#of her duty to the universe and beyond and whatever . to blend in and keep the Family off their tails

[theladyfae]

i think human nature/family of blood is a really good two parter in how it manages to show how full of shit ten is 🫶

[karizard-ao3]

I just noticed that Anamnesis passed 15,000 hits! To celebrate, here are some lines I wrote for it that didn't quite work, but that I saved in case I could use them later (I couldn't).

Deleted Lines

Eren longed to see the stars again but the constellations he missed most were the ones that sparkled in Mikasa's eyes.

***

“We could just leave him,” suggested Eren, tapping his cartridge cap. The chemicals inside helped a lot, but even they couldn't cure him of being petty.

***

Mikasa frowned when yet another ad for Quantum Zee began to play, the familiar lullaby jingle accompanying the voice actor’s intimate, knowing murmur. She shoved her earbuds into her ears, turning on her music quickly to drown out the words. She didn’t want to think about this. 

***

Eren grimaced to himself, irritated that he’d revealed the macabre underpinnings of his psyche. 

***

"Hey, sex machine," purred a voice.

***

of the climate control grid malfunctioning overhead, dooming her region to the desolation of an eternal summer. 

***

He wasn't young, like them. Meren had been watching him, too, and he stood as though his body was a burden he had borne for years, one that was beginning to weigh him down. 

***

"If you break his heart, I will destroy everything you have ever loved and make sure that you are never happy again. If he breaks yours, call me," Historia winked. 

***

her dark gaze as lush as black velvet.

***

Eren knew that his main concern should be all the stuff about unknown persons bringing Erens over from other universes, but he wasn't from another universe and despite the efficacy of the new chemical blend he was on, which he still needed to go get replenished because he could feel his mental health declining, he didn't really care much if he lived or died.  

***

As an Eren, he could say beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no way he or any of his other selves would let anything happen to any of her. It was impossible. He was so invested in her well-being that he was still kind of freaking out about how the other Mikasa's labor would go and he wasn't even going to be in the same universe to help.

***

He didn’t want to die. Not now. Not now that he was doing better and he’d found a chemical cocktail that worked and might even keep working to the point that he could get genetic surgery to start making them himself. Not now that he had someone he wanted to spend his life with. 

***

Her heartbeat took on a frantic clamor as she considered his involvement, whether he was safe. She told herself her fear for him was because he had become such a close friend over the past several weeks. She was sure she would be equally distraught if it were Annie or Sasha, or even Reiner or Ymir. But, despite her insistence to the contrary, her worry for Eren was different, more shrill; her desire to keep him safe from harm was laced with the sharp desperation of self-preservation. She was already barely alive. What would become of her if he disappeared or died? What if they damaged him, like she had been damaged? She knew quite well how swiftly and irreparably someone could fracture another person, each crack fissuring until the entire structure of a personality crumbled into something unrecognizable. 

***

"True love means accepting someone for their flaws."

"She doesn't have flaws."

"She doesn't do anything that annoys you?"

"If she annoys me, that's a problem with me, not her."

***

“We’re on a date?” Eren asked, his mood lifting somewhat.

Mikasa’s eyes darted to him, her lips tugging into a frown. “I… I mean, I asked you to come with me tonight, and… and you were holding my hand over there, so I thought…” She ducked her head,  letting her hair fall in front of her face so Eren couldn’t see her blush. “I guess I don’t really know what constitutes a date.”

Eren slipped his fingers through hers. 

***

Erwin didn’t have to schedule himself for night duty, but he did it because he was fair. However, he did whatever he wanted between calls because he was the captain and who was going to tell him not to? He accepted his ice cream cone and left a nice tip in the jar, then strolled down the sidewalk towards the karaoke bar to see if anyone was being rowdy. 

***

What you’ve done doesn’t change who you are, right?”

***

But then he’d met Mikasa, and in an instant there was no longer any question of whether he was capable of love, only whether he could survive without her. "Yes,” he said.

***

boring into her with a searing gentleness 

***

he craved her so violently that he was powerless against himself, desperate to bask in the light of even the palest imitations for as long as he could bear the counterfeit glow

***

 asked Mikasa, more brusquely than she had intended, her heartbeat as rapid and devastating as machine gun fire.

***

her fingers digging into his arm, shackling him to her.

***

Eren’s heart caved in.

***

“I’m in love with you, Mikasa,” said Eren. 

She froze, her entire body going rigid in his arms. 

“I’m sorry!” he gasped, releasing her, his face creased with panic. “I didn’t mean to say it. It was supposed to stay in my head. I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

She began to shake, her muscles so tense that he could see them straining against her skin. “I’m sorry,” she squeaked. 

***

“Why are you sad, Hange?” Levi asked. 

Hange shrugged. “Just mostly because I feel like no one understands me,” they said. “I’m a strange bird, Levi. And I know it.”

***

"Jean told me you were a troublemaker," Mikasa said, her eyes shining. 

"That fucker! When?" Eren demanded.

"Right when we first met," said Mikasa. "I

***

Not a line, I’m just disappointed I didn’t find a good place to have Meren say something was “urchy” instead of “shitty”. 

***

, her jaw setting. “It would actually be kind of nice not having to worry about staying on my bastard father, Rod Reiss’, good side anymore.” Her angelic blue eyes hardened, an evil glint sparking inside them. “I mean, imagine the damage I could do to the family if I decided to stop pretending to be Daddy’s perfect little bastard princess.” Armin cocked his head and Historia grinned. 

***

Ymir's forehead creased as she pushed the salt back and forth in front of her. A brief, residual rankle of jealousy prickled behind her ribs, but it was gone almost before she realized it was there, a mere echo of feelings long past that were replaced with a golden warmth when Historia appeared and plunked a wire number holder clip down on the tabletop and slid into the chair next to Ymir’s, her blue eyes sparkling like sunlit dew and her cheeks as pink as geraniums. 

***

“He keeps trying to get me to try it, but I want a port like I want a hole in my head.” He cocked his head. “Oh, hey,” he laughed. 

Mikasa grinned. 

Mikasa wrinkled her nose back. “It seems like you and I have the real life version.”

Eren laughed. 

[thebakingqueen5]

KW 2021: The Sea & The Sky

Day 7 for Kataang Week 2021 hosted by @kataang-week with the prompt The Sea & The Sky!

Don't mind me crying in the corner that Kataang Week is basically over, but anyways I'm super proud of this last oneshot and hope you all enjoy it!

Links: AO3 | FF.net

Summary: Another year, another, another week of prompts celebrating our favorite couple. Kataang Week 2021 Day 7: The Sea & The Sky. Katara was the sea, Aang was the sky, destined to meet at the horizon where they were bound together for all eternity.

Word Count: 1.7K (barely)

The sea and sky, two entities as old as time itself. In some ways, as contrasting as the night and day, and in others, perfect reflections of one another.

The sea has always been below the sky, left to gaze upon the brilliance of the celestial bodies embedded in it for all eternity and reflecting the light of the bright stars beyond.

The sky has always been above the sea, forever peering down into its depths for the miracles and mysteries hidden beneath, and guiding its steady waves as they crash upon the shores of the Earth.

The sea is the reason the azure sky is adorned with feathery white wisps floating high above the ground, and the sky, in turn, fills the oceans and floods the rivers with the very liquid that makes survival possible.

The sea fosters life beneath its steady, undulating surface. It holds flora and fauna of all shapes, colors, and sizes, and it was a point of fascination for the sky. The sky, in all its glory, could not sustain anything for long. Even the birds that rode over its swift breezes had to eventually land somewhere below. And yet, the sky was free, a vast expanse of space that extended beyond what the sea could ever imagine to be possible. It wasn’t shackled by the chains of the planet, and the sea almost envied it.

In the days of old, when sailors ruled the seas, the ocean and her gentle waves would push them across great stretches of nothingness, while the sky and his stars would aid in guiding them on their journeys. Without the sky, those explorers would be lost at sea, and without the sea, their ambitions would remain sky-high with their dreams of traveling the world doomed to remain just that- dreams.

The sea and the sky have always been connected. Together, they make a thriving world possible. And so it follows that those so closely bonded to their elements, Aang and Katara, would be similarly linked by the fabric of space and time.

Though he was the Avatar, Aang’s native element was that of air. He preferred to soar on his glider high above the clouds, and gravity was a laughable concept to him. True to his airbending disposition, Aang’s natural inclinations were to evade conflict and obstacles in order to move forward, like a leaf on the wind.

Katara was born in the Southern Water Tribe, surrounded by ice, glaciers, and the frigid seas of the South Pole. She wielded the element of water, adapting and accepting things as they came since water was the element of change. She would experience swells of emotion similar to the waves, but she always came down into a steady balance, an ebb and flow just like tides.

Aang and Katara were not each other’s antithesis, far from it actually, but rather each other’s complements. Had they been such stark opposites, their relationship would’ve been much more turbulent, having the highest of highs but also the lowest of lows. They needed not a sharp contrast but rather a soft blend to allow them to communicate with and learn from one another. It was this that allowed them to work so well.

When Katara was firm and unyielding like a tsunami approaching the shore, Aang accepted her stance and often strengthened it. Consequently, if the airbender was flighty and indecisive, Katara would be there to ground him and guide him to something he felt confident in.

Katara was Aang’s earthly tether. When his head drifted up into the clouds, she pulled him back to the real world and allowed him to guide the four nations into an era of peace and prosperity. On the other hand, Aang showed Katara true freedom and what being unrestrained felt like. He brought her up with him on his glider and taught her to defy nature’s laws, to not be afraid to take exhilarating risks, and to keep her ambitions sky-high.

Their worlds collided like the brilliance of colors created as the sun set over the horizon, gradually leaving the realm of the sky and sinking into the sea. Some of their traits reflected each other like the sun’s rays on the sparkling surface of the water, and the others melded together well to make the glorious gradient that streaked the sky as night fell. Together, Aang and Katara created a rich harmony filled with overtones that mirrored the depth of their connection.

When they first met, that instant link, the bond that tied them together, was remarkably evident to all those around them. It was absolutely undeniable.

Though Sokka had mostly been joking when he had called Aang Katara’s boyfriend, there were still some astute observations lying under his exaggerated comment. Sokka knew his sister. She didn’t take to people too well, he had noticed over the years. Katara was protective, almost overly so, of the people she loved, and it was hard for her to let people in.

And yet here was Aang, a boy whom she had quite literally taken into her open arms without so much as a blink of hesitation, a boy whom she was ready to leave her tribe, everything and everyone she had ever known, and travel across the world for. It seemed so out of character. Katara didn’t usually make sense to her brother, but this was something different, something special.

Even Gran Gran had taken notice of the unique energy between them. “Aang is the Avatar,” she had told the Water Tribe siblings. “He is the world's only chance. You both found him for a reason. Now your destinies are intertwined with his,” and she was right.

That day, Aang and Katara had forged a connection that wouldn’t, that couldn’t, ever be severed. Breaking him out of the iceberg had been the catalyst for the rest of their lives together. Their adventures following only served to deepen and strengthen that link, allowing them to fall wholly and completely for one another and experience a love they didn’t know was possible.

Visiting Aunt Wu was the first time Katara had really stopped to consider how far their bond went and the strength of her feelings for Aang. She knew they had something unique, something exceptional, but she hadn’t ever thought it could run that deep. “The man you’re going to marry… I can see that he is a very powerful bender.” It made sense, didn’t it? The boy who had changed her life for the better would grow to be the man that she would spend the rest of her life with.

Their kiss in the Cave of the Lovers only further cemented the idea in her head, and a part of her began to believe that their meeting was fate, just like the tale of Oma and Shu. Aang, while still reeling from embarrassment at some of his words (“I’m saying I’d rather kiss you than die, that’s a compliment!”), also began to have similar thoughts, thinking that maybe they too had parallels to the starcrossed lovers and that the love that they shared would one day too be immortalized in legend.

The battle in the catacombs underneath Ba Sing Se seemed like an all too abrupt end to their story. It simply didn’t feel real. How could their link just have been cut off like that? No, Katara wasn’t ready to accept it. She couldn’t accept it. It went against the laws of the universe, it wasn’t possible.

She was going to do whatever it took to keep him there with her, and she did. She brought Aang back from the spirit world through the purest of love, light, and determination, and she made it her duty to never let such a thing happen again.

It was what allowed them to fulfill their roles as the Avatar and his waterbending master at Sozin’s Comet and have their kiss afterward, the early buddings of a relationship that would last a lifetime. Years later, they would go on to pronounce that love to all their friends and family, but, for now, they were more than just their fates.

Just as Aang was able to manipulate water along with his primary element of air, the heavens held clouds in its vast expanse of sky, connecting it to the sea. The sea sent water up in the form of vapor to create those fluffy masses above, and the sky releases the water that the clouds hold in torrents of rain back down to the ground, tying the two together in an endless cycle.

Similarly, waterbending was one of the many things that bound Aang and Katara. It was the reason they had met, the reason Katara was able to break Aang out of that iceberg, and it was the reason they embarked on their epic journey to the North Pole- to learn from the masters and even become ones themselves.

Waterbending linked them as sifu and pupil, strengthening their bond. Without waterbending, Aang may have never realized that fateful day of her adjusting his form of the effect she had on him, the full intensity of the pull, the attraction she held in his eyes.

Waterbending had made Katara especially attuned to the rhythm of the waves rising and falling, and it didn’t long for her to notice how her and Aang’s dynamic reflected it, ebbing and flowing in a delicate yet harmonious balance.

Their meeting had been fate, an event necessary for the survival of the world itself, but that did not define them. With each other, they were not their destinies. They were not the Avatar and his waterbending master, nor were they the beacon of hope for the future of the Air Nation.

No, they were Aang and Katara, two people who had defied all odds, overcome all obstacles, and quite literally gone to the Spirit World and back all in the name of love.  They were not the heroes who had saved the world, but soulmates, fated just as the sky and the sea were to meet at their own horizon. They were two people irreversibly linked to each other then, now, and till the end of time itself.

[zargsnake]

Knightkiller: Anakin and Obi-Wan’s First Adventure

Chapter 6: Tila Juna

Word Count: 1659 Links: Chapter 1, Table of Contents

  *   *   *

As he is meditating, several guards burst through the curtain into Obi-Wan's room.

“Alright, Jedi, what did you do?” asks a Rodian.

“Do?”

“Where is your boy?” asks an Ithorian in his steady, peculiar language, which the cosmopolitan scholar of course understands perfectly.

“Oh, dear. I thought he was with you!”

The Rodian smacks his insolent guts with her staff. “He's run off! What did you tell him? What did you give him?”

“Nothing. I know nothing about this station. And I haven't left this room.”

The Rodian whacks him on the head. “Sneaky Jedi rat.”

The Ithorian wearily halts his coworker’s attack. “Juna’s girl will work just as well for your death matches. Your boy was only ever extra bait. Now he has proven himself to be only trouble.” His gaze is imperious and bland. “When we find him, we shoot on sight. Then we’ll slice off his head before you can pull any of your magic tricks, and divide the spoils between the upper officers.”

“You underestimate him. He cannot be found if he doesn't want to be.”

“We shall see,” the third guard, a Zabrak, threatens.

Obi-Wan feels no fear at her appearance. She looks far more like his Zabrak friend Master Koth than the Sith. No one looks like the Sith.

But, for Anakin, he feels great fear. What did Anakin do? Where did he go? What is he thinking? Anakin amazed Obi-Wan with his knowledge of these low-lives. But on his own, in a place like this? With all the street smarts in the world, he won’t last an hour.

I have lost the Chosen One. Qui-Gon would kill me.

Nevertheless, the bold knight tuts and laughs. “You would love to hear our master plan, wouldn't you? Ah. I pity you all for what's about to happen to you and your little tournament.”

The Rodian hits him again.

“Alright, then,” says Obi-Wan, grimacing. “If you want answers, you'd better bring in your boss. I'll only talk to Knightkiller.”

“Not likely,” the Ithorian responds. “You'll only fight Knightkiller once you’ve defeated all the others. So many of our athletes are paying through their noses for the chance to kill you.”

“In that case, please do drop a line if my Padawan turns up.”

The guards leave, irritated.

A minute later, they return, now practically hysterical.

“Alright!” yells the Rodian. “Something IS up! Where's the girl, Jedi?!”

“What girl?”

“Juna's Padawan!”

“Goodness gracious. Can't you keep a better eye on us?”

The Rodian moves to hit him again, but stops since he doesn't seem affected. “We know you're behind this.”

“It's almost like the most highly-trained warriors in the galaxy can just slip through your nasty little fingers.”

She hits him again.

“The teachers will pay for their students' disobedience,” says the Zabrak, who pulls the other two guards out of the room and slams the door.

The warriors beside Obi-Wan have gone quiet, intimidated by his taunting, in awe of his unknown abilities and those of the other three Jedi. Obi-Wan wonders how long that awe will last, if he can't escape as the clearly more competent children did.

Suddenly, the door to the arena opens up. He hears the crowd chanting his name. When he steps out, his arm shielding the brightness from his eyes, they all cheer for him. He feels disgusted to be a source of admiration for people like this, for doing the worst thing in the world. The sand underfoot is congealed with spots of blood. An attendant hands him a clean sword.

As the announcer speaks, and Obi-Wan's eyes adjust to the light, he sees that his opponent is that boyfriend-killer Tiango. The Mandalorian flexes and poses for the audience, but they are not swayed in their support for Obi-Wan.

In the same chair on which they had bound Anakin, now they have bound Master Juna. Where Anakin was terrified, Juna is peaceful, even content. She is a tall, large, fuzzy alien, a Lollian. Centuries ago, so he’d been told, her fur was bright orange with brown stripes, but he has only ever known her to be gray and silver. One of the two horns curling around her head is broken, but that was not from this death game; it has been like that as long as Obi-Wan can remember. The woman seems entirely unfazed and unharmed by the experience. He knows this cannot be remotely true, and yet she hides her pain so well -- or else, the Force is so strong with her that she sits on a plane of existence above it all, unbothered. She nods at him and he feels as one blessed.  

Obi-Wan instinctively reaches out for his own master. The years of physical peril and spiritual confusion in the life of a Padawan trained Obi-Wan to reach out to Qui-Gon as an immediate reaction, utterly replacing his natural fight-or-flight instinct, the ways of the Jedi overcoming evolution itself.

But of course he cannot reach him. Grief strikes him harder than any of these crooks could, harder than even any Sith could.

He's got to replace that instinct himself, this time; he's got to do it himself. There's someone else he has to reach for now, someone who feels entirely different, strange, and small, still smarting from a bad first impression. And -- more than that -- he, Obi-Wan, has got to be ready for Anakin whenever Anakin needs him, for whatever, just as his master was for him. The weight of this responsibility could crush the young man.

Anakin is here in the audience. Obi-Wan can sense his presence.  

Obi-Wan glances over the crowd -- Tiango seems to be posturing still -- but he can’t locate his Padawan. Anakin seems panicked, urgent. He has seen Tiango kill before, kill someone he cared for. He must be worried Tiango will be too much for Obi-Wan to handle. But Obi-Wan took down several Yoroo Soldiers less than one year ago. Sure, they're not an easy fight, but he knows their tricks; he knows their evil cybernetic enhancements.

Chahlee sends a laser, suddenly, at Obi-Wan, from his blaster-arm. Obi-Wan deflects it deftly, causing the audience to gasp, but the impact bends his vibroblade. Obi-Wan stares at it. He forgot they did that.

   *   *   *

Freed, with the help of Fenn Gallowk and his acid-blaster, on the upper floor of the space station, Anakin knows he needs to hide his Jedi robe and Padawan hair. These people might even know his face. He got lucky with Fenn -- the next person who recognizes him from the Boonta Eve race probably won't give Anakin a chance to talk it out.

Anakin wonders if anyone here bet ON him. He doubts it. But it's a big galaxy, and maybe someone out there took a chance on him.

He remembers Qui-Gon's confident face, and how the man had picked him up to put him into the podracer, and then picked him out of it in the end and carried him on his shoulders. If Anakin is honest with himself, he knows Qui-Gon was, really, the only person who believed in him. His mom, Padme, and Jar Jar had supported him, and hoped beyond hope he would make it out alive. But Qui-Gon was the only one, probably in the whole universe, who believed -- foresaw, even -- that Anakin would win.

No, that's not true. Anakin had believed that too. How could he fail, when they all needed him so badly? When there was absolutely no other way, no choice?

Anakin hurries down the prison hall. The cells are closed on all sides; it is impossible to see who is being kept in them. He hides behind the flap of a garbage chute as a security droid passes; he sits with his back and legs pressed against opposite sides of the chute, careful not to fall down into who-knows-where. It smells awful. He jumps back into the hallway and finds the door to the public area ajar. He pushes his way out and tries to blend in with the crowd, keeping his head down and arms crossed around his blaster and the front of his robe.

Recharging: 3%.

Of all the blasters he could have stolen...

Just around the corner, he sees a big green alien at a desk and, behind them, a coat-check. Anakin ducks under the desk and sneaks into the room full of these criminals’ coats and cloaks. It smells even worse than the garbage chute.

He holds his nose and searches for something bulky, obscuring, and somewhat in his size. He finds a fur cloak, the pelt of a pink monster with its horned face still attached. He puts it on and ties the lower part around his waist so it doesn't drag on the floor. With the hood up, he can hide his own face inside the monster's mouth. He hides the blaster in the copious folds of fur.

Maneuverable? No. Inconspicuous? No. Unrecognizable, and able to hide his weapon? Yes.

Exciting? Yes!

Now he's got to get to Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan will know what to do. Even if he doesn't, it's Anakin's duty to be at Obi-Wan's side.

The loudspeakers announce the fight between Obi-Wan and Chahlee Tiango. Anakin feels afraid, and tells himself Jedi do not feel afraid, but it doesn’t help.

He sneaks back out from under the desk and finds two large furry aliens on the way into the arena, arguing with each other and paying no attention to anyone. He sticks close to them and pretends they are his parents. Once the hairy family has entered the arena through this upper-floor entrance, Anakin separates from them and waddles through the balcony seats, trying to get as close to the arena as he can. He sees Obi-Wan and the Mando have already begun to fight. He takes a seat on the floor at the very front of the balcony and holds onto the bars with his shivering hands.

“Come on, Master.”

Chapter 7: Jane

[fieryphoenix0007]

Prologue/Introduction

In the beginning…

  God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light”: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

Or so the story of Creation goes…

  Same, too, to say, that this was also the story of Michael’s first triumph against Samael’s Great Rebellion.

They say that the Bible is the Word of God, His Story, and His message to humanity, however, many theologians never fully understand all the words written by the great apostles, prophets and scribes of God.

  The writer themselves were puzzled with every word that came from the inspiration of God through their writing.

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

  Facing with the punishment of being banned from the promised land of Canaan, the writer of the first five books, the “Pentateuch”, Moses, the great leader of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, determined to himself that he will write and record, scribe what the Lord inspires him to write.

  He began with the words, “In the beginning…” notating the answer to the large mystery of ‘Where did everything started from?’

  From Genesis to Exodus, how they escaped slavery from Egypt, and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, Moses played a large role in starting writing the original manuscript of the Holy Book.

  What is common on these books are that they present God’s power to the human realm, His influence, physically, on the Earth’s fundamental laws. The impossible made possible, the unthinkable made pursuable, and the improbable proven.

  Little do we know about the spiritual creatures that help conjure these so-called ‘miracles’, or as the humans call it, ‘abnormalities’.

  The power to bend reality into your will is something that cannot be achieved by mere human. The humans do have their wild imagination – concoctions to a colourful and advancing world, however, they can only so little to so much with their own bare hands and feet.

  They are limited and cased into the laws of physics and the laws of the universe, whatever they can produce beyond those boundaries were theorized to be with the help of spiritual beings upon the will of God.

  These spiritual beings took on faces similar to human, but were theorized to be genderless, their form changes according to their purpose and each of them has a different power that can bend even nature itself.

  In reality, the appearance of each was uncommon to the human eyes, and mind, looking like sword, flames, ray of light, wheel, beast, and winged creatures.

  They operated in the shadows, perhaps, secret agents, fashioned by God, effortlessly blending into the crowd to create opportunities for trials and temptations, and visited humanity time and time again in a particular way that sends shivers down your spine.

  ------------------------------

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

  Moses was an Egyptian scholar. Years of his life focused on grooming and preparing him to be one of the great pillars of the dynasty of Egypt, along with his father and brother, the Pharaoh and prince regent.

  In the middle of the great pyramids’ construction, some believed that Moses was the chief engineer in building those ginormous symbol of wealth and power of the Egyptian monarchs and elites.

  Moses, the brother of the prince, standing in the midst of the crowd, proud of his lineage, and assisting his brother, the regent, on his projects and plans for the future of the kingdom.

  He was always at the top of his game. His teachers taught him manners of the royalty, work ethics, and their religious gods, but nothing from his prestige education and training has prepared him for the upcoming events.  

  “Stop! Please!” An Israelite girl pleaded and kneeled in front of the Egyptian soldier as her salty sweat runs down her brows.

  The slaves have been tirelessly put to work for almost seven days now by one of the nobles who felt that he would die at any moment.

  Soldiers were assigned to monitor each and every slave to work and accomplish the great task of mounting one of the greatest pyramids of all time.

  As women and the children were assigned to distribute food and water, the men, the older ones, and the young ones, were assigned to the heavy duty of creating blocks of mud and bringing them to the construction.

  SFX: WAPOOSH! The sound of the whip echoed in the valley.

  The Egyptian soldier just wouldn’t stop.

  She looked away every whip, the sight of her grandfather, whipped to death for falling behind the line, blood oozes out of the pores of his back, blending in the mud and straw where the slave drenched as he fell behind the line, rashes start to appear as the straw’s unbearable dryness produced the itching reddish appearance as it touched and the heat torched the old man’s skin.

  Moses was sensitive to these kinds of things, he doesn’t remember ever getting to know a slave, nor does he know that he was from one of the slaves, but his heart ached every time a slave cried out, his mind exploded in frustration every time he sees someone lashed to death.

  He did not fully understand why, but his body followed his heart and mind, because of this, most of the Senate did not like Moses.

  To them, he looked weak, sympathizing with the slaves. Though, the current Pharaoh keeps him in his heart as his son, and the current regent treats him like a blood-brother, you will notice a difference in heart.

  “Father, I’d like a slave to be in my quarters.” The first time he heard this from his brother, the prince regent, it immediately broke his heart.

  He realized he is still too weak to do anything, but now, now, that he’s the chief engineer, maybe, maybe, he thought, Maybe I can do something about this!

  He quickly rushed to the aid of the old man with a collapsed lung, the soldier continued to whip the man to death until he submitted, wobbling standing up and tried to barely carry his load.

  Of course, he wouldn’t be able to stand up - you’re whipping him to death!

  He thought this through…

  But it was too late, he grabbed the soldier’s wrist to stop, but the old man collapsed again and was no longer breathing, his unmoving body lay still half-buried in the sand and mud and the straw that he grew up to pick up in.

  I thought I can save him.

  He expected a wave of rejoicing of gratitude from the slaves, instead, a wild, deafening screech from the weeping of the granddaughter of the old man echoed through the desert.

  He couldn’t comfort the girl, he couldn’t scold the soldier, he couldn’t punish the abuser, and protect the weak, stuck in the middle, he was faced with the greatest enemy of his life – the cruelty of his own father, or so he thought.

  That night, determined to get justice, and to be the defender of the weak, the sneaky vigilante snuck through the darkness and struck quickly in the moonlight.  

  “No, please, don’t kill me.” The soldier appealed with his life.

  But the more he beseeched for mercy, the more Moses got agitated, he remembered how the little girl implored for his grandfather’s life, and for that, he struck the blows even harder and harder, until there’s no recognizable feature in the man’s face.

  A sigh of relief rushed down his spine as he finished the task, he succeeded in sending that soldier’s soul to hell’s hottest and finest rooms.  

  The relief quickly brushed down his face, and terror and panic soon came charging in. The clouds that covered the moonlight passed on and as the light hit the sand, his murder handiwork reflected in his eyes. His hands covered in blackish hard liquid, as the blood dried out immediately in the cold of the night.

  What have I done?

  Alas, he thought he was doing a righteous task by taking justice in his own hands, but what he took was his own innocence, and send it off to hell.

  Sand! I’ll… I’ll bury him in the sand!

  He quickly scooped his bloodied hands in the sand, cold and rough, gasping for air as he dashed to bury the body in the middle of nowhere. He knew that no secret in this world that will never be revealed, but hoped at the least that his family doesn’t find out.

  As he was finishing his burial, his eyes nervously darted and scoped around like a cornered impala, waiting for the lion to strike.

  There’s no one. Good.

  He speedily head back to the palace, near at the river’s bank, and washed off his body and threw his clothes, the river stowed away with the bloodied evidence of his crime.

  He looked at the silver moon, it was not a good sight. His eyes filled with the red-stained blood that splashed around while he bludgeoned the soldier to death with a sharp rock.

  He wanted to go back in time, to undo what he did, but it’s too late, it’s already done.

  Forgiveness from a god was familiar to Moses, they have customs and rituals indicated in their history paintings and drawings, but this was the first time he sought forgiveness from the God of the Israelites.

  God, if you can hear me, please… please forgive me. I’ve been good, and I’ve helped many of your people. I hope You can help me this time.

  Every one of the Egyptians was well acquainted with each other, though they treated the Israelites as slaves, their definition of family was still pretty close, hence, the next morning, the family of the soldier petitioned a searching party from the palace.

  Alarmed by the missing soldier report, the Pharaoh quickly dispatched a team to rummage through the desert and the nearest kilometres of the borders.

  And within that day, a few volunteers discovered a body, unrecognizable, near the borders of Egypt.  

  So… so fast, I… I need to get out of here.

  God wanted to help Moses, though he murdered a man in the name of revenge, he was still the chosen deliverer of the Israelites out of Egypt, that was His plan.

  Then…

  God liberated Moses all from the anchor of his family, the pressure of Egypt and from his crime.

  “Aren’t you the one who killed this man? Are you not an Egyptian as well? Why did you kill him?”

  Someone whispered in the crowd.

  Moses darted his eyes through the crowd, there was no one.

  Who’s talking, then… who?

  An old man has his back turned from Moses, and that’s when his heart spoke to him, Approach the old man, approach him.

  And he did.

  That voice steered him to something that he could not fathom, at the least for that moment, or for the next forty years.

  He frantically stretched out his arms across the crowd and reached the old man’s shoulder.

  “Wait…”

  His face quickly turned pale and devoid of any colour, as if the blood came rushing out, the old man’s face, it was the dead old man, the unmoving old man, whipped to death, bloodied with his back, and rashes in his whole body.

  “You killed him! You killed your fellow Egyptian! He killed him! I saw him last night!” The outlandish accusations of the old man seemed to be believable to the people around Moses.

  The Chief of the Army quickly posed a wanted poster and notice for the head of Moses, the man who killed an Egyptian.

  How is this possible? That old man already died, I avenged him.

His thoughts got scrambled quickly as puzzle as he packed up his things to escape justice for his murder charges.

  Pressed by the elites and nobles, the Pharaoh, issued a warrant to arrest and punish Moses for the murder charges.

  I have no other choice but go.

  MOSES! MOSES! The echoing soldiers and army ready to arrest him were now threading to the gates of Egypt.

  He quickly marched on to the death of the desert to escape his pursuers.

  *Huff, Huff*

This isn’t working, this isn’t what I wanted. I only wanted freedom for the slaves. Fair treatment for everyone, how did it end up this way?

  It’s too late, he was already miles away from the kingdom, in the vast desert. At least he knew how to find an oasis or something similar in this time of the day.

  Exhausted, lingering between life and death, Moses continued to march on at the cold of the night, his eyes barren of any life and hope, not knowing where to go, what to do, and if there is any future ahead of all of this.

  Then…

  SFX: Thud, thud

  His knee gave out, weakness due to thirst spread throughout his body and he suddenly fell on his knees, then his face on the sand.

  It’s as if he had lost all hope, closing his eyes to oblivion, his ears started tingling, there’s sound coming from somewhere.

  “Father, father…”

  The faintest sound of a lady woke him right up, his eyes dilated of joy and hope. He pulled out his arms from the sand, and pushed his body upwards, along with his torso and his legs.

  Flailing like his legs were going to give out, he struggled to find the sound.

  Where… where was it?

  “Aaa-, aa-, hee-“

  He doesn’t have that much voice in him, the sand dried up his throat, there’s vibration from his breathing, but sound, there’s nothing much, he’s too weak to speak, or even shout for help.

  “Father…”

  The whispers were getting louder by a minute, in what direction were they coming from?

  Moses closed his eyes, felt the wind and located where the whispers were coming from.

  South-east! South-east, go, go, go, move legs!

  And there it was, a small group of people, in tents surrounding a small oasis, supply of water, in the middle of the desert.

  Moses’ eyes lights up even more, shone, and the only thing he could see was the well besides the oasis.

  He ran and threw his face down at the water of the oasis, drinking, gulping, and-

  “Haaaaaaaaaaa.” Gasping for air. He lifted up his drenched face from the well, and looked up to the Heavens, the stars, the skies, the moon, it wasn’t bloody red anymore. He clearly saw the shining light reflecting to the water and on to his eyes.

  He wanted to cry his eyes out, but that’s not possible, he was still dehydrated from walking in the scorching hot desert for almost a day.

  Regaining his composure, his eyes wandered the premises, there’s no one nearby, no one awake, no soul that could whisper what he heard and yet he knows what he heard, he remembers what he heard.

  However…

  There’s something weird about the place. Everything was quiet, no one was definitely awake, particularly different from the bustling evening of Egypt.  

  Something even weirder caught his eye. A sword plunged shallowly on the sand near the well caught his curiosity, he began approaching the sword. It’s a double-edged sword.

  He was not familiar with this type of sword as Egyptians used a sickle-shaped, one – edged sword in their military.

  He’d only seen double-edged swords in their library of pictures, the walls that described their history and glory.

  In all the war pictures in those walls, he never saw a double-edged sword depicted in the drawings.

  Enthralled by the sword, he grabbed tightly the hilt of the shining silver sword and quietly pulled it out of the cold sand.

  “Moses.”

  “Ha!”

  Upon hearing a voice, he was startled and jerked off the sword out of his hands into the sand beneath his shoeless toes.

  What was that? Was that the sword?

  “Was… was that you?”

  What am I doing, talking to a sword? Is this a full-on hallucination?

  “Yes.”

  It talked! It talked, it talked, it talked! What?

  “What… what are you? Did you… did you save me and lead me here?”

  Definitely intrigued, he slowly approached the talking sword.

  “I am the messenger of God - the God of Jacob, the God of Joseph, the God of the Israelites.”

  You? A sword? Wait, Israelites?

  “So, it’s true, the God of Israel, is the true God?”

  There are many Egyptians gods that we pray to, but… I never felt a connection.

  Moses tried to grab again the hilt of the sword. This time, he made sure he tightly gripped the hilt.

  “Yes.”

  His heart skipped a beat, but he didn’t let go of the sword. Hard as it may seem but his mind accepted the fact that the talking sword is what led him there.

  “What do you want?”

  “Simple. To inform you something.”

  “Some… thing?”

  “You are of Israel, son of Jochebed, daughter of Levi, one of the sons of Jacob.”

  “What? That’s… that’s… impossible.”

  He gathered his thoughts, he’s an Egyptian, yet he has feelings for the slaves, pity, love, mercy, and the slaves are good to him as well, they knew something that he doesn’t.

  Flashbacks came flooding in.

  The time he felt pity for the first time for the slaves outside of the palace working on with the pyramids, and that time that he saw a little girl guiding him in the river, or that time that he remember in his dreams that an adult woman slave was singing him to sleep, those… those weren’t just dreams, they’re… they’re memories.

  They’re… my memories?

  “Your mother kept you alive in a basket for almost three years.”

  “Pharaoh, your adoptive grandfather has decided to slay the male Israelites to avoid increasing the number of the slaves, he was afraid that a rebellion will happen if Israel were to outgrow Egypt and overcome them in numbers.” The sword continued the story.

  “Numbers… wait, what? He… Grandfather…”

  “The history is not one pleasant thing to remember. The children howled and whimpered, and their mothers wailed and bellowed their cries, it’s as if the Heavens closed again its windows, this time, against humanity.”

  “So…”

  The reason why many Israelites hated my grandfather was… was…

  “The soldiers, along with their conscience, begrudgingly tossed the male infants to the Nile, only to be drowned, or subdued or eaten by the reptiles which roam about the river. That day, the Earth, the land, the waters grieved for the gifts of God shed blood unnaturally through the wickedness of the heart of Pharaoh.”

  “Then… I… I was about to be killed…”

  “Yes, however, your mother was able to get you hidden from the soldiers. Once she was fully aware that she will not be able to for the next years of your infancy, she… she prepared a basket for you to be able to float into the Nile. Guided by your sister, Miriam, Jochebed hesitantly watched you, and the basket sail within the most dangerous depths of the river to the chamber of Pharaoh’s daughter. That’s how you became the Prince of Egypt.”

  His eyes opened wide, his knee gave out again, but not due to hunger, not due to dehydration, but due to shock, he also lost the power to hold the sword and it fell, blade-first into the ground.

  “That’s… how do you know so much about me?”

  “I already told you, I am the messenger of God.”

  “If you have saved me, then…”

“Yes, you will be Israel’s deliverer, you will deliver them out of slavery into the promise land.”

  “I… no, no, no… I just came out of there as a murderer! I’m a criminal, not some saviour, and who am I to… to…”

  “You’re not just someone, God set you up to be the Prince of Egypt and the Deliverer of Israel, you are Moses.”

  “How can I…”

  “Believe. For now, learn the way of the priest and the shepherd. I will be reaching you again when the time comes.”

  “When the time comes?”

  “Yes. “

  Moses, looking down, has realized his fate, and his life was a set-up to believe what’s in front of him, but now…

  There’s an even bigger person than father, than the Pharaoh.

  “Who… who are you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes.”

  As soon as Moses became curious about the sword, what emerged from the back of the sword raised his interest even more.

  White, fluffy, and shining bird-like wings fluttered in front of his eyes, with a jaw-dropping beauty and elegant movement, the only thing that Moses can do is try to reach out the illuminating wings.

  He let go of the hilt of the sword and thus, it hovers in the air.

  “I am-“

[eddycurrents]

For the week of 27 August 2018

Quick Bits:

A Walk Through Hell #4 focuses largely on flashbacks to the case the agents were working before whatever’s currently happening happened and...I’m not really sure of anything that’s going on. I think that’s kind of the point, unsure as to how everything is supposed to connect and what any of it all adds up to. Great art from Goran Sudžuka and Ive Svorcina, though.

| Published by AfterShock

Beyonders #1 is off to a great start. Between this and The Lost City Explorers, it seems like AfterShock right now has pseudoarchaeology stitched up and it’s wonderful. Paul Jenkins, Wesley St. Claire, and Marshall Dillon kick this one off with a wee bit more crunch, though there’s a very interesting upheaval this issue that will make you wonder what’s going on.

| Published by AfterShock

Blackwood #4 brings this series to an end and it is dark. Very dark. Evan Dorkin, Veronica & Andy Fish have crafted a wonderful horror story here, with some interesting twists, and one hell of an ending.

| Published by Dark Horse

Bone Parish #2 takes a deep dive in to some of the foundational moments of the Winters clan, even as they begin to deal with the fallout of one of their dealers dying from an overdose. This is great stuff. The art from Jonas Scharf and Alex Guimarães is incredible. Great detail and atmosphere, perfectly bringing to life the premise and characters from Cullen Bunn.

| Published by BOOM! Studios

Brothers Dracul #5 circles back around to the beginning of the story, as we reach the end of this interesting retelling and interpretation of the intersection of both the historical and legendary story of Vlad the Impaler, from Cullen Bunn, Mirko Colak, Maria Santaolalla, and Simon Bowland. There’s an interesting twist here that certainly paints Vlad’s action in a different light, and I hope we see it followed up upon in a second series.

| Published by AfterShock

Cyber Force #5 is a nice change of pace as Bryan Hill, Matt Hawkins, Atilio Rojo, and Troy Peteri introduce us to another old familiar face. This incarnation of the team definitely is taking its time to be brought together, but when the storytelling is as entertaining and the artwork is as gorgeous as this, it doesn’t really matter. To note, though, this is not the kind of decompression that feels empty or padded, it’s just fleshing out characters and their lives more than what we’ve seen before.

| Published by Image / Top Cow

Daredevil Annual #1 presents a standalone story of Misty Knight’s days as a detective and her first meeting with Daredevil. It’s good. It feels a bit more like a pilot for a Misty Knight series than necessarily a Daredevil tale, but, as I said, it’s good. The art from Marcio Takara and Marcelo Maiolo is nice. I really like Takara’s style which gives me hints of Phil Hester, Jim Mahfood, and Tomm Coker.

| Published by Marvel

Dungeons & Dragons: Evil at Baldur’s Gate #5 is another fun one, with a focus this issue on Boo. I’ve really enjoyed this series, with Jim Zub giving the party a bit of a breather between larger adventures and giving a great look at them as individual characters. Great art, too, including this issue from Francesco Mortarino and Jordi Escuin.

| Published by IDW

Edge of Spider-Geddon #2 gives us a view into another alternate Spiderverse, circling back around to SP//dr, and giving us a new twist on the power and responsibility rubric and VEN#m. It’s nice to see Lonnie Nadler and Zac Thompson play with more technological horror, with some incredible artwork from Alberto Alburquerque and Tríona Farrell.

| Published by Marvel

Euthanauts #2 is a thing of beauty. Nick Robles and Eva De La Cruz are seriously delivering some of the best art in comics right now with this series. The page layouts, character designs, use of colour, and incorporation of lettering choices from Aditya Bidikar, just elevate the storytelling immensely. Not even to mention how Tini Howard is making the weird science seamless in the dialogue. This is great.

| Published by IDW / Black Crown

Exiles #7 concludes the Old West-ish arc with cowboy T’Challa. Drop dead gorgeous artwork from guest artist Rod Reis. His depiction of the ultimate villain here shows some nice influence from Bill Sienkiewicz.

| Published by Marvel

Extermination #2 brings the fight to the school, even as the team (and the reader, although it’s not a bad thing) is still confused as to what is really going on. I love this, the tension that Ed Brisson, Pepe Larraz, and Marte Gracia are building is palpable, and the hints of kid!Cable’s actions are chilling. Also, the art is just phenomenal. 

| Published by Marvel

Harbinger Wars 2 #4 is kind of the end to this, but the ramifications and fallout are all supposed to appear in the Aftermath issue. That being said, Matt Kindt, Tomás Giorello, Renato Guedes, Diego Rodriguez, and Dave Sharpe go all out for the spectacle in this final confrontation between Livewire and X-O Manowar. It is still kind of insane how Capshaw could possibly consider what GATE and OMEN have done as being “good”, especially in light of Palmer going absolutely batshit insane, but it does lead to interesting set-up for future conflicts.

| Published by Valiant

Hillbilly: Red-Eyed Witchery From Beyond #1 begins the next adventure of the black-eyed tramp. I get a bit of a Beowulf vibe from Eric Powell’s set-up and I’m interested to see where it goes. This series sees Powell passing on the artistic duties to Simone Di Meo, Brennan Wagner, and Warren Montgomery and it’s an interesting visual shift from the washes of Powell’s own work in the original series. I quite like Di Meo’s style, which reminds me a bit of James Harren and Troy Nixey.

| Published by Albatross Funnybooks

House Amok #1 is something I’m not sure I can describe. It’s kind of a family drama, but if that family were all collectively sharing a hallucinatory experience or delusion. It’s a very interesting concept that’s only partially revealed by Christopher Sebela, Shawn McManus, Lee Loughridge, and Aditya Baker, but it leads to a very compelling start here. Gorgeous artwork from McManus and Loughridge.

| Published by IDW / Black Crown

Hunt for Wolverine: Dead Ends #1, like all four of the Hunt for Wolverine mini-series, is kind of a bit of treading water. I cannot say it or any of the previous series are bad, taken on their own separated from this “event”, they’re usually quite good, but as a whole it’s kind of disappointing. It’s a search for Wolverine that kind of comes up empty, acting as a prequel to the return of Wolverine, despite already having returned in Marvel Legacy and hopped across numerous different titles, before apparently being used for evil, as per throwaway bits in the fourth issues of those previously mentioned minis that didn’t necessarily connect with the plots of those minis. It feels a bit scattered and unnecessary, unfortunately, especially when it comes to comparing notes, coming up with the organization we already knew was behind it, and a bit of hand-waving mystery and grandstanding that still tells us a whole lot of nothing. It’s sound and fury. All of which is a bit of a shame because I otherwise generally enjoy the work of Charles Soule and Ramon Rosanas.

| Published by Marvel

Isola #5... Just look at the artwork. Karl Kerschl and Msassyk just keep delivering page after page after page of beauty.

| Published by Image

Jessica Jones #2 reaffirms that this is one of the best things that Marvel is currently publishing, with the next two chapters in this story. Kelly Thompson’s dialogue, narration, and banter throughout this issue is spot on, propulsive, and funny as hell when it needs to be, but what elevates it is that this isn’t your typical talking heads approach. The characters are doing stuff, like hunting sea monsters, instead of sitting at a desk or whatever. It’s a refreshing change that overall just makes this all the better. Not to mention Mattia De Iulis’ stunning artwork. It’s slick and polished with a line style that somewhat reminds me of Paul Gulacy and a bit of Rick Mays, and an approach to shadow and colour similar to Frazer Irving. This is a great series that really shouldn’t be missed.

| Published by Marvel

Judge Dredd: Under Siege #4 wraps up this entertaining series from Mark Russell, Max Dunbar, Jose Luis Rio, and Shawn Lee. I really like Dunbar’s take on Dredd and the Russell’s idea of people creating their own law in the absence of law is an interesting philosophical counterpoint to the idea of man naturally sliding towards a state of chaos. Even the mutants striving for society is an interesting challenge to the typical idea of things falling apart.

| Published by IDW

New Mutants: Dead Souls #6 concludes the series with Illyana putting the pieces together for what actually has been going on, it isn’t a pretty picture. This has been a great series from Matthew Rosenberg, Adam Gorham, Michael Garland, and Clayton Cowles and the revelations this issue are heavy. The implications for the X-universe is huge and I want more.

| Published by Marvel

The New World #2 essentially reveals itself as a romance comic, amidst the ultraviolence and social engineering. Didn’t really see that coming, but it’s an interesting move. Trippy art from Tradd Moore, Heather Moore, and Ludwig Olimba.

| Published by Image

Paradise Court #2 continues to be an entertaining horror comic from Joe Brusha, Babisu Kourtis, Leonardo Paciarotti, and Taylor Esposito. This gives us the part of the story where our protagonist is experiencing the horror and everyone else is telling her she’s just imagining it, but it’s still well told and well illustrated.

| Published by Zenescope

Rick and Morty vs. Dungeons & Dragons #1 is about as perfect a crossover of two properties as you can get. Morty trying to get into D&D because he thinks it will get him laid is the perfect in to the world of the game and the cartoon, perfectly blending the two for fans of both without alienating or diminishing either. Jim Zub, Patrick Rothfuss, Troy Little, Leonardo Ito, and Robbie Robbins are faithful to both and in doing so deliver a wonderful beginning to this story, that also educates along the way.

| Published by IDW & Oni Press

Runaways #12 is easily one of the best issues in what has already been an exemplary series. Rainbow Rowell, Kris Anka, Matthew Wilson, and Joe Carmagna focus here on forgiveness, acceptance, and second chances, with some truly beautiful character work between Gert & Victor and Nico & Karolina. If you don’t have a giant grin on your face by the end of the issue, I question your humanity.

| Published by Marvel

Submerged #2 is still weird, very weird, but there’s some really good bits in here demonstrating some of the emotional manipulation that family members sometimes employ. Beautiful, ethereal artwork from Lisa Sterle and Stelladia.

| Published by Vault

Venom: First Host #1 is somewhat strange to see in light of where Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman have taken the character, but this limited series from Mike Costa, Mark Bagley, Andrew Hennessy, Dono Sánchez-Almara, and Clayton Cowles serves as both an interesting addendum to the symbiote’s history and as a continuation (and likely capstone) to the previous creative team’s run. It’s pretty decent.

| Published by Marvel

Web of Venom: Ve’Nam #1 is a one shot fleshing out the backstory of Rex Strickland and the SHIELD experiment that bonded the early symbiotes to soldiers set loose during the Vietnam War. It’s an entertaining tale with some nice guest stars and sweet art by Donny Cates, Juanan Ramírez, Felipe Sobreiro, and Clayton Cowles. I particularly like the scratchy, faded look in the art to make it look a bit “old”.

| Published by Marvel

X-23 #3 is great. Mariko Tamaki has nailed the characters and the art from Juann Cabal and Nolan Woodard is incredible. The page designs alone elevate the storytelling immensely.

| Published by Marvel

The X-Files: Case Files - Hoot Goes There? #2 concludes the second of this new approach of a series of mini-series and it’s...weird? Funny, but weird. Definitely taking a page out of some of the more outlandish episodes of the series, where you question whether or not what you saw happened actually happened. Still, it’s entertaining, which is all that really matters. Fun from Joe and Keith Lansdale, Silvia Califano, Valentina Pinto, and Shawn Lee.

| Published by IDW

X-Men Blue #34 looks like it largely serves as a capstone to Cullen Bunn’s work with Magneto over the past four years or so, as he winds down his run here and continues to tidy the characters up a bit before he’s done and hands the reins off to the next band of storytellers. It feels like there’s a lot more here that he would have like to have told, but what we get here is still excellent. The hints at the next stage for Magneto and mutantkind are intriguing. Great art from Marcus To and Matt Milla. 

| Published by Marvel

X-O Manowar #18 gives an interesting transition from this flashback of Aric’s pre-Shanhara life to his return to Earth, focusing on how ideas, people, and culture keeps changing. Matt Kindt delivers a pretty chilling reaction to it. All with some nice artwork from Trevor Hairsine, Brian Thies, and Diego Rodriguez. 

| Published by Valiant

Other Highlights: Deadpool: Assassin #6, GI Joe: A Real American Hero #255, KINO #9, Marvel Two-in-One #9, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Shattered Grid #1, Modern Fantasy #3, Moon Knight #198, Ms. Marvel #33, Red Sonja #20, Rick & Morty #41, StarCraft: Scavengers #2, Star Wars: Lando - Double or Nothing #4, Star Wars: Poe Dameron Annual #2, Star Wars Adventures #13, TMNT: Bebop & Rocksteady Hit the Road #5, Wayward #28, X-Men: Grand Design - Second Genesis #2

Recommended Collections: 2021 - Volume 1, 30 Days of Night, Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack - Volume 1, Black Cloud - Volume 2: No Return, DuckTales Classics - Volume 1, Eugenic, Factory, Femme Magnifique, I Hate Fairyland - Volume 4, James Bond: Hammerhead, Judas, Killer Instinct, Stray Bullets: Sunshine & Roses - Volume 2

d. emerson eddy is not the very model of a modern major general. Nor a scientist salarian for that matter.

[feydncrs]

urban, a short story;

She tied the brown and yellow apron tightly around her waist as her shift began. Morgan, the barista who stayed up until three in the afternoon, threw the keys on the counter and waved her goodbye as he left, the bell on the door dangling when it shut. She tightened her ponytail and inhaled deeply – the smell of recently brewed coffee was intoxicating yet homey to her. It was time to work.

Looking at the notes on the counter, she picked up the ingredients for the first order. No matter how much they observed her, no one could ever figure out her secret to excelling as a barista. Her treats were always heavenly. No one meant to say that Morgan was bad at his job or anything of the kind, but whatever she prepared was certainly different. Her dishes had a different touch, filling the clients’ stomachs with sparkles of wonder. Other than that, she did everything at an amazing speed – whenever she was on duty, treats would come way before they were even expected. The clients were always caught aback by it. It was almost as if, instead of actual mixing, cutting and battering, she was doing magic behind the counter.

But, of course, those were just speculations. The barista was just a regular woman – regular women can’t do magic. Regular women have to grab all the ingredients with their own two hands, wait as pots, pans and machines brew them and pour them carefully where they belong.

A small cloud of cinnamon fluttered over the tall glass she had just been preparing. Putting it on the counter and ringing the bell so the waiter would know it was ready, she moved on to the next order. Pancakes 134 was what the yellow post it read. In the blink of an eye, the stove was on, the pan on top of it melting butter. She turned back to the fridge, finding a bowl with pancake dough as usual and tasting it with her finger. A little milk. After pouring it in, she spun her finger quickly a few times, dipping it again right afterwards. Setting all of it on the counter and tapping the bowl twice, she heard the first dose frying as she followed up the next drink order.

She didn’t realize it when the door opened to reveal a prominent figure, but, as it approached the counter, she tapped the pan lightly, grabbing the spatula to turn the pancakes right before it fell against the stove. She smiled, still looking at her work. “Welcome to Hobbit’s Door, sir! How can I be of any help?”

“I’d like the Puff Special if possible, Amelia. With extra butter.”

The voice made her head whip up. On the other side of the counter sat none less than Seamus Finn, an old teacher of hers. Amelia’s smile widened greatly, and she almost forgot about the pancakes. She let go of the spatula, leaving it to its job with the bowl of dough. She reached up to the small caldron where an espresso was brewing and released a blueish smoke. “It would be my pleasure! What brings you here, sir?”

“You see, my dear Amelia,” Professor Finn started in a cautious tone, “that is a bad way to start a conversation with an old teacher. Why don’t you tell me what you have been up to lately, instead?”

Confused, Amelia poured the espresso into a small and a medium cup. The small one went over the counter as she rang the bell once more, while the medium cup received a sprinkle of butter and a small dose of Fire Whisky before she put it in front of the man. According to the next post-it, strawberries started being chopped and the pancakes were finalized. If Professor Finn wanted her to talk first, he must have a good reason. “I’ve been working part-time as a barista here – many of my old classmates like the place – and studying double Botanic during the morning. It’s quite satisfying.”

“No wonder. I always pictured you in a cozy place like this, Amelia, just not as the barista.” The Professor commented, sipping on his coffee.

“A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, Professor.” Amelia smiled slightly, throwing cherries in the chopper’s direction. “I’ll eventually get out of here, I should be done with university in the next year or so. The barista life is not that bad, though. People here appreciate me enough.”

Finn chuckled slightly. “Who wouldn’t, after all? You must have wonderful tips for efficiency.”

“They come in handy.” She admitted. “It’s very lucky that my mother decided to share her kitchen secrets with me while I was still young. Now that I’m using it as a barista, though, I fear she might not teach my sister the same. She despises the job.”

“And little Beatrice made her way into the conversation.” The Professor sighed, smiling.

Amelia smiled at the sound of her sister’s name, putting the plate with pancakes over the counter and slapping the bell. The chopped fruits went into a small caldron, which she agitated for a moment – just enough to blend them. “How is she doing? She was very nervous about this year.”

“She has the family’s spirit, I must tell you. She excels in my classes, just like your brother and you once did. It seems that the Main family has a hand for Herbology, my dear.” The Professor said calmly, taking a small bag out of his pocket and pouring it inside the coffee – his anti-morphers, Amelia guessed. “I fear, however, that she is the wind that blew me your way.”

“Oh, dear.” She said, hearing it as the caldron dropped to her cooking counter. The pancakes stopped turning – she no longer was paying them any attention. What had Beatrice done this time?

“Don’t worry, Amelia.” The Professor guaranteed, still tranquil. She had learned over the years, however, that there wasn’t much that could put Seamus Finn in despair. “All is fine, so are her grades. I just fear your sister overgrew a Pink Lock – ”

“I told her to keep it sharply cut!” Amelia exclaimed, getting a look from the waitress that served as her coworker that afternoon. She realized a lot of smoke messed up with her eyes – the pancakes were burning. She turned off the stove manually and shook her fingers over the pancakes, making them vanish.

Finn still smiled. “I realized I might have been a treat of yours.”

“Professor, I am so so sorry.”

“Don’t worry, dear.” He repeated, sipping his coffee once more. “You see, no one has gotten hurt yet. I do fear Beatrice and another student, Jonathan Lee, have gotten trapped inside it, however.”

“Beatrice…” Amelia whispered, shaking her head. “My deepest apologies, Professor. How can I help you?”

“Well, Amelia, this incident brought something to my eyes.” The Professor assumed a serious tone. “Although I knew how to prevent the situation, I don’t quite know how to deal with it. I fear modern Herbology has gone beyond my reach. I am uncertain of my capability of teaching it alone.”

“Don’t say that, sir.” Amelia shook her head. “You taught a great generation of Herbologists! So many of your students take double Botanic in the most prestigious universities and – ”

“Amelia, dear,” he interrupted her politely, “I am not saying otherwise. What I mean to do here is offer you a position at the school – an internship as a Herbology assistant.”

Her spatula fell to the ground. “Pardon me?”

“Shall you accept, you’ll be integrated effect-immediately, for we do need someone to take Miss Main and Mister Lee out of the Pink Lock.” He finished, turning his cup one last time.

“Say no more.” Amelia said decisively, untying her apron. “Come with me – there’s a fireplace we can use in the employee’s room.”

“You did think about everything.”

“You know the Mains, sir.” She said, leading the way to the back of the café as their two figures disappeared into the door. A breath later, the choppers were clean and in place, the pots were regular pans and the pancake dough was lacking a little milk. Morgan, the barista who stayed up until three in the afternoon, threw the keys on the counter and waved the waitress goodbye as he left, the bell on the door dangling when it shut. It was a lazy sunny autumn day in New Haven, and, outside the campus, everything ran like deep jazz – smooth and slow.

[auskultu]

Armed Forces: Democracy in the Foxhole

uncredited writer, Time, 19 May 1967

Deep in "Indian country," the Viet Cong's jungled heartland, a lone U.S. helicopter flapped furiously down on an abandoned dirt roadway. Even before the Huey hit the ground, its six passengers were out and running. Their faces streaked with camouflage paint, their black and green "tiger suits" blending into the foliage, their black-stocked M-16 automatic rifles at the ready, they faded swiftly into the perennial twilight of 80-ft. trees, impenetrable bamboo thickets, and tangles of thorn and "wait a minute" vines. This was "Lurp Team Two," a long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP) of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, sent to seek out two Viet Cong regiments that their outfit was itching to locate, engage and destroy. Within moments, Team Two was itself in imminent danger of destruction.

It did not take long for the patrol to discover that it had landed smack in the midst of a Viet Cong concentration. As skilled as Victor Charlie in the deadly blindman's buff of jungle warfare, Team Two soon realized that the enemy was following its every move. Each time Staff Sergeant Glide Brown Jr. halted his men, they could hear a couple of footfalls close behind—and then a bristling silence. As the jungle dusk deepened into blackness, Brown set up a defense perimeter and listened more closely. Above the keening of insects, geckos and night birds, he heard the snap of two fingers and the snick of a rifle bolt not 30 yards away. "We're getting out of here," he whispered. "They're just behind us."

Linked up head and tail like circus elephants by their "escape ropes," each humping half a hundredweight of gear,* the muzzles of their rifles still taped to keep out gunk, the scouts took advantage of distant artillery salvos to mask their footfalls on the way back to a prearranged retrieval zone. Brown, in the lead, groped his way back through the blackness by memorizing the map and counting his own steps; each time his left foot hit the ground 67 times, he calculated the team had covered 100 meters. Back at the landing zone, Brown's whispered message filtered into the PRC transceiver: "Four seven, this is Papa Two. I'm in trouble. This is Papa Two . . ." No reply. The triple-tiered jungle canopy drowned his call to the pickup helicopter. Brown moved his men soundlessly across the clearing and set up a radial defense—each man flat on his back, head to the center of the circle, his M-16 ready—behind a tangle of fallen trees.

Hanging Tough. Team Two measured the passage of the night in careful inhalations, silent exhalations, and the clack of bamboo signal sticks used by the Viet Cong patrols that passed within 50 feet of its hideout. Then, at 2 a.m., a single shot blasted the night: Brown's radio man, shifting his M16, had accidentally triggered a tracer round —almost certainly disclosing the team's position. Brown hung tough, hoping that the cross-wave of jungle echoes would confuse the enemy searchers. It did, and at dawn the team moved back in to hunt out the Viet Cong base camp.

Only after Brown had spotted a concentration of black pajamas did Team Two withdraw. As enemy sniper bullets stitched around and between them, the scouts blasted back with fragmentation grenades and bursts of automatic fire that chopped the brush into jungle salad. Brown "popped smoke"—yellow signal grenades—to bring in the choppers, and while hovering Huey gunships laced the weeds with rockets and .50-cal. bullets, Team Two made its getaway, mission accomplished.

Bright Strands. Sergeant Brown, 24, is a Negro from the black belt of Alabama; in 16 sorties into Indian country he has not lost anyone on his five-man team, none of whom is a Negro. The cool professionalism of Glide Brown's patrol underscores in microcosm a major lesson of Viet Nam—a hopeful and creative development in a dirty, hard-fought war. For the first time in the nation's military history, its Negro fighting men are fully integrated in combat, fruitfully employed in positions of leadership, and fiercely proud of their performance. In the unpredictable search-and-destroy missions through the Central Highlands, in the savage set-piece battles along the DMZ, in the boot-swallowing, sniper-infested mangrove swamps of the Mekong Delta, on the carrier decks and in the gun mounts of the Seventh Fleet offshore, in the cockpits of helicopters and fighter-bombers in the skies above both Viet Nams, the American Negro is winning—indeed has won—a black badge of courage that his nation must forever honor.

That badge, interlaced with all the bright strands of personal bravery and professional skill that have marked their performance in battle, proclaims a truth that Americans had not yet learned about themselves before Viet Nam: color has no place in war; merit is the only measure of the man.

Can Do, Must Win. More than anything, the performance of the Negro G.I. under fire reaffirms the success—and diversity—of the American experiment. Often inchoate and inconsistent, instinctively self-serving yet naturally altruistic, the Negro fighting man is both savage in combat and gentle in his regard for the Vietnamese. He can clean out a bunker load of Viet Cong with a knife and two hand grenades, or offer smokes to a captured V.C. and then squat beside him trying to communicate in bastard Vietnamese. He may fight to prove his manhood—perhaps as a corrective to the matriarchal dominance of the Negro ghetto back home—or to save Viet Nam for a government in Saigon about which he himself is cynical. Mostly, though, he fights for the dignity of the Negro, to shatter the stereotypes of racial inferiority, to win the judgment of noncoms and officers of whatever color: "He's got the tickets."

Even though 70% of all Negroes are rejected by the draft because of ghetto-bred ill health or non-education, the proportion of Negro army combat troops in Viet Nam is more than double the ratio of Negroes to whites in the U.S. population at large (23% v. 11%). That, according to the Negro G.I. himself and his officers, is because those who make it into military service are the "cream of the crop"—can-do, must-win competitors who volunteer for dangerous duty both for the premium pay and the extra status it gives them. "I get my jollies jumping out of airplanes," says one Negro paratrooper of his $55-a-month extra airborne pay. Unlike Negroes in previous wars, the Viet Nam breed is well disciplined: there are proportionately no more black than white inmates of L.B.J., as the Long Binh Jail is unfondly known. Many of the best Negro warriors are former civil rights demonstrators, men who marched on lunch counters and Washington itself to win equal rights for their race. Not surprisingly, Negroes pull a considerably higher combat death rate than whites.

Black-white relations in a slit trench or a combat-bound Huey are years ahead of Denver and Darien, decades ahead of Birmingham and Biloxi. "The only color out here is olive drab," says a white sergeant. Despite the foxhole comradeship of most G.I.s in Viet Nam, the war is not all interracial amity: vicious racist graffiti from both sides mar the walls of latrines in Saigon; whites and Negroes slug it out on occasion along the nighttown streets of Tu Do and in "Soulsville," the Negro's self-imposed ghetto of joy along Saigon's waterfront. Sometimes they shoot it out. Like their people back home, many Negro G.I.s are skeptical of the aims of the war. Nonetheless, of scores of Negro servicemen interviewed by TIME in Viet Nam, all but a few volunteered the information that they were there to serve their country, however badly it may have treated them.

"With all the inadequacies and imperfections," says a Negro infantry officer, "the U.S. still offers more individual rights than any other country; it's still worth dying for." Says South Carolina-born General William C. Westmoreland: "I have an intuitive feeling that the Negro servicemen have a better understanding than the whites of what the war is about."

Gallant Gallery. Negro officers in key technical and diplomatic posts range from Major Beauregard Brown III, 31, of De Quincy, La., who supervises combat logistics in Westmoreland's headquarters, to Navy Lieut. Commander Wendall Johnson, 33, a former gunnery officer aboard the Viet Nam-based destroyer U.S.S. Ingraham, who is now one of Saigon's key contacts for Thai, Nationalist Chinese and other Allied cooperation with U.S. forces. They include a brace of other, unrelated Johnsons: Major Clifton R. Johnson, 31, of Baltimore, a chemical-warfare expert with the 173rd Airborne, who laid the smokescreen that kicked off an assault on the Viet Cong regiments that Glide Brown's patrol helped to locate; and Captain Wallace Johnson, 27, a former Oklahoma University fullback who now wears the Green Beret of the Special Forces and bosses a pacification program in Viet Nam. They include Negro women like 1st Lieut. Dorothy Harris, 27, a slender, sloe-eyed nurse who was pinned down by a mortar barrage a month after she arrived in Cu Chi last January. Nurse Harris spends much of her time beyond the Cu Chi perimeter, treating disease and malnutrition among the Vietnamese civilians, who often touch her brown skin and cry: "Same! Same!" She will extend her tour of duty by six months when it is up next year.

More numerous are the front-line warriors, commissioned and enlisted alike. Lieut. Colonel James Frank Hamlet, 45, of Buffalo, is a hard-riding Negro battalion commander of the 1st Air Cavalry Division (Airmobile), the elite "First Team" that has killed more Viet Cong than any other U.S. division in the war. The 600 men who fly Hamlet's 75 Hueys—and carry many of the Air Cav's troopers into combat—respect him for riding along on even the hottest missions and for talking straight to his bosses. Hamlet, who enlisted as a private in 1943, likes to recall that "there was a time when I knew personally every Negro lieutenant colonel; thank God, I don't any more."

The list also includes aviators like Air Force Major James T. Boddie Jr., 36, of Baltimore, a Phantom fighter-bomber pilot who has flown 153 missions over North and South Viet Nam since he arrived seven months ago. Winner of nine Air Medals and recommended for both the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Silver Star, Boddie can lay bombs or napalm within 30 meters of his own troops and take as much steel as the Viet Cong can dish out. Yet he is able to say of Stateside antiwar demonstrators: "I'm here to protect their right to dissent."

Duty & Dogs. In the enlisted ranks, few Negro G.I.s are better known than Sergeant Lonnie Galley Samuel, another Silver Star winner, who leads a "Blue Team" of an Air Cav battalion. His job: to draw enemy fire from a chopper, then land and engage in hopes of provoking a major battle ("Sam" has provoked a batch in the past year). Asked why he does not apply for a commission, Sam, at 41, laughs: "I can't do that, man. I'd be the oldest lieutenant in the Army."

Just as tough is Specialist Four Roderick Johns, 22, a former airline flight checker and draftee from Washington, D.C., who has survived 69 patrols as a dog handler with the 38th Infantry Scout Dog Patrol. Communist posters offer big rewards for every handler captured dead or alive, and fully half of the 18 men who arrived in Viet Nam with Johns last July have been killed or wounded. His only wound came from a dog—not his own—that flipped under pressure and nearly tore off Johns's right hand. His own dog, a German shepherd named Kentucky, patrolling at the edge of a jungle copse, sniffed out an ambush, saved 35 lives—and won Johns a Bronze Star recommendation.

Foremost among the Negro combat heroes of Viet Nam are the two who won Medals of Honor. Pfc. Milton Olive, 19, won his award posthumously by throwing himself on a grenade and saving the lives of four multicolored squadmates during a fierce fire fight near Phu Cuong in 1965. The only living Negro Medal of Honor winner in the Viet Nam war is Medic Lawrence Joel, 39, now stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C.

Making It Big. Product of a broken North Carolina home, reared by foster parents from the age of eight, Joel made the Army a career because he was convinced that "you couldn't make it really big" as a Negro on the outside. Promotion came slowly, and he was once busted for arguing with a sergeant. Then, on a fiery slope near Bien Hoa in November 1965, Joel met Victor Charlie. As his platoon was devoured by enemy crossfire, and he himself took two slugs in the legs, Joel hobbled and crept through the holocaust to patch ripped chests, plug bottles of plasma into dangling arms, give bloody mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to corpses and wounded alike, shoot Syrettes of morphine into mangled men. He allowed himself only one Syrette for his own wounds, for fear that he might dull his mind and hamper his work. At dawn, the job done, Joel recalls looking at himself: hands encrusted with blood to the wrists, legs thick with edema and dirty bandages. He lay under a tree and cried for the first time since he was a boy in Winston-Salem.

Last week, in crisp dress whites, Joel and his wife were the guests of President Johnson at the annual White House military reception. A gentle, reticent man, who once thought of giving up military life to become a beautician, Joel responded firmly when reporters pressed him about the morality of the war: "Most of the men who have been to Viet Nam feel this war is right."

Perils & Glory. Individual Negroes have shown valor in every war: Crispus Attucks was the first American to die under British fire in the Boston Massacre; Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, himself perhaps part Negro, mustered many colored sailors aboard his men-of-war in 1812; a battalion of 600 Negroes turned the tide at the Battle of New Orleans by defeating British General Pakenham's seasoned Napoleonic veterans. Andrew Jackson paid them a glowing tribute: "To the Men of Color —Soldiers! I invited you to share in the perils and to divide the glory of your white countrymen. I expected much from you; for I was not uninformed of those qualities which must render you so formidable. I knew you could endure hunger and thirst; I knew that you loved the land of your nativity. But you surpass my hopes. Soldiers!"

Few such encomiums greeted the Negro regiments of the Civil War—though many units fought gallantly on both sides. Negro troops also served with valor in the Indian wars and the Spanish-American War. (One of their white officers, John Pershing of the 10th Negro Cavalry, became "Black Jack" to a later generation because of his service with Negro troops.) In World Wars I and II, some of the luster was lost with reports of the sometimes cowardly performance of the Negro 92nd and 93rd Divisions, and with the rioting by off-duty Negro soldiers that accompanied a rise in racial tensions.

Race as a Crutch. Though Harry Truman ordered the military services desegregated in 1948, the Korean War found Negroes still serving in all-black outfits, or else in behind-the-lines noncombat roles. White officers—particularly in the Navy and Marine Corps—stubbornly kept Negroes out of top command positions.

That situation is better today in Viet Nam—but not much. Though more than 10% of the Army troops in Viet Nam are Negroes, only 5% of the 11,000 officers are black. Of the 380 combat-battalion commands in the war, only two are held by Negro officers. Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke, during his Viet Nam tour in March, received many complaints that the Negro is not given the opportunity to attain command; he cites the case of a Negro colonel who, when promoted, was given a desk job that had never existed before simply to keep him from being assigned to a line command. One reason, of course, is that too many potential Negro officers lack the educational requirements for command. In fact, Captain James R. Randall, 34, a Negro psychiatrist for the 4th Infantry Division, though agreeing that many Negro officers and enlisted men complain of discrimination, says: "Many times I have found that the complaint because of race is not really that, but that race has been used by some as a crutch." To the argument that Negroes are too poor for college deferments must be added the fact that they like the military enough to re-enlist at a rate three times that of the white servicemen.

Still, many Negro soldiers prefer to pull their passes in Saigon's self-segregated Soulsville, a warren of bars and brothels along Khanh Hoi Street near the capital's waterfront. In the honky-tonks, they can dig the big beat of the Supremes singing Come See About Me or the kinky cool of Ahmad Jamal's Heat Wave, bop about the bars in their "shades" (sunglasses) and talk "trash" (shoot the bull). The girls of Soulsville —many of them dark-skinned Cambodians or the daughters of French Senegalese soldiers—are less costly and usually less comely than their sisters on white-dominated Tu Do Street near by. The "in" spot in Soulsville is the L. & M. Guest House, a bar-restaurant and record booth run by balding, beer-bellied "Johnny" Hill, 35, a New Orleans Negro and ex-merchant sailor whose menu of "soul food" runs from No. 4 (turnip greens) through No. 8 (barbecued spareribs) to No. 9, "Kansas City Wrinkles," better known as chitlins. In Soulsville, the sustenance is psychological as well. There, no matter how close he may be to white soldiers on the line, the Negro G.I. can get away from "Chuck," the white man (the Stateside nickname "Charlie" is reserved for the Viet Cong). "Chuck's looks in those Tu Do bars!" growls one Negro pfc. "Man, they hurt more than a Claymore."

Whatever "Keep the faith, baby" might mean to Adam Clayton Powell, the phrase is used by most soldiers in Viet Nam to mean, as Negro Captain Clifford Alexander Jr. puts it: "We are fighting over here against the Viet Cong and at home against discrimination; together we can win in both places." The Negro on duty becomes a truly invisible man: "In civilian life, somebody might look at you and say 'You're a Negro,'" remarks Navy Lieut, (j.g.) Friedel C. Greene, 25, a carrier-based radar tracker from Memphis. "Over here they just look to see if you do your job." That hopeful sentiment reflects a concern with full citizenship that goes far beyond the desperate banalities of Negro dissidents in the U.S.

Rural Deprivation. The whirlwind of civil rights protest that swept up millions of American Negroes over the past decade never touched Lurp Leader Glide Brown. In his starched khakis, cocky tan beret and flaming sword patch on the right, he is a 5-ft. 7-in., 168-lb. pillar of dignity. Great-grandson of a slave, he grew up in Brewton (pop. 7,000), a sawmill town in the piny woods of Alabama. His father, Clyde Brown Sr., is known as "Buck" to his friends because of his lively buck-and-wing dancing. Individualist Glide Brown Jr. always insisted on spelling his name differently.

"I always loved that boy so much it hurt," says Buck, a $100-a-week construction worker. "When he'd wrestle, he'd always have to win. Now he can win with me. He's a better man than me now. He doesn't sass the captains. He's a good, red-blooded American boy." Buck taught his son to hunt and fish in the dense woods near by. Schoolmates of Counter Guerrilla Glide still recall how, when he was twelve, he converted a cap pistol into a zip gun and shot a deer, then dived into a river to wrestle it out and into the family larder. Glide Brown Jr. had no desire to spend his life in the pine flats "tim-timin' " (notching pine trees to collect the gum for turpentine). As soon as he graduated from Brewton's all black Booker T. Washington High School, where he played halfback on the football team and shortstop for the Pony League Brewton Braves, he joined his daddy in the construction trade. Having promised his mother not to enlist, Glide was secretly happy to be drafted into the Army in 1961.

Benefits from Sam. A tour in West Germany as a paratrooper convinced him that the Army was his life. "Number 1," he says, "the Army is a good job. You get paid good money and there are benefits and other good things Sam has for you. Then you get a chance to work with people and be a leader. What's more, any paratrooper can whup five 'legs' [infantrymen]!" Brown thought about OCS but rejected it. "I like being a noncom," he says, "and the Army always needs good NCOs. Some officers are something else."

During his West German R and R, Brown visited Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Turkey and Greece—places that few of his schoolmates in Brewton will see in their lifetime. Back in the States in 1966, he married a divorcee, Amelia Greenlee, whose Army sergeant father is a 30-year man in the infantry, and whose two children by her previous marriage Brown has adopted. Glide and Amelia also have a son of their own, two-year-old David.

Safer than the Bats. Fort Benning gave Brown a chance to join a Lurp team. The boy from the black belt taught judo at Benning's Ranger school, sat as a member of the Combat Condition Committee, and last July stitched on the coveted Ranger patch. After passing stiff interviews and skill tests in map reading, marksmanship and "maturity," Brown was picked as a Lurp leader in Viet Nam last November. "They have to be trustworthy," says Major Raymond F. Spinks, the brigade intelligence officer, who relies on Brown's reports. "It's safer than in the bats [infantry battalions]," says Brown with pragmatic insouciance.

When not on patrol, Brown reads (currently A Thousand Days), listens to rock 'n' roll records (favorites: the Righteous Brothers, James Brown), or sips bourbon with his buddy, Sergeant Arthur Silsby, a 26-year-old New Yorker who happens to be white. Brown eschews Soulsville forays, preferring to send his money home to his wife, and to put his 14-year-old sister Lois through college. As for Viet Nam, Brown is casual. "You stay alert, you stay alive," he says. "And that red clay do remind you of northern Alabama."

"Hell, No!" Like most soldiers, Glide Brown is basically apolitical; yet as a Negro he is a member of America's most active political minority. How does he justify the contradiction? "I don't know whether I would march if I became a civilian again," says Brown. "But nobody is going to shove me around. That goes for those peace people who don't want to support our Government, and the white bigots, and Carmichael and his bunch, who don't want to support my people." His people? By that Brown means not the Negro, but his own patrol members.

What burns Brown and most Negro fighting men is the charge—first proclaimed by Stokely Carmichael and now echoed by the likes of Martin Luther King—that Viet Nam is a "race war" in which the white U.S. Establishment is using colored mercenaries to murder brown-skinned freedom fighters. "Hell, no, man!" snaps Brown, in an unconscious parody of Carmichael's antidraft slogan. "We're here fighting for a cause, not a white or a black cause or any crap like that. I'd like a chance to meet Stokely out there with the V.C." Most incomprehensible to men who have seen their buddies maimed by V.C. steel and booby traps is Carmichael's statement that it's better to shoot a white cop than a Vietnamese.

"Nothing Separate." A Negro Army major reflects the Negro G.I.'s deep concern for the Vietnamese civilian when he says: "I wish Martin Luther King and William Fulbright could see for themselves the savage butchery that the Viet Cong have wrought in the name of liberty." Fulbright gets a double dose of dislike from the Negro G.f.: his anti-war sentiments dovetail with his record of support for segregation. Negro 1st Lieut. Frank Smith, 33, a platoon leader of the "Big Red One," who earned a Bronze Star last year in a fight near Di An, where four of his white soldiers died trying to save a wounded Negro, says of Fulbright: "He's actin' pink as a cranberry." Curiously, one Southern white segregationist wins grudging praise from the Negro in Viet Nam: House Armed Services Committee Chairman L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina. "That's the man who gets us the pay raises," Specialist Five William Brent of Pensacola explains—correctly.

Cassius Clay, respected for his cool style and forensic fulminations, is nonetheless resented by the Negro G.I.s for his draft evasion. "He gave up being a man when he decided against getting inducted," says Glide Brown. "And I don't want him as no Negro either." (Anyway, most G.I.s who know him think that Marine Sergeant Percy Price could whup Clay any time—as he did at the Olympic trials in San Francisco in 1960.) Negro G.I.s blame Clay's misdirection on the Black Muslims.

"They're separatists," says Glide Brown, "and there's nothing separate about this war." Adds an Army officer: "There's no difference between Elijah Muhammad and the Grand Dragon of the Klan."

The most perplexing figure to Negroes in Viet Nam is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. They respect him still for his pioneering role in the civil rights revolution but are puzzled and hurt by his current stance that Negroes should refuse to fight in Viet Nam. "I don't think any American leader, black or white, can assist the cause of freedom by preaching the cause of sedition," says Negro Lieut. Colonel Warren P. Kynard, 39, an operations officer on the Saigon staff of General Westmoreland. "Furthermore, I don't think Martin Luther King is qualified enough in international relations to open his mouth on American policy in Viet Nam." Harsh words from any source—but particularly since Kynard is the former fiance of Coretta King, Martin Luther's wife, and still a close friend of the couple.

Bridge Builders. Massachusetts' Brooke, first Negro elected by popular vote to the U.S. Senate, emerges clearly as the most popular leader among Negro troops, who mostly esteem the bridge builders who try to cross the racial gap rather than widen it. They were impressed with Brooke's painful reversal of opinion about the war after his firsthand look at the battleground. According to Army Sergeant Velmon D. Phillips, who won a Bronze Star recommendation after trying in vain to save the life of a white paratrooper, Ed Brooke "proves that a Negro can make it on merit alone."

Predictably, Air Force Lieut. General Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the highest-ranking Negro officer in any service—and son of the first Negro general, Benjamin O. Davis—rates high with Negro servicemen. So do such moderates as the N.A.A.C.P.'s Roy Wilkins, U.S. Solicitor General (and longtime civil rights strategist) Thurgood Marshall, Labor Leader A. Philip Randolph (who directed the 1963 March on Washington), U.N. UnderSecretary Ralph Bunche and Baseball Great Jackie Robinson. Negroes in Viet Nam show the same respect for Southern-born General William C. Westmoreland as do white G.I.s. "His position on civil rights was a matter of public record even before he came to Viet Nam," notes Major Beauregard Brown.

Confidence & Skills. Whatever the outcome of the war, whatever its length and its price in suffering, the result of the Viet Nam experience should pay high dividends in reshaping white Americans' attitudes toward social justice and integration; it has already given some 50,000 Negroes a sense of self-confidence and a commensurate demand for deeper participation in American society. "If anybody slights one of my soldiers for racial reasons when he gets home," says Glide Brown's commanding officer, Brigadier General John R. Deane, "I expect that soldier's going to get madder than hell."

That anger could well be triggered if, on his return, the Negro veteran of Viet Nam finds himself cast back into the ghetto and a social immobility equivalent to the triple-canopy of the Southeast Asia jungle. "He's seen miles of progress in Viet Nam," says Beauregard Brown, "when there wasn't an inch of progress at home in Harlem or Jackson." The Urban League's Whitney Young Jr., one of the few Negro civil rights leaders who have visited Viet Nam, warns in Harper's June issue that, along with his "new confidence," the Negro G.I. has acquired new skills "of guerrilla warfare, of killing, of subversion, and it would be realistic to expect such experts of mines and booby traps to find good reason why they should use these skills and risk their lives against the enemy of personal injustice as they did against the enemy of Communist aggression." Negro Leader Bayard Rustin has a more constructive view: "As the students of 1960 were in the forefront of the civil rights movement back then, the Negro G.I. will be in the forefront of the next phase."

Only a Beginning. Fully 15,000 Negro veterans are returning to civilian life each year, and if the war continues to grow in its demands for more troops, their numbers will mount accordingly. To help those men find a place in civilian life worthy of their talents and proven leadership capabilities, the Urban League will begin this summer to seed ten "Veterans Affairs Offices" into its 81 nationwide centers. Funded at $175,000, the VAO program will help Negroes use their G.I. benefits ($150 a month for education), place them in a "skill bank," and offer on-the-job training where it is needed.

At the same time, the Federal Government is moving to eradicate some of the racial injustices that still exist back home. Last week Defense Secretary Robert McNamara announced a long overdue program to eliminate "humiliating discrimination" in off-base housing against Negro G.I.s who are often forced to travel long distances to and from their Southern bases. It might even ease the complaint of the Air Cav's Jim Hamlet, who refuses to accept post-Viet Nam duty in the segregated South —"although some of the best jobs in Army aviation are there."

Whatever the conditions when they return, Negro veterans, says Senator Brooke, "will be better able to make a better life for themselves." They will have acquired sophistication and skills along with their expectations. University of Chicago Sociologist Morris Janowitz, one of the few scholars who have given intensive thought to the re-entry problem, believes: "The experience of the military will integrate them into the larger society. They will be more likely to enter the mainstream of political American life." Military service, after all, makes a man wilier, not angrier, and the Negro vet will probably be more attracted to politics than demonstration or riot.

Melvin Stennis Jr., 24, of the 25th Division "Wolfhounds," who as a squad leader commands the life and death movements of five whites and one other Negro, has perhaps the definitive word on the future of Negro progress. Before entering the Army, Stennis watched the Watts riot from his doorstep. "I hear people are still rioting back home," he says. "It makes you feel sore, sick and guilty. Riots don't do nothing. Instead of playing the big-time part, you got to work for what you want. Don't beg, steal or burn. You got to work for it." Then he pauses. "In Viet Nam, we are working for it."

American society also has to work for him. By channeling the energies and accommodating the ambitions of the returning Negro veteran, the nation can only enrich its own life and demonstrate that democracy can work as well in the cities and fields of America as in the foxholes of Viet Nam.

* Load per man for a two-day mission: Claymore mine and 240 rounds of ammo; four canteens of water and three meals of dried meat with rice; compass, flare gun, signal mirror, orange-and-cerise panel to signal for help; morphine for wounds, pep pills for drowsiness, codeine to kill coughs that might betray a position, antidysentery pills; tape to ward off leeches by closing off wrists and ankles of uniforms.

[digitalshopers]

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[tothemetaverseandbeyond]

FIVE THINGS FUTURE DC FILMS SHOULD BORROW FROM WONDER WOMAN

Five things future DC films should borrow from Wonder Woman

by Kwame Opam@kwameopam  via theverge.com

Wonder Woman had an arduous task to pull off on its way to the box office. As the fourth entry in the DC Extended Universe film franchise, it needed to succeed where Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and Suicide Squad each failed by being dour, poorly made, and overly violent. It also needed to be the first blockbuster starring a female superhero to land at the box office, proving decades of skepticism wrong in the process. It’s an unenviable position to be in, but the film was a success despite its underdog status, making its record-breaking $100.5 million debut in North America and critical acclaim that much more astounding. Wonder Woman was a trailblazer for female heroes in comics, and now she’s a trailblazer at the movies.

Wonder Woman’s theatrical success is no accident. Unlike its cinematic cousins, Wonder Woman is cleaner, more fun, and more sure of itself in ways that we should demand from our superhero movies. Marvel and DC, it’s time to take notes.

IT HAS CLEAR STORY

BvS and Suicide Squad have a whole host of problems shared between them, but the most egregious issues relate to their muddled, often nonsensical narratives. Superheroes don’t exist in worlds that look a whole lot like our own, what with the flying people and aliens with eye lasers, but their stories should adhere to some kind of internal logic that keeps viewers invested beyond the spectacle. So it’s frustrating when these tentpoles revolve around stories that, say, pit Batman against Superman because Lex Luthor happens to hate Superman because of undercooked father issues that have nothing to do with Batman. Or when the shrewd, ruthless Amanda Waller thinks a guy who’s really good with guns and a woman in clown makeup can take on a being who can survive a nuclear blast.

‘WONDER WOMAN’ SATISFIES BECAUSE IT MOSTLY MAKES SENSE

Wonder Woman, on the other hand, is satisfying because it makes sense. Or as much sense as a movie inspired by a pulp story written for children in the 1940s can, anyway. Diana of Themyscira is raised among a race of women warriors bred to keep the world safe from war. War comes to the shores of Themyscira. Diana takes it upon herself to fulfill her duty and save the world. She soon discovers that the world is far more complicated than she ever knew, but she grows enough to believe that the world is still worth saving. That’s as straightforward a story as you can get, and it leaves plenty of room for introspection, nuance, and action that pulls viewers right into Diana’s world.

IT ISN’T OVER-STYLIZED

Much has already been said about the DCEU cinematic aesthetic. Man of Steel and Batman v Superman director Zack Snyder loves spectacle — so much so that some of his scenes in movies like 300 don’t feel so much like moments as splash panels lifted directed from the source comic. Those choices plagued his DCEU movies, while the choices made in David Ayer’s Suicide Squad blended gritty, grimy action with Day-Glo colors, making for a confused visual experience.

Wonder Woman is certainly stylized when it wants to be. The numerous slow-motion shots of the Amazons and Diana herself come right out of the Snyder stylebook. But when the film takes a step back to let them be awesome on-screen, fighting on horseback or taking artillery shells head-on, it’s that much more thrilling.

IT’S FUNNY

This is an area where Wonder Woman is not only leaps and bounds ahead of the DCEU’s previous films, but where it’s also able to give some of the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe a run for their money. The film is intermittently hilarious, thanks in large part to the chemistry and comic timing of Gal Gadot and Chris Pine.

GAL GADOT AND CHRIS PINE HAVE GREAT COMIC TIMING

Where a film like Guardians of the Galaxy is able to mine laughs out of the Guardians’ screwy family dynamic, Gadot’s Diana and Pine’s Steve Trevor are two worlds colliding in the funniest possible ways. There are several moments where the movie seems to acknowledge that Diana, warrior princess, coming to man’s world is a patently silly concept, but the movie betrays so much affection for her and the people around her that the silliness brings laughs and real smiles. Especially when it comes to Steve trying — and failing — to gently undermine Diana, and Diana doing whatever she wants to do anyway.

IT’S SURPRISINGLY DIVERSE

The superhero genre has always been deeply white and male, and creators have struggled to change that, even in this franchise era when seemingly any superhero, no matter how obscure, can get a movie. (Remember Jonah Hex?) Wonder Woman, as the character’s first ever solo theatrical movie and the first female superhero movie since 2005’s awful Elektra, was always going to be a standard-bearer for women in the tights-and-capes crowd. But, given that Wonder Woman has become a modern pop-culture symbol for all women, the specter of white feminism meant that it needed to include people of color in a way that other films in its genre didn’t.

Thankfully, the movie manages to pull this off. The Amazons are formidable warrior women with a variety of skin tones, and they’re never sexualized for leering viewers. London (or what we see of it, anyway) is similarly diverse. And Diana’s comrades in arms include two actors of color, Saïd Taghmaoui and Eugene Brave Rock. Is the movie perfect on this front? No. After leaving Themyscira, the movie fails to really center the story of any female character beyond Diana’s own, and Doctor Poison (Elena Anaya) is woefully underutilized. But what’s there works so well that it’s a little hard to find fault in the shortcomings.

IT’S REFRESHINGLY SINCERE

On their way to the front lines, Diana and Steve pass by an ice-cream vendor. He buys her a scoop, and she eats it with such visible delight that she tells the vendor he should be very proud. It’s an affecting moment, because it strikes at two things that make Wonder Woman a great character. First, she’s able to see more clearly than anyone around her that there’s good in the world. Second, she believes that such goodness is worth defending. In just an instant, we get a clear glimpse at what drives her, and that instant is more joyful and sincere than anything the DCEU has offered to fans until now.

‘WONDER WOMAN’ IS SINCERE IN A WAY THE OTHER DCEU FILMS AREN’T

That sincerity is a far cry from the cynicism and existential anguish in all three previous DCEU films. Oh, Diana certainly has to grapple with what it means to be a hero in man’s world. But she knows what she believes, and arrives at a place where she can defend the world she loves, while still knowing there are things to be cynical about. In other words, she’s miles ahead of Batman and Superman in being the kind of hero that children have idolized for nearly a century.

[themaryiestsuetoeversue]

eyyy it’s Easter, have some religious headcanons:

in all verses except Poke, Poppy was raised Catholic. Her immediate family is not too devout, only her mother goes to church on the major holidays and sometimes on Sundays and in general even the holidays are largely secular. Poppy herself will claim to “not know or care whether a higher power exists” and doesn’t particularly care to bother with any religious tradition, although in JAPANAU, she’ll go to shrines and follow protocol in an attempt to integrate with Japanese society at large.

Pokemon, though...: I will preface this by saying I ALWAYS saw Pokemon as polytheistic, sometimes even PANtheistic, and I also NEVER saw Arceism as a Christianity parallel like the rest of the fandom seems to. It just makes no sense with what we see with the rest of the Pokemon Universe (created by Japan, who, with their mixed Shinto and Buddhist history are not likely to have ANY Abrahamic religious themes in their work at all) 

I also assume who worships what is probably skewed a bit by the region they’re from, but of course outliers exist.

Atheism is more along the lines of “I don’t think these are GODS, just super powerful Pokemon”, rather than “they don’t exist” because? we have dex entries? not believing in their existence at all makes no sense to me. I also HC that Christmas and other real world holidays are celebrated in a secular fashion in regions where it’s applicable.

Any whoodle

Poppy’s family was raised in the Deities of Fiore: The options there were the Legendary Beasts and possibly Manaphy. THEIR parents “converted” to the Unovan pantheon in an attempt to assimilate, but her parents stuck to their roots. I quote converted because I see Pokemon religion as 1. Highly individual in how people worship, 2. Most people probably just go to shrines/places of worship and don’t do much beyond celebrating the thing the deity they chose to pay respects to’s specific theme. 

As for Poppy’s family, they stuck to the Fioran roots in adolescence and then mellowed into realizing it was dumb rebellion. They largely give prayers to Victini, due to what it represents. Her sister also tosses a few donations towards Meloetta sometimes. 

Poppy is a devout worshipper of Mew. Mew symbolizes fertility, is the genetic ancestor of all Pokemon, the first Psychic, and thus, a PARENT. Given Poppy’s history with her family, Mew is the deity of choice for her. 

Her religion is a hodgepodge of Shintoism (bc mew is from kanto aka japan), and wicca. The specifics:

She has the traditional altar in the house, a blend of the Shinto kamidana and wiccan/pagan altar. Her symbol for Mew is an Ankh, because fertility and life. The Shinto tenet of cleanliness is absolute - being a medical professional means everything has to be sterile anyway so it’s easy to slot this belief and practice into her life. Offerings are usually symbols of fertility like, oh say, eggs. She mostly follows Shinto protocol in terms of how to pray/how offerings are given, etc. The wiccan half manifests in Dianic Wicca: Mew is the Mother Goddess. The magic that would be present in Wicca here is replaced by Psychic powers, and Poppy practices hers on the daily. 

Procreation is important - but Mew didn’t give birth from traditional means, so building a family however you manage is what counts. Mew is also considered, to Poppy at least, a Female Deity, so, yeah, f/f sexuality is encouraged. Mew’s symbolic meaning as a mother means you should fulfill your duty as being whatever you believe to be the Archetypal Nurturer (keep in mind that this is how POPPY practices. What each person considers to BE procreating and nurturing etc is gonna change by person to person - as is whether they even gender Mew at all.) 

Finally, Mew gave live birth (in the games, and this is game canon on this blog) but the child was a clone. Science and technology made that miracle possible. So it’s very important to her to be as scientifically literate as possible and kept up to date on all the new things etc. Tech is a good thing and should be embraced and accepted, especially medical tech.

Holiday wise, she celebrates all secular Unovan holidays the Unovan (read: American) way. Some have Fioran/Italian-American/Unovan variations and for those she goes with those customs instead.  Other than that she celebrates all fertility holidays by going to a Mew shrine if she can and tossing stuff in the donation box. There’s a specific abandoned one in Saffron she likes to visit. Failing that, she prays to the house altar.