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runwayrunway · 1 year

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No. 51 - Alaska Airlines

This is one of my most requested posts. Apparently, a very significant portion of my readers fly Alaska Airlines!

That tracks. Alaska Airlines is the fifth largest airline in the US. A sort of anti-Flair, they are supposedly the least complained-about full-service carrier in the US. They are also one of five remaining US legacy carriers, along with American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Hawaiian Airlines, and United Airlines. They operate a massive network primarily on the US West Coast, with bits branching out into nearby slices of the Americas. As one might surmise from prior knowledge of the size and population of Alaska, they're actually mostly based in Seattle.

Now, when it comes to their livery, there's one thing that stands out. At least, it stood out to me, and I'm sure at least some of you have had this thought too.

That is a human person's face on the tailfin. But who does that face belong to, and why is it on the Alaska Airlines fleet? This is precisely the sort of trivia I think anyone who knows me would expect me to be able to just rattle off, but actually...I don't know, and neither, as far as I can tell, does anyone else. Isn't that weird?

(By the way, it is indeed Alaska Airlines. I have always found that somewhat unintuitive. It's just not how you're used to hearing things phrased, right? It's Possessive Noun Airlines, Air Noun. America Airlines would sound weird. Alaska Airlines sounds weird. I am never surprised when people mistakenly say Alaskan Airlines, but it's Alaska Airlines. Just so we're all on the same page.)

Alaska's a bit of a hard place to navigate. Big empty place, lots of ice, lots of mountains, islands, trees...not very much asphalt. That's even true now, but it used to be way truer, and even back then people did still live there. And there's a lot of things those people might maybe like to have, like medical care, or food, or just the hypothetical possibility of getting somewhere without having to get the snowshoes out. In that sense, Alaska is a really perfect place for aviation to flourish.

More or less as early as physically possible, when there were planes available that weren't requisitioned for the first World War or owned by the ultra-rich, people were flying in Alaska. In a lot of ways the basic landscape hasn't changed that much. With its surplus of difficult environments and paucity of actual tarmac Alaska's harsh wilderness is an environment only suited for "bush" flying, using smaller, more rugged airplanes specialized for the environment. Some of the most popular models of bush plane are very old, not that dissimilar to what you'd see in the 50s and 60s - apparently, they just don't make them the same anymore, and as long as you don't get your de Havilland Beaver crunched horribly into the side of a mountain there's just nothing that can replace it. Alaska is full of planes on floats, planes on skis, and taildraggers on tundra tires, most of them high-wing and piston-engined. Bush pilots are a unique sort, often doing work that's neither glamorous nor lucrative (nor safe, with Alaska having two to five times the accident rate of the lower 48) but undeniably necessary.

That's not as true of Alaska Airlines. They have a modern fleet, a good safety record except for that one time, and as a category III carrier they make over a billion dollars in revenue each fiscal year, meaning their finances aren't too strained (except for that one time). Unlike the local carriers that connect remote parts of Alaska to resources and to major cities, Alaska Airlines connects Alaska to the rest of the nearby world. (Though it also does short, multi-stop milk run flights.) It's a necessary part of the ecosystem, helping to keep Alaska's beautiful but hostile terrain from getting in the way of daily life. Before they became Alaska Airlines, though, they were far more similar to what you might expect of...Alaska airlines.

Image: Roy S. Dickson

In 1932, a man with the fantastic name 'Linious McGee' started his very own airline. You could just do that back then. In 1934 it was merged into Star Air Service, another tiny airline. Star Air Service had also been founded in 1932, born from the flight-school-starting dreams of a wealthy miner with the similarly wonderful name 'Wesley Earl Dunkle'. Apparently Star had its first ever aircraft, a Fleet B-5 biplane, brought to Alaska by steamship, which I just find fairly interesting. I guess this was before you could even ferry an airplane directly to Alaska by air. They ate up a few other small airlines (and their routes), and in 1943 they won a small scuffle against another pretender to formerly rebrand themselves as Alaska Airlines. So it's been 80 years of that now!

They've gone from flying Curtiss Robins, Ford Trimotors, and Lockheed Vegas to flying basically only 737s, save a few vestigial A320 family aircraft acquired when merging with Virgin America which they plan to phase out by the end of 2024. Their livery is also on E175 regional jets operated by Horizon Air and SkyWest. The airplanes flying for them number around 300. That's incredibly large even by the standards of major airlines (not even counting the SkyWest planes that have the livery).

The Alaska Airlines livery is not breaking any molds and I need to say that upfront. This is a very straightforward pattern I've taken to calling the Lufthansa Declined, or the Lufthansa Line SAS Variation. (Because the push and pull of trend cycles in brand identity is basically comparable to chess, right? Maybe? No? Not really?) I've recently codified the concept of the Lufthansa Line, the straight line continuing where the tailfin left off to carve through the fuselage. This is a very common and very disappointing fuselage trope. The Declined, or SAS Variation, is named for an airline I specifically contrasted with Lufthansa from my very first post on this blog, SAS.

The SAS Variation simply curves this line outwards towards the front of the plane, stopping the cutoff from being quite so blunt and hopefully undoing the unbalancing effect somewhat. This can solve some of the nastier effects of Lufthansa Lines, particularly on shorter planes, but can also look very wonky if implemented without enough care. It's not always a big improvement, but it's definitely not the exact same thing, either, and it's this shape which Alaska Airlines attempts. Being introduced in 2016, this livery actually pre-dates SAS, but Delta and Lufthansa weren't starting their own namesake patterns either. The names aren't attributed based on innovation, but on formative status in my own specific understanding of airline liveries. SAS as contrasted to Lufthansa is the holotype for my creation of the taxon, and thus earlier liveries are retroactively SASlikes. Birds are dinosaurs and whales are ungulates. Taxonomy is imperfect and has to accommodate new discoveries within a sometimes unintuitive framework. That's just how it is.

I think they do better than many. The fact that they use so many colors, layered over each other, is crucial to the effect. It accomplishes similar things as a gradient might, transitioning from dark to light with minimal pain in the process.

Image taken from Alaska Airlines's very useful branding style guide.

The shades of blue and green used resemble the Aurora Borealis. I can't find anything confirming that this is intentional but I can't imagine it isn't. I think they're very nicely chosen. Different lightings can make the blue (Alaska's material calls it midnight blue, but it's technically Prussian blue) look anywhere from true vivid blue to more of a deep ocean color, which is one of my favorite shades. In particular, the very washed out yellowish green is an absolutely gorgeous choice for a highlight color. I like that the colors aren't given equal purchase, though, and that the green is used sparingly for highlight, and to create that lovely subtle 'halo' around the face on the tail. Sometimes less is more, and this is one of those cases. In fact, their own website states:

Midnight is our primary brand color, and should be used sparingly to avoid overuse—giving more prominence to the Alaska Airlines brand.

(They also note that they took specific efforts in the design process to make sure these colors had significant contrast between them to meet accessibility standards, which I really appreciate and want to see more of.)

For example, if the 'intermediate' blue colors took up more of the plane, or were separate from the green, I would probably not feel any real way about them. I definitely wouldn't think they were nice if they just did a standard Lufthansa Line block with each color individually expressed. But using them as a trim to a nice clear deep blue, overlapping each other in a way that's very carefully mapped out but seems at a glance essentially random, halfway to mixing, like the dark tail is melting slowly into the fuselage...that's nice. That adds something.

The partially-overlapping, brushlike curves are further expressed as swashes on the winglets and engines. What's interesting to me is that if you look closer you can see that the little curves are on both the inboard and outboard sides of each engine and winglet, so you get that consistent curve, hypothetically, no matter what angle you see it from. I do think I appreciate that. The curves are just never going to all line up, because airplanes are inconveniently three-dimensional and there are as many angles to view them from as there are Planck lengths at a distance where you can tell what it is you're seeing. This is a weakness in all liveries more detailed than a Braniff jellybean and adding the curves to even the side of the engine that you're usually not going to see is definitely an appreciated attempt to mitigate this. Does it work? Maybe not totally, but I see the effort.

While there's never a perfect syzygy into one continuous line, the curves seem like they're part of the same nebulous body from most angles. I appreciate this approach. I think making things look pretty good from most angles is worth more than making things look really good from one angle and awkward from all others. As they say, the perfect is the enemy of the good. I absolutely love the use on just the inside middle of the scimitar winglet, which I already think is a gorgeous feature that just elevates the MAX and retrofitted 737NGs compared to the vanilla model. It's distinctive and stylish, and the limiting of the color to just the lower half of the upper blade has a real restrained elegance to it - these slashes of color are all the more effective for the way they interact with the space around them.

Just look at these winglets. They're such a tiny feature. It's absolutely wild that I can be this in love with winglets, but there's just something about split scimitar wingtips that make me go completely wild. The amount of space and the interesting shape leaves so much more room for creativity than just about any other wingtip device. Alaska Airlines does have planes with other wingtip styles, and it uses those effectively too - covering the lower half of canted/blended winglets and fully encompassing the interior of less pronounced split winglets - but this is where they look their best.

Back to bad angles, though...

Alaska Airlines has a weird weak spot, and it's from the front and slightly above. All those gorgeous swoops on the winglets and nacelles are basically impossible to see due to their two-dimensional nature, and you can see how the colors don't fully cover the back of the fuselage. My normal policy is to judge liveries by their weakest link, but I honestly almost want to be lenient on this because of how unlikely it is that you're ever going to see an airplane from this angle. The only situations you're ever above an airplane in are ones you're basically never going to encounter as a regular passenger. Don't get me wrong, I still think this could have been designed in a way which eliminates this weak point, but as far as weak points go this is quite excusable. Is that what Thetis thought when she dipped her son in the Styx? Sure, probably, but I stand by my take. For a lot of liveries their worst angle is close to side-on, which is just fully experience-ruining. This? I'm okay with this, relatively speaking.

On the other hand, one of the better angles is one a lot more people will see - below and to one side. The taper of the different bands of color really prevents the awful jarring cutoff that Lufthansa Line and SAS Variation liveries often have, and I feel like they trick the eye into thinking up more of the fuselage is occupied than it really is. Also worth noting is that the grey underside, which resembles a shadow, is actually intentionally painted on, which is lovely. This is a feature common to the Deltalike livery trend that I outline at the start of my Southwest post, which I do think is one of the things that makes me honestly a bit sympathetic to Deltalikes when looking at them next to Lufthansalikes - at least there's an attempt to distribute visual detail evenly. Deltalikes were already a bit dated by 2016 (it was not the longest-lived trend, though it came at a time in my life perfectly positioned to make me think it was more prominent than it was) while SASlikes were on the rise, and this livery has aspects of each, but it feels less like a conflicted result of an intermediate period in dominant trends and more like something which intentionally pulled features from both where it thought they might work best. It's rare that I get this sense from a livery. That's the right way to use trends - as inspiration, not a template.

Alaska Airlines is definitely not a true Deltalike, and I would argue it's not a true SAS Variation either. (For the record, I would consider the 1998 SAS livery a Deltalike, funnily enough!) It incorporates features of both, which makes me feel uncomfortable classifying it definitively as either, though it's definitely more of a SASlike than not. For example, from the side it just is a SASlike, because the grey doesn't go high enough and isn't contrasting enough to be visible except from below. This is in contrast to actual Deltalikes, which have a thin but clearly visible line on the lower side where the underside's block of color bleeds out.

This grey color is also on the engine nacelles, although it is very subtle. This does bring up a minor gripe of mine, which is that the design on the pods cuts off at a bit of an awkwardly sharp angle, usually not worth remarking on but possible to notice from some angles if you are, say, a livery reviewer and you look at these things very closely. What I do like, though, is that the grey on the belly actively connects to the color on the tail, feeling like an extension of it instead of an awkward choice made to mitigate it.

The final specific feature of the livery I think I want to comment on is the wordmark. I really like the wordmark. It's not in their custom typeface, AS Circular, a Roboto-ish sans serif I'm not a gigantic fan of, although I really like their custom web icons. They also use Highest Praise by Adam Ladd, a fairly cheap commercially available font.

As for the wordmark itself, though, I can't seem to find what font it's based on! I have to say the original 1966 logo would be great if another airline were to use it, the 1972 is somehow giving supermarket chain, and the 1990 logo would be great if not for the weird way the K overlaps the A, which just feels sloppy and unprofessional. The 2014 and 2016 incarnations, though, are great. The 2016 one (designed by the firm Hornall Anderson) feels like a great update, just cleaning up the earlier version, though I somewhat miss the lightning-bolt S.

The placement is what I want to talk about, though. Placing a wordmark is more of an art than you might think - I'll show a couple examples of Alaska itself doing a slightly wonky job later - but when Alaska's placement is good it's great. It's one of the least cramped-looking wordmarks I've ever seen, feeling free and airy, spreading upwards above the window line. The descending line on the K and the trailing like on the A both create a feeling of freedom, like it could just keep going but doesn't want to, yet is tastefully restrained and doesn't actually overstep its bounds. I like the solid single color, and I like that it reaches almost to the engines, preventing that empty-forward-half feeling. The one thing I'll comment on for this set of images is that the left-to-right reading direction of English does mean that it looks distinctly worse seen from one side than the other. I much prefer the forward slant, which feels aerodynamic fitting with the motion of the plane, vs the alternative, in which it feels like the wordmark is trying to catch up with the aircraft's nose.

On shorter planes, though, Alaska fumbles a little. They choose to line up the wordmark with the engines instead of with the nose, creating an awkward look when it overlaps the door and nearly reaches the cockpit window. I would have leaned in the other direction were I them. This picture also demonstrates a strange feature which rears its head in certain lightings where the shading on the tailfin image makes it look almost wrinkled. I don't have anything to add to that or know how to solve it, but I need to point it out.

On a very long plane, conversely, the back half of Alaska's planes begins to feel that Lufthansa Line emptiness. The vast, vast majority of their planes are of a moderate enough length that neither issue is too overpowering, but I'm taking a wide view here! Also, the wordmark here seems to not be aligned with the engines, so...what's the idea?

Alaska Airlines is an interesting livery. More interesting than I thought I'd find it for sure. It's not just a SASlike with pleasing colors and a nice wordmark, it's a SASlike with thought put into features that can mitigate the inherent weaknesses of the SASlike. It doesn't always fully succeed, nor does it comprehensively fail, but it definitely tries.

At the end of the day, as usual, I wish there was less white. I'm sure it could have been done. I don't have an obvious solution in mind like I do for some hypothetical redesigns, so it's something I would have to think over and really dig into, but, like, Alaska Airlines makes more than a billion in revenue every year so I think that's reasonable to expect from them.

I initially started using the grading system as a way to categorize liveries without limiting myself to a very specific scale that I'll dither about for years and then change my mind about later, but it's started to end up in that role. I just don't know what better solution there is, so I'm going to continue trying to make it work. Alaska Airlines is a livery that I ultimately think I like, that I think is designed decently, but that is limited by the fact that a really good SASlike is still a SASlike - mostly white and rear-heavy. It's getting the most possible out of a flawed paradigm, and I've been inconsistent so far on how I rate a good SASlike or Lufthansalike because it causes me some legitimate cognitive dissonance.

I'm giving Alaska Airlines a provisional B-.

I think I might downgrade it to C+ later, which is why I say it's provisional. A good execution of something really limited - how do I even rate that? It's somewhere between tepidly good and better-than-average, which is a really awkward place to be. But that's probably a conversation for another day, because this post is long enough and I'm still not done.

Okay, I teased this earlier.

Him. Who is he?

The short answer: nobody knows. Not me, and not Alaska Airlines.

The long answer: deserves its own post. Both because it's long, and because I've hit image limit. And there will be images. Join me in tomorrow's bonus, where we climb our way through the rugged terrain of seemingly-lost history to attempt to put a name to this ubiquitous face.

#tarmac fashion week #grade: b-#era: 2010s #era: 2020s #region: north america #region: united states #alaska airlines #legacy carriers #lufthansa declined #deltalike #skywriting

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froggytimemachineinternet · 10 months

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some pretty asks :]

@boygenuiss, this is your ask list, im just doing it weird because i had half the questions answered when i realised i hadn't rebloged :[

Is there anyone youd do anthing for? my brother mal. for the sake of being cringe i will not be tagging them. \

what facinates you? astrophysics and the persuit of knowledge, and the application of knowledge

favorite artists? Hozier, and Barbara Levalle (a painter)

what outfit makes you feel most confidant? clothes were i feel as though i am fully covered. (leather/denim) it makes me feel safe

favorite flower? Alaskan SalmonBerry. its the flower im named after

favorite season? Fall. before i moved down to the lower 48, i had never seen fall. it lasted about 2 weeks, if you were lucky, where i grew up.

favorite movie/tv show? i really enjoyed Fairy tail, however i am a hardcore mlp show. i watched the shit outta that as a kid

favorite color? dark raspberry, but the kind you see in a ruby.

infatuation/first crush? a boy in my kindergarten class named Darius, he ended up bullying me later on though. RIP

How long do you sleep on average? As a person with clinical insomnia, not much and the stuff i get isnt very good

what celebrity do i look like? i have never had somone tell me i look like someone

whats your favorite scent? settling cheesecake, i make it homeade and nothing smells better than a cheesecake while its still batter

Pets? i have had 3 in my life. 1 passed away when i was a child, the other 2 are seniors and living their best life.

what color is your hair natually? what color would you die it? I have dark brown hair, that kinda shines yellow. i would die the ends of my hair forest green

do you have a good relationship with your parents? no. neither of them, or my siblings.

do you take a yearly vacation? i do not have that kinda money

biggest fear? not being strong enough to keep myself safe/not being able to outlast my disablity.

are you taken? no. i have chronically low rizz

what do you wear to bed? lounge wear, the comphy clothes i wear around the house.

best feeling youve ever exsperienced? i dont really have any? i lost a shit ton of my memories due to ptsd. so, im sure im gonna make some good memories, later on in life

whats your skincare routine? i wash my face with bar soap and water, whenever i wear makeup. otherwise i just kinda leave my face alone.

best gift youve ever recieved? as a child i got a lightsaber for christmas, after thinking i wouldnt get it because i was a girl. (i really should have noticed i was trans a while before i did)

favorite book? its a toss up between Skullduggery Pleasent and Septimus Heap. and an honorable mention to Pride and Prejudice.

do you have a garden? plants? nope, i live in an apartment and the plants draw in bugs, no sir.

dream destination? ive always wanted to live in Iceland! far, far away free to be someone outside of the shit ive dealt with

best subject? math. for sure math. once i understand the material i fly through it. i would say that science is my favoite subject, considering im planning on becoming an Astrophysist.

do you want kids? no, never, i woudnt be a good parent and i dont wanna bring kids into this world anyway, this place sucks. esp wher i live lol

whats your sexuality? im bi-romantic, and asexual.

do you prefer loose or baggy clothes? i prefer to wear soft heavy clothes. unfortuanly i live in the south. so no warmth for me. well. to much warmth rather

nail polish? i am currently wearing cobalt blue! i like wearing bold colors when i actually do wear it.

if you could travel to any time period, when would it be and why? i would travel far back to when my native tribe hadnt been decimated. so i could see what my ancestors, my family, actually did. the truth is hard to find after they (genocide perpatrators) tried to bury it all.

do you want/have tattoos and peircings? i want another 2 lobe peircings, and i might get some other ear ones! i am a coward however. i am planning on getting a Tlingit (my tribe) story tatooed on my back, and im also going to get some salmonberry flowers on my neck, surrounding my head/neck like a necklace!

tag list (feel free to ignore if you guys dont wanna do it)

@grandwretch you're my first mutual btw :]

@antipasto-the-theif @puffin-smoke @anunmarkedface @no-see-um-incorrect @new-kanon @bagelbucket @psychethebutterfly

#ask game #more about me #proabably honestly info dumping about me

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terrifickid · 3 months

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It's not an argument for my part it's the determination of my consciousness - it's what I believe is actual or factual. Weather or not some dumb shit shits themselves at the notion is hardly stunning.

To my view.

And there in lies the crux as to just where this mine is on this damned chessboard.

What will actually happen you know?

I saved a dog in siargao rather than end my life I can die Scott free. I don't give no fuck.

Now I'm flying back to Midland from a mountain taller than Everest submerged by the wrath of the Lord upon the wicked.

What next?

Well, that's also really uncool. On the one hand, I could be framed for murder and executed for it just because a jury decided so. Irrespective of my innocence. At any time.

I don't see how that's cool. The problem is the nature of criminality forces the situation upon us all. Then an imperfect solution decimates all our lives.

So where do I wind up? It's just the spin of the wheel of barter town.

Since the choice is mine, I mean, winning without a scratch? I was never interested in that. I only really care about learning about stuff. Whatever I do or don't do or what have you how does that matter when you just get blown up by a jihadi as collateral? You're telling me it was my fault for being imperfect? That's the nature of the realm and all things cad.

So we should diagnose as invincible by structural design and do whatever. I think cloak.

That doesn't force me into any sexual encounters. Or demand I consent to anything for any reason. Or precludes me from denying all this shit I hate and won't do and won't participate in.

I think people need to get with that program. And apparently the angels as well.

Accept the way things are they say.

That's not novel. And it's not faith.

I bought that at Walmart for cheap as an experiment. The whole thing is research remember?!

I think armor is a great idea. It has some pros and cons. I don't want to carry a massive bag I have to get to the airport and slip my shit under my seat and that's stuff I got here, prompted by an odd bleed on my knuckle that was time consuming.

It doesn't chaff,. isn't stinky, is super useful and it isn't hot. It makes you look like a video game ninja and dangerous and suspicious AF. What am I going to do? Trudge it across town in and out of concealment on precarious legal grounds with a plane to catch to reclaim it 24 months later at the soonest? What if it isn't even there? I should ship the 35 dollar item for 125 across the Pacific? Or lug it back across the ocean with the rest of my actual non-experimental gear for 24 months so I can get detained or something? I guess, I could keep it as a backup or something and then wear it to Alaska? Why wouldn't I just get kevlar sleeves? And continue to learn about armor? Utilize what I already have? Where does that get me? Rich? Hassled by Alaskan state police? Why don't I just wear a big jacket than?

I'd really rather avoid people noticing me, including the police and especially crazy shelter people that will piss on you and get you fucking sick for life

This world is fucked and its not because the world is wobbly otherwise why would God cast you fucks down and smite your whole shit?

You guys are prideful.

I'm not talking to my family, it's not important. There is 1 name I answer to.

Sith cave.

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twilightofthe · 4 years

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Chapter Nine liveblog of The Mandalorian Season 2! Let’s go!!!

Recap time!

Oh shit the ARMORER I MISSED HER even if it’s just her voiceover lol

Y’all I am fucking PUMPED

Oh shit yeah Fennec Shand’s not dead I wonder if she’ll show up again too

GOD I MISSED THE SOUNDTRAAAAAACK

OOOP OOP OOP OOP OOP HERE WE GO HERE WE GO HERE WE GOOOOOOO

THAT’S MY FUCKING SON AND HUSBAND

THERE THEY ARE

LOOK AT THEM

THEY’RE JUST WALKING AND I’M IN LOVE AGAIN

BABYBABYBABYBABYYYYYYYYYY

HIS WIDDLE FUCKING FACE

OH NO HE’S WHIMPERING

OH BABY YODA GOD HOW I MISSED YOU

YES MR TWI’LEK LET THE CUTE BABY IN

YES LOOK HOW CUTE HE IS

*cinemasins voice* Space wrestling!

Oh yeah it’s those green pig species guys from ROTJ whose names I never remember, Gamoreans?

Wherever I go he goes KILL MEEEEEEEE

Lol bruh looking for other Mandos won’t teach you how to find Jedi, it teaches you to pick fights with ‘em

HAHAHA THE BABY IS CASUALLY LEARNING MORE VIOLENCE YES I LOVE IT

Heyyy it was Gamorrean!

I feel like I know Cyclops’s voice for some reason

Lol look at Din he has sense

Ohhhh boy fight time

Time to see my husband kick ass

Oh shit shit shiiiiit is there like, a valuable underground trade for beskar and Mandalorians??? SHIIIIIIIIIT

LOL YEP GO HIDE WHILE DADDY WORKS BABY

EPIC GUITAR WAILING NOISES YESSS

ARMOR HUSBAND KICKING ABSOLUTE ASS YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

THAT WAS A FUCKING SASSY HEADBUTT LOOOOOOOOK

HE’S SO AWESOME I’M ;_;

HELL YEAH GET THAT TRAFFICKER BABY

AND CUE THE AWESOME ASS RECORDER THEME

I LOVE ME A MAN WHO NEGOTIATES

Whaaaaaat a Mando on Tatooine? Good thing my Mando on Tatooine fic is an AU!

Mos Pelgo, huh? New city!

Pfff it’s been literally less than ten minutes and I’ve already typed THIS much

OHHH SHIIIIIIT HE’S LETTING THE TRAFFICKER GET EATEN ALIVE DAMN SON

BADASS RECORDER NOISES INTENISFY

Oho, “The Marshal”, huh?

WAIT MARSHAL AS IN LIKE “MARSHAL COMMANDER”

ARE WE GETTING FUCKING CLONES?

OH GOD PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

And there’s Peli!!!!!

Holy shit my fic did pretty well predicting that xD

Lol I love her

She is Me

BABYYYYYYYYY

wrinkled critter

Din she doesn’t know what a Mandalorian Armorer means

I LOVE PELI

HOLY SHIT WE’RE GETTING A MAP OF TATOOINE

SHIT I CAN USE THIS

BABY STILL LIKES CAR RIDES

Omg he’s actually sitting with the Tuskens!

TREAT THE TUSKENS LIKE PEOPLE AND NOT UGLY STEREOTYPES 2KFOREVERRRRRRRRRRR

Dang the way he walks tho

(sorry I had to *coughs*)

“Someone who looks like me” pfff Din

Wait hang on a second this “Marshal” isn’t fucking Boba Fett is he he better not

But shit this is on Tatooine it makes sense--

I’M BAD AT MANDO ARMOR IS THAT BOBA IDK I CAN’T TELL IN THE BACKLIGHTING

Ah a blissful stranger. Not a clone tho, dammit, that would have been nice

He sounds young too, I recognize his voice

WAIT A FUCK THAT IS ABSOLUTELY BOBA FETT’S HELMET I MIGHT BE BAD AT MANDO STUFF BUT I’M FUCKING POSITIVE

oh damn and he just took it off in front of Din The Orthodox Mando WHOOP

Shit I know that guy’s actor who is he

OH NO OH NOPE HE’S NOT EVEN A REAL MANDALORIAN HE’S JUST AN ARMOR THIEF WHO STOLE BOBA’S ARMOR THIS BOI IS GONNA DIE AHAHAHAHA

Ahhh we’re going cowboy movies again

Wait so Boba wears real beskar now? I thought his wasn’t

Lol yep here we go Din’s goin’ after him now

“He’s seen worse” Din NO, THAT IS HOW YOUR CHILD LEARNS TO STRANGLE PEOPLE FOR ARM WRESTLING

Tatooine’s got earthquakes?

2012 is that you? Lion King antelope stampede hello

WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT IS THAT A KRAYT DRAGON

I’VE WANTED ONE OF THOSE FOREVER

IT’S AN ALASKAN BULL WORM

No really damn what is that thing lol

Could be a Krayt dragon? But idk their designs

DIN YOU JUST ABANDONED YOUR CHILD IN A POT MY DUDE WHY

AHAHAHAHAHAHA YESSSSSS A KRAYT FUCKING DRAGON HELL YEAH HELL YEAH FINALLY AFTER FORTY FUCKING YEARS.

Ngl I was hoping it would look a little more stereotypically “dragon-ish” cuz I’ve been entertaining this ridiculous fantasy of Obi Wan befriending one in the Kenobi show and learning how to make the noise

But giant angry sand worm friend is also good!

Din bro careful last time you agreed to hunt something on Tatooine with someone new that dude betrayed you

Ohhhh flashback!

Oh for fuck’s sake why are we adding MORE slavery

Y’all know you can also have literally anything fucking else on Tatooine besides slavery

Gah sorry y’all

Lol Jawas again

And more Wilrow Hood ice cream machines!

Ok but so did the Jawas literally fish this off of Boba’s body, did the Sarlaac shit it out and they found it, or did Boba actually sell it to them?

Oh damn and these ppl probs knew who Boba was too

Oooh dinosaur-hyena thingies

DIN SPEAKS TUSKEN

I LOVE HIM

MARRY ME

Ok but now I REALLY wanna know how Din learned the Tusken traditions

GOOD BOY ALERT! GOOD BOY! IT’S A GOOD BOY! DINOSAUR-HYENA IS A VERY GOOD BOY

TUSKEN CULTURE OH MY GOD I’M LOVING THIS

This is not a time to be a picky eater bruh

Ok there Anakin let’s settle down a bit

DIPLOMACY BY FLAMETHROWER DIN I LOVE YOU

Ok so if you eat a sarlaac does that also technically count as eating two meals since you’re also eating whatever it’s been digesting in its stomach for a thousand years?

Yep Alaskan Bull Worm

OH NO IT SCARED THE BABY :O

Din training a village to fight this thing is a wee bit harder than training them to fight an AT-STsaurus Rex

WHY DON’T WE JUST TAKE THE TOWN AND PUSH IT SOMEWHERE ELSE?

This really is just the stereotypical Western episode but kinder to the natives

Damn

“Are you trying to blow us up?” ooooof they WENT THERE

More teamwork!

“Belly is the weak spot” hey so like Smaug!

Wait a fucking second I wasn’t paying attention did they bring Baby Yoda to where he could possibly get eaten by a dragon again

Oh yeah “dank ferrik” is another SW curse

Wait why are they just standing there and letting the Tuskens get eaten

Gahhh everyone’s being so brave I’m proud of them!!!!! :_:

OH EW FUCKING GROSS GROSS GROSS GROSS

Gah I HATE vomit scenes especially unexpected ones

Sorry that’s like, a super major squick for me

And dammit they didn’t even kill the worm

Oh and now it’s up there and VOMITING AGAIN I HATE THAT

Oh shite that’s acid

Oh please be careful baby

Ok wait wait wait how did the Jawas even salvage Boba’s jetpack enough to make it fly the whole reason Boba got eaten was because the pack broke

Oh and now I’m seeing a bit of Jaws in this too

Bro noooo are you gonna blow up that bantha?

DIN NO YOU RECKLESS-ASS BITCH

B o i

Actually let himself get eaten

Din where are your braincells

Aw Baby nooooooo

Uh oh I sense more vomit

Or not!

Ok bro that was p badass

Ok yeah Marshal is p hot

There I said it

ASLDKJFSDLKFKL OF COURSE BABY YODA EATS THE RAW DRAGON MEAT

That guy is hoooooooot

“You tell your people I wasn’t the one who broke that” lol yep Han better look out

Huh? We getting excited over MORE eggs?

Oh goddammit and there is Boba Fett because of course

Knew it was too good to be true

Lol sorry y’all just wasn’t particularly excited to see him

Guess that means he willingly gave up his armor, huh?

BUT ANYWAY THIS WAS A BRILLIANT EPISODE

AND I LOVED IT

AND THE TUSKENS GOT THE RESPECT THEY DESERVED

Ok but it also seems at least Marshal and the rest of the townsfolk had the same backwards view towards the Tuskens as Anakin did, now I REALLY want to see RESPECTFUL discussion on colonialism on Tatooine, I gotta know more about this

Still super excited for the next ep!

Aaaaaaaaa!

#liveblogging the mando show #sw the mando show #mando man of mystery #the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #the mandalorian season 2 spoilers #star wars #sw

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corvusknight22 · 4 years

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Random Snippets from Alaska AKA Sirius backstory that I’m working on...

Sirius can be read up on here (https://toyhou.se/9266318.sirius) if your up for learning a little bit about her and who she is. However here is a bit of info about her that was not on her toyhouse. -Sirius AKA Alaska is the leader of Polaris, an army of meta-humans set on changing the world in many ways, they are an international wide known group and considered the “bosses of the underworld.” They are considered a international threat due to some (brutally efficient) interesting ways of dealing with things that bother them. -The snippets are from when Alaska is 9 years old and Lark is 12. This entire story takes place in Northbridge Alaska (its a made up town so don’t google it) on Kodiak Island. Just a quick warning the grammar is not the greatest below and has a bunch of mistakes in it. I am in the process of fixing some of the grammar mistakes. ________________________________________________________________ “It was a cloudy, cold day over the coastal Alaskan town of Northbridge. The dark grey clouds were brooding over the tranquil grey sea that surrounded the island of Kodiak. Today everything was strangely peaceful, and there were no gunshots heard from hunters or even shouts from fellow kids playing on the beach. It was quiet, and even as me and my sister Lark ran down the seaweed-covered beach laughing, nothing else besides the laughter and the gentle waves padding against the sand could be heard. We would soon know why it was so silent that day and how we were the ones behind that silence...” “Alaska woke up with a killer headache and a weird tingly feeling in her hands. She slowly opened her eyes to see the half-drawn medical curtains of the nurse’s office and a very pissed Principle Atkins staring at her from the base of the bed. “You have 15 minutes to feel better.” He hissed, then stormed off as the nurse rushed in with a cold towel and placed it on her forehead. She sighed very loudly and braced herself for what was coming. Sure enough, 15 minutes later, the assistant principal walked in and bought Alaska to the principal's office. The principal’s office was a brick-walled, no window room that looked more like a torture chamber than a middle school’s principles room.” “When she opened her eyes, she was standing on a barnacle filled doc. Where am I? When she looked up, there was sand, nothing but sand, coarse black sand that stretched for miles. Where is the Ocean? Isn’t this Polaris Beach then where is the Seahors- “Alaska, what are you staring at? C’mon, I’ve never seen the ocean out this far before! Let's see how it goes!” Suddenly Lark was in front of her with that stupid grin on her face. She could move now, she realized with a sigh. “Coming, sis.” She said as she hopped off the land-bound dock on to the black sand. That's weird why I don't have shoes on. This is freaky. Wasn’t I just at the Sterling Store? Why is the ocean like that, and why is it so goddamn quiet? An eerie silence hung in the air, and when she looked up, she saw dark grey storm clouds overhead, stacking on top of one another. When she craned her neck even further upward, she saw the eye of the storm overhead of them both. A beam of sunlight broke from the eye and shone on her and Lark, her sister pausing from staring out at the empty beach to look up. “ (There playing GTA here) “Police behind you!” Alaska shouted as her sister proceeded to spin their car straight into the ten police cars behind them and send them flying off of the bridge they were on. Alaska loaded the ARG they had stolen and proceeded to shoot the hell out of the police helicopter which was trailing them, it crashed directly in an office building, and Alaska chuckled. “Jeez, sis, psychopathic tendencies much?” Her sister said, smiling as her sister rammed the stolen car they were driving into a woman with a baby in her arms. ________________________________________________________________ Yeah I’m 40,000 words into this “backstory” (more like an actual book at this point)

#myherooc #my hero academia oc #my hero academia

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myhockeyworld87 · 5 years

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Nervous Regrets - Tyler Seguin - Part 9

Word Count: 4708

POV: Reader

Warning: Hmmm I may have not used a curse word, but I can’t be sure...haha!

Notes: Sorry this took so long to post. I was hoping to get more writing done this weekend, but it didn’t happen. Then the internet was down most of today because of a storm. At any rate, here’s part 9, the one where you tell your parents. Enjoy!

The trip down to your parent’s was completely uneventful; Tyler and you chatted about nothing of consequence for most of the ride. A sense of déjà vu hit you, this was your little ritual at times with Tyler; chatting essentially about nothing when he was on the road until he would have to get ready for the game. It was fairly easy to fall back into old habits with him; though you prayed some habits would be broken.

Turning onto the street where you grew up, your stomach got queasy; however it had nothing to do with the baby. An overwhelming sense of dread hit you that you were finally going to have to tell your parents everything that had happened in the last few weeks; well, not everything, some things were better left unsaid. They could be demanding at times, more so your mom than your dad. It seemed as though she always sought perfection in each of her children; that she couldn’t see that your imperfections were what made you unique, was a struggle in your relationship. You were sure that she’d see your reconnection with Tyler as one of the biggest mistakes of your life; praying, you hoped she wouldn’t see the baby that way as well.

Pulling into the drive you took a deep breath and gathered your courage. Grabbing your bag, striding through the front door, you said, “Hello, it’s your favorite daughter.” Technically you were their only daughter; so by default you were their favorite. Rushing from the kitchen, they came out to greet with hugs.

“You made great time,” this from your dad as he led the way back to the kitchen. “We’ve got your favorites in the oven for dinner.”

“It smells delicious.”

Busying herself cleaning up dishes that were dirty from food prep, your mom added, “You’re looking more yourself this time. Things must be going well with Robert.”

Leave it to mom, to just get right down to the nitty gritty; if she only knew the real Robert. “We’re not seeing each other anymore.”

“Really? I thought he was so nice, and from such a good family. Didn’t you two go out last weekend?”

Questions never ended with her, and it seemed as though she remembered every insignificant detail that you’d ever told. “It just wasn’t meant to be mom.”

“Can’t you see she doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“Thanks dad. So how have things been here? The big bad world of investment banking treating you well dad?” He always thought daddy’s little girl could do no wrong; hopefully he’d still be thinking that in a few hours.

“Works been great. We just won another trip.”

“Excellent, where are you off to now?” The investment banking business had been good to your family; affording them many luxuries in life. A nice home, financial stability and adventurous vacations were just some of the benefits your family had received from your dad’s hard work.

“Your father is in his glory with this trip, they’re sending us on an Alaskan cruise.”

“Oh wow, that sounds amazing. Are you going to go fishing up there?” It was one of the interest both he and Tyler shared; they would spend endless hours chatting about what flies and lures to use. It all seemed a little mundane to you.

“I’m hoping to. There’s a couple guys on the trip that want to take a float plane in and do some fly fishing.”

“Oh, Ty….” Shit you were almost going to say Tyler would love that but quickly you caught yourself. Coughing hoping to cover up the slip; you went and grabbed a water out of the fridge. “Sorry, throat’s a little dry from the drive, but that sounds amazing.” The timer went off on the stove; you were literally saved by the bell from having to answer anything more.

Dinner went well, you caught them up on what was going on with work, and things that were happening with your friends; that you kept leaving out the most important information, wasn’t by accident. There was never going to be a right time. So as you loaded the last of the plates into the dishwasher; you decided there was no time like the present. Sitting back down at the table, feeling your heart beat fast, you started. “So, I’ve kind of have some big news to tell you.” Preparing both you and them; you paused briefly. “It’s kind of complicated…and well….I didn’t expect it at all.” Ugh you were no good at this, maybe you should start again. “Anyhow, I ran into Tyler; and we’ve been talking. We’re getting back together.”

“OH (Y/N), you’ve got to be kidding me.” There was disapproval dripping from your mother’s voice. “After everything that he did, how can you even contemplate taking him back.” Your dad remained silent.

“Well there’s actually more.” It was kind of like ripping off a bandage, you were either the type of person to take it off nice and slow, or one that ripped it off all at once; all at once was your choice at the moment. “So I’m pregnant, and before you ask its Tyler’s. And yes, it’s part of the reason we are getting back together, but it’s not the whole reason. I love him. I never stopped loving him and I just want the best for all of us. And he’s really trying, I think this time things will be different.”

“Don’t you know once a cheater, always a cheater?” Your mother would focus on that as the most important part of anything you’d just said.

“People can change mom. Is that how you feel about Sean? Because I believe he was the one who cheated on Kristen. Are you saying that he’ll do it on Jessica as well?” It wasn’t right throwing your brother under the bus when he wasn’t even here to defend himself; however, his first marriage had ended because he’d cheated on his ex-wife. That it was with his current wife shouldn’t matter.

“You know that’s different.”

“Is it? I don’t think so mom. It’s only different because Sean is your son. But look he’s been married to Jessica now for five years and things are great with them. I don’t think he’d ever cheat on her. But even if he did, if they love each other can’t they both find a way to work through it.”

“She does have a point.” This from your dad as he watched the exchange between you too. “But I think you’re missing the point here dear. Our daughter just told us she’s having a baby.” He grabbed your hand then and gave it a gentle squeeze; tears started to well in your eyes. Inhaling deeply you closed your eyes willing them not to slip out; the last thing you needed to show your parents now was weakness.

“You’re making a horrible mistake.”

It was all you let your mother say, “My child is not a mistake mother. I will never look at him or her like that. I love Tyler and I love our baby. So please do not say that again.”

“I meant you taking Tyler back is a mistake, not the…” She waved her hands motioning to your belly, as if the word baby had too many syllables in it and she couldn’t get them out. You knew this wouldn’t be easy, but you didn’t expect her to be so negative about your pregnancy.

Growing up you’d constantly butted heads with your mother; in the last few years you’d thought that rift had mended. Though right now it was as if foreshocks were coming across a fault line; preparing you for an earthquake bigger than any that had happened before. “It’s a baby mom, you can say the word.”

“Yes I know what it is. I just don’t feel that you are going about this the right way.”

“And what’s the right way? Don’t you think I would’ve loved to have been married before I was pregnant? Because I would, but sometimes things don’t go the way we envision it.” A tear slid down your cheek, angrily you wiped it away; hating the way you always cried even when you were frustrated.

“Is this why you broke up with Robert?”

That was it, you snapped. “Fuck, Robert mom. He’s nothing but a self-absorbed child that forces himself on people when he doesn’t get what he wants. He has absolutely nothing to do with this. This is about my baby, the one I’m having with Tyler. If you can’t get that through your head, then that’s your problem.” Shoving yourself out of the chair you stood up, anger emanating off of you. “I knew this would be hard for you, but you’ve either got to learn to accept that Tyler is in my life or I don’t need to be in yours. Do you understand me?” Silence ensued, neither one of your parents saying a word. Shaking from the encounter; this was the first time you’d been this forceful with your parents. “I need some air.” Grabbing your purse, you headed out the door straight to your car.

Pulling out of the driveway, you tried to calm your nerves. In your teenage years, after certain rows with your mom; you’d often just go for a drive. Coming back things always looked clearer; you weren’t so sure this time. Aimlessly you drove around, no real destination in mind; until you found yourself parked in front of your brother Matt’s home. Matt was always the voice of reason growing up; he’d put out more fires between you and your mom than you could recall. You’d often joke that he was her favorite; even though he was the middle child. His front door opened, long strides had him standing by your car in no time.

“Hey brat, are you going to sit in the car all night or are you coming in?”

“Are my favorite kiddos in the world here?” Matt had two little ones, a girl and a boy, Rylynn and Reese; they were by far one of the best reasons for coming home.

“Nah, Melissa took them to get ice cream. She thought maybe we’d need some time to talk.” Giving him a quizzical side eye; he answered you before you could even give voice to your thoughts. “Dad text me, and said you and mom had it out.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“Nope, I was hoping you’d fill me in.” Getting out of the car, you followed him into the house. Strewn across the floor were dozen of toys, but instead of looking unkempt; it looked homey and inviting. Your mind conjured a time when your home with Tyler would look the same, only with three dogs milling around as well.

Sitting at the kitchen island, you sighed heavily. “Where do I start?”

“How about the beginning?”

“Well….Tyler and I are back together.” Matt, god bless him, didn’t say anything; just raised his eyes slightly. “I know. We’re working things out. Not gonna lie, I don’t trust him one hundred percent, yet. That’s going to take time, but I love him Matt. I’ve always loved him.”

When you didn’t say anything more, he added, “So mom’s pissed about that huh?”

“Wait…there’s more.” Eyebrows going up further this time, “I’m pregnant.”

“Oh…wow…ok.” He took a moment, regathering himself. “Congratulations little sis. You’re going to be a great mom.” The dam let loose, a flood of tears just coming out of your eyes; Matt came over grabbing you in a hug, as you sobbed. This is what you needed, that one person that believed in you; had faith that you were making the right decision.

Getting your emotions under control, you pulled back; looking up at your brother, you hiccupped out a “Thank you.” Why couldn’t your parents be like this; well correction really your mom. Your dad really didn’t get a chance to voice his opinion.

“Look sis, I’m gonna give it to you straight ok?” If there was one thing about your brother, it was that he never pulled any punches; but sometimes it was better to just take your medicine without sugar coating it. “Mom’s always been tougher on you. I have a few guesses as to why, but that’s for another conversation. Essentially, she only wants the best for you, for all of us really. I don’t think you know how hard it was for her to watch you go through the shit you went through with Tyler. Look at it from her point of view once; you’re going to be a mom now. What if your baby is a little girl and her boyfriend cheated on her; now take it one step further and watch her go through it in a public scandal. How would you feel?” He paused letting his words sink into your brain. “I know how I’d feel if it was Rylynn. It would be really hard to hear that she’s getting back together with him; and having his baby. You need to give her time; she’ll come around.”

Why did your brother always have to make so much sense; he seemed to have a way of putting things so that you could see it from your mother’s side. You’d only known you were pregnant for four weeks now, and you already loved your child so much, that you would do anything for him or her; now multiply that love by twenty some years. Going through your own heart ache is one thing; watching someone you love go through it, and not be able to help, that pain would be gut wrenching. “I see your point. Maybe I’m being a tad unreasonable. It’s just…”

Cutting you off, before you could say anything more; “I know you love him, and you’re right; mom can be irrational about these things. Ultimately, it’s your life (Y/N), and she has to let you live it; and she will. But like all of us, she’s going to be leery of him for a while. I’m telling you right now, if he does something stupid again; I’ll beat the fucking shit out of him.”

Smiling at that, you knew your brother would defend you within an inch of his own life. Truth was he could whip Tyler’s ass with one had tied behind his back. Matt had been a state champion wrestler in high school, as well as running back for the football team; he’d maintained that physical robustness even years after graduating. While he’d never been one to go looking for a fight; he could hold his own with some of the best. “I’m banking on you not having to go that far, but thanks for the offer. Thanks for everything, you always know just what to say.”

“I’ve got your back sis, not matter what; even if it comes down between you and mom on this one. Which it won’t. Now please tell me how all this went down, to my knowledge you haven’t seen Tyler, for what three months?” When you nodded your head, he continued. “So, you’re what thirteen or fourteen weeks pregnant? Have you known that long and seriously not said something to your favorite brother?”

Spending the next thirty minutes, you filled Matt in on everything that went down. That was until four little feet came running through the door; both yelling for your attention, which you happily gave them. At ages three and five they were full of energy but also full of love. The three of you played with all the toys in the family room for the next hour; while Matt, you assumed, filled Melissa in on everything. Helping Melissa with their bath time ritual, you thought about bathing your own little one soon. The three of you then snuggled into the couch and watched the Stars play for a bit before bedtime. In no time the two of them were asleep; you always had that light tickle touch and would rub their little backs, putting them right to sleep. Matt carried them upstairs as you finished watching the game; the Stars falling to the Blues. Tyler had played well but you knew he’d beat himself up about the loss.

Matt came back downstairs then, “I put the kids in Reese’s room, so you can have Rylynn’s bed. I also took the liberty of texting dad and telling him you’ll be back over in the morning.” He really was the sweetest brother in the whole world.

“Thanks, but all my stuff is at their house.”

“It’s one night, you can just borrow something of mine to sleep in.” This from Melissa as she was picking up the stray toys on the floor; getting up you helped her. “So now that the kiddos are asleep, tell me how you’re feeling? Is the nausea gone? Because it seemed like mine lasted the whole pregnancy.”

“I’ve been pretty good lately. The PA we saw this week, wants me to gain more weight, which I’m trying.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. It seemed like I ballooned out and wasn’t even trying. It’ll happen. Are you going to find out if you’re having a boy or a girl?”

“Well as you know we (Y/LN)’s like surprises in life. So nope, we aren’t finding out.”

“See I told you Melissa, you can’t ruin the only one true surprise of life.”

“Ugh…I really wanted to know, and this one right here wasn’t having any of it. I think I heard that no true surprise in life thing, until I was going to puke; which sometimes I did.” Laughing she went over to Matt. “But honestly it was the best moment, when the doctor’s like you have a little boy or girl, since we got both.” Matt and Melissa were amazing parents; you could only hope you and Tyler would be just as good. “Come up and I’ll give you some clothes to sleep in and stuff. I’m sure you’re exhausted from the day.”

“Yeah I kind of am, but I’m trying to stay awake to talk to Tyler for a bit.”

Walking into Matt and Melissa’s bedroom, she asked, “So how is that going? Are you happy?”

“I am and I think Tyler has really changed. I know he loves me and the baby. I think we can make this work. I just hope that eventually everyone will accept him again.” Even after your conversation with Matt, you still had doubts in the back of your head about your mom coming to grips with the whole situation.

“Everything will be fine, you’ll see. Especially after that little one is born. You know, you can call me with any questions about being pregnant or babies. I know I asked my sister a ton of questions when I was pregnant.”

You’re brother had the best wife ever; Melissa was sweet, kind and an excellent mom. “Thanks, I’m sure I’ll be taking you up on that.” Handing you some pajamas, you made your way to the bathroom to change; then said a quick good night to Matt and Melissa. Putting your phone on vibrate, you laid in bed waiting for Tyler to call. The walls were covered in a light shade of pink; Disney princesses scattered here and there. It was perfect for a little girl; and had you dreaming of what you wanted to do your baby’s room in.

The phone buzzed then, “Hey you, sorry about the game, thought you guys were going to pull it out there in the end.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t one of our best, that’s for sure.” Tyler’s voice carried a hint of disappointment; that seemed to melt away with his next comment. “How are my babies doing?”

“We’re good. Just fighting off sleep so I can talk to you.”

“So how’d it go today with telling your parents?”

“You don’t want to know. Let’s just say, I’m staying at Matt’s tonight.”

“That bad huh?”

Your mind drifted back to your argument with your mom; you debated on how much to tell Tyler. “Well there was no congratulations going around that was for sure. I didn’t think it would be easy, but I didn’t expect it this bad either. Though Matt has been a god send. I’m going to go over tomorrow, with a new perspective; and hopefully things will be better.”

“Look (Y/N), I know I’ve got a lot of repair work to do with your family; probably more than I do with you. But I’m going to show them, that they couldn’t ask for a better man for their daughter and sister, than me. They’ll come around in time I’m sure.”

“I know you’ll do everything you can Ty, but you’re right it will take a little time. But we’ve got that.” Hopefully you could mend some of the rift tomorrow; which would help shave off some of that time.

“Have you been eating?”

Ever your personal trainer in baby weight gain, Tyler would ask that question. “Of course I did. Plus the kids brought me ice cream.”

“How are those two munchkins?”

“They’re great. They were excited to see you play. Reese even wore his Stars pajamas to bed tonight. I know they’re excited to see you.” Their sweet innocence had protected them against all the negative criticism directed towards their Uncle Ty, as they referred to him; they still loved and missed him being around.

“Awww that’s sweet, I can’t wait to see them.” He yawned, which in turned made you do the same; both of you exhausted from the day. “You know I could talk to you all night, but I should probably let you get some sleep.”

“Yeah, I think we’re both pretty tired. Call me tomorrow when you land?”

“Of course babe. Get some rest and good luck tomorrow. I love you.”

“I love you too. Sleep well.”

With that you hung up the phone and drifted off into a dreamless sleep; not waking up until streams of light came streaking through the window. Rolling over checking your phone for the time, you found that it was just shy of eight. Willing yourself to have a positive attitude for the day; you got up. Voices floated upstairs; you knew the kids were up. It was one in particular that caught your attention; distinctly you recognized the laugh as your mom’s. Well there was no time like the present; so, you glided down the stairs making your presence known.

“Morning,” you greeted the group.

Two little forms came hurling at you, “Aunt (Y/N) you’re awake, yay!!” Embracing them in a big group hug, you kissed them both on the head; drawing strength from their exuberance.

Slowly you made your way over to your mom, who remained at the kitchen table as you drew near. “Alright kiddos, time to get ready for school.” Melissa ushered the kids upstairs quickly, giving you some privacy; Matt trailing after her, mouthing the words, good luck.

Deciding to break the ice first, you said, “Hi mom.” Awkwardly you sat down next to her. “Look I’m really….” She halted anything else you were going to say by putting her hand up.

“Please don’t say anything else. Look I thought a lot about our conversation yesterday, and I’m sorry. I didn’t handle myself or the situation very well.” Blinking, had your mother actually apologized; it had to be the first time that ever happened. “You’re a grown woman now, and I sometimes forget that; because you’re always going to be my baby girl. I just love you so much and only want the best for you and if that includes Tyler; then I am one hundred percent behind you.” There were tears welling in both of your eyes. “I just can’t believe my baby is going to have a baby. I’m so happy for you sweetie, I really am.”

With that she stood up and just enveloped you in her arms; both of you crying happy tears. “Thanks mom, I’m so sorry about yesterday too.”

“Shhh. I don’t want to hear anything about that; we’re just going to put it all behind us.” Holding you at her arm’s length, she continued; “Now, tell me everything. Well wait let’s go grab breakfast somewhere; I know your brother has to get off to work and such.” Gathering your stuff you headed out with your mom to fill her in.

The next twenty-four hours were like a whirlwind. During the day you and your mom gallivanted throughout town; stopping for pedicures and manicures and just doing mother daughter things. You spoke to Tyler for a spell as well; then the family headed out for dinner. On Saturday, your brother Sean and his wife, Jessica, headed up from Houston for a family get together. The day was full of joy and laughter, as you chased the kids around the lawn and reminisced with your family about all the memorable times you’d had; as well as the new ones that you were going to make.

Busying yourself in the kitchen, since your dad had requested one of your famous homemade cakes; you hunted around for an extra bag of flour. “Mom, I can’t seem to find the flour. Did you move it or something?”

“Damn, I think I forgot to buy that the last time I was at the store.”

“That’s why you always take a list dear.” This from your dad, as he stole a piece of fruit from the bowl you’d been cutting up.

Playfully you smacked your dad’s hand, scolding him; “You know I won’t have enough for the cake if you keep eating it. I’ll just run to the store and go get some.”

“I’ll come with you.” Your brother Sean piped in; not having a chance to really get a one on one conversation with you since he’d learned about everything. “But I’m driving, you’re a horrible driver, sis.”

“Oh really? I’m not the one with three speeding tickets, mister lead foot.”

Taking his hand he clamped it over your mouth, “Shhh, mom doesn’t know about those.”

Whispering low, “Seriously, you’re afraid to tell mom about that.”

“What can I say?” Giving him a sympathetic look; for you knew exactly where he was coming from. “Toss me your keys, your cars at the end of the driveway.” Getting in the car, the two of you headed to the store. “So, how are you doing, I mean with everything? It’s got to be a lot.”

“Yeah, it is; but I’m really happy. Tyler’s been pretty great about everything.” He glanced at you questioningly. “I know, it’s kind of hard to believe; but he’s really trying. I didn’t say anything to anyone yet, but he bought us a new house. He told me yesterday that the seller’s accepted our bid.”

“Woah, that’s big; so obviously you’ve moved back in with him.” “Not yet, but once the papers are finalized; I’ll move into the new house with him.” The excitement in Tyler’s voice yesterday, was contagious; and had you just as thrilled to move into your new home together. “I’m looking at it as a fresh start for us.”

“That’s great sis. I’m happy for you.” The light was red, turning over to look at you, he become all serious. “I can’t believe you’re going to be a mom. You know you’re always going to be my pesky little sister though; who I’d do anything for. So if you ever need anything, anything at all I’m here. All you have to do is say the word.”

Pregnancy hormones really sucked; you seemed to be a weepy mess all the time. Looking over at your brother, eyes shining with tears; you loved your family so much that sometimes it just couldn’t be put into words. The light changed then and you proceeded through the intersection. That’s when you saw it; a car barreling towards you. “Sean look out!” It was the last thing you said; hands went instinctively around your mid-section to protect the baby from the impact. Please God let us all be ok; it was the last thing you thought, as your head smacked the passenger window and everything went completely black.

Side Note: Please don’t threaten to punch me in the face like one of my best friend’s did after reading this...hahah! Peace, love and hugs y’all!!!!

#tyler seguin #tyler seguin imagine #tyler seguin imagines #dallas stars #dallas stars imagine #dallas stars imagines #nhl imagines #nhl imagine #nhl fanfic #hockey imagines #hockey imagine #hockey fanfiction

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wemadeacrosswhereourshadowsmet · 5 years

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David Berman - Self-Portrait at 28

I know it's a bad title but I'm giving it to myself as a gift on a day nearly canceled by sunlight when the entire hill is approaching the ideal of Virginia brochured with goldenrod and loblolly and I think "at least I have not woken up with a bloody knife in my hand" by then having absently wandered one hundred yards from the house while still seated in this chair with my eyes closed. It is a certain hill the one I imagine when I hear the word "hill" and if the apocalypse turns out to be a world-wide nervous breakdown if our five billion minds collapse at once well I'd call that a surprise ending and this hill would still be beautiful a place I wouldn't mind dying alone or with you. I am trying to get at something and I want to talk very plainly to you so that we are both comforted by the honesty. You see there is a window by my desk I stare out when I am stuck though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write and I don't know why I keep staring at it. My childhood hasn't made good material either mostly being a mulch of white minutes with a few stand out moments, popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer a certain amount of pride at school everytime they called it "our sun" and playing football when the only play was "go out long" are what stand out now. If squeezed for more information I can remember old clock radios with flipping metal numbers and an entree called Surf and Turf. As a way of getting in touch with my origins every night I set the alarm clock for the time I was born so that waking up becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do is take a reading of the day and try to flow with it like when you're riding a mechanical bull and you strain to learn the pattern quickly so you don't inadverantly resist it. II two I can't remember being born and no one else can remember it either even the doctor who I met years later at a cocktail party. It's one of the little disappointments that makes you think about getting away going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables and taking a room on the square with a landlady whose hands are scored by disinfectant, telling the people you meet that you are from Alaska, and listen to what they have to say about Alaska until you have learned much more about Alaska than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables. Sometimes I am buying a newspaper in a strange city and think "I am about to learn what it's like to live here." Oftentimes there is a news item about the complaints of homeowners who live beside the airport and I realize that I read an article on this subject nearly once a year and always receive the same image. I am in bed late at night in my house near the airport listening to the jets fly overhead a strange wife sleeping beside me. In my mind, the bedroom is an amalgamation of various cold medicine commercial sets (there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand). I know these recurring news articles are clues, flaws in the design though I haven't figured out how to string them together yet, but I've begun to notice that the same people are dying over and over again, for instance Minnie Pearl who died this year for the fourth time in four years. III three Today is the first day of Lent and once again I'm not really sure what it is. How many more years will I let pass before I take the trouble to ask someone? It reminds of this morning when you were getting ready for work. I was sitting by the space heater numbly watching you dress and when you asked why I never wear a robe I had so many good reasons I didn't know where to begin. If you were cool in high school you didn't ask too many questions. You could tell who'd been to last night's big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallway. You didn't have to ask and that's what cool was: the ability to deduct to know without asking. And the pressure to simulate coolness means not asking when you don't know, which is why kids grow ever more stupid. A yearbook's endpages, filled with promises to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness of a teenager's promise. Not like I'm dying for a letter from the class stoner ten years on but... Do you remember the way the girls would call out "love you!" conveniently leaving out the "I" as if they didn't want to commit to their own declarations. I agree that the "I" is a pretty heavy concept and hope you won't get uncomfortable if I should go into some deeper stuff here. IV four There are things I've given up on like recording funny answering machine messages. It's part of growing older and the human race as a group has matured along the same lines. It seems our comedy dates the quickest. If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes I hope you won't be insulted if I say you're trying too hard. Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live seem slow-witted and obvious now. It's just that our advances are irrepressible. Nowadays little kids can't even set up lemonade stands. It makes people too self-conscious about the past, though try explaining that to a kid. I'm not saying it should be this way. All this new technology will eventually give us new feelings that will never completely displace the old ones leaving everyone feeling quite nervous and split in two. We will travel to Mars even as folks on Earth are still ripping open potato chip bags with their teeth. Why? I don't have the time or intelligence to make all the connections like my friend Gordon (this is a true story) who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree until I brought it up. He'd never broken the name down to its parts. By then it was too late. He had moved to Coral Gables. V five The hill out my window is still looking beautiful suffused in a kind of gold national park light and it seems to say, I'm sorry the world could not possibly use another poem about Orpheus but I'm available if you're not working on a self-portrait or anything. I'm watching my dog have nightmares, twitching and whining on the office floor and I try to imagine what beast has cornered him in the meadow where his dreams are set. I'm just letting the day be what it is: a place for a large number of things to gather and interact -- not even a place but an occasion a reality for real things. Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic or religious with this piece: "They won't accept it if it's too psychedelic or religious," but these are valid topics and I'm the one with the dog twitching on the floor possibly dreaming of me that part of me that would beat a dog for no good reason no reason that a dog could see. I am trying to get at something so simple that I have to talk plainly so the words don't disfigure it and if it turns out that what I say is untrue then at least let it be harmless like a leaky boat in the reeds that is bothering no one. VI six I can't trust the accuracy of my own memories, many of them having blended with sentimental telephone and margarine commercials plainly ruined by Madison Avenue though no one seems to call the advertising world "Madison Avenue" anymore. Have they moved? Let's get an update on this. But first I have some business to take care of. I walked out to the hill behind our house which looks positively Alaskan today and it would be easier to explain this if I had a picture to show you but I was with our young dog and he was running through the tall grass like running through the tall grass is all of life together until a bird calls or he finds a beer can and that thing fills all the space in his head. You see, his mind can only hold one thought at a time and when he finally hears me call his name he looks up and cocks his head and for a single moment my voice is everything: Self-portrait at 28.

#david berman #poem

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tangentmoth · 5 years

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You’re one of the living; who’s gonna make it tonight?

Zdravstvuyte, fellow Stalkers! Tangentmoth is back, with another installment of Scorch the Skies, a collection of loosely interconnected fics bridging Clear Sky and Shadow of Chernobyl, from the point of view of the NPCs our protagonists meet along the way. (Because someone’s got to care about the Some Gremlins of this obscure, underappreciated fandom, and it might as well be me.)

Chapter 1: Sailor Take Warning

Chapter 2: The Bad Death of General Krylov

There’re a lot of unanswered questions in between Clear Sky and Shadow of Chernobyl, and none so engrossing as the complete disappearance of the title characters of Clear Sky themselves. Which brings us to this week’s Gremlin: Nimble, the Wedge Antilles of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe, and one of only two known survivors of the Clear Sky faction.

(A/N: This turned out to be a much longer fic than I expected it to be, and will thus be released in two parts.)

Chapter 3: Ishmael (Part I)

“And only I am escaped alone to tell thee…

- Moby Dick (paraphrasing the book of Job)

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

He doesn’t know exactly how long he’s been running. More than a day, is the best he can figure. There was darkness at one point. Now it’s light again, for a given value of “light”. It all blurs together in the storm.

Sometimes there are lulls in the storm, when the downpour lightens and the lightning stops flashing and the thunder quiets for an hour, two, three. Those are the times when he rests, when he hides among the hummocks and the reeds. The storm is his friend, right now. The thunder hides the sound of his passage as he slogs through the Swamps, the curtains of rain and wind obscure his movements, the lightning blinds the eyes of his pursuers. Mutants, mostly.

But not just mutants.

He avoids the farmsteads and the ruined villages and the tumbledown old Orthodox church, all the places that had once been theirs, or mostly theirs. He’s dead exhausted and he wants to stop, hole up in one of the old buildings and dry off and fucking sleep, but he can’t afford to take the chance. They might be waiting in one of the buildings, or all of them. Better to just keep moving. He’s got plenty of energy drinks in his pack, two Flashes in the set of lead-lined pouches at his belt, accurate maps on his PDA. He can run for days. But which way?

Not east. Definitely not east. He knows he could slip past the military outpost’s machine guns and make it to the Cordon, he’s done it half a dozen times running errands for Suslov or Kalancha, it’s how he got his nickname. He and Vasya had been running that way to begin with, until they’d stumbled on what was left of Suslov.

The circle. The heads.

Vasya had freaked out and run. Hadn’t paid attention, hadn’t noticed the way the rain was warping and spiraling around itself just ahead of him. No more Vasya.

North. North to the railroad tracks, then up through Hunter’s Woods. He could cut over to the Main Road from there…

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

Nimble was lost. Really, really fucking lost.

He’d gotten to the woods okay. That part had been alright, except for a couple of Snorks. Thank fuck for Vasya’s SPAS-12. Way better than his sad old sawed-off. He’d taken a couple of swipes, nothing serious, and the combat shottie had laid the Snorks out without much of a fuss. It was worth the injuries just to be away from the Great Swamps. No more slogging through the marshes, looking over his shoulder, every minute expecting those...freaks to ambush him and put his head on another pike. When I get to the Cordon, I’ll buy a bottle and toast Vasya’s memory, he’d thought. I’ll toast all of their memories. And then sleep. Sleep for a week.

Except he couldn’t find the Cordon. He couldn’t find the fucking road.

He had exited the woods to find himself in rocky, scrubby hill country littered with tangled junk and scrap metal. The Garbage, according to the maps on his PDA, which told him he was south of some old industrial complex and west of the Main Road. Good. Great. Except then he’d tried to climb a hill for a good vantage and his dosimeter started clicking so fast it was screeching. He’d panicked, tripped and gone tumbling ass-over-end down the hillside in his haste to get back down. A dumbass rookie move if there’d ever been one. The PDA was still up there on that hill somewhere With the maps.

I, Nimble had thought, lying dazed in a bush with his right sleeve shredded to the elbow, am fucked.

There was still the sun to navigate by, at least, but the Garbage was slow going overland. Terrifyingly slow. If the dosimeter wasn’t going apeshit, it was the anomaly alarm It felt like he was wasting fifteen minutes worth of nervous bolt-chucking for every fifteen meters he progressed. The hills were crawling with blind dogs and the occasional boar, and he was running perilously low on shotgun shells. Pretty soon he’d be reduced to his shitty little Makarov. He was exhausted, his injuries were hurting like hell, and he was starting to feel sick despite the Fireball he was carrying.

Worst of all, the sun was starting to set.

It went down as he skirted around a jumbled pile of what looked like construction crane parts. For a long minute Nimble just stood and watched, unmindful of the constant click of the dosimeter, until there was nothing left of the light but a faint stripe of slightly lighter blue against the junk-strewn western horizon. He was alone, in this godforsaken irradiated no-man’s-land, with no PDA to navigate with or call for help, too little ammo and no medicine. At night.

I am fucked.

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

“Vnimanie! Anekdot!”

Wolf grinned to himself, listening to the others tell their campfire stories. He’d never admit it, but this was one of the things he liked best about life in the Zone. Not the firefights, not the thrill of picking your way through minefields of anomalies (or sometimes just literal minefields, if you spent most of your time in the Cordon like Wolf did), not the strange and hazardous wonder of the artifacts. Just a bunch of fellow stalkers gathered together around a fire, drinking, playing music, and telling stories to ward off the night.

Tonight he was camped out at the old scrapyard with Bes, Bes’s crew, and a small gaggle of Cordon rookies. The Garbage was a radioactive, anomaly-strewn shithole he normally preferred to avoid unless he was just passing through, but his new crop of rookies were another story. The Big Blowout had blasted artifacts out of seemingly every anomaly south of Rostok, enough of them that they were just scattered over the the hills like so much shrapnel and you didn’t even need a detector to locate them. Most of them weren’t of much use (or value, for that matter), but of course the newbies all had fucking stars in their eyes and had taken off from the Cordon like a bunch of greenhorn Alaskan prospectors who just heard there was gold in them thar hills. Wolf had followed, not because he particularly wanted to but because most of these kids were going to die without a babysitter. Hideously.

“...so Pravik and me, we’re searching the bodies and we hear a ‘whoosh’, and you know what we saw? A bandit spinning in midair! Must have been trying to get the drop on us, til that whirligig got the drop on him! Stupid gopnik too drunk to throw a bolt.”

Wolf snorted, passing a bottle of vodka Bes’s way. Good stuff, too, not that Cossacks rotgut that was a hryvnia a dozen in the Zone. A working relationship with Sidorovich had its perks. And Bes was a good man and a good friend, an experienced Stalker who knew this whole area like the back of his hand.

Bes took a swig, nodded his approval, then shot a skeptical eyebrow at the storytelling rookie. “Your clothes look mighty clean for someone downwind of a bandit caught in a whirligig,” he pointed out drily.

“See, that’s the best part though! It never went off all the way, so he just stayed up there spinning around like a flying saucer! Might even still be up there for all we know!”

That got them all cracking up, Bes included, and Wolf almost missed it--would have missed it, if not for the sixth sense most veterans gained after a while in the Zone: the sound of footsteps on gravel.

“Shut up, all of you!” he barked, raising his hand in a curt ‘quiet!’ motion and hoping the rookies would take the hint. He got to his feet, rifle at the ready. Bes and his men followed suit, a bare instant behind Wolf. Good.

The footsteps grew louder as they approached, and now they could see the flicker of a headlamp coming from the western end of the old vehicle graveyard. Not a bandit, Wolf didn’t think; a bandit would have either darted behind cover or opened fire by now. A Loner, then, most likely...but why hadn’t he announced himself?

“You there!” Bes called. “Who goes there?”

The figure staggered on toward them, finally close enough for Wolf to make out in the beam of his headlamp. A skinny guy in some kind of camo fatigues--it was impossible to make out the color in this light--and what looked like a retooled military flak vest that had seen much, much better days. One sleeve was completely shredded, and there was a bloody bandage around his right thigh. His face was white, his eyes wide and starey.

“What the hell?” one of the rookies muttered.

“...don’t...don’t shoot….” the intruder croaked “Don’t shoot, please…” Then he fell to his knees, vomiting.

“Shit,” Wolf muttered, running up to the man and dropping down onto one knee next to him. Up close, he could see the guy was no older than most of his rookies, and that he was puking up mostly blood and bile. Shit, shit, shit. “Hang on, man,” he grunted.

He lugged the sick Stalker to his feet, slinging an arm around his shoulders and half-dragging, half-carrying him over to one of the bedrolls arranged around the fire. Drifter, one of the brighter rookies and the one Wolf had pegged as Most Likely to Survive a Year, held out a canteen of purified water and a medkit, but Wolf shook his head. “Get me one of the better ones out of my pack. Should be in a yellow box.” He’d traded for those from the Ecologists up at Lake Yantar, and they were worth every ruble. “And the pack of antirad syrettes.”

“Waste of meds,” one of Bes’s men grumbled as Drifter tossed him the packages. “Better to put him out of his misery now.”

“When I want your opinion I’ll ask for it,” Wolf snarled back. The sick Stalker was retching again, groaning. Wolf ripped the wrapper off of a pre-loaded antirad syringe, bit the cap off, and jammed the needle into the Stalker’s hip. The kid yelped, and Wolf figured that for a good sign. He followed the antirads with a dose of morphine out of the scientists’ medkit, then squatted back on his heels to get a better look while the meds kicked in and the young Stalker got his breath back.

In the firelight, at close inspection, the Stalker looked like 500km of bad road run hard. There was definitely bullet damage to the vest, which probably meant bruised or broken ribs underneath. The wound on the right thigh looked like claw slashes from an mutant attack, and the shredded sleeve revealed what was either a badly infected scrape or a nasty beta burn all the way up his forearm--probably both, considering the dirt here. There wasn’t much left of the man’s pack but the straps, but he was very obviously carrying three or four artifacts in the pouches on his utility belt--one of them a Fireball, judging from the heat Wolf could feel radiating even through the lead lining. A savvy choice that had probably saved the man’s life here, where you could eat 200 rem just picking the wrong path to walk down.

He set about stripping off the vest and cutting off the old bandages so he could get at the unfortunate Stalker’s injuries, talking to him while he did so in the hopes of keeping him conscious. “Lucky you didn’t get shot for a bandit, wandering in here in the middle of the night like that,” he chided. “Fuck, you’re lucky you didn’t get shot by a bandit out here. Garbage is crawling with the scum. You got a name, friend?”

“...Nimble,” the Stalker managed, voice slurred and gravelly from the vomiting and the drugs. “...was trying to find the Cordon...come up through the Woods, then down the road...thought...I was safe…but I got lost…lost my PDA, dogs got my pack...thought I was dead, til I saw your fire.”

The Stalker’s clothes were filthy, caked in mud and blood, but there was a patch on his shoulder that caught Wolf’s eye--not the usual black-on-yellow radiation symbol that most Loners wore, though. Two birds flying over the rising sun, on a sky-blue field. The writing underneath was half-obscured by mud, but Wolf could read it just the same. Chistoye Nebo.

Clear Sky.

Wolf glanced up at Bes, beckoning him over. “You came up from the Great Swamps?”

Nimble nodded weakly, eyes glassy. Bes looked him over, eyes narrowing with suspicion “Nobody in the Great Swamps but bandits. Call themselves Renegades, like they’re a legitimate faction.” He spat to the side.

Nimble shook his head, crying out as Wolf poured antiseptic solution over the inflamed claw slashes in his thigh. “Not me...not us. We were down there too. Clear Sky. Nobody...ah fuck!....nobody knew...just a few people, the trader at the Cordon, a doctor up in Yantar….”

“He’s telling the truth,” Wolf said “I’ve seen his folks at the village. They come in to trade with Sidorovich every now and again, if they manage to make it past the military outpost. Some kind of armed science unit, eggheads with guns. What the hell are you doing up here in the Garbage, kid, all by yourself? This is a bad, bad place to be lost.”

“...came up through the woods...” Nimble slurred. The drugs were really hitting hard now; he could barely string words together. “...nobody left down there…..just me...Vasya fell in an anomaly and died….they got everyone else, but I outran them….”

Wolf frowned at that. “They? The bandits, the Renegades or whatever?”

Nimble’s eyes slowly closed. “...not bandits...don’t know who they were….came after the blowout, in the night….burned our place, killed everyone...I saw Trodnik, he was with them, but he wasn’t..he wasn’t him....they killed everyone…” He trailed off, head lolling to the side.

Wolf finished re-bandaging the young Stalker’s injuries and sat back, still frowning. He looked over at Bes. “That make any sense to you?”

Bes shrugged. “Kid’s rad-sick and doped to the gills. Who knows what the hell he’s talking about. What are you going to do with him?”

“Take him back to the village, if he makes it through the night.” And Wolf thought he would make it through the night. Young and skinny as he was, he was clearly tougher than he looked--tough enough and smart enough to have evaded whatever had befallen his comrades down in the Swamps, to have survived wandering the woods and the Garbage for what must have been days. Wolf knew experienced stalkers who might not have made it. He admired Nimble for it. But he was unsettled by the kid’s story, filtered through delirium though it was.

I saw Trodnik, he was with them, but he wasn’t...he wasn’t him…

He knew Ivan Trodnik. He was a Guide, a rare, valuable, and dangerous trade here in the Zone, and he was good at his job. He’d worked the routes from Cordon all the way up through Rostok and beyond, before moving south to map the Great Swamps. Wolf had last seen him maybe two or three weeks ago, dressed in blue-and-white fatigues and good armor with the same Clear Sky patch on his shoulder, escorting a big Merc to see Sidorovich. Clearly he’d joined these people at some point. Had he betrayed them? To who? What had Nimble meant by “he wasn’t him”, or had that just been the delirium talking? It was bothering him.

Something bad had happened to the Clear Sky faction, that was certain, and Wolf wanted to know what the hell it was. The Great Swamps weren’t far from the Cordon and the rookie village. If there was a chance of trouble moving north toward them, Wolf wanted to be ready for it.

They came in the night...they killed everyone...

He stayed awake, smoking, listening to the groans and shrieks of the Zone and the survivor’s ragged, labored breathing, for the rest of the night.

#Fanfic #S.T.A.L.K.E.R.#S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky #S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl #TW: Emetophobia #TW: Needles #Nimble #Wolf #Bes

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darklightsworld · 5 years

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Another insta-read m/m novel recently: the fifth novel in the Mad Creek (How to Howl at the Moon) series by Eli Easton, How to Run with the Wolves. Devoured it yesterday - on the day of publication XD It was great with a tiny(?) but. You know the drill, long post, J key... Maybe I should make a Goodreads account and post there...

I love this series, the dog shifters are adorable and you can really feel the dogs in them. The series was supposed to end with volume 4, so it was a pleasant surprise to see a new book announced. Easton felt rightly that there were no more stories within Mad Creek, and this time she expanded the world of dog shifters with the discovery of an isolated and dying shifter pack in Alaska.

The plot is set a few years after the previous book, the distribution center is already established and going well. One of our protagonists is Zeus, a born quickened with Saint Bernard heritage, a shy giant who dislikes crowds and prefers to spend his time in the nature. He’s a childhood friend of Lance, and becomes a member of the Search and Rescue team (Sammy’s dream) lead by Matt, and they go to Alaska after a huge earthquake to help. While Zeus looks for survivors with Sammy he notices a gorgeous unknown quickened and he becomes intrigued by him. The gorgeous quickened is Timo, member of a tiny, isolated husky pack originating from sled dogs of the Inuit. Timo becomes fascinated with Zeus too, and goes as far as to lure him to his pack partially to help to save his pack - which eventually leads to a journey in search for a solution for the pack’s problem.

This books is quite different from the previous ones. Aside from the first one there was always a new quickened who had to learn about the way of human life and they were naturally lost and unsure. This time, however, Timo is a born quickened living in a pack with its own rules and he is also relatively used to human life, and although there are a lot of things he doesn’t understand, he is confident, prideful, borderline arrogant and even looks down upon humans. To be honest it was hard for me to get to like him, although I do see where Zeus’s fascination came from, and I also understand why Timo behaves the way his does, since he has lived in a pack with a strict peck order. Still, his demanding behavior, huge ego and obsession with alphas and submission and what not is tiring, especially because the change in him is slow - too slow, just not enough. I always had to remind myself that he’s a husky, and his behavior is probably related to that too. Zeus, on the other hand, is adorable, endearing, instant love, a very nice gentle giant and you can only root for him to find happiness <3333

The story is fascinating with creating the myth of the Alaskan quickened pack and Alaskan nature (they really run with wolves!!!), then the way Timo’s horizon broadens in Mad Creek, the problem and solution for the pack issues. A big plus is that we catch up on all the pairings. I liked Lance’s and Matt’s friendships with Zeus. It was also nice to see that Matt does not shy away from doggy skinship ^^ We got the most of Jason and Milo, Jason for the genetics and Milo as a helper on every level, but unfortunately we got the least from my fave pairing, Sammy and Rav - Sammy appeared in the beginning in the S&R team, and Rav shortly later, but not enough catching up with them :(

The book has one problem: the romance suffers big time due to the plot... Yes, they are fascinated with each other, the signs are there, and Zeus notices relatively early that he’s in love, but he doesn’t act on it, he rather removes himself, and Timo doesn’t notice anything, he doesn’t even consider the option. Homosexuality does not exist in his pack, would be a problem too, because his pack needs puppies, and even after he observes it in Mad Creek he does not consider it for himself until Zeus flips, then after some drama he does a 180° - around the 80% mark of the story. This is just... not enough, Zeus deserved a more satisfying romance. Too many things happen, the discovery of Mad Creek takes too many pages, Hitty’s issue was unnecessary at that length too (though I’m glad Simon was finally mated) - these could have been made more compact in favor of the romance. If there was something more obvious in Timo, like that type of attraction, longing or whatever, it would have been better, but like this it was too sudden and not enough. And since they get together too late in the story (I repeat, after 80%!) Zeus and Timo cannot really grow as a couple, so the part with their relationship ended with a huge not enough in me. Same for the sex, they were both new to that, so it would have needed a few more times with more discovery of their bodies, intimacy, giving pleasure and growing emotionally - I can’t help but compare this to the slow build-up emotionally and sexually between Rav and Sammy in the previous book and yeah, something like that would have been necessary here too.

The novel is a great read, it just needed a better balance of the plot. I’m happy that this was not the last of this series, and this book was actually the starting point of a spinoff series with the Alaskan pack! I can see the next pairing already with the pack alpha Yuki and Bruno from Mad Creek, fufufufufu, it will be great, there are already sparks flying, though not _those_ sparks yet, mind you XD I also hope that the pack can bond with the Inuit again, especially with that _handsome_ (you don’t call a nameless character handsome unless he will be important later XD) older guy who was pained that his dog was stolen by the pack. Btw that last scene with him was beautiful, and makes me hopeful that he will also be paired with a quickened. It was never made clear whether his stolen dog was a quickened or not, but if yes, it would be nice if he bonded with his lost dog who got the spark because of him, that would be lovely! So yeah, I can imagine at least two books. Easton also wrote in the afterword that she feels there might be one more book in Mad Creek - no idea between whom, but it would be nice :)

Anyway, looking forward to the next episode in 2020~

#m/m novel #long post #should post something else too #but recently I'm too tired for tumblr ><#I only seem to post when I have to get something out of my system ^^;;;

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anistarrose · 6 years

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Some Sunny Day - Ch. 1: Prologue (Gravity Falls Same Coin Theory)

Summary: Time isn’t linear, Stan has a catchy piano tune stuck in his head, and blue flames threaten to consume the peace that the Pines family has found.

Warnings: None for this chapter

Next chapter

AO3

(Based off the Same Coin Theory by @dubsdeedubs and @renmorris, a longtime favorite theory of mine!)

The gryphon they encountered on the rocky Alaskan island was nothing like those that Stanford had met before. The near-omniscience was impressive enough, but given what he knew about gryphon vocal cords, Ford almost thought the fluent English was even more extraordinary. Almost.

“Stanford and Stanley Pines,” it addressed them, not moving its beak at all. “Though you’ve both gone by other names at different times — most notably in Stanley’s case, of course.”

It gently floated to the ground, then folded up its wings and began to groom (preen?) its chest fur.

“I’d appreciate it if you put your weapons away,” it told them. “Though I don’t blame you for that sort of reaction. I am something an outlier among my family.”

It spoke the word family in a way that made Ford suspect it was referring to its entire species. And seeing as this gryphon was the only one they’d met that hadn’t tried to eat them, Ford was inclined to agree with it.

“Of course. We apologize,” Ford told it, holstering his gun. He noticed that the gryphon was a bit smaller than the ones he’d seen before, though not drastically, and its wings were a darker dappled brown instead of the usual beige. Were the biological differences a result of its unique abilities, he wondered, or were those abilities an adaptation made in response to the disadvantages the biological differences caused? Being nothing if not a scientist, he couldn’t help but ask.

“If you don’t mind the question, what is it that makes you you? What is the cause of this outlier status?”

The gryphon tilted its head at him like a dog expecting a treat. Ford supposed it didn’t get very many chances to talk about its talents — or talk to anyone, really — in this barren environment.

“You could probably trace it all back to my precognizance,” it told him. “I can see into many different times, but knowledge of the future was what changed me most.”

Stan narrowed his eyes. “Oh yeah? Give us an example of this future knowledge.”

Ford could relate to Stan’s skepticism. Most people would have believed it without a second thought — the gryphon had addressed them by name, after all — but being raised by a fake psychic tended to make you suspicious of such things.

“Gladly,” the gryphon replied. “First of all: there is a reunion awaiting in your future.”

Aware of the usual cold reading tricks, Stan and Ford stayed silent, careful not to give the gryphon any extra information.

“You’ll return to a familiar situation, but you aren’t trapped in a cycle — there once was a cycle, but you’ve already broken out of it. You will, however, reminisce on past mistakes, and the correction of those mistakes. And you’ll both find answers to questions you didn’t know you had — at least not consciously.”

It paused. “Is that sufficient? I don’t want to go and spoil everything, you know.”

Stan and Ford exchanged a look.

“The ‘reunion’ thing means spendin’ another summer with the kids, I guess?” Stan suggested.

“Probably.” They had indeed been planning to reunite with the kids in Gravity Falls next month. “Returning to a familiar place… that’s Gravity Falls, of course, but I have no idea what cycle we used to be trapped in.”

“Petty arguments and grudges?”

“Fair enough, I suppose. But what about the questions we didn’t know we had?”

“Well, right now we don’t know we have ‘em, duh.”

Ford sighed. The predictions were vague, but the more specific parts seemed plausible. Only the passage of time would allow him to seriously assess their accuracy… though Stan, for his part, had taken the whole thing (relatively) seriously, which meant he probably believed it was real. And given how skilled Stan was at spotting scams, his gut instinct was more than good enough for Ford, even as unscientific as it was.

“That’s sufficient. We believe you,” Ford told the gryphon. “But if you don’t mind, how exactly did you gain this ability? Is it inherent, or acquired?”

The gryphon spread its wings — preparing to take flight, Ford realized. He knew gryphons didn’t like staying in one place for too long, but he’d hoped this particular one would stick around for a bit longer — he just had so many questions…

“Time isn’t linear,” it said, “you of all people should realize that.”

(Was it just Ford’s imagination, or did the gryphon look briefly at Stanley?)

“That means that seeing the future really isn’t all that difficult. A lot of people can do it — at least to some extent — if they’re taught the right way. But if you must know — well, I can’t go spilling all of my secrets, but I will leave you with this: there is a being I am indebted to in many ways, a being that itself sees many things that from your perspective are yet to come.”

For a second, Ford was afraid that that was all they were going to get, that the gryphon would fly away and leave them with only questions and no answers. But then, it added:

“Stanford Pines, I believe you’ve heard of the Axolotl during your travels?”

And with that, it took to the sky and didn’t look back.

Well, that was an answer that just raised more questions in its place, Ford thought, his mind whirling as Stan gave him a concerned look. But I’ll take it. I’ll definitely take it.

“Ford? Earth to Ford?” Stan asked. He may have repeated it a couple times; Ford wasn’t really sure. “I’m guessing you do know something?”

“Yes, something. You could say that,” Ford finally answered. “Let’s get back to the boat and pray we have an Internet connection. There are a lot of things I want look into.”

***

“We’ll meet again…”

Stan was by no means a good singer, but Ford thought he’d gotten used to it over the past eight months. And really, he was used to it — it was just the song that he couldn’t bear to listen to.

“Don’t know where, don’t know when…”

He was trying to ignore it, to not make a big deal out of something he shouldn’t have cared about, not after the better part of a year had passed, but —

“But I know we’ll meet again, some —”

“Could you shut it already?” Ford snapped, slamming his fist onto the rail of the Stan O’ War II with more force than he’d intended and instantly regretting it. Not so much because it hurt his hand (though it was a little painful), but because he worried how Stan might react to it — not well, that was for certain.

But Stan just gave him a look that was more concerned than hurt. “Whoa, Poindexter, I’ve been singin’ for about six seconds. Somethin’ wrong?”

Ford looked down. “I’m sorry, I just… I don’t like that song. Do you think you could sing something else?” He could have elaborated on why that song unnerved him so much, and Stan probably would have understood right away, but Ford had stayed up unhealthily late the past night researching and wasn’t in the mood to talk about Weirdmageddon.

And Stan couldn’t have possibly have believed him that it was that simple — Ford never snapped at him unless he did something remarkably stupid or unintentionally triggered a painful memory, and Stan wasn’t doing anything remotely stupid or risky at the moment — but he didn’t question Ford.

“Meh, my voice is kinda tired anyway.” It was a blatant lie, and the attempt to change the topic that he followed it up with was just as blatant. “So, you figure out anything else about that salamander god?”

Ford accepted the escape route Stan had offered him. “Well, technically I suppose I have, but not nearly as much as I would have liked.”

They’d spent three days sailing south since the gryphon encounter, and despite their Internet connection holding out far better than Ford had ever dreamed of, he’d hadn’t been able to find very many things that he hadn’t already known.

“It manifested itself to countless groups across the multiverse, I’m sure of that, but it seems that the only surviving records in our dimension were created by the Aztecs. And you know I’ve already read nearly everything there is to read about their god Xolotl.”

“Yeah, god of ‘twins and deformities.’ You’ve had that obsession since, like, middle school.” Stan tried not to pronounce the names of the god or the amphibian if he could avoid them. “And you even had one of the pink frilly guys in your lab.”

“I wish we could visit Mexico to conduct more research of our own,” Ford mused. “I have a vague idea for a summoning ritual, but I need more…” He paused as Stan’s words sank in.

“Yeah, too bad the kids will never forgive us if we skip out on them this summer to search for a magical fish lizard,” Stan told him, not realizing anything was wrong. “And I can’t remember what name my all my arrest warrants in Mexico were put out under…”

“Stanley, wait. You said you found an axolotl in my lab?”

Stan blinked. “Yeah, the one in the fish tank. I was afraid I was gonna accidentally kill him or somethin’ after you… ya know, fell through the portal, ‘cause I didn’t know what to feed him or how to clean his tank, but the little guy stuck around almost until you got back. You… you knew about it, right?”

“Almost until I got back?!” Ford asked. “Axolotls can live for fifteen years if they’re cared for well, but twice that?!”

“Yeah, I always wondered if you did some weird spell on it or somethin’. But… you really didn’t know about it?”

“I never kept an axolotl in the Shack,” Ford confirmed. “I honestly would have loved to have one as a pet, but I didn’t have the time to take care of one. They require a specific type of food, a specific temperature range, a specific type of materials in their tank… I can’t imagine any way one could have gotten there by natural means!”

“Would it freak you out more if I told you it just disappeared a couple days after the kids showed up last summer? Literally nothin’ left behind, like it dissolved in the tank or somethin’?”

Ford slammed his hand against his forehead. “Stanley, I can’t believe you had a ghost axolotl in your house for three decades and never brought it up until now.”

“Hey, how am I supposed to know what’s normal for pink salamanders? They could have all lived that long and disappeared like that, and I would have sounded like an idiot for bringing it up!”

Ford shook his head. “It has to all be connected!” For about the seventh time, he regretted not bringing a bulletin board and red string with him on the Stan O’ War II. “Your axolotl, the god Xolotl, the countless references I’ve heard across the multiverse to a benevolent creature that guards against evil and patronizes those with prophetic ability…”

“So… you really think it was the Axolotl in that tank all those years?”

“I think it’s quite probable. But… just what would the Axolotl want with you, Stanley?”

***

Ford had fretted over the Axolotl for several more minutes before they encountered what had to have been some sort of cursed seagull — no normal bird could possibly crap that much, right? — and their attention was very quickly drawn elsewhere.

As they were cleaning up the aftermath of the attack, Ford mentioned something about the Axolotl probably knowing that Stan was destined to defeat Bill, but he quickly abandoned the thought to continue cursing out seagulls in every alien language he knew. The explanation must have at least partially satisfied him, though, since when they went ashore that evening Ford fell asleep almost immediately in the hotel.

“I’d still like to do more research, of course,” he told Stan before completely losing consciousness. “Maybe we could sail south after this summer, visit the region where the Axolotl manifested himself as Xolotl. But I do think it’s likely that he paid you a visit knowing about your eventual role in Cipher’s downfall.”

Stan wasn’t as satisfied, for reasons he couldn’t quite pin down. Rare were the times when Stan was the twin lying awake at night, thinking about the day’s unsolved mysteries, but tonight, for whatever reason, he’d transformed into the resident sleepless conspiracy theorist.

He had a weird gut feeling telling him there was something he was missing — forgetting? — about the Axolotl, and he’d learned to trust his gut over the years — it had saved him so many times he’d lost track. His subconscious apparently knew a hell of a lot more than he did — though that really wasn’t much of an achievement, he figured.

There was a weird sense of urgency to his gut feeling today. Stan wasn’t sure he’d be able to describe it if he’d tried. There was just a hard-to-explain emotion — not really fear, he didn’t think, but definitely not a positive emotion, either — that rose up in his chest whenever he thought of the future: of returning to Gravity Falls, of reuniting with Dipper and Mabel and everyone else, of actually traveling to Mexico with Ford one day to learn more about and maybe even meet the Axolotl.

Big things are coming, he thought. And I can’t stop them.

Then he thought, Come on, Stan, you’re getting as paranoid as Sixer. Next thing you’re going to be keeping a diary all written in code.

So he ignored his gut and let himself fall asleep, a familiar tune about reunions and clouds and sunlight running through his head just as it had been ever since leaving that barren Alaskan island.

L wrog brx wkdw zh’g phhw djdlq Vdlg L glgq’w nqrz zkhuh ru zkhq. Exw qrz wkh vxq lv vklqlqj Vr pdbeh zh’oo uhdolch L’p qrw frplqj edfn RQH GDB — L’yh EHHQ edfn iru rxu zkroh olyhv.

Thanks for reading, feedback is appreciated as always!

I’m aiming for weekly updates, but I can’t promise anything, especially if I’m struck with inspiration for other unrelated one-shots and the like. I have the whole plot planned out, and completed fic will probably be about 14 total chapters, plus or minus two.

#gravity falls #same coin theory #stanley pines #stanford pines #bill cipher #the axolotl #fic: some sunny day #rosalia writes fic #i am truly excited to share this fic #(partly bc it's the first multichapter fic i'm posting #and partly because i'm just so excited about this theory/concept!)#this is just the prologue so it's just setting up themes and foreshadowing #but (bill voice) big things are coming #you can't stop me #seriously the next chapter is almost done #and i am very proud and hyped to share it

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slingspeacea · 6 years

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☆ // SUBJECT: THE EARP HOMESTEAD. LOCATION: PURGATORY, COLORADO

a collection of research exploring the idea, that if not for wynonna earp’s low budget and physical filming location, purgatory and its key landmarks should have been based in the united states, around the colorado river specifically. !important: earp roleplayers are more than welcome to also adopt this divergence if they agree with it, and may 100% feel free to REBLOG this post. please remember when interacting with my character, in all verses, that they are from purgatory, colorado, and not from canada. if after reading this, you feel bothered, please let me know and we can absolutely follow writers’ show canon in our threads!!

☆ // WARNING!!

this divergence is strongly opinionated. the writers of the show have confirmed the plot setting for the television series wynonna earp, is in fact located in alberta, canada. i am 100% aware that alberta is absolute show canon. however, as a roleplayer, creative writer, and western fanatic, i can neither ignore, nor let wyatt earp and doc holliday’s history get completely washed away for the sake of filming convenience. make no mistake. i love the show, the storyline, and i love the characters immensely; but because of both the comic book series, and nonfictional history, their story’s location does not make any sense to me or add up at all.

☆ // PART I. WYATT’S JOURNEY.

first, let’s begin with wyatt earp’s original routes and a few historical events. i’ve taken the time, and mapped wyatt and doc holliday’s trail out below in order. they were obviously riding on horseback and taking ferries or trains, so they wouldn’t have been using main roads or highways ( although busy trails later became paved highways and roads throughout america ). at only one point does wyatt travel through canada and it is during his two, long journeys to alaska. as you can see below, he really goes nowhere near alberta or calgary on his way to his next stop, seattle, washington.

it would make way more sense for purgatory to be located somewhere in the united states, in one of the towns wyatt earp lived or stayed in for a prolonged period of time. not to mention the old west is well... united states history, and all notable events regarding the old west happened in the states. the original 1993 wynonna earp comics even pay homage to places like tombstone ( and can i mention when the t.v series says they’re loosely based on the comics, they are hardly anything like them? like barely even remotely? ). it mentions white trash and trailer parks, hill billys, pabst blue ribbon, you name every southern stereotype, and they cover it. no surprise, it is based in america.

“ two u.s. marshals and a sheriff lie dead in san diablo, new mexico. when marshal wynonna earp hits the trail to bring the killers to justice, she uncovers connections to a devastating new drug...and a pack of redneck vampires! modern firepower and frontier justice --that's wynonna. “ wynonna earp, comic issue #1, summary.

but that’s totally besides the point, and another post probably worth making entirely. let’s get back to the real wyatt earp and docs holliday’s actual history. below are some maps, and i’ve linked bigger versions so they’re easier for y’all to see.

larger map images for reference: a, b, c.

exhibit one: map a. ↳ this displays his route from dodge city in 1875, up until his last ride to los angeles where he would also die in 1923. this map is all prior to docs death specifically, which is extremely important. why? because doc had obvious connections to both constance clootie and bulshar. this has become even even more so evident in season 3. wyatt earp did not travel through canada until after docs actual death. this alone raises a red flag as someone who thinks placing purgatory in canada was an easy cop-out by show writers, and as someone who often ponders plot holes in the show’s storyline.

another point i have to to stress, is that a majority of wyatt earp’s time with doc holliday throughout life was spent in the southwestern united states. their stomping grounds are where a majority of the route lines cross on the map, and they traveled between each of those cities, owning saloons, gambling, hunting outlaws, etc.. countless times. i’ll have more to add about this later under section iii, which heavily regards the revenants.

exhibit two: map b. ↳ map b is probably the most important of all three. it depicts what his ride would have looked like from wrangell, ak to nome, and then from wrangell, ak to seattle, wa. google maps actually wouldn’t let me map the whole thing through from idaho and washington to alaska, because fun fact, you have to fly and take ferries to get around from the usa to those alaskan towns. phew, can you imagine wyatt’s adventure to alaska on horseback and water?? his wife actually tried to stop him from making the journey because she was pregnant at the time, but of course, he saw an opportunity for wealth and didn’t listen.

alberta is a far stretch out of the way. he would have had to go over or around the canadian rockies, and since he was traveling to and from alaska from either washington state and/or idaho with a clear destination in mind, it would make no logical sense whatsoever. the red triangle, accurately labeled show’s location wtf?? is where the show’s canon ghost river triangle is located. i know what you’re probably thinking, they never say it straight up in the series, but writer’s confirmation aside, upon researching there is one particular episode which gave us show purgatory’s exact location right away. here is a picture of waverly in s01e03, with a map of purgatory. . . and here is another .... and now here is an actual, real map which indisputably matches waverly’s layout. note: those are not my screencaps, you can find the original post i got them from here !!

exhibit three: map c. ↳ vildal, california is where he built his home in 1911. the earps bought a small cottage in vidal, the only home they ever owned. beginning in 1911 and until Wyatt's health began to fail in 1928, Wyatt and sadie earp summered in Los Angeles and spent the rest of the year in the desert working their claims. The "happy days" mine was located in the whipple mountains a few miles north of vidal. wyatt had some modest success with the happy days gold mine, and they lived on the slim proceeds of income from that and oil wells. ( source: wikipedia. )

so, my question is likely the biggest plot hole in the whole freaking television series. how the heck did wyatt’s family homestead end up all the way near calgary, alberta, canada?? the show writers ignore this entirely and uses an insane amount of liberties. wyatt never had any children to begin with, but if one wants to paint the picture of family, love, loyalty, and closeness as they do on the show, i would think that the earps would have remained somewhere closer to wyatt’s grave. at the very least in the same country.

the other major thing to take into consideration, is that by the time map b and map c were traveled, real doc holliday was also dead and no longer amongst the living. i bet your thinking, ❝ okay so maybe vidal, california would have been an alright place for the show to take place, since that was wyatt’s actual only home. ❞ and i totally agree, but the more i thought about making this wynonna’s hometown and ground zero for the homestead, the harder i could picture the gang there. problem is, the landscape is nothing but desert. it’s hot and arrid. in vidal there are there are no prairie winds, or great plains, or chinook rocky mountain sunsets. on the show we see mountains, rivers, forests, and more importantly, large amounts of snow.

this leads the divergence trail back to none other than the myth, the man, and the legend, doc holliday. let’s dive a little more into his relationship with wyatt in the next section.

☆ // PART II. DOC AND WYATT.

how wyatt and doc met in history & the show. ↳ earp had run two cowboys out of wichita earlier in 1878. during the summer, the two cowboys—accompanied by another two dozen men—rode into dodge and shot up the town while galloping down front street. they entered the long branch saloon, vandalized the room, and harassed the customers. hearing the commotion, earp burst through the front door, and before he could react, a large number of cowboys were pointing their guns at him.

in another version, there were only three to five cowboys. in both stories, holliday was playing cards in the back of the room and upon seeing the commotion, drew his weapon and put his pistol at morrison's head, forcing him and his men to disarm, rescuing earp from a bad situation. no account of any such confrontation was reported by any of the dodge city newspapers at the time. whatever actually happened, earp credited holliday with saving his life that day, and the two men became friends.

how wyatt and doc actually parted ways in history. ↳ according to a letter written by former new mexico territory governor miguel otero, wyatt and holliday were eating at fat charlie's the retreat restaurant in albuquerque, "when holliday said something about earp becoming 'a damn jew-boy.' earp became angry and left…." holliday and dan tipton arrived in pueblo, colorado in late april 1882. ( source: wikipedia. )

doc’s death in real history. ↳ in 1887, prematurely gray and badly ailing, holliday made his way to the hotel glenwood, near the hot springs of glenwood springs, colorado. he hoped to take advantage of the reputed curative power of the waters, but the sulfurous fumes from the spring may have done his lungs more harm than good. as he lay dying, holliday is reported to have asked the nurse attending him for a shot of whiskey. when she told him no, he looked at his bootless feet, amused. the nurses said that his last words were, "this is funny.” holliday died at 10am on november 8, 1887. he was 36.

wyatt visited sick doc before he died. ↳ wyatt heard of doc’s death shortly after he had died. he was close by in aspen, colorado at the time, and it’s thought that he may have visited doc before his death. josephine earp told a story about sitting beside doc’s deathbed, but it’s thought that she may have confused this with another occasion ( because of old age ). she additionally gave an account of doc and wyatt’s last meeting in the lobby of a denver hotel. both men were quite upset and josie said that wyatt cried afterwards. there’s also a story that doc’s gun was also sent to wyatt although again not a lot of evidence to prove whether or not it’s true.

wynonna earp flashbacks. ↳ in s01e03, wyatt visited his bedside, where doc is very ill and lying down in a tent. it’s implied doc was resting, wyatt packed up his things for him, and dispite his sickness, earp keeps urging him to ride with him to purgatory. doc rejects knowing he can’t and says goodbye. this is likely right before he seeks out constance clootie for immortality, in whatever town they were in. there is no viable way his transformation could have happened in purgatory, because the church in wynonna’s vision quest later on was somewhere on the outskirts of town.

on the series, doc holliday had already come across constance clootie, and gained his immortality before the best friends had their argument and wyatt disowned him for becoming something of the devil’s work. wyatt also finally admits to his family being cursed. doc was also as equally heartbroken about wyatt’s opinion of his choice, and throughout the series, we see how deeply he considers and takes an earp’s opinion to heart. despite being set in modern years, and appended romantic aspects aside, his relationship with wynonna mirrors that of his and wyatts.

consider that wyatt already killed constance clootie’s sons, and bulshar clootie is the man he was fixed on punishing for cursing him. it’s entirely plausible doc followed closely behind wyatt’s tail after being shunned, and that wherever wyatt was going was only a few days ride from doc’s staying place. the witch clootie admitted she turned doc ageless to hurt wyatt and succeeded, but we also know that where blushar goes, clootie is looking for vengeance. it’s conceivable to theorize certain suspicions such as, but not limited to; doc wanting take back his immortality due to wyatt’s rejection, and in turn while meeting clootie, got tossed with the final seal into the well.

the “earp well” lol. ↳ we know doc winds up in a well , but it’s location seems to appear elsewhere from it’s original place on the earp property in season one’s pilot episode, to somewhere in a random forest, in s02ep08. the earp property is said by wynonna to be only 10 acres ( 0.125 sq miles ). for a farm where you have to drive to get from point a to point b, this is not very large or inaccurate. all shots of the property are also mainly rolling farmland with no large forest vegetation resembling that of the well’s site. i’m going to chalk this discrepancy up to this scene having been in the pilot, having a low budget and limited choices for pilot filming location.

doc’s well was never on the actual earp property like some probably assume at first glance, but instead, somewhere else entirely. just go on ahead and re-watch. after retrieving peacemaker and talking to dolls, wynonna drives up to the purgatory town line, truck facing towards the town. it makes for a clear ( or not so clear ) clue hinting the well’s whereabouts. in s2ep08, juan carlo takes wynonna outside of purgatory to the outskirts for her vision quest. the well is clearly located in that area and tied heavily to the flashback in the church. from a teen wynonna was a drifter. she could have stashed the gun in an abandoned well anywhere, somewhere safe, and no where too close to the homestead. but here is another thought, doc and wynonna’s fates were entwined, so who knows? maybe she felt specifically drawn to that area and frequented there to clear her head when she was younger. merely a concept.

finally, bobos imprisonment in the well further proves it’s located elsewhere, since revenants can't step foot on earp land without being burned. this gives us some room to play for setting up wynonna earp’s story in colorado.

tying history and flashbacks together. ↳ this is where it gets complicated, where it’s hard to put things into words, and where my divergence really starts, because the show canon entirely ignores actual history when it comes to the true separation and deaths of both of these men. we have no clue as to the location in either of these flashbacks on the show, but we do see wyatt is wearing a jacket and scarf. it’s apparently cold outside so there’s at least that to work with. the state of colorado has cold winters, which also works in this divergence’s favor.

if the real doc holliday died in glenn springs, colorado, and the real wyatt earp was in aspen, colorado around the time of his death, we could place purgatory somewhere in that area. doc faked his death on the series, between the time he decided he would became immortal, and the time he was thrown in the well shortly after. sewing these realities together puts purgatory in colorado. doc’s death would make the location default. in regards to the comic taking place in the deserts of the united states, this divergence will also have that covered later on.

the canadian show takes an extreme with creative freedoms and gives no resolution whatsoever as to how wyatt earp somehow settled down in alberta, candada ( did they even do their fact checking?? ) or how every family member has lived there ever since. the actual wyatt earp had no children, and his home was and will always historically be in vidal, california.

so, let’s make this more believable. what if in another universe that isn’t real history, but makes a hell of a lot more sense when unified with the show’s, wyatt earp made a home in colorado after bulshar was buried? not only close to where is thought to be his best friends grave, but where he can keep an eye on, and protect, bulshar’s remains until he dies? bobo moved him, but where were they prior? on the show wyatt is also said to have been partially involved in entombing bulshar’s body. therefore, this explanation would make 100% total sense as to why wyatt and his wife never made it to vidal, california. his life’s journey would have been stopped dead in its tracks, so he could keep the demon who cursed his family from the widows, and make sure bulshar never returned. one could claim, in a historically based, fictional western series, that wyatt earp built a ranch because of this, and settled down with his wife in a town called purgatory, colorado.

☆ // PART III. WYATT’S CURSE, THE REVS, & THE GHOST RIVER TRIANGLE.

wyatt earp’s curse. ↳ the earp curse makes all people that wyatt earp had killed in his lifetime resurrect over and over again. those revenants can only be killed by the peacemaker which only the current heir can use. wait a minute. wynonna voice: say whaaaat?? wyatt never killed multiple people in canada. at any point in history. how would the 77 people he killed even get to canada if revenants can’t leave the ghost river triangle in the first place?? can you say, major woops? this is personally my favorite fudge up.

the ghost river triangle. ↳ the ghost river triangle is an area of cursed land, partially framed by the splitting of the ghost river into two, that imprisons the resurrected outlaws killed by wyatt earp. should a revenant cross the boundary line, they experience hell on earth. to quote waverly, in leavin' on your mind: '...everything from the mountains to where the north and south ghost rivers meet, forms the ghost river triangle. it cuts through the big city, contains thousands of square miles of forest, foothills, prairie, the badlands. and all of it...cursed.'

forest, foothills, prairie, and badlands? yeah, if we want to place divergent purgatory somewhere in the united states to make the show a little more historically accurate, the ghost river triangle definitely parallels to none other than the colorado river. the colorado river runs through colorado, utah, arizona, nevada, california, and all the way down to mexico. at least three of those states were in fact, wyatt’s stomping grounds before and after his historically recorded vendetta ride.

not to go with some total, mythical, movie cliche here, but in an alternative wynonna world set in the united states, the ghost river triangle could have also been named by the native americans who inhabited the land along the colorado river. factually, many parts of the colorado river are actually suspected to be haunted. let’s not get too carried away, though. alberta canada is in fact home of a real place called the ghost river valley, and there’s totally no disputing that.

wyatt’s vendetta ride ↳ in history the vendetta ride was a deadly search, where wyatt lead a federal posse for outlaw cowboys they believed had ambushed, and maimed virgil earp and killed morgan earp. the earp brothers had been attacked in retaliation for the deaths of three cowboys in the gunfight at the o.k. corral on october 26, 1881. from march 20 to april 15, 1882, the federal posse searched southeast cochise county, arizona territory for suspects in both virgil's and morgan's attacks. several suspects had been freed by the court, owing in some cases to legal technicalities and in others to the strength of alibis provided by cowboy confederates. up to this point, wyatt had relied on the legal system to bring the cowboys to justice. now he felt he had to take matters into his own hands.

i could be wrong, but i have a feeling the chase for bulshar is loosely based on this part of wyatt earp’s history. the parallel of his two own brothers dying, and two of clootie’s sons dying, is a little thought provoking, no? coincidental even? an eye for an eye, perhaps? there is a lot of wyatt’s history left to be uncovered and explored, and that’s if the show writers even decide to reveal anything else at all. on the show, wyatt got innocent people killed, there was one hell of a lot of collateral damage surrounding him.

i feel 100% comfortable standing firmly by the headcanon that after wyatt was cursed and his brothers were killed, that he went on a tear after bulshar and destroyed anyone who got in his way. this is important, because these events could be tied to his life in tombstone, arizona, and the events which took place in and after the shootout at the OK corral. if he was cursed in tombstone, then there is no way around it, one of the ghost river triangle’s points would have to begin there.

the revmap, i mean . . . revamp. ↳ below is a map which bases a divergent ghost river triangle heavily off of history. it takes into consideration doc holliday and wyatt earp’s routes, where doc’s last known whereabouts were, where wyatt would have killed the most men, and finally, his vendetta ride. in total the divergent river triangle’s perimeter is about 2,500 miles and takes 36 hours nonstop to drive. in contrast, the show’s ghost river triangle is 617 miles and takes about only an easy 12 hours to drive from point to point. purgatory is west of denver, and the homestead is about where the house icon is. ( larger image version is here. )

yeah okay, so the size may be of some issue, but vastness aside, there are three things this triangle does have, that the other doesn’t. firstly, historical accuracy. it includes nearly all of the areas where a number of wyatt’s targets made their peace. if we tie back to wyatt’s vendetta ride and the whole paralleling idea for a moment, many of the revenants who rode with bulshar would've died in various areas of colorado and the purgatory area. secondly, the terrain might aid with narrowing revenant whereabouts down. deserts and mountains surround a majority of these iconic towns. and lastly another argument can be made that because some revenants do want to end the earp line, few might've simply migrated to colorado and placed themselves somewhere closer within wynonna’s line of fire.

i could continue ridiculously blabbering on and on about why i chose this location divergence for my character. everything from climate, to terrain, and how there are salt flats in utah nearby, or my really strong distaste for how the show writers erased wyatt earp and doc holliday’s real history, but in honesty i think everything i’ve covered above nicely sums up my research and premise. anywhooo, that’s all for now folks, hope you enjoyed the read!

#- ̗̀ ♤ // — V: MAIN. » ̖́-#- ̗̀ ♤ // — V: CANON. » ̖́-#- ̗̀ ♤ // — DIVERGENCES. » ̖́-#- ̗̀ ♤ // — HEADCANONS. » ̖́-#phEW IT'S FINALLY FINISHED #if you have questions #don't be shy !!

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verifiedmothman · 6 years

Photo

A review type thing: SPOILERS ABOUND

After fifty-three hours I finally completed Far Cry 5 last night. For once I managed to play completely spoiler free. I also only paid attention to marketing enough to know that I wanted the game and hadn't ever completed a Far Cry title before, so my experience was pretty fresh. Some attempts were made to play 3, but I hated the radio tower system in that, so I was really glad to see that immediately out the window in 5.

Can't say the Resistance Points worked much better as a story gatekeeping mechanism though. It took absolutely zero effort to get them. Like sometimes I'd be wandering around minding my own business and I'd get the pop-up message that I'd freed a civilian somehow without any active intervention on my part.

Then of course came the inevitable kidnappings. I wish the game had accounted for the fact that by ten hours in I could single-handedly dispatch the entirety of whatever abduction gang the Seeds sent after me. I didn't have as much problem with getting snatched as other players, but I think we should have had the option to delay confrontations with the strength of the abduction gangs increasing as time goes on. This would be extra relevant in Jacob's region, given his whole cull the weak schtick.

But back to wishing the game accounted for things it didn't. So many times I just stood there doing nothing, because I hoped the game would accept my inaction. Leap of Faith, especially. I must have stood on that statue for fifteen minutes before realizing I had no choice but to jump off. Similarly, I crouched down in Jacob's murder-rama torture fest hoping it would just end. It didn't. Which is annoying because sometimes the game does account for failure, like if you can't shoot John down in his plane.

Speaking of John and the rest of the Seeds I feel like the developers poured all their creative effort into them and let everyone else fall by the wayside. Most of the characters in this game barely deserve to be qualified as such. They're more like hokey, boring approximations of a character. Just survive hours of being good at murder at the hands of Jacob? It's okay. You have Grace and Sharky there to talk about how Sharky vomited that one time. Need an emotional catalyst to spur you into confronting Faith? Well, a guy's gonna die. What's his name? Oh right, Virgil, he was the mayor or something I guess. What was his main point of characterization? Oh yeah he was anal about buttons for some reason. Fall's End with Pastor Jerome and Nick Rye was about as close as I got to feeling emotionally invested in the citizens of Hope County--which I think is a really big shame because the Deputy is going out there everyday and selling his soul for these people and I don't always feel like it's worth it. I was actually touched that Nick Rye names the deputy godparent to his daughter, though.

When I finally got to confronting the Father, I immediately resisted. Cue nuclear blast that was never foreshadowed for me because I could never switch radio stations. Though the backlash is hardly at the same volume, this ending kind of reminds me of Mass Effect 3. Both sequences have some weird details to pick apart. And just like I prefer some version of Indoctrination Theory, I buy into the Shared Nuclear Hallucination theory for Far Cry 5. Because otherwise I don't see the point in everything that happened before. All that self-sacrifice for nothing. I don't want to accept it. As it is, the ending just made me feel sick and hollow. I couldn't believe I'd paid $60 to feel so gross.

Without the ending, I think Far Cry 5 is a solid 8/10. With it: 7. Maybe even 6.5.

Other stuff:

-For me the game never really got around to satisfactorily answering why the townsfolk didn't just send some capable, adventurous individual to bypass cult blockades and get to the outside world. This is probably what the deputy should have done after the initial helicopter crash.

-I guess I just really like the way Ubisoft handles sniper rifles. Sniping in The Division and Far Cry 5 have both been so satisfying. I need more games I can just drop into and start sniping enemies immediately. I would have appreciated more variety in guns, though. Snipers get like four guns at most and two of them look extremely similar.

-It annoys me that literally no one in-game reacts to the deputy pulling off some dangerous, Hollywood action movie shit. Like alright, Grace, you and me and this gun for hire are going to exit this flying helicopter right before it stalls. Make sure you both have your parachutes ready, because we'll parachute to this westerly vantage point and wait for our enemies to enter our line of sight then headshot every single one of them.

-Prepper's Stashes were some of the most fun I've had in a video game in a while. One of them had me spelunking in a cave behind a waterfall, another had me grappling to a supply cache beneath a massive bridge, and yet another had me climbing a mountain.

-They did a good job at differentiating the regions. They all had their unique flavor. I originally went John > Faith > Jacob. But if I play again I'll go Faith > John > Jacob.

-I like how Ubisoft corrected a Polygon article about the endings by pretty much being like WAIT, WE DID FORESHADOW THE NUCLEAR BLAST SEE??? WE DID OUR WORK, IT'S IN THESE RADIO BROADCASTS ITS ENTIRELY POSSIBLE TO NEVER HEAR.

-I wonder what this game would have been like if it were five minutes into the future and set in multiple US locations rather than just Montana. Joseph Seed stays in Montana, but has a region similar in size to one of his siblings. Faith plays her drug trade on an old plantation in the south. John holes up on the east coast somewhere. Jacob has some sort of training center in an Alaskan hellhole so we get a snowy area. The deputy could be a rookie marshall instead of a small town cop, be more or less put in charge as the lead officer in charge of arresting the Seeds who've started a national movement, rather than a regional one.

-It’s depressing as fuck, but I would have taken a suicide ending option. As it is, I waited there while the bombs exploded. Let the fires take me as long as they’re taking Joseph Seed too. I think someone (Jacob?) even tells you that offing yourself is your best option.

-If there was ever a game in need of a non-lethal takedown route option, it’s this one. I WANT TO ARREST THE SEEDS GODDAMNIT.

#far cry 5 #Far Cry #I am confused #Far cry 5 review #Far Cry 5 Spoilers

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thevirginchronicles · 4 years

Text

Self Portait at 28 by Dave Berman

I know it’s a bad title

but I'm giving it to myself as a gift

on a day nearly canceled by sunlight

when the entire hill is approaching

the ideal of Virginia

brochured with goldenrod and loblolly

and I think "at least I have not woken up

with a bloody knife in my hand"

by then having absently wandered

one hundred yards from the house

while still seated in this chair

with my eyes closed.

It is a certain hill

the one I imagine when I hear the word "hill"

and if the apocalypse turns out

to be a world-wide nervous breakdown

if our five billion minds collapse at once

well I'd call that a surprise ending

and this hill would still be beautiful

a place I wouldn't mind dying

alone or with you.

I am trying to get at something

and I want to talk very plainly to you

so that we are both comforted by the honesty.

You see there is a window by my desk

I stare out when I am stuck

though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write

and I don't know why I keep staring at it.

My childhood hasn't made good material either

mostly being a mulch of white minutes

with a few stand out moments,

popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer

a certain amount of pride at school

everytime they called it "our sun"

and playing football when the only play

was "go out long" are what stand out now.

If squeezed for more information

I can remember old clock radios

with flipping metal numbers

and an entree called Surf and Turf.

As a way of getting in touch with my origins

every night I set the alarm clock

for the time I was born so that waking up

becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do

is take a reading of the day and try to flow with it like

when you're riding a mechanical bull and you strain to learn

the pattern quickly so you don't inadverantly resist it.

II two

I can't remember being born

and no one else can remember it either

even the doctor who I met years later

at a cocktail party.

It's one of the little disappointments

that makes you think about getting away

going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables

and taking a room on the square

with a landlady whose hands are scored

by disinfectant, telling the people you meet

that you are from Alaska, and listen

to what they have to say about Alaska

until you have learned much more about Alaska

than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables.

Sometimes I am buying a newspaper

in a strange city and think

"I am about to learn what it's like to live here."

Oftentimes there is a news item

about the complaints of homeowners

who live beside the airport

and I realize that I read an article

on this subject nearly once a year

and always receive the same image.

I am in bed late at night

in my house near the airport

listening to the jets fly overhead

a strange wife sleeping beside me.

In my mind, the bedroom is an amalgamation

of various cold medicine commercial sets

(there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand).

I know these recurring news articles are clues,

flaws in the design though I haven't figured out

how to string them together yet,

but I've begun to notice that the same people

are dying over and over again,

for instance Minnie Pearl

who died this year

for the fourth time in four years.

III three

Today is the first day of Lent

and once again I'm not really sure what it is.

How many more years will I let pass

before I take the trouble to ask someone?

It reminds of this morning

when you were getting ready for work.

I was sitting by the space heater

numbly watching you dress

and when you asked why I never wear a robe

I had so many good reasons

I didn't know where to begin.

If ou were cool in high school

you didn't ask too many questions.

You could tell who'd been to last night's

big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallway.

You didn't have to ask

and that's what cool was:

the ability to deduct

to know without asking.

And the pressure to simulate coolness

means not asking when you don't know,

which is why kids grow ever more stupid.

A yearbook's endpages, filled with promises

to stay in touch, stand as proof of the uselessness

of a teenager's promise. Not like I'm dying

for a letter from the class stoner

ten years on but...

Do you remember the way the girls

would call out "love you!"

conveniently leaving out the "I"

as if they didn't want to commit

to their own declarations.

I agree that the "I" is a pretty heavy concept

and hope you won't get uncomfortable

if I should go into some deeper stuff here.

IV four

There are things I've given up on

like recording funny answering machine messages.

It's part of growing older

and the human race as a group

has matured along the same lines.

It seems our comedy dates the quickest.

If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes

I hope you won't be insulted

if I say you're trying too hard.

Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live

seem slow-witted and obvious now.

It's just that our advances are irrepressible.

Nowadays little kids can't even set up lemonade stands.

It makes people too self-conscious about the past,

though try explaining that to a kid.

I'm not saying it should be this way.

All this new technology

will eventually give us new feelings

that will never completely displace the old ones

leaving everyone feeling quite nervous

and split in two.

We will travel to Mars

even as folks on Earth

are still ripping open potato chip

bags with their teeth.

Why? I don't have the time or intelligence

to make all the connections

like my friend Gordon

(this is a true story)

who grew up in Braintree Massachusetts

and had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree

until I brought it up.

He'd never broken the name down to its parts.

By then it was too late.

He had moved to Coral Gables.

V five

The hill out my window is still looking beautiful

suffused in a kind of gold national park light

and it seems to say,

I'm sorry the world could not possibly

use another poem about Orpheus

but I'm available if you're not working

on a self-portrait or anything.

I'm watching my dog have nightmares,

twitching and whining on the office floor

and I try to imagine what beast

has cornered him in the meadow

where his dreams are set.

I'm just letting the day be what it is:

a place for a large number of things

to gather and interact --

not even a place but an occasion

a reality for real things.

Friends warned me not to get too psychedelic

or religious with this piece:

"They won't accept it if it's too psychedelic

or religious," but these are valid topics

and I'm the one with the dog twitching on the floor

possibly dreaming of me

that part of me that would beat a dog

for no good reason

no reason that a dog could see.

I am trying to get at something so simple

that I have to talk plainly

so the words don't disfigure it

and if it turns out that what I say is untrue

then at least let it be harmless

like a leaky boat in the reeds

that is bothering no one.

VI six

I can't trust the accuracy of my own memories,

many of them having blended with sentimental

telephone and margarine commercials

plainly ruined by Madison Avenue

though no one seems to call the advertising world

"Madison Avenue" anymore. Have they moved?

Let's get an update on this.

But first I have some business to take care of.

I walked out to the hill behind our house

which looks positively Alaskan today

and it would be easier to explain this

if I had a picture to show you

but I was with our young dog

and he was running through the tall grass

like running through the tall grass

is all of life together

until a bird calls or he finds a beer can

and that thing fills all the space in his head.

You see, his mind can only hold one thought at a time and when he finally hears me call his name he looks up and cocks his head and for a single moment my voice is everything:

Self portrait at 28.

I am once again thinking about this amazing poem.

#poetry #quotes

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dcstoryteller · 4 years

Text

ANWR Part IV

August 28, 2020

So, after leaving Barrow, we were in an Interior Department prop plane that held about 10-12 people. I sat up on the front seat right behind the pilot, headed back to Anchorage. The cockpit didn’t have a door, so I could see out their window. After two or three hours of flying over nothing but snow covered mountains, I could see a big mountain in front of us.

I went up to the cockpit to get a better view and the pilot told me the big mountain was Mt. Denali, or Mt. McKinley, which is over 20,000 ft. high. It sits all by itself and was snow covered from about halfway up. I asked the pilot if we could circle it so everyone would get a view. He agreed, and we flew completely around it. The weather was beautiful and it was an awesome sight. Only two other mountains in the world sit alone and this high.

After spending the night in Anchorage, we drove the next day down to the Kenai Peninsula where we went salmon fishing in the Kenai River. Since this was off the official trip, we all paid our own way for the trip, including the boats and the guides. It was a great trip with all of us catching our limit of 2 silver salmon a day except for the Deputy Secretary who only caught one. He was not a happy camper, but we thought it was funny.

The next morning we took a commercial flight that left just before dawn headed to Valdez. It was by far the most beautiful flight I have ever taken. We watched the sun come up over the glaciers between the mountains and turned them pink. The glaciers looked like huge rivers that wound their way down to the sea. Just awesome.

We landed in Valdez, a small city on the Gulf of Alaska. The city was completely destroyed by an earthquake back in the 70′s, so they had moved the entire town a few miles away and rebuilt it. It was a port city and the terminus for the Alaska Pipeline. We saw the facility where the oil we had seen a few days earlier in Prudhoe Bay finished its journey at mile marker 800. There the oil would be treated to take out water and impurities and loaded on huge tankers which would deliver it to refineries on the West Coast. Years later, one of these tankers, the Exxon Valdez, went aground about 300 miles south of Valdez and caused a catastrophic oil spill.

Next we boarded helicopters and flew a few miles away to a spot where a new gas terminal was planned to receive natural gas from northern Alaska. Unfortunately, it never got built. While we were there on the ground, we experienced the Alaska state bird...the mosquito. They were everywhere and attacked us with a vengeance. One of the security guys accompanying us was carrying a high powered rifle. The Deputy Secretary came over to me and asked why he had that. I told him to protect us from bears. He didn’t believe me and asked the man himself (which I had already done). The man told him that a female brown bear lived near there with her two cubs and he was concerned that they could become agitated at our presence.

This was the end of our Alaskan adventure, as we flew back to Anchorage and then commercial back to Washington DC. There is a postscript, however. A year later, I was accompanying the Secretary of Energy on a special trip to Tokyo. We were flying first class on a All Nippon 747. The only other passenger in first class was the ABC anchor, Ted Koppel. As we flew over the middle of Alaska that afternoon in clear skies, I called Ted over to the window and asked him what he saw. He said all the saw were mountains and snow everywhere. I said, yes, no towns, no highways, no civilization. I told him that ANWR was 300 miles north of where we were, so never let anyone tell him how ANWR was a pristine Serengeti and that we wanted to destroy it with a 1000 acre oil field.

I hope you enjoyed this trip with me, and maybe learned something as well.

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countrygrlswrld · 7 years

Text

To Chicken and back: Another 3,000-mile journey

—Quote from Rick Warren

In the last two months we: Sold a house, bought a truck, drove more than 3,000 miles, flew from Spokane to the Midwest and back, held four babies under a year old (none of which were ours, thank you very much!) and tailgated at the best Cougar football game in 25 years. I know, you’re tired just reading that—believe me, I know.

We pulled out of Chicken, Alaska (tears) Sept. 5. OK, actually, we got two miles down the road before our truck took a big crap in the middle of construction on the road crew’s almighty paving day. They had been working on getting the three-mile stretch of road paved, upon which the community of Chicken lies the whole summer, and this was D-Day, or P-Day. Nonetheless, Alaskans are helpful, no-nonsense people and they hooked our dead truck towing our 15,000-pound trailer up to one of their rigs and at least towed our home on wheels and ailing Ford to a safe, level spot off the road (all I could think was, No one in California would have EVER touched our rig with all the liability flying around.) Furthermore, one of the road crew supervisors gave me a ride back to camp. I’m baaack! I loitered around Chicken Gold Camp for a few hours while Spanky unhitched, managed to limp the truck to the mine shop and clean out the gunked up EGR valve. Then, with fingernails dug into the armrests, we throttled on to Tok some 80 miles away just rolling into town before the truck started to heave and choke again. Long story somewhat shorter, we left our RV parked in Tok, drove four hours to Fairbanks, got the truck fixed and traded that baby in for a slicked up 2015 King Ranch.

Though the truck fiasco was a pain, it was actually as straightforward as possible. It was a miracle we came back from Alaska as unscathed as we did—I mean 6,000 miles of towing our beast of an RV along permafrost damaged, roller coaster roads?! We will count our blessings.

After our three-day diversion in Fairbanks, Spanky and I were on the road again—in style, mind you—and headed into Canada where we took our time driving through British Columbia and Alberta over a course of 10 days before arriving back in the Lower 48. This is a pretty quick synopsis of the last couple of months, but I don’t want to neglect to point out the immense beauty of Banff. It’s been on my bucket list for a couple years now, and it did not disappoint, nor did it pale in comparison to the Himalayas or Patagonia, which we visited earlier this year. No, Banff can hold its own among the natural wonders of the world. The only thing I couldn’t figure out was why more of its neighbors to the south (my Washington peeps, especially) have never been there. Tisk, tisk. Do yourself a favor and make the 6.5-hour drive north from Spokane—you will not regret it. Just try to do it in late August or early September to avoid the Disney-style crowds at Lake Louise.

As soon as we crossed into Washington, we headed to the title company to make the sale of our house (and cabin—another tear) final. What can I say? You just can’t tie these gypsies down, and as my husband learned from his grandfather, “Everything is always for sale for the right price.” You can’t let yourself get too attached. Once business was done, it was time to head down to Pullman to play. Us and 20 of our college friends met up for the Coug game to end all Coug games—a win against USC.

Three days later, Busch Light still pulsing through our veins, Spanky and I hopped a flight to Minneapolis where we met up with Spank’s former line apprentice-turned-journeyman, whom Spanky met in South Dakota seven years ago and hadn’t seen since. It was like no time had passed at all. Then we visited friends Benson and Carolyn and their new little one and hopped another plane to St. Louis, where we reconnected with the dynamic traveling nurse duo Steph and Seth and their brand new baby girl. I’ll tell you what, making an effort to see all of these people is not easy, but it is so incredibly rewarding. Spanky and I remind ourselves that relationships require effort. Sure, we might have more time if we didn’t run around visiting everyone, but we wouldn’t have any friends either! Now what’s the fun in that? One of my favorite sayings from Rick Warren is: “The best use of life is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now.”

So, when we got back to Washington, we made our final rounds to see my folks in central Washington and ALL of our best friends in western Washington (I can finally say that now that my BFF Andrea is there on furlough for the year!!) Insert more baby holding.

Now the fun is over. Ha! Yeah right. You know as well as I do that that is not true. Sure, it’s back to work time, but that just means new adventures. Currently, I’m sitting in a hotel room, which Spanky and I will call home at least until the end of the year, maybe longer. Our gypsy wagon is parked in storage, as Spanky’s company is covering the hotel expenses; not to mention, there are no good RV parks in San Francisco (i.e. none without barbed wire fences). While it was hard for me to leave my home on wheels—the only home I’ve grown to know—the area we are staying in is pleasant (and pleasantly not smack dab in the city), and wouldn’t ya know, we have some friends close by.

#travel #love #relationships #friendship

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