#like staying out of politics is absolutely not a new idea this existed in 1940

[freebooter4ever]

"this is why i stay out of politics"

"well i cant do that when there's people suffering"

this is the sort of dialogue i mean - miep uses words and phrases that sound distinctly 2020 rather than 1940 and makes her seem above everybody else in the show. it mitigates the 'average woman helping her perfectly average family friends who were in danger, so YOU can do this too if it becomes necessary, no matter how scary it might seem' narrative that the real miep tried to get across in her interviews/etc. like miep did interviews and stuff with the goal that should something similar to this happen, people would have heard the message - always stand up to injustice, its not heroic it is Necessary - since childhood and hopefully would do the right thing. but this fictional miep sounds posturing and 21 century holier than thou at times - which is often how a lot of social media 'activism' feels to me. and seems to miss the point entirely.

[lookedupandfellasleep]

“Casablanca” During World War II and the Impact It Created Then and Now

Casablanca (1942) is regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. It has undeniably made history and secured itself one of the top spots in every movies-you-must-absolutely-watch list. Using contemporary themes accurate to the era it was being made in, weaving in dramatics and fiction that made it just a little bit easier to digest, but nonetheless, delivering a powerful story, Casablanca managed to capture the hearts of its World War II audience and transcend time with its relevance and sentiment, as good cinema does.

Funnily enough, despite being a film enthusiast, I have never watched Casablanca. Despite the noses that would definitely turn up at me for saying this, I can’t pretend that classic films have the same appeal to me as modern films do. My attention tends to sizzle out with the sing-song delivery, dialogue-heavy style of old movies. However, there are exceptions to this and I will have to say that Casablanca is one of them.

Casablanca follows the story of Rick Blaine, former freedom fighter turned nightclub and gambling hub owner in Casablanca, Morocco. Rick's Café Américain has become the number one spot in Casablanca for displaced refugees that seek safe passage to America through illegally obtained letters of transit. Despite his past, Rick now chooses to stay “neutral” and isolate himself from any political affairs, “I stick my neck out for nobody”. At least, that’s what it seems like on the surface. This existence is disrupted when his former lover and the cause of his cynicism, Ilsa Lund and her husband, Victor Laszlo, enter his saloon. The past quickly resurfaces and the flame within Rick and Ilsa is rekindled. He now has to face the choice of keeping his love by his side or doing the right thing for the greater good and losing the love of his life again. In the end, Rick cannot help but go back to his roots and do the right thing, “… three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world”. He ends up saving his rival, Victor Laszlo, and helping him and Ilsa safely flee Casablanca for him to continue his work as a leader of resistance in the war.

Casablanca was adapted from an unproduced play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison then titled Everybody Comes to Rick’s. The idea for the play's premise came about when Murray Burnett traveled to Vienna to help out his Jewish relatives. While he was there, he learned that refugees used a route that traveled from Marseilles to Morocco to Lisbon to then bring them safely to the United States. Many refugees stopped over at Casablanca during the Nazi invasion of France in 1940.

Casablanca, the film, came about when Irene Diamond, story editor for Warner Brothers, read the unproduced play while on a visit to New York City in 1941. Diamond, being a long-time collaborator of Hal Wallis, convinced him to buy the play’s rights for $20,000. The name was then changed from Everybody Comes to Rick’s to the iconic title, Casablanca.

The film started production in May 1942, during the height of World War II with A-list actors already in its roster: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid. Production for the movie had to be rushed when Stephen Karnot saw an opportunity that they could take advantage of when Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor. He saw this as a massive publicity boost and made the film’s themes extremely relevant at the time. Due to this and a couple of other hiccups, filming did not go too smoothly.

Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch were enlisted to write the screenplay. The script was only half-written when production began. Nobody knew how the film would end. Bergman came to Howard Koch to ask which man she should play like she’s more in love with, Victor or Rick. The scriptwriter couldn’t answer this specifically and instead just told her to play them both “evenly” as they also had no idea what was going to happen. The script went through many more rewrites during filming.

Production also suffered with shortages and limitations at the time of filming. Because of the ongoing war, production could not use materials such as rubber, aluminum, nylons, and silk because of the shortages. Costumes and sets had to be made differently. Filming also could not be done on location or at nighttime because of the looming threat of a Japanese attack in mainland California. Casablanca had to be filmed entirely on soundstages.

Casting was also affected by the war. Almost all of the cast of Casablanca were actual refugees, which, in part, may have contributed further to its success. Emotions ran high while the cast sang, “La Marseillaise” in the now iconic scene. Both on- and off-screen, this symbolized for them unity against the fascism and oppression that was happening at the time. The passion can be heard in their voices as they drown out the “Die Wacht am Rhein” of the Germans. Real tears are shed by real refugees who were displaced in the war.

Censorship also played a bit of a hindrance in the making of Casablanca. The film was dealing with a lot of sensitive topics at the time: adultery, war, and propaganda. It had to go through a lot of rewrites and plot changes for the film to be considered “appropriate” for the audience. Censors had to make sure that the film did not condone adultery and that it would send the right message when it came to supporting the war effort.

From an insider’s point-of-view, the film seemed lackluster and a bit of a patchwork with its unfinished script, production limitations, numerous rewrites, censorship, and actors that barely wanted anything to do with the project. However, the way it all came together was magical and exceeded the expectations of everyone who was a part of making the movie.

Much like how production was rushed for this film, the premiere was also moved from 1943 to November 1942. Additional scenes were supposed to be filmed but canceled to be able to hasten its release. This was to take advantage of another major moment in the war: the Allied landing in North Africa and the Battle of Casablanca. This was huge publicity and helped not only to draw the crowds for the film but to also increase its resonance with the people. The film continues to grow in popularity and has achieved “classic” status in today’s time.

I believe its success comes from the raw romanticism of sacrifice that this film portrays. Boy does not get girl. Instead, sacrifices needed to be made for the greater good. It’s a satisfying ending that had us all wanting to do the right thing. This film is about love but it’s not just about romantic love. It’s about the love that we have for people, in general. The good that we see in the world even in times of darkness.

[cake-writes]

Breathe (Lecture 1)

Pairing: Bucky x Reader

Story Warnings: Slow Burn, Angst, Fluff, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Mixed Delivery (Social Media & Written Parts), Eventual 18+

Summary: Bucky takes a history class at his local university in hopes of catching up on the last few decades, on everything he’s missed whilst under Hydra’s control – but he winds up learning a lot more than what’s on the syllabus. He learns how to heal.

Written for @the-omni-princess​​’s 1k writing challenge!

(Formerly Hope & Happiness; I decided that I needed a better title!)

TAG LIST: OPEN

💛 This fic is interactive. Here’s how it works! 💛

So I took the time to find an actual university course to complement this story because I’m just that invested, you guys. (I’m also a huge history nerd, lmao.) The syllabus and lectures are real, and any content relating to these in my story is straight from the source.

Lectures are recorded and available for a listen! Most written chapters will correspond to a lecture; I’ll list which one at the top of the chapter if you want to learn along with Bucky. Each one is about 40-50 minutes long and in English. Click here to access them!

This is definitely optional, though, so please don’t feel pressured to listen, but if you’re a history nerd like me then you may want to take a look!

Wednesday, August 24

Lecture 1: Introductory Lecture

Although Bucky had been on campus a couple of times before now – first to apply, and then to meet with an advisor as all new students were required to do – he didn’t think he’d ever get used to the sheer size of it. Universities these days were massive: cities within a city, buildings upon restaurants upon shops and all he wanted to do was learn.

That was all he’d ever wanted to do, really. Learn about himself. Learn what made the world tick. Learn all the things he didn’t know. He’d always excelled in school, and once upon a time he’d started to save money in order to attend university. Didn’t know what he’d study – just knew that he wanted a degree in order to support the family he thought he’d have one day.

Ambitions for the future.

Then came the draft. Because hadn’t yet been able to save enough, he’d been shipped out to the European Theater – sent to hell, not to college.

Ambitions for the past.

Two years spent in cold, wintery foxholes gave him an opportunity to think, but all he could think about was the stench of death surrounding him, surrounding his unit, surrounding every waking moment of his life at war. Not his death, of course, but it may as well have been.

Bucky learned to hone in on the sound of his heartbeat in his ears, the rush of adrenaline in his veins, the sensation of his boots in mud and snow. He learned to focus. He learned to survive.

And all the while, he lived with the very real possibility that he wouldn’t make it through – and, well, he didn’t. Not really. Some parts of him never made it back; what little remained became the property of Hydra. Mind corrupted, soul shattered, will broken into sharp, jagged shards of glass.

Fragile. Breakable. Erased, but still alive.  

Bucky may have survived, but he’d never really been right since – never really been whole. Physically and mentally, with too many pieces of himself missing or damaged, one constant stayed the same: a desire to learn. He’d gotten through the war and Hydra’s harsh training because that quality was a part of him – one of the only parts that made it through.

Battle-worn and weary from surviving – not living, not really – Bucky finally had the opportunity to take a step back from the battlefield to just… exist. To live. To breathe. In taking a leave of absence, he embarked upon another journey: to rediscover the man he used to be.

It would be difficult task, he knew. The twenty-first century was far cry from the 1940s, a far cry from home, and the sheer size of the college campus only served to remind him of that. In fact, he was only able to recognize that he was still in New York because this school happened to be the very same one he’d once planned to attend so long ago. Staten Island University. Right across the bridge from his present-day apartment in Brooklyn, not to mention his old family home.

Home.

But this unfamiliar new century was his home, now, so he sought to learn what he’d missed over all the decades he’d lost to Hydra. In the process, maybe he’d learn about himself, learn what made the world tick, learn all the things he didn’t know.

What better place could there be to do that than at a university?

Bucky soon found out that his education would be paid for by the United States government for his service in the military. Ironic that the very barrier which forced him into war was the same thing being gifted to him now. The GI Bill. A reward for his patriotism. A thank you for his sacrifice.

Flowery words for a bribe meant to keep him silent. Call him jaded.

Worse still, if Bucky thought tuition was expensive back then, he didn’t know what to call it today. He’d been rendered speechless when he found out what a single class would cost, but rest assured, Uncle Sam would pay for it so that he didn’t have to.

Physically, it only cost him an arm but mentally, it cost him so much more.

U.S. Society and Politics Since 1945. Mondays and Wednesdays at two o’clock. Three credit hours, whatever that meant. He signed up for the class after his first meeting with an advisor – thought that it might do him good to put his past behind him and learn.

Bucky arrived about twenty minutes before the class was due to start, all nerves and first day jitters – absolutely ridiculous when he really thought about it, so he tried to put it out of his mind and selected a seat in the very back row in hopes of not being noticed.

Counting seats proved to be a good distraction. Three hundred seats. Would there really be that many students? Save for a handful of his new classmates scattered about, the too-large lecture hall seemed like it would never fill. Sure enough, however, it eventually started to – not all three hundred seats, but close enough.

It wasn’t until then that Bucky realized he might have been woefully unprepared. Just about everyone else had laptops sat out front of them, and while he could use one – clunkily – he still preferred something more a little more tangible. All he’d brought along was the required textbook, a notebook, and two pens, one of which he’d been rolling in between a gloved thumb and forefinger for the last few minutes. 

That was a nervous tic of his, one he’d picked up in the army, except today it was a pen instead of a cigarette and he sure could have used a pack of Lucky Strikes right now. A cigarette would have done wonders to take the edge off, but he didn’t smoke, not anymore. Frustrated, he dropped the pen back down onto his desk and slumped down in his chair.

Had school always been this nerve-wracking? He couldn’t remember.

A snort drew his attention, and Bucky glanced to his left to find you sitting a few seats down in the same back row, watching him in amusement. 

It caught him off-guard.

“Is this your first class?”

A innocent question, unprompted – untainted.

While Bucky knew that there would be some socializing required, especially in the discussion section of the class, never in his wildest dreams did he think that anyone would be willing to strike up a conversation with him. He had half a mind to say ‘no’ and ignore you as long as possible, but for whatever reason, he didn’t. He opened up.

“How could you tell?”

You shrugged. “You’re fidgeting, for one. But mostly because you don’t have a bag.”

Why would he need a bag? He was only taking one class.

At his doubtful look, you spoke again, voice light and airy, “Don’t worry. You’ll learn.”

Well, that was foreboding. Then again, you seemed like you would know. You looked slightly older than most of the other students who were likely fresh out of high school, and you appeared to be all sorts of prepared, what with a leather laptop bag on the chair to your right and some brightly-coloured notebooks, binders, and a few thick textbooks all strewn about the desk in front of you.

A laptop bag, but no laptop. Strange.

Bucky wasn’t really sure why he wanted to know, but he nodded to your books and asked anyway, “What else are you taking?”

“Mostly upper-level psychology classes. I’m in my final year. What about you?”

“This is my only class,” he admitted, and to him, that wasn’t a satisfactory answer. He was only taking the one class with no particular goal in mind, but here you were, taking at least four other classes judging by the number of textbooks on your desk.

You had a goal. 

He didn’t.

You didn’t ask why, though; instead, you offered him your name, along with a bright smile.

“Bucky,” he found himself telling you way too easily.

“Well, Bucky, it’s nice to meet you.” You paused, then, before you made an offhanded comment of, “I think it’s really good to have a friend in class, you know? Mostly so you can steal their notes when you skip.”

A joke, perhaps, but Bucky took it literally. That may have been the stupidest thing he’d ever heard. “I’m not gonna— Who pays thousands of dollars in tuition and then decides not to come?”

Your brows rose in surprise for a moment or two, but then you laughed at his stick-in-the-mud response. “Oh no, you’re one of those. What a goody two-shoes!”

Don’t worry, you’d said. You’ll learn.

But the mischievous sparkle in your eyes let him know that you were just teasing, and what’s more, he actually didn’t mind. No, he kind of liked it, having some normal human interaction for once – not whatever the hell he’d grown used to at the compound. Between blood-spattered banter in the field and too-dark humour used as a coping mechanism, his interactions there were anything but normal.

Bucky also liked that you had no idea how wrong your sentiment was; not that he’d never admit it. This was the first time in a long, long while that he’d been treated like a regular person – not enhanced, not a science experiment, not an Avenger – and he had no intention of shattering the illusion anytime soon.

“I’m not giving you my notes, either,” he deadpanned.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Super goody two-shoes. My mistake.”

When he opened his mouth to respond to your sassy one-liner, however, the professor’s voice sounded from the front of the lecture hall. You gave him a final wink before you turned to face the front, purple pen already poised and ready to go.

Good afternoon! Can you hear me in the nosebleeds? Yes? With me? Okay…

Forty-five minutes passed in a blink, and most of the students quickly started to pack up their belongings – but not you. No, you stayed in your seat and continued scribbling away at something in your notes, seemingly having zero plans to leave anytime soon. Bucky couldn’t help but be curious as to why you weren’t packing up, but it wasn’t any of his business and he didn’t ask.

Armed with a new syllabus and a daunting list of required readings for the week, he pulled himself to his feet and collected his own belongings; only managed to push the chair back in and take about two steps toward the door before he heard your voice again.

“Hey, Bucky, wait.”

He turned around to see you still reading through one of your textbooks, not even looking in his direction, but in your outstretched hand was a bright pink sticky note.

What?

“Come on,” still focused on your reading, you waved the post-it, pink paper flapping in the makeshift breeze but staying stuck to your finger anyway, “Take it. Here.”

Hesitantly, Bucky stepped closer and accepted the proffered note. Upon it, he found that you’d hastily scrawled your name and phone number, along with what he assumed was meant to be a smiley face. The drawing was god-awful, and a welcome distraction from the way his heart had immediately leapt into his throat because a woman had just given him her phone number.

Her phone number.

“Th— Thanks?” he stammered, unsure.

Now, he certainly wasn’t one to jump to conclusions, but this—

“Don’t get any weird ideas,” you interrupted his train of thought, finally pulling your eyes away from the textbook to look up at him. 

Gorgeous, glimmering, big doe eyes focused right on him, now, and seeing you up close like this, a fleeting thought crossed his mind about how attractive you were. He blamed it on the fact that you’d just given him your number, and now his brain only wanted to overthink what he’d interpreted as the first sign of potential interest from the opposite sex in – well, far too long. 

Bucky hadn’t been expecting that at all, and he wasn’t particularly interested to pursue such a thing, either. At least not right now. He still needed to get his head on straight; still needed to figure out his own problems before he took on someone else’s.

Even if you were a pretty little thing he might have taken dancing, once.

Then you added, “If you have any questions, just shoot me a text, okay? I remember how lost I was when I first started, especially because I’m a,” you did some air-quotes, then, “‘mature-aged’ student.” Another snort, one much less ladylike than before. “Mature-aged. I’m not that old!”

So it was a friendly offer. Nothing more. Not like the implications in the 40s – and Bucky thought, then, that if you were considered to be ‘mature-aged,’ he didn’t want to find out how he’d stack up.

“Thanks,” he said again, this time a little less unsurely. “I appreciate it.”

Another one of your bright smiles brought a sense of calm over him, a feeling that carried over even when you poked fun at him again, “Then I guess I’ll see you next week, Mr. Goody Two-Shoes.” 

“Yeah,” he responded, feeling the corners of his lips turn up just a little at your goodnatured teasing. “See you next week.”

And when he left the lecture hall, fluorescent pink post-it stuck to the inside of his notebook, Bucky’s footsteps felt just a little lighter than before – and so did his heart.

Part Two

[dreamwritesimagines]

Untouchable 2- Bad Ideas [Bucky Barnes x Reader]

A.N: Thank you so much for your feedback my loves, please keep it coming! <3

You can read the previous chapters on my masterlist<3

Summary: “Did I cross your mind?”   “I don’t think about you at all, Sergeant.”

Characters: Reader x Bucky Barnes, Steve Rogers

Word Count: 2381

Warnings: Mentions of sex work, explicit language, 1940s. 

“You know you are way too sweet to be doing this job sweetheart, aren’t you?”

Your bright smile felt way too forced to you, but it was practiced enough to make him fall for it.

“General,” you tilted your head and batted your lashes, “You’re being very polite.”

“I’m being honest,” he said, as you pulled the sheets around your naked body and he curled an arm behind his head, letting out a relieved breath “And I think we both agreed you’d call me Charles.”

“Everyone calls you General Richards,” you said airily, “I figured I could follow the tradition.”

“Well,” he tapped your nose with his finger, making you scrunch up your nose in a completely adorable way in his opinion, you were sure, “For you I can make an exception.”

“Oh you know how to make a girl feel special,” you giggled as he pulled you closer, and by some kind of irony, what one of your friends had told you flashed in your mind.

It was around the very first weeks you had joined the brothel, and you had asked the girls how they could pretend that easily.

Everyone had different answers but what Nancy had said stuck with you for a long time,

“You pretend it’s someone else,” she had said, “You close your eyes, and when you open them, you imagine it’s someone else, someone more handsome, someone who makes you feel excited.”

“Do you know what people call you then?” Charles said and you closed your eyes for a moment, then when you opened them, the face flashed in your mind made you sit up straight.

Bucky Barnes.

“Hm?” you frowned slightly, trying to shake off the thoughts, “I’m sorry?”

“Do you know what they call you?”

“No,” you said softly, trying to focus and looked up at him, “What do they call me?”

“The most beautiful harlot ever existed,” he said, making you raise your brows,

“Is that right?”

“Oh don’t tell me you didn’t know,” he chuckled, “You have many admirers, lovely.”

“I think I heard a thing or two about that,” you waved a hand, “I tend not to listen to gossips.”

“You don’t care what people think of you?”

“I do care what some people think of me,” you smiled slightly, stealing a mischievous look at him, “Not the people on the streets. But do you think I’m beautiful, Charles?”

Your voice was way too soft, a perfect balance between shyness and curiosity, something you had practiced way too many times to fail.

“Oh little birdie,” he pulled you closer to kiss you on the lips, making you feel-

Nothing. You felt absolutely nothing.

“You might be the most gorgeous thing I have ever laid eyes on,” he muttered to your lips, “Hence my comment about you being too sweet to be doing this.”

“How else would we have met?” you asked, smiling at him, and he pulled from you,

“You make me want to stay with you the whole day, birdie.”

No, please go.

“Then stay?” you offered, already dreading the possibility, but thankfully, he shook his head.

“I have things to do, with people who are much less beautiful,” he said as he grabbed his pants, “Some of the wounded soldiers were sent back, so I have to fix the new men who will be sent there instead of them, it’s a mess.”

“Ah, that’s sad,” you said, your stomach doing a flip, “I do hope they get well.”

“You should hope that if you want them to be sent back to the front, because that’s where they are going when they get better.”

“Oh,” you swallowed thickly and he reached out to brush your hair off your eyes,

“Don’t you worry your pretty head about it,” he said, his tone almost condescending as if you couldn’t understand the situation, making you clench your teeth for a moment before you controlled your expression, “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Oh I might have something to do tomorrow, I’m afraid-“

“I say if you’re busy or not birdie, not the other way around,” his voice was like a whip and your eyes snapped up to yours, the sudden flare of anger in his voice catching you almost off guard, but then you managed to pull yourself together and smiled,

“I didn’t mean it that way, of course,” you said abashedly, “I just saw this new lingerie, and I meant it to be a surprise but they will deliver it next week.”

That was more than enough to make him smirk and you fought the urge to roll your eyes.

“Oh I’m a patient man,” he leaned in to peck you on the lips, “You thought I would like it, huh?”

Don’t make a face. Do not make a face.

“I’m sure of it,” you said as he got into his jacket, then put a wad of money on your nightstand.

“I’ll see you later birdie,” he said and walked out of your room, making you drop the smile immediately and glare at the door he had just closed.

“I hope you die at the front,” you whispered, then grabbed your gown to put it on, before walking to the shower.

                                                             ***

“Y/N,” Linda, the madam of the brothel stopped you before you could button your coat, and you turned your head,

“Yes Linda?”

“Can I see you for a moment?”

“Of course,” you smiled at her and followed her to her office. You shut the door before walking to one of the seats to sit down, “Is everything alright?”

“Everything’s fine,” she sat down and lit her cigarette, then offered you one, which you gladly accepted, “These flowers came for you today.”

“Oh?” you said, then pulled the vase to yourself, “That’s… they look beautiful.”

“I was going to put them into your room but you were busy with a client.”

“General Richards.” You nodded as you grabbed the card “Yes. He might come tomorrow as well, he was talking about that.”  

I can’t wait to see you.

You tried not to scoff, then threw the card into the trash under Linda’s desk,

“I know, he told me,” Linda said, “He does look like he’s fascinated by you.”

You exhaled the smoke, “You taught me well.”

“It’s not just me, you know that,”

“It’s not that hard to pretend,” you shrugged slightly, shooting her a forced smile, “People are easy to deceive.”

“Your looks make it easy, sugar,” she told you, pointing at you with her cigarette, “That’s why I called you here. What are your plans?”

“For what?”

“For the future?”

“I…um-“ you stammered, “I’m trying to save money, but I don’t think-?”

“Not that,” she waved a dismissive hand, “If I had your youth and beauty, Y/N… You need to use those for your benefit.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

She exhaled the smoke again, “You have many admirers. All of them are rich. With enough….persuasion, they would gladly make you more than-“ she motioned around you, “This.”

You turned the cigarette between your fingers, “General Richards talked to you.” 

“You know he could offer you everything.”

“Not everything.” You shook your head, “He…. He just wants to control people. That’s all. I’m not paying that price for what he offers.”

“Oh sweetheart,” she said, “Don’t be so quick to decide. Do you want me to send these to your room?”

You eyed the flowers, then shook your head,

“They look better here,” you said as you stood up, “Do you want anything from the outside?”

She shook her head so you walked out and closed the door behind you, then left the house. You had only taken a couple of steps when an argument caught your attention coming from a nearby alley and you frowned at the familiar voice, then turned your head to approach the two men who were both unaware of your presence,

“I’ve seen you do so many ridiculous things for girls but this is something else,” the shorter one said, “Does she know we’re here?”

“No!”

“Do we know if she even wants to see you?”

“Steve…”

“I’m not going to follow a girl around just because you think she’s beautiful.”

“We’re not going to follow her around!”

“Bucky,” the blonde man- Steve said and your heart skipped a beat for some reason, “You dragged me here-“

“I just want to see if this is where she lives, that’s all.”

“Why?”

“I just-“ he heaved a sigh, “To- to make sure she’s alright.”

“She doesn’t sound interested in you, so I’d gather she’s just fine.”

“Steve, you don’t understand-“

“Can I help you gentlemen?” you cut him off and Bucky turned around, his arm in a white plaster catching your eye.

He looked exactly like you remembered him, with bits of cuts and scrapes over his handsome face, but other than those, that look on his face as his eyes fell on you was the same, making a small smile pull at your lips.

“No ma’am, thank you,” Steve said but Bucky elbowed him.

“You’re back,” you said after a beat, “Welcome back, Sergeant.”

Steve looked between you two, then a look of realization dawned on his face.

“Thank you,” Bucky said breathlessly “It worked- your prayers. You- you said you would.”

“I did.”

Steve raised his brows, tilting his head as if he wasn’t used to see Bucky stammer and get nervous.

“I’m Y/N.” you extended your hand and he shook it.

“Steve Rogers, ma’am.”

“Will you tell me what you and your friend were doing in this part of the town, Mr. Rogers?”

“We-“

“We were passing by.”

“This is a blind alley.”

“We just realized that.”

“And walked deeper in?”

Bucky nodded solemnly, “Yeah. Yeah we did.”

Steve closed his eyes and shook his head silently, as if he was at the end of his patience, then cleared his throat.

“I’ll just….” He motioned towards the street, “Yeah, over- over there.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“You too, ma’am.” Steve said politely, then walked out of the alley, leaving both of you there. A silence fell upon you as your heartbeat got faster and you cleared your throat.

“Does your arm hurt?”

Bucky looked down at his arm as if he had forgotten about his injury, then shook his head,

“Turns out you can’t really aim with a broken arm.”

“Well if a broken arm brought you back to Brooklyn, it’s good luck.”

He smiled softly, then nodded, tips of his ears going red again and you tried not to smile.

“What are you doing here, Sergeant Barnes?”

“Bucky.”

“Sergeant Barnes.” You repeated, “Why are you here?”

“I... I wanted to see you.”

“Why?” you asked and he licked his lips,

“Do you always question people like that?”

“Usually. Considering people usually pay to see me.”

“Does my presence disturb you then?” he asked and you wanted to say yes, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do so.

In all honesty, seeing him back in Brooklyn made you feel almost excited, as if someone had brought you a present you had really, really wanted.

“No,” you said, “No it doesn’t. But it’s a bad idea.”

“Why is it a bad idea?”

“You know why,” you said, swallowing thickly for a moment before you pulled yourself together, but he had already caught it.

“I thought about you,” he said, “When we were out there. At the front.”  

“You shouldn’t have,” you crossed your arms, “Find a nurse or something, aren’t there pretty nurses out there?”

He frowned, as if he didn’t know how to answer that, “….Yes?”

“There you go,” you said and you started walking back to the brothel, but he caught up with you,

“How about you?” he asked, “Did I cross your mind?”

“I don’t think about you at all, Sergeant.” You lied way too easily as you kept walking, “I don’t have the luxury to think about men other than my clients.”

“You didn’t?” he stopped you and your eyes snapped up to his, “At all?”

You had no idea what was going on with you, why your stomach had made a flip or why you couldn’t look him in the eye and fed him your pretty lies, just like you had done to everyone else. It was supposed to be as easy as breathing, your façade had never failed you.

Until now.

So for some reason, you averted your eyes and took a deep breath, then forced yourself to smile,

“What you have in your mind is only a dream, Sergeant Barnes,” you said, “If it helped you survive out there, I’m grateful. But I-“ you took a shaky breath as he waited patiently, “I’m a bad idea. You know I am a very, very bad idea.”

He looked like he had nothing to say to that and you reached out to take his hat off, and handed it to him,

“There,” you said slowly, and tried to smile, “You shouldn’t deprive Brooklyn’s girls of your face. We do need to see a handsome fella after all, wartime or not.”

With that, you walked past him and opened the door to the brothel, then got inside and closed it. You leaned your head back, desperately trying to ignore the burning in your eyes before you pushed yourself off the door and climbed the stairs to get into your room to get ready just in case a client showed up, but as soon as you entered your room, you stopped dead on your tracks.

There was a small box lying on your bed with a small note attached to it. You grabbed the note, then skimmed the lines,

Surprise for a surprise, birdie.

Charles.

You pulled the lid off the box to see a diamond necklace inside, shining on the soft, tiny black satin, as if winking at you.

You were supposed to want this.

Linda would want this.

Shirley would want this.

All the girls in the brothel would want this.

It was an expensive gift, and you were supposed to want this.

….What the hell was wrong with you?

You clenched your teeth, breathing out of your nose, then put the necklace back into the box and threw it to the wall with all your strength.

                                               ***

@rhabakoli​​ @rmwest9​​ @finnickfoxes​​  @theskytraveler​​ @asongofmarvelanddc​​ @thorohdamnson​​  @fictionwillneverdie​​ @barnesrogersvstheworld​​  @lostkizzy​​   @evanstarff​​  @superwolfchild-fan​​  @marauderskeeper​ @propertyofpoeandbucky​ @alwaysadreamingoptimist​ @lettersofwrittencollective​ @i-am-always-famished​  @small-round-and-angry​ @captstefanbrandt​ @flowers-in-your-hayr​ @writeyourmindaway​ @geekandbooknerd​ @mamaraptor​  @j-finco​ @the-omni-princess​ @supercarricat​ @anxietysucks​ @fortisfiliae​ @stopitchris​ @nea90sweetie​ @inforapound​ @theladybiers​ @aikeji​ @nishanki1​

[arcadianambivalence]

World on Fire, Episode 4, or How We React to “Normal” in a Crisis

Spring 1940

Months have passed since the last episode, and characters have had time to steady their nerves.  Kasia’s previous reservations about killing Germans is largely gone, Lois has decided to have the baby and not involve Harry in her life, Webster and Albert have resolved to stay together, and Nancy has repeatedly tried to sneak her discoveries into her broadcasts (or to smuggle her research out of Germany) despite blackmail.  

Other characters have started to lose their determination.  Claudia and Uwe’s marriage is falling apart over their differing ideas about how to protect Hilde, Harry is struggling with his responsibilities in combat, and Grzegorz is grappling with his empathy and endurance.

(More under the cut)

The Winter of 1939 – 1940 has ended, and with it, the illusion of peace for Western Europe.  Stationed in Belgium, Harry’s group retreats closer and closer to the French border as the German army arrives with far more resources.  

Meanwhile, the American hospital in Paris receives wounded soldiers from the front.  Refugees fleeing the war need attention too, like a Jewish emigree couple attacked by Anti-Semites, much like Albert was attacked by fascists in the first episode.  Henriette, a nurse and Webster’s friend, confides in him that she is Jewish and had hidden that fact when she applied for work at the hospital.  

Albert and Webster count their days left together.  Webster is happy just to be with him, but Alfred is afraid of being seen.  They’ve been together for half a year, and the closest Alfred can get to public displays of affection is a brief kiss after a furtive look around.  The reasons for this become all too clear when they return to his apartment to find a swastika on the door and a severed pig’s head on the doorstep.  

“I’ll never be safe anywhere in this world,” he tells Webster.  “People have got plenty choice of what they might hate me for.”

(I would like to take a moment and appreciate this show for pointing out the fascist movements and rising acts of intolerance all over Europe in the late 1930s and 1940.  This is especially visible in the Paris subplot, drawing attention to the wide swath of cultures in the city without entirely romanticizing it as a place of absolute refuge from prejudice.  It makes me think the show is laying the foundation for exploring Occupied France and Vichy France next season...)

The German gains in the invasion bring new worry to the Rosslers.  “The better the war goes, the worse for Hilde,” Claudia says.  Uwe is not happy that Nancy and Claudia continue to meet.  Claudia discovers Uwe has registered as a Nazi to cover the family after his conversation with the workers last episode.  She is horrified, and the two have a big argument with Nancy uncomfortably caught in the middle.  “The Nazis are going to win,” Uwe says.  They must appear to be on their side.

Claudia refuses to take the same course of action.  She brings Hilde to Nancy to say goodbye, perhaps permanently.  Mother and daughter will be staying in a little cabin far away from the city and its watchful denouncers.  

Uwe will not be joining them.

Nancy gifts Claudia a bottle of spirits and Hilde American candy, then asks them to listen to her radio show and toast to a better future.

The way Nancy makes sure to place her hand firmly over Claudia’s hurts.

Douglas has concern for his own children’s safety.  Tom returns home on leave and confesses that he is thinking about deserting and becoming an official conscientious objector.  His father has reservations.  Tom could be executed for desertion, and then there are the political ramifications of a pacifist letting his own son into the movement.  Hurt and betrayed, Tom leaves home as if he does not plan on returning.

Things fare little better between Douglas and Lois.  Although Lois adamantly states that she does not want Harry or his mother involved in her life anymore, Douglas tells Robina that Lois is pregnant in the hopes that Robina’s sense of social (and financial) duty to her grandson will override any qualms about class. 

(The cautious back-and-forth between Douglas and Robina is great, as always, and if Harry and Lois don’t get back together, can their parents have something?)

In the middle of these life-changing historical events, characters continue to talk about relationships and their social lives.  Lois can’t bring herself to sing one night because she’s heartsick over the realization that her feelings for Harry was a love for a person that never truly existed.  Robina and Douglas still have small talk while the latter spoons cubes of sugar into his tea.  Stan teases Harry for his two girls back home.  Thomasz and Kasia’s interactions are sweet when they get to act like two young adults who aren’t in an occupied country with their lives at risk every minute...then they casually discuss killing a soldier like it’s a fact of life.  

Moments like this feel like a kick in the teeth.  

On one hand, you could argue that the characters are too blasé about the killings and the risks involved.  At one point, Thomasz arrives late to a rendezvous and gives “There was a round-up” as his explanation, almost as if it’s a regular occurrence.  On the other hand, wouldn’t it have been?  Poland had been occupied for half a year by this point, and maybe Robina was right last episode (to a degree), you do get used to it...or at least, you continue to live alongside it.

All characters undergo a great change in this series, but it’s still startling to see how they react to their circumstances, especially when their reactions are so different from who they were before or how we expected them to be.  

Kasia, Harry, and Grzegorz are all placed in perilous situations that ultimately lead to the decision of whether or not to take someone’s life.  

Kasia lures an SS officer to a secluded part of town with the expectation that Thomasz will kill him, but when Thomasz has not arrived and the officer starts to go too far, Kasia draws a gun from her purse and kills him.  In retaliation for the death of an officer, a new raid is carried out, leading Kasia to come face-to-face with the family of an innocent woman executed for what she did.  

The moral quandary in her storyline returns: if killing the enemy results in the death of innocents, do you kill the enemy?

When Harry kills the German sniper, he does it to save his own life, but he also does it to save the lives of the men in his troop.  It is one of the few sequences in this show that has the kind of heroics expected of war depictions.  But what could in other hands be cathartic violence against non-character antagonists in battle is undercut by Harry’s emotional reaction after the skirmish and the way he freezes at the beginning of the conflict.  

He’s not calm-under-fire war hero of fiction, but he’s not exactly a romantic hero, either.  Yes, he is the romantic lead of the show, but unlike last episode, he spends his few moments of quiet dealing with his deep-seated familial issues brought out by his powerlessness.

On the run from a death squad, Grzegorz holds a German soldier at gunpoint. The soldier, barely an adult and crying in fear, lowers his jammed weapon.  But instead of killing the soldier like Kasia and Harry do, Grzegorz offers his hand.  Despite all of the atrocities he has witnessed in the past year: his father’s death, people burned alive in Danzig, narrowly escaping execution, the massacre on the farm, the starvation and sleeping in the woods...and there is still a kind little boy thrown into something much bigger and meaner than he is underneath the exhaustion and self-preservation.  

It’s Konrad who kills the soldier, to Grzegorz’s horror.

“I killed one German, just like a German killed your dad.” “Not that German.”

The landscape of the woods around them changes.  Snow dusted ground gives way to moss and mud.  A spring fog cloaks their journey.  And just as the natural landscape subtly changes, so does their luck.

The two stumble across a troop of British soldiers (wait, where are they?) and quickly join the men.  Their relief is short-lived, though, and they are soon back in combat.  Konrad is shot through the head.  

In order to air with a certain rating, World on Fire has to clean up some of the images of violence.  You don’t see blood spurt out of people when they’re shot.  The scenes of death are not drawn out. 

But the image of Konrad, dead before he hits the ground, blood covering face, with a stunned Grzegorz kneeling over him shocked me.

When Grzegorz grieves, the loss of his family comes out, too, for his father Stefan and father figure Konrad.

In Grzegorz’s final scene, he stumbles through a forest, the British soldiers long gone.  Spring is here and beautiful, the snow has melted away, the birds are chirping, and green has returned to the Earth.  Grzegorz seems unaware of the world around him, only the journey ahead in the middle of anywhere and nowhere.

Spoiler

The next episode’s promo places him on a beach.  Is he transported out of Poland by a ship on the Baltic sea?  Or are we supposed to believe Grzegorz and Konrad have spent all winter and spring walking through Poland, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and finally into France?

Notes

Konrad calls Grzegorz son...

After a disastrous cup of tea with Douglas, Robina makes sure to pay for the both of their orders before leaving

Tom brings the canary home, a visual connector between Jan and his bird in the pilot and Tom now

When Kasia breaks the news to the Polish family of the executed woman, Thomasz notices a German officer kissing a Polish woman next door, which indicates that not all Poles consider Germans the same way they do (and raises the threat of someone recognizing them later)

Robina casually mentions the newly-appointed Churchill to see Douglas’s reaction

[artificialqueens]

They Don't Love You Like I Love You 3/? (katlaska) - kamylove

AN - New chapters are always uploaded to AO3 sooner than they are here, if you want to read ahead. On AO3 it’s up to chapter 10.

“There is absolutely no factual or metaphorical fucking going on.” Not yet, anyway. Or, Katya and Alaska take the slow train.

They text a lot over the next few weeks, facetime a couple times, even manage to meet for a quick lunch when their schedules coincide for one day in LA. Then Alaska’s off to Brazil, and Katya’s off to Miami. Then there’s Mexico City, and San Diego; and Tallahassee, and Nashville, and Atlanta.

Katya sends Alaska selfies in front of dumpsters, and long strings of emojis that probably make perfect sense to Katya.

Alaska sends pictures of every hotel room she stays in, PDFs of hideous crochet patterns she finds online, menus whenever she comes across a new vegetarian restaurant.

Katya texts things in Russian that Alaska has to look up on Google Translate, things like, “Ma'am, your car is fully automatic,” and “This box is full of squirrels, please exchange it immediately,” and “The darker the night, the brighter the stars,” which Alaska thinks is much less ridiculous and also vaguely familiar.

Alaska texts back, “I can see the sun, but even if I can’t see the sun, I know that it exists. And to know that the sun is there–that is living,” which, Katya thinks, is very much taken out of context, but perfect anyway.

Katya sends a wall of Cyrillic text that turns out to be an operator’s manual for a tractor from the 1940’s. Alaska retaliates with the longest, dullest article she can find on the chemical composition of various shades of house paint, google translated into Greek. She follows it up with every single vegetable, fruit, and livestock emoji on her phone.

There are traffic updates from whatever city they’re in and from cities they’ve never been to: Minsk, Cairo, Montevideo; Kyoto when they’re sharing sushi on facetime and Zurich when they’re sharing chocolate. There are video game sessions from across oceans. There are updates on their friends’ lives. <i>(“Not to be called gossip,” Alaska says.)</i> There are frantic text discussions about new songs to use on stage, facetimes about clothes and wigs and makeup, conversations after almost every show.

There’s brainstorming about new material, despair over politics and joy over good days and commiseration over bad ones. There are frank conversations about being sober in an industry that almost requires the opposite.

There are wakeup calls and reminder texts and inspiration when genius is on the tip of a tongue. Katya gets used to going to sleep with a smile on her face after phone conversations. Alaska gets used to finding dozens of increasingly silly texts sent while she was asleep.

There are words, and the words are endless.

<><><>

This, Alaska thinks, must just be what happens when you’re friends with Katya. It’ll be a long time before she starts to suspect otherwise.

<i>(“Hell, no,” Trixie will say. “If she texted me every other second I’d lose my entire damn mind.”)</i>

Through it all, Alaska’s careful to keep it off social media; she never mentions Katya on Instagram or Twitter, only likes a judicious number of her tweets, and she’s not sure why. But she figures out soon enough that Katya’s doing the same.

It’s delicate, Alaska thinks, whatever it is that they have. It’s too delicate to be exposed to the light.

<><><>

Katya sends entire scenes of Moliere in French; Alaska tells her to fuck off and texts the entire last act of Timon of Athens.

Alaska quotes The Boys in the Band; Katya quotes The Normal Heart.

Katya quotes Tennessee Williams; Alaska quotes Eugene O'Neill.

Alaska quotes Twelfth Night; Katya says that’s just too easy and quotes Tamburlaine the Great.

<><><>

“Trixie says you’re a positive influence on me,” Katya says one night on facetime.

Alaska is actually at home, for a whole 36 hours. She was re-packing until Katya called, and now she’s sprawled on her couch. She raises an eyebrow, because she suspects there��s a punchline coming. “Trixie said that?”

“Yes, because you’re keeping me out of her hair. Which she thanks you for, by the way.”

“My pleasure. I think,” Alaska says.

“Also,” Katya says, “she doesn’t know how crazy you are.”

“All part of my evil plan,” Alaska says. “Mwahahaha.”

“See?” Katya says. “Crazy.” She’s in Edmonton, finishing dinner and winding down after a show. She tilts her head thoughtfully. “You do have that miraculous gift for looking effortless and unbothered and unsweaty. Nobody has any idea what goes on in that pretty, horse shaped head.”

“That’s because I don’t tell them,” Alaska says. “Also part of my evil plan.

"Yes, because you, unlike me, have common sense,” Katya says. “But here’s the thing.”

“Yes, Katya, please tell me about the thing,” Alaska says, grinning.

Katya tosses a wadded-up napkin at her phone screen. “The thing is,” she says, “it’s a little known scientific fact that you and I have the exact same number of brain squirrels.”

This is not news to Alaska, and she doubts Katya’s just figured it out, either. “Please continue with your theory, Dr. Zamolodchikova,” Alaska says.

“See, they’re just different breeds of brain squirrel,” Katya says. “Mine are those New York squirrels that will steal a sandwich and your Honda, and yours are the cute, polite, red ones they have in England. Scientific fact!”

“Absolute scientific truth,” Alaska says.

“Also, you keep yours penned in the basement and trained to use kitty litter, while mine run loose and shit everywhere and attack passing motorists. Free range brain squirrels.”

“Free range, Honda driving brain squirrels,” Alaska says very seriously. “It all makes sense now.”

“Doesn’t it?”

<><><>

The second night they share a hotel room is an accident.

They haven’t seen each other in a while; Katya’s flight is late and she gets into town just in time for the show. Afterwards they start talking, and laughing, and Katya doesn’t even notice she’s following Alaska up to her room until they’ve already been there for twenty minutes.

It’s four in the morning and Alaska shrugs and says, “My flight’s at eight, you might as well stay. You want half of this sandwich?”

Katya says yes, and they still have so much to say that she doesn’t even think about leaving.

<><><>

After that, it’s weeks before they’re in the same place at the same time, and that place is Key West, the weekend of the Great Conch Republic Drag Race.

They’re not judging this time, just performing down the street with a few other girls. The organizers invite them all to attend in drag, but Katya says, “It’s their day,” and Alaska says, “Not ours.” So they go as boys, wearing baseball caps and the most cis straight t-shirts they can buy for each other.

<i>(Katya’s t-shirt says “God’s gift to women;” Alaska’s says “No gay man would wear a shirt this ugly.” “Those are the straightest things you could find?” Roxxxy says.)</i>

They stay on the edge of the crowd, cheering gamely, speaking sotto voce when they need to speak. In Key West, gay famous is bigger than regular famous, but they’re only recognized once.

After their show is over, they slip out to the beach with their makeup still on and write Alaska catchphrases in the sand, by the light of Katya’s phone.

<><><>

<b>Text from Katya:</b> starfish

<b>Text from Alaska:</b> long division

<b>Alaska:</b> amoeba

<b>Katya:</b> shovel

<b>Alaska:</b> rogue

<b>Katya:</b> chickens

<b>Katya:</b> eclipse

<b>Alaska:</b> chickens

<b>Katya:</b> No. There are rules.

<><><>

Katya sends mp3s of lip sync songs she knows Alaska hates; Alaska sends mp3s of the two lip syncs she won against Katya.

“Fuck you and your lip sync licking ways,” Katya texts. “I’m not talking to you for at least 10 minutes.”

So Alaska sends “Roar” and “Step It Up,” too, and Katya ups it to twenty minutes.

She only makes it to fifteen.

<><><>

“Tell me another ghost story,” Alaska says over over, late at night, on facetime. She likes the way Katya’s eyes light up when she asks.

<><><>

“You up?” Katya’s text says. “Can I call?”

Alaska’s had her phone set to accept all calls from Katya at all hours for weeks, and she’s pretty sure Katya knows that. “Of course you can,” she texts back. “You don’t have to ask.”

The phone rings almost immediately.

“Hey,” Alaska says. “You okay?”

She can hear Katya sucking on a cigarette. “Squirrels, treadmill, brain,” Katya says.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Alaska says, her heart racing with scary what ifs. “Do you want to use?”

“A little. But I’m not going to. It’s the effect, not the cause.”

“Okay, that’s good. Do you,” and she’s not sure where to go, so she asks. “I don’t know what works for you. Should I try to distract you, or do you want to tell me about the squirrels?”

“Just talk,” Katya says on an exhale. “You. Just talk.”

So Alaska does, for hours. She thinks about what she wants to hear, on days when the anxiety takes over. She tells Katya about her day, about the books she’s been reading, about the weather, about every single thing in her luggage on this trip. She tells her the dumbest jokes she knows. She recites scenes from Golden Girls and the words to songs she knows Katya hates.

At some point, Katya starts interjecting dumb jokes of her own. And then the jokes get better, which is when Alaska starts to think it might be okay.

Before she knows it, the sun is coming up between the curtains she never pulled the night before, and Katya is yawning.

“Do you think you can sleep now?” Alaska asks quietly. Her heart feels very full.

“I think so,” Katya says.

“Then sleep. I’m here. Call me if you need me.”

Alaska thinks she hears “I always need you,” muttered under Katya’s breath, but she’s probably imagining it.

“I wish I was there,” Alaska says. She hears a long sigh in response.

“Me too,” Katya says.

“Do you want me to stay on the phone until you drift off?” Alaska asks.

Katya makes a low noise in the back of her throat. “That would be lovely.”

“Sleep,” Alaska says, and it’s not long before she hears Katya’s breaths start to slow and even out. Still, she waits another ten minutes before whispering, “Katya?”

When she gets no answer, she sighs in relief. But she turns off the microphone on her phone and leaves the call connected, for a long, long time.

[backstorywithdanalewis]

China Taiwan War podcast link:  https://www.buzzsprout.com/1016881/5584486 @bonnieglaser #taiwan

Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (00:05) Hi everyone. And welcome to backstory. I'm Dana Lewis. This backstory takes you to Taiwan. If you know your history of this nation of 22 million people has existed since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, when the defeated nationalist government fled to the Island, as the communists under mousey dung swept to power in China, since then China has threatened to retake the Island. It considers little more than a wayward province. Taiwan has increasingly proclaimed its independence and lately the language of diplomacy has been replaced by this the sound of war drills as both sides, flex military muscle, and Taiwan's president cite in wind says Taiwan is not about to become another Hong Kong. Tsai Eng-Wen/President Taiwan: (01:18) This is a very strong message of phone. The people of Taiwan that is they don't like the idea of being threatened all the time, where a successful democracy, we have pretty decent economy, uh, respectful in China. China has been intensifying it Strat, and they have also for actions, uh, military exercises, and they have the military vessels or aircraft, the crew cruising around the Island and also, uh, with the things happening in Hong Kong. Uh, people get a real sense that this threat is real. The situation has changed. So we're facing a very difficult, different situation. Now we are an independent country as ratty, and, uh, we call ourselves Republic, China, Taiwan exclude the possibility of a war and it's hard. I do think we have a pretty decent capability here. Invading Taiwan is something that is going to be very costly. Uh, for China, Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (02:30) China has repeatedly flying war sorties across the Taiwan, straight towards Taiwan, no longer respecting the 80 mile separation of the Taiwan Strait Taiwan declaring. It will defend itself from China. He is quote like ants trying to shake a tree, says China are we about to see a war between Taiwan and China, which could potentially drag in Taiwan's main arm, supplier and defender America, Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (03:00) A war in Asia, high stakes Taiwan on this backstory. All right. Joining me now from Taiwan from Taipei is the Asia correspondent for the Telegraph. Nicola  Smith. Hi, Nicola, how are you doing there with first of all? COVID-19 Nicola Smith/ Telegraph: (03:22) Hi there, Dana. Yeah, we're, we're doing great with COVID-19. Um, Taiwan's been doing an excellent job in terms of, um, combating the virus and not allowing it to come into Taiwan or to take hold here. Um, so life is very normal. Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (03:38) Back  in your home country of the United Kingdom there 65,000 excess deaths. One of the worst in Europe, one of the worst in the world, what I want to get right? That the UK got wrong. Nicola Smith/ Telegraph: (03:53) Well, it's devastating. How many deaths there have been in, in the UK, but I mean, Taiwan did everything right from the start. One of the reasons was because in 2003, when there was a SARS outbreak, they were hit badly. So they took that time to just, um, prepare their puns emic plans and put together a strategy to never allow that to happen. Um, it helped that their vice president at the time, the pandemic started to take hold was an epistemologist. Um, so he was an expert and an expert in government. So they really let their response be led by scientists and politics didn't get involved. Um, one of the first things they did was control the borders very, very carefully. Um, first of all, restricting, um, and monitoring flights from China, um, and then expanding that as the virus spreads around worlds, um, they had a great contact tracing, um, place, um, system in place. They also, um, had very strict quarantine and still do so anyone coming into Taiwan, um, and people are only allowed to in on a restricted basis must go through 14 days of compulsory quarantine. Um, so all of these things came together. They act very early, very decisively. Um, and then life is normal. Skills are, are open. Um, and people are going out to restaurants or meeting their families. They're just living life, you know, like before, um, we can't really travel very much, um, with the quarantine, but you know, life is, is, is good here. Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (05:31) All right. Everybody's healthy. That's good to know. I want to talk to you about China and the threat of war. So you've, they've got COVID-19 right. Do they have, do they have China policy? Right. And as we speak, um, in the weeks leading up to this, you've had more planes from China, uh, crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait approaching in a threatening some pretty strong messages coming from China. Nicola Smith/ Telegraph: (06:00) Definitely. And it seems to be part of, um, uh, moves by China, um, generally this year to have a very robust foreign policy and, and, and quite an aggressive one around the world. And it's not only Taiwan, but you asked if Taiwan has its China policy, right? That's, uh, that's very hard to do because fundamentally they're at loggerheads about, um, the status of Taiwan and, and there, there really can't be any compromise there. Um, China has stated, um, for decades that it believes that Taiwan is, is part of its territory and Taiwan just disagreed. Um, so there can't really be any agreement there. Um, however, Nicola Smith/ Telegraph: (06:43) Hearts disagree. I mean, when you sit and talk to politicians and people who live in Taiwan, I mean, a lot of people felt, you know, probably 10, 20, 30 years ago, when you do polling, a lot of people identify with China. Now there's this completely new generations of people who, who don't identify with with China, they see what's happening in Hong Kong. They probably feel pretty distant from ever joining China. Nicola Smith/ Telegraph: (07:10) Yes, absolutely. And I don't think it's just the younger generations. I mean, now when you look at the polls, the overwhelming majority, um, would say that they identify as being Taiwanese. Um, there's always a very small minority who would, who would want, um, who, who identify as Chinese, but that's just not Taiwan has moved on basically. Um, and it's forced its own identity is the fact facto independent, um, just Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (07:37) As it moved on and, and absolutely not, you believe it's inevitable that this, this way word province, that's what they consider Taiwan will rejoin, uh, either willingly or possibly through armed action. I mean, and, and it seems like the, now the leader of China's saying, ah, we're not going to pass this to another generation and another generation he wants to bring Taiwan into, into China. Nicola Smith/ Telegraph: (08:08) Absolutely. And, and, uh, president Xi Jinping has, has made it very clear. He said in a speech last year that, that if Taiwan would not unify peacefully, that he would, that force was not off the table. And he's also made it very personal part of his, his own legacy. He's, he's one of the strongest presidents since smile. Um, and so for him, it's, it's personal, but it's also a very, um, nationalistic cause in China as well. It's one of the unresolved issues of the Chinese civil war and the 1940s. Um, so you see this rise of nationalism in China and, and taking back, or is not even taking back to Taiwan, never, uh, was never released by the Chinese communist party. But, um, incorporating Taiwan into China is a very big national issue in China. It's not just the government. I think, you know, a lots of populations behind that sentiment as well. Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (09:04) So in Taiwan, uh, they believe that they're going to stay independent. And how are they going to fend off China militarily? Nicola Smith/ Telegraph: (09:14) Well, that's a good question because, you know, you've got Taiwan is a, um, it's a democratically run islands of, of about 24 million people. It's, you know, compared to this, this huge bear next door is this, you know, China with, with over a billion people and, and a huge military force. So to, to fend off China militarily would, would be very difficult. And, um, Taiwan does face a huge military threat of invasion, um, uh, ans of China trying to take it by force. Um, it couldn't fend off China alone. It would need support from the U S and other regional and global allies. Um, and so this is a very, um, uh, tense time for the Taiwanese. They know that they they've seen what's what has happened in Hong Kong. It's a different situation in Hong Kong. You mentioned that earlier. Um, but they, they have no intention of taking the offer of one country, two systems now seen how, um, beaching has just run Rashad over that. Um, and so there is no easier happy solutions to the Taiwan, um, question the government of presence. Homeland has said that the, um, the, just the want, the status quo, um, they've offered to talk to Beijing to find some kind of solution, but Beijing has just completely cut ties with, with her government. Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (10:45) How do you read president Trump's administration, first of all, would they come to Taiwan's aid and militarily? Would they defend Taiwan? Let me ask you that. First of all, what's the read on it there? Nicola Smith/ Telegraph: (11:00) Um, it's, it's very hard to know exactly what the U S would do. Um, there are a number of factors at play in, in a lot of ways. They've been very good for Taiwan, um, that they have shown a lot of support. Um, they've sent two recent high level visits, um, to Taiwan and, and that has boosted Taiwan's confidence at the same time in doing so China has been riled and that's raised tension. Um, so it's a bit of a double, Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (11:26) You read it and others there. Do, do people read it as Trump being supportive of Taiwan or do they read it as sort of short term, low horizon policy by the Trump administration where they're just trying to irritate China because they have all sorts of trade issues with them and other issues? Nicola Smith/ Telegraph: (11:45) Well, it's hard to take the U S election completely out of the equation. Um, but generally I think, um, people do feel by the Trump administration and there's a little bit of nervousness about a Biden administration coming in and being weaker on China. But I don't think necessarily that people, Trump, um, trust president Trump, himself, that's more the people who are working for him and also, um, Senate and friends and Senate and Congress that, um, has representatives that they, there, there is a very strong Taiwan lobby in the U S and that has grown in recent years and there's a lot support for president's side. Um, so when it comes to military action, nobody's quite clear what the U S would do. It would, it would depend, first of all, what China does, if it's a field scale invasion across the beaches, or whether they choose to try to take over some of Taiwan's islands or the, the, uh, go ahead with the blockades or a cyber attack, it would depends on first of all, in China's actions. Um, but the U S does, uh, it has given Taiwan, um, commitments towards it security, but these commitments haven't been explicit in terms of action and what they would do if there was a full scale invasion. So that is a big question hanging over Taiwan students are, and nobody really knows the answer at the moment. Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (13:08) Is Nicholas Smith allowed to be the Asia corespondent, or is she allowed to leave the country right now? Are her editors back at the Telegraph saying you can't leave? You better stay because things are that hot, right? Nicola Smith/ Telegraph: (13:20) Um, not yet, no. I mean, I think at the moment we, we are, um, it would be very difficult to leave before because of COVID-19. But, um, I think at the moment, people are more nervous about the period between the, the U S election and then curation that four months in between, um, when it could, um, if there is some kind of discourse in the U S um, and if your analysis so distracted by the pandemic that president, she could see a window of opportunity there to take action against Taiwan. And if you don't have, um, strong leadership in the U S at that point, then that could be very detrimental to Taiwan's interests. So I think that, um, there's certainly some nervousness just now in Taiwan with the number of military sorties that, that China's been sending over the past few weeks. And certainly over the past few days, it's escalated again. So people are starting to wonder about what is going to happen and how they're going to deal with it. But the biggest concern is about that, that time in the U S um, that four months where we're not quite sure what the presidency will hold. Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (14:38) Is there a perception that an incoming Democrat president Biden would be soft on China, or it's just a big question, Mark people don't really understand how he would react. There was an incoming president on the Democrats if Biden went to win and that's, and that's a big question, Mark Nicola Smith/ Telegraph: (14:59) People. Yes, there is a question Mark. I mean, I think generally people are a bit, um, a bit more wary or unsure about Biden, about how you might react. Um, I mean, at the same time there is unpredictability about Trump because, you know, ultimately he is, he hasn't got rid of that businessman image where he could very well cheat off Taiwan is some kind of conflict to get something else cheating pink. Um, so there are concerns on both sides, regardless of who comes in. Um, I think though for the U S it would be very difficult to give up Taiwan. Um, it would be very difficult not to step in not least because of Taiwan strategic importance to the U S and to the rest of the region and the world. And, um, currently, um, you know, it is part of this first Island chain that goes from, um, the Russian course down to the molecular Lynch peninsula. Nicola Smith/ Telegraph: (15:52) Um, and if, if China was to take over Taiwan, it we'd get Pacific coastline, which would be a huge problem for the U S and it sends a Pacific strategy. Then it would allow Taiwan, um, try not to, to, um, dock submarines and launch them off the coast of Taiwan. So there's the military and security, um, concern for the U S it's Taiwan is also a huge semiconductor producers. So, you know, the, they would not want Tyna to control that supply chain. Um, so there are a lot of reasons why it's in the U S interests to defend Taiwan. And I personally, I can't see why that would be much different under a biotin presidency as compared to a Trump presidency. Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (16:37) Just the last question, just to kind of end where we, where we started in terms of Taiwan. And that is maybe the answer is obvious, but why is China being so aggressive in the last few weeks, in the last few months? Is it because of the arms sales and the diplomatic visits by Americans? Is it just that, or do they see a window now of, of, you know, if they're going to press Taiwan now is the time to do it, and is it a bluff or do you read it otherwise? Nicola Smith/ Telegraph: (17:06) I mean, I, I think it's, it's, um, the reasons you suggested it's, it's a bit of both really. I mean, it certainly has toner has escalated its actions in recent weeks because of growing, um, ties between the U S and Taiwan, um, with the arms sales and the visits that certainly, um, triggered China at the same time. Um, China was always, they always has had Taiwan in its sights, you know, it's, it's a strategy and it's a, um, it's a red line. It's, it's a strategy that it's not going to give up. Um, and it always has the intention of taking over Taiwan by means or, or by force. Um, so I think that regardless of what the us does, um, China is going to escalate, um, its actions. And, um, it's also part of, um, Xi Jinping's wider, wider strategy this year. No, one's quite sure why he is being is he's being very aggressive towards India. Nicola Smith/ Telegraph: (18:12) Um, and towards China's also taking, um, uh, it's, it's really shifted its relations with countries like Australia. Um, and so there is a lot of speculation and no one really knows if this is true, but there's a lot of speculation that, uh, many of these very hardline foreign policy actions have been motivated by president Xi, trying to distract, um, the domestic audience from some serious domestic problems with the economy, with the coronavirus, um, with, um, severe flooding this summer. This is a classic, um, uh, foreign policy move is to just distract the audience at home and show yourself to be strong abroad, Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (18:58) Nicholas Smith, the Asia corresponded with a Telegraph. Great to talk to you. Nicola Smith/ Telegraph: (19:02) You too. Thank you, Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (19:08) Bonnie Glaser as a senior advisor for Asia and the director of the China power project at the center for strategic and international studies, and that kind of rolls off my tongue, the China power project. What is that? Bonnie Glaser/ Center Strategic Int Studies : (19:22) Well, it is a data-driven website to evaluate how China's power is evolving relative of course, to other countries in key areas pertaining to economics technology, military, uh, international image, uh, and, and, and, and social or soft power Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (19:44) Money is just not another kind of think tank person. Because when I read back through your resume money, you've been doing this, um, for a couple of decades, at least. And you understand China very well. Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (19:58) Well, I think those of us who have studied China for decades, no, there is more that we do not know than we do know. Uh, you certainly can't go to China once as a tourist and be an expert. And, and there's, uh, so much in China that is opaque, uh, very much a black box, especially under sea Jinping. So, uh, it's, uh, it, it's always a challenge to figure out what underlies China's policies Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (20:26) Or you've advised the U S government in the past. Would you advise them right now that they're doing a smart thing with regard to Taiwan increased arms sales, diplomatic visits, it's escalating, isn't it? Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (20:39) Yes. I think that the United States has, uh, uh, a lot at stake, uh, with Taiwan. And frankly, I believe Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (20:48) That the president of Taiwan is not pursuing provocative measures and the Chinese are putting enormous diplomatic and military pressure on her and her government. And so then the question is, what does the U S really need to do in response? Because we don't want to have a military conflict across the street, and we don't want Taiwan to be intimidated, uh, or the people to feel that they have to succumb to China's demands when in fact that is not what they choose to do. And this is a hard set of challenges, uh, for the U S government. So I support many things that the Trump administration is doing. Uh, we do have an obligation under the Taiwan relations act to sell arms. Sometimes we sell things that are appropriate. Uh, other times we do not. Uh, I personally think that spending billions of dollars on tanks was not a good way for Taiwan to spend its very precious defense dollars, but there's about to be a new package of arms sold to Taiwan that will really focus more on asymmetrical capabilities, things like sea mines, uh, coastal defense, cruise missiles, Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (22:07) The major weapons systems, mines, cruise, missiles, drones. I mean, the thing is though in the past, the U S has kind of dribbled in weapon supplies to Taiwan. This is much more overt. This is a much bigger package this time. And is that designed to kind of tell China, look, don't mess with Taiwan? Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (22:29) No, I don't really think so. I think actually the dribble approach is the right one. In other words, Taiwan should be treated like every other country that purchases arms from the United States. When they make a request, we should evaluate it and give it a thumbs up or thumbs down. It really no need to accumulate large packages. Uh, we should just take them as they are submitted. So frankly, I think that that is the better approach, but what the signaling we're doing toward Taiwan is more in terms of, uh, us military exercises. Uh, we've seen us bombers in the area. Uh, we've seen a, an increase in us Naval activity, uh, but, um, uh, we are also in a sense provoking, uh, China and they sending of high level us officials, which, uh, personally I support, uh, uh, the Chinese have seen as a real threat to their sovereignty. Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (23:28) Uh, so part of the problem is that there's really no dialogue going on at the moment. I do support provoking them. Well, I, that it's their, it's their perception that we're provoking them. I'm not sure that I believe that it should be seen as a provocation. So I think that there's nothing wrong with sending the U S health and human secretary to Taiwan. I mean, Taiwan has had about 400 cases of COVID and seven deaths. Uh, they are an exemplary, um, uh, uh, model for the rest of the world. Uh, boy, the United States could learn a lot from them. So, so why not send our, uh, you know, health and human secretary, uh, to Taiwan. But what I was just going to say is that I think that it's the absence of dialogue that makes this very dangerous and it's, there's no real dialogue between the U S and China on these issues, um, conflict prevention, uh, and, uh, and management, uh, and, uh, there's really no conversations between China and Taiwan. Either Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (24:37) Talk about dialogue though. I would think that normally you have a conflict, you have dialogue and you move towards resolution, the whole ability to keep peace with Taiwan and China for, you know, 40 years and more would be that you simply don't Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (24:52) Address the issue and you keep it big. And that seems that that status quo, Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (24:59) Murky smoke and mirrors, it's kind of kept peace between China and Taiwan because us has a one China policy. Uh, and, and I'm not even sure what that means. Maybe you can define it for me. It's independent. It's not independent. Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (25:14) Well, the U S is, uh, does not take a position on who has sovereignty over Taiwan. So it doesn't recognize Taiwan's claim to sovereignty, nor does it recognize the PRC claim. Um, and, uh, the one China policy is essentially that Beijing represents China in the international community. Uh, but, uh, if we go back to the language of the Shanghai communique, the United States recognized the United States acknowledged, uh, China's claim over Taiwan, but it did not recognize that claim. And this is a difference between Beijing and Washington today. Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (25:56) Anybody who doesn't understand this, cause I know you've lived with it for a long time. That sounds confusing. And it's, I think it's meant to be a little confusing. And that is Ronald Reagan gave six assurances to Taiwan in 1982. And that was, that was recently declassified, right? I haven't read the documents, but it was recently declassified. And everybody says that reportedly there is a very clear commitment to defend Taiwan against an attack by China, correct? Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (26:27) No, no. The six shirts, the six assurances, um, do not pertain to a promise to attack, uh, to, to defend Taiwan if attacked subsequent promises to them. No, no. In fact, um, the under the Taiwan relations act, the United States does not have, uh, a, an iron clad, uh, commitment, uh, to Taiwan to defend it. This is something that would be left up to the president and the Congress if there, uh, if there were to be an attack on Taiwan. And so, uh, there, there are people now who are advocating both experts and members of Congress that we should abandon what is often referred to a strategic ambiguity. In other words, not making clear whether we would come to Taiwan's defense and adopted a possession of strategic clarity. So some people think changing that declaratory policy and giving the president and advance authority to send troops if China is attack that that will deter China. Uh, but the problem is that the U S military capabilities, um, are really, uh, weakened right now in terms of intervening on Taiwan's behalf. So I think that changing our declaratory policy in the absence of bolstering U S military capabilities is potentially dangerous and could provoke the attack that we seek to prevent. Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (28:03) Somebody says that, you know, if the us were to seriously want to support Taiwan and invasion, I mean, you're talking about at least four divisions, uh, you know, some 80,000, a commitment of 80,000 troops. This is no small conflict that would, that, that would draw in us Navy and the air force, and then boots on the ground in terms of the U S army. Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (28:28) Well, it's, it's hard to know, uh, how quickly such a conflict would escalate, but, uh, it certainly would start out as a Naval conflict and, uh, Taiwan would seek to hold out long enough for a sufficient amount of us troops to arrive. And, and that would probably take months the U S would initially flow forces from what we have deployed in the region, of course, primarily in Japan, uh, and perhaps from Guam, but then also from continental us, it could become a very large scale conflict. And it's one that I think everybody hopes to avoid. Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (29:08) Do you think China is serious about taking over Taiwan and, uh, before this president leaves the communist party, because the China's president has said over and over again, that he doesn't think they should keep, it should not be kept passing through generation to generation? Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (29:30) Well, I think that CJ pink statement, which he has made twice, that it shouldn't be passed down from generation to the next is, uh, that that does indicate at least some impatience, but I don't think that that indicates urgency for the legitimacy of the Chinese communist party. CGN pain must say, uh, that, uh, we unification is, is inevitable. Uh, and he has talked about national rejuvenation, which he calls, you know, the Chinese dream that should be achieved by 2049. He has said that that should include unification with Taiwan. Now he won't be alive then. So we don't know whether he will actually try to achieve this in his lifetime, but his rhetorical statements of course must be, uh, that this is a sovereignty issue for China and the Taiwan belongs to China. But I think that CJ ping has other priorities that are more urgent, that he would not want to put at risk at this particular moment. Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (30:34) So if backed into a corner, if he feels that his own position, the legitimacy of the Chinese communist party is in jeopardy, then perhaps he would act. So I don't rule out that he would, but I think that his preference is still to try to resolve the differences with Taiwan peacefully, and he has not abandoned, uh, the, the strategy essentially that he inherited from hu Jintao, which is peaceful development across the Taiwan Strait. And he continues to speak about peaceful unification, even though of course he does not roll out, uh, the use of force. So, um, if, if the U S and Taiwan are not careful, um, perhaps, uh, they could provoke the reaction from China that they seek to avoid. So it is difficult to determine what will deter Beijing and what will provoke it. And there are differences on those questions. Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (31:33) What is the point of sending war planes from China across the Taiwan Strait that, that 80 mile nautical mile stretch of water that they've been doing very recently sending tens of war planes, approaching Taiwan, and saying that they don't even recognize a middle of the street? Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (31:49) Well, certainly the PRC has never recognized the median line of the Strait, which was drawn so many decades ago by the United States, but they have tacitly acknowledged it for many years in the 1990s when, um, Taiwan, president Lee dome way, uh, was he gave a speech Cornell university and Beijing thought that he was pushing for independence, and they flew, um, dozens of, uh, fighters across the center line then, and the situation was quiet for 20 years and in March of 2019, uh, trying to start it again. And I believe last this past week was the fifth time, Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (32:30) The change of leadership in Thai, in Taiwan. I mean, the, the, the, the, the, uh, the race for what appears to be independence now, and you have generations Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (32:40) Appears to who to be independence. I can give you lots of, uh, of examples of actions that president's high in. One has taken to try and tamp down tensions and to discourage radical elements of her own party from pushing for independence, Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (33:04) But she ran on an independence platform. Didn't she? Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (33:07) Her party has had an independence platform in the past. She's more moderate. I do think she's more moderate. I think she's very prudent. Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (33:20) Do you, um, just to wrap this up and take this back to your own politics, as you, uh, you know, rapidly approached the November election, do you see a distinct difference between president Trump administration and a Democrat president Biden in terms of the way they'll deal with Taiwan, one more aggressively Le one less, or how do you see it? Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (33:43) Well, I would highlight one potential difference, and this is of course my own personal view. Uh, but I think that a Biden administration would also want to strengthen deterrence, um, and, uh, prevent war, uh, and they would want to strengthen the U S Taiwan relationship. But I think that they would go back to doing things in a more quiet way. Uh, and, and we have seen this in many and administrations in the past, uh, where, uh, we sale of course, uh, Naval ships through the Taiwan Strait, but it's only under the Trump administration that this was made public. Uh, we have high level meetings with officials from Taiwan, but we don't necessarily make them public. So I think that there might be an effort just to go back to doing things a little bit more quietly, so that we don't, uh, seem to be humiliating CJ and paying and pushing him into a corner of perhaps forcing him to make a decision that he doesn't want to make. But I also think that the Biden administration will try to resume dialogue with, uh, China at many levels, uh, to talk about how we can avoid miscalculation and crisis. Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (34:59) You see a more dangerous situation. It seems if president Trump wins reelection Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (35:05) Well, I, I, I think that it is potentially dangerous right now, and I'm quite worried about the situation between now and the U S election and then the inauguration of the next president. And I think that that is the dangerous time, but I would say also that if elected that I think president Biden would be a firm supporter for Taiwan for, for the values that we share, uh, and, and, uh, and for its role in the international community. And that would be consistent with prior democratic presidents as well. Are you more worried? I promise it's the last question, but are you more worried now? Um, Speaker 1: (35:44) You're wiser and you've studied this alone, Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (35:48) But times have changed. China's seems to be more aggressive. We've seen what's going on in Hong Kong. The U S under Trump is much more outspoken with regard to Taiwan and more, more overt. Are you more concerned now than you've ever been in terms of a possible conflict between Taiwan and China? Yes, I am. Um, I think that, uh, the combination of PRC capabilities, militarily, uh, CGN paying is a very aggressive leader who is less risk averse than his predecessors. Uh, certainly a more overt, uh, level of support from the United States, uh, for Taiwan. Uh, and yet the factor that the, that is perhaps least worrisome to me is actually Taiwan's policies, uh, itself. And in the past, when we've had a risk of conflict, uh, at times, and like when Reagan was president, uh, Taiwan was seen as the provocateur. So the dynamics are quite different today. Bonnie Glaser At the center for strategic and internet. international studies Bonnie Glaser/ CSIS: (36:53) Terrific. To talk to you, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Dana Lewis /Host Back Story : (36:57) And that's our backstory on Taiwan. Subscribe to this podcast. We are now in season two, and I've made real attempt to keep the podcast as international as possible because international news is under covered by most news organizations hit the subscribe button as we've covered STEM cell breakthrough, Belarus, and Russia, and Nevani and nerve agents, American democracy, and policing, and Britain's Brexit nuclear arms, the West bank in Israel. Trump's troop draw down in Germany and NATO. And of course the pandemic and Afghanistan and Beirut our interviews include former foreign ministers, American army commanders, epidemiologists. We've all had to learn to say that word a lot. This year, prime ministers police experts on biological, chemical warfare, nuclear arms negotiators, and the people. I have great respect for journalists who have been there, done that and know what's happening. I'm Dana Lewis. I hope you will share our podcast and keep listening. And I'll talk to you again. 

[yesnickkern-blog]

The Night Sea

Chapter 1

“I cannot tell you how deeply, truly, sorry I am” said the man dressed in black,

 “but I guess we know he’s in a better place now.” He looked into my eyes as though I was to have some clarity with his statement — as though I hadn’t been told the exact same thing three-hundred times that day. He turned away from me, touched the casket gently, and then walked on down the line of family members to shake another one’s hand. Another person came along and gave me their condolences for my dead relative, though this one through far more tears.

“It…it’s so shocking…I can’t even explain how sad it is for him to be gone,” said the old lady.

“It’s been quite hard, yes,” I replied with as empathetic of a face and tone I could muster to a complete stranger. “How did you know my grandfather?”

“I was his mail lady five years back. Oh! How he loved getting letters from you!” she replied, dabbing a cloth on her eyes and then wiping it on her forehead. I was taken back a little by the relation she had to him. She was crying as though he had spent every day with her, bought her a house, and rescued her cat; not that they ran into each other occasionally due to vocation and the package system. I also never sent him letters.

“Well,” she said through a crying stutter, “we know he’s in a better place now.” She smiled at me as though I was to have some clarity with this statement — as though I hadn’t been told the exact same thing three-hundred and one times. She moved on and started sobbing to my family members. Death is an unusual thing despite its rather common occurrence in humanity. I imagine loosing a loved one is somewhat like loosing a thumb. You remember what it felt like to have a thumb, and you remember all the good times you enjoyed whilst having a thumb, but the moment you reach for your coffee cup, the nubby side of your hand reminds you life won’t be the same. I do not mean to offend any of the thumbless reading this, only to say that a part of reality one once had is gone. But when one looses a thumb one does not remark “at least I know it’s in a better place.” I’d imagine one would remark something along the lines on “Ouch! My thumb! How am I supposed to open jars?” before passing out. A grandfather is not a thumb, but one should comfort the grandfather-less the same as the thumbless, not convince them that their thumb is off getting a manicure waiting for the other four digits to join it. There’s a fifty percent chance, I thought, that there is a better place for my grandfather to be in. And there’s a fifty percent chance that if there’s a good place, he could have ended up in a not so good place. But there’s a one-hundred percent chance telling that to me at that moment was the wrong thing to say entirely. As far as I was concerned, reality was becoming less and less real. Dealing with grief is hard enough without strangers piling existential questions onto the matter. With that thought I turned to my mom.

“I’m going to catch a breath of air outside for a moment.” I said.

“Alright. There’s a funnel cake cart down the way a bit if you want some.” She gave me a smile and her puffy, red eyes crinkled. I pushed my way through the mass of black-cladded people and down the sanctuary hall. When I opened the door to the cathedral, cool sea air rushed past me to fill the stuffy room. The view was opposite to the one behind me: open and endless. The Cathedral sat behind a boardwalk with vendors and some restaurants. Behind the cathedral were the rising buildings of the City. The smaller size and slate facade of the church made it stand out from the tan and brown art deco buildings. But it also stood out from the cerulean sea that lapped the side of the boardwalk. It existed sad and alone.

I walked down the boardwalk, inspecting the shops and vendors. The smell of the salty sea danced with that of sweet fried dough. I passed a trinket shop full of little statues that looked like Chthulu or some other kneeling octopus character. Why one would fill an entire shop with such things was beyond me. It must have been an accidental online order. No reasonable person thinks to themselves “I rather think this City would benefit from a shop of tiny carved creatures.” But who am I to judge? A reasonable person, I thought to myself. But then again I did just appear from a slate-clad building full of people in black surrounding a dead body. Who’s to say that’s reasonable? The next vendor I passed was a newspaper stand with a striped red and cream awning. I read a few of the headlines in bold print which were basically yelling at passerby’s to get their attention. “MORGENSTERN ADDRESSES PRESIDENTIAL RUN,” screamed the paper in deafening print. I usually was not one for politics, but this news peaked my interest. Lance Morgenstern had been my role model since I was four. No, make that five. Whenever it was, he had just come up with a planned fusion device. Of course it didn’t work in the end, but the idea added to his name. My friends would all be focused on fiction and fantasy, while I would entranced by Morgenstern’s interviews. He was a terrible public speaker. Absolutely the worst public speaker who has gotten that much attention. But I liked that. His nervousness and occasional off track comments made him human to me. His slight western European accent given to him by his mother made one stay entranced by what he was saying: as if his words were magic. And so when I discovered the buzz about his potential presidential campaign, I was both intrigued and repulsed. Of course the idea of having a competent man, with theories on global warming and extraterrestrial life, would be lovely as president, but if he were truly pursuing presidency he would be less human to me. Politicians are beasts on earth. I wanted my idol to be authentic. In a way, it made me feel more authentic. I went up to the newspaper stand — with some embarrassment I might add, having lost the battle against against an attention catching headline — and bought the newspaper with money I was going to spend on funnel cake. I shuffled through the paper like a young person, not knowing how to properly unfold one, until I had all the news on the presidency. My eyes rushed over the globs of black text until I found what I was looking for:

“Morgenstern has refused to campaign for presidency regardless of public pressure in order to continue to pursue extraterrestrial research and maintain his scientific research positions at the UN.”

I breathed a sigh of relief strong enough to ruffle the hair on the newspaper stand salesperson. That was good news. Best news of the day, really. I then became sad remembering my grandfather’s respect for Morgenstern. How he had ignited my interest in the scientist. At least on this day, his funeral, Morgenstern’s news would have been appreciated by him. I guess it’s what you call synchronicity. I dumped the paper down on the ledge of the vendor’s booth. By the look on the salesman’s face most people read more than one article before throwing a paper away. But I didn’t want to read about global warming. I didn’t want to read about the famine. I didn’t want to read about the middle east. One stressful headline was enough for that day. Maybe my grandfather was in a better place. At least I was sure wherever he was didn’t have tabloids.

I turned and noticed a figure sitting on a bench not fifteen feet down from me. He was antiquarian, for lack of a better word. He wore a dusty, old trench coat — the type I had seen in movies from the 1940s — and wrote in a peculiar journal as he gazed into the sky. His skin was leathery like that of a sailor and his hair was hoar., I stared at him for a while: an unnatural amount of time, in fact.

I looked away for a second, not wanting to draw attention, but quickly looked back as if I didn’t have a choice. He was odd to say the least. But not in a bad way. More like one would become if they lived an incredibly lonely life. Well, I decided I couldn’t continue to stare, and as I was all out of money for funnel cake and had nothing pressing to do, I walked over to the bench and sat on the opposite side. I didn’t want to be awkwardly sitting by him on the rather small bench, so one of my legs was off the side to make room: as though I was just sitting for a moment. We sat in silence for a while however.

“He’s not running, is he?” said the man to me. I looked around to make sure he was talking to me.

“Who?”

“Morgenstern. He isn’t running for office, is he?” he said in a wheezy but resonant voice.

“No. Luckily.”

“You wouldn’t have wanted him to run? He would surely win.” The man was surprised but not offended.

“I respect him. I couldn’t do that if he were a politician”

“Ah.” the man said. And we sat in silence some more.

“Would you be for his running.” I enquired. He sat quiet for a moment, but his mind was obviously turning around thoughts.

“I don’t respect him either way.” he finally said.

“Ah.” I mumbled. Again we sat in silence.

“Have you ever had the feeling” he started, “that reality is less real than it should be?” I was surprised at this statement. I had, but I chalked that up to the passing of my grandfather.

“I’ve just had a death in my family, so I can’t say grief has let me believe anything much recently.”

“Death will do that.” He replied, there was sympathy in his voice although not in his words. “Something not unlike death is happening. I think we all feel it.” I immediately regretted sitting down. I knew from a distance he was mentally ill. I let my own curiosity get the best of me.

“I have a family I have to get back to.” I said, forcing a soft tone in order not to appear disturbed. He grunted a bit.

“Be safe,” he said.

“I’ll try my best.” I quipped walking away from him hurriedly. He was right, of course. Something like death was happening.

[happymeishappylife]

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume Two A edited by Ben Bova The Greatest Science Fiction Novellas of all Time

I’ve absolutely loved getting to read these. I’ve been slowly catching up on classic literature, but as a sci-fi fan, I know I’ve been more than a little lacking in actually reading the classics of the genre. In order to fully dissect my thoughts on this book, I’ll have to review each tale since they all had unique plots and situations that really captured my interest.

Call Me Joe by Poul Anderson – As the first novella, I found this a nice way to ease into this journey. Set on a research station on Jupiter we learn of Earth’s future scientists playing with an idea on how telepathically link their thoughts and souls with actual living beings in order to explore the world below which human’s can’t since it would kill them instantly. What we learn along with the rest of the scientists however, is this program of using Joviens to link to could be so much more than a projection as the only linked man on the base discovers that he prefers to stay inside this centaur man’s body rather than his disabled one on the base. And why shouldn’t he prefer to be Joe? To get a second chance at living a life on a planet we could only dream of being on. What I liked was that the head scientist sent from Earth to correct the problem of the short circuiting K-tubes ends up being the champion to let this man do this as a way of letting this man control his own fate. Rating 7/10

Who Goes There? By John W. Campbell, Jr. – I’m not if this was the first that it was explored of alien’s taking over and shapeshifting into people to create paranoia and panic among friends and colleagues. Because that is a pretty overwritten and over explored idea, the story didn’t hold up as much for me. It was entertaining of course, but it became pretty clear that due to the paranoia of these men in this remote Antarctic base that many were going to die and kill each other in order to root out who the monster was. So while some of the details were new, this wasn’t a new idea. It was still enjoyable but not as much as some of the others. Rating: 6/10

Nerves by Lester del Rey – I think because now in 2019, atomic scientific research and catastrophe is not only a realistic idea but a historical occurrence, I felt this was hard to classify as true science fiction though because the novel was written in the 1940s where that was only just getting starting I’ll give it a pass. Still the actual story of this failed nuclear experiment told through the eyes of the head Doctor trying to save people from radioactive death was interesting because of how much medical information was put into the book to combat what they were dealing with. Although because of that we got a picture I really didn’t want to see let alone believe was a real procedure of actually opening someone’s chest up and holding onto an actual human heart to pump blood into the body manually. That’s the part of medicine and doctor’s works I get squeamish about. Rating: 6/10

Universe by Robert A. Heinlein – Loved this one because while it could very well have been a novel in so rich a world, I thought it was well presented in a novella to cover so much history of the story and the timeline of the characters. It takes place on a spaceship that had since drifted off course and been floating around for centuries where now two ancestry clans of humans existed. The normal, highly religious ones who could not grasp where they actually were as they lived towards the bottom of this giant ship and the mutis, mutated humans with oddities like having two heads who knew but didn’t really care much to do anything about it. It perfectly sets the stage for Hovan to fall into the hands of this two-headed muti Joe-Jim and learn about the true meaning behind his life and organize a resistance to reignite the spaceship and fly among the stars. Rating: 9/10

The Marching Morons by C.M. Kornbluth – Overall my least favorite just because there was absolutely no character to root for since the whole premise was based on a future where humans fell into laziness and stopped thinking critically, thus allowing a smart overload to essentially become a new age Hitler (who was referenced as a role model) and destroy much of the world population considered inferior. I think the other part about this story was how much parallel could be drawn from it and into today’s political climate which is what good sci-fi should do, but was not a good read because of it. Rating: 1/10

Vintage Season by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore – I found this one the most intriguing. Beautifully told through the eyes of Oliver Wilson, we see the same weirdness unfolding among his strange new tenants who don’t appear to be from the same Earth we know. And while they are indeed not foreigners in the sense of being from a country they originally claim to be, the interesting weaving and foreshadowing of them proving to be a time travelling tourist group was fascinating but also horrifying since their aim was to watch cataclysmic events at different points of Earth’s history. Much like Oliver, the reader gets trapped into the euphoric and learns of their true backstory a little too late which end in tragedy for him. But overall the story telling and the settings of these exotic characters made the read very intriguing throughout the story. Rating: 7/10

…And Then There Were None by Eric Frank Russell – Easily, this was my favorite story of the whole thing. It’s probably because it did a masterful job at bringing to light a really powerful and relevant discussion about freedom and letting people control you, through the use of humor and lightheartedness the entire story. We get brought into the story by an Earth ship with an Ambassador of the Terra regime. It’s filled with military personal and an Ambassador whose sole duty is to bring this planet under control. But what they soon find is the locals don’t want to and won’t give into them and its simply because they have learned that having freedom to say “I won’t!” is the most valuable form a control and individual may have. And the slowly by slowly all the lower ranking military men decide “I won’t” and leave their superior officers and Earth Ambassador completely confused and lost. Rating 10/10

The Ballad of Lost C’Mell by Cordwainer Smith – This story I felt needed to be fleshed out and extended. Like it made it very clear from the get go that C’Mell’s romantic feelings were never realized, thus a ballad was created, but the interaction between her and her intended suitor is so rushed and short that you just don’t feel it. Plus I hate the way C’Mell is described and sexualized as a human-cat organism. It’s actually rather creepy and disgusting. However, play out a longer story with real levels of attraction and it might not have come across that way. Rating: 2/10.

Baby is Three by Theodore Sturgeon – What a ride this story is! It’s starts that way too as we meet Gerard who confesses to a psychiatrist he’s murdered someone and then from there we learn of this crazy, kinda sad, and finally really bizarre life he’s led. Plus then we learn about this woman who was abused mentally and physically and its heartbreaking. But the storytelling was actually widely fascinating and I loved the mechanic of switching between what happened to Gerard throughout his life and his quips with the doctor to tell this tale. Rating: 8/10

The Time Machine by H.G. Wells – The oldest and most well known of the bunch. I had never read this until now, but can see how it is treasured. Told in that perfect Victorian London way of sitting around and swapping stories, we learn about this innovative Time Traveler and his adventures into the far future, his observations, and his conclusions. It’s a fascinating tale and the thing that struck me was since this was written in 1895, how cool to know that there was someone so fixed on time travel and in that way was an innovator themselves. The actual adventure ended up being heartbreaking, but like any time traveler, once you do it, you can’t stop. I wonder if we’ll ever see the Time Traveler again. Rating 10/10

With Folded Hands by Jack Williamson – To end with this novel was a sad and depressing, but yet something of a semi-caution to our present day. The ultimate fear that the robots will take over the world, but in this tale instead of violence, they do it by over pleasing and over helping the world. So many people out their now have that idea and while I agree we should move technology forward it can be frightening. Although, I wonder if these fears really truly are felt by all. I mean the frustrations were that people couldn’t do their passions because either they were dangerous or they weren’t as good as the humanoids, but what if you passion was reading? A robot doing everything else and you just get to read all day? I wonder how this story would work in todays time. Rating: 8/10

[yesnickkern-blog]

“I cannot tell you how deeply, truly, sorry I am” said the man dressed in black, “but I guess we know he’s in a better place now.” He looked into my eyes as though I was to have some clarity with his statement — as though I hadn’t been told the exact same thing three-hundred times that day. He turned away from me, touched the casket gently, and then walked on down the line of family members to shake another one’s hand. Another person came along and gave me their condolences for my dead relative, though this one through far more tears. “It…it’s so shocking…I can’t even explain how sad it is for him to be gone,” said the old lady. “It’s been quite hard, yes,” I replied with as empathetic of a face and tone I could muster to a complete stranger. “How did you know my grandfather?” “I was his mail lady five years back. Oh! How he loved getting letters from you!” she replied, dabbing a cloth on her eyes and then wiping it on her forehead. I was taken back a little by the relation she had to him. She was crying as though he had spent every day with her, bought her a house, and rescued her cat; not that they ran into each other occasionally due to vocation and the package system. I also never sent him letters. “Well,” she said through a crying stutter, “we know he’s in a better place now.” She smiled at me as though I was to have some clarity with this statement — as though I hadn’t been told the exact same thing three-hundred and one times. She moved on and started sobbing to my family members. Death is an unusual thing despite its rather common occurrence in humanity. I imagine loosing a loved one is somewhat like loosing a thumb. You remember what it felt like to have a thumb, and you remember all the good times you enjoyed whilst having a thumb, but the moment you reach for your coffee cup, the nubby side of your hand reminds you life won’t be the same. I do not mean to offend any of the thumbless reading this, only to say that a part of reality one once had is gone. But when one looses a thumb one does not remark “at least I know it’s in a better place.” I’d imagine one would remark something along the lines on “Ouch! My thumb! How am I supposed to open jars?” before passing out. A grandfather is not a thumb, but one should comfort the grandfather-less the same as the thumbless, not convince them that their thumb is off getting a manicure waiting for the other four digits to join it. There’s a fifty percent chance, I thought, that there is a better place for my grandfather to be in. And there’s a fifty percent chance that if there’s a good place, he could have ended up in a not so good place. But there’s a one-hundred percent chance telling that to me at that moment was the wrong thing to say entirely. As far as I was concerned, reality was becoming less and less real. Dealing with grief is hard enough without strangers piling existential questions onto the matter. With that thought I turned to my mom. “I’m going to catch a breath of air outside for a moment.” I said. “Alright. There’s a funnel cake cart down the way a bit if you want some.” She gave me a smile and her puffy, red eyes crinkled. I pushed my way through the mass of black-cladded people and down the sanctuary hall. When I opened the door to the cathedral, cool sea air rushed past me to fill the stuffy room. The view was opposite to the one behind me: open and endless. The Cathedral sat behind a boardwalk with vendors and some restaurants. Behind the cathedral were the rising buildings of the City. The smaller size and slate facade of the church made it stand out from the tan and brown art deco buildings. But it also stood out from the cerulean sea that lapped the side of the boardwalk. It existed sad and alone. I walked down the boardwalk, inspecting the shops and vendors. The smell of the salty sea danced with that of sweet fried dough. I passed a trinket shop full of little statues that looked like Chthulu or some other kneeling octopus character. Why one would fill an entire shop with such things was beyond me. It must have been an accidental online order. No reasonable person thinks to themselves “I rather think this City would benefit from a shop of tiny carved creatures.” But who am I to judge? A reasonable person, I thought to myself. But then again I did just appear from a slate-clad building full of people in black surrounding a dead body. Who’s to say that’s reasonable? The next vendor I passed was a newspaper stand with a striped red and cream awning. I read a few of the headlines in bold print which were basically yelling at passerby’s to get their attention. “MORGENSTERN ADDRESSES PRESIDENTIAL RUN,” screamed the paper in deafening print. I usually was not one for politics, but this news peaked my interest. Lance Morgenstern had been my role model since I was four. No, make that five. Whenever it was, he had just come up with a planned fusion device. Of course it didn’t work in the end, but the idea added to his name. My friends would all be focused on fiction and fantasy, while I would entranced by Morgenstern’s interviews. He was a terrible public speaker. Absolutely the worst public speaker who has gotten that much attention. But I liked that. His nervousness and occasional off track comments made him human to me. His slight western European accent given to him by his mother made one stay entranced by what he was saying: as if his words were magic. And so when I discovered the buzz about his potential presidential campaign, I was both intrigued and repulsed. Of course the idea of having a competent man, with theories on global warming and extraterrestrial life, would be lovely as president, but if he were truly pursuing presidency he would be less human to me. Politicians are beasts on earth. I wanted my idol to be authentic. In a way, it made me feel more authentic. I went up to the newspaper stand — with some embarrassment I might add, having lost the battle against against an attention catching headline — and bought the newspaper with money I was going to spend on funnel cake. I shuffled through the paper like a young person, not knowing how to properly unfold one, until I had all the news on the presidency. My eyes rushed over the globs of black text until I found what I was looking for: “Morgenstern has refused to campaign for presidency regardless of public pressure in order to continue to pursue extraterrestrial research and maintain his scientific research positions at the UN.” I breathed a sigh of relief strong enough to ruffle the hair on the newspaper stand salesperson. That was good news. Best news of the day, really. I then became sad remembering my grandfather’s respect for Morgenstern. How he had ignited my interest in the scientist. At least on this day, his funeral, Morgenstern’s news would have been appreciated by him. I guess it’s what you call synchronicity. I dumped the paper down on the ledge of the vendor’s booth. By the look on the salesman’s face most people read more than one article before throwing a paper away. But I didn’t want to read about global warming. I didn’t want to read about the famine. I didn’t want to read about the middle east. One stressful headline was enough for that day. Maybe my grandfather was in a better place. At least I was sure wherever he was didn’t have tabloids. I turned and noticed a figure sitting on a bench not fifteen feet down from me. He was antiquarian, for lack of a better word. He wore a dusty, old trench coat — the type I had seen in movies from the 1940s — and wrote in a peculiar journal as he gazed into the sky. His skin was leathery like that of a sailor and his hair was hoar., I stared at him for a while: an unnatural amount of time, in fact. I looked away for a second, not wanting to draw attention, but quickly looked back as if I didn’t have a choice. He was odd to say the least. But not in a bad way. More like one would become if they lived an incredibly lonely life. Well, I decided I couldn’t continue to stare, and as I was all out of money for funnel cake and had nothing pressing to do, I walked over to the bench and sat on the opposite side. I didn’t want to be awkwardly sitting by him on the rather small bench, so one of my legs was off the side to make room: as though I was just sitting for a moment. We sat in silence for a while however. “He’s not running, is he?” said the man to me. I looked around to make sure he was talking to me. “Who?” “Morgenstern. He isn’t running for office, is he?” he said in a wheezy but resonant voice. “No. Luckily.” “You wouldn’t have wanted him to run? He would surely win.” The man was surprised but not offended. “I respect him. I couldn’t do that if he were a politician” “Ah.” the man said. And we sat in silence some more. “Would you be for his running.” I enquired. He sat quiet for a moment, but his mind was obviously turning around thoughts. “I don’t respect him either way.” he finally said. “Ah.” I mumbled. Again we sat in silence. “Have you ever had the feeling” he started, “that reality is less real than it should be?” I was surprised at this statement. I had, but I chalked that up to the passing of my grandfather. “I’ve just had a death in my family, so I can’t say grief has let me believe anything much recently.” “Death will do that.” He replied, there was sympathy in his voice although not in his words. “Something not unlike death is happening. I think we all feel it.” I immediately regretted sitting down. I knew from a distance he was mentally ill. I let my own curiosity get the best of me. “I have a family I have to get back to.” I said, forcing a soft tone in order not to appear disturbed. He grunted a bit. “Be safe,” he said. “I’ll try my best.” I quipped walking away from him hurriedly. He was right, of course. Something like death was happening.