#Dead Man's Journey

[figtreegif]

Wardrobe // Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) // Doctor Who Seasons 3 & 4 (2007-2008) + Torchwood Season 2 (2008) + specials

[denimbex1986]

It’s one thing standing in line to watch the blockbuster film “Oppenheimer.” It’s another thing entirely queueing up in a remote desert to experience the location of the film’s most pivotal scene.

But if you’re a fan of atomic history and can swing central New Mexico this October, your pilgrimage through the Jornada del Muerto (Dead Man’s Journey) will be so worth the effort.

Saturday, October 21, presents a rare opportunity to visit not just one but two scientifically significant and movie-famous destinations on the same day – each occupying opposite ends of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Trinity Site is the national historic landmark that’s home to mankind’s first nuclear blast on July 16, 1945, where plutonium gamma rays lit up the night sky. It hosts only two open house events each year.

And while you’re in the area, an extraordinary bonus is a second, free-of-charge open house aimed specifically at Trinity Site adventurers who are willing to drive another 100 miles to take in a second mind-bending experience.

It’s the Very Large Array Radio Observatory (VLA), which was dramatized in the 1997 alien-life movie “Contact.” The VLA telescope can spread wider than New York City, able to capture the whispers of distant radio waves as they undulate across our cosmos.

Rare access to Trinity Site

Trinity Site opens only two Saturdays a year. Once in April, and lucky for “Oppenheimer” enthusiasts, again in October.

The exact dates are announced in advance each year by the US Army.

The site is a secure military installation within the forbidding White Sands Missile Range, where live weapons are regularly tested. The terrain is high desert plateau, dotted with creosote brush and not much else.

In our everyday crush of crowds, traffic and strip malls, the Land of Enchantment’s sheer miles of open landscape and soul-nourishing cobalt vistas inspire. Buzz Aldrin’s impression of the moon’s surface parallels Trinity Site, a “magnificent desolation.”

When J. Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist known as the “father of the atomic bomb,” led his Manhattan Project team to Trinity, it wasn’t just for the isolation. He had history with New Mexico, attending summer boys’ camps during his youth. Because of the popularity of the movie “Oppenheimer,” a surge of visitors is expected on October 21.

The open house event, hosted by the US Army, is free but limited to the first 5,000 guests, on a first-come, first-served basis.

How to get there

From Albuquerque International Sunport airport, your best bet is a rental car for the two-hour drive south. It’s easy to get disoriented while navigating, so stick to the Army’s directions, as GPS instructions can be wonky. Take screen photos of the route mapped on your phone – as you may lose cell service – and have an actual roadmap as backup.

Aim to arrive at Trinity’s Stallion Gate before 8 a.m., when the gate opens. There will already be a line. Be early, and you’ll still have plenty of time for the day’s second adventure. Army officials will check your ID at the gate, and from there it’s a 17-mile (27-kilometer) drive to a parking lot located a quarter-mile walk from the reason you came – Ground Zero.

Trinity Site’s atmosphere during an open house is reminiscent of a small-town carnival from a bygone era. Vendors selling souvenir trinkets. Kids in strollers. Dogs wagging tails. Porta Potties. That’s until you notice the pop-up tent displaying Geiger counters. And another with radioactive Trinitite, the mysterious green-glass rock that rained down from the bomb’s blast.

Ominous fence signs remind guests that it’s against the law to remove any pieces of Trinitite they spy on the ground because ingested fragments retain enough radioactivity to be dangerous.

The famed 1918 McDonald adobe ranch house, where the bomb’s critical plutonium core was assembled in the master bedroom, survived the shock wave two miles away mostly intact. Buses shuttle visitors back and forth free of charge from the Trinity parking lot to the McDonald house.

Venture in farther to stand next to a life-size replica of Fat Man, the nuclear bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945.

Visitors can pose for photos inside Jumbo, the 216-ton steel cylinder scientists contemplated detonating the bomb – nicknamed the Gadget – within to contain its plutonium core if the full detonation failed.

Experiencing Ground Zero

The moment arrives to approach Ground Zero, marked simply by a black stone obelisk that’s 12 feet (3.66 meters) high.

Step back in time to the pre-dawn of July 16, 1945. Glance north, west and south where Oppenheimer’s team hunkered down in three bunkers, five miles away. You stand where the course of humanity shifted. Where the boundaries of physics and possibility stretched.

Picture the 100-foot-high steel tower that stood where the obelisk stands now. A few feet away only nubs of the tower remain, the bulk annihilated in the blast.

See in your mind the mattresses hauled in and stacked high to cushion the fall should the chains snap as they winched the heavy Gadget high into the air. And young scientists rotated throughout the night babysitting the bomb as crackles of lightning threatened to strike.

Oppenheimer wrote the poem “Crossing” two decades before Trinity. His words contained the prophetic passage, “…in the dry hills down by the river, half withered, we had the hot winds against us.” He could not have imagined the heat to come.

Now close your eyes.

Ignore what you do see to imagine the history you cannot see.

The storms over the mountains. New Mexico Gov. John Dempsey is at home asleep, oblivious to when the blast will occur. Finally, the mists of rain clear. The countdown to fission begins. There’s a sense of dread, however remote, that Earth’s atmosphere might ignite in a cataclysmic chain reaction.

And finally, the detonation.

Man’s first nuclear genie shatters its bottle, unleashing the ferocity of the atom, with an explosion 10,000 times hotter than our sun. Thirty-seven minutes later, the wounded sky brightens again, to the dawn of man’s first atomic sunrise.

Reflect on the glaring omission that while the area surrounding Trinity was remote, it was not unpopulated.

Civilians termed “downwinders,” subjected to radioactive fallout fluttering down from the sky, were assured that the flash and fury some saw and heard was an ammunition explosion at nearby Alamogordo Air Base. After atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki the following month, they realized the stark truth.

Jim Eckles, an Army historian who oversaw decades of Trinity open house events, shared the site’s significance: “The ‘Oppenheimer’ movie resurrected concerns we’ve lost sight of. That thousands of nuclear warhead missiles are still out there, able to launch. We need clever intelligent people to deal with the sequence that began at Trinity.”...'

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Let the revenge games begin.

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[fluffypotatey]

“i am the prophet / with the answers you seek”

and boy does he! is it at all clear? to you maybe, BUT WHEN I, ODYSSEUS OF ITHCA ASK HIM—

[poeaxtry]

I can’t believe in May I will be a decade on hrt

How are these all me?

God damn I really did it.

[slowburningechoes]

i know at least one of you has the full-length bootleg of rsl's music man... i've seen screen-grabs. don't be shy.

[wr1t3w1tm3]

Look, I understand people are upset about the end of Will and Elizabeth's arcs in the original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy. I won't lie and say I didn't want to see some Will as the Dutchman's captain and some Pirate King Elizabeth BAMF on the high seas. I'm not even saying the writers are right... I'm just saying that the way they set up Will and Elizabeth's arc's, it makes sense.

They're tragic heroes: it's like John Proctor or Reverend Hale in the Crucible or Iron Man during the Infinity Saga or even Thackery Binx from Hocus Pocus. They're heroes working towards a noble goal, but they either can't obtain it or when they can, it doesn't go according to plan, and they have to make some sacrifices.

For Elizabeth it's a little more obvious. She's the girl who's trapped in her social status. In the first movie, her corset, a very real symbol of her status, literally suffocates her. It nearly kills her. Only once she sees the world of piracy and gets swept up in that world and allows herself to be changed by it does she see any smattering of freedom. Her whole goal is to get freedom, for her people (Port Royal) and her love (Will) in CotBP, even at the price of her own freedom (agreeing to marry Norrington if he saved Will). In DMC it's for herself (literally), Will again, and her father. That whole movie she is constantly fighting to keep herself and Will out of prison and danger. In AWE, she's fighting for her own freedom at times, but she soon finds herself the harbinger of freedom for a new golden age of piracy against Cutler Beckett and the East India Trading Co, who in the Pirates universe are canonically slave runners. She is searching for freedom in a very wide scope.

For Will, it's a little less obvious. He is also striving for freedom, but often not his own. He fights to help free Elizabeth during CotBP, and in DMC he's literally fighting to keep his own freedom and win the freedom of Elizabeth. Even when that means turning in a (sort of) friend (Jack). When he meets his father in DMC, his mission of freedom for those he loves expands in two parallel directions, Bootstrap tells Elizabeth as much in the brig of the Dutchman in AWE. The director and writers of AWE made that very clear in Elizabeth and Will's direction. One of my biggest pet peeves with that movie is the lack of a relationship between Will and Elizabeth, but it does make sense. It demonstrates Will's dilemma. His search for freedom is much more tangible, and on a very narrow scope. It also demonstrates Elizabeth's dilemma, where she feels that the freedom Will craves for his father will separate them for good. So, she turns to piracy, because freedom is all she has left by act II of AWE.

Both are searching for freedom, but both are tied down by duty. Elizabeth becomes the Pirate King, Will the Captain of the Dutchman. Both bound by their own duty, although the only duty we see them both bound too tangibly is Will's. Isn't it ironic that in the end, the choice to kill Davy Jones isn't Will's? Sure, it was his intention, but Jack wrapped his hand around the knife and dropped the hand that felled the heart. Jack - the pirate - an embodiment of freedom for both characters in CotBP (he saves Elizabeth from her corset and is the inciting incident into Will beginning his quest for Elizabeth) is the one who chains them to Will's curse? Narratively, it makes sense. Elizabeth has just become the free-est we've seen her in any of the movies (and I will die on this hill) and Will's only just literally been freed from the clutches of the EICo. And even if you did argue that Elizabeth still had her freedom as Pirate King, it can be easily argued that she lost her freedom the day she decided to keep and raise Henry. Both of them end up chained by Will's curse - one to land, one to the sea. All on their search for freedom. And Jack, that symbol of freedom (or rather, a symbol of piracy that for both characters ends up being a symbol of freedom), is the one who chains them to land or sea.

Now I am all for Henry, I actually think he had some great potential pre-Deppo-osition trial, and I think it speaks to Elizabeth's character that she was willing to wait and stayed on land for her child (who she easily could've taken her anger out on, though that doesn't appear to be the case). It can even be argued she stayed on land for Will to, as he gave her his heart to guard, a very fragile heart that if stabbed, ended her husband (this is one of the final demonstrations of their mended relationship, but that's a different topic for another time). Will got a very short stick in this fight, but Elizabeth got an equally short, if not shorter stick. Chained to the sea, destined to see your wife a max of seven more days before her death, and the reverse true for Elizabeth, instead she is arguably forced by society to keep and raise the boy who reminds her of the husband she'll never be sure she'll see again.

That's why William and Elizabeth Turner - The Captain of the Flying Dutchman and the Pirate King - are tragic heroes. In striving for freedom, they became trapped by duties, obligations, and burdens that they didn't even get a say in. In the end, not every happy ending is a good ending. And while the original Pirates trilogy didn't have a happy ending, it had a good one, as far as the narrative was concerned (Do I like this ending? Yes. Personally, I think it works and it gives me that kind-of-icky-kind-of-satisfying pit in my stomach that Hocus Pocus did back when there wasn't a sequel. Maybe it's not the ending everyone wanted, but for the story being told, it's the right one).

Thanks for coming to my little rant! I used to love doing these literary analysis essays in English my junior and senior years of high school. Over analyzing media, especially film and tv, is something I quiet enjoy. Plus, I might do a foray into video essays one day, so I figured I could use some practice. This is something that's been bouncing around in my head since I first watched AWE. The original Pirates Trilogy is just so good at symbolism, I'll probably put more stuff out here eventually raving about it. For now though, this is it.

[babaroqa]

really watching claire and jamie have sex on john's dining table while john is literally trying to escape and avoid getting hanged as he suffers through injuries caused by jamie... like do you have to? right in front of his salad?

[haru-chi]

(I don't read their manga so all I'm gonna say is purely my theories and assumptions or maybe wishful thinking on my part to suit my taste, so I'd be really grateful if manga readers don't spoil anything for me be it I hit the nail or not)

in this anime the story really starts from Himmel's death and the impact his death left on Frieren more than she actually thought resulting in her being left with deep regret. His death left no impression on me at first tbh. I mean we don't know anything about him enough to care, Heiter's death was more impactful at least to me ...

but then the more I watch the more I realize the core of this story as much as it's Frieren's journey to understand human's emotions so not to repeat the same mistake twice as much as it's about getting to know Himmel's with her so it's gonna be the death that breaks you down later on kind of way.

I thought it was cleaver that we were put in the same boat as her, we actually know nothing about him like her, so through this journey we're also gonna get to know the "real" Himmel with her.

the more she'll learn about human's emotions the more she'll understand alot of things she might've brash it away cuz she either never pay attention or don't get the real meaning of his words/actions like the fact that he actually LOVED her :)

something else that got me thinking is this ..

at the end of his funeral, she was left staring to this ring for a while ... so LISTEN TO ME .. what if this ring here is a gift from him to her ...

what if it was from the time he confesses his love to her or even worse he proposed to her but she either didn't get what he actually meant or declined or something between those lines aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa STOP ME FROM DIGGING DEEPER OMG

so, through this journey she'll learn the true meaning of those words and feelings the more she learns about human's emotions .. and the worse part what if she realized she was in love with him too by the end of the story but never understand her own feelings ????

she said she's gathering new magics cuz he was praising her whenever she learned something new, also the ghost she saw was Himmel's ghost not her teacher as she was expecting so that proves she actually care about him more than she herself realize ><

this gonna be very tragic, yet I wants this to be the core of the story since I'm just weak for those kinds of stories AND I'M ALREADY CRYING EVEN THOUGH I DON'T KNOW IF I'M RIGHT OR NOT YET I GET EMOTIONAL SEEING THEM TOGETHER YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND !!!!

I don't know how and why my mind decided to go wild with those ideas that now I see the anime and its story differently than what I signed up for at first ... WHY AM I IN LOVE WITH A DEAD MAN YET AGAIN !!!!! I THOUGHT I SURIVIVED WHEN HE DEAD BEFORE I DEVOLOP ANY EMOTIONS FOR HIM YET HERE I AM IN THIS HELL BECAUSE OF HIM AND FRIEREN !!!!! T^T

Did I hit the nail ?? did I ?? please say I did so that I can be happy this shaping up to be my kind of tragic story .. but then I don't wanna know or hear any spoilers ... I'm tempted to jump to the manga to see if I'm right or not but I must resist till the anime end at least ><

[anewbrainjughead]

armand is one moment of desperation away from faking a pregnancy terri schuester style in a frantic last-ditch effort to keep louis from leaving him

[empty-dream]

Himmel: *opens mouth*

Me:

[viktorarcanedeservesbetter]

Vi, sitting in the planning room before the battle starts: *sees/hears about machine herald Viktor and all the destruction and nudges Jayce like* "Hey at least it wasn't either of our faults this time!"

Jayce: flashes back to promising to destroy the hexcore and literally hours/days later using it on Viktor

Jayce: "About that......."

[minnieposting]

yhe minute j can stop focusing on getting home. Bc i actually got home. I just start freakin crying again over the pjsk movie it was genuinely so beautiful and it meant so much to me . a miku who struggles to reach those who want so badly to disappear and give up, yet she represents that little light in you that you try to suppress and no matter how badly you bury those feelings down, shes still there. theres always that little miku inside you . it just got me so bad like are you kidding me it was so emotional

[mastercontrol123]

Happy 65th Birthday, to the man who will forever be my lifelong crush, Bruce Campbell! 😍❤️

[ilovereadingandstuff]

In Honor of Izuku Midoriya

The Greastest forgotten Hero

How will...

...The Story End?

Edit: I updated the drawing I made by fixing the hair and shading.

[cringelordofchaos]

h how do I sct normal when wh om im reminded of omori final duet how do k not burtst out in tearas