#nor does he seem like he has many troops on his air ships for this title

[heartful-cake]

thinking of peach's inexplicable power to generate or find 1-up mushrooms in mario galaxy. like how much energy does that take? is this even usually possible for an inhabitant within the mushroom world? like mario and co. generate 1-up mushrooms by doing enough trick shots and comboing enemies, but i don't think peach usually is surrounded by enemies when she's captured, which means she has to generate them herself right? unless she keeps finding them on bowser's airships or wherever she's being held? is this an extension of her white magic? it definitely fits with her personality and other skill sets, but i'm just so curious how her sending mario 1-up mushrooms logically works out...

[doorsclosingslowly]

Your death is a number but I cannot count that high (11/16)

In which Death Watch enter the enemy ship, and Asajj gets her shot at freedom.

Zombie Savage AU | 2.5k | warning for body horror

For the first time in weeks, Asajj feels light. It’s almost offensive, how quickly she slipped from world-devouring grief and heartburn and eternal nightmares into mission planning and execution mode, but then again: she enjoys bounty hunting. Pursuit and infiltration are basically her comfort zone, and even the present company cannot spoil her thrill.

She finally has solid ground under her feet again. The swamp that broils and laps at her with every dream and with every wriggling fleshworm that fucking Savage Opress sends her way is receding, and soon enough, when she gets her chance, she’ll kill it off—kill him—for good.

Asajj’s sisters and Mother Talzin may have accidentally landed her in a malignant trap when they tried to help her fight Dooku, but Asajj will chew her way free.

That’s why she volunteered to be ground troop today. She needs to rescue herself. She needs to cut off this bond, cut off the mate, cut off the drowning boulder. She’d been prepared to argue and fight for the opportunity, since it’s not like anybody trusts her here, but it was surprisingly easy. Not even a doubtful look—no, the only response she’d received was appreciation for her fearlessness in the face of certain death. Well, maybe it is. Maul keeps insisting that Savage’s torture is a trap laid by Sidious, his past shadowy Sith Master, and that setting a foot on Entralla means getting fried and disappeared and tortured. He himself is going down still, obviously—by now it doesn’t even appear to be bravado or tending to his image before his following but genuine mushy affection for that dumb creature, and if Asajj wasn’t busy she might almost be curious—Maul is coming down with her, as are Kast and Saxon and three dozen other supercommandos. That’s what they’d settled on, once their advance droid surveillance footage yesterday had revealed their target to be a small spaceship surrounded by a hundred medium-sized tents.

Maul, Kast and Saxon at once, who as far as she’s observed are the three highest-ranking members of Death Watch, and on what all of them believe is a suicide mission—Asajj would call them brain-dead, but actually, she doesn’t care. Either Maul is every inch the scared wretch of a cast-off Sith plaything he appears and is making mountains out of skrant-hills, or she’ll, most likely, be dead too. Looks like that gamorrean sow Kast likes to suck face with will soon inherit the whole sorry rest of their terrorist crew.

Most of Death Watch, though, is inside three hundred small Kom’rk-class fighters or the two stolen Separatist dreadnaughts, standing by to intercept any fleeing ship with gravity wells or sheer violence. Well. That’s one of the reasons. Every ground Mando is in periodic radio contact with one of their motherships, and should they go silent when Sidious gets them… if the mission goes sour, dead man’s switch. Asajj doesn’t know about the exact logistics of how many have to miss check-in before the omnicidal aerial bombardment begins… but she’s starting to understand Maul’s paranoia regarding this ‘Sidious’ well enough to know they’re going to risk killing their Mand’alor sooner rather than later. It’s reassuring, almost. They’ll kill Sidious no matter what.

Well. And her, too.

But Asajj knew when she allowed that Mando to think she’d captured her that this wasn’t going to be easy. Up until know she’s always found a way to make it out alive. She’ll manage. And Sidious killed her sisters. Killed Talzin. Killed Dathomir.

Sidious will die, and so will Opress. Anything else is secondary.

She’s wearing a set of scavenged armor over her clothes and a jetpack and a gas mask, nothing more. Most of the ground team have massive tanks mounted on their back, too, full of some quick heavyweight airborne soporific Death Watch managed to procure on short notice.

(“If it’s taking this long to cook something up, we could just use poison,” Asajj had suggested, entirely not for selfless reasons. “We’re using the weedkiller tanks you Mandos use for farming, after all. We could just keep the weedkiller.”

“This is still a rescue mission,” Kast had replied severely. Unfortunately, despite being a fanatic terrorist and obeying Maul of all people and a habit of throwing tantrums about the horrible plight of Savage Opress, she wasn’t entirely braindead. “Damage is acceptable, but we won’t kill our brother.”

Maul had looked on, silent.)

Maul and Asajj are going to enter the ship first. That makes sense—both of them are assassins more than soldiers, they’re better than the Mandos at keeping quiet—and even if Maul will be a hindrance when they find Savage, she can use him as a distraction before that.

It feels weird, somehow, touching ground in front of the enemy’s ship. The unconscious guards on the ground are wearing clone trooper armor, which means that—yes, it means Death Watch got the drop on them and it means the soporific gas is effective, which is great, but Asajj didn’t expect this mission against Sidious to include a Grand Army of the Republic protection detail, and neither did Maul, though he appears far less perturbed by this information than Asajj is. Nothing before has linked Sidious to the Republic. She trusts the magicks she used to find this location, though. This is where the bondmate is being held.

Maul opens a control panel next to the ship’s door and plays around with a couple of screwdrivers, while Mando supercommandos direct their sedative gas into the ship’s pried-open air vents.

And… they’re in.

Too easy.

This was far too easy for a secret prison of the illusive Sith Lord, and Maul, apparently, thinks so too. He keeps glancing sideways at her while the supercommandos tie up the sedated soldiers outside and while they enter the ship’s galley, and he insists they shouldn’t split up.

“This location does not appear my Master’s—my former Master’s style,” he whispers in his clipped accent. “It’s neither desolate, nor are there plush red carpets. It’s not a torture dungeon.” Maul looks at Asajj, and his eyes gleam with suspicion. “If you have lied to me, you are dead. If this hurts my brother, you’ll wish you were.”

“This is the place. My sisters’ magicks are never wrong,” Asajj replies haughtily. It won’t do any good if both of them admit to their unease.

(Maul’s been vibrating faintly ever since Asajj broke into his brain to find Opress. It’s probably fear and anticipation, and most of all the superfluous awareness of him that she’s gained ever since exploiting both their bonds. Maybe he was always this high-strung.

“Someone’s attacking him,” he’d whispered to her just minutes before they reached Entralla, as if by joining their minds she had proven she cared. His eyes had been dark, agonized. In a movement that appeared entirely involuntary, he’d gripped at his neck as if looking for a pendant, and then he’d hugged himself, holding onto his torso and stomach as if his slippery entrails were ready to leak out.

Asajj had looked down and realized she was mirroring him.

When she slid her eyes half-shut, she could see the shadows of undulating metal cables.)

The ship, on the inside, just appears a standard Republic cruiser. It has a single long hallway that Asajj is pulled down by the worms in her gut, and Maul, frowning and broadcasting dread, follows.

They pass unconscious Republic clones at uneven intervals.

It’s so—ordinary. Asajj knows these ships. And there are no traps at all, just that pulsing connection drawing her forwards, shading and twisting, the memory of desolation and grief and that orange boy getting chocked (Kast’s eyes were so hard when she said, “He tried to give me his lightsaber, too, so I would have an easy time of killing him, if—when, he said, when he was used again to hurt his little brother,” that Asajj almost felt guilty) and everyone on Dathomir is dead and—

There.

She stops, and Maul comes to a halt behind her, ‘saber raised.

An open doorway, half-blocked by an armored redhead that seems vaguely familiar, and the beckoning hand of her sisters, and if Sidious doesn’t have the heart to provide a distraction for Maul then Asajj will just improvise.

“Back there, I think,” Asajj whispers, pointing at a random closed door to her left. “I can feel your brother in there.”

Maul’s eyes are wide. “I do not feel—are you sure?” he whispers, and he looks so young and hopeful bathed in the green glow he doesn’t understand and never had a right to wear that Asajj almost dares to believe her plan will work.

“I know these magicks,” Asajj drawls. “I don’t mind double-checking, but I thought you wanted him as alive as possible. He’s not doing well. Might get deep-fried at any moment, that’s not healthy for such a weak brain.”

It works. Maul bites back whatever kind of response he might have had, and he starts frantically working on slicing the door that was—her sisters are smiling upon Asajj—thankfully locked.

Asajj, meanwhile, tiptoes hurriedly forward and past the redhead—almost a decent glimpse of his head, why does she feel she knows him and—and inside the room she looks at a monster. The scene is arranged as if to mock her, a single bare cot in the middle of the room approximating a stone slab and the dimmed red electric lights a stand-in for the fire on the day she was tied to the boulder that tries to drown her. On the cot, as he was supine on the slab back then, lies unconscious Savage Opress.

Well. The used dog toy formerly known as Opress.

He’s always made her uncomfortable, even when they met. First, it was his silent bruised obsequiousness and the glances he’d shoot her after that arena fight, like he expected her to ravish him then and there just because she’d beaten him up. The sense that she’d stumbled into a world she didn’t understand drawn in silent rules and violence and sex—and Asajj has never liked that anxiety born of ignorance though she can and will tough it out and persevere, and only with the bond strangling her did she realize her stupid mistake—the sense that there was something hiding below her feet ready to devour her. He only got more obsequious and annoying after the ritual that tied Asajj to him, with his empty brainless eyes that somehow simultaneously said do whatever you want with me and I’ll kill you. She was happy to use him, if it got her traitorous ex-Master Dooku off her back, but she was at least as happy that the plan included Opress staying at Dooku’s side, not hers. Well, in the end, he was as useless as he was stupid and creepy, and Asajj had to fight Dooku on her own while Opress escaped his leash and used the power gifted to him by Talzin to harass innocent villagers and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

He doesn’t have the body that Mother Talzin gave him anymore. Not that he ever deserved it.

Savage Opress, who is bound by ancient magicks to Asajj, looks like someone took his corpse and stuffed it full of a crashed spaceship debris in a desperately poor attempt at covering up an accident. The body Mother Talzin’s Dathomiri magicks gave him was stout, forceful, architected and executed with a keen eye and deep control, while whoever did this was a careless butcher. Asajj has seen carnage and pain, she’s fought and killed and maimed, and yet she has never seen anything as bestial as the body before her.

Savage Opress, who is making her share his torture through a telepathic bond, looks like a gutted carcass. This is what became of one of the three last survivors of Dathomir: worms writhe in and out of him, the things she’s been feeling like phantom maggots burrowing into her heart made real and she can see them feasting and seaming up his raw mottled shoulders and lap at the empty spots where someone tore out his hearts. He’s still conscious, though, just asleep. She can feel him feeling the worms. She can see him breathing, though he doesn’t need to, not without an intact torso. Not without hearts. She feels sick. So this is what has been calling out to her. What has been sliding into her mind, unstoppable and unwanted. This has violated her dreams.

Savage Opress, the bondmate Asajj came here to covertly murder, looks like death would be a mercy.

“Ventress, what are you playing at? The room was empty and Kenobi is here,” Maul hisses from somewhere behind her. “I told you. You’ll die for your betrayal—Savage…”

Asajj turns, expecting a fight, but Maul looks like the air was punched out of him, and he’s rooted to the doorway. The air around him tastes of abhorrence and dawning dread. He could have reached Savage before her, in her stupor—he could have jammed his ‘saber into her back—but now she’s jolted loose and ready to take her one chance at freedom.

To take mercy on Savage, for once in her life.

She drives her lightsaber into his right eye socket.

Maul’s scream behind her is vile, deeply inhuman and guttural and echoing over and over and over in the small room. It’s so loud her eye starts to hurt. His howl is the storm and the cave and the first drink in a lifetime. It’s green. It’s gentleness and sympathy he thought his Master had long driven out of the apprentice, but in teaching Savage he can’t help but refrain from using the techniques he once had endured himself. He doesn’t understand the reason—he is Sith and if he does not teach his apprentice to draw power from pain, he will have failed him. He doesn’t understand, but he feels something quake when he is called brother and when he notices he turned his back to Savage and never even expected to get hurt—he doesn’t understand, but somehow, he does. He loves Savage. Savage loves him. Maul was never meant for love, was made a weapon to be used and abused and discarded by a Master wielding power he’ll never attain, but somehow, Maul found this one person who loves him. Maul lost the person who loves him. Maul just lost him again. Maul won’t lose the person who loves him. He won’t. He can’t. He refuses. He loves—

And desperate love paints the room acid green. Greedy love tears the cot to tiny metal shreds. Unconditional love presses hot and painful into Asajj’s right eye, and she’s taking tiny measured steps toward Savage, in rhythmic unison with Maul and unstoppable no matter how hard she tries to take back her body.

Love, no matter what it takes, and both their green-bathed hands touch Savage.

All goes black.

[in-love-with-darth-vader]

Star Wars as if it were like the Office! (Also i need a title, so if anyone has any ideas for that or any suggestions in general, let me know.

Also, sorry if this sucks. I don’t write very often nor have I ever written a screenplay type of thing before. I honestly just did this for fun!

PART 1

“Anakin, what are you doing?”

“I’m standing on the edge of this balcony.”

“Yes, I can see that. Why are you standing on the edge of that balcony?”

*pan to the chaos of Coruscant below; ships speeding in traffic, huge buildings, and an insanely long drop. Obi-Wan is standing behind Anakin on the part of the balcony that’s made to be stood on; Anakin is on the edge of the railing*

“Uh, well, some of the clones said there was no way that I could jump and land in one of the ships flying through the city, and I told them I definitely could, so here I am.”

*Obi-Wan looks to the camera in annoyance and disbelief; camera pans down to Anakin’s end point where Fives, Echo, and Jesse wave up to his position*

“Absolutely not. Get down from there right this instant!”

“Sorry, Master!”

*he jumps, and he is flying through the air for about two seconds when he suddenly freezes. Obi-Wan is looking down at him as he holds him mid air with the Force, slowly raising him back up to eye level*

“Anakin, you are twenty years old. Could you maybe start acting like it?”

*he drops him onto the floor; Anakin gets up and sulkingly follows Obi-Wan out of the room*

*this would be where the theme song and title card would go*

In the background: “yeah, so Obi-Wan refused to let me jump, so I had to come back here. Sorry you all waited for nothing”

*Obi-Wan turns to the camera*

So, does Anakin do this sort of thing frequently?

“Oh, yes. He doesn’t seem to care about safety or his own well-being. That’s the third time this month I’ve had to stop the Balcony Jump. And clearly I’m the only one who thinks these are bad ideas, so I’m always the one who has to step in. I swear I already have a few grey hairs from having to stop Anakin from doing something stupid so often.”

*back to normal scene*

“Alright, everyone gather around, we have a new mission to discuss.”

*anakin, ahsoka, and many of the clones from the 501st and 212th gather around Obi-Wan*

“The chancellor seems to think it’s a good idea for us to go investigate a possible takeover on Ryloth….” *fades out as we zoom in on Anakin clearly bored and not listening*

“I hate debriefings. When Obi-Wan does them he talks for forever. They’re too long, so I just tune him out and pretend like I know what I’m doing on the actual mission. When I tell the others what we’ve been assigned, I take 2 minutes tops. Master Obi-Wan stretches it into at least 10.”

*now to ahsoka*

“Yeah, Master Kenobi goes over every single detail in the mission log every single time. I’ve had to slap Anakin awake in the middle of a meeting too many times to count.”

*back to obi wan speaking to them all*

“So, we need to go in and investigate the distress signal’s purpose, mainly to see if it’s a separatist attack. Anakin, you’ll be positioned here and you’ll direct your troops to-Anakin?? Are you listening to me?”

*obi wan turns away from his whiteboard where he’s drawing out strategy to see Anakin staring slightly up at the ceiling. Anyone else wouldn’t have noticed, but Obi wan knows his past-padawan turned Jedi Knight too well*

“What? Oh, yeah, of course I am.”

*interview with obi wan*

“Anakin is a terrible liar. You’ll soon find that out.”

*switch to interview with Anakin*

“Luckily for me, I’m an amazing liar, so I’m not worried.”

*back to the scene. Obi-Wan has his hands on his hips in his judgmental pose™️ facing Anakin*

“Oh really? Then what did I just tell you to do?”

“Uhhh I have to hold my position, lead the 501st, all that jazz”

“Mhm and where is this all going down?”

“Uh, Iridonia of course.”

“You literally could not be more incorrect.”

*obi wan int.*

“Told you so.”

*anakin int.*

“Okay, in my defense, there’s thousands of planets. I had like a 1% chance of guessing correctly.”

*back to the scene*

“Ryloth, Anakin. Ryloth is where we’re going. A distress call was detected coming from the planet, and since the Separatists have a history of meddling with the peace of Ryloth and its citizens, we were instructed to go inspect. I will not repeat myself again. That is all, everyone get ready. You’re dismissed.”

*interview with Rex; clones preparing armor and weapons in the background*

So, are you kind of like the leader of the clones around here?

“Uh, I’m the captain of the 501st Battalion under General Skywalker’s command. I follow his orders and then lead my brothers to execute those orders. We’re one of the most successful groups of clones, so I take great pride in-“

*rex is interrupted as the camera switches focus to the background where Jesse Kix and Fox are all at each other’s throats. They’re stealing each other’s helmets and tossing them around. Rex turns to look*

(Sigh) “as I was saying…I take great pride in our success and professionalism.”

“Rex!”

“Sorry, gotta go do my job now.”

*they board the ships and head off to Ryloth*

*camera switches to Anakin on Ryloth*

“Can we please leave now?”

“Absolutely not, Anakin. We still aren’t quite certain what set off the alarm.”

“It was probably just an accident. There’s nothing here, Master. Ahsoka, back me up.”

*ahsoka is looking down at and messing with a data pad clearly not listening to Anakin*

“What? Oh, uh, yeah. Totally.”

“Were you even listening to me?! I was speaking to you, Ahsoka. Can I get a little bit of respect please?”

*obi wan looks at the camera like ‘are you fucking kidding me’*

“Listen, Master, I started to tune you out like an hour ago. All you’ve done is complain.”

“Because there’s nothing here! I want to go home!”

“You just want to get back to Coruscant in time to go to that party for the senators.”

“What??????!?!?? That’s absurd, master. Absolutely preposterous. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

*cut to Anakin*

“Okay, I know exactly what he’s talking about, but I can’t admit it! There’s this politician gathering tonight and normally I wouldn’t be one to willingly seek out social gatherings-especially one full of politicians-but Padme is going and she asked if I would come. So of course I said yes. Also, they usually have those little cocktail weenies, so no way I’m missing that.”

*cut to obi wan*

“Anakin is terrible at hiding things, especially from me. He clearly wants to get back so he can go to the party tonight with Senator Amidala.”

Any reason why he’d want to go with her so bad?

“Oh, yes, you see my former Padawan thinks he’s sly, but as we all know he’s a terrible liar. He’s been pining after the senator since he was a boy. I assumed it would pass by now, but clearly he’s still infatuated with her. They’re very good friends but he still has his teenage crush on her. It’s very unprofessional.”

Will you be attending it as well?

“Oh, no. I’m not one for politics.”

*back to the scene*

“What? Master why are you going to that stupid thing? You hate those types of parties! Plus, last I checked, you are not a politician.”

*cut to Anakin*

“So I’ve never actually told Ahsoka about my secret relationship with Padmé…”

*back to the scene*

“Uhhhhh because I’m good friends with the Chancellor, obviously. He would like me there to….to talk about strategies. Yes. Strategies for the Republic.”

“At a formal gathering for politicians? That doesn’t even make any sense!”

“...you’re asking way too many questions, Snips. We have a mission to focus on! You’re better than this!”

*ahsoka looks suspiciously at him as obi wan shakes his head at the two of them*

“Now that you’re done bickering, will you two please go explore the blocked off caverns for any possible signs of life?”

*both, simultaneously and clearly annoyed*

“Yes, Master.”

——-

“You know, there’s nothing in these caves. He just wanted us out of his hair. He’s just keeping us busy.”

“How can you know for sure?”

“Because I don’t sense anything. There’s nothing in here.”

“Master Kenobi told us to do it, so that’s what we’re gonna do.”

“So you listen to all of his orders but not mine?”

“Well, Obi-Wan doesn’t lie to me, so yes.”

“Psh. Pssshh. I’m not lying to you...that’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not. Tell me the real reason you’re going to that party! I know that you’re lying!”

“I’m absolutely telling the truth. I don’t know why you’re so adamant about this. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Oh please. Whenever you lie you start using big words and you talk faster than normal. Just tell me the truth!”

“Fine. My friend Senator Amidala was allowed to bring someone and since we’re friends she asked me if I would like to come along too. So I said yes.”

“That wasn’t so hard, was it? Makes sense why you’re so anxious about it.”

“Whatta you mean?”

“Oh, nothing, it’s just that you’re going to a party as the Senator’s plus one which she asked you to. It’s definitely a date.”

“Whaaaaaaaatt. It’s not a date. That’s ludicrous! We’re just friends. Plus, I’m a Jedi. We can’t go on dates!”

“Right, and you don’t have a crush on her.”

“I don’t have a crush on her! We’re friends! It’s extremely platonic.”

*int. With Anakin*

“Okay, so it’s not platonic. But I don’t have a crush on her because I’m married to her! If I tell her that I willingly break the Jedi Code whenever I want, then maybe she will too! And then what kind of Master would I be?!?!”

I thought you technically weren’t a Jedi Master.

*zooms in on anakin’s ‘I will fuckin kill you’ face”

*back to the scene*

“Right, and I don’t secretly steal your jackets when you’re sleeping when I’m cold.”

“What?”

“What?!”

“.....look, can we just get back to the mission?”

“Sure thing, Skyguy. Wait till Master Kenobi hears about this.”

*under his breath* “pretty sure he already knows...”

*scene switch to obi wan, he’s with Cody and many other clones. They’re in a room in one of the government buildings on Ryloth surrounding a beacon device. It’s a distress signal activator.*

“And you’re sure you didn’t do this, Mr. Syndulla?”

“No, Master Kenobi. I only use the distress beacon for serious emergencies. I have no clue as to who did this. There aren’t many people that have access, and it’s not something that just anyone can do by accident. You must enter a code and confirm multiple times.”

“Thank you for the information. Will you let us inspect the fortress for any intruders?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Thank you. Cody, take Waxer, Boil, and Gearshift to the west wing. Gregor, you and your troops take the left. Myself and Crys will start here. Report back if you find anything.”

“Sir yes sir!”

*we see Obi-Wan and Crys searching first. They stayed in the room where the beacon is kept. Obi-Wan is looking through digital records as Crys is underneath it looking at its internal parts like those scenes where someone is laying on a skateboard to fix a car*

“This is strange. There’s no trace of tampering with the records or files. Nothing was wiped. This doesn’t seem like sabotage or a distraction for something bigger. Crys, do you have anything?”

*crys rolls out from under the beacon*

“No, sir. Everything is wired and hooked up properly. No signs of sabotage or demolition.”

“Hmm.”

*Int. With Crys*

“I’m really good with robots and droids, so that’s probably why General Kenobi wanted me to tag along with him. Usually he takes Cody, but this is more of my field of expertise.”

*back to the scene*

“This is trivial indeed.” *he’s doing his beard stroke* “I wonder if the others have found anything.”

*switch over to gregor and his troops. They’re searching the left wing of the fortress. They’ve been interviewing many citizens of Ryloth. They’re not very successful*

“I don’t see the point in talking to anyone else. I doubt they’re gonna know anything. We should report back to the general.”

*int with Gregor*

So, Gregor, can you give us a little summary of what you do around here?

“Yeah, sure thing. Uh, I’m kind of like third in command here. I’m a captain in the 212th Battalion and that’s pretty much all there is to it.”

Your helmet is very interesting. It’s pretty unique compared to the rest of your brothers.

“Oh, this? Some clones have tallies, but these represent stitches.” *he points to em* “It’s basically just showing how many injuries I’d have and how many stitches I would’ve gotten if I didn’t have the helmet. I think it’s pretty cool.”

*back to the scene. They’ve found nothing*

“Yeah, I’ll comm the general.”

*gregor taps into his comms and contacts Obi-Wan*

“Gregor, have you found anything?”

“No, general, I called to report that we’ve found nothing out of place. The twi’leks we’ve interviewed seem like they know nothing. How about you?”

“No, sadly we’ve come across nothing either. The beacon hasn’t been tampered with whatsoever.”

“We’ll keep looking around. I’ll keep you updated.”

*he hangs up the comm*

“Alright, boys, let’s keep going!”

*we now cut to Waxer and Boil being lead by Cody. They’re going door to door in the right wing where the rooms are located asking questions*

“This is leading us nowhere, Commander.”

“I know, Boil, but General Kenobi told us to inspect the entire right wing. We only have three more rooms to do. Let’s go.”

“Fine.”

*they knock at the next door*

“Hello?”

“Hello, ma’am. My name is Commander Cody of the 212th Attack Battalion. We’re on a mission here from the Jedi council. The distress beacon gave off a signal earlier today and we were wondering if you knew anything about it.”

“I’m very sorry I can’t be of any help to you, Commander, but I know nothing.”

*suddenly, a small child comes running down the hallway laughing. She trips and falls and scrapes her knee.*

“hey, are you okay?”

“Waxer you know that’s not how you talk to a child!”

“I’m sorry! You know I get awkward around kids. Why do we always find a runaway child when we’re on Ryloth? Like, how has this actually happened twice?”

*boil ignores him and kneels down to the kid*

“Hey there. My name is Boil. Are you okay? Do you need help?”

*she looks a bit frightened still. Boil realizes he still has his helmet on so he takes it off.*

“Sorry about that. Is it okay if I patch up your knee? I keep bandages on me, you can even pick the color if you want.”

“...okay. Blue please.”

“Blue it is. So, why were you running so fast? Is anything chasing you?”

“No. I was just looking for my papa. And I’m bored. I played with his fun machine today.”

“His machine, huh?”

*the three clones look at each other with a look™️ and Cody comms obi wan*

“General? I think we found your culprit”

——————

“‘Wow Anakin, you’re such a genius. It’s almost as if you were right all along!’ ‘Why thank you, Master. I knew I was right, and now we can go home even though we could’ve earlier.’ ‘Yes, you’re so right. We should’ve listened to you the whole time-“

“Anakin, are you finished?”

“‘we should make you a master on the council. I admire you.’ Now I’m finished.”

“Oh, give it a rest, Master. We get it, you’re right, now let’s get you home for your date.”

*anakin freezes and turns slowly. They’ve been walking up the ramp to board their ship when ahsoka said that. Anakin is now very red in the face*

“....what. What are you talking about snips??!! I don’t have a date. I don’t date. I’m just attending a senator party with the Chancellor. A date. Psh. Psh.”

“But you told me-“

“LETS GET ON THE SHIP, AHSOKA!”

*obi wan just rolls his eyes as they board the ship*

*We’re back to Coruscant!*

“Finally, we’re home. I’m so tired from all the nothing we did.”

“Oh, Anakin, you are such a drama queen. We did our mission like we were supposed to. Now, can I please speak to you in private?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Even though you have complained a lot today, I still care about you Anakin, and I know you made a promise to someone else already. So, I will go inform the Jedi Council that this was a false alarm by myself. Maybe I’ll take your Padawan. But you, my friend, should go get ready for your senator party.”

*anakin hugs obi wan*

“Thank you, Obi-Wan. I owe you one.”

*anakin goes up to his apartment on Coruscant where Padme is; she’s on their couch reading something and already dressed when anakin comes in*

“I’m back! I’m finally back!”

“Hello to you too Anakin. I was hoping they’d let you out. You’re cutting it close this time.”

“I’m so sorry. We had to go to Ryloth for no reason and Obi-Wan wouldn’t let me leave until we knew for sure what happened.”

“Well, I’m glad you made it in time.”

“Me too. Obi-Wan is letting me skip the debriefing for this.”

*he goes to change into his formal clothes for the party. Padme is already wearing one of her super rad fancy senator outfits. Anakin has an all black suit cause you know he’s that guy™️.

*int with Padme*

“Anakin has missed a lot of these outings with me due to Jedi business, so I wasn’t expecting him to actually be here for this one. I’m glad he is. I don’t see him as often as I wish I did.”

Do you ever think of asking him to leave the Jedi Order then?

“Oh, no. Absolutely not. I would never ask him to give up his life like that. And I don’t want that either. He’s a great Jedi and he loves what he does. I would never try to take that away from him.”

*back to scene. Now they’re walking down the halls of the senate building on their way to the party*

“So, get this, Ahsoka is convinced that I have a crush on you and that this is a date.”

“I mean, she’s not exactly wrong, is she?”

“Well, no, but I don’t really have a crush on you since, you know, we’re married. And she meant date as in ‘you invited me to this thing but we’re not together but in her eyes, it’s a date’ kind of thing.”

“Hmm so she still doesn’t know?”

“No. I can’t bring myself to tell her. I love her, but I don’t want to taint her mind and views of the Jedi Code and council. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“A very good point. You’re a good Master, Anakin.”

“Thanks.”

*they then enter the party. Many political figures from across the galaxy are there already. Its purpose is unknown to us, but it is clear that it’s important but also not too serious. They speak with many different people included Palpatine. We have yet to actually speak to him yet. Anakin is eventually over near the snack table, a drink in his hand and another one being handed off to Padme*

“Here you go. It’s your favorite.”

“Thank you. So, are you having fun yet?”

“Well, I don’t think I’ll ever have fun hanging around any politicians but you, but it’s not so bad. Plus, these snacks are really good.”

*padme rolls her eyes but laughs at him*

“It’s nice for us all to get together like this. It’s important for the Republic.”

“Mm, indeed.”

*they continue chatting until Anakin notices someone across the room. Fancy blue outfit. Blonde hair up in a bun. He doesn’t notice who it really is until she comes a bit closer. He does the pikachu face and drops his drink, luckily catching it midair with the force as he apologizes to those around him*

“Anakin?? Are you okay? What was that for?”

“You didn’t tell me she was going to be here!”

“Who?”

*he points to her by nudging his head in her direction hoping Padme will see who he’s talking about*

“Her? That’s my friend Satine. She’s the Duchess of Mandalore. She’s-wait a minute, how do you know her??!?”

“Nothing bad, I assure you. I’m actually quite fond of her. I just wish I knew sooner!”

“Why?”

“Because that, my love, is Obi-Wan’s girlfriend.”

END of this part.

Part2

——

[brooklynislandgirl]

How would your muse react to being handed a baby? {Keni}

Soft, Silent, Sweet || Accepting

 "Wait. W-w-what....what are you doing?"

The young Jedi stands surrounded by a group of village women. All of them seem to be petting and pawing at her. In the fading dusk the blood and filth of battle drying on her face looks like a primitive mask even as cooling breezes begin to tease her hair into ribbons the hue of dark wood flowing down her back after escaping their confining ties. For now her sabre is sheathed though for just a split second it looked like it was going to see further use with the way her fingers flex near its hilt on her belt.  One of the bolder women offers her a gap-toothed smile, and murmurs in the local tongue, too softly to be heard. She takes hold of Melakeni's arms and pulls them away from her body. Into them is deposited an infant. It squirms and squawks. Gurgles spit bubbles on its lips. Keni’s stomach, no bigger than her fist, lurches at the sight. Tries to shrink into itself as much as the rest of her wants the very same. The Force becomes immediately awash with a deeply abiding sense of disgust, a shudder that could potentially if not so thoroughly repressed shake the ground and make the collection of huts around them collapse. This is one of those mammalian things that Keni has never quite gotten her head around. Certainly she has treated younglings by the score in the Temple, every kind of imaginable illness from the contagious poxes to scrapes and bruises and wobbly tummies. Almost to the last they have wanted for a small word of kindness, a kiss on the head. A promise that she can make them well again, but the younglings she treats are capable of speech, of independent thought. She has nothing to do with the creches where those too young to be sorted into clan are kept, tended like plants. Except most plants do not drool and do not defecate in their own clothes. They neither screech nor wail ~at least as far as most sentients are concerned~ with their little faces scrunched up and turning hues. They do not have that indescribable smell like old milk and crusty skin that particularly female humans seem so entranced with. She has often in the past teased Anakin that Zelosian nurseries are full of large jars full of nutrient rich soil and its own little watering apparatus, and sometimes, especially rare children of her species require an aquatic environment. None of that is true. As far as she knows, she doesn't remember that far back, after all, her people are born and raised in the same way. She just has no experience to mark the occasion and she is absolutely certain she'd never made a mess of herself or smelled like that. What's more is she doesn't understand the biological imperative of breeding. Her eyes turn toward Anakin. A human. And he is the depth and breadth of her soul. She has absolutely no doubt that the Force had made them for one another. And Melakeni has dreams. Some of them do involve him and the requisite acts that would be required to produce tiny offspring. All beautiful lines and commingled breath. The feel of his skin burning against her own. Tender kisses and every pleasure that is forbidden to them. Unbidden, others come along with those fever-dreams. She has at least once imagined what one would look like with his hair and long limbs, her eyes and teeth. But that was only once. The reality of it is, even if they were to ever desire such a thing, it would be impossible. They are genetically incompatible, mammalian and viridiphyta respectively. She could never imagine wanting a child of her own, she doesn’t even really want a padawan. And of those children she doesn’t fantasise about, the only possible source for one would be from Anakin. For all that some people might think otherwise, and to no shame, Anakin is not the kind of man who would make for a good father. He would want to be, he would love any child to the very depth of his soul, but therein lies madness. Anyone who has seen him with his droids and his Clones could predict a future where only tragedy could unfold. He would be unable to separate himself from his fears. They would become mania. She has seen what happens when Anakin loves too much. And she knows, much to her own regret, that sometimes, love is not enough. It would kill him as surely as poison. Children are not their future. They will both be content with that.  The infant latches onto her hair and gives it a yank, a hideous little sound coming out of it that she soon enough realises is a laugh. Melakeni flashes Anakin a look that can be felt like direct shot from one of the blaster rifles carried by a nearby handful of Clones who immediately proceed to look away although one looks like he’s overcome with a fit of amusement that his brothers are now trying to save him from. As politely as possible Keni pries the little thing’s fingers apart and rescues herself from the situation. She turns to the translator who accompanied the women and murmurs platitudes. Yes, yes. Adorable child. Many blessings on the family, thank you. Excuse me please. She means none of these things but if she has one ability to surpass all others it is emotional mimicry. She hands the creature back to its parent. Hands come up in a peaceful gesture which she half nods-half bows over. Begins to extricate herself from the group.  The translator asks if they need anything. Keni asks for a tub and as much hot water as the village can muster. They have already been offered food, and a few dozen spare huts at the far edges of the camp. It is all they have to give for their salvation. She tells them that everything is fine, and that they ~Anakin, herself, and their Troops~ will make as little trouble as possible. When they are finally alone, she allows herself to shudder all of her natural revulsion. “The Living Force spare me, it was so gross.” Her face screws up tightly, which pulls the corners of her mouth down, as if she’s having trouble trying not to retch on the spot. “And so...grabby. And squishy. Honestly, Anakin. I’d much prefer dealing with slugs.” There’s meaning in that declaration the likes of which only he can understand. After all, he’s been the one to rescue her from them for years now.  She flings her tunic at him, and lets the rest of her uniform flutter and fall to the ground. She slips over the edge of the wooden tub and sinks into the water, disappearing beneath the surface for a few seconds before rising back up. She can still feel all the infant’s various fluids on her skin. “Next time, you hold the babies and get fondled by the civilians and I’ll stay with the boys.” Anakin laughs and agrees with her before he climbs into the bath opposite of her and she can almost hear his bones shriek in gratitude.

~*~

The twin suns of this dying world bake the sand beneath her boots. There is little shade to be found anywhere and the air feels as if it is scorching her lungs from the inside out. She could never have imagined a time in all of her life where she misses the cold dark of space, nor that she would be counting the seconds before she could return to her ship and erase the memory of sunlight on her skin. She’s done her best to blend in with the locals. To survey her target at every opportunity while remaining out of sight. Until now.

She beckons the boy with a delicate, airy hand. Curiosity draws him near, of course it does. And something she does not possess cracks in her chest leaving a space awash with grief and love and a thousand different yearnings still. Though he’s approaching his tenth Empire Day, he is small for his age. Wind-whipped, carved out by the vast nothingness of his little kingdom. The same suns that sear down have bleached his hair pale gold and in places there are certain cowlicks that will never be tamed, no matter how gentle but unforgiving the hand is that attempts it. His eyes are painfully blue. More so than the sky above them, more than shimmer of sea that does not exist here. The shy grin he offers her harks back to another era that seems like lifetimes ago. If she ever had a doubt, it evaporates here and now. And this is how perhaps the most feared and loved woman in the galaxy comes to kneel before a child. Fixes the boy with a softly-shaped smile, one that hides the fine points of her teeth but that gives warmth to emerald eyes. From some secret pocket, perhaps from the force itself, a gloved hand produces not one but two crystallised honey-sticks, tinted by berries and juices into a chaos of colour. He is cautious. Does not immediately reach for them as one might expect. This pleases her immensely, he has inherited his father’s great wisdom. She continues to hold them out, and inclines her head. Nods a little. He takes them. But then his aunt calls for him, and he looks back toward her over one scrawny shoulder before returning his gaze to his mysterious benefactor. She lifts a finger to her lips.  A secret it is to be. She is gone before Beru comes looking for him.

[snowwhitelass]

When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.

Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

Belleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” He also said that he didn’t understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies.

Trump’s understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and sacrifice has interested me since he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. “I like people who weren’t captured.”

There was no precedent in American politics for the expression of this sort of contempt, but the performatively patriotic Trump did no damage to his candidacy by attacking McCain in this manner. Nor did he set his campaign back by attacking the parents of Humayun Khan, an Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Trump remained fixated on McCain, one of the few prominent Republicans to continue criticizing him after he won the nomination. When McCain died, in August 2018, Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of this event, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” the president told aides. Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral. (These sources, and others quoted in this article, spoke on condition of anonymity. The White House did not return earlier calls for comment, but Alyssa Farah, a White House spokesperson, emailed me this statement shortly after this story was posted: “This report is false. President Trump holds the military in the highest regard. He’s demonstrated his commitment to them at every turn: delivering on his promise to give our troops a much needed pay raise, increasing military spending, signing critical veterans reforms, and supporting military spouses. This has no basis in fact.”)

Trump’s understanding of heroism has not evolved since he became president. According to sources with knowledge of the president’s views, he seems to genuinely not understand why Americans treat former prisoners of war with respect. Nor does he understand why pilots who are shot down in combat are honored by the military. On at least two occasions since becoming president, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his views, Trump referred to former President George H. W. Bush as a “loser” for being shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II. (Bush escaped capture, but eight other men shot down during the same mission were caught, tortured, and executed by Japanese soldiers.)

When lashing out at critics, Trump often reaches for illogical and corrosive insults, and members of the Bush family have publicly opposed him. But his cynicism about service and heroism extends even to the World War I dead buried outside Paris—people who were killed more than a quarter century before he was born. Trump finds the notion of military service difficult to understand, and the idea of volunteering to serve especially incomprehensible. (The president did not serve in the military; he received a medical deferment from the draft during the Vietnam War because of the alleged presence of bone spurs in his feet. In the 1990s, Trump said his efforts to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases constituted his “personal Vietnam.”)

On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security, and who would, a short time later, be named the White House chief of staff. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly (who declined to comment for this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.

“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend went on to say, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”

I’ve asked numerous general officers over the past year for their analysis of Trump’s seeming contempt for military service. They offer a number of explanations. Some of his cynicism is rooted in frustration, they say. Trump, unlike previous presidents, tends to believe that the military, like other departments of the federal government, is beholden only to him, and not the Constitution. Many senior officers have expressed worry about Trump’s understanding of the rules governing the use of the armed forces. This issue came to a head in early June, during demonstrations in Washington, D.C., in response to police killings of Black people. James Mattis, the retired Marine general and former secretary of defense, lambasted Trump at the time for ordering law-enforcement officers to forcibly clear protesters from Lafayette Square, and for using soldiers as props: “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Mattis wrote. “Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

Another explanation is more quotidian, and aligns with a broader understanding of Trump’s material-focused worldview. The president believes that nothing is worth doing without the promise of monetary payback, and that talented people who don’t pursue riches are “losers.” (According to eyewitnesses, after a White House briefing given by the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford, Trump turned to aides and said, “That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?”)

Yet another, related, explanation concerns what appears to be Trump’s pathological fear of appearing to look like a “sucker” himself. His capacious definition of sucker includes those who lose their lives in service to their country, as well as those who are taken prisoner, or are wounded in battle. “He has a lot of fear,” one officer with firsthand knowledge of Trump’s views said. “He doesn’t see the heroism in fighting.” Several observers told me that Trump is deeply anxious about dying or being disfigured, and this worry manifests itself as disgust for those who have suffered. Trump recently claimed that he has received the bodies of slain service members “many, many” times, but in fact he has traveled to Dover Air Force Base, the transfer point for the remains of fallen service members, only four times since becoming president. In another incident, Trump falsely claimed that he had called “virtually all” of the families of service members who had died during his term, then began rush-shipping condolence letters when families said the president was not telling the truth.

Trump has been, for the duration of his presidency, fixated on staging military parades, but only of a certain sort. In a 2018 White House planning meeting for such an event, Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. “Nobody wants to see that,” he said.

[ofwarbonds-blog]

five times kissed

Send “Five Times Kissed” for a drabble of – YOU GUESSED IT – 5 times our muses kissed | @ghoststorytm | Always Accepting (but slow) 

1)

It’s an accident.

He and Bucky are sharing a bed because Steve would likely freeze to death otherwise. The bitter cold of a Brooklyn January night shows no bias, nor mercy, after all. It’s almost like they’re kids again; nudging one another, and accusing the other in hushed tones of being a bed hog. Bucky complains that Steve has an unfair advantage, what with those daggers he’s got for elbows.

Steve gets him in the ribs for that remark, and shortly after, the two settle down.

There is no quiet to be had, of course. Between the neighbor’s below, who can’t seem to decide if they’d rather be arguing or…Well, making up – and the wildlife outside of their apartment insistent on rummaging through the day’s trash, Steve is regrettably quite awake.

Bucky has long since drifted off into a peaceful slumber, and exactly how he manages to do so consistently is beyond Rogers’ understanding. He’d be envious if he weren’t already overcome with too many other, more persistent emotions. Mainly the overwhelming urge to kiss the soft-looking, slightly parted mouth now mere inches from his own.

It’s an accident. One minute he’s staring (and vehemently reminding himself that he can’t do this – and shouldn’t want to in the first place), and the next…He’s leaning in, lips quivering, and presses the most chaste of kisses to that whiskey-flavored mouth.

He regrets it immediately; tears away from his best friend, and slips out of the bed as quickly as possible without alerting the other male to his departure.

Steve is in too big a rush to notice Bucky staring after him from the bed they had previously shared.

2)

He can’t forget that first time, no matter how hard he tries. It plagues him in both his waking, and unconscious hours. How many hours of sleep has he been robbed of now, tormented by visions, and phantom sensations of lips and hands that he has no right to desire? Too many to count.

Steve is grateful that his friend was unaware of his moment of…What? Delusion? Weakness? He’s wracked his brain countless times, attempting to make sense of just what compelled him to follow through with such a disgusting desire. To take advantage of a friend like that is unforgivable.

Drinking is expensive, and dangerous for a man of his slight build (not to mention less than fantastic medical background), but Steve indulges tonight because he’s not sure he’d be able to bear watching Bucky dance with both their dates, otherwise. There’s a pretty blonde, petite, with a cherry-colored mouth getting twirled around the dancefloor before she’s pulled back in closer to Bucky than Steve could ever be. It’s so intimate, he can hardly stomach it.

Or is it his own guilt and shame that has him feeling so nauseous?

Regardless, Steve decides that he’s had enough – enough booze; enough stale, smoke-filled air; and more than enough watching his best friend be the kind of guy that all ladies moon over.

He stumbles out into the crisp night air, pulling his jacket tighter around his bony frame, and starts toward home on unsteady legs.

Only a hand comes down on his shoulder, halting his progress before he even gets five paces away from the too-loud club. “Hey! Where are you running off to, punk? Leaving your date like that, she’s gonna-” Steve swats the hand away far too sharply. He knows that Bucky’s done nothing wrong to deserve such harsh treatment, but right now, Steve’s too drunk and angry to care.

“She’s got you, Barnes. Why the hell would she miss a guy like me?” The words are spat in Bucky’s direction, venomous and scathing.

There’s no time to register what’s going on; one second Steve is standing with his back to the other man, shoulders slumped and spine bowed, and the next, he’s gulping down air in a desperate attempt to fill his lungs after having the wind forced out of them. His back is against cool brick now, and Bucky’s staring down at him with eyes far too clear for a man that’s had as much to drink as he has.

“What?” Steve snaps again, feeling strangely exposed; as if Bucky can see right through to the fear and insecurity ravaging him inside.

Bucky’s leaning into him now, one hand propped against the brick on either side of Steve’s head, and for a moment, the blonde is sure he’s gonna get socked in the jaw for mouthing off. The punch he’s anticipating never comes, though. Instead, in the time it takes him to blink, there are lips slotted against his own.

It’s searing, sloppy, and short-lived; Steve pulling away, and nearly cracking his head against the brick behind him in the process.

Bucky seems just as shocked by his actions as Steve, if the look of horror that flashes across his face is anything to go by. The brunette staggers back silently, cupping a hand over his mouth before turning on his heel, and bolting out of the alley.

Steve doesn’t wait up after returning to their apartment to know whether or not Bucky returns that night; but he does wake to an empty bed the next morning.

3)

Bucky ships out, and Steve is left behind, because that’s “what God intended”, or some shit. He doesn’t care much for such an illogical line of reasoning; at the end of the day, he’s been turned away time and time again because his body isn’t strong enough to withstand the rigorous training required to fight a war, much less actively participate in one.

Then he meets one Dr. Abraham Erskine, and his life is completely changed. For the better, Steve would argue. After all, he’s made fast enough to chase down the man responsible for the good doctor’s death; strong enough to withstand bullets; and his myriad of debilitating physical ailments just…Cease to be.

It turns out that war isn’t all Steve thought it to be. At least, not when you’re America’s shiny, new golden boy. Being placed upon a pedestal is something he’s unaccustomed to, and he hates it, but he goes along with the shows because it keeps the troops motivated. Steve doesn’t want – has never wanted – to parade himself around a rickety stage with a group of (admittedly lovely, and almost too sweet) young ladies while the soldiers around him continually go out and risk their lives.

He wants to go out there, himself, fight alongside these men for the good of everyone back home, waiting for their loved ones to return, and ensure the safety of this country.

When he hears word that Bucky’s life is endangered, well, there’s no longer any doubt in Steve’s mind that he needs to be out there. With the help of Peggy, and Howard Stark, Steve is able to get back to his best friend.

Seeing Bucky strapped to a table is unnerving, but it’s a relief just to see that he’s alive. Steve gets him up, and the two men fight their way out of the Hydra base. It’s a completely irrational thought, but once they make it back, Steve thinks that this is what he’s always wanted; to be on level ground with Bucky, fight alongside him, and protect him.

Their return to camp is met with mixed emotions. Survivors are welcomed back with open arms, and relief, while they mourn those that were lost to Hydra’s hands. Sleep is elusive, though every man is exhausted to his very bones. Steve is no different, having chosen to stray a short ways from the camp to gaze up at the sky, and count the stars he can see clearly now, with his enhanced vision.

A hand touches the small of his back so lightly it’s damn near imperceptible, and the blonde jumps, twisting to face his would-be assailant. There’s Bucky, looking momentarily startled before he manages to collect himself enough to muster a small, crooked smile.

“Thought I told you not to do anything stupid, punk.”

Steve’s mouth goes dry. Seeing Bucky on that table, prone and lifeless, had been terrifying. And now, having the other man before him, alive and impossibly handsome, even with a bruised face and messy hair is too much.

Averting his gaze, Steve offers a lazy, one shouldered shrug in response. “Good to see you too, Bucky.”

The tension between them is thick enough you could cut it with a knife. This isn’t the way he envisioned their reunion going, and he hates it, hates that this feels almost like they’re two different people meeting for the first time.

Steve sighs, drags a hand back through his hair, and returns his attention to Bucky. “Listen, Buck, I’m-” He isn’t allowed to finish his sentence, however, as quivering hands grip him by the shoulders to draw him down, and into a kiss that’s equal parts uncertain and demanding.

It’s over as quickly as it’s begun, leaving Steve breathless and confused, and a little hurt as he’s made to watch Bucky’s retreating form make the walk back to camp with slumped shoulders.

4)

“You look like hell, Steve.”

Steve lifts his head so quickly he’s sure to have gotten whiplash. Standing there in the doorway  of his cramped kitchen is none other than Bucky Barnes.

It’s not the Soldier that he’s grown accustomed to seeing in his apartment, sitting stationary for hours at a time, staring ahead at the television screen without really processing any of what’s being broadcast. But it’s not quite the James Buchanan Barnes that struggled to keep Steve out of trouble in seedy Brooklyn alleys, either. This is a man that’s looking to discover himself – whoever that may be – and just wants some fucking peace while he does it.

Steve can relate.

By the time he manages to pick his jaw up off the floor, his mouth has gone dry, and Bucky looks about ready to bolt.

“Yeah,” he rasps, the corners of his lips twitching with a smile he’s doing a poor job of concealing, “well, at least I own it.” That comment earns him a snort from the brunette darkening his doorway. It’s an oddly endearing sound.

Bucky doesn’t move from the kitchen doorway for the next hour, while the two talk, and banter. Steve knows better than to think this is like old times – he’s been down that road before, and it only ends in pain – but it does feel good not to be alone.

A companionable silence falls over the two men, and after upholding about half of that hour long chat himself, Steve is content to let it wash over him. Bucky, however, is clearly not. The brunette shifts his weight a little; averts his gaze to the front door, as if expecting someone to come charging in; and idly touches the metal plates of his arm.

“…We kissed.”

Steve is too dumbfounded by this sudden announcement to formulate a more eloquent response than a strangled noise, as he nearly chokes on his own spit.

“You and me…Before.” Before HYDRA. The words go unspoken, but they’re understood nonetheless.

Steve hesitates just a moment before nodding.

“I don’t remember much.” Bucky speaks slowly, brow furrowed, as if he’s waiting to be scolded for bringing it up in the first place. His gaze is piercing in spite of the uncertainty laced in every word. “Just…Sensation, mostly. Warmth. Your lips were chapped.” There’s a slight quirk to one corner of Bucky’s mouth as he says this; the beginnings of a crooked grin, unfortunately quickly smothered.

Again, Steve merely nods, though his own smile grows in response.

For the first time since the beginning of their conversation, Bucky fully enters the room. His steps are slow and measured, purposeful, as he closes the distance between Steve and himself. Once close enough, he outstretches the hand of flesh and bone, and curls fingers in dirty blonde hair.

“Can I…?”

The air is all but forced from Steve’s lungs by that simple question. “Yes.” It escapes his lips a prayer.

Bucky is careful, so careful, as he lowers himself to slot their mouths together. Slow, measured, and purposeful, much like his stride; and Steve drinks it in, taking all that Bucky is willing to give, until he’s drunk on it.

The two separate, mouths slick and kiss bitten red, and stare at each other until Bucky looks away.

“You ever heard of chapstick, Steve?”

Steve socks him in the shoulder for that one.

5)

Steve honestly never thought he would choose to hang up the suit and shield. In truth, he always suspected he would get himself killed first; no doubt his teammates thought the same. But in the end, it was the best decision he could have possibly made. Not only for himself, but for him.

The gorgeous brunette seated across the table from him now is smiling as Steve outstretches a hand to caress his knee under the table, and even allows a little huff of laughter to escape those plush lips of his.

“You’re a dog, Steve Rogers.” Bucky accuses, voice warm and low in a way that has Steve counting his lucky stars, because only he gets to see this side of Bucky; the soft, intimate, playful, teasing side that makes him fall in love all over again.

There’s a rumbling hum of affirmation from Steve, who makes no attempt to argue or defend himself, as he gives the other man’s knee another light squeeze before withdrawing. His heart’s racing, and his chest feels tight – dear God, it’s like he’s a 90 lb asthmatic again – and Steve worries that he may just pass out before he gets to this next part. It’s so important that this go well, because he wants to make it perfect – Bucky deserves perfect – but when does life ever make it so easy for them?

The two have been sitting at their little dining room table for the better part of an hour now, just talking and sipping idly at wine that neither man could get drunk off of if he tried. It’s been…Nice. Steve can’t remember the last time that he was able to just sit and talk with Bucky like this, without fear of some impending crisis dragging him away from it all.

There are so many things that he wants to say; so much to thank Bucky for; so much to apologize for, too. But that can come later. For now, there’s something far more pressing that he needs to get off his chest.

Rising from his chair, Steve watches, barely biting back his smile, as Bucky assumes that dinner is over and checks his phone. Normally, this is the point in the night that one of them collects the dishes and takes them over to the sink to be washed. But not tonight.

A small velvet box is drawn from his pocket as the blonde takes a knee by Bucky’s side. To his credit, Bucky does shift his attention from his phone, curiosity evident in the way his brows knit together as he peers in Steve’s direction. Lips part, likely prepared to question Steve’s odd behavior, before realization dawns. And oh, what a beautiful thing it is to witness the moment in which Bucky takes notice of the parcel in his lover’s hand. Shock melds into confusion, and into what Steve hopes to be elation.

“Steve, what the hell?” Bucky sounds as breathless as Steve feels, right about now.

After taking a deep breath to steady himself, the blonde speaks. “I’ve loved you since I first knew what love was, Bucky. I put you through hell, and yet you stuck around, refusing to leave my side like the stubborn jerk you are.” Mirth glimmers in baby blue eyes, and Steve feels his chest tremble with his next shaky inhale. “I’ve come to realize that home isn’t a city, or a time, or even a building – it’s you. You’re the home I wanna come back to, Bucky. So…With all of that being said, will you marry me?”

Bucky looks like he’s about ten seconds away from either kissing Steve senseless, or punching his lights out. Naturally, Steve has a preference, but he opts not to vocalize that – probably for the best, too.

Just as he’s certain that he’s about to be let down easy, Bucky surges forward and hugs him so tight, Steve fears he may black out before he gets his answer. “You stupid punk…Yes. Yes, okay? Yes, I’ll marry you.”

Steve is familiar with heart defects, seeing as how he lived with one for a good chunk of his life, ‘n all, and he’s pretty sure that his heart’s fit to burst right about now. Clinging to Bucky in return, he grins from ear to ear, pressing a series of kisses into the crown of the other male’s hair. “God, Buck, had me scared there for a minute.” He whispers, voice a weak and shaky thing, barely able to escape his throat. There’s laughter on the tail end of that statement, however, because he’s too damned giddy not to laugh.

He leans back, taking Bucky’s hand in his own, and slides the simple gold band down the length of his flesh index finger. “Beautiful.” Steve’s baby blues are transfixed on the other man’s face, tracing every curve, and committing the way he looks in this moment to memory. There’s no doubt in his mind that he’ll never see a sight so entrancing as Bucky Barnes looking back at him with the utmost love and adoration, and a gold wedding band on his finger.

“C’mere.” Bucky offers no room for argument, pulling Steve in, and claiming his mouth in a kiss that speaks volumes. It’s a kiss that neither man will forget, for the rest of their lives; a kiss to mark the beginning of their next chapter.

After all, they did promise…Til the end of the line.

[phroyd]

As President Trump muses periodically about a prompt withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, he confronts warnings, including from his own foreign-policy advisers, that such a move would risk the onset of greater chaos in that country. He has responded with suggestions that an Arab stabilization force supplement and gradually replace U.S. troops to forestall that danger. However, the replacement force he has in mind would not be a generic “Arab” contingent, as he and other proponents describe. It would consist primarily of personnel from Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies.

Such a force would be neither politically neutral nor dedicated to restoring and preserving peace in Syria. Instead it would be the instrument of Sunni Arab power dedicated to overthrowing Bashar al-Assad. Indeed, since the earliest stages of the Syrian civil war in 2011 and 2012, the Gulf powers (along with Turkey) have been intent on that objective. The rebellion against Assad is primarily a Sunni bid for power against Assad’s coalition of religious minorities. As early as 2012, journalists embedded with rebel forces noted that they were virtually all Sunnis. Arrayed against them were Assad’s followers, primarily members of his quasi-Shiite Alawite sect, Christians and Druze. Syrian Kurds were busy pursuing their own agenda of carving out a de facto independent state in the north.

Predictably, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and other Sunni powers backed the rebels to the hilt, supplying them with both money and military hardware. Soon, though, they lost control of some of those forces—factions that evolved into ISIS. As early as 2012, the United States cooperated with Riyadh and Ankara, sending “non-lethal” aid to supposedly moderate insurgents. By 2013, Washington was shipping arms to them, further entangling the United States in an increasingly murky ethno-religious conflict. The effort to boost the fortunes of Riyadh’s Syrian clients failed, though, when Russia intervened in 2015 and backed government forces with extensive air power.

Introducing a bogus stabilization force at a time when Assad and his Russian patrons are on the verge of victory over the insurgents is a last-ditch Sunni ploy to help the rebels avoid defeat. Even reasonably astute U.S. officials should understand that reality. They should also comprehend that Riyadh’s goals do not necessarily benefit America’s interests. Most of the factions that Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have backed are staunchly Islamist. One prominent client is the Salafist group Ahrar al-Sham. And Saudi support also seems to be flowing to Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) once that group officially ended its ties with Al Qaeda.

The emergence of a post–Assad government that such factions would dominate might advance the agenda of the ultra-conservative Saudi royal family, but replacing a secular dictator like Assad with a Sunni Islamist regime does not enhance U.S. security in the slightest. Yet Syria is not the only arena in which Washington is supporting Riyadh’s policies contrary to America’s best interests. Both the Obama and Trump administrations have backed the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen. The United States continues to refuel coalition aircraft and provide intelligence data to assist those planes strike targets in that country. New information indicates that Washington has Special Forces on the ground to combat Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. Washington’s collusion with Saudi Arabia’s military campaign continues despite mounting evidence of the coalition’s repeated, systematic war crimes against civilians in Yemen.

Washington’s explanations for that collaboration range from weak to laughable. One justification is that Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula (perhaps the most dangerous of AQ’s affiliates) is active in Yemen. But that explanation ignores the fact that the Houthis are vehemently opposed to the group. Scarcely better is the allegation that the Houthis are Iranian pawns who are to blame for Yemen’s instability and violence. The extent of Tehran’s backing actually is quite modest, and Riyadh’s meddling is far more extensive and disruptive. As in Syria, defeating the Houthis and consolidating the hold of a Saudi-backed Sunni regime in Yemen may serve the Kingdom’s interests, but that outcome does not benefit America’s interests or reputation. Collaborating in the commission of war crimes certainly does not do so.

Unfortunately, U.S. leaders seem inclined to blindly back Saudi Arabia whenever and whenever Riyadh’s rivalry with Tehran takes place. President Trump’s ongoing efforts to undermine the multilateral nuclear agreement with Iran appear to reflect the wishes of both Saudi Arabia and Israel. But sabotaging that accord creates needless tensions with Washington’s European allies and intensifies dangers throughout the Middle East. Worse, it increases the likelihood that Iran will acquire a nuclear arsenal, thereby likely leading to a U.S.-Iranian war. Such a conflict that removed Iran as a serious regional power would undoubtedly gladden the hearts of the Saudi royals, but it is hard to see how that destructive outcome benefits America.

For too many decades, the United States has adopted without much reflection policies that advanced Riyadh’s agenda when American interests were not at stake or even when they were undermined. Trump’s fawning behavior toward the Saudi rulers during his 2017 state visit to the Kingdom encapsulated Washington’s willingness to overlook or excuse Riyadh’s outrageous domestic and international behavior.

Despite the assertion that Saudi Arabia has been a loyal U.S. ally, the record indicates otherwise. The Saudi government funds the Wahhabi clergy that has spread a virulent, anti-Western brand of Islam throughout much of the Muslim world. Saudi-backed extremists have become cadres in terrorist organizations from Al Qaeda to ISIS. That fifteen of the nineteen hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi nationals is indicative of the problem that Riyadh’s sponsorship of Islamic extremism creates.

Saudi Arabia is a nasty, duplicitous power that pursues its own goals even when that pursuit imperils crucial American interests. President Trump needs to adopt a real America First policy in the Middle East—one that no longer allows the Saudi tail to wag the American dog.

Phroyd

[brigdh]

Reading Definitely Not Wednesday

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey. A space opera set in the relatively near future. Humans have colonized Mars and the asteroid belt, and a few scattered populations make due on the moons of planets further out. There is, however, no faster-than-light travel, no contact with any solar system beyond our own, no sentient AIs, and no aliens. A major theme of the book is the culture clash between those who live on Earth or Mars – the superpowers of this future – and those who live in the Belt, where mining is the preeminent economy and life is the hardscrabble sort where even water and oxygen have to be imported, never mind concepts like justice and equality. Different characters move from one place to the other or switch allegiances, but their origins are as baked in as we would regard ethnicity or nationality. As one character puts it, "A childhood spent in gravity shaped the way he saw things forever." Corey (who is actually two separate dudes writing under a penname) does a wonderful job of fleshing out the background worldbuilding. I loved references to fungal-culture whiskey, Bhangra as the default elevator muzak, hand gestures exaggerated to be seen through a spacesuit, and largely unintelligible localized slang (“Bomie vacuate like losing air,” the girl said with a chuckle. “Bang-head hops, kennis tu?” / “Ken,” Miller said. /“Now, all new bladeboys. Overhead. I’m out.”). It feels like a more detailed world than a lot of sci-fi does. Which is good, because the characters are not all that compelling. The two POVs are Jim Holden and Detective Miller. Holden is the second-in-command on an unimportant spaceship that works as a freight hauler, moving ice back and forth between the Belt and Saturn. Things change dramatically when a mysterious someone attacks their ship and kills everyone except for Holden and a few others, and he finds himself centrally involved in the runup to war. He has the most generic action-movie-hero personality I can imagine, with no discernable characteristics except 'idealistic' (and I really only know that because other people keep telling him he is), kinda nervous about being suddenly thrust into command but doing a good job, a womanizer (but see, it's okay because he just keeps genuinely falling in love with so many women!), and earnest. He's fine. He's not even objectionable, just incredibly boring. He comes with a crew of entirely indistinguishable followers that I couldn't keep straight, but that's all right because most of them get killed off so I no longer had to try to remember who was who. He also develops a romance that is 100% unbelievable, but I suppose that's what action-movie-heroes do, so who's even surprised. Miller is a detective on Ceres, the largest city in the Belt, who's been hired by a rich family to track down their anarchist, slumming daughter. Miller is an incredibly cliche noir protagonist - alcoholic, divorced, not as good as he used to be, cynical, a little bit corrupt but underneath it all he still remembers his good intentions – but at least that means he has more of a personality than Jim, even if it's a personality you've seen a thousand times before. On the other hand, Miller becomes obsessed with this dead/missing girl in a way that is painfully stereotypical Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Two things kept this from ruining Leviathan Wakes for me. One, Miller is at least somewhat self-aware about it: This was why he had searched for her. Julie had become the part of him that was capable of human feeling. The symbol of what he could have been if he hadn’t been this. There was no reason to think his imagined Julie had anything in common with the real woman. Meeting her would have been a disappointment for them both. And two, there's a twist near the end that allows Julie to finally have her own voice in the text, and not exist solely as Miller's imagined dependance on her. It takes almost half the book for Miller and Holden to finally cross paths, at which point the missing-girl mystery and the war plot combine and take a twist for a direction I DID NOT SEE COMING. I am ambivalent on whether to spoil this; on the one hand, I read it unprepared and it was incredibly awesome to experience it that way. On the other hand, I suspect this is information that will be a determining factor for many people on whether they want to read it or not. So: halfway through, Leviathan Wakes takes a wild jump and becomes about a zombie outbreak. I would not have previously thought that 'space opera' and 'zombie apocalypse' are two genres that should be combined, but the tension and excitement skyrocket once the book takes this turn, transforming it from average quality to 'I CANNOT STOP READING, MUST FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT'. So, good choice! The sequence with Miller and Holden trapped on a small space station trying to sneak their way past zombie hordes is one of the most thrilling I've read in ages. Leviathan Wakes is the first book in a series (apparently it was originally supposed to be a trilogy, but there's currently eight books out with at least one more planned, along with a batch of short stories) and has also become a show on the Syfy network that I haven't seen. I feel like I've spent a lot of this review complaining, but honestly I mostly enjoyed the book and am planning to read the sequels. The fact that people seem to like the characters from future books more than these ones certainly doesn't hurt! Pig/Pork: Archaeology, Zoology and Edibility by Pia Spry-Marques. A nonfiction book about everything remotely related to the farming and eating of pigs. I expected from the subtitle and the author's personal background that archaeology would be the main focus, but it turns out that's really only the first two chapters, which cover the Paleolithic hunting of wild boar and the original domestication of pigs. The other chapters turn to topics as diverse as experiments on feeding farmed pigs leftovers from restaurants, the spread of foot-and-mouth disease, a special Spanish ham called ibérico de bellota which can only be fed acorns, genetically modifiying pigs so their manure would contain less phosporus, sunburn in pigs, minature pet pigs, organ donation between humans and pigs, the terrifying tapeworms to be acquired from eating raw pork, why pork is a 'white' meat, how to make sausages, theories on why pork is neither halal nor kosher, the use of an enzyme from pig pancreases in wine production, EU food-safety regulations on traditional pork dishes, Cuba's 'Bay of Pigs', the Pig War between the US and Canada in 1859, and Oliver Cromwell's favorite pig breed. Basically if it has the remotest connection to the title, Spry-Marques has included it. She even includes recipes for each chapter, though some of them are clearly more for amusement than actual consumption – I can't imagine anyone having just finished a chapter on how eating raw pork will give you cysts in your brain is eager to try figatellu, a type of uncooked sausage from France. And it would take a braver foodie than me to taste "Asian-inspired pork uterus with green onion and ginger". In fact, as is probably not surprising for any book which touches on factory farming however briefly, you will probably come away not wanting to eat pork at all for a while. Spry-Marques's writing is breezy and conversational, which kept me turning the pages even when the structure was a bit scattered. I wish it were more focused, but it's a great book for anyone who enjoys popular science, history, or food writing. I read this as an ARC via NetGalley. Song of Blood & Stone by L. Penelope. A YA fantasy novel with some unusual elements. Rather than being set in vaguely medieval England or a dystopian sci-fi future, we're in a country where the technology seems to be around 1900: cars and electric lights exist, but they're restricted to rich cities, and someone coming from rural poverty might well have never seen either. Magic exists, but comes from one's heritage; you're either born with it or not. In Elsira, where our story is set, it's rare to the point of nonexistence. Our heroine Jasminda, however, does have magic, due to her father having been a refugee from the neighboring country of Lagrimar, where magic is common. Elsira and Lagrimar have been constantly at war for hundreds of years, but are separated by a magical Barrier which allows no one to pass through, except on rare occasions when a temporary breach happens and violence erupts. Elsirans are light-skinned and Lagrimari are dark-skinned, so Jasminda has dealt with fairly severe racism throughout her life. The story starts when Jasminda runs across Jack, a Elsiran soldier just back from spying in Lagrimar who has super important information that must get back to the capital as soon as possible; unfortunately Jack has just been shot and is closely pursued by a troop of Lagrimari soldiers. Jasminda and Jack team up, fall in love, and try to prevent the coming outbreak of war. The most revealing thing I can say about Song of Blood & Stone is that it's very, very YA. (As you could probably guess, what with its title that fits exactly into the pattern of the 'YA title' meme currently going around tumblr.) Almost everything that happens is easily predictable from the back cover (Jack's long-withheld backstory is clearly supposed to be a shocking twist, but it's obvious from the moment he appears), the prose is mediocre but fine, good and bad guys are clearly signalled, the real world parallels (racism, treatment of refugees, domestic abuse) are good-hearted but extremely Social Justice 101. On the plus side, the beginning was the worst part and it got better and better as it went along; several developments near the very end were so interesting that I'm tempted to read the sequel, despite my initial boredom. Overall it's not a bad book, but I'd only recommend it to people who are extremely affectionate of the most repetitive tropes of the YA genre. I read this as an ARC from a GoodReads giveaway.

[DW link for easier commenting]

[esprit-de-corps-magazine]

ON TARGET: The Canadian Military is Not a Delivery Service

By Scott Taylor

Last week it was announced that the Canadian military has received formal orders to participate in planning the nationwide distribution of the COVID-19 vaccinations.

In an interview with the Canadian Press, Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance admitted that long before the order was delivered the Canadian Armed Forces had been preparing for such an eventuality.

It was also announced that Major-General Dany Fortin will be commanding the Canadian military response team at National Defence Headquarters. Fortin’s most recent posting was in Iraq where he headed up the NATO mission to train Iraqi soldiers.

By all accounts, Fortin is a charismatic and extremely capable officer and at his initial press briefings he has proven to be very telegenic.

From a government public relations perspective this has been a very successful formula. The CAF has earned the trust and respect of the Canadian public to the point that simply handing over responsibility to the military and having an officer in uniform command the operation appeases our pandemic-fearing population.

The problem with this equation is that the military solution to vaccine distribution provides little in the way of actual resources. The challenge of rolling out vaccines across Canada is both logistical and medical.

The military does have an entire Logistics Branch and a truck fleet. However they have no where near the distribution capacity of existing private sector companies like Purolator, FedEx, UPS & DHL just to name a few.

The military also does not possess the specialized refrigeration equipment necessary to store and transport some of the vaccines.

It was reported that one asset the CAF could use would be its fleet of cargo aircraft – either the C-17 Globemasters or the C-130 Hercules – to rapidly deliver vaccines to Canada from either the U.S. or Europe.

One would think it would be far more efficient and cost effective to ship these vaccines using private sector airfreight companies. The aviation industry has been economically hard hit by the pandemic and using air force planes to deliver freight would only further exacerbate their lost revenue.

In terms of a medical challenge, one of the biggest concerns will be in determining who receives the vaccines first, and who in turn is to wait in line the longest.

Despite his sterling career and many martial accomplishments MGen Fortin does not have a doctorate of medical ethics on his resume. He is an artillery officer who commanded troops in Iraq.

Of course Fortin can add a civilian medical ethicist to his team but this is not currently a military profession. If Fortin is not a logistician nor a public health expert, other than disciplined leadership what exactly is he contributing to the vaccine distribution task force?

This observation should in no way be interpreted as slight to the capabilities of the men and women of the CAF and certainly not to Fortin personally. I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the CAF is not among the best militaries in the world – it is the best in the world.

What they are not is a delivery company with a nationwide distribution network.

I do believe the military will be able to assist in bringing the vaccination teams into remote regions and for this they are uniquely qualified and equipped. However we have to remember that such aid to the civil power, which has also included flood relief and fighting forest fires, is not the primary role of the CAF.

The CAF personnel are just as susceptible to the COVID-19 virus as the civilian population and their close proximity workspaces (ships, aircraft, barracks etc) means that any outbreak could spread through their ranks like a wildfire.

The raison d’etre of the CAF is to provide a combat force capable of defending Canada’s interests at home and abroad.

As much as it seems to reassure us to have a uniformed soldier handing out vaccines, it would make more sense if that same delivery were made by a guy in a Purolator jacket.

[sinrau]

The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.

Jeffrey Goldberg 5:32 PM ET

Donald Trump greets families of the fallen at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day 2017.Chip Somodevilla / Getty

When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.

Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.

Belleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” He also said that he didn’t understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies.

Trump’s understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and sacrifice have interested me since he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. “I like people who weren’t captured.”

There was no precedent in American politics for the expression of this sort of contempt, but the performatively patriotic Trump did no damage to his candidacy by attacking McCain in this manner. Nor did he set his campaign back by attacking the parents of Humayun Khan, an Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Trump remained fixated on McCain, one of the few prominent Republicans to continue criticizing him after he won the nomination. When McCain died, in August 2018, Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of this event, “We’re not going to support that loser’s funeral,” and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. “What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser,” the president told aides. Trump was not invited to McCain’s funeral. (These sources, and others quoted in this article, spoke on condition of anonymity. The White House did not return earlier calls for comment, but Alyssa Farah, a White House spokesperson, emailed me this statement shortly after this story was posted: “This report is false. President Trump holds the military in the highest regard. He’s demonstrated his commitment to them at every turn: delivering on his promise to give our troops a much needed pay raise, increasing military spending, signing critical veterans reforms, and supporting military spouses. This has no basis in fact.”)

Trump’s understanding of heroism has not evolved since he became president. According to sources with knowledge of the president’s views, he seems to genuinely not understand why Americans treat former prisoners of war with respect. Nor does he understand why pilots who are shot down in combat are honored by the military. On at least two occasions since becoming president, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his views, Trump referred to former President George H. W. Bush as a “loser” for being shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II. (Bush escaped capture, but eight other men shot down during the same mission were caught, tortured, and executed by Japanese soldiers.)

When lashing out at critics, Trump often reaches for illogical and corrosive insults, and members of the Bush family have publicly opposed him. But his cynicism about service and heroism extends even to the World War I dead buried outside Paris—people who were killed more than a quarter century before he was born. Trump finds the notion of military service difficult to understand, and the idea of volunteering to serve especially incomprehensible. (The president did not serve in the military; he received a medical deferment from the draft during the Vietnam War because of the alleged presence of bone spurs in his feet. In the 1990s, Trump said his efforts to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases constituted his “personal Vietnam.”)

On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security, and who would, a short time later, be named the White House chief of staff. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America’s most recent wars. Kelly’s son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son’s grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly’s grave, turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” Kelly (who declined to comment for this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America’s all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.

“He can’t fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself,” one of Kelly’s friends, a retired four-star general, told me. “He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there’s no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There’s no money in serving the nation.” Kelly’s friend went on to say, “Trump can’t imagine anyone else’s pain. That’s why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he’s buried.”

I’ve asked numerous general officers over the past year for their analysis of Trump’s seeming contempt for military service. They offer a number of explanations. Some of his cynicism is rooted in frustration, they say. Trump, unlike previous presidents, tends to believe that the military, like other departments of the federal government, is beholden only to him, and not the Constitution. Many senior officers have expressed worry about Trump’s understanding of the rules governing the use of the armed forces. This issue came to a head in early June, during demonstrations in Washington, D.C., in response to police killings of Black people. James Mattis, the retired Marine general and former secretary of defense, lambasted Trump at the time for ordering law-enforcement officers to forcibly clear protesters from Lafayette Square, and for using soldiers as props: “When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution,” Mattis wrote. “Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.”

Another explanation is more quotidian, and aligns with a broader understanding of Trump’s material-focused worldview. The president believes that nothing is worth doing without the promise of monetary payback, and that talented people who don’t pursue riches are “losers.” (According to eyewitnesses, after a White House briefing given by the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford, Trump turned to aides and said, “That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?”)

Yet another, related, explanation concerns what appears to be Trump’s pathological fear of appearing to look like a “sucker” himself. His capacious definition of sucker includes those who lose their lives in service to their country, as well as those who are taken prisoner, or are wounded in battle. “He has a lot of fear,” one officer with firsthand knowledge of Trump’s views said. “He doesn’t see the heroism in fighting.” Several observers told me that Trump is deeply anxious about dying or being disfigured, and this worry manifests itself as disgust for those who have suffered. Trump recently claimed that he has received the bodies of slain service members “many, many” times, but in fact he has traveled to Dover Air Force Base, the transfer point for the remains of fallen service members, only four times since becoming president. In another incident, Trump falsely claimed that he had called “virtually all” of the families of service members who had died during his term, then began rush-shipping condolence letters when families said the president was not telling the truth.

Trump has been, for the duration of his presidency, fixated on staging military parades, but only of a certain sort. In a 2018 White House planning meeting for such an event, Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. “Nobody wants to see that,” he said.

Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’

[citizenaycock]

The Master (2012) | Written and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Intro and Technical Details

I try to figure out why I gravitate to certain films.  Most of the time, it’s after someone asks me what my favorites are. I tell them, and then 90% of the time they don’t understand why I like those particular films. I’ve asked myself if it’s just some kind of wanna-be elitist, cinephile phoniness or something...but that’s not it.  The reason I love films like The Master is due to their elusiveness.  The Master shows you an approximate direction, but doesn’t overtly tell you what the answer is. In my eyes, this places it in a special category of cinema which is mysterious and often transcendent.  It has something profound to say about us as humans and morphs with each viewing.  It is alive because it doesn’t spoon-feed you an agenda or proposed concrete “truth” or “moral lesson”. My goal in this post is to take what I know and implement my personal thoughts and film knowledge to try to gain a better understanding of what this film is.  This is my third post analyzing a film of my choosing.  The first was about two women (Persona), the second was about a man and a woman (Cold War) and The Master is about two men. When people ask me what my favorite movie is, I tell them The Master by Paul Thomas Anderson.  This is also PTA’s favorite film of his own.  I remember the first time I watched it was at the NoHo Laemlle Theater a couple of blocks from where I live, right off of Magnolia, which happens to be the title of the first Paul Thomas Anderson film I ever watched.  But while watching The Master that day in the theater, I remember feeling lost and dumb.  I knew A LOT was happening but I didn’t know what. It left me behind.    As a short filmmaker, when I first started (around the time The Master came out) I would just have stuff in my films (images, sounds, lines, etc) that were superfluous and didn’t have any legitimate reason for existing.  My intentions were good...I was trying to create an atmosphere, even though a lot of the attempted atmosphere didn’t connect to the story or the idea being examined.  I think it’s because a lot of the movies I was watching during that time I didn’t understand.  I didn’t know why the director was making the detailed choices he or she was making.  I still don’t always know the reason, but I do have a better idea. I must’ve thought these choices were just there spontaneously or by accident...for style-sake maybe!  I was just going along the ride without consciously considering the nuanced decisions the director or actors were making.  And oddly enough, this particular film is about a cult called “The Cause” and every cult’s main philosophy-based objective (in some odd form or fashion) seems to be to awaken your consciousness to yourself and/or to reality.  If one is a film lover, and is so inclined to dig into this film, I believe one must watch consciously to understand it and not just go on the ride.  And at first glance, one might make the mistake of thinking there is no rhyme or reason for certain moments, but Anderson is a filmmaker that does a vast amount of research and is very aware of what he’s packing in there.  A literary example (which is much more elusive) is Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce.  Many believe Joyce was just goofing around with words, but if you read Joseph Campbell’s Skeleton Key or do some independent research on each phrase and term (if you have 10 years), one will realize there is meaning within the puns and riddles and melding-words. Finnegan’s Wake is a circular book and I believe The Master is a circular film.  Finnegan begins again and I believe Freddie begins again.   Roger Ebert gave the film 2.5 out of 4 stars and I love the first two sentences of his review: “Paul Thomas Anderson’s "The Master" is fabulously well-acted and crafted, but when I reach for it, my hand closes on air. It has rich material and isn't clear what it thinks about it.”   Of course, I disagree mostly.  I agree that the material is rich, but I think it’s clear what it thinks about itself more than Ebert thinks...and I’ll elaborate on this opinion throughout this detailed post.  The next sentence in the review (after the quote above) is about how the Dodd character is based on L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, but how in the film there is no clear vision of what the cult is or what it becomes.  I believe we see quite a bit of what it is and we see that it has expanded to England by the end of the film.  The film never lays out the exact tenets of the cult in list form, but Dodd himself is making it up as he goes along and this is expressed multiple times in the film.  I also believe enough is revealed to get a fairly good idea of the cult’s philosophy and the methods being used for “curing”. Also, in my opinion, I don’t think understanding “The Cause” is entirely relevant to what the film is trying to say.  The film is mainly about the symbiotic relationship of the two main characters, Freddie and Lancaster.   I rewatched There Will be Blood last night (Anderson’s film before The Master) and the thought came to me that you have to watch the expressions of the characters closely during these films and follow what’s happening inside of them.  This seems so obvious to point out, and could definitely apply to any film-watching experience, but the acting in Anderson’s films is so strong and subtle one will be lost unless you watch the silent moments and what the faces show you. I'm really trying to pick the right words to express this...but you have to consciously tell yourself while watching (in your thoughts) what’s happening with these complex characters if you want to understand the transitions. I don’t think the camera movements are as important in The Master nor the lighting, but it’s the characters’ internal life expressed in their faces manifesting from their psychological states, needs and wants.  Of course, Freddie’s gait is a big part of his character and various body language from the all the characters are  important, but their faces tell you most of the story. Also, I believe some knowledge of Spiritualism is needed to bring to the table, but I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to understand what the film is trying to say.    But anyway, perhaps I’m over-explaining too soon.  I was trying to figure out how movies like this get away from people (including me) and cause so much confusion.   The last time I saw the film was about 6 months ago at The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood where the premiere was in 2012.  The screening I saw may have been the same 70mm print from the premiere, but I could be wrong.  I just tend to think there’s not too many 70mm copies out there.  The Master was the first fiction film in 16 years to be shot in 65mm and then 5mm is added for the audio track.  I didn’t know for a long time the reason why such a big film stock made a difference, but apparently it’s because more information can fit on each frame, therefore it’s crisper and more details can be seen...which makes it epic and ambitious and a filmmaker is really swinging for the fences if they use this big stock! Anyway, there was quite a large crowd at the Egyptian and I remember laughing at a few spots where no one else was and kinda had to pull myself back.  I also remember noticing a lot of things I hadn’t noticed before and I’m sure this will be the case when I rewatch it again for this post. Before getting into the film, I'd also like to mention I will probably come off as a bit of a fan boy in this excerpt.  It is because I believe Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the best filmmakers in the world of the past 25 years and has much to teach in a field that I’m passionate about.  Also, I believe The Master is a master-piece and there are new interpretations of depth and reference that I am still uncovering (or think I’m uncovering).

Freddie Quell, Navy Man at Sea

The opening shot is of aqua blue water behind the back of a ship, which is also the dominant color in the palette of the film and the color I think of when I think about the film.  Johnny Greenwood’s score crashes in and then we see the first shot of Freddie Quell in a bunker with a military helmet on.  I can’t remember where I read it but Paul Thomas Anderson told Joaquin Phoenix to mimic the monkey in the hot spring from the documentary Baraka for this shot, which also coincidentally was filmed in 65mm.  I’m sure it's partly a nod to the film’s use of the same stock size, but I also think it's covertly setting us up for Freddie’s animal-like nature...or pointing to the animal-like nature of war and how this particular primate, Freddie, is expected to change his entire behavior, which is attempted by Lancaster Dodd throughout the film.  Simplistically put, Freddie indulges in his animal nature.  Dodd denies it.  A dichotomy that will also act as a magnet between the two throughout the film and something that I will point out several times.    Also, we wonder if war broke Freddie or was Freddie already broken? Or is he actually “broken” at all??  

We immediately see that Freddie drinks heavily and how he is markedly different from the other soldiers in the group.  He takes things too far and is much cruder than the others.  He drunkenly simulates sex with the nude sand woman the guys have made and then masterbates into the ocean.  He then lays down and closes his eyes next to the sand sculpture bosom, almost oedipal-like, sweetly spooning its side.  This exact same image will pop up again and I believe it holds a large significance in the key to understanding the film.  

It is next revealed Freddie can make booze out of pretty much anything as he drains what looks to be the ship’s missile fuel into a cup.  This also seems to be Freddie’s way of making friends with the other troops, as it is simultaneously announced that World War II is over.   The camera scans the room and shows all the interesting yet shell-shocked faces of the troops as it’s explained to them by their superior they are now able to enter the world.  They are told they can now open up their own businesses with the skills they’ve acquired.  This doesn’t come off so much as anti-war, but obviously points out that a lot of these men are damaged psychologically, and the military either comes off as naive or willfully ignorant regarding the mental state of the guys entering the world post-service.  This is magnified by a comical scene of Freddie sitting in a room with a hardened military psychologist who shows him rorschach blots as Freddie interprets every single one as extremely sexual.  Phoenix is amazing in these closeups and the camera is able to hold on him for long periods of time.  This was after his fake retirement from acting and I think he was hungry for this film.  His face is gnarled with lines. He has this mumble that’s slightly distracting but makes you lean in as he moves in and out of the camera’s shallow depth of focus.  This film has so many closeups and doesn’t include the long steadi-cam and dolly shots like in Boogie Nights or There Will be Blood.  The comical scene is followed by a sad scene showing us that Freddie has some real psychological pain.  He talks little and very uncomfortably to another military psychologist about his family and an old sweetheart.  Freddie mumbles, “you can’t help me” and later sarcastically says, “thanks for the help”.  Later on we wonder if Dodd gives him real help opposed to these psychologists.

Freddie Enters the World

Freddie has a job as a photographer in a department store.  The portraits look lovely. The song underneath during this scene is perfect (”Get thee Behind Me, Satan” by Ella Fitzgerald). 

Freddie flirts with a woman that models clothes for customers.  He later then mixes some of his potion in a photo-chemical room like an Alchemist. They both drink from the flask and then kiss.  She shows him her breasts.  Freddie asks her to go out that night, which cuts to Freddie passed out drunk at the restaurant table and the woman annoyed.  

The next day Freddie is hung over at work and gets into a fight with a large male photo client.  Freddie comically runs from the man and throws various items at him while dodging and weaving behind columns.  The camera covers the commotion in wide shot in the department store so well! Then Freddie does something peculiar and funny by grabbing the hand of the model (his date from the night before) like he’s leaving the job and she’s coming with him.  She looks at him baffled as they hurry out.   Music comes in perfectly here (once again) with a jagged discontinuity of woodwinds which takes us to Freddie now working in a lettuce field in Salinas, California.  The shift to this new, vastly different environment is dreamlike.  Freddie continues to make booze and gives some to an older man that Freddie says looks like his father.  The man gets ungodly drunk and Freddie is run out of the work group after being accused of poisoning the man, which leads to one of my favorite shots of the film.  It is a long tracking shot of Freddie running through a foggy field away from the workers chasing him.  I liked it so much I tried to slightly copy it while shooting a silly annual family short film in a cotton field in Texas, also running away from farmers.   And worth mentioning (assuming my short film is worth mentioning), I remember reading somewhere that Paul Thomas Anderson read about the life of John Steinbeck (from Salinas, CA) and incorporated some of the stories in The Master. 

The Master (2012) Paul Thomas Anderson (Panavision 65mm)

The Jackel (2016) Cory Aycock (Canon 7D Crop Sensor)

Freddie Meets “The Cause”

Next, it cuts directly to Freddie walking on a dock, looking cold and dejected. In the distance is a boat docked with a lively party and warm lighting.  Music plays and we get our first glimpse of Lancaster Dodd. He dances charismatically with his wife in the middle of an admiring group as Freddie, the misfit loner, decides to sneak onto the boat.  The boat is then shown setting out to sea, which looks to be departing from San Francisco under the Bay Bridge.  

The next morning, Freddie is hungover and has a humorous conversation with Lancaster, the leader of “The Cause”. Such a great opening scene with these two and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is so great in this role.  I think it’s his best performance...but I’m biased. As mentioned, the conversation is humorous, but not funny-haha.  Again, I will try to explain as best I can what I feel when watching some of these scenes... They talk in such a way, not necessarily about funny stuff, but they are such characters and there’s such chemistry it puts a smile on your face.  You see the inner-game they are both playing and it’s delightful to watch.  They are opposites, which creates this lively synthesis and makes you laugh sometimes, but also gives you such a large mindscape to enter during these rich, concentrated dialogue sessions.   In this first conversation, Lancaster and Freddie both mention that the other seems familiar, which comes back later.  Their association is sweet yet ridiculous at times.  A likable naivety exists, but also a sense of intrigue and darkness lies underneath. Dodd tells Freddie, “I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher...but above all I am a man...A hopelessly inquisitive man, just like you.”  And shortly after calls Freddie a scoundrel, but asks him to make more of his secret booze.        A young Rami Malek, Clark, pops up next in the film and is marrying Lancaster’s daughter, Elizabeth.  The first interaction we see between Hoffman and Malek feels like a Tom Cruise-like stareoff.  Malek stares until Hoffman ducks his head in slight awkwardness.  This trivial detail always catches my attention and I’m not sure why. Lancaster gives a speech after the ceremony in triangular blocking.  This is my favorite speech of Dodd’s in the film.  He is at his most charismatic and funny here, in my opinion, and touches on some of the philosophies of “The Cause” in symbolic terms.  He talks about lassoing a dragon and then teaching it stay, then roll over and play dead. I’m almost positive this serves as a metaphor for taming the ego and/or reactionary mind, then learning how to navigate life playfully following this “enlightenment”.  Freddie shifts in his drunkeness from confusion to laughter while continuing to compulsively drink all the alcohol in sight counter to the simultaneous speech.  

Although, Lancaster loves Freddie’s booze and, again, secretly asks for some after the speech.  Freddie’s process of procuring this solution is somewhat like a mad alchemist and shown multiple times in the film. To me, this could metaphorically point to some type of alchemy forming between the two opposite characters considering the psychological and metaphysical tone of the film. It is also revealed the next morning by Amy Adams’ character, Peggy (Dodd’s wife), that Freddie inspires something in Dodd and he has been writing much more since Freddie showed up.  Peggy has asked Freddie to sit with her at breakfast, possibly to see what it is about him that could possibly spark this insight in her husband.  Despite this, I don’t think Peggy sees anything special in Freddie and doesn’t understand their relationship for the remainder of the film.  Actually no one, besides maybe Elizabeth, sees anything worthy in Freddie at all other than Dodd.  I believe this is because Freddie fills a unique gap within Dodd.    I will expand on this more later, but to me it’s obvious Freddie is filling the gap of the id.  Freddie is a scoundrel, an open drunk, a philanderer and a wanderer.  These are things Dodd isn’t.  He forbids himself of being this and Freddie is counter to this persona of Dodd’s, who is a leader, married and always ON.  He is relied upon by his followers, always maintaining his status as prophet for the cult...perhaps the superego. Soon it is revealed there are “processing” sessions occurring on the ship, recording “past lives”.  Everything is being put on tape of what people are saying during these sessions.  Freddie humorously navigates the ship during all of this.  At one point he sits at a table and puts on some headphones and it’s Lancaster’s voice deliberately stating,  “We are not animals.”  “We are not a part of the animal kingdom.” Simultaneously, Freddie looks across the table at a young woman and passes her a dirty sexual note.  She goes back to work as Freddie watches her.  The sun behind him shines through the window and perfectly peaks behind Freddie’s head.  This is what I meant at the beginning of the post...the film is showing you something regarding the ideas it is trying to express.  In this moment it’s not necessarily just in the face of the character, but in what Dodd says in the headphones in direct opposition to Freddie’s sexual note and then the sun winking at us from behind. For some reason, it makes me cringe to analyze some of these moments... demystifying and deflating the “magic” of these details.   

The distinction of “animal” pops up periodically a few more times in the film on the account of Dodd. Again, Freddie (the animal) and Lancaster (the divine) forming a fully whole being.  Now, at the 36 minute mark, the best scene between two actors sitting across from each other at a table I’ve ever seen.  It reminds me a bit of the scene in Persona where the two women sit across the table from one another when they meld. They also repeat the dialogue here like in Persona and Dodd dresses down Freddie similar to Alma’s dressing down of Elisabet.  The face lighting in this scene is also similar, half-lighting the characters but in a dark Charlie Rose-like room directly counter to the white background in Persona.   The scene begins by Freddie being processed after a drink with Lancaster.  Lancaster asks him probing questions about his life and records it.  The scene is funny, dark, raw and nuanced.  I can’t say enough about this scene, there is so much here.  Phoenix moves and looks around.  Hoffman stays still, centered, not breaking eye contact.   The first time around, Freddie doesn’t take it seriously and farts in the middle of them talking.  Lancaster playfully calls him a “silly animal” and ends the processing session soon after by turning off the recorder.  Freddie seems disappointed and wants to do it again. Lancaster sets up the rules this time and tells him he is not allowed to blink during the questioning. Freddie agrees.  In somewhat Mesiner-like fashion they continue the exercise in a long closeup on Freddie.  Phoenix is amazing here and at one points slaps his face multiple times after he blinks.  They start over.  Tears roll down his face.  Apparently Freddie is severely troubled by his family past and recalls a sexual relationship he had with his Aunt.  Then he reveals he was in love with a girl in his hometown named Dorris.  It beautifully cuts from the black, heavy room to a bright sunny day and the white house where Dorris lives with colorful flowers in front.  This is a beautiful contrasting cut by Anderson transporting us.  Also, worth pointing out, is the contrast of how silly the scene started with farts and laughter, then taking us to this this deep, heavy pain within Freddie.

This is a unifying scene for Freddie and Lancaster.  And despite what we think about the legitimacy of the cult, some type of deep psychological progress with Freddie is being made here...a progress that was not even close to being accomplished with the military psychologists.   Or is this “progress”?  Feels like it.   As Freddie comes back from the flashback, it cuts to the aqua blue water again, similar to the opening shot of the film, perhaps personifying Freddie’s current mental state.  The color of Freddie’s shirt also matches the color of the water.

Again, there is a charming naivety within Lancaster regarding “The Cause” during his far-fetched final questioning lightening the mood before the two have a drink and smoke a Kool together.

Funny outtakes at the end of the scene.

Obviously, Dodd is modeled after L. Ron Hubbard, but I don’t think it's a nasty rebuke or hit piece, nor is it an exact replica.  I read Anderson and Tom Cruise remained friends after Anderson showed it to him.  If one thinks it’s mainly a film about Scientology then they are absolutely wrong.  It’s evident Anderson loves these characters in spite of all their flaws and complications.  Dodd remains a believer of his own philosophy throughout the film, which I think keeps him likable.  You also believe throughout he wants to help Freddie, even though some of that motivation may be ego-based or material for his writing.  He is misguided at times but cannot be broadly painted good or bad and does not come off as maliciously pumping out nonsense solely for monetary gain.  You believe he believes. 

Sea-Legs to Landlocked

The ship now arrives at New York City and the group attends a fancy party at a home.  You get the feeling this new spiritual movement is in vogue.  Freddie goes straight for the booze and also begins stealing random stuff around the house.  Lancaster schmoozes, then is shown performing a processing exercise for a woman laying on the couch for the party crowd.  This last time watching, I got the feeling Dodd was curious what she would say and that every session he conducts he secretly sees as an experiment, collecting more data for himself rather than having a fully realized philosophy or completed methodology.  

I’ve read Dianetics, so I do believe I have more insight into what’s going on in some of these scenes than a regular viewer.  Although, I also believe the information is already there in the scenes if one pays close enough attention. And I’ll say it again, “The Cause” is not a carbon copy of Scientology.  But, to generalize, the quest of both seems to be the same...to reach a state of “perfect” (or “clear”) by cutting through past traumatic memories and lifetimes (when the “analytic mind” was unconscious) in order to tame the current reactive mind. After processing, the woman on the couch talks about her past life and Dodd answers some of her questions.  Then, a naysayer from the party verbally challenges the legitimacy of Dodd’s claims.  "The Cause” is no longer confined to the vacuum chamber that is their boat.  Dodd raises his voice in anger and Peggy looks visibly rattled as well.  Lancaster eventually loses his cool after the naysayer continues to not back down and calls him a “Pigfuck”, which makes me laugh every time.  This is the first time we see Dodd lose his composure in the film.  Freddie is observing off to the side and throws a tomato at the guy, probably something Dodd wishes he could do.  The party guest is obviously convinced there is no way to have a logical discussion regarding “The Cause” with Dodd and he’s right.

A quick aside and personal story...the actor playing the Party Guest Naysayer is named Christopher Evan Welch.  I briefly worked backstage at the Mark Taper Forum in Downtown Los Angeles and Christopher was one of the actors in a play when I was working there.  During one of the shows, while waiting for his time to go back on stage, he sat with me for a while and asked me questions about what I wanted to do in the business and where I was from, etc.  I was still pretty green.  I remembered him being very nice and authentic. This must have been around the time he worked on The Master because it was in early 2012. The next year I found out that he died suddenly of Cancer. Hoffman died not too long after.  Very sad.  The full scene is below with Welch and Hoffman:

Dodd and Peggy are upset now in their room after this fiasco.  Dodd writes furiously as Peggy speaks, putting words to their anger, completely flabbergasted by this mild rebuke. The whole group is bent out of shape, shaken by this challenge.  Freddie, next door, elects to take Rami Malek’s character (Clark) to the naysayer’s room to rough him up and they do (or Freddie does).  

The next day Dodd pretends to scold Freddie, but it’s obvious he’s glad he did it.  Again, Freddie being the id that is unrestrained and not held down by social convention in direct opposition to Dodd’s persona.  This is where something similar comes in comparable to Scientology, because Scientologists are known to go after naysayers, sometimes aggressively.    The group nows arrives at a large house in Philadelphia belonging to Laura Dern’s character, Helen.  Everyone gets out of the car like a big happy family visiting relatives and you really feel the warmth of their community here.  Different courses and talks are being held at the home.  Dodd’s daughter, Elizabeth, makes a move on Freddie during one of the talks and Freddie resists.  She is a redhead just like his past sweetheart Dorris.  In the previous scene, Freddie was ready to go find the naysayer and Clark seemed apprehensive until Elizabeth gave him a look to go.  She seems to like Freddie’s aggression.  Plus, perhaps, her father’s closeness with Freddie has something to do with this attraction. There are moments when Freddie’s face, with all it’s interesting lines, drifts to another place and the sound completely fades as Anderson holds the shot on Phoenix in closeup.  Anderson does tons of planning and research, but you get the feeling on the day during filming he’s constantly looking to catch moments of spontaneity and it seems this choice to hold on Phoenix during this particular moment is a good example.

Freddie continues to get completely wasted alone amongst the others, shown during a party as Lancaster sings and holds court.     The scene afterwards always makes me laugh really hard (no pun intended) when Peggy jerks Lancaster off in the sink while making him agree not to drink anymore of Freddie’s booze.  She continues to jerk and tells Lancaster if he’s going to cheat on her to not let her or anyone else she knows find out.  Lancaster eventually comes and doubles over as he lets out a few violent pleasurable yelps.  This is the closest to the animal side we see of Dodd, and this spirited release may point to the pressure build-up.        Peggy then walks into the dark room where Freddie is passed out and tells him there will be no more boozing. He reluctantly agrees upon waking. Yet the next scene (the next day) shows Freddie continuing to drink heavily on the sneak.  The Philadelphia Police show up at the house suddenly to arrest Dodd for running a medical school without a license.  Dodd gives himself up relatively calmly and in contrast Freddie fights wildly with several police who violently wrestle him to the ground and handcuff him.   Then there is a wonderful scene following, setting up the two protagonists’ contrast in temperament even more when Freddie is hauled in and put in the cell next to Dodd. Dodd is cooly standing still and calmly leaning on his bunk.  Freddie is abruptly being dragged in by four officers, and immediately starts DESTROYING his cell as Dodd just observes.  Dodd possibly feels this rage inside but has elected to consciously watch his rage rather than react as Freddie is.     Then the two get in a hilarious, childish yelling match after Dodd tries to explain to Freddie why he is how he is.  He tells Freddie the cause of his affliction is due to an implant from millions of years ago and that he is asleep (lining up with Scientology).  Freddie isn’t having it and says he’s just making it all up as he goes along, echoing what Dodd’s son said to Freddie on the porch right before the police showed.  Dodd yells back that no one likes Freddie except for him.  Both of the characters have told each other a truth.  Dodd then says he’s done with him and begins peeing in his cell toilet.  Yet Freddie has no pot to piss in because he’s destroyed his cell, including his toilet.  In fact, he may have also destroyed his relationship with Dodd, which would likely mean he will not have a pot to piss in for quite some time.  

During a quick arraignment scene with Dodd, the Judge orders him to repay the $11,000 he took and gives him this look that has so much character and makes me smile every time.  He cuts his eyes up in this humorously scolding way as he simultaneously hits the gavel.   With these great films and directors and actors, you learn that even the smallest scene is packed with so much richness and detail and not wasted!

Dodd is now at the dinner table with his family.  Freddie is still in jail.  The family open up to Dodd voicing their concerns regarding Freddie.  They want him gone.  Dodd says they must try and help Freddie get well, perhaps Dodd trying to find a way to keep him around. Now a wide shot outside of the Philadelphia house.  Dodd is sitting up on the porch with several others and there is a little girl on a tricycle in the foreground below the steps.  Freddie sheepishly approaches the house after being let out of jail like the prodigal son.  Dodd cooly embraces him.  The little girl runs up the steps into the house.  The two men then start wrestling like little boys in the yard, the two halves reconciled, laughing hysterically. 

Freddie Quell, Patient of The Cause

Freddie is now being “treated” and/or administered tests in front of about 30 people in the house to “cure” him. Dodd tells him to go from one end of the room to the other, to feel the wood wall and describe it, then walk over to the glass window, feel it and describe it too.  He continues this over and over.  

Paul Thomas Anderson is a filmmaker that walks in front of you and you have to catch up.  He does this by overloading your mind with scenes that just start and don’t have a lead-up.  You have to wait, then you find out.  The strength of the music, cinematography and acting lays so much subtext in front of you, it can keep you from following what’s actually happening...which, oddly, I feel is part of what great cinema is.  It’s a great distraction...a created atmosphere so thick that one can be swept away by it if they don’t watch out.  For example, the first time I watched this film I thought I had an idea what was happening, then I realized I was wrong, but I had already overthought in the wrong direction so far I became completely lost and just sat there asking myself even more wrong questions in my head about what was going on until the credits rolled.  I did the same thing in the same theater with Inherent Vice a few years later.  In the next scene there is another exercise where Freddie sits across from Clark and is not to react to anything he says, including personal insults.  He cannot react in any way (laugh or talk, etc) or Dodd will start over the exercise.  This reminds me of the Synanon Cult and their ”Attack Therapy”.  The cult used to be located in Santa Monica where the hotel Casa Del Mar is now and I’m sure Anderson had heard of them growing up in LA.  Clark immediately says “Dorris” and Freddie breaks right away, looking to Dodd knowing Dodd told Clark to say this.  Dodd replies, “Fail” and they have to start over.  In my opinion (and I think I’m right) Dodd wants Freddie to get to a point of non-reactivity, possibly closer to a state of “clear”.  All the individual’s insecurities are placed in the forefront consciousness (also why they record everything) and then the individual has to face these thoughts head-on until the past is dealt with and the former traumatic memories no longer abscond the self, opening the individual to infinity.  The individual must face the shadow in other words, becoming whole by “mastering it”...taming the reactive mind or “dragon” as mentioned in Dodd’s speech at the wedding.  Once the dragon is tamed then one can teach it to “roll over and play dead”. Am I being indoctrinated too??

Next, Peggy reads Freddie sexually explicit passages from a book in a Demme-like closeup and Freddie is not supposed to react or say anything.    Dodd excludes Freddie from eating lunch with the group and makes him stay inside the house continuing the exercises where he continually has to walk back and forth and feel the wood wall and window over and over again. Freddie is at a point now where he names the wall and window random things like “moss”, “rocks” and “barbed wire” as he touches them.  My guess is this is an exercise to break down his sense of language....or just break down his mind, because it’s obvious to Dodd he needs to be broken down.  I also think Dodd is using this as an experiment for his methods to see what “works”.   He watches from outside as Freddie, alone, continues to walk back and forth.  The camera pushes in on Dodd and his expression is one of curiosity as well as remorse, yet still barks out orders, “Back again!”.  

Shortly after, he explains to Freddie that it is a slow, hard process and Freddie looks mentally exhausted.  But, eventually, Freddie starts making progress and is becoming stronger.  Is it really working? Rami Malek (Clark) is so monotone and annoying here, it really shows Freddie has to be strong to take his insults during the exercises.  Peggy even shows compassion for Freddie at one point, one of his biggest naysayers throughout the film.   To shift to something technical for a second, I love how the flicker of the film looks in these closeups on Joaquin Phoenix!  You can really notice it in the 4K Version.  I also remember being very aware it was shot on film while watching the 70mm version at the Egyptian.  I know it’s very cool to like film, but I really do authentically enjoy the look of it.

Freddie now does the wall/window exercise with manic energy. There is one moment when Joaquin Phoenix is jumping up and down and almost hits his head on the chandelier’s metal point...and it looks as though Hoffman gets out of character for a sec to block Phoenix’s head that narrowly misses it. Freddie is back feeling the wall like he has hundreds of times, then goes over to the glass again, feels it and deeply says he can touch the neighbor’s plants...the stars...anything he wants... This is not a big moment magnified by a music cue or closeup, but Dodd says enthusiastically “End of application!” Freddie has succeeded in completing the exercise.  Perhaps Freddie has now transcended and touched infinity in Dodd’s opinion, realizing he can touch anything he wants (mental freedom), seeing the infinitude in something simple and ordinary like a glass window.  Perhaps he has gone through the iterations of the exercises enough to become “clear” (the word “clear” is never used in the film).   Dark, foreboding music now comes in during a shared hug between Lancaster and Freddie. In my opinion, the music foretells the bleakness of certainty Freddie is 100% cured.

In the next scene, Peggy announces that Dodd’s new book will be presented in Phoenix, Arizona.  After watching a few times, you realize that the work done with Freddie was most likely the catalyst for Dodd finishing the book after administering all the exercises.  The film obviously doesn’t come out and say this directly, but we know Freddie has inspired Dodd’s writing, his son earlier revealed that Dodd is just making it up as he goes along and this announcement about a new book comes directly after Freddie “successfully” completes the tests.  Also, is it a coincidence the city picked for the new book event is the last name of the actor playing Freddie, as well as the symbolic mythological bird that rises from the ashes after a rebirth?

Dodd and Freddie now are at a remote, desert location I assume is outside of Phoenix.  They dig up Dodd’s unpublished work that had been buried. Lancaster carries a gun and looks around to make sure no one’s watching or, maybe, if a magic event might manifest.  The score by Johnny Greenwood here is amazing.  Again, with the two characters in this scene there is a wonderful naivety regardless of the ridiculousness of digging up this essential manuscript for “The Cause”.  They are like two kid soldiers out in the great beyond full of wonder and purpose.  And the shirt Dodd is wearing in this scene is hilarious.  

“The Split Saber” is printed on the press.   Freddie takes pictures of Dodd, which are funny and sweet. I’ve included a pair of photos below that look to be influenced by photos taken of L. Ron Hubbard.

Everyone is gathered at the book event in Phoenix now.  Dodd sits in a side room and is visibly nervous.  There is a church vibe to the event.  The Master (Dodd) comes out on stage to cheers from the crowd.  Freddie sits in the middle listening intensely with a yearnful look on his face, perhaps hoping Dodd has a huge secret to reveal.  Unfortunately, Dodd just basically says some of the same stuff he’s said before and Freddie looks let down. Anderson’s closeups on Phoenix in shallow depth of field continue to be revealing and look magnificent! Freddie paces afterwards behind the stage, looking lost, angry and confused.  As you look at him, his pants, shirt and shoes are way too big.  Maybe because he had to borrow some decent clothes from Dodd.  Phoenix walks with Freddie’s unusual gait like a wounded clown.  A friend of The Cause from New York, Bill, who we’ve seen before, reveals to Freddie he thinks the book stinks.  Freddie asks Bill to go outside with him and just completely snaps and slaps Bill hard multiple times.  There is something comical about this.  It’s as if Freddie’s been holding this monster at bay and then just releases it all on poor ole Bill.  Freddie has a history of lashing out at naysayers of The Cause but I don’t believe this is the main reason for the attack.  I think Freddie now knows he is not “cured” or “clear” like previously thought.  I think the lack of answers he felt he was going to get from Dodd’s speech and book pushed him to this, knowing deep down Dodd doesn’t have all the answers like he expected.  In the following scene, Laura Dern’s character sweetly approaches Dodd sitting alone on stage after the event.  She confronts him about something he has changed in the book regarding the processing and seems very confused.  Dodd has a comically loud, insecure outburst displaying his lack of patience and also his unacceptance of criticism.  Obviously, Freddie and Lancaster both simultaneously react harshly when The Cause is questioned despite the contrasting prior exercises practicing non-reactivity.

Freddie Runs

Now Freddie, Lancaster, Clark and Elizabeth drive a car and a motorcycle out to a deserted lake bed.  On a personal note, I shot my latest short film’s biggest scene in a lake bed very similar...so similar I had to look it up online to see if it was the same one. It was not.  Anyway, I remember in Roger Ebert’s review he seemed to be perplexed by this scene and what it represented. I just think Dodd decided it would be a good idea to get away and blow off some steam with a motorcycle after the stressful book event. I personally really like this scene.  It’s funny, it’s visually interesting and there is a danger to it.   Dodd explains the game is to pick a point and then drive the motorcycle to that point. Dodd does this first.  Now it’s Freddie’s turn.  Freddie takes off and speeds away. Dodd does this funny thing in closeup where he puts his hand up to block the sun, watching Freddie ride, then goes to say something, stops himself, then eventually ends up yelling, “Freddie!!”  It’s something so small but Hoffman makes it so interesting and humorous and it’s hard to explain why.  In my Short Film, I start my scene at this similar location with my hand up looking in the distance, as a nod to this scene with Hoffman (3rd photo).

Freddie is long gone with the bike.  Dodd’s best friend has left him.  “No Other Love” by Joe Stafford comes in perfectly here.  It’s such a melancholy end to the scene and I just feel the song compliments it so eloquently.  It’s my favorite song of the film because of this and is in the trailer.  Freddie goes to the house of the girl he loved before going to the war.  He finds out Dorris is married now with kids and lives in Alabama.  He finds this out by talking to Dorris’ mother. Freddie missed his shot. The scene is slightly comical due to the dichotomy between the sweet, mannerly mother and Freddie’s pressing roughness and gnarled face.  It’s something I always notice and enjoy watching.  We are transported now to Freddie asleep alone (most likely drunk) in a movie theater.  You can hear Casper the Friendly Ghost in the background and see the flicker of the big screen on the sleeping Freddie and the empty seats around him.  There has to be a reason for the choice of Casper the Ghost, but I have no interesting theory why.   A theater concierge brings a phone to Freddie after waking him up.  It’s Dodd.  Either this is a supernatural moment in the film in which Dodd just happens to know where Freddie is (because they’re “tied”) or Freddie is being followed Scientology-style.  Freddie nor us know how Dodd knew he was there.  This made me think of an interview (somewhere) with PTA saying sometimes details in a film don’t have to make sense or have a definite answer.   Dodd asks Freddie to come to England where he currently has a school.  He says he misses Freddie and says he can cure him.  My guess is he’s had someone find and follow Freddie...unless the Casper the Ghost reference somehow hints at the supernatural spiritual “tie” Dodd mentions between him and Freddie and Dodd just “knew” he was there...but my theory connecting this may be too far of a stretch.  

On a Slow Boat to China...

Freddie is once again traveling on a boat, which has become a motif... Freddie adrift. We see the recognizable deep aqua water paired perfectly with Greenwood’s score.  The music, once again, adds so much here, producing a sense of  longing and beauty.

Freddie arrives at the school looking haggard and gaunt.  Jesse Plemons’ character (Dodd’s son) greets him with a wry smile of familiarity which soon turns to concern after examining Freddie’s appearance.  They walk down the burgeoning school hallway to Dodd.

Freddie enters with wild eyes to Dodd’s grand office.  Peggy sits off to the side and Dodd at his desk.  Freddie hands Dodd some Kool cigarettes and they hug.  Peggy immediately asks Freddie if he’s drunk, says he looks sick and says he’s not interested in getting better.  She storms out.  The two men share a smile after she leaves, but Dodd’s hands are tied.   It’s worth mentioning Amy Adams (as Peggy) was also nominated for an Oscar for her role and plays a sort of antagonist to Freddie.  Dodd’s book was not well received by close peers and perhaps this was due to Freddie’s influence and she saw this, maybe encouraging Dodd to cut ties because of Freddie’s negative influence and lack of dedication to The Cause.    You can see here Dodd loves Freddie very much.  This is scene is so good!   There is a lot of heart and power here in these closeups.  Dodd loves Freddie’s freedom. Freddie depends on Dodd for structure and meaning and a place to stay.  Dodd then says my favorite lines of the film,  “For if you figure a way to live without serving a master...any master...then let the rest of us know, will you?” With the risk of over-explaining, I’ll dive in with my thoughts... Dodd seems to think everyone has a Master...an obligation, a social role and something transcending mammalian daily life to quench existential and spiritual need.  But does Freddie have a Master?  I think Dodd thinks if anyone might know how to live without one then it would be Freddie.  Would this make Freddie “The Master” and not Dodd? Who is the prophet? Dodd calls him “a man navigating the seas, going wherever he pleases, paying no rent” and you realize Freddie’s steadfast gaze reveals a mastery of something...especially according to Dodd.   The culmination here of bringing to consciousness the pair of opposites in character form proves to be the thesis of the film.  This is not a film with a traditional story (perhaps that Ebert hoped to understand clearly) but a special situation between two men and how they fit together like puzzle pieces...two sides of the same coin...to the point where one might think it’s possible they did in fact know each another in a past life. Dodd mentions this upon meeting Freddie for the first time and Freddie agrees there is a mutual recognition.   Two inverses folding into one another creating something whole, for better or worse. Dodd goes on to explain that he finally figured out where they met in a previous lifetime and says if they meet again in the next life they will be sworn enemies.  Again, there is a lovely naivete here...and said with such earnestness.  And as mentioned before, it is easy to like Dodd because you believe that he believes what he says, even though we, the audience, are speculative.  Again, this is not a film about trying to figure out the legitimacy of a cult but about two men trying to navigate the world the best they can.  Dodd goes into great detail about their past life association.  In appearance, Dodd is so regal, reserved and groomed...so certain!   Freddie is mangled, gaunt and lost.    Dodd now begins to sing, which is funny and heart-breaking at the same time. It’s as if this is the best way he knows to express how he feels in the moment.   I remember the first time I watched this film in the Laemlle Theatre and there were a few laughs here.  I also remember watching this part when I was staying with my Dad and Stepmom one Christmas on HBO.  I just flipped through the channels and saw this scene and stopped to watch.  My Dad had never seen the film but watched this part with me and also chuckled a bit...not in a “that’s ridiculous” way, but in a concentrated way due to the intensity of Hoffman’s performance here. As the scene carries on, I again begin to wonder if these two really did meet in a previous life.  Or maybe it’s just so powerful because they both BELIEVE this past life was real, believing in a pre-destined reason for their association in this lifetime. 

Freddie has now left Dodd. He is out of the office walking alone in a row of trees leaving the school.  He goes to a bar, meets an English woman and they go to a room and have sex.  Both are fully naked in a very human way lit in natural light.  Two hominids in an animalistic act following the parting of Dodd who rejects the animal side for the fully divine.    He playfully tells the woman he has to ask her some questions and she can’t blink.  The processing scene is obviously still with Freddie and obviously PTA is aware of the power that scene held to call it back.  She plays along for a little bit but laughs quickly and breaks.   Now waltz music plays, circling back to Freddie on the beach where he was at at the beginning of the film, laying next to the sand woman in oedipal longing.  Did he dream all of this?? I have watched the film around 10 times and have never thought about this as much as I have this time around.  Of course, it’s ambiguous, but it could very well be true. And he did mention to Dodd in the England office he had a dream, but never got a chance to explain what the dream was.  Dodd then went on to talk about their past life association.    Anyway...the interpretation that I had come to previously was that Freddie has gone on this journey, but has ended right back where he started, meaning no amount of processing or methods to change his behavior can change his determinism.  He is what he is.  In fear of repeating this too much (which is never overtly stated in the film) humans cannot escape the fact that they are also of the animal kingdom.  I believe the first shot of Freddie in the film mimicing the monkey introduces this idea.  And Anderson doesn’t seem to care if the audience gets this first, coded, specific detail, but I believe there are enough clues throughout the film to make the animal comparisons to come to the same interpretation, as I’ve pointed out above multiple times to really bring my point home. Also, Freddie cannot escape how he may have suffered in the war, nor the trauma of his childhood, nor the loss of his sweetheart, Dorris, as he lays next to the breasts of the manufactured woman made of earth as the tide rolls in and out.  This is still with him in his memories, shaping his present, whether he deals with it or not.        And, more broadly speaking, perhaps all of this striving us humans engage in for self-mastery, and the constant modifications to ourselves to reach some pinnacle of “perfection”, we have built in our own minds is futile.  We just go in this big circle, this journey and we end up right where we started.  Are we “better”?  Are we different?  Are we “cured”?    Maybe.  Maybe not. 

To conclude, I’d like to mention that I’ve discovered pre-determination has loomed large in all three films I’ve written about on this page.  I’m not sure if it’s me or the films, but it has been the big picture idea I’ve come to on all three.  It also makes me think how cinema itself is made possible, by showing and shaping a world, often overtaking the individual characters’ will.  I believe this tells us something vital about our reality...cinema expressing transcendent ideas that can swallow up egoic identification, which is why films like this stick with you, pointing to something larger at play within the individual rather than solely the idea we have of ourselves.  

[eirianerisdar]

more obitine p l e a s e i want them to be happy (or at least not dead i'll take not dead)

Summary: This was supposed to be written a month ago, as a continuation of the Satine Lives AU that I wrote for a three-sentence fic prompt, but since I’ve been terribly busy, here we go. Set right after the end of ROTS (just corrected a typo there, I’d accidentally written ROTJ before), with everything the same except Satine’s continued existence.

(Also because, you know, anything in connection to Luke Kryze will always be awesome)

Characters: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Satine Kryze, Luke Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano (mentioned), Captain Rex (Mentioned)

Chapters: 1/1

I’ve cross posted this to ff.net!

The Question, Twenty Years Late

The war is over.

Satine stands alone on the palace balcony, and watches the afternoon sunlight glance off the glass towers of Sundari.

The people of Mandalore go about their ways in peace; Ahsoka, Rex, and their men have seen to that. Their last act as general and captain was to break the Siege of Mandalore, and return the system to Satine’s governance.

And then, in the midst of their post-battle laughter, came the order.

Satine remembers the minutes after the first declaration of order sixty-six with mind-numbing clarity.

There was confusion as the troopers not under Ahsoka’s direct command turned blasters towards her, and Ahsoka’s men reflexively raised theirs in return; there was blasterfire, and agonised screaming, one voice but from the mouths many men, brother, brother, why are you doing this-

Satine had wondered, later on, when Ahsoka and Rex and their surviving men have been rushed onto her fastest ship and sent blasting off into unknown space - whether her dream of two krayt dragons, brothers, tearing each other to pieces on black sand was truly simply a dream.

It had seemed too real.

Below Satine’s trembling feet, the palace walls are decorated with frescoes of dying Jedi, crushed under Mandalorian soldiers’ boots in millenia of war. And beyond this biodome, beyond Sundari, Mandalore is covered with dust ground from a billion soldiers’ bones.

The war is over, but at what cost?

Soon, Satine knows, the newly-self-declared emperor will send fresh troops to Mandalore, and ask for her sworn fealty.

It will fill her lips with gall to swear it; but she will have to. To do otherwise would be to condemn her people to extinction.

Her hands clench white and bloodless around the durasteel railing, and she fights the urge to lose her very insubstantial lunch over the balcony side.

Obi-Wan was on Utapau when it happened.

The holonet had been very vocal about his death.

She had not felt anything when she saw. She knew, in a way, that ten thousand Jedi had perished. That statistic, she could comprehend.

She could not, and cannot, comprehend Obi-Wan’s death.

The balcony doors slide open behind her, with hiss of compressed air. It sounds like the gasping breaths of a dying planet.

Satine closes her eyes against the afternoon sunlight, treacherous moisture prickling at her eyelashes, and waits for her attendant to announce the arrival of an Imperial Senate messenger, who will rip Mandalore from her like a child from her side.

But then, suddenly:

“Hello, there.”

Shock. Disbelief.

Satine turns in place.

Joy.

Utter, complete, rage-filled urge to slap the red-gold beard off that smirking face.

She stalks towards him, hands still clenched into fists, moisture that had welled in her eyes for another reason entirely suddenly breaking free into a torrent of furious tears. She might be snarling. She doesn’t care.

“Obi-Wan, you-”

He lifts calm, tired eyes to meet her tear-streaked gaze and says, with a little catch of humorous grief in his voice, “Shh, my dear, you’ll wake the baby.”

The-

Satine slides sharply to a stop, and stares at the little bundle in the crook of Obi-Wan’s arm.

“This is Luke,” Obi-Wan says, with that same strange lilt in his words. “My- my nephew.”

That raises many questions, but she does not voice them. Satine raises a finger, and brushes it along a pink cheek soft in slumber.

“Satine.” There is something new in Obi-Wan’s voice, now.

She looks at him, and reaches out gently to lower his hood. There is ash in his hair, and black sand speckled in his beard. His tunics, she notices for the first time, are scorched and worn. Her hands skitter over his cheekbones, his chin.

Obi-Wan smiles at her, a shadow of the cocksure grin that had stolen her heart across a campfire, almost two decades ago now, in the year of Mandalore’s civil war. “I’m not sure how to do this, and I’m probably doing it wrong,” he begins. “I know I’m supposed to have a ring, at least. I don’t. I’ve come to your doorstep with nothing but a scarred lightsaber and a baby.” His lips twitch, sardonically, as if realising the ridiculousness of that statement. “But if you’ll have me?”

That last sentence washes over Satine’s ears without entering them for a moment.

“You’re asking,” she says. It isn’t really a question.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan replies, gaze steady. “I’d kneel, but I’m holding Luke, so it would be somewhat awkward.”

“I…” Satine’s hands are frozen on Obi-Wan’s face.

“I once said I would have left the Order, had you said the word,” Obi-Wan murmurs, slipping a hand out from under Luke’s weight to clasp her hand where it rests on his cheekbone. “I know now why you did not - and I am asking a burden of you, to do this. I am asking you to raise a child not your own, and to marry a man who is a death sentence walking, for all the Empire’s intent. Forgive me for asking, but I think I have to.”

He falls silent with the air of a man awaiting either his pardon or his exile.

“What of attachment?” Satine says, softly.

“We were fools. Attachment, in the end, is simply valuing something above our service to the Force; it was something I did not teach, nor understood well enough, until now. And in the end, it brought about this horror.” There is shame there, in those whispered words; sorrow, and grief.

Satine traces Obi-Wan’s face with a perceptive gaze; there are lines there she had not noticed before, like the faint lines that edge her face in the mirror each morning, now.

But there is also a smooth, unmarked face, sleeping quietly between them.

Satine leans forward, and presses her lips to his cheek.

“Yes,” she says.

He makes a sound, something between a hiccup and a sob. Joy, and grief. The next moment, he has pulled her into an awkward embrace, one arm around her and the other holding the child, their child now, between them. She reaches out instinctively to support Luke’s head.

“Satine,” Obi-Wan says. It is all he needs to say.

The Empire will be sending visitors, Satine knows; today, tomorrow, in a week, in years and decades to come - but for the present moment, this is their joy, and it is complete.

END

@qwertyuiop678 here you are.

My Fanfic masterlist

My ff.net profile

[saint---jay]

I’ve talked about the film Dunkirk in the past, it’s a great film to study. In this post, I’ll be using comparative elements to discover its true form. So if you too enjoy film analysis, then check it out.

Dunkirk is without a doubt a smart and thrilling film about a group of young Allied soldiers, a few piolets, and several civilians who all played their part in this historical battle of WWII. The film was crafted as cunningly as one would expect any of Christopher Nolan’s movies. Nolan has directed successful films such as Inception and Interstellar, two films that shocked the world with their creativity and in-depth plots. Dunkirk is an American film made last summer, July 2017, starring actors such as Tom Hardy, Harry Styles, and Cillian Murphy.

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      We see these characters face all odds as they are all placed in terrible situations. Most of them don’t get the chance to fight, or even speak much for that matter because of the intense conflict that surrounds them.

This film is different than other Christopher Nolan films with its historical background and little dialogue. It’s different from other war films with a largely one-sided battle, an irrational storyboard, and an even deeper focus involving civilians. Because of this, I raise the question; was Dunkirk a war film up to par with films like Full Metal Jacket, or was it more of a thriller based on creating suspense?

The film Dunkirk takes place on a battlefield but is that enough to qualify it to be a war movie? One could compare Dunkirk to the grittiest, most realistic, and passionate war movie, Full Metal Jacket. By doing so, there would be side to side comparisons between what is surely an American made war film, next to a clever and elegant piece that stuck success at the box office. There is more to compare than just the setting of a war film, but its themes, emotions, and the director’s choices involving elements such as music and dialogue also make a large impact on a film’s genre.

What makes a film a war story? The war itself does not matter, nor does the timeframe, or the individual battles. It is the emotions depicted, the reasoning for the film, and the overlining themes of heroism and bravery that make certain movies war films. Dunkirk shows the historical battle for Dunkirk where the allied forces needed to be rescued by their own British civilians. The story is true as it is powerful showing the desperate situation these men had to endure and the nationalism and bravery the civilians of Great Britain displayed as they traveled to France to save their army.

Full Metal Jacket also showed the dedication of soldiers and opens up to the long-held idea that war is hell. Although these two films were created decades apart from each other and depict wars from separate time periods, they still share the same values, when it comes to the dedication of soldiers.

While everyone is in agreement of uplifting the men who fought and died during combat, not all war movies praised the specific wars that our country participated in. Going back to the definition of a war film, it’s reasoning. “Joker” in the film Full Metal Jacket, played a journalist in the marines long out of combat. He wore a peace symbol button that conflicted with the message written on his helmet “Born to Kill”. After his traumatizing time in boot camp, months spent in Vietnam, then finally his brush in conflict, Joker learned much about this war. He saw that the people they are supposed to be helping hated them, the people they killed were just farmers, and the war itself was changing the psychology of its soldiers.

Compare the suicidal scenes of Full Metal Jacket to Dunkirk. When Private Leonard murder-suicides his Sargent, it was out of revenge for the mistreatment he was put through. When what we saw from the allied soldier on the beach of Dunkirk was an act of desperation. He walked into the sea himself and was never seen again a result of the stressful situation he was in. Sargent Hartford’s death was more of a shocking turn and a statement against the harsh treatment of soldiers in training.

Full Metal Jacket was made to show the real conflicts of war and the suffering that so many men went through for a war that didn’t need to be fought. Dunkirk on the other hand showed a completely different war and had a much more positive message. It was made to show a better side of humanity. In the darkest of moments humans won’t fall apart, but group together as a nation and risk their own life to save others. In Dunkirk, you didn’t have to be a soldier, or even a man, to be a hero. You didn’t have to win the battle to be victorious or even put up a decent fight. As WWII had a more positive cause, the reasoning behind the war films made about it tends to also show positivity. The Vietnam war was widely protested against so the films about it view the war negatively.

While war films can have happy endings, and often do so, the themes of survival, and civilian intervention are not typical in these type of films but do occur.

It seems fairly obvious that Dunkirk should be labeled a war film. After all, it fits the parameter being a fictional piece based on true events of war, the Battle of Dunkirk. But that only describes the setting that needed to be placed, without any indications of what type of action should be featured. “Fighting that war, planning it, and undergoing combat within it should fill the major portion of the running time” (filmrefference.com).

Going by this definition of a war film, it’s hard to say that enough action was taken to make Dunkirk a war movie rather than an evacuation movie. Conflict occurs when two foes confront each other, but throughout this film, we saw the Allied Forces as open targets. They had no way to fight and little ways to run. The film was dominated by Germany’s success in cornering the British and French troops onto a beach where they could pick them off slowly. But there still are war movies that are not heavily reliant on action. Films like The Best Years of Our Lives displayed a post-war scenario that was heavily influenced by war, but not inclined to show conflict. Other films will do the same using flashbacks to return to the war periodically as it is an important part of their plot. The question is, do these count as war films?

“I didn’t view this as a war film,” says the director. “I viewed it as a survival story”

Christopher Nolan went to another great director for advice when making this film, the creator of Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg. In Spielberg’s recreation of the battle at Omaha Beach, his war movie featured limbs being blown off, vicious battles, and depressing losses that the audience empathized with.

“We didn’t want to compete with that because it is such an achievement. I realized I was looking for a different type of tension” (Nolan).

This director found many ways for his film to distinguish itself from others.

Besides Nolan’s classic cinematography techniques and overly extreme attention to detail, he strived to be different in a variety of ways.

“I needed suspense, and the language of suspense is one where you can’t take your eyes from the screen,” he says. “The language of horror is one where you hide your eyes. You’re looking away. It’s a different form of tension (Lang).

The way Nolan got his audience to keep their eyes glued to the screen was by crafting a thriller like we’ve never seen before. He gave us characters we had no reason to connect to. A random British teen in the middle of the war, a pilot making a brief flight, and a man with nothing but his son, a friend, and their sailboat. The names of the characters did not matter as some of them were only mentioned once. In the traditional war film like Full Metal Jacket, we get involved with our characters, the Marines showed in that film were brought up from the beginning of their training at boot camp. We saw these characters develop into killers before they were shipped out to Vietnam. It was important to see these character’s rise up because it made the film all that more traumatic when they were killed. They spoke to each other, told them stories and we learned of all of their differences being from random parts of our nation. We wanted to see them succeed, not just because they were on the American front, but because we had time invested in them and learned who they were.

Christopher Nolan’s approach to recreating the war was much more different as it was told like a thriller. It was hard to remember characters name’s and faces as they all seemed to be the same. Tommy, who started in The Mole, lost his entire squad within the first minute of the movie. Normally your men are the ones who will stick with you throughout the entire movie, naturally an elite killing force. But Tommy was an inexperienced soldier on his own. His first friend was a French soldier who didn’t speak English and was completely silent in most moments. Together the two met other British soldiers, but still, there was little dialogue. The British soldiers, for the most part, looked alike and when the French spoke, there were no subtitles making you rely almost entirely on what you saw, which was a visual masterpiece.

Instead of focusing the camera on the main points of battle, the conflict, German U boats and air force fleets, we got to see the faces of the terrified Allied soldiers as misfortune struck. When a torpedo was fired at the large destroyer they sneaked on to, we never saw where the missile came from, only the effects of its destruction. When they were in the boat waiting for the tide to come in, you had no idea where the shots were coming from while the soldiers were trapped within the boat. It was all very real, the emotions of the audience were shared with the film’s characters as we had no more information about the world than they did.

The aspect of closely following a set of characters and giving the audience a first-person viewpoint rather than the full knowledge of a third person view is common in thrillers, not war movies. Traditionally, war films pride the soldier’s tactics and show the battle plans usually spoken by generals around a large table then carried out by the foot soldiers. Or in Full Metal Jacket, when the sniper was gunning them down in the final scene, we all knew where she was, but the men didn’t. Imagine if we could have closer felt the emotions that Joker did at that moment. It’s hard to when you know something that he doesn’t.

In Dunkirk, the idea of splitting the story into three separate pieces with different characters have different missions is not too uncommon in war movies. Joker and his buddy from boot camp, Cowboy, met after going their separate ways in the Marines. Similarly, but with an entirely different game plan, Nolan had his three separate stories on three separate timelines, but they all collided towards the end. It may have been confusing to think when you notice Tom Hardy’s character, the pilot, only has one hour of fuel, but Tommy lasted multiple days in Dunkirk. The entire story was broken into pieces then put back together to create a thrilling chain of events with action never letting up. Even in the regular war films, there is time set aside for plot, character development, and time elapsing. But in Dunkirk, it is explosions and gunshot with only the intense feeling of awaiting danger in these in-between time.

This suspense has a sound to it that kept the audience thrilled even in the dialogue-less quiet moments. Christopher Nolan’s composer Hans Zimmer has worked with him in the past and the two enjoy putting a special kind of sound illusion to give his films that suspenseful touch. He is able to create a tone that seems to be getting higher and higher without actually changing its audio. The technique is called The Shepard’s Tone, it’s used by creating multiple layers on an ongoing loop. Three tones are made at different levels but all play at once separated by octaves. As the audio plays out, the highest tone comes in but fades away, the middle tone plays loudly all the way through, and the deepest bass tone slowly comes into audibility. When placed in a loop, you will always hear two of the tones ascending up the scales at the same time. You think you are hearing something constantly ascending, just like the suspense in the movie. This never-ending intense loop sounds eerie like you are rising up without control, it relates directly to the rising tension of the film, which is why Christopher Nolan loves using it so much (Vox).

Click here for a video with the full explanation.

Music like this should be featured in war movies, but it’s not because it’s too much. The goal of a war movie isn’t to scare or intimidate your audience. The bloodshed and gore they show in Full Metal Jacket or Saving Private Ryan is purely for historical accuracy. Dunkirk doesn’t even feature that much blood and remained a PG-13 movie despite the countless deaths. Perhaps this is because Dunkirk is one of the few war movies where you should fear drowning more than you should gunfire.

Throughout the several scenes out at sea, there is always the threat of sinking. Within the labyrinths of WWII warships, one torpedo strike could fill an entire level full of water with no way out. In this film, you either drowned or were blown away off camera by dropped bombs. Not one big name character died, they didn’t use any cheap gimmicks to make you feel sad. This wasn’t an emotional movie it was an intense one. Films like, Saving Private Ryan, wanted you to feel sad for the lost characters, and in Full Metal Jacket, you were supposed to think about the corruption of government. But Dunkirk the only way that you connected with these characters was by seeing through their eyes better than you did in either of those two war films.

Unlike Full Metal Jacket with its gloomy ending where we question what it is we are fighting for, Dunkirk ends at first with a glimpse into what “survivors guilt” looks like. They were just saved by an amazing feat of heroism like we see in countless movies, but no one was happy. They rode away from danger with blue faces covered in black oil. Tommy had seen so many deaths, the owner of the sailboat and his son had lost a friend, and Tom Hardy’s flew away into the sunset deeper into German territory out of fuel and ready to surrender. They were depressed as they got off their ships and made their way into England to prepare for the inevitable next stages of the war fearing Germany would soon conquer the world.

The blind man handing out blankets to the troops told everyone “Well done.” One responded with “All we did is survive.” To which he replied, “That’s enough.” It wasn’t until they truly reached England that the story took an uplifting turn, because the film’s message wasn’t at all about the troops in battle or heroism of soldiers because all they really did was die and cower. The real heroes were the citizens of Britain who risked their lives to save their army, but still, they all rejoiced as the soldiers returned home. There was talk in the papers of the bravery those sailors had and their prime minister Churchill rallied the nation with his famous speech “We Shall Fight on the Beaches”. No true war film shows such defeat, no war film avoids the theme of soldiers’ bravery and sorrow over fallen brothers.

Can we call the film about the greatest military disaster a war movie when the true heroes were not soldiers but civilians? Can we call Dunkirk a war movie if it was a one-sided battle with enemies on all sides with a vicious air force that slaughtered the Allied men?

Dunkirk is without a doubt a war film, yet it has the tendencies of a good thriller. Who is to say that thriller cannot take on a battlefield? Who’s to say war films can’t have the aspects of horror? We mix genres more and more today with our interest shrinking and greater stories being required. This type of film needed to take place on Dunkirk because you cannot be so easily thrilled with regular warfare which the Battle for Dunkirk was not.

A horror takes place when characters are put up against a force so powerful that they are completely outmatched and only until they have grown as characters can they lay an attack. But for the most part, horror movies are just about survival, which Christopher Nolan himself said, this is not a war film, but a survival film. It has the music of a thriller and the videography of a blockbuster that showed the emotions of the battle that took place long ago. If there can be such thing as a thriller war film, then that is what Dunkirk is classified as. It cannot be just a war film, because it is the first of its kind, different than the gritty Full Metal Jacket, or the blood-filled Saving Private Ryan. Dunkirk is virtual reality without the headset and a visual masterpiece to all who watch it.

  Sources

Lang, Brent. “Christopher Nolan Gets Candid on the State of Movies, Rise of TV and Spielberg’s Influence.” Variety, 8 Nov. 2017. Vox, director. The Sound Illusion That Makes Dunkirk so Intense. 26 July 2017. “War Films.” Film Reference.

Dunkirk Film Analysis I've talked about the film Dunkirk in the past, it's a great film to study. In this post, I'll be using comparative elements to discover its true form.

[roguenewsdao]

Syraq SITREP 49: Douma Chemical Attack Case Falling Apart, Israeli Threats Against Damascus, and U.S. Demanding Turkey Drop S400 Purchase

U.S./UK Accuse Russia of Covering Up Evidence in Douma as Case for Poison Gas Attack Falls Apart, OPCW Shot At to Delay Their Entry into the Town Outside Damascus

Germany-based blogger 'b' over at Moon of Alabama (often abbreviated in the alt-media as MoA) has put together a series of posts about the Douma incident, linking to testimony from doctors and (non White Helmets) first responders who stayed there after the jihadists left on buses for Idlib. The evacuation of the Jaish al Islam (JaI) jihadists was part of a ceasefire deal negotiated by the Russians, who agreed to only use their own military police rather than Syrian government troops in the town for a certain time period. It was that agreement, as well as the Anglo-American strikes around Damascus, that Moscow blamed for any delays in OPCW personnel deploying to the town after their arrival in the country last Friday. The remaining Douma hospital staff overwhelmingly insist that there was no chemical attack, and Russian journalist Evgeny Poddubiny met with an eleven year old boy, Hassan Diab, who was exploited as an unwitting crisis actor by White Helmets promising him food. Other civilians who were said to be suffering from dust and smoke inhalation after a series of government air strikes, according to the physician who spoke with long-time Independent Mideast correspondent Robert Fisk, were panicked by shouts of 'gas attack!' in the Douma hospital emergency room. They are seen hosing themselves off and being doused with water by White Helmets-linked activists in the video circulated online after the alleged chemical attack.

While this story presented to Fisk does not answer all questions regarding what happened, such as where the supposedly chemical tainted blood and urine samples came from that U.S. or its partner intelligence agencies obtained from Douma residents (if such samples actually exist or haven't been falsified off site), it received a vociferous reaction from panicked regime change advocates on social media. Those insisting chlorine gas was dropped on the town from Assad government helicopters, like the French government's released dossier, rely on alleged open source evidence, compiled by the usual USAID/Gov-oogle/Atlantic Council (read: NATO) funded suspects at Bellingcat. According to Bellingcat's Leicester, UK-based professional couch potato Eliot Higgins, a chlorine canister killed or sickened over a score of residents in one Douma house alone. RogueMoney readers will recall that Higgins has been an 'open source' 'go to guy' when US/NATO need evidence of any Syrian or Russian government wrongdoing for almost five years. This has been Higgins role through the Ukraine War, dating back to the mainstream media promoting 'Brown Moses' constantly shifting analyses of alleged sarin-tipped rocket flight paths from government-held territory near East Ghouta in August 2013.

The fact that Russian military police visiting the building found no traces of either the supposedly helo-dropped chlorine canister embedded in the roof nor the residents killed or injured by gas after sheltering in the basement, according to Higgins, is chalked up to Russian concealment. The Russians are so determined to keep OPCW inspectors from the town, that they allegedly opened fire or arrange for someone to shoot at their SUV convoy. However a Russian soldier was reportedly injured in this murky attack by unknown gunmen, and there is no reason to believe the OPCW won't return to the town on Friday or Saturday. Furthermore, if the Russian chemical and biological warfare specialists can successfully scrub all traces of chlorine if not sarin nerve agent from the town in just 72 to 96 hours, they will be far more capable than the UK technicians tasked with cleaning up after a tiny amount (in comparison) of novichok nerve agent which was said to have poisoned Sergey and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury. Obviously, the U.S. and UK arguments that the Russians are even capable of such an extensive cover up across many chemical contaminated acres over a few days is absurd. But that isn't stopping the increasingly shrill and desperate Anglo-Americans from making the charges to the OPCW -- which has been under pressure from all sides since the Skripal incident in the UK.

Anglo-American Establishment: When Disbelieved, Shout Louder and Flail Your Arms More

To distract from such glaring contradictions and holes in their argument, including the basic question of why Assad would resort to chemical weapons when he already had the jihadists holed up in Douma surrounded on the verge of surrender, the British have taken the lead in a campaign of vilification against anti-Syria regime change activists. The Huffington Post UK and taxpayer funded BBC have attacked activists like Vanessa Beeley and former Ambassador Peter Ford, as well as UK academics like Tim Hayward who've undermined their story line. U.S. taxpayer funded outlets like RFE/RL spin off Polygraph.info have joined in this campaign, with thus far minimal success. Public 'support' for the strikes, even according to the mainstream media commissioned polls in the UK, is abysmally low or at best, indifferent. Furthermore, the longer U.S.-UK involvement in hostilities with Damascus and its Iranian/Lebanese/Iraqi Hezbollah allies drags on, the greater the risk of casualties to the troops deployed inside Syria and thus greater decline of deployed forces morale and support back home.

While a passionate few continue to scream for follow on air strikes against Assad, the recently reported by TASS high level meetings between Russian and NATO commanders to discuss Syria suggests no immediate follow on strikes to those of April 13 are being readied. So too, does Moscow's dialing down the hot rhetoric about targeting U.S. missile launch platforms, meaning jets and ships -- for now. The stories from Bloomberg about additional Kremlin concessions being put on the table to avoid the new sanctions UN Ambassador Nikki Haley promised, and which President Trump postponed, seem like so much wishful thinking in Washington. Not unlike the wishful thinking of both virulently anti-Trumpers convinced The Donald and Putin are secretly in cahoots, and the QAnon followers who believe the same thing.

Despite his inexcusable failure to stand up to the neocons in his Administration and oppose the unjustified and illegal under international law strikes, Trump's ego may have smarted from his own sense of being rolled on anything Russia or Syria related. Subsequently, the Commander and Chief overruled and humiliated his infamously aggressive neocon adviser Nikki Haley, and it leaked to the Cold War 2 maniacs at the Washington/Langley/Bezos Post that the Russian Embassy had been instructed to disregard her public statements as policy. Such public humiliations from this boss typically precede his signature line from The Apprentice, which is about the only thing President Trump has proven good at , saying to insubordinate or leaky advisers, "You're fired." Haley may believe that her patron the pro-Israel billionaire Sheldon Adelson who partly finances the Republican Party can intervene with the Oval Office to save her job, but she's likely mistaken.

Next week's arrival of the USS Harry S. Truman battle group, said by some to indicate the imminent outbreak of hostilities between the Americans and Russians in the eastern Mediterranean, now looks somewhat anti-climactic. Additional chemical false flags are possible, particularly in far southern Syria close to the Israeli held Golan Heights, and in the north of Idlib province, but the panic over their case falling apart in Douma suggests the neocons fear additional staged events could lose their impact. Even if some of the incidents turned out to be partially real, the neocons, knowing only how to double down, can't cope with the broader Atlantic public's chemical and Syria fatigue. The war has dragged on for almost eight years, and in that time there have been many atrocities and the mass use of indiscriminate firepower -- with war crimes committed by the jihadists seeking to overthrow Assad downplayed or dismissed by the legacy media (so too, has been any introspection as to how the CIA-planned destruction of the Syrian state and introducing vast numbers of GCC-funded arms and foreign jihadists into the country created the Islamic State 'caliphate'). Nonetheless, it remains to be seen if Trump will take the next logical step and fire neocon Nikki Haley, and follow up his anticipated peace summit with North Korea's Kim Jong Un by meeting with Vladimir Putin. If he can, and no further strikes are launched by anybody but the spoiler Israelis in Syria, then perhaps the Russian Analyst can say real progress is being achieved towards global peace. But again, this prospect still leaves regional players Saudi Arabia and Israel plus their pals in what our LaRouchePAC friends call the lingering British Empire unwilling to accept peace in the Levant with Assad secure in power and Hezbollah if not its patron in Iran militarily stronger than ever.

Moscow Threatened to Give S300s to Syria After the Anglo-American Strikes: What Will Israel Do? Probably More of the Same -- Harassment via Standoff Missile Attacks

With a more robust series of Syria strikes seemingly off the table for now, and President focused on upcoming face to face talks with North Korea, the pressure is on Israel to make something happen to disrupt its enemies consolidation in the Levant. As the Israeli Air Force has found, standoff missile strikes against alleged Iranian targets inside Syria are no longer as effective as they were in the years of the high intensity fighting inside the country, when the Syrian air defenses were in total disarray. Moscow has stayed out of combat with the Israelis, fully aware with its systems based at Kheimmim and Tartus of when the Israeli jets are over neighboring Lebanon if not tracking them from the moment they take off. But this does not mean it the Russians have been completely on the sidelines when it comes to defending their allies in Damascus from Tel Aviv's depredations.

The Syrian air defenses, even if their effectiveness against the Anglo-American missiles were exaggerated, nonetheless have demonstrated the capability to shoot down an Israeli F-16I and damage IAF F-15s (and perhaps the vaunted F35 'Adirs' stealth jets too). This is certainly due to Russian upgrades to command and control, particularly fiber optic links between SAM sites that cannot be jammed from the air or sea. The recent Israeli electronic attack on Homs, if it did happen, was originally reported as a missile strike on a base where Russian personnel were known to be present. If that were to happen, it would represent a serious escalation on the part of the Israelis against the Russians, and a violation of their tacit agreement that the IAF avoids hitting Russian personnel and stays out of Syrian air space (while still violating that of the Lebanese). As Elijah J. Magnier reported in February, the Israeli-Russian understandings and deconfliction in Syria also do not preclude Damascus from firing its longer range if older S200 SAMs at IAF jets while they are still over Lebanese territory, especially if they get closer to Damascus. Those who choose to believe the Daily Beast's repetition of Pentagon lies regarding 100% of the missiles fired striking their targets are deluding themselves.

The Israelis understand that lobbing missiles at Syrian bases and killing a handful of IRGC officers is one thing; but to make any real impact, their strategy of targeted harassment would have to give way to heavier strikes and therefore greater risking of downed aircraft (as well as that Moscow could tear up the deal it made with Tel Aviv and transfer more S300s to Syria by way of an overland shipment via Iraq to Iran). If Hezbollah chooses to use even a small but highly accurate portion of its huge missile arsenal to retaliate against Israel, the Israelis have threatened to personally hold Assad responsible and kill him in a targeted strike. But the present Israeli government, notwithstanding its warnings that it will go to war in order to prevent Iran from establishing a foothold in Syria (too late), has plenty to lose in that scenario, both economically and above all in terms of its diminishing ability to overawe its enemies.

For the Israelis, this conundrum is far larger than whether or not Damascus gets long range S300 SAMs to defend itself. The IAF has practiced against older models sold to the Greeks by the Russians, but is not prepared to face off with the latest improved versions that would presumably be integrated by data link to the S400s the Israelis would avoid targeting at Kheimmim. Israel has never attacked the forces of a nuclear armed power openly flying their flag -- at least with the exception of its covered up assault on the USS Liberty in 1967 (dogfights with Soviet pilots flying for the Egyptian Air Force over the Sinai in the late 1960s or early 70s war of attrition era leading up to the 1973 Yom Kippur War don't count). Thus the most logical course for the Israelis and the one politically acceptable to both the U.S. and Russians is to muddle along, continuing to lob missiles here and there from over Lebanon or Israeli air space at alleged 'Iranian bases' inside Syria.

Winning the Longer Game: Despite Giving Verbal Endorsement of the U.S./UK Strikes, Turkey is Still Pivoting into the Eurasian Camp and Away from the Americans and NATO

Damascus can absorb such attacks because it knows with Russia's help it's still winning the war, knocking down many of the enemy SAMs with its new Pantsir point defense systems and soon, the Syrian Arab Army will be driving the jihadists Israel has carefully tended on its border to flee. After the territories south of Damascus Idlib province, which is under de facto Turkish protection (without an actual presence by Turkey's Army). As Magnier writes, Assad's strategy advised by the Russians is to make the lingering US and Turkish occupations irrelevant. So long as Moscow can do this, and keep the Turks appeased, while avoiding direct confrontation with either the Americans or Israelis, the Kremlin will keep on winning in the Mideast. The only gambit that can stop this trend, or so the neocons may believe, is a broad regional war that Russia will struggle to stay out of due to its Syrian, Iranian and Hezbollah allies getting heavily bombarded. That is, the big Mideast war between the Americans and Israelis on one side and the 'Axis of Resistance' aka Syria/Hezbollah/Iran backed by the Russians that Team RogueMoney's mentor 'W the Intelligence Insider' has been predicting for the last two years.

Barring the big regional war (which still would not be WW3 only approach it) scenario, the proof of the Russians being seen as a strengthening horse rather than a diminishing one like the Americans' is found in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE and Iran's purchases of Russian weaponry. All of the former except for the latter having been since 1979, American allies. These are tangible multi-billion dollar (or soon payable in euros, yuan and rubles) tokens of Moscow's growing clout in the region, which the death (apparently from natural causes in Paris) of eastern Libya's pro-Russian General Haftar will not reverse. Neither can the strikes that Washington neocons hoped would show Putin as a worthless ally who cannot defend Assad from whatever the U.S. and its sidekick Israel will themselves to do, since word gets around among the informed regarding how few missiles actually hit their targets -- and the attacks changed nothing on the ground.

As London Paul pointed out in his Wednesday appearance this week on RogueMoney radio, all the April 13 strikes did was increase the determination of Moscow, Beijing and Tehran to harden their defenses and joint efforts to diplomatically and economically undermine the Americans. And that response will not be military, but overwhelmingly economic in nature as dollar dumping accelerates. But in order to dump the dollar in trade without fearing direct attack, countries need strong defenses. Enter Moscow as a provider of low-cost security for the Eurasian powers, fulfilling the role China is still reluctant to play beyond its Asia Pacific region for historic and financial reasons (still many stakes in the sinking U.S. economy). When Washington is reduced to pleading with the Turks not to buy S400s or they could face sanctions, and hinting its new partners in South Asia the Indians could be next to be sanctioned -- you know which side senses that time isn't on its side.

[jjamwal]

THE STORY OF KHUKRI AS TOLD BY CAPTAIN ALLAN RODRIGUES TO COMMEMORATE NAVY WEEk 23rd December 2010 Dear Ms Ameeta Mulla Wattal, I am an ex- Indian naval officer who left the service honourably in 1994. I live in New Zealand, and work in Australia and New Zealand these days. This email refers to an article you wrote some five years ago very poignantly, on your father the Late Captain Mulla, pondering why he chose to go down with his ship. The article obviously struck a chord with many of your readers, and in the way of the internet, travelled the world before it entered my mail box a few days ago, via a social network maintained by the 42nd NDA and 51st IMA course. I did not know your father personally, but I feel I have always known him and for what he stood for, all of my adult life. I missed the fighting in 1971 as I was cadet in the NDA at the time, and only passed out and joined a warship at sea in June 1972, six months after the war ended. In the event I became an Anti Submarine specialist and along the way, I ended up commanding three warships including INS Himgiri (also an anti submarine frigate, although a more modernised version of the original Khukri). I retired after 20 years, joined industry, and eventually moved across the Pacific and the Tasman Sea to New Zealand. I only say this because it has some context to the comments I make below, on the decision by your father to go down with his ship. In doing so I hope to capture the circumstances (and perhaps the greater purpose) of why captains of warships in extreme circumstances, take such drastic actions that seem to lack purpose or reason (particularly to the public at large). I am sure many naval officers of senior rank and certainly more qualified than me, may well have commented at length after reading your article. I just felt I might throw some light on a take that has largely been neglected. I know the pain never goes away and I apologise for any anguish I might give you in the process, but I do believe that Captain Mulla did something for the service that night, that has not been either understood or recognised, by both the navy, and the public at large. The Indian Navy of 1971 was a different beast from the one we have today. Little was known about Anti-submarine warfare (ASW) at the time. We commissioned our first submarine in 1968 in the then Soviet Union, and had barely begun operating a fledgling submarine arm by 1970. Pakistan by contrast, had been operating submarines since the early sixties. Ships like the Khukri and Kirpan supposedly specialised in ASW, formed the vanguard against the fight against Pakistani submarines. They had little in the way of operational experience against submarines, and even less knowledge about the ocean environment. The physics of detection can be explained in simple non technical terms. The Khukri had sonar called the ‘Sonar 170’. which was the best we had at the time. It had a maximum range (in laboratory conditions) of only 1500 yards. We knew little about the harsh nature of the environment underwater. The seas in the tropical waters off India’s coastline are heated up in the morning and afternoons, raising surface temperatures to ambient levels. The worst effect is in the afternoons. The laws of physics then apply. They literally bend the sonar waves downwards, severely limiting detection range. Since deeper waters are ice cold, there is meeting point of the warm waters on the top and the cold waters below. This meeting point is called the 'layer' where the sonar beam bounces off and is almost totally reflected upwards. There is very little penetration below the layer. These layers lie between 30 and 60 metres depth in tropical waters, and are exploited by expert submariners who are able to hide under it. It took us another 15 years after the war, all which I was professionally involved with in one way or then other, to fully understand the nature of anti-submarine warfare, and to learn how to work with the physical limitations imposed by a hostile ocean underwater environment. Submarines on the other hand are not as handicapped, as they do not need to transmit on their sonars to detect a ship. Their engines are silent. They can consequently listen out for a warship and even identify a type of ship and its signature from the sound of its engines. Skilled submariners hide beneath the layer and approach with stealth. They only transmit at the last possible moment when they need a final range to fire their torpedos. Warships at sea in 1971 (and Captain Mulla in particular) would have been more than aware of these limitations. They would have known two simple facts (a) That a submarine at sea would have already detected a surface ship long before the ship had even reached any kind of detection range; (b) That even if the warship did detect the submarine, it would be at the penultimate moment, when the submarine had already fired, (or was on the verge of firing) its torpedoes, giving the warship a few minutes at best, to take avoiding action, let alone counterattack. The Pak submarine that sank the Khukri used its environment to maximum advantage. In hind sight and over the years, we developed better sonars and better tactics. We employed dedicated ASW aircraft with sonobuoys and magnetic detectors, helicopter with dunking sonars, and yes we spent a lot of time learning the harsh facts of the ocean environment we were forced to operate in. This is the context in which ships put to sea in 1971, against an adversary who was well versed in using submarines to maximum advantage. Our own ASW ships had little in the way of riposte or as much experience we would have liked to have had before the war of fighting submarines. In the event every sailor at sea recognises a moment of truth, when all of his training and skills are put to the ultimate test. It is the moment when the ship beats to quarters and goes into action against an enemy in sight, or an enemy that has been detected. Khukri and Kirpan were operating in submarine infested waters. The ship would have gone to 'action stations' against a submarine many times over, in the days and nights preceding the sinking of the Khukri, sometimes for genuine reasons, sometimes for false alarms. All of this would have exhausted the crew and formed the 'fog of war' that hindsight experts, armchair generals/admirals and the public at large never quite get. Each time the crew of the Khukri beat to quarters and battened down for action, a clarion call would have been broadcast on its tannoy “Hands to action stations _ assume first degree anti-submarine readiness - assume damage control state one condition Zulu”. The crew of the Khukri would have known fully level, that they were going against a committed enemy, and that the dice were loaded against them. Each of them would have been wondering whether they were going to come out of the action alive or dead. This is an age old fear that men have, and then learn to conquer, when they go to sea and to war. It is the nature of the beast. The army and the air force face similar issues, which they deal with in their own inimitable way. The people most at risk on board the Khukri that night would have been its technical departments; engineering and electrical officers and sailors, closed up at action stations in the bowels of the ship three and four decks below the waterline, keeping the engines and the machinery running, so that their captain could fight. Each of them knew if a torpedo were to hit, it would do so well above where they were located, and that the chances of them surviving would be a lot less than those sailors who were fortunate to be located on the upper decks, and above the waterline. it takes a special kind of motivation to get these men to go down into the bowels of a fighting ship whilst in action against a submarine. they do so each time out of a sense of duty that the ship cannot fight without them and mostly because they recognise that one single unspoken truth… that their captain will not forsake them; that their captain will not leave them behind. that is the crux of the why, and the reason why captains at sea honour this unspoken agreement. Captain mulla would have known that many of his boys were trapped (but yet alive) in the bowels of his ship when it went down, in the few minutes after the torpedoes hit. he tried to help as many as he could, but i suspect he could not bring himself to save himself, whilst his boys were dying down below. that he chose to go down is a personal decision, perhaps even a moral decision; but it was a decision that set a standard that will save lives in future actions. it forced all of us who came after him, and who were privileged to command men in peace and war, to recognise that undeniable and unspoken bond between fighting men … that you fight your ship against an enemy (or the ocean in a storm), with what you have, and to the best of your ability, and that come what may, you never forsake your troops or leave a man under your command, behind you. What Captain Mulla did that fateful day has had an enormous and positive impact on the service he loved and on the men who continue to serve it to this day. It reminds every one of us chosen to command of the qualities of leadership needed under duress, and of the ultimate responsibility we have to the families of the men we command; "You never forsake your men – You never leave a man behind". I know that this hardly helps when trying to explain all of this to the family of a captain who makes the ultimate sacrifice. Nor does it assuage the grief of a young girl trying to understand why her father chose to voluntarily die, rather than save himself. For a fledgling service post independent India trying to forge its own traditions independent of the Royal Indian Navy of yore, the impact was enormous. It was one of the many actions in the 1971 war that made us equal partners with the Army and Air force in the defence of independent India. I am reminded of the last few stanzas of Ronald Hopwood?s classic poem 'Our Fathers' that I quote below. “When we've raced the seagulls, run submerged across the Bay, When we've tapped a conversation fifteen hundred miles away, When the gyros spin superbly, when we've done away with coals, And the tanks are full of fuel, and the targets full of holes, When the margin's full of safety, when the weakest in the fleet Is a Hyper-Super-Dreadnought, when the squadrons are complete, Let us pause awhile and ponder, in the light of days gone by, With their strange old ships and weapons, what our Fathers did, and why. Then if still we dare to argue that we're just as good as they, We can seek the God of Battles on our knees, and humbly pray That the work we leave behind us, when our earthly race is run, May be half as well completed as our Fathers' work was done”. My wife Sharon and I wish you and your family a great Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year 2011. If you or your family do visit New Zealand do look us up. Allan Rodrigues DirectorNE http://ift.tt/2jmRz5A

[mariesanabriam]

Christopher Nolan’s Wartime Epic

“Dunkirk” is a harrowing look at a barely averted British catastrophe.

Deep space was where Christopher Nolan boldly chose to go for his last feature, “Interstellar” (2014). Now he has aimed for shallow waters. Most of “Dunkirk” is set on and off the beaches of northern France, close to the Belgian border—a perilous place to be, in late May and early June of 1940. The British Expeditionary Force, dispatched to France in the fall of the previous year, had been forced into an inglorious retreat. The result was that a multitude of Allied troops were stranded in and around the town of Dunkirk, waiting at the sea’s edge to be rescued. For prowling German aircraft, they were easy prey. Thankfully, salvation did arrive, in the shape not just of the Royal Navy but also of a flotilla of small vessels—the Little Ships, as they came to be known, some seven hundred strong—that had been summoned to the fray. Eventually, in what Churchill called “a miracle of deliverance,” more than three hundred thousand men made it back to England.

This saga is an unlikely candidate for a major Hollywood production, especially one written and directed by the maker of the “Dark Knight” trilogy. It’s hard to think of a more parochial tale. Dunkirk is stitched into the British mythology of the Second World War and, even now, occasional mention is made of “the Dunkirk spirit,” yet the legend has never travelled far, and for obvious reasons. Operation Dynamo—the code name for the evacuation—was not a victory but a barely averted catastrophe, and it came on the heels of what Churchill himself, in the House of Commons, lamented as “a colossal military disaster” in Belgium and France. Many countries, preferring straightforward triumphs, would have swept such an episode under the rug with a mixture of embarrassment and relief. Something about Dunkirk, though, appeals to the peculiar British love of the gallantly narrow squeak, and, in the deployment of the Little Ships, to an abiding fondness for the doughty and the makeshift. You can understand Nolan’s interest; born in London, in 1970, he belongs to what is probably the last generation to have been reared on the rousing fable of Dunkirk. Why on earth, however, should he want to spread the word?

A clue to this puzzle comes early in the film. Up onscreen appear the phrases “1. The Mole,” “2. The Sea,” and “3. The Air.” They introduce us to the three narrative strands that will wind through the next hundred minutes or so; notice the hint of the elemental. The Mole refers to a concrete jetty jutting into Dunkirk Harbor, whereas the air is the domain of a Spitfire pilot (Tom Hardy). When we first encounter him, he is already aloft, in a formation of three. Never do we discover which squadron he belongs to, or what sort of life he has left behind on the ground. For the most part, all that we see of him is his goggled eyes; not until the finale are we shown the rest of him, and only in the ensuing credits do we find out that he is called Farrier. It must have taken Hardy almost an entire morning to learn his lines, which seem even sparser than his dialogue for “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015), although, as we know from that masterwork, the less we hear from him the tighter our grasp of his character, and the greater the powers that seem to be held in check. At one point in “Dunkirk,” Farrier, low on fuel, is faced with a choice: pursue a German bomber that is harrying a warship crammed with evacuees, or turn tail and head for home before the tank runs dry? He says nothing, but those eyes reveal all. We follow his thoughts as clearly as we do every tip and tilt of his wings.

No such clarity below. Men are lined up on the shore, hoping to get onto one of the ships that dock in the harbor, but a sullen quiet prevails; the next bomb could shred and scatter them, and they cannot predict where it will hit. Shouldering through the crowd are a couple of young British soldiers with a stretcher, who are trying to get one of the wounded on board—and maybe, in the process, sneak a berth themselves. Gradually, one of them, Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), gains a foothold in the drama, though you couldn’t call him the hero, for there is no main character in “Dunkirk.” Instead, various figures move onstage and off: Commander Bolton (Kenneth Branagh), who oversees the embarkation; Alex (Harry Styles), a fellow-evacuee whom Tommy meets halfway through; and a numb and nameless man (Cillian Murphy) found shuddering on a capsized hull. Silent at first, he eventually mutters, “U-boat.”

Meanwhile, out in the English Channel, and heading to Dunkirk, is the Moonstone, skippered by Dawson (Mark Rylance), her owner. (In truth, the majority of Little Ships were requisitioned for the voyage across, but there were exceptions, and that is why Dawson casts off just before the uniformed authorities can reach him.) He recognizes a Spitfire from its growling thrum overhead, without having to glance up. “Rolls-Royce Merlin engine,” he says. “Sweetest sound you could hear out here.” He is no more voluble than the rest of the folk in this film, who seem either stunned by events or taut with determination, but Rylance, as ever, conveys a vigor of spirit through the simple crispness of his gestures. He removes his jacket on departure, and, throughout the ordeal, wears a white shirt, a tie, and a sweater, as if he were doing a bit of Sunday gardening rather than hauling a shoal of his countrymen, half-drowned and drenched in oil, from the unfriendly waves.

How to account for the impact that is made by “Dunkirk”? After all, there are so many ways in which the film falls short, and so many directions in which Nolan decides not to tack. Anybody wishing to understand the niceties of Operation Dynamo will be confounded, as will anyone expecting the sight of high-ranking strategists huddled around maps in low-lit situation rooms. (We do hear one of Churchill’s speeches, but only when a young man reads it aloud from a newspaper.) Nor does the film convince as a period drama. Most of the soldiers, who should look pinched and ration-fed, are well nourished, handsome, and unmistakably modern specimens—oddly well spoken, too, and lacking that earth-dark humor with which combatants everywhere seek to lighten their load and to wrestle down their dread. Most anachronistic of all are the tears that cloud Bolton’s eyes at the approach of the Little Ships. As a rule, senior officers, tasked with the mass relocation of men, have neither the time nor the inclination to weep.

Yet the movie works. Time and again, the action swells and dips, like a wave, then suddenly delivers a salty slap in the face. From above, we see a pilot ditching his damaged Spitfire in the sea, and the procedure runs smoothly; later, another flier does the same, and we stay with him as he lands. A tumult of water rushes toward him and fills the cockpit at alarming speed, while he batters on the canopy above, which refuses to slide open. Smoothness, viewed from another angle, collapses into the roughness of panic. Likewise, we join a throng of rescued men, belowdecks on a naval vessel, who are served bread and jam and—as in every moment of crisis, this being a British enterprise—mugs of tea. Then a torpedo hits. All becomes darkness and deluge. Humans turn into creatures of the deep. A pale hand flickers like a fish.

Nolan has described “Dunkirk” as less a war film than a survival film, but it’s even more basic than that, in the way it lures us in and keeps us hooked. It is about what we do—how we suffer and retort—when things happen to us, and when the happening grows far beyond our control. There is plenty of agency here, much of it valiant, not least in Farrier’s dogfights, but the focus is on the inflicted; aside from a few shadowy forms in the closing minutes, no Germans are visible at all. Look at the British who hide in the belly of a beached fishing boat, which unseen enemy troops are using for target practice. Look at the evacuees on the Mole, turning their backs as a bomb bursts nearby and being caught in the gust of spray; we don’t actually witness the explosion, any more than they do. We need to feel their fear.

And so the fates keep drumming down like rain. By constantly cutting between the three stories, Nolan, the master of all he surveys, allows us no chance to relax before the next onslaught begins. Hans Zimmer’s music may pilfer from Elgar’s “Nimrod,” the most patriotically charged of the Enigma Variations, yet such bombast is not really required, and the rest of the score is more attuned to the film’s suspense; the strings unleash a machine-gun stutter, and a ticking sound suggests not a clock but a countdown to detonation. Although “Dunkirk” is not as labyrinthine as Nolan’s “Memento” (2000) or “Inception” (2010), its strike rate upon our senses is rarely in doubt, and there is a beautiful justice in watching it end, as it has to, in flames. Land, sea, air, and, finally, fire: the elements are complete, honor is salvaged, and the men who were lost scrape home.

By Anthony Lane.