#but great calamities & wars lead to them becoming the ghost of what they once were even while still plenty mighty in their own right

[swordince]

🧍‍♂️<- aggressively rotating dragon age eternia thoughts

[official-megumin]

Y’know, I generally like to think that I’m pretty good at staying in my lane, so I don’t typically stray too far into fandom stuff or whatever.

But as some people may know, destiny as a franchise recently turned 10 years old. And I wanted to talk a bit about that.

Back when I was a wee little girl at 14, destiny popped up at my local gamestop, this was back before gamestop left Denmark as well.

Back then I didn't even go to the internet. So all I knew about destiny was that it was made by the people behind halo. Which at the time was my favorite series.

All I had to go on about destiny was the little pamphlet I got when I pre-ordered it.

And the way all these worlds we've all grown up imagining visiting, being presented? It just captivated me, the way all the characters looked both like they came from a distant past and the far future all at once.

So I went the rest of the year just looking at this pamphlet. Again, I barely went online at this point, so I had no idea how excited people were online, I had no idea that I could find out more about it online.

And then it came out, I barely knew how my xbox worked, so it took me a week or more to even get access to the game.

So I made a character, a male warlock at the time. The promise of great powerful magic and discovery had me intrigued.

And I will never forget the first time I saw the game.

The intro, seeing humanity go to Mars for the first time, seeing the traveler and what it could do.

The shifting landscape in the back, almost showing how this is something that has happened time and time again, repeating for eons.

All with some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard.

And then I got control of my character, and ghost spoke to me. I got to look around an abandoned road leading to a great wall.

Ghost told me I had to hurry because something was stalking us. I had no idea what.

So I kept going into the wall.

I still knew nothing, but this world already had me hooked. Around every corner was mystery and excitement.

As I went further through the wall, they found me; the fallen, a race of space pirate spider monsters.

Back in 2014 I just saw them as cheap copies of the covenant from halo. But as the years have passed, it had become so obvious that they are much more than that.

Luckily just before the fallen found me, or I found them really.

I found a rifle, a rifle that has stayed with me every since that day.

I still have my original khvostov in my inventory after all these years, still safe in my vault.

After fighting my way through the fallen, I came out the other side of the wall. And the world opened up.

It was a huge space port, filled with ancient secrets and rocket ships designated for the stars, but left to rot on Earth.

As I didn't have much time to play back then, it took me a while to get further.

A couple months later I reached the moon. Another place we all know so well from staring into the night sky.

But standing there in the dust of a great calamity felt different. And of course, we had neighbours there now.

The hive and their organic gothic architecture.

I pushed forward and reached Venus, another location that has etched itself into my memory.

The jungle, the vibrant volcanic pools everywhere, the blue lava and of course. The vex.

I robot hivemind existing beyond time. Like the hive and even the fallen. Their architecture was unlike anything I had seen in a game before.

It was geometric and ancient, it defied logic yet felt real.

It devoured Venus and imposed itself on everything.

Then I got to Mars, a planet that had defined my imagination unlike any celestial body till then.

Here we met the cabal. A race of militant giants.

At the time I didn't much care for them. But as we have moved further into the series, I have come to miss them as they were then greatly.

They were like us, they were conquerors and scientists. War pushed their limits in all fields of existence.

Like us, they tried to understand the vex.

And that let us to the black garden. The final level of the original game.

As I wasn't very experienced with gaming, I couldn't beat the final boss.

And as much as it's embarrassing to admit, it made me rage. And I ended up breaking a table.

This rage marked my end of playing until I was 15.

I had very limited money, so I didn't get to buy any dlc, or even play online with other people till then.

But then I somehow saved up the money to buy the taken king.

And since then I have bought everything on day 1. And the franchise has become a constant for me. It's become a source of comfort and excitement.

Be it exploring the dreadnaught or braving the plaguelands. Destiny 1 always sparked wonder.

Then destiny 2 came out, and I stuck around even in the darkest hours of the franchise.

It always hurt to see how much people hated what I loved so much.

As forsaken came out, my thoughts and feelings about my gender were starting to resourface.

I started struggling more, but destiny was still there for me.

A year passed, and by this point I had admitted to feeling how I did, and I came out as trans.

With the nex expansion called shadowkeep, old content returned too.

The first ship you got in destiny 1, the arcadia class jumpship. Returned, and it had me excited.

I started over, made a new warlock, female this time. To reflect who I now was. It also saw us return to the moon. It let us, for the first time in destiny 2. Explore hive architecture.

And I loved it.

This time was especially hard for me. It was a time of the players being the least hopeful since destiny 2 launched.

And it was a time where I was on the brink of collapse.

I attempted to take my own life, and in the wake of that. I came out to my fiends and aquaintences.

Luckily for me, this still mostly worked out, and I kept having friends to play with.

As the year kept going, beyond light was announced, and I lost interest for a while.

Gear would be sunset and I would lose all the armor I had worked so hard to aquire for years.

I didn't come back till the season just before transmog was introduced.

It happened to drop on my birthday.

Since then I have played pretty much constantly.

We have seen highs in the form of witch queen, and lows in the form of lightfall.

But I stayed through all of it. Enjoying all of my time spent in the process.

And now, tens years after I set out on this journey with bungie leading me and all other players.

It's over, the light and dark saga has been completed.

We defeated the witness.

And I'm thankful I got to experience it.

Few things in my life has been there for me as consistently as destiny.

I left out so many things that has happened over those 10 years.

I barely have mentioned the lore and how it helped get me back into the game several times over the past decade.

I have alluded to how much the music has meant to me.

But it has been the one consistent thing about the game, and now all the original composers are gone.

And I'm sad to see it end. But I regret none of my time in this game.

Neither do I want to see it go now.

Bungie has announced the next multi year saga. And I'm ready for it.

I'm excited to see the mystery and wonder return to this franchise so near and dear to me.

Thank you bungie, for letting me have this in my life

[darklingichor]

Odd Thomas, Forever Odd & Brother Odd by Dean Koontz *MAJOR SPOILERS* Long post

I've written a little bit about these before. My goal was to listen to all seven of the Odd books plus the two short stories... I couldn't make myself do that.

I use to really love those books. I use to really love Dean Koontz, just recently, the writing has started to annoy me. Since I haven't read any of his new stuff since Saint Odd came out, I can't say it's because the writing has changed. I think I have changed, I'm just not sure in what way. So, I'm going to look at the first three books in the series because 1. I like them the most (sort of). 2. Because I honestly feel like the series should have either ended there or jumped to Saint Odd. 3. Because I'm going to see if by writing about them, I can figure out why reading Koontz in my 20's was like a breath of fresh air, but in my 30's it feels like when the air conditioner is some how making everything too cold, yet not cooling things down at all: uncomfortable and bafflingly frustrating.

Odd Thomas is a 20 year old fry cook in the small california desert town of Pico Mundo. He's seen as sweet but strange to all but a few people in town. He grew up with a mostly absent father, a crazy mother and a loving but wild grandmother, the last has already gone to the great beyond, so what family he has, he has found.

He has a girlfriend named Stormy, they've been together since they were sixteen, his boss at the Grill where he works, Terry, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of Elvis Presley, a 300 lb mystery writer named P. Oswald Boone (Little Ozzie), his landlady who is afraid she'll turn invisible, and the cheif of police.

Odd also sees ghosts, or The Lingering Dead as he calls them. He trys to help them crossover. Sometimes it's as simple as talking to them (though they don't speak back, "the dead don't talk")  oftentimes is complicated and dangerous. Hence why his close relationship with the cheif comes in handy and also why it formed. He has other gifts. The occasional prophetic dream that usually only gives him bits and pieces to work off of, he sees these spectors of calamity that tend to show up right before something bad happens (like an earthquake or a shooting) they are black shadow things that Odd calls Bodochs, and psychic magmatism, where  he can find anyone he's looking for by wondering around with a clear picture in mind.

Everyone in his circle knows about his gift other than his landlady who is slightly and gently insane.

There is one other person in his circle, the ghost of Elvis who Odd had been trying to help crossover since he was in highschool.

The first book takes place over the course of three days.

To avoid a blow by blow, I'll summarize. After an eventful morning during which he helped a murdered twelve year old cross over by catching her killer, Odd goes to his shift a the Grill. There, he sees a creepy little man that reminds him if a mold and fungus, followed by a group of Bodochs. He finishes his shift, goes looking for the guy he's dubed Fungus Man.

He eventually finds his way to Fungus Man's house, breaks in and finds it unnaturally cold and silent. He discovers a room that is pitch black except for a small red light. He soon finds that what has made this room so black and the house so cold and quiet is the mob of Bodochs occupying it. After the Bodochs stream out, Odd is able to see that the room is an office and Fungus Man (aka Bob Roberts) is obsessed with serial and mass murderers, he has a file cabinet full of folders on them and posters of famous murders on his wall. Bob seems to be planning something, but Odd doesn't know what, as his only clue is a planner page in a folder from the killer cabinet. The folder is labeled with Bob's name and the date is two days away.

A series of happenings eventually leads to odd trying to stop a horrifying plan

*SPOILERS STOP READING RIGHT HERE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE END*

So, Bob is a satanist in cahoots with a couple of other satanists to shoot up and blow up the Pico Mundo mall, among other places. He is able to stop them from completing their goal, but some people do die, including Stormy who was working at an ice cream shop at the mall.

Forever Odd

It's months later and Odd has moved into Stormy's apartment. He wakes up to find the ghost of one of his best friends's stepdad at his bedside. Strangely, Danny, a guy with brittle bone disease, with whom Odd grew up, was not mentioned in the last book.

So, the ghost of Danny's stepdad convinces Odd to go to his and Danny's house. Once there, Odd finds stepdad's body and discovers that Danny has been kidnapped.

What follows is a slightly weird story.

Odd eventually finds Danny and his kidnappers. One is a bug-shit woman Danny was talking with on a phone sex line. To impress her he told her about Odd. She's into her own twisted form of the Vudun religion and decides that Odd can show her the lingering dead and wants him become one of her crew. She kidnapped Danny to lure him out.

Danny is rescued, bad guys defeated, and Odd decides he needs to get out of Pico Mundo for a while.

Brother Odd

Odd has spent the last several months at the St. Bartholomew's Abbey, in the California Mountains, as a lay visitor among the monks and nuns. The Abbey is also home to a a community of disabled children. Odd becomes  close with four people in particular The Mother superior, The Priest at the head of the monks, Brother Knuckles, an ex mob guy turned monk, and Brother John, a wealthy guy turned monk. Only the first three know of his gift.

Waiting up to see a snow storm break, Odd finds Brother Timothy unconscious or dead on the grounds. He is then clubbed on the back of the head and knocked out. A search for Brother Tim leads to a strange mix of science and the spiritual that I for one found really cool.

** SECOND SPOILER**

Elvis crosses over in this one and Odd contemplates becoming a monk. Two reasons I think that this should have been the last one. Another reason is that he comes very very close to connecting with Stormy though a conduit to the otherside. Third, this is the last book where Odd is truly Odd.

See, Odd hates guns and will only use one as a last resort. In the first, Odd takes out most of the bad guys with a baseball bat, in the second, bug-shit lady was killed by a cougar, the bad guy in this one was killed by someone else.

Although his ability to see and help the lingering dead is not the main focus of the second or the third, it's still something he does. There is character progression from the first to the third. When we meet Odd he is trying to carve out a life dispite his traumatic childhood and while trying to do right with the gifts he has. After he loses Stormy, the second commitment becomes more intense, because of his conviction that the only way he will meet Stormy on the other side is to live his life in the best way he can, and that means using his gifts to help people. He's sadder, slightly less heedful of danger, but still fully committed to flighting the good flight, in his unconventional way.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, in the fourth through the seventh, the train is derailed, possessed, and also on fire.

Not only does his primary gift take a back seat, but the fight he is flighting isn't between the forces of good and evil, or even between justice and injustice, it's a culture war.

And the side of the war that Odd is on is peopled with climate change deniers, dooms day prepers, anti-government people who supply other "good guys" with guns,  other anti-personnal gear, tech that circumvents federal guidelines. All the "bad guys" are anyone with any sort of power judges, lawyers, cops, corporations, politicians. Their victims are the hard working Americans, the waitresses, the truck drivers... Strike that. The victims are the Christian hardworking Americans who evedently are being "persecuted in their own country" (this might be a different rant for a different blog but I maintain that there is a big difference between Persecution and Denial of Entitlement. Persecution is being in danger of being harassed, hurt, killed or imprisoned for your beliefs, ethnicity or culture. And when that happens justice is less likely to happen for the person or people targeted. Denial of Entitlement is when a person, or people, cry injustice because they either can't dress up their persecution of others in their beliefs, or can't force those beliefs on others, through law, or through being amazingly obnoxious).

Not only are anyone in power corupt, they are satanists, not are they satanists, they are the same sect of satanists who attacked Pico Mundo, not only are they the same satanists that attacked Pico Mundo, they have an actual connection to Satan. Like they can call up demons and monsters.... Yet for some reason they still use bombs, guns and weponized diseases to wreak havoc.

Now, if Koontz wanted to showcase some characterization of how to fight against a corupt system, that's cool, I mean I'm all for calling out people in power. But this vears into government lizard people territory, and if that was the type of book he wanted to write then that's cool too,but he essentially highjacked Odd's story to do it.

I have a hard time believing that when Odd picked up the ghost of Frank Sinatra at the end of Brother, and walked off into the sunset, that the original intent was to end up in the middle of a plot to plant nukes around the country and then, accompanied by pregnant girl who is some how The Virgin Mary's mother, to a house where time travel is possible and mutant pigs fade in from a post apocalyptic future and want to eat people, where they pick up a sort of dead, sort of immortal child, who is neither of those any more. Only to then to leave them to go on a road trip with an old lady, who some how has connections to the metaphysical, and a microchip planted in her ass that makes it to where she doesn't have to sleep, to rescue kids kidnapped by the powerful satanists to be used as human sacrifice. Along the way, they meet up with some fighters in this coming war, who while they do not wear tin foil hats, they have the cheerfully bloodthirsty air of cult members waiting for the end times. (Side note about the roadtrip book: Deeply Odd is the most boring, yet weird book I have read since Breaking Dawn. Say what you will about the crazy pigs and time travel in Odd Apocalypse, it's at least interesting).

And then to end up back in Pico Mundo to fight said satanists. The in increasingly nonsensical plots really just there to deliver commentary on how the world has gone to shit and everyone is to focused on the material.

Again, remember that Odd is pretty apolitical. He's never voted, owns only the clothes on his back, prefers Shakespeare and old movies to tv, which I figure also includes the news. How does this not equal out to a kid being a patsy for this group, which essentially takes over the narritive. I mean, yeah, he's still doing his thing, but he has many of his moves ditcatated by this group. This includes carrying a gun, all the time.

Again, Odd hates guns. Granted, by the last book, he has spent three books killing people with guns while talking about how much he hates killing people with guns, but up till the last two books, his hatered of guns is seen as a virtue, and then suddenly, he's an idiot if he doesn't arm himself to take a piss.

This makes very little sense to me. Odd is a simple guy, he wants to live his life as long as he has to, do right by the dead and make his way back to Stormy, all the while perfecting his pancake recipe. How the fuck did we get from this to "Everything is shit, there are three type of people, those in power who are working for the devil, those on the side of the angels and the idiots who don't see what's going on. And dispite all the supernatural stuff, we still need to busta cap in someone's ass.

I know that Koontz is Catholic, and I speculate that he had a renewal of his faith somewhere, but also somewhere along the line he took a turn into conservative libertarian territory if that is a thing that can exsist.

I feel like originally, the idea was to have Saint Odd follow Brother Odd, at least in some incarnation. It makes sense, the satanist sect want to come back and finish what was started, and take out the town and Odd, who cocked it up to begin with. In the first book Odd describes Roberts and his cohorts as playing satanists but just using it as a delivery system for their sick want to kill people and be famous for it. It follows that others who are also playing at being satanists would come back to town to get revenge for their fallen brethren. This also trucks with Forever Odd where the bug-shit lady was playing at being a Vudun, and with Brother Odd where people played at being faithful.

This is how ai think it should have gone:

Odd goes from the Abbey, where he is shown, yet again, that evil is a human driven force, that those who wallow in pride, in want of adoration and perfection can be the down fall of themselves and others, back to his home town to defeate these sad delusional people once and for all.

Or

Odd goes home for Christmas at the end of Brother, decides he wants to take vows, and goes about the process of becoming a man of the cloth. Maybe he goes back to St. Bart's, and he figures out a way to help the lingering dead from there, or, after he is confirmed in whatever capacity, he goes back to Pico Mundo and works along side Stormy's priest uncle. He sort of Father Dowlings it until he passes.

Instead, suddenly the structured feel of all of the supernatural things, which (implied by the third book) are based in science and the laws and rules of the universe that God laid down, turns into... Magic?

Doesn't matter how or why, what matters is there is a war! And the little fry cook shall lead them!

Seriously. Five years of Christian School has me seeing the turn that Odd's story takes, a couple of ways.

First it is either an overworked Christ story, where Odd is swept up in a war between the oppressed and the opressers, even though his life and mission is mostly one of mercy. In the end being a sacrifice that saves millions (by preventing the spread out f a weponized strain of rabies) but his sacrifice will only be remembered by a handful of people at first. The difference is of course that Odd buys into the culture war even though it make no sense.

Or, it's a Saint's story. Struggle, strife and miracles. See, it use to be that to be canonized, you had to have three miracles. His miracles? Well, first, his helping of the dead to cross over could be one, the preventing of whatever demon the satanists summoned in Deeply Odd, could be another, and finally, somehow managing to send Little Ozzie the manuscript for Saint Odd after Odd himself had already died, could be the last.

Either way, books four, five, and six are completely unnecessary.

So why does knootz's writing annoy me? It's self righteous and condicending. Poking fun a people who watch tv, enjoy unsophisticated things, bemoaning those who don't see just how stupid it is to buy into media, and how people are just marching their own way to misery because they just don't Get It.

It's the same time of people who look down on adults who do kid stuff sometimes "Why would you read John Green when you can read Dickens? Why would you watch Inside Out when you can watch Citizen Cane?"

Why would you eat coco puffs? Adults don't do that!"

I'm sorry, have I outgrown fun? A book is a book, a movie is a movie, breakfast cereal is breakfast cereal and you should be able to watch anything you want on tv without being shamed by a book that has an exploding cow in it.

[thedarkthatbindsus]

Here it is!

Your first peek at The Dark That Binds Us, my debut novel, due to be released in Fall 2019! 

The earth shudders as another dreadnaught drifts over the Dukcha Wood, casting a shadow like storm clouds.

Professor Gim keeps a hand on my shoulder, the both of us crouching as low as we can into the underbrush, waiting for the ground to still and the roar of the engines to fade. Its shadow is so huge that it blocks the sun, already struggling to pierce the thick canopy of the jungle.

I don’t know why I’m holding my breath, but I do, hand over my mouth as the ground finally stills and only the sounds of birdsong and buzzing insects fills the air. Professor Gim’s body relaxes next to me, but our guide Arjun’s body stays tense. When I look at him, his dark eyes are still wildly scanning the canopy, sweat pouring down his face.

Like me, he’s no stranger to invading Adosi ships

“This is…unexpected,” says Professor Gim. She doesn’t sound the least bit rattled. In fact, she’s glowing from the combination of sweat. My heart is pounding so hard, I can hear it in my ears. “I guess that peace treaty didn’t mean much.” She turns to me with a reassuring smile on her tanned face, but it quickly fades when she sees how pale I am.

“Are you well, Verity?” she asks. I nod, but of course, I’m lying. The underside of an Adosi dreadnaught is always an ill omen. I have scars left over from Adosi brutality. A cold knot of dread coils in my stomach at the mere thought of seeing the crimson armor of an Adosi soldier, but I take in a deep breath through my nose, trying to draw in some of Professor Gim’s bravery. I can’t be the apprentice of famous explorer Minji Gim and be a coward.

 She pats my shoulder, giving me a soft smile before she turns to Arjun. “Are you ready to lead us, Mr. Kang?” she asks. He seems to be having a harder time calming down. He clears his throat, shaking the sweat from his ginger beard and mustache. He gives a stiff nod, leading us out of the underbrush and back onto the path.

 We’ve been in the Dukcha Wood for a week, and we’ve spent three of those days spotting Adosi ships flying eastward to Haseul City. It’s the last bastion of civilization before the jungle and the capital of East Nal Va. I’d be a fool to think those ships were paying a friendly visit.

But Professor Gim has led us with a single-minded determination. Through rainstorms, armed checkpoints, and oppressive heat, Professor Gim has never faltered.

Even though Arjun is the guide, the professor leads us down the trail, her trousers and boots caked with mud. The handles of her pistols glint in her belt. I carry a pistol of my own, even though I hate the things.

“It’s not safe for a woman in most places,” she told me before we departed from New Argent City. “Any student of mind needs to be able to protect herself.”

I took the gun from her with shaking fingers. “Have…you ever killed anyone before, Professor?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Once.”

Now, she pauses in front of us, kneeling down to look at something in the mud. She waves me over and I rush to her side. A strand of black hair sticks to her cheek with sweat, but her face is glowing with excitement. It’s a struggle to look away from her face and down to where she points a long finger.

“What does that look like, Verity?” she asks me, nearly breathless.

I wipe away some of the mud to reveal a glint of polished stone, a sharpened length of obsidian attached to a turquoise hilt. As Professor Gim fishes her field notebook out of her satchel, I carefully pull the obsidian dagger from the mud and rotate it in my hands. The blade still gleams as though it were shaped just yesterday.

 A series of thick, intricate letters carved into the bottom of the hilt tell me exactly why the Professor is so excited.

This is of Witgan make. The characters on the hilt could either be the name of the person it belonged to or the trademark of the smith who made it.  

“We’re close,” the Professor says as she puts her notebook away. “We’re so close!”  

Already, I can feel the weight of our discovery settling on my shoulders. For years, the scholarly consensus was that the Witgan people never ventured this far north from their cluster of villages and cities to the south of the Aksenti Mountains…not until their decline two hundred years ago forced them to migrate into Ilios. But little discoveries like this dagger put doubt on that theory. Witgan literature is just as rare, but what little pieces of it the Professor found mention temples and shrines erected by Witgan people who traveled abroad to honor their gods and spirits. Of course, they may have been destroyed over the years, but finding just one here would be enough to shift all we know about Witgan history.  

Professor Gim plucks the dagger from my hands and shows it to Mr. Kang. He takes it from her almost with reverence, turning the blade over in his hands carefully. He reads the characters on the bottom, tapping them with a finger.  

“This belonged to a warrior,” he says, speaking to us in stilted, accented Varterian. “This is their family name, Tu Wabe.”  

“Astounding,” Professor Gim breathes, but excitement is cut short by another dangerous rumble of earth. This time it’s accompanied by a terrible roaring sound, like some great beast has been awakened. My body goes cold, and memories of a crumbling, burning city flood my mind. For a moment, I’m a little girl again, watching my home disappear into a crater carved by Adosi bombs.  

Professor Gim has to shake my shoulders to tear me away from the memory.  

“We keep moving,” she says, that mad determination back in her eyes. “The sooner we finish here, the better.”  

I take in a shuddering breath. I didn’t come this far to be cowed. Mr. Kang and I follow the Professor down the trail, deeper into the woods and farther south. The trail disappears into the mud and dead vegetation, and it becomes so dark that even the air chills. The canopy becomes so thick and overgrown that no light can peek through. The humidity creeps away, replaced with the kind of dry cold that proceeds winter. The stench of mold and dead things is stronger here. There were rumors in East Nal Va of the wood being cursed, either by ghosts or malevolent spirits. I’ve never been a superstitious person, but I’m having a hard time finding a logical explanation for the sudden drop in temperature.  

I pull a torch out of my satchel, shaking it to activate the mechanisms inside that cause it to glow with a bright, white light. I have no idea how it works, but I can’t help admiring my friend’s ingenuity.  

Professor Gim shakes her own torch to life and gasps when she casts the light on a wall peeking out from the trees. I join my light with hers, giving Mr. Kang room to run his fingers over the carvings on the brown stone.  

Some of the lettering is faded, but over his shoulder, I can make out the words ‘ruined’ and ‘fallen’ amidst murals of mountains crumbling and people and animals fleeing to escape whatever calamity is being described here.  

“The Akiwran’tam,” says Mr. Kang. “When Mt. Aksenti erupted.”  

And shortly after that, Ados invaded and took what was left.  

“But we’re miles away from Mt. Aksenti,” I say. I raise the torch higher and find that the ground starts to slope up into a hill. Cobblestones poke through the mud and undergrowth. A road. This used to be a road! I leave the Professor and Mr. Kang to follow it, nearly having to fall to my hands and knees to climb up the slippery incline. I breach the tree line like I’m emerging from the water and gasp like I'm taking a breath for the first time in minutes.  

A temple rises before me, and I see patches of moss growing over ancient stone hewn with arches, faces, and the bodies of gods and spirits. It rises in terraced levels, each adorned with demonic faces, intricate visages of dragons, leopards, and birds. Some of the temple has fallen, islands of stone invaded by tree roots and rot. It’s silent here. Not even wind whispers through the leaves. I don’t even hear a bird.  

“Verity!” the Professor shouts from behind me. “Don’t wander...off...”

Her voice trails into astonishment. She drops her torch, raising her hands to her mouth in shock. Mr. Kang mutters something to himself in Witgan and clutches his heart.  

“I knew it,” Professor Gim says with a gasp. “Oh, I knew it. I knew it!”  

I’m ready to join her in celebrating before I hear it: a horrible buzzing noise like a horde of locusts is approaching us fast from the east. The sweat that blossoms on my skin tells me what they truly are: Adosi wasps, the smaller ships that hover around their dreadnaughts like flies and peel off the main fleet for reconnaissance or to carry smaller squadrons. There’s no roar of a dreadnaught engine, so these ships are flying on their own.  

“We need to get inside,” I say, partly out of fear and partly because I am eager to explore this discovery.  I lead the way inside, and the Professor and Mr. Kang follow me towards the stone archway that marks the entrance. The darkness swallows us, and the stench of dust and mildew waft around us. It’s colder here, and I find myself shivering as I raise my torch to look at the walls. There are scratches on them in several places. There’s an armored figure that repeats several times amidst falling mountains and cracking skies, but each time, their face is scratched or gouged out. When I touch the stone, it’s icy cold against my fingers.  

“I...don't know this,” Mr. Kang says beside me. “They were obviously an important figure, but at some point, they must have done something unforgivable. I’ve never seen this before.”  

“This day is full of wonderful discoveries,” the Professor sighs. I wonder, does anything scare her?  

I let her lead the way deeper into the ruins. I trip over uneven stone, feeling my exhaustion creep over me. They war inside me, the desire to go home, and the urge to see what lies deeper in its ruin. If those Adosi ships keep buzzing around outside, I don’t know if I’ll make it home.  

The hallway slopes down and we slip over the wet stone. Water drips from the ceiling. We must be underwater somehow. The hallway opens up into a grand, circular chamber of stone, waterfalls roaring through an opening in the high ceiling and spilling in with the sunlight. The sound fills my ears and rumbles in my chest, the spray of the water dampening my skin and clothes. But it’s what lies in the center of the chamber that draws my attention.

It’s a body.

[alexthegamingboy]

Toonami Weekly Recap 1/06/2018

Black Clover EP#04 - The Magic Knights Entrance Exam: Asta and Yuno head toward the colosseum in the royal capital for the Magic Knights Entrance Exam, while looking around and admiring all the things they’ve never seen before.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans Season 2 EP#10 (35) - Awaking Calamity: Orga tells McGillis of the Gundam Flauros and the Pluma that Tekkadan excavated on Mars, along with a much larger unit discovered in the area. McGillis tells him to stop the excavation immediately, revealing what they discovered is an ancient Mobile Armor; a forbidden piece of technology that caused both the Calamity War and the mass casualties associated with the conflict. Meanwhile, Jasley has his men spy on Tekkadan and McGillis' activities, before informing Rustal's fleet of McGillis' secret trip to Mars through his connections with the Kujan Family. Vidar suspects that McGillis is out to destroy the Mobile Armor to earn the Order of the Seven Stars; the highest honor within Gjallarhorn. Aboard the Saisei, Tekkadan and Teiwaz's mechanics activate the Pluma, which wreaks havoc on the hangar. Upon his arrival on Mars, McGillis reveals to Tekkadan that Mobile Armors are fully automated, therefore making them capable of unrestrained violence, and that Mobile Suits - especially the Gundams - were created to destroy them. As soon as Tekkadan and McGillis reach the excavation site, Iok and his platoon stage an ambush to arrest McGillis, but the presence of their Mobile Suits accidentally activates the Mobile Armor.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders EP#19 - Death 13, Part 1: Kakyoin has a dream where he is in a deserted amusement park, accompanied only by a dog. Suddenly, the Death tarot card appears, and he is attacked by its image, the Stand Death 13, killing the dog, before Polnareff wakes him up to tell him that they are on the way out of town. Kakyoin becomes concerned when he finds his hand has been cut in his sleep, and more so when he spots the dog he saw in his dreams, killed in the same manner as he saw in the dream. When the two catch up with the others, Joseph is arguing with a man he had planned to rent a plane from, who has now refused to let him go as they need to get a baby to the hospital. Joseph offers to take the child with them, and a woman with the child agrees. As the group takes off, the woman says she must find the child's mother, admitting that the child, Mannish Boy, is not her own, and she was scared of his fangs. While in flight, both Kakyoin and Polnareff fall asleep and find themselves at the amusement park, again. Kakyoin tries to warn Polnareff that he was attacked in his dreams by a Stand, using the dead dog as proof, but Polnareff does not seem to pay much attention, until Death 13 makes itself known once more, attacking the two of them. They find that in their dreams they cannot summon their Stands to fight back, but before Death 13 lands a mortal blow on Polnareff, Joseph wakes him up to have him change the baby's diaper, leaving Kakyoin on his own. As Death 13 is revealed to be the Stand of Mannish Boy, Kakyoin cuts his own arm, as he thrashes about in his sleep, causing Joseph to crash the plane. As the team sets up camp to prepare for rescue, Kakyoin sees that he has cut the words "Baby Stand" into his arm, leading him to realize that the child they have been taking with them is their attacker. He tries to warn the others, but they do not believe him, as Mannish Boy is pleased that his plans to kill the group are succeeding.

Lupin the 3rd EP#24 - I'm Going to Get You Lupin: Rebecca realizes she is truly in love with Lupin, and announces to Italy that she'll be able to capture him. In the meantime, Lupin continues to break into various banks without stealing anything, and Rebecca understands that he's searching for something in particular. It's the beginning of a great battle between the two, with the final stand that will take place inside the last bank. At the end, Rebecca finds out that Lupin was in search of a single banknote in order to win a bet with Jigen, and they somehow manage to safely escape the police, even with Robson's help, proving to be quite a fine couple. Despite this, at the end Lupin decides to escape, and Robson, despite his concerns, decides to let Rebecca live as she pleases.

Hunter x Hunter: The Chimera Ant Arc EP#78 - Very × Rapid × Reproduction: Kite and his party trace the whereabouts of the Chimera Queen and conclude that it is located in the neo-ludite nation of NGL. As both Kite's group and another separate team of hunters depart to NGL to investigate, the Queen establishes her stronghold and instructs her soldiers to gather a huge number of humans for her to consume in order to give birth to the King.

Outlaw Star EP#16 - Demon of the Water Planet: Gene, Jim, and Melfina are contracted by an old man to recover a shipment of dragonite ore from a ship that crashed on the water planet Heifong VII, which leads to a battle with the creature guarding the ship and its ore. Once the dragonite ore had been loaded onto the ship, the old man sacrifices himself to the creature in order for the crew to safely escape from the planet.

Cowboy Bebop EP#14 - Bohemian Rhapsody: The Bebop crew hunts for Chessmaster Hex, the rumored mastermind behind a series of robberies at hyperspace gate tollbooths. However, while trying to dig up dirt on their target, they unearth some very valuable data regarding the gate accident that devastated Earth fifty years earlier.

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig EP#08 (34) - "DI: Vegetarian Dinner – FAKE FOOD: Tired of Goda's manipulation, Aramaki decides to take the initiative and conduct his own investigation into the Individual Eleven case while simultaneously looking into the Cabinet Intelligence Agency. Section 9 is split into two teams, one focused on digging up additional info on the two cases and the other tasked with locating an ex-GSDA officer identified as a person of interest in a series of shootings at a local TV station. While on a stakeout of a Taiwanese vegetarian restaurant, Batou and Togusa find out that Section 1 has been fed false information about the same ex-GSDA soldier, and have set out to kill him on the assumption that the man is a world-renowned terrorist. Batou and Togusa arrive too late to save the man, and both sides determine that someone behind the scenes is feeding disinformation to both Section 9 and Section 1.

[science-criticaltheory]

A Clear and Present Threat to U.S. National Security: Donald Trump by James Bruno

The White House/Flickr

The President is Depleting the Security Apparatus That Can Prevent a Crisis From Becoming a Catastrophe.

On January 26, two Russian TU-160 Blackjack strategic bombers buzzed North America. American and Canadian fighter jets quickly scrambled to escort them away, in what was just the latest game of aerial chicken between Moscow and the West. Nuclear-capable Russian bombers also skirted the Alaska coast in both September and May of last year, each time intercepted and chased out by U.S. fighters. Putin’s message is clear: Russia is a great nation and the United States is vulnerable.

Such close encounters have occurred sporadically since the Cold War. So far, these close calls, sometimes measured in yards and feet, have not resulted in calamity. But they easily could. If so, how would things play out? Is the Trump administration capable of handling a serious international crisis soberly and methodically?

A head-on collision between U.S. and Russian or Chinese warfighting assets could easily spiral into a Guns of August-style avalanche toward armed conflict. Just as feckless European powers a century ago let the assassination of a Balkan archduke lead to world war, an incompetent U.S. president, dismissive of his national security apparatus and operating in a policy vacuum, puts our security at serious risk. As President John F. Kennedy once said, “Domestic policy can only defeat us. Foreign policy can kill us.”

In December, President Donald Trump reversed U.S. policy on Syria and Afghanistan, withdrawing all U.S. military personnel from the former and half from the latter. There were no policy discussions with the Pentagon, State Department, or even within the National Security Council. The intelligence agencies were not asked for their input. Nor were Congressional or international allies consulted, much less the Afghan government or Syrian opposition forces. It was off-the-cuff policymaking at the touch of Trump’s Twitter finger.

Since he came into office, this president has been at odds with his own government, likening the intelligence community to “Nazis,” attacking the FBI and justice system, demeaning cabinet secretaries and other senior officials to the point of their quitting or being fired. James Mattis, Trump’s former defense chief, was the latest to leave, following the decisions on Syria and Afghanistan.

Last week, Trump called his intel chiefs “extremely passive and naïve” and suggested they “go back to school” in response to the latest Worldwide Threat Assessment report, the intelligence community’s comprehensive overview of salient threats to our national security, which happens to contradict the president’s alternative facts, notably regarding Iran, ISIS, North Korea, and Russia. In an astonishing and unprecedented move, the president’s intelligence briefers warned, anonymously, that his rejection of intelligence is endangering the country. “When it comes to the effective stewardship of our nation’s security—especially during crises—the most successful administrations had three things in common: people, process and policy,” notes President Obama’s former Deputy National Security Advisor Anthony Blinken. In the Trump administration all three are severely lacking.

In terms of senior policy personnel, the Trump administration resembles a ghost ship more than a fully functioning executive branch: nearly 40 percent of top government positions remain unfilled, including a third of the nearly 200 senior policy jobs in the State Department; thirty-one ambassadorships are vacant; political appointees, often unqualified campaign contributors and cronies, comprise fully half of the rest; and a quarter of cabinet-level departments are headed by “acting” secretaries, according to the Partnership for Public Service. What’s more, there has been a record two-thirds turnover in senior White House staff, including three national security advisors since Trump came into office.

As for process, essentially there is none. “Principals” and “deputies” meetings of cabinet and second-tier officials of the foreign affairs agencies to coordinate policy are rare. When I was a State Department official working on Afghanistan and European affairs in the 1980s, such meetings were frequent. The process, though bureaucratic, contributed greatly to the policy successes of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Without the collective input of experts and policymakers in multiple government agencies, bad decisions might have been made with dire consequences. Decision-making in the current administration, however, is overly centralized in the hands of a highly ideological and hawkish National Security Advisor John Bolton—and a whim-driven president.

Equally disconcerting, Trump’s America First policy agenda has damaged the post-World War II order that has undergirded political stability, democratic societies, and global prosperity for more than half a century. Through instigating a rift with our NATO allies, threatening to pull out of the World Trade Organization, coddling despots, downplaying human rights, and abandoning the Paris climate change accord and Iran nuclear deal, the president has diminished America’s capacity to lead on the world stage.

Most disturbing, especially to this ex-diplomat and many of my active duty and former colleagues, is the growing evidence of potential collusion between Trump and Moscow. President Trump’s obsequiousness to Vladimir Putin has been amply documented. His exclusion of U.S. officials—even American interpreters—from his meetings with the Russian leader sounds obvious alarm bells among counterintelligence professionals. Is the U.S. commander in chief an asset of Russia? As outlandish as it sounds, the possibility can by no means be ruled out. Once Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation is completed, we may finally know. But there is one refrain that circulates widely among national security professionals: none of us would have received security clearances had we even a fraction of the shady foreign contacts or financial shenanigans that have come to light about the president.

Imagine a Russian SU-27 fighter clips the wing of a U.S. Navy reconnaissance aircraft, causing it to tailspin into the Black Sea, sending all 24 crewmembers to their deaths. Washington and Moscow immediately face a Cold War-style confrontation. What happens?

The fully professional U.S. military chain of command functions as it should. But it requires orders from the commander in chief. Yet, as of this writing, there is no secretary of defense. There is no adequately functioning interagency policy process. The president ignores the intelligence reports and policy papers put before him. Our gutted and hack-dominated diplomatic machinery stalls in place. Maybe Trump heeds funky signals from Putin not to respond. Maybe he responds with fire and fury.

We don’t know what would happen. All we know is that the security apparatus that has kept America safe for decades is being eroded. If the United States really had to deal with an emergency, the guardrails that once existed would be impossible to resurrect, and the policymaking machinery gravely deficient. In fact, Trump is making it all the more likely that any crisis could quickly turn into a catastrophe.