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agentmarymargaretskitz · 5 years ago

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Better Late Than Never

My last minute contribution of something that will not happen in COIE, but what’s fanfic for anyways?

AO3

Earth-73

This was not supposed to happen.

Everything had been going perfectly when the GATE was first activated. They had expected it to stay that way, given they’d checked and double-checked all the parts of the machine. Still, something had gone wrong. Dr. Jackson had sent Thea to get her and Jax to help. When they arrived on the floor where the GATE had been built, the woman herself seemed to be struggling to put in the override codes. Her mother and Caitlin were struggling too to stop the impending disaster.

“Mom!” Lily Stein screamed, jogging forward before lightning crackled in front of her and put her to a stop.

“Lily!” shouted Clarissa as she and Jax’s mother looked up at the arrivals. “Get out of here!”

Jax was at her side, shaking his head. “You sent Thea to get help!”

“I thought we could,” Dr. Jackson’s face crumbled when she looked up at them. “But it’s too late. The energy is overloading. An explosion is coming. We can’t stop it- just prevent its direction. And we have to stay with it.”

Her eyes found Cait’s reddened ones before her fiancée sniffled and rubbed a sleeve over her face.

“Mom,” Jax shook his head. “No, we all need to go.”

“Someone has to redirect the power. We can’t get out through the lightning. I’m sorry.”

“No!”

“Just get out of here, both of you!”

“NO!” they screamed together.

“Lily, Jax, you have to-“

There was an explosion above the GATE. For two seconds, time seemed to freeze. Then it resumed to its speed, a pulse of energy surging out to hit the two young scientists holding on to try and shield each other.

Lily Stein’s eyes snapped open. Her entire body shook with residual panic from the nightmare. Gritting her teeth together, she reminded herself where she was- in an apartment, not in the basement of Mercury Labs. When that didn’t work, she turned to her breathing exercises. Eight counts in, eight counts out. Repeat four times.

She was alive. Jax was alive. They were safe.

But her mother, his mother, Caitlin…they were gone, or not who they once were in Caitlin’s case.

Light was streaming through the thin curtains of her room. Lily wrapped the sheets around herself tightly, thankful she had the day off. After finding Caitlin again, she needed some time for herself. Jax and Thea understood and told her to go. The city survived years without Firestorm before the GATE blew, and it could absolutely handle a few days now.

~~~

Across town, Jefferson “Jax” Jackson was frowning at the screen of a computer. Like his late mother, he was considered a genius and could back it up with his doctorate and project history. His latest participation in sending satellites out across the multiverse to make contact with other Earths was Mercury Labs’ latest and potentially last push to win back public favor after the GATE disaster. If this didn’t work, then the labs would close for good and his mother’s legacy would not be the lab she and Clarissa built, but the disaster that took their lives.

Now one of the satellites had stopped transmitting data without warning. The launch had been a month ago and the other three satellites were working perfectly fine. But this fourth one had been functioning just like the others two nights ago. Yesterday, it had just stopped transmitting data. He couldn’t figure out why.

“Still hung up on the satellite?”

Jax turned around to see Thea standing in the door, surprised not to have heard her. “When did you get here?”

“I’ve been here an hour. Did you go home last night?”

“No, I stayed here and tried to figure this out.”

Thea raised her eyebrows. “Not to use her against you like this, but you know that your mother would have-”

“Told me off?” Jax gave a ghost of a smile. “Yeah, she would. She’d probably already know what to do. So would Clarissa.”

“I know,” Thea took a seat across from him. “It’s been hard without them. But we’re holding up. And we’ve figured out countless things without them. This one is just taking more time.”

“I think I’m going to need to call in Lily from her day off to help. But I know she’s still processing Caitlin too.”

Thea nodded. “Can you blame her? She believed her fiancée was dead only to find out she’s been alive all this time. Not only that, but she’s not the Caitlin we remember.”

They fell into silence, both trying to think about the satellite but their minds drifting back to Lily. A quarter of an hour later, Thea decided to try and get into the computer system of the satellites not to examine data, but the live data from the satellite before it had lost all contact. She managed to get it up soon enough before sending him off to cafeteria to get some food for himself. He didn’t realize how much he needed the break until he had it and decided to thank her by bringing back lunch and coffee for her.

“Ready to watch the last recording the satellite sent out?” Thea asked, taking a sip of her cappuccino.

Jax nodded and pressed on the file. Together, they watched the Earth from the view of the satellite. For a few moments, the two talked about how beautiful the other Earth looked and what life must be like on it. As the rest of the video played, their awed expressions turned to horror at the events on screen. Thea covered her mouth and Jax put a hand on her shoulder. Then they replayed the video, slowing it down so they could see the details closer.

“We need to call Lily in now,” Thea murmured.

Jax shook his head in agreement.

~~~

Within the next hour, Lily was watching the same video the other two scientists had seen. The other Earth rotating peacefully one moment. In the next, a wave of…something was surging across the screen to consume the Earth. The satellite captured it all before everything went to static, then black. Likely due to being hit by whatever that matter was.

“Do we know what that stuff is?” she inquired softly once the video had played through.

Jax shook his head. “We don’t. And because of the satellite’s positioning, we don’t know a point of origin either. Whatever it is, it destroys everything in its path.”

“So all of that…it’s gone?”

“We don’t know for sure,” Thea bit her lip. “But there’s no longer a signal from that satellite, or that Earth.”

A chill ran down Lily’s spine. “All those people…”

“I know,” Jax murmured. She knew he could feel flickers what she was feeling. “But the other three satellites are still working. The project won’t be a total loss. I figured you would want to see this though. It could be a potential risk for our Earth or another one day.”

With a few strokes of the keyboard, he had pulled up the live transmission date for the three remaining satellites. Lily studied them and the Earths they were focused on. This was the first step in moving towards inter-Earth cooperation. Soon, they could make contact with the citizens of those universes. Strike up a relationship and share technologies. Maybe there was even something on another Earth that help Caitlin’s new powers, bring her back them and her…

“How have you been holding up anyways?”

Jax’s question startled her out her observation of the satellites. “Okay. Although finding out your fiancée has been alive for the past two years and not dead is a lot. That’s not even counting that she’s become some sort of energy vampire.”

“We’ll figure it out. Just like we always do.”

A smile slowly made its way onto her face. “Thanks, Jax.”

He opened his mouth to answer, then stopped and leaned towards the computer screen. Lily followed his gaze, trying to see what had caught his attention. It took a moment before she and Thea both saw the substance in the corner of the satellite creeping towards the Earth. Before they knew it, they were watching the strange mass surge towards the other Earth, wiping everything out before the satellite’s feed went dead.

“That’s another one…” Thea swallowed. “Just like the last one.”

“Exactly like the first one. How is this happening.”

Lily frowned. “There are two ways. It might have originated in this universe too somewhere. That’s one way, maybe the better way.”

“And the other?” Thea asked.

“It’s the same wave, one of destruction that can cross dimensions.”

Jax grabbed a piece of paper and a pen. “Thea, where are the positions of the Earths where we launched those satellites too?”

She ran to another monitor and began to recite them to him. His pen scribbled a graph and circles down as fast as she could read them. Lily stood to the side, watching him.

“Thea, when did the first satellite go down again?” she asked.

“Two days ago. Exact time was 23:08.”

“Great,” Lily nodded before she grabbed a pencil and started writing on the other side of Jax’s paper. “And this one just went down a minute ago, so I can get the rate down with the distance. I know we don’t know it for sure yet, but this would be how fast that wave is traveling through the multiverse.”

She set her pencil down at the same time Jax dropped his pen. With Thea, they all examined the work.

“So if that material is all the same, and it’s traveling through the multiverse,” Thea began. “How long would take before it reaches us here?”

Jax was silent for a few seconds, picking up the pencil and writing down the numbers. “Three days.”

“Three days until the end of everything,” Lily’s shoulders sank.

Silence fell over the trio.

“Firestorm can’t stop this one,” Jax sighed, looking over at Lily. “We can do a lot of things. But stopping a wave of destruction from space? There’s no way we can transmute that.”

“I know,” Lily nodded. “But I don’t want to die.”

“Me neither.”

“Hey, I don’t want to die either,” Thea chimed in. “But it’s not just our Earth. There are others out there, and not all of them might know about this. Some might know how to overcome this.”

“Like that one,” Jax pointed to one of their remaining satellites. “There’s been a lot of traffic over there for the last three years. If we get to them, then we can warn them or get them to help save the other Earths.”

“And how do we get there?” Lily asked. “Can we use the system that got the satellites to the other Earths, Jax?”

He shook his head. “We didn’t design it for organic material.”

“But the Gateway to Alternative Timelines and Earths was,” Thea reminded them. “And it can be again.”

Lily stared. “You want to try to use the GATE? Thea, you know what happened the last time it was activated. People died. Others got powers like Jax and I. Threats came over from another Earth for a whole year before we put a stop to it.”

“But the DeVoes tampered with the system,” Jax looked between the two of them. “Without their sabotage, it would have worked. Not that we’ve ever tried to.”

“The GATE was two and a half years ago,” Thea said. “Since then, we’ve all learned more about the multiverse. I think I can create a program that will connect the GATE to that Earth everyone keeps going to. When I do, we can reach them and explain what’s happened.”

“The last time we ran the GATE, Mom and Dr. Jackson never had an exact coordinate planned. It just scanned for signs of life to lock onto as a breach. Having that specific place we go to might make things easier. But the explosion did do damage. It’s going to need repairs.”

“Then we can do them while Thea works on developing the program. How long do you think it’ll take?”

“I don’t know. If it’s possible, at least a few hours. A day at maximum. Plus I want to run a few simulations with it.”

“Do we have time for that?”

“Need I remind you France won the Space Race because America didn’t run tests and ended up with astronaut jelly?”

“I don’t want to be Firestorm jelly,” Jax gulped. “Okay, simulations are good. Lily and I still need to assess damage.”

~~~

“Our mothers’ greatest undertaking,” Jax sighed, staring at the arch before them. “Now we’re the ones who are depending on it to save Earth.”

“And all the other ones,” added Lily, approaching the twelve-foot structure with their toolbox.

“Yep. Are you okay coming back to this?”

“Peachy. But you’re not.”

Jax crossed his arms. “This killed our mothers. It gave us a great power, but it also made Caitlin what she is now. The GATE gives and it takes away from my point of reference.”

“It didn’t take away our fathers. They were there that night instead the building, but we still have them. And it never took away Thea. It just brought her closer to us.”

His partner grinned knowingly at him and Jax rolled his eyes. “After we deal with this…crisis that’s happening, I’ll tell her. Promise.”

“Good,” Lily chuckled and tossed a roll of paper to him. “Spread out the blueprint. Let’s see what we have to work with.”

For a while, the two worked in silence studying the blueprint, comparing it to the GATE, and making the fixes necessary to it. They didn’t need to talk at times with their psychic link. If Lily needed the pliers, Jax passed them to her wordlessly. In turn, she knew what he needed, whether it was holding the ladder for him to climb up or to pass him some new screws. Other scientists thought it was freaky whenever they did it in the past and avoided them. Thea told them it was kinda cool.

“This is going to work,” Lily finally told him.

“I know.”

“But you need to hear it. Thea is better with computers than anyone I know. We’re both brilliant with mechanics and how things work. I admit it, I have my trauma from what happened. I’m still seeing Dr. Horton about it. But I trust you and Thea and I believe this is going to work.”

“I just don’t want to bring down Mom’s or Clarissa’s legacy anymore than people have already done,” Jax told her. “And I don’t want to bring any more hurt to the city than I already did with the GATE, even if the DeVoes did sabotage us last time.”

“We won’t fail, because we can’t.”

Jax snorted. “When did you get so hopeful?”

“One of us has to be.”

“In that case, let me tell you something, Lily. We are going to get Caitlin back one way or another.”

~~~

In the end, it took a day and a half, a combined total of fourteen hours of sleep, several coffees or beverages containing caffeine, several alternative pop mixtapes, and only one use of the first aid kit before Jax, Thea, and Lily completed the project. The trio stood in the basement to gaze up at their work. The GATE was rid of dust and gleamed a little brighter than it had hours ago, save for the large burn mark on the base of the right leg. All that was left was for it to be powered up, Thea to upload her program, and then they could walk through to another Earth.

Too bad the founders of Mercury Labs were not here to witness it.

“How long is it going to take to power up the GATE?” Lily asked.

Thea slung off her backpack. “About half an hour. Then we can enter and should find ourselves on that Earth.”

“I’ll go power up the GATE now,” Lily looked right at Jax. “It should take me a while.”

“Then you better get going.”

She smirked a little as she hustled over to the control booth. Once inside, the memories of the night she’d lost her mother crashed into her. It had been the first time she and Jax had fused, which was terrifying given they’d never done it before. They had crawled into the control booth and tried not to get into a lengthy panic attack over how they were one. Thea had been the one to find them and helped them split. Team Firestorm was born in the early morning hours after the GATE failed.

Lily yanked the lever down to start the power-up. Most of the employees at Mercury had already gone home, which was all the better. The rest were probably going to experience power problems for a while. Hopefully none of them would find their way down here to see what they were doing. Everything about this was off the books and could cost them their jobs. But when it was compared to losing the world, Lily would rather be jobless. So would Jax and Thea.

Speaking of the duo, Lily fell back into an easy chair and spun around to watch through the control booth’s window. Jax was doing all the talking. Lily didn’t need the psychic link to tell that he was anxious about talking to Thea. But then those fears evaporated as Thea put her hand over his and kissed him. Good for them.

She gave them another moment before exiting the booth. “Did it go good?”

“It was great,” Thea chuckled. “As soon as all this is over, we’ll do something proper, like dinner or coffee.”

“Or you can do it on the other Earth?”

“Lily, there’s a wave of destruction that’s taken out two Earths already,” Jax reminded her. “I want to stop it first. Then I’ll take Thea on a date.”

“Point taken,” she smiled. “I’m happy for you two. Not the best time, but…better late than never.”

Thea’s expression softened. “Thank you, Lily.”

~~~

“It’s almost time,” Thea announced as she looked at the GATE’s readings on her computer. “Another two minutes and we’ll be good to go.”

“Anyone else feeling a little nervous now?” Lily asked.

Jax raised his hand. “Not sure if it’s me or if it’s because of you. Probably both.”

“I am, but I’m hopeful,” Thea told them. “We always need hope.”

The halves of Firestorm nodded.

“Once the GATE is at power, I need to input the code. Then we can-“

“NO.”

Someone was in the room now. A towering man in some kind of armor stood by the door. It had been locked, but none of them had heard him come in. His skin was white with eyes that were sunken and gaunt. It was as if someone had taken a corpse and brought him back to life. There was even a stench of death about him, one so repulsive that all of them took a step back.

“This Earth must fall, and so must those who tread upon it. You will not be spared.”

Jax held out his fist to Lily behind Thea’s back. She bumped hers against his. With a swirl of flames, Firestorm appeared, inhabiting Jax’s body this run. It was his turn after all.

“I’d get out of here now, buddy,” they warned, stepping in front of Thea.

“You cannot frighten me,” the corpse hissed. “I have seen many Firestorms. None of them strike fear. None of them have overcome me. Fire can be put out easier than you think.”

The lights flickered above them. It made the corpse frown, so it was not his doing. Jax frowned before remembering they were using a lot of energy.

“She’s coming.” Lily’s voice echoed.

“Thea, get ready,” Jax whispered.

A second later, the lock on the door clicked loudly before the door itself fell to the floor. In stalked a woman with tangled white hair and pale skin. Dark circles formed rings around her eyes. If they didn’t know her, they could have assumed she was related to the corpse. But they knew her name. Who she had been. Who she had loved.

“Caity.”

Caitlin Snow, now known as Blackout, stared around the room. She frowned at the corpse before relaxing a bit at the sight of Thea and Firestorm. Once she laid eyes on the Gate, her expression became a mixture of hunger and anger. The device that had changed her life was now offering itself as a food source.

“Let me take over. Just for a moment.”

Jax relaxed control over their mouth so Lily could assume it.

“Caity,” Lily’s voice came from his mouth. “Help us get out here. He wants to destroy the Earth.”

Caitlin turned back to her. “Lily?”

“Please, Caity. We’ll help you. We’ll find a way to stop the hunger.”

Two long strands of energy flowed from Caitlin’s hands. “You had me at destroying the Earth.”

“Careful, girl,” the corpse warned.

The metahuman laughed. “I’ve been much more than that for a long time.”

With that, she ran towards him, her energy whips flying forward to wrap around the wrists of the corpse.

“Guys,” Thea whispered. “The GATE is ready. I have to get in the coordinates.”

“We can’t let them follow us,” Jax reminded her, taking control of Firestorm again. “At least this freaky guy. He’s the one who wants us dead.”

Thea smiled. “Well, we’re lucky that I was the one who made sure the code has an instruction to close after two organic lifeforms enter it.”

“Thea, you’re a genius.”

“Go help Caitlin first, then compliment my brain.”

Firestorm rose into the air as Thea made a run for the control booth. The corpse was holding up well against Caitlin’s energy whips, which was saying something. Together, Lily and Jax hurled fireballs at him to keep him distracted from Thea. But just as she almost reached the booth, the corpse bent backwards to avoid one whip, which smashed into the metal frame of the window. Thea yelped and fell backwards, her laptop skittering out of her hand all the way to the boot of the corpse.

The corpse stopped and stared at the laptop. Without hesitation, he brought his foot down on it.

Thea did not scream as her pride and joy was reduced to a cracked screen and a broken keyboard, but she looked devastated.

“Thea Queen,” the corpse boomed. “You are not like your doppelgangers. And you shall die different from the rest of them.”

“Not interested, but thanks.”

The corpse smiled cruelly and raised his hand. Jax started to fly towards her.

A strand of energy coiled around the hand before it could swing down.

Both Firestorm and the corpse stopped and turned to see Caitlin clinging to her whip with gritted teeth. “Leave my friend alone!”

The corpse growled at her and yanked his coiled arm forward. Caitlin flew forward and landed on the floor. Thea took the chance to scramble her feet and out of the way. Jax didn’t look to see where she went, but he couldn’t fly anywhere. Lily was too transfixed in horror, watching Caitlin struggle in vain to hold her group as the corpse dragged her across the floor.

“Caitlin Snow,” the corpse pulled the whip forward, so she landed at his feet. “Any final words?”

“No no no no no no.”

Lily wanted to move forward, so did he. But they couldn’t somehow. They were just guests.

Caitlin scowled as the corpse lifted her up into the air by the whip, but then looked towards them.

“I love you,” she said. “Kick his ass.”

The corpse snarled. “Pathetic.”

His hand wrapped around her neck. Jax closed their eyes, but they still heard the snap and the thump of a body.

“Now, Firestorm. It is your turn.”

Jax reopened their eyes and felt feeling return to their body. He lowered them to the floor. Caitlin’s body was behind the corpse. A cry that did not belong to him escaped his mouth. Lily’s anguish was almost overpowering, but it was fueling a fight in them.

Flicking their hands out, Jax and Lily summoned handfuls of fire. If they were to go down, they were going down together in a fight.

Behind them, the GATE was filled by a dark blue hue. It was active and ready for transport.

Jax flew up in the air a little, just enough to see past the corpse and Caitlin. Thea was inside the doorway of the control booth, a smile on her face. She was also crying.

“Thea?” he shouted, throwing the fire out to throw off the corpse

The corpse growled. “How-”

“It’s called a flash drive, E.T.!” she screamed at him. “You killed my computer, but not the back-up!”

Then she looked up at them. “Now go!”

“Not without you!”

But the corpse was turned towards her now. She wouldn’t have the time to make it. Logistically, Jax knew this.

Emotionally, he could not accept it.

Thea looked up at him with love, not fear. “Go save this world.”

“Thea!” he cried out.

Lily took control and flew toward the GATE. Jax peeked back one last time at her before they entered the arch. Everything became blue and cold and fast. This was what he imagined going down a sink felt like. Images of people and places flashed around them, but there weren’t very many. He didn’t focus on them when he had just left Thea in the hands of the corpse who wanted to kill all the Earths.

Then everything went black.

~~~

“You’re a foolish girl,” the corpse said as he stepped inside the control booth.

Thea was backed against the wall. Moments ago, she had been brave. Now she was terrified.

“I’m no fool,” she proclaimed, yanking the flash drive out. “I’m a freaking genius.”

The GATE sputtered and shut down.

Raising a hand, the corpse stared down at her. “Then enjoy a taste of your planet’s demise.”

~~~

“How long ago did you find him?”

“An hour, and it’s not really just him. There’s another brainwave signature.”

“So it’s Firestorm. Did Jax find a new partner?

“This isn’t our Jax. Gideon pulled up his location. He’s out in Zenith City.”

“Well, I kinda figured he was from another Earth given how he burst out of that breach.”

“What Earth did he come from?”

Jax groaned. Lily was groggy inside his skull. Summoning as much energy as they had left, they split apart.

“Whoa!”

Jax sat up first and opened his eyes. He was jammed with Lily on a bed in some medical wing. Three people were crowded around the bed. A man wearing something between armor and an exoskeleton, a woman in a white jumpsuit, and a second man wearing all red.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Earth-1,” the woman answered. “You landed outside STAR Labs and passed out. We know your doppelganger pretty well, so we brought you inside. Where did you come from?”

“Earth-73 is our positioning,” Jax told them as Lily started to rise up beside him. “Something has been destroying Earths. Ours is going to be hit by it within a day. We travelled here to warn you if you didn’t know, or to get help to fight against it.”

The three exchanged a look before the man in red answered. “We know it’s coming, and we can use all the help we can get to fight it.”

“Consider us invested,” Lily told them. “Can you use two people who become a superhero with nuclear-based powers?”

“Definitely,” the man in the suit told them before frowning. “Hey, are you okay?”

Jax didn’t realize he was crying. “I…I…”

Lily finished for him. “We lost people coming here.”

He nodded. She’d lost Caitlin. And Thea was probably as good as dead, but at least he’d told her how he felt.

Better late than never, right?

#fanfiction #crisis of infinite earths #legends of tomorrow #arrow #jefferson jackson #lily stein #thea queen #caitlin snow #anti monitor #barry allen #sara lance #ray palmer #earth 73

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searchingwardrobes · 6 years ago

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Natural Opposite: 9/16

The dance I invented for this chapter is probably my favorite. One, because it’s to a Nirvana song, and as a nineties teen, I LOVE Nirvana. And second, my dance background is more in this style (contemporary) than in ballroom. I hope you enjoy reading it and the way it brings Emma and Killian closer together!

Thanks to my beta @distant-rose who loved this Nirvana dance almost as much as I did. Ro, our music chats were such a fun part of doing this with you! I’m glad we have similar tastes. And my artist, @optomisticgirl girl, is so talented and perfectly captured a dance that was only in my head beautifully for this chapter. Thank you, B! She also made that gorgeous banner you see every Monday!

Chapter art:

Ch 2

Ch 4

Ch 5

Ch 6

Ch 7

Summary: Dance is more than Emma Swan’s career; it’s practically saved her life on more than one occasion. But when it comes to reality TV shows, she’s always danced in the shadows of her twin brother David and her sister Elsa. Her first season as a pro on Dancing With the Stars was a disaster, and she enters her second season determined to prove herself. All she needs is a good partner. Hollywood bad boy and ladies’ man Killian Jones isn’t what she had in mind.

Rating: M for mature themes, steamy dance routines, and sexy times (But NOT smut)

Trigger warnings: discussions of online solicitation of a minor, bullying, statutory rape, and emotionally abusive/controlling relationships; stalking; anti-Rumbelle, anti-Neal

Can also be read on

Ao3

Tagging: @bethacaciakay @kmomof4 @teamhook @kmomof4 @snowbellewells @whimsicallyenchantedrose @kday426 @snidgetsafan @delirious-latenight-laughs @jennjenn615 @followbatb @onceuponaprincessworld @hollyethecurious @ohmakemeahercules

Chapter Nine: Heart Shaped Box

Killian grinned widely at Emma when he arrived for their rehearsal the next day. She returned it and gave him a small hug in greeting, and she couldn’t say it was just for the cameras. As much as she hated to admit it, she found herself looking forward to their rehearsals. They actually had fun together. Yeah, he still drove her crazy sometimes, but he also made her laugh. Last week, Killian had summed it up in a teasing remark.

“You know, Swan, I quite fancy you from time to time. When you’re not yelling at me.”

Henry’s observation about him “liking” her rose to mind, but she quickly pressed that down. Flirting, she had come to find out, was his autopilot. And like her sarcasm, it was largely a defense mechanism.

“Sorry we have to rehearse so early,” Killian told her, “but . . . I brought a peace offering.” He extended a styrofoam to-go cup.

“Coffee?” she asked, with a tilt of her head as she accepted the offering.

“Please, Swan, are you trying to test me? It’s hot chocolate,” he said, tapping the plastic lid teasingly, “with whipped cream and cinnamon.”

“I must say, I’m impressed,” she told him as she took a sip, “and I like the early rehearsal. It means I get to pick up Henry from school this afternoon.”

“I’m glad,” Killian replied, but then he blinked and rubbed his eyes, “although I hope the coffee I consumed on the way here kicks in soon. Filming went into the wee hours this morning.”

Emma frowned. “Be sure you’re taking care of yourself. I know this show is grueling, especially when you have other commitments.”

“I’ll try,” he promised with a weary smile, “though I go straight from six hours with you back to the studio for four more hours on green screen. I’ll be glad when the hiatus begins. If I haven’t gotten voted off by then.”

Emma waved her hand dismissively as she set her hot chocolate down beside her dance bag. “Please. We’re making it to the finale, Jones, I’m telling you.”

“Okay,” Killian said with a smile, “let’s get to work then. It’s decades week, so what decade did we get?”

“The 90s.”

Killian’s brow furrowed. “The 90s.”

“Why? You don’t like the nineties?”

Killian shrugged. “Well, that depends. Are we talking flannel, angst-ridden, grunge nineties? Or boy bands, bubblegum pop, dark lipstick nineties?”

Emma laughed. “Well, don’t you know the decade well! What if I said we were dancing to ‘Heart Shaped Box’ by Nirvana?”

Killian’s eyes lit up like a kid at Christmas. “Yes!” he enthused, pumping both fists.

“So Killian Jones likes angst,” she teased, “good to know.”

“Well, if you were going to make me dance to ‘MmBop,’ you may have had a mutiny on your hands.”

“Well, the cool thing about this dance is also that it’s contemporary. And believe me, angst works well with contemporary.”

Killian nodded, his face suddenly determined. “You can get really creative with this, Swan, that’s exciting.”

Emma put her hands on her hips and studied him silently for a few moments. The corner of her mouth quirked up when he almost started to squirm under her gaze.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he finally asked.

“How would you like to choreograph this dance with me?”

Killian’s eyes grew wide. “Are you serious?”

“Sure. You’re a performer and a musician.” She winked. “And you like angst.”

He gave her a smile she had yet to see on his face. It was genuine, as if he were truly touched by her offer. “I’d be honored, Swan.”

She cleared her throat, slightly unnerved at how much she liked this new smile on him. “Well, let’s figure out the story we’re trying to tell first.”

“Well, the lyrics are pretty dark.”

“Of course they are,” Emma said with a roll of her eyes, “it’s Nirvana.”

“Aye,” Killian chuckled, “and it’s also about a relationship. One that isn’t making either person happy, yet they stay together anyway.”

Emma swallowed hard. She knew the feeling.

“The man says he has complaints, yet then he turns around and says he’s in debt to her,” Killian continued.

Emma nodded. She had already listened to the song multiple times. “He talks about her having a cord around his neck, yet he climbs right back.”

“An umbilical noose, to be precise.”

Emma wrinkled her nose, “I know, but ew! Why did grunge bands use such sick and twisted images? He talks about eating her cancer, too.”

“They were pushing the envelope. It’s what every revolutionary period in music has done.”

Emma shook her head and smiled. “I better watch out. I’m treading into your area of expertise.”

Killian scratched the spot behind his ear. “Well, this is the genre of music I first learned to play on my guitar. I told you I was a bit morose.”

Her face softened at that. She remembered too well the lonely years before Ingrid. She could see why dark music would appeal to a lonely kid.

“So we’ve got a man who feels trapped in a relationship,” Emma replied, switching topics back to brainstorming for the routine.

“Hence the heart shaped box.”

“But I like what you said,” Emma continued, “about neither of them being happy. I think that should be our story. We’re a couple who aren’t good for each other, but we stay together anyway –“

“ – because we’re afraid of being alone,” Killian finished for her.

Emma smiled and then gave him a gentle slap on the shoulder. “You were right, Jones, we do make quite the team.”

“Or maybe,” he said softly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, “this topic strikes a little too close to home for both of us. Loneliness.”

Emma blinked and took a step back. Her heart pounded rapidly in her chest. Her hands clenched and unclenched as her mind tried to come up with a response.

Killian gave her his trademark crooked grin and quirked brow. “I mean, who wouldn’t crave loneliness when you’ve got cameras recording your every move?”

A slow smile spread across Emma’s face. “Right. Okay, Jones, let’s figure out the first eight counts.”

**********************************************************

It was the day of the show, and Emma and Killian sat on a dingy sofa set up on the dance floor hand in hand, waiting to be announced. Around them, the set department had created a living room in a rundown apartment circa 1995. Killian was dressed in faded jeans and a Nirvana t-shirt (of course). Emma wore black leggings and a plaid shirt, unbuttoned and tied at her waist. Underneath it she wore a black sequined bra top.

“You know,” Killian teased, fingering the tied ends of her shirt, “I don’t recall black sequined bras being a fashion statement in the nineties.”

“Well, not all of us are old enough to remember the nineties, old man,” Emma teased back.

“You wound me, Swan! I’m only thirty-five!”

Emma just laughed and rolled her eyes at his mock-offended expression. Behind them, the video package played of their rehearsal week. Just as she had expected, it opened with Killian finding her backstage last week after their Tangled routine. The expression on his face, which she hadn’t seen for herself at the time, was tender as he put his arms around her. It also showed their hug when he brought her coffee, and Killian tucking her hair behind her ear. They also played up the emotional portions of their choreography, showing embraces in super slow-motion. Emma rolled her eyes. It was ridiculous the way they were playing it all up like some sort of romantic comedy.

“Dancing a contemporary routine,” boomed the announcer, “Killian Jones and his partner Emma.”

She wished there were a commercial break so she would have a little more time to put the video package out of her mind. Killian gave her hand a squeeze, and she nodded, pressing her lips together. He relinquished her hand, and they both stared blankly forward as the lights came up and the music started.

The music producers were using a recording of the actual song performed by Nirvana. The live band just couldn’t capture the dissonance or the gravely sound of Kurt Cobain’s voice. She eyes me like a Pisces when I am weak. Cobain’s broody voice filled the room as Emma and Killian slid off the couch and onto the floor. For the remainder of the dance, they pushed and pulled on one another, neither of them able to stray very far from the couch, which of course symbolized their toxic relationship. They used the couch often, beating it with their fists, jumping on and off it, falling and sliding from it. Then the dance ended as it had begun, both of them sitting, staring blankly forward. The overhead lights dimmed as other lights flickered in front of them, meant to look like a television playing.

When the music faded out and all the lights came up, Killian leapt up in excitement. Emma, however, felt herself suddenly drained of emotion. If Killian hadn’t pulled her to her feet and embraced her, she may have kept right on sitting there. She felt as if her heart had just been exposed. She blinked as Killian cupped her head, whispering in her ear how “brilliant, bloody amazing,” she was. Somehow, that snapped her out of her daze. She thought about the woman in the song and her heart shaped box. She took a deep breath, and stuffed her own heart back inside of hers.

As Killian led her over to Marco so they could face the judges, her limbs once again cooperated, and she plastered her “performance smile” on her face. She really was proud of Killian. Not only the way he just danced that, but his creativity in helping her with the choreography. She put her arm around him and squeezed him around the waist. They both struggled to breath; the routine had been intense and the movement had never really stopped.

So it took them a minute to register that all three judges were on their feet, clapping. Emma blinked; even Blue seemed moved almost to tears. They all sat and Emma gnawed nervously on her lower lip as Teach began.

“That was artistry, pure and simple. I’ll be straight with you Jones, I didn’t think you would cut it on this show. I wanted to hate you. But that? That was dancing. Amazing dancing. Well done!”

Emma gave Killian a happy little shove, and he beamed down at her with a huge smile on his sweaty face.

Tiana was literally crying and struggled to begin her critique. “That is what dance is supposed to be. I can’t believe you’re the same dancer you were three weeks ago. Remember when I said you weren’t opening up? Well, you took what I said to heart, and you have grown remarkably. And Emma? That choreography was genius. You deserve an Emmy for that.”

Emma was shocked when Killian pressed a kiss to her cheek, nodding vigorously in agreement. Emma grabbed Marco’s microphone.

“I do want to remind everyone that Killian helped me with the choreography, so thank you Tiana, but I have to give this guy credit too.”

Killian pulled her closer and pressed another kiss to the top of her head as the audience cheered. Once it died down a little, Blue gave her review.

“Look, I’m a traditionalist. I like to see ballroom and strictly ballroom. However, you danced that full out, and you were completely in sync with your partner throughout. Not my cup of tea, but I’m impressed.”

Since the decade week dances were performed in chronological order, and they had been assigned the nineties, their routine was the last one of the night. That meant no time for an interview with Ashley, and the judges gave them their scores right there on the dance floor.

“Tiana Sabine,” the announcer intoned dramatically.

Tiana seemed to pause an inordinately long amount of time before revealing her paddle. But when she did, she did so with flourish. “TEN!”

The studio audience went wild with excitement! The first ten of the season! Killian whooped and picked Emma up off her feet in a tight hug. Once everyone settled down, Blue gave her score of nine and Teach, amazingly, also gave them a perfect ten. It was the highest score of the season so far.

There was no time for an interview with either Marco or Ashley. Emma was relieved, worried she may have had to field questions about the very misleading implications of their video package. The couples all lined up, and for the first time, Emma was nervous about the double elimination. However, she didn’t have to worry. Gold and Ruby were voted off, to no one’s surprise, and then David and his Disney channel star Violet. The second one was a surprise, and the fifteen year old sobbed with disappointment. Emma was glad for the distraction as everyone surrounded the poor girl to console her. She still felt a little emotionally raw after that dance. And maybe it was the way the video package had been edited, but was Killian giving her an awful lot of casual affection recently?

According to social media, he was. By the next morning the two of them were the number one trending “couple” on both twitter and tumblr. Emma blushed as she read through the comments.

“Anyone else out there shipping Killian Jones with his dancing partner?” - @killianjonesandfairydust

“OMG! I ship it so hard!” - @neverland4evr

“Did you see the PDA last night? That was a lot of hugs and kisses!” - @hookNtink4life

They even had a shipping name: Captain Swan. And surprisingly, there were no longer any threats upon her life. She wasn’t sure where the Killer Rose shippers had gone, but there was only one remotely threatening theme among Killian’s “hookers.”

“She better not break his heart.” - @yeahiamahooker

But the only heart Emma was worried about was her own.

#2018 csbb #csbb #cs ff #modern au #dancing with the stars au #enemies to friends to lovers #natural opposite #searchingwardrobes

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trevorbailey61 · 7 years ago

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Joan as Police Woman

Stoller Hall, Manchester Tuesday 24th February 2018

February 2011. Cyclone Yasi battered the coast of Queensland, Julian Assange was facing allegations of rape that would see him spend most of the following years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy, “The King’s Speech” won the Academy Award for best picture, the last surviving World War 1 veteran died in West Virginia and the BBC had to apologise for comments made about Mexicans during “Top Gear”. That tragedy was always ready to strike was seen when an earthquake in New Zealand killed over 100 people but the events with with the most lasting consequences were to be seen in North Africa and the Middle East. The Arab Spring protests in Cairo that were soon to bring an end to the Mubarak administration had spread to other countries, often provoking a vicious response from the Government. The Libyan air force launched airstrikes on crowds of protesters leading to the UN imposing sanctions on Gaddafi and a no fly zone being declared over the country. The uprising spread to other states including Syria where dissidents called for a “day of anger” against the Assad regime. Despite the brutality in Libya, it was still possible to have some optimism about how these events would unfold, a movement of ordinary people calling for democracy, open Government and an end to being subject to the whims of dictators.

It was also in February 2011 that I last saw Joan as Police Woman. I had already seen her twice before, the first time following the release of her second album, “To Survive” and the second where she performed cover versions of songs by, amongst others, Jimi Hendrix, Britney Spears, Public Enemy and Nina Simone. On both of these occasions, I was accompanied by my wife but after booking tickets for a third concert, I was informed that she unavailable that night and I needed to find someone else to go with. This was most likely due to a work commitment but something of a Joan overload may also have contributed to her decision. Where my wife was unable to or didn’t want to go to a gig, my next concert buddy was my niece who had already developed a wide ranging and extensive knowledge and interest in music; years before when she was very young, she had arrived at our house whilst I was playing “Rocket to Russia” and immediately began head banging to “Rockaway Beach” which made me very proud. We had already seen Bob Dylan and John Grant together but as the JaPW was on her eighteenth birthday, I assumed that she would have better things to do than spend the evening with an audience most of whom would be pushing fifty. Incredibly she didn’t and as the gig was at the Glee Club, which had an over 18 policy, she would have been the youngest person in the audience, most likely by about twenty years. Thankfully Joan didn’t disappoint with a set mostly drawn from her third album, “The Deep Field” and Grace was able to leave with a JaPW t-shirt, one in which she is rather provocatively reclining on a chair with a gun resting in her lap; being an uncle means that parental censorship can be ignored.

Seven years later: those southern hemisphere disasters have been filed away along with all those other acts of God that suddenly leave families bereaved, Assange is still in the Ecuadorian embassy and seems a rather seedy individual instead of the champion of free speech that he liked to portray himself as then, Clarkson’s thoughtless and confrontational manner brought his time at the Beeb to an end and he has taken his casual racism to Amazon and “The Shape of Water” has been named as best picture. The optimism of the Arab Spring has long since evaporated, leaving instead the war in Syria that has so far claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions. Whilst the image of a dead child being washed up on a Turkish beech and the chilling use of chemical weapons have occasionally brought home the horrors occurring on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, the conflict is now largely background noise and their was precious little compassion for the refugees arriving at the borders of Europe in an attempt to escape the slaughter. Instead, there has been a resurgence of populist right wing politics that offer apparently simple solutions to these complex problems largely based on building walls to keep the others out. On the fiftieth anniversary of Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech and the 25th of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, it seems as if the dragons that we long since thought were slain are very much alive and there are plenty who even try to deny that the horrors of the twentieth century ever happened.

Seven years later is also when my niece and I are having some family time seeing JaPW, although as she is the one who is now economically active, I am the elderly relative who is being treated to a day out. It has been a typical Manchester day, raining from the moment I arrived and a penetrating wind that made it feel colder than it was. With my clothes soaked through, wandering around the city centre soon loses its appeal and I decide instead to spend most of the afternoon sitting in a cafe sipping Earl Grey. I am the only person in there and I soon get the feeling that the two girls behind the counter wish I would bugger off so that they can continue their conversation without having to be sensitive to the customer in their presence. We meet up for some Tex Mex and happy hour cocktails a little later, although mine was on draught and arrives in a pint glass, before making our way to The Stoller Hall and our appointment with Joanie. Built as a medium sized concert hall for Chethams School of Music, it is an appropriate venue for the classically trained multi-instrumentalist we are here to see. Like the students we see wandering around as we wait for the concert, Joan Wasser learnt the piano and violin as a child which led to her being awarded a place at the College of Fine Arts at Boston University, her prodigious talent meant that she gained entrance a year early. She soon, however, grew disillusioned with the classical world and started adding violin and keyboards to the backing bands for a range of diverse artists including Anthony and the Johnsons, Rufus Wainwright and Lou Reed. Her most personal collaboration, however, was with Jeff Buckley which led to a relationship that lasted until his tragically early death in 1997. Struggling to deal with her grief, she continued working as a backing musician but started to take a more prominent role in both writing and performing, recording the album “Debt and Departure” with Black Beetle, a band made up mostly of Buckley’s backing musicians. It was apparently Lou Reed who, in what must be the only occasion that he ever showed an interest in any musician other than himself, encouraged her to set out on her own and taking her name from the Angie Dickenson TV series, her debut album, “Real Life”, appeared in 2007.

Whilst largely critically acclaimed, her music appeals to a select audience and her previous tours have been to small venues such as the Glee Club. This has meant that she mostly provided the accompaniment herself, bringing just one other musician with her to add rhythm or, on one occasion, having the backing tracks recorded on cassettes, now that really is old school. In the years since we last spent some time together, however, her popularity has grown to the extent that she has moved into bigger venues and as a result she now has a full band with her. The sounds are still very much based on what can be produced from the keyboards which she plays along with two others but there is a rhythm section to provide the beats that were once contained within a rectangular piece of plastic. With her jet black hair and the carefully assembled costumes, she and the band all arrive on stage wearing lilac tour jackets, she remains a sultry and brooding stage presence but inevitably she does look a little older than last time. In terms of the music, however, she could be picking up from where we left off, her last two albums, “The Classic” and an uneven collaboration with Benjamin Lazar Davies called “Let It Be You”, are ignored completely and aside from her most recent release, “Damned Devotion” which could be her best, the rest of the set is drawn from the songs that she performed at the Glee Club.

Despite the enhanced firepower, however, it is a subdued and delicate start to the concert. “Wonderful” is a smooth velvet opener, Wasser’s vocals drawing her voice into the back of her mouth capturing her fragility as she struggles to regain her piece of mind. The slight percussion finds spaces in the melody rather than driving it forward as ghostly chords hang in the air. “Warning Bell” is similarly sparse, a break up song where she wishes for finality of a tolling bell to announce the end of a relationship; “If there was a warning bell, I'd know; But all I hear is music soft and low”. With a steady 4/4 rhythm, “Tell Me” is catchier and the first song to incorporate the full sound of the band; Wasser herself picks up a guitar whilst counter melodies and falsetto harmonies delicately weave their way around the vocals. It is a fine example of her strengths; calm and wistful melodies in a beautifully arranged musical setting where voices and instruments combine perfectly, the hours spent studying orchestration were not wasted. The two older songs that follow were pared back even from the minimalist recorded versions, “Eternal Flame” and particularly “Honour Wishes” were simply breathtaking, the haunting and tight harmonies in the latter providing a really quite special moment.

With “Honour Wishes” paring things back as far as they could go, the sound builds as she uses the rest of the set to showcase the remaining songs from the “Damned Devotion” album. Like with “Tell Me”, drums and bass outline the rhythm, although the intricacy of playing took this well beyond just laying down a beat, while the keyboards and occasional guitar filled out the arrangements and whilst it never became loud, the songs gained a harder edge compared to the restrained opening. Whilst her music has always been fascinating, words have not always been her strong point and underdeveloped and sometimes clumsy metaphors have often provided the weakest points in her albums. This is something, however, that she seems to have mastered with “Damned Devotion” where perfectly constructed lyrics work alongside the exquisite music to capture moments of raw emotional honesty. “What Was it Like” is a touching tribute to her late father which she introduces by explaining how he never passed judgement on others, noting that he would say; “I could never see what passing judgment; On anybody else would ever do for me”. The most poignant line, however, is when she notes how he always supported her musical development; “My dance recitals, they were never concise; You never missed one, you were always there for me”. His selfless devotion, together with her feelings following the death of Buckley, has provided an impossible standard against which she has found others to be wanting. The ideal of finding someone with whom she can share her life remains but this is tempered by the experience that anyone she allows in will inevitably fall short of this. A breakdown in communication is a constant, “Talk About it Later” follows the earlier songs in the set in looking at the barriers we set up to keep others out of our deepest feelings. A deep descending bass makes itself felt through “Rely On”, “Valid Jagger” and “Damned Devotion”, each dealing with the complexities of her own emotions and her interpretation of those of others. With its funky collage of high pitched vocals, frantic percussion and chopped up synthesised brass, “Steed (For Jean Genet)” is just plain filthy. The highlight, however, is “The Silence”, a darkly brooding piece, again dealing with communication but this time taking it from the personal to the political, ending with the repeated chant; “My body, my choice; Her body, her choice” that provides a chilling conclusion to the set. Alongside her most recent work she includes two from “The Deep Field”, “Human Condition” and her first encore “The Magic” that both seem a little more optimistic that her recent songs and rounds things off with an almost unrecognisable cover of “Kiss”, pared back to the point that it barely existed whilst still capturing the essence of the song.

After the show and despite my age I am not above playing the fanboy and I join the queue to buy a copy of the album and get it signed whilst also asking Grace to take a photo, something I hope didn’t cause her too much embarrassment. The dark themes in much of her work made it a deeply emotional concert but also very uplifting. For years her reputation has exceeded the sales of her music and concert tickets but despite this she has been able to develop her music and a few more, at least, are now beginning to appreciate her talent. Into her late forties now, in a business as unforgiving as music she could now be considered a veteran but always being on the periphery has allowed her music to develop and she is still capable of surprising even her long standing supporters. There may not have been the intimacy that there was seven years ago but in every other respect this was a show from an artist at their absolute peak. A brilliant, moving and exciting gig which just leaves the question of who will be paying next time.

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lykegenia · 7 years ago

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The Things We Hide Ch. 5

The Southern Water Tribe stood for a hundred years against the Fire Nation, indomitable until Sozin’s Comet tipped the balance in Fire Lord Ozai’s favour. Now, as planned, the South is decimated, Chief Hakoda is a puppet on his throne, and Princess Katara is a political prisoner held in the Fire Nation capital to ensure his good behaviour. But Ozai has little time to gloat. A vigilante masquerading as the Blue Spirit is causing unrest among the people, rebel ships still hound his navy, and right under his nose the South’s most powerful waterbender waits with the patience of ice to strike at the very heart of his empire and bring it crashing down.

Chapter 1 on AO3

Words: 3048 Pairing: Zuko x Katara Chapter Summary: In the aftermath of the attack on the harbour, Zuko tries to find answers to who the mysterious waterbender is, and what she wants.

Read it on AO3

Scrolls littered the long table in the royal library where Zuko had sat researching since even before the palace servants were awake. Every scrap of parchment on the Water Tribes the Fire Nation had archived lay in front of him in haphazard piles, from treatises on waterbending to collections of scholarly notes, but all they told him was how woefully ignorant his people were about those that lived at the ends of the world. Most of the accounts were second-hand or hearsay, and those that weren’t tended towards the sensational, and were so old that they offered nothing useful anyway.

Blearily, his rubbed his eyes and pulled yet another yellowed scroll towards him. This one was a military report written by a Lieutenant Sangon. It was about thirty years old, stained by saltwater, and told of the capture of a Southern Water Tribe ship.

Liuyue Twenty-sixth Day

In the night we came upon a bank of dense fog incongruent with the weather fifteen leagues off the shore of Whaletail Island, and knew our enemy lay within its depths, though not how many ships ranged against us. Captain Mei-Lin ordered a return to the commonly sailed patrol route, but by dawn the fog overtook us. General quarters were called, but as visibility lessened the captain decided to proceed with engines cut and fires doused so we would not give away our presence. It is well known the water vessels run on the wind and the currents they themselves manipulate, so I think her hope was we would run on the current before them.

The captain bid me consult our charts against compass and last known position in case they planned to sink us on shoals, but, reassured we were in deep waters still, she surmised their tactics would be more traditional icebergs and overwhelming waves. Our elite Cormorant Squadron stood ready to defend our sides and blast away ice attacks, while the ammunition for the prototype pivot trebuchets were readied with pitch and spark powder.

The Water Tribe attack came estimated an hour before sunrise. Our only warning was the crack of ‘lightning ice’ that froze the propellers solid, before two Southern Tribe ships breached the fog off our port stern.

Zuko found his fingers creasing the edges of the paper as he read on, only too able to imagine the fear those firebenders faced against enemies who could encase them in ice or send water whips out of the sea to pluck them to their doom. Only the unexpected power of the then-new deck mounted trebuchets had kept the ship from being totally lost, as the shot loaded into them had been designed to shatter and spread explosive flame on impact – more than a match for the flammable wooden hulls of the Water Tribe.

In the end, one of the enemy ships had sunk with a gaping hole in the starboard keel, and the other had suffered a lucky shot that brought down the mast and all but snapped the vessel in two. Lieutenant Sangon described the aftermath with unprofessionally graphic detail, but Zuko hardly noticed.

Under my orders the hands followed procedure in taking account of the casualties and clearing the deck of the debris from the forward trebuchet. The fog around us cleared enough to allow the sun to filter through, and it roused heartiness in us all. The light let us spot a figure among the flotsam of the destroyed ship, a young woman in the garb and war paint of a waterbender, though through my glass I saw her bleeding heavily from a wound on the scalp.

Thinking to create some return for the tragedy of Captain Mei-Lin’s death, I ordered the boat out, and the girl was brought back in chains, to many jeers from the men in the crew. Their display left a sour taste in my mouth, for all she had tried her best to kill us all not moments before.

I conclude my report with a note on the waterbender’s condition. It is lucky we picked her up in such an incoherent state, otherwise it is certain she would have followed the example of her captured brethren before we could begin to question her. Her wounds have been treated, but for her own safety and ours we are keeping her drugged with wortroot, which has the added bonus of supressing qi should she manage to shake off sleep.

We estimate Gaolong Harbour in three days, and will submit our guest to the port authorities at that time.

In my own hand

Acting Captain Sangon Zushin

Rubbing the back of his neck to ease the ache, Zuko sat back, tapping his fingers against the table. The report mentioned the Southern waterbender had her face painted, and that in the attack some of the crew were killed by strands of water rising from the ocean like the tentacles of a giant squid-topus. Although this was the best corroboration he had found so far, it was still a tenuous link to what he had observed two nights before at the docks.

Rumours had already begun to gust around the capital. Witnesses to the disaster swore it was the work of angry spirits; Officials scoffed and said it was an act of sabotage, committed by a group of rebel benders intent on destroying the lives of helpless Fire Nation citizens. Only time would tell which story the people would take as truth, but already the harbour swam with offerings of flowers and rice thrown down to try and appease whatever god was powerful enough to destroy three ten-deck troop carriers single-handed.

As for Zuko, he knew with certainty the woman the Blue Spirit confronted that night was human. This raised more questions than it answered, however. Was the saboteur alone or did she have a network of hidden waterbenders helping her? And if she did, why attack at night? Such power as she demonstrated would have made short work of any soldiers sent to stop her, so was it merely convenience that she had waited until the docks were quiet, or was it conscience? Considering the scale of the disaster, very few of the ships’ skeleton crews had been killed in the attack, and more than one report mentioned feeling the waves push them onto the breakwater, heavy armour and all.

Zuko groaned and buried his face in his hands.

“Prince Zuko?”

“Yes?”

The elderly librarian shuffled forward, a new stack of papers in his arms. “You wanted the tactical reports from the Southern Conquest.”

“Ah, thank you.” He pushed out of his chair so he could relieve the old man of his burden. “You know you could get one of your assistants to help me.”

“No, I could not,” the librarian replied, waving his prince’s concerns away. “It would dishonour you to have one of those bumbling children getting in the way of your research. Besides, it does these old bones some good to get about a bit.” He wheezed a laugh and cracked the stiffness out of his knuckles. “Might I ask what all of this is in aid of, Prince Zuko? I haven’t seen you this studious in years.”

“I’ve had other things to think about,” Zuko replied testily. “Do I need a reason?”

“Of course not, of course not.” The librarian held up his hands in good-natured surrender. “Just tell me if you require anything further.” He shuffled off again, leaving Zuko to his alcove and his privacy.

The biggest problem, the prince observed wryly to himself as he flitted through the newest stack of documents, was that nobody had any real clue about the capabilities of waterbenders. Every naval report spoke about them with a sort of reverent fear, and it had taken the power of Sozin’s Comet to finally bring their society to its knees, but there was no empirical value set on their abilities, either the range or the volume of water an individual could manipulate at any one time. He supposed that reflected the subtle nature of their element, but the Fire Nation’s lack of knowledge had more to do with lack of subjects – captured waterbenders never lived for very long.

Still, he found it difficult to believe one person could be powerful enough to cause so much destruction - apart from the avatar, of course. His uncle would have known. Once, before everything went wrong, Iroh had encouraged Zuko’s curiosity about the other nations. He had said understanding other cultures was the true key to bringing peace after conquest, but then Lu Ten had died at the siege of Ba Sing Se, and the once revered Dragon of the West had betrayed his own men, ordering a retreat when they could have pressed on and assured victory. When the soldiers rebelled, their general had been caught in the blast of the Avatar’s power, his body torn apart by the elements.

Official records left out the true circumstances of Crown Prince Iroh’s death, but afterwards Ozai made it clear to his son that an open-minded attitude towards the other cultures of the world would no longer be tolerated. Iroh’s weakness in the face of the cursed avatar became a lesson in the perils of mercy.

But the avatar was far away in the Earth Kingdom, the last of the Air Nomads alive and well, busy stirring up rebellion against Fire Nation colonisers. The bender he encountered at the harbour was definitely not an Air Nomad, and there was no mistaking her shape underneath her clothes. He felt his cheeks warm at the memory and fisted his hands on the table to try and regain control of his fire. Royal princes did not become flustered at the mere thought of beautiful women, especially ones who were such a threat to shipping.

Was she beautiful, though? Under the war paint, did she have dark skin like that of others of the Water Tribe? Was it smooth and soft, or chafed by sea winds? What shape were her lips? He hadn’t been able to see the colour of her eyes in the darkness, but they were fierce.

He groaned again and pinched his fingers to the bridge of his nose.

The lattices of Katara’s private chambers were all open, but no breeze could be tempted in from the baking garden. If anything, the scorching heat of the sun had only increased since the day before, as if trying to squeeze the last moisture from the earth before the arrival of the winter rains. The still, dry air made Katara fidget under her sweat-drenched sheets, her fever slow to cool.

The influence of the full moon and the rush of her own daring had allowed her to destroy not one but all three of the ships moored in the harbour. Even in her delirium she remembered the savagery of her joy at being able to unleash her full power and strike at the heart of her enemy. She felt again and again the scream of tearing metal as she smashed the Ryujo against the breakwater, only now the tremors lanced through her body instead.

At the time she hadn’t realised how much energy she was using, too busy focussed on the flow of water in her hands. Afterwards, though, when she dragged herself back through the dimming streets, she had felt the tug of fatigue slowing every step as if stones pulled at her feet.

She woke sometime the next afternoon to the caress of healing water on her forehead. Linara sat over her, the healer’s smooth face scrunched in concern as she tried to map the splintered lines of qi through Katara’s body. Hama stood at the foot of the bed, her hands framed into rigid lines as she froze the air into powdery ice over her charge’s wrists and ankles. That was how she remembered the hours, in snatches of consciousness as shadows from the window trailed across the room, with her guardians working in seamless, unending tandem to bring her back from the dark.

Now, Katara sat in a pile of cushions with the vile taste of some reviving tonic lingering at the back of her throat. She focussed on separating the dank flavours to work out what they forced down her throat, because the alternative was having to look Hama in the eye.

She had never seen the old woman so angry.

“What were you thinking?” the old general demanded. “It’s a blessing you weren’t seen – or captured! What do you think would happen to our people, to all our well-laid plans, if they find out it was you who destroyed those ships in the harbour?”

“I couldn’t sit by and do nothing! Those ships were going to take soldiers to the Earth Kingdom, and now they can’t,” Katara retorted. She glanced down at where her hands lay in her lap. “And nobody caught me,” she added sullenly. “So they aren’t going to find out it was me.”

Ham sniffed. “And how will you explain your current state when the guard comes to interrogate us?” She threw up her hands. “You never think things through! Always impetuous, always taking on more than you can handle. They’ll be looking for waterbenders, girl.”

“General, please,” interrupted Linara. “This can be saved for another time. Katara needs rest.”

“She needs sense knocked into her. Where’s a glacier when you need one.”

“I’m sorry, Sifu,” Katara mumbled as Hama turned to stomp out.

The general hesitated in the doorway. “No you’re not,” she grunted. “You’re pleased with yourself. I hope you still are when all of our sacrifices come to nothing.”

Katara watched her teacher cross the garden and round a corner towards the kitchens, the blue-clad form shimmering under the intensity of the sun. She bit her lip. Everyone had risked so much for her, and Hama was right: the lives of too many people depended on her staying in the good graces of the Fire Lord as a political hostage, too demure to be a threat and too important to be thrown away. To be found out as a waterbender…

Tomorrow, she would make a proper apology, when exhaustion no longer clawed at her bones and made her head swim.

Linara tactfully chose that moment to replace her healing water, running her fingers along the rim of the turtleshell bowl she had received when she attained the rank of Master Healer. At twenty-five, she was one of the most gifted students in the school, hand-chosen to be part of Katara’s entourage, to protect the young princess in the polar bear-dog’s den, and to keep the skills and talents of the Southern Water Tribe safe, hidden in plain sight in case Hama’s plan failed. The bone beads threaded into the locks at her temples clicked as she kneeled once more at Katara’s bedside.

“All that bluster is just worry for you,” she said kindly. “The general’s actually quite impressed. We all are.”

She lay her hands against Katara’s fevered skin, one on her abdomen while the other smoothed a healing glow along her legs and down over her feet. Tension eased out of the Water Tribe princess, resignation settling in its place.

“Dad’s going to be so angry when he finds out.”

“He may be angry that you put yourself in danger,” the healer calmly replied. “But nobody can deny how far this will set back the Fire Nation war effort. Each of those ships was worth two thousand soldiers at least, and now it’s unlikely they’ll get to the Earth Kingdom in time to relieve the soldiers already there. Mark my words, it’s a gap that’ll be exploited. If there’s anyone who can make the most of this, it’s -”

“Don’t remind me,” Katara interrupted, burying her head in her hands. “That’s another person who’s going to be mad at me.”

The healer grinned. “Not looking forward to Mimi’s next letter?”

“No.”

“It might not be so bad. The Fire Navy will be short three of its biggest assets until they can replace them. That’s at least six months of unchecked piracy. The Third Fleet will be busy.”

Katara pushed herself out of her pile of cushions, gnawed by an unexpected concern. “And how many people will be worked to death to get new ships ready in six months?”

Linara’s hands paused against Katara’s skin, her smile hardened into a frown as she brought her fingers up to touch the carved pendant at her throat. The once-beautiful image carved in the mother-of-pearl was marred by a deep, deliberate scratch.

“That’s not our problem.”

“Isn’t it? It’ll be my fault.”

“There’s more suffering in this place than any one person could hope to change,” Linara snorted. “Don’t make yourself responsible for a society where the nobility break the backs of peasants to avoid stepping in the mud.”

“But -”

“If you want to help them, see this through. Care if you must, but remember you’re the only one who will.”

They lapsed into silence, Linara’s thoughts her own and Katara’s wandering back to the moonlit pier and the man with the twin swords who had confronted her there. At the time, she had been too surprised to notice much more than the glint of moonlight on steel and the gruesome mask leering through the darkness, but when the guards stole his attention and allowed her to get away, she had looked back. He moved through them with perfect control, chaos poised by discipline. Her father’s troops were well trained, but she had never seen anyone fight like that. His black clothes were loose, made of material that wouldn’t rustle as he moved, but Katara could imagine the lithe muscles beneath. He would not be bulky, like Water Tribe men used to hauling fishing lines, fed a steady diet of fish and meat. Was he a native of the capital, or somewhere else? What colour were his eyes? Most importantly, what had he been doing at the harbour that night?

“Katara?”

She blinked and found Linara watching her.

“Are you alright?”

“I was just wondering…” Katara paused, finding the right smokescreen for her interest. “I heard some of the Fire Nation soldiers talking. You’ve been to the market. What are people saying about a man in a blue mask?”

likes, reblogs, comments - all welcome!

#zutara #zutara fanfic #atla #avatar: the last airbender #zuko #katara #zuko x katara #katara x zuko #My writing #story: the things we hide

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dustedmagazine · 8 years ago

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Dust Vol. 3, Number 3

A little past Valentine’s Day, midway through the winter, we interrupt our regular schedule to present a series of short reviews of albums that have caught our interest in these short, dark anxious days. There’s a posthumous EP from the Thin White Duke, a jangly solo effort from Ought’s Tim Darcy, a study in American primitivism from Joseph Allred, a bit of costume party revelry from Gorilla Mask and a slice of latter day jangle pop from the Courtneys, among others. Contributors this time include Ian Mathers, Bill Meyers, Justin Cober-Lake, Derek Taylor and Jennifer Kelly. Make a cup of tea, turn the heat up and dig in.

David Bowie — No Plan EP (Columbia/Sony)

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The headline, of course, is that this the last(!) new(!) material from David Bowie before his death, and that’s true as far as it goes. It’s also true that one of these four songs was already released on ★, and the other three were included both in Bowie’s musical Lazarus and twice on the cast recording of the show (once by the case, once on the bonus disc in the versions found here). But whether you take the stance that this release is essential or deeply redundant, it confirms two things: Bowie still had plenty left in the tank when he passed (whether or not these three songs would have found their way to the album he wanted to make next), and his curatorial instincts were still firmly intact. Whatever work the songs here do in the musical, they would have made for an odd fit with the compressed, keening, weird melancholy tracks that make up ★ and would have been the weakest material there (the majestic, keenly felt “Lazarus” excepted, of course).

That doesn’t make them scraps or afterthoughts, it’s just that they’re more on par with more prosaic material from The Next Day instead. The title track is another in a series of wavering elegies later-period Bowie has been mostly nailing since, let’s say, “Thursday’s Child” in 1999. It’s immediately contrasted with the insistent, grinding guitar of “Killing a Little Time,” a song that is the most conventionally “rock” thing Bowie did in 2016, although the closing “When I Met You” comes close. That last track is mostly notable for being an unusually direct song of love and devotion from Bowie; it’s hard to hear it and not assume it’s about Iman in some part. It’s a lovely note to go out on, and probably more true to Bowie’s existence at the end than the more self-consciously iconic (and tremendously powerful) “I Can’t Give Everything Away;” after all, he was fighting to keep living and working until the end.

Ian Mathers

The Few —Fragments of a Luxury Vessel LP (Two Cities Records)

Fragments of a Luxury Vessel by The Few

Some music falls into the cracks, but that’s where The Few finds space to navigate. The Chicago-based trio of guitarist Steve Marquette, bassist Charlie Kirchen and violinist/vocalist Macie Stewart has ties to both inside and outside jazz traditions as well as song-based rock and their acoustic instrumentation invites folk comparisons as well. Marquette’s Bailey-esque crabwalks on “Do You Still?” and stark harmonics on “Variations on ‘The Truth Is Marching In’” confirm his familiarity with no-net improvisation, but even though the music is freely played it doesn’t conform to any idiomatic proscriptions against tonal melody. And while Kirchen cuts some bold, Mingus-like shapes in the foreground of “Foot Fall,” the flamenco-like guitar flourishes and Stewart’s parallel streams of vocalized and long bowed tones put it in a context where dreamlike flow counts more than swing.

Bill Meyer

Tim Darcy—Saturday Night (Jagjaguwar)

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Tim Darcy, the front man from Ought, wields a sharp guitar and a wobbly voice to great effect, channeling the oddball earnestness of Gordon Gano, the woozy pop surrealism of Jeff Magnum. Saturday Night is his first solo album, recorded at around the same time as Ought’s denser Sun Coming Down, but stripped of aura and overtone and guitar effects to reveal a jaunty pop core. (The Ought song that this album most resembles, as others have noted, is “Beautiful Blue Sky.”) Thus “Tall Glass of Water” rips and struts and slashes with pop-punk bravado, while intimating vulnerability in the tremble of the words. “You Felt Comfort” blares more dissonantly (and it’s this one that reminds you of Neutral Milk Hotel), but around a sweet, heartening tune; it’s a rampage with a fetching smile. The song stretch out and grow weirder after the midway point. The title track slips some abrasive bowing into its disconsolate mix, with Darcy muttering “I wish I’d run away sooner…to save time,” but it sounds to me like he got out at exactly the right moment.

Jennifer Kelly

Gorilla Mask – Iron Lung (Clean Feed)

Gorilla Mask strikes a precarious balance of costume party extroversion and dialed-in intensity on Iron Lung. Theirs is pile-driving, peel-out-on-a-dime music that wastes nothing in the way of quarter given to skeptical neophyte listener or avaricious industry suit. Altoist Peter Van Huffel punches, jabs, ducks and weaves from his reed like a jacked-up cousin to John Zorn, riding the tight, pounding metrics of drummer Rudi Fischerlehner and liquid mercury electric bass lines of Roland Fidezius that often also rely on fuzz pedal and delay. “Before I Die” has the sweaty basement door gig flavor Boston-era Vandermark, a head-bobbing backbeat bolstered by detours into Echoplex dub. “THUMP!” divines memories of the sort of circumscript, drain-circling jams that were the purview of SoCal punk jazz pioneers Bazooka while ��Crooked” projects Brötzmann-worthy peals of pathos above a pulsing mallets-driven processional. The German power trio proves better suited to the former context as the fire-stoking title track also beautifully and implacably bears witness, but who’s to fault them for trying to beat their chests outside the box.

Derek Taylor

Joseph Allred—Fire & Earth LP (Scissor Tail Records)

Fire and Earth by Joseph Allred

There’s more than one mountain to climb in American Primitive guitar territory, and Joseph Allred favors the holy one. Like Robbie Basho, he totes a 12-string guitar, augments his playing with other instruments and some line-in-the-sand singing, and uses his music to convey mystical and nature-dazzled themes. But he’s no copycat. Instead of feverish exaltation and slack-jawed awe, he expresses humility and a more measurable appreciation for his subjects. And some of his recurrent instrumental effects do not come from Basho’s playbook at all; the blurry tremolo effect he employs on “Holy Blue Window” and “A Waltz for Winter” recalls the early work of James Blackshaw. On two of the album’s nine tracks, Allred sets his guitar aside to play harmonium. “Musica Humana” is so closely recorded that you can hear him hum subliminally along with the melody while his feet work the pedals. It feels as intimate as the thoughts of a true nature lover communing with the divine during a long afternoon walk through the woods. Allred lifts his voice just once, on the hymn-like “Useless Air.” His high quaver is not as easy to embrace as his strumming, but the song’s prayerful quality is of a piece with the rest of the album.

Bill Meyer

The Courtneys – The Courtneys II (Flying Nun)

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The Courtneys' aptly named second album has found the proper label, matching the history that the Canadian trio mines for their pop-rock. Flying Nun pillars like the Clean stand as sonic predecessors — there's still a bit of jangle here and a bit of pop and a particular sort of rock that touches on but isn't limited to its late 1980s and early 1990s roots. The group hints at a fuzziness it never quite dips into. At times, particularly in the second half of the album, the Courtneys reach more toward Sonic Youth, but this group never loses a brightness of tone that keeps a pop sound to even its more driving numbers. “Virgo” shows the anxious undercurrent of the band's music and while it hurtles along, it never dips into darker sounds.

That sort of edge keeps the album from leaning too far toward bubblegum. The group writes fantastic melody after melody, a sort of bright punkiness carried by a stream of hooks. “Silver Velvet” is a new teen love anthem, a little goofy and a little resistant, but completely given to its own ends. Like that opener, much of the album is fit to go over well when sung either in a safely grungy club or in a similarly half-cleaned bedroom.

Justin Cober-Lake

Tim Daisy—Red Nation “1” (Relay Recordings)

Tim Daisy [] Red Nation "1" (relay 018) by red nation

It has been a long time since you could just call Tim Daisy a jazz drummer.

Consider the classically steeped themes he has written and the marimba melodies he has played in the ensemble Vox Arcana, or the radio captures that he releases into the electrified environment of Ken Vandermark’s Made To Break; he’s a fully ledged agent of sonic and aesthetic diversity. Consider also that he helps program Option, an improviser’s salon at Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio and runs Relay Recordings; Daisy is an unstinting contributor to Chicago creative music scene, which has thrived despite the soul-corrosion and economic stress of 21st century American disaster capitalism.

Maybe it’s not a total bust to live in these times. In the mid-20th century, it took considerable institutional support for the pioneers of musique concrete to make music that sounds like Red Nation “1.” Daisy was able to make the album in just two days without a single overdub by drumming along with stuck and triggered records and was able to get it from the recording studio to a finished silver CD in just 30 more. Being his own label boss means that his business practices can be as instantaneous as his playing, which synthesizes composition and improvisation into music that is spontaneous, witty and complete. “The Drunken Captain” is anchored by a hard-to-source electronic lurch that vividly evokes the gait of the titular skipper, who miraculously never quite trips over the streams of distorted piano and restlessly searching snare action that crisscrosses his path. And on “Shadows Play” and “Beats for an Owl,” Daisy plays spare and evolving beat patterns around layers of remorselessly rotating sound.

Why red? Daisy isn’t making any sort of political statement, he just likes the color, and sometimes when you’re your own boss you get to do what you like.

Bill Meyer

#dust #david bowie #the few #tim darcy #gorilla mask #joseph allred #the courtneys #tim daisy #ian mathers #bill meyer #jennifer kelly #derek taylor #justin cober-lake

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Headlines

The Other Way Covid Will Kill: Hunger (NYT) Long before the pandemic swept into her village in the rugged southeast of Afghanistan, Halima Bibi knew the gnawing fear of hunger. It was an omnipresent force, an unrelenting source of anxiety as she struggled to nourish her four children. Her husband earned about $5 a day, hauling produce by wheelbarrow from a local market to surrounding homes. Most days, he brought home a loaf of bread, potatoes and beans for an evening meal. But when the coronavirus arrived in March, taking the lives of her neighbors and shutting down the market, her husband’s earnings plunged to about $1 a day. Most evenings, he brought home only bread. Some nights, he returned with nothing. “We hear our children screaming in hunger, but there is nothing that we can do,” said Ms. Bibi, speaking in Pashto by telephone from a hospital in the capital city of Kabul, where her 6-year-old daughter was being treated for severe malnutrition. “That is not just our situation, but the reality for most of the families where we live.” It is increasingly the reality for hundreds of millions of people around the planet. As the global economy absorbs the most punishing reversal of fortunes since the Great Depression, hunger is on the rise. Those confronting potentially life-threatening levels of so-called food insecurity in the developing world are expected to nearly double this year to 265 million, according to the United Nations World Food Program.

Farmworkers face coronavirus disaster (Politico) Within days of the coronavirus pandemic taking hold, the Trump administration had to confront a reality it had long tried to ignore: The nation’s 2.5 million farmworkers, about half of whom the government estimates are undocumented, are absolutely critical to keeping the food system working. It was a major shift for a president who continues to reduce any debate about immigration to stoking fears about border defense and crime. But the Trump administration and Congress have done little to help keep farmworkers safe on the job. Six months into the pandemic, according to a POLITICO analysis, these workers appear to be victims of the worst of the Covid-19 crisis. For several weeks, many of the places that grow the nation’s fruits and vegetables have seen disproportionately high rates of coronavirus cases—a national trend that, as harvest season advances in many states, threatens already vulnerable farmworkers, their communities and the places they work. From Oregon to North Carolina, counties with the highest per capita rates of coronavirus are some of the top producers of crops like lettuce, sweet potatoes and apples. In California, six out of seven of the state’s most Covid-ridden counties, per capita, are in the Central Valley, which produces the lion’s share of America’s fruits and vegetables.

What’s next? Devastating fires are latest challenge in West (AP) The path of devastation spans thousands of miles where flames have consumed people, homes and cars while leaving a barren, gray landscape. But the massive wildfires aren’t done chewing through the West, shrouding the skies with choking smoke or driving residents from their homes. It’s an ominous harbinger of fall for the region that was the first to be hit hard by the coronavirus and where the cries for social justice have rung especially loud this summer with protests in Portland for more than 100 days. “What’s next?” asked Danielle Oliver, who had to flee her home southeast of Portland ahead of the deadly flames. “You have the protests, coronavirus pandemic, now the wildfires. What else can go wrong?” She’s one of tens of thousands of people displaced by wildfires in Oregon, California and Washington state. Many more are living with air contamination levels at historic highs. The region’s death toll has topped 30 and could increase sharply, with Oregon officials saying they are preparing for a possible “mass casualty event” if more bodies are found in the ash.

Teacher departures leave schools scrambling for substitutes (AP) With many teachers opting out of returning to the classroom because of the coronavirus, schools around the U.S. are scrambling to find replacements and in some places lowering certification requirements to help get substitutes in the door. Several states have seen surges in educators filing for retirement or taking leaves of absence. The departures are straining staff in places that were dealing with shortages of teachers and substitutes even before the pandemic created an education crisis. Among those leaving is Kay Orzechowicz, an English teacher at northwest Indiana’s Griffith High School, who at 57 had hoped to teach for a few more years. But she felt her school’s leadership was not fully committed to ensuring proper social distancing and worried that not enough safety equipment would be provided for students and teachers. Add the technology requirements and the pressure to record classes on video, and Orzechowicz said it “just wasn’t what I signed up for when I became a teacher.”

Paulette rolls toward Bermuda; Sally threatens Gulf Coast (AP) Residents of Bermuda were urged to prepare to protect life and property ahead of Hurricane Paulette, which was forecast to become a dangerous hurricane Sunday as Tropical Storm Sally intensified in the Gulf of Mexico. Paulette gained hurricane status late Saturday and was expected to bring storm surge, coastal flooding and high winds to Bermuda, according to a U.S. National Hurricane Center advisory. A hurricane warning for Sally was issued Sunday morning from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and included metropolitan New Orleans. A storm surge warning and a tropical storm warning were also in effect for parts of the Gulf Coast. A slow moving storm, Sally could produce rain totals up to 20 inches (51 centimeters) by the middle of the week, forecasters said.

As Both Sides Dig In, What’s the Endgame for Belarus? (NYT) After more than a month of protests in Belarus, there is still no clear endgame in sight for either side, with Mr. Lukashenko and his foes both insisting they can prevail but neither offering a clear and plausible path to victory—other than continued peaceful defiance by protesters and relentless repression by the government. One way to break the stalemate that all sides, including Russia, say they could support would be constitutional changes to pave the way for new elections. But Mr. Lukashenko, having declared in August that “until you kill me, there will not be any more elections,” has shown no real interest in changing anything any time soon. He refuses to even talk with his foes, denouncing them as treasonous “rats” and “tricksters” who belong in jail, not at the negotiating table. Instead, he has focused on rounding up workers who organized strikes and methodically dismantling the opposition, whose most prominent figures have, one by one, been forced to flee abroad or been thrown in jail. Protesters have defied expectations by turning out in huge numbers each Sunday for the past four weeks despite government threats, a feat they hope to repeat this weekend. But Mr. Lukashenko, emboldened by Russian support, has only grown more insistent that he is not going anywhere.

France Daily Coronavirus Cases Top 10,000, Most Since Lockdown (Bloomberg) France reported more than 10,000 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, the largest daily increase since the end of the country’s lockdown in May, a day after Prime Minister Jean Castex warned of a “clear worsening” in the spread of the virus. The French government is trying to avoid another national lockdown, and people will have to live with the virus and be vigilant about sticking to precautions, Castex said in a speech Friday. With cases also spiking in neighboring countries, including Germany, Spain and the U.K., Western Europe has reemerged as a global hotspot for infections.

Fed-up Lesbos islanders, migrants stuck waiting for Europe to decide (Reuters) Crisis-weary residents of the Greek island of Lesbos and the thousands of migrants stranded there after this week’s refugee centre fire are united by one thing—they all want to see the migrants moved off the island. Lesbos and other islands off the Turkish coast have been among the main entry points for migrants into Europe for years, peaking in 2015-16 when around a million people arrived in a seemingly endless stream of small boats. The overflowing camp that burned held more than 12,000 migrants—four times the numbers it was supposed to—forcing thousands to live in squalor and putting a strain on both its occupants and residents in nearby areas who have mounted a series of protests this year demanding the centre be shut down. But with the European Union unable to reach agreement between countries like Greece and Italy, which want the bloc to share the burden and others refusing to take in refugees, for the moment Lesbos’ 86,000 islanders and migrants remain unwillingly together.

Ageing and empty: Japan next premier’s hometown highlights challenges ahead (Reuters) It’s noon on a warm day in the Japanese town where Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s next prime minister, grew up, but more than half the stores in a downtown shopping arcade are shuttered and sidewalks stretch empty except for the rare elderly passerby. A building proclaiming “I Love Yuzawa” stands abandoned. A giant department store nearby hulks over the street, mostly unusable because it doesn’t meet earthquake safety standards but too expensive to tear down. The remote part of Yuzawa where Suga grew up, 480 km (300 miles) northeast of Tokyo, captures key challenges his administration will face: half the residents in the area are over 60. Depopulation and ageing have meant a dramatic fall in tax revenue, pushing the town’s government, reliant on support from Tokyo, to consider merging with other towns in Akita prefecture. “Japan is the world’s fastest-aging nation, Akita the fastest-aging prefecture and Yuzawa one of the worst in Akita,” said town employee Toru Abe, noting that close to 40% of all Yuzawa residents are over 65, compared to 28% for the nation.

Scores arrested at protests in Australia’s coronavirus hotspot (Reuters) Police in Australia’s Victoria state arrested 74 people and fined 176 for breaching public health orders as scattered protests against a weeks-long coronavirus lockdown continued for a second straight day across Melbourne. A riot squad marched through fruit and vegetable stalls at the city’s landmark, the Queen Victoria market, before the scuffling with protesters erupted, with some people throwing fruit at the police, television footage showed. The protests came after 14 people were arrested at small dispersed rallies on Saturday and as Victoria is set to ease its lockdown restrictions very slightly as of Monday, as the number of new daily coronavirus cases continued to fall in the country’s hotspot.

Israel to set new nationwide lockdown as virus cases surge (AP) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday announced a new countrywide lockdown will be imposed amid a stubborn surge in coronavirus cases, with schools and parts of the economy expected to shut down in a bid to bring down infection rates. Beginning Friday, the start of the Jewish High Holiday season, schools, restaurants, malls and hotels will shut down, among other businesses, and Israelis will face restrictions on movement and on gatherings. The lockdown will remain in place for at least three weeks, at which point officials may relax measures if numbers are seen declining. Israelis typically hold large family gatherings and pack synagogues during the important fast of Yom Kippur later this month, settings that officials feared could trigger new outbreaks.

#headlines #news

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bountyofbeads · 5 years ago

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The Amazon Fires Are More Dangerous Than WMDs

One person shouldn’t have the power to set policies that doom the rest of humanity’s shot at mitigating rising temperatures.

Franklin Foer | Published August 24, 2019 | The Atlantic | Posted August 25, 2019 7:42 PM ET|

Updated at 1:55 p.m. ET on August 25, 2019.

When Jair Bolsonaro won Brazil’s presidential election last year, having run on a platform of deforestation, David Wallace-Wells asked, “How much damage can one person do to the planet?” Bolsonaro didn’t pour lighter fluid to ignite the flames now ravaging the Amazon, but with his policies and rhetoric, he might as well have. The destruction he inspired—and allowed to rage with his days of stubborn unwillingness to douse the flames—has placed the planet at a hinge moment in its ecological history. Unfortunately, the planet doesn’t have a clue about how it should respond.

In part, the problem is that so much of the world is now governed by leaders who share Bolsonaro’s sensibility. Even before Bolsonaro presided over the incineration of the world’s storehouse of oxygen, he led a dubious regime. His path to power began with the corrupt impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, followed by the arrest of his higher-polling electoral rival.

In part, the problem is the dismal state of international institutions, which haven’t been so tattered since World War II. In the face of global critics begging Bolsonaro to stop the destruction of the Amazon, he shouts about the threats to Brazil’s sovereignty. For that complaint to land, he would need democratic legitimacy, and this revanchist has none; yet those critics do nothing more than sputter inconsequential rage.

If a country obtains chemical or biological weapons, the rest of the world tends to react with fury—or at least it did in the not-so-distant past. Sanctions rained down on the proliferators, who were then ostracized from the global community. And in rare ( sometimes disastrously misguided) cases, the world decided that the threat justified a military response. The destruction of the Amazon is arguably far more dangerous than the weapons of mass destruction that have triggered a robust response. The consequences of the unfolding disaster—which will extinguish species and hasten a worst-case climate crisis—extend for eternity. To lose a fifth of the Amazon to deforestation would trigger a process known as “dieback,” releasing what The Intercept calls a “doomsday bomb of stored carbon.”

It is commonplace to describe the Amazon as the “world’s lungs.” Embedded in the metaphor is the sense that inherited ideas about the sovereignty of states no longer hold in the face of climate change. If the smoke clouds drifted only so far as the skies of São Paulo, other nations might be able to shrug off the problem as belonging to someone else. But one person shouldn’t have the power to set policies that doom the rest of humanity’s shot at mitigating rising temperatures.

What makes Bolsonaro’s behavior so galling is the pointlessness of it. Of course, he has ties to agribusiness, which would like to raze the forest for its cattle and crops. And he campaigned on the promise of damming the river and developing the region into the country’s economic engine. But there are even baser motives driving Bolsonaro’s gleeful policy of deforestation: The man has a demonstrable record of racism, and he’s compared the indigenous people who live on protected lands to animals in a zoo. And like Donald Trump, he squeezes personal joy from his confrontations with foreign leaders and NGOs, posing as the manly enemy of the effete elites. In other words, he’s letting the fires burn, at least in part, to troll his enemies. He’s cutting out the world’s lungs for the sake of owning the libs.

The situation isn’t without hope. The world can treat Bolsonaro with, at least, the urgency it has shown Venezuela’s dictator, Nicolás Maduro. To force him away from his policy of deforestation, and to prod him to intensely fight the fire, world leaders should threaten to cancel trade agreements and ban the import of timber and beef from companies that operate in the Amazon; they should sanction members of the Bolsonaro inner circle (who, in the grand tradition of the nation’s political history, seem to have achieved an expertise in money laundering); they should turn Bolsonaro and his sons, who serve as their father’s henchmen, into pariahs, forbidding their international travel.

Thus far, French President Emmanuel Macron is the lone world leader who seems appropriately terror-struck by the satellite pictures of the devastation. And when he proposed rolling back trade agreements with Brazil, he spurred Bolsonaro to at last mobilize his military to act against the flames.

If there were a functioning global community, it would be wrestling with how to more aggressively save the Amazon, and acknowledging that the battle against climate change demands not only new international cooperation but, perhaps, the weakening of traditional concepts of the nation-state. The European Union or a coalition of nations should, at least, mull sending planes or firefighters to extinguish the flames, even if Bolsonaro rejects their presence. Admittedly, that might not be practical or might exacerbate the problem. But the case for territorial incursion in the Amazon is far stronger than the justifications for most war. In the meantime, the planet chokes on old notions of sovereignty.

The Amazon Cannot Be Recovered Once It’s Gone

The fires blazing in Brazil are part of a larger deforestation crisis, accelerated by President Jair Bolsonaro.

Robinson Meyer | Published August 24, 2019 | The Atlantic | Posted August 25, 2019 7:43 PM ET |

The Amazon is burning. There have been more than 74,000 fires across Brazil this year, and nearly 40,000 fires across the Amazon, according to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. That’s the fastest rate of burning since record-keeping began, in 2013. Toxic smoke from the fires is so intense that darkness now falls hours before the sun sets in São Paulo, Brazil’s financial capital and the largest city in the Western Hemisphere.

The fires have captured the planet’s attention as little else does. The Amazon is the world’s largest and most diverse tract of rainforest, with millions of species and billions of trees. It stores vast amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide and produces 6 percent of the planet’s oxygen.

So the Amazonian fires—which have been blazing for weeks and notoriously received less coverage than Notre Dame’s burning roof— seem like a potent symbol of humanity’s indifference to environmental disorder, including climate change.

But climate change is not the primary cause of the wildfires. Unlike, say, most California blazes—which are sparked by accident and then intensified by climate change—the Amazonian fires are not wildfires at all. These fires did not start by lightning strike or power line: They were ignited. And while they largely affect land already cleared for ranching and farming, they can and do spread into old-growth forest.

Read: Trees could change the climate more than scientists thought

So the two scariest numbers for understanding the fires are this: There are 80 percent more fires this year than there were last summer, according to the Brazilian government. This surge in burning has accompanied a spike in deforestation in general. More than 1,330 square miles of the Amazon rainforest have been lost since January, a 39 percent increase over the same period last year, according to The New York Times.

Why are these figures so important? Because Brazil’s political leadership has changed in the past year. On January 1, Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right populist who has openly pined for his country’s authoritarian past, was sworn in as president. During his campaign, he promised to weaken the Amazon’s environmental protections—which have been effective at reducing deforestation for the past two decades—and open up the rainforest to economic development.

Now he is making good on that promise. The three Brazilian states with the worst spikes in fire this year are all governed by Bolsonaro’s allies, according to Richard Black, a former BBC journalist and the current director of the nonprofit Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit. The states governed by Bolsonaro’s political opponents have actually seen a decline in fires. And according to allegations by the global news site OpenDemocracy, leaked documents show that Bolsonaro’s government intends to strategically prevent conservation projects in the Amazon.

But recognizing that the fires are a political problem as well as an environmental one does not make solving them any easier. Bolsonaro has found success in part by casting himself in opposition to the rich global North. When asked about the fires, he implied that environmental NGOs were behind the burning. After President Emmanuel Macron of France called the fires a crisis, tweeting that “our house is burning,” Bolsonaro co-opted his words, accusing him of a “misplaced colonial mindset.”

That cynical attack points to the difficulty of a remedy. The Amazon rainforest does, in some sense, belong to Brazilians and the indigenous people who live there. But as a store of carbon, it is fundamental to the survival of every person. If destroyed or degraded, the Amazon, as a system, is simply beyond humanity’s ability to get back: Even if people were to replant half a continent’s worth of trees, the diversity of creatures across Amazonia, once lost, will not be replenished for roughly 10 million years. And that is 33 times longer than Homo sapiens, as a species, has existed.

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ramrodd · 6 years ago

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What moment during your military service do you feel changed your life forever?

COMMENTARY:

I had what they call a “Come to Jesus” moment the second week I was in-country and up-country and waiting to hook-up with my platoon somewhere out in the woods north west of An Khe that caused me to abandon a military career. During an otherwise undramatic evening sit-rep at th Brigade TOC, my brigade commander began rant like Rush Limbaugh riffing on Title IX or the Homeland Security Secretary explaining the righteousness of child separation and it’s divine origins and I my literal first thought was Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg on the bridge of the Caine during a typhoon.

He didn’t force me out of the service intentionally. He never knew he had any influence on me. one way or another. I was a young platoon leader on his way to the front and on his front row with two other LT/FNG, both of whom were West Pointers from my Ranger class. This was just after Kent State for all you former street fighting men who avoided military service came to see the world differently after Kent State, as captured in Neil Young’s OHIO. Kent State scared the generation of red-blooded American men who had other priorities than military service and were scared shitless of going to Vietnam and believed in Woodstock as the great tribal celebration of ending the war by replacing LBJ with Nixon. Kent State was the generational reality check.

I literally had my orders for Vietnam in my hand when I heard about Kent State. I was working my way around Ft. Benning, getting ready to leave Dodge and head for Saigon. You take a stack of your orders from place to place and whatever connection I had with Ft. Benning, as military infrastructure, was disconnected and I carried the rest of the orders to Vietnam to complete the loop and get my travel pay in cash. I mean, priorities. And I knew from living cheek-to-jowl with the anti-war crowd at Indiana University, I suspected there would be some unhappiness expressed in various semi-coordinated street theater nation wide. I didn’t hear OHIO until I got a cassette tape as part of the introductory offer from the Columbia Record Club. “Tele ach Your Children” could be the theme song to the US Army Ranger School, if you see what I mean, and, of course, Kent State woke the anti-war people up to the fact that there isn’t any magic in ending wars and Nixon kept his promise, but it took another 7 years.

The SDS didn’t get the memo about realpolitik that operated beyond the finite boundaries of the Oliver Stone version of Vietnam At the time, I didn’t know there was an Oliver Stone version of Vietnam in the future, it was happening around me. I was playing my part in the Patriot Game.

The Cambodian Incursion was a brilliant strategic thrust that operated like an angioplasty in terms of Abrams influence on the battle space: we went into the NVA’s supply dumps and took it all away. Go watch the part of Ken Burns’s Vietnam talking about being on the Ho Chi Mihn trail as the Uncle Ho version of the Red Ball Express that provisioned Patton after the break out in Normandy. Only, the Red Ball Express wasn’t dealing with B-52 Arc Strikes. I mean, there were people who got used to it. And we took all that hard work and sacrifice away. And everything that came to Hanoi from the Soviet Union. The Camodian Incursion was the leading edge of the war of attrition against the Soviets.

And that was my frame of reference when I heard about Kent State, which, for anyone with a sense of the cosmic, was part of the karmic triangulation between the Zippo Monk and the assassinations of the Diem brothers and JFK. 4 dead in Ohio, for anyone who believes in the Bible at any level, in particular the Holy Ghost, the connection between them is inescapable. The Holy Ghost works with number all the time to open and/or employ communication with us on a personal basis. All this stuff was operating in my life before Kent State and it barely registered in my consciousness. Between Kent State and the moment that changed my life in Vietnam, I had checked out of Ft Benning, gone on leave to NYC and Puerto Rico for two weeks, then home to pack up and drop in on old friends and then Panama and Jungle Warfare School and then Seattle for another couple of days with my fiancee and then flying into Bien Hoa.

But it was in the back of my mind, along with the newsfeed about the Calley court martial, It was apparent at the time that this was a classic shit flows down hill in the Big Green Machine. I knew my future was my own version of Platoon, because I had been practicing Platoon in Ranger School and training other people in full scale role play.

And then this Colonel about the same age as my dad goes crazy and I have to confront a certain moral insufficiency in myself that forced me out of an Army career. It wasn’t this officer’s fault: it was all me, And I was faced with an existential dilemma requiring a choice between continuing to believe in the Big Green Machine and continuing to believe in myself and it was a no brainer: I stopped believing in myself and, in less than a year, I was out of the Army, except for a two Reserve summer camp in 1972, a year after I got back from to the World.

And it happened in the blink of any eye. I had run into an officer who literally had the power of life and death over me and he didn’t know what he was doing and the only way he was going to learn his trade included me. I had signed up for the combat: that didn’t bother me, but, if I was going to make a career out of it, I was going to have to deal with the politics of working for people who thought like him, like Mike Pompeo, spcifically, and I knew I didn’t have a chance. Disaster loomed,

It is impossible to overstate how fucked up the Army was at that moment at the rank of Major up to the Chief of Staff of the Army because of Tet 68 and the moral collapse of McNarama’s Whiz Kids at the political level. Colin Powell writes about it in his autobiography and the Burns’s film features it in the last episode. Between 1968 and 1973, the US Army ran like a well-oiled Trump White House staff.

So, I bailed out. There was no Plan B. But it followed me home aovernmentnd now, it’s putting middle schoolers in cages because the Trump people only understand prison systems and can’t figure out how to fix Puerto Rico because in is full of people like the people Trump is trying to keep out of America.

Still, it was a wise decision. The thing about Kent State that helps define the Oliver Stone version of Vietnam is that it was deliberate, a symbol of the Pig State slashing at its own people. If the draft hadn’t effectively come to an end, Kent State could have ignited general revolution from white kids. The National Guard had been gunning down blacks in places like Watts and Detriot, DC and Atlanta since 1963, but they were all looters and drug addicts and not the righteous voice of peace and love. And, now, 4 dead in Ohio, It’s the whole white priviledge, Black Lives Matter dynamic in a neat little package. Rookie soldiers, live ammunition and amped up protesters: what could go wrong? It was an accident waiting to happen.

My second thought on hearing about Kent State, just a flash of thought, the logical outcome of process theology, was that, if I had been the Company CO of that National Guard unit and determined to use lethal force, I would have killed everyone on that hill, It’s the nature of the profession of arms. The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in OHIO.

That’s one difference between the Oliver Stone version of Vietnam and my version of Vietnam. It’s why I bailed out.

In the blink of an eye.

#transformingamericafirst

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milenaramoscomponent2-blog · 7 years ago

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What is the name of the photograpger?

Mike Larremore is a professional photographer living in Portland, Oregon. He began his career when he is living in Europe, he started off with portrait photography and street scenes in Florence, Italy. Larremore is self-taught and is influenced his mentors and colleagues. When he is in Portland, Larremore does commercial fashion and portraiture shoots for agencies, press and local businesses. Larremore has been part of a massive projects, from February 19th to March 1st 2010, in partnership with the United States and international teams, he travelled to a disaster-struck Haiti a month after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit; during this time, he took thousands of pictures, documenting the medical relief work in Port au Prince. Sixteen images were displayed at the Sequential Art Gallery in Portland throughout the month of February in 2011.

What is the most crucial conceptual element in this portrait photograph?

The most crucial element in this photograph is the emotion and the expressions of the models in all the images. Mr Larremore told MailOnline that he gave all of the participants emotional cues for each pose such as “bored” or “angry” and “angrier”. This means that the photographers intention was to, infact, capture the different emotional expressions someone can do. I believe that each of the photographs capture their respective emotions succssfully. In addition to this, I think another crucial element is nudity or the appearance of nudity in these photographs. Larremore has said “Even something as simple as a plain white T-shirt comes in a variety of sizes and styles (baggy or tight, v-neck or round, etc). I decided that the most consistent solution to this issue was to shoot all the subjects with bare shoulders.” Larremore wanted the viewer to focus on the facial expressions only and by adding clothes onto the models would draw attention from the model, he wanted it to be raw emotion in these photographs.

Respond to this statement

You can only take a ‘portrait’ photograph of someone if they know and agree to having their photograph taken

Sophie Wilkinson is a freelance journalist who specialises inentertainment, celebrity, gender and sexuality. Wilkinson was a victim of a hate crime, taking pictures of Women iwthout concent can be considered a hate crime, she was spotted eating on the tube and a man took a picture of her and uploaded it to a Facebok group called ‘Women Who Eat On Tubes” which consisted of 20,000 members. Sometimes capturing someone while they do not know they are being photographed can result in a very good picture/portrait however getting the persons consent is very important espeically if you are going to upload it on social media where things can be taken out of hand, like this example. Even though this is an extreme case I believe getting someones permission to take a photograph of them is very important but if the idea of ‘not knowing’ their photograph is taken, the photographer could easily approach them afterwards to ask if it okay if they use this image for whatever purpose. Sometimes a picture can turn out great without the model knowing but it is always better to be safe than sorry; like a I mentioned earlier it is not guranteed that the photograph is going to come out great, it is literally be chance so it is better to warn or get the persons permission.

What is the most striking visual element of this portrait photograph?

Martin Schoeller was born 12 March 1968 in Munich, Germany, he is a New York-

based award-winning portrait photographer who is well known for his style of “hyper-detailed close ups” especially his portraits of celebrities. Schoeller studied photography at Lette-Verein in Berlin. He is heavily influenced by photographers August Sander, Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher. Martin Schoeller has had his work shown in National Geographic Mgazine, The new Yourker, New York Magazine, Time, GQ and Vogue. Schoeller currently works as staff photographer at The New Yorker since 1999.

“Like most portrait photographers, I am to record the instant the subject is not thinking about being photographed, striving to get beyond the practiced facial performance, reaching for something unplanned”

Martin Schoeller believes that his best pictures are captured the moment as soon as the model forgets that they are being photographed and that unplanned photographs turn out the best.

I agree and disagree with this quote. The reasons why I disagree with this quote is because unplanned photographs do not always turn out great, they are unpredictable and could fail usually 3/10 “unplanned” photographs come out great which is not ideal nor productive. However, I do see the beauty captured in unplanned photographs because that is when some models look their best. In my opinion, the safer and more reliable option is to pose the model so you can capture exactly what you envisioned. It is better to communicate with your model and explain to them what you picture so they understand what they are doing. For my photographs I did instruct my model to do certain facial expressions by saying the emotion beforehand however towards the end I was running out of facial expressions and I asked for her to do any expression she wanted and I did end up using some of them. Giving the model that freedom to do what they want or distracting them can be a success. While looking through Schoeller images it doesn’t seem like he does what I have quoted, it looks like he has told the model to stare into the camera and he would take the photograph. The photographs do not have that “unplanned” feeling however I cannot say what he does and what he doesn’t do, regardless his photographs come out amazing.

The most striking elements from his celebrity pictures is the texture of skin, angle and lighting. The texture of the skin is really striking to me because you can see all the details of the skin like wrinkles and moles, this also includes the hair, you can see the different colours in the hairs. I also like how close the portraits are it gives you an opportunity really look at the details of the persons face and it also makes the viewer feel vulnerable and close to the celebrity.

I have come to the conclusion taking a picture of someone while they are distracted or they don’t know they are being photographed depends on the relationship between the photographer and the model. It is much easier to distract someone you have a relationship with because they are comfortable around you and they do not have that barrier up when you first meet someone. The majority of Schoeller’s portraits are of celebrities or for the national geographic when he gets sent the models, people who he doesn’t have a relationship with so it would be difficult to get them to completely relax, distract themselves and let their mind wonder. Schoeller said “You’re there to fulfil the need for a magazine, and they’re there to publicize whatever they’ve done” which means that his intentions are not to build a relationship with the celebrities. However, I am not saying that the relationship between the photographer and the model determine how effective the photo will come out but it does have an impact on amateur to beginning photographers.

What is your personal response to this Mike Larremore’s photograph and how does this photograph inspire you and relate to your own work?

Mike Larremore discovered through his project that emotions are universal so I want to know what I can learn from my portrait photographed. I want to give my model the freedom of doing whatever facial expression she wants. After the first photoshoot I came to this decision so before what we started taking pictures I told her you can do whatever you want with your face. And, that is how I represented freedom of our bodies through portraits. I was inspired by the Larremore’s portraits because of what he learned not what techniques he used, even though I did try to implement his techniques in my first attempt.

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badbackgroundscience · 7 years ago

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Doctor Doom’s Doctorate Definitely isn’t in Heliophysics

The cover gives you a hint we’re going to be talking about space, but you’re definitely not going to be able to guess exactly what’s going on:

It’s really not important how Doom trapped the Fantastic Four in this ‘magic death room’ (That’s what I’ve decided to call it, anyway), but for those of you who really want to know, he paid three random goons’ bail and forced them into getting mediocre superpowers (using some fancy tech toy he invented).

A dude who’s all brawn and no brains gets a strength upgrade and a “cosmic beam gun” that turns Ben Grimm back into his human form for a few minutes, allowing him to punch him out.

A con man gets super sensitive hearing* so he can track Susan Storm while she’s invisible, and an ether-shooting gun to knock her out.

And a circus performer who claimed to be flame-resistant is now “fireproof”, who tricks the Human Torch into taking a ride in an air-tight, asbestos-lined car and douses him in nerve gas after Johnny tries to burn the man alive.**

Reed, meanwhile, is captured by Doom personally (with the help of a robot Thing), and trapped inside an airtight plexiglass box. Our evil college dropout expelout does not seem worried about Reed suffocating...***

After Sue wakes up, she uses her new force field-generating powers to free the Thing, who uses his strength to free Johnny and Reed. Their escape attempt fails, however, because Doom can...fly. I mean fine, he’s got rocket booties, I’m okay with that. But it’s 4 against 1 and that room is very small...

Doom flies out a tiny trapdoor in the wall and reveals his evil plot via thought bubble:

What does a “Solar Wave” do, you ask?

Let the world’s dumbest smart guy explain it to you:

In other words, it’s a naturally-occuring transport beam.****

Our Sun, of course, does emit a lot of waves. Specifically, electromagnetic waves. That’s kind of its schtick.

Given our star’s mass/temperature, most of those EM waves fall within the visible part of the spectrum - what we usually refer to as “light”. But it also emits, to a lesser but varying extent, photons in all the other bands, from radio all the way up to gamma rays.

For example, you can see real-time images of the Sun at a variety of ultraviolet wavelength’s courtesy of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, and here’s a false-color soft x-ray image taken by NASA’s no-longer operational TRACE observatory:

Whatever Doom’s “Solar Waves” are, they’re certainly not anything the Sun really emits. But you probably already guessed that our local plasma orb doesn’t radiate transport beams once a day.

The Sun does have other nasty, recurring emissions. You probably know them as solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), but might think they’re basically the same thing.

They’re not, though they are related. They both are created when the Sun’s magnetic field lines get all contorted then suddenly snap back into realignment, which releases a lot of energy.

A solar flare is ‘just’ a bunch of high-energy photons (mostly x-rays). Yes, I did just use the word “just” when referring to the largest explosive event that happens in our solar system. But I mean that it’s ‘just’ a burst of electromagnetic radiation - i.e. light. Being made of light, solar flares travel at the speed of light, which means they hit Earth at the same time we know one even happened - 8ish minutes.

[Fun fact - I’m publishing this post 14 years (to the day, only a few hours late) after the most powerful solar flare ever recorded. This is entirely a coincidence. Based on analysis out of New Zealand’s University of Otago, that record-breaking “flare's x-ray radiation bombarding the atmosphere was equivalent to that of 5,000 Suns, though none of it reached the Earth's surface”.]

CMEs, meanwhile, are streams of matter hurled off of the Sun as a result of the energy release. “Steams” might not be the right word -- too delicate. There I go again with the word choice. This is a violent ejection of the Sun’s own (surface-level) guts into space, on the order of a billion tons of mass (That’s nothing to the Sun, but a lot to us pathetically tiny humans).

CMEs travel much more slowly than flares - only ~1 million meters per second compared to 300 billion - taking days to reach the Earth instead of 8 minutes.

Unlike a solar flare, whose light spreads out everywhere from its point of origin, CMEs are directional. NASA once likened the two to cannon fire - the solar flare is the muzzle flash, and the CME is the cannonball. Although, unlike cannonballs, CMEs do expand in size.

While the Sun does go through periods of more intense solar activity - on average every 11 years - the time between individual flares/CMEs is not predictable. There are ways you can educatedly guess where one might come from, and when one’s more likely to happen, but it’s not anything similar to the 24-hour recurring sweeps Doom’s “Solar Waves” have.

Also, unlike Doom’s wave, your typical solar flare or CME isn’t capable of reaching all the way to Earth’s surface. Charged particles are deflected by Earth’s magnetosphere, and higher-energy radiation like x-rays can’t penetrate the atmosphere (That’s why we have to send satellites that monitor that kind of data into space).

But a strong enough CME can and has deformed Earth’s protective shield significantly, and in this technological age it could devastate society. 1859 saw the biggest solar storm in recorded history (dubbed the Carrington Event), where the aurora borealis were seen as far south as Hawaii and telegraph equipment suffered power surges enough to spark fires. Nowadays, the damage to power and telecommunications systems from a Carrington-level CME striking Earth could cause trillions of dollars in damage.

But because it takes a couple of days for the CME to actually go from the Sun to the Earth, and we’d see it coming as soon as its light reached us (i.e. that 8ish minutes), we’d have a fair-sized chunk of prep time to shut the really important stuff down before such an event.*****

[One final note with regards to the second component of our transport beam, ionic dust: Ions are particles (atoms/molecules) with missing or extra electrons. Dust can become charged, though one might argue whether they’re small enough particles to be called ions, but that doesn’t imbue them with any special teleportation-granting powers (Surprise, surprise).]

As Doom’s solar wave sweeps across the room (rather slowly, if you think about it for more than a moment), Susan traps Doom with a force field. Rather than die with them, Doom tries to...save everyone? Save himself? It’s unclear.

The Thing pulls Doom into the room then scares him into falling through the giant hole into the ‘void’ (There’s a lot of stuff in said void), and Reed reasons arbitrarily that ionic dust is expensive,`* so Doom only coated their room in it so only that room will disappear, and they all climb out Doom’s doggy door to safety.

I still don’t understand the logistics of this solar wave + ionic dust setup. But what do I know? I only have a BS in astrophysics. If only I’d have gone for that PhD...

* Note that the man, now capable hearing a feather hit a floor, does not immediately collapse in agony over the general background noise of living in New York City.

** So, is there an oxygen tank hidden in some part of the car to pump more of the gas into the cabin after Johnny’s flame uses up most/all of it? Because if not, they’d probably both pass out after that third panel...and be dead within a couple of minutes -- it’s an air-tight cabin. Actually, that’s not necessarily true - Doom definitely could have designed a car that leaks nerve gas out onto the street...I retract my question.

*** Remember that time Doom trapped Reed in a small room he claimed had only 1 hour of air [It didn’t]? Because this box is waaay smaller and he’s meant to stay in the box for, like, way longer than that. If the box is 1x1x2 meters in dimension (aka 2000 L volume), it has roughly 89.3 moles of air molecules - and therefore about 18.75 moles of oxygen molecules. Reed has about 13.4 moles of oxygen to use up ‘safely’. If I use my old estimate of Reed using up 6.4 moles of oxygen gas every hour, it means he’s basically got 2 hours of consciousness left. But just like last time, the carbon dioxide in the box will also increase with each breath, and doesn’t have to rise as much as the oxygen has to fall before causing some serious trouble. Based on that, Reed would be at risk of dying from suffocation in under one and a half hours.

We don’t know how much time passed between Reed getting sealed into the box and Ben breaking him out, so I can’t say whether or not he should be dead or not, but I thought it’d be worth pointing out that he could be. Especially since Doom was trying to kill them all by beaming them into space using astronomy that doesn’t actually exist. Trapping them in tiny boxes would have gotten the job done, too, Victor...

**** It’s a special type of transporter, too. Somehow, it connects the room to some arbitrary point in outer space, then disintegrates anything the dust coats. Why else would the room be disappearing to reveal space?

I really don’t understand the logistics, here.

***** And for any of you that saw and remember that 2009 disaster-of-a-diaster movie Knowing, no. That is not an accurate representation of what would happen.

`* Who am I to say it’s not? It’s magic!

Enjoy the blog and have a dollar to spare? I have a Patreon, now.

Fantastic Four #23 - Writer: Stan Lee, Art: Jack Kirby, Ink: George Bell

Image Credits:

TRACE image, Public Domain

9/6/17 solar flare gif from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-ZQBlWdlAY

8/31/12 CME gif from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrnGi-q6iWc

#comics #fantastic four #Astronomy #space #solar flare #coronal mass ejection

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2700fstreet · 8 years ago

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THEATER / 2017-2018

ON YOUR FEET!

The Emilio & Gloria Estefan Broadway Musical

Featuring music and lyrics by Emilio and Gloria Estefan Directed by Jerry Mitchell Book by Alexander Dinelaris Choreographed by Sergio Trujillo

So, What’s Going On?

The scene: Washington, D.C., 1990

The curtain rises as… Latin pop superstar Gloria Estefan preps for a huge concert while her husband, Emilio, and their son watch from the wings. Emilio tells Gloria her tour bus will have to make an unexpected stop and she’ll have to give up her day off. Annoyed, Gloria heads to the stage to sing one of her hit songs.

Cue flashback.

In 1966, young Gloria María Fajardo lives with her mother (also named Gloria), her grandmother, Consuelo, and her sister, Rebecca, in Miami. Their family has emigrated from Cuba to the U.S. following a violent political revolution. And while little Gloria’s father fights overseas in Vietnam, the women in the family keep things humming at home…literally: little Gloria has a talent for singing and songwriting, and she often performs Cuban songs for her neighbors and friends.

Young Gloria sings and dances while helping her family with the laundry.

As Gloria grows up, word begins to spread about her voice, and, in 1974, a young local musician named Emilio Estefan comes knocking at her door to ask about the songs she’s written. He convinces her to come play a tune for his band, named the Miami Latin Boys, and soon she joins the group as its lead singer.

Time passes and the Miami Latin Boys have transformed into the Miami Sound Machine. The band is booking tons of gigs, which frustrates Gloria’s mother, who feels Gloria should be living a normal life at home and helping her ailing father. Seems like a classic case of “protective mom,” but there’s a bit more to it: Gloria’s mother had her own shot at the spotlight once, but she let her dream go. Consuelo warns Gloria her newfound career may be stirring up old issues.

In a flashback to Havana in the 1950s, we see Gloria’s mother in action on stage.

Take a listen… The real-life Gloria Estefan sings “Mi Tierra” (“My Land”), the song performed by her mother’s character in On Your Feet!.

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Despite the tensions at home, Gloria continues to sing with the Miami Sound Machine, and the band starts attracting listeners across the U.S. and South America. In fact, things are going so well that Emilio and Gloria speak to their record producer about “crossing over” into the English-speaking pop world. But the producer hates the idea. He suggests their sound and their Latin names just aren’t “American” enough. Emilio reminds the producer that immigrants count as Americans too, and decides to take matters into his own hands. He and Gloria get creative and market the band’s latest English single, “Dr. Beat,” to clubs and disc jockeys. The song takes off…and a romance between them starts to bloom.

Gloria and Emilio start to fall in love.

With each other for inspiration and support, Gloria and Emilio produce a newer, even bigger English single that captures hearts across the country: “Conga.” Thanks to the song, Emilio is able to get the attention of his studio executive, but the boss doesn’t want to give the band the contract it deserves. A few hits later, however, and Gloria’s talent and popularity can no longer be ignored. Finally, Emilio helps Gloria and the band secure a multi-million-dollar deal.

“Conga” becomes a hit on dance floors across America…and around the world.

Take a listen… Gloria Estefan revisits her hit song “Conga” in a live concert.

youtube

But all of this success—and the touring that goes with it—doesn’t make Gloria’s mother very happy. Even worse for Mrs. Fajardo: Gloria wants to take her sister, Rebecca, on the road. Worried her family is falling apart, Gloria’s mother threatens never to speak to Gloria again. And she doesn’t. Not for two years and an entire world tour. Which brings us back to where we started…

Washington, D.C., 1990

Gloria finishes her show and decides to call her mom to try and patch things up. When there’s no answer, she boards her tour bus with Emilio and their son, Nayib.

Then, disaster strikes.

A massive collision destroys the bus, injures Emilio and Nayib, and leaves Gloria in danger of permanent paralysis. Will she be able to walk again? Will she be able to sing again? And, perhaps most importantly, will she be able to repair her relationship with her mother before it’s too late?

Who’s Who

Gloria Estefan (born Gloria María Fajardo), a Cuban-American singer and songwriter Emilio Estefan, a Cuban-American musician and producer, Gloria’s husband Gloria Fajardo, a teacher and former singer, Gloria Estefan’s mother José Fajardo, a policeman and soldier, Gloria Estefan’s father Consuelo, Gloria Estefan’s abuela (grandmother) Rebecca “Becky” Fajardo, Gloria Estefan’s sister Phil, a New York record producer Little Gloria, a young Gloria Estefan Nayib, Emilio and Gloria Estefan’s son

Cuban Water, American Roots

“I came to Miami when I was two years old…my Mom kinda replanted us. But she watered me with Cuban water…everything that [my family] did was to keep alive the culture that they thought that we would go back to.” – Gloria Estefan

On Your Feet! is a tale of two very passionate and talented immigrants who came to the United States during a time of political turmoil in their homeland of Cuba. Starting in 1952, Cuba began its extended period of uncertainty, beginning with a military coup spearheaded by a corrupt and oppressive Fulgencio Batista (whose name you’ll hear mentioned in the show), followed by another coup conducted by the polarizing leader Fidel Castro.

After Castro established a new government in 1959, many Cubans—including the Fajardos and the Estefans—chose or were forced to move to the U.S. But Cuban families were often separated, and many had to leave promising careers behind. Still, the Cuban culture continued to thrive on American shores, particularly through its music. Today, cities across the U.S. are buzzing with the sound of Cuban dance rhythms, and artists like the Miami Sound Machine keep mixing Latino beats with traditional jazz and pop, creating a unique sound that’s both Cuban and American.

For more on the history of Cuba/US relations and info on Cuba’s revolution, go to:

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Check This Out…

On Your Feet! features many recognizable songs that have been played on the radio (and at parties, weddings, dance clubs, etc.) for decades. Listen up for these tunes while you watch the show—and don’t be afraid to sing or dance along if the actors encourage you to.

Choreographer Sergio Trujillo wanted the moves in On Your Feet! to feel as authentically Cuban as possible. He even went to Havana to study native Afro- Cuban dances. Keep an eye out for these intricate steps during the show, especially ones that involve two people partnering up and moving together, which is an essential component in Latin dance. Pick up a few steps… Sergio Trujillo talks about his career and his process for getting On Your Feet!... well...on its feet.

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This story includes many flashbacks to different time periods and different countries. Watch out for the ways in which the lighting, costumes, and set designs give you clues about where and when the characters are (hint: pay special attention to the different colors used in each scene).

Lots of the music in On Your Feet! will be sung in Spanish. For those audience members who don’t speak the language, pay close attention to the singers’ voices and facial expressions. You’ll most likely pick up the meaning of each song based on the energy and emotion the performers convey.

Think About This…

On Your Feet! is a combination of big, bold musical numbers and smaller, more intimate scenes between two or three people. Which moments do you prefer? Which scenes are more successful at moving the story along? Which are best at making you feel for the characters?

Most stories have an antagonist, but in On Your Feet!, the villain isn’t always easily identified. Who or what do you think operates as the “bad guy” in the show? What forces are most responsible for the troubles the characters endure?

The Estefans and the Fajardos are affected by stereotyping throughout the show. In what ways do you observe the non-Latino characters making incorrect or misinformed assumptions about Latino immigrants?

On Your Feet! is an immigrant story, but it’s also a human story. Can you think of similar tales in film, TV, or theater where the main characters fight for their dreams in the face of adversity? In what ways are these stories similar to the biography of the Estefans?

Go Behind-the-Scenes

To learn more about the making of On Your Feet!, check out this video series:

Episode 1: “Here We Are”

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Episode 2: “Writing the Show”

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Episode 3: “Casting the Story”

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Episode 4: “Directing the Musical”

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“Stand Up and Take Some Action”

One of the major themes of On Your Feet!—and the message of its title song—is to challenge yourself to take action in your daily life and claim control of your future. Both Gloria and Emilio come up against impossible odds, but they insist on forging their own personal and professional triumphs through hard work and determination.

Why not use their efforts to motivate yourself to reach for your own life goals? Choose a friend or family member and decide on a cause or achievement you can work toward together (this can be a joint plan or two individual projects; one for each of you). Next, make a pact that you’ll hit a specific milestone on the road to your end goal by a specific date.

For example: Want to apply for a dream summer job? Make a promise to your chosen buddy that you’ll have your forms filled out and ready by next month. Ask them to make a similar promise to you and make sure you both hold each other accountable for having completed your tasks.

Need another example? Say you’re hoping to give back to your community on a regular basis. Consider creating a shelter, soup kitchen, or local government volunteering schedule for you and your friend. Once that’s done, be certain to check in on each other’s progress every week.

If you feel comfortable with social media, keep track of all your accomplishments on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or any platform you prefer and use the hashtag #standupandtakesomeaction. Remember to ask your friend’s permission before posting about them.

Explore More

Go even deeper with the On Your Feet! Extras.

An important final note:

This past December, Gloria Estefan and four other artists received the prestigious 2017 Kennedy Center Honors. When told she was being awarded this honor, Ms. Estefan made the following comment:

“Little did I imagine when my parents brought me as a toddler to the United States from Cuba, in order to be able to raise me in freedom, that I would be receiving one of this nation’s greatest honors. I feel privileged to be included in the galaxy of stars that have received the Kennedy Center Honors and I am grateful to be considered among the many talents in this great country that have been bestowed this exceptional accolade.”

The ceremony was broadcast on December 26, 2017. You can see footage from the annual event at www.kennedy-center.org.

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All photos by Matthew Murphy.

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