#i work in literally some of the most remote regions of the state and it's so wild you would not believe the stuff we see

[providencehq]

YOU WRANGLE COWS????? do tell me more

Sometimes but always unofficially! It's part of my job only so I can to certain sites and get data/measurements/etc. Cattle get into areas of certain allotments or fenced regions (usually a spring) and you have to round them up and them out to do whatever it is you need to do. It's all on foot since that the only way our crew can do it, no horses or roping if that's what you're thinking (I'm shit at roping and even worse at on horseback.) Wrangling is sorta a catch all term for getting up and moving cattle along.

The only reason I do it often is because it's the only way to get to certain sites I need to be able to do my job. I'm something along the lines of an ecosystem/habitat health monitoring tech along with a bunch of other duties. We just mess with cattle to get them to move out of the way so we actively get our data and be out of there. Also because I am an ecologist/scientist through and through and I don't talk about my work except on instagram, have some photos of my boring field sites aka no identifiable landmarks to get an idea where I work at. I

[newstfionline]

Sunday, April 9, 2023

Joyous Holy Week celebrations around the world (AP) From dressing as Roman soldiers in Antigua, Guatemala, to carrying palm fronds on the streets of Lagos, Nigeria, Christians around the world are celebrating Holy Week. For millions of Christians, the week between Palm Sunday and Easter, known as Holy Week, is the most sacred time of the year. It’s the week Christians commemorate the passion of Jesus Christ. The week began with Palm Sunday, where mass at the Vatican was celebrated by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square the day after he was discharged from the Agostino Gemelli University Hospital in Rome, where the Vatican said he was treated for bronchitis. In Bolivia’s highland region, artists gathered for an annual event where they built sand sculptures based on Bible stories. Members of the faithful in Brazil wore tunics and hoods to take part in the Procession of Souls in Goiás state. And in Managua, Nicaragua, a child dressed as an angel during an event observing Good Friday. In recent years, Holy Week has been scaled back due to COVID-19 restrictions that require precautions such as social distancing and mask use. However, this year many of the faithful gathered in celebrations reminiscent of the era before the virus changed the nature of religious observance.

Stabbing of Cash App Creator Raises Alarm, and Claims of ‘Lawless’ San Francisco (NYT) The fury erupted within hours, as word spread that the 43-year-old man who had been stabbed to death this week in an enclave of high-rise condominiums near the Bay Bridge was Bob Lee, a well-known tech executive. The leaders of “lawless” San Francisco had Mr. Lee’s “literal blood on their hands,” Matt Ocko, a tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist in Palo Alto, Calif., tweeted. “I hate what San Francisco has become,” added Michael Arrington, the founder of the industry blog TechCrunch. “Violent crime in SF is horrific,” Elon Musk, the chief executive of Twitter and Tesla, chimed in. The drumbeat has built since then in the liberal city that only last year recalled its progressive district attorney amid calls for law and order and deepening frustration over the city’s homelessness crisis. While city officials agree that the murder is a terrifying tragedy and a signal that San Francisco has work to do on public safety, they’re also clashing with powerful figures in the tech sector over the nature and severity of the city’s problems with crime. The tension comes at a precarious time, as the tech industry implodes with layoffs and San Francisco itself struggles to bring visitors, conventions and legions of remote workers back to the too-quiet area in and around its downtown.

Resurgent remittances in Mexico (Foreign Policy) Flows of money sent to Mexico from abroad are at historic highs. This February, total remittances to the country accounted for 11 percent more than they did in February 2022, according to Mexico’s central bank. In 2021, Mexico surpassed China to become the country that receives the second-largest amount of remittances in the world. (India is no. 1.) The high tallies may reflect the post-pandemic economic recovery in the United States, where the bulk of the Mexican diaspora lives, the Economist reported.

Deadly Attack Exposes Growing Threat in Mexico: the Military (NYT) Gustavo Ángel Suárez Castillo, an American citizen from San Antonio, piled six friends, including two brothers, into his white pickup truck with Texas plates just before dawn, having spent the night celebrating the news that he was going to be a father. Suddenly, four vehicles filled with armed men began chasing and firing at them. The pickup truck crashed and as the passengers tumbled out, the armed men threw some to the ground, shooting one in the back, survivors told The New York Times. One recounted how he watched his brother slowly stop breathing while the assailants blocked medics from arriving. When it ended, five of the men, including Mr. Suárez, were dead and the other two severely injured. The attackers? Uniformed Mexican soldiers. The shooting in the city of Nuevo Laredo in the early hours of Feb. 26 has been called a coldblooded execution by the survivors and a top government official. So far, four of the 21 soldiers involved in the encounter have been arrested and the case is under investigation by civilian prosecutors and the military. The episode has deepened concerns about the growing footprint of Mexico’s armed forces, which has not only been put in charge of domestic security, but has also been given a rapidly expanding portfolio of businesses, like a new international airport and a major rail line.

Sweden Says State Actor Blew up Nord Stream Pipeline (AP) According to a new statement by Swedish investigators, it’s most likely that a state actor was behind the explosions that took out the Nord Stream gas pipelines late last year. “Our hope is to be able to confirm who has committed this crime,” said the public prosecutor leading the investigation, though he warned that “it should be noted that it likely will be difficult given the circumstances.” While Ukraine and some in the U.S. have blamed Russia for the attacks, investigations have returned a mixed bag of suspects: the New York Times has suggested that a pro-Ukrainian group was behind the attacks, while German media pinned them on a yacht operated by a pro-Ukraine Polish company. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh also released a report blaming the U.S. for the explosions, though Washington and the U.S. media have dismissed him.

Kremlin says its strategic aim in Ukraine is to create a ‘new world order’ (Guardian) Moscow wants any Ukraine peace talks to focus on creating a “new world order”, the French press agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) quotes Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov as saying. “Any negotiation needs to be based on taking into account Russian interests, Russian concerns. It should be about the principles on which the new world order will be based.” According to the agency, he added that Russia rejects a “unipolar world order led by ‘one hegemon’.” Russia has long said it was leading a struggle against US dominance over the international stage, and argues the Ukraine offensive is part of that fight. The Kremlin said this week it had no choice but to continue its offensive, seeing no diplomatic solution.

Facing critical ammunition shortage, Ukrainian troops ration shells (Washington Post) The artillery shells were stored in a shallow mud dugout, covered with a black plastic tarp to keep them safe. Just 14 rounds remained—evidence of a critical ammunition shortage that has the Ukrainians scrambling for ways to conserve supply until their Western allies can produce or procure more. The artillery platoon, with the 59th Motorized Brigade in eastern Ukraine, used to fire more than 20 or 30 shells per day with their Soviet-era howitzer. Now, they typically shoot one or two, or none at all. The ammunition that has pounded parts of Ukraine daily for more than a year has become a precious resource in the artillery war with Russia—and which side conserves shells and rearms faster could turn the tide on the battlefield. Even amid a shortage, Ukraine is firing some 7,700 shells per day, or roughly one every six seconds. Russia, which may also be running low, is firing more—by some estimates triple that amount.

China flies fighter jets near Taiwan after leader’s US trip (AP) China sent warships and dozens of fighter jets toward Taiwan on Saturday, the Taiwanese government said, in retaliation for a meeting between the U.S. House of Representatives speaker and the president of the self-ruled island democracy claimed by Beijing as part of its territory. The Chinese military announced the start of three-day “combat readiness patrols” as a warning to Taiwanese who want to make the island’s de facto independence permanent. The People’s Liberation Army gave no indication whether they might include a repeat of previous exercises with missiles fired into the sea, which disrupted shipping and airline flights. On Saturday, eight warships and 42 planes were detected near Taiwan, 29 of which crossed the middle line of the strait that separates the island from the mainland, the island’s Ministry of Defense said.

A Historic Handshake (1440) Saudi Arabia and Iran formally reestablished diplomatic relations On Thursday, a significant milestone in the relationship between two of the largest powers in the Middle East. The pair cut off ties seven years ago after Saudi embassies in Iran were attacked following the Saudi execution of a popular Shia cleric. Saudi Arabia and Iran have been engaged in a regional power struggle for decades, exacerbated by the differing sectarian religious views—Saudi is roughly 90% Sunni Muslim, while Iran is about 90% Shia Muslim. The regional conflict has also become a proxy for greater world powers, with Saudi Arabia generally working with the West and Iran forging close ties with Russia and China. Notably, the deal was brokered by China, marking one of the country’s biggest diplomatic moves in modern geopolitics.

Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars (Reuters) Tesla assures its millions of electric car owners that their privacy “is and will always be enormously important to us.” The cameras it builds into vehicles to assist driving, it notes on its website, are “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy.” But a Reuters Special Report shows that between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras, according to interviews with nine former employees. One ex-employee described a video of a man approaching a vehicle completely naked. Also shared: crashes and road-rage incidents. One crash video in 2021 showed a Tesla driving at high speed in a residential area hitting a child riding a bike, according to another ex-employee. Two ex-employees said they weren’t bothered by the sharing of images, saying that customers had given their consent or that people long ago had given up any reasonable expectation of keeping personal data private. Three others, however, said they were troubled by it. “I’m bothered by it because the people who buy the car, I don’t think they know that their privacy is, like, not respected … We could see them doing laundry and really intimate things. We could see their kids.”

‘I’ve Lost a Lot of Flesh and Bone,’ Jeremy Renner Says, Recalling Snow Plow Accident (NYT) The actor Jeremy Renner, who was severely injured on Jan. 1 when a heavy snow plow ran over him, said in a TV interview on Thursday night that the truck had hit him as he was trying to save his nephew, an accident that broke more than 30 of his bones and upended his life. Mr. Renner, an Oscar-nominated actor who is perhaps best known for his role as Hawkeye in the Marvel Avengers movie and TV franchise, spoke publicly at length about his frightening experience and arduous recovery for the first time in an interview with ABC News. “I’ve lost a lot of flesh and bone in this experience,” Mr. Renner told the journalist Diane Sawyer. “But I’ve been refueled and refilled with love and titanium.” Doctors interviewed by ABC News said that Mr. Renner’s good physical shape and health had probably helped him survive. About 10 weeks after the accident, Mr. Renner is beginning to regain enough strength to walk with a cane. When asked in the interview if he sees the same face when looking in the mirror, Mr. Renner replied, “I see a lucky man.”

[head-post]

AI Act enters into force in EU

A law on artificial intelligence (AI) came into force in the EU on Thursday, the European Commission notified. The new law should both encourage the development of AI in the EU and ensure the protection of basic human rights.

The law categorises all AI-based systems and tools into risk levels ranging from low to unacceptable. It includes a ban on the use of facial recognition and other real-time “remote biometric identification” systems in public places, as well as emotion recognition systems. It will also ban the use of predictive analytics systems by the police to prevent offences, etc. The law also regulates generative AI (such as ChatGPT) and “high-risk AI-based systems,” among them unmanned cars and medical devices, quite strictly.

The timeline for implementing the new regulations varies. Most rules must be implemented by August 2026, but for high-risk AI systems affecting critical areas – employment, healthcare, justice – the deadline has been extended to August 2027.

Thierry Breton, Brussels’ self-proclaimed “digital enforcer,” wrote on X’s website, celebrating the start of the law and calling the EU a “pioneer” in its implementation.

Others were less solemn, comparing the decision to regulate the industry to the way it was once decided to ban plastic bottles from having easily removable caps. One user wrote in response to Breton’s comments:

I am sure, every AI entrepreneur will be happy to explain [to] a German EU bureaucrat — who literally does not know how email works — how their AI fulfils the regulation. First question: Do you ship your “AI” on CD, Floppy or DVD?

The introduction of the rules came against a backdrop of many EU countries trying to abandon fax machines, which have been in use in some form since the mid-1960s.

Regional governments in Germany have found it particularly difficult to abandon the technology.

As the EU enacted its regulation on artificial intelligence, the government of Bavaria announced significant progress in its bid to become the first state in Germany to abandon the use of fax machines in administrative work. The region’s digital minister Fabian Mehring said on August 1:

[We have] sent half of the digital fax dinosaurs to the museum.

He added that the move would help “speed up administrative processes, reduce bureaucracy and enable the use of artificial intelligence.”

Read more HERE

[ethanm8n]

Gulls

March 19, 2024

“I was mugged by a gang of seagulls” reads the title of a Tripadvisor review for Granville Island1. “When I came outdoors [a] gang of seagulls attacked me and stole part of my lunch.” Anyone who has eaten a meal outside of the Granville Island Public Market will understand this frustration. Seagulls watch like sentinels from rooftops, above benches and dining tables, on the lookout for a loose pizza slice; grey-coloured seagulls beg near sitting diners, screeching incessantly. Some seagulls patrol the skies above, while others choose to stay close to the ground, walking around on webbed-feet, waiting for loose food items and handouts. It would be easy to overlook these birds as a nuisance—rats with wings, to quote the pelican from Finding Nemo. They may be kleptoparasites, stealing food from other animals, including lunching humans and unsuspecting tourists. But seagulls are so much more than just ratbirds. In the Salish Sea region, they humble the proudest of birders trying to make an ID. (Is that light grey-mantled gull with darkish grey wingtips a Western x Glaucous-winged Gull hybrid or a darker Glaucous-winged Gull? Does the slightly smaller, petite head indicate hybridization with a Herring Gull, or is it a female of another species? Is its eye colour dark or pale? How about the colour of the orbital rings?) Their increasing reliance on urban breeding grounds (e.g. rooftops) serves as a litmus test for habitat degradation, and also gives researchers an opportunity to study how fauna adapt to urban living. How does the diet of an urban dwelling Glaucous-winged Gull Larus glaucescens differ from one that spends its time in more remote areas? Do urban seagulls lay more or less eggs than their counterparts? What is the survival rate of their young in to adulthood? Researchers have been hard at work answering these questions2. One recent study flew drones above buildings in Victoria to study nest sites of Glaucous-winged Gulls, a wonderful example of new technology opening up more avenues for scientific inquiry3.

Before going further, I need to address a misnomer. Gulls belong to a diverse group of birds in the family Laridae, from the circumpolar, all white Ivory Gull Pagophila eburnea, to the grey-bodied Lava Gull Leucophaeus fuliginosus and coal-black backed Olrog's Gull Larus atlanticus in South America. (Melanin—the pigment responsible for skin colour in humans—is what gives darker tones to feathers. It helps resist sun bleaching, which is why gull species's upper bodies trend towards darker tones closer to the equator4.) The Heermann's Gull Larus heermanni is a true pelagic (literally “ocean”) species, individuals spending their days hunting for fish, rarely going inland. Then there is the California Gull Larus californicus, which breeds inland of the Western United States; and the Ring-billed Gull Larus delewarensis, prolific in most of North America, but rarely straying beyond coastal waters5. This is why you will almost never hear birders refer to seagulls as such. Many gulls are generalists, found in urban centres, prairies, rivers and lakes, landfills, open oceans and coastlines. Calling them seagulls would be a disservice to their enterprising nature, breeding on every continent, including on the fringes of Antartica. Many of these species have adapted to living in rapidly expanding human-made habits. We can conflate this success with the annoyance conjured up in many people's minds when they think of these birds: Their pervasiveness; their loud squawking; the mess they make with their guano; and their proclivity towards thievery. Perhaps the things humans find so irritating about gulls are actually what we hold most in common. But I digress. No birder or ornithologist worth their salt is going to call you out for saying seagull instead of gull. (If they do, they will bring it up benignly.) Gulls as a label in itself is taxonomically ambiguous, pertaining to several genera within the Laridae family while excluding terns, skimmers and noddies. Instead of splitting feathers over vernacular, try learning about local gulls in your neighbourhood (if you have any.) Download an app like Merlin or Audubon for quick reference if you stumble upon an interesting bird. Your local gull species may not have the vocal acumen of a Song Sparrow Melospiza melodia, nor the fantastically coloured plumage of a Wood Duck Aix Sponsa. For me at least, I find tremendous enjoyment in watching a second winter Olympic Gull walk past me, a collage of grey and brown and white; or seeing a first winter individual staring at me with those deep and dusky eyes, its first grey scapulars developing, like ash on a dirt road. Gulls are full of personality. I observe them trying to snatch fish from cormorants; pulling up worms from park grass; standing on volleyball pegs and tidal rocks, heads tucked in behind their backs and bodies rotating side to side as if to lull themselves asleep. Even the seemingly normal, mundane, sometimes irritating aspects of life can offer up wonders if you are patient. Gulls or otherwise.

References:

“I Was Mugged by a Gang of Seagulls – Granville Island, Vancouver Traveller Reviews – Tripadvisor.” Tripadvisor, 2011, www.tripadvisor.ca/ShowUserReviews-g154943-d156255-r120159573-GranvilleIsland-VancouverBritish_Columbia.html.

Edward Kroc. “Reproductive Ecology of Urban-Nesting Glaucous-Winged Gulls Larus glaucescens in Vancouver, BC, Canada.” Marine Ornithology, vol. 46, 2018, pp. 155–16.

Louise K. Blight, Douglas F. Bertram, Edward Kroc. “Evaluating UAV-based techniques to census an urban-nesting gull population on Canada’s Pacific coast.” Journal of Unmanned Vehicle Systems, vol. 7(4), 2019, pp. 312-324. https://doi.org/10.1139/juvs-2019-0005

Steve N.G. Howel, Jon Dunn. “Peterson Reference Guides to Gulls of the Americas.” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007, p. 25.

Birds of the World, https://birdsoftheworld.org/bow

[mandoclan]

SWEET HOME KENTUCKY // Jack Daniels (Agent Whiskey) x F!Reader

A/N: 14.8k. Yes, this is a spinoff of Sweet Home Alabama. I love that movie and I love Whiskey, so here you go! This is Jack Daniels x Female!Reader, but there’s no Y/N mention (unless I missed one).

Warnings: Character Death (mentioned in passing), Fluff, Angst, Divorce, Physical Abuse (a punch and a tight grip), Drinking, Drunkenness, (basically, if you’ve seen the movie, I’ve deviated but no more than normal).

She still dreamed about that night. The one where Jack took her out to the meadow behind his mama’s house and told her he wanted to marry her one day. To which she asked, “Why would you want to marry me for anyhow?” and he replied, “So I can kiss you anytime I want.” Her first kiss. Her first love. And they were only twelve at the time.

It didn’t come as a shock to her when Jack had asked her to marry him right out of high school. She was his first love, after all, and Jack swore he’d loved her since before he ever kissed her in that meadow. But then he never showed up to their reception because he was still drunk from his “bachelor party” the night before, he was always gone on missions and attempted to stop her from doing the same even when they worked for the same intelligence agency, and she eventually got shot in the head in a mission gone wrong, resulting in medical having to use Alpha-gel on her to bring her back.

That fatal injury had broken her and it had broken Jack too. He hadn’t been able to protect his own wife when she was his partner, and that killed him inside. After that, he became almost overbearing in his protectiveness and you’d eventually asked Champagne for a transfer after a whole year of turmoil in your home, explosive fights, and missions spent arguing. Champ loved you and Jack like his own kids and wanted you and your husband to fix this, but he did as you asked and you’d transferred to New York without telling Jack with the instructions that if he were to ask that Champ would tell him that you were safe and in another Statesman office.

That’s where you found yourself now, leading the New York office after the last agent had retired. You’d built up your reputation from scratch, leading missions and directing agents in the Northeast region of the United States. You kept in touch with Champ barely, but it had been seven years since you left Kentucky. You refused to even think about Jack unless you were sending another copy of the divorce papers or unless you had that damn dream about the meadow again.

You woke to the sound of your office door opening, and you lifted your head from the desk you occupied on the top floor.

“How come you let me sleep?” You grumbled to your assistant when he stepped into the room with a mug of coffee and a mission report from one of your top operatives.

“You needed it, boss, but it was only for a few minutes. Long enough for me to grab your coffee and fetch the report from downstairs.” He shrugged. “Y’know, that accent of yours gets a whole lot thicker when you’re dreaming.”

That boy had the audacity to smirk before you narrowed your eyes at him.

“And what exactly did I say?” You demanded.

“That I’m gonna get a raise when you realize how awesome I am.”

“We’ll see how good your coffee skills are, then.” You laughed, finally smiling at him through your exhaustion. In all reality, you liked this kid. He’d just been assigned to you and hadn’t earned his agent name yet, but you had a feeling he would do just fine and you already had plans to promote him come next quarter.

“Enjoy.”

“Mhmm,” you hummed, “I’ll see you tomorrow for that meeting in the conference room, alright?”

The kid agreed and you nodded at him before making your way to the elevators.

Your apartment on the lower levels of the Statesman New York building was modest, but well-lived in. You’d wanted to make it seem as much like home as possible. This time, however, your apartment wasn’t as empty as usual. The entire entryway and living room were filled with rose petals and rose bouquets in glasses of water.

“Goddamn that man,” you swore, stepping around the petals and heading to the panel you had on the wall where an orange light was blinking, signifying you had a waiting message. A button was pressed and suddenly your boyfriend’s voice filled the room.

“There’s a rose for every moment I thought of you last night. God, you must be exhausted. Sweetie, listen, I’ll see you tomorrow at our meeting. You’ll do great. I love you. Bye.” The message ended and you rolled your eyes before heading over to the largest of the bouquets.

You loved your boyfriend, Agent Rum, but this was too much. You hated huge, sappy gestures like this and he knew it, but you supposed it was a bit sweet. Very few other ladies you knew had such attentive men at their sides and Jack had never done anything remotely like this. A sharp breath was inhaled in an attempt to nix that thought from your mind before you headed to your front door and made your way to the ladies’ dorms. You left an embarrassingly big bouquet in front of each door and sighed in satisfaction once you’d swept up and removed most of the flowers in your apartment.

_________________________________________________________________

The meeting you’d scheduled came sooner than you’d liked, this being a collaboration between the Texas office and your own New York one. Rum walked in and kissed your forehead before the meeting could even start and you smiled at him. He could always brighten your day in an instant.

“Thanks for the flowers, babe.” You smiled at him, squeezing his hand in yours. He grinned, asking if you really liked them, and kissed you before sitting in his spot along with a few of your other agents. You both slipped on your glasses and started the meeting, knowing that you could talk properly once the collaboration was agreed upon.

It felt like hours went by before all positions were assigned and the intel was decided upon. You groaned once you were able to remove the glasses needed to see everyone in their remote locations, rubbing your temples. Hands were felt on your shoulders, and you knew it was Rum. Your glasses blinked a light on the side and you sighed, placing them back on your face.

The blinking was due to a message from Agent AppleJack, one of your own agents whom you’d taken a shine to and often spent weekends going about the city with. She was a nice girl from Maine who had an affinity for seafood you couldn’t quite get behind, but you’d consider her one of the closest friends you had in this city.

“Please tell me he has a flaw somehow.” She had typed out. You rolled your eyes before moving your eyes on the on-screen keyboard to type a reply.

“He asked me to go to California for Christmas.”

“He’s gonna ask you a lot more than that,” was her reply.

“You think so?” You were suddenly nervous. You’d only been dating Rum for six months and your divorce still wasn’t finalized.

“Sweetie, let’s go for a walk.” Rum took you from your conversation, and you nodded, slipping the glasses back off your face. “You’re so stressed, but you did so well today.”

You both made your way to the elevator, hand in hand, and eventually you meandered around Central Park just talking about your jobs and how your last missions went. You rarely went on them anymore, but you made sure that Rum had as many as he liked to keep him happy.

“So have you made a decision?” He finally asked, bright eyes boring into yours.

“About what?” Your eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

“California.”

“Babe, California? That’s four months from now. We don’t even have to decide right now because we can literally jump on any jet we have and go within 6 hours if we want.”

“I was thinking maybe 200 guests, tops.” Rum continued in his words, but you stopped him with a pull to his hand.

“For Christmas?” You asked, still very confused. “Rum, are you on some kind of medication I don’t know about? Should I take you off of field duty for a bit? Did you get shot or something?”

All of a sudden, Rum was kneeling in front of you in the middle of a pathway in Central Park, and everything finally made sense. He held a diamond ring in his hand, the light hitting it just right and you gasped.

“Brandy, and I should probably know your real name by now, will you marry me?”

“Are you sure? Because if you’re not sure we can just go back to work and forget all about this. It’s only been six months.” You floundered, not even sure what to say, but he looked so hopeful and you really did love him.

“Brandy, I love you. I didn’t come by this decision lightly, and I really hope you’ll say yes. I want to build a life with you.” Rum stood, looking you right in your eyes. “So, I’ll ask again. Brandy, will you make me the happiest man alive and marry me?”

You nodded, not trusting your voice and felt the ring slip on your finger. It felt strange, another ring being there, but you were suddenly overcome with joy that your life was finally falling into place and you had a man who loved you and wanted to build a life with you. That’s all you could ask for. So you kissed him.

He grinned once you’d let yourselves out of his arms and released him from your kiss, hand reaching for his agency-issue watch.

“I’ve got to tell my family.” He gushed, “Wait until you see the look on the guy’s faces!”

“Babe, do you mind if we keep this to ourselves for a while? With this collaboration mission with Texas happening and everything else, I’d rather just keep this quiet for a bit.”

“You don’t want to tell your family?” Rum asked, a bit confused. You cursed yourself in your mind because he didn’t know. The only person close to being a family to you was Champ, and you hadn’t really talked to him in ages. Close to seven years, actually, which was downright awful. The guilt gnawed at you.

“Sunshine, I don’t really, um, have a family.” You stated calmly, fingers soothing the back of his hand as he pulled a face.

“But—” he started.

“I have a mentor who I looked up to as a father, but I haven’t seen him in about seven years. I think I should tell him in person.”

“Okay, whatever you want, sweetie. I’m happy as long as you’re happy.” Rum smiled, and you sighed in relief.

“He’ll love you, eventually.” You reassured him.

_________________________________________________________________

First thing the next morning, you caught a plane down to Kentucky and found yourself driving along the battered country roads to the little farmhouse where you and Jack used to live. Your watch buzzed with an incoming call, but you didn’t answer, knowing it was AppleJack. You’d fill her in later.

You parked the car next to the oak tree that still held your swing. A dog came rushing down the steps, howling at you, but you didn’t mind. It was your dog, after all. A tall man in heavy work boots busted out the door, hollering at the dog and telling you that “he don’t really bite.”

The man looked at you without really seeing you, seeing only a woman in worn out cowboy boots and aviators covering much of her face. Her hair was different, so she didn’t really expect him to recognize her.

“What can I do for you?” The man drawled in his southern accent. You shuddered, not forgetting the way that voice sounded when you were in bed together at all times of day or night.

“Well, for starters, you can get your stubborn ass down here and give me a divorce.” You snapped, pulling the sunglasses off your face. Jack’s eyes widened once your words registered. “C’mon, Jack, I mean it. The joke’s over. We need to finish this so I can get back to my office and take care of my job.”

“You’re shittin’ me, right?” Jack spluttered.

You finally got a good look at him. He had shaving cream on the side of his face as if he hadn’t got a chance to finish before your hound was howling, but he’d kept his mustache. You hated to say that he looked good, but it was the truth. The years had been kind to him.

“You know, I’ve never actually understood that expression, but no, I’m not “shitting” you.” You groaned, pulling a packet of papers out of the glovebox of your rented truck and spreading them out in the bed. “Look, it’s even got these idiot proof tabs so you can’t mess this up. I’ve got one copy for you and I both and one for my lawyer. So c’mon.”

When you looked up at him again, he didn’t say anything but he certainly looked like he had quite a few things to say.

“Well?” You demanded, irritated that he wasn’t coming down off the porch to sign the papers like you’d asked him to.

“You show up here after seven years without so much as a ‘Hey there, Jack, remember me? Your wife?’ Or a “Hi, honey, lookin’ good! How’s the family?’” He had the audacity to laugh, finally stepping closer to the edge of the porch.

“You expect me to tell you that you look good? Bless your heart. Sweetheart, we’ve been separated for seven years. I’ve had it with your bullshit.”

“They like that attitude wherever it is you’ve been?”

“Cut the crap, Jack. You knew where I was. Champ told me you accessed my records.” You spat, moving closer to the porch. “And don’t you dare tell me you’ve spent all this time missing me.”

“Oh I missed you alright, but I’ve been going to the range more and practicing so my aim’s gotten a lot better.” He drawled, leaning against the railing.

“Is that a threat, Jack? I’ve got a lawyer who charges me an arm and a leg. He charged me every time you sent these damn papers back without your signature on the dotted lines.” You lifted the papers as you spoke, but he scoffed at you.

“Well, I’m glad to see you got the message.” He smirked, going to say something else but you were both cut off by the dog howling again due to your hostile tones.

“Shut up, Coal!” You shouted, but Jack shouted a different name. “What happened to my dog, Jack?”

“He died. You weren’t here.” He grumbled, turning to go back into the ranch house. You stood there in shock for a second before realizing what he was doing.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“I’m leaving!” He shouted, back turned to you, “You done it, so you should recognize the process. I need to finish shaving my damn beard.”

“Jack, can we please just keep this civilized? For God’s sake, we’re both adults and agents. Please just sign the papers so I can go back home.” You sighed, pinching the bridge of your nose. This was a mistake, you thought. He wasn’t going to sign the papers.

“What do you know from home?” Jack spit, finally turning around to face you, fire in his eyes. “Hell, I bet Champ doesn’t even know you’re here, does he? That old man took you under his wing and trained you himself and you have the audacity to avoid him like he’s some annoyance?”

“That’s my business, Jack, so you stay out of it.”

“Honey, he’s the only family you got.”

“Don’t you ‘honey’ me, honey!” If looks could kill, he’d have died about ten times by now with the murderous look you were giving him.

“Get your ass back in that truck, drive over and see him, and maybe we’ll talk after.” Jack demanded, pointing his finger at your vehicle. He was headed back inside before you could even think, and you started shouting at him as you followed him up the porch.

“Jack, you idiotic, stubborn, no good agent! The only reason you won’t sign these papers is because I want you to!” You yelled, hands on the doorknob of the windowed door he’d just slammed in your face and locked.

“Wrong!” He shouted, trying to pull the blinds on the door that he could never get figured out. “The only reason I ain’t signin’ is because you’ve turned into some hoity-toity, wine-drinking, Yankee bitch and I’d like nothing better right now than to piss you off!”

He finally maneuvered the blinds mostly over the door as you dashed to the back of the house, but he locked that too before you had a chance to get there in time. He could hear your frustrated shout from outside and he chuckled in disbelief before heading to his bathroom to get rid of the rest of his beard.

“Divorce, my ass.” He grumbled. Jack came out two minutes later, wiping his face with a towel to find you lounging on his bed. He froze.

“Hey genius,” you smirked, anger still evident in your eyes. “Next time you wanna lock somebody out, make sure they don’t know where the spare key is.” You waved the offending object in the air, and Whiskey made a mad dash for it but you closed your fist before he could snatch it.

“Knew I should’ve changed those damn locks. It’d be nice if my wife had told me where the spare key was!” He growled.

“I’m not your wife anymore, Jack.” You said softly, “I’m just the first girl that climbed in the back of your truck. But you’re right, I have changed. I don’t even know the girl you married anymore.”

“Then let me remind you.” Jack sneered before grabbing his cell phone and heading back into his bathroom, locking the door behind him.

Ten minutes later, Jack popped his head out of the bathroom.

“You bring any clothes with stripes on ‘em?” He asked, and you looked at him in confusion.

Red and blue lights flashed through the windows suddenly and your eyes widened.

“You called the sheriff?!” You gasped, jumping off the bed you used to share with the man looking at you with a satisfied grin on his face. “You know that old bastard hates me!”

“For good reason!” Jack shouted, still in the bathroom.

You made to run for the back door, but it opened to reveal a man you knew.

“Well, hell’s bells!” The man grinned, “If it isn’t our favorite Agent Brandy!”

“Tequila?”

“Hot damn girl, did we miss you! The agency wasn’t the same without you!” Tequila laughed, picking you up and giving you the biggest hug you’d gotten in a long time.

“I can’t believe you’re the sheriff!” You pulled on his badge for a second and knocked his cowboy hat off kilter to mess with him.

“Yep, I get to frisk pretty things like you all day and get paid for it.” Tequila put his hands around your waist and you slapped his chest.

“Aaron, can you try and be at least a little more professional? We got us a crime suspect here.” Jack emerged from the bathroom and you were struck with the fact that you hadn’t known Tequila’s real name until that moment. You quickly snapped back into it, though.

“Now, Brandy, you can’t just go breaking into your ex’s house whenever you feel like it, no matter how much they might deserve it.” Tequila—Aaron, you had to remember that—said.

“I didn’t break in. I used a key. My key, if you must know.” You snorted. Clearly, “Aaron” didn’t know that y’all were still married.

“Well, it still ain’t your house, Brandy. I’m gonna have to escort you out.” Aaron made to take your wrist in his hand, but you pulled away and grabbed the divorce papers you still had with you. You waved them as you heard Jack tell Aaron to use the cuffs on you.

“If you can get that asshole to sign these papers, I’ll let you run me out of town.” You smirked and Aaron laughed at your antics.

“Now that’s none of your concern, Aaron, you hear me?” Jack started, but Aaron was already taking the papers from you to look over.

“Well, what do you know. A bill of divorcement?” He asked. You nodded, and Aaron turned to Jack. “Hell, Jack, I thought you took care of this.”

“I thought I did!” Jack protested.

“Obviously not! Well, if y’all are still married, it’s her house too. This here ain’t nothin’ but a domestic dispute.” Aaron handed the papers back to you, and you smiled at him.

“He didn’t hit you, did he? If he took a swing at you, I’ll take him in right now.” Aaron told you quietly, out of earshot of your husband. You shook your head, because no, that man had never harmed you in ways that were physical. He’d only wounded your heart.

“No, he never hit me.” You replied quietly. Aaron nodded.

“Well, seems y’all got some catching up to do, so I’m gonna leave y’all to it. There’s nobody for miles, so Jack here can make ya scream all he likes.” Aaron winked at Jack, and you shouted in indignation. “G’night, lovebirds!”

“Aaron, I saved your life at least four times back in your Statesman years! You owe me!” Jack shouted, rushing to follow the sheriff’s retreating figure. He wanted you gone from his house in handcuffs if that’s what it took to get you to leave him alone about those divorce papers that he didn’t want to sign.

“Why can’t you just sign the damn papers, Jack?” You yelled after him, and he fixed you with the nastiest stare you’d seen in a long time.

“Listen, Jack. There’s nothing I can do. Your wife’s done nothing wrong, so I can’t just haul her in for nothing. Y’hear me?” Aaron blocked the doorway with his large frame as he lifted his hands in mock surrender.

“I suppose shoplifting steaks at the grocery store’s okay.” Jack spat.

“I took ‘em back and you know it!” You screeched back.

“You remember that vandalism out at the stockyard? Totally her!”

“Like I could tip a cow by myself at sixteen.” You growled, and Jack groaned. He couldn’t hit you with anything from your Statesman years either because that was all “classified information” you didn’t have to answer to. But Jack got an idea.

“Hey Aaron, isn’t there some outstanding warrant for whoever dumped your old man’s tractor in the fish pond?” Jack smirked triumphantly, making eye contact with your horrified expression. And then the cuffs were on your wrists and you were making your merry way to the county jail in the back of his cruiser.

“Now you know I didn’t have a choice, sweetheart.” Aaron smiled ruefully once y’all reached the station. He’d ended up hauling you off in cuffs just like Jack wanted and you were seething.

“This all could have been avoided if he’d just signed those damn papers.” You grumbled. “Can I make a call?”

“Sure thing, sweetheart. You’ll get a couple minutes once I book ya.”

You rolled your eyes, taking the photos Aaron needed to do for “legal purposes.”

“You know that’s gonna get wiped once I make my call, right?” Aaron had the audacity to laugh, knowing exactly who you were going to call.

“I know. Tell big daddy I miss him.” Aaron pointed towards the phone.

It rang for a few seconds before a secretary's voice filtered on, saying the usual crap the Statesman company was supposed to yodel on about.

“Hi, I’ve got a word for you, lady.” You spit out, “Lemon drops suck.” You heard the operator say something about holding on for a moment and then a familiar voice was asking who you were.

“Champ! It’s Brandy,” you shouted, “Listen, I need a favor.”

“Name it, darling. You know I’d do anything for you and that wonderful husband of yours.” He drawled on for a moment and you smacked the phone receiver into the box.

“I need you to pick me up.”

“Well, where are ya? I’ll send a car or whatever it is you need.”

“That’s the thing. I’m in town. But, I need you to come get me from the jail.” You said after a moment. A groan came through the receiver and you winced.

“Alright, darling, I’ll be right there. I’m assuming it’s the usual one, then?”

“Yeah.”

Fifteen minutes later, the man himself was strolling through the door.

“I’m here for my girl, Tequila.” Champ rolled his eyes at you once he saw you waving. He had you out and your record erased within five minutes, and then you were back in his familiar old truck that smelled like whiskey and gunpowder. He accepted a muttered thank you while you drove off towards the Statesman offices.

“So what put you in jail this time?” Champ finally asked.

“Jack and his big, fat mouth.” You grumbled. “It was just a misunderstanding, that’s all.”

“Kinda like that wedding I officiated, huh, darling?” You refused to make eye contact.

“I would hardly call that a wedding.”

“The boy was nervous.” Champ chuckled.

“He was still drunk from the night before!”

“Can you blame him?”

“Yes, I can! We’re supposed to be professional agents and he goes and gets piss drunk the night before we’re supposed to get married. I went to the reception by myself with his puke on the side of my dress while he slept it off at the hotel. And you’re still siding with him!”

“I ain’t siding with nobody, so get rid of that idea. Y’all two are my best agents and I need you both.” Champ stated firmly. “The boy’s changed is all.”

“Can we just not talk about Jack? I know he’s like the son you never had, but you also called me your daughter and all that, so can you just ask me what’s new with me or something instead?”

“Sure. Shoot.” Champ looked disinterested, and you had the feeling that he’d kept up with you better than you’d kept up with him. Curse the archives for always spilling your secrets before you ever could.

“I met somebody. And he’s quite a catch.” You started, and Champ raised an eyebrow beneath his larger than life cowboy hat. “And I’m happy. Really.”

The rest of the drive was held in silence, neither of you feeling like talking much. He pulled into the Statesman gates and led you inside, scanning his ID card on an empty apartment in the back of the warehouses where agents could sleep during the longer missions.

“Sleep well, sweetheart. We can talk about all this in the morning.” He kissed your forehead and you hauled your bag inside. “I’ll take you to get your truck in the morning, don’t you worry ‘bout a thing.”

_________________________________________________________________

In the morning, you were on the phone with your lawyer, walking around the Statesman compound and attempting to avoid the various tour groups that were unaware of the real reason this distillery existed.

“How long does a contested divorce take?” You asked, exasperated that you had to do this now of all times because your no-good husband wouldn’t sign the divorce papers. “18 months? Mr. Collier, I don’t even have 18 days, really!”

The man told you that was how it had to be, you informed him that this arrangement wouldn’t work, and he was informing you of a different option when you heard someone wolf whistle at you, throwing out some jab.

“Ain’t seen the likes of you around this place much!” The man shouted from his horse.

“Mr. Collier, that’s just not going to work for me.” You groaned, trying to block out the man catcalling you from his horse. Clearly this was some junior agent. “Mr. Collier, I’m gonna have to call you back.”

“Listen here, bubba, why don’t you kiss my ass!” You shouted up at the guy, but screamed in happiness once you realized who it was. “Oh my god, Moonshine?!”

“Let’s go inside then, missy, because I don’t do that kind of thing out here in front of the guests.” Moonshine smirked at you, jumping down from his horse.

“I guess your mama raised you right, then.” You laughed, hugging him. You’d missed Moonshine, who’d been one of your first friends in the agency aside from Jack, of course. “I better back off of you before your little lady tries to come beat me up.”

Moonshine looked sheepish.

“There is a little lady, isn’t there?”

“I can hardly afford me and my unhealthy addiction to firearms and whiskey, let alone some high-maintenance babe.” Moonshine laughed.

“What about Cara what’s-her-name? From the class outside of ours? Y’all had real chemistry on some of the missions I supervised.”

“She transferred out to the Alaska branch, and uh, I wasn’t her type.” Moonshine scratched the back of his neck and you hummed, understanding the situation.

“That answers a few of my questions. Guess we all have our secrets, don’t we, Moonshine.” You grinned, your suspicions about him batting for the opposite team nearly confirmed.

“Yeah, we sure do.” Moonshine climbed back up on his horse, tipping his hat on the way. “I gotta get back to work now, missy, but are you gonna be in town for awhile? Me and a few of the guys are going down to our normal watering hole later tonight if you’re up for it.”

“I hope I won’t be here long. I have to go see Champ, but I think I’ll see you boys tonight.”

“Well, I better scram if you’re seeing the boss man.”

“Very funny. I’ll see you later, Moonshine.” You waved the man off and made your way inside, scanning your own ID card on the entry doors and taking the elevator up to Champ’s office.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in. If it isn’t my favorite agent.” Champ drawled from his seat at the head of the conference table.

“Hey boss man, care to give me a ride to town so I can get my truck?” You asked, leaning up against the door jam and waving your keys. He laughed, standing up and grabbing his own keys from his desk.

“C’mon then, little lady. I did make you a promise. You can tell me all about why you’re here on the way over.”

_________________________________________________________________

Once you’d picked up your truck from the jail’s parking lot, you made your way to the bank. You hadn’t accounted for Jack taking as long as he was to sign the divorce papers, so you needed some cash for necessities.

Of course, the bank didn’t have an ATM. You cursed yourself for forgetting as you stepped inside. The bank guard’s eyes widened once he laid eyes on you, telling whoever it was in the teller’s booth that he was going to take a break outside. You winced once you remembered that this was the same man whose farm you and Jack and a few of your old friends had gone rolling pumpkins in year after year. He probably hated you.

You approached the teller, but didn’t recognize her. She clearly recognized you, though.

“Well, if it ain’t the queen of the New York Statesman office.” She grinned. You narrowed your eyes, attempting to figure out who she was when the lightbulb clicked.

“Jenny? Oh my god. I haven’t seen you since you and Tequila got hitched! You look amazing!”

“Thanks, sweetie! So do you. What can I do you for?”

“I need to make a withdrawal from my—“

“Joint account?” Jenny smiled like she knew something you didn’t, which knowing her, she probably did.

“My what?”

“Your joint account. With Jack? From what I hear, y’all are still married.”

“Why yes, yes we are.” You grinned, a plan already formulating in your mind.

_________________________________________________________________

It was after five when Jack got home, but you’d already got to work. You had on one of his favorite dresses that you’d found in a trunk somewhere, one of your homemade aprons, and a wide smile once he walked in the door.

“Hi, honey! Lookin’ good. How’s the family?” You grinned up at him, serving food onto two plates in the dining room.

“Cut the shit. Where’s my stuff?” Jack growled, chucking his hat on the couch along with his whip and lasso.

You smiled where he couldn’t see it, glad to see he’d noticed what you’d done to the place. There were new appliances in the kitchen, a new couch and loveseat, a flatscreen tv, a new rug, and Jack assumed you’d also done something to the bedroom. None of the things he’d had laying around since you left were where he could see it, and the sight agitated him.

“Now what kind of wife would I be if I didn’t pick up after my husband? Dinner’s ready in five.”

“The kind that don’t live here.” Jack groaned, hands raking over his face. “Now, I’m gonna ask you one more time—where is the house key?”

“I had the sweetest talk today with Tequila’s daddy.” You started as you ignored him.

“Nice to see you got your accent back.”

“Oh, I stumbled on a few things today.” You said, noticing Jack had gone to the kitchen, likely in search of a beer.

“Holy shit!” He shouted, and you stifled your laughter. “What happened to the stove?! And where are them little magnets I got from my travels, huh?” He opened the fridge and groaned.

“What the hell is this? Chick food?” He gestured to the fridge that you’d restocked with fresh fruits and vegetables, and new groceries that weren’t stale takeout containers.

“Light beer. Less calories, honey.” You smiled brightly, missing Jack’s murderous expression. He grabbed a can anyway and popped the top off.

“I tried to pick out a new bed today, but the mattress store only had old models. I’ll have to order something from New York.”

“Whatever floats your boat, honey.” Jack muttered, taking a deep swig of the beer you’d bought. He’d have to find his stash of whiskey and hope you hadn’t gotten rid of it.

“Oh, but darlin’, I thought you said we should think of it as our money.” You saw him freeze where he stood, and continued your crusade. “Just a guess, but I’m thinking the words ‘joint checking’ are flashing through your mind right now.”

“How much did you take?” He whirled around, effectively forcing you into the kitchen.

“All of it.” You replied simply, enjoying his facial expression.

“Son of a bitch!” He cursed, chucking the now empty beer can into the trash can and rubbing his face with his hands.

“You wanted a wife, you got a wife, honey,” you spat, “and what were you doing with all that cash? Why don’t you invest it? We work for a perfectly good company with shares for sale, don’t you know anything?”

“I know if you don’t get out of my house right now—”

“Sign the papers and I’ll give it all back.”

“Fine—fine!” He shouted, “gimme the pen.”

You rummaged in your packet for the pen and laid out the papers on the dinner table. You made to give him the pen, but thought better of it.

“Hold on. What are you doing with all that cash saved up? And since when did you tell Champ not to put you on anymore active missions? You aren’t doing anything illegal, are you Jack?”

“So what if I am? I don’t ask you about your boyfriend, you keep your nose out of my life.” He spat out, not making eye contact with you. You deflated.

“Who told you?” You asked quietly.

“Honey, just ‘cause I talk slow don’t mean I’m stupid.” He said in a much quieter tone. He almost sounded hurt.

“Look, Jack—” you trailed off.

“For god’s sake, nobody finds their soulmate at twelve years old.” He mumbled.

“Yeah, I guess,” you murmured.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Jack almost smiled. Your eye caught something on the mantle and you looked up to see a horseshoe and a photo of your parent’s old farm.

“I can’t believe you kept that all these years,” you murmured, eyes trailing over the familiar old farm. It had burned down four years after that photo was taken, taking your parents’ lives with it. Jack looked at you before looking at the clock on the wall.

“Oh, hey sweetie, you know what? I just remembered I got myself a hot date.” Jack grinned maliciously, unbuttoning his collared shirt as he spoke. Your eyes moved from the picture to the skin being revealed and suddenly were at a loss for words. “You don’t mind if I have my lawyer take a look at these, do you?” He tossed the papers back on the table and left the room.

“What?!” You gasped.

“Hell, I’m just a dumb intelligence agent with no regards for the law. There’s words in there I don’t even know. You might be takin’ me to the cleaners for all I know.”

“The cleaners? You? You ain’t been there since our wedding, if you even washed your suit for that,” you scoffed. “Can’t you just sign the damn papers?”

“Nah,” he grinned from the doorway to his bedroom, “but thanks for stoppin’ bye. It’s been a real treat.” And then the door was slammed and you screamed into a newly-purchased throw pillow.

You’d realized after about ten minutes that Jack wasn’t coming back into the living room. In fact, his dramatic ass had jumped out the window and you heard his truck starting up outside.

Tequila had made an offer, though, and you planned to take up the social obligation. Besides, if Jack was as predictable as he’d always been, his “hot date” was probably at his mama’s bar where everyone in that little town went to unwind.

Your phone rang once you were outside the noisy bar near Jack’s truck, and you answered at once knowing it was your fiancé.

“I love you, I love you, I love you.” You smiled into the phone and Rum’s happy voice spilled out.

“Are you sitting down?” Rum asked.

“Why? Bad news? Did the mission blow up or something?” You panicked. You knew putting this in Rum’s hands would only backfire if something happened.

“No, no! Nothing like that. I was just going to tell you that I read the mission reports and everything went exactly to plan just like you said it would. You might be up for another promotion, babe.” Rum reassured you.

“Oh my god, really? Oh, I needed that almost as much as I need to see you.”

“What is that noise?” Rum finally asked, and you assumed he could hear the loud music and shouts coming from inside the bar.

“The sound of my past.” You grimaced.

“Have fun. I love you.” Your fiancé finished, and you returned the sentiments before hanging up the phone and waltzing into the bar. You were immediately greeted by a screech and an older woman who was still spry was pulling you into a tight hug and yelling over the music.

“Batten down the hatches, boys! Trouble done just walked back into my life disguised as my favorite daughter-in-law!” Helen grinned at you. “Honey, gimme a hug, it’s been too long.”

You laughed while you hugged her and stepped back to show her your ring.

“Soon to be ex-daughter-in-law.” You stated proudly.

“Ooh, who’s the lucky guy?” She asked, inspecting the diamond on your finger.

“His name’s Blake and he works with me.” You winked, and she nodded in understanding. She knew about a little of the work you and her son did, but she mostly stayed out of it, claiming that the stress would bring her to an early grave.

“Well, he’s got my vote if he picked out a ring as pretty as that. It’s good to see you, baby girl.” Helen gave you a pat on the shoulder and told her bartender to give you whatever you wanted. You asked for a whiskey on the rocks and nearly laughed at the irony of the situation.

Once your drink was in hand, you scanned the room, looking for your husband. You spotted him in the corner with some young blonde thing and rolled your eyes. A quick march found you standing right behind Jack and you flipped the edge of his cowboy hat.

“Mind if I join you?” You asked sweetly, leaning up against the pool table beside him.

“Actually we do.” Jack said, raising an eyebrow. He was challenging you, but you ignored him in order to set your sights on his date.

“You must be Jack’s hot date.” You grinned at the girl and she put a hand out to shake yours.

“I’m Carly.”

“Hi, I’m Y/N, Jack’s snotty, Yankee-bitch wife whom he refuses to divorce even though I’m engaged to another man.” You shook her hand, and the girl gasped once she saw your ring.

“Hot dog, Jack, look at the size of that thing!” She gushed. You nearly rolled your eyes at how dumb she was acting just in an attempt to impress your husband.

“Honey? Why don’t you get us a couple of drinks, yeah?” Jack turned to Carly and handed her a few bills. The girl smiled, popped her gum, and proceeded to ask you what you were having. You rolled your eyes then. “Not ‘me and her’ us, ‘you and I’ us.”

The girl agreed and scurried off, and then you turned to Jack.

“Why do you make me be mean to you? Is that what you want? To be humiliated in front of all your friends?” You snapped, frustrated that he was taking this so lightly. He shook his head and downed the rest of his own glass of whiskey.

“C’mon, Brandy, they were your friends too.” You heard Jack mutter, nodding towards a few agents who’d just walked over with their drinks. You recognized a few guys who’d been in the class behind you along with Moonshine. He nodded at you and ordered a beer before heading over to say hello.

“Alright, Brandy, you sit down while I teach your husband here how to lose at pool.” Moonshine grinned, pulling a bar stool over to you.

“Now Moonshine, I’m not really a watch and see kinda girl, am I Jack?” His expression was priceless as he took up the challenge.

At least six drinks later, you were definitely feeling the effects of the alcohol and you landed somewhere near Moonshine as he lined up his shot.

“Come on, now, Moony, you got it. Don’t blow this one, okay baby?” You drunkenly giggled and Moonshine laughed at your inebriated state.

“You can take the girl out of the honky-tonk, but you can’t take the honky-tonk out of the girl.” He missed the shot, but you didn’t care anymore, more focused on the conversation Jack was not-so-quietly having with Cognac? Coors? You couldn’t remember his codename, but it didn’t matter. Jack was talking about you.

“So, Whiskey, are you gonna divorce this girl or what?” The agent asked. Jack shook his head.

“She’s waited seven years. A couple more days won’t kill her. Unfortunately.”

“Like it’s gonna make a difference.” You snorted, nearly falling into his arms but stabilizing yourself at the last second.

“You never know,” the agent started, “you might be interested to know that Whiskey here has been—”

“Hey, hey, Cognac, let her think what she wants. She made her mind up about me a long time ago.” Jack cut him off, making you wonder just what it was that he didn’t want you knowing about.

You quickly forgot that thought, though, when Moonshine started yelling and telling Cognac he owed him fifty dollars. Cognac groaned, forking over the cash.

You didn’t really know what happened next, but you got into a shouting match with one of the other agents and eventually asked Helen for another round of drinks, but she quickly cut you off. Then you were shouting again as Jack dragged you out of the bar by your arm, yelling at you, saying that you couldn’t just insult everyone in the bar because you’d made it out of Kentucky but they were happy where they were.

“What makes you think you can treat them like somethin’ you stepped in, huh?!” Jack demanded as he put you right up next to his truck.

“You asked for it!” You yelled in his face, trying to get your keys out of your pocket. Jack quickly grabbed them.

“You show up here, you steal my money, you rearrange my house, and then you insult our friends, actin’ like you’re better than them.” Jack spat. He was angry and you knew it, but you couldn’t seem to stop.

“I am better than them! And you stole my keys!” You whined, wanting to be anywhere but here with your husband who was telling you that you were wrong. He was right, but you wouldn’t admit it.

“That’s all that matters to you, huh?” He asked in disbelief.

You tried to say his name, but he cut you off.

“God, ever since you left, this has been a nightmare. The money, the fancy office, the city, you’re pathetic!” He raked a hand through his mustache and you got lost in the action right before spitting out a comeback.

“Oh, like you’re goin’ places!” You groaned, a splitting headache appearing out of nowhere. “I certainly am once I get my keys back.”

“No, you don’t. No. You want to kill yourself driving, you do it somewhere else. But not here, not on my watch.” Jack said, putting your keys into his own pocket.

“At least I’m doing something with my life. So what if you and I aren’t partners anymore, you can still go on missions. You don’t have to worry about me anymore!”

“Get in the truck, Y/N.” Jack opened the door and guided you inside, defeated. His date was waiting by the door and you noticed them having a quiet conversation before he handed her your keys and made his way back to the truck.

You fell asleep before Jack even got on the two lane highway that led to the Statesman offices where he knew you’d been staying. Champ didn’t say anything when Whiskey carried you inside your temporary apartment, snoring away, but he wished things would work out between the two of you. His hopes were dashed as soon as Whiskey asked for a pen to sign the papers you’d brought with you.

When you woke up, still hungover from the night before, the divorce papers were stuck on top of the pillow beside you. You wished you could say you were happy about it, but you couldn’t deny that a pit was in the bottom of your stomach.

Once you rolled out of bed and had some coffee, the papers were sealed into an envelope and you drove to the post office to mail it out. You’d talk to Jack afterwards and apologize for your behavior.

When you got to the familiar farmhouse, you found Jack’s dog Midnight lounging at the base of the porch. You scratched his ears, and he whined happily at the attention he was receiving. The dog got up and raced up to Jack when he came out of the house with a crate.

“What’s she doing here, huh, boy?” He asked the dog before turning to face you, “Thought you’d have high-tailed it out of here by now.”

“I put the money back in your account.” You said quietly, searching his face for any emotion whatsoever.

“Thanks. Saves me from bouncing a lot of checks.” He smiled at you, a genuine smile, and it caught you off guard. “I like what you did, though, to the house. Should help it sell quicker.”

“You’re moving?” You were surprised. This was the house you and Jack had gotten and fixed up together in the early stages of your marriage and it held a lot of good memories along with quite a few bad ones.

“Well, I’ve been spending a lot of my time a bit south of the distillery, so . . .” he shrugged.

“Oh.”

“Look, hon, I signed your papers.” Jack sighed, finally hauling the crate into the back of his truck.

“Jack, I never meant to hurt you, or anybody else for that matter. And I just came out here to say thank you.” You finally said.

“You might want to move your toes.” Jack nodded towards where your feet were in reference to his truck tires. “Wouldn’t wanna run ‘em over since you need them for field work.”

“You can’t just leave!”

“Sure I can.” He chuckled, hopping into the cab. “You want to come?”

“Where you goin’?”

“I want to show you something.” Jack said solemnly, and you wished you could go. Something made you stop, though.

“I can’t.” You finally answered, defeated.

“Can’t or won’t?” Jack asked you, already knowing the answer but asking anyway.

“Both.”

“The girl I knew used to be fearless.” Jack leaned against the steering wheel to get a good look at you. You looked so much like the woman he’d once known so intimately, and yet so different. A lot had scarred you both and he recognized that.

“The girl you knew didn’t have a life.” You smiled weakly, fighting back tears.

“Well, I guess you better get back to living it then. C’mon, Midnight.” Jack got his dog in the cab with him and drove off, leaving you alone with your thoughts.

_________________________________________________________________

You didn’t know what possessed you to stay in town now that the papers had been signed and mailed out, but you found yourself in the town square that evening for the weekly square dance night.

“Hello.” You murmured sheepishly once you’d spotted Tequila and his wife, Jenny, and Moonshine, and a few of the agents from last night at the bar. “I just wanted to apologize to y’all. Last night was so uncalled for, and I’m sorry. Really sorry.”

“Brandy, forget it.” Tequila told you, a smile gracing his face. “You know we don’t stay mad for long.” The group nodded, and you smiled in relief.

Jenny pulled you to the side and handed you a glass of sweet tea.

“You know, he went up there.” She said, sort of secretively.

“Who?” You were confused about what she was talking about. But then she looked at you oddly and you suddenly knew. “Jack? When?”

“About a year after you left. He doesn’t know I know, but Aaron “big mouth” Tequila over there can’t keep a secret to save his life nowadays.”

“Jack was in New York?” You asked, completely surprised. You’d never seen him. He’d certainly never come to see you and say hello. Jenny nodded.

“He told Tequila he’d never seen anything like it. He realized straight off that he’d need more than an apology to win you back. He needed to conquer the world first. He’s been tryin’ ever since.” Jenny told you, downing her own tea.

“That’s why he kept sending the papers back.” You murmured, and Jenny nodded at you again.

“It’s funny how things don’t work out.” She sighed.

“It’s funny how they do.” You smiled warmly at her, knowing she was happy with her life and how it was turning out.

“Hey, look who I found wandering around the edge of the party.” Moonshine cheered, shoving Jack in the center of the group you were with. He had the nerve to look a bit sheepish, knowing you were there, but you were the one who blushed. After that, it was a whirlwind of everyone catching up on the times and you found yourself smiling at Jack.

The band finally started playing a slow song, and Tequila got up to ask you to dance, leaving his wife to drag Jack into the square. The both of you danced for awhile before Tequila stole his wife back, which left you and Jack standing face to face. Jack held out a hand to you to offer a dance, but you hesitated.

“Maybe we could just talk?” You asked him quietly. He shook his head and walked off, a sigh escaping your lips once you realized you were alone.

The night wore on with you on the sidelines, drinking sweet tea, and finally you made your way down the street towards your truck. Something stopped you, though, and you made your way into the coon dog cemetery on the edge of town. Maybe Coal was in there. You didn’t realize Jack had been watching you and finally ended up following you, and maybe you wouldn’t have been so honest in your talk with your old dog if you’d known.

You knelt beside the dog’s grave, his collar and your old license plate stuck to the stone placed above him.

“Hey there, buddy. Sorry it took me so long. I would’ve come sooner if I’d known you were sick.” You sniffed, fingers running along the etching of his name in the stone. “Actually, that’s probably not true. I’ve been pretty selfish lately. Dogs don’t know anything about that, do they, though?”

“You were always a big old pillow after missions. Like when everything went pear-shaped after I got shot, you never left my side. And then I just left you. Oh gosh. I bet you sat there on that big old porch, wondering what you done wrong.” You sobbed, wiping the tears away.

“I told him it was my fault.” Jack’s voice broke you out of your concentration and you whipped around to see him kneeling behind you.

“Quit bein’ so nice.” You sniffed, a small smile breaking through your tears. Jack offered you a hand to help you up and you accepted it. He led you to a bench right near Coal’s grave and kept holding your hand.

“It’s the truth.” Jack stated.

“How come everything has to be so complicated,” you asked tearfully. Jack smiled softly at you.

“What?” He asked finally.

“Truth, life, this,” you gestured between the two of you and towards the hand he was still holding in his grip. Jack didn’t answer that, not that you expected him to.

“He was one hell of a good dog, wasn’t he? You looked like you were having fun out there tonight before I got there and ruined it.” Jack mumbled. You brushed a thumb over your intertwined hands softly.

“I’m happy in New York, Jack.” You laughed wetly, “But then I come down here and this fits too.”

“Since when does it have to be one or the other, darlin’? You can have roots and wings, you know.” Jack told you. You nodded.

“Maybe I could just fly south for the winter.” You joked miserably.

Jack finally pointed out towards the woods and nudged your shoulder, “Look.”

“What?” You asked.

“There, see ‘em?” You followed his pointing finger until you realized that he was pointing at fireflies illuminating sections of the woods with their blinking behinds.

“Only you,” you laughed fondly, looking up at him. You couldn’t deny it, Jack was still just as handsome as the day you married him even if the years had gone by.

“You know, I still go out there sometimes. To the meadow, I mean. I hear the crickets and I go and sit in the field and stare up at the stars like we used to. It’s like a religion.” Jack revealed, turning to look down at you to gauge your response.

“I had a dream about it the other night, our first kiss when we were twelve. Remember that?”

“You ever wonder what would have happened if you hadn’t gotten shot and died on that mission?” Jack asked bluntly. You were surprised and whispered his name.

“Just, let me get this out before I can’t.” Jack started, “I thought us working together on missions would be an adventure. I loved seeing you be this beautiful badass and I loved being the one who got to love you. And it took me awhile to realize that being tied down to me would be your only adventure.”

“I guess that thug knew what he was doing then, aiming at me. I was so ashamed, Jack, ‘cause I felt so relieved once I woke up and remembered everything. And all of a sudden, I just . . . Needed a different life. Y’know? I had to get away.” You were almost frantic in your story, the painful memories resurfacing of how you just ran away from your husband with no explanation. Gosh, the number you did on him.

“You done real well for yourself. I’m proud of you, sugar.” Jack told you sincerely, fingers brushing your hair away from your wet cheeks. “I’m just sorry I never danced with you at our weddin’. I’m sure this next one’s gonna go better for ya.”

You looked up and suddenly your lips were on his and it felt like you were breathing real air for the first time since you left his home and abandoned him. It felt good, his lips brushing yours in just the right ways, but you couldn’t do this.

“Jack, I can’t do this.” You whimpered through your tears. He nodded.

“I know. Go home, Brandy.”

And just like he’d appeared, Jack disappeared in the dark, leaving you alone with your conflicted emotions.

_________________________________________________________________

The next morning found Jack entering the Statesman offices as a man on a mission. But he found an unfamiliar man with flowers in hand, pacing in the lobby.

“Y’alright there?” He asked. The man whipped his head up and sighed.

“I’m here to surprise my fiancée. The secretary won’t let me in because I don’t have a Kentucky Statesman badge, only a New York one.”

Jack quickly realized the situation, knowing immediately that the man was there to see you without needing to be introduced. He also knew that you were probably in Champ’s office, talking smack about missions like you used to do.

“Well, I’m headed upstairs to see a friend of mine, but you’re welcome to join.” Jack motioned to the elevator, and your fiancé quickly nodded and followed him inside the cab. Jack rolled his eyes at the guy’s eagerness.

“So, fiancée huh? Which one of our lucky agents is it?” Jack drawled, knowing full well who this man meant.

“Agent Brandy.” The man answered, “and you are?”

“I’m Agent Whiskey. Who might you be?” Jack smirked.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m Agent Rum.” Rum laughed sheepishly. He was quite a bit smaller than Jack and had to look upwards to make eye contact.

“Ah, so you’re the man Brandy was talking about.” Jack couldn’t help but meddle a little in his ex-wife’s affairs.

“You know Brandy?” Rum asked, surprised.

“Course I know her. I know all about her.” Jack grinned down at the man, “I know her name, her whole life story, everything. She was my partner.”

“She never mentioned you.” Rum stammered. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same girl?”

Jack described you, and Rum nodded, but that description would match a few agents and Rum wasn’t sure Jack really knew who you were. Joke’s on him.

Moonshine got in the elevator and froze once he saw Jack with your fiancé. He’d looked Rum up as soon as you’d mentioned him, and the look Jack had on his face was downright scary to someone who knew him. It was like a lion playing with its prey.

“Uh, uh, hey Whiskey.” Moonshine stuttered.

“Morning,” Jack smiled. “Brandy here?”

Moonshine nodded.

“Yeah, yeah she’s here. She’s with big daddy.”

“Wonderful. I’m just escorting her fiancé here up to meet him.” Jack nodded towards Rum who waved a hand. Jack couldn’t figure out how this man got to be an agent, all timid and shy next to Southern guys. He seemed like a schmuck.

“Oh, that’s great.” Moonshine nodded emphatically.

“I’m sorry, you are?” Rum asked, in reference to Moonshine.

“Name’s Moonshine. I’m Brandy’s, uh—” her turned to look at Jack to figure out what to say.

“Her other partner.” Jack finished. Rum smiled at the two.

“Wow! Two partners while she was here. That’s something.”

Jack rolled his eyes behind the man’s back.

“So what do you like about our Brandy?” Jack finally asked him, directing the both of them to exit the elevator. Champ’s office was just down the way, but Jack wasn’t ready to leave this man with you yet.

Rum spouted off a lot of things that Jack knew you weren’t like whenever y’all were married and he quickly realized that the woman you were with this new guy wasn’t anything like the woman he married. The woman he’d seen in the last few days. This was a woman who had completely changed herself to fit New York, and that just made Jack’s stomach churn.

Finally, he pulled Rum over to Champ’s door and he threw open the doors. You were sat inside, alone, staring at a few photos on the wall before you looked up and made eye contact with your ex-husband. You stood quickly, walking over to the two men standing before you.

“What are you doing here?” You asked, looking at Jack.

“Well, I came to deliver your fiancé.” Jack stared at you real hard.

“I, uh, think she was talking to me.” Rum cut in, handing you the bouquet of flowers he’d been holding.

“Jack . . .” You trailed off.

“Must be exhaustin’.” Jack started.

“What?” you asked softly. Rum echoed the question beside you, finally realizing that you and Jack were talking to each other in a way that wasn’t normal to him.

“Livin’ a lie.” Jack finished, hand shoving his hat further on his head. You shook.

“What’s he talking about?” Rum asked you, and you looked back at Jack, pleading for him to be kind.

“You and I are in love with two different people.” Jack said with a shake of his head as he left the room.

“Who is he really? He said he was your partner.” Rum asked you, staring after Jack’s retreating figure.

“He’s my husband.” You answered.

“Your what?” Rum was dumbfounded.

“I mean my ex-husband.” You gasped, correcting yourself.

“You married your partner?!” Rum was running his hands through his hair, trying to wrap his mind around the situation and realizing just how little he knew about you. Had you up and married another man while you were down here? Were you married before? You interrupted his thoughts with a quiet answer.

“No, I came down here to finalize my divorce.” You sighed.

“Hey darlin’,” Champ burst into the room, “just saw your precious hubby and took his resignation.” He froze once he saw who was with you. “Oh! You must be my baby girl’s new someone!”

You groaned internally.

Rum threw up his hands and made some new noise you’d never heard before then promptly left the room. You scurried after him, trying to get his attention.

“Blake! Wait!”

“I just—” Andrew started as he pressed the button on the outside of the elevator.

“Let me try and explain, you don’t understand!” You tried to wedge your way between him and the door, but he easily slid past you. You slammed your arm against the side of the sliding doors to keep them from closing. “This isn’t who I am anymore!”

“Look, I don’t know who you are or what else you’ve lied about, but I do know one thing. There’s a helicopter parked outside in the field, and I am on it.” Rum’s face was stony as the doors closed.

You stood there for a moment, dumbfounded, trying to grasp the situation. A sigh escaped your lips before you made your way back to Champ’s office to slump down in a chair.

Champ was sitting at his desk, Statesman glasses perched on his nose and a tumbler of whiskey in his hand. He looked up right as you made eye contact and gave you his signature “I told you so” look. You groaned.

“I know you’re thinkin’ I spoiled things real good this time.” You grumbled, chucking your hat on the table.

“Now, sweetheart, don’t go accusin’ me of thinking. I ain’t done anything of the sort.” Champ snorted. “Anyway, I don’t think you spoiled what you think you did. You got a good head on your shoulders kid, and I love you.”

You talked for awhile, catching up on life and missions and things you hadn’t spoken of in years when a knock sounded on the open door of Champ’s office. Champ nodded whoever it was inside, but you didn’t even look up until Champ looked at you with a knowing smile.

“Hey, you two. Look who I found wandering around by the weapons labs.” Moonshine nudged someone forward and you finally looked up. Agent Rum, your fiancé, was in front of you with the sorriest look you’d ever seen on his face.

“I thought you’d be halfway to New York by now.” You said slowly, not sure why he was still here. Your little interlude an hour before sounded like a breakup if you’d ever heard one. You stood up and moved to stand beside Champ, knowing he’d back you up if needed.

“So did I.” Rum smiled sheepishly, nodding toward Champ.

“Oh, this is Agent Champagne, but we call him Champ. He’s basically been my daddy since I started here.” Champ reached up squeezed your hand in reassurance and you moved closer to Rum. “And this is Moonshine. He’s been my best friend for a long time, well, as long as I’ve been good to him. He’s always been a better man. This is where I started, where I grew up, and my home.”

“Well,” Rum started, “it’s nice to meet you both. I’m Agent Rum, Brandy’s fiancé. That is, if she’ll still have me.” You looked at him in surprise. “ Look, I don’t really care what just happened back there. So you have a past. I mean, who doesn’t? We’re all trying to escape something in this life. What I need to know is if there is a place for me in your future.”

“Good Lord, he’s saying all sorts of sweet things.” Moonshine muttered and you laughed at him.

“Well?” Rum asked. You nodded with a small smile.

“Crap, guess I need to plan my vacation days to go to New York then.” Champ grumbled at his desk.

“What vacation days, old man?” You sassed Champ. You turned back to Rum, “Babe, what if we had the wedding here? I have so much history here, I’d like to end it all here and start fresh with you.”

Rum smiled and agreed and Champ started hollering about how he couldn’t believe you were going to do this to him again, how he’d have to officiate yet another wedding, and how many times does his only daughter get married? Apparently the answer was twice.

_________________________________________________________________

A month went by before you knew it, full of missions and planning and setting up temporary groups while you’d be on your honeymoon. In between all you had to do in the Statesman offices, you were also wedding planning. Luckily, you had Champ and his wife to help with all that along with AppleJack and your assistant.

Mr. Collier, your lawyer, had been calling nearly every day, but you’d assured him that you had everything handled and that he could clear the divorce without you. You’d been calling Jack a lot too. You wanted to talk to him about what Champ meant when he said Jack had retired, and why no one seemed to want to talk about what he was doing. But he never answered his cell and your old home phone seemed to be disconnected.

It still didn’t feel real that you’d be getting married on Saturday afternoon as you stepped off your Statesman jet at the airfield in Kentucky on Thursday with Agent AppleJack and your assistant—now newly minted Agent Smirnoff.

“You guys remember that mark from a year ago on that mission I was on for about three months, right? The Spanish one?” AppleJack was telling you. You nodded, remembering who she was talking about. He’d been rugged and good looking, and you’d told her as much when you handed her the mission. “Well, he proposed to me, and I think I loved him despite his obvious attraction to black market trading.”

“Then why didn’t you say yes?” Smirnoff asked.

“Because I hesitated long enough to realize my head and my heart were saying two different things. And he was on the other side of the legal fence.” AppleJack scoffed.

You guided the two of them towards your waiting truck and chucked your bags in the bed of it. Theirs followed as they argued.

“Well, it’s a big decision.” You added in.

“It’s supposed to be the easiest one you ever make.” Smirnoff said. You’d always thought he was a romantic, and now you were sure of it.

“Hey, y’all, I want to stop somewhere before we head to the office. Okay?” You turned to look at the two of them, and they shrugged before agreeing. It wasn’t like y’all had much to do today anyway. Champ had already assured you that the cellar was decorated and pretty for you and Rum to tie the knot, and that he’d already arranged everything for your honeymoon too.

You drove the forty-five minutes it took to get to your parents’ old farmhouse where you used to live before it had burned down, taking both your parents with it when you were nineteen. You hadn’t been there since a few days after the fire when you’d set up headstones for your parents on the property, but you wanted to tell them what was going on.

The driveway was long, but you were surprised to see how well kept it was. Then the house came into view along with Jack’s pickup truck and a familiar black dog lounging on the steps. You slammed on the brakes and parked right off the driveway, jumping out of the vehicle.

“Oh my god.” You gasped, looking at the place. It looked nearly identical to the house that burnt down, but there was a new barn in the back of the house and fence posts as far as you could see down the drive that kept going. Your dad had never cleared that far into the woods, but it looked good. It looked like a really successful ranch had been started right where so much devastation had taken place.

“Brandy, do we know the people who live here?” AppleJack asked, finally catching up to your quick walk towards the house. “What is this place?”

A man walked out of the house and froze once he saw you, and you hardly heard both AppleJack and Smirnoff arguing about if he was single.

“Jack,” you breathed. He stepped down off the porch and came over to you, greeting you with a sad smile. “I tried to call you a couple of times.”

“Listen,” he started, completely ignoring your previous statement, “since you’re here, you and your friends should look around. Say hello to the horses in the barn or something. It’s nice out today.” He tipped his hat towards your two companions and called his dog, making his way back into the house before you could say anything else.

You shook your head, trying to clear your eyes of the tears that had somehow started filling them. As you looked around the ranch, you saw all the little things that Jack had done, as well as the big, that made this place feel so much like home. It was almost exactly the way it had been when you lived there so long ago, and you were reminded of the photo Jack had on your old mantel. You’d asked him why he kept it, but he hadn’t answered then. And the times when the guys you used to work with were trying to tell you that Jack was successful now, but Jack had cut them off. Now you knew why. He’d built this place for you.

_________________________________________________________________

When you got to the Kentucky office, Champ was waiting for you downstairs.

“Hey, little darling, there was a man here for you. He straight up asked about your whole name and everything. Did you have a guest coming for the wedding we didn’t know about who’d know your civilian name?” He asked. Your brow furrowed as you shook your head. “Alright, well we sent him on his way, anyhow. I’m sure it’s fine.”

You introduced him to your two companions and Champ grinned, happy to meet two people you trusted with your life. You asked him if Rum was here yet, to which Champ nodded and guided you all inside. “Got here about two hours before you, sweetheart.”

Once you were inside, it seemed like a whirlwind of things happened as you readied yourself to get married for a second time. The next 36 hours were hell, waiting for everything to be finalized so you could get hitched.

It was Saturday morning and Champ had stationed two low ranking agents to man the guests as they filtered into the cellar where you’d be holding the wedding. So far, only agents were to be in attendance and a few plus ones, but you’d wanted to keep it small. So when a balding man appeared and introduced himself as Mr. Collier, telling the two agents that he wasn’t on the list, they promptly told him that he couldn’t come inside as he wasn’t invited. The man insisted he had urgent business with a Ms. Daniels, but the agents weren’t having it and escorted him out of the cellar.

Meanwhile, at your old house, the one you had shared with Jack, your ex-husband was adding the last few crates and boxes of his and your things to his truck. He groaned once he saw his mama leaning up against her car in the driveway since he hadn’t seen her pull up.

“Hey, sweetheart, there’s a wedding goin’ on.” She said softly, helping him throw a gym bag into the backseat of his truck.

“Yeah, I heard mention of it a time or two.” Jack shrugged, “I sure hope this weather cooperates. It’s supposed to be a big storm.” He didn’t want to give into his mama and tell her how he really felt about all this.

The truth was, Jack was devastated. He’d spent so much time trying to get his wife back, and now she was marrying a man he knew she didn’t love as much as she loved him, and it hurt. It felt like something had died inside his chest, and he supposed something did. His heart.

“You know, Jack, you’re my only son and I love you, but sometimes you are too much like your daddy.” Helen sighed.

“She made her decision, Mama.” Jack set the last box in the bed of the truck and covered them up with tarps to keep ‘em dry.

“For somebody who’s been holdin’ onto somethin’ so hard, you’re pretty quick to let it go.” Helen eyed him.

“You know I can’t control her anymore than I can control the weather. I gotta go. I wanna get these inside before the rain ruins whatever I’ve got left.” Jack tipped his hat at his mama and climbed inside the cab. Helen shook her head in disappointment.

Champ stood in the corner of the apartment you’d been occupying in the Statesman office that weekend, watching you adjust your dress and cowboy boots. He smirked once he realized you’d be getting married, Southern style with the boots and a dress that he swore he’d seen in one of those fancy Southern Living magazines his wife was always reading. Or was it Southern Weddings? He didn’t know, but you looked beautiful. Even more so than the first time he’d officiated your wedding to Jack.

You kept fidgeting, causing Champ to speak up.

“It’s just nerves. You’re doing the right thing.” He attempted to reassure you.

“Am I?” You asked, unsure.

“When I married my wife, Lord, I was a goner for that woman. I couldn’t put one foot down in front of the other, despite being an agent with perfect balance, mind you. I remember standin’ there thinking, ‘Oh preacher, better hurry up before this woman changes her mind.’ And look where it got me. Sometimes she drives me so crazy that I could shoot her, but—”

“But you still love her.” You cut him off.

“God knows I do, and only she knows why.” Champ laughed, his eyes teary as he looked you over.

“Champ, I think I—”

“He can give you a life in this company, honey. You’ve always wanted this. And he adores you.” Champ said firmly, not letting you get back on the confusion train.

“He does, doesn’t he?” You sighed, “Well, even if he is a Yankee, at least he’s sober. Let’s go, Champ. I’m ready to get this over with.”

Champ led you down to the cellars, and then down the aisle. He didn’t get you two very far, though, when a man’s shouts were heard yelling “Ms. Daniels! Ms. Daniels!”

You whipped around, confused about why someone would be calling you by your married name. “Mr. Collier?” You asked in surprise. The two agents supposed to be manning the door had grabbed him by now, but you were quick to dismiss them.

Rum called your name, but you held up a hand to stop him from speaking. You didn’t know why Mr. Collier was here, but it had to be important if he was trying this hard to get in contact with you. The man took a moment to catch his breath.

“You are one hard woman to get in contact with.” Mr. Collier wheezed as he bent over to breathe.

“Mr. Collier, he signed the papers.” You said quietly. “What are you doing here?”

“He did. You didn’t.” You finally noticed the papers he was holding and sucked in a breath.

“What? You mean I’m still married?” You asked, unsure how you felt about this new information. You thought for sure you’d signed the papers when you’d sent them off the day after Jack had signed them. Apparently, you hadn’t. Mr. Collier pointed at the line above Jack’s name, and sure enough, it was blank.

“Well, not if you don’t want to be.” Mr. Collier replied gently as he handed over the papers.

“For goodness sake, Brandy, I thought you took care of this?” Rum groaned as he made his way to stand in the aisle beside you.

“It’s an honest mistake, Blake.” You shook your head in disbelief.

“Well, then, can we fix it? We’ve got agents who need to be on missions soon and we have a honeymoon to get to.” Rum snorted. Your brows furrowed as you watched this normally kind man getting frustrated over a mistake you hadn’t even realized you made.

“Does anybody have a non-deadly pen?” You asked, knowing no one would have one on them unless it had ten functions to kill someone and not one of them being the purpose of a real pen with ink that would actually stay on the paper. You’d made the mistake before of signing something with ink that removed itself within two hours and you didn’t want to make that mistake again.

No one around you had one, not even Champ, until a woman behind you cleared her throat. You turned around to face your mother in law, Jack’s mom.

“These things don’t just happen, y’know.” Helen said with a knowing smile as she held out a fountain pen. You took it and uncapped it, placing it on the paper but not moving to sign it.

“You can’t ride two horse with one ass, sweetheart.” Champ said from beside you. You looked up at him and with a watery smile, you told him you couldn’t sign the papers.

“Blake,” you started, taking his hands in yours, “You don’t want to marry me.”

“I don’t?” He asked, eyes almost looking dangerous.

“No, you don’t. Not really. You see, the truth is—” You hesitated before continuing. “I gave my heart away a long time ago, my whole heart, and I never really got it back. And I don’t even know what else to say besides ‘I’m sorry.’ I can’t marry you, and you shouldn’t want to marry me.”

“So this is what it feels like.” Blake muttered, eyes definitely glittering with anger now. “You can’t just do this to me. That’s it? You’re just going to leave me for the man you haven’t even wanted to be married to for seven years? God, Brandy, what the hell!” He shouted.

You took a step back, attempting to make space and remove your hands from his, but he held your hands tightly. You gulped, knowing Blake wasn’t done.

“In my entire career, and I have a good one, I have never met someone so deceitful and manipulative! I should’ve known, considering our occupations, but this is so disgusting what you’ve done.” Blake spat.

“I’m just trying to be honest.” You whispered.

“You are such a little bitch.” Blake roughly dropped your hands and Champ immediately stepped in, crowding the shorter agent.

“Now, look here, Agent Rum. She said her piece and there’s no need for name-callin’, you hear me?” Champ growled.

“Oh go back to your office and get shit-faced.” Blake spat at Champ’s feet. You saw red.

“Nobody talks to my daddy like that.” You growled, throwing one of your best punches. Agent Rum was soon on the ground and you chucked your engagement ring at his head. It hit his cheek and bounced off somewhere, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care.

“Praise the Lord, my baby’s back.” Champ cheered, pulling you away from your ex-fiancé.

“Hey y’all!” You shouted as you stood up on an empty chair in the venue, “If you’re friends of the bride, stick around! I’m gonna go find me a groom!”

And then you were off, grabbing your keys from Moonshine and hopping in your truck, wedding dress getting stuck in the door. You didn’t care, though. You knew exactly where Jack would be and you planned to go get your man back.

You roared into the meadow, truck chassis bumping around on the uneven ground. The door was flung open and you were racing across the field, dress bunched in your hands. Rain had started falling, and Jack was sitting in the bed of his truck getting sopping wet. He had a bottle of whiskey in his hands, but he hadn’t quite noticed you yet.

“Hey, cowboy!” You shouted above the rain and he whipped around to face you, eyes wide beneath the brim of his hat. Rain dripped off the edges and you almost laughed at how bedraggled he looked, but refrained. “You owe me a dance.”

“Nice dress. Where’s your husband?” Jack finally said as he capped the whiskey bottle and set it down beside him in the truck bed.

“I’m lookin’ at him.” You said, and Jack froze. “Apparently, you and I are still hitched.”

“Is that right?” He asked slowly as he got off the tailgate. He made his way over to stand in front of you, rain still pouring over the both of you to the point where you could only really see him anymore.

“Why didn’t you tell me you came to New York?” You asked desperately, needing to know if he still wanted you, if he still loved you.

“I needed to make somethin’ of myself.”

“About done?” You asked in disbelief. This man was already enough for you, how could he not see it?

“What is it about you Southern girls? You can’t make the right decisions ‘til you tried all the wrong ones?” Jack scoffed. He was sure this was some elaborate joke, that your fiancé would hop out of your pickup truck and laugh at him any minute now.

“At least I fight for what I want!”

“Oh, what do you want, honey? Hell, I don’t even think you know.” Jack shook his head.

“You’re the first boy I ever kissed, Jack, and I want you to be the last.” You said as you stepped closer to him, dress dragging in the grass and dirt. You didn’t even care, not if it meant you could get your husband back.

“Maybe you and I had our chance.” Jack muttered, hoping you couldn’t hear him, but you did.

“Fine! Have it your way, stubborn ass!” You yelled.

“Whatcha wanna be married to me for anyhow?” Jack asked, repeating what you’d asked him all those years ago when you were twelve. You grinned, catching up to his game.

“So I can kiss you anytime I want.”

And then you were in his arms and he was kissing you, his hat dumping water on the both of you but you couldn’t bring yourself to care. You were already soaked. You’d gotten your man back, and you sighed into his mouth. You didn’t want to move again, the feeling of his kiss bringing life back into your lungs and giving you space to breathe for the first time in a long time. He just felt right. Hands wandered up his back and you knocked off his hat in an effort to get even closer to him. He groaned when fingers locked into his now soaked hair, tongue slipping into your mouth when you whined.

You only broke away when you heard someone yelling at the both of you, lights shining right onto your interlocking figures.

“What the hell are you two trying to do? Get yourselves killed?” Tequila yelled. You laughed, breaking away from Jack just long enough to shout back.

“What seems to be the trouble, officer?”

“I’m here to bring you in again, little lady!” Tequila called back, hands on his hips and looking downright hilarious.

“What did she do this time?” Jack shouted. He walked you both closer to Tequila and the man had the audacity to grin at the two of you.

“Well, the way I hear it, seems she run out on a perfectly good cake!”

You laughed and smooched Jack on the cheek before reaching down to grab his hat from the ground.

“Get in my truck, cowboy!” You grinned, “Seems we finally get our reception!”

You raced your husband to your truck, hopping in and laughing at the way you both shivered from the cool air you’d had blasting. Jack swore and turned on the heat as you got yourselves out of the meadow and started following the red and blue flashing lights of Tequila’s patrol car.

You reached a hand over to hold Jack’s and he lifted your fingers to his lips to press a kiss to the knuckles.

“I love you.” He murmured and you returned the sentiments, happy for the first time in a long time.

Tequila led you to the bar Helen owned, and you laughed once you realized where the guys had decided to hold your reception. It was only fitting that the place where you’d originally hosted your first reception was now the place of your second, and with the same man no less.

Tequila made his way indoors first and introduced you, yelling out a “Ladies and gentleman, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Daniels!”

You rushed inside, nearly tripping over your boots and dress, but Jack steadied you, dipping you for a deep kiss just inside the door.

Catcalls filled the air as Jack lifted you back up, a boyish grin gracing his lips.

“I do believe I owe this lady a dance,” Jack nodded at his Mama by the jukebox and she smiled at the two of you.

“You sure do!” Moonshine shouted.

“Hey Helen,” you turned to Jack’s mama, “make it a slow one.”

She saluted you, and then hit a button, playing Tennessee Whiskey. Jack snorted at the song choice as he held your waist in the middle of the space they’d cleared for a dance floor, but you didn’t mind. You’d always joked that the song was about him with his Statesman name, and he hated it. You loved him, though.

You had your husband back and you weren’t ever going to give him up again. You swayed to the song for a moment before leaning up to kiss him. Finally, you were home.

[gear-project]

4Gamer.net GGST Interview with Daisuke Ishiwatari and Akira Katano!

4Gamer.net Interview with Akira Katano/Daisuke Ishiwatari

Translation: Yours truly! (Gear-Project)

4Gamer:

Thanks for your Time today. In less than a month, the game will go on sale June 11th, so please tell us your current feelings. *(Note: Interview was held on May 18th.)*

Ishiwatari [I]:

Normally, the development would be over, and I think that it's still a feeling of "please play this everyone", but for us the release date is over. Instead, I think it's all in the timing of the beginning. It's a feeling of what to do in the future.

Katano [K]:

You can see from the point when the 2nd Open Beta was conducted (May 14th to 16th), we are still developing and verifying everything. Of course, we will continue to adjust the game even after it is released, but for the time being, we are working hard to provide a full-package game that will satisfy our users on the release date.

4Gamer: This work was originally scheduled for release on April 9th, but the release date was extended to June 11th. Could you elaborate on the reasons for the delay?

I:

Biggest reason was that we received a lot of opinions about the processing and specifications around the Network. It took some time to meet those demands.

4Gamer: Didn't you get an opinion on the battle balance?

K:

Of course, there are also those aspects. In the open beta, we were observing the movements of various players throughout distribution, etc. and receieved many opinions. I think it was a necessary measure to aim for something more ideal.

4Gamer: The 2nd open beta test was conducted on May 14th. How was the response from the players here?

I:

In a phrase: pros and cons. It was more pronounced than the first beta.

4Gamer: How about from a developer's point of view?

K: I feel that it was meaningful to conduct the open beta test again before the release. Around online, a server error occurred even during the second beta, which caused trouble for the players, but it was great that we could confirm the cause before the release and fix it, I think.

Also, regarding the battle system, there were some elements that changed in fundamental areas from the first and second beta. There was both positive and negative opinions from the players about them. As for what kind of adjustment will be provided on the release date? I'm glad that I had the opportunity to consider it again.

4Gamer: I also played in the 2nd Open Beta Test, but I felt that there were quite extreme adjustments in terms of battle balance from the 1st. Was that intentionally made extreme?

K: If I said it was intentional, it may be a little misleading. However, to be honest, there was a part that was adjusted to the point that the product version would NOT be as extreme.

4Gamer: When that happens, there's a possibility that the product version will be considerably adjusted from the 2nd Open Beta version.

K: At this point, we are aware that we CANNOT sell the product as it is. After analyzing all the contents and feedback of each of the 1st and 2nd sessions, we will continue to make adjustments up to the last minute, aiming for the final product version.

4Gamer: By the way, what was the most popular request from the players at the end of the first session?

I:

Most common area was around the Lobby.

K:

Most of the opinions were that the lobby was difficult to use and it was difficult to play against each other. The development team also participated in the beta test from the users' point of view and agreed with everyone, so I felt that it was necessary to fundamentally revise the revision before the release.

4Gamer:

In terms of battle balance, there were many opinions that the aerial options were too strong in the first test. In the second test, I feel that some extreme adjustments were made, such as shortning the flight distance of jump, adding landing recovery after aerial actions, and strengthening anti-air attacks.

K:

As I mentioned earlier, it's certain that we've made some extreme adjustments (for the 2nd test).

4Gamer: When I actually played it, I felt the degree of freedom around aerial moves was reduced compared to last time.

K:

To be clear, it was cramped. We recognized that as well. After analyzing user feedback, we are currently deciding where to land.

I:

Regarding the dissatisfaction with the actions side, we expected that such a voice would come out. However, there was a possibility that something I didn't notice might come in to view, so I decided to steer a lot this time.

4Gamer:

It was quite literally a 'test'. By the way, I think that the past GUILTY GEAR Series was mainly about aerial combat. Is it the idea where you wanted to emphasize ground warfare because you dared to reduce jumping?

I:

I'm not sure because it's free to play (the beta), but I'd like you to think so. One of the problems with the previous Guilty Gear was that it was attractive for 'free aerial combat' and the difficulty there was too high. It's a recognition that it's too difficult for new players to come in.

Difficulty of operation included aerial battle, combo length, etc. had to be remade to some extent for new players and alleviated. The result of a comprehensive review of these is the current form.

However, I don't want you to misunderstand that just because the difficult part was simplified does not mean that it has become easier as a fighting game. I think the game has become more severe in the bargaining part as the risk in actions has increased. (GP's note: yes, very Samurai-Shodown-like).

K:

I've always wanted to make the first step of the stairs easier to touch and play, but I don't think it's easy as a game design. We are designing with the hope of providing "Guilty Gear-ness" that integrates the difficulties and severity that are different from previous series.

The story of aerial warfare is the same, and I don't want to make jumps separately. We would like to provide free bargaining and technicality that makes use of the aerial behavior that is unique to "Guilty Gear", however, since the past work was like this, it is NOT the idea that it should be so this time as well. (It doesn't have to be the same as last time, in other words.)

[The balance is "wild adjustment" emphasis on fun, not strength.]

4Gamer:

Please tell us about character adjustments. Is there a direction or guideline for overall adjustment? In the 1st and 2nd tests, it was Potemkin that was adjusted in an easy-to-understand manner, and I felt that a lot of elements were weakened.

K:

Regarding adjustments, first of all, we value the character's strengths, charm, and fever points. For example, the Potemkin of this work is designed so that the command throwing Potemkin Buster can do unprecedented damage. This part has not changed since the last test.

I:

As with the previous Potemkin, there was a fact that he was a grappling character, but he was strong "without" throwing. Therefore, I try to reconstruct that part to push out the charm of a grappling character.

4Gamer:

If you are attracted to grapplers, it would be nice to have a lot of charm in throwing techniques. By the way, do you have any idea/plans to intentionally add elements that the users may be looking for when making adjustments?

K:

No, this work provides a new starting line, so I try not to be aware of it as much as possible (ouch!). To be honest, I can't say that there is none at all. However, the word "user" ultimately refers to the player who has played the past work, so instead of intentionally approaching it, the emphasis is on preparing a new concept and designing weapons and weaknesses. I put that down and make it.

I:

In past works, there were some contradictions, such as a long-distance character with strong close combat, and a throwing character with strong attacks. We are developing to match the character concept that we and the player think of so that people who start from this work will not be confused.

In addition, although the term "wild adjustment" has been used for some time, when making the adjustments, the emphasis is on "whether it is interesting or not" rather than the parts that are strong or weak. Anyway, sharpen the sharp part and drop the parts to be dropped. It's like getting paid.

K:

As Ishiwatari says, in the end, fun is more important than balance. Therefore, I don't want to sharpen the charm and weapons of the character. In addition, it is often desirable to adjust the upper features to strengthen the whole, but I do not think that it is correct that as a result of strengthening, many characters who can do anything will be born.

However, in the past works, as the series progressed, there were times when quite a few characters became versatile. Because it's a game with a long history, elements that make up for weaknesses were often added.

I:

There was also the aspect that being able to do anything would lead to the individuality of the player.

K:

The starting line for the adjustment was what to do with this work, taking into account the historical facts as they were, regardless of whether it was good or bad.

4Gamer:

Please tell us about the Netcode. In this work, ARC's original rollback netcode was adopted. How was the response on the development side in the 2nd Open Beta Test?

K:

It's not that there were no problems at all, but I think that the overall results were very good. In particular we received very positive opinions from overseas players. There may have been many players who were dissatisfied with the delay method.

I:

There are FOUR time differences in the United States! (lol time zones)

K:

It's not comfortable in Japan and Brazil, but it's now possible to enjoy a comfortable match in Japan and South Korea, or in the United States. I feel a great response from the development.

4Gamer:

With Rollback netcode, it seems possible to realize online battle events in remote areas. For example, it may be interesting to carry out regional competitions that were held during the heyday of arcades.

I:

I don't think young players today know that there was a regional competition. Since we are from an Arcade Field, we want to know more about the Arcade Culture.

K:

I think that the goodness, enthusiasm, and enjoyment of the events we held at arcades in the past will surely be passed on to the new generation and must be passed on. This is true for all fighting game events. I think there are many cultures and merits of the community that only people who have been playing fighting games for a long time know, and I haven't been able to convey them to the new generation. I want to deliver the charm of fighting games in a new way.

[Season Pass Adds 5 people, including completely new characters!]

4Gamer: Next, please tell us about your character. We were able to use 15 characters in the 2nd Open Beta Test. will this be all the characters at the time of launch?

I:

That's right.

4Gamer: Anji Mito hasn't participated since the Guilty Gear XX Series. Was Anji Mito scheduled to appear from the beginning of development?

I:

No, he was just one of the candidates. As with any work, even right down to the last frame, the characters will still be a worry until it's finalized.

K:

Regarding Anji Mito, it was planned that we would pick a character who did not appear in the Guilty Gear Xrd Series, and I remember that's what decided it.

I:

I really want to put out more characters. The more characters there are in a fighting game, the more fun it is. In that sense, I would like to provide you with new characters as soon as possible. (Ishiwatari wants a HUGE roster, hah!)

K:

I have a desire to have all the characters that appeared previously in the series. As always, I'm sorry for the fans of the characters who have been waiting for us.

4Gamer:

Who is the most difficult character to select among the 15 characters?

I:

First of all, there was a concept that we wanted to release the initial characters of the first GUILTY GEAR, and so 9 character slots were filled. All of the following 6 characters were a concern, so I don't think anyone was the best.

4Gamer:

Leo and Ramlethal are characters from the Guilty Gear Xrd Series, so some fans were surprised to participate in the conflict.

K:

For those who are playing from Guilty Gear Xrd, I was thinking of releasing either Ramlethal or Elphelt, which are the representative characters, from the beginning. But this time, Ramlethal was chosen.

I:

For the fans of Guilty Gear Xrd, I wanted to bring out the recognized characters rather than making them completely different. However, with Leo I really didn't bother so much, because I wanted to put him out there.

K:

Since it was decided to implement Story Mode, whether or not it was a character that appeared in the story had some influence on the character selection. Although the cost is different between the battle and the story, since it is based on the same character model, there was talk of wanting to make some characters in the story playable.

I:

It feels a little strange that you can't use the characters that are active in the story in the first place.

K:

In that sense, Leo is a character that is quite involved in the story.

4Gamer:

Who are your favorite characters, Mr. Ishiwatari and Mr. Katano?

K:

Nagoriyuki. I like his visuals and performance, and if I'm playing, I'll definitely pick him.

I:

I will be Sol this time. The finish is selfish, and I feel that the character settings and performance match.

K:

As with all characters, after throwing away the battle image so far and thinking about how to fight like Sol, that's the end result. Each character in this work has a situation that they are good at, and if you bring it into the situation, you will be able to demonstrate strength that can be said to be somewhat unreasonable.

4Gamer:

Mr. Katano mentioned earlier that he likes Nagoriyuki, and in this sense he is a rushdown character, I feel the image fits him perfectly.

K:

It may be easy to understand the timing when a strong rush is set along with other weaknesses. However, this is something that all characters are aware of, not just Nagoriyuki. If you can prepare your favorite situation individually for each character, it will be established as a fighting game in which various types of characters fight.

Of course, it may be compatible with the character, but I don't think it is necessary to forcibly flatten them.

4Gamer:

In the popularity poll held the other day, Ramlethal was the most popular in all regions at home and abroad.

I:

To be honest, it was really surprising.

K:

Ramlethal dominated 1st place, but Giovnna and Nagoriyuki were also in the top. Since the popularity polls in the Guilty Gear Series always have major characters like Sol and Ky at the top, it is interesting that the characters who participated during Guilty Gear Xrd were selected at the top.

4Gamer:

Please tell us about the designs of the new characters. What kind of concepts did Nagoriyuki and Giovanna come from?

I:

Visuals of Nagoriyuki came from the forefront of the story. I'd say that I drew what came to mind as it was, and the pencil ran on its own. On the contrary, Giovanna had a lot of problems. Because of her profession as a Secret Service bodyguard for the President, I couldn't design her too eccentrically, and in a sense I settled on a character that didn't look like a GUILTY GEAR character.

It was a nice miscalculation for her to get into the top of the popularity poll.

4Gamer:

Regarding the design, does the visual come from the character settings? Or is there a reverse pattern?

I:

It's already case by case. Sometimes it's born with settings, sometimes it's because I wanted a character that looks like this. For example, with regard to Giovanna, the unique silhouette of wearing wide pants is characteristic, but this came to mind even before the image of Giovanna was created.

K:

Our team may always be thinking about how to make a particular silhouette or action look cool. Speaking of Nagoriyuki, there was a strong desire to express the behavior of a sword master in a cool way.

I:

The movement of the blood attacks along the sword, we call the movement a blood swing, we think we produced a cool movement with it.

K:

The current team is unique, and that kind of story comes first. I want to make my blood look cool, so I'm trying to implement this kind of motion. I don't see this kind of thing on other teams.

4Gamer:

The image of Faust has changed significantly compared to the old character.

I:

In the first place, the idea was to renew all the characters to the extent that the image was not spoiled. Faust is a character characterized by comical actions, but many of its sources are only familiar to Japanese people. There was still a part that seemed to be a drifter to expand globally (laughs). As a result of his image and backbone being made to live in an interesting way, it became the current visual.

4Gamer:

Regarding characters, it was announced that 5 people will be added in the first Season Pass. How long until this will be added? Also, do you plan to add some characters from completely new or old works?

K:

We will not be able to give a specific character name by the time it is released, but we plan to announce when it will be added. Five people have already been decided, and I would like to release them as soon as possible!

I:

I always try to add one or more completely new characters to the five.

[The story of Sol that started from the first GUILTY GEAR is now complete.]

4Gamer:

Speaking of the Guilty Gear Series, songs and BGM are also highly evaluated. Is Mr. Ishiwatari in charge of them in this work as well?

I:

I leave the BGM production for the story mode to someone else, but I composed all the vocal songs for the fighting game part.

4Gamer:

Is there anything you are conscious of when composing?

I:

In this work, I have abandoned what I had been conscious of before. I used to think that if this song was played during a battle, it would be an emotional scene, but I didn't dare be aware of that. The emphasis was on the backbone of the characters, projecting their drama more intensely than before.

K:

This time, the theme of the character, including the lyrics, is strongly featured. At the moment, only a part of it is open to everyone, so please look forward to it.

4Gamer:

Who will your favorite song belong to?

I:

I really like Ramlethal's song, and I have decided to make this song the title of the album. She is a character who recognizes "Necessary Waste", and in a sense, it is close to the theme of GUILTY GEAR. I decided that her theme would be suitable for the title of the album.

K:

I especially like Leo's Song, but all the songs have different charms. I want you to listen carefully after the release.

4Gamer:

Tell us about the Story. In this work, it is said that the relationship between "That Man" (Asuka R. Kreutz) and Sol will be settled, but as a story, will it be the curtain once here?

I:

As far as I can tell, the story of a "man named Sol" will draw to an end. A Story Mode has been prepared from the Guilty Gear Xrd Series, and Sol has developed in the story as the Main Character. In this work, he talks about what kind of answer he will give to the world in the wake of the incident that started from the past work in simple words. I'm really curious about how you'll feel. So I'd love to hear from you.

In addition, the story mode of this work changes the expression method. Where Guilty Gear Xrd (Sign) was the format of an adventure game (visual novel), Xrd Revelator was an animation (anime style), but this time it looks like a movie (fully animated film).

K:

The other day, I released a part of the story mode, but there are opinions that it looks like a movie as intended.

I:

Originally, I was particular about how the 3D looks like an animation and how comfortable it is, but this time I'm using 3D to incorporate cinematic techniques and camera angles.

K:

With Guilty Gear Xrd, the flow was to make 3D look like a 2D animation, whether it was a battle or a story. In this work, we have evolved it into a powerful expression that makes the most of 3D.

4Gamer:

I think it was refreshing because the camera work during the battle sometimes switched to an angle that was not found in past games.

K:

We are repeating the verification on the part of whether coolness and fun as a game can be compatible.

I:

This is also the part that I have been searching for all this time.

K:

However, whenever I decided to adopt a new and cool angle, I became worried. I used to go back to the 2D method when I was at a loss.

In this work, the scene change does not change mechanically, but the camera follows the movement of the character. Knowing that the core fighting game fans would criticize me, the idea was that this was the only time to go on an adventure.

I:

Of course, after going through the beta test, I would try to correct the Overkill.

4Gamer:

It is said that the story of Sol will be completed, but people think that Guilty Gear will end.

I:

I can't give you a specific story, but I have a plan in mind for future developments. It may be after or before the story of Sol, but I'm thinking about how the story of GUILTY GEAR will unfold. This isn't about making or not making games, it's about notes in your head.

4Gamer: --That will continue.

K:

That's what Ishiwatari always says, but it's difficult to express (laughs).

I:

It's a boring story, but since GUILTY GEAR is a very important IP for us, we can't just cut it off. However, it is certain that this work will make a break for the time being.

K:

I think that the parts that were not told in this story will be complemented in other ways.

I:

Earlier, Mr. Yasuhiro Naito, the creator of "Trigun" that I was with at an American event said, "It's better to finish things than to make them." I've always thought that I had to complete it properly.

K:

Fans have told me that this work will never end.

I:

It's over properly (laughs). I've been thinking about the theme of the story from the beginning, and it's still the same. To all the fans, please look forward to it!

4Gamer:

Please tell us if you have any plans for pre-launch or post-launch events or e-sports development.

K:

We will release new information before the release, and we plan to hold tournament events that players can enjoy and events that a wide range of players can enjoy even after the release.

I:

I would like to hold a new type of event that suits the current situation. Offline events are easy for us from arcades to get together and enjoy, but I think there are some parts that were difficult for those who weren't.

K:

For the past three years, I've been desperate to make games, so I'd like to do that as well. I would like to develop something that can be enjoyed with the players.

4Gamer:

Finally, do you have a message for the fans who are looking forward to the release of this work?

K:

This work was created with an emphasis on playability and ease of entry for those who touch it for the first time. However, I have never made it shallow as a fighting game. We have prepared the elements that we should work on and the world that we can see beyond. It will be operated for a long time, so all players can experience it.

I:

Rather than being a continuation of the GUILTY GEAR SERIES, it was created with the aim of being a completely new fighting game. I think that even new players can enjoy it, so I hope you will be interested and touch it.

And in this work, one episode of the long Guilty Gear Series will be completed. I think that we have been able to deliver something neat to those who have followed the story for a long time, so please look forward to the ending. In addition, for those who come into contact with the world of Guilty Gear from this work, we have prepared movies and manga of the past series on the official website and YouTube. I hope you will check this out as well and enjoy it.

4Gamer:

Thank you both for your time today. (May 18th, 2021)

[vickers-n-lickers]

Moonlit pt. 2

((Contains mentions of violence and gore. BradxOC and the rest of the gang))

Horrible moans were muffled against the glass, fingers dragging long dark streaks.

Even with the blinds drawn tight, the dead knew they were in there.

"You need to go, Brad. Please… don't. Don't argue. Just go. Run before they get you…"

"I'm not going to leave you."

"You have to. You can't let them get away with this. They killed our friends. Jenna."

Her life hanging by a thread was a storm cloud hovering over them.

Check tossed in her clutch, Joan looked over herself one more time in the mirror. Cap off her lipstick, she carefully painted on a clean line, then another.

Finally paid for performing at this over the top wedding, she might be able to get the water heater fixed and take a shower in her own apartment. Jack had been up her ass for a week, every time she showed up to grab a shower there was an argument.

She never told Brad. It wasn't his problem and he had enough on his mind with work.

He would have helped…

She frowned at her reflection. Depending on someone was always a bad idea in her book.

Even with that in mind, there were things in her that unfurled every time he swung by for 'just a minute'. Things that bloomed between cups of coffee and the way he swayed with her from behind while she made dinner; hands on her hips, chin on her shoulder, humming away to Steve Miller Band crackling through on the radio.

These little things strung themselves together into an idea.

A life. One that came to her mind as easy as breathing. White picket fences, BBQ grills, his corny jokes and a pack of kids chasing one another around an inground pool. An eternal summer where fireworks and lightning bugs shifted to strings of lights and Christmas mornings where they both were half asleep wrapped up in house coats in front of a massive tree he just had to have for them.

Tiny terrors racing around the house with new toys while basset hound puppy tried to keep up.

Dumping them all off at Forest's garage for a date night, half terrified of coming back to find the kids had burned the place down. Who was she kidding? Half of the time she swung by: Forest had set the place on fire himself.

Weddings always do this to me.

The wedding reception hall still looked grand as ever, even after guests had cut a rug for half of the night. It made her smile, thinking of her own future for a moment. Gift basket in tow, she bumped into someone on her way out of the Depot. "Oops! Sorry… David." Her eyes widened.

The man simply stared at her for a moment, hair as silver as ever. There was a time she teased him about going gray so early in life. There were other times she teased him that he should pick a codename that didn't belong in a steamy romance novel about spies. What sane person called themselves Hunk?

Now she was just trying to get to the door.

"We need to talk."

"Call me tomorrow and we will," She replied quickly.

"I want to see her before I leave. I have a right to see her," the man replied lowly.

That hit a nerve. The golden light of the outdoor lamps bathed half of her face. "Your rights? Hmm, what about my right to some help raising her? How about some health insurance or dental insurance covered? How about a gift for Christmas or a fucking call on her birthday?"

Everyone stopped and stared. 

"Everything alright?" Brad asked as he stepped outside. Confusion crossed his face as Joan offered up the gift basket and her clutch.

"Peachy." Her expression was torn between pain and rage.

Vickers took one look at the man, deducing just who would have managed to gain real ire from Joan. "I'll go start the car, babe." He paused when her hand snatched at his elbow, pulling him close enough to leave a lipstick mark on his cheek.

"I'm right behind you," She said, quick and anxious.

He couldn't see the argument that broke out as he stepped off the curb and out into the darkened parking lot, but the look on his three teammates faces told him to look back.

Joan's stance was hostile, even in an evening gown. Her hands were a flurry of gestures as she spoke in a heated fashion. A look fury on her face, her gaudy jewelry glittered in the dim light of the building's entrance. The man in front of her said nothing, toying idly with the toothpick set between his jaws.  He suddenly retreated. "There you go! Walk off, it's what you're good at," followed him back inside the building.

"Jerry, Jerry, Jerry…" Chris whispered, pumping a fist. Both Wesker and Jill gave him a sour look.

Brad could only look on, sighing heavily.

Miss Piper was trying to calm the fury as she marched up the sidewalk. A bright smile appeared as she saw Brad. "Hey Baby! Are we headin' out?"

"Do you still love him?"

"BRADLEY VICKERS!"

"She whipped out the whole name. Man…" Chris grumbled from the back seat. "Don't ask stupid questions while she's driving." He undid his tie with quick fingers. "He's just had too many, Joan. Don't listen."

Vickers shook his head, looking out the window. Part of him wished he had rode along with Captain Wesker and Jill.

Even though those two have been acting weird for weeks…

"I don't love David. That was a long time ago. He's an asshole."

"He seems like a deadbeat. I've never seen the guy before tonight," Chris added, sitting back.

"He doesn't even live in the States. We met when I worked for Umbrella. I did security for a lab that manufactured vaccines in a remote region. That's all."

"That's not all. You two literally have a kid."

"Stop it, man."

She signaled left at the stop sign, turning onto Jack Street. "You've been more of a dad to Jenna than he ever was. I know it's a lot to take in, but you try at least."

"He's still her real father."

"Brad, shut up!" Chris's last attempt to intervene was cut short by Joan pulling into a parking space and slamming on the brakes. "Now she's pissed…" He muttered.

Car put into park, she looked over at Vickers as she killed the engine. "Look, I am sympathetic to your jealousy. Everyone feels that, but this isn't going to work if you're going to act like this. My daughter will always come before me and I will always try to meet her needs. It's not about me, it's about her. The sooner you get that through your head, the sooner you'll understand why I'd rather shit in my hands and clap than ever take David back. I love you and I love Jenna. That's it. Everyone else doesn't matter. Whatever you're thinking: put it to rest or go home and sober up."

Brad visibly flinched when she slammed the door shut. Air blown out his nose, the brunette mopped a hand over his face, quiet for a moment. "…Goddammit."

Chris unbuckled his seatbelt in silence, leaning forward to clap Brad on the shoulder. "Write her a bad poem. Give it to her with some dandelions. That should smooth things over." Unlocking the rear door, he stepped out too. "C'mon Vickers, let's get you some coffee."

Joan was behind the bar by the time the two wandered in, despite still being dressed in the same attire she'd worn while entertaining at the wedding. "It's been a long time since I saw you last, Captain. What brings you by?" Her bright eyes followed Jill and Rebecca for a moment and lifted to him as she cracked open two long necks.

A single blond brow lifted. "Boredom and babysitting."

"Oh, well then… Johnny Walker. Right?" The brunette girl's award winning smile flashed briefly. Ice, glass, and liquor after; she slid the glass over to him with a sigh. "On the house, so long as you don't start frisking people."

A long sip taken from the glass, Wesker's lips briefly pursed. "What was happening in front of the Depot?"

"Oh, you saw that? David decided to make the mistake of speaking to me." Tongue rolling along the inside of her cheek, she frowned. "Spencer's dog." Rotating her own glass against the bar, she just shook her head. "I wish I had never joined up and taken the assignment on Rockfort."

"Oh, Joan. We all had fun. Well, you didn't. He liked picking on you quite a bit."

"You were only there for three months. I was there for two years and I regret ever getting tangled up with that man. Jenna doesn't need to know him." Another glass poured, she sipped it down like spring water.

"Vickers is probably a safer bet."

"Mmm… you'd think so, but he had the great idea to piss me off too tonight."

The blond blinked, eyes going wide behind his shades as he listened. Looking for an out immediately, he found it in Jill waving him over. "You can't kill him, Joan. I need him. I'm sure he'll figure out how to make it up to you."

"We shall see…" Her eyes lifted to Miss Chambers. "Beers are on the bar, Rebecca." Turning, she carried her glass to the sink at the other side and disappeared into the back. One heel after the other pulled off, she left them behind on the cooler before she made her way to the back stoop under a blanket of stars.

When she came back in from a needed break, a napkin of all things was rolled up in one of her heels. She snorted when she read the message left on it.

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

I'm a jerk,

Your hair looks nice.

Rolling her eyes, she pinned it to the board with the work schedule before heading back out.

Rebecca and Jill cheered when Wesker sank the 8 ball into a pocket on the other side of the room. "We win." Rebecca beamed. "I want my jeep waxed too."

"That's not fair; you had the captain make the shot." Ed was almost pouting.

"Oh, you had no issue with him doing it when you two thought he wasn't going to win it for us!"

"Yeah, but he doesn't suck at pool. We thought he might suck at it."

"Well it serves you right for judging him. Shame on both of you." Rebecca grinned.

Leaning against the bar, Joan listened while Chris dazzled a few of the group with another tale from the Airforce. Fingers lacing with Brad's idle ones, her lips twitched up at their edges when he squeezed. Forgiveness came as a kiss against his cheek when he turned to pick up his cup of coffee.

Most of the group had taken off when the clocktower chimed at midnight. The remaining parties had ties loosened, jackets off, heels dropped and hair down at long last. Jukebox set to play the full list, Joan settled on one of the couches next to Brad. "It's 'Never Have I Ever'. Rules are simple. You take a drink if you've done the thing the person says they've never done. Alright, I'll start." Joan sighed. "Never have I ever owned a dog."

Everyone else groaned, taking a drink.

Brad was next. "Never have I ever flown with an airline."

Everyone else took a drink.

Chris was next, peering at his drink for a moment. It was time to start getting creative. "Never have I ever had sex with Brad."

Joan rolled her eyes at the collective snickering, taking a drink.

His date, Morgan, followed. "Never have I ever had sex with a woman."

Every man and Joan took a drink. Brad nearly choked. "What?"

Joan just shrugged. “I dated her for three years too.”

Jill peered at her glass for a moment, elbows on her knees. "Never have I ever been out of the country."

Most of the group had to take a drink.

Wesker sighed a bit, peering towards the bar as he thought. "Never have I ever paid for sex."

Brad and Joan both took a drink. Both gave the other a sidelong look.

Chris about died laughing right then and there. "Joan, you need to open up more to us. We're clearly not getting the best stories during happy hour."

"I think we all want to hear this story." Wesker smirked a bit, arm stretching along the back of the couch both he and Jill occupied.

Glass on the squatting table, she laughed. "Alright, alright. Is it safe to assume that you were saying that you never paid a working girl for their time?"

"I suppose you could, yes."

"I paid a woman in Germany for her time because it was on my bucket list. We ended up going to a movie and eating at a Donor Kebab stand. Her name was Sindy with an 'S'. I loved her to pieces."

"That's not paying for sex, though." Chris replied, sighing deeply. "I thought we were going to hear one of these wild and crazy 'Joan Piper: Lady of the Night' stories."

"I bet she remembers Joan still, unlike any man that crawled on top of her and wheezed his way through two minutes of the best time of his life." Jill uttered.

Albert let out a snort, shaking his head.

Joan's pearl grin was visible even in the dim light. "Alright, my turn. Never have I ever learned how to speak German fluently."

Only Albert took a drink, a couple brows raised.

"Never have I ever given oral."

Everyone just stared.

"That's not something you want to say in this game, Brad." Chris snorted, covering his face with a palm as he began to laugh. Red faced, he wiped away a few tears. "Oh shit, I'd be lost without you in my life Vickers."

"This is rather educational." Wesker uttered, receiving a slap to the arm from the female to his left. "What?"

Breath relaxing, Chris leaned back next to Morgan. "I've never… Huh, gotta think for a bit. Oh, Never have I ever had a 'ménage a trois'."

Jill's eyes were the size of dinner plates as not only did Miss Piper take a drink but… "What, really?"

Albert merely lifted a single blonde brow after taking a sip from his drink. "What? It was a long time ago."

Brad's jaw about fell to the floor.

"Wait, we heard my paying for sex story. You have to tell us about the threesome."

A deep sigh and Wesker pitched his gaze toward the ceiling. "It was during college, the two ladies living across from me in the dormitories—…"

"Okay, I've heard enough." Jill refilled her glass. "Sounds like the opening of a porno."

"We are spending way too much time together when Captain Wesker is talking about having a three way." Brad mumbled.

Chris's face was in both of his hands as he laughed.

Stare shifted to Jill, Wesker shrugged. "I was eighteen. Nobody would have passed that opportunity up."

Across from them, Joan leaned in to speak quietly to Brad.

"They're fuckin'."

Brad just nodded.

"You really think those two are?" Sleeves rolled up, Brad dunked another glass in soapy water.

"Who?" Joan asked, hanging her dress from a knob to one of the cabinets. Dressed down in a sweater and jeans, she felt a million times better.

"You know who. Captain Perfect and his best gal pal?"

She grinned, wiping down the glossy top of the bar. "They are or they're going to. It was pretty obvious when she reacted like that." She looked over to Brad. "Nobody is perfect, though."

Glasses set on the rack, Brad swiped the bar towel from her to dry his hands. "That could have been us."

Arms stretching above her head, the woman sighed. "True. We would have been forced to sneak around, only able to see one another during graveyard shifts. Screwing in your aircraft. So romantic…"

Brad snorted. "I'll talk to her about it. It might save her some headache."

"I thought this was strip poker." Forest said, taking a look at his hand.

"Well, the only one here who would want to see something like that is Richard…" Ed muttered.

Richard let out a chuckle. "None of you are my type, thanks for thinking of me though, asshole." A pearly grin appeared across his face when everyone else at the table chuckled. "Callin' it… Oh what the fuck, Brad."

"That's like the fourth hand, dude!" Joseph groaned, cards dropped on the table. "He's cheatin'."

"I don't cheat," The brunette sounded hurt when he gathered up his chips.

"Yeah, Joe. He doesn't cheat. We'd know if he ever did. Joan would be on CNN screaming she'd toss him in the wood chipper again." Forest replied with a smirk, finishing off his beer. "How long have you two been together?"

Brad cut the deck, shrugging. "Little over two years now?" His brow furrowed at the expressions all around. "What? Why?"

"When are you going to ask her?" Kenneth reached down, picking up his lighter.

"Ask her what?"

Everyone sighed.

"Ask her to marry you, dumbass." Joseph tossed off his bandana, raking a hand through bright red hair. "Have you even looked at a ring?"

"He's got one…" Forest leaned in, squinting… leaning in more when Brad recoiled. "…He's carrying it right now."

"How the fuck do you do that, man?" Vickers couldn't even react before Joseph had snaked a hand into the pocket of his vest, fishing out a box.

"Jackpot, boys. Ahhhhh! Hey!" His hand jerked to avoid a swipe at it. "We get to see it before you give it to her."

"It might be a Ring Pop and that's not going to work, chief," Kenny replied, the ash from his cigar flicked into the tray on the table. His brows lifted when the box was offered over to him. "Mmm… that's pretty nice."

Forest wrinkled his nose when he looked at the ring tucked in white satin lining. He let the box go when it was snatched. "You couldn't afford this. Are you a drug lord now?"

"It was my great grandmother's. Lay off." Brad replied, tucking the box away. He went right back to shuffling the cards.

"It's a nice ring, Brad," Richard added, trying to lower the temperature of the room. "When do you think you'll ask?"

"I'm asking her at the jazz festival."

"That's not until September," Ken commented, confused.

Cracking open another bottle, Joseph snorted. "He's going to need until then to get up the courage."

Dealing out cards, Brad was fuming. "Joseph, when was the last time you went on a date?"

"I can't go on dates, Brad. You know your mom gets jealous." He and his chair suddenly went over when Brad put him in a headlock.

Forest's jaw dropped.

Ed cackled up a storm. "Get 'im Vickers!"

"Can you guys stop so we can play some fuckin' cards?" Richard asked, picking up his drink as the cards, chips, and table went toppling over. "…Nevermind."

The house was older but it had a new roof. The white picket fence needed some work, grass growing tall along it. One of the windows in the back had a crack in it. A new coat of paint needed to be slapped on the south side. It would need some love, but they had plenty to spare.

Sunliner in the driveway, Joan pulled another box out of the backseat. She left it in a room painted in a cozy rose color. It would be Jenna's room soon. She took her time walking to the back door, turning about to gaze around.

A house, a real house.

She was going to get everything she wanted after all. A glass of sun tea in tow, it took some jiggling to get the back door open. "I think that needs fixed too."

Brad looked up from the lawnmower turned on its side. "Same with this, thanks babe." He drained the glass in seconds. It was unusually hot for late spring. "I think I'm just going to call a landscaper. This isn't working."

"Jack said it worked last week. Who knows…" Sitting down next to him, she took a moment to admire the ring on her hand. It always brought a little smile to her lips. So did he. "I'm just happy I get to wake up every morning and kiss you while living on Kiss Street."

Brad's turn for an eyeroll. "Cheese ball." His attempt to get away was met with a firm grip on his shirt and lips stealing a kiss.

"Just think... we'll be married next October."

He smiled fondly. "I can't wait."

Red pooled between them.

"I love you, Brad. I… We had a good life together." She worked the ring off her finger, offering it up. He still had a chance. She wasn't going to let that memory die with her.

He hesitated, then tucked the ring into his vest. "I love you too…" There was no arguing with her at this point. Her hands in his, he kissed her knuckles one last time.

She was already gone.

He wept in the dark for her.

[earning-money-while-travel]

traveling mailbox - is this a normal experience?

I'm currently using Traveling Mailbox. I was finally able to get my passport renewed and my passport was mailed to my PMB with TM with the tracking number for the passport envelope showing that the passport was delivered on Saturday 08/22 @ 12:55pm.

Given the extreme importance of this letter, I sent TM an email on Sunday evening 08/23/20 asking when I should expect to see a scan of this letter in my TM inbox. TM replied that if the letter was received over the weekend then the letter would be "shipped to us" on Monday and that I should see the scan in my TM inbox by Thursday 08/27/20 at the latest.

I sent a followup email on Saturday evening 08/29/20 stating that I didn't have a scan of that letter in my TM inbox yet. TM replied this morning asking for the sender and recipient address that was used for the passport letter so I replied with that info. This seems like a lot of work just to get a letter and I've had a similar back and forth experience on 2 test letters that I sent to my TM PMB in the past.

Is this a pretty typical experience with TravelingMailbox in particular or similar mail services in general? Maybe this is more of an issue with the Denver location since others seem to have reported good experiences with TM. However, I need a consistent and reliable service irrespective of branch location. Have you found that it's better to have anything of importance that you need to receive sent to a friend or family member and TM should only be used essentially as a spam folder for unimportant letters?

List of Digital Nomad Visa, Long Stay Options, and Visa Hacks Rated

I got a little frustrated with sites listing "DN visas" and all them being in the Caribbean with a $2k fee and $70k minimum income, so I did some research and organized the visa list below.

This is a full list of every reasonable visa option I could find for digital nomads (and a few unreasonable ones), rated it by practicality (1-5) on ease of getting the visa, fees, desirability of the location, cost of living, and how the location generally resonates with DNs and there needs.

There were 45 visa options I could find 6+ month visas or good short term visa situations, with about 13 being all around reasonable DN visas, 4 good visa hacks or worthwhile short term visas, and 6 DN programs with legislation being passed by countries and potential long stay/DN/Remote Worker Visas.

Working from gorgeous Guatepe, Colombia.

I’ve had dreams of working remotely for almost a decade. 5 years ago I was laid off from the best paying job I’d ever had and went into a deep depression when I couldn’t find another gig. I decided I should go back to school and finally finish my degree. What I thought would take at most 14 months took 2 1/2 years but I finally graduated last December. Got a job the day I graduated that was ok but I got tired of living where I was. I put myself out there 9 months later and got the offer I’ve dreamed of. I start my remote gig on Monday and am literally on my way to Medellin, Colombia to meet a friend right now. I can’t believe it’s finally happening.

Edit: Thank you all for the upvotes. This is only me second post on Reddit (still trying to figure it out). I’ll answer a few of the questions I received below.

Checking out Croatia for our next DN destination and I’m thinking… yes. Any tips for making the move?

Nea Fokaia, Halkidiki, Greece - shoulder season is the best!

Favorite destinations that are comparably ‘cheap’ given their regions, or places that are just generally affordable?

For context, I’m still in the early stages of my digital nomad journey and am still on a relatively low budget (ideally close $1k monthly). Eventually, I’d like to have the freedom of being able to go to whichever destination I choose, but for the timebeing my goal is to travel and see as much of the world’s different regions and cultures as possible, while sticking to the most affordable cities,

Read More:https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/ik25vn/traveling_mailbox_is_this_a_normal_experience/

[parvuls]

19/54 :)

19 - summer camp / 54 - secret relationship

now. the first thing that came to mind is camp sweetgum. so i’m gonna leave this here in case it strikes your fancy and also because it’s great.

but i’m a sucker for extensive worldbuilding, so let’s settle in for the long haul, kay? this is 1.7k of plot outlining. you can see why it takes me four months to write fics.

eric bittle. age 15. moved to madison for high school, quit figure skating, joined a no contact hockey team. coach is happier but not happy, so he suggests an idea: hockey summer camp. yes contact. it’s in minnesota (coach’s not thrilled about the yankees, but there are no hockey camps anywhere south; he checked), and it’ll give junior an opportunity to meet some kids with similar interests. athletic interests, that is. and there’s still a lake and extracurricular activities, “so it’s just like the camp up by lake oconee, y’know? where the kids braid friendship bracelets and whatnot. except with sports.”

eric is... less enthused. but it’s not actually a suggestion so much as a decision and coach just moved across the state for him because he managed to get himself stuck in a closet overnight (eric’s mindset, at this age, is perhaps not the most healthy), so he says yes.

jack zimmermann. age 20. assistant coached a peewee team for the year and is not ready to spend a third summer in his parents’ house in montréal when all his former teammates from the q are returning home during off-season. his boss tells him about this summer camp in minnesota that’s looking for experienced counselors -- “it’s not a prospect camp, mostly for fun, so the boys there aren’t headed for the league. you should go. talk to some kids above the age of ten.”

jack’s pretty okay with never talking to anyone over ten again, but he’s got no other options and bob starts mentioning going to bonding fishing trips just the two of them, so he send an application.

um. he’s jack zimmermann. he was supposed to go first in the draft. the guy in charge of hiring for the summer probably rubbed his eyes in shock when he saw the email and headed straight to bed because he thought he was delusional from lack of sleep. jack gets the job.

so, like. listen. samwell men’s hockey team? they’re not your usual hockey playing dude bros. eric gets to camp that july and he’s still all long dancer’s muscles from regionals and even lighter weight from usual because he was on a strict diet and he’s got a southern accent and narrow shoulders and he doesn’t like when you slap him on the back. he’s not a hit with the local boys. but you know who does like him immediately? adam birkholtz, who’s off the ushl for the summer and wanted to play some fun hockey and get paid doing it. is it legal? who fucking cares, man.

does eric like adam? uhh. adam is 6′4 and touchy feely and eric’s got undiagnosed ptsd, so. no. but it works out after a while, because adam is relentless and also cannot stand most of the other counselors, and this tiny kid is great.

you can see how it goes: jack does not. get. bittle. it should be mentioned that jack also does not get adam, and adam does not especially like jack, so they stay out of each other’s way, but bittle is in jack’s morning slot. he skates like he was born doing it but every time one of the other players so much as looks in his direction he freezes like a deer. now, this isn’t the ncaa, jack’s got nothing to lose if this kid sucks in hockey, but he also doesn’t make friends and he’s got nothing to do with his day except read (he reads. a lot). and he likes challenges. so he starts paying attention.

the first time he asks eric to stay after morning slot’s over, eric looks so terrified jack’s usual awkward conversation skills reduce him to single-word grunting. but he gets the point across: they’re gonna practice yes-contact. for reasons. eric’s all like, “oh -- oh, no, it’s okay! i’m in a no contact co-ed team, it’s fine, this is a summer thing, really, sir, no need --” and jack’s like, did this kid just call me sir, i am twenty, but is also too awkward to take it back. he’s invested now. they’re gonna practice.

and practice they do. it goes badly before it even remotely starts getting better. eric looks like he’s gonna start crying every time and jack does. not. get him (!!!) but eventually adam finds out and talks to eric about it and encourages him (very, very gently, god, this kid is the shit but he’s definitely got some issues 19-years-old-adam is not equipped to handle) to give it a shot.

and then it does get better. jack likes having a purpose, guiding someone through an improvement process (jack’s therapist, wisely, does not tell him that this is the best thing he could’ve done for himself, because jack is... not there yet). eric (very, very slowly, god, he also should start seeing a therapist) stops fearing every jock who gets near him with the combined effort of adam’s incessant friendly advances and jack’s daily practices, and can even take some checks. gentle ones. but it’s something.

and then summer’s over. eric and adam trade numbers. eric and jack… do not, but jack probably says something like, “eat more protein, bittle,” and eric’s not even that offended, so it’s fine.

guess what? he goes back the next summer. coach is over the moon (he expresses this in a twist of the mustache and a firm shoulder clap). adam is also back, talks a lot about quitting the ushl after his next season and maybe going to college somewhere. jack is back because… uh, well, no one’s really sure why jack is back. he’s going to samwell in early august, right after camp ends. jack tells himself he’s easing himself back into hockey in a low-pressure environment and totally isn’t looking forward to seeing what a year has done to eric bittle.

which is, physically speaking, not a lot, honestly. eric’s firmer now, a lot more thigh and bicep muscles, but still narrow. it’s not collegiate hockey, it’s a high school team, alright? gosh. but he’s less jumpy and smiles at jack when their eyes meet and he’s babbling with adam a lot more than he did last year (they texted all year long, and it was nice having a friend, even if it was long distance), so it’s cool. jack makes him do morning practices again and he flinches less and less. they’re like. friends. maybe. jack hasn’t had any friends in three years and the last one was parse, so he’s a little rusty. it’s not a very traditional friendship.

they part ways again in august, and eric wishes jack good luck in school. jack sticks his hands in his pockets to avoid fiddling with his hat and has no idea how one says goodbye, and like, he’s not gonna keep in touch with this sixteen year old kid in his freshman year of college, okay? so. so. but he’s gonna like -- uh -- miss him. maybe. sorta. don’t tell anyone.

eric hugs him goodbye. jack doesn’t even take both hands out of his pockets to hug back, he’s so shocked.

the year after that, none of them come back. jack’s in college, he just got the c. adam’s getting ready for his freshman year. eric’s over the age limit for camp. it just doesn’t happen.

but the year after that, he gets a hockey scholarship for samwell. and it’s yes contact. and he hasn’t been checked in two years, and last time it was in a controlled environment near a minnesota lake, and he’s scared. and the guy from camp (the one who woke up that morning two years before and realized jack zimmermann indeed wanted to work at their camp) offers him a summer job, counseling skating lessons. and he says yes. for money, and to be ready for a season of real hockey.

also that year, jack’s had a bad season. parse won the cup, and smh didn’t even make it to the frozen four, and he feels shitty about everything. and coaching always made him feel better. so he goes back to camp, for one summer.

let’s set the scene: eric. age 18. taller, stronger, determined. in need of a haircut, but in possession of very short shorts. is headed to a liberal school and finally knows he’s gay and refuses to care about what the other boys think (camp has done wonders for his early mindset development; canon bitty, probably, was not as confident at this point). he’s a counselor now, fellas!

jack. age 23. not taller, yes stronger, has been friends with shitty knight for a year and knows a little more about human interaction (truly a little, but still). is looking to relax for the summer before kicking ass next season (and attracting scouts and joining the nhl and winning three cups before 30 and proving everyone wrong, but. first, relaxing and playing some hockey. jack zimmermann’s version of relaxing is different than other people’s).

they’re sharing a cabin in the counselors area. there are two beds, obviously, this is not that trope, and it’s not even bunk beds, but: they were cabinmates. oh my god, they were cabinmates.

the plot, obviously, follows as one would expect. eric is definitely not a kid anymore, is all tanned skin and strong calves and short shorts, and jack is only human. jack is all firm chest and pale eyes and hideous yellow shoes, and eric is disgusted, but is also only human. and jack is on summer break, and eric is not out yet, and so when they drink some beers one night and make bad attempts at actually braiding some friendship bracelets and jack’s tongue pokes out in concentration and eric bursts out laughing, jack has to kiss him. right? right. It’s not like eric would tell anyone. see closeted reasoning above.

what’s the catch? oh, no, they don’t get caught. they share a cabin! everything’s going swell. it’s just -- jack came there to avoid thinking about his bad season. eric came there to avoid thinking about his upcoming year of collegiate hockey. so… neither of them mentions… captaining the samwell hockey team. or. heading for the samwell hockey team. they talk about literally everything else (country music; undeveloped political opinions; daddy issues; the tv show arthur; american vs. canadian thanksgiving; one very late night conversation about homophobia in pro sports), but not about college. so neither of them knows.

oops?

[stone-man-warrior]

December 4, 2020: 4:36 pm:

https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1334908215751024642

A wide array of demolition experts were required, engineers were varied, and many.

"Fire in the hole!" was shouted by one crew.

"Timber!" exclaimed another.

"Head-ache!" was heard throughout the area.

and...

"Fore!" was the last thing that was said at the event. Later, at the wake, Saint Barbara was seen hoisted from a passing helicopter, clutching a staff.

https://twitter.com/CatholicSat/status/1334878612466569216

==========================

In other news:

Kenny Wayne Sheppard was featured again in an encore performance interview discussion about a Jimmy Hendrix guitar riff, was first presented by Premier Guitar (PG) during the same time that Twitter was still a Beta Twitter, in around 2008 or so. The interview is presented as new, fresh, while in reality, it’s old, stale.

https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/31101-hooked-kenny-wayne-shepherd-on-jimi-hendrixs-voodoo-child-slight-return?goal=0_93db14e670-5fc2cb0a63-65512397&mc_cid=5fc2cb0a63&mc_eid=941be062ce

Shepherd: He has a Hellcat. a Virgin White Hellcat. A car that can do wheelies by factory design and intent, comes with a Pit-Crew Tool Box filled with tools and spare suspension & steering parts, and, some additional Pizza Cutter front racing wheels for the track, all for just a little more than 100K. Remote ignition, standard.

Those chairs there: Play the turn around Kenny talks about. He is talking about how a guitar riff talks. A talking guitar riff is noted by Kenny, literally, and figuratively noted. The talking guitar riff is one that was made famous by a black man, who played a right handed guitar, upside down, and backwards, left handed, with strings reversed. I am feeling that Kenny wants to play the turnaround on the Twelve Barr Blues.

Very subtle message there from Kenny Wayne Shepherd.

Those two guilded chairs, in the garage, where the White Virgi Hellcat is at, are what you need to turn around. Just one of them. Arrange the two chairs such that the Arm Rests are touching, a Arrrrmmm rest handshake there. From above, Bird's Eyes Maple view, the two chairs form a letter S when arranged correctly.

(Saturn & Jupiter will be one degree apart in the knight sky.)

The S is a Grommet female terror soldier. She has a gauge piercing between her vaginal and anal cavity. (garage ideas here) The pierced gauge is usually plugged with a inserted grommet, for feminine highgene, while it is removed, or, a specially customized Grommet is inserted there depending on the kind of attack plan the Grommet terror soldier is to carry out.

Kenny says: "Turn the Grommets around", or, “Make Grommets”, or some other message about Grommet Soldiers, and PG drives the message. See John Bohlinger.

What does it mean?

Idunno.

I do know that the news about Saturn & Jupiter appearance in the knight sky with just one degree of space between is the "taint" in the sky.

737 MAX Airplane Grommets all over the place, thousands of them, releasing gas. That is what the Grommet is for. The inserted Grommet that also has a donut hole within, serves as a place where the nitrous gas release tube of the rectally holstered nitrous tank, "crosses" over from one cavity to the other. The human female Grommet soldier sounds like a frog when the apparatus is used outdoors. Many Grommets hiding in a wooded area, sound like many frogs. In a city environment, many Grommet soldiers all in a line at an event near a flood drain in a curb, also sound like many frogs. The frog sounds that are produced. are searched for by people who are nearby, they hear the frogs, and want to see the frogs. There are no frogs though, there are Grommet terror soldiers. There are swordsmen hiding in the darkness where the Frog Grommets are playing their tune.

The story about the two planets is a way to say to "heat the frying pan by one degree". Frog in a Frying Pan terror attack is done, Kenny called it, news media made it happen.

It could be a much bigger event than a Grommet in the woods making frog sounds while releasing gas to lure  victims into a creek area in the night to search for frogs. It could be a Boeing Bouncing Bullfrog of 737 MAX overhead attack to assist many ground soldier swordsmen. Bouncers at The Club while Rikky Riccardo is playing Babaloo. "Lucy... You got some Splainin' to do?" On Fri, Dec 4, 2020 at 2:15 PM Premier Guitar <pg@premierguitar.com> wrote:

<snip>

===================================================

Grommet Math, one more time:

The Grommet’s are sometimes called “YoSoY”, with that arrangement of capital Y, S and lower case o.

Yo = Frontwards; Forward

S = The Grommet itself, a plug installed in the Septum that exists between the vagina and anal cavity of the female, nitrous gas armed, Grommet terror soldier.

oY = Backwards, Yo.

The plug is removed sometimes, is modified to produce desired sound effects, and other effects that are beyond what I know, and is useful for releasing a very subliminal and primal odor, one that is not supposed to be there, but is there, when the Grommet attack happens. That right there causes a lot of problems for marked men at the attack area. The odor of the female is there, so is the nitrous gas, mixed with Medazolam.

Modern warfare is advanced with old proven means, with the addition of modern technology.

Not all of the Grommet soldiers are gauged that way by choice. Many are kidnapped US Citizen victims who’s parents were killed, then were trained as disposable terror soldier captive slaves. There are many kidnapped child terror soldiers taken from the schools. The schools taken over, serve as terror training centers. Children receive a specialized education at the schools, and the schools are protected by the terror army. They don’t look like terror training centers, they look like public schools, and are maintained the same as public schools have always been maintained, with some modifications that could be found if only there were some people willing to watch the baby.

YoSoY is the Grommet soldier in written form, or graphic form adaptations, such as the two guilded chairs in Kenny Wayne Shepherd’s Hellcat Virgin White Garage where those chairs make the S septum when the VooDoo Chile voice is spoken the way the Shepherd says to say it. “Slight Return“.

The video was presented originally more than ten years ago when Oregon was slaughtered, people all killed and replaced with Canadian terror army soldiers, thus, the Slight Return of the VooDoo Chile is important for repeat of the same attack that already worked successfully in Oregon, is commanded to commence again, to take over other regions.

Where? Everywhere, that’s where.

When? now and ongoing for fifty years, this is the final blow, the Boeing Bounce at the Club. French North American Republic Territory comes next, replaces the geographic region that is currently occupied by Canada, USA, and Mexico. A new nation. It’s a Communist Kingdom. Mitt Romney is scheduled as first King, Justin Trudeau as first Prime Minister. That leadership arrangement may have changed, maybe not.

The Romney/Trudeau arrangement is not difficult to see that Romney is to be presented as a Front Man for the show, a magician, has a lot of hokus pokus up his Mormon sleeve, and can summon a lot of “Dark Side” Mormons to do whatever needs doing in the “New Salem” FNART Capital, wherever it may be. While Trudeau is the Queen‘s Pet, the real power, has the teeth of HMS Trudeau behind him. The French part is a nod to Quebec.

===================================================

There is a lot to look at today on the Twitter news feed of terror commands. Do your own research to find connecting stories about overhead ideas. There, you may find clues that could be used to stop a massive attack with poison gasses delivered from the sky, sea, and ground. Gas that precedes and assists sword wielding terror army soldiers who are well equipped with tools and vehicles that are designed for road building, but are used as weapons, detour, delay and distraction, and housecleaning afterwords, associated with the aerial attack from above.

I just included a small glimpse of the terror comm, there is much to look at today, and a lot of that is distraction, cover and confusion service provided by newsmedia to slow efforts to stop the attack of Corona Virus/COVID.

===================================

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bohlinger_(musician)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_Guitar

https://www.premierguitar.com/

Use a lighter, burn candles. The gas they bring is flammable. Light them up and watch as they burst into bits, and launch into orbit like a rocket.

End terror report: 5:19 pm.

============================================

Bonus (see additional comments below in the comments area) 6:58 pm:

Donald Trump and other Verified Accounts have been referring to “Tense” conditions about some different things presented on Twitter, this is only one clue about the Ford Bronco for 2021 of many that are available to find if you look for them. It’s a big deal. The Bronco serves many uses, but the most important one is that it’s a reincarnation of a Land Rover Range Rover w/three factory roofs in 1990 or so. See the Bronco as a Crowning Achievement for terror soldiers from Canada, lead by SAG and Britain. See it as the horse on which a Royal Canadian Mounted Police is perched, in command at US State Police Offices throughout USA. That will get you started.

https://www.ford.com/suvs/bronco-sport/?searchid=10524085194|108057202550||brcspr-ret-n-200714&ef_id=Cj0KCQiA2af-BRDzARIsAIVQUOfHBxJyrh6XJ2y2Vqt1njqxPHmbEC8nplF9A13CEDCOj9ud2hTFv5YaAjUYEALw_wcB:G:s&s_kwcid=AL!2519!3!447747038581!e!!

https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1282842515037716480

<snip>

Make Canadian and British Geldings. Start with the Pope, he has all the right tools for the job. Boris will show you the way, a guide.

=====================================

Additional 12-5-2020: 11:59 am:

These young people are super talented.

This tune was posted to YouTube on Thursday 12-3-2020. Close your eyes, and give a listen.

Music industry producers use these kinds of talented people to advance a message. They have no choices but to go with the flow.

Right now in 2020, we are, and have been experiencing a black hole where the good music used to be, these guys fill the void, the producers know it.

They have been inserted into the terror time-line. These guys are used as some kind of small place holder to say messages about the advance progression towards the aerial Boeing gas attack we are about to receive. They, along with the insertion of Greta Thunberg, are like the minute markers on a clock.

minutes.

Thunberg fits in with a pirate motif. She showed up in USA, by boat, unchecked, from Europe, at a time when Guatemala Caravan people were being tossed into captivity at containment centers, separated children from parents, families broken apart, help captive, while Greta Thunberg waltzed right in during the same set, at the same show, at the same concert, at the same venue... USA.

So, the bus came by sea. The victims were taken on land, far away from where the sea bus landed on shore.

Greta Van Fleet has been around a little longer than the Thunberg Sea Bus, as far as I can tell, but maybe not. I remember Greta Thunberg from the Beta Twitter in 2008, but I don’t recall knowing of this other Greta, Van Fleet, until around 2013 or so.

I am bringing this into this entry because of the timeline, and the Amazon Prime 100,000 Renault Delivery vans that are deployed now, doing nitrous gas refill work for mobile terror soldiers on attack on location, globally.

There is a Trinity Rule that I can see developing in the reveal, and that Grata Van Fleet tune has an eerie sort of Apocalypse now kind of Jim Morison sort of The Doors vibe happening in it... I can almost smell the napalm in the morning after hearing “The Age of Machine” today.

I like the song, the band members are talented, they are young, and are being used to send the message of the Producers.

The Trinity Rules I am seeing develop are in that there are two Greta’s, each one has it’s own thing going on that is of interest, there is another Greta out there somewhere that will show up to satisfy the Trinity terror rules. It will a Ghost Ship though. So, you take two Greta’s, one came by sea, one is on stage singing songs with interesting titles, there is a traffic song they do, and some others, interesting videography from Greta Van Fleet, and Greta Thunberg is also an interesting videography, is also “On Stage”, just a different stage, an abstract one.

The idea about the Fleet in the name, combined with that catamaran, and that the band plays a song called the Safari Song, and other small connecting dots, suggests that the connection to the Trinity for the Ghost Ship to come soon, is contained in a “Fleet”. A Fleet of Boeing Grounded 737 MAX. That is worthy of inclusion here with the Ford Bronco for 2021, in a round-a-bout, mysterious way.

I am still trying to reach US and Global security people with this part of the entry from yesterday. The timing I have in seeing what I saw to write about is matching the advance of the terror comm in explainable ways... I need help, I need more brain power to unravel all of the small parts of the terror puzzle that GCHQ built with help from SAG Writers Guild.

Please help.

I like this song too, I think that place in the video is called “Vasquez Rocks”, along the 15 Freeway between San Bernardine, and Victorville, where a very long train is almost always on the tracks on the opposite side of the 15 there.

When the Curtain Falls ~Greta Van Fleet

What kind of curtain do you suppose could happen?

“Cocktails... cocktails...”

[hanniebvnnie]

Operation Miroh

trigger warnings: none

written + edited by: 🥺

pairings: hwang hyunjin x oc

summary: A string of murders lead Detective Yang Nami down the winding streets of Seoul’s maze district, searching for the Vampire Slayer. But what happens when her digging leads her far closer to home than she could have ever thought? What happens when it’s someone she’s supposed to trust?

Prologue

There are lots of rules when it comes to vampires.

First, they must be invited into a house before they can enter. I'm not entirely sure why--they aren't usually portrayed as the most polite of people, not when they're plunging their fangs into your neck and sucking you dry. But it's a rule, and they have to abide by it.

Second, they must avoid certain things such as sunlight, garlic and anything remotely holy. Supposedly, it's because they're devil incarnates and anything too potent or bright or religious can harm them. I just think it's because they have weird allergies. Kind of like how I'm allergic to oranges, which is really inconvenient because they look like they taste good. It sucks.

Finally--not that it's the last rule, but it's the final most obvious one--they can only be killed by certain methods. Some of these include the use of silver, fire (they're insanely flammable), decapitation and a stake to the heart--the most famous and popularly used of them all.

All of this is purely hypothetical, of course. Just myths formulated by people with better things to do than tell stories of bloodsuckers and the threats they pose to us poor, helpless prey.

At least, that's what I thought.

I had read enough stories and watched enough movies to know the basic rules about vampires, but not enough to blindly believe my boss when he told me they're real.

"You're kidding, right?"

He's kidding. He has to be. Maybe he's crazy, or maybe this is a prank.

I searched Captain Park's face for signs of amusement or maybe some sort of twitch--a crack in his demeanor to tell me that he wasn't being serious. His face remained completely flat.

I glanced around the room for cameras, wondering if I was on some kind of prank show, or that one TV program What Would You Do?. It would have been a really shit prank, because I was definitely not buying it, but you never know. Maybe they'd run out of ideas. I might have been payed more for not falling for something so stupid.

The same security camera that had been in the office since I began working there blinked back at me, red light flashing. I'd seen security footage from it before--for a security camera at a literal police station, you'd think that it'd have better resolution. Apparently not.

Which meant it wasn't a prank show, at least not one that valued it's camera quality. Which meant my boss was crazy.

He stared at me silently, not bothering to answer my question. Yep, definitely crazy.

"I'm serious, Detective Yang." He did look serious. Since when did he start taking acting classes? I thought. I mean, I took drama for 3 years and even I wouldn't be able to keep a straight face after spilling that level of bullshit.

"So you're telling me," I said, picking at my finger nails, "That not only there's been a series of killings around this area, but that they're all down to Vampires."

"A Vampire. And yes, we don't know for sure, but that's what it looks like."

"And what evidence do you have that it's a-" I waved my hands around in the air, as if summoning some common sense for the man. "-An actual Vampire and not just, I don't know, a regular serial killer. Which would be so much easier to deal with."

He clasped his calloused hands together and leaned back in his chair. He had an air of distaste surrounding him as if I was the one who was speaking crazy, but maybe that was because he always looked like he'd just smelled something revolting. Wrinkled skin scrunched up unlike the smooth sheets of paper stacked on his desk; lips pursed as if he'd sucked on a lemon for four hours; small, black eyes squinted despite the large, square glasses balanced on his nose. He had a habit of looking down on people even though he was 5'6 at most. Most people would describe him as intimidating but, to be fair, most people hadn't been told by him that Vampires exist.

"I understand your disbelief." Yeah, no shit. "I, too, was skeptical at first. But the evidence I've been shown convinced me that this is no joke. I know you like to believe that we humans know everything about our world, but the truth is that we simply cannot. You're going to look into this case whether you believe it or not."

Fighting to ward off the compelling urge to sigh and tell him again how stupid this is, I nodded curtly. "So I just have to find this..." God, I can't believe this is actually happening. "...Vampire. And bring them in."

A failed attempt at a smile passed over his stern features. He must have thought he'd won. "Precisely. I'm glad you're picking up on this."

"Can I think about it over the weekend and get back to you?"

I definitely would not think about it and I definitely would get back to him--to tell him that I was absolutely not doing it.

But of course, the universe seemed to be against me all of a sudden. Or maybe it was just him. "No, you can not," he stated plainly. "I've given you this case and you must take it. It's that simple."

"But Sir, there are loads of other Detectives who can do this job. I'm sure there are more... believable cases you can give me," I argued, trying my hardest not to sound in control and totally not like I was pleading him.

He leaned forward and his chair whined under his weight. "You're right." Wait, really? "There are plenty of other Detectives who can do this job and do it far better than you can. However, I am asking you to do this, and like the fair and just man I am-" (I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes at that one and, instead, just stared at the side of his desk). "-I will give you a choice: You do this case or you're out."

"Hold on," I began, gaze snapping up from the corner of his desk to those hard, black eyes, "I'm out as in... fired? For real?"

He nodded nonchalantly, not a word slipping past his thin lips. You have to be kidding me.

"That's ridiculous. This entire thing is ridiculous."

"I'm giving you a choice. Make it." He shrugged.

It wasn't really a choice, just the illusion of one. I'd worked under this man for two years by that point. He knew how much I loved that job and all that it meant to me. He knew how much I threw into it. He knew everything I'd given up to be there. And now I had to choose between discrediting my career with a Vampire hunt or losing it altogether. Options, options, options.

"You know what my answer is already."

The corners of his mouth curled up into a smirk. "I do." He reached for a pencil with a sharpened, pointy edge and twirled it around his fingers. "But I want to hear it from you."

God, I hate this man. Trying to hide my seething rage, I gritted my teeth and swallowed. "I'll take the case."

He barely reacted, just continued to play with the pencil. That doesn't mean I didn't notice the triumphant, cocky glint in his eye, though. "You are more like me than you think, Nami."

I looked at him curiously. That couldn't possibly be true. The only similarity that we shared is both working there, and we didn't even do the same job. So yeah, apart from the massive age gap, gender difference and literally everything else about us, we were totally the same.

"How so?" I asked, not sure if I wanted to know the answer or not.

"We're both intelligent, dedicated, hard-working." And not the slightest bit modest, clearly. "And like me, you know your place in this world and you will stubbornly defend it." He dropped the pencil onto the desk and it landed with a muffled clatter, then rolled until it hit a framed photograph of him with who I could only assume were his wife and two children. It reminded me that there must have been some remnants of a kind, young man beneath his cold, commanding demeanor--in the worst way possible, though.

He reached over to pick up a file and flicked through it until he settled on a page. I watched as his eyes scanned the paper. Just as I thought he was about to provide me with some tangible evidence of the wild claims he'd made that meeting, he spoke; "You are dismissed."

I found myself glued to my seat, my limbs weighing me down like anchors. "That's it? Are you not giving me a file on this?"

He glanced up from what he was reading for a brief second before continuing. "I'll email the main pieces of evidence to you digitally. You will be given a file tomorrow morning, once all of the necessary data has been compiled."

I didn't reply. Was I supposed to leave just like that? This man had told me that he thought the serial killer rampaging our region was a Vampire and that he was willing to fire me if I didn't take the case, all in the span of 30 minutes. And I was supposed to just soak in all that information with barely an ounce of explanation or evidence? Apparently so.

Hesitantly, I stood from my chair. A searing pain shot through my back, reminding me that I'd been sitting in a wooden chair for the past half an hour.

Captain Park regarded me for a second as I crossed the room. Hand on the doorknob, I faltered, waiting for him to say something, and when he didn't, I left the room, shutting the door behind me as gently as possible--despite the desire to slam it in frustration.

It was almost dark by the time I got home. The cerulean blue sky was stained with bright white dots, and the streets were bathed in the orange, artificial glow of the streetlights. With flushed cheeks, a running nose and icy hands, I fumbled with my keys until my apartment door unlocked, making a mental note to take a scarf or gloves in to work the next day.

I had stayed later than usual that night, finishing off any write-ups and looking through evidence relevant to a few other cases. After the meeting, I hadn't seen the Captain around, but that was for the best. I might not have been able to control my instincts for much longer.

Warmth swept through my body as I stepped in to the living room. I discarded my satchel on the floor and shrugged off my coat, folding it over the back of the couch. It was unusually empty and unusually quiet. Just as I went to search the apartment, a voice sounded from behind me.

"You're home late."

I whirled around to see Soyeon, leaning against the threshold where the living room and kitchen met. Her blonde bob was pulled into a short ponytail, revealing her pointed chin and signature smirk.

"I texted you," I said.

She retrieved her phone from her pocket and glanced at the screen, the blue light illuminating her face. "Oh, you did. Sorry, I didn't see. My phone is being weird at the moment."

"You gonna get it fixed?"

"Eventually."

I rounded the couch and plopped onto it, the cushions sinking beneath my weight. "Where's Jeongin?"

"In bed," she answered, following suit, "I think he has a cold."

"You should have told me, I would've brought some soup."

She waved her phone in the air as a reminder. "Again, dodgy phone. And it's alright, I got some anyway."

"Stupid school kids," I grumbled. I sighed and sunk further into the couch. Soyeon glanced over at me, concern gracing her features. "Bad day?"

I chuckled humourlessly. "Weird day."

"Not allowed to talk about it?"

I faced her and nodded. She repeated the action without a word of protest. It was different at first; Soyeon was always so eager to be involved in every part of my life, and when I told her that I couldn't disclose information about the cases I was working on for legal reasons, she got upset. But after a while, she understood that it was out of my control.

Instead, she extended an arm out to me. I shuffled closer and pressed myself into her side, inhaling her familiar scent of acrylic paint and chai tea.

"You must be tired," she mumbled.

I hummed in response, unable to muster up the energy to force words out. Her head leaned on mine, the way it always used to, except this time was an act of friendship rather than romance.

With every passing moment, my body grew weaker and my eyelids heavier, and after a while, I was unable to resist the tempting call of sleep.

[anonsally]

Days 101-158 of COVID-19 shelter-in-place

Reporting on things in general, not a daily report... and mostly on the recent stuff.

Since I stopped blogging about it, I’ve basically stopped taking a daily walk, even though I know it’s better for me if I do it. I think I’m spending more time working, maybe? Also, our hikes have gotten slightly less frequent--more like once every 2 weeks, and even then, we’ve had to ease up on how strenuous they are, because Wife’s knee is injured. I’ve been dancing a bit more, perhaps, but it’s all concentrated in 3 consecutive days of the week. 

The nation is metaphorically on fire, and my state is literally on fire. There are hundreds of wildfires caused by lightning, mostly in remote areas, and essentially uncontained. Firefighters are in short supply (partly because the crews of prisoners assigned to firefighting can’t work because of COVID-19 lockdown [firefighting is apparently a very desirable assignment, I guess because it’s an opportunity to be outside, though--infuriatingly--they cannot be hired as firefighters once they are released even if they have the training and experience]), and weather conditions are not helping. More lightning is expected tomorrow night. ...I feel a little like I have exhausted my capacity for worry and anxiety. I’m just... done. All of my anxiety (and I have a lot of it!) has already been allocated to things, and any further items requiring my anxiety are just out of luck.

Of course, wildfires also bring smoke, which makes outdoor exercise less appealing and, if the smoke is bad enough, actually a terrible idea. The regional parks are closed because of the extreme fire danger, making it impossible to take real hikes. 

Yesterday we ended up taking a walk in a municipal park--it was flat and short and easy, which was better for Wife’s knee anyway. We did have some good wildlife viewing at least, even though the park itself is only scenic because it’s right on the bay. We saw many adorable ground squirrels, including some juveniles and some chonkers; a lizard; a couple of house finches; a whole slew of grebes (hard to tell if they were Western grebes or Clark’s, but we think they were Clark’s? they might not have all been the same, though.); a brown pelican; and--excitingly--Wife saw harbor porpoises! I didn’t know they came into the bay, but apparently they do. Unfortunately for me, we had temporarily gone in different directions and by the time I joined her again, the porpoises had left--but several people had seen them, so I know Wife wasn’t making it up! We also saw people kite-surfing in the bay, and other people flying kites in the park, including a pretty amazing dragon kite.

Another good thing is that last weekend, before the fires, I did get to see a live performance, in person, in a park. Well, it was actually a dress rehearsal, because I was too late to get a “ticket” to the performances... but due to the smoke, they’ve had to cancel some performances, so I guess I lucked out in getting to see it at all. Anyway, the dancers and audience all wore masks; the audience consisted of about 8 people seated at least 6 feet apart (so we were in compliance with COVID-19 restrictions). The dancers were twins, one of whom in pre-pandemic times was a circus performer (some sort of aerial acrobat-dancer) in Europe and the other of whom is a dancer (and writer and extremely gifted clown and possibly also a teacher) here. They move very differently but are an amazing duo. I don’t think I can adequately describe the joy of seeing a partially improvised performance happening right in front of me, in real, 3-dimensional space, taking up most of my field of vision... after several months of hardly getting to see any performances, and the ones I did see being mediated by a screen. This felt like more of a connection, even though I couldn’t see the whole face of the dancers--but we are getting better at reading expressions from the eyes only, and of course dance is about communicating with the whole body. 

Wife and I made Kaiserschmarrn last night--an Austrian dish consisting of a sort of shredded eggy pancake served with plum compote made with Italian prune plums. Wife insisted that no other plums would be right, and that variety is hard to find here, but we managed to get hold of some so of course we had to seize the opportunity! We’ve also made ice cream several times, including a pretty delectable s’mores ice cream twice and a custard-style vanilla ice cream that wasn’t too sweet and was thus good with caramel sauce. 

[southeastasianists]

Surrounded by low-hanging clouds, mud and chickens in a village deep in the northern hills, a young woman tells me, “We are not Thai and we try not to be Thai. Sometimes I find myself talking to my family in Thai and I think, ‘No, try to be Lisu’”. Katima is an activist and member of one of Thailand’s myriad ethnic minorities. The Lisu people are spread across Thailand’s northern hills, deep into north-eastern Burma and southern China. They are a stateless people with language, culture, religion and practices that are completely distinct from any of the national states that envelope them.

In The Art of Not Being Governed, anthropologist James C. Scott makes the case that the Lisu (and many of the other ethnic minorities found in upland southeast Asia) are culturally and materially anti-state. Their fluidic language, culture, lack of alphabet and semi-nomadic living practices developed as a response to escape the reach of the states that would have had them as productive subjects who store grain, deliver taxes and provide soldiers. The Lisu and other similar groups were free of these obligations and were able to live under their own community governance. Scott argues that they have tried—consciously or not—to make themselves an unconquerable population.

Down the road sits the local government office. Built around 20 years ago, it marked the first formal governing presence in the lives of the local people. “When I was a kid, we used to have no hospitals, no schools, no government,” Katima tells me. Today the office is coated in flags and murals dedicated to the monarchy and nation-state. Those who work in the office are not locals, but Thai people brought in to govern the Lisu population. The same is true of the teachers in the local government schools: Thai civil servants assigned to teach the national curriculum. There has also been a concerted effort to build Buddhist temples in these more remote areas, which serve to supplement and eventually replace the animist spiritual beliefs held and practised by the local people.

This extension of the state is a clear and direct plan originating from 20th-century policies of ‘Thaification’ formulated by the central government. Beginning in 1933, dictator Plaek Phibunsongkhram oversaw a massive nationalist overhaul of the state’s relationship towards ethnic minorities. Notable policies included harshly enforcing the Thai language in the education system, reinforcing the relationship between the monarchy and population, and issuing the 12 Core Values—a kind of nationalist guide to ideal ‘Thai’ behaviour, ways of living and etiquette.

A negotiation

Even today, some Thai officials are scared to go into Lisu villages. There are stories of government officials being detained by angry villagers over land rights conflicts. “It’s definitely happened before,” a resident tells me. “The Lisu people came out with knives and bats and the Thai officials had to negotiate for their release.”

Another young Lisu woman, who wanted to go unnamed, describes government involvement in Lisu life as a negotiation. “We accept some of the things the government offers us, like schools, hospitals, temples. But we are still Lisu … The defiance is at home and in the community, where we will continue to do our customs and live our own way of life. We won’t really assimilate”. Most local people don’t feel the government has any influence over them.

In the north of the country, one of the state’s most effective arms is without a doubt the Royal Project, which was inaugurated in the late 60s as a means to replace opium crops grown in the hills by ethnic minorities with fruits and vegetables. The agricultural products produced for the Project are sold to a state-operated company which distributes them throughout the kingdom, leaving the locals dependent on the state for their material wellbeing.

In the early days, the Project was funded and supported by the United Nations. Besides crop replacement, an added and intentional benefit was the absorption of minorities into the activities of the Thai state, with the aim of keeping them from being drawn into the drug trade or from joining the communist insurgencies which were flaring up across Southeast Asia at the time.

Today Royal Project stations, which can be found throughout the hills, technically serve the purpose of agricultural research and development. They also act as laybys for domestic Thai tourists from urban areas—embassies of a kind to help central Thai people feel acquainted with the faraway hills. The outposts are a continuous source of soft power for the central government to ingratiate officials with the local population and absorb their activities into the nation-state.

Anti-state fight/flight

The same anti-state culture is exhibited by the Maniq people in the deep south of the country. The Maniq are nomadic hunter-gatherers who live in the heavily forested national parks near the Thai-Malay border. Like the Lisu, they have their own language, culture and no alphabet. But unlike the Lisu, the Maniq refuse to even negotiate, rejecting literally all aspects of modernity in favour of a far more traditional existence. Even today they live without electricity, permanent housing or any of the trappings of modern life. They find food from hunting with slingshots and poison-tipped blow darts, or by foraging in the forest.

Maniq groups typically consist of around 30 individuals. They live nomadically and communally with no concept of private property and without hierarchy. Their total population, confined solely to these hills, is estimated at only around 200.

Historically, the Maniq people have suffered tremendously at the hands of outsiders. There are two key words in Maniq language, which one quickly learns when spending time with them: ‘Maniq’ (‘us’) and ‘Hamiq’ (‘them’). “You are either of the forest or of the town. Maniq or Hamiq,” Speaker Kai tells me. (The role of Speaker in Maniq society is literally that of a communicator—a speaker for the group. As there is no hierarchy in the community, the Speaker is by no means a leader. Rather they listen to the many voices of the group and communicate the consensus with outsiders.)

The key to the Maniq’s survival so far has been their flight reflex. They’ve spent thousands of years literally running away from settled society, and are well known for being extremely wary of outsiders. But today that nomadic lifestyle, particularly as it concerns conceptions of private property, inevitably results in constant clashes with the Thai legal system. Their lack of formal identification runs parallel to Thailand’s great state bureaucracy. Meanwhile their seclusion and isolation leaves them ripe for exploitation from illegal loggers and poachers. Plantations and farmlands have also been squeezing the Maniq’s living area for centuries, shrinking it at an astronomical rate.

James C. Scott made the case that the geographic conditions of Southeast Asia historically made state building no easy task. Evidence of this historical lack of state reach is still clear in the lowlands of Thailand, where almost every region—even the provinces immediately outside of Bangkok—have a distinct dialect or even language. For example, many rural people in provinces such as Surin (450 kilometres from Bangkok in the flatlands of eastern Thailand) speak upwards of four languages: Khmer, Lao, Surin and the most recent addition, Thai. The people of Surin also have religious practices and cultural points of reference which are not found in mainstream Thai culture.

Such communities live as proof of a Thailand before it was ‘Thaified’—a place rich in diversity and bound by communal strength in local identities. But these communities are rapidly fading under the ever-growing reach of a state able to replace local identities with a national one. Yet opposition still exists in different guises, particularly in the hills, from the Lisu in the North to the Maniq of the South.

Speaker Kai pointedly says of the Thai government, “They want us to settle down, grow food, go to their schools, be like them. We can’t live like that”. The Thai state has made efforts to control the Maniq including issuing ID cards, which quickly disappear. A forced resettlement project, where they were made to live in permanent housing on a kind of reservation in Phattalung province, was apparently seen as an act of charity by the state. The experiment didn’t last long as the Maniq ran away and escaped back into nomadic jungle life. “We don’t want charity or help. I just want my kids to grow up like I did. I want them to be Maniq, to live as Maniq,”  Speaker Kai tells me. “We just want some land to live off of and to be left alone”.

This is pure anti-state ideology: a refusal to take part in any kind of settled civilisation with powers that supersede their own control. Still, above the Maniq’s temporary forest shacks fly two flags: one Thai national flag and one Thai royal flag. They were erected by the Maniq as a show of good faith to the local Thai plantation owners and national park rangers who have been harassing them for decades. Pessimism about their future is inevitable as the veins of settlers stretch ever deeper over the hills and into the forest. Speaker Kai’s message to the outside world rings out: “We want to be left alone”.

[valarhalla]

Sumeria Questions for Avatarsymbolism 

1) since my main character was a wheat farmer, what sort of routine might he have had?

2) how did water irrigation work in sumer?

SO, to combine the first and second questions, I’m not sure of the actual mechanics of how the irrigation systems themselves worked, I’d have to look it up, but the important thing here, perhaps the single most important fact in Southern Mesopotamian Studies, is that Southern Mesopotamia is too dry to grow any sort of crop withOUT artificial irrigation. You can’t do it. Just going out and planting a field without it is impossible. Which makes it all the more amazing that it’s there that Eurasian civilisation got off the ground of all places, and it’s believed they’re connected- the prevailing theory is that the social organisation required for maintaining all these large-scale irrigation projects is what LED to the social stratification and invention of urbanism in the region.

So, on that note, irrigation work is going to be a MAJOR part of any Sumerian farmer’s life. He’s probably got a communal rota with his immediate neighbours if he lives in a small village, PLUS corvee labour for his landlord, city state or local temple, or possibly even all three. Money existed in the region at this point, but an average farmer probably didn’t encounter it much- his payment for temple labour (we THINK) would have been a grain ration in something called a Bevelled Rim Bowl. We’ve found thousands upon thousands of these in temples, and they’re all the exact same size, so they’re thought to have been for paying workers in grain rations. 

So there’s a bunch of texts that go into quite a lot of detail on daily life for farmers I could normally take some photos of for you, but I won’t have access to the book for the next few weeks at least. In the mean time, daily routine is hard to say, but a lot of aspects of agricultural life in this region haven’t changed much until a few decades ago, so you can probably extrapolate from recent accounts about life in Southern Iraq and not be far off. Something I remember is that there ARE a lot of mentions of wives bringing their husbands cold beer at the end of the day when they got back from the fields- it was probably cooled in something called a pot-in-pot refrigerator ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot-in-pot_refrigerator ) and drunk through a straw. Heat in this region was and is extreme, so people start work at like 4 or 5 am, work until midday and then sleep in the afternoon, if they can. There’s a LOT more information I can give you once I have access to some of my books, but that’s a start.

approximately how big were summerian and assyrian armies and do you anything about how they were organized?

Ok, so there’s over a thousand year gap between the decline of Sumeria and the Assyrian Empire, so the two are basically chalk and cheese. Sumerian Warfare was… probably not as grand as we might picture it. Horses hadn’t been domesticated yet in the region, so rulers rode donkeys, if anything, or rode behind them in carts with wooden wheels that moved at about two miles an hour. Armies were probably a few hundred at MOST, mainly press-ganged, possibly corvee labourers again. The actual ruler probably did most of the commanding/general type stuff, since the armies weren’t very large. And the subject of the conflict was often those irrigation canals- the cities of Girsu and Lagash spent more than eight hundred years fighting back and forth for control of a single canal. There’s a famous piece of art called the Standard of Ur, which is thought to be a fairly realistic depiction of Sumerian warfare, armour and weapons.

(Look up Standard of Ur to see this bigger and in more detail).

By the time of the Assyrians, things had moved on, and the Assyrians really DID have vast earth-shaking armies of thousands fighting huge pitched battles. We know this, because, luckily for us, they produced photo-realistic wall reliefs of their wars and campaigns. And we know they’re photo-realistic because they’ve been corroborated by archaeological evidence- there’s one relief of a siege-ramp outside the city of Lachish, which archaeologists actually found pieces of, decades after the wall-relief was excavated from an Assyrian palace. Look up “Neo-Assyrian war reliefs” on google images, and you’re damn close to having a camera present at some of these events. A lot of what’s depicted is pretty similar to medieval siege warfare, with siege engines, archers, catapults, and ladders going over walls. Neo-Assyrian Warfare is a HUGE topic, so information on it is pretty readily available, if that’s what you’re going for- the British Museum did a big exhibition on it last year with lots of books published. 

4) would it make sense for my character to have eventually join the the army because of factors beyond his control?

YES (I’m actually so glad you asked this), because an absolutely incredibly piece of Sumerian literature called “In the Desert by the Early Grass”, which is a narrative about a mother trying to steal back her dead conscripted son from the underworld. It goes into a LOT of very unpleasant details about the son being quite literally dragged from his house and from his mother’s arms into joining the army, so this was very much a thing. It specifically mentions that shepherds and herders were at particular risk of being targeted, since they tended to work in remote areas outside of city defenses. Also at the end of the poem, the young conscript’s mother and sister are evicted from their home due to no longer having a male relative present to fulfill corvee labour requirements. Again, this text is in a book I don’t have access to and that I can’t currently find online, but it is very much a thing. 

Hope this helps! ;D

[absalomabsalom]

Coming and Going: Misrecognition and Identity in Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything That Rises Must Converge”

Professor Richard A. Garner The Human Situation, April 15th, 2020

Outline

I. The Best Title in All of Literature

II. Misery Like a Coastal Shelf

III. The Injury of Intelligence, the Insult of an Education

A. Intelligence is a curse

B. A Martyr to the Desire of the Other; or, that St. Sebastian Painting One More Time

C. The Terror of Identity; or, Meeting Yourself Coming and Going

Richard Sexton,Oak Avenue, Wormsloe Plantation, 2009

I. The Best Title in All of Literature

 “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

 —William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

 In a second, I’m going to talk to you about the literary genre called the Southern Gothic. It’s the best. It’s weird and uncanny and disturbing, and it’s all ours. After that, I’m going to talk about the cursed intellectuals of O’Connor’s stories in general, and more specifically of our story for today, “Everything That Rises Must Converge” (1961). You might want to read the last one first, as it does the most close-reading, or the second one, which has lots of maps and stuff. But first, I want to tell you that “Everything That Rises Must Converge” is the best title in all of literature.

From the moment I read it on the syllabus as an undergraduate—circa the turn of the millennium— it took on a life of its own in my head. It’s one of those phrases we encounter in life that returns over and over again, coming to mind unbidden in situations that have nothing remotely to do with the themes of the story. Indeed, every time I go back and reread the story I am struck by how the title, like many of O’Connors, creates this tiny bit of cognitive dissonance, this strangeness that makes it at once both absolutely perfect and deeply unsettling: a stark line of poetry that stands over and above the story, its own little work of art.

And I say this knowing—as you may as well, if you read Giroux’s introduction—that the phrase comes from the Jesuit philosopher Teilhard de Chardin: “Tout Ce Qui Monte Converge” (xv). Robert Giroux relates that the phrases appears in French, in an anthology he had sent O’Connor of the philosopher’s work. Yet, if anything, going back and reading Teilhard de Chardin and how he uses the phrase makes O’Connor’s usage of the phrase embettered, not worsened, by the repetition. Here’s the version of the passage most often quoted, which is not actually the philosopher’s but one of his students/anthologists. From Max H. Begouen’s Foreword to Building the Earth: “He gave each of them this watchword: ‘Remain true to yourselves, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge’” (13). Here’s one version in his own words, from the essay “Faith in Man,” expressing a major theme in the philosopher’s work: “Followed to their conclusion the two paths must certainly end by coming together: for in the nature of things everything that is faith must rise, and everything that rises must converge” (186). In other words, where Teilhard de Chardin is saying something about the nature of our common humanity converging in ever-greater complexity and perfection, O’Connor is injecting something insistent, something dark into this message of hope. In doing so, she is not trying to negate the utopian vision of the philosopher, but to transform it by way of adding in the full range of human experience. For O’Connor, thinking about convergence means thinking about life in a place where sectarianism is stuck on the Catholic/Protestant divide so strongly that to be a Catholic is so alien that one might as well be Jewish (and anything further afield would be meaningless to the young Church of God boys); where buses had only been desegregated in Browder v. Gayle five years before she wrote the story; and where the number of women receiving PhDs in Philosophy in the 1950s—much less in the South—was vanishingly small. In other words, O’Connor injects a certain Southern peculiarity combined with a bit of Gothic uncanniness into this convergence. Faith, theological or not, is easy when it does not have a world to contend with, and if it is easy, it is no faith at all.

But before we talk about the Southern Gothic, I want to return to the title, because I love it so much. Ultimately, beyond any particular meaning it derives from and alongside the story itself, it’s the beauty of a phrase that lingers in one’s mind, insists on coming back again and again, that I want to discuss. I want to discuss it because it gets at the heart of something about literature. For instance, when I say it’s “the best,” on what criteria am I basing that judgement? Are those objective, or purely subjective? Am I repeating a mistake we see from so many of O’Connor’s characters, of assuming that their personal preference can stand in for everyone else’s (and that those who disagree must be wrong)? Short answer: no. I’m saying this for effect. I know it’s just me. But the longer answer is that the particularity of my judgment on this title does give us a clue to the universality of something about language. Our psyches are, ultimately, linguistic; all the sense-experience, emotions, and logic that we deploy emerges out of and is filtered through language. Language makes possible what we can know of our world, and some of the greatest tragedies of our lives are marked by our inability to find a language that fits our experience—of love, of friendship, of betrayal, of death—often because someone else is imposing their language on us, or because there is no language at all for it. Sometimes we have to invent it. I don’t know what part of my self, per se, needs the phrase everything that rises must converge, but some part does. Thank you, Flannery O’Connor.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, 1955

II. Misery Like a Coastal Shelf

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

—Philip Larkin, “This Be The Verse”

What is it about the South that lends itself to the gothic? Ever since Edgar Allen Poe’s American reinvention of that European genre—of ancient curses, crumbling castles, monsters and murderers, of innocent women in distress and dark and stormy nights—Southern literature has often veered of into the uncanny and horrific as it’s modus operandi. And the answer as to why? Well, it’s not all the decaying castles scattered across the countryside. The answer is obvious: it’s slavery. The deep secret, the obscure past, the meaningless descent into gratuitous violence, the uncanny return of repressed trauma and desire: slavery.

Let’s take a tour of some maps… First, what do you think this one is?

If you answered “a map of which parts of America started socially distancing when during the pandemic,” then you are a winner. Here’s the key I excised from the original New York Times article the map appeared in (Ganz et al).

You’d be forgiven for mistaking this for a map of a lot of different things, but let’s cut to the chase. Here’s the second map:

In case you’re having difficulty reading the title, let me help with this U.S. Coast Survey from 1861: “Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States.”  But just in case the point is not clear yet, here’s map number three:

That, everyone, is a map of the United States as it looked during the late Cretaceous period, many millions of years ago (126-65 mya, to be geologically precise; see Krulwich). That inland sea left rich alluvial deposits that became the fertile crescent of land known as, first geologically and then politically, the Black Belt. Needless to say, the agricultural quality of the land correlates strongly with the intensity of slavery practiced in the American South.

In Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents (a book we read often here in The Human Situation), the psychoanalyst uses the metaphor of the ruins of Rome to talk about the deep history of our own human minds. He wants us to understand how, even after they’ve been totally erased and are irretrievable, our earliest experiences shape who we are, just as the long-obliterated strata of Rome each successively dictated what was built after them. For me, when Larkin evoked misery deepening like a coastal shelf, Freud’s ruins of Rome and the cretaceous South sprang immediately to mind; I took it not as simile, but something that could be, often is, literally true.

This is what is meant in Faulkner’s famous epigraph about the past never being dead. Southern Gothic emerged as one of the most distinctive genres, blending mystery and murder and a deep sense of a looming violence in the world. Flannery O’Connor’s stories, as we have all seen, could easily be turned into horror movies, and William Faulkner’s work also includes many of the same themes. If we include Toni Morrison and Cormac McCarthy (e.g., the hauntings in Beloved or the demonic Judge of Blood Meridian), then the genre is easily the defining movement of twentieth century American literature.  And it is not only slavery, but the history of violence that is the warp and weft of the institution, that colors our Southern Gothic. The Civil War is still the deadliest war in American history, and it’s not even close. Indeed, scholars have argued, often convincingly, that the region has to this day not recovered from the economic, social, and political devastation caused by the military conflict alone, not to mention its aftershocks, the devastation like a modern war fought 75-100 years before its time.  “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

III. The Injury of Intelligence, the Insult of an Education

A. Intelligence Is a Curse

As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, O’Connor’s stories are chock full of characters for whom their intelligence is a curse. Hulga almost causes her mother an existential crisis because the pleasure- reading she leaves lying around is Heidegger’s “What Is Metaphysics?”; The Child is clearly the smartest one in the room; even The Misfit was marked off at a young age: “‘You know,’ Daddy said, ‘some that can live their whole life out without asking about it an it’s other has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters’” (129). So, too, Julian.

Julian is a writer who does not write. Like Hulga, whose philosophy is solely for herself, Julian’s fantasy world is solely for himself. And he seems to know that he is not a writer—he never expects to make a life/career/money out of it—which forces us to ask: why does he identify as a writer? But before we answer that question, let’s get right to the stakes. The clue is in the title, and O’Connor doesn’t make us wait too long. Immediately after she tells her son that he should be proud that his ancestors owned hundreds of slaves, Julian’s mother gets down to commentary on civil rights: “They should rise, yes, but on their own side of the fence” (408, emphasis added). So, rise: yes; converge: not so much for Julian’s mother. It is no mistake that this story takes place on a bus, the public space Rosa Parks made famous and which the Supreme Court desegregated in its 1956 ruling in Browder v. Gayle, five years before this story was published; the bus, for O’Connor, is again not a metaphor for race relations, it is the thing itself. Thus, unlike for Hulga, Julian’s fate and choices are going to extend far beyond himself—to the status of racism in America, the history of slavery, and reparations therefore—although they will extend to himself, too. Perhaps O’Connor is saying that the repercussions of the choices of the two, philosopher and writer, have different stakes. Perhaps.

Which brings us back to all these emotionally fraught intellectuals here, decaying slowly, like fish out of water, in their Southern hometowns. This theme is important for O’Connor because it argues intelligence, reason itself even, can serve not as something that enlightens, but something that closes off, distances, and deceives. The dark of reason. Like The Child in “A Temple of the Holy Ghost,” they can only see the difference in all things, and not the sameness; there are parts of everyday life that they have utterly rejected, and thus cannot connect to; they are alienated on their own soil, homeless in their own homes. And often with good reason! Julian’s mother is an out and out racist, and she represents the norm. He should reject her racism. But, for some reason, he cannot reject her herself. And he cannot reconcile the one to the other. I love her: she’s a racist; I must reject racism: I must reject her. His very love for his mother is a source of immense guilt for Julian, and that right there is the essence of the Southern Gothic.

There is a deeper lesson here, one that we don’t really have time for, about how Julian is actually trying to inhabit two different symbolic worlds, ones with different rules that justify themselves in different ways and that are ultimately incompatible. It’s like he speaks two different languages, but thinks they’re the same one  and so often gets hopelessly confused. And the truth is something like that, when we recognize that culture is like a language that sets up rules for what and how we make meaning of the world. Heidegger famously said: “Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells” (217). Hulga and Julian, justifiably reacting to the smallness and violence of the world they grew up in, have learned another world, but tragically cannot see their way back across the divide they have built; they’re emotionally attached, but intellectually distant, so they take refuge in that distance and decay psychologically, along with the old plantation mansion that Julian can’t help but dream about. Perhaps this is a problem O’Connor understood all too well. Her writing teacher in the Iowa MFA program had to ask her “to write down what she had just said” the first time they met her Georgia accent was so thick (vii, all emphasis mine).

B. A Martyr to the Desire of the Other; Or, that St. Sebastian Painting One More Time

When I worked in that highly suggestive, very famous painting of St. Sebastian into my lecture on Voltaire, I had totally forgotten that our erstwhile saint figured into our story for today, even though I had been reading O’Connor again over break. Sometimes the Unconscious, to paraphrase Larkin, fucks you up, but every now and again it does you a favor.

One of Julian’s fantasies is that he is a martyr to his mother. This should right away give us some pause. Take this for instance: “Everything that gave her pleasure was small and depressed him” (405). There is something deeply wrong with Julian’s relationship to his mother here; in fact, this is not a healthy relationship to have with any human being. Why on earth does Julian care what gives his mother pleasure? Shouldn’t he be happy that she is happy, despite it being over a ridiculous hat? Why would you ever arrange it so that, in the most important relationship in your entire world, anything that makes the other person happy makes you sad? That, my friends, is a recipe for disaster, death and disaster and tragedy. You don’t even have to read to the end. This is not going to end well.

To understand characters, you have to understand their motivations. This can be tricky. We can’t assume the characters are us, or anyone else but who they are. There are many possibilities for why Julian does what he does—alien mind control, for instance—but very few plausible ones. What, then, are Julian’s plausible alternatives here to his misery. Alternative one: leave his mother and move far away. He wants to be a writer? New York City, Paris, hell Houston or Atlanta: get thee hence. Anywhere but here (Hulga, too). Why, then, does he stay? We can be very, very cynical and say that Julian is broke and his mom’s supporting him. True! But not really enough. A lot of life can be lived in cheap apartments with ramen noodles, even on the commission of a typewriter salesman. This would be an excuse he would be telling himself, though we should also assume that many of the jobs he might be qualified for he would reject because they would conflict too heavily with his identity (as a writer), or just embarrass him (as being beneath him and his college education).

I think the real clue is in the saint imagery. But it’s not him who’s the saint, it’s his mother—a fair description for her achievements vis-à-vis Julian, which are not small, and which she is justly proud of. Even if taken literally, if he is suffering for his mother, as a saint, that means his mother is Jesus! His non-sacrifice of riding on a bus with his mother—“the time he would be sacrificed to her pleasure” (406)— is really her sacrifice. The problem is that, in this twisted relationship, his mother-the-saint is also a racist. Moreover, he knows that she’s not doing this for her pleasure: her doctor has told her she might die if she doesn’t become more active. Yet that’s how he frames it, which makes no sense … unless, here again, we should take this more literally than he means it: she’s staving off death, and as long as she is alive and enjoying life, then of course he cannot enjoy it. Ipso facto, he wants her to die, so he can move on. Again, her very existence is a source of guilt for him. Not because he hates her, but because he loves her.

C. The Terror of Identity; Or, Meeting Yourself Coming and Going

What does the phrase “you won’t meet yourself coming and going” (407) even mean? I had to pause at this phrase after O’Connor repeats it in the story, making sure to remember, as Professor Charara reminded us, that just because it is a cliché for the characters doesn’t mean that it is one for O’Connor. In short, it signifies a desire for uniqueness. If you do not meet yourself coming or going, you will not see someone else that looks like you on your journey.

This desire—to be singular, unique—is a pretty basic one. We all need some manner of distinguishing ourselves from others, otherwise the difference between self and other breaks down, and what it means to be uniquely our self does with it. This loss of self is, in almost all cases, terrifying for us. It is terrifying for Julian, because it is precisely what he fears in relation to his mother: he will never have his own desires, his own identity, but merely be an extension of hers, subsumed by his mother’s identity, her view of him. He will always be, as Professor Wallace discussed, an object and never a subject. (At the same time, to have nothing in common with other human beings is an opposite extreme, untenable as well. What it would even mean, to share no qualities with other people, no common bond over which you could unite, no language, aspirations, or anything else? Nothing.)

Of course, his mother does indeed meet herself going to the reducing class, in the form of a black woman with her child, angered about … something. Long story short, this woman hits Julian’s mother and storms off when she tries to give her child a penny. There is much to be wrung interpretively from whether or not it is this blow that causes his mother’s death, or Julian’s reaction to it. But I think this is a bit beside the point, much as the hat is. The truth of the situation is in Julian’s belated realization of his unacknowledged love for his mother—he calls out to her as a mother would to a child, or even a lover to their beloved, at the end, “Darling, sweetheart, wait!” (420)—and with that, his imminent “entry into the world of guilt and sorrow” (420). His coded wish for his mother’s death has been granted, but in so doing all the compromises he has made will no longer be tenable. He will, of course, blame himself for the way he acted vindictively toward her, even in her last moments, and he might even blame himself for her death.

Most of all, though, he will lose his ability to maintain that ironic distance that he has adopted toward the world, the one that has kept him locked into a fantasy world. There is compensation here: that fantasy allows him to live the life he secretly desires—not incidentally, the one where he can acknowledge his mother’s love and sacrifice, if not in word, then in deed. He does devote himself to his mother; despite what he says he is on that bus. The “in word” part is crucial here. Julian wants to be a writer because it allows him to keep an ironic distance toward the world as the detached observer who can catalogue all the worlds foibles while imagining that he is the hero setting them aright. But not in the real world, which is a bit too messy. When he imagines marrying a black woman, he tempers this fantasy by writing his fictional lover as not too black, her race only a suspicion (414). When he befriends black folk in his fantasies, it is only “the better types” (414). And when he imagines joining a sit-in, this is “possible but he did not linger with it” (414). Of course the possible is not something he lingers with! There is no ironic distance in the possible. Only jail, maybe even death. In fact, in a very real sense, Julian needs injustice to continue, because if it disappeared he would be forced to confront everything that he is fobbing off. Thus: “It gave him a certain satisfaction to see injustice in daily operation. It confirmed his view that with a few exceptions there was no one worth knowing within a radius of three hundred miles” (412).

I think a more interesting question than whether or not the child’s mother is responsible for Julian’s mother’s death is why she is angry to begin with. Julian is probably not wrong, that negotiating the casual violence of an antiblack society has shaped her outlook, and primed her for confrontation as an understandable survival strategy (compare her to the man who buries his nose in a newspaper, learning about the world at large while ignoring the world at hand). But perhaps we should look closer to home. If you were a mother negotiating public transit with your child, might you be annoyed if a grown man—a white man, in this very specific instance—forced you to split yourself off from your young child? And, assuming that she’s as good a reader of the world as Julian is, when you realize that he’s forced you into this situation because of some tiff he’s having with his mother? Julian delights in the fact that the children have been split from their mothers; he is himself keenly aware of the dynamic at play here. But because he is trapped in his own bubble—his own decaying mansion of the mind—he cannot see that maybe she does, too. And if Julian’s desire to separate himself from his own mother is achieved in this awkward social situation, it is imposed upon the mother and her child. Yet the stakes for each are different, and Julian knows this, too. He sees it coming from a mile away, but what he can’t see is that the cause is not his mother, but himself, and he cannot see it because then he would be the one thing he cannot be, his mother. He would see himself coming and going, in her.

Bibliography

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Glanz, James, et al. “Where America Didn’t Stay Home Even as the Virus Spread.” The New York Times, 2 Apr. 2020. NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-social-distancing.html.

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O’Connor, Flannery. The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1972.

Reni, Guido. Saint Sebastian. Circa 1615. Musei di Strada Nuova, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guido_Reni_-_Saint_Sebastian_-_Google_Art_Project_(27740148).jpg.

Sexton, Richard. Oak Avenue, Wormsloe Plantation. 2009, https://richardsextonstudio.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/19-c070.jpg.

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. Building the Earth. Wilkes-Barre, Pa. : Dimension Books, 1965. Internet Archive, http://archive.org/details/buildingearth0000teil_y0u0.

——. The Future of Man. New York: Doubleday, 2004.

——. The Phenomenon of Man. New York: Harper Perennial, 1955.

[zamancollective]

Fiction, Poetry, and the Shaping of Mizrahi Cultural Consciousness

By Sophie Levy

This article was originally published in the Fall 2019 issue of The Current, a journal of politics, culture, and Jewish affairs at Columbia University.

“So sometimes people think we are Arabs

and they are Jews?

[My nephew’s] words make flocks of birds fly through my body

ripping my blood vessels in the commotion

and I want to tell him about my Grandmother Sham’a

and Uncle Moussa and Uncle Daoud and Uncle Awad

But at the age of six he already has

Grandmother Ziona

Grandmother Yaffa

lots of uncles

and fear and war

he received as a gift

from the state.”

- Adi Keissar, “Clock Square”

I read Adi Keissar’s poetry for the first time at fifteen years old, when my mother forwarded me a link to Haaretz’s Poem of the Week under the headline “Who’s who? Who’s an Arab, who’s a Jew?”

The poem was a vignette of a conversation between Keissar and her young nephew as they walked beside the clock tower in Jaffa, tracing the aftermath of his distant observation of a man speaking Arabic. With each consecutive line, I felt like an anvil had been dropped on my chest (in the best way possible). Why did a Persian girl from Los Angeles who hadn’t really thought about her Judaism in years feel such a punch in the gut from a poem by a Yemeni woman in Israel? It felt incomplete and a little tacky to exclusively attribute my reaction to our shared Judaism. There was another layer to consider— a quiet but strong common denominator between the way I thought of my family and the way Keissar wrote about hers, even though I grew up hearing Farsi spoken more than Arabic, and I am American, not Israeli.

I only heard the word Mizrahi used to describe people from Middle-Eastern and North African Jewish backgrounds a few weeks before I read “Clock Square.” It made sense to me that there was another word for us out there—for Jewish people who called ourselves Sephardi even though our supposedly Spanish lineage seemed less-than-factual. It felt good to become aware of this new, audibly articulated way of making a distinction I wanted made—not because I resented the Sephardi label, but because I noticed something different about the community from which I came, and those differences were bound to Iran, not Spain. I let the word roll around inside my head and off my tongue. Mizrahi. So that’s what I’m called.

Of course, label-picking in the age of identity politics can sometimes take on a flattening or superficial connotation. It’s understandable that pinning any one label onto a multifaceted self can feel stifling, and there's been no shortage of analysis surrounding the derogatory or Orientalist undertones of Mizrahi’s literal translation to eastern. It’s a subject that often comes up in the company of other young Arab and Persian Jews I know, some of whom also feel distanced from the term’s relatively recent or “artificial” origin in Israel’s political lexicon.

Bearing this nuance in mind, I would still argue that identification with and critical thought surrounding the issue of Mizrahiut can open the doors for a new, constructive, collective self-perception— one that’s rooted in a consciousness of culture, heritage, and history. In her essay “The Invention of the Mizrahim,” Ella Shohat acknowledges how the Mizrahi label can be seen as a construct born from societal formation under Zionism, but also sheds light on its strengths. She notes that Mizrahi identity “celebrates a Jewish past” in Southwest Asia and North Africa, and that in turn, it can imply a “future of revived cohabitation” with other peoples of the region. In the meantime, its inclusion of a diverse range of Jewish communities places value on the cultural dialogue that ensued between them once they encountered each other in Israel (or in Western countries, as in my family’s case).

The story of Mizrahi immigration to Israel is not a smooth one. Between 1948 and 1951, roughly 325,000 Southwestern Asian and North African Jews migrated there, following their departure or expulsion from their countries of origin. Upon their arrival, many were placed in transitory refugee camps (ma’abarot) with poor conditions, later being displaced to remote development towns or vacated Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem—situating them in Israel’s geographic and socioeconomic periphery. Their ensuing civil rights struggle would continue for decades.

Mizrahi refugees at a ma’abara in the early 1950s.

Contemporaneously, an underground Arabic literary network began to take shape, connecting Mizrahim in Jerusalem and the ma’abarot with Palestinian writers who remained in Israel proper after 1948. Fiction writers like Sami Michael and Shimon Ballas got their start publishing short stories in al-Jadid, an Arabic-language, left-aligned journal that served as a vital platform for Mizrahim and Palestinians alike in the early decades of Israeli statehood. The novel soon emerged as a favorite medium of Mizrahi writers (many of whom were Iraqi men), their characters’ psycho-emotional turmoil reflecting the tumult of the political changes in which they were caught. Whether set in Baghdad, Jerusalem, or Haifa, these novels lamented the waning reality of integrated Muslim-Jewish life, criticized the treatment of Mizrahim in Israel, and conveyed wistful longing for Iraq— all in Arabic.

However important this underground fiction movement was, its tangible success in spurring Mizrahi cultural consciousness among a wider public was limited. Contributors to al-Jadid were writing almost exclusively in intellectual circles, hiding themselves from wider readership in ma’abarot or other communities of Arabic-speaking immigrants to Israel. Further, the overwhelming cultural dominance of the Labor Zionist Ashkenazi literary canon and the disenfranchisement of Mizrahim on a material level led to practical obstacles to publishing. Thirdly, although the deliberate decision on the part of these authors to write (sometimes exclusively) in Arabic was a commendable act of resistance against the state’s efforts to stifle the language’s use, this reduced their novels’ wider appeal to a Hebrew-speaking public. Amid the political activism of the Mizrahi Black Panthers and the decline of the Labor Party in the 1970s, Mizrahi novelists were able to publish their work more frequently; yet even then, they mostly remained on the margins of literary life in Israel— dear to a burgeoning community of Mizrahi academics, but largely unknown to a wider audience.

Despite these barriers to recognition, Mizrahi fiction was and is of value. The often explicitly-stated goal of these novelists was to encourage a sustained connection to and appreciation of the worlds they were a part of before their displacement to Israel. By writing in Arabic, they demonstrated acute political and historical consciousness, challenging the state’s prevailing narratives about Mizrahi primitiveness, its effective demonization of Arab language and culture, and its dismissal of any positive bond to diasporic life. Most importantly, in the words of the writer Almog Behar, their work “carried a torch” for Mizrahim of future generations — like Adi Keissar, and like me.

After “Clock Square,” I started reading Keissar’s work almost voraciously, scouring Haaretz and the Forward for translated poems when I couldn’t understand enough of her Hebrew. As a flagrantly opinionated teenager, I got a high from her blunt feminism and indulged in the refreshing matter-of-factness with which she expressed the depth of her emotions. After having left my majority-Mizrahi Jewish day school for the odd funhouse mirror of a secular, preppy, majority-white high school, it felt like a comforting exhale to settle in the sweet, relatable sadness of poems like “Black on Black:”

"My grandmother loved me with a thick accent

spoke to me Yemeni words

I never understood,

and as a child

I remember

how scared I was to stay alone with her

out of fear that I wouldn’t understand the tongue in her mouth [...]

the sounds far, far away

even when she spoke closely.”

I didn’t yet know enough about Israeli history to fully grasp the political subversiveness of Keissar’s poetry, but I did know that her work made me feel seen. I felt estranged from the no-questions-asked Zionism of the Reform, Ashkenazi institutions I belonged to as a child, and I felt detached from my high school’s country-clubby, all-American ethos. Sometimes, as much as it embarrassed me to admit it, I felt the same distance from my large and (lovingly) overbearing Persian family, and even from other Mizrahi kids. Yet the more I looked into Adi Keissar’s work, the more I understood I wasn’t alone in those feelings, and the more I understood there were ways to address them constructively.

The fact that my mother came across “Clock Square” on Haaretz in English translation was not only indicative of Keissar’s increasing success as an individual poet, but of the rising recognition of a poetic movement she had ignited a few years prior. Keissar is the founder of Ars Poetica, a collective whose name is a double-entendre between Horace’s The Art of Poetry and the word ars عرص — a slur reserved for Mizrahi men that essentially translates to pimp in Arabic. Bringing together Mizrahi poets of diverse ages and backgrounds under an all-women roster of leaders, the group has put a new spin on the poetry reading by reinventing it as the hafla (Arabic for party).

Adi Keissar at a poetry reading.

Since Keissar organized a night of rousing performances by spoken-word poets, alternative DJs, and belly dancers at her first hafla in 2013, Ars Poetica’s loud, multifaceted reclamation of Mizrahi cultures has sent shockwaves through Israel and beyond. Keissar, Roy Hasan, and Tehila Hakimi— additional members of the group and renegade poets in their own right— all won the Bernstein Literary Prize within two years of Ars Poetica’s launch. Change is also felt elsewhere. Erez Biton, often seen as a father figure of this poetic movement, faced many of the same obstacles to mainstream success as his fiction-writing contemporaries for decades, until he became the first Mizrahi writer to win the Israeli Prize for Literature in 2015. The next year also presented a huge milestone, when Biton was appointed as chairman of a new governmental committee dedicated to promoting the inclusion of Mizrahi history and literature in school curricula. Since Ars Poetica’s founding, the group’s impact has garnered extensive media attention, with Jewish newspapers and poetry magazines in the US and Britain publishing article after article about the “Mizrahi Revival” cropping up in Israel.

Ars Poetica may well have triggered the strongest shake-up of Liberal Zionist, Ashkenazi hegemony in the context of Israeli literature to date. Of course, as we’ve seen, the written fight for Mizrahi recognition didn’t begin with Keissar, but her collective does much more than function as a simple continuation of the efforts of writers who preceded them. The group’s unprecedented headway is the result of taking that history, learning from it, and building on it in a new direction.

One thing this “new direction” has entailed is a deeper, more intersectional, subversive strain of political consciousness. Written attacks on the structural subordination of Mizrahim now often serve double functions; when Adi Keissar writes in embracement of her body and physical features as a Mizrahi woman, she is also writing to undo the internalization of racialized misogyny. When Roy Hasan bristles against the performative liberalism of centrist Ashkenazi elites, he is also tackling Israel’s class divide as it occurs along ethnic lines. Keissar and Hasan’s ability to synthetically address a broader range of societal issues in their work with relative brevity enables it to speak to a readership wider than that of the novelists before them.

Furthermore, Ars Poetica’s rejection of elitism goes beyond the content of their poems and permeates their approach to language itself— their verses often full of curses and reclaimed slurs, their Hebrew colloquial, their tone raw and piercing. Hasan points to Jay-Z and the Wu-Tang Clan as important influences on his writing, and it only takes feeling the rhythm of repetition and line breaks in his poem “In the Land of Ashkenaz” to feel their impact on his work:

“...I am the armed fucking robbery

The crook with the kippah

In the court of law

I am the graves of holy men

And talismans

I am a pimp

I am clapping hands

And cheap music

Low culture

Low grade

A stubborn root

And a pain in the ass…”

Between the subject matter of its members’ poetry, their use of vernacular language, and their formulation of the hafla as a truly grassroots method for communal ingathering and artistic promotion, Ars Poetica has shown itself to be founded on a sense of radical accessibility. These poets are stripping their medium of the sterile, elite connotation it has borne for many working-class Mizrahim and presented it as a reachable, usable medium for readers, thereby breaking down the barriers that kept Keissar herself from writing poems until she was in her thirties. It’s predictable, of course, that this accessibility has garnered some backlash from prominent Ashkenazim in mainstream literary institutions; critics have branded their poems as too angry, unrefined, or unsophisticated— arguably recalling decades-old biases about Mizrahi primitiveness. I think it’s safe to say that Keissar and Hasan would meet their discomfort with a scoff and a smile.

There’s also something to be said about the rise of poetry as the medium of choice for many of today’s Mizrahi writers. Prose still has its merits, of course; fictional narratives are a way of emotively articulating and preserving a fairly developed sense of what life was like for Mizrahim before 1948. It remains relevant, as demonstrated by the writer Ayelet Tsabari, for instance, in her use of short stories to create strikingly beautiful vignettes of modern Mizrahi life. But poetry, by virtue of its performability and new aura of accessibility, has demonstrated a special potential for change— not only in Ars Poetica’s move closer to the spotlight in Israel, but in its ability to effectively reaffirm the value of Mizrahiut in the eyes of an ordinary reading public.

This new wave of Mizrahi writing is turning heads toward old and new writers alike. A sweet consequence of the poets’ success today has been rising recognition of yesterday’s novelists, and that recognition is happening in contexts much more interesting than just Israeli academia. This past October, Mahmoud Abbas requested the printing of Ishaq Bar-Moshe’s novel Departing Iraq for distribution at a “conference for Arab leaders” in the West Bank, echoing the author’s hopes for cooperation and consistent interaction with Palestinian Arabs. Meanwhile, the media buzz around Ars Poetica has exposed young Mizrahim in the diaspora to the concept of cultural revival, creating real potential for us to process what we’ve been through, scrutinize where we are, and connect to where we come from.

That’s certainly what new Mizrahi poetry has done for me. I should clarify that my close family doesn’t have a history of immigration to Israel, and I will not erroneously claim to understand what it’s like to grow up in a majority-working class, Mizrahi development town. Even so, amid the difficulties of toggling between life in a huge, close-knit Persian family and finding myself lost in Ashkenazi-run, ardently Zionist institutions, I’ve noticed links between the kinds of alienation many Mizrahim feel from our cultures, whether we were raised in Israel or in the Western diaspora.

The experience of occupying any larger, Ashkenormative framework presents its commonalities: being discouraged or prohibited from speaking Farsi or Arabic as if it were a vulgarity, receiving minimal formal education in Jewish history aside from shadowy mentions of the Holocaust or sanitized tales of Israel’s establishment. From another angle, the legacy of our parents’ or grandparents’ exile from Muslim countries presents its own unique implications: a precarious relationship to the languages that came before English or Hebrew because of the political stigmas they bear, the angst or detachment that results from not being able to see your family’s country of origin because of blacklisting or hostile diplomatic relations. All of this feels disorienting, to say the least.

Written endeavors to foster Mizrahi cultural consciousness— whether academic or creative, intellectual or grassroots— have not only sought to combat this disorientation, but to engage with it on a deeper level, to wrestle with it and derive something of substance from that struggle. The Mizrahi writing with the strongest impact and the most meaningful legacy does more than shallowly advocate that we “connect to our roots;” rather, it demands that we unravel feelings of disorientation and displacement by facing our histories in full, envisioning what we want for the future, and giving ourselves a voice to communicate that effectively. This means reckoning with our relationships to Ashkenazi institutions and communities, but also to non-Jewish Middle-Eastern ones. Iraqi novelists sought to reach across the latter divide by writing in Arabic, and progressive Mizrahi writers today do the same in their advocacy for increased solidarity with oppressed populations across the region.

Engaging with Mizrahiut in a modern context also prompts us to reevaluate the idea of the “homeland.” There is discomfort in an awareness of our communities’ intense estrangement from places and worlds that were once inextricable from our existence. But out of this awareness, and out of the complex implications of exile, there is room for a new understanding of what constitutes a “homeland” for Mizrahim. Alphabets and accents, stories and poems, flavors and smells, songs and images become objects of longing often as deep as the desire for physical return to an inaccessible place. I think a lot of us quietly yearn for that feeling of home, even if we don’t always know how to articulate that or put a finger on what it is. I find it most often in the celebration of dialogue between Mizrahim, in recognizing the connections we have to the things we’ve been conditioned to forget, and in the words of writers like Roy Hasan:

“From the ruins of the language of my parents

I shall build a house for my children."