#albeit one without any gunfights

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

I feel like it would be nice to acquire a cool military antique while I’m here, like a cool compass or pair of binoculars, but also I feel like a fucking moron for collecting army stuff and the feeling becomes more intense with every passing year

[067supremacy]

This was just a little something I came up with a while back and decided to release it now : )

I hope you enjoy it!! <3

Return to me - Jill Valentine

You stood at the kitchen island, biting at your fingernails until there was nothing left. Worry and panic, all are setting the boundaries early on in the day when it was announced to you and other next of kin that a mission had gone sideways. S.T.A.R.S had given you the initial statement, but now twelve hours later, you still had yet to hear any updates on the mission.

Jill's hoodie is comfort right now, but then the thought of never holding her or kissing her again makes you feel sick. You were dressed from head to toe in Jill's clothing without a care in the world about your appearance. You just needed that woman of yours to be safe.... she better be safe.

You recall something you said to her before she left, "what happens if you don't come back this time? Please, stay." She simply pulled you close and placed your head on her chest. You could feel her heartbeat. The steady thump calmed you to a halt; your heartbeat matched hers in speed and timing, for you were one.

"I always come back; I'm never going to leave you." Her words make the tears in your eyes spill. There was only one person in this world who could calm your being, and her whereabouts/well-being was under question.

Even at two in the morning, the prospect of something happening has you wide awake. Jill's missions were dangerous, and you knew how hard she would fight to get back, but the risk factor in her line of work always forced doubts in your mind. Every time she went away on a mission and your phone would ring, you thought this is the moment. This is how your and Jill's story was about to end.

You pick up your phone and dial Claire's number to see if she had any updates on Chris' situation, but to no avail. She, too, was still waiting for answers.

The weather outside was perfectly fitting your mood right now. A shower of rain had been pelting the ground for hours now. The slight tapping of rain connecting with the window ledge was heard throughout the apartment. The odd flash of lightning and claps of thunder appear when your anger seeps in at the thought of someone taking your Jill away from you. "You better be okay, Jill." You whisper to yourself.

You remember a time when Jill came back from working a case against a small-time drug dealer that had links to something big within Raccoon City. She got into a gunfight with a gang of jumped-up drug dealers, one of them had pierced her shoulder with a 9mm handgun bullet, but luckily she survived with just a tiny scar present to this day.

After that incident, you were so worried about what else could happen, So Jill made you a promise. She promised that no matter the situation out there. She would fight to the very end to make it back to you, no matter the cost.

You hoped and prayed this was a promise she would continue to keep. She had held up to her commitment so far. Surely this time, she would again.

Now it's four in the morning; dried tear marks trail your face as you snuggle into Jill's pillow. Her scent fills your nose, which serves as therapy for a few seconds. The cruel reminder of the situation follows when you realise that her smell is all you have left at this moment in time. You open your phone to the screensaver of you and Jill on one of your famous date nights. This one was a bit more special than the others. You both smile brightly at the camera while you hold up your hand to show off a sparkly diamond ring on your finger. The day you agreed to do this for life, the happiest day of your life, brings a smile-albeit small-to your face.

Then you hear the doorknob to the front door rattle, keys jingle and crash into the wooden frame. You had already shot out of bed and rounded the corner of your small apartment to see the love of your life standing there in her uniform. You leap into her arms, let her scent invade your nostrils, you shake with sobs of her name. Jill whispers sweet little words in your ear, as well as reassurances that she will always find a way back to you.

You can't resist them lips of hers; you capture them between your own. You let Jill relax into the kiss; you pour everything you possibly can into it. She's your future wife, after all. As you pull away, you look deep into her eyes and whisper. "you always return to me."

[zydrateacademy]

First Impressions / Review - Cyberpunk 2077

I have some screenshots but they’re mostly photo mode and the occasional interface showing off my gear. So this review will be pic-less for now. I got Cyberpunk off of Stimulus money so as far as I’m concerned, the government paid for this game which does negate some of the problems I’d normally have for dropping 80$ or so on a preorder. Use that information how you will. First, I want to address some technical issues. In the sense that I don’t have very many. I have a 1050 GTX, an i5 processor, and 16GB of Ram. That’s about as complex as my knowledge goes on that. I’ve had a few glitches like Jackie ghosting through a closed door, some vans were clipped into the parking lot, and some NPC’s being stuck in furniture. A lot of ghosting around, really. The odd frame drop but nothing game breaking, and I haven’t had any crashes except one on startup, right after updating my drivers. Just the one in ~21 hours of gameplay. I play on High (but not ultra) settings. So all in all, not a bad experience. Everyone’s computer is a unique butterfly so while you will see a lot of yelling on various communities, some of us are trucking along several hour sessions at a time and not having a problem. Let’s do a quick dive into the story, and there may be some spoilers here but it’s mostly for Act 1, which is reachable just a couple hours depending on how quickly you want to unlock the whole city (as you’re locked to one region until you complete a major heist). 

You play as V, of any variety of gender identity you wish (though you are stuck with he or she pronouns). Basically a futuristic mercenary that does any kind of work available, kind of giving me some vibes from Burn Notice. Arms deals, stealing fans, VIP extraction, and so on. Of course, nothing goes as plan and you more or less lose your entire initial team after a heist goes wrong in every way possible. You’re witness to a world changing shift in a power structure and are forced to insert a chip with the ‘soul’ of Johnny Silverhand, an angry and incredibly bitter man who staged a bombing decades before V enters the game. This becomes the driving force of the game as you work to remove him safely from your body before he replaces you entirely - Something that not even he can stop, really. I’ve only had my toes dipped in Cyberpunk as a genre but it seems pretty standard fare. The concepts of “do cybernetics eat your soul’ and the various debate of how much human makes a human, all that. You’re put right there in center force as you grapple with these questions, even though our avatar as V is more concerned with just curing themselves like it was any other terminal disease. Even in-universe, the idea of a soul-preserving microchip is still a relatively new invention, though still in development enough to be advertised and talked about in news circuits. So let’s approach my first problem. It takes several hours for the game to essentially ‘wake up’. For a long time, you’re stuck in several conversations and interactable cutscenes with very little gameplay except taking advantage of V’s chosen origin in dialog. A couple of firefights here and there but the initial region locks you in and there’s only so many world encounters to just run into. The game more or less railroads you into completing Act 1 with some haste, because it also unlocks the ability to get more cybernetics and even some actual, full on mechanics. Within that railroading, you’re witness to so. Much. God. Damn. Talking. Mercifully you can press or hold “c” to skip through some things if you already understand the gist, but the first several hours of the game can very much feel like a very pretty walking simulator. Thankfully this kind of goes away after Act 1. You suddenly get called by a variety of Fixers that preside over various regions and they toss you dozens of side-jobs to do and so far, I find them to be delightfully varied. As a stealther, I found great joy in having a VIP escort quest with the optional objective of not sounding any alarms. So I went and bought myself a silencer and happily snuck around some gang mates boxing in the middle of a building, retrieved my guy, and escorted him outside while leaving several enemies alive. It was a great achievement. These side-gigs can be as complicated or straightforward as you please, giving me some Dues Ex vibes. The tutorial introduces you to hacking so you can distract and destroy your enemies how you see fit, and I have found that most encounters are designed with alternate routes to deal with enemies. Others are less clear. During one gig, I opened a door and the entire bar went ape on me, so I shot my way through and earned two stars from the police. Turned into a massive shootout that led to a dropbox that had gang members in it that also shot at me. Playing on Easy is a saving grace, but as someone who typically likes sneaking around games when the option is available, I wish the game made it more clear if I'm in a "suspicious" type zone. I also have no idea which NPC's are counted as potential enemies (the scan early in the story tells you if they're in a gang or not), as perfectly normal NPC's in the aforementioned bar just began unloading on me. It was wild, and I survived and got paid but the mission giver telling me it was sloppy work. Thanks, lady. Another time I opened a gate and trained my silenced pistol on the guard only for her to slightly sidestep as the gate opening “alerted” her. So I missed the shot, she opened fire, and the entire structure came out to play. It was an intense gunfight in which I was victorious, but it felt hollow as my silenced approach just botched the entire encounter. It was difficult for me to figure out what the game’s general “loop” is. So far it gives me the Ubisoft vibe of “hit everything you run into”. I do like the idea of V being something of a vigilante, as random police encounters pretty much allow you to intervene and gun down gang members without them bothering you about it. I must admit, however, I wish there was more to actually DO in the game. So far it’s mostly just side-gig after side-gig. Escort guy here, steal a van there, eliminate all enemies here. Though again, I said before that some of this can be quite enjoyable under the right circumstances. Maddening in others. In a way, this is kind of the Rage 2 problem all over again, in the sense that people loved the general gunplay but there wasn’t actually a lot of gameplay beyond the decent combat mechanics. Cyberpunk 2077 is certainly no GTA5, but I hope some day it can become that with DLC’s that add actual activities.

A couple of quick asides. I despise the driving, as most vehicles seem to want to spin out very easily if you hold the turning key for a second too long. In some fashion, it forces you to drive like an actual sane person and mowing down civilians (even accidentally) adds a GTA-esque wanted level though it seems stupidly easy to avoid. Narratively, it makes sense as the authorities in this universe are incredibly corrupt and it basically amounts to “eh, they’re too far now, let’s not waste resources”. So, fair enough. Still, I hope to GOD there’s no mandatory story-based racing. Games have screwed me on that before, and I have not beaten most GTA games because of that. Secondly, I don’t think the origin choice does a lot. You get different dialog choices and being a Corpo did lead to one interesting turn when you just ‘knew’ a credit chip had a virus on it. So there is that, but ultimately the rest of the dialog is identical. You could chalk this up to V spending six months with Jackie and he, more or less, lets your V really swim in Night City culture but honestly ALL V choices feel like they’ve become the same person. I was originally a Corpo but it just feels like her past and culture didn’t seep in through most of the dialog. At the end of the day, V is always just some mercenary punk. The world is gorgeous, albeit not as alive as it may have been advertised in promotions. Random civilians just have canned dialog, a lot of it rude. However I’ve been hard pressed to find doubles or clones of anyone just walking around, but that may change once I get into the hundreds of hour counts. It’s a very pretty game and despite some of my qualms, I am enjoying the experience. There’s a photo mode which is wonderful to utilize when you run into an environment that just captures the imagination. I took a screenshot of Jackie’s wall of pinups, including a typical slutty nun but as per the universe, her chest filled with beautifully placed cybernetics. It was just fun to see, and there’s a lot of semi-subtle world building like that that I just adore.

The game has issues. However, if you wanted a slightly scaled back idea of GTA5 with a different aesthetic, this is not at all a bad choice. However I will not blame anyone if they wait for the “GOTY” editions to come out. And on sale.

[o-blivia]

... Five Years Later

I never set out to start an aesthetic blog, for as much as I’ve been curating one for the past half decade and counting. This whole thing started with the idea to start collecting images from around tumblr that sparked ideas for various writing projects without cluttering up my hard drives. It shouldn’t have been so surprising that not long after starting this habit, a cohesive, if eccentric, aesthetic began to emerge. There are a few well worn grooves in my mind when it comes to my artistic vision, I guess.

That vision has expanded and refined over the years, and curating o-blivia has become a project in its own right — independent of anything I’m writing even if it’s still a well for inspiration. And in this respect, o-blivia is meant to be more than an aesthetic, though it is that. Through imagery alone, I’ve been carving out something of a cyberpunk future. With that ever in the back of my mind when I sit down to tackle my queue for the day, a loose set of internal guidelines has developed for what does and doesn’t get posted. Figured it was time I expanded on them a bit, maybe involve you all in the process.

Firstly, the world is a complex, multifaceted place and I’ve always wanted o-blivia to reflect that in ways most cyberpunk works can’t while telling a specific narrative. That’s why it probably seems like I jump around a lot. Eclectic is a word for it, but it’s more the idea of presenting a rounded vision. In someways, this is my answer to where or how ordinary people are supposed to exist in the Cyberpunk Future(tm). Mainly, right mixed in with the mercs, cyborgs and basement hackers. Everybody’s gotta live somewhere.

Secondly, representation. Representation is achingly important. I’d hardly be the first to accuse the visual media in this genre of being whitewashed (blade runner, I’m looking at you,) nor to point out the absurdity of a globalized future lacking in diversity, and I’m not going to claim to be the first to refuse to perpetuate the tendency, either. It certainly wouldn’t reflect the world I live it. They call my country a cultural mosaic and my city a melting pot, so I’ve set myself the task of creating an equally rich fictional world — because we are the better for all our differing perspectives.

The thing about representation is it doesn’t mean shit if it isn’t done respectfully. It isn’t as though marginalized groups have been completely absent from media for the last century. The context in which they’ve been represented has been racist, demeaning and beyond disrespectful in much the same ways they’ve been treated in real life. Society is changing, and — albeit at a glacial pace — coming around to the idea that white people and their stories are not the universal default. For the longest time, there was next to no diversity in the cyberpunk tags on Tumblr. It’s gotten better, but I still feel that I have to put that extra bit of effort into finding and including images representing diverse groups in respectful, empowering and humanizing ways.

On the subject of representation and respect, I have to talk about my biggest peeve when it comes to cyberpunk Tumblr: the way women are portrayed, or the goddamned tactical bikini. Cyberpunk has a litany BAMF women characters, yet the art has remained firmly entrenched in trends that originated in the 80’s. The tendency is to have these big hulking male power fantasies decked head to toe in body armour and leather, while their female counterparts take up literally half the space, showing up to combat in daisy dukes and a bikini top wielding a big fuck-off gun like that’s how any sane person would show up to a gunfight.

There is nothing inherently shameful about the female body, I want to make that painfully and abundantly clear. My issue is not with how much skin is showing. No, my issue is that these images are meant to specifically portray women as sex object. The only conclusion you can come to is that these women have put appealing to the male gaze above bodily safety, which is beyond insane. So my rule when it comes to women with guns is that if she’s dressed in a way that is realistic, or that I could easily find a man similarly dressed, I will post it. If she’s dressed for a day at the beach instead of heavy combat, that shit is not getting anywhere near my blog.

That said, context is very important. So yes, I will post images of more provocatively dressed women if the context is right. Mainly, if she isn’t about to go into combat and the image is empowered. There is the odd exception, namely Tank Girl, who wields her sexuality like a weapon and pushes limit of provocative into the realm of raunchy with the intent to offend and scandalize. (She’s my hero.)

And above all else, on this blog, women are the default and not the other way around. So you will see at least as many, if not more women than men here. No, I don’t feel bad about it.

Lastly, it’s important that I address the depictions of violence and militarization that appear on o-blivia. It might seem incongruous with opinions I’ve expressed in the past, and with my own experience with gun violence, to have these depictions feature on my blog. I’m not a pacifist, even if violence is not something that I feel lives inside of me in anyway. Neither do I believe it realistic to expect a species as divisive and opinionated as we are to be capable of abandoning conflict and bloodshed any time soon. Someone is always going to find some way to be crueler, to inflict more suffering and pain, which means there needs to be someone to stop them.

I never set out in my mind to create some kind of utopian future — that’s not what cyberpunk is about by anyone’s definition. So to omit the presence of militarized forces, the threat of violence, or the realities of omnipresent surveillance would be disingenuous and would, I think, undermine what I am trying to create.  That said, I don’t seek to glorify violence, either. I don’t post images of firearms on their own, even if the image would fit the aesthetic, and I don’t post images where proper trigger discipline is not being respected. Guns exist, theres no way around that, but they should be treated with the trepidation and caution due to a device capable of ending a life between one heartbeat and the next.

Other than that, it’s pretty much anything goes. I’m an open minded person with varied interests — technology, fashion, abstract art, architecture, videogames, cats, sea creatures, space, design, weird creepy things and street art, are just a few regularly occurring themes. Who knows what will spark my interest tomorrow.

[iolrachs]

1989, 11th July - Alex is born to Tom and Anna Weiss in Lakeville, Minnesota.

1998 - A nine year old Alex learns to hack, inspired by his older sister, Kaz.

2003 - Tom begins to teach a fourteen year old Alex how to shoot a pistol, taking him to a shooting gallery most weekends.

2007, September - Tom suffers a heart attack and dies, leaving behind Anna, Kaz, and an eighteen year old Alex.

2007, September - Alex begins a four year course at the University of Minnesota, majoring in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Computer Engineering. During this time, he joined the Minnesota Running Club.

2010 - Kaz marries Lucya. Alex is the best man at her wedding.

2011, June - Alex graduates from the University of Minnesota with full honours.

                 - Alex remains unemployed, albeit with a sideline in computer repair. The majority of his income, however, comes from hacking gambling sites to increase the odds of him winning.

2013 - After hacking into several government databases and being hunted by the governments in question, Alex came to Conrad Roth for sanctuary on his research vessel. Though he initially offered to work for free, Roth allowed him to stay aboard and welcomed him into his crew as a technician.

- Alex meets Lara Croft and Sam Nishimura, as well as the rest of the Endurance crew, finding his old friend Jonah a member. Alex immediately develops a crush on Lara, nurturing it in secret, though his over-awkwardness annoys Lara to some degree, and becomes fast friends with Sam.

- Alex meets Dr Whitman after the Endurance is hired to help in filming Whitman’s World. Alex does not take kindly to him, having hacked into files about his private life and discovered his messy divorce and financial strife.

- Roth charges Alex with forging the necessary permits for the ship and the expedition, including the crew.

- While setting up a Wi-Fi range extender for the Endurance, Alex fell overboard. He was saved by Lara, though pushed back into the water by Sam in mischief.

- With the expedition to find Yamatai on hold due to funding issues, Alex presents a solution in the form of a self-made 99.9% hacking program. He uses it on gambling sites to increase their chances of winning and accrue the necessary funds – however, the 0.1% chance of detection occurs and Alex is forced to throw his computer overboard to avoid being traced.

- While at sea, the Endurance needed an intermediate repair in the engine room. While Alex insisted it was a mechanical fault, Reyes correctly informed him it was an electrical fault. In attempting to make a joke, Alex made a flirtatious remark about a girl in Reyes’ photo – a girl he soon learned, around the foot in his mouth and disbelief at his own idiocy, was Reyes’ 14 year old daughter.

March - The crew came to a crossroads midway into their journey. Lara suggested venturing into the Dragon’s Triangle, where Whitman rebuked the idea. Alex hacked into a satellite to show the weather conditions over the triangle – with the storms there and Lara citing Himiko’s apparent myth for controlling the weather, a myth that could have some element of truth, Roth decided to make for the Triangle.

- At 11pm, in the vicinity of Yamatai, a storm strikes the Endurance and cleaves her in two. Alex manages to escape the shipwreck and makes it to the beach with Reyes, Jonah, Grim, Sam, Whitman, and another crew member. Although Alex tried to save him with CPR, the crew member died on the beach.

- The crew reunites with Lara while she is caught in a bear trap, having been searching for the kidnapped Sam and Mathias. The crew free Lara and split up – one to go with Lara and head for Roth, who is communicating via radio and attempting to gather all crew at his location, and the rest to fan out and find Sam. Alex offers to go with Lara, but is denied by Whitman, and joins the party searching for Sam.

- When Lara attempts to use an abandoned radio tower to boost the rescue beacon from the Endurance to call for help, it is Alex who talks her through both finding the control bank and the method of patching the signal manually through the tower’s maintenance box.

- While searching for Sam near Himiko’s palace, Reyes, Alex, and Jonah are taken captive by the Solarii Brotherhood and imprisoned in an old airplane wreck suspended in the underground geothermal caverns. The three are rescued by Lara, though are separated from her again while she returns to the caves to hunt for Sam and Whitman.

- The three manage to escape and reunite with Sam, but are cornered by the Solarii and begin a gun battle to fend them off. With Roth and Lara on a helicopter Roth had called, it seems the four will be left to the islanders, until Lara forces the pilot to land for their friends.

- Roth dies protecting Lara, and Alex attends his funeral pyre burial. He suggests to Lara that they only need to regroup, though he agrees there is something strange about the island. He leaves with Reyes, Jonah, and Sam to go to the old PT boat on the beach, with Reyes believing she can repair it sufficiently to allow them to escape.

- With the boat in bad condition, it becomes apparent Reyes needs her tools from the Endurance to properly repair the boat. Taking inspiration from Lara’s “See what you can do.”, Alex volunteers to fetch the tools from the wreck.

- He manages to successfully evade the Solarii raiding the wreck for scrap, as well as climb and travel over dangerous terrain to reach the wreck. On reaching the engine room, however, Alex was surprised by a Solarii gunman. Their brief gunfight saw Alex come out victorious, however a steel girder and several other pieces of the Endurance’s ceiling were loosened in the battle. They came crashing down on Alex, severely injuring his leg and pinning it beneath the metal beams, trapping him there until Lara came.

- Though she attempted to remove the debris, it caused Alex too much pain. The Solarii, aware of Lara’s presence and previously alerted by the sound of Alex’s gunshots, stormed the engine room, engaging in a brief exchange of bullets. After convincing Lara to leave him and return to Reyes with the tools, Alex shot at the ruptured gas pipe, causing an explosion that rocked the ship and ultimately had Lara presume he was dead. Instead, Alex was severely burned along his left side and right arm, thrown from the debris into a lower room by the blast. He was knocked unconscious and sealed within the room as the Endurance sank, with only a limited supply of air.

- Waking up on the seafloor some unknown period of time later, Alex knew he had to act. If his air supply did not run out, it would be the mounting pressure that killed him, his saving prison already groaning under the weight. Eventually forcing himself to stand, though he could not put his weight on the injured leg, Alex dragged himself to the room door, where he forced it open and attempted to swim to the surface before the pressure killed him through knocking all air for his lungs and drowning him, or by giving him brain damage in the process. Successfully making it to the surface, Alex makes for the remaining half of the Endurance, seeking to raid what medical supplies may be left in order to treat his wounds.

- A tourniquet tied around his leg and what bandages he could find binding his leg in a makeshift splint, Alex retreats to rest for the night, resolving to return to the crew in the morning. By the time he awakens, however, Lara and the crew have already journeyed inland to rescue Sam.

- Alex slowly drags himself to the beach, forced to take frequent breaks and rely almost entirely on a crutch (his leg is useless, he knows this, he knows this, but still he forces himself to go on). It is there he sees the PT boat leaving off in the distance, Lara having rescued Sam from Himiko. Though he tries to hail them, his voice is too hoarse, his body too weak, and so they leave without hearing him.

- Three months pass, and Alex is still on the island. His leg is barely healed, broken and twisted beyond all compare. Though he refuses to look, gangrene has begun to set in to the wound by the second month, despite his attempts to keep the wound clean. He searches for any other possible way off the island, evading the stragglers of the Solarii and killing them where he must.

- By the sixth month, Alex resolves that the only possible way to escape is to hail for rescue from the radio tower as Lara did. It takes him several weeks to cross the island, slowed as he is by injury and his leg, and several days to climb the tower. On his descent from the tower, his leg gives out and he falls from the last ladder, breaking his right arm.

early September: Lara travels to Pripyat at the behest of her hallucinations of Alex. There, she meets his sister, Kaz, and her family-in-law, and defends them from Trinity. Although Viktor and Kirill are killed by Mr Cruz, it is revealed that Lucya is still alive, having faked her death to escape Trinity. Lucya, Kaz, Varvara, and Pavel are all taken into Witness Protection, where Lara gives them burner phones that they may remain in contact with her should they need her.

late October - Alex is rescued by plane and flown to Bokutoh Hospital for emergency treatment. He is treated for sepsis and found to be suffering from septic shock; his arm is set and his leg, too far ravaged by gangrene and infection, is amputated above the knee. He remains in a medically induced comatose state for several weeks, half-dead and kept alive by IV lines and antibiotics.

2014, January - Alex begins to stir. Although still disorientated and incredibly weak, hospital staff manage to get two sentences from him – Lara Croft and Yamatai.

- Although not enough to identify him, as his identification was left in the Endurance, Alex’s repeated murmurs of ‘Lara Croft’ drive hospital staff to find her in the hopes she might know their mystery patient. She is located on account of her publishing her testimony of what happened on Yamatai.

10th February - Lara Croft is contacted. She does not remain convinced the hospital have the right person, until Yamatai is mentioned. She immediately packs and fly for Japan.

11th February - Lara reunites with Alex. At first she does not believe it is him, believing instead that it is a hallucination or a cruel joke. Though Alex manages to convince her, through tears on both parts, he is still not strong enough and falls asleep again.

12th February - Lara contacts Jonah, Reyes, and Sam to inform them of Alex’s survival. They all fly to the hospital to see Alex with their own eyes and reunite with one they thought dead.

15th February - With Alex’s permission, Lara has him transferred to Royal Surrey County Hospital, so that she and Sam may keep watch over him.

17th March - With doctors finally satisfied he is recovered enough to be released, Alex is discharged. He is offered a place to live by Lara, in her London apartment with her and Sam.

1st April - Alex begins the process of being fitted for a prosthetic leg. Although he tries to argue, Lara insists on paying for the whole process, as well as his rehabilitation and learning to walk.

November - Atlas DeMornay forces Lara to attend therapy and prove she is of sound mind before he allows her access to her fortune. It is revealed to Alex and Sam by Atlas that Lara is in fact a Lady.

- Obsessed with proving her legitimacy, Lara begins a search for the Divine Source. Although forbidden to accompany her physically, Alex remains in London as technological backup, ready to hack and find information and funding as Lara needs it.

- Following her return from Syria, Lara returns to Croft Manor, bringing Alex and Sam with her. Though it is Lara who does all the work, Alex still attempts to help her find evidence she is the rightful owner of the estate and her inheritance.

- Lara and Jonah fly out to Siberia to find the lost city of Kitezh. Alex remains in Croft Manor with Sam, helping out in the restoration where he can and waiting for Lara to return.

[fortnite-oblivion]

Conjecture and Happenstance

Neo-Tilted’s lights shone brightly against the nightscape. It was hard to tell that the small city had sprawled into such a towering monument to how quickly humanity adapted, recovered and thrived. 

Olivia smiled as she swirled the wine in her glass before taking a sip. He dress for the evening was a rather odd choice, sporting one long sleeve while her other arm and shoulder were completely bare. the gown itself went down to her ankles with a slit along the side of her left leg only up to her calf. She could easily fight in this, albeit a little uncomfortable. The final touch was a trim of orange to accentuate her crimson eyes. 

“Will you be needing anything else, Ma’am?” 

Olivia turned and smiled before handing the menu, which sat nearby, to the waiter. “No thank you, sir. I believe I have everything I need.” 

SHe then returned to looking out the window to the city below, smiling to herself. Nice kid. One of the Few she was hoping to protect.

A chair shifted on the carpet of the restaurant as a familiar man sat opposite of Olivia. 

“Hello, John. Or should I refer to you by your code name, Reaper?” 

John frowned as he sat across from Olivia. “We both know why I’m here, Oblivion. Why are you here, is my question.” 

The waiter returned with two meals, one a medium rare steak with lightly seasoned mashed potatoes and asparagus in a Parmesan sprinkling; the other a meal of filet mignonette over an alfredo sauce with a white wine reduction. 

John raised an eyebrow while Olivia smiled and thanked the waiter. 

“What’s your plan?” 

Olivia smiled to John after the waiter was away. “Simple. I wanted dinner, i figured either you or some other would be ‘hero’ would arrive as my sister has given my information to you in hopes that she can ‘save’ me. I don’t see where she got that idea in her head, though I suspect she gets it from our father.” 

John eyed the food before an exasperated Olivia rolled her eyes and reassured him that she wouldn’t ruin her evening with random murder. 

“Really, John. I do have some tact, unlike Omega. He wouldn’t enjoy a meal with an adversary. He would have simply monologued and attempted to kill you.” 

“As opposed to...?” He remarked before taking a bite of his meal. It was rather good and tasted normal. No after tastes or immediate reactions.

“I at least have the courtesy to take you to dinner first.” 

Olivia laughed at her own joke while John continued to eye her up and down. 

“My question?” 

“Very well-” Olivia relented “If you must know, I am merely visiting the new city to experience a night of relaxation. Even I need to recharge my batteries once in a while. I had went to a play, done some shopping, and I had intended to enjoy a nice meal with someone I respected. You really are a phenomenal man, John. Not many have been able to halt my progress as much as you have.”

John almost smirked at that. He soon finished his meal and continued to listen. 

Olivia began to continue. “Even though I have told you what my ideals are, you still fight me tooth and nail. I still say that a more clear distinction within the judicial and political environs would do us some good, especially with the storm and what not still a rather obvious threat.” 

“What you try to do is no better than what the criminals do. Two wrongs dont make a right.” 

Olivia close her eyes and nodded. “True, however my idea is to simply take all of the wrongs onto my shoulders. A... Martyrdom if you will.”

John waved the waiter away after he offered desert for the two. 

“You will be taken in, Oblivion.” 

“Please, John, It’s Olivia. I would also refrain from throwing around false accusations. I am no more than an honest business woman here for dinner. To arrest me would raise questions about you and your friends. We wouldn’t want a scandal to cause the public to rescind funds from that, would we?” Olivia said with a knowing smile. 

“The fact of the matter is that I am in a position where I am the innocent and you are the transgressor. I wouldn’t have made such an outing if I had no backup plans available to me, John. Any good assassin knows this.” 

John silently cursed to himself for being careless. Now that he opened his eyes, he saw several routes of escape, plenty of cover for a prolonged gunfight. 

She had him cornered.

“Since I’m not heartless, I’ve paid for our meal.” Olivia said as she placed a Fifty dollar bill as a tip. “I’ll see you later, Reaper. Tonight was a pleasant distraction and I hope we do it again.” 

John stared out to the city as Oblivion, one of the most wanted, walked out of the restaurant without any consequences. 

“Well played.” 

[kieranreardon772]

Special Issue Brief: Rodrigo Duterte’s Persistent ‘War on Drugs’

The Initiative

On May 8, 2016, the day before Rodrigo Duterte was elected into office, he stood in front of a crowd of more than 300,000 people and said: “If I make it to the presidential palace I will do just what I did as mayor. You drug pushers, holdup men, and do-nothings, you better get out because I'll kill you” (Duterte, Human Rights Watch; 2019). This notion was the foundation on which he ran his political agenda, he vowed to get rid of all petty and serious drug offenders that were selling and trafficking narcotics into and out of the Philippine Islands. This War on Drugs is not a new idea, just as he elucidates in that quote. In accordance with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), illegal drugs and distribution have been Duterte’s central focus since his time as mayor in Davao City. Fighting drugs and drug-related crime has shown the public and his administration the low cost and high return of pushing an extensive war on the national drug trade (Timberman, CEIP; 2019). This dangerous battle has complimented Duterte’s status because it has tended to be accepted by most of the socioeconomic sections of society, especially because most of the drug war’s victims have been the urban-poor who are looked down upon, to begin with. This is a political issue that spans far beyond political spectrums in that it alternatively offers an efficient and useful political narrative that which Duterte now solely possesses in discourse that persuades the people of his country about the danger posed by drug dealers and other drug-affiliated criminals.

“Duterte not only successfully established crime as the most pressing problem, but also made the unconditional fight against this threat into a hallmark of a comprehensive “we” group. Given the assumed absoluteness of the evil to be combated, any criticism of the president has been silenced. Detractors are suspected of being supporters of the criminal threat to society, and any reference to due process can be ignored”

-Peter Kreuzer (German Researcher of CEIP; January 2019)

Statistical Facts and Deduction

For quick reference and surface level understanding, the Filipino war on drugs has racked up some serious statistics since its fruition a little over two years ago. In the year 2016, 28,000 drug arrests were made – a 44% increase from the year before – and a little over 47,000 drug-related cases were filed. In 2017, those statistics drastically increased. The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency executed 34,744 drug enforcement tasks concluding in 66,672 arrests and roughly 70,000 drug-related cases being filed (Timberman, CEIP; 2019). A statement by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Corrections, it cited that in 2017 alone the national prison system occupied 41,500 inmates, close to doubling the facility’s capacity. One year later, in 2018, another statement released by the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology reported data showing that there were over 141,000 detainees (70% of which were drug-related cases) who were held in jails that were 582% overcapacity (Timberman, CEIP; 2019). These numbers only tally those that have survived the situation. What these stats do not include are the thousands of people, innocent or criminal, who have perished in firefights with authorities or that have simply been murdered in cold blood. Over 12,000 people to date have been killed as a result of Duterte’s War on Drugs campaign. Only about a third of the 12,000 killed have been credited to gunfights with the Philippine National Police (Human Rights Watch; 2019). That means 75% of the murder committed has been done out by drug trafficking criminal associates or government-sponsored vigilantes who are protected under Duterte’s ‘Extra-Judicial Killings’ statute. “Extra-Judicial Killings’ (EJK) is a term that provides an alibi for any killing done to silence Duterte’s opposition and ‘fake-news’ spreading journalists.

Social Acceptance

Senior officials of Duterte’s administration have antagonized and incited this violence in the presidential campaign as it flirts with an epidemic of crimes against humanity. As a result, he blames the death toll on what he calls “ninja-cops”, government-sanctioned vigilantes who covertly kill drug dealers and drug dealing associates as part of the EJK (Stubley, The Independent; 2019). What’s more chilling about this is that Duterte is behind all of it but he cannot be liable for any wrong-doing because society has been persuaded into accepting it.

“Duterte may be offending the norms of respectful communication when he prefaces his remarks with “motherfucker,” but he brings to the surface the collective frustration many feel. He may not offer the clearest policy, but he puts forward the sincerest discourse of sympathy… Duterte’s gutter language establishes the urgency of saving the republic. Including “kill” and “death” is essential to the president’s vocabulary for the country is at war, and his politics of “I will” demands quick, albeit painful, solutions” - Nicole Curato (Anthropologist, CEIP; 2019)

His charisma and blunt attitude toward the unfolding violent situation has landed him a type of dramatic movie-role persona with a qualified political track record to support it. With conviction, Duterte bestows himself as the only strong leader decisive enough to save the nation from this drug crime crisis. The 16.6 million people who voted for him without hesitation truly believe that he can supply the real change he has promised them. In an article by The Independent, Rodrigo Duterte is referred to as the ‘strongman’, which is a leadership archetype outlined in the book Populism: A Very Short Introduction: “Populist strongmen tend to rule on the basis of a “cult leader”, which portrays him as a masculine and potentially violent figure…the notion of strongman is often related to authoritarian regimes” (Mudde & Rovira, 2019; p.63) The book concludes its description by explaining that “…populist take it a step further, crafting an image of a man of action, rather than words, who is not afraid to make difficult and quick decisions, even against “expert” advice” (Mudde & Rovira, 2019; p. 64).  This is interesting because it is a very choice word/name by this news publication to use to describe Duterte’s role as leader of the nation, and it absolutely designates their opinion about him as a freely-elected president.

Mayor & Vice Mayor EJK – A Trending Analysis

There is a malicious pattern that has been on the rise in the Philippines. In an article published in 2018 by Rappler – the current leading government opposition news publisher in the Philippines –  it showcases that since President Duterte was elected into office in 2016, there have been nineteen separate cases in which a Mayor or Vice Mayor of a region in the Philippines has been shot and killed with zero follow-up investigation by government-appointed authority (Gavilan, Rappler; 2018). Moreover, not only have the high majority of the cases not been solved, but each one of the case files claims that the suspected killer’s identity is unknown. In a quick breakdown analysis, based on the information provided by the article published by Rappler, fourteen out of the nineteen murder cases was an EJK and tasked by an unidentified gunman(men) through a tactical ambush, drive-by shooting, or close-range assassination (Gavilan, Rappler; 2018). In the remaining five cases, two were of special or unusual circumstance but served as coincidental in the timeframe. The Mayor of Albuera, Rolando Espinosa, was shot in his jail cell in October of 2016 after being arrested and sentenced to life in prison on charges of illegal possession of firearms, ammunition, and eleven kilos of methamphetamine in his home. In June of 2017, Gisela Bendong Buniel, Mayor of Bien Undo, is believed to have been abducted and killed by her husband over an alleged marital dispute. The remaining three cases show that the National Police or State Agents are the groups responsible, but only after each of the government officials (Mayor/Vice Mayor) supposedly attempted to evade arrest or refuse to surrender to the security forces (Gavilan, Rappler; 2019). In all three of those instances, however, the proclaimed Mayor(s) or Vice Mayor(s) were being approached on a warrant by the nation on suspected drug trade or trafficking activity. But, the other fifteen government officials who were murdered in cold blood, those operations were performed by government-sponsored vigilantes; people who have purposely remained unidentified because they are being protected under the Duterte Administration EJK statute.

[dweemeister]

Cheyenne Autumn (1964)

The American Western has been a genre in cinema almost from the artform’s beginning. Over decades and influenced by the traditions of Western firsthand storytelling and literature, Western films evolved with the vocabulary and history of film. Maybe the most important figure in the Western’s development is director John Ford. Ford directed not only the greatest films of that genre, but for the entire medium of cinema – including titles like Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946), and The Searchers (1956). All three of those films were shot in Monument Valley, located on the Arizona-Utah border within the Navajo Nation, and famous for its imposing mesas. Many Navajo starred as extras in those films, including the subject of this write-up, Cheyenne Autumn.

With this final Western to direct and his health failing, Ford was in an unusually repentant mood. Upon reflection, he became to realize how poorly he treated the Native American characters in his Westerns. They were often one-dimensional villains massacred by white pioneers or United States Cavalrymen; noble savages; or just faceless, bloodthirsty legends that are never seen. Ford always sympathized with the Navajo extras he employed in his Westerns (they often played non-Navajo tribes, and the filmmakers spent no effort for linguistic accuracy), albeit from a paternalistic lens. Cheyenne Autumn is shadowed by that white paternalism – an overlong experience never adopting the perspectives of its Native American characters.

In Oklahoma Territory/Indian Territory, a group of Northern Cheyenne leaders are planning to return their people back to their homeland in Wyoming. Led by Little Wolf (Ricardo Montalbán) and Dull Knife (Gilbert Roland) after the death of Tall Tree (Victor Jory), the tribe’s efforts are opposed from a military and Department of Interior policy lens. Captain Thomas Archer (Richard Widmark) sympathizes, but refuses to listen to the advice of his bloodlusting, openly prejudiced subordinates (especially Patrick Wayne’s character). American newspapers get wind of these Western developments, and begin to misrepresent the Northern Cheyenne actions as a danger to American civilians. Numerous subplots abound, including Archer’s Mormon love interest, Deborah Wright (Carroll Baker, whose character teaches the Cheyenne children English) deciding to embed herself with the Cheyenne’s northward journey. Secretary of the Interior Carl Schurz (Edward G. Robinson) also wants to avoid violence, and will venture westward to defuse the situation.

Other characters including a Cheyenne named “Spanish Woman” (Dolores del Río, probably referring to the character’s mixed heritage), the fiery Red Shirt (Sal Mineo), and the short-tempered Captain Oscar Wessels (Karl Malden). An ill-advised pre-intermission comedic sequence with Wyatt Earp (James Stewart) and Doc Holliday (Arthur Kennedy) comes off only as bloat.

The chief problem of Cheyenne Autumn is one that constantly undermines its central premise. In this film, Ford and screenwriters Mari Sandoz (a novelist-biographer who specialized on the American West, including the Plains Indians) and James R. Webb (1962′s Cape Fear, 1963′s How the West Was Won) rarely adopt the point of view of the Native American characters. When the screenplay does concentrate on them, it is distilled by the experiences and political positions of the white characters. Carroll Baker’s character becomes the white character through whom the Cheyenne become relatable, their intentions and reasons sanitized. Mentions of American atrocities towards Native Americans – if not specifically the Cheyenne – are superficial, requiring guesswork for those unfamiliar in American West history, with Ford never bothering to contextualize how those actions have contributed to the Cheyenne’s presence in Oklahoma. As characters, they are never anything more than frustrated figures that speak out against the American government. Aside from moments where the Cheyenne are taking down their teepees and packing their belongings, what are they like as parents? Friends? Peers? The film is not interested in that, depriving a lot of potential emotional power for the characters that should be central to this work.

One important inclusion in Cheyenne Autumn is the American media’s depiction of the roving Cheyenne as a band of anarchic scalp-collectors. An outlier newspaper editor wants to distinguish himself from the mob, so he frames his paper’s stories as supporting a horde of noble savages. The mass hysteria among Eastern and Western publications could stand in for twentieth-century Hollywood, as the initial storytellers of a narrative tradition colored by racial fear. As much as this film’s allegiances are more beholden to the Native American characters compared to John Ford’s previous works, Cheyenne Autumn is not so much forcing the viewer to experience American imperialism through the eyes of its Native American as it is an expensive, languidly-staged presentation of Ford’s personal beliefs.

Ford further weakens his film by whitewashing the principal Cheyenne characters. Dull Knife, Tall Tree, and Red Shirt are all played by white actors; Little Wolf is played by Mexican actor Ricardo Montalbán, but this is just as problematic – Mexican actors or “less pale” white actors were often employed to portray Native Americans in American Western movies. While conversing in “Cheyenne”, the few Navajo actors playing the Cheyenne are saying dirty Navajo jokes to each other. This erasure of historically correct Native American perspectives fails to generate much empathy, even if Cheyenne Autumn has some structural similarities to documentaries or docudramas.

Cheyenne Autumn’s comedic sequence in Dodge City featuring some of the most famous names of Western lore is an inexplicable miscalculation. As much as I might like some Jimmy Stewart any day, there is no reason for Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday (Stewart and Kennedy are too old to play Earp and Holliday, respectively) to appear. This pre-intermission comic relief does nothing but wreak havoc on the film’s already-languid pacing. It does not help that the broad comedy elicits few laughs.

Shot in Super Panavision 70mm Technicolor, Cheyenne Autumn has a wide frame for cinematographer William S. Clothier (1948′s Fort Apache, 1959′s The Horse Soldiers) to work with. The final cut is beautifully photographed, if a bit repetitive and annoying to anybody with an understanding of Great Plains geography (those Monument Valley vistas are not that ubiquitous across the central United States; for example, there are no mountains in Kansas). The signature vistas, shot solely medium and long shots that a widescreen format enables, are gorgeous as always. Moab, Utah and Gunnison, Colorado also stood in for locales along the Northern Cheyenne Exodus – even if the exodus never traversed those states. Ford, his eyesight failing, had lost much of his sense of composition by this point. Those repetitive wide shots and awkward stagings of dialogue scenes with a mass of characters all attest to this. But even a weaker John Ford effort ranks as a stunning visual experience.

Composer Alex North’s (1960′s Spartacus, 1963′s Cleopatra) modernism in his score clashed with Ford’s expectations. North’s score is powerful, brimming with anticipation of the tense situations that are to come. Yet it is without any identifiable leitmotifs until later in the film, as North adopted a modal structure based in Native American music that runs against the idea and expectations of recurring, melodic musical ideas. This set-up works in the context of the film, but independent of the accompanying scenes – and this subsequent statement is speculation but based on my experience with modal classical music; Cheyenne Autumn’s score is unavailable for free online – the score probably suffers. Music like the lyricism of Dimitri Tiomkin’s Western scores (see 1948′s Red River and 1956′s Gunfight at the O.K. Corral) would not fit in Cheyenne Autumn, given the challenging subject matter. Ford himself disliked North’s music, cutting much of it from the final version of the movie. This would not be the last time North was on the wrong side of an artistic disagreement, with much worse treatment by the likes of Stanley Kubrick in his future.

For Warner Bros., 1964 proved to be an eventful year. Its two most high-profile properties – at least, the two movies they spent the most money to acquire the rights for – were Cheyenne Autumn and My Fair Lady. Producer Bernard Smith (1960′s Elmer Gantry, How the West Was Won) convinced Jack Warner, after Warner’s greenlighting of My Fair Lady, that the studio needed a second surefire hit: a John Ford Western. But Ford’s decision in material was among the least commercial of his career, and Cheyenne Autumn’s constitution is not conducive to a single sitting for most. With My Fair Lady slated to be released three weeks  after Cheyenne Autumn, Warner Bros. then decided to concentrate its advertising firepower on the Lerner and Loewe musical adaptation – sealing the financial fate of John Ford’s last Western.

More truthful, faithful Westerns portraying Native Americans would be released in later decades – perhaps not always the most high-profile Hollywood features, but worthy in their fidelity to depicting Native American perspectives. Yet the idea for a kind of cinematic reparation from a major Hollywood production can be said to begin here, in Cheyenne Autumn, under the direction of the one person who might have been most responsible in popularizing negative cinematic stereotypes of Native Americans. John Ford may be the most accomplished director the United States has given to cinema, but a great portion of that success is thanks to capitalizing on destructive ideas serving as the keystone of American narratives.

My rating: 6/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[theclaravoyant]

Oh! Oh a prompt! Fitzskimmons fic featuring FitzSimmons patching up an upset daisy after pulling her out of the gladiator arena and telling her that even though they want to get married it doesn’t take her out of the equation!

AN ~ Thanks for the prompt! If you haven’t read my other 5x06 FitzSkimmons UA coda I suggest you read that too, but I also decided to run with this prompt a little bit; it turned into FitzSkimmons + a discussion about marriage (the first bit is set at an undisclosed time, but there’s some 5x06 thrown in too). Fluffy :D though some super mild references to injury. Hope you like it!

Read on AO3 (~1300wd)

-

“Okay, you guys, no offense but if either one of you gets any ideas to propose without at least a full minute of choreography, the answer’s no.” Beaming, Daisy held her phone up above all their heads and they watched the end of another Big Ask video. “Although – writing your own lyrics is optional.”

“Good, because I don’t – I don’t think I’d be very good at that,” Fitz remarked. Daisy and Jemma snorted in unison and Daisy dropped her phone back to her chest to turn her head, facing him as best she could as the three of them lay together.

“Pfft,” she scoffed. “Please, you can’t help it. You could write a whole song from scratch with your eyes closed. If you actually knew anything about music. Unless, I mean – do you?”

“No?? I was a bit busy getting my PhD by the age of fifteen thank you very much,” Fitz retorted defensively. “But I also don’t think I’d like one of those big, flashy, public proposals. It’s too much pressure. I’d go for something classic; a nice dinner, a walk somewhere private, that sort of thing.”

“Ring in the champagne?”

“Oh, Lord no.” Jemma screwed up her nose. “Rings are nasty with germs and dead skin cells and things. I certainly wouldn’t be drinking that glass.”

“No, well, but hopefully you wouldn’t be drinking it because you’re so totally flawed by my amazing idea,” Fitz objected. “Stop making me think of dead skin while I’m trying to propose.”

“I quite like the flashy proposal, myself,” Jemma continued without heed to his squeamishness. “I mean, I don’t believe it should be the first conversation about marriage a relationship should have, but if you’re on the same page with things then you should essentially have the yes before you do the dance anyway. Then the dance itself, you make it special, individual, you put a lot of effort in. And you announce to the world that this is your person, your people. And after all, isn’t that what marriage is all about?”

“Mmm.” Daisy hummed, and it sounded hesitant. Fitz and Jemma frowned.

“You don’t like marriage?” Fitz guessed.

“It’s not that I don’t like it,” Daisy replied. “I mean… I like the idea of it. I like what Jem just said about commitment and all that. I just – I don’t know, marriage. It’s a lot, you know? A wedding sounds like fun. Marriage sounds like…”

“A bargain struck between men to move their women around like chattel?” Jemma put in.

“Sort of, I guess, yeah.” Daisy squirmed. “I mean that’s where it comes from but that’s not really it. I guess I’d feel trapped? Not trapped. Uh. I don’t know how to big-words-ify it.”

“Intellectualise,” Jemma corrected.

“Yeah. That.”

“I’ll take a stab,” Fitz offered. “You grew up surrounded by dysfunctional families in a messed up system based on formalized definitions and their failures. Basing ideas like love and connection on the same kind of system feels disconnected, if not downright scary. Plus, marriage is a heteropatriarchal amatonormative monogamous institution and you’re a bi poly anarchist down to your bones.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” Daisy snorted. “Plus, I mean, isn’t that what lots of people say? ‘I don’t need a piece of paper to tell me I’m in love with you’?”

“I’d quite like one,” Jemma disagreed. “I’d hang it in my office so that everyone would know.”

“Although, Jemma Fitz-Simmons-Johnson is going to need a pretty big nameplate,” Fitz pointed out.

“Who says that’d be my name?”

“Well you’re hardly going to take mine, are you? But you wouldn’t make me or Daisy take yours without it being equal, so…”

“Hang on a sec guys,” Daisy interrupted, “I just wanna be clear, just... just in case. I don’t want to get married. You can, if you want, I’m not sure how that works, but – for serious, I don’t want it for myself, okay?”

“Okay,” Fitz and Jemma both agreed, and shuffled closer to Daisy in case she was feeling uncomfortable. She was, to be honest, but she quickly shook it off.

"Now, back to planning FitzSimmons’ Big Day.” She held up her phone again and started googling. “Now, would the happy couple prefer a horse and carriage, or a hot air balloon ride?”

-

Despite their brush with sincerity, the conversation about proposals and marriage was, in all honesty, one born of abstraction and jokes. It wasn’t for some time afterward that any of them put any wheels into motion, and as it turned out, none of those wheels ended up worth a damn anyway. In the end, every carefully parsed decision flew out the window of a diner 74 years in the past. In the end, the words just slipped out.

“Marry me, Fitz.”

Jemma's heart was beating hard, her head spinning. Fitz’s arms held her up, flush against him on the tiny little box, and even though they were in the middle of running for their lives, Jemma couldn’t help but feel safe. She lavished the feeling of him warm and solid and heroic and here. And him. It felt like months since she’d seen his face, his real face, and since he’d held her in his arms. He’d been so shaken, last she’d seen him, it was nice to see the colour in his cheeks again, and his chin held high. Yet, she knew how quickly it could all be ripped away and maybe that’s why they slipped out.

Marry me.

And all he said was, Absolutely. With such conviction it was as if his life’s singular purpose had led him to this moment. As if he was completely prepared to stare into his lover’s eyes in an alien gladiator ring in the ruins of Earth, decades beyond their deaths and the end of the world, and promise her his everything. Of course, he shortly began insisting that he had been preparing for exactly that and had in fact beaten her to the proposal in the first place. Even as they carried Daisy out of the arena as best they could, they were already bickering – like, one might say, an old married couple.

Jemma led them to a vacant room and began rummaging about for medical supplies, and Fitz help a slightly delirious Daisy down onto the bed. He sat beside her and stroked her hair out of her face, and out of a bloody cut on her forehead.

“Don’t mind me,” Daisy grumbled, albeit with a fond smile. “Casually dying over here, but it’s fine.”

“Sorry,” Fitz apologised earnestly. “You know Jemma. Emotional, that one. Well known for grand gestures and getting caught up in the moment.”

Daisy snorted. Fitz’s eyes glistened with tears of joy as he snuck another glance over to where Jemma was working, sterilizing something. He’d never imagined she’d be the one to pull him in by the lapels for a kiss, in the middle of a gunfight. It made his cheeks feel hot just thinking about it.

“You’re really gonna do it, huh?” Daisy wondered, prodding him with a poorly aimed finger. His eyes dropped back down to her. “Marry Jemma.”

“Absolutely,” he said again. “And you know, I would you as well, if it’s something you wanted. I mean – unless you’ve changed your mind?”

“Yes, of course we wouldn’t want to leave you out, Daisy,” Jemma assured her, bringing the tray of supplies over. “Sit up? Fitz, fix her pillows, thank you. But if we were operating on old assumptions, then, I apologise. I haven’t a song and dance prepared.”

Daisy chuckled. “’S’ okay. Talking like an old-timey princess is enough for me. You’re cute when you’re being funny.”

“Well, that’s good to know,” Jemma agreed with a smile, and shone a light into Daisy’s eyes. She pressed her lips together. “And you’re a surprisingly good patient when you’re concussed.”

Daisy made an expression that suggested – in her head at least – she was giving a nonchalant shrug. “Consider it a wedding present.”

“So you won’t be joining us, then?” Jemma checked, running her hands over Daisy’s limbs with practiced ease.

“Oh, yes I will.”

Jemma frowned, and looked at Fitz. He frowned back. Perhaps they should wait for Daisy to sober up before they made sense of this conversation. Then again, Daisy laughed, apparently entertained by their confusion.

“Come on!” she cried. “Dope dresses and cake tastings?! I’m an anarchist, ‘n my head hurts, but I’m not a rock. Do I not bleed?”

Jemma grimaced. “Yes, you certainly do. And you break bones, so you’re lucky you didn’t shatter both your tibias just now.”“You don’t have to tell me.” Daisy grimaced, and sighed heavily, leaning back into the pillows. Fitz squeezed her hand and she lamented - “But damn, it looked wicked for a second there, didn’t it?”

[invctus]

1989, 11th July - Alex is born to Tom and Anna Weiss in Lakeville, Minnesota.

1998 - A nine year old Alex learns to hack, inspired by his older sister, Kaz.

2003 - Tom begins to teach a fourteen year old Alex how to shoot a pistol, taking him to a shooting gallery most weekends.

2007, September - Tom suffers a heart attack and dies, leaving behind Anna, Kaz, and an eighteen year old Alex.

2007, September - Alex begins a four year course at the University of Minnesota, majoring in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Computer Engineering. During this time, he joined the Minnesota Running Club.

2010 - Kaz marries Lucya. Alex is the best man at her wedding.

2011, June - Alex graduates from the University of Minnesota with full honours.

                - Alex remains unemployed, albeit with a sideline in computer repair. The majority of his income, however, comes from hacking gambling sites to increase the odds of him winning.

2013 - After hacking into several government databases and being hunted by the governments in question, Alex came to Conrad Roth for sanctuary on his research vessel. Though he initially offered to work for free, Roth allowed him to stay aboard and welcomed him into his crew as a technician.

- Alex meets Lara Croft and Sam Nishimura, as well as the rest of the Endurance crew, finding his old friend Jonah a member. Alex immediately develops a crush on Lara, nurturing it in secret, though his over-awkwardness annoys Lara to some degree, and becomes fast friends with Sam.

- Alex meets Dr Whitman after the Endurance is hired to help in filming Whitman’s World. Alex does not take kindly to him, having hacked into files about his private life and discovered his messy divorce and financial strife.

- Roth charges Alex with forging the necessary permits for the ship and the expedition, including the crew.

- While setting up a Wi-Fi range extender for the Endurance, Alex fell overboard. He was saved by Lara, though pushed back into the water by Sam in mischief.

- With the expedition to find Yamatai on hold due to funding issues, Alex presents a solution in the form of a self-made 99.9% hacking program. He uses it on gambling sites to increase their chances of winning and accrue the necessary funds – however, the 0.1% chance of detection occurs and Alex is forced to throw his computer overboard to avoid being traced.

- While at sea, the Endurance needed an intermediate repair in the engine room. While Alex insisted it was a mechanical fault, Reyes correctly informed him it was an electrical fault. In attempting to make a joke, Alex made a flirtatious remark about a girl in Reyes’ photo – a girl he soon learned, around the foot in his mouth and disbelief at his own idiocy, was Reyes’ 14 year old daughter.

March - The crew came to a crossroads midway into their journey. Lara suggested venturing into the Dragon’s Triangle, where Whitman rebuked the idea. Alex hacked into a satellite to show the weather conditions over the triangle – with the storms there and Lara citing Himiko’s apparent myth for controlling the weather, a myth that could have some element of truth, Roth decided to make for the Triangle.

- At 11pm, in the vicinity of Yamatai, a storm strikes the Endurance and cleaves her in two. Alex manages to escape the shipwreck and makes it to the beach with Reyes, Jonah, Grim, Sam, Whitman, and another crew member. Although Alex tried to save him with CPR, the crew member died on the beach.

- The crew reunites with Lara while she is caught in a bear trap, having been searching for the kidnapped Sam and Mathias. The crew free Lara and split up – one to go with Lara and head for Roth, who is communicating via radio and attempting to gather all crew at his location, and the rest to fan out and find Sam. Alex offers to go with Lara, but is denied by Whitman, and joins the party searching for Sam.

- When Lara attempts to use an abandoned radio tower to boost the rescue beacon from the Endurance to call for help, it is Alex who talks her through both finding the control bank and the method of patching the signal manually through the tower’s maintenance box.

- While searching for Sam near Himiko’s palace, Reyes, Alex, and Jonah are taken captive by the Solarii Brotherhood and imprisoned in an old airplane wreck suspended in the underground geothermal caverns. The three are rescued by Lara, though are separated from her again while she returns to the caves to hunt for Sam and Whitman.

- The three manage to escape and reunite with Sam, but are cornered by the Solarii and begin a gun battle to fend them off. With Roth and Lara on a helicopter Roth had called, it seems the four will be left to the islanders, until Lara forces the pilot to land for their friends.

- Roth dies protecting Lara, and Alex attends his funeral pyre burial. He suggests to Lara that they only need to regroup, though he agrees there is something strange about the island. He leaves with Reyes, Jonah, and Sam to go to the old PT boat on the beach, with Reyes believing she can repair it sufficiently to allow them to escape.

- With the boat in bad condition, it becomes apparent Reyes needs her tools from the Endurance to properly repair the boat. Taking inspiration from Lara’s “See what you can do.”, Alex volunteers to fetch the tools from the wreck.

- He manages to successfully evade the Solarii raiding the wreck for scrap, as well as climb and travel over dangerous terrain to reach the wreck. On reaching the engine room, however, Alex was surprised by a Solarii gunman. Their brief gunfight saw Alex come out victorious, however a steel girder and several other pieces of the Endurance’s ceiling were loosened in the battle. They came crashing down on Alex, severely injuring his leg and pinning it beneath the metal beams, trapping him there until Lara came.

- Though she attempted to remove the debris, it caused Alex too much pain. The Solarii, aware of Lara’s presence and previously alerted by the sound of Alex’s gunshots, stormed the engine room, engaging in a brief exchange of bullets. After convincing Lara to leave him and return to Reyes with the tools, Alex shot at the ruptured gas pipe, causing an explosion that rocked the ship and ultimately had Lara presume he was dead. Instead, Alex was severely burned along his left side and right arm, thrown from the debris into a lower room by the blast. He was knocked unconscious and sealed within the room as the Endurance sank, with only a limited supply of air.

- Waking up on the seafloor some unknown period of time later, Alex knew he had to act. If his air supply did not run out, it would be the mounting pressure that killed him, his saving prison already groaning under the weight. Eventually forcing himself to stand, though he could not put his weight on the injured leg, Alex dragged himself to the room door, where he forced it open and attempted to swim to the surface before the pressure killed him through knocking all air for his lungs and drowning him, or by giving him brain damage in the process. Successfully making it to the surface, Alex makes for the remaining half of the Endurance, seeking to raid what medical supplies may be left in order to treat his wounds.

- A tourniquet tied around his leg and what bandages he could find binding his leg in a makeshift splint, Alex retreats to rest for the night, resolving to return to the crew in the morning. By the time he awakens, however, Lara and the crew have already journeyed inland to rescue Sam.

- Alex slowly drags himself to the beach, forced to take frequent breaks and rely almost entirely on a crutch (his leg is useless, he knows this, he knows this, but still he forces himself to go on). It is there he sees the PT boat leaving off in the distance, Lara having rescued Sam from Himiko. Though he tries to hail them, his voice is too hoarse, his body too weak, and so they leave without hearing him.

- Three months pass, and Alex is still on the island. His leg is barely healed, broken and twisted beyond all compare. Though he refuses to look, gangrene has begun to set in to the wound by the second month, despite his attempts to keep the wound clean. He searches for any other possible way off the island, evading the stragglers of the Solarii and killing them where he must.

- By the sixth month, Alex resolves that the only possible way to escape is to hail for rescue from the radio tower as Lara did. It takes him several weeks to cross the island, slowed as he is by injury and his leg, and several days to climb the tower. On his descent from the tower, his leg gives out and he falls from the last ladder, breaking his right arm.

early September: Lara travels to Pripyat at the behest of her hallucinations of Alex. There, she meets his sister, Kaz, and her family-in-law, and defends them from Trinity. Although Viktor and Kirill are killed by Mr Cruz, it is revealed that Lucya is still alive, having faked her death to escape Trinity. Lucya, Kaz, Varvara, and Pavel are all taken into Witness Protection, where Lara gives them burner phones that they may remain in contact with her should they need her.

late October - Alex is rescued by plane and flown to Bokutoh Hospital for emergency treatment. He is treated for sepsis and found to be suffering from septic shock; his arm is set and his leg, too far ravaged by gangrene and infection, is amputated above the knee. He remains in a medically induced comatose state for several weeks, half-dead and kept alive by IV lines and antibiotics.

2014, January - Alex begins to stir. Although still disorientated and incredibly weak, hospital staff manage to get two sentences from him – Lara Croft and Yamatai.

- Although not enough to identify him, as his identification was left in the Endurance, Alex’s repeated murmurs of ‘Lara Croft’ drive hospital staff to find her in the hopes she might know their mystery patient. She is located on account of her publishing her testimony of what happened on Yamatai.

10th February - Lara Croft is contacted. She does not remain convinced the hospital have the right person, until Yamatai is mentioned. She immediately packs and fly for Japan.

11th February - Lara reunites with Alex. At first she does not believe it is him, believing instead that it is a hallucination or a cruel joke. Though Alex manages to convince her, through tears on both parts, he is still not strong enough and falls asleep again.

12th February - Lara contacts Jonah, Reyes, and Sam to inform them of Alex’s survival. They all fly to the hospital to see Alex with their own eyes and reunite with one they thought dead.

15th February - With Alex’s permission, Lara has him transferred to Royal Surrey County Hospital, so that she and Sam may keep watch over him.

17th March - With doctors finally satisfied he is recovered enough to be released, Alex is discharged. He is offered a place to live by Lara, in her London apartment with her and Sam.

1st April - Alex begins the process of being fitted for a prosthetic leg. Although he tries to argue, Lara insists on paying for the whole process, as well as his rehabilitation and learning to walk.

November - Atlas DeMornay forces Lara to attend therapy and prove she is of sound mind before he allows her access to her fortune. It is revealed to Alex and Sam by Atlas that Lara is in fact a Lady.

- Obsessed with proving her legitimacy, Lara begins a search for the Divine Source. Although forbidden to accompany her physically, Alex remains in London as technological backup, ready to hack and find information and funding as Lara needs it.

- Following her return from Syria, Lara returns to Croft Manor, bringing Alex and Sam with her. Though it is Lara who does all the work, Alex still attempts to help her find evidence she is the rightful owner of the estate and her inheritance.

- Lara and Jonah fly out to Siberia to find the lost city of Kitezh. Alex remains in Croft Manor with Sam, helping out in the restoration where he can and waiting for Lara to return.

[flatsuke]

if i missed you, would you hold it against me

Summary: With Soryu and MC’s passing, it now fell onto Eisuke to be Ryusei’s legal guardian. Why Soryu and MC would think naming Eisuke, of all people, as legal guardian in their will was beyond him.

              You’re the only one we can trust, Soryu had told him. But that didn’t mean Eisuke was ready to be a father.

              Hell, he wasn’t ready for anything that came since that day.

              He wasn’t ready to be a father.

              He wasn’t ready to lose his best friend.

              He wasn’t ready to lose her.

Genre: Angst, Hurt and Comfort

Pairing: One-sided Eisuke/MC, MC/Soryu

a/n: I haven’t written a proper fic in so long lmao. this idea just popped in m head one day, and since then, i couldn’t stop thinking about it lmfao. 

@2bedroom-baddestbidderlove i hope you like it!! @maidofstars @bolt8826 @tsundere-eevee @alolan-lillie @themysticaldaydreamer here’s a fic after so long lol

               Dinner was a solemnly silent affair.

              In the stillness of the dining room, the only sound that could be heard was the clang of Eisuke’s utensils on his plate. Across him sat little Ryusei, who only stared at his untouched food with empty eyes.

              “… You’re not hungry?” Eisuke asked slowly.

              The boy shook his head without looking up from his plate.

              Eisuke sighed in defeat, putting his utensils down. “Do you want to go to bed already?”

Ryusei nodded in assent. Gingerly, the boy pushed back his chair and gave a little bow, leaving Eisuke alone with his thoughts.

              “I suppose it’s not going to be easy, huh?” he said to no one in particular.

              And it won’t ever be easy again. Not with them gone.

              Just three days ago, Eisuke was staring into Soryu’s and MC’s coffins. Both of them looked deceptively peaceful, as if they were only asleep—that anytime, they’d wake up from their long nap and mess around in the penthouse like always.

              But Eisuke knew better.

              Underneath all the flowers and their elaborate clothes were the bullet wounds dealt unto to them by a rival gang. The Ice Dragons had been in an ongoing feud with the said rival gang for a while now, but no one could have predicted the rivalry to escalate to MC being kidnapped, Soryu getting into an outnumbered gunfight, and both of them ultimately perishing.

              (The memory of Soryu and MC, clinging onto each other for dear life while covered in bullet holes was something Eisuke couldn’t forget, even if he wanted to.)

              With their passing, it now fell onto Eisuke to be Ryusei’s legal guardian. Why Soryu and MC would think naming Eisuke, of all people, as legal guardian in their will was beyond him.

              You’re the only one we can trust, Soryu had told him. But that didn’t mean Eisuke was ready to be a father.

              Hell, he wasn’t ready for anything that came since that day.

              He wasn’t ready to be a father.

              He wasn’t ready to lose his best friend.

              He wasn’t ready to lose her.

              (Despite everything, the torch he held for her never burned out.)

              Every time he looked at Ryusei, Eisuke felt the dull ache he kept hidden for so long resurface again.

              At first glance, Ryusei was the spitting image of his father. With his dark hair and dark eyes, Ryusei was essentially the mirror image of the stubbornly serious young boy Eisuke had befriended all those years ago at boarding school.

              But to anyone who knew better, Ryusei also carried his mother’s likeness, albeit more subtly. Ryusei’s eyes held a gentle strength Eisuke was all too familiar with, and the boy’s selfless nature was a constant reminder of what he could never hope to have.

              Sitting on the edge of Ryusei’s bed, Eisuke pulled up the covers over the boy. Ryusei was asleep, but he held onto his family photo with a firm grip, as if he was afraid that if he let go, the people in the photo would fade away.

              It’s too late for that now, though.

              Since that day, Ryusei had been unnaturally quiet. He had always been on the calmer side, but now, it was like Ryusei couldn’t speak anymore.

              Even with constant visits from all the other auction managers, nothing could rouse him from his self-inflicted speechlessness. Despite Baba’s gentle encouragement, Ota’s invitations to hang out, and even Mamoru’s uncharacteristic support, Ryusei wouldn’t budge. Not even Inui or Samejima could do anything to help their Young Boss.

              During the funeral, Ryusei practically held a blank gaze the whole time. Not once did he cry, and his once bright gray eyes were now a dull slate.

              But right now, Eisuke could see how puffy his eyes were in his sleep. Ryusei had been crying, but he did so all alone, away from anyone’s sight. He probably didn’t want to burden anyone with his tears, Eisuke thought.

              Just like his mother.

              Baba had suggested looking through old photos  to try and cheer Ryusei up.

Recalling and sharing happy memories might help him, the thief advised with a smile.

              Eisuke was never the type to be sentimental, nor was he good at comforting kids, but he supposed Baba was right.

              “This was from your sixth birthday, right?” Eisuke asked, holding up a photo album.

              “… Yeah,” said Ryusei, speaking up for the first time in a while. “The Ice Dragons threw a surprise party for me. They said I was the hero of the day.”

              Eisuke remembered that day, too.

              Ryusei had a superhero-themed birthday party. The whole thing was pretty silly, now that Eisuke thought about it. Seeing all the hardened Ice Dragons dressed in bright capes and masks was a sight to see. Even the auction managers got it on the hero action. Baba was excited to show off his full-on spandex outfit to everyone.

              “That was a fun birthday. Everyone looked really cool in their costumes,” Ryusei beamed.

              “They did, huh?” The corners of Eisuke’s mouth twitched in a ghost of a smile. He remembered how hilariously uncomfortable Soryu had looked in his costume.

              The two of them continued to browse through all the albums until Eisuke stopped at a particular one.

              “Oh, that’s my parents’ wedding album.”

              The devil in Eisuke told him to drop the album immediately in anticipation of the ache that he knew would surge, but he told himself that he had to do this for Ryusei.

              I’m supposed to feel grief, not jealousy. Get your shit together, Eisuke.

              Leafing through the pages, Eisuke could almost relive how bittersweet their wedding day was.

              He, of course, was chosen as Soryu’s best man. Standing to next to Soryu, Eisuke could see MC walk slowly down the aisle, looking immaculately stunning in her gown. She was so painfully beautiful that Eisuke was tempted to take her hand in his own, as if he were the groom.

              But he wasn’t.

              She stretched out her hand—with her engagement ring shining—and laced her fingers with Soryu’s.

              Now, Eisuke knew that if anyone deserved MC, it was Soryu. He knew that Soryu, amidst his tough exterior, was a good person at heart. He would never do anything to hurt her, and he would always, always make her happy. MC, in turn, was a perfect match for Soryu. Seeing the usually-cold mobster letting his walls down and opening up to someone was a breath of fresh air. She managed to bring out the tender side he had hidden deep within him. Eisuke knew better than anyone that they both deserved to be happy with each other.

              (But still, that didn’t mean it hurt any less when he heard the words “I do” from her lips.)

              “…Mom looks really pretty in that picture,” Ryusei said with a sad smile, pointing to a photo of husband and wife, lips on each other’s in a fervent declaration of love.

              Biting back a sob, Eisuke gave a sad smile of his own.

              “Yeah. She sure is.”

              Ryusei was finally feeling better enough to see visitors again, so Eisuke asked Inui and Samejima to watch over their Young Boss while he went out for a while.

              It had been far too long since he last checked Soryu and MC’s grave. Eisuke thought that now would be the best time to visit, considering not much people would go there after all the time that passed.

              Driving alone, Eisuke checked the back seat one last time to make sure his cargo was still intact. Thankfully, the flowers he had ordered weren’t damaged from the long car ride to the cemetery.

              When he finally arrived there, he took the baskets of flowers on each hand and began the long, halcyon walk to their grave. The only sounds he could hear were the clacking of his own footsteps on the pavement, and the constant humming of the cicadas in the summer.

              Eisuke had to chuckle bitterly. If only his feelings were as peaceful as the surroundings.

              Their grave was left in pristine condition, with white chrysanthemums to adorn it. He assumed a caretaker must have been tending to the grave every day since the funeral. He’d have to thank them for keeping the place pleasing to the eye.

              Setting down the flowers on their graves, Eisuke mused to himself silently.

              He had so many things he wanted to ask them—what would happen to the Ice Dragons now, what should he do to the rival gang, why did they think he’d be a good father to Ryusei—but he kept it all inside.

              Seeing MC’s name etched onto the grave didn’t make it any easier for him.

              Sometimes, in the darkness of his bedroom, Eisuke would think about all the forbidden what-ifs. What if they never died? What if they were never married? What if she had chosen him instead of Soryu during that fateful night at the auctions? He could’ve kept her safe, they could’ve been happy together, she could’ve lived to see today—

              “Oh, Eisuke. I didn’t know you were going to visit.”

              A deep voice shook him out of his internal stupor. He turned around and was met with the sight of an old, familiar friend.

              “Luke. So you’re here.”

              Eisuke didn’t expect to see Luke, of all people, show up with a bouquet of white chrysanthemums in hand.

              “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” The doctor gave a sheepish smile. “How is Ryusei?”

              “He’s doing much better. I left him back home with Soryu’s lapdo—ahem—Inui and Samejima. But what about you? What brings you all the way here?”

              “I’ve actually been coming here to give flowers and tend to the grave every day.”

              Luke did all this?

              “You don’t have to do that, you know,” Eisuke replied. “You must be busy with all the surgeries.”

              “You’re right about that. But every time I try to go back to my old routine, I can’t stop thinking about them. You and Soryu were the first friends I ever made back in school, and now that he’s gone, it all feels so… incomplete. The three of us won’t be together again to play with cats anymore.”

              It was unlike Luke to be so open and honest about everything, but the wistful nostalgia on his face kept Eisuke from saying anything.

              “And Sexy Bones—no—MC. She was… special. Her collarbones were definitely a thing of beauty, but I’ve never met anyone whose smile could heal me until I met her.” You and me both, Luke.

              “I… I miss them terribly, Eisuke,” Luke lamented, his lips trembling in an attempt to hold back his tears.

              “… I do too.”

              Both of them stood in silence, basking in the sorrow of it all. The cicadas hummed again, as if to play a requiem for the lost lovers and their grieving companions.

              “��� I have to go now. Ryusei’s probably waiting for me to get back,” Eisuke said, turning to Luke.

              “All right then. Tell him his Uncle Luke said hi.”

              Eisuke gave his friend one last nod before walking away to leave.

              “Wait, Eisuke,” Luke called out. “I only noticed it now, but the flowers you gave Sexy Bones… why did you get her yellow tulips?”

              This was one secret Eisuke would keep to his grave. No one, not even Luke, must ever know what those flowers really meant. This was between him and MC alone.

              (If anyone knew the language of flowers, then they would know that yellow tulips stood for one-sided love.)

              “I just thought they would suit her, that’s all.”

              One morning, Eisuke and Ryusei had breakfast together in silence. Unlike all the previous times, this silence was peaceful instead of the usual stifling tension.

              It had taken a long, long time, but Ryusei improved considerably since that day. He stopped crying alone, and he opened up a lot more, too. He was back to his old self, thanks to the constant support from all the others as well.

              In truth, Eisuke was thankful for Ryusei. After his last visit to the cemetery, he focused all of his attention on raising the boy; that way, Eisuke wouldn’t have the chance to lose himself in grief and longing.

              In a way, Ryusei saved Eisuke from himself.

              “I made us some omelets,” Eisuke said, setting down the plates. “It’s not as good as your mom’s, but it’s certainly better than your dad’s.”

              “You’re right about that. Sometimes, the kitchen explodes when he cooks!” Ryusei laughed in return, poking the eggs with his fork. It was true that he could order a chef to cook for them, but Eisuke thought this would be a nice change of pace for them both.

              “Oh, wait! Stay there, Uncle Eisuke!” Ryusei chirped. “I’ll be right back.”

              Ryusei ran to the kitchen, leaving Eisuke wondering what he had in store.

              After a few minutes, Ryusei came back, a steaming mug of coffee in his hand.

              “Um, I made you some coffee,” the boy said, slightly unsure. “Mom… she told me you liked coffee a lot.”

              “Ah… she did, huh?” Eisuke forced a tight smile. The recognizable aroma was starting to take a toll on his self-control, and he could already feel the waves of his forgotten déjà vu hit him one after the other.

              ...He really is your son, through and through.

              With a slightly shaky hand, Eisuke took the mug from a hopeful Ryusei. He took a sip.

              “I—I hope you like it! I’m sorry if I put too much milk and sugar.”

              The taste that spread through his mouth was all-too familiar. It was a combination of a resolute sweetness, a gentle warmth, and a signature creaminess that reminded him of the only person that ever mattered to him in a long time. The experience of it all was all too much to bear.

              “Uncle Eisuke, are you okay? Was it too hot?” Ryusei fretted.

              Eisuke didn’t even notice the tears that started flowing down his face. All the years of pent-up loneliness, grief, and regret came out at once. It had been far, far too long since he had let his guard down in front of anyone, but the drink was what finally burst the dam of his well-hidden sorrow.

              “… It’s delicious, Ryusei. You make really good coffee,” Eisuke confessed through his sobs, ruffling the boy’s hair.

              It tastes just like yours.

[rallamajoop]

The Magnificently Interchangeable Seven

So, on a whim (well, let's be honest, mostly for Robert Vaughn), I watched the original Magnificent Seven. I know it's supposedly a cinema classic, but it was a little lost on me. The following impressions may be best understood as the ramblings of a largely uninvested viewer coming to the film several decades too late, and mostly Not Getting It. Take that as you will. The plot, for those coming to this as cold as I did, goes roughly as follows: A small village of poor Mexican farmers is being terrorised by a gang of bandits. Pooling what little money they have, three of them go to buy weapons to defend themselves, but are advised to hire men who know how to use those weapons instead. Lacking the money for anything better, the men they hire are variously well-intentioned enough for what amounts to charity work, or (more likely) down on their luck to the point of desperation. Some discussion of the relative merits of the life of the lonely cowboy desperado vs the poor farmer is injected in attempt to lend some modest thematic weight, while the villagers debate whether it's better to give in to the bandits and starve or resist and risk being slaughtered, and the hired guns wonder whether it's really worth risking their necks for so little pay. There are the inevitable several gunfights, a thoroughly half-hearted romance subplot between one of the seven and a villager, and various minor diversions as the villagers bring out all their best food for the mercenaries but hide all their women. There's really not much more going on. For a wittier and more detailed (and more spoilery) summary, I would refer you to The Editing Room's Abridged Script, which is pretty much the film as I remember it, albeit recalled by someone even more cynical than I.

The obvious problem with producing a movie with seven different main characters, all bringing basically the same skill set to achieving the same purpose, is that a meager 2-hour run-time is going to be spread pretty thinly between them. To my moderately face-blind memory, the Magnificent Seven themselves consisted of: Yul Brenner, Robert Vaughn, The Hot Young Trigger-Happy New Kid They Almost Didn't Bring, The Two Brown-Haired Dudes, and The Two Skinny Blond Dudes. If pressed, I might be able to separate those two brown-haired dudes into Dude Convinced Village Had Secret Treasure, and Dude Who Bonded With Those Three Morbidly-Obsessed Village Kids, and the two skinny blond dudes into Knife Guy and Is That Steve McQueen? (Sorry, Steve, I know you're supposed to be hot stuff in the cinema of this decade, but I could not reliably pick you out of a line-up.) If you can guess going in which three of the seven actually make it out alive, give yourself a no-prize. (Hint: one of them is Is-That-Steve-McQueen, who doesn't quite seem to know what he's doing in this movie, except playing second to Yul Brenner, who mostly doesn't need one. You meet him almost-first though, which is evidently your clue he’s meant to matter.) Though the film does pretty well overall at giving (most of) them some sort of minor plotline to their names, distinguishing visual characteristics are unevenly distributed. Hogging most of the screentime are Yul Brenner (aka, the bald one who wears all black) as the grim, disillusioned old drifter, and Hot Young Dude as the inexperienced firecracker trying to prove his worth. Robert Vaughn, in addition to being Robert Vaughn, was also easily distinguished by the fact he's the only one who dresses nicely, in a waistcoat, neck tie and black gloves. The other four are white guys in cowboy gear, and being the traditional Old-West Men Of Few Words, the script was not much help. I had a hell of a job keeping them straight. Vaughn's character, Lee, is not one of those who gets much development or screentime, which is a little hard to object to given that Vaughn (much as I love him) has never had much talent for doing accents other than his own, and this was not the role to convince me otherwise. That we spend so little time with Lee is frustrating nonetheless, because out of a cast of seven characters with maybe a dozen character notes to share between them, Lee gets three, and none of them particularly add up. When we meet him, he's on the run from the law after (presumably) hunting down and killing "The Johnson Brothers". In the middle of the movie, a screaming nightmare shows us he's suffering from some variety of severe PTSD. And throughout, despite being reduced to sleeping in filthy backrooms owned by anyone who won't turn him in, he dresses like a gentleman. How does it all add up? Just what is Lee's backstory? Well, keep wondering, because the movie isn't telling. (Possibly, he’s only well-dressed at all because Vaughn refused to spend that much time on screen without being allowed to dress up for the occasion. Or maybe he realised that no-one was going to be able to pick him out of that line of cowboy hats from a distance otherwise. Either way, I Approve.) Almost the only character who did quickly grab me was one of the least important. Early in the film, a traveling salesman happens upon a dead man's body, does the decent thing and offers to pay for a a proper funeral, only to be frustrated by a town of racist asshats who object to having an Indian buried in their nice, white cemetery. The point of the scene is to get Yul Brenner and Is-That-Steve-McQueen to show their good natures by volunteering to drive the hearse when no-one else will, which is a nice little introduction, but it sold me on the good nature of Mr. Salesman (ironically enough) far more effectively than anyone else involved, and he thereafter vanishes from the film. Unfortunately, that would remain my favourite scene; nothing from there on in particularly connected in any lasting way. Quite likely, The Magnificent Seven is one of those films where everything it did well has been redone so many times since that it all seems trite in retrospect. Even more likely, westerns just aren't my genre, and even Robert Vaughn in a very nice waistcoat and leather gloves is less than what it would take to change my mind.

[therightnewsnetwork]

Searching for the American Dream on the Edge of the War in Ukraine

SLOVIANSK, Ukraine—At the public library in this eastern Ukrainian city about 50 kilometers, or 30 miles, from the war’s front lines, a group of teenagers gather on a Monday afternoon to learn about life in America.

This is Presidents Day back in the United States, and, as a way to practice their English, the students write letters to U.S. President Donald Trump.

“Thank you for everything,” a student named Katya wrote to the president. “I want to visit America, and a world without war. Help Ukraine.”

On this day an ebullient volunteer named Oleseya leads the meeting—she asked that her last name not be used due to security concerns. Her energy and enthusiasm are boundless as she prompts the 22 teenage students through a series of icebreakers and English language exercises.

“I wish my children, Milena, 10, and Maria, 4, and all the kids in eastern Ukraine to forgive and forget the horrors they have seen,” Oleseya tells The Daily Signal. “They have supped their part of sorrows. It’s more than enough. And I am sure this generation is born to make a difference in Ukraine. They just have no other options.”

Oleseya, standing, leads the Access group through a series of English lessons and icebreakers. (Photos: Nolan Peterson/The Daily Signal)

The teenagers, who range in age from 13 to 15 years old, are members of a voluntary study group called Access in Sloviansk, which meets a few times a week to practice English and learn about American culture. Access in Sloviansk is one program among many at the Window on America center at the Sloviansk library. Participants in the center’s various programs range in age from 5 to 60.

At the library, an American flag hangs on the wall beside a poster of the Statue of Liberty and the New York City skyline. The shelves are lined with books about U.S. history and geography, as well as GRE prep books, U.S. college application guides, and a DVD collection of Rocky Balboa movies.

“The war affected everyone, but all people react and recover in different ways,” Darina Andrieieva, coordinator of the Window on America program in Sloviansk tells The Daily Signal.

“It’s not easy for everyone to quickly recover and move on, but I’m happy to see that many of the young people are looking forward to a better future,” Andrieieva says. “They are curious, they are learning with passion. And I’m happy to work in this center, because I have a great opportunity to encourage that passion.”

In April 2014, pro-Russian separatists, supported by Russian special forces and security agency operatives, took over Sloviansk. In July 2014, Ukrainian military units launched an operation to liberate the city of about 100,000 people. As artillery and tank shots rained down, and small arms gunfights broke out in the streets, Oleseya resolved that this cycle of violence that has consumed every generation of Ukrainians in living memory had to stop.

The author addressing students at the Window on America program in Sloviansk.

“On April 12, 2014, my little world changed forever,” Oleseya says, referring to the separatist takeover. “The war didn’t kill me, it made me more compassionate and every-moment-appreciating. Now, it’s my turn to help my neighbors—the university students, Access teenagers, Sloviansk locals—to be stronger, more encouraged, more loved, and more English-speaking.”

The 29 Window on America centers across Ukraine are a diplomatic outreach project organized  by the U.S. Embassy to “promote mutual understanding between the United States and Ukraine,” according to a statement on the program’s website.

Yet, Sloviansk’s Window on America program was a true grassroots initiative launched by area residents. The Sloviansk center is actually a transplanted version of a Window on America program that existed in Donetsk before combined Russian-separatist forces took over that city in 2014. Today, Donetsk remains the capital of one of two breakaway separatist territories in eastern Ukraine.

“Not all of them dream about America,” Andrieieva says of the teenagers. “Some want to live in Australia, or Germany. But this center, and the desire to learn English, to learn something new, brings them all together. Especially for such a small town it’s a great cultural place.”

Back to Work

Later, at an industrial park on the outskirts of Sloviansk, Olexandr Ivanovich Poligenko opens the heavy metal door to one of his two crockery factories. Inside, on the factory floor the air is misted with clay particles spewing from machines operated by a pair of workers who hardly seem to notice as their boss enters the room.

An unformed tongue of gray clay oozes out of one machine like a giant worm. A worker uses a wire to slice the clay into bricks about the size of phone books. Soon, they will be shaped and then fired into fine ceramic crockery in one of two conveyor-belt kilns at another section of the factory.

On this night, the wide open, high ceilinged industrial workspace is loud with the sound of machinery and brightly lit. Normally, the windows are left open during the day to let some of the dust escape, Poligenko explains. But at night the workers prefer to wear face masks rather than let in the cold air. If you’ve ever experienced a Ukrainian winter, then you understand why.

Olexandr Ivanovich Poligenko in his office.

Poligenko stands proudly, with arms folded, his shoulders pulled back, watching the fruits of 15 years of hard work in motion. His two factories in Sloviansk produce about 650,000 pieces of crockery a month. They also employ 260 people, including veterans and 22 Ukrainians who fled their homes due to the war. A planned third factory, the construction of which is nearing completion, will add another 150 jobs.

“My dream is to expand my business to America,” Poligenko says. “The war will be over soon, and we should look forward to the future.”

Clean shaven, with shortly cropped salt and pepper hair and round animated eyes, Poligenko is the director of Poligenko Trade Mark, one of the largest crockery producers in Ukraine.

Poligenko launched his enterprise 15 years ago. Today, it’s one of Sloviansk’s most important businesses. But success did not come easy. To build his company, Poligenko had to navigate Ukraine’s corruption-riddled, post-Soviet business-scape, replete with the nefarious influence of Mafia thugs, tribute-demanding oligarchs, and Russian agents. And there was the war, too, of course.

A worker operates a machine on a factory floor in Sloviansk.

“It has become easier to do business in Ukraine since the revolution, but if the time of Yanukovych returns, I will not work,” Poligenko says, referring to the pro-Russian former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, who was overthrown in 2014 by pro-European street protests.

Poligenko says he and his family have been forced to flee Sloviansk five times due to the war and various criminal threats against him. “I know what war is,” he says.

Albeit slowly, corruption is diminishing throughout Ukraine, as is the insidious Russian influence. The country’s economy is also slowly rebounding from the hit it took after the revolution and the loss of its Crimean Peninsula to Russia in 2014, and the three subsequent years of war.

Ukraine’s gross domestic product grew by a tepid 1 percent in 2016, and, according to various Ukrainian and international estimates, GDP is expected to grow by about 2.3 percent each year in the period from 2017 to 2019.

Poligenko is optimistic that Ukraine’s business environment is on the right trajectory and that the war will end soon, spurring him to look for ways to grow his business abroad.

With practically breathless enthusiasm, Poligenko explains how his ultimate dream is to build a factory in the U.S. But for now, he’s looking for a way to export his goods to the American market.

“We’re not looking for investors, we’re looking for business partners,” Poligenko says.

Role Models

In 2014, Sloviansk was at the epicenter of a separatist insurgency, which, with financial and military backing from Moscow, spawned two breakaway separatist republics in eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces deployed to eastern Ukraine in the spring of 2014 to stop the combined Russian-separatist advance, which at that time was engulfing town after town across the Donbas, Ukraine’s embattled southeastern territory on the border with Russia.

Sloviansk fell to combined Russian-separatist forces in April 2014. According to accounts from civilians living in the city at the time, Russian special forces troops and agents from Russia’s security services were operating among the separatists. In the intervening years, however, the Kremlin has repeatedly denied supporting the separatists.

A letter from a Ukrainian student to U.S. President Donald Trump.

On July 5, 2014, after weeks of heavy fighting, Ukrainian forces retook control of Sloviansk. It wasn’t quite a Pyrrhic victory, but the battle to liberate the city left scars. Most notably in a nearby village called Semyonovka, which was practically leveled by artillery crossfire. Overall, about 100 people died in the fighting, and roughly 40 percent of the city’s residents fled.

In August 2014, one month after the battle, the carcass of a separatist tank destroyed by a landmine was strewn along a highway leading out of town. Buildings were pockmarked by bullet holes and artillery shrapnel. At an artillery-razed bus stop outside town, a woman and her child sat on their suitcases waiting for a ride. And in Semyonovka, residents who had fled the shelling trickled back, returning to the debris fields that used to be their homes.

Today, the city is peaceful, people have returned home and most of the physical damage has been repaired. The face of the city has also changed. Evidence of pro-Ukrainian sentiment is much more apparent than any latent pro-Russian leanings.

Statues of Soviet luminaries, including Vladimir Lenin, have come down. Ukraine’s blue and yellow flags are everywhere, as is the graffitied expression in Ukrainian, “Glory to Ukraine”—a patriotic rallying cry akin to “God Bless America.”

A destroyed tank on the outskirts of Sloviansk in August 2014.

But the war isn’t over. Daily artillery and small arms skirmishes continue on the front lines about 30 miles away.

A cease-fire was signed in September 2014 in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, but it quickly collapsed. A subsequent deal struck in February 2015, called Minsk II, reduced the intensity of the war by proscribing airpower, as well as heavy weapons and armor within a certain buffer zone around the front lines.

However, the war never ended. Rather, it morphed into a static, indirect fire conflict, fought from trenches and improvised forts along a 250-mile-long front line.

A third of the 10,000 Ukrainians who have died in the war were killed after the February 2015 cease-fire was signed. Casualties, both civilian and military, still occur daily on both sides of the conflict. And about 1.7 million Ukrainians remain de facto refugees in their own country due to the war.

The fighting intermittently intensifies, as it did in the front-line town of Avdiivka in late January, briefly capturing international media attention. But the cease-fire has largely kept the war in check, and both sides have not made any major offensives in more than two years.

Hope

The Access in Sloviansk students kick off their Presidents Day meeting by singing a song in English.

They sit in a horseshoe formation of desks around this correspondent and his brother—who have been invited as guest speakers on this day. It is only the second time in two years that an American citizen has spoken at the Window on America program in Sloviansk.

At first, the young pupils are shy, yet effusively polite and well mannered. They raise their hands to be called upon before speaking. Most have smartphones in front of them, yet, demonstrating a level of politeness that escapes many American university students, the devices remain out of the students’ hands while anyone is speaking.

They do, however, whip out their phones to snap some selfies at the end of the afternoon. This correspondent and his brother happily oblige.

The author and his brother among the Access students at the Window on America center at the Sloviansk public library.

During an icebreaker session, when asked to name their favorite symbols of America, the teenagers’ answers span the gamut from the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, the city of Chicago, McDonald’s, Hollywood, baseball, and pizza (sorry, Italy).

When asked to name their favorite U.S. president, the students respond with answers like Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and John F. Kennedy.

The conversation moves from the desks to a circle of beanbag chairs. The students warm to the Americans in their midst, and begin to open up. They talk about their hobbies, like playing soccer and guitar, and their favorite movies, which include “The Avengers” and “Home Alone.”

They have lots of questions about life in America.

“What kind of music do you like?” they ask. “What’s your favorite holiday? What sports do you play?”

Then, “Is it true you can live anywhere you want in America?”

In Ukraine, it remains a laborious bureaucratic process to officially change one’s city of residence. Ukrainians are still required to carry a domestic passport, a carryover from the Soviet era when authorities could demand to see one’s “papers” at any time.

Consequently, the fact that an American could pick up and move to any city of his or her choice, whenever he or she wants, is an alien concept.

Ukrainian students at the Window on America center in Sloviansk.

Near the end of the meeting, Andrieieva, the Window on America coordinator, asks, “Can you explain for them what the American dream is?”

A brief pause to formulate a coherent response, a lot is riding on what comes next.

“It’s the belief that anything is possible, and that, no matter what, you always have the choice to make your life better,” this correspondent says. “No matter where you come from, or what your background is, you are in charge of your destiny.”

“Sounds amazing,” one young woman says, nodding approvingly.

“That’s the Ukrainian dream, too,” Oleseya, the volunteer group leader, chimes in. “You can do anything you want,” she says, scanning the faces of the teenage students. “Remember what I told you. You are a different generation. Your lives will be different.”

Work Ethic

Back in his office at the crockery factory, Poligenko leans forward with his elbows on his desk. “Believe in your work,” he says. “And everything is possible.”

The walls of Poligenko’s office are draped in military memorabilia—unit flags signed by soldiers, medals, shoulder patches, photos. Pieces of ammunition of various calibers line his desk. In a drawer he keeps a live grenade. “Just in case,” he says, smirking.

“Tea, coffee?” Poligenko asks at the beginning of the interview.

Minutes later his secretary appears with a tray of steaming hot cups of tea and coffee, as well as plates of chocolate candies, cookies, and pastries. Poligenko knows how to make a good impression.

Olexandr Ivanovich Poligenko’s blue and yellow coffee mugs—Ukraine’s national colors—have become ubiquitous throughout the war zone.

Poligenko is frenetically ambitious, constantly talking about plans to expand his business in America. With his teenage daughter and adult son chipping in to help with the Russian to English translations, Poligenko explains his idea of work ethic.

“If working from eight in the morning until six at night isn’t enough, then start at six,” he offers.

Poligenko talks about his business for a while, but his demeanor noticeably brightens when he speaks about the Ukrainian soldiers. He lauds the troops’ courage in combat, which he witnessed firsthand when they fought to liberate Sloviansk in 2014.

“The quieter the soldier, the more dangerous he is,” Poligenko says.

On his computer, Poligenko scrolls through photos from the various volunteer projects he has spearheaded to support Ukraine’s military. He has, over the course of the three-year-old war, traveled frequently to the front lines to deliver supplies, including military kit and food, as well as camouflaged storage containers used to conceal Ukrainian ammunition depots from Russian drones.

Poligenko also pays for the medals of soldiers who have received decorations for bravery but could not afford to buy the actual devices for their uniforms. “Who would help the soldiers if I don’t?” Poligenko says.

Poligenko is well-known for one unique item, which is now ubiquitous throughout the war zone.

At his ceramics factories, he produces a special blue and yellow coffee mug (Ukraine’s national colors) emblazoned with the national symbol, a trident, as well as the likeness of Ukraine’s traditional warrior, the mustached, fierce-looking Cossack.

“It’s a morale booster,” he says.

Ukraine’s military has dramatically improved, both in terms of supplies and fighting prowess, from the early days of the war in 2014 when its regular army was caught off guard by the combined Russian-separatist blitz across the Donbas.

With the regular army on its heels, Ukrainian volunteer military units stalled the separatist advance and turned the tide of the war in 2014. These paramilitary forces comprised civilians who often had little military training and were armed with hand-me-down weapons from area police forces. Yet, by July 2014, Ukraine’s mostly volunteer army had retaken 23 out of 36 districts captured by combined Russian-separatist forces.

The volunteer units have now been incorporated into Ukraine’s army and National Guard. And the volunteer troops who put their day jobs on hold to step forward and fight in the early days of the conflict are now some of the most experienced and battle-hardened soldiers in Ukraine’s military.

They also probably have more combat experience against tanks and artillery, and in trench warfare, than any group of active-duty soldiers in the world today.

“We have a real army now,” Poligenko says.

Ukrainians across all walks of life—from university students to businessmen—have volunteered their time and money, and sometimes risked their lives, to support their country’s war effort. Some decided to fight, others to collect and deliver supplies to the front lines.

The volunteers serve with no expectations of fame or fortune. They want to win the war so Ukraine can get back to the business of rebuilding itself into a functioning democracy free from Russian influence.

Olexandr Ivanovich Poligenko’s crockery factories employ 260 people, including veterans and 22 Ukrainians who fled their homes due to the war.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Ukraine’s grassroots war effort is that it materialized without governmental direction or backing. It was a truly spontaneous manifestation of Ukrainian society, underscoring a widespread attitude of self-reliance among Ukrainians who were unwilling to wait for the government to act in a moment of crisis.

Ukraine’s volunteer movement, consequently, is a sharp break from the Soviet mindset—a condition colloquially referred to as “homo sovieticus” among Ukrainians—in which people depend on the government for their financial stability and security, and are reluctant, either due to intimidation or apathy, to challenge the established order.

“It’s important for Ukrainians to help themselves, and not wait for the government,” Poligenko says. “Now, we have to finish the war and get back to work.”

Poligenko credits his business acumen and work ethic to reading books and a natural inner drive. He dropped out of university before finishing his degree, and his first job was repairing TVs. “I have no education,” he says. “I taught myself everything.”

“It seems like you’re living the American dream,” this correspondent says.

A pause as the sentence is translated. Then, Poligenko cracks a smile.

“It’s the Ukrainian dream now,” he says.

The post Searching for the American Dream on the Edge of the War in Ukraine appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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[silviajburke]

This Bond Bull Isn’t Dead Yet

This post This Bond Bull Isn’t Dead Yet appeared first on Daily Reckoning.

“The bond bull market is over!” How many times have you heard that in the past six months? The past year? Or, for that matter, the past five years?

Time and again, the bond bears have declared the bull market over. They just can’t believe U.S. rates can possibly go lower. Time and again the bears have been proved wrong, and the bond market rally continues.

We may be on the brink of another reversal in temporary bear market conditions. The bond market has been down for the last five months. As bond yields rise, bond prices fall (and vice-versa).

Yields to maturity on benchmark ten-year Treasury notes have backed-up over a full percentage point since their record low of 1.36% in July 2016 shortly after the Brexit shock. They currently trade around 2.4%. This follows the recent high yield of 2.6% in December 2016 after the Trump election victory, and the “Trump Trade” that affected stocks, bonds and currencies.

The bears are unanimous that this breakout in yields — from 1.4% to 2.6% and resulting capital losses to bond holders — is the death-knell for the 35-year old secular bond bull market. Just to put that in perspective, the yield on ten-year Treasury notes hit an all-time high of 15.82% in September 1981.

Yields have tumbled, albeit with zigs and zags and nasty bear markets along the way, for the entire 35-year stretch since then. It’s not unreasonable to estimate that most of the bond traders on Wall Street weren’t even born when this secular bull market began in 1981.

At the 1.4% level reached last summer, it seemed that yields just could not get any lower. Just about all market participants, young and old, were ready to write “RIP” on the bull market, and brace for a new secular bear. Market behavior since then has supported that view.

But the bond bull market may still have legs. As Mark Twain observed after reading a false obituary of himself, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” The same might be said for the bond bull market.

Hedge funds and leveraged players look trapped in a massively leveraged short position. They are being set up for slaughter by the real money accounts.

What are the bears missing? The most important thing they are missing is that rates are really not that low to begin with. It’s true that nominal rates have been low, but real rates are nowhere near their all-time lows due to the impact of inflation.

A real rate is simply the nominal rate minus inflation. Prior to the super-spike in yields in 1981, nominal rates were around 13% while inflation was about 15%. This meant that real rates were negative 2%, (13 – 15 = -2).

Today, with nominal T-rates around 2.4% and inflation about 1.6%, the real rate is positive 0.8%, (2.4 – 1.6 = 0.8). Even though nominal rates were 10.6% percentage points higher in 1980, the real rate was 1.2% lower. Since real rates are what determine investment decisions, it’s the case that interest rates are relatively high today.

This simple concept of real versus nominal rates is not discussed much on financial TV or blogs, but it’s a crucial distinction. Simply put, interest rates are still high today and could fall a lot lower.

Another concept missed by the bond bears is velocity. That refers to the turnover of money. It’s also easy to understand. If I have a dollar, go to dinner, tip the waiter, and the waiter takes a taxi home, and the taxi driver buys gasoline, my dollar has velocity of three in the tip, the taxi fare, and the gasoline (1 + 1+ 1 = 3). If I stay home, watch TV, and leave my money in the bank, my money has velocity of zero since it was never spent.

The notional value of GDP is defined as money supply (M) times velocity (V), or M x V = GDP. Bears keep looking at the expanded money supply and expecting inflation right around the corner.

It’s true that the Fed has expanded the money supply enormously since the 2008 crisis. But guess what? Velocity is sinking like a stone. In fact, velocity has been plunging since the 1998 financial crisis due to demographics and lost confidence in money as shown in the chart below.

The math is inescapable. If M0 (base money) is $4 trillion and V is zero, then the economy has disappeared; the gross nominal GDP would be zero ($4T x 0 = 0). Of course, that won’t happen (with 0 nominal GDP, we’d all be living in a new Stone Age), but the extreme example makes the point that as long as velocity is plunging, there’s no inflation. And without inflation, real rates will remain high even at very low nominal rates.

It’s not difficult to imagine a U.S. scenario where nominal rates are 0.5%, inflation is negative 1% (called deflation), and real rates are still relatively high at 1.5%, [0.5 – (-1.0) = 1.5].

Indeed, this is precisely the situation that has plagued Japan for decades and appeared in Europe recently. It may be coming to the U.S. also.

The recent back-up in yields looks just like the yield increases in 2013 before they hit a peak and fell sharply.

Far from the start of a bear market, early 2017 looks like early 2014. It’s déjà vu all over again.

What are the reasons for believing that yields actually will decline again as they did in 2014? And why should investors expect a new bond market rally even in the midst of the secular bull market?

It’s obvious by now that the Trump economic plan will not provide nearly as much stimulus as Wall Street expected immediately after the election. (Something we warned about at the time). The “Trump Trade” could be out of steam and is set for a reversal. That includes a reversal in bond yields.

Protectionism is on the rise and a full-scale trade war is not far behind. Protection can produce U.S. jobs in manufacturing, but it’s a job killer in aircraft, pharmaceuticals, technology, entertainment, and other sectors. Regardless of the merits for displaced manufacturing workers, protection is a headwind for overall economic growth.

Excessive debt levels put the U.S. in the danger zone when it comes to growth. Germany’s Angela Merkel says a 60% debt-to-GDP ratio retards growth. That’s the standard the ECB uses for members of the Eurozone. Scholars Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart put the figure at 90%. The U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio is currently at 105%, and heading higher. Under any standard, the U.S. is at the point where more debt produces less growth rather than more. This is one more reason why the Trump infrastructure spending plan will not produce the hoped for growth. With low real growth and low inflation, don’t expect nominal rates to rise much if at all. In fact, expect them to drop.

With the ingredients for lower rates and a bond market rally in place, the most straightforward trade is to go long ten-year Treasury notes.

The problem there is that the Treasury market looks like the Gunfight at the OK Corral. On one side are hedge funds and leveraged players who are massively short bonds. On the other side are real money players like banks and institutions who see what we see.

One side is going to lose big (my view is it will be the hedge funds again), but there could be huge volatility and violent countertrends as the two sides fight it out.

Regards,

Jim Rickards for The Daily Reckoning

The post This Bond Bull Isn’t Dead Yet appeared first on Daily Reckoning.