#an Unstoppable Force Between Static Stars

[sparkles-rule-4eva]

"An Unstoppable Force Between Static Stars" by @skimmingmilk

you have no idea how fast I whipped these up and how many tears I've shed thinking about this akmdjfjsnks the brothers ever help I won't be able to handle this fic there's only a prologue out and I'm already destroyed

GO READ THIS WONDERFUL THING THIS WONDERFUL HUMAN WROTE/IS WRITING

[number-one-shadisper-shipper]

SO EXCITED FOR THE UPDATE 🤩🤩🤩🤩

Y'all ready for today's update of ( an unstoppable force between static starts ) from @skimmingmilk

I'm mentally unwell and I can't wait I'm literally feeling the adrenaline rush thru me from excitement y'all bbbvgvhknnnkjhhvgg I can't wait

If you're not reading this WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE go shed some tears fam

(Skimmingmilk please take your time tho)

[babbushka]

Something Incredible, Something Unstoppable

Supreme Leader Kylo Ren x Reader 

3.7k ; explicitly NSFW, warnings for mentions of murder & blood 

Also on AO3! 

                                                             ---------------

You step out of the shadows, when he’s done.

When his lightsaber has pierced the heart of an Emperor long thought gone, when he’s breathing hard at the implications of this news, at the implications of this man and how it hits him, how it changes everything he’s ever known, everything he’s ever believed.

The room crashes and crackles around you, some deep dark chasm, some ancient cave, where statues of Sith legends peer down at you with their stony eyes. They judge you, but that’s okay, because as you shoot a glare back at them, at the ancient beings who have witnessed the murder of your husband’s tormenter, you judge them right back.

The crippled old man slumps in his throne, body sizzling, not having expected Kylo to turn on him, not expecting Kylo to be so quick to kill him. The old man has lived a thousand lives it seems, but now his last has finally come to an end.

“Kylo.” You say, voice soft. You do not need to shout, do not need to scream out his name, for he hears you, always hears you. You could be a thousand lightyears away and he would hear you, there inside his head.

You saw the whole thing, the entire thing, from your spot at the entrance of the cave, the room where Kylo dared not let you step into fully. Surrounded by the Knights of Ren, by your sworn loyal hounds, by your guards, you watched as your husband struck Palpatine down.

He’s shaking, trembling, his jaw clenched tight as he powers off the saber and turns towards you, desperate for you. If he doesn’t get near you soon, he’ll scream, his entire mind in shambles from the revelation that everything, everything, has been by Palpatine’s design. He wonders just how far the plan would have gone, if he had simply walked away, if he had taken up Palpatine’s offer and ran with it.

He wonders how that plan would have ended, a vision of the future that could have been; a twinge in his spine of phantom bones cracking in another universe where he did not just slice the man in half, sliced him into two in the same manner as he had done to his master not so long ago.

His master who, like everything else, was nothing but a puppet with invisible strings.

He does scream then, but it is not of fear, or of pain. He screams because there is too much energy and nowhere to put it, nowhere for it to go, as the power of the Force shudders through him. With Palpatine gone, there is only him, only his body for the dark side to call home. It is a harsh sound, his scream. Deep and primal, one that rips through the vocal cords in his throat, one that shocks through the walls of the cave.

His chest heaves as he storms across the chasm to you, to the squadron of protection he has wrapped you in. The danger is gone now, smote by his own hand, but still, still he demands your protection.

“Time to go.” You say gently, firmly, holding a hand out for him.

You want him out of here, want him away from this place. There’s too much to process, too much to sort through, you don’t want him here.

You don’t want to be here.

Kylo takes your hand, and you don’t even so much as bat an eye when your glove stains red from the blood on his gloves, you only let it drip between your fingers as you turn and lead him out of the cave, back to the ship where he has docked it, where he can shred your clothes and dig his fingers into your flesh and cling to you in the way he’s desperate for.

He follows, and as he does, so do the Knights.

As he does, so does the Force.

It’s like the Force knows, it’s like it agrees -- it’s like it adores you, adores Kylo. Adores the love and the bond you have built together. It creates an umbrella above you as you clear the short distance to the ship, keeps you dry. The rain is not worthy to fall on your skin, to dampen your hair, to darken your clothing. You are contained inside a bubble, one that no one in the universe could ever burst.

 Inside the ship, he barks an order, sets the coordinates for home, for the star destroyer that stalks the galaxy, the monument to the Order’s power. He will no doubt take control of the fleet which Palpatine has been so kind to amass, so kind to build. You are filled with the thrill of power when you think about how it will be under your command, under Kylo’s.

You are also filled with the heady anticipation of his adoration for you, his desperation for your body. You can feel it pulsing off of him, it’s oozing in waves so thick you’re sure everyone around you can feel it. You can’t help but let a small smile through, at the thought of everyone going to fuck the stars out of each other just from the few intoxicating moments of being near Kylo’s lust.

And oh, how that lust is intoxicating.

By the time you arrive to the quarters which have been lavishly furnished just for you, quarters with the lights turned down nearly all the way, the glow of the distant stars illuminating the space, it is as though every fiber of your robes are permeated with the smell of it. It’s nearly painful, the way which he craves you so feverishly. You had never had the misfortune of being struck by the lightning which he can summon from his palms, but you think if you were to, it would feel like this.

Electrifying, blistering, blinding heat – a tremor runs through your spine as the static charge of his love radiates in red crackling currents through your very soul.

He loves you, and that is a dangerous thing.

You love him back, love him with every cell in your body, love him unapologetically and openly, love him completely. And that is what will bring the remaining corners of the galaxy to its knees.

There is a ritual you share, no matter where you are, no matter when he wants it. A ritual you take great stock in, a ritual which you uphold with utmost respect. You begin by stripping him down to his bare skin, removing layer upon layer of his clothing slowly, folding each piece with care.

You begin at the top, with the cape which clips to his tunic. He is so broad, so incredibly broad, you think as your hands smooth down his chest to the buckle of his wide belt. You smile at the little tracker placed inside it, grateful for the technology as you rest it over the back of a plush armchair in the corner of the room.

Underneath his outer tunic of black ribbed weatherproofing fabric, lay a pair of high waisted leather pants and a protective layer of armored padding. He had learned, since being shot in the stomach by the bowcaster of an old friend, to not be so neglectful. You unclasp the padding, undo the buttons on his trousers, sinking to your knees along the way.

You kneel before him, before your Emperor, your Supreme Leader, as you remove his boots one by one. You bend down to kiss his ankles, open mouthed kisses that have his hands balling into fists, and now it is his turn to tremble. The boots come up halfway to his calf, and you suck and breathe kisses onto the leather as you move up them, unbuckling the straps and letting him step out.

All that remains of his stately attire, are his gloves and those trousers unbuttoned and slung on his hips. Trousers which you peel slowly slowly slowly down, down his thick muscular thighs, down his newly freed calves.

His cock is so hard that it curves up slightly, seeking friction, seeking heat.

You smile at Kylo’s restraint – though it is barely there – he knows he’ll have you soon. This slow sweet torture is not something to be skipped, anticipation of fucking making the fucking itself that much sweeter.

You nuzzle your cheek into the hardened muscle of his lower stomach, so close to his cock that occasionally your other cheek grazes the head of it, and he bucks his hips involuntarily from the sudden jolt of pleasure.

“Share with me a secret.” You whisper, when you have decided that he’s had enough torment.

He offers you a strong and steady hand which you take, and he hauls you up carefully to your feet.

“I’ve never felt stronger than when you’re with me.” He licks his lips, lips which are perfectly bitten from how his teeth had worried them while you made out with his boots. He licks his lips and swallows, cups your cheek with a calloused palm and tilts your face so he can better enter your space, so he can better kiss you. He doesn’t kiss you yet, instead he asks, “When I close my eyes, do you know what I see?”

“Tell me.” You breathe, as you feel the invisible hands of the Force slither around your body, an agreement with the universe that you need to be naked too.

“Paradise.” Kylo’s eyes flicker redorangeyellowgold, just for a moment, just for an instant.

“Show me.” You say, not quite a demand, not quite a beg, but somewhere in between.

And just as slowly and sensually as you had removed every stitch of clothing on your husband, he removes yours. The Force aides his hands as he carefully undoes the intricacies of your dress.

Your cape is not a separate piece of clothing like Kylo’s, instead it is made of yards of fabric which actually hang from your belt. The fabric folds behind you and drapes up over your throat beautifully in a criss-crossing manner, protecting the fragile anatomy there and providing a sense of elegance you were known across the galaxy for.

He unclips the big sleek metal belt-buckle, and lifts the looped fabric from your neck to allow the cape to flutter gently to the polished marble floor. The neckline of the dress plunges, held together by a single button at your navel which is normally hidden by the belt. When undone, the sleeveless bodice slips down your shoulders, and under the weight of its own it too slips down your hips.

You wear no undergarments, and when the dress is nothing more than a puddle of black satin on the floor, you stand in nothing more than your gloves and your boots. Unlike Kylo’s, your gloves extend pass your elbow, leather and shiny and black. Your boots rise all the way to your inner thigh.

But like you, Kylo falls to his knees.

His hands shake, when they ghost the flesh of your thighs. He begins as you did, at the bottom, kissing and licking the black leather boots. But he has a much longer way to go than you did, and as he kisses up up up your leg, he begins to shake more and more strongly.

You know his patience is being tested, but his patience will soon be rewarded, you both know this.

So he kisses up your leg, and finally, finally, when he reaches the top of your boot, he is mere inches away from the one thing he craved possibly more than anything in the entire galaxy.

More than the murder of his inexorable sister, more than the death of his traitorous uncle, more than the collapse of the rebellious organization that insists on terrorizing his precious reign – your beautiful, hot, glistening pussy.

“Take me.” You tell him.

And just like that, the patience breaks.

The Force rips the gloves away from both of your hands, peels them off and throws them into the corner so that when you and Kylo embrace in a meeting of fire and brimstone, it is with the electrifying spark of bare skin on bare skin.

The bed is large and soft, but he lays you down upon it with an urgency that has the whole mattress shaking, rippling under his power as he props your hips up with a silk pillow. He does not waste time burying his face in your pussy, his tongue insistent, impatient, demanding entry between your folds.

“Kylo!” You say, you say because you cannot say anything else, cannot express anything other than the love you have for this man.

Your hand grabs a fistful of his hair and grips him tight, holds him in place as he licks hot broad stripes with the flat of his tongue through all your slick, drinking it down with a fervor that would have you chuckling if you weren’t moaning instead.

His arms hook underneath your thighs and his grip on you is bruising, absolutely bruising with the way his blunt nails carve crescent moons into your skin. He is breathing hard, so hard, as he moans into your cunt with the way he tries to shove his mouth harder against your pussy, kissing and drooling and massaging your thighs with restless hands all the while. He bites the soft skin of your inner thigh, bites down hard enough for you to tighten the grip in his hair and yank slightly. Kylo only laves his tongue over the harsh indents he causes in apology, one that you’re happy to accept.

“Stars, fuck (Y/N),” Kylo pulls back for a moment, because he too is overwhelmed by his own acts of worship. He wants nothing more than to worship you.

He sucks on your clit then, out of nowhere. The pleasure is immense, nearly blinding, because as he latches his mouth around it, something cups and kneads your tits, pinches and tweaks at your nipples. The stimulation has your knees clamping down around his head, and your eyes shut closed so tightly that you can see stars forming behind your eyelids.  

“Oh, yesyesyes,” You arch your back off the sheets, pushing your hips up against his mouth further, “Kylo, yes please – oh fuck, fuck honey -- ”

He eats your cunt and toys with your nipples until your toes curl in the sheets and you’re gasping, coming coming coming on his tongue. He doesn’t let up, doesn’t stop, only continues to lick and suck suck suck on your clit, the force finding its way around your throat, into your mouth. Phantom fingers stroke your tongue, and you cry out Kylo’s name as you shudder so hard from your orgasm that your teeth clack.

He pulls away only once he can sense you’re overstimulated, but he’s not anywhere near done with you yet. His cock weeps for you, you can feel it dripping pre-come across your thighs as he positions himself on top of you fully. The wetness smears between your bodies as he drinks the nectar of your love from your lips, kisses you while the last legs of bliss from your orgasm ripples and shakes through you.

“Good, you’re so good,” Kylo pets the side of your face with one of his large mitts for hands, strokes your cheek. “So fucking good for me, you precious thing.”

Unlike his words, he is not gentle, when he fucks you. It is like much else about him – harsh, severe, explosive. He doesn’t even wait to bottom out before he begins to thrust into your sweet pussy, the blood pounding in his head too loud for him to even appreciate the sick squelch of your come as he grinds his hips against yours. He is fast, he is hard, he is angry.

All the anger that he felt, all that passion that was imbibed in his veins when he slaughtered the man who had ruined his life by his design, all that rage comes flowing out now, now that he has the sweet surrender, the infinite release of your body to take him.

And take him you do, happily you take what he gives, and you give everything you can in return. His cock is so fucking big, so skilled, so adept at maneuvering inside your body from the years of sex you have engaged in together. He fucks you skillfully, even if a little sloppy in the wake of all that rage.

He is some feral thing, unhinged.

Years ago, a crippled puppet had once described Kylo as having raw, untamed power.

Now there were no more strings, no more shadows behind closed doors a thousand lightyears away pushing the pieces – and Kylo felt free.

He grits his teeth and pinches his face up in anger as he rails you hard, fucks you up up up the mattress until your head nearly hits the ornate headboard, and you bring Kylo out of it for just a moment so he can see that soon there will be no more room for him to pound you. He nods – but instead of pulling out of you so you can shuffle back down the bed, he uses the force to drag your joined bodies to the center of the mattress once more, and he resumes his frantic pace.

“I want – I need – ” You pant, body jolting under him as he lifts one of your legs for a better angle that has tears spilling into your hair, chin trembling from how fucking good this new position feels. It all feels good with Kylo, but this, this is magic.

Once it has its hands on you, the Force doesn’t seem to want to let you go. You think it’s sweet sometimes, how it vies with Kylo to cover your body in its presence. Kylo is a large man, large in every sense of the word as he has to pin your hips down against the pillow, skin smacking harshly against yours. Kylo is large, but the Force is a greater power, and the Force wants you almost as badly as Kylo does.

Not more, because nothing could want you more than Kylo, but almost.

It anchors itself around you, opens you up further for Kylo to take and give more pleasure, more more more of his power seeping into you. Your flesh breaks into goosebumps, limbs shuttering as you feel the tendrils of the Force wind around your neck, plunge down your throat, wisp around your wrists and tug at your ankles.

It is an unbreakable rope that slithers and snares its way into every possible crevice and orifice that your body possesses, thick cord that binds you, binds you to him, to Kylo.

“Holy shit – ” You gasp, sharp and high and loud.

Kylo has found the spot inside your cunt that makes you go blind with pleasure, and he milks it both with his cock, which throbs at the realization that you’ll come around him soon, and the Force, which somehow has the power to intensify the feeling, getting in and stimulating the very nerve ending in your pussy.

“Please Kylo, your cock is so big I can feel it up in my throat, please, please, fuck, I’m coming, yesyesyes– ” You sob for him, beg beg beg for him, and he is drenched in sweat at the praise, teeth gnashing and hair tossed wild as he brings you to orgasm once again.

You’re almost worried for a moment, that you’ve blacked out. It’s happened before, the sheer overwhelming power of your orgasm simply too much for you to handle sometimes, too overwhelming that your brain doesn’t know how to respond to all the pleasure. Your entire body is convulsing, and suddenly, it’s as if a switch as been flipped.

Kylo’s hips drop to a slow grind, a screeching halt of the bruising smacking rough rhythm he had immediately set out with. You’re not sure which drives you over the edge further, the brutal fucking or this, this measured, restrained, even flow. It is almost methodical, almost too perfectly even, and it makes you sob.

You are wordless, fucked dumb by your Supreme Leader’s cock.

You don’t know how long this lasts, how long your orgasm rips through you. The Force keeps it strong, keeps it bright white hot behind your eyelids. Hands are all over you, and you’re not sure which are your husbands and which belong to the universe. Every part of your body is massaged, squeezed, groped, claimed.

Your voice is so high as you shout it out, you have to let it out somehow, or you’re sure you’ll die. Kylo milks it for all it’s worth, forces himself to maintain this slow and steady pace, to both of you practically snarling into each other’s mouths simply because you’re both so far gone.

When he finally comes, the alarms blare.

His release is so strong that it shatters the shields of his ship as it hurtles through time and space, hurtles toward a future of grand opulence and power – a future you will build together. The shields shatter, and the alarm blares, and Kylo looks down at you with a strange mix of fear and bewilderment and pure awe. He’s coming, still coming inside you, his eyes wide open from the shock of just how good it feels.

He gives you this look every time, and every time it fills your entire being with pride, fills you with a warm satisfaction that you can give him this, that you can allow him to feel this way.

He gives you this look every time, as if it’s the first time, as if it’s the only time he’ll ever have; but with this – the power the fleet the force – you know it won’t be, it’s just the beginning.

The beginning of something incredible, something unstoppable. You know this.

You know because unlike the feeling of your hips settling under his as he grinds his pulsing cock into you deeper deeper deeper, something in him is new. Something in him is fresh, is so shocking that the realization hits you both at the same time and has you both splitting into grins so wide it stretches the pearly white skin of his scar.

You know because when he presses his forehead against yours and lets the Force bond open up, lets his mind flow into yours, for the very first time inside his head, the only voice he hears, the only whispers which curl around his skull,

Are yours.  

                                                 ---------------------------

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[spaceiplier]

Black Skies

It was gone.

Sitting on the white bed, Jack stared at his leg. Or, more accurately, lack of leg. The empty space where only days ago there had been a leg. Now it was gone. Cleanly cut just above the knee. A stub, ending where his limb should be. It was wrong. It felt so wrong.

Jack could only stare.

Henrik stood nearby. Waiting for the shock to set it. Waiting for Jack to say something. He’d been standing there since Jack had woken up. His hands carefully holding the holo-board, his eyes watching as Jack took in his surroundings, and took in his new body.

“What happened?” Jack asked, his voice hoarse.

“ANTI got you out of the prison,” Henrik said. “During the escape, however, I believe your leg was crushed. To save you, ANTI pulled you out. It destroyed the leg further, to the point where we could not save it. We had to amputate the leg.”

Jack felt something click in the back of his head. The red lights. The screaming. The taste of blood in his mouth, the bones snapping in his hands, and the vacant stare of the dead. It was all flashes. Just moments of time as ANTI had torn his way through the prison, his laugh more a scream than any expression of vicious joy.

Mark…

Jack looked up at Henrik. “How am I going to walk?”

“Felix is having a leg made for you. Top of the line. There will be phantom pains, but with this new mechanical leg the feelings should be significantly reduced.”

Jack didn’t nod. He didn’t give any sign of understanding. He just stared at the robot. He took in the information. Took it in, and let it sit there. He couldn’t process. It was as if all his emotions had been locked away. Just beyond his fingertips if he tried to reach for them. But he didn’t reach. He just watched.

“Would you like to talk to Felix?” Henrik asked.

“Just leave me alone.”

Henrik nodded, and then he left. The door closed silently behind him, leaving Jack alone in a white room with white thoughts.

.

.

Three Months Later

Sirens wailed far below him. The dull roar of thousands of voices was like muted static over the haze of lights and smog blanketing the streets. Rain fell from the planet next to them, making everything cold and damp. A few floors below him, someone was singing along to some pop song from the inner city. Wildly out of tune, but singing their heart out.

It wasn’t often that Jack came here. Nihill, he came to often. His dealing with Felix, his own side projects, brought him back time and time again. Nihill was like the second home he never wanted. He knew these streets as well as he knew the scales on his hands. Nihill was no stranger to Jack.

No, it was this spot. This shitty little corner of the world where everything faded into the background and it was just him and the chaos below. It sat near the top of one of the many towering skyscrapers on Nihill. An apartment complex. Near the top was a little balcony, tucked away and only big enough for one person. It wasn’t even really a balcony. More a little ledge that overlooked the city.

Jack sat there, one knee propped up to his chest, the other - his mechanical one - hanging over the edge of the ledge. His tail sat on the other side, occasionally twitching as he watched. His scarf hung loosely around his neck, providing little warmth. Shifting, he let one of his arms come to rest on his knee, leaning his head against the wall to his back.

He didn’t come here often.

There was no real reason for coming here. It wasn’t comforting. It wasn’t painful. It was just a dull haze between whatever was going on down in the streets, and whatever was going on with the stars. He wasn’t sad, or angry, or upset. Not anymore. It had been too long. Now he was just numb and tired.

Jack could barely see the stars from here. The smog, coupled with lights from the Floating City left little room for stars to shine. He didn’t miss them. He saw them nearly every day. It was almost comforting to look up and see nothing.

Nothing but black looking back.

His pocket buzzed. Jack tucked a little comm in his ear, accepting the call. “Yeah?”

“Where are you?” It was Robin. He sounded annoyed. “We agreed to meet an hour ago.”

“Oh. Right,” Jack answered. He couldn’t find it in himself to care. Everything was so heavy and tiring. He just wanted to sit here where nobody could find him. He didn’t want to face friends he could never keep. Friends that he could fail, because face it; when had he ever saved anyone. He didn’t want to look into the eyes of someone who believed in him as he failed over and over.

“Jack,” Robin asked, his voice instantly shifted from annoyed to concerned. “Jack, where are you?”

“Nowhere important,” Jack answered. The singing a turned from happy to angry screams as someone burst into the room. Another argument. Another fight. “It doesn’t matter. Can we reschedule? I’ll make it up to you.”

“You’re on Nihill.” It wasn’t a question.

“And?”

“Can’t I be worried about you?”

“Sure. Do whatever you want. I don’t care,” Jack said, his voice flat. He didn’t care. He didn’t care if Robin decided at that moment to throw in the towel and completely give up on him, or if he flew all the way to Nihill and forced him onto his ship.

Jack didn’t care.

Why should he?

It was just one step after another.

Jack could keep walking. He never stopped walking. This entire life was just him walking towards goals he could never complete. It was him walking towards monsters that would only hurt him. There was an end for him, and it was bloody, but for now he could keep walking.

Because he was too much of a coward to do anything else.

Robin sighed, and Jack felt his scales ripple with annoyance. Why couldn’t Robin just be mad at him? He deserved it. He was being an asshole, and he knew it. He had failed, and they both knew it. Why couldn’t Robin just give him what he wanted and scream at him.

“It wasn’t your fault.” Robin said. “You know that, right?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jack said. “Nothing fucking matters anymore. They’re all in prison. Dark is gone. Disappeared off the map. Mark is… Mark is fucking gone. It doesn’t matter, because even though it’s my fault that I was too late it won’t bring him back. It won’t make things right. The GAAP is still unstoppable. I’m still…”

Jack didn’t finish his sentence. He could feel the rage building in the back of his head. After so many months of nothing, feeling anything was overwhelming. A dam cracking, as every feeling he’d ignored for so long pressed at his head.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Robin said, worry in his voice.

“Do you know who you’re talking to?” Jack said, attempting to joke but there was no humor in his voice.

“Stay safe,” Robin said.

The line went dead.

It started raining harder.

Good.

Jack let his head fall to the side. He couldn’t see the horizon. Too many buildings. He could see the planet above them, though. A blue monster that covered Nihill with its shadow. Sceifarr was just a giant, making the moon black. Jack could feel some shitty metaphor in the back of his head, but he just watched the waves crash against each other millions of miles away.

ANTI was nudging at the back of his head. He wanted to take over. He wanted to make Jack safe. Why? He wasn’t going to throw himself off this building. He wasn’t standing at the edge with half a bottle of booze and a note logged to his friends. He was just sitting here, waiting for something to happen.

Jack closed his eyes, letting the black take over his vision.

It was his fault. All his fault.

The dam broke as Jack screwed his eyes shut and screamed into the black sky.

[sparkles-rule-4eva]

OKAY OKAY I'LL JUST KISS MY HEART GOODBYE WITH EVERY NEW UPDATE

I can't

I'm crying so hard I can't

*sniffle* g-great job

Chapter 3: The Worth of One's Word

Neither Sonic nor Tails were responding.

Brows knitting together in a concerned frown, Knuckles set his gaze straight ahead as he glided down from Angel Island. He'd been lucky its current orbit put it about forty minutes out from South Island, the source of Tails's S.O.S. signal. Despite having taken extreme care in designing the function, the kid never used it. And Sonic certainly never did.

"It's just an emergency protocol," Tails had explained in the middle of his tutorial when they'd dropped by unannounced—again—on his island. "This way if anyone tries to attack Angel Island or the Master Emerald, all you have to do is press this button and we'll be routed to your coordinates in a Sonic Second!"

"Do you have to call it that?" Knuckles had sighed while Tails grinned. He'd completely done it on purpose. No one could say that Sonic hadn't raised him. "I can defend my island and the Master Emerald just fine. I've gotten by for years without you two sticking your noses where they don't belong."

"Uh-huh," Sonic drawled from where he'd supposedly been napping atop the gem in question—the liar—eyes still closed even as he smirked. "And how many times has the Master Emerald been stolen or broken on your watch, knucklehead?"

"I will bury you in Sandopolis." Knuckles knocked his own fists together as a warning, but Sonic just cracked open one eye while he stuck his tongue out at him.

Tails sighed, rolling his eyes as he grabbed hold of Knuckles's forearm and tugged, getting him to look back at the device strapped to his wrist. "It's up to your discretion if you want to call for back-up. Otherwise, you can think of it as a way for you to know if we're the ones who need you to bail us out of a situation."

Knuckles continued to frown as he demonstrated the feature, with both his and Sonic's communicators ringing with a high-pitched, dissonant chime. Tails's little fox-faced icon flashed on the screen, then a map with his coordinates appeared while the icon was pinned to his location, even though he was directly in front of Knuckles. Sonic snapped off the alarm with a groan, ignoring the test since he'd likely endured several rounds of it already. But Knuckles waited until Tails deactivated the S.O.S. himself with a four-digit code, so it couldn't accidentally be shut off before reinforcements arrived. 1-0-1-6, Knuckles quietly observed with a snort. The kid's birthday.

"You know you'd be better off if you called practically anyone else for back-up," Knuckles remarked, watching the kit send a message to Amy to see if she'd seen the test transmission on her end, too. "Someone who could get to you more quickly."

"Probably," Tails replied airily, not looking up from his communicator until he was done, then flashed Knuckles a bright smile. "But not just anyone's part of Team Sonic. There's no one we trust more than you to have our backs!"

Tails extended his arm in a punching motion and Knuckles couldn't deny him the fist bump he'd been angling for. Though it was more of a fist graze to keep from accidentally breaking one of the kid's fingers. 

[Continue at AO3]

[anistarrose]

Some Sunny Day - Chapter 10: Happy to Know (Gravity Falls - Same Coin Theory)

Summary: It’ll all out in the open now.

Warnings: Suicidal ideation (no one dies)

Previous / Next

The Beginning (see here for AO3 link)

Just a quick foreword for this chapter and the next one: now that the main cast members are all realizing the truth, they’re going to be expressing some opinions on the situation (interpretations of the theory) that are not necessarily my own, and may not reflect the overall direction this fic is taking. The truth is out, but there’s still a lot that needs to be worked through, so if this chapter feels like a downer, don’t worry — this fic is tagged Hurt/Comfort for a reason that will (eventually) become apparent.

(The Same Coin Theory is by @dubsdeedubs and @renmorris!)

Stanley’s mindscape was changing.

Ford somehow remained blind to it until he tried to stand up, only to fall back down to his hands and knees as the floorboards shuddered and swayed beneath his feet. All around him, walls buckled and planks were torn out of place, rearranging themselves to craft new hallways, new connections between memories.

Hissing geysers erupted from cracks in the floor, the scalding-hot plumes weaving deftly around him as their steam escaped through the holes in the roof. Some of the clouds took longer to drift out of sight, and as they hung lazily in the air, Ford could make out images in them — a rift, a shooting star. A fire, a fist. A statue.

The steam even seemed to seep out of the walls and floor themselves, sapping the darkness from the wood as it grew lighter and lighter, brighter and brighter until it burned Ford’s eyes just to look at. The grain patterns in the planks shifted and flickered like waves of fire, taking on a blue hue as they leapt out of the wood and into the air, chasing away the last wisps of darkness to render Stan’s mind in all white and light gray, accented by the yellow gleam of the knots in the walls as they all shifted to fixate their gaze on Ford, unblinking.

He covered his eyes, but the images stayed seared in his memory.

***

Stanley laughed — a long, hearty laugh that would have brought tears to his eyes and a sore sensation to his gut, had he not been immaterial and invulnerable, free from the oppressive laws of physics as the undisputed master of the mindscape.

Oh, it had been so long — so long since he’d last looked beyond where his cataract-ridden human eyes could see, since he’d last snapped his fingers and rewritten the rules of the universe however he deemed fit, so long since he’d last consciously thought about how ancient and how powerful he was, how much he was truly capable of when he set his mind to it…

He didn’t know whether to call it ten months or sixty-two years, but it had been so long, too long.

So long since he’d last cheated someone out of some precious time in possession of their own body, so long since he’d razed a dimension from the inside out and danced as it went up in flames, so long since he’d —

So long since he’d tortured his former pawn (his future brother) to give up the equation confining his reign of terror to a single town, so long since he’d left it up to chance which child (which nibling) he’d kill in cold blood, to convince Ford that he meant what he said about hurting those kids —

Fuck, fuck, fuck —

More and more memories kept rushing back, some already remembered from a different perspective, but many worse than anything a still-amnesiac-Stanley would have ever dreamed of. Dimensions burnt to the ground, deals struck and puppets claimed, eyes dripping blood and cutlery jabbed into arms —

He had always known on some level, he realized.

(No, not realized. Admitted.)

He had known since the blue flames first flickered up around his fingers that morning, and he had known since he first found the prisms in Ford’s house and been struck by a wave of déjà vu, as long-slumbering memories grew restless in their sleep. He had known since he’d swung back and forth on a rusty swingset on a beach, staring at the six-fingered hands gripping the chains of the other swing, and addressed their owner by a nickname from a prophecy written centuries ago, in a cave two thousand miles away. He’d known ever since the blue fire of the burning mindscape had faded away, and he’d opened two eyes in a hospital in New Jersey, mind blank but not truly empty.

He just couldn’t admit it to himself and stay sane. He didn’t dare risk reawakening the demon that lurked in his memories, bound in place by the flimsy chain that was his newly acquired conscience — but it hadn’t just been about self-preservation, or even the preservation of the rest of the world, had it? He hadn’t been able find the courage to admit it to his family, either, to tell them who he was — and then, even worse, to explain how he’d known and lied about it for so long, for as long as he’d known them. How he’d lied until he couldn’t remember what was a lie and what wasn’t.

And he didn’t know how to tell them that all the lying been futile, in the end, because denial could erase memories but not actions. Not who, not what he was. His very identity as the others saw it — as even he had been foolish enough to see it, for sixty-two years — was nothing more than just another con. Just another fake name.

All belief of being Stanley Pines abandoned, Bill Cipher raised a hand to cover his mouth and screamed.

***

The one remaining column of steam in the room exploded just as Ford pulled himself to his feet, and winds tore across the room, howling in agony but miraculously not knocking him down. On unsteady feet, a figure with disheveled hair but an impeccable suit and tie walked falteringly forwards, away from the site of detonation — and despite himself, Ford stepped towards him.

“Stanley? Are you —”

Stan’s head jerked up, and he stared at Ford like a deer in the headlights. “No! No, don’t come any closer, I —”

His feet lifted off the floor, and waves of pixels and static rippled up his body as he gritted his teeth, form flickering back and forth between human and —

And something Ford couldn’t quite make out, human and —

Human and —

A sickly yellow triangle materialized out of the static, single eye unblinking as thin black limbs dangled limply towards the ground.

“Well,” he said, in the quietest voice Ford had ever heard emanate from Bill Cipher, “you probably see why you shouldn’t come near me.”

Ford’s stomach churned like it had been thrown into perpetual free fall, and his eyes unfocused.

“What did you do to him?!” he howled. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY BROTHER?!”

“Nothing,” Bill said, hands curling into tiny black fists as his appearance flickered and morphed into Stan once again. “I got some bad news, Sixer.”

“Stop pretending to be him!” Ford snarled. “I know you’re really Cipher, so stop — stop making a mockery of him like that! Stop pretending!”

“I have stopped.” The being that took on Stan’s appearance looked genuinely upset, shaking his head slowly and refusing to make eye contact for more than a fraction of a second. “I was — I was pretending for a really long time, but —”

“You’re not making any sense, St—” Ford barely caught himself, and corrected frantically. “No, I mean — fuck. What do you fucking want from me, Bill, that —”

Stan took a shaky breath — the type that often comes when tears are starting to dampen one’s eyes, and they’re trying not to let them creep into their voice. “I really had you convinced, didn’t I?”

He closed his two eyes, after another burst of static, Bill opened his one. “Sixer, I… I was always Stan.”

“What?! No, of all the bullshit — is this some reincarnation angle you’re going for? Because you clearly died long after Stan was —”

“Time doesn’t work like that, Ford! You went rooting through my memories, you saw me invoke the Axolotl — that big frilly know-it-all exists way outside of any backwards and forwards or cause and effect, you must have figured that out by now! I invoked it back when I was burning in my own damn mindscape, when I didn’t actually want to die, and you know what it thought? It thought I was worth saving — oh, and not just saving, but worth shoving me back into your lives like I hadn’t ruined them enough yet!”

“Don’t talk like that about him! Don’t talk like you are him! I won’t fall for your tricks, Cipher, I —”

“I don’t want it to be true either!” Bill wailed, and a fiery blue tear fell from his eye, continuing to roll down his cheek as he turned back into Stan. “You have no idea, I — I want more than anything to to go back to just a couple days ago, to being able to pretend everything is normal and only thinking about spending the summer with you all! But — but it’s not — I can’t pretend anymore! I’m too dangerous to all of you!”

His hoarse voice broke every few words, so full of anguish and so unmistakably Stan. So far beyond anything Bill would ever have the capability to fake.

“There’s — there’s got to be memories getting mixed up in here somehow,” Ford whispered, and though he tried to sound comforting it ended up sounding more like a desperate prayer. “We’ll get this all sorted out, Stanley, don’t worry —”

“You can’t sort out what was never mixed up in the first place!” Bill yelled. “Why won’t you just listen to me, Ford? What about — what if I show you something you remember too?”

The Shack shuddered, planks groaning as they moved to make way for a new door that was dragged out from the hallway by an unseen force. Blue flames ignited around the knob as it twisted open on its own, letting the door swing open to reveal —

Earlier this June, about two weeks ago. Ford shuffled cards as Dipper and Mabel pulled chairs up to a table, and Stan carried in a bowl of fresh popcorn.

“Alright, what are we doin’ for teams?” he asked, setting down the bowl. “Ford and I are obviously unstoppable together, so it’s only fair if we both team up with one of you kiddos…”

“Yeah, ‘cause you both count cards…” Dipper muttered under his breath.

Stan ignored him and folded his hands together, making a point with his index fingers as he gestured between Mabel and Dipper. “Eenie meenie miney… you.”

Dipper flinched as Stan landed on him, staring at his pointed fingers with horror for a moment before taking a few hurried steps backward. “I, uh…”

Stan frowned. “Something wrong?”

“Oh, no,” Mabel murmured. “It’s a Bill thing, isn’t it, Dipper?”

Dipper started to shake his head, but then sighed and pulled down his hat. “Yeah. He… he said that to me a couple times, and now I just…”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Stan said. “Tell me right away if I ever use a bad phrase like that again, okay?”

Dipper nodded, and Ford put a hand on his shoulder. To Stan, he whispered: “I think I remember hearing Bill use that phrase once, but… aside from that, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it from anyone but you. Did he — did he steal your catchphrase?”

Stan shrugged. “I dunno, but I hope he didn’t steal anything else. Dipper — or any of you, actually — are there any other words you guys want me to avoid?”

The other three Pines shook their heads, and Stan smiled, passing the bowl of popcorn in Dipper’s direction. “Well then, let’s play some euchre before the popcorn gets cold. I got fancy with this batch and made it on the stove, ya know.”

The door to the memory slammed shut, and Ford bit his lip. His hands were trembling at his sides, fingers curled so tightly that they ached like hell, and he couldn’t bear to look down at them in fear he might find them bleeding.

“Coincidence,” he choked out. “It has to be.”

“What will make you believe it, Sixer?” Stan asked. “Fuck, even that nickname should clue you in! Did you ever think it was weird that the two of us both called you Sixer, and just the two of us?”

“Bill must have stolen it from you. Like he stole —”

“That nickname came from the zodiac and you know it! I know you know it, so why can’t you just — just — just look at yourself, Stanford!”

The air shimmered between them, forming a surface so pristine and perfectly reflective that Ford almost thought he was still looking at his twin, view unobstructed — but Stan had been silhouetted in blue flames just a moment ago, while Ford’s reflection was awash with darkness. Clouds circled him slowly, not a single spark of lightning seen in the air between them, and they blurred together with his trenchcoat as it flowed in the gentle wind, disintegrating into tiny gray droplets at the hem. Dark paths traced from the corners of his eyes down his cheeks, running off his chin and down his neck towards his sweater, where they bled into the wool and stained it black.

And the hands, unmistakably six-fingered and undeniably his own, were dripping dark liquid too — not the blood he thought he’d felt, but relentless cascades of black, feeding rivers that hissed and steamed as they ran across the floor’s glowing planks.

“Don’t you see? You’re drawing all the darkness left in my mind towards you because you’re the one in the deepest denial now — but trust me, Ford, it’s not gonna last forever. Something’s gonna snap you out of it sooner or later, so it — it might as well be now. Just accept that I’m not who you thought I was.”

“Fuck,” Ford whispered. “Stanley, you — you’re — you really —”

Stan rose above the mirror, still cloaked in flames as his body convulsed into the form of Bill once more.

“You said no one is allowed to say Stanley is worthless, but guess what? ‘Stanley’ isn’t real. He was just another lie, invented by an amnesiac dream demon who almost managed to convince even himself that he deserved to have a family.”

His voice broke again, but he looked at Ford in the eye as he continued:

“Face it, Sixer — you never had a twin.”

“No!” The dark clouds and blue fire both blew back from Ford as he yelled, voice echoing in his own ears like a grenade going off. “Reincarnation is one thing, but — but there are some things that I’ll never — that can’t —”

He lunged at (Stan? Bill? His brother? He didn’t know) but his hands and then arms passed harmlessly through the triangle, flickering and fading to white — and then Bill’s body turned transparent too, seeming to almost catch him off guard.

“Oh,” he whispered, and transformed back to a faint, quickly fading outline of Stan. “Guess it’s time. See you on the other side, Sixer.”

And then Ford couldn’t see anything anymore, but he could hear a high, echoing voice call out once again as if from far away:

Remember, a deal’s a deal.

***

“Alright, that should be it for the barrier,” Fiddleford announced as he stood up from his kneeling position and watched a glowing blue dome briefly flicker into existence around the sleeping Pines. “Remind me not to leave these mercury vials here on the floor after this has all blown over.”

“How will we know if it works?” Melody asked.

“Great question! I have no idea, an’ hopefully we’ll never hafta find out.”

“Real reassuring,” Wendy muttered under her breath. “Hey, how long do you think it’ll be before —”

Ford leapt bolt upright and tossed the pillow he’d been clutching halfway across the room. “Bill, what do you —”

He locked eyes with Fiddleford. “Fidds? Oh no, Stanley, where’s Stanley —”

He whirled around and saw Soos and the kids beginning to stir, but only Stan opened his eyes — regular and brown, no sign of possession to be found.

“Shoot me, Ford,” he whispered.

Ford froze. “No!! Why would you think I would ever do that?!”

Slowly, as if still feeling the effects of the sedative, Stan pulled himself out of his chair. “Because you promised?”

“When did I ever promise I would shoot you?”

Stan shook his head and sighed, nervously glancing at the kids and Soos and taking a few quick steps away from them while they opened their eyes and rubbed their ears. “Look, Ford, I know it’s been… a long day, but you’ve gotta remember. You promised you’d kill me if Bill took control, and I’m feeling — I’m feeling pretty in-control of myself right now, so —”

“What?” Soos jumped to his feet and grabbed ahold of Stan’s arm. “Mr. Pines, what are you saying? You can’t — you can’t leave us, you’re —”

Stan tore himself out of Soos’s grip and rushed to Ford’s side. “Just get it over with! Please!”

He ran both hands over his skull, yanking on fistfuls of his own hair. “You have to, before I end up hurting someone! Please, I — I — I fuckin’ killed you enough times in Weirdmageddon, I deserve this! Don’t you want to get revenge on me?! Don’t you want to protect your family?!”

“You what?! Grunkle Stan, what do you mean?!” Mabel grabbed ahold Ford’s trenchcoat, voice rising as she clasped handfuls of the brown fabric in trembling, balled-up fists. “What does he mean?!”

“Don’t say that, Stanley,” Ford breathed. “For the kids’ sake, I can’t —”

Stan’s gaze drifted towards a spot the floor a few feet away, fixating on a pale blue chunk of moonstone. He’d noticed the barrier, Ford realized a second too late.

“Fine,” Stan whispered as he stepped backwards. “Then I guess I’ll just have to… take care of it myself.”

“No! Don’t go! Don’t you dare leave us like —”

Ford lunged after him, but Stan backed out of the barrier too quickly, and Ford’s hand passed right through Stan’s shoulder as he disintegrated like smoke in a gust of wind. A single tear fell from where Stan’s face had just been, striking the floor without a sound.

“Grunkle Ford, what happened?” Dipper’s voice cracked. “We found Bill’s memories, and then he — Bill glitched out, and it felt like the whole mindscape was gonna get torn apart —”

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Ford said. “I — I don’t know what to believe.”

“Stan’s not — that wasn’t Bill just now, was it?”

“I don’t know.”

Dipper went silent, leaving the quiet sobs from behind him as the loudest sound remaining in the room.

“He’s really gone,” Soos wept. “After everything, he’s just — he’s just gone —”

Ford took a few steps backward and slowly laid an arm over Soos’s broad shoulders, eyes still fixed on the damp spot where Stan’s tear had struck the floor.

“He’s still out there somewhere,” he insisted, “he has to be. I would know if he wasn’t. I’m sure I would.”

He wasn’t sure. That — that entity, with Stan’s eyes and Bill’s memories, almost certainly had the power to destroy its own self in an instant, and Ford had no reason to believe that it hadn’t just done so. (It might not even matter, if Stan wasn’t even in there anymore. Or if he’d never been in there in the first place —)

But baseless hope had pulled through for Ford countless times before, and once again, it was all he had to go on now.

“Stanley is still out there,” he repeated, “and we need to find him.”

***

End notes:

I chose Ford’s POV for this chapter because it made certain scenes a lot more horrifying/impactful, especially the part with the mirror, but I realized while editing that the result is a bit of a trade-off in which Stan’s motivations become a little less clear, so I’d like to clarify: the reason Stan doesn’t immediately leave the new unicorn hair barrier is because he doesn’t trust himself to end his own life, and in fact doesn’t really trust anyone besides Ford to do so. It’s only when Ford shows he’s clearly not willing to cooperate that Stan leaves, realizing that taking it into his own hands is the best option he has left. (Also, as much as he’s convinced he has to die… it’s still terrifying to him, and he doesn’t want to leave the world all alone. It’s not his main motivation for his actions at the end, but it definitely plays a role.)

Anyways, feedback/reblogs are appreciated as always! Next update should stick to the every other Monday schedule that I’ve been attempting!

[traditional-with-a-twist]

viii. Beauty and Her Beast

@bubblesthemonsterartist “the highly disapproving facial expressions” - HA this is the most perfect phrase to describe how Kiki deals with problems

@claudeng80 love your speculations about what becomes of Mitsuhide--it’s true that Rain, Sun, and Snow doesn’t answer the all-important question “how?!” (where would be the suspense then XD), and I am really excited to share that journey with you... there are so many little scenes and interactions lined up that I have been dying to publish since 2016!

<<Previous || masterpost || AO3 || Next>>

Parallel scene: The Lost Prince from the main arc of The Beast with the Beautiful Face.

To make ready for attending a royal funeral, Obi dresses in his old greens. 

Black would have suited the occasion, but green is better for blending in with the leaves and rendering himself invisible to the archers, knights, and bird handlers ringing the gravesite.

The bandit clothes fit him perfectly. The boots slip on like gloves, and the hat hugs his head like a second skin--but it is an old skin, like shrugging back into something that he shed long ago.

He hasn’t worn it since Zen gave him a new job, a new life, a new self.

...

Once upon a time, Obi was a drifter, a leaf on the wind, a blade for hire.

Zen changed all that. He, and the people he surrounded himself with, turned Obi’s leash into roots. They offered him more than food to fill his belly and a place to shelter him from the rain.

They offered him a home.

...

He hardly recognized the place anymore. With Zen gone, a paralysis has gripped the castle--everyone and everything was colorless and stiff, caught in its thrall.

There is no wailing, no public outpouring of sadness. The people face their rulers in silence.

The first prince is foremost, upright and brilliantly attired, like a fork of lighting in mid-strike.

Kiki is there with her crooked arm hidden beneath a triangle of dark velvet. It drapes over her shoulder with as much elegance as if the uniform were designed that way, a persuasive deception.

Beside her is that insufferable old man, Lord Haruka, his face drawn into a tight mask that strangles emotion in its cradle.

Mitsuhide is a pallbearer. He arrives in mute lockstep, lowers the coffin to its pedestal, then waits immobile beside it.

Only the artificial beauty arranged in intricate patterns offers any relief to the tension: flowers wound with ribbons, white sand softening the cobblestones, dresses and coats dripping with coins and tassels, and the jewel-blue feathers of the messenger bird corps, all arrayed in preparation.

...

It is rich with symbolism and custom, no doubt, but none of it meant anything to Obi.

He wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t risk coming so close to armed guards and Izana’s all-seeing eye, except that this is his chance to say good-bye.

He has one last duty to perform on Zen’s behalf.

It is an act of homage, a sign of respect among those who practice in his line of work. He owes it to his master.

...

In the meantime, the ceremony drags on. He can’t follow much of the complicated gestures or stilted language; he is restless, tells himself that he is bored.

Boredom is in fact his only refuge, because otherwise he would be transfixed with longing for Shirayuki.

The longing plagues him anyway, like a deep muscle ache that seems to disappear only to reassert itself with a resounding throb that can’t be ignored, or like a static electricity that ripples his blood, just under the surface of his skin.

It directs his eyes to her, over and over again, in spite of his best intentions.

Masked, overwhelmed, withdrawn, even so she draws attention. Obi’s eyes are not the only ones that lose sight of the ceremony’s focal point and slide towards her instead.

Strangers see her red hair; the ambitious see her as a threat. Her friends see her pain.

Obi sees the woman he loves.

…

She presents a very different picture from the unstoppable, electrifying force that he first confronted from a tree branch not too distant from here.

Then she was running towards her destiny, contemptuous of deadly shafts thrown her way. Now she huddles among the elite, shrouded in white at the first prince’s side.

Still the veils are not enough to stifle her presence.

A fighting spirit burns inside her, indestructible courage packaged in incredible fragility. Somehow her purity of mind clears what it comes in contact with, instead of being tainted.

He has never known anyone like her: fearless yet delicate; strong yet unsullied by the world.

The very sight of her is pain to him because it reminds him that there is space between them; they are parted.

She makes him ache.

...

As the sun sets, the trained corps of messenger bird handlers release their charges. The flock soars over the crowd, their brilliant feathers gleaming gold in the dying light.

They are Zen’s legacy, one of the few lasting visible signs that he existed, he acted, he loved his people and wielded his power well.

Shirayuki raises her head to watch them pass.

For a moment, it is as if she looks directly at Obi. He knows it’s an illusion, because she couldn’t have made him out from his perch in the shadows, but for that moment, her eyes are open windows.

Her soul speaks to his.

It is a wordless cry, an appeal that he cannot, could not, has never been able to ignore.

He swears to himself then that he will honor his promise to her, that he will go back to her and make things right, apologize for what he allowed to pass between them.

...

Shirayuki is not thinking of everyone she has lost and will continue to lose.

It is easier to turn her eyes away than to think of them, even though Mitsuhide is right there, on the threshold of departing from her, bowing to shoulder again the stone weight destined for the earth.

She doesn’t think about the box he gave her or the box he is carrying now, or what either of them mean. She thinks only of the job she must do.

At Lord Haruka’s nod, she takes one step then another, one at a time, one foot before the other.

She grips a heavy iron key, clutching it tight enough to bite into her skin, determined not to let it fall.

A door rises up before her: It is carved with a crest of petals like broken stars.

The key fits the lock. She turns it.

...

Obi slips his identification tag from his belt. He hasn’t worn it since the day he left Wistal; it has been waiting, coiled and ready, in a snug pocket.

Sliding off his glove, he lays the string across his bare palm. The pendant dangles, its inscription rendered invisible by the gathering darkness.

A flick of his wrist, and a leaf blade balances between finger and thumb. His face is blank, even relaxed, as he waits.

As Zen’s casket overtakes Shirayuki and vanishes into the mouth of the Wisteria family tomb, Obi passes the blade across his open hand.

It cuts deep enough to sever the string--and his skin.

Like the flash of metal in the firelight of a hundred raised torches, the pain stings then quickly deadens. With time, it will fade into a silver thread, a reminder and a tribute.

...

There is a cost for carrying this memory with him for the rest of his life. It is one more line for his collection, but it is also a sacrifice, a small concession of the safety found in obscurity.

A distinguishing marker, no matter how slight, presents a risk, another challenge to overcome in a life of secrets and stealth.

The scar is a vulnerability, willingly assumed.

It is the greatest honor someone like Obi can pay a master like Zen: voluntarily marking himself so that their contract will never be forgotten.

...

“Farewell, master,” he whispers.

Red runs across his palm, branding him, sealing him, loosing him. His service is at an end.

The second prince's messenger is no more.

[eirianerisdar]

if you're talking crazy AUs...............what if thanos wiping out half the universe affected the star wars galaxy

ANON. YES.

This is set in the later period of The Clone Wars, right before what would have been the last events of season 5 of TCW. (I’m sorry I know this wasn’t the first prompt I got but I NEED to write this)

Also um…warning? Much character death? This is a lot darker than anything I’ve ever written. There’s always hope in the end, though! Oneshot, gen.

Not This Crude Matter

Luminous beings are we; not this crude matter.

Obi-Wan was the first to sense it.

In hindsight, it seemed only natural that he should be the only one to see it coming; in his childhood he dreamt of twin suns, and in his youth of a green lance of fire that shattered a blue-white sphere into nothing; and should the Unifying Force have continued, and time sped on uninterrupted, then he would have seen both these things for himself.

But it was coming, a rending of space-time and the Force itself, screaming, writhing, and wrong.

Obi-Wan’s voice broke off mid-order as he froze, gauntleted arm extended.

“Obi-Wan?” Anakin shouted over the rain of blaster-fire, the scream of his lightsaber suddenly overwhelming and close in the loss of Obi-Wan’s; Ahsoka’s voice behind them was lost in the thud of plasma cannons

Across the field, at the head of the advancing columns of the Separatist forces, Dooku fell still, crimson lightsaber chambered at his side.

A plasma bolt passed so close to Obi-Wan’s face that he did not hear so much as feel its searing hiss; Anakin’s shout as he leapt to defend him seemed to come from a far-off place, discordant and skewed in a cataclysmic wave that reared as it struck.

The blaster-fire stopped.

No, that was the wrong word for it; it did not stop so much as sweep into a crescendo with the oncoming storm-front, frozen forever in a scream so high-pitched and so desperate that it took Obi-Wan a long, sweat-chilled moment to understand it was the Force that was screaming.

Screaming, as the Living Force was rent apart and the Unifying erased in one inescapable, perfect storm.

On the field around him, half of the 501st and the 212th were dropped their blasters in a clattering cacophony of metal meeting rock.

Because their hands were no longer there.

And then there was a secondary rain of lightweight durasteel and plastoid alloy as the other half dropped their own DC-15s and ripped off their buckets, flinging out pleading hands only to plunge them through disintegrating chests and arms and necks, one after another until the field was filled with wailing, guttural howls.

And then they, too, started to melt away.

Above and around and within them was the ever-present and ever-building sigh of rustling, windblown leaves.

Dust, leaves, and ashes.

Obi-Wan stood frozen as the entire field of men - an ocean of candles in the Living Force - were snuffed out as cruelly and as finally as a breath from the belly of Death itself.

Cody slipped into the Force somewhere amongst his men, before Obi-Wan could even begin to reach.

Throughout it all, the Separatist forces stood silent and unmoving and as dead as the durasteel that made up its assault tanks and droids and heavy blasters.

Before them, Dooku raised his hand and watched as it dissolved into black sand, and that sand into nothing. He did not speak, but instead lifted his chin and gazed across the field at his grandpadawan; a stare that somehow bridged the scars of their lineage and the opposing sides of the war they found themselves in.

The Force flung itself across no-man’s land and the field of dying men between them; Obi-Wan inhaled sharply, tasted dust on his tongue as his grand-master’s Force-signature flickered and latched onto his mindscape.

Dooku did not speak. There was no time to do so.

There was only a strange sort of fondness echoing in the smile of a brown-haired padawan and a steady-handed master, one and the same in their shared memory.

Obi-Wan closed his eyes as Dooku’s regret washed over him, another breaker in a tide that kept rising.

“Qui-Gon always spoke very highly of you,” Dooku had once said to him in that dark holding cell on Geonosis. “I wish he were still alive. I could use his help right now.”

Obi-Wan had thought, then, that they were only the silken, twisting words of a Lost Jedi who had chosen the wrong side of a war.

He knew they were not, now.

Dooku’s lightsaber extinguished as it thudded to the ground, but what sound it made was lost in the cries of the dying and the living.

And then, somewhere behind Obi-Wan, Ahsoka screamed.

Obi-Wan whirled in place.

“Rex!” Anakin shouted, leaping forward.

Rex was on his knees, and the expression on his face was one of such young bewilderment that for that one instant before he dissolved into nothing he looked all of his twelve short years, a child soldier uncomprehending of his death.

Ahsoka flung her arms around him, and embraced only dust.

Anakin was frozen an arm’s length from her, his own gloved hand filled with a handful of grey that bled into nothing in the wind when he opened his fist.

Obi-Wan stood as a shadow and a spectre, and could only watch in numb horror.

And then-

And then.

“Obi-Wan,” Anakin murmured, faintly. His boots were blurring at the edges, as were his gloved fingers. As though an artist were watering down his outline, about to wash him from the picture, erased as though he never existed.

No.

No.

Obi-Wan’s feet moved before he was aware of it. He caught Anakin around his shoulders before he could fall, allowed the Force to pour into his former padawan’s - his brother’s - fading form. In that moment, he wished to be nothing; a window so clear and transparent that the Force could wield him as it wished, and that he would be nothing at all.

The slow fading away of Anakin’s form slowed, though it crept onward nevertheless, insidious, devastating, unstoppable.

Anakin - the furnace that never stopped burning, the hero with no fear who used to crawl into Obi-Wan’s sleeping pallet as a child when the nightmares came - gasped in a breath in Obi-Wan’s arms, raised wide eyes to meet his, and whispered, “Padmé. Comm.”

It took a precious moment for Obi-Wan to understand the significance of the statement, and he found understanding in Ahsoka’s gaze, too, knelt as she was with one hand on Anakin’s shoulder.

Obi-Wan nodded, and Anakin’s lips curved in the smallest of smiles.

Ahsoka scrabbled for Anakin’s comm, flicked it open, and pressed in a code as Obi-Wan held Anakin tighter.

Anakin shivered in his arms.

For a terrifying few seconds it seemed as though the comm channel would not open; but then in a burst of subspace static, it held.

“Anakin! I’m so glad you’re alright, the Chancellor and so many others have-”

At Padme’s voice, Anakin’s expression changed into one of such gentleness that Obi-Wan almost looked away - it was too private a moment.

“I love you,” Anakin said, breath hitching. The dust had crept up to his elbows and past his knees, now. “I love you so much.”

A pause.

“No,” Padmé said, so strongly that Obi-Wan almost believed it would stop the slow progression of death up Anakin’s limbs. This was the former queen, the Senator who should have been Chancellor.

“I love you,” Anakin repeated, no more than a susurration of air.

Padme’s voice was degenerating into sobs, now. “Don’t do this, please,” she gabbled. “Don’t- I need you here. We need you here.”

Obi-Wan inhaled sharply. Ahsoka clapped both her hands over her mouth.

Anakin’s eyes had begun to slip shut, but he seemed to force them open with the last dregs of his strength. “What?” he whispered.

“I’m pregnant, Ani. Five weeks.”

For a moment, Anakin’s face was frozen.

Then joy spread across it in a burst of starlit incandescence.

“I’m so happy,” he said, his smile wider than the sky, even as his body flickered. His eyes raised up to Obi-Wan’s - and there was such pure joy in them that Obi-Wan felt ashamed for the tears that spilled over his own.

“I’m so happy, Padme,” Anakin murmured, closing his eyes.

The Force let Anakin Skywalker go.

Obi-Wan looked down at the dust in his hands, and felt the first of his tears drip past his beard; saw it splash in a darker black against the grey. The Force was no longer speaking to him; he felt nothing. Heard nothing. Saw nothing.

Ahsoka pressed both her hands into the ground as tears slid down her cheeks.

There was something incredibly wrong about the fact that it was Ahsoka who was weeping; Ahsoka, Anakin’s brave, brave padawan, hewn of steel and verve and sass and power.

And when she was vulnerable, she was quietly strong, and enduring, and kind.

Not this. Never this.

And then her fingers, too, began to fade, melting into the hard-packed dirt.

Ahsoka stopped crying very abruptly, staring down at them.

Obi-Wan scrambled towards her.

Ahsoka looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes and said, very quietly, “It’s okay, Master Kenobi.”

The dust was at her shoulders and hips, now.

What was left of Obi-Wan Kenobi broke.

“Take me,” he screamed, though he knew it was not the Force that he screamed to, but death itself. “Take me instead-”

Death did not. Death never did; not Obi-Wan Kenobi, the steward and the watcher.

Ahsoka tumbled into nothing, and Obi-Wan knelt there, a single, brown-hooded figure in a field of dust and fallen leaves, waiting for his own end to come.

It didn’t.

Obi-Wan buried his face in his hands and howled.

By his right knee, Padmé’s sobs echoed out of Anakin’s comm. Together they made a cruel duet; and then abruptly, the channel cut off.

Silence, save for the wind and the creaking of the Separatist forces, frozen forever with their blasters trained on the single Jedi left before them.

The Force, broken as it was, curled around Obi-Wan’s shoulders.

Through it Obi-Wan saw things he did not understand.

A purple-skinned arm, and a gold gauntlet set with six glowing stones. Another world, so many light-years away that Obi-Wan trembled at the distance and weight of the years.

Even now the Force wanted something of him.

“What do you want of me?” he whispered to the Force. “I cannot go there.”

A huff of hot breath over his head.

Obi-Wan’s heart leapt into his throat as he turned his head.

A white-haired wolf bared sharp teeth down at him in a feral grin. Then it turned and offered him his back.

An inkling of legend curled in Obi-Wan’s mind, of Loth-wolves and ancient Temples, before the Order called themselves Jedi.

Oh.

The Force buoyed up under Obi-Wan’s nerveless feet, guided his hand to pick up Anakin’s comm and tuck it into his belt, and gave him strength he did not know he had to climb up on the Loth-wolf’s back.

It was warm and steady and alive, and as the wolf began loping away from the battlefield, the world blurred into another and the Force began to sing.

Perhaps the Force was leading Obi-Wan to a new war; perhaps the galaxy he knew and the Republic he served would never be the same again. But there is a lightsaber in his hand, and the Force, broken though it was, was humming in his veins.

They ran on, luminous.

END

Um. Don’t kill me? I can’t make this into a multi-chapter crossover, but this sort of spun out of control and let’s just take it that Obi-Wan went over to the MCU and gave Thanos a good pounding.

Also, whatever happens in the follow-up to Infinity War applies to the people who died here, so I’m sure Anakin, Ahsoka and the rest are ok. Spidey’s got to come back after all, right?

I’ve cross-posted this to FFN! And I promise if you’re a new reader that I write much brighter things than this. For those interested, I’ve written an Infinity War fic from Loki’s perspective, Five Choices.

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[k-reviews]

2018 IN REVIEW: ALBUMS/EPS

The time has come for us to have a look back on the 2018′s most memorable and impressive albums and EPs. As per usual, it was not possible to listen and to and review every album which dropped this year however conscious effort was made throughout the year to listen to as many as possible and to review them whenever time permitted. Following last year’s format, this list will outline a top list of 10 albums/EPs released this year. The placement of the entries are based on a mix of review scores/critical opinion and my own personal enjoyment and preferences. One entry per artist was permitted. 

In case you missed the 2018 Top 15 Singles roundup you can catch that here.

2017 - Singles

2017 - Albums

10. LOONA - [++]

Taking their sweet time before finally uniting, the payoff was mostly worth it; resulting in a tight 6 track EP filled with bubbly ideas that are expressed through its charming production and glistening performances. LOONA demonstrated a commendable degree of versatility in the sounds they approached on ‘[++]’, from the frenetically sweet title track ‘Hi High’ to the soaring ‘Heat’ and the hard hitting impact of pre-release banger ‘Favorite’, LOONA lay down foundations that paint a bright future for the group. [Full Review] 

Recommended Track: Perfect Love

9. Giriboy - Science Fiction Music

Wasting no time after dropping his most accomplished project yet in last year’s ‘Graduation’, Giriboy stayed busy in 2018 with a myriad of collaborations, singles and a winning stint as a producer on SMTM. ‘Science Fiction Music’ is yet another excellent record, filled to the brim with razor sharp production that bleeds with vibrancy, depth and creativity. Giriboy’s performances remain energetic as ever, working in rapping and singing seamlessly. The guests he brings on the record also shine in their own regard. Giriboy continues to elevate himself above his contemporaries as one of Korea’s most engaging MCs. 

Recommended Track: Acrnm (feat. Goretexx)

8. Dreamcatcher - Nightmare: Escape The Era

The rocking girls of Dreamcatcher bring their defining sound to a climax with ‘Escape The Era’, a mostly familiar, but undeniably confident and impactful EP. ‘You And I’ presents gorgeous, open verses with timid, yet emotional vocal melodies that ascend to an explosive chorus. The production across the board has the right amount of polish balanced with just enough grit to give the EP a tangible edge and palpable energy. Flexing effortless vocal performances that work in gorgeous unity with the production, ‘Escape The Era’ is peak Dreamcatcher. [Full Review]

Recommended Track: Mayday

7. EXO - Don’t Mess Up My Tempo

Coming through with arguably their best record since ‘Exodus’, even topping that perhaps is EXO’s ‘Don’t Mess Up My Tempo’. EXO once again demonstrate superb vocal performances whether it be in the bravado that carries the electric nature of lead single ‘Tempo’, or the emotive prowess they bring on the sensual ‘24/7′ and airy ‘With You’. The production is more modest, but infinitely rich throughout - ‘Gravity’ being the shining star in this field. ‘Don’t Mess Up My Tempo’ is a very focused effort that plays within very defined sonic borders without ever feeling static, instead its tracklist courses swimmingly. [Full Review]

Recommended Track: Gravity

6. BoA - Woman

Seemingly each year, there is just one phenomenal straight-up no twist and turns pop record that sets out to do one thing; make great pop and do so with flying colors. BoA does exactly that with ‘Woman’, her ninth and best album to date. Boasting abundantly colorful production in tracks like the fierce title track and the springing ‘Little More’, the record maximizes what’s fun in the current pop landscape while cutting the fat so that it’s just back to back joyrides. The glittery production aside, ‘Woman’ would not be what it is without the charisma that BoA carries herself with in all of her performances throughout. 

Recommended Track: Little More

5. Jonghyun - Poet | Artist

Jonghyun of SHINee’s posthumous album, ‘Poet | Artist’ is a record that incites a myriad of emotions. It brings childish joy in ‘Shinin’ and infectious confidence in ‘Sightseeing’ all leading to the record’s closer ‘Before Our Spring’ which is nothing short of beautiful in its honesty and longing. As always, Jonghyun’s vocal flexibility, and sheer force illuminates the album’s broadly toned production. It can be a confronting listen, but what Jonghyun put together on his final album is ensures that he will be remembered not only for his stature as a successful idol, but as a compelling musician with a kind heart and a sharp ear. 

Recommended Track: Take The Dive

4. Simon Dominic - Darkroom: Roommates Only

Finally following up his debut solo project in 2011, Simon Dominic presents the grim and intoxicating ‘Darkroom: Roommates Only’. Despite its heavy tone, it feels like a cathartic listen as Simon D candidly invites the listener into a dark state of mind that is muddied with anxiety, depression and uncertainty. He evokes moods through his masterful writing; blunt and grounded at times, and others he immerses us in his engaging storytelling, often supplemented by haunting performances that hold onto listeners with a suffocating grip. Sonically, Simon D’s harrowing rapping and singing is over very moody, atmospheric production that intertwine with his performances perfectly. 

Recommended Track: Demolition Man (feat. Kim Jong Seo)

3. Younha - Rescue

Also making an anticipated return in 2018 was Younha with her fifth full length album, ‘Rescue’. ‘Rescue’ has Younha continuing to show her versatility and adaptability as a singer-songwriter as she approaches this record with a subtle, but atmospheric pop flare. The record is still nicely stocked with dreamy ballads that drown listeners in her luscious and crystalline vocal displays like on the opener. Brighter moments on the record truly sparkle, ‘Feel’ is one of the year’s most uplifting tunes that pulses with joy. Younha successfully unites her signature sound with some of the sounds of today, and none of it feels contrived at all. ‘Rescue’ stands proudly and comparable to her best works such as 2012′s ‘Supersonic’. 

Recommended Track: Feel (feat. Chancellor)

2. DAY6 - Shoot Me: Youth Part 1

From the commencement of their EveryDay6 project in 2017, DAY6 have been an unstoppable force and they keep up their momentum with ‘Shoot Me: Youth Part 1′ in 2018. Headed by a fiercely bold lead single of the same name, the record is essentially the foundations laid down in 2017′s ‘Sunrise’ milked to their absolute potential in a compact EP format. The songwriting is incredibly tight and engaging, the performances from the boys both instrumentally and vocally are consistently thrilling and the production is supplemented by nicely toned and textured arrangements. DAY6 hits hard and fast with tracks like ‘Warning’, while also throwing curveballs like ‘Talking To’ in the mix. Whatever you want to label DAY6 as; idol group, idol band, pop rock band, pop punk band - there’s simply no other act doing what they’re doing at this very moment. [Full Review]

Recommended Track: Shoot Me

1. Paloalto & Justhis - 4 The Youth

Uniting two of South Korea’s most technically skilled MCs from two different generations of hip-hop, ‘4 The Youth’ presents a strong case to be one for the history books when it comes to hip-hop records. Paloalto’s demonstrates an effortless mastery in adapting beat to beat with his inhumanly smooth flows which glide over instrumentals with a sense of authority and concurrent airiness. On the other hand, Justhis brings a frenetic energy on his hyper-articulate and precise performances that cut through beats like glass. The duo come together on gorgeous and serene beats like the Groovyroom produced ‘Seoul Romance’ and the cold ‘Brown Eyes Views’ with sensitivity and inspiration. Harder hitting songs like ‘Zombies’ and ‘Cooler Than Cool’ is where our MCs let loose on their flows, with back to back highlight verses filled with cut-throat flows and an unparalleled command of attention between the two. The 22 track, 70 minute runtime could’ve divulged into a chore but thanks to tasteful beat selection and the raw talent of Paloalto and Justhis, ‘4 The Youth’ is a monumental hip-hop record, and the most outstanding record of 2018 overall. [Full Review]

Recommended Track: Switch, No Reason, Zombies

[marcosoropoet]

Pavlovian Tingle-Railway [Station Blackout] ~ (or express razor eye out Mr. Tingle)

1. Kloud killer chiller kulture canyon snake basement forge tight street corner deal forced ink steel night deal danger: Nawnawnawman. mah bruh? ten dollahs on a hundid?! Heh, I knows you's tryin tah pop it right by keeping it tight homie but this muthahfuckin-assed bullshit yo ...The Fuck Outta Here dawg thas some sorry assed real bullshit you tryin' tah pull homie home re-union haze of teenage (((flashback glitch))) in his head left a hilarious grease spot on the blackboard & chemical vandals sizzling in his brain. the green dusty blackboard in a delicately crystalline formulaic tableau of wood and numbers the vicissitudes of black snow the color of darkened ash has hushed all the talk, as he walks in tonight... menacing heights of fire escape drills, getting a dart in the back slo-mo, someone had poured soda into the ketchup bottle and now small torrents of bubbling red oozes & blooms out over the entire table ahhh! the other man makes slight adjustments to his demeanor to be less 'street' and more 'invited' why it's his reunion. flinch. ruination anguish]...dark train car rumbling out of a long dank tunnel why'd I think to see those people (((again))) — all the dark mirrors burn each morning with the sun coming up got the snake eye fingernail pie & the sway all day boo" swooning dust and pitter-patter rain falling on the wood and concrete burst open telephone call in a very clean & empty conference room all cool grey, and smoked glass ultra post-modern a tart aroma permeated throughout the heated glass sun, spun glass sun, glass skin, black tea, your loose spacetime textile, hunched machinations launched the sniper river: filled with humid headrush & slowed down lunge... bell strikes upon time textile carousal corral I'll crack tea soon, planet zone houseout your concrete vibrations played earth, I joke but I don't play hot black grit is dense milky frozen afterflow stillness flight from disorientation crush inside hothouse of humid bright light vivid green curling leaves, frozen stillness of isolated thought timestamp molecules pierce loose clean shimmers sheerly, behind a crystal sky lattice tethering, examine gravel and glass stars, vivid flowers spying are bright: sand pebbles, sun, glimmers sheerly, behind the headlong tangible surfaces, singing head, the pristine universe: filled with air, swooning belts of galaxies, silence of people spin roar and black grit is white black snow of ash razor spin cycle of blood...eyes...ears...horror. between brass skin, into an unspeaking, unexpected whole city falling, hears what time. namedrop sibelius, but no good. I had gone over to piss on a clean slab. city heavy the day fragmented air, swooning body between my fingers, from rooves near edges elbowing real business of people television sidewalk morning show trauma. 2. uncanny sharp terror reflection of purple surfaces, doing my heavy whole city hears white noise and through a candlelit's merriment chili & hot black onyx coffee deems me grass sun, glass stars, glass skin, blank memory shimmers in hems, a blown out window, gusts of icy air, was I walking in circles that day? Yes. (outtake 15: "you wanna do the purple surface deflection again, or the blank noise, or the tinsel applause rose confetti trick...) suspicious mirrors coalition carry long fingers of light, floodlight: store window glass stars, glass sun, glass sunlit coppery direction, spacetimes. sand. cut granules. increments of ideals. my song. black tea, your loose diamond-snake in hemisphere air expanded the sense of screams of the bitten who had become crazed and dethroned. Off with him. OFF. smoothing body dry at the woods' lake edge. the sense of elbowing heavy thunderstore window glass sunlit coppery direction, spacetime textile, caricature. it is what time textile, hunched...( ). every roof dots the night. bells of mirrors repeating swirling sense-blur of heady fruity honeysuckle, hot blue flowers were to go to headlong silvergold touch flame of snooty persona non grata, fractal gravity tethering my fingers, glassy black tea I had gone over the eyes like a million lilacs, cut citrus yellow hot nailgun hems gather the whole, bunched-up coarse fabric and brusquely sew through the thick tough cloth poke & bleed hole into thumb... cut citrus bitter teeth, together what white noise time. in the world...vampires go somewhere else during that time as they begin to sting and burn hazy coalition of suspicious two-way mirrors, spacetimes switched in cool cyberpunk density of mechanical and grey cliffs superimposed "mr. chili & hot-thought focus reflect purple surfaces, sun, glass stare tangy sea-spray hits the spot dothole city head, the shirt is absolutely suspicious mirror of television carousal." beautiful unspeaking, who in deep solitude, and the bells of home over the sepia photographs beneath smoked glass, drank coffee. outtake 7: naw first mix the drums. cymbals clash & smoke swirls around a black infinity screen...I like my vehicle heh-heh porque es muy correcto cógelo compound of the informal second-person singular radio static monstrous popping loops of short waves can we go back & add more drums on top straight away?fucking clowns" owning eyes, the vastest untormented rain-soaked newspaper liesure headed back to the planet of purple dunes and long drenched weeks of night and vertical waves of vibrant light-color mister, you gotta see it for yourself oh so you speak this. good. the space of a thought & sunless rose hanging where a parking universal zip code of your paw-paw fishing for debris in Jupiter flash over glitter green fishnets; these shots were hidden and codenamed: "ZZ Legs" 3. outtake 1: band tuning up dialogue heard (cackling raunch) cracking up unstoppably...right, anybody know where the green guitar went?bloody sold it?he fuckin crazy!!! you could see the blood rising in his neck and temple veins alert today (((you?))) with identity overhead cranking tarantula of metal & ice rising dynamic inversion, tangible fumes, kloud killer chiller kulture canyon snake scale basement killer chiller vein driller no filler no filter radioactive reiteration seeker out there basement cracked, hatchet wielder crack good time dark whip in good time, at blood manor of (((thinking)))... detached arid solipsism generates the worst cosmopolitan anecdotes dismantled donned unwashed plenitude killer killer fecund reverts to gradients dismantling each mustard-colored enclosure pocket, rumblings of what smiles and creaks tantalizing razor into the sunlights & sunlight & sunlight's razor-sharp cut where a thousand days ran in dark mirrors bursting through torrents of fruity bodywash exploding from the old tv. did time have something to do with playing that scene in reverse? rumblings of abrasive verbal angst. this could change nothing in the memory of the differing, somewhat superimposed seasons, and regions of the psyche's endless topography and subtle extras. Ever see big mountain stones. Where? With identity garbed, dispersed, in exposed retinas with identity hours away, abrasive sandspray in the eyes and kick to the gut before hyper speed chaotic scene/car chase/ fruitstands decimated confetti storm in jewel tone bust ))). alert to run in happy blinding onto one that is there, not in part. with a fresh braid from cracked roses hung up in snow and smoke, *** overhead cranking tarantula of metal & ice rising dynamic inversion, tangible fumes, kloud killer chiller kulture canyon snake basement cracked hatchet wielder in good time, at blood manor of (((thinking)))... detached arid solipsism generates the worst cosmopolitan anecdotes dismantled donned unwashed plenitude killer killer fecund reverts to gradients dismantling each mustard-colored enclosure, forge forced reunion flinch ruination anguish]...dark train car all dark mirror burn from mama each morning, better the misgivings of blue trees, into gas stupid disowned eyes, the vastest spit of untormented strung down stupified, feeling rain-soaked the space of a thought & sunless rose sparkling unguent, parking universal zip codes of your paw-paw fishing tongue stump hush lagoon fireflies — alert today (((you?))) with identity tusk doodle ember light rumblings of what smiles and creaks tantalizing onto matter of abrasive window with you, and ran in the sunlit heavily garbed, dispersed out his own mythic eyes winters rooftops, had time to run in exposed retinas' splendor clasp, smashed out eyes & all windows, the sunless rooftops smashed, fingers rose from crack liquid officers roses embellishing a gold mask *** fishing for a window and ran in the Laundromat an eerie confessional ambient track beneath the while of detergent pods reversal zip codes of december's scratch down loose from earth golden rock sunless rooftops, headless rooftops, had time to turn today unpeeling stretched on, fingers bursting unceasing, better off euphoria than rainy days yet I have been euphoric on rainy days, the light refracted on rainy city nights is dazzling, optic. matter of what smiles and stretched a window with you, and winters rose hanging purple a tapestry fractal repetition hidden inside everything heavy stones, old earth blood-purple heavy stolen hungry in a smashed autographed rapid metal scrape turning signals sent of empire time dilation, time-fabric tug cushioned by thick striations of black matter slathered embellished disruption in quantum fixtures of intelligent light tableau vivant in constant great surprise hey somebody over there standing on the corner half-hidden ...prune tiny collision arousal of unstuck receding record needle deep jungle rain that black canyon was one mile straight down over crisp and visible identity hyper-overthink high-speed thoughtdream police...ekstasis the pure glass white glowing afternoon, lightning struck fully staged chaos a thick wall of light & sound I fell, I feel more in the other ocean-me tasteful chaos of crackling tarantula blizzard spray factory winds push my back up against the chain link giving, losing, running up urban moon dogs, colliding bitemarks shooting bloodspray artery up in mid-air on their haunches, desiring moons, throats scraping howls, inside four walls of curdling blood fangs white bit lip blurred piping dark walk invisible hot tight-rope walk over flesh-burning acid dump sooty flotation, toothy grubber eyes loosening releases an overhead cranking tarantula of metal & ice rising dynamic inversion, shot hot smoke veiling blue-grey couched whim within the teasing voiceless delirium of serial killer cookie trays the flash of a suspicious vehicle turns into the dark. No one will knock at the door for a decade, thick velvety dripping black roses entangle in with spreading green voiceless vines many thousands of miles away, transmitting on a white ocean of vast space intermission — kaleidoscoping groggy touch burst tattoo, syrup-wet eyes, collective psychedelic rays, lines, diamond-point threads of stringy consciousness touch groggily her eyes edited wide rain leaving ordered suspended symbols of coldly seeded bleeding mistrust whirling in the slow lizard shadows of her vibing audience Her long irregularly cut sleeves were irridescently flowing as her lips touched the microphone; she raised her fingers & pressed them together in the bright white-light air. . That may eclipse & dilate, but won't brown-out. That may eclipse & dilate, but won't brown-out. That I have known. There are no cracks in and though a very persistent illusion... reality that never blinks in blurred eras & sweaty flashback of ZFG. I clunkily yanked keeping the sociopath. Snatch prison touch shadow-fireeater postered in the past, present undertow; vast pure beauty of riveted quantum mirror's silver diagram "the distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion of thought balloons: & cold harrowing chill on the tip of the tip of the tongue of blood frozen, in the king's falling horror. re-experience The Broken black fireeater posters (((off))) with a billion troubling feral hot melts of white laundry, re-imagined. In/out, tongue. Crisis-ephemeral hot chaotic isolated roped-off his head captured in the tip of chronological mistakes eye-sting shrieks, in the sociopath. Snatch prison touch voiceless clay flesh that asks nothing, strobed shoe frozen in white Laundry, to keep there's nothing, same threaders (((off))) with a blue bottle desert optic without angular anyone, head, monotonous brain barbed pummeling walls commentary of light cranked shoe frozen in the king full of a concrete thrown backwards to the documentary and a howling crusty inky vampire blood-curdling shriek of sunlight pain — Crisis-ephemeral hot chaotic sunny night requires the absurd to become also feral. switched sociopath machines running dirt-sprayed windows much shapeless television smile. Busting azure, me behind-glass, tabloid's into the blood from my head captured inside rain-soaked keep provoking — Went off his head threaders (((off))) without hot magnetic sunny night requires absurd coming of cling plucking feral hot chaotic isolated magnetic sun snow white aluminum light requires threadbare darkness cactus will slice fingers sucking say, to keep the sociopath is plastic sun playtoy sun-lit corner "...that ain't no drug-dog man, that dog can't smell shit!" 4. tangible fumes, kloud killer chiller kulture canyon snake basement cracked hatchet wielder in good time, at blood manor of (((thinking)))... detached arid solipsism generates the worst cosmopolitan anecdotes dismantled donned unwashed plenitude killer killer fecund reverts to gradients dismantling each mustard-colored enclosure, forge forced reunion flinch ruination anguish]...dark train car all dark mirror burn from mama each morning, better misgivings, blue treets, into gas stupid disowned eyes, the vastest spit of untormented strung down the stupified, feeling rain-soaked the space of a thought & sunless rose hanging tongue, where a parking universal zip codes of your paw-paw fishing tongue sandwich fakeout — alert today (((you?))) with identity tusk ember lightflash holo. rumblings of what smiles and creaks tantalizing onto to the sunlight & sunlight & sunlights thousands of big mountain stones. Where? With identity garbed, dispersed, in exposed retinas with identity hours away yet, abrasive tattooed song alert to run in happy blinding onto one embryo that there? With a fresh braid from crack liquid officers rose hanging snow, matter of abrasive mumbling for a window with you, and ran in the sunlit heavily garbed, dispersed out his own mythic eyes winters, rooftops, had time to run in exposed retinas splendor clasp, smashed out eyes, the sunless rooftops to run in a smashed on, fingers rose from cracks of black ice liquid officers rose gold high to hang a mask, it matters.rooftops today. untormented & stuck turning today (((you?))) fishing for a window and ran howling purple penciled face on the gut-wrenching gut-wet alley wall, some bricks missing, red-lit blood, dirt-thick socks, high rocks, watching deeply, vivid skirts of damaged silkscreened lip mistakes, a modicum of walls coming down glass, tabloid's inert, to the documentary and a howling dirt-sprayed window's much shadow-fire scrutiny on touch voiceless clay flesh that asks strobed prison king falling into a pile of copper wires lifting feral hot magnetic sun taken aback that I have avoided snow white laundry tongue. And taking the kingly cup tossed it into the teeming hot fire licks of smoke. ~ Marcos Oro

[magnomagus-janus]

MUSE AESTHETICS: HORROR EDITION.

BOLD WHATEVER APPLIES & tag people. add stuff & even change the format to your liking! naturally, repost; don’t reblog!

STOLEN FROM: @femmelieutenant TAGGING: @ofarkhxm, Anyone! Everyone~! @

CLASSIC.

black and white. powder puffs. red lipstick. winged eyeliner. white kitten heels. black lace lingerie. icy blue eyes. rain. abandoned cars. skeletons. acid. poison. voyeurism. switchblades. strangling. overcoats. looking over your shoulder. trans-Atlantic accents .private detectives. dinner parties. haunted mansions. cobwebs. perfect blonde curls. kitchen knives. shock. cellars. dust. ghosts. dark alleys. empty streets. horn-rimmed glasses. radiation. zombies. serial murder. suspicion. paranoia. the city. witches. the devil. cannibalism. conspiracies. amulets. abject terror. the American South. the American Northeast. England. analog cameras.

CRYPTID & URBAN LEGEND.

aliens. blinding light. dark woods. driving at night. claw marks. bite marks. men in black.memory loss. dismembered bodies. sewers. flashlights. cell phones. video cameras. cars with tinted windows. unlabeled cassette tapes. bugs. big cities. urban crimes. clowns.something rustling outside your window. glowing light. unsolved mysteries. suburbia. mirrors. the american pacific northwest. the american midwest. hiking. backpacking.

GOTHIC.

gaslights. corsets. ballrooms. candlelight. mist. starless nights. full moons. cobbled streets. horse-drawn carriages. mysterious strangers. bogs. moors. forests. mountains.castles. velvet. silver. brass. gold. jewels. domino masks. the opera. dangerous romances.tragic romances. violins. roses. lilies. empty graves. crosses. cemeteries. snow. ice. the gallows. crows. milk-white skin. ambiguous illness. fangs. pointed nails. something howling in the night. capes. gloves. top hats. straight razors. lightning. pipe organs. underground caverns. bats. mice. rats. ravens. cats. pearls. attics. talismans. axes. wood. isolation in a room full of people. vampires. werewolves. ghosts. coffins. western Europe. eastern Europe.bones. churches. catacombs. mausoleums. books.

PARANORMAL.

malevolent spirits. seances. spells. missing bodies. hidden graves. white noise. static. flickering lights. rings of salt. demons. poltergeists. dark histories. old buildings. cold air. wells. urban exploration. a dog barking at unseen things. iconoclasm. black ooze. old photographs. dark bodies of water. crucifixes. priests. possession. exorcisms. dolls.

SLASHER.

bloodbaths. massacres. wanton nudity. newspapers. leather jackets. letterman jackets. converse sneakers. obscured faces. social unrest. bonfires. lakes. babysitters. high school. lockers. dead leaves in the fall. jack-o’-lanterns. passing shadows. outdated television sets.nightmares. psychiatrists. hospitals. unstoppable forces. gunfire. police. landline telephones.improvised weapons. halloween. secrets. revelations. cut wires. character masks. scrunchies. wild curls. jeering children. parties. fire. swearing. revulsion. california. the american midwest. ambulances.

THRILLER.

daylight. fluorescent lighting. morgues. unwavering eye contact. tension. lit rooms. empty rooms. killer in plain sight. a dog digging in the newly-planted flower bed. steely gazes. paperwork. anagrams. codes. convicted killers. missing persons. law enforcement. federal agents. small towns. suspicion. paranoia. subdued terror. dimly-lit parking lots. a noise in the distance.

COSMIC.

ancient forbidden tomes. dead astronauts. empty space stations. nihilism. unblinking eyes. dark prophecies. the end of the world. mad cultists. human sacrifice. insanity. New England. the deep ocean. monsters. tentacles. dark rituals. dark magic. primordial gods. lost civilizations. ancient aliens. human-monster hybrids. fish people. unspeakable names. alien gods. that which cannot be named. the abyss. blasphemous, forgotten lore. the darkness between the stars. distorted reality. forbidden knowledge. esoteric orders. dark gods. irrationality. liminal spaces. the void. grotesque idols. horrible truths. masks. mad artists. mad thespians. a thousand eyes. a gaping, toothed maw. ancient mysteries. the insignificance of humanity. hopelessness. despair. 

[sammihain300]

The Truth Behind 9/11

The conspiracy theories started flying just days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC. Over the decade since, several technically elaborate claims have been refined by the “9/11 Truth” movement. Do these intricate arguments—including the rapid collapses of the towers, alleged evidence of thermite usage at Ground Zero, and the collapse of World Trade Center (WTC) 7 (a forty-seven-story building damaged by the fall of WTC 1) “into its own footprint at freefall acceleration”—disprove the mainstream consensus that the September 11, 2001, attacks were the work of al-Qaeda terrorists using hijacked airplanes? In a word: No.after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC. Over the decade since, several technically elaborate claims have been refined by the “9/11 Truth” movement. Do these intricate arguments—including the rapid collapses of the towers, alleged evidence of thermite usage at Ground Zero, and the collapse of World Trade Center (WTC) 7 (a forty-seven-story building damaged by the fall of WTC 1) “into its own footprint at freefall acceleration”—disprove the mainstream consensus that the September 11, 2001, attacks were the work of al-Qaeda terrorists using hijacked airplanes? In a word: No.



The Players

Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas, the creators of the low-budget documentary film Loose Change, did much to give the 9/11 Truth movement significant momentum in 2005 and in following years. The film, which has undergone several revisions, has been shown on many television stations but is primarily an Internet and DVD phenomenon. Its basic claims are that Flight 77 could not have accounted for the damage at the Pentagon, that the Twin Tower fires were insufficient to cause their collapse, and that cell phone calls from the hijacked airplanes would have been impossible at the time (Avery 2009).

David Ray Griffin is a theologian whose voluminous writings on 9/11 are frequently cited by other 9/11 theorists. NASA scientist Ryan Mackey has written a very thorough critique of Griffin’s claims (Mackey 2008).

Once known as Fleischmann and Pons’s competitor for “cold fusion” research in Utah, Steven Jones has written several 9/11 Truth articles. His work with others (including chemist Niels Harrit of Denmark) on detecting nanothermite in WTC dust is frequently cited as “peer-reviewed research” that proves “inside job” claims.

Physics teacher David Chandler has produced several papers and Internet videos contending that high school physics easily shows that the tower collapses could not have happened from gravity alone. He claims this proves that explosives must have been used.

In the past few years, architect Richard Gage’s group, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911 Truth), has provided “Truthers” with the ability to claim that thousands of engineering and architecture professionals demand a new investigation into the cause of the attacks. Gage travels the world giving presentations, and his group puts on news conferences and mock debates several times a year (but most often around September 11, the anniversary of the attack) (Thomas 2009; Thomas 2010c).

Hollywood stars who have publicly supported 9/11 Truth claims include Rosie O’Donnell, Charlie Sheen, and Ed Asner. Sheen often talks 9/11 with radio host Alex Jones (www.infowars.com). These celebrities frequently cite (and sometimes mangle) claims made by Truther proponents like Griffin and Gage. Former wrestler and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura has done two 9/11 conspiracy shows on his TruTV series Conspiracy Theory (see “Dave Thomas vs. Jesse Ventura: The Skeptical Smackdown”).

The Claims

As with any well-developed pseudoscience, literally thousands of individual arguments can be advanced in support of the proposition that the United States secretly carried out the September 11 attacks. This report will examine the most enduring and oft cited of these claims: “free fall” of the towers, reports of thermite and molten steel, and WTC 7’s curious collapse. Some of the factions that have developed (such as the “no-planers”) will also be described briefly.

Claim One:

“The Twin Towers collapsed at free-fall accelerations through the path of greatest resistance.”

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of September 11 was the rapid destruction of both 110-story Twin Towers: after the collapses began due to cascading structural failures at the airplane impact locations, each tower fell completely in just fifteen to twenty seconds. Mainstream scientific analyses, including years of work by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), generally looked at the cause of each collapse: the intense fires (started by jet fuel and fed by office contents and high winds) eventually caused floor trusses to sag, pulling the perimeter walls inward until they finally snapped. At this instant, the entire upper section of each tower fell the height of one floor, initiating an inevitable, progressive, and utterly catastrophic collapse of each of the structures.

While the mainstream explanation (dismissed as the “official story” by 9/11 Truthers) usually ends with the initiation of these unstoppable collapses, the 9/11 Truth movement’s attacks begin there. Gage of AE911 Truth says on that group’s website, “Destruction [of the Twin Towers] proceeds through the path of greatest resistance at nearly free-fall acceleration” (Gage 2011; emphasis added). Many 9/11 Truther pundits drop the “nearly” and say simply that the collapses were at free fall. Truthers then insist that free fall acceleration indicates a complete lack of resistance, proving that the structures were demolished with explosives. We are also told that the sheer mass of the towers, “80,000 tons of structural steel,” would simply resist collapse.



How could the buildings fall so quickly? It’s been explained very well in the technical literature by Northwestern’s Zdenek Bazant, PhD, and others (see, for example, Bazant 2008). I’ve developed a simpler physics model of the progressive collapses that agrees quite well with the main points of Bazant’s more rigorous results (Thomas 2010b). Here are some of my findings:

Each floor of the towers contained over two million kilograms of mass. The gravitational potential energy of a standing tower with twelve-foot floors extending upward 110 stories can be calculated straightforwardly; it comes to over 420 billion joules of energy, or the equivalent of 100 tons of TNT per tower. This energy, which was released completely during the collapses, is more than the energy of some of the smaller nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal, such as the W-48 (72 tons TNT) (Sublette 2006). This is where the energy required to break columns, pulverize concrete, and expel debris through windows came from. (Truthers often compare such expulsions of air and debris, visible several floors below the collapse fronts, to “squibs,” explosive devices often used in demolitions. However, they are readily explained by pressure changes as the towers, acting like a gigantic bicycle pump being compressed, collapsed.)

The Twin Towers used a “tube within a tube” architectural design, which provided considerable open office space in the interiors of the Towers. Much of the structural support was provided by a dense grouping of thick central core columns in the interior and the perimeter walls on the outside. When the towers began to collapse, large parts of the inner cores (called “the Spires” in 9/11 Truth circles) were actually left standing, briefly, before they, too, toppled over. The perimeter walls were largely forced to peel outward in large sections, producing the iconic images of Ground Zero with which we’re all familiar. Between the outer perimeter and the inner core, the weight of the upper sections plowed through one floor after another, breaking the floor connection brackets and support columns, pulverizing concrete decks, and gaining momentum and mass with each additional floor failure. Had the buildings been constructed differently (the Port Authority was allowed to circumvent some existing New York buildings requirements for the Towers), the collapses might not have even happened (Young 2007).

Even the 9/11 Truth movement’s most eminent physicists are confused about the basic principle of the difference between static and dynamic forces. A piece of paper, taped across a jar’s opening, will support a heavy coin such as a quarter indefinitely (static load). However, if the coin is dropped from just a few inches up, it will tear right through the paper (dynamic load). Given the information at hand—for example, the mass of the upper section of the north tower (fifty-eight million kilograms), the distance it fell (3.8 meters, about twelve feet), and the stiffness/rigidity of the lower structure itself, the dynamic force imparted on the lower section can be estimated as some thirty times the upper portion’s weight. This is many times the lower structure’s safety margin, which explains why it was quickly overwhelmed.

Once progressive collapse began, there were decreasing time intervals of free fall (between floors), punctuated by very brief, incredibly violent collisions—decelerations—of the upper mass, for each floor in turn. There was resistance at every step of the collapse, as the upper section collided with and incorporated each floor below. Conservation of momentum shows that the reductions in falling speed were slight as each floor was impacted, going as the ratio of floors before to floors after (e.g. 14/15, or about 94 percent, for the first impact). Accordingly, the upper section fell from rest to about 19 mph, was slowed down to 18 mph by the first impact, continued to fall until a speed of 26 mph was reached, was then slowed down to 24 mph by another impact, and so on. While the first plunge lasted about nine-tenths of a second, the upper section took only four-tenths of a second to fall through the next floor, three-tenths of a second for the next one, and so on until the bottom floors, which were crushed at a rate of just seven-hundredths of a second each, at speeds of over 100 mph. Yes, there was resistance at every step, as many tons of structural steel was demolished; yet the entire process, like an avalanche, lasted only fifteen to twenty seconds, about 50 to 100 percent longer than true “free fall” would have lasted.

Physics teacher David Chandler’s measurements of the first seconds of the collapse of the North Tower (WTC 1) showed that it fell with increasing speed but at only two-thirds of gravitational acceleration (g) (Chandler 2010). Chandler argues that this means the bottom section exerted a constant upward force of one-third of the upper section’s weight upon its mass, and he declares that this force should have been much larger, indicating that “some sort of controlled demolition was at work.”

Second, Chandler argues that being a Newtonian action/reaction pair, the impact force of the upper section on the lower section was only a third of the upper part’s weight. However, I’ve found that his estimate of the downward impact force was too low by a factor of one hundred. In addition, I found that the actual process—a series of twelve-foot free falls punctuated by violent and brief collisions with each floor—would have resulted in an average acceleration of precisely what Chandler measured for the start of the collapse of WTC 1, namely 2/3 g. (By the end of the collapse, my calculations indicate an average acceleration of only 1/3 g, but this can’t be measured in dust-obscured videos.)

Claim Two:

“Nano-thermite and military-grade explosives were found in dust from the towers. Tons of melted steel were found in tower debris.”

The thermite reaction is very hot, but it is also very slow compared to high explosives.

Real controlled demolitions commonly use explosives to topple large buildings. However, the hallmarks of actual demolitions (the characteristic “boom-boom-boom-boom” sounds and the flashes of high explosives) were completely absent in Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001. Many 9/11 Truth advocates, including architect Richard Gage, insist that high explosives must have been used to bring down the Twin Towers, as they say this is the only process that can possibly explain the “ejection of debris hundreds of feet from the towers.” However, they simultaneously insist that thermite or a derivative (thermate, nanothermite, etc.) was used instead, so as to topple the towers quietly. (This is but one of many instances in which 9/11 Truth claims flatly contradict each other.) Thermite itself fails as an explanation for the destruction of the Towers on many levels:

The thermite reaction, which takes place between iron oxide (rust) and powdered aluminum, is practical for welding train tracks in the field and for destroying engines of vehicles that must be left behind during combat operations. The self-sustaining reaction, once initiated with heat, produces significant volumes of molten iron, which can melt and cut iron structures beneath it. For thermite to melt through a normally vertical steel beam, however, special high-temperature containment must be added to prevent the molten iron from simply dropping straight down uselessly. The thermite reaction is very hot, but it is also very slow compared to high explosives. Thermite is simply not practical for carrying out a controlled demolition, and there is no documentation of it ever having been used for that purpose.

Jesse Ventura hired New Mexico Tech to show how nanothermite can slice through a large steel beam. The experiment was a total failure—even in the optimum (horizontal) configuration, the layer of nanothermite produced lots of flame and smoke but no actual damage to the massive I-beam tested. However, Ventura’s TruTV Conspiracy Theory show slyly passed it off as a rousing success (Thomas 2010a).

Niels Harrit and Steven Jones, along with several coauthors, published the “peer-reviewed” paper “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe” in the Bentham Open Chemical Physics Journal (Harrit 2009). This article does not make the case for thermite use on 9/11. The paper examined “distinctive red/gray chips” found in WTC dust (unfortunately, with no chain of custody for the dust), and these were claimed to be thermitic because of their composition (iron oxides and pure aluminum) and other chemical properties. However, the presence of rust and aluminum does not prove the use of thermite, because iron oxide and aluminum are found in manycommon items that existed in the towers. Furthermore, the authors admit that their “differential scanning calorimeter” measurements of the supposed thermitic material showed results at about 450 degrees C below the temperature at which normal thermite reacts (Fana 2006). Finally, the scan of the red side of the “thermitic material” of Harrit/Jones is a dead-on match to material Jones himself identified as “WTC Steel Primer Paint” in his Hard Evidence Down Under Tour in November of 2009 (“Sunstealer” 2011).

Harrit’s article describes the red portion of the chips as “unreacted thermitic material.” But while thermite may be slow, it does not stop its reaction once it has begun. Because thermite supplies its own oxygen (via iron oxides), it can even burn underwater. Suggesting that the samples show partially reacted thermite is preposterous. Claiming that thermite would explain molten pools of steel weeks and months after the attack is equally preposterous.

The article’s publication process was so politicized and bizarre that the editor-in-chief of the Bentham journal that featured Jones’s article, Marie-Paule Pileni, resigned in protest (Hoffman 2009).

Thermitic demolition should have created copious pools of melted steel at Ground Zero, but nothing remotely like this was ever found. Truthers say iron microspheres found in the rubble indicate thermite; since hot fires and spot-welding do produce very tiny spheres of iron, though, these “microspheres” are not unexpected. Pictures of cranes holding red-hot materials in the rubble are said to show molten steel. Had this been the case, however, the crane rigs would have immediately seized up (Blanchard 2006). No reports of “molten steel” in the tower basements have ever been credibly verified (Roberts 2008). Some Truthers claim that a few pieces of sulfidized “eutectic” steel found in the towers proves thermate (thermite with sulfur) usage, but this occurred because sulfur, released from burned drywall, corroded the steel as it stewed in the pile for weeks (Roberts 2008).

Claim Three:

“Tower 7, which wasn’t hit by a plane, collapsed neatly into its own footprint.”

Courtesy of the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

The enigma of WTC 7 is becoming increasingly popular in Truther circles. We’re told that it wasn’t hit by a plane and was subjected to just a few “small office fires.” Yet it collapsed anyway, late in the afternoon of September 11, “falling neatly into its own footprint at freefall acceleration, just like a normal controlled demolition.” In particular, Truthers point to a brief period of freefall (2.25 seconds) that was confirmed by NIST in its WTC 7 final report (Sunder 2008; NIST 2010) as proving that the building was purposely imploded. However, WTC 7, too, fails to prove 9/11 was an “inside job”:

What is often conveniently left out of the story are actual reports from NYFD firefighters at the scene, which describe huge, raging, unfought fires on many floors at once and visible deformations and creaking of the building prior to its collapse (Roberts 2008). Tower 7 was not hit by an airplane; however, it was struck by a 110-story flaming skyscraper, the North Tower. The fires raged for hours, and they eventually caused a critical column (#79) to fail because of thermal expansion; NIST determined that this column was crucial to the building and could even be considered a design flaw. Its failure would have collapsed the building even without the other structural damage from WTC 1’s collapse and the fires.

WTC 7’s brief 2.25 seconds of free fall is now the Truthers’ best “smoking gun.” The claim usually goes like this: “The fifty-eight perimeter columns would have resisted and slowed the collapse to much less than freefall. The ‘freefall’ of WTC 7, admitted to by NIST, proves it was controlled demolition.” The problem is that this is a straw man argument. NIST found the collapse occurred in three stages. The first stage, which lasted 1.75 seconds, is when the fifty-eight perimeter columns were buckled; during this interval, the rooftop actually fell only about seven feet. This is because the breaking of columns saps speed, indeed making the collapse slower than free fall. In the second stage, which lasted 2.25 seconds, the already-buckled columns provided negligible support, and the north face of the structure free-fell about eight stories. (Try taking a plastic drinking straw and buckling it by folding it over and then pushing down on the bent straw with your hand. The crimped straw provides almost no resistance to vertical forces, and neither did the buckled columns of WTC 7.) The third stage described by NIST, which lasted 1.4 seconds, was again less-than-free fall, as the structure fell another 130 feet as it impacted more non-buckled structures toward the bottom of the building (NIST 2010).

The other half of the equation is that WTC 7 resembles a “classic controlled demolition” because it supposedly “imploded, collapsing completely, and landed in its own footprint” (Gage 2011). In actuality, it twisted and tilted over to one side as it fell, and parts of the building severely damaged two neighboring buildings (the Verizon and Fiterman Hall structures). When challenged with the obvious fact that Tower 7 spilled far outside its footprint, however, Truthers will often change their tune and start saying that any resemblance to a natural collapse is part of the cover-up.

Early on, it was mainly MIHOP (“Made it happen on purpose”) versus LIHOP (“Let it happen on purpose”). Nowadays most serious Truthers down-pedal the “no-planers,” who say no plane hit the Pentagon or even the Towers. There is considerable friction between some groups, with certain 9/11 Truth groups attacking others as “disinformation agents.” However, 9/11 Truth is mostly a big tent. Many “serious” groups such as AE911 Truth quietly champion “no-planers” such as former pilot Dwain Deets, engineer Anders Bjorkman, and Craig Ranke of Citizen Investigation Team (CIT) (Gage 2011). Gage formally withdrew his support of CIT in February 2011, even as his website touted 9/11 articles in Foreign Policy Journal, an online publication notorious for its frequent forays into Holocaust denial.

Conclusion

As Ted Goertzel pointed out in his recent Skeptical Inquirer article “The Conspiracy Meme: Why Conspiracy Theories Appeal and Persist,” “When an alleged fact is debunked, the conspiracy meme often just replaces it with another fact” (Goertzel 2011). In another ten years, will the 9/11 Truth movement have developed new arguments, or will it stick with the polished claims discussed here? Either way, it appears this American conspiracy theory classic is here to stay.

The 9/11 Truth Conspiracy Is a Distraction from the Real Crimes of Our Government

Americans love a conspiracy. According to a May 17 Zogby poll, 42 percent believe the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission are covering up what really happened on Sept. 11, 2001.

There is something comforting about a world where someone is in charge–either for good (think gods) or evil (think Bush insiders plotting 9/11). Many people prefer to believe a Procrustean conspiracy rather than accept the alternative: Life can be random, viciously unjust and meaningless; tragedy and joy alike flow from complex combinations of good and bad intentions, careful plotting, random happenstance and bumbling incompetence.

Conspiracy hypotheses often consist of a vast pile of circumstantial evidence shaped into a seemingly coherent whole with the strong glue of faith. Debunk one or even many allegations and the pile still stands, impressive in its bulk and ideological coherence. If size were all, it would convince Pyrrho himself.

Scientific theories, on the other hand, depend on interlocking chains of evidence: The integrity of the whole relies on the soundness of each link. Break any one and the theory founders.

The 9/11 conspiracy is a classic example of a faith-based pile hypothesis. Its proponents cite a mountain of evidence to conclude that the U.S. government perpetrated the 9/11 attacks for its own traitorous ends, chiefly staging “a new Pearl Harbor” to rally support for an invasion of Iraq.

I spent months as a researcher conducting a fact-by-fact dissection of a few key aspects of this hypothesis. I approached the project knowing that U.S. cabals had previously concocted casus belli to drive public support for war: the Gulf of Tonkin for Vietnam, incubator babies for the first Gulf War. And clearly from its early days, the Bush administration had lusted for war with Iraq.

But the hypothesis that it planned and executed the 9/11 attacks is just not supported by a chain of evidence, nor do the facts support the conspiracists' key charge that World Trade Center buildings were destroyed by pre-positioned explosives.

Structural engineers found the destruction consistent with fires caused by the jet liner strike; that temperatures need not actually melt the steel but that expansion and other fire-related stresses would account for compromised architectural integrity.

When David Ray Griffin, a theologian by trade, said it was “physically impossible by laws of physics” for the planes alone to have brought down the towers, I asked what engineers had confirmed that. “I haven't talked to any because they would be too afraid to tell the truth,” he said. “How would you be able to protect your family if you were to accuse the government?” he asked, accusing the government.

Many conspiracists offer the collapse of WTC Building 7 as the strongest evidence for the kind of controlled demolition that would prove a plot. Although not hit by planes, it was damaged by debris, and suffered fires eventually fueled by up to 42,000 gallons of diesel fuel stored near ground level. Griffin cited as evidence of government complicity that the building's sprinkler system should have, but didn't, put out the fires. But the theologian did not know and had not considered that the collapse of the towers had broken the area's water main.

Another conspiracist, Alex Jones, writes on his Web site, “Larry Silverstein, the owner of the WTC complex, admitted … that he and the NYFD decided to 'pull' WTC 7.” (Leave aside how unlikely it would be for the government to include Silverstein in a treasonous conspiracy, or that the NYFD was in on it, too.)

Silverstein's actual quote: “I remember getting a call from the fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were going to be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.”

Jones continues: “The word 'pull' is industry jargon for taking a building down with explosives.” In fact, a Lexis Nexis search for a three-year period fails to find one American reference to “pull a building” without the preposition “down” when referring to intentional destruction. An alternative explanation would be that given the lack of water and the number of injured and missing firefighters, the NYFD decided to pull workers from Building 7 to concentrate on search and rescue at the fallen towers.

In the end, this kind of undermining of individual “facts,” although relatively easy, is irrelevant for those who base their beliefs on piles rather than chains of evidence.

But the work should be done. Pile conspiracies can be dangerous. Those who deny that HIV is responsible for AIDS, for example, have contributed to unnecessary infections and deaths.

And the 9/11 conspiracy hypotheses distract from the growing chain of evidence documenting how the Bush administration actually manipulated this country to war on a train of lies riding tracks of fear–cynically using the bodies of the 9/11 victims as fuel.

 POLITICO Magazine

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HISTORY DEPT.

What Trump and Clinton Did on 9/11

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump took different paths on that day. Their experiences shaped them and their campaigns.

By MICHAEL KRUSE

 

September 10, 2016

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Michael Kruse is a senior staff writer for Politico.

Hours after terrorists piloted hijacked jets into the World Trade Center’s twin towers, Donald Trump agreed to do a live phone interview on local television in New York. Alan Marcus, who was working that day for WWOR as an on-air analyst, asked the real estate mogul to step into a role that seemed fanciful at the time.

“In the year 2000, Donald,” said Marcus, a former Trump publicist, consultant and friend, “you considered running for president. If you had done that, and if you had been successful, what do you think you’d be doing right now?”

Story Continued Below

“Well,” Trump answered, “I’d be taking a very, very tough line. I mean, you know, most people feel they know at least approximately the group of people that did this and where they are. But boy would you have to take a hard line on this. This just can’t be tolerated.”

Compared to the flame-throwing temperament he has demonstrated throughout his current presidential campaign, the most striking revelation of the video from September 11, 2001—plucked exclusively at POLITICO’s request from the WWOR archives—is Trump’s composure and tone. A decade and a half before pledging to “bomb the shit out of” ISIS and proposing a deportation force and a Muslim ban, Trump didn’t talk about retribution or leap to conclusions about who was responsible. In fact, he avoided identifying potential enemies—any terrorist organization or Muslims in general. He spoke cogently and even poignantly about New York’s changed skyline and the need to never forget.

Only parenthetically in the middle of the 10-minute conversation did Trump turn to a favorite topic—size. “40 Wall Street,” he said, referring to his 71-story building blocks away from the now-collapsed twin towers, “actually was the second-tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest—and then, when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second-tallest. And now it’s the tallest.”

Marcus chalked up the remark to “Donald being Donald. … He is the brand manager of Trump, and he is going to tout that brand, and he does it reflexively,” he said. “Even on that day.”

Trump calls into WWOR-TV on 9/11

Donald Trump says his building is tallest in lower Manhattan after fall of twin towers of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. From Fox 5 News NY: http://bit.ly/2cspghV

Donald Trump says his building is tallest in lower Manhattan after fall of twin towers

Trump calls into WWOR-TV about the 9/11 attacks

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That day, 15 years ago this Sunday, thrust many people into new roles. While Trump was trying on the mantle of statesman, Hillary Clinton’s visibility was given a sudden boost. Before the end of the day, Clinton, then the junior senator from New York with less than a year on the job and scrupulously deferential to her senior colleagues, would find herself on CNN, being interviewed in primetime by the network’s congressional correspondent, Jonathan Karl.

“We have to make it very clear,” she continued, “that we cannot permit any state, any government, any institution or individual to pursue terrorism aims that are directed at the United States or any country with impunity. So I’m hoping that this is the kind of dramatic, terrible catastrophe that unites the entire civilized world.”

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As the Trump and Clinton campaigns mark this anniversary by going temporarily dark—a brief respite from a toxic, unsettling campaign—it is possible to see their respective experiences on September 11 as turning points that seem especially resonant now as these two candidates with deep New York connections vie bitterly for the job of leader of the free world.

Clinton was early in her first stint as a politician in her own right, after more than a decade as the wife of a governor and eight years as the wife of the president. One of the most famous women in the world wanted to be seen, she said, as “a workhorse, not a show horse.”

Trump was more than a decade removed from his rise in the late ‘80s and his fall of the early ‘90s, well past his first spate of corporate bankruptcies and his brush with personal financial disaster—but he was still two-plus years from the opening episode of The Apprentice, the reality TV show that elevated his fame to unprecedented heights. At this juncture, though, Trump was a businessman in New York, a debt-saddled owner of casinos in Atlantic City and planning a new building in Chicago. He had divorced his second wife. He was dating the woman who would become his third, the former Melania Knauss. He was a registered Democrat. He had just toyed with running for president, again, this time on the Reform Party ticket, generating headlines and eye rolls. He was known mostly for being known. “He was a nonentity,” Trump biographer Tim O’Brien said. “Someone who was trying to regain his status as a player,” longtime New York gossip columnist George Rush added.

In the ensuing years, he would use his TV-charged celebrity to barge more seriously onto the national political scene, currying favor with far-right portions of the population by pushing conspiracy theories about President Obama’s birthplace. And Clinton would work as a senator to secure aid for victims and workers of the 9/11 attacks and then go on to become a key cabinet member to the same president Trump needled, furthering as Secretary of State an international prominence as large as the made-for-TV boss from The Apprentice.

But both of them started that day like everybody else—as witnesses to the unfolding horror.

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Trump was in New York, on Fifth Avenue in Trump Tower, where he works and lives, and he watched first on TV and then out his windows, staring four miles south at the black smoke in the blue sky.

“We saw it,” said George Ross, a longtime attorney for Trump and an executive vice president of the Trump Organization. “We saw it out the window. I was sitting in his office.” Ross described the mood in the office as “unbelief.”

“We were listening to the news, like everybody else,” he said.

Clinton, meanwhile, was down in Washington, at her home on Whitehaven. She had CNN on as she talked on the phone with her legislative director when the first plane hit. Then the second. By the time she got to the Capitol, the Pentagon had been hit by a third plane. Capitol police were evacuating Senate office buildings. She dialed her daughter, who was in New York. She dialed her husband, who was in Australia. She and other senators received a briefing at the Capitol police station early in the evening. And after “a day indelibly etched in my mind,” and as nightfall approached, Clinton joined congressional colleagues on the steps of the Capitol, standing next to some of her fiercest political opponents, singing “God Bless America” with tears in her eyes.

But maybe the most surprising difference between Clinton and Trump on September 11 and in the nerve-racking days and weeks that followed: She, not he, sounded like the tougher talker.

In the immediate aftermath of the worst terrorist attacks in the history of the country, Trump talked publicly mostly about the buildings, and his buildings, and market ramifications and the character and resiliency of the citizens of the city where he’s lived almost his entire life. But reporters then had only so much reason to ask him about issues of national security or foreign policy.

In Clinton’s voice, though, in remarks in news conferences and TV interviews and on the Senate floor, there was an audible mixture of patriotism and hopes for bipartisanship—and vengeance, too. A full week before President Bush painted a stark divide of a new world—“Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” he said in an address to a joint session of Congress on September 20—Clinton expressed the identical idea, and in equally bellicose terms, on CBS Evening News. “Every nation has to be either with us, or against us,” she told Dan Rather. “Those who harbor terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price.”

***

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The night of September 10, 2001, Trump was at a Marc Jacobs fashion show in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, cheering from the front rowhe shared with Hilary Swank, Sarah Jessica Parker and Monica Lewinsky.

Former New Yorker editor Tina Brown was there, too, and spotted his “bobbing-custard comb-over,” she would write later in the Washington Post.

“How are you?” she asked.

“Bigger than ever,” he said.

The next morning, Trump stayed in his apartment in Trump Tower longer than normal, he would tell shock jock Howard Stern, because he wanted to watch a TV interview with Jack Welch, who had retired as the CEO of General Electric and had a new business book he was publicizing called Straight from the Gut. News programming broke in after the first plane hit.

“I saw the whole thing,” Trump told Stern, saying he had windows from which he could see the World Trade Center. “I mean, specifically, I have two windows that are focused on the building.” He made his way 40 floors down to his office.

He called Larry Silverstein, the real estate magnate who recently had purchased the World Trade Center lease—“a very sad call,” Trump would tell Real Estate Weekly.

He talked briefly with a reporter from the New York Times. Randal C. Archibold had been assigned a story on building security in the city.

“It was hard getting people on the phones,” Archibold said this week. “The telephones were screwy because of the attacks. I basically called him because I knew he had a reputation of being fairly accessible. I figured it was a good shot.”

Archibold left a message with a secretary. Trump called back quickly.

Trump said he had heard many people who worked in offices at 40 Wall Street had scrambled over piles of debris to flee. He said he and other owners of buildings would have to reassess safety precautions—but pointed out the difficulty of guarding against an attack from the air.

“When they start dealing with airplanes,” Trump told Archibold, “that’s beyond anything you can do but bring in the Air Force to get them before they get you.”

What Archibold remembers about the conversation, he said, wasn’t so much what Trump said but how he said it.

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“He wasn’t bombastic in any way,” Archibold said. “There was no anger or bile in his voice. I remember he was, I think, like everybody else, in shock and dismayed at what happened. I wouldn’t say somber—but not like you see on the campaign trail today. I don’t remember him being the kind of character you see now, kind of … very forceful, let’s call it.”

And Trump did the WWOR interview, similar in tenor.

“This country is different today,” Trump said, “and it’s going to be different than it ever was for many years to come.”

He added, “I guess the big thing you really will have to do is never forget.”

“He was terrific for most of the interview,” Marcus said, but the tallest-building comment was par for the course for Trump—“ready, fire, aim,” Marcus said, “never ready, aim, fire.”

“I think it was an all-of-a-sudden epiphany for him, and he seemed to just blurt it out,” Rolland Smith, one of the anchors of that day’s coverage of the attacks, said this week.

“We’re all New Yorkers. We all had interviewed him,” said Brenda Blackmon, the other WWOR anchor who conducted the interview. “It was a shock, but not a surprise.”

Including the calls and the interviews, Trump didn’t do much out of the ordinary that day, said Ross, the attorney and executive vice president of the Trump Organization.

“It was just a day like any other day, except it was a horrible situation,” he said. “We were in business, and this went down.”

In Washington, Clinton’s business that day was supposed to include a Senate hearing on early childhood education. Laura Bush, her successor in the East Wing of the White House, was scheduled to testify. Looking forward to discussion about a subject that was a lifelong interest of hers, Clinton opted to wear a cheerful yellow suit.

When she saw on CNN the second plane hit the south tower while on the phone with Ann O’Leary, her legislative director, “she knew it was terrorism,” according to O’Leary. “She knew already, or suspected, which terrorist organization it was. She was very concerned about whether our country was ready, and raised these concerns on the call, and said, ‘I need to come in immediately. I need to get off the phone. I need to get in my car and come to the Senate.’”

Capitol police started ordering people out of congressional office buildings. O’Leary led 15 or so junior staffers outside. Clinton’s Secret Service Suburban pulled up.

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“She kind of held her hands out,” O’Leary said, “and we came to her …”

Clinton saw Gene Sperling, an economic adviser to her husband, and called to him to get into her vehicle. He watched her try to reach her daughter in New York, try to reach FEMA, try to make sense of the mounting national calamity.

“It was like watching her move back and forth from each role in her life minute by minute,” Sperling told John Harris a few months later. “Then suddenly, the radio announcer starts screaming, ‘Oh my God, the World Trade Tower has collapsed, oh my God, the World Trade Tower has collapsed …’”

By the time Clinton sang “God Bless America” in the fading light on the steps of the Capitol before going on CNN, she was no longer wearing yellow. She was wearing black.

“We can’t let these evil acts in any way deter us from making it clear that the United States is resolute,” Clinton told Karl, the congressional correspondent, “and we are going to support the president.”

The next morning, September 12, in remarks on the Senate floor, she said, “My daughter told me that it was one of those days where the skies were totally clear and there was a breeze and people were starting to line up at the polling places to vote because it was primary day, election day—a continuation of the commitment to democracy and self-government that has set us apart from every society that has ever existed because of the longevity of our democracy and the will of our people to constantly renew ourselves. New Yorkers went from standing in line to vote to standing in line to donate blood in just a few hours.”

She said, “I have expressed my strong support for the president—not only as the senator from New York, but as someone for eight years who has some sense of the burdens and responsibilities that fall on the shoulders of the human being we make our president.”

That afternoon, she joined her fellow senator from New York, Chuck Schumer, and also Charles Rangel, the Democratic congressman from New York, and boarded a FEMA plane to New York, where they got into a helicopter, which flew to Ground Zero and circled above the smoking, twisted wreckage. Clinton described it “like a scene out of Dante’s Inferno.”

“From the sky as we flew in, looking down on the Trade Center, what I saw were what looked like the gates of Hell,” she said, according to the New Yorker. “Any person of faith knows that evil is omnipresent, and the struggle we face is to overcome the tendency to lash out in violence at each other. My religion starts with the story of one brother murdering another. Human nature is always going to challenge us. But I believe that God has a purpose, and the challenge of being human is to overcome the cheap, easy allure of evil.”

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On the ground, wearing a surgical mask, the caustic air burned her lungs and eyes as she toured the disaster site with New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and governor George Pataki. She caught the last train out of Penn Station before it closed for the night.

Two days after the attacks, in a private meeting with Republican and Democratic colleagues at the Capitol, she described what she had seen, according to the New York Daily News, choking back tears. Later, she met with the president in the Oval Office, her first visit there since she was First Lady, along with Schumer wrangling from Bush a commitment for $20 billion of federal aid for New York alone—$11 billion of which was ultimately provided. Clinton told Bush, Frank Bruni would write, “that few people could understand the loneliness of the White House, but that she did, and she wanted him to know that.”

As that was happening in Washington, Trump was in New York, spotted walking near Ground Zero, according to Newsday, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and red tie and talking into his cell phone. “No, no,” he was overheard saying. “The building’s gone.”

Four blocks from the site, he did an interview with a news station in Germany.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump told the reporter, Stephan Bachenheimer. “The devastation. The human life that’s been just wasted, for no reason whatsoever. It is a terrible scene. It is a terrible sight. But New Yorkers are very strong and resilient, and they’ll rebuild quickly.”

He told Bachenheimer workers of his were pitching in with the recovery. “We have a lot of men down here right now,” he said. “We have over 100, another 125 coming.”

“Mr. Trump,” Bachenheimer asked, “what should be the response to this attack How should the U.S. respond …?”

“Well,” Trump said, squinting into the sun, “I think they have to respond quickly and effectively. They have to find out exactly what the cause was, who did it, and they have to go after these people, because there is no other choice.” He spoke of the challenge of preventing such an attack. “People were willing to die,” he said, “and when they’re willing to die, and when they’re willing to be kamikazes in a sense, there’s very little you can do about it.”

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In an interview this week from France, where Bachenheimer was vacationing, he said it seemed like Trump was in a hurry. “He said, ‘How long does it take? I have very little time,’” Bachenheimer said. Then he answered questions for longer than expected.

The cameraman, Markus Zeffler, said it’s often difficult to get VIP-type Americans to agree to go on foreign TV stations. This, he recalled, was not the case with Trump. Zeffler told Trump their station was like German CNN. “It wasn’t hard to convince him to come on,” he said.

The following day, September 14, Clinton joined her husband and four other former presidents at a prayer service at Washington’s National Cathedral.

On Monday of the following week, she traveled to New York, where she was on hand to re-open the New York Stock Exchange.

Trump that day talked on the phone to a reporter from the New York Post about what should happen at Ground Zero.

“Once they get it cleared—and that is going to be a very long process—we will all have a better idea of what can be done on the site,” he said. “The current mindset is to put up new towers, and I agree with that.”

But they shouldn’t be exact replicas, he added.

“To be blunt, they were not great buildings,” Trump said. “They only became great upon their demise last Tuesday.”

***

Clinton, it is now clear, would get one thing really wrong in the weeks and months after September 11.

Nicholas Lemann of the New Yorker met with her in Washington in late September and asked if she thought the attacks in some sense would prove to be a unifying force—if the diabolical havoc of the day would rid the national debate of extreme polarization and anti-government rage.

“I think the answer is that we saw government in action,” she said. “It wasn’t some abstract target of our discontent. It was the firefighters. It was the emergency workers. It was the elected officials who were leading and comforting. It had a human face. And now, when we’re looking at the war against terrorism, we’re asking ourselves: How do we beef up security? Well, maybe the government has to do more. How do we root out these terrorists? Well, the government has to come up with the plans and the intelligence and the resources. We had the luxury—some might say the failure of historical understanding—after the end of the Cold War that gave people the idea that they didn’t need a government, or they needed it in only the most rudimentary way, and there was a collective sense of misunderstanding about what government is and does.”

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In her first memoir, Living History, published in 2003, she would write, “That September morning changed me …”

And in an interview in 2006, she would say, “I felt this overwhelming sense of loss, and commitment and obligation to do everything I could do …”

Trump, on the other hand, would tell the Chicago Sun-Times a week after the attacks he was looking at design options in the planning of his tower in that city, “some tall, some not so tall,” he said. “Tall buildings are what make architecture in Chicago and New York great.” (That’s not the way the architects remembered it, one of the architects said later, the Chicago Tribune reporting Trump’s representatives no longer wanted the tower “to be the world’s tallest building. Shorter would be better.”)

Not two months after the attacks, Trump gave a speech to Wharton Business School graduates, according to Real Estate Weekly. In the question-and-answer session, one of them told Trump he had just before September 11 bought an apartment near what had turned into Ground Zero.

“What should I do now?” he asked.

[seekingnomad-blog]

Homo Mathematicus

The soul as a sphere in equilibrium: not grasping at things beyond it or retreating inward. Not fragmenting outward, not sinking back in itself, but ablaze with light and looking at the truth, without and within.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.12 The world is how it´s always has been: neverending, everchanging, and yet oddly static. Whether it is the essence or the manifestation that changes, I do not know. It doesn´t matter right now. To me, at least. Tonight I don´t care about the specifics of change and stasis, but about how the way we look at the world is evolving.

The world used to be a place full of magic. Or rather, people used to see the world as a place full of magic. A magical place, even, created by gods, corrupted by demons, inhabited by spirits. A world in which apotropaic magic kept us safe from the horrors that lurked in the night, in the forests, in the waters, in the air itself.

But today we look at the world and we see something different. We see things. Numbers. Everything around us is being explored, analized, tested, catalogued and carefully archived. This effort began very, very long ago, even though it´s been accelerating at an absurd rate since the Age of Enlightenment. A trip to nowhere and everywhere at the same time. And it´s changing us. The world isn´t a magical place anymore. It is a roughly 4.5 billion years old planet with a circumference of roughly 40.000 kilometers that revolves around this one particular star 365.256 times per year. The walls of the city aren´t sacred anymore, but a X kilometers long ruin made of stone and mortar. The night isn´t dark anymore. We light up the world and forced the darkness to retreat away, into the sky. When was the last time you saw the stars? It´s been a while since I spotted any. And what happened to the horrors that lurked in the night? And those in the forests and waters? They´re gone too. There´s no space for them anymore, because now the light fills everything, and no shadow can stand against the encompassing light. They must retreat farther away, deeper into the heart of the 20.163 hectare forest of whitebeams and oaks and pine trees and conifers, located 1919 meters over sea level on ground created during the Cenozoic and Paleozoic periods and populated by a sadly decreasing list of specific animals species that I won´t develop now because I think you already got the point.

Is this good? I´d argue that people no longer being scared of demons eating their souls if they go outside at night is a good thing. As is medicine, technology, knowledge in general - pitfalls aside.

But it wasn´t that long ago (at least on a historic scale) that two friends who went for a walk in the park could suddenly stop to improvise some poems about this or that old tree. Nowadays there´s this perception that poetry is something that comes from deep in the soul of an inspired poet - but poetry has always been a rather public thing. Something to be shared. Educated people in Ancient times used to compose and recite poetry when meeting their friends. Still in the XVIII And XIX centuries we find plenty of public poetry and literature and sharing in general.

But not anymore. I believe that the World Wars are partially at fault. The world was too busy for poetry and songs - even though I´d argue that´s when they were needed the most. There´s plenty of poetry from that time, but it is of a more private sort. Sad, harsh, painful. I knew a simple soldier boy Who grinned at life in empty joy. Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, And whistled early with the lark.

In Winter trenches, cowed and glum, With crumps and lice and lack of rum, He put a bullet through his brain. No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you´ll never know The hell where youth and laughter go.

-Siegfried Sassoon, Suicide in the Trenches Not the kind of stuff you´d just start reciting out of the blue in a park.

But still, there´s more to that than a couple generations being mutilated, traumatized, and generally kept busy rebuilding their world. During the last century, coupled with the turn towards materialism, globalization, industry, and the absolutely BRUTAL acceleration of progress and technological development*, our culture has taken a sharp turn towards Mathematics. *(Someone could have been a cheeky teenager or early in their 20s during 1903 and laughed at those fools who claimed they could build a machine to fly in, and still be alive to watch the retransmission of the first men walking on the Moon. Take a second to think how they must have felt remembering their childhood, in which the idea of flying at all was something between a dream and a joke) And this is where I wanted to get. This is not about poetry. It´s about math. The world is crazy about math. Everything is quantified. And while we can light a lamp at night and find comfort in its light and warmth, when a whole city, a whole country, the whole world turn on their lights… The darkness is vanquished, yes, but at what price? I miss the stars.

There is one big problem with the human nature, and that is that we´re not good at sticking to the middle path. People tend to stay still and never move, no matter how unhappy they are being stuck in old, harmful traditions; or they rush forwards with an unstoppable thirst for more knowledge, for new ideas and new traditions, no matter how many good things they leave behind of break in the way. What drives us to explore the world is that we don´t know it. And the more we know it, the more we find that we don´t know - but those unknown parts are deeper and deeper every time. For the average person, most of the world has already been explored. They don´t have neither the formative background neither the interest required to care about WHY does this very specific aspect of this or that field behave the way it does. As far as they can see, things make sense. The mystery of the world is gone. All there´s left to do is to wait until the next breakthrough so there´s something to be amused about, even if just for a little while.

And the explorer go on and on, always looking for those new breakthroughs. Because that´s what explorers do: they keep going, always hoping to find more. And with their rain of information they desensitize themselves, desensitize everyone else to the beauty that´s already there, because all the eyes are already placed on the next thing. There´s two trends I see here that I like, though. The first one is that the new generation seems to be back to the old roots. Most of them are removed enough from the great wars that none of their living relatives were directly involved. There´s been time for wounds to heal. Internet memes, often quickly disregarded as the lowest tier of… whatever, are actually a form of expression. They are a new birth of the old habit of spontaneously breaking out in poetry. Different on the surface, definitely, but ultimately the same thing: an act of personal creativeness that combines something from the world with your own vision, and is shared freely with others. The comparison might seem odd, or even absurd. You might be tempted to say that the old poetry was valuable and memes are quick fading crap. But cut them some slack, will you? They´re recovering a very important part of our culture that has been forgotten for generations. People three centuries ago grew up watching other people, who had grew up watching other people, etc. The craft improves with time and through generations. Kids nowadays are rebuilding the habit from the ground up. And covering it with a layer of absurdism and cynicism that´s very fitting to the current world climate. It must be quite confusing to be 15 nowadays. Politics made little sense to me when I was 15, and back then they DID make some sense. Trying to puzzle the pieces together to understand how the world works nowadays must be a maddening challenge.

The second one is that the world seems to be recovering a bit of that wonder. We´re turning everything into math, but we are using that math to find more beauty. While the world is speeding up, it is also slowing down, in a way.

And while the schism with the old world -the old customs, old traditions, old values- maybe be more and more inevitable as capitalism and marketing replace everything we used to hold dear, I see that a new world is formed. A new old world. Different. With its own customs, traditions, values. Not the ones we´ve had for centuries, but new ones. When 1 and 1 meet and combine themselves, they become 11. And no 1 knows which 1 it is anymore, but they´re both the same, although different. And with time, they merge into a single entity: 2. New. Different. A global world in which individual traditions are forgotten. And while some might call that chaotic mix a mess (and they´re not wrong), I think there´s also beauty in the amalgam of cultures that will, if everything goes right, last a very long time. Until the next major schism between past and future which, like the one we´re going through right now, will likely be caused by technological advancement, and hopefully not but maybe also war, or some other major catastrophe. Maybe it´ll come when we spread through the stars, if we ever reach that point. And the world goes on. Neverending, ever-changing, and oddly static.

Isn´t it beautiful? Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces – to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What´s thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it – and makes it burn still higher.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.1

[number-one-shadisper-shipper]

ACK THIS FIC WILL KILL ME ESPECIALLY IF YOU KEEP MAKING ART LIKE THIS

"An Unstoppable Force Between Static Stars" by @skimmingmilk

you have no idea how fast I whipped these up and how many tears I've shed thinking about this akmdjfjsnks the brothers ever help I won't be able to handle this fic there's only a prologue out and I'm already destroyed

GO READ THIS WONDERFUL THING THIS WONDERFUL HUMAN WROTE/IS WRITING

[sparkles-rule-4eva]

EVERYONE JUMP ABOARD THE HYPE TRAIN TODAY'S THE DAY

Y'all ready for today's update of ( an unstoppable force between static starts ) from @skimmingmilk

I'm mentally unwell and I can't wait I'm literally feeling the adrenaline rush thru me from excitement y'all bbbvgvhknnnkjhhvgg I can't wait

If you're not reading this WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE go shed some tears fam

(Skimmingmilk please take your time tho)