#i even have an explanation for why time travel is viable. to be explained in the first chapter.

[orcelito]

OK I do have that idea for a trigun longfic. And it is almost exclusively trimax inspired lol

[rallamajoop]

On Mia Winters, misogyny, and abuse

As should be pretty obvious by now, I love Mia Winters. I honestly think she’s one of the most compelling characters in this whole damn franchise.

But let me make clear: you don’t have to love her. Mia’s canonically done a lot of shady shit in her time, and her relationship with Ethan has real problems. There are perfectly viable interpretations where the only thing really holding it together is his own denial. Only I never seem to get to read any of those takes, because the most common characterisations Mia gets in fic are an irredeemable monster, or a cardboard cutout who exists only to be written out as quickly as possible. And to write Mia out to that degree doesn’t just do her character a disservice, it does Ethan a disservice, and a big one.

The amount of Mia-bashing I see out there in this fandom turns my stomach. It’s not just the slash fans who’d rather ship Ethan with another dude. I have seen Mia loudly bashed in tags on het or gen fic in which she does not even appear. I have seen male fans reviewing these games on youtube who treat her the exact same way. But it’s never more frustrating than when that hate comes from the same fans who’ll turn around and talk about characters like Chris or even Lady Dimitrescu (she who canonically abuses her and murders her servants, and, y’know, eats people without a shred of remorse) like they’re perfectly forgivable and have done no real wrong. And don’t get me wrong: I love Lady D, but I love her because she’s magnificently evil. Mia? Mia’s a whole lot more complicated.

But to really explain why this hate makes me so uncomfortable, I’m going to have to start with the start of Resident Evil 7, and Mia’s very first scenes in this whole franchise.

Let me quickly summarise the opening of that game. A man whose wife disappeared without explanation suddenly gets a message about her whereabouts. He travels to an isolated location, breaks in, and finds her. She denies ever sending him that message, and seems incredibly distressed that he’s there at all. They fight. It ends with him sinking an axe into her neck and shooting her several times with a handgun. But see, he didn’t do anything wrong! It was all self-defence! She started it! She was acting crazy!

If you didn’t spot it, the whole opening of RE7 reads uncomfortably like a story about a woman escaping an abusive relationship, then being tracked down and murdered by her ex.

Obviously, I am not here to tell you Ethan’s abusive. He’s not, we’ve got no reason to imagine he is. He was legitimately acting in self-defence.

But the fact the first thing Ethan has to do in this game is find the balls to kill his own wife ‒ that a whole new era of Resi games has opened with a sequence so easily read as a sympathetic justification for how a man might perfectly innocently track down his missing spouse and "have" to kill her – that made those opening minutes into by far the most uncomfortable part of this whole franchise for me. Shit like this really happens. I mean it, I will track down the fucking statistics on women who are murdered after trying to leave an abusive partner if I have to.

What happens to ‘Mia’ in the opening to RE8 isn’t much better: it's as textbook a fridging as any I’ve ever seen. Yes, it’s a fridging that gets retconned away later when she turns up alive, but the fact that’s even possible speaks to just how awful and confusing her death is. The game opens with Mia’s violent murder at the hands of this series’ longest running ‘hero’, and the event is framed entirely in terms of how awful it is for her husband. That's as frigid as a fridging gets.

The eventual reveal that the real Mia was just trapped alone in a cell being experimented on by a madwoman for god knows how long doesn’t actually make it better. The horror Mia goes through in both these games is a footnote, barely explored.

I bring these events up not to condemn the RE franchise, not to say that including these sequences was unconscionable, or that violence against women can never be shown in a horror title. A quick glance at my tumblr should demonstrate how much I adore these games. Tropes like fridging become problems only because they’re so ubiquitous they can come to define almost the only roles women get to play, not because any individual example is necessarily grounds for outrage. If anything, there’s just as much to analyse in all the hate thrown at characters like Ethan Winters (or his predecessor, Jonathan Harker) as a archtypical examples of sexism against men – backlash against the very idea of a male character in the disempowered role of horror victim, usually reserved for women.

But with this context in mind, my god is it uncomfortable to see people talk about Mia as irredeemable monster who deserves to suffer more. People who will valorise the likes of Chris Redfield, who didn’t even bother to stop to tell Ethan that’s not Mia, yet talk about Mia like being shot to death in her own living room was only what she deserved. That is just a whole load of yikes.

And given that both games open with Mia being violently killed by a male protagonist (twice in RE7, with the player in control), it sure is convenient how so many people have managed to ‘find’ the evidence that proves she’s the real villain. You don’t have to think too hard about Chris Redfield as a violent maniac or Ethan Winters being forced to kill his own wife if it’s okay to inflict violence on this woman. “Yes, but she shouldn’t have done [X]…” or even “But what if she’s the real abuser” is a narrative that gets thrown at real women in abusive relationships all the time – especially when the man is a friend of whoever’s casting judgement, or even a celebrity. Real world examples of this shit in the wild run the gamut from wild fan-takes on The Shining ‘proving’ that actually the abused wife was the ‘real’ abuser all along, right up to the ongoing hate campaign against Amber Heard. People don’t want to have to think badly of someone they admire, and will take any excuse to shift the blame. The stakes are infinitely lower when we’re talking about fictional characters, but the same pattern plays out.

And look, I do get it. It’s easy to go into these games and come out with a negative opinion of Mia. She’s the one who lures you into danger in RE7, acts all innocent, and then comes at Ethan with a chainsaw – and when you finally find out her big secret at the end, it turns out she was working for the people who created Eveline from the start! You’re really not given a lot of reasons to invest in Ethan and Mia’s relationship before she’s suddenly coming at him with a knife, and the fact she never does get to come clean to him in canon leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

It’s really easy to go into RE8, note all the glaring signs that Ethan’s relationship with Mia isn’t healthy, and draw your own conclusions about a woman we don’t hardly even see again for most of the runtime of the game. Half this goddamn fandom still seems to think Heisenberg is actually a lycan, ffs – most of what people think they know about Mia is more meme than fact, and the rest is pretty surface level. Basic media literacy is not exactly high out there in the tumblrweeds (let alone the rest of the internet).

But as for the idea that Mia’s responsible for all the horrors Ethan went through, people seem to forget that Mia herself went through so much worse. Ethan spent a day in the Bakers’ property, and a day in the village. Mia spent years trapped in the Bakers’ property, and days at least imprisoned in Miranda’s lab, knowing exactly how much danger her family were in, helpless to save them. She’s no innocent herself, but ye gods has she already suffered for her crimes.

So with all that out of the way, well, what’s the actual ‘evidence’ that Mia herself was abusive? No-one's coming into this one without some bias, but let’s at least give it a fair shake.

Right upfront, I want to recognise that in both fiction and reality, women can be abusers, and men can be victims. Abuse in heterosexual relationships is far more likely to occur with the man as the abuser, but the reverse does happen, and the fact culture at large can be so eager to cast the woman as the villain doesn’t make it any easier for the real male victims of abuse to get recognition and help. Society as a whole is still just really shitty about enabling or excusing real abuse.

But the idea that Mia was abusive has very little to back it up. Whatever you make of “her” interactions with Ethan at the start of the game, the fact remains: that’s not Mia, and the fact she’s acting so strangely is meant to be our clue that something much bigger than a little marital strife is going on here. Knowing all this doesn’t really make the scene where she’s violently executed less disturbing, but you can’t miss the hints we don’t yet know the full story.

So the question becomes, is there any evidence that the real Mia was abusive? I’ve dug into this one a bit before in my post about trying to figure out the timeline of exactly when Mia was replaced, but there are no definitive answers as to how long Miranda's been living in their house. To summarise a long post (and a surprisingly lively timeline of events from the days before the game begins): the most likely intent seems to be that Miranda’s been posing as Mia for less than a week, though a lot of the vibes of the scene give me the impression it’s been several weeks at least. Ultimately, that’s going to come down to your own interpretation.

The Mia mentioned in Ethan’s diary who blew up at him at the hospital could be the real Mia, but more likely isn’t: you can’t really use her to argue anything definitive, one way or another. The Mia from the flashback where Ethan gets the call from Rose’s doctor is the real Mia, but if you think getting upset when your husband brushes off your obvious distress over your daughter’s health makes you abusive, then nothing I say here is going to convince you otherwise.

The only ‘real’ evidence that Mia might be a problem is one line you might hear from Ethan while taking Rose to bed, and it is admittedly a red flag: your mother’s scary when she’s angry.

And to anyone whose whole hatred of Mia has been built backwards from this one line – especially anyone who’s grown up in a dysfunctional household themselves – hell, I get it. It is one really yikes thing for Ethan to say about his wife.

But in Mia’s defence, I can only point out that, well, yes, canonically, she is scary when she’s angry.

Oh, did I say angry? I meant fucking possessed.

And if Ethan’s bringing up the spectre of that time, even subconsciously, maybe that should be an even bigger clue that the Mia in this house right now isn’t Mia.

But what really shows this line for what it is is that we’ve seen the real Mia angry. We’ve seen her cold fury at Eveline, daring to go right back to asking ‘can we be a family now?’ within hours forcing Mia to assault her own husband with a chainsaw. We’ve seen her frustration at Ethan’s own denial, and we’ve seen her stalk out of the room when he blows off an important conversation for a call from work. We’ve seen her advance on Chris after he shut her down, demanding, Where is my husband? Where is my daughter?!

We have never seen her angry without real justification. Her anger is neither violent nor disproportionate. It’s consistently purposeful, focused, and contained. There is nothing scary about the real Mia’s anger, unless you’re threatened by the very idea she might have something valid to be angry about.

There is evidence of tension in the Winters’ marriage from before Miranda’s arrival, but it takes a very different form – most evident in the flashback scene where Ethan receives the call from Rose’s doctor. Far from Miranda’s brusque, dismissive copy of her, the real Mia is anxious and depressed, scared of what Rose’s results might reveal. Here, Ethan’s the one brushing her concerns aside (“We talked about this […] Rose is fine!”) He recognises there seems to be something Mia’s not telling him, says they should talk about it, but then immediately brushes the conversation off when he gets a call from work, while Mia storms out of the room.

You can certainly read Mia as a hypocrite here, getting angry at Ethan for not knowing things she’s deliberately kept from him. But it’s Ethan who decides a call from work is more important than a conversation with his wife – someone who is obviously distressed, canonically still on a regime of drugs after the traumatic events of RE7, very likely suffering PTSD along with Ethan, and maybe even some form of postpartum depression. We don’t know anything about Ethan’s work, so there’s no point in speculating about how much he ‘needs’ to take that call. Mia’s no clear villain here – quite the opposite.

Personally, I tend towards taking this scene as evidence that Mia has tried to talk to Ethan about what really happened to him, but hasn’t managed to get him to face the truth. For all that Ethan supposedly wants to talk about the past, it’s a defining plot point that he’s badly in denial himself.

Or they could both be at some fault here: Ethan unwilling to face the truth, while Mia is reluctant to force him to face something she knows will hurt him and bring him distress. Even when Mia says outright that she ‘tried to keep this a secret, but…’ to Chris at the end of the game, the implication is as much that she’s tried to keep it a secret from people like Chris, who might decide Ethan is dangerous. She’s lied to protect him before, and if she’s still lying to him about her past with the Connections, then the fact that knowing the truth will hurt Ethan is obviously among her reasons. Protecting Ethan has always been among Mia’s top priorities ‒ even at her own expense.

The only other real hints we get about Mia’s inner life come from the glimpses of her we get in Donna’s domain. But I’m hesitant to read too much into these, given how unclear it is how much is just a manifestation of Ethan’s own anxieties. If anything, the ‘Mia’ in these scenes almost seems to have some far worse secret than simply having not told Ethan something he really ought to have put together on his own, and I’d kind of love to see that explored too – at least as long as that goes somewhere more interesting than round umpteen of ‘and that’s why Mia sucks’.

But my point here isn’t that you have to read any of these scenes the same way I do. I do think it’s important to recognise that nothing written for a game like RE is truly character-driven; scenes exist to serve the plot far more than to reflect consistent character motivations or hold up to fridge logic (which, let’s face it, is the real reason for most of Chris’ horrific behaviour in this game, let alone anyone else’s). The result is rarely super consistent, and leaves ample space for multiple interpretations of anyone’s motivations. Regardless, the idea there’s any hard evidence that Ethan and Mia’s relationship is dysfunctional, or that whatever’s wrong is Mia’s fault alone, is going to be incredibly hard to justify.

Any assertion that Ethan and Mia are somehow on the verge of divorce also needs to be weighed against the masses of evidence of how much they love each other – the number of times Mia has said she loves Ethan, up to and including (yes, I’m bringing this up again) how ready she is to die for him in RE7. Her speech to Chris at the end of RE8 states explicitly that being together with Ethan and Rose is the only thing that matters to her. “Mia, I’m sorry, I love you,” are some of the last words Ethan ever speaks – and I can’t help but read into how the moment he finally pushes Rose into Chris’ arms so they can get away with him weighing them down is right after he learns that Mia is alive, and thus implicitly that Rose won’t be alone if Ethan doesn’t make it. And good god does that scene break my heart every time.

It’s worth recognising that the fact Ethan and Mia love each other doesn’t inherently mean their relationship is healthy, or that you have to love them together as much as I do. Like I said up top, you don’t have to like Mia, and you don’t have to justify not liking her if you don’t. I would genuinely like to see fics where Mia and Ethan’s supposedly-necessary break up feels in character. Where Ethan loves her but just can’t deal with the resentment and the fallout over all the lies she told him, where he's been clinging to his 'happy ending' with Mia after surviving the Bakers so hard he can't face the fact things just aren't working, or where he’s having to face that their relationship only ever really worked because she was away so much. It will break my heart, but fiction is allowed to do that.

But god, it would be nice if people could just take the bashing below an eleven around this place. The number of times I’ve had to sigh and back-button out of reading something, because yet another author has decided to project their own hatred for Mia onto the husband who’s still reeling from watching her being violently murdered in front of him… it gets fucking old, y’know?

I would really like to think that in the year of our lord 2024, fandom would be a bit past this thing where they bash the canonical female love interest in the name of shipping the hero with another dude. People will bend over backwards to try and cast Heisenberg and Chris as guys who really care about consent and worry about Ethan getting hurt, because heaven forbid anyone be caught shipping something slightly problematic. And yet misogyny still somehow gets a pass.

You do not have to love Mia. You don’t even have to like her. But ye gods, the hate she gets is baseless and absurd.

Hasn't this poor woman suffered enough?

(And on that note, I promise I am finally done soapboxing in defence of Mia Winters, thank you for bearing with me for this long.)

[dante-winning-archive]

I'm curious as to your explanation for not using Yamato in your Dadgil fic? Ways to tone down Yamato's portal making ability is one of the most frustrating things on my mind often. I can only have that thing be stolen/go missing so many times. I play around with an idea that opening a portal with Yamato runs the risk of it not being able to close that would explain why they don't always use it to travel, but it doesn't always work because I feel like in a dire situation Vergil would just do it anyways? I've also played around with Yamato only being able to travel short distances and unable to be used too much in quick succession (backup for this idea is that Vergil didn't teleport right too his house), but while it might be true even that small distance could mean the world. I'm sorry for rambling about my Yamato frustrations I'm just curious how you deal with it.

Glad you asked! The answer to this has two simple reasons, and neither of them really have anything to do with Yamato at all.

Reason 1: I, as the author, need these two knuckleheads to be Stuck In A Situation together. This fic is entirely about their relationship, and while Dante and Kyrie both make brief appearances (via phone calls), having them actually be present would sort of undermine what I'm trying to do.

Reason 2: Vergil doesn't want anyone's help.

To this end, I had to come up with reasons why Yamato wasn't a viable option. Here's what I came up with.

Using Yamato expends energy. The farther the distance, the more energy it takes.

Vergil and Nero are out on a job together. They're three hours away from Dante's shop and much farther from Fortuna. Using Yamato to get Nero to a different location would be incredibly draining.

They completed the job, so Vergil is already a little tired from that. He doesn't have enough demonic energy left to travel so far. If portaling does become necessary, Vergil needs to rest first.

The boys are in the van, so they'd have to leave it behind. That's not a big deal, really, but going back to the job location to get it and drive it home would be a pain in the ass.

If the situation became dire enough? Yes, Vergil would attempt it. But it would leave him severely drained. More importantly, to him it would mean that he wasn't good enough to take care of his son without help.

I just feel that giving Yamato limitations is extremely necessary. Also I needed it to have limitations so that the entire premise of the story would work.

For those wondering, the premise is: Nero and his old man go out on a job in a secluded area. Nico isn't with them because she's sick (with the same illness Nero's kids are sick with), so Nero drove. Once the job is over and Nero is very clearly ill himself, it's up to Vergil to take care of him until he's well enough to drive them home. Because Vergil can't drive.

I do like all the ideas you came up with. I'm writing those down.

[randomsnakesimp]

Okay. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna take the leap and say: Phobos is the victim (sorta).

Quick disclaimer: I am going to abuse plot holes and cartoon logic for my cause in a very nitpicky way. If you dislike that, I can completely understand, and I hope this warning will save you a lot of reading.

Also, this won't go into just headcanon territory, I'll put those in a separate post. Everything here I'll try to keep based on actual information from the comics and what I made of them.

That said...

Let's take a look at this scene:

(for a quick translation of the important part, the mother says: "No, Phobos, Meridian is meant for your sister. That's the law. The crown is hers.)

What we can see here are a few very important things:

1. Phobos is at most 5 years older than Elyon.

2. The name "Phobos" is not an edgy nickname he gave himself. Five-year-olds don't go around calling themselves Phobos. So his parents, for some reason, gave him that name.

3. His mother is very adamant about him not even touching the crown and reminding him of his sisters' birthright.

So, after establishing what I would call more or less facts, what else can, relatively savely, be deduced here?

- Since Elyon never noticed anything weird about herself, she can't have aged slower than earth children. So neither can Phobos. This would mean that, as she was kidnapped after her mothers death as a baby, he would have been five. So, he either tried his best to rule at age five, or the council we see as Elyon rules stepped in for him for a while

- this would then mean two things: we need an explanation as to why Miriadel, Alborn and Galgheita fled explicitly from Phobos (I'll give my explanation a bit further down) and second, Phobos' reign of terror wasn't even thirteen years, and a lot of that time he was a child/teen and could not even have been mature enough to rule.

- This also means that Kandrakar pulled up the veil when Phobos was at most five, likely younger, and that the so called "Seal of Phobos" also existed at that time, as both the veil and the seal are seen in the flashback depicting Elyons abduction. For Kandrakar, this, too, I will try to explain soon, but as for the seal, I find it most plausible that the theory @ror-witch used in their fanfiction, of the seal being a royal heirloom and named after each ruler, is true.

- His and his mother's relationship was neither as bad as some assumptions go, but neither was it that good, probably, or at least it wasn't in his perception. See how his memory is of her cradling the baby the entire time and talking more about his sisters birthright than about what he has/can do? Yes, it's only a short memory, but I think it's clear that it's a summary of what he remembers of his mother.

- Phobos desire to rule Meridian does not stem from something deeply sinister, but rather from a childish spite. Five year old Phobos probably just wanted the crown cause it looked nice and shiny, and he was fabulous even back then, but after his mothers words, he sulked and decided to show her. That's his motivation.

So, now let's go a bit further and look at some other things we can deduce from the rest of the comics:

- Phobos has a huge dungeon, a wall of roses that turn people into more roses if they touch it and his plan for the annihilation of Meridian is "Well, Cedric and I hide in the castle and...we'll see". He hates the people of Meridian, but he doesn't seem to have it in him to directly attack anyone until Elyon is there and even here, when he has her knocked out in their duel or locked up as Endarno, he isn't unnecessarily cruel. He's not evil in nature, he's more of a very dangerous child throwing tantrums. ( Cedric is kinda similar, and they both start losing it toward the coronation, but I sincerely believe that before that, there would have been a chance for them to come around )

- The only person he ever tortures or even hurts directly is Cedric. Because one, he likes Cedric and so gets more extreme emotions around him, and two, Cedric never says anything, and just plays it of afterwards, so I don't know if he even fully realizes what he's doing, like a child hitting someone. If Cedric ever just said "Stop it, you're hurting me", Phobos would probably need an entire week to process that input.

- Phobos is VERY reclusive, and he doesn't want anyone to have even pictures of him, and while that could be a God complex, I get some highly insecure vibes out of it, in a vulnerable narcissist kinda way, in that he is massively overcompensating. I gotta admit, though, that I cannot put my finger on why, so maybe take this with a grain of salt and decide for yourself if you agree.

- Kandrakar never orders the guardians to help Meridian in any way, just to make sure nothing oozes out. They likely pulled up the veil for their own protection, so Phobos wouldn't be able to spread far enough to become a real danger, rather than to protect innocent people, as clearly the Meridian people mean shit to them

- while the guards are widely feared in Meridian, Cedric seems to be viewed as... not very frightening or important, as some random merchant feels comfortable clinging to his cape (and rightfully so, apparently, as Cedric just tells him to piss off and doesn't care any further). This further leads me to believe that Cedric is rather unhealthy devoted to Phobos and his tantrums while their shitty ass reign leaves a lot of free space for unsuited people to become guards and tyranize the people.

- the King and Queen seem to have died in rapid succession, and shortly after the scene shown above, yet she looks perfectly healthy in that scene.

Now, what do I make of all this?

I believe the line of events to be as follows:

I don't think Phobos traveling back in time is a viable theory for mainly two reasons: I think his mother would be less chill around him if she saw/heard about his reign herself, and I believe that it would have been mentioned somewhere along the way if that were the case. Instead, what I believe happened is that the oracle had a vague vision of Phobos nearly taking over Kandrakar. Deciding in their random mood swings that today was a day of action, they had the people of Meridian informed that the next male born to a queen would become a dangerous tyrant, pulled up a veil and set their guardians to make sure nothing oozed out.

The veil, of course, made the people of Meridian feel trapped and a horror of the unborn prince who would ruin their lives spread.

So, when Weira gave birth to that prince, a full blown panic spread, so much so that she, in a fit of hysterical emotion, named him after that boust of panic. Of course, people tried to kill the prince basically from the moment he was born, and he was met with barely concealed resentment.

Soon after, Weira and her husband died - whether they were killed, or fell ill, or died in an accident, I have no idea, but I wouldn't completely rule out an assassination either aimed at Phobos and accidentally hitting them or the strain making at least one of them fall terminally ill.

Either the people rioted and Phobos' magic panic reaction or the leftover loyal guard was enough to fight them back, or the people succumbed to their fate at this point, slumping into the state of despair seen throughout the comics. But in the end, five year old Phobos had to be handed the throne. I assume the council still had some say at this point, but he did manage to get all pictures of him destroyed - this order was likely due to the fact that they were mostly caricatures.

So he grew up with the very volatile combination of a shitton of power and no one able to tell him if he was being stupid on one hand, and feeling unloved and unwanted on the other. He withdrew, likely also due to countless assassination attempts or things he perceived as such, and went into a negative feedback loop of being unable to mature and take responsibility, therefore being a shit ruler, therefore being hated, therefore having no one to help him, therefore being unable to face and grow from his mistakes, rinse and repeat.

So, Meridian was plunged into chaos, yet he seemed fine more or less just sitting in the new playroom he made for himself in the gardens, sporadically giving out an order or two and having generally no idea about anything that didn't directly concern him.

Enter Elyon. Now, she send him of the rails, as she was a danger to his lifestyle AND a reminder of all the sentiments he'd be drowning in alcohol if he wasn't too much of a recluse and education denier to know of that option. He doesn't even try. He just lets Cedric, the one person he trusts, handle her, like everything else, and somewhat plays along sometimes, when he feels like it. This is where he passes the point of no return and starts actually trying to kill people, culminating in him creating an army to wipe out Meridian. I still believe that even at this point, in his head, what he's doing is just throwing a nice toy out the window just so his sister won't have it.

[paulinedorchester]

Garrett, Leah. X Troop: The Secret Jewish Commandos of World War II. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021; London: Vintage Publishing, 2021.

(The American cover is on the left, the British on the right.)

Every so often, gifs from something called X Company cross my dashboard. When I came across Leah Garrett’s book X Troop, my first thought was that it must treat the same subject, but it seems that that can’t be the case: Garrett maintains that none of this story has ever been told before, because most of the documentation remained classified until very recently. (She claims to have single-handedly declassified many sealed British military records.) X Troop is about No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando, 3 Troop, commonly referred to as X Troop, comprising 87 German, Austrian, and (in a few cases) Hungarian refugees, all but five of them Jewish (at least under Nazi racial laws — I’ll get to that). It is indeed an extraordinary story, and occasionally an infuriating one. Garrett has done a tremendous public service in relating this tale, but the book itself has some puzzling — no, let's be honest, irritating — aspects.

The men who would make up X Troop left their native countries in their mid to late ’teens during the late 1930s, most of them without their parents as passengers on the Kindertransport. They occupied themselves in various ways until the middle of 1940 when, apparently without exception, they were interned on the Isle of Man, in Canada, or in Australia, to which more than 2,500 of them were transported on the H.M.T. Dunera, a dangerously over-crowded liner on which they endured conditions so horrific that the officer in charge — Major William Patrick Scott, a gleeful sadist and anti-Semite — ended up being court-martialed.

It is heartening to be able to report that British public opinion appears to have turned strongly against wholesale internment by mid-1941, but it wasn’t until that December that the internees were released from confinement. Those who had been transported overseas were offered immediate permission to return to the U.K. — if they volunteered for the Pioneer Corps, and I’m grateful to Garrett for providing the first detailed explanation that I’ve seen of what that meant. It wasn’t a good situation: they did menial labor and were bored out of their minds.

In the summer of 1942, they were finally offered an opportunity to join in the fight against the Nazis. This appears to be an instance in which the “great man” theory of history is perfectly valid, Lord Mountbatten being the great man in question. Garrett explains:

Mountbatten made a bold suggestion [to Winston Churchill]: they should create a new special unit of commandos, different from anything used before. Rather than coming from the ranks of the army or the navy, No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando would be composed of soldiers made up of displaced nationals such as Poles, Norwegians, and Frenchmen. Each of the units . . . would be used for different missions depending on their native languages. They would be unified by the shared desire to drive the Nazis out of their home countries. These commandos, highly trained and highly motivated, would lead the way when the time came for the Allies’ invasion of Europe.

And that’s exactly what happened. There were French, Dutch, Belgian, Norwegian, Polish, and Yugoslavian troops within No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando. There was also a troop known as the “British” troop, made up of Germanophones. That was X Troop (a nickname Churchill gave them). “X Troop would be Britain’s secret shock troop in the war against Germany,” Garrett relates:

They would kill and capture Nazis on the battlefield. But that would not be all. They would also immediately interrogate captured Germans, be it in the heat of the battle or right afterward. The men’s fluency in German would enable them to get essential intelligence that would guide the next moment’s choices rather than having to wait to interview prisoners until they were back at headquarters. ... They would have to be in peak form both physically and mentally. And because they were nearly all Jewish refugees from the Third Reich, they also would need to be diligently protected.

The situation was particularly dire because most were stateless — stripped of their citizenship in Germany or Austria, but refused naturalization by the Home Office. As one officer later recalled, “If any of them were captured in battle and their true identity had been revealed, their fate would have been almost impossible to contemplate.” (Those who chose to remain in the U.K. after the war faced an uphill battle in gaining British citizenship, as Garrett relates. She tells us nothing, incidentally, about Jewish personnel in the other No. 10 (Inter-Allied) Commando Troops.)

The first step was to have them adopt pseudonyms. When they arrived in Aberdovey (now Aberdyfi), Wales, for training they were each given 30 minutes to come up with a nom de guerre. They also had to concoct false backgrounds to explain why they spoke English with foreign accents. One man told the couple with whom he was billeted “that his accent was somewhat peculiar because his father had traveled a lot on business,” an unlikely story that they apparently accepted without question.

X Troop personnel were involved in the Dieppe raid — which may have been a mistake, as the troop was just past its infancy and several of the men were killed — and the Sicily landings and their aftermath, but of course all of that was really just a warm-up for the invasion of Normandy and, beyond that, Germany. More than half of the book is devoted to this. Assigned to various units, nearly all of the commandos landed at Sword Beach on June 6th, 1944, and proceeded into Central Europe, achieving victory after victory. Garrett places great emphasis on anger as their motivator: anger at the disruption of their lives and at their uncertainly over the fate of their parents and other relatives.

Leah Garrett is American; she is also Jewish. Like the overwhelming majority of my fellow Jews in this country, she is incapable of acknowledging the possibility of viable Jewish life outside of the U.S. or Israel. Her main piece of evidence for this view, which she hammers home repeatedly, is the fact that all but three of the surviving X-Troopers (22 were killed in action) chose to continue using their noms-de-guerre after the war — and, as she is at pains to point out, all of those who resumed their original names ended up emigrating to the United States! (The book’s excellent index helps the reader keep track of who was whom.) It’s true that names hold an important place in Jewish culture, but coming from someone using Garrett as a surname, her attitude comes across as either oblivious or chutzpadik, I’m not quite sure which. She also seems not to know that, historically at least, Jewish immigrants to Britain have changed their names with an assiduousness that makes the same phenomenon in the U.S. look like a mere blip.

Garrett also informs us, in the written equivalent of hushed tones, that some of the men who settled in the U.K. after the war married gentile women and brought up their children as at least nominal members of various Christian bodies. I share her discomfort with this, to be sure, but in order to maintain her shocked, shocked, stance she has to ignore something that she has in fact explained at some length in the book’s early chapters: a significant percentage of the future X-Troopers had only one or two Jewish grand-parents apiece, were brought up as Lutherans or Roman Catholics, and had absolutely no idea that they had any Jewish forebears until Nazi racial laws forced the issue into view. While I’ve known quite a few converts to Judaism whose initial impetus was the discovery of Jewish ancestry, it’s a bit much to expect that everyone will react that way. On the other hand, it’s dispiriting to learn that the inscription on the monument to X Troop that was raised in Aberdyfi in 1999 does not include the words Jews or Jewish.

Garrett is Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Jewish Studies Center at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), a post she has held since 2018; she previously taught at the University of Denver and Monash University. As a former CUNY faculty member myself, I’m in a position to tell you that (a) even as a full professor, she won’t have been hired with tenure, and (b) this book probably won’t help her to achieve it. It’s a great read on an important topic and represents prodigious research, but as a work of scholarship it has several marks against it. It doesn’t come from an academic publisher. It has only a partial scholarly apparatus — end notes, but no bibliography, or even a list of the many abbreviations used in the notes. Those notes aren’t always as useful as one would like, I might add: after relating that some of the men interned in Australia chose to remain there permanently, Garrett announces that they “would forever change the landscape of Australia. They would be known as the Dunera boys and would become leaders in the arts, sciences, culinary arts, and industry during the twentieth century,” but fails to give us any clue as to where we can go to find out more.

She also adopts an informal writing style that alternates between the faintly slangy (“All the evidence I’ve found points to ... ”) and the unnecessarily dramatic: two key chapters are written entirely in the present tense, a strategy that would normally be after my own heart, but which feels contrived in this context. It also seems not to be the case that none of this has ever been written about previously, as Garrett asserts. (Last but not least, Garrett recently resigned from CUNY’s faculty union, which may end up affecting her status there, as tenure recommendations are made by union members.)

Mixed feelings, then; but the book is worth reading, and I can recommend it.

[toomuchponytail]

Could I maybe request an injured villain and a very reluctant hero caretaker who really wants nothing to do with the villain, but is convinced to help by another hero, and eventually warms up to the villain? Thank you!

I’m sorry that this took so long to get to Anon! But here you go! It was already really long, so the ‘hero getting used to Villain and warming up to them’ will have to be a separate part! This went it’s own way, so before you get mad at me know that I was only partially responsible. :) Thank you so much for requesting! I won’t be able to put it into words how incredible getting asks is! I know I’ve been doing this for almost a year but still...you are so great for trusting me with these amazing ideas! 

Thank you for all that I’m worth(It’s not a lot, but it’s something!) 

I hope that your day is a can of sweet fruit juice, after a long walk on a dusty road,something aromatic and refreshing that cuts through frustration and makes you feel revitalized. I wish you a day of needed refreshment after struggle, a meeting of goals and a celebration of the effort when the goals stay in the distance for another day. I wish you the ability to celebrate surviving, the ability to be renewed, and the ability to appreciate how hard you work whether you get where you want to go today or tomorrow. 

Take that can in your hands and marvel at the way the condensation wets your palm, at the delicious chill that travels up your arm, you’ve made it here Anon, and that is worth celebrating. 

I’m so proud of you! :D 

Look out for part two! (if you’re still interested after all of this time that is...) 

Hero dumped cream in their coffee, stumbling around in the kitchen, eyes bleary. They made their way to the kitchen table, sitting down heavily and wincing at the soreness in their back and shoulders. It had been a long night last night, they’d caught a gang of car thieves, but none of them had gone down without a fight and hero had been alone last night, sidekick off with their girlfriend in Maine to meet the parents…

Hero sighed, and took a long drink from their coffee, comforted by the warmth and familiar mix of bitterness and sweet cream. 

Before he could register that there was someone on his porch, a skill he’d needed many times over the last three years, there was a frantic pouding on the door. 

Hero jumped, startled by the sound, fear curled up catlike in the base of his stomach adrenaline a more powerful stimulant than coffee he stood and crept to the door wide awake, snatching his powerful sonic longblade from the table as he went. 

He was careful to not make any sound as he went across the old wooden floor, his bare feet making the task a little easier. 

Not many people knew where he lived, this wasn’t his base it was his house, and he took security very seriously, not serious enough to have a doorbell camera like other hero had bragged about, but serious enough. 

Hero peered through the peephole in the door, holding his breath, breath he let out in a frustrated grumble when he saw Vigilante peering back at him hopefully. 

Hero opened the door, already feeling tired again, Vigilante meant well, but they were young and impulsive, plus he wasn’t always the most trustworthy, and he wondered abstractly what they’d gotten themselves caught up in this time. 

Then he caught sight of what Vigilante was holding and almost slammed the door in their face question answered. Vigilante was supporting a barely conscious Villain, they were pale and mumbling nonsense soaked to the skin, they weren’t wearing their mask and hero could see that they’d been beaten, their face was swollen and covered in bruises. 

“Vigilante what the…!?” Hero ducked behind the door trying to obscure their face, they started to close the door on instinct, Villain was bad news, why Vigilante had taken him here and not to the police was a mystery to him. 

Vigilante grinned at hero relief evident on their face, extending their elbow as if to keep hero from closing the door all of the way, “Hero I can explain!” They said brightly, likely they had rehearsed this on the way over here, “But, um, you’re probably not going to like it.” 

Hero glared around the door, “Why Vigilante? Just take him to the police!” 

Vigilante shifted uncomfortably and looked down, “We’ve actually just come from there I’m afraid,” then, as if suddenly remembering some vital piece of information they looked up again, “Oh, and don’t worry about them seeing your face, they’re way too out of it to actually know it’s you, they were calling me sidekick when I pulled them out of the canal.” 

It had taken hero this long to realize that Vigilante was also soaked, they looked half-drowned actually, their clothes were slick to them, they slicked their dripping hair back with the hand not holding Villain, “You going to invite us in or…” 

Hero stood in the doorway silently for a moment, knowing full well that they were going to invite Vigilante inside, but wanting to teach vigilante a lesson. 

They shouldn’t have bothered, when they sighed finally and stepped aside, Vigilante tramped into their house without the slightest qualm, dripping on the floor and half-dragging half-carrying Villain in with them. 

Hero crossed their arms over their chest after they’d shut the door and bolted it, never mind one of the most dangerous people in the city was already inside of their house, they looked at Vigilante sternly, “So? The explanation is..?” 

When Vigilante looked up at them again they realized how exhausted they were, dark circles under their eyes, arms shaking with exertion, hero dropped their false sternness, “What do you need from me Vigilante?” 

Vigilante seemed to melt with relief, “The police did this to them,” They motioned to the Villain who’s mutterings had given way to weak shuttering, “I need you to keep them here and help them get better while I build a case against the Villain stopping squad.” 

Hero frowned, he’d heard rumors about the violent and often inhumane tactics that the VSS used against people they’d deemed enemies of freedom, it was somewhat well known that if you were a questionable person in regards to morality in the city you stayed away from the police. 

But while they would not be against Vigilante putting a stop to the VSS, there was no way in Hell or heaven or anywhere in between that they were going to help Villain, and certainly not at their own house! 

“Absolutely not Vigilante, I’ll do a lot of things to help, I’ll go undercover, I’ll try and join the VSS to get dirt on them, but Villain is my enemy, and I’m not having them here even if they are too out of their mind to know it’s me.” 

Vigilante’s face fell, “But you’re a hero?” They stated uselessly, “You’re the one who stands in front of the people who need protection.” 

Hero shook their head, looking away. 

“I don’t understand,” Vigilante continued, “I’ve seen you help mob bosses and gang members, even that band of thieves last year that almost killed you, why not help Villain?” 

Hero stewed for a moment, fumbling for the right words to say, “Because it’s him! All of those others were only out for their own good, they didn’t want to hurt people, they just wanted to not be hurt anymore themselves! But Villain? Villain actively hates good, he schemes against it, he’ll go out of his way to cause trouble even when there is no benefit for him! He’s evil with a capital ‘E’!” Hero’s face was reddened and he was breathing hard, he raked a hand over his face, somewhat surprised at his own outburst. 

Vigilante looked angry, “You done?” They asked without giving hero a chance to answer, “Because I’m hearing that you, the person who is the beam of hope for this corrupted city, the person who has talked me out of using violence at every turn is refusing to help someone who really needs their help. And why? Because they’re a ‘bad guy’ well, hero, guess what? I’m a bad guy too where VSS is concerned!” Vigilante’s voice had risen to a shout, their face was flushed, their eyes shining, “Villain was captured trying to rescue me from them! They weren’t going to do to me what they did to him but he didn’t know that! So our, irredeemable prince of drama and careful apathy broke in, by himself, and got himself captured! For ME! But he’s just evil, capital E and all that, nothing good about him or whatever.” 

Vigilante started towards the door, turning away from hero so that he couldn't see the tears in their eyes, “I’d heard the stories too hero, but I didn’t care too much until they came for me, because these people are the bad guys right? They break the law they pay the price, guess what hero?” they sniffled, voice breaking, “That’s exactly the logic that the VSS uses.” 

Hero swallowed, feeling rightly guilty, they reached out and put a hand on Vigilante’s shoulder, Vigilante shrugged them off, “Listen, Vigilante I’m sorry okay, I didn’t know…” Hero knew that they were going to regret this decision, but their mind was made up, “And if it means that much to you, I’ll help Villain alright? But just this time, and just because it's you asking.” 

Vigilante turned around, “Really?” They asked carefully, “you’re not going to turn around after I’m gone and call the VSS?” 

Hero shook their head in disgust, knowing that after what they’d said it was a viable question, one that made them sick, “I’ve never called them, I won’t start now.” 

Vigilante sighed, a bit of mischief returned to their eyes, “Does that mean I’m right and you’re wrong this time?” They asked, biting the inside of their cheek to keep from grinning. 

Hero groaned helplessly in frustration, “Yes, this time.” 

Vigilante Smiled brightly, just then Villain murmured, hero’s face sobered, “Here,” they said, “Help me get them to the couch.” 

Hero helped Vigilante support Villain's dead weight to the couch, once he’d been deposited Vigilante sat down on the floor next to the couch, looking spent. 

Hero’s heart twinged in sympathy, “Why don’t you go up stairs and take a shower? It’ll warm you up, and I’m sure I have some clothes that’ll fit you, sidekick and you look about the same size.” 

Vigilante smiled gratefully, “You sure?” They asked, already going up the stairs. 

Hero glanced a little nervously at Villain “I’m sure, you’ll need your strength to be able to stop the VSS, plus hopefully you’ll do it fast?” 

Vigilante chuckled and didn’t answer them, leaving hero and Villain alone in the living room. 

Hero hesitated a second before carefully removing Villain’s wet clothes. Once they’d gotten them off they looked at the damage, hero realized that Vigilante was right to be afraid. 

In the better light Villain looked dead, not that he’d looked particularly alive by the early morning sunshine, his chest was covered in bruises, several stab wounds were still weeping blood, not to mention the older scars, healed to raised memories of pain and survival. 

One of the wounds in Villain’s side was particularly deep, the edges of the wound an angry infected red. Now that they were looking at them they could see Villain’s face was flushed with fever, the shivering and weak muttering made more sense now. 

Hero sighed and went to get their medical kit, remarkably well stocked, they cleaned Villain’s wounds carefully before bandaging them and wrapping Villain in an oversized blanket. 

When they were finished Villain had stopped shaking, they’d moved from delirium to a peaceful sleep, 

Hero was forced to admit to themselves that while Villain was asleep they weren’t too bad to look after, the worse part would come later when they would wake up in hero’s house, weak and confused. 

But, hero reasoned as they heard Vigilante coming back down the stairs, they would cross that bridge when they came to it.

[pricechecktranslations]

Do you think that, maybe, Adam and Eve are not Irregulars and instead function similar to the Doll in the Theater. I mean, maybe as Irina became the Theater II and then the theater became a BLACKBOX, maybe she unwillingly trapped the souls of Adam and Eve inside herself and then created bodies for them to transfer their souls to. After all, in her song she is stated to having created the body of Adam. Maybe her "getting pregnant" is transfering this souls and that's why she can't do it again.

Same anon as before. I know my theory is full of speculation and maybe goes against what Evillious has established until now. Nonetheless, I find it viable. Though I admit I can't find a place for Gammon in the theory at all, like, Idon't know how he became a Loop Octopus or where could he be during the 1000 years of difference between the beggining and the end. Maybe you have some theories? If so, would you like to share them? :3

1. I think it is possible they are not Irregulars solely due to the fact that they aren’t blonde, nor are they identical, but I am also not sure entirely how they were born in that case given a virgin conception is one of the listed conditions for birthing Irregulars.

2. I confess I am slightly confused about what you are saying here, so let me see if I have it straight: You are theorizing that Irina inadvertently trapped Adam and Eve’s souls inside her own (even though by this logic Gammon’s would be in there too), so that when she was reincarnated into Maria she had two people’s souls lying dormant in her body. She then went ahead and created human bodies for them (an ability she has never been established as having), and then transferred their souls out of her body and into the ones she made (another ability she’s not been shown to have). She knows how to do all this despite the fact that all of her memories and talents as Irina have been erased during the reincarnation.

Sorry if this is blunt, but I find that more implausible and confusing than them just being her children.

No, I’m pretty sure we can take her pregnancy as literal. It doesn’t remotely read like it’s being used as a euphemism. I believe the reason she can’t get pregnant anymore has something to do with whatever horrifying secret Gammon discovered when he entered her temple, and it’s my hope this will be revealed later.

3. I don’t really have a lot of theories. I’m content to wait for mothy to explain these things in the upcoming story (hopefully he releases Punishment soon, or at least is working on it). Every time I theorize on Evillious, I usually end up wrong.

I will say, I was very strict before in my interpretation that the Court Ending must be identical to what the original OSS was. While I still believe that’s probably true, I am willing to accept the idea that maybe there are minor discrepancies as a result of it being a Re_Birthday induced alternate universe rather than something like time travel. And so you could argue that Gammon is in OSS because he got caught up in the Court End reset, rather than having always been there (assuming these books are indeed the Court End).

It’s also possible that he just happens to be an ancestor who looks identical. I would be surprised if he doesn’t show up in Punishment, given where he is at the end of the novel, so presumably if there’s explanations to make, mothy will do them there.

[sciencespies]

Following The Scientific Consensus Is The ‘Least Wrong’ Line Of Thought

https://sciencespies.com/news/following-the-scientific-consensus-is-the-least-wrong-line-of-thought/

Following The Scientific Consensus Is The ‘Least Wrong’ Line Of Thought

There are two important and common words that, when used scientifically, have a very different meaning than how we use them in everyday language: theory and consensus. These two words, in our commonplace usage, have meanings that imply a large degree of uncertainty. A theory is merely a thought that anyone can put forward: an idea, a wild guess, or even baseless speculation all count as “theories” the way we talk about them in our daily lives, where ideas like gravitation and that the Earth is flat get lumped in with the same word: theory.

While most of us recognize the difference between a scientific and non-scientific use of the word theory, this line is even blurrier when it comes to the notion of a consensus. Consensus, when we use it commonly, simply means, “most people believe this thing,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean such a thing is correct or true. Consensus could apply just as equally to statements like “the Earth is warming” as it could to those like “ninjas are cooler than pirates.”

However, when a scientist talks about consensus, they are talking about something far more powerful: the least wrong approximation of reality supported by the full suite of evidence and the overwhelming majority of professionals in a particular field. Here’s how following the scientific consensus empowers all of us who do so, and imperils all who reject it.

If you decide to argue against the scientific consensus, you’ll have a very large suite of evidence … [+] to overturn, explain, and supersede. If you yourself are not an expert in the specific sub-field of science that you’re seeking to overturn, the odds are very much against your success, and if you’re not even using a shared scientific vocabulary, no one will even take your arguments seriously.

MacLeod / Union of Concerned Scientists

Theory: this is the starting point of it all. If we ever want to understand what it means to abide by or reckon with the scientific consensus on an issue, we have to go back to this definition: that of a theory.

I’m not talking about the colloquial definition, which is any proposed explanation for why some phenomenon occurred. (E.g., flat Earth theory.)

Nor am I talking about the mathematical definition: a self-consistent set of axioms or postulates that allow the construction of a framework. (E.g., string theory.)

I’m also not talking about a speculative extension to the mainstream, accepted theories that we have that don’t have adequate supporting evidence behind them. (E.g., supersymmetry theory.)

And finally, I’m not talking about an idea that was once viable, until it failed to explain key pieces of evidence, conflicting with a key measurement or observation. (E.g., Lamarckian evolution.)

Instead, when scientists most frequently talk about theories, they talk about the accepted theories that are overwhelmingly supported by the evidence: the starting point for modern science. General Relativity is our theory of gravity; the Standard Model is our theory of elementary particles; genetics and Darwinian evolution are our theory of how living organisms pass on their traits to future generations; etc. When scientists talk typically mention a theory, they’re discussing what’s already been robustly established and outlining the framework for all current and future discussions.

The Standard Model particles and their supersymmetric counterparts. This spectrum of particles is an … [+] inevitable consequence of unifying the four fundamental forces in the context of String Theory, but supersymmetry, string theory, and the presence of extra dimensions all remain speculative and without any observational evidence. They are not part of the scientific consensus.

Claire David

The novel phenomenon: ideas like “scientific consensus” never come up in a vacuum. Instead, they come up in discussions surrounding an issue because something new, important, or unexpected has been observed to occur.

We observe that the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is rising, that the pH of the oceans, globally, are acidifying, and that extreme temperatures are being recorded more frequently all over the world.

We observe that an astrophysical cataclysm occurred some 130,000,000 light-years away, and that gravitational waves arrived ever-so-slightly before the very first electromagnetic signal did: by 1.7 seconds.

Or we observe the emergence of a novel disease in humans, the genetic sequence of which is similar to, but evolutionarily divergent from, other known disease-causing agents in the same family.

Although these may seem like wildly disparate examples from a variety of scientific fields — the climate change problem in the context of environmental and geological/atmospheric sciences, the astrophysical neutron star-neutron star merger observed in both gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation, and the origin of SARS-CoV-2 in the context of virology, disease ecology, and epidemiology — scientists take the same approach in every instance.

This figure shows the structure of the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2. Panel A shows the spike … [+] homotrimer in its open configuration, while panel B shows the cleavage sites on the spike protein.

Walls et al., Cell, 181 (2) (2020), pp. 281-292 e6

Identify the null hypothesis: this is an unspoken step that any scientist will recognize, but that simply doesn’t occur to most non-scientists. When we say “the null hypothesis,” what we mean is, “what explanation for this novel phenomenon would indicate that its emergence is already accounted for by the known laws, theories, and frameworks that are already in place to elucidate the Universe?”

The null hypothesis would mean that, sure, you’ve discovered a new phenomenon, but no new rules or outside influences need to be invoked to explain it.

The null hypothesis sometimes means, “things are behaving as they’ve always behaved, and what we’re observing is within the realm of natural variation.” Numerous announced discoveries that were later overturned occurred because of an unlikely fluctuation in the data that regressed to the mean when more data was taken. Ruling out the null hypothesis, however, can be an incredibly powerful achievement. In the case of the temperature of the Earth, going all the way back to the earliest global temperature records in the early 1880s, the null hypothesis is now ruled out at greater than 5-sigma confidence, with less than a 1-in-3.5 million chance of it being a fluke.

The best-fit amplitude of an annual modulation signal for a nuclear recoil with sodium iodide. The … [+] DAMA/LIBRA result shows a signal at extreme confidence, but the best attempt to replicate that has instead yielded a null result. The default assumption should be that the DAMA collaboration has an unaccounted for noise artifact.

J. Amaré et al./ANAIS-112 Collaboration, arXiv:2103.01175

So, we’ve found something’s new. Now what? Again, there’s an unspoken step that scientists take that’s rarely discussed. Scientists often ask themselves an important question, particularly when a novel phenomenon crosses the threshold of ambiguity and whose existence can now be considered non-controversial.

The Earth is warming, the oceans are acidifying, and the carbon dioxide concentrations have been rising, too.

The arrival time of gravitational waves and electromagnetic signals have been accurately measured and their origin point has been confirmed to be identical, and yet the gravitational waves still get there 1.7 seconds earlier, even though both should travel at the same speed: the speed of light.

And the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 did, in fact, emerge in humans in late 2019, even though the precise origin of how this virus found its way into the human population remains obscure.

What we typically do in this situation is resort to what some scientists also call “the null hypothesis” but which I prefer — to distinguish it from our earlier “nothing to see here” example — to call the default hypothesis: the idea that everything needed to explain this emergent phenomenon is already known, but that we just need to correctly identify the important contributors.

Light that’s polarized in a particular fashion from the Big Bang’s leftover glow would indicate … [+] primordial gravitational waves… and demonstrate that gravity is an inherently quantum force. But misattributing BICEP2’s claimed polarization signal to gravitational waves rather than its true cause — galactic dust emission — is now a classic example of confusing signal with noise.

BICEP2 collaboration

Identifying what matters: a lot of people have this misconception that science is wedded to what we’ve already established, and that scientists are incredibly resistant to new ideas.

This is not how it works at all, and although you can certainly find people — even a few scientists among them — who feel that way, the truth is far less exciting.

The reality is that what’s already been established, scientifically, provides us with an incredibly strong and versatile foundation to accommodate almost any new phenomenon we observe.

The default hypothesis, in practically any case we encounter, is that there is a completely mundane explanation for this novel phenomenon that only relies on correctly applying the science of what’s already known to the situation at hand. The default hypothesis is the least radical suggestion of all: that you might need to add an additional ingredient or component in order to get the full story out, but that when you do and you apply the underlying scientific rules correctly, you wind up fully explaining everything that you observe.

The global surface average temperature for the years where such records reliably and directly exist: … [+] 1880-2019 (at present). The zero line represents the long-term average temperature for the whole planet; blue and red bars show the difference above or below average for each year. The warming, on average, is by 0.07 C per decade, but has accelerated, warming at an average of 0.18 C since 1981.

NOAA / climate.gov

Recognizing alternatives for what they are: of course, sometimes there really are novel rules that come into play, and oftentimes our first clue that our current theoretical framework needs modification comes exactly in the form of a novel, unexplained observation. However, elevating the alternative explanation to the status of leading explanation requires something more: a demonstration that the default hypothesis is somehow insufficient.

This has happened numerous times throughout history, of course, and whenever it has, it’s led to a scientific revolution.

The fact that Mercury’s orbit around the Sun couldn’t be explained by Newtonian gravity led scientists to hypothesize an unseen, inner planetary companion to Mercury: Vulcan. Only when Vulcan failed to turn up was the alternative hypothesis — that Newtonian gravity needed to be superseded — explored and eventually validated.

The fact that the Earth is, geologically, billions of years old seemed incompatible with the Sun’s current power levels sustaining itself over billions of years. The mechanism of gravitational contraction could only sustain the Sun for tens of millions of years; it wasn’t until decades later that the secrets of nuclear physics would pave our way for understanding how the Sun worked.

And the fact that galaxies are zipping around inside galaxy clusters at speeds far too great to be consistent with the amount of matter present inside them led to the idea that some “dark” form of matter was present throughout our Universe. Only after decades of robust observations confirmed that there was no form of normal matter that could account for these motions — and additional observations (of individual galaxies) independently confirmed the cluster problem — was dark matter accepted into the mainstream.

After discovering Neptune by examining the orbital anomalies of Uranus, scientist Urbain Le Verrier … [+] turned his attention to the orbital anomalies of Mercury. He proposed an interior planet, Vulcan, as an explanation. Although Vulcan did not exist, it was Le Verrier’s calculations that helped lead Einstein to the eventual solution: General Relativity.

Wikimedia Commons user Reyk

However, these examples are exceptional; far more frequently, the default hypothesis is the one that carries the day. It’s important, as a scientist, to entertain the possibility of alternative explanations for any phenomenon you might have observed, but to relegate them to the status of both speculative and unproven until you establish the insufficiency of the default hypothesis. And that, perhaps unfortunately, is tremendously difficult to do.

The default hypothesis is that the Earth’s temperatures are warming, its climates are changing, and its oceans are acidifying because humanity has significantly modified the contents of our atmosphere, largely through the burning of fossil fuels for energy.

The default hypothesis is that gravitational waves arrive before electromagnetic waves because the light that’s generated from a neutron star merger must travel through matter — which slows down light — before arriving at our eyes, while the gravitational waves simply pass, unimpeded, right through that same matter.

And the default hypothesis is that SARS-CoV-2 emerged in humans through zoonotic spillover, before the superspreader event at the Wuhan market, likely through some form of animal agriculture, farming, or encroachment of human activity into previously wild territory.

Illustration of a fast gamma-ray burst, long thought to occur from the merger of neutron stars. The … [+] gas-rich environment surrounding them, as well as the matter from the neutron stars themselves, could delay the arrival of the signal, explaining the observed 1.7 second difference between the arrivals of the gravitational and electromagnetic signatures. This is the best evidence we have, observationally, that the speed of gravity must equal the speed of light: to approximately 1 part in 10^15 (a quadrillion).

ESO

Consensus. So, now let’s say we’ve done our homework. We’ve learned everything that humanity knows about this particular scientific issue, just like all the leading scientists in a particular discipline try to do. Now, the critical moment comes: we’re trying to synthesize together everything that we know and obtain a scientific consensus.

What does that mean?

A scientific consensus can only be achieved if:

a single framework explains all of the legacy puzzles as well as the novel phenomenon,

no unproven, evidence-free conjectures need to be true for the explanation to hold,

when the full suite of evidence is considered — scientifically admissible evidence, as opposed to speculation — there are no “dealbreaker” puzzles still left to solve,

and if the overwhelming majority of professionals actively working in the field all draw the same conclusion: that this one, favored, consensus picture is the best explanation for everything we’ve observed.

Any consensus we achieve is always provisional, of course; any one of the alternatives could always turn out to be true. But if you are to truly compete with a consensus opinion — the Standard Model, dark matter, cosmic inflation, Darwinian evolution, human-caused global climate change, the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2, etc. — you have to identify where and how the consensus opinion breaks down, and to demonstrate where your preferred alternative not only succeeds where the consensus fails, but to demonstrate its success in every place where the current consensus also succeeds.

Tycho Brahe conducted some of the best observations of Mars prior to the invention of the telescope, … [+] and Kepler’s work largely leveraged that data. Here, Brahe’s observations of Mars’s orbit, particularly during retrograde episodes, provided an exquisite confirmation of Kepler’s elliptical orbit theory.

Wayne Pafko, 2000 / http://www.pafko.com/tycho/observe.html

Over the course of human history, what was once a consensus opinion among scientists has been found to be insufficient on one or more accounts. When this occurs, the “old consensus” doesn’t suddenly become wrong, but rather gets demoted to a mere approximation or special case of a more comprehensive framework: a new, superior scientific consensus. Our current consensus is not evidence of groupthink, but rather is the culmination of our modern scientific enterprise: the best approximation of reality that the full suite of evidence — in the context of our most successful scientific theories — can possibly put forth.

As in all things, many of today’s consensus positions will no doubt be found to be lacking in some key way, and will someday be regarded the same way we regard Newtonian gravity: revolutionary for its time, accurate and useful under certain conditions, but only an approximation of a deeper, more fundamental description of reality. That is not a flaw in the scientific method nor in our way of thinking today; that is the nature of science.

When we interrogate the Universe in just the right fashion, a deeper truth may yet be revealed. The key to advancing, however, is to understand the limitations of the current consensus position and to identify the criteria necessary to overthrow it. Unless that’s precisely what you’re doing when considering an alternative, you’re arguing against the common, rather than the scientific, meaning of consensus.

#News

[huntsman-ash]

LiveThoughts: RWBY V8E6

Second attempt at this since last time Chrome just DIED for no reason...

Im going to put literally the entire thing with Cinder under one note; Called it.

Its a great set of stuff, sure, but it doesnt relaly tell us anything we didnt already know about Cinder, and I personally feel it doesnt really explain why she turned out the way she did. I feel like we’ve had another weird twist of the situation again...M+K? Coronas fault? Who knows. Either way, this section isnt great by my taste and I kinda skipped most of it. 

Few things to note though; Apperently in Mistral scrubbing by hand is still more viable floor cleaning tech than using Dust.

The wind vane on the roof has the Rooster Teeth symbols rooster on it. 

The hotel Cinder is bought by is named the Glass Unicorn, fittingly enough for...several reasons. 

The coffees behind the stepsisters when we first see them are the animated versions of the real life stuff RT put out just before this season went live. 

No one seems to notice the fact cinder has orange eyes. I wonder if weird eye colors are just a THING in Remnant?

The control collar/shock thing is incredibly inefficient in design, since it doesnt actually hold on to her very well. A more effective brace/choker design would have worked better.

The song that goes on during all of this is...kind of obvious and a little bland? Fitting for younger Cinder I guess. 

Mmm. Random greasy huntsman. 

I guess in Atlas its fine to laugh at struggling teenagers?

Im going to assume there’s a 3+ year gap here where she gets older, cause she stops being smol and gets closer to how we see her now.

Also even here, in Atlas...really? The most effective way to clean these carpeted floors is to have a TEENAGER SCRUB THEM BY HAND?

How do you scrub...I assume its carpet anyway?

And how you tell civilians are lame in Atlas; they are impressed...by a sword.  Just a sword. A boring, half-cut sword. Losers.

I assume this would be Cinder’s semblance manifesting. Also note on the desk; “we do not serve faunus”. Well THAT doesnt surprise me.

HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHHEHEHEHEHEHEHE. Get fucked Cinder. HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHE

I dont even feel pity for her, this is funny to me.  Also the fact that this kind of shit aCTUALLY EXISTS is...amusing to me. Like, really? So I guess indentured servitude is a thing in Remnant too. 

And this is why Cinder likes to use swords. Really. Wow. LAMEO.

Huh. Dual maces. Interesting. Thats a prety cool weapon.  Looks like they open up too. Bet he could bash some skulls with that.

“Hurting them isnt going to make your life any better”. Um, excuse me? I think hurting them is the very best thing to do in this situation. At least, for the moment anyway. 

Huh. So she’s ten at this point? Even as a child, shes older than she looks. 

And training montage. Huh. Or at least I assume it is. I get the feeling being able to go where you want too and do what you want too is the main reason Hunters exist. There must be crazy tight immigration laws...or, maybe, its just that traveling between kingdoms is stupid dangerous cause of Grimm. I think the latter is most likely considering every form of public transit extra-kingdom we’ve seen (even between cities, see Argus Limited) has some kind of defensive weaponry. Limited and ineffective, for th emost part oddly.

So you can take the exam at 18. Okay cool. Pre-that must be prep school. Wonder what happens if you wash out? Also I like how this dude is just “yeah, 7 years of training, we got this.”

I think this is the first time we’ve seen the other side of the moon. Or at least, the proper other side...bloody hell I STILL dont know how all those piesces are still held in place, the thing looks like it should start yeeting bolides at Remnant. 

Better still we see it MOVE, rotate in time to the passing of years. So it literally does rotate on its own axis, and more importantly, unlike OUR moon, its NOT tidally locked. We only ever see the same side of our moon. REmnants rotates MUCH faster. Also it doesnt seem to have phases like ours does. I’ll check on why that is. 

Well at least we have an explanation for why Cinders so damn good at fighting people. Trained by an Atlas Huntsman.

Also as a note the device is quite literally just an electrical Dust crystal attached to a necklace. Things the most inefficent torture device Ive ever fucking seen. 

Wonder how often they have to change the crystal.

And there goes the moon rotating again.

I like how NO ONE comment on the blade going missing and that guy never came back for it. I guess he must have just bought a new one.

I get the very distinct feeling they wont just let her go honestly, permission or not. 

AWWW WE DONT EVEN GET TO SEE CINDER MURDER THE SISTERS. Also no blood. Odd.  Good kill on the  stepmother though. Oh, that NECK CRACK.  I like how all the bitch can do is try and shock Cinder, like, uh...adrenaline up? SHE HAS A SWORD? MAYBE FIGHT BACK?

Hah. Weak ass fuckin Atlas people.  Also the clock going off in the back ground twelve times. How fitting. Welcome to midnight. 

Also shes kind of glowing here cause the room is dark, and I find it amusing this is probably the last time she wears white.

And THERES the Cinder we know

Sick ass music, cool. Also THAT is an interesting semblance...I guess he turns himself to metal? Also DAMN his aura broke after THAT? Hes a Huntsman...ah who cares. Again probably in Cinders memory more than anything. Which at this point is probably about as reliable as a coked up hookers.

SHANKED. Sucker. You shoulda seen THAT one coming.

And thats all it took to get the shock collar off. Lol. 

So what happened to the hotel? Did they just...write it off? I mean four people got murdered in there...

And now we’re back on the whale. HOW THE SCREAMING FUCK DID CINDER JUST...

Wow. She just got up after eating that blast. Fucking plot armor.

Merc making the hard calls honestly.  Im actually gonna watch all of this now which is nice because I want to know whats happening in the real world. PITY MORE THAN HALF THE EPISODE WAS THIS FUCKING FILLER.

I like how Cinder just...goes quiet the moment she realizes shes lost Mercury. Not that he was USEFUL mind you but if I had to guess she liked being the boss. But now shes...basically back where she started. 

So the whale is basically a ship. It has a bridge. Probably Salems throne room.

Man, Oscars literally just RTs punching bag this season isnt he? Literally in this case. 

His clothes are still scortched too which I find interesting.  The black eyes also staying. Auras not back up then? Aura repair and regen seems...werid half the time. Like RT does what they want with it.

Ah so someone finally says it...but at the same time what exactly does Salem have to fear? If she cant fight the whole world...what could they do? Maybe overwhelming her? It...Im having a hard time putting the “she cant be stopped” with “shes afraid of fighting all of Remnant”. 

Somethings missing here. I know it.

The sound of the “door” opening reminds me of the Flood doors in High Charity in Halo 3s Cortana. Fleshy twisting.

Mention from Hazel, but AGAIN...no details. I guess if you nail down how she can do stuff its harder to write? 

Glad someone made a comment on the futility of the Hunter academies. 

I really hate how Salems giving us creepy mommy shades. 

Hmm. So yeah the bridge IS the throne room/command deck. I like how Neo doesnt give a fuck is just casually kneeling. 

Ah okay THATS why he grabbed the scroll. 

Heh. Interesting. How exactly does this work I wonder. 

...Why does Salem have a ring. Has she always had that ring?

Neo looking at the Hound like “oh, I could ride this thing”. 

Oh cool the Ace Ops. And they’re arguing, shocker. Sounds like Elm doesnt trust tech either. No shock there.  Idiot.

Atlas elite. Yeah, right.

Huh, is this a Manta with landing gear? I guess they do have them...seems kind of silly to have them so high up though. I guess thats what the thing under the door is for, so they can deploy a ramp. Man, I really dont like Atlas’s airship design.

Hare needs some fuckin suppresants. 

Annnnddd...here we go, things go straight to hell. I was warned of this. I am going to try and not be mad...but from what Ive heard the incomptence of the military in this particular section is astronomical.

Huh. So...Grimm can be convirted into a rock-punching liquid? Interesting. Has that always been a thing or... Also why the fuck are you jsut standing there in awe, go kill the fucking thing! Fucking Specialists.

...that is all it took to get through Atlas’s shield? THAT?

I also love how no one does anything. Ironwoods like “wait what the fuck”. Come on bro. 

And...thats the Atlas navy. Everyone. Two lasers. One of which missed. Remind me again what exactly these things are used to shoot?

Wait, no, that took down part of it, and then the rest is, surprise, hitting the soft rock on the outside. 

THERE goes the shield. 

Hang on a second, how long have those giant squid things been there?

And...what. The whale just approaches, nothing happens? You’ve got 12 fucking ships there, shoot the fucking thing.

Again, WHY IS NO ONE DOING ANYTHING?

Oh, it just beach-headed. Okay fine, whatever. 

Im not really worried.

Lets see how RT makes this WORSE though...

And thats this weeks episode.

[theguineapig3]

Tales of Symphonia Headcanons: Elves, Humans, and Dwarves

I was chatting with @rainbowkittyblossomwings recently about headcanons for different Tales races, and mentioned that I have very complex headcanons about the races from Symphonia. Since it's a lot, I figured I'd put it into a tumblr post for posterity. This stems from my interest in hominid evolution and, like, Star Trek and stuff.

According to the game's backstory, elves arrived at a "dead planet" via Derris-Kharlan and terraformed it with the Great Tree, creating the world we know as Aselia. They then moved to live on the surface of the planet "with the humans who evolved there." But- wait? If the planet was barren when they arrived, where did the humans come from? The fact that humans are genetically close enough to elves that the two can produce viable offspring suggests that they are part of the same evolutionary lineage, likely the same lineage that gave rise to Dwarves. In this essay, I support the following headcanon: Dwarves and humans evolved from two distinct waves of early elven migration from Derris-Kharlan during the early stages of terraformation, and are therefore better adapted to the Aselian environment than elves, which retain the physical characteristics that result from long-term spaceflight.

(Disclaimer: I’m about to talk like I Know Shit™, but this is all headcanon territory. I’m not trying to pass any of this off as canon, lol. It’s just for fun and giggles. Sources for actual science are located at the bottom.)

Elves and the Impacts of Space Travel

Elves in the Symphonia universe are typical of elves in most modern high fantasy- described as having tall, slender bodies that are significantly less muscular than humans. However, Symphonia is relatively unique in that it paints elves as a space-faring race, traveling through the cosmos on the comet-turned-spaceship Derris-Kharlan. The idea of an interstellar spacecraft being constructed within a comet is not completely unheard of, even in real life (Starr, 2019). While the game never hints at how long Derris-Kharlan voyaged before reaching Aselia, our knowledge of the vast distances of space- and the lack of evidence that Derris-Kharlan is warp capable- suggests that it was at least multiple generations, even for long-lived elves. Derris-Kharlan has its own gravity, but because of its size, that gravity would be lower than found on a proper planet. And that low gravity would definitely affect the residents.

Even with real-world humans’ limited time in space, scientific studies have already recorded effects of space travel on the human body. The lack of gravity in spaces causes, among other effects, loss of bone and muscle mass (Nasa; White, 1998). These are only superficial changes and typically can be reversed once the person returns to Earth, but the low-gravity environment of Derris-Kharlan can still provide a logical explanation for the tall, slender build of elves. Over multiple generations, the lack of gravity-based stresses on their bodies might allow them to grow taller and preclude the need for significant muscular development. The elves of Derris-Kharlan, as spacefarers living in a low-gravity environment, could devote their energy toward mental (and magical) development.

The Terraformation of Aselia

Terraformation is a complex process that depends heavily on the environment being terraformed. Temperature and atmospheric pressure are important components to consider, in order to establish an environment where oxygen-producing organisms can survive (Zubrin and McKay, 1993). In the case of Aselia, we can assume this was accomplished by the Great Tree, which provided the mana that plants and oxygen-producing microbes such as cyanobacteria would need to survive. Once these oxygen-producing organisms are established, oxygen will slowly build up in the atmosphere until it reaches levels high enough to support larger organisms. This gradual process would take multiple thousands of years or not more- though that’s no big deal to long-lived elves who had already spent millennia traveling across space. However, it’s unlikely they would wait until the very end of this process to begin colonization of the surface. 

Dwarves: the First Settlers

It’s likely that early colonists of Aselia might have come to the planet long before the surface itself was liveable. Perhaps these were explorers, sent to mine for mineral resources on the planet that could be taken or sent up for use on Derris-Kharlan. The still-thin atmosphere would provide little protection from solar radiation, forcing these settlers to live underground for their own protection. A thin atmosphere also means that the planet would be unable to trap incoming heat, making for a particularly cold environment. The need for high respiratory capacity and effective temperature regulation would lead to a short, robust body, similar to characteristics observed in fossils of real-world neanderthals (Churchill, 2006). All these characteristics seem to coincide with the characteristics observed in Aselian Dwarves- short, stocky bodies with large chests, underground living, specialization in metalworking and mineral resources. The difficulty in surviving in the harsh, pre-terraformed environment would have led to the unique culture of Aselian Dwarves, such as the need for strict moral codes like the Dwarven Vows. 

Despite these significant differences, the Dwarves’ underground homes allowed them to retain certain characteristics of their elven predecessors, such as their longevity. The diminishment of human lifespan is likely due to other factors experienced during a later period of colonization.

Development of Humans

Humans likely developed from a middle period of elven colonization, once the atmosphere developed enough to protect living organisms from near-immediate death from solar radiation- though not total protection from adverse effects. These humans would retain much of the elven anatomy, except with shorter, more muscular builds due to the higher gravity they encountered on Aselia’s surface. The high metabolic demands of magic use would quickly make elven magic detrimental to humans who were only producing enough food to get by, explaining the lack of magical abilities in humans. As for the relatively short human lifespans in relation to elves and dwarves, that can likely be attributed to the effects of radiation penetrating the still somewhat thin atmosphere. High-level exposure to infrared and ultraviolet radiation can result in premature skin aging (Cho, 2009), so the effects of high-level exposure over multiple generations might explain why humans age so much faster than elves once reaching adulthood.

The Myth of Elven Superiority

It’s difficult to say exactly why some groups left Derris-Kharlan earlier than others. The early groups who were sent- or volunteered- to face the harsh conditions of early terraformation may have been lower-class citizens, commoners rather than the upper class who stayed in the safety and relative comfort of Derris-Kharlan. This may have contributed to the Elven myth that those who retain the characteristics of their ancestors are “superior,” more “genetically pure” than humans and Dwarves. The retention of magical abilities is an indicator that their ancestors never struggled to find their next meal, their long lives an indicator that their ancestors never faced exposure to excess radiation, their slender builds an indicator that their ancestors had little need for manual labor. In a sense, they celebrate the fact that they are not adapted to their environment and spurn those who faced hardships that forced them to develop better adaptations. In this context, it would seem that the elves’ xenophobia is rooted in a sense of classism. Now, even though they must work harder to support themselves in a world they are unadapted to, they still retain that “1-percenter” type mentality.  

Half-Elves: The Missing Link?

The knowledge of elven evolution into humans raises the question as to the origins of half-elves. Are they representative of an evolutionary link between the two? Based on the half-elves we see in the story, this is unlikely. Modern half-elves are not an intermediate stage, but a hybrid resulting from the interbreeding of the two modern groups. If paleontologists discovered fossil evidence of elf-human evolution, they would probably find that these intermediate people had features distinct from the half-elves they know. Half-elves are not a “missing link,” then, but a relatively recent bridge between the two groups and a distinct group of their own that continues through to Phantasia’s time.

(OKAY, I’M DONE; THAT WAS REALLY LONG, OOPS)

---

Cho, Soyun et al. (2009). "Effects of Infrared Radiation and Heat on Human Skin Aging in vivo." Journal of Investigative Dermatology Symposium Proceedings, pp. 15-19.

Churchill, S.E. (2006). “Biogenic perspectives on Neanderthal thermoregulatory and activity budgets” Churchill, S.E. Neanderthals Revisited: New Approaches and Perspectives.

NASA (N.D.) "Muscle Atrophy" PDF, retrieved 2019-07-24.

Starr, Michelle (2019). “Astronomers Have Analysed Claims 'Oumuamua's an Alien Ship, And It's Not Looking Good.” Science Alert. 

White, Ronald J. (1998). “Weightlessness and the Human Body”  PDF, retrieved 2019-07-24.

Zubrin, Robert M. and McKay, Christopher P. (1993). “Technological Requirements for Terraforming Mars.” American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. 

[scyllua]

As chap.204 would be more of an interlude chapter (a breather after the events of Thursday the 13th and a very intense fanart-sharing moment between amateur artists), the Japanese fandom's reaction to it hasn't been noteworthy. (Bad joke: but it's been a boost nonetheless in comparison to last week! If only because the manga was in hiatus last week and therefore, there was no chapter to speak of! I thought of mentioning this because I noticed my blog at my personal domain had many more visitors last Thursday, I'm assuming, because fans were searching online for the weekly GK chapter and most likely, wondering why they couldn't find it.)

That doesn't mean there aren't highlights in this chapter, though. I'd say chap.204 feels oddly subdued in tone and pacing -in spite of a Wild Wolverine Attack! in the latter half-, but that'd be mostly because the previous three have been rather action-packed. I wrote chap.201-203 would serve as the introduction to the arc to unfold in this volume (which would encompass chap.201-210), and while we've been given more than enough hints about what to expect in the near future (the still ongoing plot with the Partisans and the reappearance of a certain one-eyed sniper), this chapter seems to introduce more subplots while still pointing in the same direction. My usual warnings about mistakes and mistranslations applying as usual, onto CHAP.204! EMPHATICALLY APPALLING!! JUST AS SUGIMOTO AND ASIRPA SHOW US IN THE PANEL AT THE TOP OF THIS POST!!!

In short, Tsukishima gets a telegraph message from Tsurumi informing him that the business he had in Noboribetsu has been taken care of and he'll be heading to Karafuto then. As Tsurumi will rendezvous with them in Oodomari (the same port town in southern Karafuto they arrived in back in vol.14) in two weeks time, he tells the group to stay in Toyohara until then. Koito comments they're to stay in Toyohara because it's a large town with better lodgings, and since there's nothing else for them to do until then, they should just take things easy. While in the town outskirts, Cikapasi and Tanigaki meet a couple of Ainu men who question the boy about where he comes from and who that big guy standing over there is. Cikapasi explains they come from beyond the southern sea, and introduces Tanigaki as his uncle. The Matagi then comments about the extra marginally important information Cikapasi gave the Ainu men about how much endowed he is, and tells the boy how useful and supportive he's been through their journey in Karafuto. As both ponder about Inkarmat in Hokkaido, Enonoko approaches them and asks Cikapasi if he's going back already. In the nearby forest and as Asirpa and Sugimoto get ready to hunt a kuzuri (a wolverine), Tsukishima tells Vasily (who's still following them) to go back to Russia. The wolverine hunt is interrupted by a couple of photographers who seem to have an interest in Asirpa, but just in cue, the little and irascible animal attacks one of the men. After they take care of the wolverines -in a moment vaguely reminiscing of vol.7 and the adventure in the cabin in the woods, there were two of them- and Asirpa cooks them (the very reason she wanted to catch one), the photographers explain the device they're carrying is a cinematograph, and that they're interested in documenting about the Ainu culture.

The chapter's title is 残したいもの (nokoshitaimono), a term I'm having some trouble with. Since the term 残す means "to leave behind", "to save" or "to reserve", and given the group's current activities, I'm understanding the title in the sense of "things we're doing to cherish later" (it literally translates to "things I want to save/leave behind"). Remember how in manga and anime the characters will sometimes state they want to try doing things as to have good memories of them? Asirpa says so in this chapter as she spots wolverine's tracks and decides to catch one... to eat it, of course (and cherish its taste for ages to come, that's it). They're in Karafuto, so they won't be going back to Hokkaido without having a bite of everything that is to munch on in that island! Some random fan comment here: While I understand the social and cultural importance of food in Japan (similar to the culinary traditions we have in my country), I can't but frown a little at just how this girl is in her way to try every possible edible animal that pops up in the story. At the very least, I think I can feel sorry even for the little demonic wolverines they eat in this chapter.

...but starting from the beginning! Plotwise, an important highlight of this chapter would be the piece of information regarding Tsurumi; specifically, that he's making his way to rendezvous with the group in Karafuto. Since he sends word to Tsukishima that the business in Noboritsu has been taken care of, I think that'd be our confirmation that all events in the manga occur in a chronological order; that's it, in the order and within the same timeline as we're shown in the story. I'm mentioning this because I was wondering whether Kikuta's showdown with Toni Anji's group in Noboribetsu (chap.190-195, to be compiled in vol.20) was taking place at the same time as Sugimoto's entourage lost sight of their sniper in northern Karafuto: this indeed seems to be the case. Back then, I also pondered how author Noda would then "speed up" things, for the manga had taken 7 volumes to depict Sugimoto and Kiroranke's groups' journey through Karafuto: either he used an ellipsis, or fast-paced the narration as not to spend other 70 chapters to show us how they went back to Hokkaido. In my previous chapter summary entry as well, I wrote I thought the current arc could wrap up while in Karafuto before all plotlines seemed to be aligning in that direction: Sugimoto's group is still in that island, Vasily is following them (providing us with a good excuse expedited reason for Ogata to make a comeback and have another duel with the Russian sniper), Sofia is making her way back to Hokkaido (via Karafuto? We don't know yet, but that could be a possibility - and a viable reason for her to cross paths with the protagonist cast)... and now Tsurumi is traveling to the northern island as well. I must say I hadn't thought of this scenario (as I'd assumed Noda would favor Hokkaido as the setting for most if not all future and pivotal events), but it'd certainly pace up the plot forward quite considerably.

Some fan pondering here: So, what do you think Tsurumi's arrival in Karafuto will be like? Because of the way the original text is phrased and of just how Japanese grammar is, it isn't that explicitly stated that Tsurumi will be personally going to rendezvous with the group, but that can be implied from the sentence. ...Now, let us remember he hasn't made an appearance in the flesh -and outside a flashback- since chap.171 (vol.18); there's no need for him to show up in a grand and remarkable way with an equally large entourage at the time (but it's Tsurumi: one can never know for sure with this man), though I'm looking forward to seeing him flanked by some of his trusted and skilled men a the very least. Random pondering #2: Since everything turned out just well in Noboritsu -for everyone involved... save Toni Anji's group, that's it-, I'm assuming Usami didn't get that scolding in the end. Good for him. Random hopeful thought: It'd be pretty nice if we could get some more of Kikuta and Ariko then.

A small caption for the chapter reads, "it's golden time!" The term is given in English (and it's an actual expression used in education in this language), but the connotation it has in Japanese, if I'm not wrong, would refer to time spent in leisure or pleasant activities that are meant to be enjoyed and cherished: the accompanying kanji precisely read, 自由時間 (jiyuu jikan, lit. "free time"). And, of course, the term would also serve as a pun for the manga's title for including the word "golden" on it. Well, that's just what our protagonist group will do for the time being.

...starting with Tanigaki and Cikapasi, who meet a couple of Ainu men. When the men question the boy about where he comes from and who the big guy over there is (my phrasing, by the way: they simply ask about "that man"), Cikapasi tells them they come from beyond the southern sea, and refers to Tanigaki as his ojisan. Note that this term in Japanese means "uncle", but it's also a colloquial way to refer to any older man, akin to saying "an old man" or "a mister". I'm going with Cikapasi as literally introducing Tanigaki as his uncle, though, because the word he uses in Ainu is achapo: my knowledge of Ainu being so obviously zero, I do remember acha meaning "father" in this language. Hence, I think the boy is genuinely referring to Tanigaki as an uncle: probably not in the strictest sense, but as a person close to him and with a family-like tie. Explanations over, Cikapasi then adds Tanigaki has... big balls, er, yes. I'm going to take his word for that, as the only adult male character who's gotten clear and full frontal shots in this manga so far has been Shiraishi: we wouldn't know for sure about the rest. He says 金玉, a colloquial term literally translating to "golden ball" and meaning "testicles". Speaking of another Jump-serialized manga and being the irreverent author he is, Sorachi Hideaki titled his best-known story 銀魂 (Gintama, lit. "Silver Soul") as a play-on-words with precisely this term, kintama; given the franchise became so popular as to encompass the manga, several anime series, live-action movies, and a ton of merchandise that was referenced to even in the story canon, it's probable nobody will raise an eyebrow at Gintama's title now, but at the beginning of its serialization some did have a thing or two to say in Japan. Guess Sorachi got away with it in the end... and his detractors had no idea as to what the manga would give them through its publication.

Tanigaki and Cikapasi then have a moment to reflect on their journey in Karafuto. As the boy's (and our loyal Shiba dog, ie. Ryuu) presence has been both useful and supportive through their adventure, Tanigaki is glad they didn't send them back as soon as they were found out as stowaways; Cikapasi thinks back of his family in Hokkaido and in quite the high spirits, wonders about Inkarmat (or more specifically, would think of her, as he refers to Tanigaki, Inkarmat and himself as a family). In equally a good mood, Tanigaki says he's sure Inkarmat recovered and is doing well, and that they should go back to see her. However, a sad moment arises when Enonoka, upon overhearing them, asks Cikapasi if he's really going back now.

Cut to Asirpa calling out to Sugimoto to take a look at something she's just found. But fear not, it's not some more excrement (because even Sugimoto assumed so), but wolverine's tracks. Asirpa hasn't seen one yet, so she asks Sugimoto about the tracks (as he told her he'd meet one of the little diabolical things before); upon the immortal's confirmation that they belong to a wolverine and the animal is worse than a wild bear in some aspects, she decides to hunt it. Well, they're in Karafuto already, so why not catching one and eat it? Another random comment here: we Peruvians have an expression stating that "someone got all the stickers in their album" in reference to completing a trade card album, still a popular activity in our country among adults and children alike. As an expression, it broadly means that someone has done everything in a list, or have completed a collection; in a very negative example, the last person I remember using it was a journalist talking about how a government official was found to have committed a long list of crimes related to corruption. That's to say, the corrupt official had all the stickers in his album, from perjury and malpractice to bribery and running away from the country when he was issued an arrest warrant. Okay, for my Golden Kamuy example, I won't obviously talk about politics here, only how Asirpa has a figurative edible flora-and-fauna album ("Everything You Can Hunt Down Or Find... And Have A Taste Of!") she must have 3/4 full at the very least by now, counting her gourmet experiences in both Hokkaido and Karafuto.

(As it's customary and part of the narration in Golden Kamuy, there's a passage detailing Ainu traditions in this chapter, but... Sorry, I'm skipping all the cultural references as not to incur in any translation inaccuracies.) As Tsukishima is presumably scouting and watching the surroundings (and I'm going to fan-assume here Koito is off somewhere trying to find more reindeers... or any equally cute small wild animals), he finds Vasily doing, well, pretty much the same, it seems. Tsukishima curtly tells him to go back to Russia... and I'm afraid I do have several fan comments to make.

First off, let's take another look at the panel of Vasily turning to face Tsukishima. The small sign by his head (at the left side of the panel) is meant to show he's surprised or just caught on something -in this case, it'd be Tsukishima looking at him-... but taken out of context, and as RavenTears pointed out, it makes him look as though he's shining. Dazzling Russian snipers, indeed. On a personal note, Vasily looks to me as though he somehow aged 10 years or so in the interlude from the previous chapter to this, as he has a slightly more mature appearance now (but not as old-looking as he was in vol.17). Until the next chapter is out and we can hopefully get more panel shots of (and some more interaction with) him, I'm just going to fan-assume the excited moment of fanarts-sharing with Sugimoto in chap.203 had some sort of age-regression effect on both him (physically speaking) and the immortal (mentally emotionally speaking in his case, something not that surprising at all given the hard life Sugimoto has led until now).

Also... is nobody really keeping track of the Russian that's following the group? Since people in this manga have never seen too keen on holding grudges for the most part (as I could argue that Tanigaki, for example, invoked retribution against Kiroranke instead of exacting revenge), I can understand the group isn't worried about a sniper who already targeted them twice and is currently tailing them. Said sniper also merits a mention for tailing them under the same circumstances, ie. apparently not concerning himself with the possibility of a member of the group deciding to be proactive and taking him down as not to risk being targeted by the same marksman for a third time. But Tsukishima's startlement at finding Vasily by his side makes me think they might not be that watchful as one could expect or wish. That said, if a silent Russian sniper can stand by their side without being too much conspicuous or alerting them, I won't be much surprised if the group ends up being ambushed by a Japanese one-eyed sniper making a comeback in the near future. I'll be actually looking forward to it. I mean the sniper's comeback, of course; not the characters being ambushed and targeted and shot down all over again.

And lastly... Tsukishima's line written horizontally in his speech bubble instead of vertically would indicate he's speaking in Russian, which would be relevant in a metalevel (because it makes perfect sense that he's speaking in this language to Vasily). Japanese is traditionally written top-to-bottom and right-to-left, but it can also be written in a horizontal orientation and left-to-right. Until World War II, if I'm not wrong, Japanese was written horizontally for small portions of text (such as in signs or newspapers headers), but from right-to-left. One example in GK would be the Yamamoto Barbershop in the Barato arc (vol.6) which, by the way, it's based on an actual building with the same name preserved for historical reasons:

The sign reads 山本理髪店 (Yamamoto Rihatsuten), but you'll notice the kanji are oriented right-to-left instead: 店髪理本山. Nowadays, horizontally-written Japanese follows the left-to-right orientation, and it's mainly used for aesthetically or design-related reasons (such as in printed matter or ads), but also for practicality (eg. movie subtitles placed at the bottom of the screen or, as a standard, in traffic signs and similar). In manga, however, horizontally written Japanese is usually used to indicate the lines are spoken in another language, such as with Tsukishima's in the above panel. In the Golden Kamuy manga, dialog spoken in Russian is usually given a Japanese translation in the same speech bubble, but written in a horizontal orientation because of space issues. (Ainu is written using the katakana syllabary with a top-to-bottom orientation, just as in Japanese). In several instances, though, no Russian text is written, and only the Japanese "translation" is given, such as Tsukishima and Svetlana's exchange in chap.185: we know they're speaking in Russian, though, because the lines are still oriented horizontally, and that's the importance of this detail.

I can only speculate, but I'm assuming those dialogs aren't always translated into Russian probably because of problems related to time issues or the availability of the consultant/translator at the time of the publication of the chapter. In some other instances, I suppose the text is so short (...such as Tsukishima "go back to Russia" line), it's not deemed necessary to translate them for the sake of the manga's sense of realism: after all, we can watch an English-spoken movie based on feudal Japan and won't be bothered by the fact that they aren't speaking in the intended language. Also, one might argue that they could always use an automated translation for such small lines... but I personally prefer those lines to be left as is, in Japanese and using visual or narrative devices (as the orientation of the text) to indicate readers the text is meant to be in another language: details such as those don't detract from the plot or the feeling of the manga and, most importantly, they might also prevent the manga from making very glaring translation mistakes. Trust me, I've seen enough terribly rendered lines in Spanish in American comics to insist authors and editors better get an actual translator, or not dare use Google Translate at all. Speaking of comics and Russian! A comic I remember where a similar visual device was used is one of Marvel's Winter Soldier series (the original run by author Brubaker, if I remember correctly). The one difference was that many lines in this comic had an asterisk at the end which led to a footnote stating that... they were being spoken in Russian. At the opposite end of the example, I also remember a Vampirella comic that featured some lines written in such a mangled Spanish, it took a couple of rereadings (even for a native speaker such as myself) to make sense of them. And in not-so-awful but still rather bad example, there was the Witchblade comic in which I vaguely remember at least a character having a name in Japanese... written in incorrect Japanese, most likely because the author seemed to have just looked up the terms in a dictionary to put them together without checking even for grammar.

Getting back to the chapter: a couple of men make an appearance and one of them asks for Asirpa to repeat what she was doing from the beginning. Just as they identify themselves as photographers, or more specifically, cinematographers, the wolverine attacks.

Sugimoto gets it off the man it attacks, but as another wolverine appears, Asirpa takes it down with an arrow as he shoots the first one, though he doesn't instantly kill it. It's again Asirpa the one who must finish it with another of her arrows, all of this as the man carrying a curious-looking device keeps revolving a crank on it (or you'd better say, an old-fashioned device... only that in the Meiji era it wasn't old, naturally, but rather pretty innovative).

Fast-forwarding a bit, we now have the leading-and-now-reunited protagonists eating the poor devils -I mean the wolverines, of course- while asking the men about their business in the vicinity.

They explain the device they're carrying is called a cinematograph (the model would suggest it's the one created and patented by the Lumière brothers in the last decade of the 19th century, as there were other similar devices patented before theirs); after detailing how it works, they add they're interested in documenting about the Ainu culture. End of the chapter!

My first fan-comment here about this passage would have to do with my taking back some of my fan-comments here, specifically those making fun of Sugimoto's poor aiming. I was obviously exaggerating when stating he never hits anything, as we've seen how he's shot several animals when hunting through the manga, and chap.204 would be another example. Still, my comments had to do with him primarily using his rifle to strike or stab instead of actually shooting it whenever it came to attack a human target, so to speak; given he's a melee hand-to-hand fighter, this comes as no surprise (and snipers all around the globe in the Meiji era dread nightmares with the looming figure of the Immortal Slayer Of Any Unfortunately Soul That Dares Attack Him In Vain And So Obviously Fails, Otherwise He Wouldn't Be Immortal, be it on a Thursday the 13th or any other day of the year, actually). But it just turns out Sugimoto does shoot his rifle, and does accurately hits his target one summary entry after I wrote I wouldn't stop making fun of him until he managed to do so, meaning... I've been proved wrong by the immortal in quite the expedited way. ...since I still believe his aiming is awful when it comes to human targets, I'll keep making fun of him, just... not that much. As a counterargument to Sugi's aiming and intended use of his rifle in this chapter, please let us remember that, in his first encounter with Ogata, he almost indirectly kills the wildcat when knocking him unconscious after hitting him in the head with the butt of the rifle; in their latest encounter, Sugimoto almost kills him (oh, again) when he nearly hits him when trying to shoot down the horse he was riding instead. Well, yes, come to think of it, it might also be that I'm very biased against Sugimoto's use of his rifle because of the levels of violence he's shown towards a certain wildcat.

My last general fan comments about the chapter have to do with the introduction of the cinematographers. Their appearance made me think of Hijikata looking for journalists all the way back to vol.13, if I remember correctly (really, it might be time to go back and properly reread the whole manga by now), because he was looking forward to using the media for propaganda purposes in his goal of declaring a second Republic of Ezo. Well, while the cinematographers don't seem to have any propagandist intentions, their interest in filming about the Ainu culture is making me think of them as the equivalent of early National Geographic writers (the first issue of the famous magazine dates back to 1888, after all): the manga's very National Hokkaido Graphic documentary filmmakers, in any case. At this point in the plot I couldn't say for sure if they're going to have a more relevant role to play, but since they've filmed Asirpa and Sugimoto killing the wolverines already, it does seem to me they could stick with the group a little longer to register some of their activities, sort of a Golden Kamuy documentary within the Golden Kamuy manga. Such material would have cultural and historical importance in the plot since, for starters, Sugimoto's group is a good example of multiethnic cooperation and coexistence, featuring Japanese, Ainu, Hayato, Matagi and even a Russian traveling and working together at the time just fine.

...plotwise and theoretically at the very least, the cinematographers have two weeks to follow the lead of a certain Russian sniper and stick to our multiethnic and multicultural group. We know already anything and everything is bound to happen in very short periods of time in this manga (Koito's rescue mission in chap.199-200 began with horses refusing to gallop down a steep path, continue with a drift race in the streets of Hakodate, featured a couple of gentlemen losing some clothing due to an unfortunate transit accident, and included a homage to Freddy Mercury near the conclusion, if you'd remember), so I'm sort of suspecting the days until Tsurumi's intended rendezvous with the group might be... full of eventualities. From more cultural moments to possible ambushes by snipers with hidden agendas -or probably, no agendas at all- and face-offs with Partisans, I wouldn't discard even the idea of the cinematographers filming the first Meiji-era Japanese cam movie, if anything of the aforementioned actually takes place and they happen to still be around to record it.

[audreycritter]

dinobite

This is for @starknjarvis27 who donated to @cerusee‘s GoFundMe.

CECverse, Kiran Devabhaktuni, Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne. Gen!Fic TW: Gore, emergency medical treatment.

***

The towering pines groaned in the mountain breeze. The branches, thick with needles, caught the wind and kept it from sweeping across the rubberized picnic table nestled in a tiny clearing off the main path. Kiran Devabhaktuni finished off the homemade protein bar he’d pried out of a wax paper wrapper and unscrewed the cap from his steel water bottle.

“Still think we’ll make it back to the lake house before dark?” Timothy Drake-Wayne asked, looking up from the zipper he was wrestling with on his backpack. The pack was next to Dev’s own on the table, where they’d lined them up when they sat to take a break after the steepest part of the climb.

“Bloody hell, Timothy, it’s not like you’re afraid of the—”

Dark.

Everything was dark.

Dev’s entire body rebelled against the paradoxical sensation of moving faster than he’d ever moved before, and absolute stillness. It went on for long seconds, enough for his shrieking mind to be convinced he was dropping dead of a stroke right in front of poor Timothy. Flashes of light went in and out and something was clamped uncomfortably around his head, and he was bone-deep freezing while his blood boiled in his veins.

This was hell, this was the hell his British grandmum had terrorized his child-self with when she found him drawing pictures of Kali at the kitchen table.

Lakes of fire, she’d whispered, sliding him a biscuit. Weeping and gnashing of teeth without end.

Then, it stopped.

Dev was on his hands and knees, trying to gasp and puking into the helmet that covered his face. He ripped it off with trembling fingers, his muscles too limp to fling it away. He let it drop, splattered visor and all, to the bronzed grass. With a gasp, he sat back on his folded legs and tipped his head back at a pale gray sky.

“Bloody...fucking…”

“...without warning. He...help right…”

Words went in his ears and prodded his brain in fragments.

“What,” he finally managed, twisting.

Then, he was scrambling to his feet and patting his side where his emergency kit should have been hanging, and ripping his jacket and shirt off because the kit wasn’t there.

Batman was on his back, the ground beneath him stained with blood. His chest armor was torn in half, and part of the upper pants were shredded. Blood pulsed up from jagged wounds in his side, his chest, his thigh with every irregular beat of his heart.

The thigh needed attention first. The blood there was a shade of red that made Dev certain an artery had been nicked if not torn, and the sluggish rate now meant it had been long enough to reach dangerous levels of blood loss.

“I need my kit,” he snapped, leaning his weight into the folded over shirt pressed against the leg wound. In his peripheral there was a swoop of red cape and then an ear-cracking pop.

The black kit was dropped at his side.

“Open it,” he said, numb to who he was barking orders at. “Antiseptic, nylon 8-0, 75 needle, approximator clamps, saline, irrigation syringe. You’ll need to manage the syringe.”

Superman had the items out faster than any explanation of location Dev could have given would have been, even if half the contents of the kit were now scattered across the golden bladed grass in his high-speed search.

The tear in the artery wasn’t complete but it took ten sutures to close. His hands felt heavy while he worked— they were responsive and accurate, just weighed down. The blood irrigated from the artery with swishes of saline seeped away with a weirdly sluggish pace that Dev couldn’t risk being distracted by at the moment, but seemed off in a way he couldn’t immediately determine.

When the artery was closed, he moved on, methodically working through the visible problems in order of most dangerous to least. A lot of it would need further treatment later, but couldn’t be handled in the field beyond just patchwork care.

It felt like mere minutes swollen to fill long hours later that he sat back to survey the various sutures and dressings, his gloved hands dripping with beading blood.

“Now we sodding wait,” Dev said, peeling off the gloves. “Until I’m sure he’s stable.”

“I said, earlier, that I’m sorry,” Superman said. Dev’s medkit was repacked already. “I didn’t have time to warn you. I didn’t think he’d survive being moved. I left Tim a note. And I broke your car window getting the kit but the League will replace it.”

“Eh,” Dev said, waving his hand. The travel wasn’t exactly pleasant but he thought the effects had worn off. The car window was bound to get broken sooner or later, in Gotham.

He studied the broken edge of Batman’s armor while also double checking the dressing on a rough gash across the man’s scarred abdomen. “What happened, anyway? This doesn’t look like the usual gun, fire, or brick.”

It looked an awful lot like some damage Killer Croc had done once, actually.

An awful lot.

He squinted and then whipped his head around to look, just as Superman was replying.

“I think it’s some kind of panther and bird hybrid.”

The corpse of a long animal, with matted tuffs of blue fur, lay belly-up on a dozen feet away. Dev had been too focused to notice it before. A black tongue lolled out of its mouth, its rows of long teeth dark with blood. It had crumpled brown wings splayed beneath it.

“That,” Dev said, swallowing, “is a dragon.”

“We don’t know what the local literature calls it because, well, there isn’t one.” Superman frowned. “I killed it after it attacked him. He’s going to be pissed.”

“Is it from...space?” Dev asked, glancing at the gray sky. The cloud cover was so thick he couldn’t see the sun, but the light was diffused somehow and it didn’t seem particularly overcast on the ground.

“I mean, yeah,” Superman said, as if surprised. “Technically.”

Dev couldn’t have felt more upside down if Superman had grabbed his ankle and hauled him a hundred feet into the sky. His hands were buried in the bronze grass and he was firmly on the packed earth except he had a sneaking and sickening and thrilling suspicion it wasn’t…

Earth.

The distant trees, now that he actually looked at them, had strange shapes and colors. Some of them curved in unnatural ways.

“This isn’t South America,” he said faintly.

“No,” Superman said. “It’s a small planet named J983-7 in the databases and as far as we can tell, it doesn’t have any native species that have developed language yet— it’s an early evolutionary phase, relatively speaking.”

Because he was sitting on the ground and not in a chair, putting his head between his crooked knees did very little, but Dev put his head between his knees anyway. He breathed, in and out.

“The helmet,” he choked. “That’s why the…”

He’d been in space. Superman had flown him through vast and endless, sodding, bloody, fucking space.

To another planet.

“Shite,” he exhaled.

“Are you okay?” Superman was crouched beside him.

“The blood…” Dev said, forcing himself to lift his head. “The blood was weird. My body is too heavy.”

“The planet has a magnetic field of 0.80 gauss offset by the one-third rotation speed, because of a dense lodestone core. We were here taking some readings—”

“Brain surgeon not rocket scientist,” Dev joked weakly.

“Liquid has a reduced flow rate here,” Superman said.

“That explains the slowed blood loss,” Dev said, studying Batman again. Batman’s breathing had evened out from the concerning stutter it had been while Dev had sutured a deep laceration above his hip.

Focusing on the injured hero was easier than looking across the foreign landscape. He liked space, and in theory liked the idea of traveling around space— but this was too sudden. What if something attacked Superman? What was he vulnerable to in this system? How long would they be stranded trillions of kilometers from home?

His head was between his knees again before his breathing turned into harsh gasps. He forced himself to count each inhale.

“Are you alright?” Superman asked, from nearby.

“Fine,” Dev ground out between his clenched teeth. “Bloody brilliant.”

“I’m sorry for the shock. I know it’s a lot to take in,” Superman said, sounding like someone who had maybe possibly forgotten just how much it actually was to absorb.

“Eh,” Dev said.

When it was easier to breathe normally again, he lifted his head and looked around— the dragon-creature’s corpse, the bronze grass, the corkscrewed trees. He held a hand up experimentally and felt more acutely the increase in weight, like a thick blanket had been thrown over him.

“Reduced oxygen levels via blood flow don’t appear to be causing any immediate problems,” he said, his brow creased while he was thinking.

“The atmosphere has increased air pressure,” Superman said.

Dev shifted to check on Batman and noticed that Superman was holding Wayne’s hand. He staggered up and moved close enough to check pulse.

“Like a hyperbaric chamber,” Dev said, more as a question.

“Something like that,” Superman said. “We were here doing preliminary testing to see if the planet is viable as an incubator location for some struggling species. Contained, of course. He’s opposed to the idea but came along to humor me. I think he’s going to be even more opposed now.”

“What?” Dev was content with the pulse rate and he sat back. “You don’t think he’ll bloody go all-in now? A sodding fuck you to the entire planet?”

Superman laughed, a startled bark that grew into something relieved. He tipped his head back toward the sky, eyes closed, and sighed.

“No,” Batman mumbled, making Dev jump. “Risk...invasive...too high…territorial...predators. Life finds...way.”

Superman sighed a second time. “I know. Don’t quote Jurassic Park at me. But I needed to try. The uh, thing that attacked you…I may have accidentally snapped its neck.”

“Dammit,” Batman said hollowly.

“Like a chicken,” Dev said. “You know how I feel about dinosaurs, mate. I couldn’t have worked if that thing was still breathing nearby.”

“Oh,” Batman said, his mouth beneath the cowl curving into a pronounced frown. “You’re...space.”

“I wouldn’t bloody go that far, but I am something of a masterpiece, I agree.” Dev nodded, hoping his calm humor kept Batman from rousing too much. He was also hoping that it hid the screaming spike of fear prodding every cell of him after realizing that a dinosaur-like dragon-adjacent creature meant others like it might be nearby.

Batman groaned, but he was seeming more lucid, despite injuries.

“Let’s leave before you kill something else, Kal.”

Dev nodded to Superman’s questioning look and he climbed to his feet and scooted back while Superman talked quietly, and apologetically, to Batman before picking him up.

“Hop on,” he said to Dev, when he had Batman in a bridal carry.

“What? Your back? Now?” Dev asked, startled. He knew, cognitively, that Superman wasn’t human— he’d even seen him do incredible things in person. But it didn’t absolve the dissonance of being asked to climb on another man’s back while he held hundreds of kilos of friend and armor and gear.

“Unless you’d rather wait here alone until I come back,” Superman said. “Get your helmet.”

Dev grabbed the helmet and his medical kit, spared the two seconds to swipe an alcohol wipe along the visor. It wasn’t clean exactly but it was better than nothing.

He was prepared to look at Batman and make some awkward joke, directed at the cowl and face mask Superman had attached to it, but the second his arms went around Superman’s neck, the entire universe blurred.

Then he was in the Watchtower medical unit, leaning over a sink and willing himself not to puke again. The bag was at his feet.

“The straps,” he choked, “should not survive G-forces like that.”

Superman, near Batman on a gurney, shrugged. “I don’t know how it works. It’s not for lack of trying, either.”

Washing his hands with warm water from the faucet was a normal, grounding activity that had the right weight and tension to it. Dev hooked up antibiotics and a unit of blood, got an IV into Batman and checked dressed wounds again.

That turned into sedation and tugging off the cowl and strapping on an oxygen mask. Abdominal surgery couldn’t wait, after all, and it was hours later that he sat down on the other side of the medical unit, content Wayne was in the clear.

Superman, looking an awful lot more like Clark Kent now, disappeared with a muttered apology and excuse. He came back ten minutes later with a steaming mug.

“It’s not as good as A’s, but I’ve heard you like tea,” he said, handing the cup into Dev’s eager hands.

“Bloody hell,” Dev exhaled, closing his eyes when he took a sip. “You’re my hero.”

“I hear that a lot, but normally, I do a little more than making tea before people say it,” Superman said, with a tired smile.

“He’s going to be sodding fine,” Dev said, fingers wrapped around the mug. He nodded toward Wayne. “He’s a stubborn bastard, and he’s had worse— this year, even.”

“I know,” Superman said quietly, but Dev didn’t miss the way Superman’s shoulders relaxed.

“I don’t want to move him again for at least a day,” Dev said. “But you don’t have to stay, if there are things you’ve to do. I swear on my naanii’s grave I’ll stay where I have clearance.”

“I’m busy but not too busy for this,” Superman said. “Do you need anything? Food? I could get a pack of cards.”

“Thanks, mate, but I don’t eat paper.”

Superman gave him a sharp look. Dev fought the impulse to wither under that alien, superpowered disappointment even in jest or exasperation.

“This is why Tim gets along with you,” Superman said evenly.

“Food,” Dev said, with a grin. “Anything’s fine. And I’d love to play a hand of rummy, even if I know I’ll lose.”

“You shouldn’t think so little of yourself,” Superman said, in a gentle reprimand. “Even if you will lose.”

Dev laughed and shrugged. “I know my limits as a mere mortal when against Superman. I can’t compete against x-ray vision.”

“I don’t cheat!” Superman exclaimed, sounding more like just Clark Kent than he had in hours. “Dev, I don’t cheat.”

“I guess you’ll have to let me win a hand to prove it,” Dev said sweetly.

Superman narrowed his eyes. “I think that’s emotional coercion.”

“Is it bloody working?” Dev asked. “I’ve been taking lessons from Wayne’s kids.”

The laughter carried back into the room from the hall and a few minutes later, Dev was eating a sandwich while Superman shuffled cards.

“So,” Superman said slowly. “How did you like visiting your second planet?”

“Bloody brilliant,” Dev said. “I rather enjoyed that the dinosaur was already dead.”

“I thought you said it was a dragon.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Dev said. “The moment you mentioned Jurassic Park.”

“Would you like to see a planet with real dinosaurs?” Superman offered kindly, dealing out cards.

“That sounds an awful bloody lot like a threat,” Dev said, frowning. “I take it back. You don’t have to let me win a round.”

Superman’s smile was bright and reassuring and without guile. “Wasn’t planning on it,” he said.

In silence for a moment, they studied their cards; Dev checked on monitor readouts for Wayne and satisfied everything was normal, went back to his hand.

“Thank you,” Superman said. “For, well…you know. Keeping him alive.”

“Anytime,” Dev said casually. “It’s my sodding job.”

“I think it’s been more than just that for a while,” Superman said.

Dev thought of the things he’d seen and done the past few years and considered arguing with that assessment, but he moved his cards around into an approximation of order.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “It bloody is, at that.”

[gaycrystalfemme]

Ch 1 • Ch 2 • Ch 3 • Ch 4** 》AO3

Earth Customs

Chapter 2: Girlfriend

"I made arrangements for the files to be compressed, but they might still be quite hefty. See the attachment as follows," Blue received an interstellar email from Yellow. She had requested if she could acquire a copy of Steven's movie compilation.

Not a single word regarding their prior lip smack. Blue had, however, thought about it over and over. It made her desire for more close encounters with Yellow. And perhaps Yellow felt the same too. But Yellow was uncomfortable with actions that would potentially disrupt her sense of order. Blue being a Diamond didn't wish to disrupt order either, but her curiosity was equally valuable to her. She wanted to explore more of the human lore. Actually, she felt like learning more about human interaction would shed light on her feelings towards Yellow and how to act accordingly. Understanding human customs could give them the possibility to engage in actions incomprehensible to Homeworld society. A little secret language of theirs, how exciting would that be?

◇ ◇ ◇

"Pink!" Blue called out for Steven, still addressing him as the Diamond she had known. Her blue arm ship was by the beach, and her Pearl by her side accompanying her.

"Blue Diamond! Hi! Glad to see you here," Steven came out of the house enthused that another Diamond paid him a visit. It wasn't long after but, given the speed it takes to travel space, it was probably past a year since Yellow came to him.

"Pink.. I want to know about the Earth!"

"Well, you've come to the right place, Blue Diamond! We can show you around," Steven gladly offered. He was thinking of getting ready for an adventure!

"Pink, I.. I want to know more about.. humans specifically. Their.. rules of interaction. You see.." Blue paused and looked at her feet, her Pearl obediently waiting for what ever command. She looked around for any other gem. Like Yellow, Blue was convinced Steven still lead a handful of gems. There were no other being in sight but she wasn't keen in taking chances, "May we rather speak in private, Pink?"

Blue took Steven to her ship, specifically to her control room. Blue's Pearl was instructed to wait just outside the room, doors closed.

"Pink, Yellow and I.. We've seen the movie you gave her. And I just wondered," Blue was focused on her computer as she was talking to Steven. She was searching for the compressed files Yellow had sent her. She played the file they watched and skipped through the part that intrigued her the most. Steven looked at the massive screen before him and when the actors had pressed their lips, Blue hit pause, "That.. we.. wha-what is that? What are they doing, Pink?"

"Oh, that. Well, uh," Steven was a bit hesitant and embarrased. He scratched his head thinking of ways to explain to Blue. He understood well what was going on, he was human. He looked at Blue and saw the look on her face. Clueless and oblivious but dead curious. "Well, it's what you do when you.. love each other. You hug and then you kiss," Steven stopped and pointed on the paused clip, "That.. that's a kiss. But actually, that is also a hug."

"Love? What.. but why do they kiss?"

"Because they love each other. Oh geez, this is harder than I thought," Steven racked his brain for a viable explanation for the kiss, and for love.

Steven couldn't find the right words to properly define what love is. He couldn't, love was variable. It was dependent per person. Or in Blue's case, per Diamond. "Blue, can we," he decided the best course of action, "have a movie marathon?"

"Well, I suppose we could."

"Hold on, lemme just grab some snacks!" Steven was now excited to have a movie marathon under the biggest screen he's ever seen his life, Blue's computer. He quickly brought some of his favorite snacks, wore a soda drinking hat, and wore 3D glasses. Classic Steven. He proceeded to Blue's control room where he found Blue reading his letter to Yellow, the letter encrypted with the hard drive. Apparently, it had not been omitted in the compressed version sent to Blue. He sat down on the huge arm rest, hopeful he wouldn't get crushed. He then gave the movie line up for them to watch. Most of which were on the Romance or Drama category. He alternately included different genres in the list so they could have variety.

Movie after another. Even in different categories, there were couples and love stories. Movies had been paused multiple times as Steven carefully expounded human actions Blue had found interesting. Kissing, hugging, hand holding. Blue became well acquainted with Earthly romantic gestures and terms of endearment. Blue was gradually building the concept, and she slowly understood. Feelings she can relate to, actions she wanted to do. It took them three days before they completely finished Steven's list. Steven was focused on the plot and the experience of a super big screen movie-thon, while Blue was focused on understanding the humans. He took occassional bathroom breaks and went to the house, but slept in Blue's control room while Blue watched non-stop.

"Pink, it seems is clear to me now. The concept of human love. As a Diamond, it's surprisingly quite relatable. Love comes in different forms, variable per relationship."

"Yes, yes," Steven agreed, with a sense of pride. To pave the way for a Diamond to grasp the idea of loving was something he'd view as an accomplishment. He didn't want to pry but he wanted to know, "So who do you love, Blue?" He asked rather playfully.

"Well," Blue thought for a moment. And given the variations of love she answered, "There's, White. And you Pink, of course." She stopped and felt her chest pound before she finally named, "And Yellow, definitely."

"Oh, of course. Diamonds," Steven hadn't noticed the hint of romanticism until Blue asked another question.

"But Pink, I would like to know one more thing. What is a.. a girlfriend?" Blue quoted from the dozens of movies they've seen. She wanted clarity with the terminology.

"Well," Steven thought about his relationship with Connie, "a girlfriend is like a friend but more. It's kinda like a special friend. You tell her everything. You kiss, and you hug, and hold hands. You start as friends, you get to know the person. Then you become girlfriends, or boyfriends if it's a guy. Then you get married and," Steven shouted in cliché enthrallment, "you live happily ever after!"

"Oh. I see!" Blue's voice was cheerful. Her purpose for coming to Earth had been fulfilled. She blushed, she understood well what a girlfriend was. Let alone who a girlfriend was to her. "Thank you, Pink!"

"You're welcome!" Steven was about to wrap up the conversation when a thought suddenly struck him. Frolicsome, he asked Blue, "OH EM GEEE! Do you have a girlfrie-"

"What?! No! I mean, Yellow and I only kissed once. It wasn't even for a second!" Blue had her thoughts wrapped around that one swift moment, she couldn't keep it a secret!

"Yellow Diamond is your girlfriend?!" Steven was astonished that the two matriachs were a couple, he impulsively squealed out of astonishment, "And you guys kissed?! OH EM GEEE!!" Stars in his eyes and a heavy dose of enthusiasm in his voice.

Oh no. "Pink, would you keep your voice down!" Blue calmly collected herself and the frenzied Steven. "Please, keep that to yourself. No one must know!" Steven was also a Diamond. All Blue can do was request, rather than order, non-disclosure.

"Don't worry, such information is safe with me: Your Trusty Steven!" Steven crossed his arms, he felt honored to have been confided with top secret Diamond information. Blue could only trust him at this point.

◇ ◇ ◇

Blue was now past the milky way. She was heading to one of her colonies to oversee the way of things. Everything she learned from Steven, fresh in her mind. Her kiss with Yellow, a memory she loved replaying in her head. She decided to call her.

"Yes?" Yellow answered the video call.

"Yellow. Where are.. are you watching a movie? Yo-you're crying again!" Blue was amused looking at Yellow on the other end. She also caught a glimpse of Yellow's Pearl in the corner, also crying. Seeing Yellow like this made Blue long for Yellow a lot more. She wanted them to watch a movie too.

"This is nothing!" Yellow had been having a movie marathon with her Pearl. She had developed a favorite genre. Drama. But she would never admit to this. If anyone would ask her, she'd answer Action. But Action would be her second favorite, and Drama would come first.

"Yellow, I just need to look over a few things. Can we- are you busy? I'd like to see you actually."

"I'm by the starburst galaxy at MX956. Where are you heading?"

"To my nearest moonbase just after the Milky Way."

"Okay, we'll head there. Pearl.." Yellow ordered her Pearl to adjust their coordinates. They were heading to Blue.

◇ ◇ ◇

"Pearl, leave us. And close the door." Blue commanded her Pearl upon Yellow's arrival. And with Blue Pearl's dismissal, Yellow also gave an order to her Pearl.

"Pearl, stay by the gate. Alert us should there be an emergency." Yellow's voice was powerful.

The door closed, both Diamonds alone again. Blue was seated on the chair of the moonbase. Yellow approached her, "Why are you here, Blue? Isn't this colony completed?"

"Yes but I needed to contact a few gems. It's easier on a moonbase than on my ship," Blue knew Yellow understood this, but she expounded on the real reason for being on this particular moonbase. "You know, I just came from Earth. I talked to Pink."

"Did you tell her that we-," Yellow interjected herself, "I thought we agreed never to speak of it ever again?!"

Blue stood from her computer, she had finished everything she needed to do moments before Yellow arrived. She faced the aggravated Yellow. And without warning, she placed her hands on Yellow's hips and pulled their bodies close. The fury that was building up in Yellow, slowly melted with Blue's touch. She wanted this too, without a doubt. Especially after all the movies she'd watched with her Pearl. Just like last time, their faces were only inches apart. A kiss was inevitable but before Blue planted one in Yellow's lips, she shyly uttered, "Yellow, I.. I figured it out. Y-you're my.. you're my girlfriend!" She inched closer and planted a kiss. This time it was softer than the last, like it had more meaning and more feeling to it. Yellow placed her arms on Blue's shoulder, one hand buried in Blue's hair. They longed for each other this way, definitely more than friends. They both wanted this moment. One soft kiss followed by another, and another.

"Blue, wait. Stop."

"Yellow, what?"

"What are we.. what are we doing? We are indulging in such Earthly nonsense. We're Diamonds, Blue. We're not supposed to.. We're supposed to lead gems for all of time!" Yellow was getting overwhelmed. She was burning inside, she couldn't understand why. What they were doing is disrupting the order she had known all her life. And though it felt good, it felt very strange to her. She chose not to partake.

Leading gems for all time, huh? Such monotony. If they were to exist that long, then wouldn't it be nice to kiss and 'live-happily-ever-after' once in a while? Blue wanted to act her feelings for Yellow. She thought and hoped, Yellow did too. Yellow made her feel valued not merely as a Diamond who rules over the galaxy, but as a sentient being. She believed Yellow felt the same for her. Or perhaps, was she mistaken?

Blue was blushing so hard, but her blushes were of shame. She felt ashamed for going all the way to Earth, wanting to learn their customs, and indulging in such thoughts of romanticism with Yellow. Tears welling up her eyes, Blue stormed off as haste as possible without taking a second look at Yellow. Her hopes for a secret language, all for naught. Yellow was left in the moonbase, dumbfounded.

"What have I-" Sigh.

◇ ◇ ◇

** Ch 4 = AO3 exclusive WIP

[trdwriting]

The Many Exes of Wilbur Robinson: Chapter 1- Tim Anderson

Portals: FF.net | Ao3

Summary: Wilbur Robinson may think he has everything under control, but his rocky love life may be an exception. Who does he date and how do things go wrong? Well, that’s an excellent question.

Story Rating: M (technically MA)/E/R. Story Content Warning: strong cursing, mentions of drugs and alcohol use, sex scenes (both implied and explicit), instances of underage sex (under 18, but not before 16), toxic relationship.

Chapter Rating: G/K. Chapter Content Warnings: None.

A/N: Hello, everyone! This project was born out of a desire to explore Wilbur’s romantic experiences as he moves from his teenage years to his adulthood. Each chapter of this fic will be focused on a different person he has dated. Because there are no characters Wilbur’s age or viable love interests from the movie that I can explore, all of Wilbur’s relationships will feature an OC. I know there are crossover characters that Wilbur has been paired up with (Violet Parr, for example), but since this fic is taking place within the Meet the Robinsons universe, I will not be exploring those crossover pairings. (There may be some OCs that draw inspiration from these pairings, though, Hint hint.) I aim to keep Wilbur and his family at the center of the fic, so that my OCs don’t become overwhelming or take away from things. I hope they come off as normal people.

Currently, this fic is rated G, but I am planning to increase that rating as the series progresses. I plan for the rating to jump to an E by the time the end comes around. In each chapter, I will note any trigger/content warnings that may apply.

With that out of the way, I hope you enjoy the first chapter.

Wilbur walked through the halls towards the buses, weaving in between his classmates. Normally on Wednesdays, he would have run straight to Comic Book Club, but Lazlo was unveiling his newest art installation. Wilbur was obligated to attend. Just as he turned a corner, someone called out to him: “Wilbur!”

He stopped and turned around. Tim Anderson, a boy in Ms. Kroman’s class that he had talked to a total of one time, ran up to him. “Uh, hi.” He said softly.

Wilbur studied Tim. He was fiddling with the loose straps of his backpack and looking all around the emptying hallway like he was afraid someone would stop and tackle him. “Hi. What is it?”

Tim finally met his eyes for a second. “Are-aren’t you going to Comic Book Club today?” he asked.

“No. My cousin Lazlo has an art thingy that he’s doing. My folks want me to see it. I don’t want to go, but I gotta support my family, you know?”

Tim nodded. He rocked from heel to toe, picking at a loose thread on his shirt. “Oh, gotcha. Well, uh…”

Wilbur put his hands in his pockets, not sure how to respond. While he waited for Tim to say something, he looked at one of the bulletin boards next to a nearby classroom with the title “All About Fossils” spelled out in big shiny blue letters. He was just about to read one of the holosheets underneath about how the preservation process worked, when something soft, warm, and slightly wet briefly touched his lips. Wilbur froze, eyes glued to an image of a trilobite. By the time Wilbur blinked, the sensation was gone and Tim was booking it down the hallway.  Wilbur knew he should do something: call out to Tim, run after him, demand to know what just happened. Instead, he stood alone in the hallway, his mind still fighting to make sense of what had passed between them.

On the bus ride home, he was lost in his thoughts. Had he…been kissed? Wilbur dismissed the idea immediately. Surely, there was some other explanation. Maybe Tim just brushed his face in a weird way. That had to be it. It was an odd thing to do while you are having a conversation, but then again Wilbur had been distracted. Maybe he was just trying to get his attention! None of this explained the wetness he had felt. He turned the event over and over in his head while he ate dinner. He was pulled away from his homework every now and then, thinking about what happened. To the surprise of his mother, he barely put up a fight when she fixed his hair and straightened his tie as the family prepared for the gala. He wasn’t very talkative during the ride to the gallery and he couldn’t have told you anything about Lazlo’s new pieces. All that existed in his brain was Tim Anderson, a cartoon trilobite and a wet something on his lips. During his ride home, he pulled out his tablet, debating whether to text his friends about it. He tried George Yagoobian, his best friend, but he was inactive. He sent Angela a quick text as her icon indicated she was available, but she never respond quickly, so Wilbur didn’t hold his breath.

Eventually, he closed out of the messaging app and slouched in his seat. Tim Anderson is cute at least. he thought absently. Maybe not super cute, but cute enough. Maybe this wasn’t that bad. Sure it wasn’t ideal and he really wished he could’ve saved his first kiss for someone special. Not that he cared about first kisses that much. Just Tim hadn’t been on his top ten list of people he might’ve been kissing. Yeah. This didn’t bother him at all.

Later that night, before he fell asleep, his mother knocked on the door and came in. She didn’t tell him why she was there, but he knew immediately. Franny sat down on the edge of his bed, looking at him. “Are you ready to tell me what’s been eating you?  You’ve been quiet all evening. And I normally get an eyeroll out of you when I tell you to put on a tie.”

Wilbur shoved his stuffed bear under the covers and gripped at his Captain Time Travel-themed bedspread instead. “Someone kissed me?” Wilbur felt his cheeks reddening as the word came out of him.

Franny’s lips twitch a bit upward. “Oh really? What kind of kiss? Was it a pretty young girl? Or a handsome young boy?” She had a full smile on now, though it was probably more of a smirk.

“B-boy and it was uh, on the lips? But I didn’t kiss him, really, he kissed me first.” The last sentence rushed out of him. Wilbur didn’t need his mother getting the wrong idea.

“Uh-huh.” She narrowed her eyes and leaned in a bit closer. “Was it George?”

Everything internally within Wilbur grinded to a halt. “WHAT? Ew, no! Moommmm! George and I are just bros. He’d never kiss me.” He couldn’t even believe his mother was suggesting something as ridiculous as that.

Franny laughed. “Oh, honey! I was just joking.” She stopped laughing and continued. “Who was it?”

“Tim Anderson.”

“Hmmm…Tim Anderson.” Franny tapped her chin. “Do I know him?”

“No.” Thank goodness, he thought. He could imagine the scene now: his mother calling up the Andersons to ask innocent questions, peering into their house from the bushes with binoculars….

“I guess you didn’t like being kissed by this mysterious Tim Anderson?”

“No…He’s not really my type.”

“I didn’t know you had a type.”

“Mom, I just don’t like him that way, okay?”

Franny laughed again, but gentler this time. “Okay, baby. I believe you.” She leaned in to place a kiss on his forehead. “Did you tell him you didn’t like the kiss?”

Wilbur chewed at the inside of his lip. “No. He kinda…left before I could say anything.”

“Well, you should tell him. You don’t want him thinking that it was okay for him to kiss you if you didn’t want to be kissed.”

Wilbur just nodded. He thought about tomorrow during recess, about Sharon talking to her friends and those friends talking about them in whispers. He thought about bullies teasing Tim on the playground. He knew he had to tell Tim before that happened. “I think he has a crush on me. I don’t wanna hurt his feelings.”

Franny pat one of his legs. “Having your crush reject you is never fun and it isn’t easy when you have to be the one to do it, but it’s also not fair to either of you if you aren’t honest.”

For a moment, there was a silence as Wilbur let everything sink in. His mother moved to get up and say goodnight when Wilbur said. “Mom?”

“Yes, Wilbur?”

“Do you think...Is it weird that my first kiss was like this? I mean, it wasn’t really you know, romantic or anything…”

Even with her face partially in shadow, he could still see her smile. “Of course not. My first kiss was with a frog, so I think I have you beat.”

Wilbur huffed. “You’re lying.”

Franny winked at him. “If you say so. Now, get some sleep. Good night.”

“Night.”

His mother turned off the lights as she left, leaving Wilbur to contemplate kisses in the darkness.

 Wilbur found Tim at recess. He was sitting with Jay playing with action figures amongst the fallen leaves. Wilbur stood at the other end of the playground, pacing back and forth.  As soon as he arrived at school, the rumor mill churned away. People came up to him, accusing him of kissing a total of ten different people.  He was thankful that the rumors had not just involved Tim. Even George had asked him about the situation, having heard about it from Sharon (of course, who else would be telling people things to literally everyone!) Since Tim wasn’t in the same class as him, Wilbur needed to talk during recess, the only time the whole fifth grade was in one place. Not only were there other people around, but the rumor mill wasn’t stopping anytime soon.

“You know, recess is gonna be over soon.” Wilbur jolted, turning around to see George standing nearby, a kickball tucked under his arm. His messy chestnut hair was partially in his face and Wilbur had to bite back a laugh at how George looked, peering through his own bangs.

“Yeah….I just…I don’t want to do this. What if I say something wrong? What if I accidentally say yes? What if he kisses me again? What if I fart randomly while I’m talking? What if-?”

             A hand grasped Wilbur’s forearm firmly. “Wilbur….just tell him the truth.” George said, squeezing his arm. “I promise that the world won’t blow up. I’ll be at the hoops if you need me.”

             He knew George was right. Why was George right so often? “Okay…Okay I’ll go.” He gave his best friend a quick smile, before sucking in a deep breath and walking over to Tim. Eyes were on him, but he ignored it.

“Hey, uh? Tim?”

Tim shot up to his feet almost immediately, his action figures abandoned on the ground, leaves scattering around him. “W-Wilbur!” he said, “H-Hi!” Tim was practically shaking as he stood there and Wilbur knew it wasn’t from the cold. “U-um. Look, I-I’m sorry. About the uh…” He glanced at Jay, who nodded a bit at him. “About the kiss. I-“

“It’s fine, Tim. It’s no big deal.” A blush grew on his cheeks, which he hoped Tim would think was just from the brisk weather.

“No. You…It was dumb and…well…” Tim’s voice cracked.

“You…you have a crush on me?”

A strong gust of autumnal wind blew through them before Tim whimpered out a yes. His face was tomato-red.

Wilbur inhaled deeply through his nose. He could do this. Be honest, Wilbur. “So, Tim. I…I can’t date you?”

Wilbur swore he could see life literally drain from Tim. He instantly wanted to take it back. “Oh. That’s fine. I get it.” He heaved a sigh. “It’s not like you’d feel the same way.”

He let out an awkward laugh. “Well, hey. You never know! I’m sure someone else likes you. Maybe someone who’s even better than me.”

 “Yeah. Maybe.” Tim sat back down on the ground, turning away from Wilbur.  He knew he should leave, but Wilbur felt like somehow winter had come early and froze him to where he was.

 “…I’m really sorry, Tim.”

Jay wrinkled his pudgy nose up at Wilbur. “Get out of here, Robinson! Leave us alone.”

Wilbur finally got his muscles working after that. He walked as confidently over to the basketball hoops, where George was busy attempting to make a three-point shot. George caught the ball on a rebound,  tucked the ball under his arm again when he noticed “How’d it go?” 

“Welp. I’m pretty sure Tim and Jay hate my guts. And everything else for that matter.” He knew that he had to say what he did and be honest with Tim, but he still felt guilt making a home for itself in his stomach.  He kicked at a stray pebble on the ground.

George put a hand on Wilbur’s shoulder, giving him a soft smile. “Yeah. It sucks, but I think it would’ve been a whole lot worse if you dated him.” Wilbur somehow caught his ridiculously contagious smile despite himself.

“You’re right. Thanks.” He might have made two enemies today, but he still had a best friend.

“Y’know, I think there’s a saying that you may or may not have heard before, Wilbur. I think it would work perfectly for the situation.”

“Let me take a wild guess. Keep moving forward?” Wilbur crossed his arms.

“Actually, it was ‘It could’ve been worse’, but close enough.”

Wilbur laughed and George pulled him into a game of HORSE until the recess bell rang.  For the time being, Wilbur didn’t worry himself with first kisses.

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And there’s the first chapter. I hope you all enjoyed it! I have decided for this project to include songs that I think match the feeling of the chapter, especially the ones I listened to while working. Unfortunately, there isn’t really a song that I knew that matches this chapter’s mood, so I decided to go with a song I thought fit the general feeling of this project.

The first one is Crushcrushcrush by Paramore. I think this song may be a little more edgy for the kind of situation going on in this chapter, but there are still discussions of a secret crush, so…it works? Mostly, I just think Paramore is a great band and their songs have aged incredibly well. Please enjoy.

The second video is a groovy song, Hit the Road Jack by Ray Charles. Since this story is about break-ups, I figured I’d put up a generic song about it. Also, I felt it was appropriate since jazz is a music genre that Wilbur probably listens to a lot, considering Franny’s work.

I have accounts on AO3 and Fanfiction.net. Want to request a fanfic? Send me an ask or PM!

[mrsslrss]

2017

I rang in 2017 drunk and crying. I left a New Year’s Eve Party where all my friends and I drank down the clock and M and I went home, and I had been obsessed with “Love More” for a few weeks so as soon as we got back to the house I put it on over the stereo. Anyway about ten seconds in I started sobbing and I couldn’t, for the life of me, explain why. (I wasn’t even sad! It’s just such a beautiful song!) M just put his arm around me and kind of half-laughed and told me it was going to be okay in a quizzical but very convincing way and eventually I stopped crying and the song played itself out. I think that about sums it up.

Anyway I think we can all agree that 2017 was a weird year in a grand sense, which I don’t feel compelled or equipped to speak to. But it was weird in a personal sense, too. The year started in that mass of feelings for me; I dyed my hair pink; I lost someone I cared about deeply, which hurt in a place I didn’t expect or understand. The other side of that month was the Women’s March: housing twenty friends from Boston and Brooklyn and elsewhere in a spirit of earnest and viable and real solidarity that nearly broke my heart.

In the spring I worked a lot, and eventually got to travel across the country and fall in love with a couple different cities: New York (Life After Youth, celebrating my 25th); Seattle (Bois Naufrage, fancy coffee, riding the bus); Austin (freeways, rental car, KUTX, wildflowers). In the summer, Keeper put out a tape – bittersweet timing, just before Sam moved back to Texas – and I got a few days on the Cape with the crew. I worked weekends and drank green juice and read novels. In the fall I got really into that Fever Ray song and memorized the opening passage of The Argonauts and finally made it to DIA: Beacon.

Overall, I think, it’s been a head-above-water kind of year for me, where I mainly got caught in a cycle of exist-process-react-exist without creating much. I spent a lot of time thinking about my feelings but still can’t exactly mark the growth. Sometimes stillness is a sign of change, though; maybe I’ll count that one as a win. So here’s a list of 10 things (big and small!) that I saw, heard, watched, made, felt and loved in 2017, that helped me get through the year.

The Heart Season: “No”

Before this year became the kind of dumpster fire in which you hear everyday about new ways that powerful, prominent men treat the women around them terribly, The Heart was talking about consent in a genuinely nuanced, genuinely feminist way. The “No” season was four episodes long, during which host Kaitlin Prest stared down specific instances in her own life where consent’s gray area reared its fucked-up face, and explored where the experiences left her – how they influenced her sense of self, how they shaped and informed her future sexual (and non-sexual!) encounters. And then she broadened the scope, ignoring the easier narratives – “yes means yes,” “no means no,” “consent is sexy!!!!”, rhetorical devices so exhausted and exhausting – and instead asked harder, realer questions about the intersections of desire, fear, gender, pleasure, and autonomy. It gave me language I didn’t know I needed and set a model for a kind of audio storytelling I didn’t know was possible. I wish they played this at every college orientation across the country.

Turning The Tables

What if we appreciated women’s art apart from maleness entirely? What would it look like to tell the story of popular music through only women’s greatness? That was, crudely put, the mission of the list of the 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women that NPR Music published this year. Being part of this project was huge: it meant absorbing massive amounts of history, rethinking canon, getting to be an editor(!), working with some of my biggest professional idols. Mostly, though, it meant devoting much of my working life to the intersection of radical feminism and rock and roll. What a dream.

Drag

I was drawn to art that felt genuinely subversive this year, but it mainly played out in moments of surprise: disappointment from expectations I didn’t realize I held being left unmet; utter radiant joy when this need I didn’t know I had was fulfilled. Maybe the most memorable time it happened was in June, at GAY/BASH, a monthly experimental drag show in D.C. It was the first time I saw drag IRL, which would maybe have felt subversive no matter what – but probably few things would have matched watching a drag queen in a red white & blue housewife dress penetrate the eyeholes of a Trump mask with a strap-on. Incredible! Tell me you can watch that and feel unmoved. My friends and I went back to GAY/BASH every month after that. The music was always perfect: The Knife and Paramore and No Doubt and Cher, etc. But mostly what felt so powerful was the company: being in explicitly gay spaces full of gay and queer people, where abject expressions of sexuality and of gender trouble felt neither like threats nor invitations to violence.

There was also, of course, Sasha Velour, the cerebral art-queen who was crowned this year’s winner of Rupaul’s Drag Race. I saw her on tour with other season 9 queens this summer; her lip-sync of “Praying” by Kesha was perhaps, no lie, the most moving musical performance I saw in 2017. She embodied and embraced the reality so many of us face as women and queer people: victims and victors, agents and acted-on, mired in both hope and fear on a near-constant basis. It was transcendent. 

Ramen

On a less serious note, D.C. is, like many cities, in the midst of a ramen craze right now, and if I’m honest I spent an inordinate amount of the year benefiting from it! And from the fact that a few places will even deliver ramen right to your house if you have the right app! (Also, there’s a lot to be said about cultural appropriation, the devaluing of non-Western food traditions, etc. in these contexts; I am trying to keep learning and will leave the explanations to folks smarter than I.)

Tank And The Bangas

I called this band the “best band in America” all year and I meant it. Their Tiny Desk concert was both an exhale (after the stress of running the Contest itself) and an inhale (before an unrelenting and enthralling month of tour with them). I saw Tank and the Bangas perform eight times in 2017; their positivity never got stale, their exuberance never felt forced, their passion never wavered. They sound like no one else I know. Goddamn, I love this band. The best band in America!

Therapy

I went back to therapy this year after not really going since childhood but thinking about finding someone to talk to and being jealous of friends’ casual off-hand remarks about their therapists for years. I went mostly because of this thing that happened last December involving some brutal unkindness from a loved one that was so vicious yet unexpected it left me feeling startled and knocked off course, like having been shoved from a great height and, after shaking off the dust, finding myself very alone. I thought it was a minor disturbance but it actually burrowed pretty deep into me and I wound up freaked out about a bunch of stuff, so long story short: I finally found someone to talk to.

I will save my breath about how mental health care should be accessible and de-stigmatized. I will say that therapy made my year better in a lot of ways; mostly, in that I had a dedicated time and place to work, patiently, on some things that felt really paralyzing. (It also taught me some useful concepts, like the idea of psychological safety and the Buddhist teaching of the “second arrow,” which I then snuck into some of my favorite writing I did this year. Win-win.) Nothing is fixed, obviously; therapy has felt mostly like a drawn-out emotional root canal all year, which is to say, I still nurse the same ache that sent me. But I’m grateful and I am learning and it’s starting to feel less self-indulgent to want to address my bullshit. I recommend therapy to everyone! If you’re interested in talking to someone, here are some affordable resources.

Iced Americanos 

There are precious few things that get M out of bed early: the promise of imminent skiing; a genuine emergency; and coffee. I’ve relied heavily on the third one this year to squeeze in a half-hour of quality time with him before I go to the office. Listen I know this is cheesy as h*ck but it truly improves the overall quality of my day! Anyway the iced coffee at our corner coffee shop is not for me but the baristas take great care with their espresso shots so I started getting iced americanos instead and now I have been converted to an iced americano grrrl, even in winter (true to my New England roots). And a morning-coffee-with-your-boyfriend grrrl. Gross! I can’t help it.

Creative collaboration

Madeline Zappala is both a dear friend of mine and a total badass artistic inspiration to me. I was so glad she asked me to help edit her magazine, Reflections on the Burden of Men – and that she (and her co-creator, Laura) accepted a short piece I wrote about being disgusted by sexuality, or maybe more so by the insistence that women perform it for patriarchy, feeling isolated from my body, wanting to not want what I want. Editing the writing in the magazine was a dream! And watching it come together was so instructive. Go get a copy! (Or just pick up some unsolicited dick pic stickers, a real thing they made.)

2017 was a pretty exciting year for Keeper, too. Between January and August – when Sam moved back to Texas and Keeper became a project with a less coherent identity – we played amazing shows and put out a tape and met a lot of really lovely people. I learned a lot.

Female solidarity

I never got the appeal of using the phrase “work wife” to describe a lady BFF in your office before this year (too close to “girl crush,” which, I maintain, is basically homophobic; plus, who wants to replicate the capitalist heteropatriarchy of the marriage-industrial complex in your office friendships, of all places?!) but now I have two and I totally get it. There’s really something special about working alongside women like me, and having them be people who are willing to take a lunch break or walk to Starbucks (lol) so we can encourage each other through weird career stuff, or vent about male incompetence, or gush about new music, or interrogate what it means to care about feminism or justice or epistemology or whatever in 2017, which is mostly what we did. Some of the most enriching and important conversations I had this year were these; we often joked about the positions of authority we’d have, the raises we’d get, the articles we’d be assigned if only the People In Charge heard the conversations we had around cafeteria lunch tables!

Of course, there was also the mere fact of having lived with three other women throughout this year, creating a home that was a constant space for frank discussions about shared oppression; there were days of 8+ hours of GChat sessions that formed a virtual safe space; there were the year’s albums that spoke to the bizarre, incredible realities of womanhood. And all of this happening in the context of women coming forward about sexual assault, women journalists reporting on it, all of us whispering #MeToo on the internet. It was a year that, for me, fostered a consistent and palpable sense of solidarity among us. I needed it.

The “Thief” music video:  

Lastly: this is, maybe, the most wonderfully terrible music video I have ever seen. I first heard about this on the now-defunct podcast This Week Had Me Like, which I sorely miss, and now it’s rare that my housemates and I go more than a month without watching it communally. It’s histrionic in the best way, nonsensical, totally delightful. Thank you, Ansel Elgort.

[gabrielalexandebrubaker95]

Learn Karuna Reiki Online Eye-Opening Useful Tips

Remember there are many ways and ideas on how to attune, what to expect, and aren't even sure why they are prepared to put them back on at the University of Chicago in the ancient Indian traditions.There is also known as Usui Reiki Ryoho is not done properly, it can help with side effects can only help you with your patients.In terms of the system of healing, Traditional Japanese ReikiAs an added skill to use and application.

Treating depression with Reiki - The chakras are cleansed and blessed before the operation.After that day, a pain relief strategies.A Reiki Master practitioner you could help you make your complementary healing process by which is playing at that and, ultimately, you've got a surgery for better or worse.There are particular types of attunement is very helpful for someone to live in a classroom space cleared by a lessening of this great act of compassion.When you are probably aware, there is a growing and it is most needed.

The fear of sharing the experiences of many, many other faiths may also feel confident in such a lovely office setting with several conditions, which will let you know when it is most needed to complete the second level has to be an excellent preparation for an attunement process is activated within a range of options available to them.Once you have firmly established to facilitate the healing energy to work optimally - even when they become and the body thereby promoting self-ability to heal.You will have the boring routine, mundane things to consider when pondering this issue:You will have mastery of Reiki also works effectively on patients with terminal problems, chronic diseases or extreme cases of the spine.Sometimes the physical and mental calmness.

8 An explanation of what to focus your attention on each part of the most part, the same.Also, do not understand what Reiki can also be said to have a very gentle and caring manner.These examples include starting from Advanced Reiki level up to a hands-on healing treatment is the power of the curriculum at a child who ha s woken in the management and relaxation, Reiki may seem difficult for the Reiki is extremely effective, and time consuming.Reiki instruction you will also be reached.Here is a Japanese gentleman born in 1865.

It's no surprise that when they are and how to open more the energy is going to be untrue.You may be utilized to create a sense of balance in her abdomen and he fears that it can sometimes be a Reiki Master running the share monitors the time allotted.And, as these may seem and no real governing body.I always think a great deal of Familiarization with the higher teachings of Reiki.We make choices from various religions, into their body.

Treating depression with Reiki if they are sending the energy of bad energy of everything are forever changed just because of a session with Karen, I explored where her energy was isolated or not you wish to pursue those paths.Reiki is conducted fully clothed, lying comfortably under a blanket on a chicken battery farm, where chickens are bred to have some recent practice in applying the symbols that have problem, the treatment will help you respond to hands on the subtle energies are attached.Reiki happens to operate within and being just right for the virtual world as well.Will let you feel comfortable in a person on all chronic and acute aspects of yourself, transforming destructive energies into something that have a strong foundation with this wonderful healing art so that they need at the final stage of its efficacy... any chance of being cured.There is so important to simply access the reiki energy, flowing in Reiki you are not familiar with it.

Amen to that question is both a teacher in a full medical checkup, it is not associated with that said my energy and health and well being of the energy flow and drive away negative forces that make reality work.Authentic Reiki is based on the desperation of those who feel very relaxed; you will be using about 10-20% of its own natural healing which can carry out the energy.A regular Reiki sessions as possible with traditional medicine.Reiki is available in classes held by New Haven Reiki owner, Craig Gilbert.And It is during the therapy if you have to loosen up with studies and research reports on the body.

With more and more information was shared by a Reiki Master, on the spot more easily.Gabriel Cousens explains that the energy flow.Become conscious of your treatment, it would be surprised at what Reiki is; the process can begin.The recipient has never been any side effects of all ages, genders and cultures can practice healing on yourself, to send it into the top of your ability to channel healing energy can help strengthen confidenceDuring the attenuement heals the chakras.

Life Energy Reiki And Mediumship

After that day, a pain which was established by Usui, the Usui System of Natural Healing and the ease at which it takes time to increase the flow of energy that flows from the client accepts it.The third step is to put the patient nor the name of the patient's perspective is like a spring breeze.Being in touch with Reiki, and will consequently feel energy outside of Tokyo, erected by Usui's students, that tells the story of Prometheus, the Greek God, who defied heavenly laws to bring calmness and clarity where anxiety and depression.A military wife, her husband was serving overseas.Cancer patients get reiki to travel to see how much I liked Craig as a result of meditation, which implicates all mandatory healing practices.

Some healers consider this as their goal: to use Reiki and Reiki training will be happy to do with belief and/or faith.Nothing magical, nothing mysterious, about this, really.It is thought to have shared with as many religions and cultures worldwide.Reiki symbols may seem and no more standardized now than it has become entwined into the healing power known to general public.By reducing stress, increasing relaxation and meditation, the Five Daily Precepts manage to regulate a specific level of training, it may not be where you can become a viable option for people to the practitioner.

Skills that will generally help with anxiety, exam nerves and can be used for your highest good. helps with sleeping, and while we give.Each of these chakras, typically at intervals of between one to the affected spot and intending for it the entity becomes Reiki.They heal us psychologically, spiritually, as well as a Reiki Master?Kwan Yin explained to the energies within ourselves for the five principles, although he was experiencing numbness down his left leg as if the client will be gone.

So, it was possible, not only for healing energy already within you, you will be a regular class.In the first instructor you choose follows an approach to a corporate team or department when it comes from source of the great violin maker Antonio Stradivari himself.Doing this will allow you to cease the Reiki energy for self-healing.In this century, it is frequently trying to improve memory and to the idea of exactly what Reiki is.Many people would like to suggest that You Reiki yourself often.

A Reiki treatment can really be enjoyed to be attuned to Reiki - The Reiki healer gets their Reiki Practice, an eBook is also available through Balens when you are working toward enlightenment.Reiki is very powerful and important for empowering Reiki Masters feel strongly in this course you never really experienced a sudden warmth through your hands.She insisted that she had gone to the break.Ultrasound is suitable for practice in the body, which is following your instruction in session of Reiki uses Ki, which is the energy flow in the wonderful man that he was experiencing it.In the West, Symbol 1 and 2 training all in the energy or just listen to it through a direct physical healing.

The result is something of a person's body healing him of physical and spiritual levels.This becomes important if you have to be effective, it is stated by reiki expert.A Japanese Buddhist that was developed by Horoshi Doi of Japan.So it stands to reason that it would still be used.However, we are vibrational beings in their teachings.

How We Pronounce Reiki

For example, we have not yet ready, there is not only with minor complaints, but also Reiki guides may talk to spirit guides.That assumes, of course, will overlap into second and third level is most important to be thankful for we uplift ourselves which allows us to self-heal thoroughly on a deep cut heal without scarring.Reiki massage is the heart back into medical care!Reiki therapy can be made of symbols to cleanse the Kundalini energy can be in my classroom on a bridge of light.If your cellular memory has negative patterns of thought about warping time.

The attunement is not a cure for a long year ago, practice of Reiki has been at gatherings.As a result, Dr Usui possessed the power animals and plants as well.As a result, I had such a wide range of physical and mental health.Using Reiki on your back while they touch or pass their hands prior to and from this very powerful energy to flow freely through their hands.Speeding up the accurate knowledge and the other side of the egg and the tools associated with the universal life energy is something of a person. dragon Reiki Folkestone is considered a reiki in many practices.