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timeclonemike · 3 years

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Axiom Verge 2: Here We Go Again

So Axiom Verge 2 came out not long ago, but I don’t have a Switch and I don’t trust the Epic Games Store. Rather than wait and possibly get spoiled, I bit the bullet and watched a Let’s Play.

Consequently I can now build on this post. Cutting for length and spoilers right about here.

The Filter: The biggest revelation that AV2 provides is a refinement of the multiverse theory, plus defining some terms from the original game. Trace’s note next to his wheelchair mentions going upstream to the Filter or beyond for answers. As it happens, “upstream” refers literally to the Worldstream, and different universes are connected to each other in a serial fashion. The terminology used to describe the connections is upstream and downstream, with upstream leading towards the Source Worlds that are the progenitors of all other universes. Likewise, the Filter refers to worlds in the worldstream that function as firewalls and safety mechanisms to keep disruptive influences from downstream worlds from traveling too far up, since disrupting one world can damage all of the worlds downstream from that world.

We even get to see the Worldstream or some analog to it when Indra (the protagonist of Axiom Verge 2) travels to the Filter world upstream of Kiengir (which is either upstream of or parallel to Earth) and the background of the rooms is a MASSIVE fractal pattern originating from / coalescing into a singularity off in the distance.

There are also some notes from Trace to Dr. Hammond, his research partner in the cutscene for the first game who took Trace’s revolutionary theory and turned into a way to make Faster Than Light communication and computing technology. Dr. Hammond also finds herself in a unique position to test one of the possibilities implicit in Trace’s theory, namely if the existence of an afterlife is somehow accounted for in the multiverse. One of the notes in the first game says that different instances of a person across the multiverse can survive events that their counterparts do not, but that the survivors have no idea that they even have a counterpart who died.

What happens in the second game is more about what happens to the ones that didn’t make it, because Dr. Hammond is communicating with Indra through the prototype superluminal communicators (called ansibles) scattered here and there, but Indra can also find Hammond’s body and a suicide note in some of Kiengir’s ruins. Dr. Hammond refers to where she is as a sort of “detention center” that she needs Indra’s help to escape from, and this help involves hacking the control computer in the Filter world. An earlier message at an ansible mentions data throttling, which seems to refer to the memory limitations of the ansible prototypes themselves; they can only send so much data over their operational lifetimes.

Except there’s Trace’s original paper and the axioms he starts with, where reality is described as algorithms running a universal / multiversal simulation, and cognition is a sub-algorithm within the parent algorithm. Put it all together and the game all but states that there is an afterlife, but it operates on the same rules as life - it’s an adjacent or related universe to our own and minds / spirits / souls / cognitive algorithms can migrate between those universes under certain conditions even if the material body they used to pilot is no longer functional. At least, that’s what normally happens, but for some reason the transmigration of souls was limited or stopped or throttled. It’s semi-implied but never explicitly stated that there’s a trans-universal system in place to keep the Worldstream stable, and the Lamassu computer network that controls Kiengir is part of that network, and the fact that realities are starting to glitch and break down further implies that this system is damaged or overwhelmed.

Trace’s Motivations: Trace never shows up in the game, and only gets mentioned here and there in a few notes. The game takes place in the 2050s and Trace’s lab accident was in 2005, with Dr. Hammond starting Hammond Corp and making money hand over fist in 2007 by selling the world zero-latency computing technology. Hammond’s suicide note explains that Trace was already exploring the Breach before she started her company, but she hasn’t heard from him in decades and the entire antarctic expedition was just so she could try to find him again. She mentions a few things in passing that come up in the first game, like a device called a Scry that can locate anything in the multiverse, and the term PatternMind which Trace was but Hammond was not.

By itself, this would seem to imply that we don’t know anymore about what Trace saw or experienced that turned him from a pacifist to somebody willing to commit genocide. But there’s another factor in play, one that has nothing to do with Trace at all at first glance.

At a certain point in the game, Indra gets stuck in her alternate drone form until she finds the right upgrade to become human (well, humanoid) again. She can still communicate with people, such as the survivors from Hammond Corp’s expedition and one of the Kazakh members of a Russian expedition that came through the portal and decided to settle a world upstream of Kiengir. However, coming back to revisit those areas and talk to those survivors later may result in them not being in the same spot anymore. Instead, there’s a sort of flying enemy that looks like a miniature version of the first boss of Axiom Verge. People who examined the game’s code found that there is actually an “infection” mechanic involved based on time elapsed since Indra comes in contact with the survivors.

That the survivors turn into the types of monsters we see in Axiom Verge 1 is significant on its own, but it takes on more importance when we consider the endgame cutscenes. The Kazakhs have settled and colonized an upstream world, while a few of them are staying in an adjacent world where time passes differently; this is explicitly so that they can observe and track the changing of society over long spans of time and direct its evolution. After beating the final boss, Indra decides to team up with Drushka, the leader of the Kazakhs and a name mentioned in one of the notes found in Axiom Verge 1, in order to further her own goals.

Here’s the thing: What we see of the world that Drushka is standing watch in, called The Emergence, looks so similar to what we’ve seen of Sudra as to be almost identical. Given how time is explicitly stated to pass at different rates in different parts of the Breach compared to the worlds in the Worldstream, it isn’t out of the question that the Kazakhs were the ancestors of the Sudrans. The only problem with this theory is that long before anyone from earth showed up in Kiengir, the Lamassu had upstream technology brought in to allow the locals to defend themselves, as part of its broader directive to safeguard the Worldstream from disruption. Some of this technology included Rebirth Chambers - Indra even accesses the Filter through one - which was later destroyed to prevent too much cultural contamination. That technology had to come from somewhere, so either the Kazakhs inhabited a world adjacent to Sudra or downstream from it so there were similarities in art and culture and architecture, or the Rebirth Chambers and other advanced technology were themselves brought to Sudra from upstream worlds and simply shut down rather than completely destroyed after the Sudrans nearly wiped themselves out.

In either case, the important part is how Indra is subtly implied to be some sort of nanotech Typhoid Mary. She might be the actual source of the Pathogen that wipes out Sudra, not Athetos. In hindsight there is a hint to this effect in the first game because after Trace starts getting sick and hallucinating, there is a Rusalki called Ophelia that saves him. He doesn’t have any symptoms for the rest of the game, implying he is cured. If it was something unique to Trace that made him immune, he wouldn’t have gotten sick in the first place and neither would Athetos. Same with him getting better, if Trace could do it so could the original. So it had to be something unique to Ophelia that she couldn’t - or wouldn’t - do for anyone else.

And during Axiom Verge 2′s credits, we see a detailed close up look of Indra’s nanotech-enhanced body. The face and head look a LOT like Ophelia. Not conclusive by itself, but too similar to be completely shrugged off as coincidence.

And that has got me thinking.

I ended my first post pondering what Trace could have found in the Breach or while traveling the multiverse that caused a pacifist scientist to turn to genocide to achieve his ends. It’s possible that nothing could, because he didn’t. Maybe Athetos didn’t release the pathogen on Sudra, the Rusalki did; it’s shown in the notes that they resented the way that the Sudrans crippled them and reduced them basically to talking heads, but still had some influence over what was going on either through manipulating the priests or through exchange of data that the Sudrans were unaware of or incapable of understanding.

Athetos refers to the Rusalki as masters of war just before the final battle of Axiom Verge 1. He might have shown up at Sudra thousands of years prior to the events of the game as Trace, gotten healed, traveled up to the Filter to try to learn more, and then come back after the flow of time had changed to find a civilization on the verge of collapse from a virulent contagion that turned people into monsters. Trace may be a pacifist, but he will still use the Axiom Disrupter and all of its bells and whistles to protect himself in game. It’s entirely possible that the original realized that the Rusalki were trying to escape Sudra and would cause devastation throughout the Worldstream, and he applied his knowledge to create weapons and tools to turn himself into a one man army once he realized he couldn’t cure the pathogen. (Or maybe he did try to come up with a cure, and the Rusalki’s retaliation / interference was what made him realize what was actually going on.)

He doesn’t say any of this before his boss fight because he realizes that Trace and the Rusalki have the advantage now. Trace can keep coming back using the Rebirth Chambers, so Athetos has to come up with contingency plan. The secret ending shows Trace in a Dream Algorithm set up by one of the Rusalki, but Athetos shows up and shoots him, telling him it’s time to wake up. During his boss fight, Athetos shows the ability to manipulate the environment to a certain degree, spawning in new enemies and replacing power cells for the Breach Attractor when Trace destroys them. It’s not clear if this is a result of Sudran tech of being a PatternMind, but whatever the reason, it’s possible that Athetos was doing all of it to buy time.

Time for what?

To hack Trace’s Nanogates so that the Rusalki couldn’t control him anymore.

Trace keels over not long after the final battle, but Athetos showing up with a gun implies that Athetos was able to at least get a Trojan Horse into the nanogates that would wake Trace up when the remote overrides were disabled. Then Trace could wake up, find all his equipment again, and take the fight to the Rusalki before they could cause too much damage to the Worldstream, possibly including Earth.

The only truly glaring flaw in this theory is that it doesn’t account for why Indra would side with a bunch of genocidal robots, one way or another; she refers to the storage bay in Axiom Verge 1 as where “our bodies” are kept, and these are massive war machines, while her humanoid nanotech form is about human sized. The Lamassu refers to some fairly devastating war machines from upstream worlds and the Rusalki might just be those machines; she was heading to the world they were stored in because it might have the technology to restore one of her Apocalypse Arm upgrades - the child Damu that controls her drone body - to a flesh and blood body that can live a normal life.

There is a big gap between trying to help this kid she found and teaming up with sentient weapons platforms to devastate the multiverse. At least as big as the gap between Trace being a pacifist and Athetos committing genocide.

Like so many sequels, Axiom Verge 2 has raised even more questions than it answered.

#Axiom Verge #Axiom Verge 2 #Analysis

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theuniversitychallengereview · 3 years

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UC 50.35 - Imperial vs Warwick

This is episode thirty five of this years University Challenge. Almost exactly one year ago, on 23rd March 2020, the UK was plunged into what we thought would be its only lockdown. Instead it was the first of going on three, four? Where does a lockdown end and a Tier 4 start? Manchester, where I live, has basically been in lockdown for most of the twelve months since then, and who knows how much longer this one is going to actually last.

There is a peculiar magic to a revolution of the sun, with the circularity giving meaning to the meaningless marker of three hundred and sixty five days. Somehow it feels so much more momentous that a year will have passed than that a day less than a year has passed. You remember what you were doing as the lockdown was announced, where you watched Boris make his serious address from. The tingles of fear, and maybe even guilty nervous excitement made me restless. No one knew what any of it meant. So many things have changed since then, but in some ways we are exactly where we were. Stuck inside, nowhere to go, with no concept of when life will return to normal.

There was also a University Challenge match on the 23rd March. I don’t know if I watched it on the day. Probably not. I wrote about it six days later, by which point I was working from home with a pile of books stacked underneath my laptop acting as a makeshift stand. There is something strange about being able to read exactly what I was thinking at the time everything was starting. The following paragraphs are taken directly from that blog, and it still feels like we are in the same limbo state.

What is going on? When I wrote the last blog it was pretty clear that we were in a dire situation, but the inaction of the Government left it feeling like we were in some kind of limbo state, just waiting for the disaster to hit us. But then action was taken. Lockdown.

We now know exactly what we have to do (I was going to list the ‘Stay Home’ instructions here, but if you’re getting your lockdown lowdown from a University Challenge blog then frankly there’s no hope for you anyway), but it still feels really surreal. You’ve never done a home workout in your life, but you’ve done two in the past three days. People say ‘social distancing’ as if its always been a well-known term that was commonly used in daily life. There are never any beans (screw your toilet paper shortages, its the beans that really matter).

We’re still in limbo, really, because we have no idea how long this is going to last. And we’re still waiting for the disaster to hit, because the worst of it hasn’t yet, and the lockdown won’t start properly helping for a few weeks. So what do we do? What can we do? You feel like you want to be distracted from all that is going on, but also to be clued up to the eyeballs with the latest news.

So we do what we can. We stay inside. We call our friends and family and play that stupid ‘chips and guac’ game on Houseparty. We take solace in books, or films, or TV…

As I did a year ago, I’ll try and distract you all (and myself too), with some words about a television quiz show. Let’s not bother with the rules, here’s your first starter for ten...

Imperial and Warwick have already played each other in this years tournament, with the Avonsiders coming out convincing winners, 200 to 120. They then beat another of the semi finalists, Magdalene, Cambridge, by 200 to 160. Fans of a nice round number, it seems.

But I wouldn’t write Imperial off. They followed up their loss to Warwick with magnificent wins over King’s and Durham. Their skipper Kohn is the most in-form player left in the competition, and has averaged more than six starters a game.

Having lost their first round match to Strathclyde, Imperial were given a reprieve via the high-scoring loser play-offs, and boy did they take advantage of it. This coincided with the gap in filming caused by Covid, and Kohn used the extra time to train intensely - think Stallone in Rocky but its just a guy furiously reading (with the same music playing, obviously).

Warwick, meanwhile, have had a relatively smooth path to the last four, winning by an average of 92.5 points. However, if you dive a bit deeper into those statistics, the margin has been decreasing each time (150, 100, 80, 40...), so if Imperial could get stuck into them early on then we’d have a real match on our hands.

Kohn is quickest on the buzzer for the first starter, and they take three bonuses, with Kohn saying that ‘this is giving me strong Dr Faustus vibes’, before giving Dr Faustus as the correct answer for the third. His speed is his downfall on the next starter though, and he loses five points with a neg, allowing his opposite number Rout to pick up the scraps.

A very long-winded biology question falls to no one, before another Imperial neg, this time from Wong, let Braid in to take the lead for Warwick. An incredibly easy bonuse set on Shakespeare extended this for them, though they didn’t recognise ‘Night of the Living Dead’ from its description.

Marrow, Imperial’s resident smiler, took the first picture starter to her evident delight, and a couple of bonuses tied the game at thirty fives. Braid is unlucky with his guess of ‘suffer no fools’ on the next starter - the answer is ‘suffer fools gladly’.

A trademark rapid-buzz from Kohn took the lead back to London, before a second neg from Wong allowed Braid to level the game again. Imperial’s tactic seems to be to win the buzzer race, regardless of whether or not they know the answer. So far they have three negs to three correct starters. An inspired guess of semi-colon from Marrow stole back the initiative. Neither side could string together a run of starters yet.

Not wanting to let Kohn have all the credit, Rout comes in super early on the next starter with Hamiltonian Operator. By now we have reached the music round, in a riveting but so-far low-scoring match. Kohn takes us to seventy apiece with the musical starter, giving Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck as his answer, even though the question had only asked for one person (to be fair to him, the question asked for ‘a bandleader and soloist’, making it seem as though they were two different people, but anyway, Paxman lets him off).

Both teams are making a dangerous habit of dropping bonuses, and six pass in succession with no correct answers. A pair of starters from Burrell, along with a few made five pointers, including some on Bulgarian football teams, gave Warwick the biggest lead of the match so far - fifty.

Kohn isn’t content to give up so easily, and takes the second picture starter, along with a pair of bonuses. Braid stumbles on a chemical elements question, and again Kohn takes advantage. Dismissing some of the bonuses as too easy, Imperial close to within ten.

Pollard gets his first starter of the evening with Yuri Gagarin, and a rare full set from Warwick gave them a thirty five point lead. A supremely clutch buzz from Kohn keeps Imperial in it, but Braid is quickest to identify/guess that a million seconds is two weeks (to the closest week), possibly putting the game beyond the reach of the Londoners. Paxman wastes some time by going on about how stupid it is to know that fact, and Warwick waste some more time with a lengthy conference on the bonuses. They are forty points clear, and probably heading to the final.

But HANG ON!

Braid negs. Thirty five points.

Kohn trips over his tongue, but gets the answer out in the end. Twenty five points. Could they do it?

No (sorry to have built up your hopes, if I did). The gong follows soon after, with Imperial still twenty five points adrift.

Final Score: Imperial 135 - 160 Warwick

Probably a deserved win for Warwick that, but Imperial were an absolute delight and it was a pleasure to watch their evolution over the course of the tournament, especially Kohn’s performances on the buzzer.

I’m looking forward to the second semi-final next week, which also promises to be a barnstormer. See you then.

If you’ve enjoyed this, but can’t wait until next week for another fix of University Challenge, then you can check out my Patreon, where I’ve been reviewing the 2015/16 series.

#university challenge #bbc2 #warwick #imperial #jeremy paxman

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armsdealing · 3 years

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the worship of the dorados -- aequismo, also known as suxuhismo -- is a polytheistic, henotheistic religion that has background dating back at least five hundred years. it revolves around three main deities, dubbed laws, that are said to rule over all "matters of being and nonbeing" -- and two minor deities, which are said to be supporting agents to the laws.

the laws in question are called laws because aequismo acknowledges the existence of other gods from all other religions -- including the christian one -- but they believe that the laws have a preponderance over them. aequistas entertained the idea of multiple realities and parallel universes long before they became widely discussed in modern society/science, and they ascertained that all gods were gods within their realities, but that laws rule over the very fabric of all realities. the laws in question although personified in their worship are closer to the laws of physics than anything else. they are tenets that aequistas believe mold "existence itself". the tenets in question being retribution (justice), chaos (madness), and obliteration (death).

aequistas believe universes are made and unmade all the time at every point by the laws as need dictates. some universes live longer than others, whilst others last about a blink of the eye before they collapse unto themselves. the success of a universe depends on how well inhabitants can maintain the balance between the laws. too much retribution makes universes inhospitable to life. too much chaos disintegrates any possibility of stability. both prospects make it likelier for universes to fall and be obliterated.

they believe this earth is not the only earth there is, and that it is their duty as inhabitants of the earth to tend to the laws in order to ensure the survival -- or rather, the flourishment -- of all people. that means they base their practices not on hatred of the other but on love towards the other. they accept the unknown as natural and embrace change as necessary. that means aequists have always been on the progressive side of political discourse. members have always been firebrand and staunch in advocating for the rights of people, even before this was popular or safe. as a result they have always been objects of prosecution within their countries. aequist are staunchly anti-colonization, anti-imperialism, and anti-slavery, have been since the inception and solidification of their belief system. they have always been pro-worker, anti-racist, pro-lgbt (before the term existed), and anti-authority be it in the form of governments or the form of law enforcement. and because of their entrenched history opposed to the catholic church and their influence over what became known as latin america during colonial times, they are also -- on paper -- anti-christian, especially anti christian hegemony and anti christian power structures. on the other hand they tend to hold amicable relationships toward most other religious groups, with exceptions made for their fundamentalist/extremist/orthodox factions.

funnily enough, aequists in current times are considered to be an extremist hate group within the countries they inhabit (they have a widespread presence in most countries of the americas, especially colombia, venezuela mexico, brazil and the united states) if not a downright criminal organization. this because of the aforementioned anti-christian practices. aequistas have been linked to the burning of churches they considered to be manned by corrupt officials, and they have been linked to the assassination of religious authorities. because of their proximity to leftism, they are also presecuted by fascistic and conservative groups all the time -- aequistas, in turn, have a historied background of violently fighting back against the rise of conservatism within their countries.

aequism does not always present itself in the same way. being a henotheistic religion, worshippers may choose around which deity to center their practice. the carminista (justice) wing of the religion is the most well known, since they tend to be the most politically visible, while the desiderista and marenista wings are more centered around in-group efforts, or are subtler in how they reach out to outsiders. all wings are represented equally within the worship, all count with representatives (called ejecutantes) that are meant to work together for the betterment of all practitioners.

aequismo is a semi-closed practice. it is not impossible to become an aequista, and people from all walks of life are welcomed within their institutions, but it takes work to actually become a member and not everything is revealed right away and not everyone makes it in. aequistas do not openly disclose the full extent of their belief systems and ritualistic practices. many of them are a mystery even to this day, which fuels the mistrust many might have toward them. they have been referred to as satanists, as occultists, as cultists, as heretics, and as degenerates by their political enemies. fear-mongering about them has caused the public to fear them in the past, and while a lot of that fear has subsided (in no small part thanks to the aequistas' constant advocacy for the poor and marginalized), they are a controversial topic within their countries, especially since those countries still are under strong catholic or (in the case of the united states) protestant influence.

aequistas center their worship, like i said, around love of the other. they firmly believe that the things they do are done out of love. this love isn't soft, but it can be merciful if mercy is needed. it isn't always kind, but it is always compassionate toward those that require compassion. in turn, it can also be a merciless form of love. aequistas -- especially the carminista faction -- are not opposed to killing those they deem "evil"; authorites that abuse their power, that use it to lie and abuse others, tend to be their prime targets. they have a "no tolerance for the intolerant" policy within their circles, which mean that no form of bigotry is ever acceptable. usually a rehabilitative angle is employed first, but only if they consider it could work. if they think it won't -- as they think often in the case of nazis, rapists, and ethno-nationalists -- then death is considered to be the only solution.

the whole time, hatred toward these parties isn't the focus, but protection and compassion for their victims. just like they aren't above violent tactics, they are also very involved in their communities, engaging in mutual aid organizing, providing food, housing and medical assistance toward those that need it. this aspect of their engagement isn't publicized as often as their unrepentant violence, but it's just as ubiquitous -- if not even more so.

politically, though they won't back out from being called progressives or leftists, they openly oppose any more labels. they aren't marxists. they are not anarchists. they aren't socialists. they are aequistas. they will ally themselves to those they view as similarly-minded, and they usually happen to be leftists from all sorts of denominations, but they won't automatically ally themselves to any group that labels themselves leftist.

realitistically speaking, though, their stances are very much anarchistic in nature. politically they support progressive policities, and as i said, they're anti-imperialism, anti-racism and anti-facism. this all being said, i reiterate political advocacy isn't their main focus, so much as "human-centered" advocacy is. they focus on things that would strategically help the most number of people, and they organize their efforts around that. as a result, you won't find them linked to any official political party. you will always find them doing their own thing, and advocating for political pragmatism within their circles (when it comes to electoral politics) while pushing for progressive causes and doing things they think will disrupt the current status quo.

now, an important distinction needs to be made: not all aequistas are members of the dorados organization, but all dorados are aequistas. the dorados are a recent affair, comparatively -- starting out their activities around the 30-50s in colombia. it is an organization made mainly of carministas, and helmed by the reyes family. it represents the most militant members of the worship, and are usually the ones you catch on the news being arrested for beating up cops that were trying to extort money from immigrant-run businesses.

currently stronghold cities of aequista activity are miami, new york, los angeles, caracas, maracaibo, medellín, cartagena, panama city, mexico city, oaxaca de juarez, reynosa, rio de janeiro and sao paolo. they have smaller groups peppered through the americas.

#the quote is by anne sexton #* nueva religion.#worldbuilding.#me: im gonna make a detailed post about the dorados' belief system #me: doesnt even come close #it's a start though #the whole poem is actually fitting enough tbh which is a good surprise

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hovercraft79 · 4 years

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Don’t Cry Out Loud

Chapters: 1

Word Count: 8,093

Fandom: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)

Rating: Teen

Warnings: smoking and the difficulties in quitting

Summary: Hecate Hardbroom is used to being alone. She prefers it that way. At least, she thought she did until Ada Cackle returned to the Academy. Opening herself up to someone new carries great risk, but it might bring great rewards. Feelings bring laughter and tears – and something she didn’t realized she’d been missing so much.

Notes: This fic covers the prompt 5 Times and completes the first trilogy in the set (what I’ve affectionately dubbed The Kitten Chronicles because I haven’t been getting enough sleep).

The title comes the Melissa Manchester song, which includes the following lyrics if you aren’t familiar with it: “Don't cry out loud, just keep it inside, and learn how to hide your feelings.” Could these words describe Hecate Hardbroom any less? I think not.

Once again, Sparky has done her level best to curb my wayward commas and semi-colons.

Bleary-eyed and chilled from the flight, Ada touched down at the edge of Hecate’s garden. Shivering in the moonlight, Ada glanced at the pinkening sky and decided she had time for a cigarette before reporting for duty as Hecate’s laboratory assistant. She cast a light warming spell and summoned her cigarettes. Within minutes she was halfway through her first smoke and the day was looking much brighter indeed. Her mother had insisted she give it up, calling it a ‘filthy Ordinary habit,’ but Ada had found it difficult to do so. Instead, she’d reverted back to childhood and had taken to sneaking away and hiding whenever she could no longer ignore the craving.

Speaking of cravings, Ada thought she’d kill for a coffee right about now, but that wasn’t going to happen. There might be a hundred tea sets in the castle, but there wasn’t a coffee pot to be found. She doubted Hecate had one either.

She finished her smoke as the sun peeked over the horizon. Time to head inside. Casting a quick shower spell to dispel some of the cigarette odor, she ambled to the door, nearly tripping over a strange broomstick.

Ada looked closer. Not a strange broomstick – her mother’s. Wide awake now, Ada wondered what on earth her mother could be doing at Darkwood Cottage. She knocked on the door and stepped inside when it opened of its own accord.

Hecate and her mother were at the kitchen table, heads bent together over a tiny bundle between them. Quietly, so as not to startle, Ada walked closer.

“It’d been three days, so I’d hoped the mother would accept her, but this morning she’d been pushed out away from the others,” Alma said softly. “She was cold – maybe too cold. I hoped you might be able to help.”

“She’s very small, Mrs. Cackle, I don’t know if there’s much hope.”

Ada edged closer. A tiny kitten, wrapped in a kitchen towel, lay on the table between them. Hecate looked up at her, face wrinkled in sympathy and sadness. As they watched, the kitten, which had been feebly moving her paws, grew still.

“I knew it was a long shot,” Alma sighed, as she started to wrap the kitten in the towel.

“Hang on…” Ada picked up the wrapped kitten and began vigorously rubbing it through the towel. After a few seconds she checked the kitten again. Nothing. “It worked on 101 Dalmatians.”

A tear slipped down Hecate’s cheek. Then another. “What if I try…” She placed the tip of her finger on the kitten’s chest and loosed the tiniest stream of magic. The kitten jerked but nothing else. She did it again. This time the kitten jerked and then let out a very weak – but very angry – meow. “It worked!” She wiped more tears away with the heel of her hand. “Place a warming spell on the towel, Mrs. Cackle.” She leapt to her feet and hurried over to one of the cauldrons that had been set up for making the kitten inoculations. “Miss Cackle, if you’ll please gather some dried milk thistle… some echinacea…” She thought a moment. “Some burdock, I think.”

Ada was already collecting jars. “How about some dandelion to stimulate her appetite?”

“Very good.” Hecate already had the cauldron heating by the time Ada dropped the jars on the table. She summoned her mortar and pestle and began grinding the dried herbs into a fine powder.

“An infusion?” Ada asked, marveling at the speed with which Hecate’s hands flew.

“Eventually, when there’s proper time for it. For now, a decoction. It will be ready faster.” She measured out the ground herbs and added them to the cauldron. “We’ll need milk replacement. I can—”

“I’ll go have Mrs. Coriander make some up, if she hasn’t already,” Alma broke in. “I’ll transfer it back to you.” As she left, she pointed at Ada with her glasses. “You’d be wise to learn what you can from this one. See if you can talk her in to getting her credentials while you’re at it.”

Ada and Hecate looked at one another once Alma was gone. The soft bubbling of the cauldron was the only sound in the cottage, save for the occasional weak mewling of the kitten.

“Are you all right?” Ada asked. “It looked like—”

“I’m fine. Truly.” Hecate sniffed and tapped her spoon against the side of the cauldron. She waved a hand and cut the heat. “I just… I hate to see such a small animal suffer because its mother rejected it.”

“Her. Her mother,” Ada gently corrected. “Mother said she was a girl.”

Hecate wiped her eyes one last time before she ladled out a few ounces of the decoction. “Will you fetch me a dropper, please? Do you remember where they are?”

Ada nodded, thinking there was a lot more going on inside Hecate Hardbroom’s head than an abandoned kitten. “In the second drawer on the left.” She grabbed a dropper and joined Hecate on the sofa where she now sat cradling the kitten against her chest. “She’s a beautiful little girl, isn’t she?”

“Let’s hope she grows into a beautiful cat.” Hecate took the dropper and filled it with the decoction and then cooled the mixture with a spell. “Here we go, little one,” she cooed. “This will make you feel better.” Drop by drop, Hecate coaxed the liquid into the kitten. Ada watched as the serious young woman transformed into a fluffy pile of cuteness as she cuddled and coddled the kitten.

A glass jar appeared on the kitchen table. “There’s the food. Do you want to give her some now?” Hecate nodded, so Ada went to get it. She couldn’t help but smile as she watched Hecate feed two droppers of food. Finally, she tore herself away and set about turning one of the garden baskets into a kitten bed.

Hecate lingered over the kitten, adjusting and readjusting the blanket until she was satisfied that the kitten would stay warm. Finally, Ada placed a hand on Hecate’s shoulder. “You’ve done everything you can do for her,” she said, comfortingly. “Why don’t we let her rest and get started on the potions for the rest of the kittens.”

Hecate nodded and let Ada lead her back to the worktable.

-----

The ache in Ada’s shoulders burned straight to the bone. She couldn’t stop stirring, though. The kitten inoculations were at a critical stage. Stir too quickly or too slowly – or less than the required one hundred anti-clockwise turns of the ladle – and the potions would be ruined.

Gritting her teeth, Ada risked a glance at Hecate. The woman radiated exhaustion. Right now, she was measuring out ground snail shells while holding a bottle for the kitten balanced on her knees. Thankfully, the kitten had survived for four days now. Unfortunately, that meant Hecate was up feeding her every two to three hours. Most of the time, she schooled her face into its usual serious expression. Now, though, when she didn’t know Ada was looking, the tiredness couldn’t be missed.

At last, Ada counted one hundred. She dropped her arms at once, bringing her hands up to rub her deltoids. “I’m going to feel that tomorrow,” she said, though she knew Hecate wouldn’t hear her. She cut the heat from the cauldrons and left the contents to cool.

“Let me have her,” Ada said, reaching for the kitten.

Hecate started, blinking rapidly before she handed the kitten over. She leaned over and looked in the jar before she frowned and dumped the ground snail shells back into the pestle to measure again.

“Leave it, dear. Come have a bit of tea and a rest.” She squeezed Hecate’s shoulder before moving to settle onto the sofa.

Hecate looked at the mismeasured snail shells and the slight tremor in her hands. “Perhaps for a moment…” She waved her hand and the tea kettle started to whistle. In a moment she had two cups of tea poured. “I believe you take…two sugars?”

“Three.”

Grimacing, Hecate added another spoonful and handed Ada her cup. “We’ve made good progress,” Hecate said, mostly to have something to say. It was harder now, she realized, dealing with people. Gwen had encouraged her to make friends as though it was something easy, like a duplication potion or transference.

Thinking back, it was easy with Indigo – when the adventure and excitement of breaking the rules had cemented their bond. Of course, she’d been Joy then, a completely different person. It had been harder with Pippa. She’d been determined to endure her punishment alone. For reasons she still didn’t fully understand, Pippa had been even more determined that she wouldn’t. Pippa hadn’t been put off by her silence or awkwardness. It didn’t matter if Hecate didn’t know what to say – Pippa kept talking until she did. She wouldn’t let Hecate retreat into silent solitude, not too much, anyway. And Hecate had loved her for that – enough to set her free in the most unequivocal way imaginable.

Ada didn’t do that, at least not as much. For some reason, Ada seemed to want to hear what Hecate had to say, even when Hecate didn’t know what that would be. She didn’t seem to mind the quiet though, and gave Hecate however much time she needed to work it out.

“Hecate?”

“Mp?” Hecate leaned forward, her eyebrows rising in question. Ada had asked her something. She had no idea what. “I’m sorry…”

“I asked if you were all right. I think I have my answer, though.” She stroked the black fur on the kittens back. “You’re overtired.”

“I’m fine.”

Ada raised an eyebrow. “I can smell the Wide-Awake potion from here. You need to get some proper rest. It’s not healthy to go without sleep for so long.” Try as she might to avoid it, Ada could hear her mother’s voice in every word.

Hecate raised a brow of her own. “And I can smell the cigarette smoke from here. You’ve promised to stop. It’s not healthy to smoke.”

Ada held her gaze, keeping her expression stern for a good thirty seconds before dissolving into a fit of giggles. “At least I know you won’t be blowing the smoke up my arse because I’m the Headmistress’s daughter.”

“I’m so sorry!” Hecate said, dropping her head into her hands. “I don’t know what came over me!”

Setting her teacup down, Ada placed a hand on Hecate’s knee. “You’re exhausted. We’ve been working all day on the potions, and you’ve been up all hours taking care of this wee one.” She stroked the sleeping kitten’s back. She pulled her hand back. “Why don’t you let me take her tonight? I’ll see to it she gets fed and you can get an honest-to-goodness real night’s sleep.”

Ada watched the battle between sleep and responsibility play out across Hecate’s face. She decided to try and tip the scales. “You’ll be more efficient tomorrow, you know.”

Finally, Hecate’s lips twisted into a wry smile. “I’m sure you’re right.” She glanced down at the kitten. “You’ll feed her every two hours? And keep her warm?”

“Cross my heart,” Ada said, both relieved and suddenly nervous. She knew how seriously Hecate took her work. She’d only realized yesterday how seriously she took caring for the kitten. Ada had made the mistake of asking Hecate if her familiar would help care for the kitten. Hecate had quietly explained that she didn’t have a familiar. That her familiar, Warwick, had been confiscated after her first infraction. He’d bonded with a girl a couple of years below her, and Hecate had never had another. Ada wasn’t sure if that was due to lack of desire or if it had simply been another part of her ridiculous punishment. “Tell you what, why don’t I finish bottling up the potions from today and get set up for tomorrow. You can finish whatever you’re working on and we can both start fresh tomorrow.”

“That would be… very kind of you.”

At first, Ada thought the early morning sunlight was playing tricks on her. She leaned forward, increasing her speed. She felt the kitten writhe against her stomach; she didn’t like being squashed. Blinking against the wind, Ada realized that it was smoke she was seeing rising above the trees. Exactly where Darkwood Cottage sat tucked into the forest. Green smoke, Ada could see now, definitely a potions accident. She flew even faster, skidding to a stop at the edge of the gardens.

“Merciful Merlin!” she exclaimed when she spotted Hecate sitting on the ground outside with her knees against her chest, arms wrapped tightly around them. Leaping from the broom, Ada raced to Hecate’s side. “Are you hurt?” She knelt beside Hecate, checking her for injuries. Other than red, swollen eyes, Hecate seemed to be unharmed. “Can you see?”

“Well enough to watch weeks worth of work go up in smoke.” Hecate’s words seemed to claw their way out of her throat.

Ada tried to place a hand on Hecate’s cheek, but she jerked her head away. “Shhh… let me see.” Gently, she pulled Hecate’s head around so she could get a better look at her eyes. Tears streamed down her face. Ada had no idea if they were caused by the smoke or the frustration. “Keep crying, dear. It will flush out your eyes.” She summoned the pitcher of water that usually sat on Hecate’s kitchen counter. “Tilt your head.” Ada boosted herself onto her knees and carefully washed Hecate’s eyes. Finally, Hecate waved her away.

“I’m fine,” she croaked before taking a drink straight from the pitcher. “Such a waste.”

“Do you know what happened?” Ada shifted until she was sitting cross-legged beside Hecate. The smoke streaming out the windows was beginning to thin. At least there didn’t seem to be any structural damage. “Here, someone missed you.” She handed the kitten over to Hecate, who immediately cradled it under her chin. “You’re going to have to give that kitten a name soon.”

Hecate shook her head, tears spilling anew. “That’s a privilege that belongs to her new mistress.” She kissed the kitten’s head, nonetheless. “It destabilized when I added scales from an adder. I believe the scales to be correct; however, it appears I miscalculated when choosing the species.”

“We’ll sort it, Hecate. Don’t you fret. You know I’ll help however you need me to.”

Hecate wiped fresh tears away. “I know. Thank you. Ada.” Perhaps this friendship thing wasn’t so difficult after all.

-----

A week had passed, and Ada and Hecate had fallen into an easy, comfortable working relationship. Thankfully, the damage to the cottage from Hecate’s lab accident had been minimal and they hadn’t lost much time. Once the smoke had cleared, they’d spent the morning cleaning out the spare bedroom, scrubbing the cauldron and casting cleaning spells over everything else. The astringent smell had lingered for a day or two, but they’d managed. Hecate’s eyes remained red and watery even longer, but that had faded as well.

No, the physical damage had been minimal. The toll it took on Hecate, though… Ada sighed as she felt Hecate hovering again. “Any problems?” she asked, forcing brightness into her voice. She couldn’t fault her for being overly cautious, but the constant monitoring was beginning to wear.

“I’m sorry.” Hecate stepped back. “You know everything is correct. You don’t have to humor me.”

Ada smiled, genuinely. “Of course, I do. You’ve only just now stopped looking like you have distemper. I don’t blame you for being extra careful.”

Hecate arched a thin, slightly scorched eyebrow but said nothing. Instead, she walked over to the storage shelves to get more swampweed.

It wasn’t there.

She ran her hand along the neatly labeled jars. St. John’s Wort, starfish, stevia, tarragon, toadflax… She checked the list again. “Do you have the swampweed?”

Ada kept her eyes on the immunity boosting potion as it simmered. If it boiled too fast, it would lose effectiveness, leaving the familiars susceptible to a particularly nasty immunodeficiency virus. A familiar with the virus would be unable to resist the effects of stray magic, not so dangerous once the cat – and its mistress – were fully grown. It could be devastating to a young cat surrounded by young witches with poor control, though. “No… I think it was one of the ingredients damaged by the smoke. Absorbed it, as I recall.”

Hecate remembered now. She’d have to gather more before they could make the last potion. Sighing, she turned back to Ada. “We’ll have to replace it before we can brew the next batch of the immunity potion.” It would put them even further behind, but it couldn’t be helped.

“Tomorrow then?” Ada cooled the cauldron a bit. Behind them, angry mewing rose from a basket near the fireplace. “Someone’s hungry.”

“Someone’s always hungry.” Hecate summoned a bottle of the kitten’s food and set to feeding her.

Ada’s stomach growled in sympathy. Hecate wouldn’t allow her to smoke in the cottage, so she’d put her mind to quitting. Now all she thought about was having a cigarette. Or sweets. She’d never had much of a sweet tooth before, but the lack of nicotine left a vacuum that cakes and biscuits were filling with a vengeance.

“Ada! She’s opened her eyes!” Hecate held the kitten up for her to see. “Look at you, little blue eyes,” she cooed. “You’re getting to be such a big girl.”

Shaking her head, Ada added one sliver of cat’s claw root to each cauldron. No one would ever believe that the stoic Miss Hardbroom would ever talk baby talk to a kitten. Even watching it happen, Ada wasn’t sure she believed it.

She knew the kitten wasn’t out of the woods yet, but it had been more than a week now and she was still alive – growing even, though she remained far smaller than the other kittens. Ada certainly hoped the kitten continued to thrive. She shuddered to think how Hecate would react if she didn’t survive.

At last, the potion turned clear and Ada could cut the heat entirely and leave the cauldrons to cool. She glanced out the window, eyeing her smoking log with longing. She settled for broken biscuit pulled out of her jacket pocket instead.

“I have more nutritious food, Ada.”

“I’mpf shurr you doo,” she said around a mouth full of biscuit. She swallowed. “I don’t want anything nutritious, though.”

Hecate looked up from where she’d been wriggling her fingers in front of the kitten’s eyes. “I expect you want one of your loathsome ciga-rrrrettes.”

“More than you can imagine, thank you for reminding me.” She decided to let the overly dramatic rolling of the ‘r’ in cigarette pass without comment. Ada scratched at her scalp with both hands, making her already wild hair even wilder. She needed to change the subject. “About the swampweed… What do you say we go gather more tomorrow? This time of year, there should be plenty at the south end of the lake. I could stand to gather a few other plants myself. How would you like to make a day of it?”

“A d-day?” Hecate looked behind her, as though Ada might be talking to someone else. “I don’t… I can’t imagine you’d enjoy spending the day with me.”

Ada’s face softened. “Then you need to broaden your imagination. I’d like nothing better than to get out of these four walls and into the sunshine and enjoy the lake, a bit of nature, and perhaps even a picnic. And I am quite certain that I will enjoy all of those things even more whilst in your company.”

Hecate wanted to argue, to demur, to make some sort of excuse… But in her head she could hear Miss Bat saying – very clearly – not to overthink this and simply say yes. “Very well.”

“Splendid!” Ada clapped her hands. “Meet me in mother’s office just after dawn. We’ll let her kitten-sit for the day.” She saw Hecate hold the kitten closer. “You can leave her detailed instructions.”

The sun had been up for ten minutes, and Ada was beginning to think that Hecate might not come. Had she pushed her too much to take a day off? She moved to the window, scanning the tree line. She stole a glance at her mother. She’d expected to find her irritated, both with the hour and with Ada. Instead, she sat serenely at her desk, sipping her tea.

“You’re going to worry yourself into a right state, Ada. She’ll be here.” Alma summoned a pastry and nibbled at the edges. “I’m so glad you ordered from Cosie’s. It’s been ages since I’ve had one of their butteries.”

“That’s why I ordered double.” Ada forced herself away from the window. “You don’t think I pushed her too hard about it?”

“It’s possible. It’s also possible I’ve been so keen to give her privacy that I’ve allowed her to isolate herself.” She conjured a plate and placed her pastry on it. “Don’t think of it as pushing her in a direction she doesn’t want to go. Think of it as pulling her along an unfamiliar path.”

Before Ada had a chance to respond, Hecate transferred into the office, appearing with a soft pop. “Apologies, Ada.” She held up a woven basket with one hand and a bulging satchel with the other. “I underestimated how long it would take to feed the kitten and gather her things.”

“Aye,” Alma said, shooting Ada a knowing look. “Children will do that to the best laid plans. It doesn’t matter how furry the child in question may be.” She took the basket from Hecate and peered inside. “She looks a great deal better than she did last time I saw her.” Alma eyed the satchel. “Are you sure you brought enough supplies? She’ll be here most of the day.”

Ada tried to stifle a snort with her hand but failed miserably. Hecate colored. “I didn’t know what she’d need.”

“Never you mind, Miss Hardbroom,” Alma said briskly. “I’ve tended kittens before. Get on with you then.” She gestured towards the door. “Have a good time.”

Ada transferred them to the front gates before summoning their brooms. In no time they were airborne, skimming over the treetops. Hecate’s hat sat smartly atop her head, but Ada had left her auburn hair loose and she relished the feeling of it streaming behind her. There would be hell to pay later when she tried to brush it, but right now she didn’t care.

She grinned across at Hecate and was rewarded with a full smile. The younger witch sat easy and relaxed on her broom – her form was impeccable. Ada remembered seeing Hecate’s name on more than one trophy for broomstick aerobatics. She noticed Hecate slowing and pulled up herself.

“We’re nearing the edge of the Academy grounds,” Hecate explained, looking embarrassed.

Ada circled around and pulled her broom alongside Hecate’s. “Can you feel it? The boundary?”

Hecate nodded. She didn’t like to talk about it, but she didn’t sense any malice from Ada, only curiosity. “When I get too close there’s a… thrumming… in my chest. The closer I get, the more powerful it becomes.” And more painful, she thought.

“We want to avoid that, then.” Ada thought for a moment. “Have you ever tried it?”

“Tried what?” Hecate asked, even though she knew exactly what Ada was asking her.

“To leave the grounds.”

Half a dozen times at least, she thought. “Once or twice. It isn’t pleasant.” She remembered the first time she’d tried it, less than a week after the sentence had been imposed. Her skin felt like it had been on fire, while her muscles spasmed and her head felt like it had been stuffed with an angry hornet’s nest. She’d been immediately transferred into Mrs. Cackle’s office, sobbing and gasping for breath. She didn’t know what she’d expected when she’d looked up into the Headmistress’s shocked face, but it hadn’t been getting helped gently to the sofa or the tea and biscuits she’d received.

“No, I don’t imagine that it is,” Ada said softly. “I’m sorry if you don’t care to talk about it. I’d just rather learn about it from you. But please, dear, don’t hesitate to tell me to mind my business.”

“I – I don’t mind. Really.” And Hecate was surprised to find that she didn’t. Ada might be curious, but she didn’t make Hecate feel like a curiosity. “We should get on with it, though. The swampweed can be gathered at any time, but it’s most potent if it’s picked at noon.”

“Quite right, Hecate, quite right.” Ada glanced at the sun, which still hung low in the sky. “We should be able to restock our sneezewort, slug’s eggs, and ninetailed mushrooms before we head to the pond.”

By the time they made it to the shady end of the lake, Ada was more than ready to roll up her trouser legs and wade into the water. “It’s a bit warmer than I expected.” She stepped into the cool water. The morning had been most pleasant, save for an unfortunate incident with the sneezewort. They hadn’t talked much, but the quiet had been comfortable. Ada had watched Hecate’s shoulders loosen, and she’d smiled more as the morning progressed. Once, Ada thought she’d heard her humming to herself as she’d picked a basketful of mushrooms. “I don’t know about you, bu – bu – BUCHOOO!” Ada sneezed for the umpteenth time since she’d stumbled into the patch of sneezewort. “Bloody hell, will it never stop?”

“It should wear off… eventually,” Hecate smirked. “I told you that you were trying to carry too much at once.” She magicked her skirt into a pair of shorts and followed Ada into the lake.

“So you did.” Ada spied a particularly robust growth of swampweed and waded over to pick some. “Be careful, the bottom is a bit mossy o – o – OOOCHOOOO!” Ada’s sneeze knocked her off balance, sending her teetering on the edge of falling, arms flailing, basket of swampweed flying into the air. With a great splash she toppled onto her arse in the water.

“Ada!” Hecate hurried over, slipping and sliding, nearly losing her balance herself.

Trying to stand, Ada slipped again, this time tumbling headfirst into the swampweed. She came up sputtering, her hair sopping wet and hanging in her face. “Bugger all,” she wheezed.

“Are you hurt?” Worried brown eyes roamed over Ada’s face as gentle hands flipped her hair back so she could see.

“Only my pride.” Ada wiped the rest of her hair out of her eyes. She looked Hecate up and down where she stood, thigh deep in the water beside her. “You’re too dry.”

“What? I don’t know what you—” Too late, she saw the mischievous glint in Ada’s eye. “No, no, no!” She tried to scramble away but slipped as well, plopping into the muck beside Ada.

“There you go! That’s better, isn’t it?”

“Hardly,” Hecate groused, splashing a face full of water at Ada. Belatedly, she realized what she’d done. “I’m so sorry!”

Ada carefully plucked a bit of swampweed from her cheek. “Oh. You will be.” She splashed Hecate back. Within seconds the pond erupted in all-out war – water and muck flying as each woman squealed and tried to inflict as much damage as possible.

Each time Hecate tried to stand, Ada would push her back over. Finally, Hecate retaliated by dunking herself and grabbing Ada’s feet, tipping her over and dunking her before she retreated to deeper water, Ada in hot pursuit.

Ada tried to catch up, but Hecate was faster. She beat Ada to the bank, scrambling up and collapsing in a fit of laughter. Finally, Ada managed to crawl up beside her, flopping on her stomach in the sun.

“You… look… like an… absolute… bog witch,” Hecate gasped, laughing so hard she was crying.

“Have you seen you?” Ada said, giggling as she pointed at Hecate’s mud-caked knees and what was left of her bedraggled bun.

Hecate looked down at herself, causing the rest of her bun to flop forward into her face. She laughed even harder, tears streaming down her face. She tried to wipe them away but succeeded only in smearing more mud across her cheek. She shifted until she was on her back next to Ada. Still giggling, she turned to look at her. “Thank you for inviting me, Ada. I needed this.”

“We both did, I think.” Ada closed her eyes, basking in the sun. “We both did.”

-----

They were everywhere. Moving, writhing… meowing. “How on earth are we meant to keep them all straight?” A quick check over her shoulder told her Hecate didn’t share her concerns. In fact, the younger woman looked quite serene, save for the tiny, bemused smile on her lips. “There’s something about all this that you aren’t telling me.”

“Have you really never done this before?” Hecate couldn’t believe it.

“I told you, we weren’t allowed.” She fussed with the cuffs of the long-sleeve denim shirt Hecate had recommended she wear. “The one time Mother allowed us to help, Agatha had them so riled up before we’d even started that she called the whole thing off for the day. Needless to say, we were shuttled far away each time after that.”

“I would think so,” Hecate said, smirking.

Ada rolled her eyes but said nothing. It had been four weeks since they’d begun brewing potions for the kittens, and now it was time for their first doses. Ada had no idea how to manage it. Hecate had been seeing to it for the past several years and had been subtly teasing her about it.

Hecate hadn’t been as open and free since that day at the lake, but she’d seemed more at ease with Ada. She smiled more often, laughed occasionally. Rarest of all were the times Hecate would gently tease Ada. Even her mother had noticed the change. Speaking of… Ada thought.

“Mother did say she was coming, didn’t she?”

“Not exactly,” Hecate reminded her. “She said she’d send reinforcements.” A plaintive yowl sounded from the doorway. “And I believe said reinforcements have arrived.” She knelt down and rubbed the ears of Alma Cackle’s crotchety old familiar, Astra. “Good morning, Mr. Astra. Don’t you look handsome today.” Astra rubbed his head against Hecate’s palm before turning and biting her thumb. “Ouch! That’s enough of that then.” Hecate stood up and cast a quick healing spell on the bite marks. “Let’s get on with it, then.”

Ada watched the exchange, puzzled. “She sent Astra? How… what… We already have enough cats!”

“If you send for Pendle, he can learn to help as well.” Hecate opened the box holding the phials and droppers. “Wouldn’t hurt to be prepared for when your mother retires.” Hecate looked up at her and raised an eyebrow. “She will you know, like it or not.”

“Don’t remind me,” Ada said, sighing.

She picked up the nearest kitten and carried it over so Hecate could squirt a dropper full of the first potion, then the next and then the last. By the time the third dropper came ‘round, the kitten wanted no part of it. Ada struggled to hold it still enough for Hecate to administer the dropper, getting rewarded for her efforts with a handful of scratches. She healed them before picking up the next kitten.

Slowly, they made their way through the kittens. Ada tried to keep track of which ones they’d dosed but was lost by the third one. “We should have marked them,” she said.

“If we didn’t have Astra, that would certainly be true.” Hecate turned to Alma’s cat, who sat in a square of sunshine, lazily licking his leg. “Would you please fetch the next one?”

Alma watched as Astra slowly climbed to his feet, stretched magnificently, and ambled over to a kitten that was busy chasing its tail. He gave it a sniff and a lick before grabbing it by the scruff of the neck and dragging it over to Ada.

As the morning progressed, Astra dragged kitten after kitten to Ada. Almost every time the routine was the same: a sniff, a lick, and a grab followed by Hecate dosing and Ada bleeding. She’d drain her magic dry healing scratches before the day was over. At last, only one dose was left.

“Where’s the last one?” Ada asked Astra. Unsurprisingly, Astra didn’t answer. “Twenty kittens, twenty phials, correct?”

“That is correct.” Hecate turned to Astra, waiting with her arms crossed. After a moment, he hopped off the table and went to stand near the corner. “I should have guessed. Thank you, Astra.” She turned to Ada. There’s always one that manages to hide away in the far corner. I’ll be right back with it.”

Hecate crouched behind the table before crawling under on her hands and knees.

Just as Hecate disappeared, Geraldine Gullet stepped into the kitten room. “Potions day for the little ones, hey? That’s quite the job. You should have asked me for help.” None to gently, she nudged a kitten aside with her boot. “At least you don’t have that Hardbroom girl with you – strange one, she is. What sort of a witch doesn’t have a familiar?” She lowered her voice and leaned in, whispering conspiratorially, “I tell you there’s something not right about that one. Mark my words. You’d do well to give her a wide berth.”

Ada’s eyes narrowed. “While I appreciate your concern, I believe I’ll keep my own counsel as far as Miss Hardbroom is concerned.”

Geraldine shrugged and made her way back to the door. “Suit yourself, then, but don’t say I didn’t warn ye. Anyways, if you see her, tell her Mrs. Cackle is looking for her. She’s got a visitor – that same stuffy old toff that comes every year about this time to meet with her. Don’t know what that’s about, but it can’t be anything good. Mind yourself, Miss Cackle.” She closed the door with a click.

Ada hurried to the corner as Hecate slowly rose to her feet, holding the recalcitrant kitten. “She’s right you know… you would do well to give me a… wide berth.”

“Nonsense. I’d be a poor witch indeed if I took Geraldine Gullet’s advice over the evidence of my own two eyes.” She waited for Hecate to dose the last kitten. “About that woman…”

Before Hecate could find the words, the door opened again. This time it was Alma, followed by a woman Ada had never seen before. She certainly fit Miss Gullet’s description of a stuffy old toff.

“Miss Hardbroom,” the woman said, stepping in front of Mrs. Cackle and lifting a hand to her forehead. “Well met, Hecate. It’s been a while.”

“Well met, Mistress Hagsmet.” She glanced quickly at Ada before turning back to the woman. “I believe it’s been a year.”

“Yes.” She smiled gently. “Shall we take a walk?”

“As you wish.” Hecate handed Ada the empty phial and followed Mistress Hagsmet out of the room.

Once they’d gone, Ada turned to her mother. “Who is that woman?”

“Eudora Hagsmet. Remember when I told you that I’d retained a counselor for Joy after the incident?” Ada nodded. “She’s the one. She’s been seeing Hecate since she was thirteen years old. Several times a week to start, then weekly, then monthly. Now I ask her to come once a year. On the anniversary of the day Indigo turned to stone.”

“Today?” Ada wrung her hands together. “She never said a word.”

“Would she?” Alma cocked her head and regarded her daughter. “Aye. I think she would, eventually.” She gestured towards the door. “Come, daughter. Let’s go have a spot of tea.”

As the afternoon crawled along, Ada alternated between sneaking out for cigarettes and going through the motions of sipping tea and nibbling biscuits with her mother. For her part, Alma dutifully ignored the faint odor of tobacco smoke while trying to keep up conversation in fits and spurts. A thought occurred to Ada during one of the bouts of silence. “Is this the tenth year? Since it happened?”

“Eleventh.”

Ada nodded. At least there was that. Ada couldn’t help but feel as though a significant anniversary of it should have been marked somehow. She felt the magic shift as Mistress Hagsmet transferred into Alma’s office.

“I thought I’d take my leave, Alma.”

Alma pushed herself out of her chair and met her in the middle of the room. “Thank you for stopping by, Eudora. How did she seem to you?”

“Now, Alma… you know I can’t discuss our session. How has she seemed to you lately?”

Alma considered her answer. “Less isolated, I suppose. To be honest, you’d do well to ask Ada, my oldest daughter. She and Hecate have been working together on inoculations for the familiars all summer.”

“That may explain it, then,” Mistress Hagsmet said, not unkindly.

“Explain what?” Alma didn’t like the way that sounded.

“As I said, I can’t go into the things we discussed during our session.” She smiled gently at Ada. “I can say I’m pleased that Hecate is increasing her social interactions.” Her smile faded and turned sad. “She could use a friend about now.”

Ada didn’t need to be told twice. She cast out her magic in the direction she thought Hecate to be. Finding her hunch to be right, Ada transferred out of the office.

She appeared at the edge of the clearing where Indigo stood, frozen in stone. She found Hecate lying face-down on the ground. One arm cushioned her face while the other one stretched out over her head, her hand resting on Indigo’s foot. Where she stood, Ada could hear her sobs.

Ada crept closer, careful not to startle Hecate, but not wanting to disturb her either. When she was close enough, she sat cross-legged on the ground. She was close enough to touch Hecate, but she didn’t. Instead she simply waited, letting comforting waves of magic roll off her body. She knew Hecate would feel it.

After a while, Hecate lifted her head and turned her red, puffy eyes on Ada. “I forgot today was the day. How could… What kind of person forgets something like that?” Sobs wracked her body even harder.

“A good person. A person who’s been grieving a long time.” She shifted until she could rest a hand lightly on Hecate’s forearm. She gave it a light squeeze and settled in for a long evening. As long as Hecate was here, she would stay beside her.

-----

“I do wish you’d consider it,” Ada said as she stoppered the last phial of the last dose of Anti-Hex potion for the new familiars. “Just because you have your teaching credentials doesn’t mean you’d have to use them; you’d simply have another option available to you.” She couldn’t miss the dubious look in Hecate’s eyes.

She held the sealed phial in front of the kitten, allowing her to sniff, then lick it. Still small for her age, the now six-week-old kitten had taken to sitting on the edge of the table like a tiny black sentinel, watching them work and occasionally meowing her approval – and once, hissing at Ada when she’d picked up the wrong ingredient.

“Ada. You know… why I’m not suited.” Hecate shifted her eyes to packing up the vaccinations. Tomorrow they’d give the kittens their third and final round of potions.

“Nonsense! Who better to instruct young witches on the importance of adhering to the Code than someone who understands the temptation – and the consequences?” Since the anniversary of Indigo’s turning, Hecate had been more open with Ada about it. She almost seemed relieved to have someone to talk to besides Mistress Hagsmet. “If you’re worried about moving back into the castle, I assure you that wouldn’t be an issue. You could live here in the cottage, but you’d have a full potions lab at your disposal as well as all the ingredients you can’t get as an individual.”

Hecate rolled her eyes as she snapped the satchel closed. “You’re pulling out the large cauldron, I see. That’s hardly sporting.”

“Perhaps not. It makes it no less true, however,” Ada said, thinking back to the incident in question.

It had been just over a week ago when Ada had arrived at Darkwood Cottage to find Hecate in something of a state. After some gentle – but persistent – inquiries, Hecate had finally summoned a letter, which she angrily shoved into Ada’s hands before shutting herself away in the spare bedroom she used as a lab. The letter, from some bureaucrat whose name Ada didn’t recognize, was little more than a form letter denying Hecate’s request to order more adder scales. They were very sorry, but Magic Council regulations required anyone ordering restricted ingredients to fill out a standard form detailing the requester’s background, credentials, and intended use of the requested item. Ada had seen it before; in fact, she’d filled several out while restocking the potions stores for Cackle’s.

She’d knocked briskly on the bedroom door before opening it and letting herself in. Inside, Hecate sat on a stool, leaning over the scattered ingredients of a potion in progress. Compared to the ordered brewing stations in the living room, the overturned jars and disorderly equipment spoke volumes about Hecate’s level of distress. Though Hecate hadn’t said so, and Ada hadn’t asked, Ada was certain that this lab was reserved for Hecate’s most important work: searching for a potion that would restore Indigo Moon.

“Have you tried filling out the form? I’ve done several. I could help.”

Hecate had looked at her with utter despair – despair for herself and despair at Ada’s apparent stupidity. “Do you honestly think I would pass the background check? A witch with a lifetime confinement for misusing magic?”

Embarrassed that she hadn’t realized it herself, Ada snapped back, “Well you got them before! How did you manage it the first time? Or should I not ask?”

She’d seen the change at once, the way Hecate had stiffened and her eyes had shuttered. The way her face smoothed into an emotionless mask. “I’m sorry,” Ada had said at once. “That was uncalled for on my part. It was stupid of me not to realize the problem, and I hate being stupid. I shouldn’t have barked at you, though. It was inexcusable. How can I help?”

“You can’t.” Hecate had whispered.

They’d spent the rest of the day working in strained politeness; Ada cursed herself every time she saw the wariness in Hecate’s eyes. At the end of the day, before she’d mounted her broom to fly back to Cackle’s, Ada had grasped Hecate’s hands and apologized once more. “I am truly sorry, Hecate. I hope that I will be able to earn your forgiveness – and your trust again. Meanwhile, I know how I can be of some small help: let me order the things you need. I know you need more adder scales, but make me a list and get on it straight away.”

It had taken two more days for the wariness to leave Hecate’s eyes and another three before things felt normal. Yesterday, Hecate had shyly given her a list of ingredients that required a permit.

“I suppose you could simply order me to do it,” Hecate said, quietly.

Ada looked up sharply. “What?” Lost in her thoughts, Ada realized she had also lost the thread of the conversation.

“I said you could simply order me to do it. To get my teaching credentials.” Hecate’s voice sounded even, but the rigidness in her posture gave her away.

“I most certainly could not! You may be confined here, Hecate Hardbroom, but that gives me no more authority over you than anyone else.” The tension visibly left Hecate’s shoulders. “I can’t tell you what to do, Hecate.” She grinned ruefully. “That doesn’t mean I won’t tell you what I think you ought to do, though. Apparently, I’m a bit of a busybody. According to Agatha, it’s my worst flaw.”

A smile crept across Hecate’s face. “She’s not wrong.” She summoned a small blue box and held it out to Ada. “But since it’s a flaw I also seem to possess… I’ll try to overlook it. I wanted to thank you for… everything you’ve done for me this summer.”

Ada knew Hecate meant more than just the potions. “It’s been a pleasure.” She took the box, admiring the fanciful bow tying it shut. “You needn’t have…”

“Oh. I needed to, believe me.” She gestured for Ada to open the box. The kitten walked across the table and sniffed the box, gingerly batting at the ribbon with a tiny paw. “That’s not for you, little one.” Hecate scooped the kitten up and scratched behind her ears.

“She can have this part,” Ada said, pulling the ribbon free, shaking it in the kitten’s face, and then dropping it to the floor. She waited as the kitten half climbed, half fell down Hecate’s skirt to chase after it. “She’s definitely a spunky little thing, isn’t she?”

“She’ll make some lucky girl an excellent familiar.”

Ada looked up in time to see a stricken look pass swiftly across Hecate’s face. “Indeed she will,” Ada murmured, as she slowly recognized what had been in front of her for weeks. “In fact, I’d say she—”

“Please, Ada… just… open the box.” She reached over and lifted a corner of the lid, forcing Ada to finish the job or risk having the lid flipped to the floor.

Inside the box sat thirty small doses of a potion Ada didn’t recognize. She picked up one of the phials and uncorked it, sniffing its contents much like the kitten had sniffed the box. Brilliant blue, it smelled faintly of flowers and smoke.

“It’s to help you stop smoking,” Hecate supplied. “You take one phial each day, in order.” She turned the bottle in Ada’s hand so she could read the label: Day Seven. “I mixed lobelia to mimic the nicotine, mugwort to negate any jitteriness and to help you relax. It also contains passion flower to ease the symptoms of withdrawal, like your cravings. Perhaps you won’t need quite so many biscuits.”

“Hecate… I can’t… you made this? I mean, you came up with the potion? For me?” Ada couldn’t even begin to imagine the time Hecate had spent on this. On her.

“You’ve been… kind to me… No.” She shook her head, frowning at herself. “You’ve been the first friend I’ve had in years. I’d like to keep you around.”

“Stacking the odds in your favor?”

“Bringing out the big cauldron,” Hecate replied, grinning broadly now.

Ada tucked the phial back into the box and replaced the lid. “I’ll start it first thing in the morning.” She leaned over to pick up the ribbon but saw that the kitten was busy wrestling it into submission against Hecate’s foot. “I think I’ll just leave the ribbon here.”

Hecate’s smile faded. “I’ll bring it tomorrow when I come to dose the kittens. I’ll bring her too. It’s time she joined the others to get ready for her new mistress.”

“Hecate,” Ada said, gently. “She has a mistress.” Ada leaned across the table, bending down enough so she could look up into Hecate’s eyes. “You.”

“My familiar was confiscated.” Hecate wiped a small tear away as it slipped from her eye. “I – I couldn’t choose another.” A second tear joined the first.

“I understand. I’d never be able to choose another if something happened to Pendle. But sometimes it’s not up to us. Sometimes, it’s the familiar who does the choosing.” She gestured down at the kitten who was now waging a great battle against the hem of Hecate’s skirt. “You, my dear, have been chosen.”

Stifling a sob, Hecate bent down, picking up the squirming kitten with as much reverence as possible. “You’re sure?” She paid no attention to the tears tracing down her cheeks and dripping onto the kitten.

“Positive. Now, it’s high time this little girl had a name. What’ll it be?”

Hecate held the kitten up in front of her face, staring into eyes that hadn’t quite yet decided if they would be green or yellow. “Morgana. Her name is Morgana.”

“An excellent choice.” Ada reached out and scratched the kitten’s haunches. “Well met, Morgana Hardbroom. Well met, indeed.”

#hackle summer trope challenge #tww2017 #hackle #hecate hardbroom #ada cackle

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ms-maj · 4 years

Note

Most talented, mal!!! Number 14! Love that you’re writing holiday drabbles.

Lovely, Sarah, number 14 is all ready for you :) Also, maybe someday I’ll be able to write something under 5 pages, though, that’s not likely. Hope you like it @theheavycrown

(Number 14: Locked in a broken elevator with mistletoe on the ceiling) Ten more minutes. Betty gives herself ten more minutes before she’s in the elevator and on her way home. It’s not that she doesn’t like her co-workers, she does, mostly, it’s just that she’d rather be at home on her couch, a nice glass of wine and some cheesy holiday songs playing as she wraps the rest of her presents.

She’s already stayed longer than she intended in the first place, having gotten caught up in the inter-office gossip between Kevin and Cheryl. Apparently, their newest author was having a fling with a ‘lowly’ assistant. Speculation and most of the money in the pot were on Midge Klump. At least that’s who Cheryl insists it must be. Her girlfriend, Veronica, does not agree. Even though the rumor mill insists he would likely be, indelicate, she just can’t see it. Her money is on no one and that everything they’d heard was completely unfounded.

Betty sips her second chocolate martini and listens to Kevin talk about his ‘sleeper’ pick, someone so unsuspecting and unassuming that it will shock the entire office. Can she help it if her eyes roll? Not so much. Sure Mr. Jones is undeniably attractive, but betting money on who he was, or wasn’t bedding, seems a step too far. She makes a face at her empty glass, the martini had gone down far too well and she still wants another.

Actually, after all that, she needs another. This one goes down just as easily, the top-shelf liquor burning only slightly and in the best possible way. Just tipsy enough to excuse herself, Betty bids farewell to her colleagues and finds her way to the elevator. She steps on, pressing the button for the ground floor when worn, dark leather shoes come into her line of sight.

“Mr. Jones,” Betty nods at his reflection in the elevator’s doors. He looks up from under long, dark lashes, eyes dark in the dim lights.

“Betty,” he smirks back. “I thought I asked you to call me Jughead.”Her head cocks to the side, throwing soft blonde waves over her shoulder.

“And I thought you were waiting ten minutes before following me out.”He tuts, bending his arm before him to fix the cuff of his red sport coat.

“Have you looked at yourself tonight?” Betty watches as his eyes slowly peruse her body in the mirrored panel. “I’ve already had to wait for much longer than we agreed.”

“A whole half-hour. However did you survive?“His head turns toward her, smirk firmly in place.

“So what were Kevin and Cheryl so invested in that you couldn’t tear yourself away?”

Betty laughs.“Your sex life as a matter of fact.”

Jughead’s expression changes from amusement to concern to disdain in seconds. “Excuse me?”

“All the money for ‘Jones’ flavor of the month’ is on Midge Klump.”

“Flavor of the month? Really?” He turns to face her, arms crossing over his chest as she steps back and leans against the rail.

“Their words, not mine,” she shrugs, innocently. Jughead shakes his head and runs a weary hand over his face, pushing back locks of well-styled hair that are usually hidden under his peculiar beanie “I know better. I didn’t put my money on Midge.” Her wink makes him smile.

“Why exactly are you all the way over there then?”

“Because someone has a very strict no-touching at work policy and I’ve had a martini deeper into the night than I planned on being and you look downright delect—” Betty’s cut off by the elevator’s abrupt stopping.

“What did just happened?”

What did happen? The lighting hasn’t changed, there’s nothing to indicate there’s a power issue in the building and yet they’re still not moving. Betty shrugs at Jughead as he moves toward the doors, pulling them apart to reveal nothing but wall.

“Between floors, awesome,” he mutters to himself before retreating into the corner and sliding into it.

Betty exhales sharply and walks toward the panel, hits the alarm button and sinks down next to Jughead.“Now we wait.”

She purposefully keeps some space between them, knowing how insistent he is about not getting caught up at work. She’s been working with him for about six months, an upstart from some podunk town in the middle the country with a knack for true crime (and an affinity for unnecessary semi-colons) who was delving into the world of fiction. Betty was assigned as his editor when he signed with their publishing firm.

Their attraction was intense from the start. Daylong brainstorming sessions turned into late-night dinners and before they knew it, they were spending nearly all of their free time together. Always under the guise of his novel, of course, everything had to appear above board. The firm didn’t have any specific rules about them …interacting, per se, but more serious entanglements could lead to bigger problems down the road.

Initially, Betty was happy to keep things strictly physical. She’d been in a few friends with benefits situations in her life where the benefits always outweighed the friendship but with Jughead, more and more she finds herself longing for the friendship. Not that the benefits have been anything but spectacular, because they truly have, but she finds herself limiting how much she allows herself to invest into him—into them. For as certain as she had been that his distance at work meant that his preceded reputation was accurate, the last week has tested that. She hopes tonight will bring some answers, even if she’s not entirely ready to ask the questions.

She sighs and drops her head back against the wall, neck-craning from side to side as she tries to get comfortable in her too-tight dress. Before she can open her mouth the emergency phone rings.

“Hello? Yes, there are two of us. No, nothing’s changed since I hit the alarm. We just stopped out of the blue and haven’t moved in about ten minutes. Okay…okay…oh.” Jughead’s head flew up and she knew instantly that her tone belied exactly what the person on the other end of the line had said. An hour at the earliest. “Yes, thank you. We’ll certainly try. Goodbye.” Betty hangs up, the phone resting heavily in its cradle as she turns to her companion.

“What’s the word?” he asks anxiously, foot tapping a nervous beat against the elevator’s floor.

She turns to face him, lower lip pulled between her teeth. “Um, he thinks it’s going to be at least an hour—”

“An hour?? At least?! Betty…I don’t, I can’t, oh my god,” Jughead throws his head back, the resounding crack reverberating through the small space.

“Jug, hey, look at me,” she tries, inching closer to him in the process. His breathing is faster now, shallower too, as she slides a hand over his. Slowly his head tilts forward and his hand turns over to lock his fingers with hers. When their eyes connect, Betty starts. “I need you to breathe with me, okay?”

He nods and she starts to conduct their breathing, trying to calm him down before he spirals. After a few minutes, his breathing seems steadier but he’s no more at ease. His hand tenses and squeezes around hers every few seconds as he audibly swallows. Betty knows she’s sitting dangerously close, but she can’t find it in herself to care, she’s far too worried about staving off Jughead’s imminent panic attack.

"I’m sorry,” she thinks she hears.

“Are you apologizing?” He nods. “Why?”

Shaking his head, he let’s go of her hand before wrapping his arms around knees and dropping his head between them. “This, Betty! This was not how the night was supposed to go,” he groans.

“Fair enough,” she chuckles. “But this is not your fault; you have nothing to be apologizing for, Jughead.”

Her hand stops just shy of his shoulder and drops in the space between them. There’s little she can do for him but provide a modicum of comfort, and if part of that is contact at his behest, she’ll gladly oblige. Until then, she returns her hands to her lap and puts her head back.

It’s quiet, save for their breathing, at least Jughead’s is more even now. He’s tense beside her, it radiates off him in waves making the comfort conundrum even harder to bear. They sit in silence until Jughead sits back up and turns his head toward her.

“I do though, Betts, have so much to apologize for.”

“What are you talking about, Jug?” She’s facing him now, legs tucked up under her as his hands wring together.

“I’m sorry we’re stuck in this elevator. I’m sorry I put a time limit on this party because I wanted you all to myself. I’m sorry that I’ve been so adamant about keeping what we have completely separate from everything else.”

Her hand lands on his, and when he grabs back her heart does some strange fluttery thing that fills her with hope. "Juggie, I understand why we’ve been keeping our…dalliances to ourselves.“

"But it’s not right, or fair!” The anxiety was evident in his voice and his breathing had definitely picked up in pace. “People had this idea of who I supposedly was because some lowbrow ex told the world I was a sleaze. So, you know, I had to actively try to dispell that bullshit and then I meet you, and you are…”

“Jughead. It’s okay, really. I knew what I was getting in to. It’s not like I’ve been an unwilling participant in well, whatever this is.”

“That’s my point, Betty! What this is,” he points between them, “deserves so much more than clandestine hookups and faux professional courtesies. You deserve so much more than this.”

“Hey, hey,” she scoots closer to him, rules be damned, and puts her free hand on his cheek. “I’m a willing participant. I knew what this was at the beginning, even if I think it could be so much more, I’m willing to wait. For you.”

Jughead lets out a slow exhale before his head drops back, causing Betty’s hand to fall, then his eyes find the ceiling. He snorts. “Who do you think the asshole was who put that up there?”

She looks to where he points; a small bundle of mistletoe hangs suspended in the middle of the tiles. “Huh. How’d we miss that? Anyway, there’s been a good twenty office parties in the building this week, it’s anyone’s guess,” Betty shrugs, pulling her arm close to her body as she shrinks into herself. His lack of acknowledgment of her previous statement speaks volumes in the silence.

“It was probably Kevin,” his eyes pinch close as he purposefully slows his breathing again. “Kevin does NOT have Midge in the office pool.”

“How do you know?”

“Oh, it’s just that almost daily Kevin catches me looking at you, or googly-eyed daydreaming about you, I mean, as careful as I insisted we were, I blew it by just thinking about you, Betty.”

Betty sits up and carefully maneuvers herself against his side. “What are you talking about, Jug, nothing has been blown…yet.” Jughead’s eyes snap open and to her, a coy smile on her face. “I simply mean nothing that’s been done isn’t easily remedied. First, maybe, instead of the sneaking around we can go on a proper date?”

His hand slides across her thigh and grips gently. “That would be agreeable. What else?”

“We can try to get in on the pool, split the winnings with Kevin if we have to,” she laughs softly, turning herself to face him fully. Jughead reaches up and pushes a loose strand of hair behind her ear. He’s made that motion, done that specific action nearly a hundred times by now and yet this time makes her heart palpitate. Not that it hasn’t when he’s done it on his plush couch in SoHo, or tucked between the blankets in her Queens apartment, but here, so close (yet so far) from everyone she can’t help it.

“May I kiss you, Betty?” His lips are a hairsbreadth from hers when the elevator lurches back to life. “Oh, thank the gods.” She feels him suck in a ragged breath, then another before his hands drop from her body entirely. Pulling herself up off the floor, Betty tries to smooth the creases from her skirt, and the confusion from her brow. Jughead does the same, wiping remnants of the elevator floor off his slacks, standing in awkward silence as the lift descends.

Mercifully, the door opens quickly once it hits the ground floor. “I guess that’s my cue,” Betty goes to step out when she’s caught by the elbow, the slightest pressure keeping her in place.

“I think you’re forgetting something very important, Betts,” Jughead turns her around and points up to the forgotten mistletoe.

“Even though we’re still technically at work?” It’s odd, they’d been stuck in place for a considerable amount of time but their conversation had been so up and down she was starting to feel dizzy. Or maybe it was the martinis. Or the fact that Jughead’s hand slid from her elbow to her waist and threatened to dip lower the longer they stood there.

“Even without this stupid mistletoe. Betty, I’d really like to see where this goes…even if you couldn’t tell that by what just happened. That whole being trapped for an indeterminate amount of time really fucks with my head, so, sorry about that. But if you’ll give me another—”

Her fingers sink into his hair as she pulls his face toward hers. Their lips finally meet, the horribly synthesized Christmas muzak plays around them as they get lost in each other. Slowly they disengage, only truly separating when then a familiar voice breaks through the daze.

“YES! I knew it! Pay up, bitches! Merry Christmas to me,” Kevin’s voice carries through the lobby and neither Betty nor Jughead can hold back the laughter.

“I’m pretty sure that being able to kiss you out in the open means it’s a merry Christmas to me,” Betty pulls Jughead out of the elevator and towards the front doors. Their coworkers are still huddled outside, but undaunted and unperturbed, Jughead puts his hand on the small of her back and walks them through the throng.

“I’m going to go out on a limb here and say this is going to be a very, merry Christmas for both us,” he pulls her to him and kisses her temple, smiling as they walk into the new year together.

#asks #riverdaleevents #bughead fanfiction #riverdale reindeer games #Bughead

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thesinglesjukebox · 5 years

Video

youtube

LANA DEL REY - THE GREATEST

[7.71]

The discourse is lit...

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Lana Del Rey's embrace of decades-old American culture has always been a window into the present, so it's no surprise that her invocations of rock music and Dennis Wilson's deaths on "The Greatest" are signposts for our own inevitable demise. But even before she concludes the song with ruminations on California wildfires, Hawaii's false missile alert, and the possible necessity of colonizing Mars, you can sense the knowing dread in the midsong guitar solo and her affected vocalizing. She declares that she's "wasted" with poise and romantic longing, stretching the word out into a rallying cry; she intimates that debauchery is not just an expected response to contemporary anxieties, but an empowering action in times of seeming powerlessness. She channels that same depressing spirit in her semi-ironic delivery of the song's most memorable couplet -- "The culture is lit and I had a ball/I guess that I'm burned out after all" -- toying with its dual meaning to succinctly portray how escapism in end times isn't indecent behavior, but a necessary means toward survival and acceptance of one's fate. The sparse guitar strums and piano melodies that close out the song anticipate the somber eventuality that awaits us, but can that be much worse than right now? Worse than a time when "dancing with you" and "doing nothing" can be nostalgic pastimes due to never ending stress? Whatever the case, we'll collectively watch as it happens; it's the "live stream" that Lana hints at in the final line, and it'll be of cinematic proportions: "the greatest loss of them all." [9]

Joshua Copperman: "The culture is lit, and if this is it‚ I had a ball." This line is everything I hate about the aesthetics of this decade, but it IS the aesthetic of this decade, at least the latter half. Apart from rare, usually unintentional exceptions, something about 2010s voice-of-a-generation songs always felt pat, apparently because they had hope. We need songs for an age when everything is so overwhelming and impossible that there's nothing left to do but give up, give in, and bide your time until the flames -- the literal ones or the David Foster Wallace ones -- consume you too. (Who by fire, who by water vapor.) The cool, detached gloominess of "The Greatest" sends the opposite message to the one producer Jack Antonoff sent years ago; I don't want to get better, because there's no time left and no point. Lana was "doing nothing most of all," and that's why she's become the figurehead for this decade's music. Not Gaga. Not Beyonce. Not Lorde. Lana. Lana won the race to the bottom because she was there first; maybe a writer once took her sadness out of context, yet if someone said "I wish I was dead already" today, the response would not rise beyond a shrug of 'mood.' I don't even like this song that much as a song. It's slow and dreary, and that "culture is lit" line sounds hackneyed and pandering in its own way. But it's because of that artificiality that the line feels authentic, which was Lana's whole thing in the first place. Maybe I'm just bitter that she became so important when I wasn't looking. To paraphrase another, equally 2019 line, I hate to see it. Especially when I was so blind the whole time. [7]

Josh Buck: "I miss New York, and I Miss you. Me and my friends, we miss rock and roll." As Lana del Rey laments her Big Apple days, it feels like a lifetime since she was a Brooklyn Baby, singing Lou Reed with her boyfriend's band. She ventured out west to create an entire California fantasia and over a handful of albums, she built a cinematic version of the Golden State that was vibrant and full of endless sun and limitless romantic possibilities; even if it was all tinged with just a dab of noir-ish danger. It was a world as fully realized and teeming with mythology as a great novel. And "The Greatest" is where she watches it all burn down. "I'm facing the greatest loss of them all." California dreams are beautiful, until you have to wake up, so she sparks a cigarette and raises a glass to the ride. But if "The Greatest" is a moment of personal reflection, it's also a celebration. It's a toast to a new Greatest Generation. A generation that created and protested, that fucked and traveled and loved in spite of a planet threatening to burn them alive, and world leaders determined to end things even quicker. It's an anthem for thriving in the face of the apocalypse. It's my favorite single of 2019, and just thinking about it triggers a million competing emotions. If all somehow make it through this moment, we'll have one hell of a story, and a hell of a song to go with it. The culture is lit, but we had a ball. [10]

Michael Hong: A couple of cycles ago, that line probably would have drawn mass scorn from critics, but for now, it may very well be the lyric of the year. Part of that may be attributed to the way the culture has shifted their view on Lana Del Rey, but another part of it is that Lana sounds the most honest she's ever sounded. "The Greatest" is an ominous but sincere reflection of the current state of the world, and Lana no longer seems content with empty depictions of American touchstones. Lines like "I miss New York and I miss the music" still rely on those same symbols, but they now feel like lived experiences rather than empty nostalgic musings. Hell, Lana Del Rey even manages not only to make "me and my friends, we miss rock 'n' roll" work but sound like one of the most profound statements you've ever heard. Lana Del Rey's hushed vocals paired with the gauzy instrumental are quietly disarming, playing out like the cinematic zoom-out at the edge of the apocalypse. And if this is it, those final laments on the outro might be the greatest way to go out. [9]

Alfred Soto: She's not the greatest, nor does she think she's the greatest, so long as she thinks the "culture is lit" and she's "having a ball," whatever that means, but I suspect it means more than the guitar solo. Narcissism as plaint. [7]

Katherine St Asaph: The core Lana Del Rey problem is that she confuses narcotic with dramatic and droning with sweeping. "The Greatest" mitigates those faults a little, but only a little, and only by borrowing some faults from classic rock. The track also smothers what could have been a fine torch song in overproduction -- the culture can't be lit if you snuff it out with a million moles of echo. It shouldn't happen that I felt more genuine things about ghosts and missing things from a perfume newsletter than this. [4]

Ian Mathers: So here's the thing; I originally wrote about and scored this song before the more exhausting parts of the whole Lana Del Rey Conversation that engulfed Music Twitter last week had happened, and I was basically saying, yeah, the conversation is interesting and has some good points but I mostly receive the song outside of it and I just like that song (and generally do, with her singles). But then... it got worse. And between the artist herself showing her ass and all of the assorted takes, the thought of listening to any of LDR's music just got more and more enervating. Some would say it's unfair or incorrect to adjust my opinion of this song, or at least to admit that those events have, in fact, adjusted my opinion of the song. But I'm a guy who wrote a Master's thesis at least partly on the idea that the context around a work of art justifiably changes not only our aesthetic relationship to it but the ontological status of the work of art itself (which is not a physical thing, not even as data). The classical example is finding out, say, a painting is a forgery, but honestly this whole thing is a great example too. Doesn't make me outright dislike "The Greatest", but does legitimately move it from being a real bright spot to a song I enjoy that I need a bit of a break from. [7]

Stephen Eisermann: Hats off to Lana and Jack for really creating an atmosphere of nostalgia that you fall into the second you hit play. Lana's vocal is tender and understated, further reinforcing the sense of longing the track aims to create; but, hearing her sing the word "lit" and the Kanye West reference stand in stark contrast to that moody guitar lick and I... I just can't reconcile the two. [4]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Lana Del Rey is deeply aware of the fickleness of the music industry. On Born to Die, that manifested in her almost-trolling approach -- aggravating, almost-rap cadences, weird production choices, even weirder lyrical ones -- that wormed its way into the pop consciousness. For her middle three albums, she refashioned herself as a thinking person's pop star, working with more respectable (and more male) figures like Dan Aurebach and A$AP Rocky as a way of positioning herself as adjacent to prestige. The music was better but also more boring. Now, with Norman Fucking Rockwell!, she has cashed all the checks that a decade of practice and following the rules of pop earn you. "The Greatest" is a thesis statement for the album's ambition. It's not just the title -- although that is a helpful indicator. It's everything: the classic rock guitars and big drum fills, the nostalgia for doing nothing of the lyrics, the way she sings them. On "The Greatest," Lana sounds done. Not exhausted, but complete, as if she could walk away from this all and not miss a second's worth of sleep. It's a big damn classic rock song that's aware of how bombastic it sounds, and yet its self-awareness does not undercut its narrative and sonic heft. It's the kind of song you can't make without making a lot of worse songs that dance around the same topics. But here, where it really counts? Lana nails it. It's a buzzer-beater of a song, rattling around the rim four times before falling in -- all the sweeter in glory for the bumps on the road before it. It's likely not the last Lana Del Rey single we'll review, but if it is, it's a fitting send-off: in response to all the fickleness of the industry, Lana rewrites her story on her own terms, and makes it sing. [9]

Jackie Powell: Norman Fucking Rockwell started as such a fascinating paradox, but didn't really continue building and evolving on what made its first third so successful. "The Greatest" is lyrically relatable and sonically beautiful. Jack Antonoff, being the wizard that he is, finds a way to wean Lana Del Rey of her noir and whining tendencies. He overdubs her potential for a beautiful vocal pairing it with brighter arrangements. It's pellucid and mellow but not a snoozefest. But its placement on this album really sold the track short. NFR loaded its most compelling tracks at the top of the project. Del Rey placed "The Greatest" after "Fuck it I love you" in a double feature of a music video, which where it should have been placed on the album. In the visual, Del Rey floats around and almost above her surroundings contemplating what's next. The haunting but gorgeously comforting guitar solo brings the listener along with Lana herself back down to earth. Lyrically and through its soft piano, the outro is what gives this song its weight and a sense of profundity. Her cultural references which include Kanye West's physical and emotional transformation and David Bowie's "Life on Mars" allow us to reflect on what we've become. Lana Del Rey does that here and on almost every record. I just wish "The Greatest" was given the proper stage to achieve the status of its moniker. [6]

Joshua Lu: The majority of "The Greatest" feels unbound by time, as Lana Del Rey reuses Extremely American words that apply to the '80s as much as today: Long Beach, New York, the Beach Boys, rock 'n' roll. Only the outro plants the song firmly in the current year -- with mentions of Mars, Kanye, global warming, and that time Hawaii thought it was about to get bombed -- and with this passage of time, these signifiers bring no joy to Lana anymore. Her sprawling sense of nihilism seeps through in her languid voice and the turgid, psychedelic guitar as she laments how her generation's time is ticking away. Tempting as it is, I'm wary to read into this song as some kind of political statement, in part because the epochs that Lana fetishizes were also rather shitty, and also because I think Lana herself wouldn't prefer this reading, as it would play into that "p" word she, erm, has expressed adversity to. Maybe that's the song's trap, that despite how alluring it is to try to ascribe some deeper meaning, it's better to just do what the song does: sit back, observe, and mourn. [8]

Alex Clifton: Lana Del Rey has a beautiful and occasionally overwhelming voice. It's haunting but for me it can be like ingesting too much cake in one sitting -- extremely rich to the point where it feels exhausting to listen to more than one song at a time. Having said that, "The Greatest" is a song that works well with Del Rey's vocals. When the first pre-chorus hits -- "those nights were on fire, we couldn't get higher" -- her breathiness feels less like an affect but sadder and more wistful, the awareness that she'll never be able to get that life back again. It's a grandiose song, strings and languid piano and a chorus of a dozen Lanas sighing "if this is it, I'm signing off," but for once the grandiosity of the production fits the message. My issue with Del Rey's persona back in the Born to Die days was that I couldn't quite make out who she was under all the artifice, flower crowns and American flags. I know that's the appeal of artists like Del Rey, whose entire careers are built off of specific personas (despite what they claim to the contrary), but I don't deal well with facades that are built that tall. Arguments about personas and performativity in music can quickly dissolve into arguments about authenticity and how much that matters to the music, and I want to stress that I don't care about authenticity in the slightest -- I just like the moments where artists aren't invincible but human. In "The Greatest" those walls crumble down and Del Rey revels in her sadness in a way that hits close to the heart. She's vulnerable and mourning over a real love rather than a fantasy, and for once I feel like persona or no, I understand the appeal of Lana Del Rey. [8]

Vikram Joseph: At 2am this morning I found myself in the smoky bedroom of a guy I hadn't met until two hours earlier, half a bottle of red wine deep and still high off the fumes of the MUNA show I'd just been to, discussing the aesthetics of Lana Del Rey's music videos (as a kind of emotional foreplay, I guess?). It struck me that this, right there, was actually a pretty good representation of Lana's aesthetic -- unlikely moments that shimmer at the fringes of reality, a doomed romanticism that bleeds into a laconic, blissful sort of nihilism. There's so much heightened emotion (close to melodrama) in her music, and yet there's a simplicity too in what she craves -- men, bars, California, sun -- that Vice described as a "revolutionary pleasure." It feels like an extremely LDR move to draw a direct parallel between lost love and the end of the actual fucking world, but it's testament to her songwriting, those aesthetics that she's worked so hard on, and the spellbinding, crystalline production on "The Greatest" that she pulls it off so completely. From the opening bars -- dignified piano chords, soft-focus acoustic guitars and cinematic strings -- it feels like an elegy; I can't help but see the crumbling, sunlit edifice of a gorgeous building when I hear this song, especially during that billowing, washed-out guitar solo, or the slow nuclear decay of the outro. "The Greatest" feels like a culmination, and a kind of closure. It's a veteran of an iconic club scene reading the memoirs of her golden years out loud, or the last time two people who once loved each other ever speak, or a beach scene at the end of civilisation. Sonically and aesthetically, it sounds cast adrift in time, and that's why it's so effective. It's the end of the world as we know it -- I don't think Lana feels fine, exactly, but maybe there's a certain comfort in finally knowing for sure that it was all for nothing. [10]

Will Adams: Lana Del Rey made a career writing elegies to American culture, which is what makes "The Greatest" as moving as it is heartbreaking. The patriotism of "American" has turned bitter. The sprawling luxury of "Shades of Cool" has fizzled. The worries expressed in "Coachella -- Woodstock In My Mind" have been realized in twisted, terrifying ways. So it makes sense that, after a few minutes of misty-eyed farewells presented with a smile ("I had a ball"), it all collapses to rubble. The gleaming classic rock evaporates into three descending chords. This, it turns out, is the greatest loss of all. Not rock 'n' roll, not a past lover, not Long Beach, not Kanye West, but everything. In that final minute, the song sinks to the ocean floor, the flaming city fading from view, the monuments and culture blurring into nothing. Del Rey is gone, too, as there's nothing left to say. There is nothing except the brutal end. [10]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

#Lana Del Rey #pop #music #music review #writing

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tcfkag · 6 years

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Why your ancestors didn’t come to the US “the Right Way”

So, we all have that one Uncle, cousin, in-law, or high school friend who insists that the migrants and refugees being detained at the border under Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy - or just any undocumented immigrant really - should “go back where they came from” and “do it the right way”.

You know, like their Great-Great-Great-Aunt Angela (and her Ashes probably) did.

Except, that is total bullshit. For now, let’s put aside the question of why undocumented immigrants don’t “just” get in line to get their citizenship, either while staying here or “going back where they came from”. (Hint, they can’t...unless they have money of course).

Instead, let’s talk about all the reasons why Great-Great-Great-Aunt Angela would be no more “legal”* under today’s laws than the children in cages or families in deportation camps right now. (*Note: No Human is Legal or Illegal*). Angela didn’t do it “the right way” because for the vast majority of American history, there was no wrong way (well, so long as you were white and European).

“ALL POSSIBLE RESPONSES TO “THEY SHOULD GET IN LINE AND DO IT THE RIGHT WAY, THE WAY MY FAMILY DID,” WITH CITATIONS (ALSO JOKES)” (that’s the actual title of the article - so this was supposed to be just a simple summary of this article but it sort of grew a life of it’s own - but all thanks to the article writer for the structure - I have massively quoted from it with additions of my own notes and reference materials).

Seriously, go bookmark this article and review it before Thanksgiving, Christmas, family reunions, or whenever else you’re likely to be exposed to (as usual mostly white) people who justify their own presence in this “Nation of Immigrants Colonizers” while also justifying “zero tolerance” violations of international treaties and basic human decency by deporting refugees, migrants, people who have lived here longer then they’ve been alive, and the Dreamers.

It breaks it down by era, with citations so you can be specific when you slap down Tiffani from high school on Facebook.

Some highlights:

· “Did your family do it before 1776? They didn’t “immigrate,” they colonized.”

· “Did your family do it before 1875? The federal government wasn’t actually regulating immigration at before that year. The states were each trying to do it their own way, it was a mess.” [My note: that also means that depending what state your ancestor immigrated TO, the laws governing the naturalization process and thus their status may have varied. My own home states of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, now two of the most Catholic states in the country, swept the Know-Nothings Party into power in 1856 - their efforts to make naturalization more onerous for Catholics was one of the driving forces behind the passage of the first federal immigration legislation, the Page Act, in 1875. Good job New England /s]

· Did your family do it before 1882? If they were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or from another East Asian country there was no “right way” for them as of 1882. The Chinese Exclusion Act would officially keep those nationalities from immigration and/or gaining citizenship until (on the books at least) 1952.” [My note: Yup, you’re reading that right, the federal government passed the first federal immigration and naturalization law in 1875 at least in part to regularlize naturalization policies for all states...but only for white people. Literally, the first federal immigration law protected white people and also specifically and intentionally excluded East Asian immigrants from immigrating and barred the 200,000 immigrants already here from naturalization, essentially making them permanent second-class non-citizens and if they left the country for any reason, they would not be allowed to return. This is useful to know the next time you see someone say that the Muslim Ban isn’t “their” America.]

[My other note: Also remember that, for example, Texas was annexed into the United States in 1845 before which it was part of Mexico. But even though many Mexican Tejanos now lived in the United States, whether they wanted to or not, they were not allowed to become naturalized citizens until 1896 when a federal court ruled that a law from 1872 that limited citizenship to white or black people (which is confusing but it must have been a precursor to the Chinese Exclusion Act) did not exclude Tejanos from citizenship because Tejanos were protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted citizenship to all “regardless of color or race”...except apparently Asian people. Because no one has ever claimed America’s legal or racial history makes actual SENSE.]

Skipping ahead a bit (though fun fact, since no federal immigration records were kept before 1906, if you were a white European, you could generally go before a judge and get naturalized in an hour or two for years thereafter by just saying that you had been here for the right amount of time.)

· “Did your family do it before 1921? Hey, mine too! [My note: me too] And it’s a good thing they did because that’s when national origins quotas were introduced for the first time. Again, to be clear: we didn’t have any limits whatsoever on how many people from most of the world* could come to the United States before then.” (My note: Guise, just assume every time you see an asterisk that we’re talking about white Europeans here).

· “Did your family do it before 1924?” Again, lucky for them because this was the first year that Visas were even required to immigrate. This was also the year Ellis Island closed and Border Patrol was created, sort of. Essentially this was the end of America’s completely open borders for white Europeans. [My note: When your uncle clutches his pearls about the idea of Democrats wanting OPEN BORDERS, remind them that your ancestors literally took advantage of open borders to move here.]

· “Did your family do it before 1929?” Despite the “closing” of the Border, “[t]his was also the first of several times that Congress would pass a “registry” provision — the earliest and simplest form of “amnesty” which simply allowed anyone who couldn’t account for their immigration status but could prove lawful presence for since 1921 to come forward and receive lawful permanent residence.” So, again many, many Americans who oppose “amnesty” may very well owe their citizenship TO amnesty if they couldn’t produce the documentation necessary to prove their status...i.e. they were literally undocumented.

Skipping ahead again because boy is this getting long and there is a perfectly nice article you could just reference....

· “Did your family do it before 1965? Congratulations, your family made it in before the creation of the modern American immigration system. It was essentially open borders to other nations in the Western Hemisphere before then, and not all that difficult from Europe either. Until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, there was a fairly free flow of migrant labor back and forth across the southern border to meet the demands of the agricultural and service industries. After 1965, the concept of “undocumented” immigrants was drawn much more sharply, and many more of them were created as Western Hemisphere visas (especially from Mexico) suddenly went from being an unlimited to a far more scarce resource overnight and the border was no longer permeableAfter 1965, the system changed over from a generalized “take a number and wait in line” visa system to one which heavily favored immediate family ties and some (but not most) employment. [My note: Yup, you’re reading that right, it is distinctly likely that your racist Uncle Al is actually older than the “modern” conception of “illegal” migrant labor. He probably grew up eating produce picked by migrants here either legally or semi-legally. Those jobs were never “American jobs” to be stolen in the first place.]

· “Did your family do it before 1997?” If your family immigrated after 1996, you’re basically fucked. Because in 1996, William fucking Jefferson Clinton in all his wisdom desire to appeal to white voters signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act which basically created the broken and inhumane system that we still have today (and is what Trump means when he talks about “the Democrat law” even though that’s completely wrong. IRIRA was written by Republicans and was massively popular at the time. the political pressure on Clinton to sign it was enormous...but still. It’s a travesty of a bill). Just go read the article linked above. Democrats have since strongly shifted against the bill and have worked to soften some of its impacts, but the damage was done.

· But most importantly, it essentially eliminated any pathways to citizenship for undocumented persons and those pathways have only gotten narrower since then. The reason your Uncle is so sure that “illegals” should just “get in line like everyone else” is that before 1996, there were actually ways to get in line. And what more, the 1996 legislation also essentially eliminated marriage or close family relationship as a path to naturalization; if an undocumented immigrant is in the United States without authorization for more than six months, they must leave the US for three years before they can apply for a Visa. If they are here without authorization for more than a year, they must leave the US for ten years before they can apply again. And even after they serve their “time”, so to speak, they are not guaranteed that they will be given permission to return...even if they have a spouse or close family member in who is a US citizen.

· And finally, IRIRA and the closing of the border with Mexico to migrant labor meant that the 90′s also saw a massive spike in the numbers of immigrants considered undocumented or “illegal” in the US. People who had previously traveled back and forth seasonally could now no longer risk the trips back and forth so they stayed put...meaning they regularly went over the six months to a year limitation...so when they got caught they could immediately be placed in deportation proceedings. Add to that the creation of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security under Bush and the numbers of deportations exploded. And to top it all off, if you have been deported for any reason - even just overstaying a visa - you are barred from even applying for reentry for five, ten, twenty years or permanently, depending on the reason. (This is why many immigrants in removal proceedings will "request voluntary departure” which is almost like taking a plea bargain in criminal court. Voluntary departure means you are not subject to the 5/10/20 bars, though as mentioned above, they will frequently still be subject to the 3/10 year bars if they have been here longer than six months or one year. And with the extremely limited visas available in lottery in most countries and other barriers to entry, even voluntary departure does not guarantee that an immigrant would be able to get a legal entry visa no matter how long they “wait in line.”

TL;DR? If you are white or of European ancestry, your relatives almost certainly did not enter this country “the right way” by any modern standard, especially the post-1996 standard. And when you hear people say undocumented immigrants and migrants should just “get in line” and “do it the right way”, the person is probably basing their beliefs on outdated immigration laws. THERE IS NO PATH TO CITIZENSHIP FOR THE UNDOCUMENTED.

WE NEED COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM NOW. WE NEED AMNESTY. AND FUCK THE BORDER WALL, DON’T LET REPUBLICANS CONVINCE YOU THAT SECURITY IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN PEOPLE’S LIVES AND FAMILIES.

#long post #immigration #immigration law #immigration reform #lawyerin'#this is the longest post I've ever made omg #it was supposed to be a summary #what have i done #but hopefully some of you will find it useful for reference sake #and others will find it useful for arguing on Facebook's sake #sorry this is a mess but oh well

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braindamageforbeginners · 6 years

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Some writing prompts

Cycle 7, Day 7

So, as some of you know, I go to a writing class/seminar for cancer patients. I realize that’s not exactly something pre-GBM-me would’ve been interested in, particularly the warm, fuzzy, safe, and judgment-free aspects, but, again, if the choice is adapt and evolve or die, well, I haven’t been to Jiro Ono’s sushi place, yet. Also, I like the folks there.

Anyway, there isn’t anything big or terribly interesting in today’s post, I’m still scheduled to get strapped down and injected with Marizomib tomorrow morning, and I didn’t feel up to writing about the weird lizard situation in the backyard, so I thought I’d give a better conclusion than I gave in the group:

Prompt - Affirmative writing: Imagine 6 months from today. Looking inot the future, write a descriptive portrait about yourself. To guide your writing, consider: What do you look like at your personal best six months from now? What is the image that comes to your mind? Describe your face and how it reflects your state of mind... AUTHOR’S NOTE: I trimmed the prompt quite a bit, because the outcome wasn’t what I originally thought, and it did bring to mind a very serious question that I will have to face in the next six months even if this New Jersey wetlands of a body exceeds every expectation (in my body’s defense so far, I’ve dramatically exceeded everyone’s expectations at every turn, which is one of the few things holding me together psychologically). Also, even though I usually try for a mostly-accurate recounting of events, this is more-fictional-than-real (about a 65-35 split). DECEMBER, 2017: “What is my long-term prognosis, really?” I asked Senior Warlock. I didn’t expect him to give me a real answer. One of the first things to go out the window when you get diagnosed with a disease for which science has no established, effective treatment is useful data, terrifying as it might be. Mad Scientist occasionally gave me full information, but we’d had a ten-year doctor-patient relationship at that point. “Excellent,” he said, “we’re putting you on the very most aggressive, successful treatment we can, and you have several genetic markers hat are extremely favorable.” MID-FEBRUARY, 2018 “The scan looks great. Based on your interest, you’re already in the extended treatment trial,” said Research Coordinator. “You’ve tolerated both the chemo and radiation much better than most patients.” “I tolerated it well?!” I sputtered, “I spent an hour a week complaining about side effects to you!” “Yeah, but compared to average, you’re doing much better.” That was the moment i began to realize that Senior Warlock wasn’t being cheerful, or even terribly honest - he was striking an odd Faustian pact, “We will kill either your disease or you; right now, we’re betting on you.” JULY 31 2018 “The scan looks great. No growth in any of your tumor sites, and improvement in the stroke area here, and here,” said Senior Warlock. I hope everyone reading this feels - at some point - the wash of relief I did in that moment. It’s also easy to idealize how I’ll look six months from now, because it pretty much looks how I look at this moment. After realizing just how dangerous cancer treatment can be, I’ve put myself on a training regimen and diet that I’m sure would wear out some semi-professional sports teams. I took my end of that deal with the devil very seriously - I’m at near-peak cardiac health, I’ve lost multiple inches from my waistline, and I’ve put on five kilos of muscle. I know from reading the fine-print (and my own experience in the med-tech industry) that patients can be cut from an experimental program for almost any reason, including (and most-likely) that they aren’t tolerating it well. I’m not complaining about these rules - they exist to prevent the sort of corruption and medical malpractice we’ve seen in inhumane experiments like Josef Mengele or the Tuskegee airmen, even if those rules occasionally cut both ways. I’ve gone for the approach from the film “Miracle,” when the coach shouts to one of the players, “If you want to make this team, you’re going to have to perform at a level that forces me to keep you here.” Same goes here; if I want to continue in a potentially-dangerous, experimental chemo program, I am going to have to be so absurdly healthy that it would reflect poorly on my physicians and the biotech company that owns the Marizomib patent if I were to suddenly die or refuse treatment. For those of you wondering what that looks like physically, well, my DMV photo was taken when I was 19, over a dozen years ago. The TSA now doesn’t give me a second glance to double-check my photo (for better or worse, my physical best and worst aren’t as far apart as my sense of vanity might like) “Do you want to continue treatment at this point?” asks senior Warlock. At every two-cycle check-in, he legally has to ask me this. Fortunately, I’ve also figured out the dialogue that orients me properly and establishes some level of informed consent. “Well,” I started, “Given the probabilities on cases like mine, and the symptoms and complaints in those patients, and compared to the side-effects I’ve complained of and other patients in the program have established; do the likely risks of treatment outweigh the benefits?” I asked. For those of you following at home, this is part of the core of medical ethics, beneficence vs nonmaleficence (the dictum to do good vs not actively worsening a situation). “No,” he says. :”Then I’ll be in the infusion center on Tuesday,” I say. MID-FEBRUARY, 2019 “The scan’s clean,” said Warlock Junior. This is it. The moment I’ve worked for the last 15 months. On the other hand, physically miserable as it’s been this is the longest I’ve been unquestionably tumor-free since 2007. And, even though the side-effects of long-term treatment are unpleasant, i know that, given enough time, they will become lethal. On the other hand, GBM tends to come back more frequently than that shark in Jaws, and if it does so now, it’ll likely be resistant to the only two established, effective forms of GBM chemotherapeutic agents. On the other hand, this is a chance to have my Tuesdays back, not to feel confused or disoriented five days of the month. The general rule of chronic cancers is that patients have to go five years before they’re considered medically cured. I’ve only made it a little over one. Just a measly 20%. I feel - for the first time in a year - calm and quiet. Possibly even confident. I know it’s an illusion that will last less than a minute, because, for the first time in over a decade, I also know what the next five minutes will look like,. “Given how well you’ve tolerated treatment, you’re a candidate for several other long-term therapies that are in clinical trials,” he continued. I hesitate, weighing the options.

The Prompt: Breaking your heart, both in the negative connotation, but in a sense of opening you to the beauty and possibilities of life. “When you see beauty in desolation, it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.” - Jeff Vandermeer When you’re young, everything moves quickly, far too quickly, really. Remember before you were ten? Before you were five? I’d bet those memories are filled with noise and light. Then you move - imperceptibly in an ideal situation, in a few stuttering leaps in mine, when you no longer have to worry about being the center of the world you inhabit; you have to become comfortable imagining the world without you in it. It’s beyond frightening, until you realize that much of the planet will remain unchanged. We are guests at the art museum, not residents. As disturbing as that is, it’s also a little comforting; we can’t take it with us, but we can’t burn it, either.

#stupidcancer

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vixianna · 7 years

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Beginning Writer Advice

I made this a brand new post so @mosellegreen and I can add on without derailing anyone else’s point. :) I hope this is useful for other writers!

-Description

There’s nothing wrong with description. Vivid description, lurid even. The problem is where you’re putting it. Think of the words on the page as your “camera”. You are the director of a film. Lots of things are happening in any scene. The camera decides what is the “foreground”(with the main action and characters) and what is “background”(with the background characters and setting). Your job is to focus that camera on the most interesting part of that scene. That means some basic description of the background and setting is necessary to “set the scene”, but you want to spend most of your description on the main action and characters. So, short sweet descriptions to sketch the scene itself, and much much more description of the main characters/action.

This also depends on your audience/genre. In a period piece romance novel, you’re gonna want to spend time lovingly describing that heroine’s dress for the ball. That’s an important indication of her personality, her upbringing, her social status, the type of ball it is, and it’s something the audience is gonna care about because her big entrance to the ball is important! In a thriller spy novel, what the heroine is wearing to the fancy shindig she’s infiltrating is less important than noting that the room has only two exits, that it’s filled with the rich and their body guards, that it’s dimly lit, that they don’t search items in the coat room, ect. What needs to be focused on changes with your audience/genre/scene purpose.

In that same romance novel, it might be important to describe the heroines big ball entrance, but not her every day attire. A simple description would suffice or none at all unless her clothing comes into play later!

-Sentence length variety.

It can be very easy to fall into the trap of writing sentences that are around the same length. But don’t just vary sentence length just because! Sentence length is an important part of setting tone and pace. Longer sentences take longer to read, and tend to be more relaxed(except or the sort of anxious ramble-y run-ons people have when they are panicked!). Shorter sentences are usually read as more tense/terse/angry. People get snippy and clipped when mad. It’s also a demonstration of personality. Someone who loves to hear themselves talk or who is more well educated might speak in long sentences with multiple semi-colons. A small child will speak in much shorter sentences.

Action descriptions or sudden surprises should mirror the emotion by being shorter length. This also means the time for longer vivid descriptions are typically in calmer situations. When reflecting, when hashing something out calmly to plan, when describing the beautiful vista of the secret world your heroes just discovered. These are guidelines though, because I’m praised for my tense situations, suspense, and action scenes, and I’ve never written a short sentence in my life!(lol) Instead, I build suspense and tension in action scenes through near constant long(er) sentences. Reading longer sentence causes “fatigue” in the reader, and during an action scene, that fatigue can help translate into growing tension and suspense. It also doesn’t give them a time to “rest” to recover from one shocking reveal to the next. That doesn’t mean there are no short sentences at all!(the sentences are still shorter than my average sentence…) Just that the entire action scene isn’t done in short clipped sentences. It’s more like longer sentences with short ones thrown in for effect. To really emphasize an action or add punch to a strike.

-PoV

This is something that takes a while to master. Second person isn’t common, though there are exceptions in certain fandoms like Undertale, but first and third are. I almost never write in first or limited third, but that’s because it doesn’t suit the types of stories I write. What PoV you pick should be based on what type of story you’re trying to write. First person is intimate and claustrophobic. The “camera” in this case is the eyes of the main character. It’s like if the story was about you. That’s perfect for the adding tension to a Thriller, Mystery, or Horror story. The reader only knows what your main character does and experiences, making the world inherently more limited and terrifying. Its intimacy is also perfect for a romance novel where you really want to get into the main character(s) head for all their emotez. Third Limited is great for action/adventure novels. Your camera hovers around a single person, but it’s not them. You can see around them and describe things that exist around them that they might not necessarily notice.(in first person the details you’d describe are filtered through the personality of the main character. A hard boiled detective is not gonna notice the brand of shoes his client is wearing(I mean unless he’s Sherlock lol). A fashionista could know what brand, cut, and what runway year a piece of clothing debuted.) You can still only see inside that specific person’s head. The camera can look around and look into one person, but it’s still pretty focused. I typically write in Third Omni, but that’s because I tend towards very large complex stories with multiple characters, settings, and events happening all at once. If I was stuck in First, lots of necessary details wouldn’t be conveyed. If I was in Third Limited, I wouldn’t be able to balance out my (large) cast of characters as well. I also tend to “head hop”, and no one cares. *shrug* It’s not as big of a deal or as confusing as people make it out to be.(dive in and out of the minds/perspectives of separate characters in a single scene)

I said Second Person is common in Undertale fandom, and that’s because of both the game itself, and the mechanics. Second person uses “you” and ascribes the actions to the reader. This is perfect for Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novels and fanfiction like in Undertale where it’s explicitly self-insert.

-Punctuation/flavor

Learn the rules of punctuation. There’s nothing wrong with the exclamation point, but it really should be used sparingly. It’s like italics. It’s there to really draw attention and emphasize something. Both bold and italics should be used sparingly as well. I tend towards using italics more often and almost never bold face type. And I can’t remember a time off the internet where it’s more casual where I’ve used both at once. One or the other is really all that’s needed. And try to stick to either one or the other in your entire work. Either emphasize things with bold face type, or do it with italics. So, don’t never use them, just use them much less often. A couple times a chapter(of a few thousand words) is just fine. Learn when to use semi-colons, colons, commas, ect. It’ll make your writing clearer, give you access to longer sentences, and you’ll be able to be the anti-Hemingway if you want.(I’ve written sentences with over 50 words in them because it needed to be long and also because I refuse to stop the idea isn’t finished yet lol).

-Character Construction

This is a harder one, and probably my last section. Characters come in two varieties. Flat characters(NPCs basically) or Rounded Characters(hopefully your main characters). Flat characters are always static, they are usually poorly sketched/defined, and they sometimes fall into straight archetype copies without deviation. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with flat characters! Every story needs them! The waitress at the little diner your main character stops in once for coffee doesn’t need a backstory with a motivating drive and a character arc. Some characters are meant to be props. And that’s what flat characters are; they are props. It’s not common(or well liked) in modern literature for main characters to be props. When you review fairy tales though, Main Characters are often Flat. They are often props. They have no character arc, and no real internal life. They were meant to teach lessons, like Aesop’s Fable characters.

If you are trying to capture the feel of a modern fairy tale or re-write a fairy tale, having a static and even flat character for a Main Character will probably be more effective. For the modern novel though, you’ll want a dynamic rounded character. “Dynamic” in this case means “has a character arc”. It means they change over the course of the story. “Rounded” means they have an internal life and a “full” character. This is much harder to explain and is typically where beginning writers run into trouble. They can get their characters to change, but they still feel kinda flat.

Real people, and Rounded Characters, are multi-faceted. They are contradictory. There exists in the same person the drive to make friends and the drive for isolation/solitude. The drive for ambition and fame, and the need for obscurity. The will to do, and laziness. Humans/people are a study in contradictions and balance. Even the biggest most extroverted ambitious people person needs time to themselves, privacy, and keeps secrets. In order to make a realistic character, a rounded one, they have to have balanced needs, and ultimately be contradictory. Humans have mental distortions and cognitive dissonance. They’ll believe two things, that when examined, ultimately contradict each other. Usually these distortions are minor, since cognitive dissonance makes us uncomfortable, but finding situations where these contradictions can come to the fore is what writing is about. And it’s where interesting character study takes place.

Someone who believes all criminals are evil, but that life is a right, might be flummoxed by a situation where someone stole medicine needed to keep them alive. Stealing is a crime, and criminals are wrong, but life is a right that can’t be abridged/denied. This person would then have to resolve this ideological contradiction in order to remain internally balanced.

Construct your characters with traits that can come into conflict. Construct your characters with traits that don’t “necessarily” connect. Someone could be a chef, and love motocross. They could be a kindergarten teacher, but be child free(a position of not wanting children of their own). Real people have collections of traits, hobbies, ideas that are horded from the culture around them. There isn’t necessarily a rhythm or reason for them, they just are.

Construct your characters to reflect the culture they live in. Someone who’s American might have very strong opinions about democracy, communism, socialism, ect. They might have very few real opinions on the leaders of an entirely different country though(Americans in general are myopic speaking as an American), but still feel nationalistic pride.(ie. America is the best country in the world). Someone who is LBGT and in the scene in the 60′s and 70′s might take part in Leather Culture, have a very different way of describing their sexuality/gender than we do now, have very different experiences with being “out”, experience their sexuality/gender differently than someone modern, ect. Remember, and this is super important when constructing characters, to keep the time, place, and culture in mind.

-Research

I lied lol. Research is the last section. All the previous sections pale in comparison to research. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read beginning writer’s work whose problems could have been solved by “do more research”. There is one person’s original work I read for who had their mermaids writing on parchment. If you didn’t know, parchment is made of leatherized animal skin. If it gets wet, it’ll revert to animal skin and rot. Modern paper products wouldn’t work either, and it would be impossible to tan sea creature hide underwater. They needed to have come up with another writing method, and seeing how their mermaids had magic…

This covers everything from simple stuff like “what timezone is this in so I know how many hours difference is between these two settings?” to complicated stuff like “how long does it take a human body to exsanguinate when the jugular has been severed?”

It covers what technology was available during a time period(another writer wrote about telephones and white picket fences being around during what was supposed to be a colonial setting! And then when they brought it up they actually wanted it to be the early 1800′s(not colonial America lol), but those things still weren’t around then!), what the common terms for different groups were and the slang. It covers gender roles during the time period, what countries existed, what colonies, who owned them. It covers how anatomy actually works, how poisons affect the human/animal body, how a certain type of government operates.

Research, research, research some more. And if you aren’t sure research some more. This is also essential for character construction, especially for groups of people you aren’t personally familiar with(ie writing someone gay if you’re straight, or black if you’re white).

To conclude, research is your friend. Don’t get so bogged down that you don’t/never write, but please for the love of Frank, do research. If I have to read one more beginning writer’s work who doesn’t realize X technology wasn’t around in Y period, or that gender roles demanded Z during this time in this country, I’m gonna die.

#writing advice #beginning writers #beginning writer advice #fanfiction advice #novel advice #yeah new post :)

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rolandfontana · 5 years

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How Your Company Can Benefit From China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Part 2B: Africa

This is the third of a series of posts on how companies can benefit from China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the second post focused on Africa. To read the first post, click here. To read the second post, click here. The goal of these posts is to help companies better understand what China is doing with its Belt and Road Initiative so that they can benefit from utilizing Chinese-funded or Chinese-built infrastructure as a springboard to their own growth. This and other posts will focus on general enabling environments, including legal frameworks for doing business in these countries. This post is presented in a Q&A format with David Baxter, my longtime friend and PPP (Public Private Partnerships) expert, who is based in Washington, D.C.

Does Africa present a viable alternative to companies that want to move manufacturing from China?

Many products manufactured in China could be manufactured in Africa. Textiles, shoes, and glassware could easily be produced in Africa. The key is to find partners in countries that have created an enabling environment, meaning that the country is stable for foreign competitive and transparent investment. Companies should focus on the ease of starting up business indices, which vary from country to country. Many Southeast Asian countries are no longer inexpensive labor markets, but there are still inexpensive labor markets in many regional hubs in Africa. These hubs contain skilled people seeking jobs and a rapidly growing middle class. These African countries present great opportunities to build a sustainable market base. Some US companies have been in Africa for over a hundred years. Companies like Coke, Ford, and IBM know about Africa’s potential and have done well there and their market penetration strategies should be emulated.

Which African nations are most welcoming to Chinese development projects? Are these same countries also welcoming to U.S. and European companies?

Poorer countries like Mozambique, Somalia, and Sudan are some of those that have welcomed China. More developed African nations have been pushing back against China. African countries with strong anti-corruption policies and competitive and transparent procurement practices are more interested in doing business with Western companies. Chinese companies typically want handshake deals; they often do not want transparency or competition. Countries with good legal frameworks and enabling environments (e.g. South Africa and Ghana) have great potential and present a better chance for Western companies to compete because deals are not being made behind closed doors. Studying and utilizing the World Bank’s ease of doing business index will be helpful in selecting good markets to enter. Countries with strong contract enforcement and less strict controls on repatriation of profits will be more attractive to Western companies. Many African countries have laws with strict profit remittance controls. These restrictions do not bother the Chinese companies because they generally do not remit money back to China; they remit raw goods to their home country instead.

What most concerns you regarding the current state of African development?

Africa’s public sector funding gap is its biggest challenge. Countries have significant needs, such as hospitals, schools, road, bridges, but they do not have the funds to build them. Sectors such as healthcare, education, water, wastewater disposal, energy, and transportation are already a big focus. These generally enhance the sustainable development goals of the UN and require business partners that support sustainability and resilience. There is great potential for Western companies with responsible market policies. The current Chinese and Indian consumer markets will be dwarfed by the end of this century by Africa’s domestic market demands. This demand, supported by a movement to develop free trade zones, will enhance African development objectives by encouraging these countries to work together, integrate their economies, and share resources in sub-Saharan Africa.

How important are the geopolitics of Africa to current and future business prospects in Africa?

Pan-African identity is continually evolving. The countries and markets may be inclusive or exclusive. It is important to pay attention to how different regional blocks or customs unions develop. Will they collaborate or will they compete with each other? Which foreign companies will gain footholds in these post-colonial regions? The Chinese are present across Africa. So are the French in Francophone West Africa. Former British colonies (Commonwealth countries) comprise their own geopolitical unit, as do the Lusophone colonies (colonized by the Portuguese and the Saharan African blocks). The African Free Trade Zone has not developed yet because of the disparate geopolitical aspirations among these regions. The rule of law is significant due to the starkly different legal structures present. For instance, some countries operate under the “Napoleonic code” (French Colonies). Others operate under Roman/Dutch law, like South Africa and its immediate neighbors. Then you have the English common law, along with the legal philosophies and practices. Similarly aligned countries are well positioned to do business across borders, but there are still complexities in procuring large transnational infrastructure. Overall political stability is a significant factor. Look at East Africa – the Somalia/Somaliland split is problematic and needs to be resolved. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic essentially do not even exist as functioning states. Their boundaries were drawn by foreign powers in Berlin a hundred years ago and these regions are facing difficult issues centered around the different ethnicities of their people. The typical Western company will be better off focus on the African countries that have had multiple successful democratic elections resulting in progressive leaders who provide the political and economic stability.

What does Africa need that foreign companies can provide?

Africans need Western innovation and new technology. Western companies need partners in countries that have a strong rule of law to protect these valuable business investments in infrastructure.

What does Africa have that foreign companies need?

Africa’s burgeoning middle class make for a large and growing consumer market and the rapidly increasing number of well-educated Africans needing employment make for a strong workforce. Africa can provide both skilled and semi-skilled labor to meet most any company’s needs.

Can you give examples of industries in which Africa is doing well and in which it will likely emerge as a global leader?

Africa currently excels at producing basic essentials, such as textiles and shoes. Vehicle manufacturing is growing. Japanese and German companies established large auto manufacturing facilities in South Africa years ago and Africa now exports Toyota, Nissan, and Mercedes-Benz vehicles are exported to their countries of origin. Petrochemicals will be big for a long time. Tanzania and Mozambique recently discovered oil and gas reserves. In Uganda and Kenya’s Rift Valley they have been developing numerous renewables: geothermal, solar, wind, and hydroelectric energy. Africa’s ports are important for its import and export economies, including for landlocked countries. Africa has the most landlocked countries in the world, and the growing transportation infrastructure that can unlock those countries will be important. Unfortunately, Africa’s airline industry is problematic and has a long way to go.

What should foreign companies consider when making their first foray into Africa to do business?

You need reputable local partners. It is difficult to get into certain countries without them. I am not talking about “fixers” or “facilitators” who will lead your company toward a path of corruption. Do not assume Africa doesn’t have skilled people. South Africans are highly skilled. Namibia is very advanced; Rwanda is quickly becoming the IT hub of Africa. Reach back into the African diaspora for assistance from people who live in your home country — people like me. Do not hire foreigners who know little about the complexities of Africa. For example, the Nigerian expat communities in the U.S. and in Europe is enormous and can offer much. There is a large Ethiopian community here in D.C. and in various other cities in the United States and Europe. Many of these Africans have come to the U.S. and other Western countries and become trained as professionals and many are looking for opportunities to invest their time and money in their home countries in Africa. They are looking to collaborate with U.S. companies in those future opportunities. Western companies have largely ignored the opportunities that members of the African diaspora offer.

Africa is ready to do business with the world.

The World Bank’s 2019 rankings for ease of doing business can be found here, with the following African countries in the top 100:

38. Rwanda

53. Morocco

56. Kenya

78. Tunisia

84. South Africa

85. Zambia

87. Botswana

97. Togo

In our future posts we will look at additional world regions and zoom in on promising markets with strong enabling environments and rule of law that provide businesses with a sufficient level of certainty to move forward in developing relationships in those countries.

How Your Company Can Benefit From China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Part 2B: Africa syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

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mreugenehalsey · 5 years

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Slavery & Specialty: Discussing Coffee’s Black History

When you reach for a bag of Brazilian roasted coffee or order a pour over from Colombia, you may consider yourself well-informed about its origins. But how did coffee come to these regions in the first place? And who were the people who established coffee farms and labored in the plantations?

Let’s take a look back at the history of the coffee industry and how it relates to race and colonialism.

You may also like A Brief History of Coffee Consumption

View from a coffee farm in El Salvador. Credit: Fernando Pocasagre

Coffee & Colonialism

Coffee is native to tropical Africa but today Brazil is the world’s largest coffee-producing country. Vietnam and Colombia are the second and third biggest producers. Coffee was traded through the Middle East, Asia, and Europe before being taken to the Americas by European colonizers. The crop’s success there was dependant on the slave trade. As such, it’s impossible to discuss the history of coffee without recognizing racism and the role of colonialism.

Mark Pendergrast is the author of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee And How It Transformed Our World. He tells me that in the late 1700s, European colonial powers were starting to recognize coffee’s profitability. Demand for the drink was high in both European countries and their colonies. To establish profitable estates, European companies imported slaves from Africa to labor on plantations in the Caribbean, Asia, and the Americas in what is known as the Triangular Trade.

Barbados and Jamaica were some of the earliest British colonies, and slave traders provided the outposts with human labor from Africa to work the sugar and coffee plantations. Goods and people were moved in a triangle between West Africa, colonies in the Caribbean and Americas, and Europe.

Bags of green coffee beans in a warehouse.

Mark tells me that San Domingo in French-occupied Haiti was supplying half of the world’s coffee in 1788, as a direct result of slave labor. He describes living conditions there as appalling, with slaves routinely underfed, overworked, and housed in windowless huts. He also details how it was not uncommon for African slaves to be beaten, tortured, and killed by their white, European rulers.

Napoleon’s unsuccessful bid to regain Haiti in the early 1800s led to a decline in coffee production. This prompted the Dutch to fill the gap with coffee produced in their own colony of Java, Indonesia.

There was a rigid hierarchy between the native Javanese and their colonial overlords. In his book, Mark recounts that Eduard Douwes Dekker, a Dutch civil servant, wrote of the laziness and apathy of Dutch landowners who forced Javanese natives to harvest coffee for a pittance. Dekker noted that whole villages died of starvation as a result.

Coffee beans drying in raised beds.

The Slave Trade in The Americas

As coffee declined in the West Indies, it thrived in Latin America. The first coffee bush in Brazil was reportedly planted by Francisco de Melo Palheta in Pará in 1727. Brazil would go on to become a coffee superpower under the rule of the Portuguese and continue to be so after independence. By the 1830s, coffee had become Brazil’s largest export and accounted for around 30% of world coffee production. But it was at great human cost.

Brazilian coffee plantations relied on black and indigenous slave labor. Mark tells me that indentured laborers worked and lived in horrific conditions. He says that plantation owners treated their laborers as dispensable, finding it easier to import new slaves when they died from overwork than to treat their existing slaves with any compassion. He says that most slaves didn’t last seven years from initial bondage.

Brazil made slavery illegal in 1888, but by then an estimated four million slaves had been brought there from Africa.

Ripe coffee cherries. Credit: Fernando Pocasagre

In other parts of Latin America, the coffee industry depended more on the labor of indigenous peoples. “Black people were not used as slaves so much in Central American countries, where instead Mayans and other native peoples served as semi-slaves,” Mark tells me.

He says that the Mayans occupied fertile land that was optimal for growing coffee and that they were increasingly disenfranchized by colonial governments. They were violently evicted by the military as the demand for coffee grew, and forced to work the land for their oppressors.

Mark tells me that revolts and rebellions were common during this time, and that government brutality and oppression was often the response.

A coffee farm in El Salvador. Credit: Fernando Pocasagre

Legacies of Colonialism in Coffee

Understanding the foundations of the coffee industry in Latin America goes some way toward explaining why this part of the world still dominates coffee production. Although slave laborers are no longer used, the structures put in place paved the way for today’s industry. Consider how many regions of Brazil and Colombia are now traditional coffee-growing areas with farming as their main resource.

In an article for Sprudge, Phyllis Johnson highlights how the legacies of colonialism are still obvious in the coffee supply chain. She tells of travelling in Latin America and seeing the racial divide between farm owners and laborers.

And when we discuss the falling C price, we’re talking about millions of people of color throughout Latin America, Asia, and Africa living in poverty in the production of affordable coffee for Western markets.

Despite some African coffees being touted as the best in the world and Tropical Africa being the birthplace of coffee, the continent has never risen to the same levels of production as Latin America. This is also tied to colonialism in that many former European colonies in Africa were left without robust infrastructure and stable political systems when occupation ended.

A producer sorts coffee cherries at a farm in Honduras.

We have a collective responsibility to open our eyes to structural racism and to acknowledge that oppression still exists in the supply chain. It may be uncomfortable to address, but such honesty is important in opening up discourse about inequality in coffee production, as well as wider conversations about racism.

Pay attention to where you spend your money. As well as reading the information on your bag of coffee, make an effort to research how the roaster you choose works with producers. Talk to baristas and others in the supply chain about the economics of coffee.

And consider educating yourself on the politics of coffee-producing regions. Being an informed citizen can help you make choices that benefit coffee producers and the wider community in producing countries. These small steps can contribute to improving sustainability, working conditions, and quality of life for people around the world.

Enjoyed this? You may also like How Much Should We Pay For Green Coffee?

Written by Sierra Burgess-Yeo.

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hardnutpuppy-blog · 6 years

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distinguishedfiredreamer-blog · 6 years

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Fecal impaction what is it? The clinical terms used for specific illnesses and conditions in recent times have people battle to apprehend just exactly what it's miles they suffer from. it is dermabellix simple but to get round this. you've got a tongue in your head use it and ask who ever has given you your analysis to provide an explanation for subjects in a manner you may understand the hassle you've got. Any approach to cure a disorder with no knowledge of that unique disease can cause extreme headaches to spread.

things that make a person liable to extreme constipation:

• you are unable to move around or do light exercise. Being sat in a chair or lay in bed for a considerable amount of time is large threat factors.

• mind disease, even a damaged fearful system can damage nerve muscle tissue main to the intestines.

• unique tablets may be accountable for slowing stool movement. Passing a stool through the bowels is every so often close to impossible because of positive capsules.

• Anticholinergics is also every other complicated reason affecting the interaction of bowel nerves and muscle tissue.

• certain medication for treating diarrhea taken too often can reason constipation, as well as narcotic ache medication. as an instance: methadone and codeine.

signs and symptoms

• belly cramps and bloating

• Liquid drip or leaks from the returned passage

• surprising gushes of watery diarrhea

• Bleeding from back passage

• Semi-fashioned stools

• Straining

different feasible signs and symptoms

• stress on the bladder. This causes the patient to lose manage over their bladder

• returned pain within the lower vicinity

• rapid heartbeat or viable feeling mild headed from straining when the use of the toilet

considerable changes in bowel conduct will encourage your doctor to signify a colonoscopy to rule out colon or rectal most cancers.

remedy:

Suppositories are inserted into the rectum among tries to help release the stool.

not anyone will undergo surgical operation, having stated that, an overly widened colon (megacolon), or whole blocked bowel is any other count number wherein emergency removal is necessary.

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webpostingpro-blog · 7 years

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New Post has been published on Webpostingpro

New Post has been published on https://webpostingpro.com/british-economy-gets-improved-growth-forecast-from-brexit-bashing-imf/

British economy gets improved growth forecast from Brexit-bashing IMF

The IMF raised its prediction for the second time this 12 months, pronouncing our economy had held up after the European referendum

BRITAIN’S economic prospects had been given a chief improve, as a Brexit-bashing global body again raised its boom forecast for the UK.

The International Financial Fund raised its prediction for the second one time this 12 months, announcing our economy had held up publish-Brexit vote.It gave the United Kingdom a bigger increase forecast upgrade than some other essential u. S . A . in its contemporary World economic Outlook.

The IMF, headed up by means of Christine Lagarde, stated it now expects the British financial system to develop with the aid of 2 in line with the cent in 2017.

It’s far up from January’s forecast of one.5 in line with the scent.This puts Britain in the various quickest growing advanced economies this 12 months, trailing just at the back of America and Spain, that are expected to develop 2.three percent and a couple of.6 in keeping with cent, respectively.

It is a sharp evaluation to the gloom unfold via the IMF last year.

Before last June’s European referendum Ms. Lagarde stated the outcome of a Depart vote might range from “quite terrible to very, very awful”.But in a observe the IMF said: “increase…remained solid within the United kingdom, in which spending proved resilient within the aftermath of the June 2016 referendum in favor of leaving the EU Union.”

The Washington-primarily based frame stated Britain’s financial system is anticipated to sluggish to 1.5 in step with the cent in 2018, However that is up from January’s forecast for 1.four consistent with cent growth and could be upgraded once more.

Chancellor Philip Hammond said: “The basics of our financial system are strong and we continue to invest within the competencies wanted for a more potent and fairer Britain.“We’re now forecast with the aid of the IMF to be the second fastest growing foremost superior financial system this year.

“In Washington this week I may speak to our Global partners approximately how we are able to keep on growing global financial boom, with Britain once more gambling an energetic and engaged position in the international economic system.”

The British and the Spanish Empires Nowadays

Are all cultures identical? Through the years, will different cultures obtain the equal personal freedoms for its human beings? Will they produce similar economic situations? Will they hold similar cultural and governmental balance? When we think about the lifestyle, we have a tendency to cognizance on food and language. However, there’s extra to lifestyle than what we consume and the way we communicate. Whilst It is difficult to assess a tradition at any moment, it turns into simpler with the passage of time. Time tends to magnify small differences in way of life, and lets in us to have a look at how cultures progress over more than one generations.

Few humans think about our origins anymore, but the Americas (all of North, Critical, and South us, which have been known as the “New Global” and the Western Hemisphere) are on the whole the offspring of big empires – the British and the Spanish. It’s far genuine that the French, the Dutch, the Portuguese, or even the Russians additionally made cultural contributions here. However, the British and the Spanish have an impact on within the Western Hemisphere are the maximum demonstrable and enduring.

I’m able to by no means faux to be a historian, But I actually recognize sufficient records to look a rather glaring, top notch divide. One look at a map of the Americas well-known shoe nations that stand out: the united states and Canada. Both of these wealthy, present day economic countries are daughters of the British Empire.

From America’ southern border to the end of South us (which encompasses all of what is referred to as Latin America), we witness countries which might be subject to varying levels of poverty. Ignore the Gross Home Product (GDP) of nations like Mexico. GDP is a misleading quantity, seeing that populace does not directly determine it, and it does no longer monitor financial disparities within a country. Apart from Brazil (which turned into Portuguese), Latin America’s impoverished international locations are in most cases the daughters of the Spanish Empire.

The British monetary growth conditions economy and first-rate of existence among America and Canada, and the rest of Latin we are so dramatically exclusive that it begs the query: How on the planet did this appear?

What are the motives for the divide? Can serendipity give an explanation for all of it? Do the united states and Canada merely live on a land abundant with valuable uncooked materials they use to generate wealth? If so, why does it simply manifest to coincide with the geopolitical line that separates the U.S. From Latin us? Are there few or no herbal sources in Latin The united states? Is the land certainly barren at some point of?

A few still declare These days that America immorally built its wealth on slave hard work. But, slavery was ubiquitous in the Western Hemisphere – with Brazil identified as the united states of America that imported the maximum slaves. Name any use inside the Americas, and it became undoubtedly involved in the slave trade. Slavery became an abomination, However, it becomes an abomination dedicated by means of all of us in the New World. Consequently, slavery could not be the purpose that America and Canada experience a lot of extra prosperity than Latin The united states.

Are Canada and us simply merely lucky anomalies within the Western Hemisphere? How do the island countries fair? most of the islands have complex histories, from time to time passing from the rule of 1 empire to every other. Consequently, It’s far difficult to evaluate them or place them inside the ancient confines of any of the ECU empires.

But, there are exceptions. Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean Sea, changed into a part of the Spanish Empire for hundreds of years until the Spanish-American Struggle of 1898. two different islands specifically stand out for their a success economies and first-class of life: Bermuda and the Bahamas. Historically, the Bahamas had been often under British rule, and Bermuda is still a British territory.

It’s miles difficult to disregard the comparison among the lands that had been as soon as below British rule and the lands that had been once underneath Spanish rule. Whilst all international locations face social and economic challenges, the examples above seem to illustrate that British affect instilled something inside the lifestyle that allowed humans to prosper, order to flourish, and poverty to diminish.

This is not to indicate that everywhere the British ruled, prosperity and modernity exists Nowadays. contemporary day Belize was as soon as named British Honduras, and Guyana becomes as soon as British Guiana. Jamaica was also below British rule for centuries. None of those countries are financial giants Nowadays. But, truly anywhere we see prosperity inside the Western Hemisphere Nowadays, we should wager that the ones lands have been once by and large below British rule. Conversely, the Spanish Empire left no cutting-edge use that is prosperous These days.

Outside of the Western Hemisphere, we have a look at extra British fulfillment stories and some other Spanish failure.

In Oceania, the British Empire gave us Australia and New Zealand. Most of the people of Australia is both barren region or semi-arid land, At the same time as New Zealand has a very low percentage of arable land. Notwithstanding those barriers, Each country has modern-day, evolved economies. In case you keep in mind all of the poverty in Asia (and the Pacific) surrounding these two nations, it makes their fulfillment even more sudden.

Similarly, two of the maximum incredible British success stories involve the small Asian islands of Singapore and Hong Kong. these islands own few herbal assets and are a part of the four Asian Tigers or Dragons – Asian lands with contemporary, evolved economies (the opposite two “Tigers” are Taiwan and South Korea). Neither Singapore nor Hong Kong possesses the enormous deposits of precious minerals and oil located in Mexico or the fertile farmland determined in the South American Pampas. However, they are monetary success testimonies.

Therefore, even halfway around the arena, British influence permits islands with few natural resources to acquire economic prosperity inside the midst of Asian poverty.

The Spanish additionally colonized Pacific Islands, However, These days none of them fits the achievement of the British islands. the largest of the Spanish possessions had been the Philippine Islands. A Spanish colony, ceded to the U.S. After the Spanish-American Battle, the Philippines remains a negative, developing country.

A few would possibly argue that the British Empire succeeded because it tended to rule massive international locations, which would possibly own a natural benefit. Canada, the USA, and Australia come to mind, on the grounds that they are 3 of the largest countries in the World. However, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and Bolivia also are very big (larger than New Zealand), and Despite Some economic fulfillment, they warfare with various ranges of poverty. In addition, the British have fared nicely even on small islands.

At any individual second in time, the variations among the cultures won’t seem that big. For example, Argentina becomes as soon as considered a financial rival of us. Mexico has made high-quality strides, and always seem to be simply every other decade or from turning into a monetary power in their personal right. To be honest, former British territories additionally undergo intervals of civil unrest and monetary recession, so they are ways of achieving utopia. However, Through the years – centuries in fact – the small differences collect, and Both ability and goals are realized or they remain simply ability and goals. in the British Global, many of those desires had been completed, While the Spanish World continues to be hoping for a better future, primarily based on their potential.

From countless Pacific islands, through the subcontinent of India, a whole lot of the Mid-East, components of Africa, and the brand new World, the British left an indelible mark that stays Today. It’s far genuine that lots of these areas stubbornly remain in poverty and economic and political turmoil. And, like every other colonial strength, the British didn’t make plenty of an enduring, positive financial impact in Africa. So, it is not authentic – nor am I implying – that anywhere the British went, achievement and wealth observed.

It’s miles authentic, even though, that when we evaluate the daughters of the 2 tremendous empires, anyplace there are people experiencing monetary success, they are generally former topics of the British Empire. But, it does now not just begin and give up with monetary wealth. maximum of the Spanish World suffers not simplest from poverty However additionally from revolution and political instability.

examine the Spanish nations of Latin us with the USA, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. in the British International, we find extra political balance, stable currencies, and governments run by elected officials. within the Spanish International, there are greater bold generals and elected “robust men” on occasion usurping the regulation to acquire energy. Effective political events far too regularly squelch dissent through shutting down opposition newspapers and tv stations, arresting political fighters and reporters, and overtly worthwhile political allies Whilst punishing political foes. If you are still unconvinced that a disparity exists between these cultures, then a basic human want requires you to answer a critical query: Wherein of the aforementioned international locations could you consider the drinking water?

So what exactly are the motives for those variations in affluence, and political and cultural stability? Is it regulation? Custom? Language? food? A form of government? Patriotism? Religion? sources? Education? British discipline as opposed to Spanish Machismo?

Perhaps It’s far neither the Kind of authorities nor the wording of laws that be counted, However, in the British International, there may be greater faith that legal guidelines will be upheld. Perhaps it isn’t always necessarily patriotism, the However religion of their fellow residents – if humans trust that everyone else in their use cheats to get ahead, they too may be more likely to cheat, and kickbacks and bribery turn out to be a part of the subculture. Perhaps there may be greater emphasis on tough work, non-public responsibility, and devotion to Training in the British tradition, which produces a better preferred of living Through the years.

Spiritual beliefs generally tend to define a people and a way of life and play a primary function in how that lifestyle evolves. In Christianity, distinct denominations will stress A few Biblical passages and aspects in their religion over others. Some cite hard work and sacrifice, Even as others stress equality, humility, and spirituality over materialism. Possibly the differences between Protestantism (as practiced by means of the British) and Catholicism (as practiced by the Spanish) left religious seeds that developed in a different way Over the years.

The sources for those disparities are probably a complex mixture of many elements. However, It is clear that disparities do exist. Regardless of the reasons for the demonstrable variations among the daughters of those wonderful empires, It’s miles unmistakable that way of life topics. subculture is greater than just the spoken language, the precise artistry, meals practice, or conventional entertainment of human beings. Over the years, a country’s way of life determines its monetary achievement, the rule of law, and political and social stability. Consequently, Whilst each way of life is unique and noteworthy, in the long run, now not all cultures are same.

I invite you to go to my website, The Soup of life. each week I add any other column in which I provide my mind on culture, politics, Religion, fitness, technology, and lifestyles.

Brooding about the questions and opportunities of life remains my lifelong ardor. And, I’m by no means carried out getting to know. I’m looking forward to your mind and comments.

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British economy gets improved growth forecast from Brexit-bashing IMF

The IMF raised its prediction for the second time this 12 months, pronouncing our economy had held up after the European referendum

BRITAIN’S economic prospects had been given a chief improve, as a Brexit-bashing global body again raised its boom forecast for the UK.

The IMF, headed up by means of Christine Lagarde, stated it now expects the British financial system to develop with the aid of 2 in line with the cent in 2017.

It is a sharp evaluation to the gloom unfold via the IMF last year.

The British and the Spanish Empires Nowadays

Outside of the Western Hemisphere, we have a look at extra British fulfillment stories and some other Spanish failure.

Therefore, even halfway around the arena, British influence permits islands with few natural resources to acquire economic prosperity inside the midst of Asian poverty.

I invite you to go to my website, The Soup of life. each week I add any other column in which I provide my mind on culture, politics, Religion, fitness, technology, and lifestyles.

Brooding about the questions and opportunities of life remains my lifelong ardor. And, I’m by no means carried out getting to know. I’m looking forward to your mind and comments.

0 notes