#Farmer Pain Scale is so funny

[jtl-fics]

I just saw the “Farmer Pain Scale” video again and have now imagined a sign that sits in Abby’s office.

I think Andrew asks for a copy of it for their professional team’s medical staff.

[fiofo]

I want to do a Very Long Post about how much I love Helicopter ER, plus some highlights, so word of warning: potentially gruesome stuff beyond the cut:

So. Here are the reasons I love this show so much (currently on season 8, so I'm in deep!):

It's about the Yorkshire Air Ambulance service, which means excellent accents, lots of cheerful banter even through unimaginable pain, and using little phrases like "had a funny do" after someone suffers a severe medical episode lol

One of my favourite paramedics is called Kit Von Mitwitz, because 1) cool name!! and 2) he's cute (generally, I think being a helicopter paramedic/doctor just makes you about 62% more attractive/lovely)

The medical shit is super cool and interesting! Never realised how much I was into it before watching some of the clips on YouTube. Now I've gone into a bit of a rabbit hole and bought a load of books written by paramedics, doctors, and forensic pathologists

That about sums up the main bits. I watched it mainly to find out why/when the air ambulances get deployed (I live under the North West Air Ambulance's flight path to the Pennines), and I have learnt a lot! Main reasons seem to be:

Heart attack/stroke/seizure/anaphylaxis

Fallen off a motocross bike (literally almost every episode features the Fat Cat track at Doncaster!)

Fallen off a pushbike/mountain bike/motorbike in the middle of nowhere

Fallen off a horse

Trampled/attacked by cows

Fall from a ladder/roof/machinery

Road traffic collisions

Weirder ones include a woman who managed to stab herself in the eye, a father who accidentally put superglue in his child's eye instead of eyedrops, and the occasional handyman who slips and almost severs a limb with a circular saw (lots of degloving injuries too with that last one!!)

Ongoing memes include farmers close to death and in agony only rating their pain scale as a 3/10.

The age rating kind of wobbles around a bit, so I don't know if it was shown before the watershed in the earlier seasons? Because they would blur out open wounds (cowards!!) and bleep out swear words like... [checks notes] "bloody" (honestly, wtf). Later seasons seem to be at least a 15, since I'm getting to see all the cool shit, like open fractures and the aforementioned deglovings.

Craziest incident so far (that they ended up making a whole episode about - called Critical Hour) was when this young man got trapped in his car. They spent 2.5 hours trying to get him out, because his foot was smushed by the gearbox. The doctor was saying about how the foot's going to have to come off within earshot of this lad (but I think they'd given him ketamine by this point, so he might not have noticed). In the short version, it only showed them discussing how he might have to have an amputation, but in the extended episode it was actually wayyyy more serious. They didn't have enough room to fit scalpels and/or surgical saws in, so they had to ask one of the firefighters if he could use the jaws of life to cut his leg off!! Just the sheer insanity of having to contemplate that decision! It literally got down to about 4 minutes before they were going to do it, until, miraculously, they managed to open up the space and free his foot... Wild shit.

Overall, I just really like the show because everyone is so nice and polite (apart from the occasional scumbag) when they're having the absolute worst day of their life, suffering through massive amounts of pain, and it just makes me so grateful that we have this incredible charity filled with the loveliest people who want to help you. Actually makes you proud to be British for once!

And speaking of British, there's a lot of classic British understatement like "well he's got multiple broken ribs, a head injury and his foot is hanging off, so, yeah... he's quite poorly". Cracks me up every time.

[tothemeadow]

Serendipity [Chapter 1]

When the kingdom of Ainamoryp falls, a motley crew of unlikely allies must come together to save the country. 

warnings: swearing, mentions of death, mentions of blood

words: 3.8k

(a/n): All characters range from 19-20. Reader insert, reverse harem.

Dinton Keep, Ainamoryp, May 3rd, 492, 00:43

“The king! The king is dead!”

As soon as the declaration is shouted, there’s a growl of pain, then the unceremonious thump as a body hits the ground.

All around, flames lick at the stone walls, set the sky ablaze. The inky hue of the night is abruptly ruined by a brilliant orange, the smell of burning wood and bodies drifting along with the night’s breeze. The clamoring of swords crashing against each other rings throughout the air, seemingly traveling for miles. Horrified screams and blood-thirsty growls make for a gruesome, twisted melody, one that imprints itself on the brain and promises itself its unholy stay.

Heavy pants, cloudy eyes, a desire for murder.

This is what keeps Prince Shouto pressing forward.

Flanked by two guards, the three scramble through the narrow halls – the hidden passageways hidden behind the castle walls. A mere torch is their only source of light, a pitiful flame compared to the hellstorm raging through the city’s streets. Their movements are rushed, silent; there’s no time to be discussing the finer details of the invasion when the only thing playing on their minds it escaping. Gods be damned if more royal blood be spilt on the stone, seeping through and leaving a burgundy scar.

Despite the silence cloaking them, Shouto grits his teeth, the urge to turn back and fight ever present and growing. That’s his kingdom who’s suffering, hundreds of innocent people dying, suffering. And for what? Power? Wealth? If it were up to him, he’d go back and slaughter those intruding the lands, planting their flags and proclaiming their victory.

This isn’t how things were supposed to go.

“Please, my prince, we must keep moving,” the guard in front throws over his shoulder, as if sensing Shouto’s inner turmoil. “We have to get you away immediately.”

Funny how this works, how simple guards think they can control their prince, a member of the royal family. He could easily rip them a new one, put them in their place and insist they stand their ground, but he knows they’re right. There are too many enemies, even by Shouto’s standards. Even if he stayed around and fought, there isn’t a doubt in his mind that he would be slain right there on the spot.

Up ahead, a rickety wooden door comes into view, a heavy bolt holding it shut. The metal creaks as the frontmost guard slides it loose and opens the door. Heavy smoke hangs in the air, slowly spreading towards the surrounding woods and farmlands. Shouto’s heart clenches at the sight, at the putrid odor of death, the sounds of petrified screams. Closing his eyes, he tries to calm his rapidly beating heart, the anger boiling in his blood twinging the outlines of his vision red.

He’s a complete and utter fool for abandoning those who need him most.

Still, he allows the guards to lead him to an awaiting horse, a brilliant beast the color of ivory. Swinging up and onto the saddle with graceful ease, his cloak flutters behind him.

“Go! Now!” the guard with the torch bellows, eyes latching onto a group of enemy soldiers scaling a wall. “Get out of here!”

“You’ll be killed, dammit!” Shouto proclaims, his anger finally boiling over. “I refuse to have anybody else shed their blood!”

“You’re the prince, your highness,” the guard shoots back, both he and the other one drawing their swords. “There’s a watchpoint south of here, hidden away in the woods. Get there, seek for help. The soldiers there will lead you to safety.”

“Bastards, the lot of them,” Shouto hisses, “I can stay and fight.”

“No! You must go!” Before Shouto is given a chance to say anything in return, the guard strikes the horses rear. Letting out a shrill whinny, the horse rears up, landing back down heavily and taking off at a breakneck speed.

Cursing under his breath, Shouto watches over his shoulder as the two guards confront the enemy soldiers. They soon disappear from sight, leaving only the smoldering haze and raging fires encompassing the silhouette of Shouto’s childhood home. As the castle and surrounding city grow smaller and smaller with each impounding trollop of the horse, he can’t tear his eyes away, even long after it disappears from the horizon.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Levalon, Ainamoryp, May 3rd, 492, 10:14

Easy does it now, easy does it… Don’t get too close… And… Gotcha!

Snatching his hand away, Zenitsu quickly stashes the pigskin coin purse underneath his cloak. Heh, suckers, the lot of them. Most of them couldn’t tell the difference between their right hand and a horse’s ass, much less when someone steals their coinage. Briskly turning on his heel, he walks away, whistling casually.

It’s so easy.

On the market streets of the town, a large sea of people roam from stall to stall, buying smoked meats, freshly baked breads, the farmers’ latest pickings. It’s a jolly scene, the constant chatter of patrons and high-pitched yelps of young boys trying to direct potential customers to their father’s stalls. Zenitsu grew up on these streets, raised right alongside other peasant boys with no home or family to call their own. Perhaps it’s a sad story, one meant for lonely nights and listening ears, but it’s Zenitsu’s lineage. It’s what made him into what he is today, a thief with deft fingers and a pair of legs that could challenge a horse in a race.

An easy smile comes to his face. He’s long since grown used to the smell of piss and sweat clinging to the cobbled street, the hollow-eyed children staring long after the people carrying baskets and sacks of food. Everything is so horribly imperfect, but this is home. Hell, although he’s making his living in a dishonest way, it’s enough to keep a roof over his head and food in his tummy. And maybe, if he saves up enough coin, roll around in a bed of hay with a large breasted whore.

Sidestepping the crowd, he makes way towards the local tavern (Ye Olde Wife, can you believe that?), breakfast and busty barmaids on the mind. If possible, the patrons inside the tavern are nearly as loud as the ones outside. Kicking the door shut, Zenitsu heads for his usual spot at the bar, sliding onto the wobbly stool and shucking his hood down. Ale and body odor permeate his nose, the smell foul yet welcoming. Nothing is more greeting than sweaty men and alcohol.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” the owner’s crackly voice says.  A stout old man with wild hair and a bushy mustache, he’s about as rough as they come, but to Zenitsu, he’s probably the closest thing to family that he’s ever had.

“Oh, come on, Gramps,” Zenitsu says, tapping the bar top with his fingertips. “You love seeing me, eh? I bring you plenty of service-“

“You flirt with the girls in here more than you order anything,” Gramps spits. Even so, he starts to step away, already heading to the kitchen to fetch Zenitsu something to eat. “Ungrateful bastard – it’s a wonder you’re not a father yet.”

“Yet!” Zenitsu calls after him. “Don’t jinx me, Gramps!” Easing back, he turns around, resting his elbows on top of the bar. Now that he’s closer to the kitchens, the smell of succulent meat turning on a spit makes his mouth water and his stomach growl. Gods, he is hungry. While he could easily steal something from the stalls lining the market street, he normally comes to Gramps’ tavern for a proper meal. And yeah, maybe he ogles the barmaids while he’s at it, but it’s merely a dinner and a show for him.

“Oh, shit,” some random man sitting at a nearby table says. “You mean you haven’t heard about the capital?” Along with him sits another man – they’re most likely miners, if their builds and dirty fingernails say anything. Knocking back his cup, the other merely shakes his head. “Them bastards from the north – Nialliv – they stormed it. Took Dinton Keep as their own.”

Now, it’s usually polite to not listen in on others’ conversations, but this is Zenitsu here. For as long as he can remember, his sense of hearing is astronomically better than the average human’s, and it’s actually quite a useful tool when it comes to his particular jobs. But this… The capital city being taken over? How come he hasn’t heard anything before?

“You’re telling me that Dinton Keep isn’t ours? Watch the shite spilling from your mouth,” the other man grumbles.

“Aye, it’s true. Took in the wee hours of this morning, I tell you. Apparently, the king is dead.”

At that, Zenitsu stiffens. The king? Dead?

“Fuck,” the companion curses. “And they haven’t said anything yet?”

The first one shakes his meaty head. “Only a few know, I guess. The messengers probably all got their throats slit. Gods bless their souls. It’d be a miracle if we’re all not dead by the end of the month.”

“How many are dead?”

“Hundreds, I take it. Mostly guards and members of the royal court, probably. No point in killing civilians if you don’t want to clean up the mess.”

“And the prince?”

“Disappeared. Haven’t heard if they found his body or not.”

“Oi,” Gramps barks, slamming a plate down on the bar before Zenitsu.

With a jolt, Zenitsu yelps. Whipping back around, he flashes Gramps with wide eyes. “Gramps,” he whisper-yells, “is it true?”

Cocking a bushy brow, Gramps leans forward, arms crossed over his chest. “Is what true?”

“That the king is dead,” Zenitsu says, slowly. He can hardly believe the words are coming out of his own mouth.

Pointing a thick finger at him, Gramps flashes him a warning look. “It’s not your damn business spreading the news around. People are gonna be in a panic when it goes public.”

Zenitsu pales. “No way…”

“I had a carrier pigeon come in this morning,” Gramps continues, voice tight. “Unless they kick them bastards out of Dinton Keep, Ainamoryp can kiss its ass goodbye.”

Glancing down at the steaming meat and eggs in front of him, Zenitsu’s body immediately says that his appetite is gone.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Roman Sea, off the coast of Ainamoryp, May 3rd, 492, 12:39

“Captain! Land clear up ahead!”

“Well, what the fuck you waiting for? This ship isn’t going to dock itself!” you screech.

The sky above is a limitless blue, not a hint of a cloud in the sky. The sun itself seems in a good mood, as does the waters. Your ship heads towards your homeland gracefully, the waves slapping against the sides in a hello, welcome back. As much as you love sailing and exploring new lands, home forever beckons for you, calls you back with welcoming arms. There’s nothing as relieving as setting foot on familiar land.

Although you’re young, you’re powerful. Already a captain of your own crew, the proud owner of The Pearl Lady, you’re meant to go places and the gods are surely smiling down at you. Granted, the overexposure of sun and salt water may have left your skin permanently freckled and mind scrambled, but you wouldn’t have it any other way. You’re a force to be trifled with, and all be damned if they dare challenge you.

Hands settled on the wooden railing, you watch as the rest of your crew scrambles to prepare for docking, lowering the sails and readying the anchor. The coast of Ainanomyrp glimmers under the afternoon sun, truly a sight to behold, but something feels… off. Normally, other boats come to and from the mouth of inland, the capital city of Endeavor being a major port. However, there’s not another boat on the water, not even the small dingeys for fishing.

Your ship glides in smoothly, coming to a gradual stop by an open dock. Your crew pushes the anchor overboard, the salty water giving a final splash as your boat jolts to a stop. Hell, even the docks are unnaturally silent, not even a single ship hand or merchant in sight. All other vessels are docked, their decks bare of any people. Your crew shifts uneasily, clearly noticing the strange lack of other human beings.

“Uh, Captain?” the quartermaster asks you, hand instinctively landing on the butt of his pistol as he glances around, “Should we lift anchor and sail to another port?”

“Like hell we are,” you grunt, narrowing your eyes. Something’s coming. You can feel it.

Stepping away from the railing, you saunter down to the main deck, heading to the side where your crew set the bridge down. The clunk of wood striking wood echoes into the air; instead of it being a relieving sound – a sign that you’re truly home – it’s ominous. It’s only a matter of time before disaster hits.

“Keep your eyes peeled,” you tell your crew, “Something isn’t right.”

“Halt!” an unknown voice calls. Straining your neck forward, you catch sight of a small patrol of guards in dark gray armor clamber down the cobblestone steps leading from the streets to docks. While it’s somewhat of a relief to see actual human beings, you’re immediately on edge, body stiffening. Those are not the given uniforms of Ainamorypan soldiers.

“Fuck,” you grumble, biting the inside of your cheek.

Metal clanking against wooden boards fills the tense atmosphere as the patrol comes up to your ship. The group stands ramrod-straight, faces stoic, eyes sharp. The leader steps forward, neck craning as he looks up at you. “Who goes there?” he barks.

Clicking your tongue, you lean over the side of the ship, elbows resting on the weathered wood. “A bunch of merchants returning home. Everybody’s got to make a living somehow, eh? Now, if you’d kindly fuck off, I’d like to step on some actual dirt for once.”

The guard sneers, expression turning ugly as he flashes yellow teeth. “All incoming and outgoing ships are to be registered. And, as far as I’m concerned, your shitty dingey isn’t on the list.” With a metallic snap of his fingers, one of his followers hands him a clipboard and a hunk of charcoal. “Ship name, captain’s name, date of arrival and planned dismissal.”

At that, you bark out an incredulous laugh. “Are you fucking kidding me? When was this instilled?”

“Just this morning, actually,” the guard snips. “Since I’m feeling merciful, I’ll let you off with a warning just this once. Follow these orders or we’ll have no other option than to imprison you.”

Prison? Seriously? Just who did this dickhead think he’s talking to?

Scoffing, you draw yourself to a full stand, placing your hands on your hips. You could easily pull out your pistol and try to shoot one of the damned guards, but lead balls aren’t going to do much against a full suit of armor. “And I’m pretty sure I told you to fuck off.”

The same guard who gave the leader the clipboard and charcoal steps close and leans in, whispering something into the leader’s ear. The leader spares you a single glance, his eyebrow cocking in interest. With a wave of his hand, the rest of the patrol storm the ship, drawing their blades. Your crew readies their own blades and brandishes their pistols, murmuring unsure words.

“Captain (l/n) of The Pearl Lady,” the lead guard says, scribbling it onto his parchment. “Such a pleasure to meet a wanted criminal.”

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Dinton Keep’s dungeons, Ainamoryp, 492, May 3rd, 13:00

“Oi, oi! Keep your grubby hands off of me!” you bark, shoving yourself against the guards holding you by the biceps.

“Shut your damn trap, you filthy pirate,” the guard on your right seethes, his putrid breath clogging your nostrils. “Thinking you can just waltz right into Endeavor? What are you, an idiot?”

“Far as I was concerned, Endeavor used to be leagues more friendly than this horse shit.”

“I told you to shut up,” the guard barks. Lifting a hand, he cracks up alongside the back of your skull, leaving a thrumming ache. The other guard merely stays silent as he shoves you into the other’s arms, fishing a set of keys from his side and opening the door to a cell. “Fucking rot for all I care,” the guard spits, pushing you into the dingy space.

You sputter as you crash onto the jagged rock, your palms scraping against the surface. You hiss in pain as the guards slam the gate shut and lock it. The one who mocked you takes off with a bark of laughter as the other simply follows behind. “Bloody bastards,” you grunt as they disappear from sight. “I oughta wring their necks and hang them from the bow.”

“Are you alright?” a new voice speaks.

With a screech, you fling yourself to the side, your hip screaming in pain as a sharp rock digs into the flesh. You instinctively reach for your sword, only to be left blubbering curse after curse after remembering that the guards confiscated all of your weapons. Perched on the windowsill sits a boy no older than you, head topped with messy green curls and a face adorned with a sea of freckles.

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you!” the stranger proclaims, waving his hands frantically before him. Hopping down from the wall, he holds his hands in front of him, much like he’s encountering a vicious wild beast. Which isn’t totally wrong, but still.

“Bullshit you didn’t! I’ll kick your ass, mate!” Scrambling onto your feet, your press your back against the cold stone wall, bloody hand clutching your bruised hip.

“I swear it! It’s just… Well…. Look, your hands are bleeding,” the stranger says, turning his hands so his palms are facing upwards. “Let me treat them.”

Your face curls into a snarl. “And why would I do that?”

“I’m a healer,” he continues, stepping forward and snatching your wrist. You yelp at the sudden contact and try to rip your hand away, but his grip is strong. Now that he’s up close and personal, you can’t deny the fact that he’s tall and muscular, the sleeves of his tunic rolled up and exposing the veins and scars riddling his forearms.  

Holding your wrist with one hand, the other hovers above your scraped, bloody palm. A golden light emits from his hand, casting a warm glow over your own. Ah, so this guy is a magic wielder. While it isn’t uncommon for people to practice magic, you yourself have never taken an interest in it. Magic can be a finnicky force to deal with, and one who cannot rein in its power may be subjected to a world full of hurt.

With a sigh, you keep your emotions under control and allow this stranger to continue his treatment. For one, this guy is healing you for free, and secondly, he appears as though he can easily throw you through the stone wall with little effort.

“There,” he says once he’s finished, gingerly retracting his hands and flashing you a tiny smile. “It’s all better now, see?”

Staring down at your hands, you flex them into fists, noticing how whatever tension that was in them had disappeared along with the scrapes. Magic can truly be a wonderous thing, but in the wrong hands… Well, things don’t turn out as pretty.

“I don’t get it,” you say, sidestepping the stranger and planting yourself on the pile of dirty hay strewn about the floor, “why is a healer in a dungeon, of all places?”

At your question, the stranger visibly perks up. He follows your movements, getting onto the floor and sitting across from you. “I guess a proper introduction is needed, huh?” he says, scratching his cheek in embarrassment. “My name is Izuku. Izuku Midoriya. It’s a pleasure!”

“I didn’t ask for your name,” you snap. “I asked you why you’re here, not who you are.”

At that, Izuku huffs and physically deflates. “You remind me a lot of Kacchan…”

“By the gods, do you know how to answer a simple question? You know what, don’t even answer that-“

“The king is dead,” Izuku says, cutting you off. His large eyes don’t hold their friendly glow anymore, but rather one of determination and anger. “He was killed last night.”

You blink rapidly at him, your mind throwing itself in for a loop. Wait, wait, the king is dead? How is that even possible? The king isn’t a weakling, and you’ve heard stories of him being a powerful fire sorcerer. But now that you think about it, it would explain the change in guards, the lack of people filling the once busy docks and streets…

You inhale sharply. “How?” you ask, voice small.

“Forces from Nialliv intruded the country last night and took Dinton Keep by force. People were…” Izuku stops, wets his lips. “People are gone,” he finally forces out. “The king is dead, the prince is nowhere to be seen, and all of Ainamoryp is going to lose hope.” Wringing his hands, his gaze drops. “I was here when the intrusion happened. I was fighting off enemy soldiers with all my might, but I couldn’t save the city. People are dead because I didn’t work hard enough.”

“And then you were captured,” you say. “But why not killed?”

“They found out I was a healer – well, I specialize in herbology, but the point still stands. They had men and women on their side who needed medical attention, and I was simply another pair of hands to them,” Izuku answers dryly. “They threw me in here once everybody was treated.”

“Then why’d you help them? They’re the enemy, you fool. You wanna know what I would’ve done? Slit every single last one of their throats.” Shaking your head, you lean back against the wall and laugh, but there’s no humor to it. “When you have the opportunity to fuck your opponent over, you take it.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Izuku snaps, clenching his fists in his lap. “I can’t stand seeing others hurt. I’m a healer, for gods’ sakes. Not everyone is some filthy, selfish pirate like you.”

Snapping your attention back to him, you send him a steely glare.

“Wait, wait,” Izuku hastily says, reaching up and smacking himself on the forehead, “I didn’t mean that-“

“You said what you said,” you interject. “And you know what? You’re right. I’m so fucking filthy and selfish that I’m the captain of The Pearl Lady. I bathe in blood and gold, you pathetic little twat. And I like it. So, do us both a favor, shut your damn trap, and leave me the hell alone.”

Izuku audibly gulps, his hands falling limp in his lap. You almost want to laugh at him; whenever somebody hears of your infamous title, their reactions are all the same. Despite the stigma towards pirates, you’re still pretty damn powerful, and your crew voted you as captain for a reason. Turning away from Izuku, you settle onto your side, willing for either sleep to take over or for Izuku to magically disappear.

Your quartermaster was right – you should’ve lifted anchor and docked somewhere else.

Anywhere else.

[fanfic-corner]

Bisexual Dean

9/12/20 - Is Dean canonically bisexual? That’s a fun question (it depends on where you live, I suppose). Anyway, nothing is stopping you from reading these beautiful fics involving a very bi main character.

Tabula Rasa by Dangerousnotbroken on AO3. (78,340 words).

Tags: Writer!Castiel, Bartender!Dean, Past Relationship, Magic, Canon Typical Violence, Mentions of Alcoholism, Mentions of Past Child Neglect, Mental Illness, Witches, Ghosts, Bisexual Dean, Bisexual Castiel, Angst, Slow Burn, Memory Loss.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: Once upon a time, Castiel Novak had everything. He had a happy home life, a full scholarship, and, if he played his cards right, a promising journalism career. And on top of all of that, he had Dean. Then tragedy struck, as it tends to do, and Castiel lost everything. At thirty six, he’s got none of those things. He’s got no family to speak of. He’s got a job investigating purportedly true tales of the supernatural for a magazine no one reads. And worst of all he hasn’t seen Dean in nearly twenty years. So when research for an article turns him on to a witch who apparently grants wishes in exchange for stories, Castiel figures it’s worth the risk. If making a deal with a witch can get him Dean back, what has he got to lose?

Notes: This was absolutely amazing; written beautifully, with a fantastic plot.

Take You To The Country by almaasi on AO3. (18,987 words).

Tags: Historical AU, Propositions, Eloping, Newspapers, Fluff, Forbidden Love, Misunderstandings, Pining, First Kiss, Established Relationship, Running Away Together, Moving In Together, Childhood Friends, Marriage Proposal, Businessman Dean, Farmer Dean, Emotional Dean, Bisexual Dean, Domestic Dean Winchester, Clockmaker Castiel, Autistic Castiel, Frustrated Sam.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: A Dean/Cas 1950s AU. Dean reads an elopement proposal in the town's local newspaper, written by some old soul in love with their best friend. He's mid-way through expressing to his brother how beautiful he finds it when Dean realises the proposal is for him.

Notes: I love Sam’s subsequent letters to the newspapers at the end, it was just a really good idea done really well.

A Little Slice Of Heaven by onamelancholyhill on AO3. (112,265 words).

Tags: Slow Build, Friends to Lovers, Falling in Love, POV Dean Winchester, POV Third Person, POV Castiel, Bakery and Coffee Shop AU, Episode: s4e17 It’s a Terrible Life, Alternate Universe - Human, Explicit Sexual Content, Bisexual Dean, Idiots in Love.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: Jim Morrison once said, “The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are.” That was Castiel Novak’s motto in life, and the reason why he accepted his grandmother's inheritance and took the responsibility it implied. Dean Winchester, a remarkable accountant at Sandover Bridge & Iron Inc., however, had other priorities. He lived to serve, hidden in a mask that didn’t allow him to be honest with himself, but lonesome and boring. When destiny made their paths cross, in a less than promising way, with Dean as the instigator and Castiel as his victim, Dean’s mind started wandering, in between pies and cakes, coffees and muffins... What if Mr. Morrison was right? After all, as the guy used to say, "there can’t be any large-scale revolution, until there’s a personal revolution first."

Notes: This was so cute and I adored the plot! It’s making me want to rewatch It’s A Terrible Life but I’ll live.

Just Like You by imherecauseimnotallthere98 on AO3. (35,717 words).

Tags: Homophobia, Homophobic John, Hurt Dean Winchester, Protective Dean Winchester, Established Relationship, Protective Castiel, BAMF Castiel, Protective Sam Winchester, Angry John, Angry Dean Winchester, Angry Sam Winchester, Protective Bobby Singer, Awesome Bobby, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Scared Dean, John Being an Asshole, Swearing, Bisexual Dean, Pansexual Castiel, Past Child Abuse, Accidental Outing, Death Threats, Fluff and Angst, Implied Sexual Content, Sharing a Bed.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: When John shows up at their door in the middle of the night, the Winchesters and Cas start looking into who or what could have brought him back. Meanwhile, Dean struggles to keep his relationship with Cas a secret from his father, with some help from Sam. The tension rises between the Winchesters as Dean shows John that he is no longer the obedient little soldier he once was, and tries to establish himself as an equal with his dad.

Notes: Bobby and Sam are icons in this and should have followed through on their threats. That will be all.

Walk Through Fire For You by purple_charlie on AO3. (2,332 words).

Tags: John Winchester’s A+ Parenting, Angst, Pride, Marijuana Use, Polyamory, Gay Cas, Bisexual Dean, Bisexual Gabriel, Everyone is Queer.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: Boyfriend. The word still feels foreign in Dean’s mouth, still brings back echoes of John Winchester’s thinly-veiled (if even that) homophobia. "Man up, don’t be a sissy, I didn’t raise a fairy". It’s a swollen blister in the back of Dean’s mind, throbbing with pain whenever a stranger’s eyes linger too long on Cas’ hand in his, whenever a waitress double-takes at how close they sit in diner booths. But here, dirty dancing with Cas in a warehouse full of other queer folks, Dean wants to shout from the rooftops- I’m Dean Winchester, I drive the baddest car in town, I lift heavy things for a living, and this is my boyfriend.

Notes: This was so sweet it nearly made me start crying - Cas deserved to be told that he was loved!

Bottom’s Up by mnwood on AO3. (28,103 words).

Tags: Fluff and Crack, Wing Kink, Domestic, Smut, Bisexual Dean, Resolved Sexual Tension, Established Relationship, Wedding Planning, Partying, Weddings.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: Sam could’ve kissed them both when he got to the bunker one day to find a string of clothing (his heart nearly burst with hope when he saw the abandoned flannel and trench coat) leading to a very naked pile of limbs tangled on the couch. Just kidding. Of course it wasn’t the couch. Sam always imagined it as the couch because the fact that he actually found them on the dining room table had tainted the happiness of the memory.

Notes: Jesus, I did not need that level of detail into Dean and Cas’ sex life (but it was very funny).

Stories Are Made Of Mistakes by wildhoneypie on AO3. (4,942 words).

Tags: Human Castiel, Diners, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Bisexual Dean, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Slow Build, Case Fic, Domestic, Didn’t Know They Were Dating.

My Rating: 4 stars.

Description: In which Cas is human and doesn’t understand basic concepts like: clothing, Mythbusters, moisturizer, and Greek food. Dean is…Dean and doesn’t understand basic concepts like: boyfriends, language, how to tell your friend that he’s a walking miracle, and when not to quip.

Notes: This was so cute and I live for human Cas. I also love the recurring ‘no fucking quipping’ joke in this, although the idea of Cas swearing broke me a bit!

And this one, which has no Destiel content but a very bi Dean:

Uniform of a Winchester by monsterfuckerdean on AO3. (20,591 words).

Tags:  Canon Compliant, Missing Scene, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Bad Parent John Winchester, Young Sam Winchester, Young Dean Winchester, Pre-Season 1, Episode: s5e2 Free to Be You and Me, Angst and Feels, Queer Themes, Character Study, Diners, Sibling Love, Family, Friendship, HBO SPN.

My Rating: 5 stars.

Description: We all know the story of the amulet Dean wears around his neck. But what about everything else he wears?

Notes: Okay, I have to admit that I am loving the HBO SPN vibes even though I am fully aware that if it was a real show I wouldn’t watch it. This is so good though, and the writing is gorgeous!

My friend came out to me as bisexual this week, and paired with the mess that is the Spanish dub, I thought this would be nice as a little reminder that it doesn’t matter how the show ended, because the fans will always be here and we will always be supportive. Anyway, enjoy!

[hamliet]

I thought too that the flower was unnecessary, cause not only hindered the redemption theme, but it was cliche as hell! Then I realised that it gave balance to the romance. Think about it, up until that point cwn is the only one who has kept sacrificing. Being enduring in silence while mr obssesed over shi mei & slept sqt, being using his very soul as source to go back in time to fix it all, being breaking the dream illusion, and dying after climbing 3 000 stairs to bring Mo ran home.

2. In book 2  Mo Ran went into his journey and made good deeds, but that is character growth & nothing of any kind of sacrifice. So now we are with this couple while one side literary kept loving the other in the most darkest & heinous of times, going through tremendous physical and emotional pain And the other half basically being ohhh I have been over idealesing my martial brother, but now that this farm girl asked I finally realise what I want \^-^/ .

But when the flower was added, then the romance scale was put into balance. That was Mo Ran sacrifice, and for the romance aspect it worked, meanwhile taking the cost on the whole redemption theme. Thanks for reading this, as always your takes are top quality❤❤ hope you are having a good day!

To that anon who send the realisation at the farm arc... I felt that fam! You are so right Hamliet that arc basically being like a fluffy, cute filler- needed for a little breath from all the pain and suffering. It was cute and humorous. Like I was in the mood for comedy, this farmer girl just become brave, u expect a funny rejection and then she is like embarrassed and just asks what do you want. And Mo Ran suddenly is like, I love cwn! It let me felt like.... THAT'S IT!!! This is how you admit

Ahhh, that’s an interesting perspective!! Thanks for sharing; gonna think more on that! (Not sure if these are all from the same person but could be combined!!)

[forgottencoffeemugs]

t h e  c o v e n  //  bittersweet 1.1

❝  I’ve never been afraid of a little fire, you are no exception❞

draft 1 | 3.5k words | mentions of death, violence, blood

Eternity is meant for the dreamers and thinkers, the explorers and revolutionaries. Someone said that to Cassian once. He wasn’t sure if he agreed--wasn’t sure if eternity was meant for anyone. But he knew it surely wasn’t meant for the bitter and numb, the broken and weary. 

It wasn’t meant for people like him.

He had told this, once, to Theo. And, as a result, had received an hour long lecture on how his argument was flawed, that the very fact that his body had accepted the change was proof that he was built for eternity in some way at least. 

It was useless to argue with Theo on such things. But, as he stared out over the hushed form of a city asleep from his window high above it all, he wondered again if that great pain of the change was truly a test of compatibility with this kind of existence, or if it was simply the price one had to pay to bear the great gift and the great burden of immortality.

His own thoughts were cut short in that moment, his mind suddenly flooded with the sensation of crashing waves and the bite of sea air that signaled that Theo wished to speak. 

Think of the devil, he sent in greeting, allowing the familiar mental connection through his outer shields.

You were thinking of me, Cas? I’m flattered. Theo’s mental voice betrayed his amusement despite the deadpan delivery. His next words, however, were serious, his voice taking on a razor edge. I have received word that our rogue has been spotted on the Eastside. Kassandra and I are nearly there. Join us?

Cassian immediately straightened at that news. They had been on the trail of this particular rogue for weeks, if Theo and Kassandra had a new lead then there was no time to waste. I’ll be there. The waves retreated from his mind without another word.

Cassian turned for the set of stairs that would take him to one of the side exits of the manor that his coven currently called home. He noted the cool kiss of the early autumn air against his skin when he stepped through the door, but he felt no less comfortable than if he had been bundled up against the chill. The moon was bright overhead, casting the surrounding landscape in bright silver and stark shadows. His eyes already having adjusted to the dark, he could see clearly as he made his way to the entrance of one of the many wooded trails that surrounded their land. It didn’t take long to locate the one that would take him east, and as soon as he did, he broke into a run that would have put even the best human sprinters to shame.

At this speed he would arrive at Theo’s location in less than twenty minutes, and he used that time to think about what he should expect. A lead on the rogue came as a surprise. They’d been on the trail of the vampire who decided to go on a murdering spree in their region for weeks already, but they always seemed to be a step behind. The chase was starting to become tedious, and Cassian, for one, was ready to hand all their information over to the council and tell them to deal with it. However, as tempting as the thought was, he knew it wouldn’t work that way. While Theo, Kassandra, and himself preferred to stay out of matters involving others of their kind, it was an unspoken rule of the ruling council that if vampires wanted to lay claim on a region, then they had to also accept a certain responsibility to intervene with matters that threatened to expose the secrets of their kind. And the trail of blood-drained bodies being left behind by their current quarry definitely fell under that threat category. 

In fact, the only reason the humans in the area hadn’t already become suspicious was the revolution brewing on the horizon. Enough bodies were already disappearing across debated borders that a few more added to the mix was nothing to warrant a second look--so far, at least.

On the heels of that cheery thought, Cassian reached the edge of the woods where dense tree cover gave way to open land. He slowed his pace to one that wouldn’t raise eyebrows should any curious human eyes be peering through the windows of nearby homes despite the hour.

Gathered in loose rows, the modest homes clearly belonged to family farmers, as evidenced by the large swaths of land between each residence. The dusty ground, where once stood tall, leafy stalks, now bore only the markings of harvest. Which provided Cassian with a clear view of where Theo and Kassandra stood, searching, at the very edge of the field adjacent to the outermost home.

As Cassian drew closer, he began to pick up the sounds of their conversation. 

“--not enough tracks, but how?”

“The smell should be more than enough.”

Neither vampire was surprised by his approach, having heard or scented him long before he came into view. Kassandra handed him a small scrap of cloth when he came to stand beside her.

Late night? Kassandra’s warm mental voice, carrying with it the sensations of a summer forest in full bloom with notes of citrus, entered his mind a second later.

Very funny. He didn’t spare her a look as he replied, instead examining the rough material in his hands.

The question was genuine. You look tired...or hungry. The last statement held the hint of a question, one Cassian chose to ignore.

“The cloth?” he asked out loud.

“Found it snagged on a broken branch just on the edge of the woods,” it was Theo who spoke. “Scent’s faint, but it matches.” He turned to gesture to the place where the field met the edge of the heavily wooded land just meters away. “We haven’t been able to pick up the scent more than a few feet into the trees, however.”

“There are footprints leading away from that house,” Kassandra nodded at the home nearest to where the three of them stood, picking up where Theo left off in the effortless way of mates. “We were just wondering why they seem to disappear here when you--” she cut off abruptly, her head snapping to her right to look somewhere in the distance. “Do you smell that?”

Cassian and Theo turned at once to face the same direction and each took a deep pull of the air.

“Smoke.” Theo murmured.

“And where there’s smoke?” Kassandra proposed.

They took off at once, heading for the direction of the scent. There was the off-chance that someone had fancied themselves a middle-of-the-night campfire, but there was something off about the scent.

As if it wasn’t just wood that was burning.

The fire was just over a mile away and the run took mere minutes, but by the time they came upon the modest home it was clear they were far too late to do any good.

It was an inferno.

Flames licked up every inch of the structure, throwing off intense heat in waves and casting the moonlit night an eerie orange. Thick, noxious black smoke poured out of the open doorway and several of the windows whose glass had blown out in the heat.

Theo and Kassandra began searching for signs that would point them toward the rogue, because despite the acrid smell of destruction in the air, the scent of the one they were after still clung to the area. He had spent considerable time here.

That realization confirmed what Cassian had expected. That off scent in the fire, it was the scent of burning flesh. Which meant that this was the scene of their target’s latest experiment.

Another failure, it would seem, Theo telepathed grimly, clearly having come to the same conclusion.

Cassian caught movement on the edge of his vision and turned to note Kassandra moving to the treeline. 

He met Theo’s eyes across the yard. Go. I’ll handle damage control. 

Theo hesitated for a calculating moment before giving a curt nod and taking off after his mate.

Now alone in the small clearing that made up the home’s property, Cassian examined the fire once more. There were no nearby structures, which meant a limited risk of spread, but the damage to the house was beyond help. This blaze would simply have to run its course. If the symphony of creaks and groans were any indication, the entire thing would be coming down soon, so Cassian set to work.

The process itself was a familiar one, but reproducing it on a scale large enough to cloak the entire clearing was an exercise of power that Cassian rarely got these days. By the time it was complete, a fine layer of sweat that had nothing to do with the heat coated his skin. It wasn’t strictly necessary to hide the fire from human discovery, but in their inevitable, useless attempts at dousing the flames, they were bound to disrupt any lingering scent trails and corrupt any viable evidence.

It was for those very things that Cassian began to search for while he waited for the fire to burn itself away. There was little of interest, he noted at once. A small wooden shed sat just far enough away from the main building as to be safe from catching fire. It opened to reveal tools for yard work and various odds and ends that Cassian thought might be the playthings of children. 

A family home, then. 

Behind the shed, in a patch of land that had become overgrown with tall grasses and weeds, was a wagon. A wagon that, going by the large crack in the back right wheel, hadn’t seen use in a long time. Judging there to be nothing else of interest in that section, he turned to scan the rest of the land. The only other objects of note were in the middle of the yard. Just a few meters from the back entrance of the home stood a wheelbarrow. And scattered beside it was a large metal bucket, some rumpled fabric, and various gardening tools--as if someone had been planning to return to their work come morning.

Cassian dared to move close enough to take a better look. Vampires were notoriously flammable, with most never daring to come within feet of any open flame larger than a candle. But, Cassian had never been afraid of a little fire, much in the same way that he admired the darkness that so many loathed--he seemed to have a penchant for the things that gave others pause. 

He did, however, pause as he neared closer to the wheelbarrow and noted the curve of pale legs sticking out from the rumpled fabric. Fabric which, he realized now, was actually a nightgown that was torn and stained from more than dirt. The rest of the body had been hidden from sight by the large bucket, but he saw now that there was a woman curled around the legs of the wheelbarrow. He let his eyes follow the slight indentation in the dirt leading from bare feet to the back door of the flaming home. His jaw set as he put together the scene. 

She had crawled for her life, only for it to give out mere feet from the flames. Left to die in the chilled air of the night rather than in the blaze behind her.

Cassian knelt, intending to carry the body back to the flames--an unfortunate but necessary measure. Humans could not be allowed to get their hands on one of the victims of the rogue they were hunting. Missing bodies could be explained away, but too many questions would arise from bodies with their necks torn out, or bodies that had been drained of blood. He was just about to reach under the rumpled bodice of the nightgown when he caught the faintest movement of the fabric.

Breathing. She was still breathing.

Frozen, Cassian drew in a careful breath. His eyes widened before he could stop the reaction. Indeed, there was no smell of even the earliest signs of decay on the body. There was, however, another very distinct scent, one that made his fangs lengthen in response. It had been hidden by the smell of smoke and burning flesh, but there, underneath it all, she reeked of the sickly sweet venom of a vampire. Presumably that of the rogue they were searching for. 

Reaching out, he took her carefully by the shoulder, rolled her onto her back, and brushed her hair away from her face and neck. He frowned at the sight. The swollen, blackened bite was a definite sign of rejection. He doubted she had much time left. He found it difficult to believe that she was alive at all, but there was no mistaking the sound of her heartbeat--faint though it was. Perhaps the chill of the air had slowed the venom's effects. Regardless, it wasn’t enough to save her. Unless--

Cassian rocked back onto his heels with a sigh. Her transition was at a crossroads at the moment and while he knew of something that might increase her chances, he questioned whether he should do so. Newborn vampires can be a handful, and with a recent string of vampires being made for use in the brewing revolution, he wasn’t eager to introduce someone new to this life.

A strangled moan suddenly escaped the woman's throat, causing every muscle in Cassian’s body to tighten. His eyes fell to the subtle twitching of her fingers. Yes, she was still alive, but barely.

Cassian thought of Theo and Kassandra, and of Faustia who was off seeing the world--his coven. They were a close-knit bunch that was entirely contradictory to their nature as vampires, but they had managed to make it work for centuries now. Theo and Kassandra, the only couple among them, acted as the bleeding hearts of the coven; their arms were always open to vampires with no place to go. He knew they would never let him live it down if he let this woman die tonight.

He swore under his breath and glanced again at the woman’s fingers. The twitching had stopped; she didn't have much longer left. As if to accentuate that thought, there was a sudden crashing sound inside the house. He wasted no time in pulling the woman up into his arms. He carried her away just in time for the roof to finally collapse, sending a brilliant burst of red sparks high into the sky. A rolling wave of even more intense heat hit his back a moment later and he hurried to scan the area for a suitable place to put his half-baked plan into action. He settled for laying his unconscious burden down on the flat surface of the abandoned wagon.

He eyed the tainted bite that marred the woman’s neck with wary eyes. The best chance of success depended on him placing a bite of his own as close to the girl's heart as possible. So, despite every one of his instincts telling him to get as far away from the mark of death as possible, he brushed her hair away for a second time. He then lowered his head to the unmarked side of her neck and sank his fangs in deep.

He gagged on the first mouthful of blood. Before he could stop himself, he turned and spit it out onto the ground. The rejection of the other vampire’s venom had turned her blood bitter, but when he returned to her neck he pushed past the corrupt taste and forced swallow after swallow of what little blood the girl had left in order to cycle his own venom through her body.

The exact science of the process was lost on him. Unlike Theo, he never bothered to read up on such subjects. But, he did know that the age of a vampire directly correlated to the strength of their venom, and the likelihood of their success in turning humans. His hope was that his considerable age would allow him to overpower the process of rejection and force the change to complete. However, whether it would actually work was complete speculation. A not so small part of his mind reminded him that this was probably a waste of his time. And his appetite.

Still, he continued to pull blood from the girl. Partway through he managed to note that, under the disgusting acrid tinge, her blood was actually quite sweet and pleasant. A dark part of his mind that lived for blood alone noted, with both amusement and disappointment, that under other circumstances she would have made a delicious feeding partner. 

After a time, he pulled away. Having no way to judge how much was needed, he had to hope that his instincts were good enough. When her blood didn’t begin the normal clotting process that typically kicked in after a feed, he reached up to undo the scrap of silk knotted neatly around his own neck and created a makeshift bandage around the woman’s to prevent further blood loss. Looking at her now, with her pallor and the deep bruising along her jaw and under the hollows of her eyes, he almost didn’t believe the faint sound of her heartbeat. She hadn't moved again since the twitching of her fingers, but still that whisper of a heartbeat remained. Even as the rise and fall of her chest became nearly undetectable.

Cassian dully wondered if it would be a corpse he carried back to the manor rather than a newly-made vampire.

Nevertheless, he couldn’t stay much longer. The sun was already starting to make itself known over the tops of the trees. With it, his cover of shadows would disappear and the house would once again be noticeable. He couldn’t be around when humans inevitably came to find the source of the smoke. At this point they would find nothing but the charred remains of the home--all evidence of the nefarious acts committed tonight having been either reduced to ash or taken care of by Cassian--but still, he had a certain public image to maintain. One that didn’t include loitering around the scene of arson.

The manor was far, but he would still arrive before Theo and Kassandra. He knew the latter would run the scent trail as far as she could. He might even have time to round up a real meal before he had to face them and explain the stray he was bringing home. The soured blood in his stomach lurched at the thought. Theo was never going to let up about him having a heart after this, but it would be better than the lecture from Kassandra he would have surely suffered should he have left the woman for certain death.

Noting the deathly chill of her skin, Cassian wrapped the woman in his suit jacket before lifting her once again. Her weight was no burden, but her presence prevented him from setting off at a true run. He settled instead for a healthy jog, his thoughts turning to wonder how he would explain the situation to the woman when she awakened. If she awakened, he corrected himself, knowing that the next few hours would put her body through even more hell. 

He shuddered at the inadvertent reminder of his own transition. 

In small doses, the venom of vampires created an incredibly pleasant sensation in humans, a soft buzz of warmth that comforted the body and eased the mind into a beautiful state of euphoria that was better than any drug. But in large, sudden doses--such as those required to initiate the transition from human to vampire--the sensations got heightened to the point of searing agony. The pain would spread through the body like an unquenchable fire that consumed everything in its path--destroying, rebuilding, strengthening. 

The change wasn’t a simple one. The physical suffering sent many humans beyond their mental limits, pushing their minds to the point of no return and leaving them as nothing but a damaged husk with no sense of consciousness. Even more humans couldn’t handle the change at all, their bodies rejecting the intensity of the venom and killing them outright. However, there were the unique few that survived all stages of the transition relatively unharmed--those were the ones that went on to join the ranks of the immortals.

Even the long centuries of Cassian’s existence had done nothing to soften the memories of his own making.

Had he been a religious man, he might have sent up a prayer for the poor woman’s soul. But as it was, he simply continued his course, knowing the best thing he could do now was give her a safe place to either be made or unmade.

[chau735473623711-blog]

Music Quizzes

The effect different genres of music can have in your mind, body, and community. Then there's promoting. Bossa nova - Portuguese for "new wave" - gained foreign money, in response to Brazilian music historian Ruy Castro, when it appeared in an advert for a 1958 multi-artist concert put on by Grupo Universitário Hebraico do Brasil. World music was hashed out in 1987 at an business assembly. It was meant only for a short marketing marketing campaign to pump non-Anglophone musicians in retail areas they won't otherwise fit into, only to stay an acknowledged, if unwieldy, class. Radio codecs sometimes impose themselves on the music. AOR is a US abbreviation for "album-oriented radio" (later "rock") coined in 1972 by Lee Abrams and Kent Burkhart's consultancy agency for the FM rock radio stations that will outline ultra-slick center-American rock: Styx, Boston , Aerosmith. In practise, it usually translates to "definitively pre-punk".

For example, you might say, Within the refrain of ‘Poses,' Rufus Wainwright sets his first line of text to a protracted, arching melody, harking back to opera." This describes the music and lets the reader know what part you might be speaking about and how you are hearing it (it reminds you of opera). Now tell the reader what is significant about this. What does it do for the which means of the textual content? The textual content suggests that ‘you mentioned watch my head about it,' however this rising operatic melody appears to suggest that the singer is de facto floating away and gone into one other world." Now your description of the music capabilities as evidence in an argument about how the tune has two layers of meaning (text and music). In the highlands of Tibet, for hundreds of years, it was commonplace for farmers to sing a particular sort of track to their yaks. The melodies were intended to coax the yaks to provide more milk, praising the sheen of their coats and the beauty of their horns. The actual combination of tones was said to have particular powers to chill out the yaks and get the milk flowing. Right this moment, only a handful of old-timers nonetheless keep in mind these songs; younger herders merely don't learn the music, distracted by the pop songs coming in over the radio. And when click the following internet site outdated-timers die, most certainly the songs will die as nicely.

Setting a distinct precedent, Friedrich Nietzsche's views on music are a byproduct of his common philosophy of culture. Nietzsche initially defends the prevalence of sure strains of European classical music. He praises composers whose irrational genius gives the Dionysian power needed to right the rational excesses of European tradition. Nietzsche eventually reverses himself. In an extended attack on Richard Wagner's operas, he rejects the continuing value of the nice" model that characterizes artwork music. In what quantities to a reversal of Kantian aesthetic priorities, Nietzsche praises Georges Bizet's extensively standard opera Carmen (1875) for its triviality and ease (see Sweeney-Turner). Nonetheless, most philosophers ignore Nietzsche's protection of light" music. Two mid-вЂ90s albums outlined these ideological threads higher than any other. In 1994, Gravediggaz†debut 6 Toes Deep found RZA and Prince Paul collaborating on the peak of their powers together with StetsasonicвЂs Frukwan, plus, um, a fourth man. The result was dusty, violent, funny, and endlessly inventive, valorizing unhealthy PCP trips and imagining a suicide hotline that talked you into it. A yr later, Memphis†Three 6 Mafia launched its eerie, lo-fi debut Mystic Stylez, a druggy exploration of 35mm, oversaturated haunted-house music. ItвЂs an album of just about ambient violence, barbmagill1531.wikidot.com its warbling synths a pink fog that creeps in from underneath your door and subtly normalizes its lyrical malevolence, like the steadily reworking worlds of JacobвЂs Ladder or Silent Hill. Literary curiosity within the fashionable ballad kind dates back at the least to Thomas Percy and William Wordsworth English Elizabethan and Stuart composers had often evolved their music from people themes, the classical suite was primarily based upon stylised people-dances, and Joseph Haydn 's use of people melodies is famous. However the emergence of the time period "folks" coincided with an "outburst of nationwide feeling throughout Europe" that was particularly robust on the edges of Europe, where national identity was most asserted. Nationalist composers emerged in Central Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain and Britain: the music of Dvořák , Smetana , Grieg , Rimsky-Korsakov , Brahms , Liszt , de Falla , Wagner , Sibelius , Vaughan Williams , Bartók , and plenty of others drew upon folk melodies. There are numerous completely different kinds of jazz dance, every with its own traits and influences. In general although, jazz dance has all the time been associated with standard tradition and it has changed over time in parallel with the music and kinds of widespread entertainment. Presently, many alternative styles coexist, in addition to numerous levels of fusion with other genres. Some important figures in the history of jazz dance are Katherine Dunham, who reinforced the connection between jazz dance and its African origins; Bob Fosse highly influential figure in the development of dance in films, and Matt Mattox , who developed his personal approach based on ballet training. Like by no means before, the web has change into a spot for sharing creative work - similar to music - amongst a world group of artists and art lovers. Whereas music and music collections predate the web, the net enabled a lot bigger scale collections. Whereas folks used to personal a handful of vinyls or CDs, they these days have prompt entry to the entire of published musical content material by way of online platforms. Such dramatic increase in the size of music collections created two challenges: (i) the necessity to mechanically organize a set (as customers and publishers can't manage them manually anymore), and (ii) the necessity to robotically recommend new songs to a consumer understanding his listening habits. An underlying job in each those challenges is to be able to group songs in semantic categories. Through all of it, RCA — Kelly's label home for the whole lot of his solo profession, each immediately and as a part of its partnership with Jive Data (which merged with RCA in 2007) — has stood by the singer, primarily, sources tell Selection, as a result of he has never been convicted of a crime and has steadfastly maintained his innocence. Makes an attempt by music firms to assemble a morality barometer for https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/100259256-ulysses-beaver artists is a precarious task, as Spotify learned final yr when it tried to ban artists — significantly Kelly — from its playlists based mostly on conduct it vaguely outlined as hateful conduct" Spotify ended up briefly penalizing two artists — Kelly and rapper XXXTentacion, neither of whom had been convicted of the related expenses of sexual misconduct — earlier than walking back the policy resulting from its vague definition and execution.

Maybe enjoyable rock music continues to be being made but it is not being performed on my local different station, so I'm not aware of it. It appears to be like like pretentiousness has taken over rock music. If a song would not have a severe that means, it has no right to exist. Rock fans decry the loss of life of "actual music." This can be a turn off to many people who want music to serve completely different purposes. Generally, it should be fun. Sometimes, it should be severe. Generally it must be about things we are able to relate as to if that is falling in love or a painful breakup. Generally it could possibly cope with social points.

[kondo-hijikata]

Pairings: Established Kondo/Hijikata Rating: T Summary: Ibuki brings a robe to Okita. Okita brings it to Hijikata. No one knows the color, but it’s definitely not white. Major angst, sorry. [AO3]

.*The Robe*.

The robe was once white. But it wasn't white any longer.

Feet planted themselves before a battered wooden gate leading to the house he’d barely managed to find with such ambiguous instructions. And now more than ever, he wondered... Why? Why had this task fallen to his hands, when they weren’t even strong enough to hold a sword? It was unfitting at best and pathetic at worst. Surely, there was someone better, someone more worthy of seeing something of such importance through.

The answer, however, was as clear as the tapestry of stars above Ibuki’s head, shining unobscured and bright through the darkness. He’d been entrusted with this because he’d personally been there, beyond the latticing of fence and reaching out with desperate cries that left his throat sore even now.

Still, the responsibility befalling to him proved the taste of irony was more bitter than any medicinal herb, and his shoulders far too weak for such a burden.

Ibuki's face had been angled downward for so long that his neck ached, his expression contorted from attempting to repress the despair which encumbered his chest with such force that it was difficult to even breathe. His will had never been strong enough and as if to mock the characteristic softness of his spine, the tears defied such wishes easily now—hot and unending, pushing through tightly clenched eyes to bleed out oceans of sorrow.

It was intolerable and unyielding…a pain that cut so deeply that Ibuki felt his knees threatening to give way.

…Control. He needed to find control—or something to carry him onward so he could make it through this.

He held the garment closer to his heaving chest, clung to it as if this were his heartbreak to bear. And perhaps, in a way, it was; the owner was a friend, a true ally in troubled times—someone who believed in him and pushed him to do better. Yet, the depths of grief battering him raw also felt like an intrusion, for he’d only walked so far in the footprints of wolves. Ibuki’s love and loyalty had only reached a certain extent, and in turn, he’d never known what it felt like to be revered in the way a partner or son was.

So, certainly…

He straightened his back, squared his shoulders...

Certainly…his role in all of this was the easiest.

Despite mentally and physically building himself up to finish what he’d begun, Ibuki’s lashes refused to part. Therefore, he relented and simply took a moment to breathe deeply and focus—to listen to the sounds around him of vitality. Of birds chirping and insects singing. Of a gentle breeze, of a cat's cry in the distance. Of a world still so full of life, even when it could just...stop for someone on an individual scale.

And just when Ibuki had begun to find the makings of a path to calm within his surroundings, there was another noise: the creak of a door opening, followed by a soft cough and cracking utterance.

"I—Ibuki-kun?"

Ibuki’s eyes snapped open the moment when Okita's voice feathered into his ears, his stomach dropping as dread flooded through him; thrust into this situation without being ready, his mouth gaped, just to find the words failing him. Ibuki’s face felt wet and tense, hot from crying and yet cold against the night. With a shake of the head, he watched as his company’s gaze dropped to the robe he cradled.

When Okita’s attention landed on it, he froze. He didn't blink. Didn't breathe. His lower lip fell for several seconds before one question was spoken—smooth and yet laced with trepidation. "…Whose...?"

Fireflies drifted about lazily as Ibuki staggered forward to close the space between Okita and himself, his legs like rubber and feet nearly becoming entangled from ineptitude. "O—Okita-san." Shoulders rose and fell with heavy breaths, his tone veiled by tidal waves of emotion beating ugly gashes into the fabric of his soul. “It’s—It’s—” Ibuki’s teeth gritted again while pearled beads pushed forth to escape his clenched eyes.

"It's Kondo-san's," Okita finished, barely loud enough to be heard.

Ibuki dropped his face and he choked out, "It isn't his anymore."

~

The horse galloped by starlight, sparkling droplets from its rider’s eyes carried off by the whisper of the wind. One hand gripped the reins, the other held the robe securely to an aching chest.

It used to be white.

It wasn’t white any longer.

And it was getting harder, so much harder…to breathe, to walk, to even think.

Still, the horse ran on, until a village came into sight and Okita dismounted and stumbled forward. And—there, on the steps, with his head bowed…

 “Hi—” Okita panted, feeling his lashes opening wide and the fury inundating him until whatever was left of his lungs began closing in. “Hijikata-san.”

Hijikata’s chin lifted quickly, giving show to black shadows beneath exhausted, heavy eyes and much thinner cheeks than memory served. “Souj—”

Silver flashed beneath the moon, one arm whipping the blade through the air until the tip pointed directly toward Hijikata’s nose.

With a gasp, Hijikata leapt to his feet, his shoulder slamming against the nearest structural beam as he grabbed the hilt of his own weapon. “What the fuck are you—?!”

“He loved you.” Okita’s teeth were gritted, his sword trembling with the tension in his muscles despite their depletion from illness.

The immediate confusion in Hijikata’s gaze morphed into dawning realization. And when it became clear that he was slowly piecing it all together, his mouth began to open.

Okita inhaled sharply through his nose, his voice shaking as he repeated, “He loved you so much. Why.” His chin raised and with a brief shake of the head, his shoulders raised in a half shrug. “I’ll never know.”

“...Souji.” The name fell in a hoarse whisper and then Hijikata looked past the steel...toward the garment Okita kept tightly clutched to the breast of his new uniform. Terror had never been openly present in the gaze of his commanding officer—until now. And seeing it only fueled Okita’s ire and anguish.

“But there is something that you can tell me, Hijikata-san.”

“Okita-san?!” Chizuru’s voice pierced the air from somewhere in the distance.

“Souji,” Hijikata tried again breathlessly. “Souji, is that—?”

Clenching his teeth tighter, Okita pulled the folded robe from where he embraced it and rifled it toward Hijikata as hard as he could. “Why the fuck didn’t you love him like that?! He would have done anything for you!”

The article slammed against Hijikata’s chest before he caught it, his fingers seizing the material. He stared at it blankly for several moments and then, it began to tremble within his grasp. Clamoring backward until his heel collided against the step, Hijikata crashed down to it again, his eyes closing and chest beginning to rise and fall with deep breaths.

“Okita-san!” Chizuru cried, much closer now. Two small hands grasped to his forearm and yanked with inconsequential strength. “Okita—”

“How could you fucking let him die?!” Okita shouted as he lunged forward, the pain in his tone so sharp it could have cut flesh from the way those around him winced. “It was your job to protect him when I couldn’t!”

“Souji!” Saito was on his left now, taking to a bicep and pulling him back.

“Okita-san, please!!” Chizuru pleaded. “Hijikata-san is injured!! He’s—”

Okita gave in, at last allowing himself to be drawn away for several paces while he took a good, long look at the situation before him. His brows narrowed as he observed just how worn and broken Hijikata’s appearance was—not just on the outside, but the way in which it seemed to radiate from the in. And worse yet, he still hadn’t opened his eyes. His arms had only tightened around the robe and—

“You…” Okita stammered in a whisper. “You didn’t even know…”

“Know what?” Saito asked pointedly.

Licking his lips, Okita’s shoulders slumped and he pulled himself free to sheath his sword. It was a hard swallow as he stared toward the ground, beginning to speak with strength, “Kondo-san…” But his voice faltered. “Kondo-san is dead.”

Silence.

“And. It’s his fault.” Okita lifted his chin, taking in the sight of Hijikata for the final time. “I will never forgive you.”

He pivoted on the soles of his boots and strode off, with Chizuru running after him in his wake.

~

The robe was white.

And now it wasn’t.

Now it was…filled with color. Blue. But not like the moonlight Kondo used to kiss him under at the Shieikan. It was blue, like the ocean of tears that stained it. Red from the bloodied hands that had carried it. Black like the void this whole world had become.

Hijikata lay on his side in a single futon, staring at the attire folded neatly before him. His eyes were wide open, his lips parted. Sometimes, he would become aware that he’d stopped breathing, so he would make sure he did that…until he realized he’d stopped again soon after.

His palm rested on the tatami, just beneath the material—until it suddenly lifted. Fingertips trailed up to the fabric. It was firm. They caressed the blue, ran over the red, swept across the black, and then closed in.

He thought of Tama, and the things said with hope.

“What do I want to do? I don’t know. Do you have any idea for yourself?”

“Me? I wanna be like Kanko, a real warrior…Ah…that sounds, uh. Sounds funny, right, coming from a farmer?”

“…No. Actually, that’s what I want too.”

Hijikata drew the robe to him and held tight.

Of Kyoto, and the things said with determination.

“Well, all we gotta worry about now is making a name for ourselves here.”

“Mm. You’re right, Toshi.”

“I swear I won’t stop until you’re the most exalted samurai in this whole country.”

He held tighter.

Of Katsunuma, and the things said with desperation before the battle of Koufu.

“I’m not leaving you!”

“Toshi, I need you to go get reinforcements.”

“And I need you to not die here!”

And tighter yet...

Of Nagareyama, and the things said with love.

“Toshi, go. My hatamoto status will—”

“Your hatamoto status doesn’t mean shit to Satcho!”

“Then these are your orders! Hijikata-fukucho!”

He held so tightly that his arms trembled.

Of Wakamatsu...

“He loved you. He loved you so much. Why the fuck didn’t you love him like that?!”

“How could you fucking let him die?!”

“It’s his fault.”

And here Hijikata was now, with a million more things he wanted to say--of hope, of determination...of desperation and love and sorrow.

But it was useless to talk to a ghost, especially while sobbing into the robe he wore to his execution. Therefore, through his heaves, Hijikata made several promises.

He promised to build a fitting grave in a location Kondo would like.

He promised to not lay down his sword until Kondo’s name was cleared, until his robe was white.

He promised to train and develop the remaining Shinsengumi as best he could, so that their truth would live on.

But most importantly, Hijikata promised Kondo he would meet him again…somewhere out there, among the stars, some time soon. And at that time, he would throw his arms around him and never, never let go.

The sun rose the next morning. It had no right to. Still, its rays hit the window and crept across the floor, slowly, until it reached Hijikata and woke him with a gentle kiss.

His eyes fluttered...and then he turned away.

~

Hakodate 1869

There weren’t many things that Hijikata owned, but Chizuru still found it difficult to go through what was left of his belongings. Her hands drifted over books, over small containers. She lifted the lid of one and her breath caught.

This was... It was Kondo’s robe.

Squinting, she reached for the material--pristine and white, just as it had been all along.

[thomasstalsworth]

A Man’s Station

It was the boar that woke him.

The delicate sunlight of early morning split through the trees. He was where he had left himself, laying in the middle of the Brackwell pumpkin patch. The earth was soft, and still cool from the night. The boar – so large and fierce that the local banditry avoided the tilled farmland proper – nuzzled him. Tom pet the beast’s snout.

With a groan he rose. Each muscle spoke its disapproval soon, stiff and swollen from a night asleep on the ground. It was a familiar feeling. The dust of sleep was still heavy in his mind, but it was a sensation he welcomed. The lull kept his introspection at bay – at least for a while.

His satchel and rifle lay in the dirt beside where he had slept. None of the local color had touched them. Tom took them up, rifle on its sling and satchel on his back, and began the trek back to the city. As his feet, aching as they were, pulled him through the forest, his mind peeled away. The previous night still laid turbulent in his thoughts.

Tom was not one to share. Indeed, it was an activity he held powerful, particular disinterest in. Yet, in months, and weeks, and days, and nights past, he found more and more that activity leaked out of him.

At first, to a man so unlike himself, a Draenei – and a Paladin at that. But despite such disparity in their race, profession, creed, taste in food, and lives – Tom felt a peculiar kinship with the Vindicator. A kinship he had never quite found in his many years.

The lively gathering of structures that formed the town of Goldshire soon broke the monotony of the forest sprawl. Mid morning left the township in a hurried movement, bustling with its citizens and travelers and men and women of the King’s contract. Tom trot into the town proper from the Eastward road, blending well with the craftsmen and hunters hustling along.

The worn wooden flooring of the Lion’s Pride groaned beneath his feet. Tom pushed past the morning hordes – the common room was shoulder to shoulder – and sat himself at the bar. A lack of moisture made itself apparent in his mouth. Tom opened his mouth to order, the request for ale lingering on his tongue. He shut his lips. A sigh pushed past the precipice.

“One coffee. And water, please.”

The tavernkeep bent a curt nod – after Tom paid, of course – and slid him a pewter mug steaming with the hot liquid. It produced a pleasant scent, surely. Though as he cupped the beverage, his mind skittered away for a long moment. The roar of the tavern’s morning crowd dulled against the tiny voice in his thoughts. His own.

“ … Yes sir!”

Tom scrubbed a hand over his face, running his palm over the auburn beard that carpeted it. It had been automatic. The snap of his spine and clack of his heels and the salute that held his arm at attention. Peculiar how the body reacts before the mind. Instinct, memory.

He rose from his seat, coffee left unattended. Tom pushed beyond the throngs of people with perhaps more force than was necessary. More than one patron cut him with a look of disapproval, of confusion – but such thoughts were no doubt lost quickly to the clamor of mid week morning. The cool air of Elwynn rose to meet him as his footfalls put him up the path toward the city’s gates. Each step came harder than it needed to.

Sharing, the act of being open with another, was not one he enjoyed. Why others made a point of it, even with those they enjoyed or pursued the company of, confused him. It felt too personal, too raw when it was easier to cloud such things behind drink and mirth. Doubly so with a woman.

“Here, hold this. Don’t lose it.”

His own words bit into the back of his mind again. Each footfall came harder. Push it out, Tommy – easier ignored than considered. Such was fruitless, of course, as he was left alone with his thoughts along the weathered road to Stormwind.

“Hey – hey! This ain’ fuckin’ funny! Gimme the headband!”

Tom twisted his neck and pinched his brow together. For a moment, he stopped. The satchel hung heavy on his back and his rifle felt more a weight than it ought to. A long, low exhale fell from his lips. Bottle a feeling long enough and even the slightest jostle may pop the cork. The sun hung higher in the sky now, late morning boiling against the lack of clouds. Tom raised a hand up to pinch the red cloth headband that rest against his hairline. He continued on, toward the city.

The gleaming stonework of Stormwind’s battlements rose in the distance and he made fast to its gates. There was a lingering feeling in his gut that told him he’d feel better if he just walked the city. It was a metropolis well and familiar to him, and maybe so it’s comfort could latch the door against his anxiety.

“I’d rather stay the night out here. Seems more fitting my … station.”

Tom came to a stop as he walked through the Trade District. There were stalls all around him – the market was in full swing. Grifters walked the edges; their voices keen to pick the pockets of those easily convinced. Farmers sat with sweat on their brow besides crops of fruit, grain, produce and more. Tom watched the ebb and flow of the crowd, the many faced peoples that walked the city’s market.

What was his station? A drunkard, a laborer, peeling back as much coin as he could from each job to make room for the empty revelry that followed? His thoughts slithered off as his feet took him away. Each step was unconscious; his faculties too full of the question that now ate his attention. What was his station?

A laborer, indeed. By sweat and hurried measure he earned his coin. But it was not to cause, or country, or loyalty. Simply the money. Even when he had felt loyalty in earnest, he cowed and bent to the path of least resistance and greatest coin. Even that had spun out in the end.

The beating of his feet left him standing amidst the relative calm of the Dwarven District. There, ahead of him in the alleyway he now stood in, hung a wrought iron sign in the shape of a cabinet beside a doorway. Tom drank deep of the air around him, the stink of flux and sulfurs a welcome sensation. He stepped inside the shop.

A bell rang. The shop was small, and cramped, and held no patrons beside Tom. A dwarf sat behind the singular, clean countertop. His brow raised, a charcoal color. Red eyes looked up from the book open between his legs, examining Tom. He spoke.

“Been awhile. Come tae’ collect?”

Before there was thought attached to the motion, Tom nodded his head. Similarly, his hands flexed without his conscious input. Aging tendons running taut and slack and taut again as his mind caught up. Each repetition of the motion brought him some calm, slowed his breathing, and gave his mind ease. The carbonic stench of the small storefront aided this; in it’s odd way.

After a few minutes, the gray skinned dwarf returned. Within his grasp, rolling atop a small dolley, was a crate. It seemed well sealed, built of sturdy, light, wood. Dust made a ready home along its surface.

Tom reached toward it, sliding a pair of fat fingers along it’s top. He nodded again to the dwarf, causing him to retreat back behind the counter. Tom exhaled, laying one hand flat against the front of the wooden container. Broad teeth caught his lip, and he shook his head, walking out of the shop and into the dull smog that coated the district. His hands resumed their tightening and slackening, over and over and over until – a sound.

“Mister Stalsworth. Please – don’t move. Make things easy.”

Peculiar how the body reacts before the mind. Within a moment of the voice breaking the stillness of the alleyway, Tom had his hands on his rifle, bringing it up to sight. There was a silence. Then – the sudden hot pain that came with a club to the neck.

Tom fell – as any would under the weight of a sap – coming to rest against the cobblestones that floored the alley. His arms came up, rifle discarded in its sling. The club came down again, and again, striking his forearms as it aimed for his head. Through the smog Tom made the man – indeed it was a man. Well-wrought leathers and a tabard spun from silk layered his body. Familiar? No – not quite. Though the way he spoke left Tom’s mind running to put the pieces together. They struggled.

“Come now – don’t fight. It’s easier otherwise. I don’t want to bleed you; surely I would have by now if that were my intent. Come easy, now, Mister Stalsworth.”

Tom moved on his instinct, teeth laid hard in his maw. Blows came hard upon his face; jaw swelling immediately with the force of the strikes. He hurled the man from atop him, leaving the attacker splayed across the cobblestone. He raised his rifle again, setting it on the man’s skull.

“Ya’ ought to have bled me.”

Thunder echoed within the alley. He fired. But – beyond the smog there lay no corpse, no body. Instead, only the voice spilled through the smoke and twisted his thoughts, the color of his skin running away at the words that came.

“Had I, he would have been upset. Don’t worry, Mister Stalsworth. Life is not long in your grasp. A drunk, a dockhand lives longer than a man with friends. Friends of measure, and constitution in this city. You ought to have remembered that. No worry. Daud sends his regards.”

Tom lowered his rifle. He was alone. The seconds passed as he stood there; pale, with sweat beading along his brow.

A bell rang.

“Back again? Change ye’ mi – “

Before the dwarf could cut his eyes to Tom, and come from beyond the countertop, there was a splitting of wood. The crate splintered and came open at the front with a groan and a thunder as the front of it fell forward. Tom held the crowbar in his hand a moment, and then let it drop to the floor.

Within the crate stood a mannequin. Atop it lay a set of armor wrought of chain, scale, and leather. It was well made, each link welded with a precision that could send the color to a dwarf’s cheeks. The links shone with a multifaceted sheen that betrayed many colors when subject to the light. A material uncommon, perhaps. The tunic was taut leather, thick where it mattered and slim where it didn’t. The shawl was silken, dyed a vibrant green that had not dulled despite the dust that settled over it.

Beside the armor, within the crate, lay a spear. It was propped in the corner, resting by its own weight. The head of the spear was long, and stiff – well suited for cutting or stabbing. It was born of one solid piece of metal that gave off a lustrous sheen much in similarity to the armor it sat beside. But the head of the spear spilled the greater of the glow.

Tom stared a long moment at the contents of the crate.

“ … What did I owe you for storage?”

“ … Ye’ made yer’ dues. Call it paid.”

Tom spared a glance to the dwarf. Those red eyes laid attendant to the book in his lap, and he waved one charcoal hand, dismissing the issue with a flick of his wrist. Tom clenched his jaw, and nodded.

The dust and smog of the district felt cool against the chain. Tom flexed his arms, stretching to and fro to test the fit. It was as sure as he remembered. With a draw of his hand, he raised the green and gold hood, covering his mess of auburn hair. The spear sat well beside his rifle on his back, well weighted indeed. Tom split with a smile.

Darkness gave call to the light of lanterns. With each step toward the harbour Tom felt calmer, renewed with vigor. In the distance, the ringing of the bells echoed with the trade winds. Tom paused a moment, coming to rest against a low, cobblestone wall at the periphery of the cemetery. An alleyway lay beyond, an archway that led to the heights of the harbour. Surely, a ship lay waiting that could take him to Barrowfield. He was a labourer, truly. But he knew his station.

Tom peered up from under his hood, noticing a woman in finery walking toward him through the glint of the lantern light. He nodded, the chain of his armor rustling, as he stood straight.

“Lady.”

(( @lady-sydor @caeciliusabzel ))

[mst3kproject]

Reptilicus

I defy you to find something in this movie that doesn't qualify it for MST3K.  Giant lizardy monster?  Check.  A musical number that has nothing to do with the plot?  We have that.  Actors who appear to be dubbed despite also appearing to speak English?  The entire cast!  Black and white footage tinted blue in an effort to make it look like it belongs in a colour movie?  You betcha!  Wooden acting?  Beakers of kool-aid standing in for SCIENCE? Foreigners pretending to be Americans?  Toy boats?  Yep, Reptilicus has it all, wrapped up in a bright technicolour package by our old friend, American International Pictures!

It seems tailor-made for the show, and Joel apparently agrees.  I wrote most of this review before I found out that Reptilicus was slated to be the Season 11 debut, and now I’m looking forward to seeing how many of my predictions here come true when the episode hits Netflix on Friday.

SPOILERS: none of them! Not a damned one!

Copper miners on the tundra of Lapland discover a piece of a frozen prehistoric monster in the arctic permafrost (never mind that the scene was shot on a nice spring day in the woods somewhere).  A guy named Sven is charged with bringing the find back to civilized parts for study.  I hope you like Sven, because he's going to keep hanging around for the entire movie, and apparently possesses the same all-purpose security clearance as a Japanese child.  He's still in town when the chunk of monster thaws out and begins to regenerate. Ultimately the regrown beast escapes its tank at the Copenhagen Aquarium and goes on a cartoon-people-devouring, scale-model-smashing rampage.  Because what else is a prehistoric lizard monster going to do with its spare time?

Yep, that's the quality of effects we're talking about here.  I like the windows that appear to be drawn on with crayon.

Being as the movie is set in Denmark, the sign on the building where the monster parts are being kept says AKVARIUM.  I don't know why, but my friends and I used to find that outrageously funny.  Every time it appeared on screen we would all shout AKVARIUM! in obnoxious faux-German mad scientist voices.  Of course, that was years ago.  We're now thirty-somethings with mortgages, children, and assorted professional qualifications – but I bet if we all got back together and watched this movie, it would be exactly the same.  AKVARIUM!

Had the MST3K of the 90s ever seen fit to tackle Reptilicus, I'm pretty sure they would have made some kind of running joke about the AKVARIUM.  I can also imagine them asking Reptilicus if he'd like some coffee with that Danish, the two monsters taking turns on the hexfield to offer competing stories of why Gamera vs Reptilicus fell through, and Dr. Forrester and Frank putting together a 'Visit Beautiful Deep Thirteen' campaign – with or without a lounge act.

It almost feels kind of unfair to attempt any actual analysis of this movie.  Analysis is for movies that have higher ambitions, and Reptilicus really does not.  If I squinted hard enough I might be able to pull something about scientific over-reach or cooperation between nations out of the mess, but whatever I came up with would be sort of a Last Minute 11th Grade King Lear Essay, made mostly out of coffee and bullshit.  All Reptilicus wants is for the audience to have a good time (and maybe to visit Copenhagen), and it does accomplish that even if not quite in the way it wants to.

Rather than talking about what Reptilicus fails at (and believe me, it fails at quite a bit), then, let's talk about how it succeeds.  What we really have here is a very fine example of how having something fun to look at can go a long way towards saving a lousy movie.

When you get right down to it, just about everything in Reptilicus is bad.  The plot is contrived and full of holes – why do we keep Sven around when by all rights he should be back in the arctic doing his damn job instead of hanging around in Copenhagen?  How stupid is just about everybody at the AKVARIUM to let the tail thaw out?  Could they really not come up with a better way to suggest drugging the monster than the old trope about 'somebody offhandedly says I wish we could do Thing and somebody else goes why not'?  How does General Grayson keep forgetting about the monster's regenerative powers so that he starts shooting at it again?

The acting is terrible.  Apparently there's a reason for this – the Danish actors who starred in the production didn't speak any English and had no idea what their lines meant!  That's why everything had to be dubbed over later, which means each performance in Reptilicus is a collaboration between two un-talented actors who were truly less than the sum of their parts.  Worst of all is Carl Ottosen as General Grayson and the uncredited guy doing his voice.  Ottosen almost always looks like he's not entirely sure what he's reacting to, and voiceover guy has only two modes: grouchy grump and solemn declaration.  Sometimes he manages to do both at the same time.  I hate to say it, but the best actor in the movie is probably Dirch Passer as Petersen the Comic Relief Janitor, who has a passable sense of physical comedy.  He almost manages to sell his reactions to things like the electric eel and the microscopic view of his sandwich, even when the jokes themselves aren't particularly funny.

The characters don't have much to them.  Sven is a terrible main character, without charisma or recognizable personality or even any motivation.  He sticks around for the whole movie and spends most of it just standing there watching other people do stuff.  Sometimes he answers phones or acts as a chauffer.  He comes across less as the movie’s hero and more as its administrative assistant.  Grayson's just there to shout orders and complain, but he's still closer to being a proper protagonist than Sven – maybe this is why they have him narrate a few scenes, in an attempt to correct this bizarre oversight.  The professor's two horny daughters never amount to much, and Passer's comedy can't quite save Petersen from being the character everybody most wants to see die (he does not, but at least he's out of the story once the rampage begins).  The Scientists are Movie Scientists, too interested in what they might learn to think about things like consequences and personal safety.

The effects are the opposite of convincing, always drawing attention to themselves as effects rather than contributing to the story.  I've seen some ridiculous movie monsters, but Reptilicus himself (everybody in the movie refers to the creature as male) is right up there in the top ten.  He looks something like a very silly Chinese dragon – a long, skinny, snakelike beast with a forked tongue, a mane of ratty fur down his back, tiny useless legs, and a pair of small wings that are, tragically, never used. Apparently a scene of Reptilicus flying was filmed, but was deemed ‘too unbelievable’ and cut from the film.  The monster's acid-spitting consists of squiggles of green goo that resemble radioactive silly string.  When he eats a farmer, it is represented by an animated cutout of the man in Reptilicus' mouth.

Okay, so I did just talk about how the movie fails, and I could keep doing so for some time.  The comic relief isn't funny. The movie stops for a moment to break into a travel ad.  Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  The point is, Reptilicus objectively sucks and if it were shot like a modern disaster film, all gritty and gray and trying for realism, it would be insufferable.  Instead, however, it's cartoony and colourful, and while the effects aren't convincing they're always at least creative.  The sets always look like sets, and the models always look like models, but they're elaborate and inspired.  Everything sucks, but movie are a visual medium, so if it's fun to watch the viewers will forgive all kinds of sins.

It's also a perfect example of an important bit of bad movie truth: you can't make a bad movie on purpose, not the good kind of bad movie.  People can try, but they come up with stuff like The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, which I couldn't even watch all the way through.  A truly enjoyable bad movie is one that's trying hard to be a good movie and fails in just the right sort of ways – an intentional bad movie is the equivalent of a belabored explanation of a punch line that wasn’t that funny to begin with.  The thing that makes Reptilicus so much fun is the same spark that animates Teenagers from Outer Space, or Starcrash, or even Troll 2 – its sincerity.

Reptilicus is one of the most utterly unapologetic movies I've ever watched.  We've all seen movies that seem a bit embarrassed by themselves – remember Being from Another Planet, which wishy-washily tried to be a Serious Movie about Serious People instead of just embracing the fact that it was about a fucking space mummy?  Reptilicus is the opposite of that. It's not ashamed of anything, even in the places where by all rights it should be.  Its monster is an immobile puppet in a scale model, but the shots linger lovingly on every shoddy detail. Peterson the Comic Relief Janitor ought to be painful, but the script is so earnest that he somehow becomes a meta-joke: the very fact that he's not funny is itself funny.  Somebody thought the movie could be used to sell Copenhagen as a tourist destination, so they have the characters tour the city and talk about what a great time they're having.  The movie never gives less than its all to anything it puts on the screen.

So yeah, I love Reptilicus.  It's never boring and it’s frequently laugh-out-loud funny, and there's nothing in it that's either offensive or scary.  There are much worse ways to waste eighty minutes of your life.

[madmazmind]

Cursed Child front row 26/02

Today has made me so incredibly happy. Yesterday evening Steph told me she had won the Friday Forty and was giving me her AA ticket, as I haven’t sat there yet and she was already going today. I will be forever grateful to her- I never believed I would get a front row seat but its happened and it was all I ever dreamed it would be. 

I sat in AA20, which is 2 from the end on stage right. I was right in front of so many of my favourite scenes. Yes, I had to crane my neck to see the back of the stage but everything was still so beautiful and I was able to really forget that I was in a massive 1400 seat theatre and feel each actors performance quite intimately. There’s something very special about this play that allows it to be both very big and very intimate at the same time, which is so incredibly unique. 

I had Stuart as Harry and Adam as the Sorting Hat/ Hagrid!

I had serious butterflies as the play started. This was one of the best audiences I’ve been a part of- they clapped and wooped everything and it was stunning!

Some specific mentions...

I adored the first Albus/ Scropius meeting on the train- it was sweet and funny and perfect. Recently Anto has been changing up his delivery of loads of his lines and its bringing out a new dimension to Scorpius which I’m loving! 

Paul and Noma were ON FIRE. Their comedic timing is so stunning always but today they were bouncing. During the “Albus/Ron polyjuicing/blocking” scene I was in fits of giggles, being so close allowed me to really spot the little nuances of Albus that Paul pushes into his performance. Like as Hermione walks back on to tell him he’s off the scale sometimes, he grimaces behind her back.

Special mention to Stuart as Scorpius. I really felt that he was playing a different character to Harry for those scenes which is phenomenal. Its amazing that he was able to almost be both Harry and Scorpius at the same time where both of them are believable. 

From my angle of AA I watched the polyjuice transformation straight on, without being able to see the very bottom of their cloaks and I swear I watched actual magic happen.

Also I started crying during part 2 in the Ron/ Hermione staircase scene. The longing in both their faces was so painful. Then Noma sort of looked to the side and chocked and I was wrecked. Which actually summed up my emotional state throughout the whole play.

And when I say wrecked I mean wrecked. Like I had a little weep when the cloaks were swishing and the lighting was pretty. And I full on cried when Anto got out of the lake after part 1 just because he was so close and the water was dripping down onto the floor like onto my feet and then I realised how ridiculous I was being for feeling things about water and cried a bit more. 

There was a big corpsing incident (you Americans apparently call it breaking!). In the scene in Godricks Hollow with the adults before they go back in time the audience laughed hard at thatched roofs and then the farmers market line broke us. Alex broke and turned away to laugh which made the audience clap, Noma corpsed, Paul went, Stuart went, Poppy broke and shrugged at everyone and it took two more rounds of applause for everyone to calm down and for Noma to deliver her next line. They continued to giggle as they were all going back in time (yes, I could hear the giggles from AA!). I’ve not seen a break like it in this show and I feel blessed to have witnessed it!

ALL the tricks worked! Nothing went wrong leading to an awkward silence!

Also Cherrelle wiggled Anto’s eyebrow in Act 4, Scene 14 and that kinda gave me life. And the scorbus last hug was beautiful.

Stage door 

I find it a little bit weird to discuss SD and decode it online because its just me having a chat with some people I admire but you guys seem to like hearing about it so I’ll give an overview! Tonights SD was stunning- a lot of people came out which was lovely as it was my cousins first time. 

I’ve pretty much stopped being awkward and fangirly with them all which means I can actually say “oh I really loved this scene, thank you so much for that” without it coming out as “ABFYULJBNJCNBQW” and me coming home cringing. 

I asked Poppy for a hug because she ruined me in the last really sad bit and she sort of held me so I must’ve looked wrecked. She gives amazing hugs! 

Noma was a goddess as usual! I forgot to ask her to sign my program first time (she hugs me, I panic and get nothing done) so I ran to the end of the line and she was lovely enough to do it there. 

Paul was SD king as usual!

We asked Adam if he was Bane’s back legs and he didn’t say yes or no but he did tell us they have a pretty funny name for whoever is playing the back legs which I’ll leave you guys to take guesses at! 

I spoke to Sam/ Anto/ Jeremy/ Jack N/ Tom Mil about how amazing today was because of the audience and other fairly normal SD things. 

Stuart is so so so lovely and special. He takes so much time to talk to everyone and chat about the play. I am so grateful for the time he spends with us. Honestly... I think he’s my Harry! 

Today was a dream come true. I’ve been wanting to sit in AA for months and really felt the emotion of being so close to such talented people and such a perfect production. And the fact that Steph decided to let me have it, rather than use it herself, made it even more special because that level of kindness was coming from someone who I met because of this play!

For... Um... Yes! 

xxx

[starpunched]

and the sky opened up

written for a creative writing class. the prompt that this draws from was to dramatize an event in our lives involving a natural disaster or extreme weather. for lack of  experience with either of those things, i wrote about the platte river during an unusually wet summer.

To pull a four-wheeler out of its self-dug grave, you tie a chain between it and its brother. Start with the engine on low, and go straight backwards until something gives. If you’re lucky, you’ll only need to do this maybe once, twice a year, but that’s at least three rabbit’s feet worth of good fortune, and we’ve wasted ours on a respite from the rain.

The Platte River floods like it doesn’t want the attention, swelling big and full like a sore about to burst. We don’t get the cinematic side of things, the rolling waves and natural disasters and storms that soak down to bones. The wetlands absorb the overflow before it seeps too far south, drowning the bogs while the fields stay clean. Avoid the river, and you’ll hardly notice.

This year, we’re noticing.

Mom’s back inside checking weather channels, yelling out the screen door when predictions change. We’re all holding our breath for bad news; the rain is an old ex we don’t want to see, a vengeful bitch set on getting what’s hers. Grandpa says we don’t have long to wait. Two hours, maybe less, and then she’ll wash our four-wheeler out along with the rest of our crud. That is, unless we get there first.

My grandpa isn’t a righteous man. His faith is the utilitarian crudity of Christian boonies, of rednecks who curse at the sky when their truck loses a wheel. It’s something tactile, hard like a stone in his mouth. Checking the gas on our makeshift tow, he says how this year Nebraska’s God’s personal toilet, and the big man just won’t stop pissing. It’s funny, on the face of things. It’s the kind of crude humor you laugh at between class periods. The way my grandpa says it, though, he makes God pissing sound like biblical vengeance.

The Good Book is gospel down here, for real. They’re more aggressive about Jesus saving down South, but Grandma calls that pageantry at best; says that down South people only know God as cheap decoration. Window dressing for the soul. People here believe in God like they believe in death and taxes - unavoidable, insatiable absolutes. I’d bet money that somewhere out in these storms, a parishioner’s started building an ark.

Knee-deep in either mud or quicksand, Grandpa tells me that it’s a right shame for any kid my age to avoid things like this.

“All that energy,” he says, “all that energy in you kids and you don’t even want to tow a four-wheeler? The things people take for granted.”

He’s joking, if justified in wanting me to do more. My brother’s worked so hard he’d still be wet in dry sun, and my shoes are barely yet stained. I tell him I want to help, I promise. I tell him I’ll do whatever he needs me to. Truth is my heart’s not in it, as if that needs saying. There’s something about the mud this year, and I swear I’m not making this up, but it looks like it’s waiting for someone to drown.

The rain is an alchemist without the circles, I think. Dirt into mud, metal to rust, sometimes big magic that goes beyond drops of water. Sometimes she melts statues wholesale.

When I was a full foot shorter, the rain once dug a hole in the dirt we called a backyard. Deep and wide it was, filled with all the runoff that flowed east from the rest of the lot. Sizing it up from outside, my mom called it a puddle. It wasn’t that big, in retrospect, but I was small then like I am now, the travel size kind of a person. I jumped at it feet first, and the puddle swallowed me whole.

This mud isn’t so deceptive as that. No one would mistake this earthen molasses for a rainy-day pool, not if you gave them a blindfold and spun them backwards. My grandpa calls it a slurry; a pain in the ass that’s sinking his prized machines. It’s both him and my brother back there now, mud past their knees and them still striving to move this mountain. Me, I’m up front manning the tow, watching the clouds as they start closing in. Yeah, my shoes have stayed clean.

I did cross country this year. Most schools, they’d have to bus out to some farmer’s empty fields just for practice space, but not us. We sat in the green bowl of God, our campus an old brick building surrounded on by one long, circular hill. Like if someone turned a mountain inside out. I knew that hill better than my own mother; we all did. When it rained and our feet were pounding her back, her sides would run dark with watered-down soil. Gaia herself, weeping at our wasted effort.

See, we could have been doing something worthwhile. We could have been out sandbagging the roads, showing lost bikes to shelter – digging four-wheelers out of self-dug graves. You don’t realize how bad the rain is when it’s always flowing off into grates. We just didn’t think there was anything better to do than burn off the calories from prom night concessions. Vanity is a sin, Father, and I have much to confess.

To see nature full-force, what you do is you drive to a river – the real kind, the ones miles from cities and people, the ones carving the land as their own. Wait for rain. Wait for a flood. City kids from rich families don’t get that, not until they set out to change their minds.

Truth is, I’m selfish. I’m the villain in the bystander effect. Even knowing the score and the risks, I’m just wondering what could happen if we let things run their course. My grandpa, my brother, they’re up to their thighs in muck and past their limits, and the storm’s closing in soon. I’ve got the tow’s wheels spinning up chocolate but I’m going nowhere fast.  We need a miracle, or an extra push.

What happens is we get it out, but not by my intervention. I stay in my seat and eventually the four wheeler rises free of the dirt, like the resurrection of Christ on a small-town scale. The rain comes while we’re driving home; me behind my grandpa and thinking how it could have been worse. It ends just shy of us needing that ark.

[heroineimages]

Average protagonist

Literature and entertainment are full of stories of that classic character who runs away from home to pursue their dreams. Depending on the type of story, they’re either wildly successful---saving the kingdom or marrying the prince or princess or whatever---or they become horribly disillusioned after trying their best and failing. But what about stories where the protag just does kind of average. They’re competent in their chosen field, but not exceptional. They settle down in a comfortable romance with someone who makes them happy, but who can’t exactly give them the world on a silver plate. I kind of ran with this idea for a quick story I wrote. It’s a short, one-scene fantasy story---I imagine the setting to be similar to the Sword Coast from the Forgotten Realms, series. It’s kind of rough, and I’m not super happy with the ending, but it was an interesting quick study. (Bree story 2)

Bree

“Ian?” Jen’s voice urged quietly, waking him. “Ian, you have a visitor.”

“What’s that?” Ian mumbled, reflexively adjusting his quilts. Jen grimaced as he coughed twice from the exertion. He blinked the sleep from his lids, focusing on his wife’s eyes above him.

“You have an unexpected visitor,” she explained, taking his hand and sitting on the stool beside their bed. “Our daughter, Bree, has come to visit you. I… think she genuinely wants to see you one last time. She said she’ll understand if you don’t want to see her.”

Ian frowned at the ceiling as he considered. So his prodigal daughter had returned to visit him on his deathbed. He hadn’t seen or heard from Bree in almost seventeen years and wasn’t sure how many years it had been since he’d even really thought about her. His initial assumption was that she must have heard he was dying and come to ensure her place in his will. But for his daughter to admit she’d understand if he didn’t want to see her—that wasn’t exactly the attitude of someone who’s trying to schmooze her way back into the inheritance.

At sixteen, she’d run away to become an adventuress or a knight errant or a paladin or whatever romantic damned notion she’d gotten from those books her grandmother left her. Bree was determined that she was going to learn to fight brigands and slay dragons and rescue princesses in towers. Before and for a long while after she left, her cousins used to joke and place bets over whether she would be slain by orcs, eaten by gnolls, or captured by Drow slavers. After years of not hearing from her, the joke became less funny.

“How does she look? Does she seem alright?” he asked his wife after a moment.

“Older, stronger,” Jen admitted, smiling tiredly. “She might be an inch or two taller, as well—or maybe she’s just standing straighter than she used to. I think even without the uniform she’d look like a soldier.”

“What kind of uniform?” Ian asked, frowning up at her.

“Chainmail with a cream-and-burgundy surcoat,” she told him, shrugging. “So, whatever city or guild or company that represents.”

He exhaled, mentally bracing himself. “Alright, tell Bree I’ll see her,” he decided, quietly, reluctantly.

Jen merely nodded, keeping her tired smile. Wishing he knew what to expect, Ian closed his eyes and tried to breathe evenly as his wife left the room.

“Poppa?” inquired the voice he’d never expected to hear again. He opened his eyes and slowly turned his head as his daughter stepped cautiously through the bedroom door.

Though the burgundy surcoat looked more like crimson to Ian, Bree looked much as Jen had described: older, stronger, and wearing infantry armor. The mail hauberk was elbow-length at the sleeves and knee-length at the hem, with a broadsword belted at her waist. She wore a grey travel-cloak, black boots, gloves tucked into her belt, and a dark grey arming shirt and hose under her mail.

He realized his daughter had definitely grown taller during her absence, but was sturdier and broader as well, particularly across her chest and shoulders. Her height and build filled up a doorway as easily as either of her brothers. Bree’s face looked darker and somewhat leathered from whatever adventures or campaigns she’d traveled on, and Ian counted three scars on her face, as well as two on her neck and a notch in her left ear—which made him wonder how many scars he couldn’t see. The dark-chocolate braid that had once reached her waist was short now, not much past her shoulders.

“Daughter,” he finally answered her, gesturing to the nearby stool. She smiled slightly and sat beside his bed. “Your hair is shorter,” he commented.

“It fits under a mail coif or kettle helm better,” she explained, her smile looking more genuine. She looked away as her smile fell. “I’m sorry, Poppa,” Bree admitted, blinking and fighting back a tear. “I’m not sorry for leaving, but I’m sorry for how I left. You were stubborn, and I was angry, immature, and stubborn, and I said things I shouldn’t have.”

“I’m sorry, too,” he agreed, trying not to relive their last fight. “We both said things we shouldn’t have. How… how did you know to come?”

“Laura wrote me,” Bree said, meaning her twin sister. She tucked a knee to her chest and rested her boot heel on the edge of her stool. “She said you’d been injured and were sick from the infection—something about a barn blowing over?”

Ian nodded, coughing. “Farmer Chalice, you remember him? He hired our shop to help shore up that old barn of his for that big windstorm two weeks back. The storm blew the barn on our heads before we’d finished. Killed his boy Abel and a couple horses, broke your brother Ryan’s arm, and bloodied up everyone else. I ended up with two cracked ribs and three rusty nails in my right hip. The apothecary gave me stuff to make me comfortable and keep the fever down, but there’s nothing more he can do for the infection.”

“I’m so sorry, Poppa,” she whispered, shaking her head and blinking back the tears. “I should have written letters to more than just Laura. I should have come back and visited sooner. But I didn’t know if you were still angry, and I knew that everyone else would want me to come back to stay.”

“I didn’t know you and Laura were even still writing each other,” he said, unable to think of anything else to say.

“A dozen or so letters, nothing regular,” she admitted, resting her chin on her knee.

“You know, it wasn’t just our hearts you broke,” Ian chided, unable to control his smirk. “There’s four or five of the local lads and three of the local lasses who all had their eyes on you and were plenty broke-up that you left.”

His daughter chuckled. “Only three lasses?” she asked, her smile returning. “I’m pretty sure I kissed at least twice that many.”

“Three that I know of,” he shrugged his good shoulder. “You look a proper infantrywoman, by the way,” he added, indicating her mail and surcoat. “That means you turned paladin or adventuress on us? Rescue any princesses from towers?”

“Fell a little short of ‘paladin,’ I’m afraid,” Bree admitted, perhaps laughing at herself a bit. “I’m just a corporal in a pike cohort for Lady Theodora’s mercenary company.”

“I think I’ve heard of them,” he mused aloud.

“We do sell-sword work all up and down the coast,” she explained, “but our winter headquarters is near Vestin with three training sites and recruiting stations as far north as Daggerpoint. We specialize in mixed infantry with archer and spell-caster support—between eight- and twelve-hundred standing at any one time. We have some pretty basic siege weaponry, mainly to supplement our clients’ sieges, rather than lay down our own. No regular cavalry, though, just a few squads of scout cavalry.”

“Mostly human, or do you recruit far enough north to get a lot of elves and dwarves as well?” Ian asked, genuinely curious. It sounded like a recruitment spiel to him, but as a corporal it made sense that recruitment might be part of Bree’s duties.

Bree chewed at the inside of her cheek as she considered. “I’d say maybe sixty-five to seventy percent are human or part-human,” she estimated. “Many of our archers and wizards and a lot of our lighter infantry and scouts are elves, and a lot of our best pikes and heavy-to-medium infantry are dwarves.” She laughed. “And our best scout-cavalry squadron is made up of a bunch of loony halflings on wolves and riding-dogs.”

“Isn’t your Lady Theodora the one with the bodyguard of Amazon fighters?” Ian asked, trying to remember where he’d heard about this woman.

“Her banner-guard consists of forty elite heavy infantrywomen, if that’s what you’re referring to,” Bree told him, frowning thoughtfully. “And there’re a few dwarves and elves and a couple Tiefling gals in that unit. They get to wear full-plate armor and train to fight with claymores or broadswords and shields, depending on the mission. I tried out twice for a position in the banner-guard, but was never skilled enough to make the cut.”

As strong and competent as his daughter looked in her uniform, Ian could only imagine how powerful the women in the banner-guard must be.

“So you’re not just trained as a pike woman, then?”

Bree shook her head. “No, pikes are great for open-field warfare or for corking or uncorking a bottleneck, but there’s other times when they’re just a pain,” she admitted. “Any kind of cluttered terrain makes them worse than useless, and one can’t exactly climb a scaling ladder or storm an entrenchment with one. When we can’t use pikes, the captains give us kite-shields and make medium infantry of us, since we all carry short swords or broadswords anyway.”

“I assume mercenary work pays well?” Ian inquired next. “As your father, I just want to be sure you’re making a good living,” he added.

“Over three times what our local militia makes,” she laughed, looking smug. “And they hate us for it. We get paid twice-monthly wages plus a share in any spoils taken during campaigns. As a corporal, I get about seven percent more than the regulars. And my wife makes reasonable money by making and mending costumes for the local theatre house.”

“Wait,” he sat up an inch, hissing painfully as his ribs protested. “Sorry,” he muttered, still grimacing. “I just… you startled me. I had no idea you were married.”

“Oh my gods,” Bree murmured, placing a hand over her mouth. “Laura never told you? Yes, a little over ten years ago I married Becca, a half-elven widow with two little daughters. They’re twelve and fifteen now,” she added. “Her husband Orrin was a sergeant in my pike cohort, back before I made corporal. He fell in battle about a week after their second daughter was born. While Lady Theodora keeps a policy of compensating the families of her fallen soldiers, it’s also a tradition for individual cohorts to take up a collection of our own for bereft families of our comrades. I offered to deliver the money to Orrin’s widow, even though I’d never met her and barely knew Orrin.” Bree smiled sadly, as if at bittersweet memories.

“Becca thanked me for the money,” she continued. “And I… I felt for her, you know? A young widow with a toddler and a newborn baby, I just felt so badly for her. So I accepted when she invited me in for tea. We talked for a long while, and I comforted her whenever she wept. And she invited me to please come back for tea again sometime. And I came back to see her during my next leave, and then during my leave after that, and the one after that. And she kept inviting me to come back. After the first few visits, I found I preferred drinking tea with Becca over drinking ale with the other mercenaries. Soon she started loaning me books, which I didn’t have many of at the time.”

“Which is a surefire way to win your affection,” Ian added, trying not to chuckle.

“To be sure,” Bree agreed, laughing. “It was nice,” she admitted. “It was this pleasant, comfortable, almost sisterly friendship that I didn’t really get from drinking with any of the gals in the company. A… friendship like I hadn’t had since leaving Laura behind,” she added, regret forming on her face. “I suppose it was around three-and-a-half or four months seeing each other when I took her to the theatre with me. It was some silly tragedy play—a forbidden-love tale between an elf prince and a half-elf commoner.”

“The kind where half the characters end up dead by the end?” Ian asked.

She seemed to think about it for a moment. “Yeah, I would guess it to be around half,” she confirmed. “I wore my dress uniform, and Becca wore a dark blue dress with a black corset. She’s kind of tiny, even for a half-elf,” Bree added. “She’s not even as tall as my shoulders, and sitting at the theatre that night, we learned that we fit together really well with my arm around her and her head against my shoulder. I kept my arm around her as I walked her home. I… uh, I kissed Becca goodnight for the first time when we got to her house. And… we didn’t want to stop kissing,” she confessed, blushing. “I, ah, woke up in her bed the next morning. I suppose you could say our courtship began in earnest after that.”

That’s my girl, Ian grinned to himself. “How did you end up married?” he needed to know.

“I bought her a house,” Bree smiled nostalgically.

He raised his brows. “Really?”

She nodded. “One night, around a year after we’d first met, I asked Becca how she was getting along financially. She admitted that things weren’t good. Her landlord had raised their rent again, and her seamstress work wasn’t enough to support them without Orrin’s income. She’d gone through all of the money from Lady Theodora and from our cohort. And she’d gone through most of the money she and Orrin had been saving to pay for their daughters’ schooling once they got older—which I know broke her heart to do.”

Ian grimaced sympathetically as she spoke. In a smaller town or village, it was common for a community to work together to help support their disenfranchised. In a big city like Vestin, it was painfully easy for a destitute widow to slip between the cracks. “So you bought her a house?” he shook his head, grinning and proud of his daughter.

Bree laughed. “I did,” she smiled. “I had a lot of unspent pay still in the company treasury, and I volunteered for extra patrols and other duties for the next three weeks to save up even more. When I had close to enough, I withdrew most of it and borrowed a little more to buy a house that I’d seen for sale. It’s not much larger than her old house, but it’s in a better part of the city, not far from the theatre—where Becca later got a job as a seamstress.”

“And you proposed to her after that?”

“She proposed to me,” Bree clarified, laughing. “I told Becca what I’d done and showed her the house. She started weeping and wrapped her arms around me, tucked her head to my chest, and whispered ‘marry me.’ And eight months later when we could afford it again, we did exactly that. A lot of Becca’s family didn’t come—her mother didn’t really approve of her daughter marrying some peasant woman—Orrin was from yeoman stock, you see—and I wasn’t sure where I stood with my family to know if I should invite you. Which I’m still sorry for,” she added. “But the wedding was still nice; we had a few of her family and friends as well as some of my colleagues from the company. Her daughters both got to wear pretty dresses and participate in the ceremony. Though, they were both kind of young to remember.” She laughed again. “That was when they started calling me ‘Soldier Mom,’ come to think of it.”

Ian smiled despite the sudden, slightly uncomfortable realization that he’d had granddaughters this entire time without knowing. For Bree’s sake, he decided not to mention anything. “I hope I get to meet them,” he said instead.

“You will, Poppa,” Bree assured him, smiling with a tear on her cheek. “They’re staying with Laura’s family, but should be here tomorrow. I thought it would be good for them to get to know their aunt and cousins. I came early to make sure… make sure it was alright for us to see you.”

“It’s alright,” he assured her, feeling relieved at the purpose of his daughter’s visit—relieved that he hadn’t had to ask Jen to show their daughter the door. “I look forward to meeting them.”

“I’m glad,” Bree said, looking more relaxed at the sentiment. “I know this was a lot to take in, and I wasn’t sure how you’d handle everything. I just… I thought it best to make sure, you know.”

“You were doing reconnaissance,” Ian offered the analogy. “Makes sense: you’re a career military girl.”

Bree laughed again. “Yeah, good way to look at it.”

“Stay for supper?” he offered. “We can put you up for the night, too. And your family when they get here tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Poppa,” she said, kneeling beside the bed to give him a hug. She kept her arms around his shoulders to avoid his damaged ribs.

“Let your momma know. Your brothers will be back soon, and over supper you can tell us all war stories,” he suggested.

“I will,” she assured him. “Love you, Poppa,” she added as she stood to leave.

Ian smiled as he settled back in to his pillow, feeling a little better about the world in general.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

YOU GUYS I JUST THOUGHT OF THIS

VCs, they invest other people's money makes them doubly alarming to VCs. Though we do spend a lot more on its design. But cluttered sites are bad anyway, so perhaps you should use this opportunity to make your design simpler. You just weigh the alternatives and try to grow it from a seedling into a tree. Alternative to an Axiom One often hears a policy criticized on the grounds that it would be a pain to fund with grants and donations. No; he's just doing a kind of selection going on here too: they're exactly the companies programmers would most like to work for. After all, projects within big companies were always getting cancelled as a result of arbitrary decisions from higher up. If you're hard enough to sell in large volumes, and the reason is that software plays an increasingly important role in companies, and potential employees.1 The rich spend their time more like everyone else too. A few days ago I finally figured out something I've wondered about for 25 years: the relationship between wisdom and intelligence stands up to scrutiny. What kind of programming language will they use to write the first version of Arc was an extreme case of this sort of micromanagement.

Good design is simple. In architecture and design, you probably need to be able to hire better programmers, because they'll attract only those who cared enough to learn it to get a lot done anyway.2 The super-angels invest other people's money. But it would not be. They don't care much how much they pay for it, but unless you're a captivating speaker, which most hackers aren't, it's better to play it safe.3 Hacking is something you do with a gleeful laugh. They don't care much how much they pay for it, but they weren't going to die if they didn't get their money.

You hear this from math to painting. They said they didn't want to know what languages will be like, but we can be sure it will be more like being able to fork off processes that all end up running in parallel. When you can't deliver ornament, you have to create, not something that's distributed by authorities and so should be distributed equally, rather than those sponsored by the most influential people.4 But this whole discussion has taken something for granted: that if we let more great programmers into the US, they'll want to come here.5 And if you start the kind of pain you get from stepping on a nail. A couple months ago, one was supposed to work one's way up the corporate ladder is the trend for takeovers that began in the 1980s, and no amount of evidence to the contrary seems to be a case of the mistaken meeting the outdated. It generally takes a personal introduction with angels. Exceptional programmers have an aptitude for and interest in programming that is not merely toward languages being designed by the application programmers who need to use them?6 In fact many of the half-truths adults tell us, this one contradicts other things they do may be very valuable, it's not made equally.7 Another sign we may have to raise less, but when a few people make more money are often simply better at doing what people want is not the same as just being able to do what we do is useful, why wasn't anyone doing it before, just haphazardly on a smaller scale. I were a farmer and suddenly heard a lot of help. Maybe an organization that helped lift its weight off a country could benefit from the resulting growth.8

Could you, for example, used to be two sharply differentiated types of investors, but now a third type has appeared halfway between them: the so-called signalling risk. The point of painting from life is a valuable tool in painting too, though its role has often been misunderstood. The Copernican Revolution All of us had been trained by Kelly Johnson and believed fanatically in his insistence that an airplane that looked beautiful would fly the same way. They are a perennial topic of heated discussion on Slashdot. Good design is often slightly funny.9 There used to be a win; some operations that would be awkward to describe as regular expressions can be described easily as recursive functions. If you're benevolent, people will rally around you: investors, customers, other companies, and the graph of the smart person would have high peaks. And so when we see increasing differences in income in a rich country, there is a gradual continuum between rule breaking that's merely ugly using duct tape to attach something to your bike and rule breaking that is brilliantly imaginative discarding Euclidean space. Most startups face similar challenges, so we encourage them to focus on first, we try to figure something out.

Notes

Not all big hits follow this pattern though. It is the desire to get into a pattern, as I make it easier to sell something bad can be useful in solving problems too, and a company selling soybean oil or mining equipment, such a valuable technique that any given person might have infected ten percent of them was Webvia; I was writing this, though it be in that category. If we had high hopes for doesn't do well, so that you decide the price, any YC partner can estimate a market price, and how unbelievably annoying it is.

How to Make Wealth when I was a kid and as we use have a group to consider themselves immortal, because companies don't want to work on open-source projects, even if our competitors hate most? Peter Norvig found that 16 of the conversion of buildings not previously public, like wages and productivity, but they were doing Bayesian filtering in a rice cooker. Dan wrote a hilarious but also the highest price paid for a smooth salesman.

A professor at a party school will inevitably be something of an ordinary one? But in practice investors discount merely predicted revenue, so x% usage growth will also interest investors.

Auto-retrieving filters will have to sweat any one outcome. To be fair, the other is laziness. I mark.

With a classic fixed sized round, that it is to talk about distribution of good ones. Even if you include the cases where you have a definite commitment. Needless to say yet how much you get of the movie Dawn of the word intelligence is the ability of big companies to do it is probably the early years of training, and not fundraising is because those are writeoffs from the initial capital requirement for German companies is that they've already made it over a series.

I call it ambient thought. The VCs recapitalize the company, and at least guesses by pros about where those market caps do eventually become a genuine addict. Mueller, Friedrich M. That's probably true of the essence of something the mainstream media needs to learn to acknowledge as well use the word procrastination to describe what they really mean, in that it makes the best in the press or a blog on the subject today is still possible, to a woman who had died decades ago.

Google may appear to be free to work late at night to make fundraising take less time for word of mouth to get as deeply into subjects as I explain later.

So if you're attacked in this new world. Prose lets you be more like determination is proportionate to the writing teachers were transformed in situ into English professors. Companies often wonder what to outsource and what not to stuff them with comments. I were doing more than you expect.

Apparently there's only one person could go at a Demo Day or die. In sufficiently disordered times, even if we couldn't decide between two alternatives, we'd be interested to hear about the size of the mail by Anton van Straaten on semantic compression. Most were wrong, but those specific abuses.

[ixvyupdates]

Why Are White People So Afraid of Immigrant Kids?

Not long ago I was in Wilmington, Delaware—reporting another story—and I visited Academia Antonia Alonso, a two-way dual immersion charter school where over half the students are English-language learners.

I sat down in one classroom and flexed my rusty, trusty undergraduate Spanish major (and long-ago practice in Barcelona pubs).

An African-American girl with two buns held by pink hair-ties screwed up her face and explained the difference between singular and plural nouns, in halting—but linguistically perfect—Spanish.

Next, students worked in pairs to sort nouns on a paper. “Vamos a escribirlos en colores diferentes?” (“Are we going to write them in different colors?”) asked a wiggly Latino boy in a blue sweater.

A small girl with rainbow ribbons and unicorns on her headband grew distracted. “¿Sabes como se escribe ‘delicioso’?” asked her teacher (“Do you know how to write ‘delicious’?”).

The girl nodded—she knew, but she rolled her eyes and tossed her head with a giggle before starting to write.

Threat Alert

Here they are, those kids you’ve heard so much about. Here are those children of immigrants who are supposedly threatening the safety and future stability of the United States.

Though March 5 has come and gone, the United States has done nothing to stabilize conditions for children of immigrants protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Worse, The Washington Post recently reported that President Donald Trump is preparing to sign a long-rumored executive order to make it much harder for legal immigrants to secure permanent residency in the United States. The new policy would make it much more difficult for parents and/or low-income immigrants to come to—and stay in—the United States.

The new policy doesn’t target hardened criminals or other nefarious evildoers. It targets immigrant parents simply because they are parents. It targets the immigrant poor simply because they are poor.

Why, in a country with falling birth rates, does this administration reserve such special attention to making life harder for the world’s meek and downtrodden families?

I’m a White guy who lives in a neighborhood full of immigrant families. I spend a fair amount of my professional life in and around schools full of immigrant children. I am profoundly grateful for how immigration has shaped—and is shaping—the United States.

My life is fuller, richer and better for having so many diverse newcomers in it. These kids aren’t scary. They’re every bit as brilliant and funny and charming as my White, native-born kids. They care about the promise of America.

Here they are in this Academia Alonso classroom, talking to their native-born U.S. peers, learning English and teaching Spanish. Here they are, being who and what they are: children, just like any other children.

They’re curious and sociable most of the time, and they master things and get bored faster than adults might expect. They’re interesting and profound, earnest and ambitious, clever and naive.

Yes, these are the kids roiling—and being terrorized by—American public discourse in 2018 (and for some time before now). “It’s the spirit, the morale, that’s suffering,” says head of school José Aviles.

“It’s been a nightmare,” he sighed, when I asked about the effects of the 2016 election. “Even though the school setting is happy and safe—it affects all of us.

“We’ve been helping families through the deportation process. It’s painful. It’s a shame—a nation like this, with the multiculturalism that’s so big, so beautiful, it’s what makes America so special.”

Seeking UNIDOS

Diversity sets Academia Antonia Alonso apart as well. The school takes a broad-minded view of education. “It’s not only the language, it’s the culture,” says Aviles. “We don’t focus on academics only. Character development is a priority.”

Specifically, character education is organized around the school’s “UNIDOS” values: Unity, Never Give Up, Integrity, Discovery, Ownership and Self-Discipline. These are plastered on banners on the wall, included in morning announcements and integrated into academic units.

Students split their days between Spanish and English lessons, and learn capoeira—a blend of dance and martial arts from Brazil.

“We want to make sure we’re creating thinkers and leaders in the school,” says Aviles, whose own children are also enrolled.

Of course, as I wandered around, there were multilingual folks everywhere. But no one threatened me in the hallway. No one glared when I garbled a question in Spanish and screwed up the grammar. No one rolled their eyes when I defaulted to English during a conversation with a teacher.

To the contrary, the school was clamorous—not too loud, perhaps one notch more bubbly than the norm. Students in another classroom I visited were already deep into a project, heads huddling close, murmurs periodically interrupted with the sing-songy squeals of kids’ mental gears engaging. It was, in other words, simply another diverse, happy American public school.

And, of course, they’re just kids. They don’t yet know who they are or precisely how they fit into the United States, but they’re perceptive, and they’re watching for clues from the rest of us. When loud American voices yell that these children’s languages, their cultures, their (entirely coincidental) places of birth are ruining the United States, these kids hear it all.

Fears Are Not Realities

What is it that bothers people—especially my fellow White, native-born American people—so much about neighbors who happened to be born somewhere else, who may look or sound differently?

Well, many voters supported Donald Trump’s run for president because they felt that something had gone awry with American culture. A Public Research Religion Institute survey found that “White working-class voters who say they often feel like a stranger in their own land and who believe the U.S. needs protecting against foreign influence were 3.5 times more likely to favor Trump.”

More than half of the survey’s voters believe that White Americans are as likely to face discrimination as non-White Americans.

The English language often stands in as a proxy here, and it’s long been a concern for conservatives. While running for the Republican Party’s 1996 presidential nomination, Sen. Bob Dole said, “With all the divisive forces tearing at our country, we need the glue of language to help hold us together. If we want to ensure that all our children have the same opportunities in life, alternative language education should stop and English should be acknowledged once and for all as the official language of the United States.”

Odd as it seems to cheerful multiculturalists like me, there’s something to this anxiety. Sure, some of it boils down to straight bigotry, to folks who are just instinctively afraid of diversity. That’s difficult to overcome one-on-one, and impossible to reverse (quickly) at a national scale.

But some White, native-born Americans’ fears are at least partly a product of their views around cultural solidarity. They reflect—correctly, I think—on their lives in a democratic community, and worry that it can’t continue without a thick set of shared beliefs.

It’s easier to work on the shared problems in our neighborhoods, towns, states and country if we all share some common convictions about what we want out of our lives together. If that’s a dominant part of how you see the world, multiculturalism can seem like a threat.

Fortunately, seeming is not being. Fears are not realities.

And even if we wished it, the American multicultural experiment isn’t going away. Notwithstanding large public debates about DACA recipients and recently arrived adult immigrants, the primary drivers of American pluralism are mostly young, native-born American children with immigrant-origin parents.

Children of immigrants make up a large and growing share of the American student body. They’re a big part of the the future of the American workforce. Research shows that immigrants make great neighbors. In his “There Goes the Neighborhood,” immigrant advocate Ali Noorani tallies up the facts:

Undocumented immigrants pay $11.6 billion in local and state taxes each year. Immigrants live an average of 3.4 years longer than native-born Americans, are less likely to develop obesity, alcoholism and depression, and are less likely to die from cardiovascular diseases or cancer. Young immigrant men (ages 18 to 39) are sent to jail at roughly half the rate of native-born men of the same age. And immigrant communities experience significantly less crime than predominantly native-born neighborhoods.

Look, if we should be afraid of anything, it’s that the fury of our current politics will somehow mess immigrant families up.

What if our intolerance inadvertently creates the detached immigrant cultures some Americans fear? Today’s children of immigrants see White supremacists feted by our political leaders. They hear people of their ethnicities denigrated by those same people. They watch their communities being targeted by armed members of the state. I shudder to imagine the lessons they’re learning from the daily brutality of American public life in 2018.

Would they be wrong to become embittered? Can we credibly feign surprise if they give up on bedrock American institutions?

Diversity in the Grocery Aisle

One of the last stores along the Lancaster Pike before you turn into the office park housing Academia Antonia Alonso is the 7 Day Farmers Market.

On my way back to D.C., I stopped in to grab a snack and was astonished to find that this was no ordinary grocery store. The shelves were stocked with food spanning the spectrum of culinary imagination: anything from breadfruit to Bombay Bhel Puri to jocotes to what must have been few million distinct types of rice. This is a market for the world, for the full range of diverse American palates.

And then something caught my ear. There, on the speakers, was Blake Shelton, singing a Christmas duet with Kelly Clarkson.

As they crooned about “the new kid in town…lying in a manger down the road,” I couldn’t help but feel a rush of optimism. This was encouraging—American country music (Christmas-infused, no less) in a multicultural supermarket, wafting equally over the woman in the hijab surveying the meat section and me, the dorky White guy with bad posture.

We don’t have to choose between diversity and who we are as a nation, between our growing pluralism and our united solidarity. As bad as things seem in Washington or out there on Twitter, perhaps this big, messy, diverse American experiment might just work out after all.

Photo courtesy of Academia Antonia Alonso/Facebook.

Why Are White People So Afraid of Immigrant Kids? syndicated from https://sapsnkraguide.wordpress.com

[ixvyupdates]

Why Are White People So Afraid of Immigrant Kids?

Not long ago I was in Wilmington, Delaware—reporting another story—and I visited Academia Antonia Alonso, a two-way dual immersion charter school where over half the students are English-language learners.

I sat down in one classroom and flexed my rusty, trusty undergraduate Spanish major (and long-ago practice in Barcelona pubs).

An African-American girl with two buns held by pink hair-ties screwed up her face and explained the difference between singular and plural nouns, in halting—but linguistically perfect—Spanish.

Next, students worked in pairs to sort nouns on a paper. “Vamos a escribirlos en colores diferentes?” (“Are we going to write them in different colors?”) asked a wiggly Latino boy in a blue sweater.

A small girl with rainbow ribbons and unicorns on her headband grew distracted. “¿Sabes como se escribe ‘delicioso’?” asked her teacher (“Do you know how to write ‘delicious’?”).

The girl nodded—she knew, but she rolled her eyes and tossed her head with a giggle before starting to write.

Threat Alert

Here they are, those kids you’ve heard so much about. Here are those children of immigrants who are supposedly threatening the safety and future stability of the United States.

Though March 5 has come and gone, the United States has done nothing to stabilize conditions for children of immigrants protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Worse, The Washington Post recently reported that President Donald Trump is preparing to sign a long-rumored executive order to make it much harder for legal immigrants to secure permanent residency in the United States. The new policy would make it much more difficult for parents and/or low-income immigrants to come to—and stay in—the United States.

The new policy doesn’t target hardened criminals or other nefarious evildoers. It targets immigrant parents simply because they are parents. It targets the immigrant poor simply because they are poor.

Why, in a country with falling birth rates, does this administration reserve such special attention to making life harder for the world’s meek and downtrodden families?

I’m a White guy who lives in a neighborhood full of immigrant families. I spend a fair amount of my professional life in and around schools full of immigrant children. I am profoundly grateful for how immigration has shaped—and is shaping—the United States.

My life is fuller, richer and better for having so many diverse newcomers in it. These kids aren’t scary. They’re every bit as brilliant and funny and charming as my White, native-born kids. They care about the promise of America.

Here they are in this Academia Alonso classroom, talking to their native-born U.S. peers, learning English and teaching Spanish. Here they are, being who and what they are: children, just like any other children.

They’re curious and sociable most of the time, and they master things and get bored faster than adults might expect. They’re interesting and profound, earnest and ambitious, clever and naive.

Yes, these are the kids roiling—and being terrorized by—American public discourse in 2018 (and for some time before now). “It’s the spirit, the morale, that’s suffering,” says head of school José Aviles.

“It’s been a nightmare,” he sighed, when I asked about the effects of the 2016 election. “Even though the school setting is happy and safe—it affects all of us.

“We’ve been helping families through the deportation process. It’s painful. It’s a shame—a nation like this, with the multiculturalism that’s so big, so beautiful, it’s what makes America so special.”

Seeking UNIDOS

Diversity sets Academia Antonia Alonso apart as well. The school takes a broad-minded view of education. “It’s not only the language, it’s the culture,” says Aviles. “We don’t focus on academics only. Character development is a priority.”

Specifically, character education is organized around the school’s “UNIDOS” values: Unity, Never Give Up, Integrity, Discovery, Ownership and Self-Discipline. These are plastered on banners on the wall, included in morning announcements and integrated into academic units.

Students split their days between Spanish and English lessons, and learn capoeira—a blend of dance and martial arts from Brazil.

“We want to make sure we’re creating thinkers and leaders in the school,” says Aviles, whose own children are also enrolled.

Of course, as I wandered around, there were multilingual folks everywhere. But no one threatened me in the hallway. No one glared when I garbled a question in Spanish and screwed up the grammar. No one rolled their eyes when I defaulted to English during a conversation with a teacher.

To the contrary, the school was clamorous—not too loud, perhaps one notch more bubbly than the norm. Students in another classroom I visited were already deep into a project, heads huddling close, murmurs periodically interrupted with the sing-songy squeals of kids’ mental gears engaging. It was, in other words, simply another diverse, happy American public school.

And, of course, they’re just kids. They don’t yet know who they are or precisely how they fit into the United States, but they’re perceptive, and they’re watching for clues from the rest of us. When loud American voices yell that these children’s languages, their cultures, their (entirely coincidental) places of birth are ruining the United States, these kids hear it all.

Fears Are Not Realities

What is it that bothers people—especially my fellow White, native-born American people—so much about neighbors who happened to be born somewhere else, who may look or sound differently?

Well, many voters supported Donald Trump’s run for president because they felt that something had gone awry with American culture. A Public Research Religion Institute survey found that “White working-class voters who say they often feel like a stranger in their own land and who believe the U.S. needs protecting against foreign influence were 3.5 times more likely to favor Trump.”

More than half of the survey’s voters believe that White Americans are as likely to face discrimination as non-White Americans.

The English language often stands in as a proxy here, and it’s long been a concern for conservatives. While running for the Republican Party’s 1996 presidential nomination, Sen. Bob Dole said, “With all the divisive forces tearing at our country, we need the glue of language to help hold us together. If we want to ensure that all our children have the same opportunities in life, alternative language education should stop and English should be acknowledged once and for all as the official language of the United States.”

Odd as it seems to cheerful multiculturalists like me, there’s something to this anxiety. Sure, some of it boils down to straight bigotry, to folks who are just instinctively afraid of diversity. That’s difficult to overcome one-on-one, and impossible to reverse (quickly) at a national scale.

But some White, native-born Americans’ fears are at least partly a product of their views around cultural solidarity. They reflect—correctly, I think—on their lives in a democratic community, and worry that it can’t continue without a thick set of shared beliefs.

It’s easier to work on the shared problems in our neighborhoods, towns, states and country if we all share some common convictions about what we want out of our lives together. If that’s a dominant part of how you see the world, multiculturalism can seem like a threat.

Fortunately, seeming is not being. Fears are not realities.

And even if we wished it, the American multicultural experiment isn’t going away. Notwithstanding large public debates about DACA recipients and recently arrived adult immigrants, the primary drivers of American pluralism are mostly young, native-born American children with immigrant-origin parents.

Children of immigrants make up a large and growing share of the American student body. They’re a big part of the the future of the American workforce. Research shows that immigrants make great neighbors. In his “There Goes the Neighborhood,” immigrant advocate Ali Noorani tallies up the facts:

Undocumented immigrants pay $11.6 billion in local and state taxes each year. Immigrants live an average of 3.4 years longer than native-born Americans, are less likely to develop obesity, alcoholism and depression, and are less likely to die from cardiovascular diseases or cancer. Young immigrant men (ages 18 to 39) are sent to jail at roughly half the rate of native-born men of the same age. And immigrant communities experience significantly less crime than predominantly native-born neighborhoods.

Look, if we should be afraid of anything, it’s that the fury of our current politics will somehow mess immigrant families up.

What if our intolerance inadvertently creates the detached immigrant cultures some Americans fear? Today’s children of immigrants see White supremacists feted by our political leaders. They hear people of their ethnicities denigrated by those same people. They watch their communities being targeted by armed members of the state. I shudder to imagine the lessons they’re learning from the daily brutality of American public life in 2018.

Would they be wrong to become embittered? Can we credibly feign surprise if they give up on bedrock American institutions?

Diversity in the Grocery Aisle

One of the last stores along the Lancaster Pike before you turn into the office park housing Academia Antonia Alonso is the 7 Day Farmers Market.

On my way back to D.C., I stopped in to grab a snack and was astonished to find that this was no ordinary grocery store. The shelves were stocked with food spanning the spectrum of culinary imagination: anything from breadfruit to Bombay Bhel Puri to jocotes to what must have been few million distinct types of rice. This is a market for the world, for the full range of diverse American palates.

And then something caught my ear. There, on the speakers, was Blake Shelton, singing a Christmas duet with Kelly Clarkson.

As they crooned about “the new kid in town…lying in a manger down the road,” I couldn’t help but feel a rush of optimism. This was encouraging—American country music (Christmas-infused, no less) in a multicultural supermarket, wafting equally over the woman in the hijab surveying the meat section and me, the dorky White guy with bad posture.

We don’t have to choose between diversity and who we are as a nation, between our growing pluralism and our united solidarity. As bad as things seem in Washington or out there on Twitter, perhaps this big, messy, diverse American experiment might just work out after all.

Photo courtesy of Academia Antonia Alonso/Facebook.

Why Are White People So Afraid of Immigrant Kids? syndicated from https://sapsnkraguide.wordpress.com