#they have buried the hatchet a few times but only in dire situations.

[monty-glasses-roxy]

This is an invitation to ramble

About Roxy and Freddy? Sure. I'll come and add a read more if this goes on forever.

How about they both think the other is a massive hypocrite?

They've never bothered to actually get to know eachother deep enough to realise that there's just as much thought and nuance in the other's actions as they have in theirs. On the surface, they just seem like they're acting like there's one rule for them and another for everyone else, but there's generally a lot more thought to it.

To Freddy, Roxy is all about the abolishment of rules. She's just gonna do whatever she wants, rules, safety and impact on kids be damned. She's never where she's supposed to be if she decides it's not worth her time, she's deliberately broken rules in front of him out of spite, and he has a sneaking suspicion - but no evidence, just a gut feeling on occasion - that she's breaking rules so big that if she ever gets found out, she'll be scrapped in seconds. And yet, whenever he's in the Raceway, she is pushing safety standards, sometimes even better ones than Fazbear Entertainment's official ones. She refuses to let anyone get away with cheating/breaking the rules in games they all play together and she's very loud about hating liars. To him, all he sees is her enforcing rules when she feels like it, but not holding herself to the same standard and it's incredibly infuriating to him. The rules apply to everyone and are there for a reason, she shouldn't get to pick and choose who follows what and when! What kind of trouble are the kids going to get into following her example? What happens when her thoughtlessness gets someone hurt? He's not gonna try and cover for her that's for sure. She's had this coming for years. He's so tired of her shit.

From Roxy's perspective though, a lot of these rules don't make sense. She's questioned why they're there every time it's hindered her, and over time, has worked out which ones are there for company money making/saving reasons, and which ones do actually need to be followed. She's tested the boundaries of what she can get away with, and it's only confirmed it for her. So long as she's not caught breaking any of the serious rules, she's fine. The rules she breaks are calculated, thought out, and generally to make her job entertaining easier. She gives out more freebies, she takes the occasional kid or two into areas they don't have a pass for, she got caught rigging a claw machine for a teen that had been trying to win something for months with no luck, and sneaking extra arcade tokens to those that can't afford to keep playing. She's careful about who she does this with, meaning she ends up with her own little group of kids that she knows fairly well instead of a mass of fans she doesn't. It's also much easier for her to entertain by doing these things, when she doesn't have an open attraction, so really, she could argue she's just trying to keep herself relevant. She's not. She thinks the rules preventing her and the others from giving kids a good day at the Plex are stupid and will gladly break them. (The other's do too, she's just way more obvious and known for it. She's got no attraction to maintain what else is she gonna do all day?)

Now, from Roxy's perspective, Freddy acts all high and mighty as a rule enforcer and follower and likes to make some sort of moral judgement on that. She calls him a thoughtless, one trick pony just doing as he's told all the damn time, yet seems perfectly happy to bend them or find loopholes specifically to spite her personally. He's literally kicked her out of Fazerblast once over deliberately misinterperating how she was playing it with a kid in order to accuse her of cheating. The reason? She was supposed to be somewhere else in the building doing something completely different. It seems to her that he picks and chooses who to punish for rulebreaking and who not to, as in her eyes, the others are getting off way lighter (because she's like a lightning rod of attention he's too busy being pissed off at her to notice the others). For someone that's all about rule following, how comes he can bend them whenever he wants? How comes he can break the occasional rule to stop her from doing something, but she can't be left alone to do her own thing? It's none of his business what she's doing! If he's so fussed about rulebreakers, she thinks he should start leading by example instead of nitpicking and stonewalling everything she does! She's never ever letting the situation where he accused her of cheating and disqualified her from a Fazerblast game go. She's so fucking spiteful about it because playing fair is something she prides herself on and how dare he try and say otherwise!!

However, from Freddy's perspective, he is leading by example. That's the whole reason he cares about this so much. He wants to make sure the kids have someone to look up to and be like that isn't going to get them in trouble. He stays out of trouble and does his best to 'lead' the others down the same path of being the best example to the kids possible, but Roxy just doesn't seem to care about that. To him, what he's doing is for the best. The rules are made for a reason, even if it's for monetary gain, that money is what is currently keeping them safe, functioning and alive. By following the rules as best they all can, they're securing that safety for themselves, and he's convinced of this. If they help the company do well, if they enforce the rules that make the company more money, and follow through with what they want from them, they'll be okay. Him being so against what Roxy does on a daily basis is his way of trying to make sure the kids that love her (for reasons he cannot fathom, and she feels the same about him) have the best rolemodel they possibly can, and that she's contributing to the continued existence of the Pizzaplex, and themselves. The fact that staff have given up and keep bending things to let her get her own way all the time has just stirred him into trying harder to keep her in check. His patience wanes by the day and much to his frustration, he finds himself slipping and letting things slide every so often. Even worse, his efforts with the others are falling short too, and the fact he's catching them more now rather than before Roxy was moved to the band, he's attributed this entirely to her being a terrible influence. What if she's as bad with the kids and they start copying her? He can't stand the thought of kids getting into trouble because of her thoughtlessness! He's honestly waiting for the day that management finally snap and scare some sense into her, or at the very least, remove her from the band to limit her influence and reach. He swears, she's gonna be the death of all of them and the reason her fans are gonna get seriously hurt.

So. They both see each other as hypocrites, but they also don't listen or care to find out what the actual thought process behind their actions are. Roxy can't stand the sight of a child whose parents couldn't afford the expensive prices of the Plex, and Freddy can't stand the thought of a kid learning bad behaviours off of any of them. Freddy follows and Roxy breaks. Freddy bends to keep order, and Roxy doesn't for a fair game. They both have their priorities and are both so stubborn they won't budge on them for anything, especially not each other.

You, may be wondering about the middle ground here. About setting a good example whilst also making sure everyone has fun. There is one, but they're not giving an inch. They have a truce for rehearsals, performance and events where the whole band has to be present and that's as good as it will get for them. And was established after they both had a joint party/event thing together, just the two of them hosting, and things got very out of hand. It was decided that since both of them were participating in what happened and both clearly fucking hate each other, that the easiest solution would be to prevent anymore parties without at least two other animatronics present for it. It took three, maybe even four to deal with that one situation so um. Yeah they're not fucking around now. No more Freddy and Roxy duos.

Things have cooled down over time, but that's only because of the truce and the new rule that they can't be left alone together. They still get into arguments and shit all the time though. At least it's less frequent now, right?

[queerchoicesblog]

Like Snow (Edge of Extinction, Grace x MC x Anna)

So, here's the fanfic I promised. Warning: it's kinda sad but if you're playing the book it doesn't exactly strike as happy sunshine, right?

I wrote it portraying the POV of the three women (Grace, F!MC Ellen and Anna) so yeah, it's like having 3 fanfics in one xD It takes place immediately after the latest episode and shows how the relationships/bonds evolve between the three women. It's non-canon obviously so feel free to disagree. Hope you enjoy it though!

Disclaimer: all the characters do not belong to me, they're borrowed from @playstoryscape game as well as a few lines of the original book.

Moreover, this fanfic is influenced by my playthrough where Pavel dies in the rescue of the hermit and F!MC gets the new outfit triggering the scene with Grace. There are also references to death, alcohol consumption, grieving and (internalized-ish) homophobia: if you're not comfortable with these issues, please consider skipping this.

Word Count: 2500+

Tag: @storyscaped @storyscapefanficarchive @aestheticsayeed @ghost-of-yuri @andi-the-cat (not sure your yes meant add me so feel free to ignore it in case you're not interested xD) @animus-and-anima

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Grace POV

There she is!

The ex-military took a sigh of relief as she spotted Ellen on the other side of the church. She didn't tell anyone where she was heading and an uncomfortable feeling of concern took hold of Grace even if she kept herself busy with chores and checking in on Mari, baby Pavel and everyone else. Now that Ellen was here though it was as if a huge burden was lifted off her chest: too many things went wrong out there not to worry when someone left their sanctuary. Not to make a habit to brace yourself for the worst even after the hermit was successfully cured and part of the crew.

When she was a few steps away, Grace leaned over a pile of boxes and took in Ellen's figure. The Doctor was checking herself in a crooked mirror they found in an abandoned clothes shop in Tromstad. Fine new black boots, jeans that fit perfectly enhancing every curve, well every curve that survived the malnourishment they all experienced. A white top under a gorgeous leather jacket that made her look radiant and tough. Grace found herself staring a bit longer than she probably should have and for once, for so long after all the tragedies that haunted the group of survivors...for the first time after her husband passed away a life ago, she decided not to predict herself for that.

Instead, she allowed herself to break into a grin as she wondered whether she chose those clothes accidentally or because they reminded her of the outfits she used to wear before the world they knew was torn asunder. When they were strangers living miles and miles away and most likely would have never met if it wasn't for that tragedy. A sudden thought made the soldier smile, almost blush: yet if by chance she had walked past her in the street or crossed her path wearing those clothes, she would have made her turn her head to follow such a vision.

"I like the new looks. It suits you" she said after a moment, hoping not to scare the doctor.

Ellen froze for a moment then spun towards her. The look on her face was a bit confused and wary: she wasn't expecting such a comment from Grace or she had no idea how to take that. Luckily, it soon softened into slight amusement as she relaxed. To prove that she meant no harm, Grace crossed her arms and playfully raised an eyebrow, breaking her usual military demeanor: a look not many got to see.

Apparently, Ellen noticed as there was a hint of tease in her voice when she answered:

"Thanks. I...guess I clean up pretty well"

Understatement of the century, Grace noted in her head but Ellen was now looking at her with curiosity, surely trying to figure out what were the soldier's true intentions as she wasn't known for outstanding bonding skills nor frivolous conversation. Realizing that she needed to provide some sort of explanation for such an off character behavior, she cleared her throat and gave a quick smile.

"Noticed you'd wandered off, so I came to check on you. Didn't mean to intrude"

The Doctor looked a bit surprised but was quick to conceal it. She just shrugged and smiled back, gesturing that there was no need for apologies. 

Grace gave a polite nod, ready to shift back into her military demeanor...but for some reason she failed. Instead of walking away as she knew she should have done or Ellen probably expected her to do as she was already turning to gather her old clothes scattered on a chair, Grace spoke again. The words that kept haunting her for days dropped out of her mouth before she could stop them.

"I don't know how it's all going to play out when we get there, but I know one thing: we never would have made this far without you"

Ellen froze for a moment then turned: surprise was written all over her face. Grace sighed and continued.

"I wanted you to know we're all grateful. Everyone knows how much the group needs you"

She buried the most compromising part, grateful to her military training that thought her to say less "I" and more "we", the crew, the group when speaking to others. So she hid behind a grateful smile how much she, Grace, the woman underneath the army fatigues she was still wearing needed her, Ellen, the foolish, heroic woman with a medical degree.

"I'd say the same about you" 

Of course Ellen wouldn't just accept a compliment: Grace should have known that the resident proved herself to be generous and selfless enough to give it back and appraise her leadership. Typical Ellen, she thought, unable to prevent herself from smiling. 

"I know nothing is guaranteed" she added after much internal debate whether to keep the conversation going or retreat before it was too late: feelings are a minefield. "But the future doesn't seem hopeless anymore. A lot of that is because of you and everything you've done"

Yeah, that was a nice way to put it down into words. With a bit of luck, Ellen wouldn't have grasped the hidden layer of meaning of it: Grace had been so secretive and distant, how could she suspect that she had been a light in the dark in so many ways?

F!MC POV

The cold breeze of the night welcomed Ellen as she stepped out of the church. She wrapped her wool scarf around her and took a deep breath. She needed a break: she wasn't able to get back to sleep last night after seeing Anna hurting so bad...but the woman she kissed what sounded like in another life only pushed her away. Again. As her wobbly figure disappeared out of view she laid back in her tent but she had no luck getting back to the safe faraway of dreams. The day kept her busy and the group kept her busy: no new threat was in sight but there was so much to do to properly prepare everyone for the trip. But now she had nothing to keep her from reminiscing Anna's hurtful drunken words.

"Maybe I was wrong to leave Pavel for you. Maybe all of this started because I was unfaithful to him"

"I love you. I just..."

"I know I've made things hard on you lately. But I just keep thinking about Pavel"

Same old story just with a touch of tragedy this time. "I love you but": God knew if it hadn't been a pattern for Ellen. She couldn't count the times she heard this. But now it was the woman, unhappy former athlete who just started to shine again until shit happened and Ellen failed. Devastating despair was in Anna bright eyes as she cradled Pavel's lifeless body and begged her to do something. Ellen was a doctor, right? She could certainly do something to save him. But no, Ellen couldn't. It was too late for that, she could only bury the hatchet and whisper a dying man a comforting lie not even him believe to. 

Anna never met her gaze again that day and the day after, shuttering herself in mourning isolation. She had never been the same since that day and the accidental meeting they had last night confirmed it. As much as it hurt, now there was only Pavel and her self-guilt in Anna's mind: no more room for Ellen. The doctor found herself wondering if deep down Anna was angry at her for being so helpless and...unhelpful the day Pavel was shot. 

"Long time no see" 

A familiar voice brought her back to the real world. It startled Ellen a little before she turned to see Grace giving her a friendly nod from the wall she was sitting on, her rifle at her side.

Ellen was so grateful. It was good not to be alone with her own thoughts on a night like that. She returned the nod and smiled to herself: who better than an ex-military to be her knight in shining armor?

"Did I spook you?" Grace inquired as she moved a bit closer.

"Nah, of course not" Ellen shook her head, hoping to be convincing.

"You sure?"

"Positive, ma'am" Ellen sighed, mocking a salute that she could have sworn made Grace chuckle. "Are you on sentry duty?"

"Yes" the soldier confirmed. "I think we're safe now but lowering our guard now would be inconsiderate. Especially now that Mari gave birth to a baby..."

"Yes, I just checked on them. The little boy is fine and heavenly resting in his mom's arms. Stig is with them now"

For a moment Ellen was jealous of Mari's baby, safe in loving arms and untouched by the dire situation humanity was facing. Just a hopeful little boy offering smiles to everyone. 

As realization hit her, she pushed her hands in the pockets of her jeans and exhaled loudly as if to get rid of her own sadness: Grace had too much to keep in check as their leader to be given such an additional burden.

"Anyway...I'll get out of your hair, you're on duty and-"

"You can stay if you want" Grace anticipated her, offering a quick smile.

"-I don't want to bother you"

"I'm a woman, I can multitask pretty well" she commented, teasingly raising an eyebrow.

For some reason, Ellen found the playful gesture seductive and she had to refrain herself from biting her lip when Grace scooped over and patted the seat beside her on the bench. 

"Here, join me, Doc"

"You know it's Ellen for you" she said, obliging and taking a seat too.

"My my, when did we become so casual?"

It surprised Ellen to still hear a hint of tease in her voice: Grace was definitely showing a whole new side that day.

"Why, you're really gonna call me Doc, lieutenant?"

"Hey, for your information I am a Captain, not a lieutenant"

"I'm terribly sorry, apologies, ma'am"

The two of them shared a look and chuckled but it was soon clear that the moment was gone. Silence settled back between the two women and Grace resumed her sentry duty. However, she was the first to speak again after some time.

"Hey I...I hope I'm not overstepping but are you okay?"

"As okay as I can be, Captain" Ellen shrugged. "I'm just...concerned about Anna"

Grace nodded, her eyes scanning the surroundings.

"Yes, you mentioned that. I promise I will check on her in the morning and talk to her. But-" she took a pause. "I'm sorry, I know you two are...close"

"Were, were close I guess" the doctor corrected her, grimacing. "I appreciate your concern, Grace, but no need to worry about me. I'm used to this, to unhappy endings"

The Captain furrowed her brows and did her best not to betray too much sympathetic curiosity when she inquired:

"Did you lose a dear one too?" 

Ellen shrugged and shifted to sit more comfortably. Then she winced and sighed deeply, enhancing a puff of air.

"Not exactly. I just never was the one women would take a chance on"

Grace shifted to face her.

"What do you mean?"

Ellen met her gaze and gave her a bitter smile. 

"I don't have the best record when it comes to relationships. Sure, the medical residency kept me busy enough but even aside from that I guess I'm not 'a keeper'" she shrugged her shoulder and looked into the distance. "Good for a one night stand or a flirt but not for more. The 'love at first sight' in a drunken gay bar night to ghost once you go back to your real life. A girl I had some kind of story with, the no-strings-attached type, dumped me when I asked to go steady then dropped to one knee and proposed to her new partner or so I heard. Last time I checked, they lived in a villa downtown with two Labradors."

Bad idea to go there: reminiscing Tiffany hurt even if the scar she left was quite healed. But Ellen fell hard for that girl, she saw a future with that girl...unlike Tiffany. The upset look on her face when Ellen asked her to be her girlfriend and the smile she had showing an engagement ring to the camera on the social media feed was still like a punch in the stomach. Especially now.

"Once I even got involved with a colleague at the hospital. It ended badly cause well I didn't know she was married" Ellen inhaled sharply and continued. "I-I suppose it's kind of a pattern to me"

Grace looked back to her and the two of them shared a long pained gaze.

Anna POV

Oy Moroz Moroz Oh moroz moroz ne moroz menya ne moroz menya

Usually, long walks never failed to clear Anna's mind and calm her. They always did, before any competition, whenever she was stressed or doubting herself. Now she felt no comfort: she was just walking in melting snow, swaying a bottle of vodka in her hands and singing in a low voice that Russian tune her father used to sing whenever he came home and had a bit too much on the way back. 

The demons that had been haunting her couldn't be pacified.

She shut her eyes as another vision appeared. She could have sworn that Pavel's ghost was near...or maybe she was just going insane for good. But she could feel his presence lingering, his voice encouraging her to toughen up, saying she was stronger than this and no matter how hard it looked now, she would have been victorious. 

Then she remembered that it was what he used to tell her before every competition so long time ago. He would place his hands on her shoulder and gave her pep talks that usually ended up like "Annushka, stop second-guessing yourself. Go out there and be like ice: strong and shiny in the spotlight cause you're the star. My star".

What he didn't mention is that ice can break too and that's exactly how Anna felt like now: shattered, crushed, in pieces.

Pasha...since that cursed day her days and nights had been a series of nightmares and hurtful visions. One moment she was dancing, gracefully flying in Pasha's arms at their wedding party, happy faces and smiles all around then out of the blue a dark bloodstain would spread on her husband's white shirt as all went dark and Pavel would fall on his knees and begged her to help him, desperately reaching for her.

Anna shook her head and took a long pull from her bottle. There was no way out of this pain, she thought as she kept walking back to the church. Why did Pasha have to change? She always knew he was a believer but lately, after the spread of the lethal virus he became obsessed with God and the book of Apocalypse. He started seeing signs of an approaching Doomsday everywhere and when they managed to survived he convinced himself that they were the Chosen ones, they had a mission and a duty to humanity...all that foolish religious rubbish pushed her away from him. He wasn't the man she married anymore.

Then she met the doctor. Ellen from America: kind, brave, compassionate and rational gorgeous Ellen. She had never questioned her sexuality before, was it even an option? Every woman she knew, family or friend, was happy or pretended to be happy with her husband cause "that's how things go, Anja", her mother cut every objection short once. So she obliged, married her sweetheart but years later from that the day she said yes to him on the altar things changed. He changed, she changed. And some invincible force waltzed her into the arms of a woman, an inconceivable thought till that very day. A bond against nature, an abomination for everyone she knew. 

But  Ellen's lips were so soft and her hold so comforting that for the first time in ages Anna felt safe.

And it was all gone now.

She had been avoiding Ellen ever since the day Pasha died. Too much pain to face her, when she bumped into her the previous night it was awful: the look of concern and love in her eyes made Anna bleed even more. 

Maybe Pavel was right after all. Maybe not about the hermit but about the God punishment talk she predicted him for. And Ellen: she surely wasn't a "witch" but could she deny she had been their downfall? All their issues skyrocketed since she first appeared out of nowhere, a daughter of the snowy Norwegian winter. She separated what God united, as preaches and her grandma would say, and what happened? People started dying, Pavel sank even deeper into his religious madness and eventually died. And Ellen was a doctor, funny enough. The moment she kept gravitating towards the gorgeous stranger, tragedies followed one after another. She accepted the love of the gorgeous woman and her husband got shot dead. Coincidences?

Anna hit her head with a fist as if to get rid of all that poisonous nonsense. No, Ellen told her that this was not what happened, just ghosts of her mind, her sense of guilt and grief speaking but she couldn't think straight anyway. Anymore. The succession of days felt like a hallucination and not even sleep could bring her peace, just the opposite. How can anyone preserve their sanity in a situation like this?

Maybe I should talk to Ellen, whenever I feel I can meet her eyes without crying like the weakling I am now, she considered as the familiar silhouette of the church appeared in sight. She's kind and she said she loves me. I gave her a hard time but maybe we can start over again. Maybe she can help.

She was almost there when she spotted two people sitting in the distance yet not too far to recognize them. She couldn't make out a word of what they were saying but they were certainly Ellen and Grace. 

Anna froze in place: lately, she hadn't been around much, mostly hiding in her tent or disappearing for walks and avoiding any kind of interaction with the rest of the group, but last time she checked the two women weren't that close. God, Grace hardly bonded with anyone, she was so busy being the leader and checking everything, organizing their daily routine in the midst of chaos and the journey to the Seed Vault...so how could she be holding Ellen's hand now? Her hand was holding the doctor's one - a hand who once held her close as Ellen's soft lips pressed a kiss on Anna's mouth- and she was saying something that apparently drew a shy smile on Ellen's face. What...what did she say? Why Ellen was smiling and squeezing her hand back? What...what did she miss out?

As the two women shared another smile and broke eye contact to look into the distance still holding hands, Anna stumbled to hide behind a solitary tree.

Even ice can break, she whispered as new tears welled her eyes. I was too slow, took too much time, never be slow Anna, never! Didn't your coaches tell you? Maybe I was so convincing when I begged her to leave me alone.

Tears found their way down her cheeks reddened by alcohol and the chilly gusts of wind that blew like a slap on her face.

Maybe our love was just like snow: beautiful and soft but it melts away when the spring sun starts shining again. Just like snow...  

[flyswhumpcenter]

Bad Things Happen Bingo! The event where you send me requests according to this marvelous card! (Red cross is the completed prompt, character headshots are prompts I’ve already filled. I don’t have any request left, so feel free to send in suggestions for this card!).

I need to write more Makaito smh

Y'all don't even know how surprised I got to see @mythgirlimagines had sent me a request. Most of all because I rarely get those, but man, that was a good surprise. I had to ask her for another duo (as I know nothing about UDG, not gonna lie), but I always love more Makaito in my life despite the appearances. I always get crazy about the worldbuilding in this AU, but in short: everyone has powers (yes, everyone, even your grandparents). They're called mages. There are three types of mages: weapon users, spell casters and healers. Sometimes there are hybrids between these models (of 2 kinds at the same time). Hybrids are chased by bounty hunters for plot reasons. Maki used to be one, but she's become a "hunter of hunters". I think that's all you need to know for this fic? Oh yeah, this fic contains some French because the main setting, the city of Hellesimbault, is heavily based on French culture. It just made more sense to keep some French in.

It should have been angstier than that, but I was in a fluffier mood today, so here you go. I really need to provide more for this ship.

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Flickering Lights

Summary: The night has never been safe for anyone in the darker streets of the city, yet a duo makes it way through the shadows with vigilent crimson eyes and purple thunder. Still, even the most attention doesn't always give away damage people can take, doesn't it?

Fandom: Danganronpa V3 (magical people AU) Ship: Makaito (Established)

Wordcount: 2.2K words

Event hosted by @badthingshappenbingo

AO3 version available here.

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Quartier de la Lune, Hellesimbault, January. The dire cold blew in harsh winds as the dust and garbage littered on the barely lit ground fly right against the ground, their mass never quite taking off. The artificial lights flicker in incoherent rhythms, drilling into the skulls of passers-by with their constant noise you can’t quite get used to, even after hearing it for a while (it just stops being your main nuisance). The rest of the streets leading to the old Moon Temple is sunk in the night’s darkness, with only a few flashes and bursts of clarity piercing through the sea of shadows.

Personally, Nerio was one of these shadows, and had always been. She had gone through everything possible: abandoned girl, orphan raised along the nice and the bad, forced through the grinder to become a bounty hunter, now on the opposite side of the underground war. Hidden under her hood, crimson eyes focusing on any light and ears open to all possible noise, she was used to the darkness.

In fact, she was in unison with the underground, hostile, familiar universe of Hellesimbault’s darkest streets and ruins long buried by modern civilisation.

 In the shadows, she felt safe as soon as she was wearing the mask of Nerio, named after a goddess of war, a bloodthirsty figure in need for a vengeance and taking it out onto bounty hunters with no hope of redemption. It felt good to shoot arrows at criminals like those who had forced her into the network as a preteen whom life hadn’t directly shown its atrocious parts to yet, and it was the one way she had ever felt alive: reclaiming her rotten childhood and early teenage years by showing them she’s now better than them.

She hadn’t quite killed her abductors, even when an untold furry had possessed her into doing so by hindering any semblance of reason she could have had, only because some guy who couldn’t get enough of her had put his hand on Enyo’s shoulder and whispered to her, in a disapproving but paradoxically soft voice:

“Maki, that’s enough.”

 That was the day where she had truly stopped only considering herself as Nerio, bloodstained shadow and reluctant, yet effective, bounty hunter turned hunter slayer, a figure of the shadows, and more like whom she had been during in the daylight all this time.

All thanks to an absolute idiot she had met in class because he wouldn’t stop not wanting to talk to her.

 Their tandem made no sense. She was a figure of the night, a girl shrouded in darkness, content being left alone. Her arms and legs were covered in scars, her hands calloused from handling her magical weapon, her feet permanently threaded with the liquified mana of her former adversaries. Her spirit was calculating, her character quiet, her face always covered with a mask. She never had had friends before high school had come around, before people flocked to her because she had apparently stopped being threatening to some. That was around this time that Nerio started to fade and Maki took her place, progressively, until Nerio was the persona and Maki the person.

If she was used to the horrors of Hybrid trafficking, he couldn’t have. He was a benevolent figure of the day, loud to the point of being obnoxious, rude but well-meaning, never second-guessing anything, acting before he thought. His arms and legs, displayed by much more revealing clothes than her elbow-long sleeves and opaque tights, were defined yet not showing a trace of damage like a recently sculpted statue, his hands were strong but their skin soft, his character remarkable, his face displaying a smile and never hiding anything from sight. He was popular, dizzyingly so, people constantly around him, but he had his inner circle. He had come to her, introduced himself, asked her who she was and, before she realized it, he had accepted her into this inner circle so few would have even dared dreaming about entering in the Cité Scolaire, and that was when her façade crumbled before his friends and him. Before she knew it, Kaito had found himself a night persona, Uranus, who barely was different from the person.

It pained her to have him as her partner for this very reason: he was too good for the shadows, too bright for the darkness, and he’d only be busted before she could save him. She wasn’t ready to lose him to the urban abyss, but he insisted, and his presence was too warm for her not to want it.

 Still, Uranus had impressive fighting skills. His dream to one day be the first mage to reach space and discover if there was a world aside from theirs had pushed him to maintain a perfect form, despite an unfortunate illness trying to limit his life. She’d have expected him to be a weapon user, like she was, but the equivalent to his crossbow life had given him was a cape whom had the powers to create the tiniest blackholes and power up his offensive magic. They were power units in vastly different domains, sure thing, but she was still impressed by how many enemies he could take at once and still win over.

The main issue of their duet was their range: it was too long for close combat. If an enemy was to sneak up on them and force her to switch her weapon for her fists and kicks, there was no doubt she’d have a harder time taking care of them. He was more or less the same: long-range spells, very poor to non-existent support magic, a blackhole strategy that’d be more of a double-edged sword and, of course, his fairly frail constitution outside of his training. Neither was a healer, so they couldn’t possibly count on that either.

 Under the full moon of the harsh January, lights flickering above them like candles on a tomb flowing with the wind, they were fighting against an ambush. A bunch of low-grade Hybrid bounty hunters, eyes staring at them with an indiscretion she was getting tired of, their hands on their weapons and only waiting for the duo to slip up. Nerio wouldn’t give them the pleasure to kill her and take her corpse away for them to get compensation for a murder, so she shot arrow after arrow, ignoring various attempted status ailments thrown at her and gusts of winds repeatedly trying to flip her skirt up. All she had to hide under the hem of her dress were tights and a holster with a material hatchet in case she was in a desperate situation; but using it in front of Uranus felt dirty. It’d be nothing but a cheap shot at life when she had proved to him countless times before she was more than competent.

Their number was dwindling more quickly than her mana, sure, but the fighting was tiring her out, most likely him too, and they had class to attend tomorrow (Kaito had managed to convince her, with the insistence of the overly cheerful Kaede). She’d better make it quick, so she charged her cheapest shots in and didn’t mind the drawbacks of wasting more of her power endurance to quickly put an end to the fight. Rapid-fire, crimson arrows it’d have to be, in the end: not quite her Final Gambit spell, which she was still trying to control, but still one powerful enough to clear through the ranks and through her mana reserves. Any child of the shadows would have learnt that exhausting their magic entirely was nothing more but signing their worse-than-death fate: being forgotten in the icy streets of the underground city.

 Their adversaries were most likely scummy opportunists, because they disappeared after a few arrows had been thrown at them. It didn’t prevent her from exhaling a sigh of relief, the danger of the streets weakening around them as the lights stopped flickering. Too much magic in the air to make the one used by the electric network function properly, she supposed: it didn’t matter this much, to be frank. All she wanted to do was go back home, now that she had exterminated the vermin for the night.

Maki turned her attention back to her partner who, like her, was still transformed into his battle attire. He looked just fine, smiling at her with his darkness-eating grin and a thumbs-up. Giving him a nod, they silently decided to go back to their base, where surely Kaede and Shuichi were waiting for them before going to sleep at last. Despite her earlier loneliness, she felt safe and welcome around their little group, her companions, her friends.

 Yet, despite the peace of hearing nothing but their footsteps and breathing, the mandatory silence of the underground nights pushing them not to speak to each other before they’d safely make it to their home, there was something bothering Maki. It wasn’t the sudden silence: she was used to activity dying down and coming back much, much later, when they wouldn’t be there anymore. Thinking silence was a trap in those uncharted territories was a beginner’s mistake: it was a sign towards the right direction. The narrow walls always made sounds resonate and echo to a hunter’s ears.

It was a smell in the air, the faint smell of iron. It was close to her, yet hindered by something, and she couldn’t quite put her hand on where she had smelt it before. Her confusion merely lasted a few moments, though, until she realized it couldn’t have been anything but blood tainting something, its scent retained by something else, but remaining detectable nonetheless. One source and one source only: the dark crimson puddle she was seeing on her partner’s attire.

 “Kaito,” she suddenly said, stopping in her tracks.

“Hm?” He turned his attention to her, hand mindlessly over the epicentre of the issue. “What’s wrong, Maki Roll?”

“You’re injured, you idiot. I thought you wanted us to tell each other everything.”

Her eyebrows frowned.

“I am? I promised I would tell you everything, Maki Roll, you must be imagining things!”

She knew when he lied, when his voice would sound fake, when his eyes looked too much to the left and when he wouldn’t stop laughing nervously. It disturbed her that none of these cues were there.

“Your hand,” she only said as an explanation. “Look at your hand, you fool.”

 Kaito, luckily, understood immediately what hand she was referring to. He took it off the wound, eyes glancing at his mostly untouched palms, then the growing stain. It surprised it at first, almost sending him in a panic, until he breathed out and ignored the nervous sweat beads pearling on his temples.

“Ah, fuck, you’re right Maki Roll! They must have gotten a hit on me… Let’s get home fast then!”

She felt a tiny smile make its way onto her face.

“I’m surprised you didn’t feel it,” she replied as they resumed their walk, gaze often glancing at the stain. “It doesn’t look too deep, at least, if you can walk this easily.”

“Yeah… Most likely a bad cut. Nothing my sidekick can’t heal!”

“…you’re going to ask Shuichi to heal that for you?”

He blinked.

“On second thought, bad idea. It’ll heal by itself soon enough.”

“That’s also a terrible option. At least put a bandage on that thing, you moron.”

“Got it!”

 His eyes grew wider as he stared at her. Now, that was a look she didn’t like in the slightest: he usually gave it to her when he had a shitty idea to propose.

“Hey, Maki Roll,” he pointed his finger at her arms, “you’re injured too!”

Surprised, she stared at her forearms right afterwards, only to notice he was referring to small bruises and scratches.

“Oh, come on, you know this has nothing in common with what you could have been bleeding from, Kaito. It’s merely a scratch.”

“You should be careful too, then, if you scold me for being careless.

“I know what I’m doing, unlike you, but thank you for the concern.”

“Hey, I know what I’m doing too!”

“Sure, sure.”

 He showed her a hand, palm turned to her.

“Don’t worry, that’s one not stained with blood”. His grin.

She found him ridiculous and beyond cheesy, but took his fingers in hers anyway, enlacing them together.

“As long as you don’t need me as a clutch, it’s fine.”

“Of course I don’t! I’m Uranus, Luminary of the Stars!”

Oh god. He was ridiculous, and such an idiot, but her life had only improved ever since he had arrived there. She could only partially attribute it to his idiotic side, in a way.

“Your predictability is utterly disappointing, sometimes, you know that?”

“I also know you secretly love it, Maki.”

“If you say so. There’s no discussing with you anyway.”

 Right in front of her, he brushed his other hand on his attire’s pants, barely giving her the time to frown in disgusted surprise, and swiped her hood in a swift movement with the back of his hand. All of this to put a kiss on her forehead, a childish peck, that nonetheless makes her cheeks slightly heat up.

“You’re an untameable idiot, Kaito.”

“I’m your idiot, though, Maki Roll.”

She looked away, chuckling despite her best attempts at controlling herself.

“…I know, I know.”

[sciencespies]

The True Story of the Aberfan Disaster

https://sciencespies.com/history/the-true-story-of-the-aberfan-disaster/

The True Story of the Aberfan Disaster

SMITHSONIANMAG.COM | Nov. 15, 2019, 3:45 p.m.

Jeff Edwards’ primary school teacher had just started the day’s math lesson when an ominous rumble sounded in the distance.

“The next thing I remember was waking up,” he later recalled. “My right foot was stuck in the radiator and there was water pouring out of it. My desk was pinned against my stomach and a girl’s head was on my left shoulder. She was dead.”

Over the next hour and a half, the then-8-year-old Edwards struggled to breathe as his classmates, trapped under a torrent of liquefied coal waste, cried out around him. With every passing minute, he said, “They got quieter and quieter, … buried and running out of air.”

Around 11 a.m., someone spotted a tuft of Edwards’ blonde hair amid the rubble. A fireman used a hatchet to free the young boy from beneath his desk, then passed him along to safety via a human chain. Edwards, the tenth child rescued that morning, would be the last survivor pulled from the debris.

In total, the October 21, 1966, disaster killed 144 people, 116 of whom were students at the Welsh town of Aberfan’s Pantglas Junior School. The tragedy, according to BBC News’ Ceri Jackson, was a “mistake that cost a village its children”; in the words of a tribunal commissioned to investigate the incident, the deadly accident “could and should have been prevented.”

The Aberfan disaster features heavily in season three of Netflix’s award-winning series “The Crown,” which returns to viewers’ screens this Sunday after a two-year absence. To ensure the television biopic portrayed the incident “truthfully and responsibly,” the cast and crew consulted survivors and current residents of Aberfan. Per a statement from the show’s producers, “All strongly felt the Aberfan disaster and the events that followed must be included, especially as it continues to hold a deep resonance for the nation and the queen herself.”

The moving mountain of coal sludge after the disaster at Aberfan when the coal tip avalanched through the Pantglas Junior School, killing 116 children and 28 adults.

(Photo by PA Images via Getty Images)

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Much like the days that preceded it, the morning of the disaster found Aberfan, a southern Wales village home to some 8,000 coal miners and their loved ones, blanketed in a wet fog. The 240 students enrolled in the school walked to class in the rain, but few were focused on the weather. Instead, the children’s conversations centered on plans for the coming half-term holiday: Following an early afternoon assembly, all students would be dismissed for vacation.

Several years earlier, the local council had contacted the National Coal Board, which ran the nearby Merthyr Vale Colliery mine, to express concerns regarding the spoil tip—a massive pile of accumulated coal waste material removed during mining—situated just above the Pantglas school.

“I regard it as extremely serious as the slurry is so fluid and the gradient so steep that it could not possibly stay in position in the winter time or during periods of heavy rain,” one engineer wrote in a June 1963 letter.

The NCB not only ignored these complaints, but implicitly threatened the town’s livelihood. Per BBC News, the unionized mining giant made its intentions clear: “Make a fuss and the mine would close.”

Rescue workers take a break from searching following the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip in the Welsh village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, on 21 October 1966.

(Photo by Ron Burton/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)

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At the time of the disaster, the tip in question, number seven, rose 111 feet aboveground and contained nearly 300,000 cubic yards of waste. Set atop an underground spring covered by porous sandstone, the heap was precariously placed and, thanks to the recent rainy weather, extremely oversaturated.

At 7:30 a.m., workers assigned to the tip discovered that it had started to slide. Although the crew opted not to move forward with the day’s planned tip operation, they were unable to prevent further slippage, and at 9:15 a.m., a “glistening black avalanche” of liquefied coal waste, or slurry, began hurtling toward the village below.

“I thought I was seeing things,” crane driver Gwyn Brown later told investigators. “Then it rose up pretty fast, at a tremendous speed. … It sort of came up out of the depression and turned itself into a wave—that is the only way I can describe it—down toward the mountain.”

According to History Extra’s Steve Humphries, the 30-foot-tall “tsunami of sludge” raced down the hill at a speed of more than 80 miles per hour. Sweeping past a canal and an embankment, the landslide tore into the Pantglas Junior School, breaching the walls of four classrooms and trapping those inside in a flood of thick, quicksand-like sludge.

Inhabitants of the Welsh mining village of Aberfan attend the mass funeral for 81 of the 190 children and adults who perished when a landslide engulfed the junior school.

(Photo by George Freston/Getty Images)

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In the immediate aftermath of the onslaught, an eerie silence settled across the area.

“Everything was so quiet,” Cyril Vaughan, a teacher at the nearby senior school, said. “[It was] as if nature had realized that a tremendous mistake had been made and nature was speechless.”

Rubble and water from burst pipes exacerbated the already dire situation. As fireman Len Haggett recounted, rescuers who arrived on the scene found rising waters threatening to engulf 10-year-old Phil Thomas, who had been caught in the sludge as he was walking to school. “The water was rising and coming up to his head,” Haggett said. “We thought he might drown.” But a group of seven firefighters managed to lift the wall that had collapsed on Thomas, and he became one of the few to successfully escape the debris.

Five students survived the disaster thanks to the quick thinking of dinner lady Nansi Williams, who sacrificed herself by shielding them from the sludge with her own body. Another staff member, teacher David Beynon, died while cradling five of his pupils. None of the students in Beynon’s class survived.

Eight-year-old Jeff Edwards, rescued from the rubble around 11 a.m., was the last person found alive. But shocked parents, miners, police officers, firefighters and volunteers continued digging long after the last child’s cry could be heard. As Alix Palmer, a reporter who arrived to survey the mayhem the following day, wrote in a letter to her mother, “Men who had started digging at 9:30 the previous morning were still digging, with shirts off and bodies sweating despite the cold.”

Charles Nunn, a detective tasked with cataloging the bodies brought to the makeshift morgue in Aberfan’s Bethania Chapel, sorted through the deceased’s pockets in search of “a handkerchief, sweets, anything that might help with identification.” Parents walked along the rows of corpses laid on pews, lifting blankets covering the bodies until they spotted a familiar face. Those whose children hadn’t yet been found repeated the ritual daily, leaving the chapel to stand in line once again, “mother relieving father, to keep their place outside waiting in the rain.”

Three children stand out from the crowds during Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Aberfan in Wales.

(Photo by Stan Meagher/Express/Getty Images)

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Fifteen days after the landslide, Nunn and his team finally left Aberfan. They had identified 144 bodies, including those of 116 children, 5 teachers and 23 locals whose homes were destroyed by the deluge. According to Johnson, the victims ranged in age from three months to 82; of the 116 students, most were aged 7 to 11.

Episode three of “The Crown”’s new season finds Elizabeth II, played by newly minted Oscar laureate Olivia Colman, debating how best to address the situation. England’s prime minister, Harold Wilson (Jason Watkins), urges her to visit the mining village and console its grieving residents in person, but the queen is reluctant to do so, suggesting her presence would distract from the tragedy at hand. Describing Wilson’s directive to “comfort people” as simply a “show,” she declares, “The Crown doesn’t do that.”

The real Elizabeth didn’t visit Aberfan until eight days after the disaster. Decades later, the queen reportedly deemed this decision her “biggest regret.”

Elizabeth’s time in the village—biographer Robert Lacey said her “gaunt features, etched with grief, were the more moving for being so clearly genuine”—signaled a shift in the monarchy’s long-held tradition of stoicism. As Jen Chaney writes for Vulture, the moment dramatized in “The Crown” offers “one of multiple hints that modern times are beginning to demand more transparency and outward empathy from the royal family.”

Aerial picture, taken from a plane, shows the town of Aberfan and aftermath of the slurry slide

(Photo by Ron Burton/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)

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A tribunal tasked with investigating the Aberfan disaster published its findings on August 3, 1967. Over the course of 76 days, the panel had interviewed 136 witnesses and examined 300 exhibits. Based on this evidence, the tribunal concluded that the sole party responsible for the tragedy was the National Coal Board.

“The Aberfan disaster is a terrifying tale of bungling ineptitude by many men charged with tasks for which they were totally unfitted, of failure to heed clear warnings, and of total lack of direction from above,” the investigators wrote in their report. “Not villains but decent men, led astray by foolishness or by ignorance or by both in combination, are responsible for what happened at Aberfan.”

Per History Extra, the NCB’s chairman, Lord Robens, denied all wrongdoing. He attributed the accident to previously unknown springs located below the spoil tip and refuted testimony suggesting the tip had shown signs of slipping in the years prior to the disaster. Both of these claims were at odds with the physical evidence examined by the tribunal.

Photographs and footage of the deadly slurry avalanche generated sympathy across the globe, and in the months following the disaster, donors contributed a total of £1,750,000. (Today, this equates to around £20 million pounds, or more than $25 million USD.)

Much of this money failed to reach the villagers whose lives had been devastated by the tragedy. As BBC News reports, the commission in charge of distributing the funds allocated £150,000 toward removal of the town’s remaining tips after the NCB refused to cover the costs; meanwhile, the fund’s managers actually considered distributing compensation on the basis of how close parents had been to their deceased children. Thankfully, the commission soon moved away from this plan, instead offering bereaved parents £50 each. Later, this figure was raised to the “generous offer” of £500.

The queen and Prince Philip visiting Aberfan

(Photo by Syndication/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images)

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The psychological scars suffered by survivors endured long beyond the 1966 disaster. Edwards, the last child pulled from the razed school, told Wales Online that he relived the trauma in the “days, the weeks and the months after.”

“I was afraid of noise, I was afraid of crowds, I was afraid of going to school,” he added, “and for many years I couldn’t go to school because I was afraid that something would happen to me.”

Melvyn Walker, 8 years old at the time of the disaster, echoed Edwards’ sentiments, saying, “[The sound of children playing] gives me flashbacks. I get very anxious even to this day. If I hear children’s voices it takes me straight back.”

Speaking with ITV News’ Juliet Brenner on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, Edwards concluded, “Most of my friends in my class died. … Basically we were happy-go-lucky children, looking forward to the half-term holidays, and at 9:15 our childhood stopped.”

Since the Aberfan disaster, the queen has returned to the tiny Welsh town three more times. Although Elizabeth was unable to attend a memorial ceremony held on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, her son Prince Charles read a statement from his mother detailing the “heart-breaking inscription” written on a posy given to her by a young girl during the 1966 visit: “From the remaining children of Aberfan.”

“On this saddest of anniversaries,” the queen added, “I send my renewed good wishes to you all.”

The queen lays a wreath to commemorate the victims of the Aberfan disaster of 1966.

(Photo by PA Images via Getty Images)

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#History

[daleisgreat]

Roseanne - Season 9

-It took a little over a year since I started, but here I am covering the ninth and final season of the original run of Roseanne! I am still bamboozled that in the middle of doing this I found out the show was returning, and that I was able to catch up in time just a couple months before Roseanne returns to ABC on March 27. Click here to catch up on my entries covering all the prior seasons. -I knew going into this season that I heard a lot over the years that the ‘lottery-winning’ season was the only bad season of the show and that I should have avoided it all together. Season eight had a huge cliffhanger where Roseanne (Roseanne Barr) and Dan (John Goodman) got into a huge dispute involving all kinds of broken furniture that implied their marriage was on the brink of collapse. In what was mostly a good season premiere the two overcome their huge fight and got back together by the end of the episode. However, in the closing credits scene of that episode the Connors find out they won the lottery, which is the catalyst for the worst season of the series.

-The next several episodes are absolute train wrecks! The Connors travel overseas to wine and dine with their newfound wealth in a series of gimmick episodes that I despised so much over the last couple seasons. Jackie (Laurie Metcalf) dates a detestable European prince, there is an awful wild west train heist episode, another that satires Rosemary’s Baby, an episode where Roseanne and Jackie spend at the spa that is easily the worst episode in the entire series, and a couple of episodes where they try and fit in with the wealthy and elite with their lottery winnings. This whole string of episodes is cringe-inducing throughout and saying it was a chore to get through these is a severe understatement. It got to the point I had to watch this stretch of episodes at 1.5x speed to gradually ease the pain. -The Connors winning the lottery kind of negates the need for a job roll call since they now are filthy rich. A couple early episodes of the season take place at the Lunchbox diner before Roseanne and Jackie ultimately decide to sell their shares to Nancy (Sandra Bernhard) and Leon (Martin Mull). As a tribute to the Lunchbox, last weekend I was playing Scattegories and we rolled the letter ‘L’ and one of the categories was ‘sandwich’ so I felt it would have been a sin not to list ‘Loose-Meat’ as my sandwich of choice! Here’s hoping The Lunchbox returns in season 10! -Darlene’s (Sara Gilbert) college situation in Chicago is never really addressed at all this season since she and David (Johnny Galecki) are expecting their child. While the Connors are overseas, their house gets renovated with decorations more fitting of their new tax bracket. It is kind of a downer actually watching this much-relatable blue-collar family transform their home into everything that went against the show’s theme all these years.

-I got the vibe the producers felt they went off the rails a bit too far nearly halfway into the season and thankfully dialed back the hokey episodes, and by the halfway point in the season them winning the lottery is almost an afterthought. Roseanne and Dan getting into another huge fight at this point in the season is when this season kind of gets somewhat back on track. -Roseanne’s yearly Halloween special this season is easily their worst as it was the aforementioned Rosemary’s Baby knockoff that did not pan out. The Thanksgiving episode was a riot though as they have the trademark family fight at the dinner table where Bev (Estelle Parsons) comes out of the closet. Readers of these blogs will recall how bummed I am that Fred (Michael ‘O Keefe) was no longer part of the show, but I was a little relieved to see Jackie and Roseanne at least address his absence during the Christmas special stating that he found a new lady. -Also around the halfway point of the season DJ (Michael Fishman) is given a few new takes on his character when he is revealed to be into filmmaking and a big time movie buff. He also gets his first girlfriend in the series and the two seem to hit it off by the end of the season. Good on the writers for finally giving DJ some depth….halfway into the very last season.

-Last season saw Lecy Goransen return as Becky after a few years off, but with Sarah Chalke subbing in for a few episodes as a nice gesture for her filling in for a few years. I have no idea why, but Lecy did not stick with the show for its final season so they had Chalke return again to play Becky throughout the entire season. I feel awful though because Becky is very much a background character this season even moreso compared to the previous few seasons. Becky is only in about half the episodes this season, and she only has a couple lines an episode she appears in as she is never really in a featured arc throughout the season. Becky essentially is receiving the Meg treatment on Family Guy. Her husband Mark (Glenn Quinn) is again a more featured presence throughout this season, and like the past few years is played up for comic relief throughout the season. On the season finale the two do reveal they are expecting their first kid however. -I think I may have only addressed Roseanne’s grandma Mary (Shelley Winters), only once or twice before. Nana Mary appears only once or twice a season on average, kind of like Rose on Lost. Whenever she was on, it felt like a truly special episode where the writers made sure her appearance mattered. I was surprised they kept her character alive all these years to the point they kind of 4th-wall jest about how she is still alive. She has a great final episode in the 9th season where Mary and Bev bury the hatchet after all their years of differences. According to her Wiki, she guest-ed on a total of 10 episodes throughout her run. Winters eventually passed in 2006. Speaking of passing, I was saddened to see in my research for the show’s relaunch to find out that Glenn Quinn passed away in 2002 from a drug overdose. I saw that Mark will be re-casted for the return, but bummed to see I went this long without seeing the news.

-Even though a good chunk of this season is awful, it has one of my favorite episodes where Darlene delivers her kid two months early. Nearly everyone on the cast steps up to deliver a strong performance in this dire time for the family, with an especially powerful scene with Mark, Dan and David that I instantly re-watched a few times. Another fun episode is when Jackie and Mark get involved at the matches at a local wrestling show. It was at this point for the last several episodes of Roseanne where it is brought back down to Earth with back-to-basics storytelling and I nearly forgot they won the lottery. -Let us touch on the controversial last episode, beware of ending spoilers in this paragraph. Darlene and David are getting setup at Roseanne’s for the interim until their kid is in full health. All the cast has an individual one-on-one with the newborn, Harris in an interesting final moment for each character. Then in an ode to the show’s opening theme where we see the cast gathering around the table for dinner all these seasons we see almost the entire cast gathering around the supper table for Chinese. Earlier in the episode DJ is moved to the basement and he references to Roseanne how they used that room for Roseanne’s writing room way back in season two.

Roseanne then goes in a voiceover during this dinner table scene saying how she has been writing ever since Dan had his heart attack and passed away the previous season. She reveals that she has been trying to cope with his death by rewriting history and essentially the final season of the show was all in Roseanne’s head. She reveals one-by-one the true fate of each cast member with Dan being dead for over a year since his heart attack, Jackie and not her mom actually being gay, and Darlene and Becky swapping spouses. It is truly a bizarre ending and definitely threw me for a loop. I was relieved to hear that ABC is pretending that final voiceover twist reveal from Roseanne never happened and that Dan will be there in full form for the re-launch in March. -There are two bonus interviews with Roseanne Barr touching on her overall thoughts with the series and final episode. Even though the extras have been minimal to none in all prior Roseanne DVD sets I am surprised they did not interview a few other cast members for a more comprehensive final set of interviews, but I guess this is better than nothing. There is no question, the 9th and final season of Roseanne is easily the worst. Most of the first half of the season is unbelievably hard to watch, and there are a few scattered weak episodes in the second half as well. That twist ending certainly did not help either, but at least there are a few really strong episodes buried in the trenches that made it marginally worthwhile to stick with it all the way through.

-Even though this is the only season of the show I recommend to avoid, that does not take away the fact that I rank Roseanne right up there with Seinfeld as my two all-time favorite sitcoms. If I were to cherry pick the best three seasons of the show to watch, I would recommend seasons three, four and six. By season three the entire cast was clicking and Roseanne finally hit her groove with working in the mall café and having a great supporting cast with Crystal and Bonnie to bounce off of and that chemistry carried over throughout season four as well. Season six was a great redemption season for the series by bringing Becky and Mark back into the mix and David and Fred injecting new life and perfectly blending into the regular cast. Seasons two, seven and eight are also strong seasons but having some minor hiccups from me ranking them in the same company as seasons three, four and six. Seasons one, five and nine are the weakest seasons with only season nine being the only one I recommend to avoid all together. It took about half the first season for the cast to find their groove and to finally start evolving into the characters we got to love. Season five hit a major lull after Becky and Mark left a couple episodes in and it was not until towards the end of that season that Roseanne finally started to recover from it and you can already tell from this blog why you should avoid season nine.

This was a blast reliving Roseanne for the past year. Thank you all for sticking with me throughout it, and have to re-enforce that I am flabbergasted that the show was announced to return in the middle of going through all these seasons so I am taking credit for these blogs inspiring ABC to bring Roseanne back! Rest assured, I will most likely dedicate a separate future blog covering the new season of Roseanne instead of lumping it in with all the other TV shows in my annual TV season recaps you can find in the links below. So please come back and join me in a few months for my thoughts on season 10 of America’s favorite dysfunctional family! Past TV/Web Series Blogs 2013-14 TV Season Recap 2014-15 TV Season Recap 2015-16 TV Season Recap 2016-17 TV Season Recap Adventures of Briscoe County Jr: The Complete Series Angry Videogame Nerd Volumes 7-9 Mortal Kombat: Legacy - Season 1 OJ: Made in America: 30 for 30 RedvsBlue - Seasons 1-13 Roseanne – Seasons 1-9 Seinfeld Final Season Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle Superheroes: Pioneers of Television

[sciencespies]

The True Story of the Aberfan Disaster

https://sciencespies.com/history/the-true-story-of-the-aberfan-disaster/

The True Story of the Aberfan Disaster

SMITHSONIANMAG.COM | Nov. 15, 2019, 3:45 p.m.

Jeff Edwards’ primary school teacher had just started the day’s math lesson when an ominous rumble sounded in the distance.

“The next thing I remember was waking up,” he later recalled. “My right foot was stuck in the radiator and there was water pouring out of it. My desk was pinned against my stomach and a girl’s head was on my left shoulder. She was dead.”

Over the next hour and a half, the then-8-year-old Edwards struggled to breathe as his classmates, trapped under a torrent of liquefied coal waste, cried out around him. With every passing minute, he said, “They got quieter and quieter, … buried and running out of air.”

Around 11 a.m., someone spotted a tuft of Edwards’ blonde hair amid the rubble. A fireman used a hatchet to free the young boy from beneath his desk, then passed him along to safety via a human chain. Edwards, the tenth child rescued that morning, would be the last survivor pulled from the debris.

In total, the October 21, 1966, disaster killed 144 people, 116 of whom were students at the Welsh town of Aberfan’s Pantglas Junior School. The tragedy, according to BBC News’ Ceri Jackson, was a “mistake that cost a village its children”; in the words of a tribunal commissioned to investigate the incident, the deadly accident “could and should have been prevented.”

The Aberfan disaster features heavily in season three of Netflix’s award-winning series “The Crown,” which returns to viewers’ screens this Sunday after a two-year absence. To ensure the television biopic portrayed the incident “truthfully and responsibly,” the cast and crew consulted survivors and current residents of Aberfan. Per a statement from the show’s producers, “All strongly felt the Aberfan disaster and the events that followed must be included, especially as it continues to hold a deep resonance for the nation and the queen herself.”

The moving mountain of coal sludge after the disaster at Aberfan when the coal tip avalanched through the Pantglas Junior School, killing 116 children and 28 adults.

(Photo by PA Images via Getty Images)

More

Much like the days that preceded it, the morning of the disaster found Aberfan, a southern Wales village home to some 8,000 coal miners and their loved ones, blanketed in a wet fog. The 240 students enrolled in the school walked to class in the rain, but few were focused on the weather. Instead, the children’s conversations centered on plans for the coming half-term holiday: Following an early afternoon assembly, all students would be dismissed for vacation.

Several years earlier, the local council had contacted the National Coal Board, which ran the nearby Merthyr Vale Colliery mine, to express concerns regarding the spoil tip—a massive pile of accumulated coal waste material removed during mining—situated just above the Pantglas school.

“I regard it as extremely serious as the slurry is so fluid and the gradient so steep that it could not possibly stay in position in the winter time or during periods of heavy rain,” one engineer wrote in a June 1963 letter.

The NCB not only ignored these complaints, but implicitly threatened the town’s livelihood. Per BBC News, the unionized mining giant made its intentions clear: “Make a fuss and the mine would close.”

Rescue workers take a break from searching following the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip in the Welsh village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, on 21 October 1966.

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At the time of the disaster, the tip in question, number seven, rose 111 feet aboveground and contained nearly 300,000 cubic yards of waste. Set atop an underground spring covered by porous sandstone, the heap was precariously placed and, thanks to the recent rainy weather, extremely oversaturated.

At 7:30 a.m., workers assigned to the tip discovered that it had started to slide. Although the crew opted not to move forward with the day’s planned tip operation, they were unable to prevent further slippage, and at 9:15 a.m., a “glistening black avalanche” of liquefied coal waste, or slurry, began hurtling toward the village below.

“I thought I was seeing things,” crane driver Gwyn Brown later told investigators. “Then it rose up pretty fast, at a tremendous speed. … It sort of came up out of the depression and turned itself into a wave—that is the only way I can describe it—down toward the mountain.”

According to History Extra’s Steve Humphries, the 30-foot-tall “tsunami of sludge” raced down the hill at a speed of more than 80 miles per hour. Sweeping past a canal and an embankment, the landslide tore into the Pantglas Junior School, breaching the walls of four classrooms and trapping those inside in a flood of thick, quicksand-like sludge.

Inhabitants of the Welsh mining village of Aberfan attend the mass funeral for 81 of the 190 children and adults who perished when a landslide engulfed the junior school.

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In the immediate aftermath of the onslaught, an eerie silence settled across the area.

“Everything was so quiet,” Cyril Vaughan, a teacher at the nearby senior school, said. “[It was] as if nature had realized that a tremendous mistake had been made and nature was speechless.”

Rubble and water from burst pipes exacerbated the already dire situation. As fireman Len Haggett recounted, rescuers who arrived on the scene found rising waters threatening to engulf 10-year-old Phil Thomas, who had been caught in the sludge as he was walking to school. “The water was rising and coming up to his head,” Haggett said. “We thought he might drown.” But a group of seven firefighters managed to lift the wall that had collapsed on Thomas, and he became one of the few to successfully escape the debris.

Five students survived the disaster thanks to the quick thinking of dinner lady Nansi Williams, who sacrificed herself by shielding them from the sludge with her own body. Another staff member, teacher David Beynon, died while cradling five of his pupils. None of the students in Beynon’s class survived.

Eight-year-old Jeff Edwards, rescued from the rubble around 11 a.m., was the last person found alive. But shocked parents, miners, police officers, firefighters and volunteers continued digging long after the last child’s cry could be heard. As Alix Palmer, a reporter who arrived to survey the mayhem the following day, wrote in a letter to her mother, “Men who had started digging at 9:30 the previous morning were still digging, with shirts off and bodies sweating despite the cold.”

Charles Nunn, a detective tasked with cataloging the bodies brought to the makeshift morgue in Aberfan’s Bethania Chapel, sorted through the deceased’s pockets in search of “a handkerchief, sweets, anything that might help with identification.” Parents walked along the rows of corpses laid on pews, lifting blankets covering the bodies until they spotted a familiar face. Those whose children hadn’t yet been found repeated the ritual daily, leaving the chapel to stand in line once again, “mother relieving father, to keep their place outside waiting in the rain.”

Three children stand out from the crowds during Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Aberfan in Wales.

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Fifteen days after the landslide, Nunn and his team finally left Aberfan. They had identified 144 bodies, including those of 116 children, 5 teachers and 23 locals whose homes were destroyed by the deluge. According to Johnson, the victims ranged in age from three months to 82; of the 116 students, most were aged 7 to 11.

Episode three of “The Crown”’s new season finds Elizabeth II, played by newly minted Oscar laureate Olivia Colman, debating how best to address the situation. England’s prime minister, Harold Wilson (Jason Watkins), urges her to visit the mining village and console its grieving residents in person, but the queen is reluctant to do so, suggesting her presence would distract from the tragedy at hand. Describing Wilson’s directive to “comfort people” as simply a “show,” she declares, “The Crown doesn’t do that.”

The real Elizabeth didn’t visit Aberfan until eight days after the disaster. Decades later, the queen reportedly deemed this decision her “biggest regret.”

Elizabeth’s time in the village—biographer Robert Lacey said her “gaunt features, etched with grief, were the more moving for being so clearly genuine”—signaled a shift in the monarchy’s long-held tradition of stoicism. As Jen Chaney writes for Vulture, the moment dramatized in “The Crown” offers “one of multiple hints that modern times are beginning to demand more transparency and outward empathy from the royal family.”

Aerial picture, taken from a plane, shows the town of Aberfan and aftermath of the slurry slide

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A tribunal tasked with investigating the Aberfan disaster published its findings on August 3, 1967. Over the course of 76 days, the panel had interviewed 136 witnesses and examined 300 exhibits. Based on this evidence, the tribunal concluded that the sole party responsible for the tragedy was the National Coal Board.

“The Aberfan disaster is a terrifying tale of bungling ineptitude by many men charged with tasks for which they were totally unfitted, of failure to heed clear warnings, and of total lack of direction from above,” the investigators wrote in their report. “Not villains but decent men, led astray by foolishness or by ignorance or by both in combination, are responsible for what happened at Aberfan.”

Per History Extra, the NCB’s chairman, Lord Robens, denied all wrongdoing. He attributed the accident to previously unknown springs located below the spoil tip and refuted testimony suggesting the tip had shown signs of slipping in the years prior to the disaster. Both of these claims were at odds with the physical evidence examined by the tribunal.

Photographs and footage of the deadly slurry avalanche generated sympathy across the globe, and in the months following the disaster, donors contributed a total of £1,750,000. (Today, this equates to around £20 million pounds, or more than $25 million USD.)

Much of this money failed to reach the villagers whose lives had been devastated by the tragedy. As BBC News reports, the commission in charge of distributing the funds allocated £150,000 toward removal of the town’s remaining tips after the NCB refused to cover the costs; meanwhile, the fund’s managers actually considered distributing compensation on the basis of how close parents had been to their deceased children. Thankfully, the commission soon moved away from this plan, instead offering bereaved parents £50 each. Later, this figure was raised to the “generous offer” of £500.

The queen and Prince Philip visiting Aberfan

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The psychological scars suffered by survivors endured long beyond the 1966 disaster. Edwards, the last child pulled from the razed school, told Wales Online that he relived the trauma in the “days, the weeks and the months after.”

“I was afraid of noise, I was afraid of crowds, I was afraid of going to school,” he added, “and for many years I couldn’t go to school because I was afraid that something would happen to me.”

Melvyn Walker, 8 years old at the time of the disaster, echoed Edwards’ sentiments, saying, “[The sound of children playing] gives me flashbacks. I get very anxious even to this day. If I hear children’s voices it takes me straight back.”

Speaking with ITV News’ Juliet Brenner on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, Edwards concluded, “Most of my friends in my class died. … Basically we were happy-go-lucky children, looking forward to the half-term holidays, and at 9:15 our childhood stopped.”

Since the Aberfan disaster, the queen has returned to the tiny Welsh town three more times. Although Elizabeth was unable to attend a memorial ceremony held on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, her son Prince Charles read a statement from his mother detailing the “heart-breaking inscription” written on a posy given to her by a young girl during the 1966 visit: “From the remaining children of Aberfan.”

“On this saddest of anniversaries,” the queen added, “I send my renewed good wishes to you all.”

The queen lays a wreath to commemorate the victims of the Aberfan disaster of 1966.

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