#so i see that as them actively protecting the subway and one another above a larger threat in hopes theyd be left alone and that someone

[lcpmon]

idk how other ppl learn to read characters but even when someone has very few lines, if they're not a few throwaway lines and have a smidgen of thought put into them, you can really deduct a lot of things from what they say without mountains of dialogue and array of actions they take.

cIaus, even Iucas via his few lines and interactive dialogue, is so easy to understand and learn what hes about from the dialogue you are given. it shouldnt be hard to mess him up

and even tho these are more active characters in the story with goals to achieve and story beats to hit, u rly can apply the same to lngo and 3mmet. u can make assumptions or deduct possible aspects about how they act from breaking down their dialogue and possible routine. some things might be completely speculative and pulled out of thin air but as long as it matches the characters general front its hard to go wrong

[route22ny]

What My Korean Father Taught Me About Defending Myself in America

Born in 1939 during what would be the last years of the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea, my father, Choung Tai Chee, also called Charles or Chuck or Charlie, came to the United States in 1960. He was flashy, cocky, unafraid, it seemed, of anything. Wherever we were in the world, he seemed at home, right up until near the end of his life, when he was hospitalized after a car accident that left him in a coma. Only in that hospital bed, his head shaved for surgery, did he look out of place to me.

A tae kwon do champion by the age of 18 in Korea, he had begun studying martial arts at age 8, eventually teaching them as a way to put himself through graduate school, first in engineering and then oceanography, in Texas, California, and Rhode Island. He loved the teaching. The rising popularity of martial arts in the 1960s in Hollywood meant he made celebrity friends like Frank Sinatra Jr., Paul Lynde, Sal Mineo, and Peter Fonda, who my father said had fixed him up on a date with his sister, Jane, in the days before Barbarella. A favorite photo from his time in Texas shows him flying through the air, a human horseshoe, each of his bare feet breaking a board held shoulder high on each side by his students.

When I complained about my wet boots during the winters growing up in Maine, he told me stories about running barefoot in the snow in Korea to harden his feet for tae kwon do. His answer to many of my childhood complaints was usually that I had to be tougher, stronger, prepared for any attack or disaster. The lesson his generation took from those they lost to the Korean War was that death was always close, and I know now that he was doing all he could to teach me to protect myself. When I cried at the beach at the water’s edge, afraid of the waves, he threw me in. “No son of mine is going to be afraid of the ocean,” he said. When I first started swimming lessons, he told me I had to be a strong swimmer, in case the boat I was on went down, so I could swim to shore. When he taught me to body-surf, he taught me about how to know the approach of an undertow, and how to survive a riptide. When I lacked a competitive streak, he took to racing me at something I loved—swimming underwater while holding my breath. I was an asthmatic child, but soon, intent on beating him, I could swim 50 yards this way at a time.

For all of that, he was an exceedingly gentle father. He took me snorkeling on his back, when I was five, telling me we were playing at being dolphins. There he taught me the names of the fish along the reef where we lived in Guam. He would praise the highlights in my hair, and laugh, calling me “Apollo.” And as for any pressure regarding my future career, he offered something very rare for a Korean man of his generation. “Be whatever you want to be,” he told me. “Just be the best at it that you can possibly be.”

Only when I was older did I understand the warning about being strong enough to swim to shore in another context, when I learned the boat he and his family had fled in from what was about to become North Korea nearly sank in a storm. In Seoul as a child, he scavenged food for his family with his older brother, coming home with bags of rice found on overturned military supply trucks, while his father went to the farms, collecting gleanings. His attempts to teach me to strip a chicken clean of its meat make a different sense now. I had thought of him as an immigrant without thinking about how the Korean War made him one of the dispossessed, almost a refugee, all before he left Korea.

When I began getting into fights as a child in the U.S., he put me into classes in karate and tae kwon do for these same reasons. He loved me and he wanted me to be strong. I just wasn’t sure how I was supposed to take on a whole country.

We moved to Maine in 1973, when I was six years old. My father had taken us back to Korea after I was born, to work for his father, and then moved us around the Pacific—from Seoul to the islands of Truk, Kawaii, and Guam, in his and my mother’s attempts to set up a fisheries company. Maine was his next experiment, and not coincidentally, my mother’s home state. On my first day of the first grade, in the cafeteria, after a morning spent in what seemed like reasonably friendly classes, my troubles began when I went up to take an empty seat at a table and the blond haired, blue-eyed white boy seated there looked up with some alarm and asked me, “Are you a chink?”

“What’s a chink?” I asked, though I knew it wasn’t a compliment. I had never heard this word before.

“A Chinese person. You look like a chink. Is that why your face is so flat?”

This was also the first day I can remember being insulted about my appearance.

“I am not Chinese,” I said that day, naively. In a few years I would learn I was in fact part Chinese, 41 generations back, but at that moment, I tried to explain to him about how I was half Korean, a nationality and situation he had never heard of before. Half of what? And so this was also the first day I had to explain myself to someone who didn’t care, who had already decided against me.

He was a white boy from America, and he was repeating insults that seem to me to have come from a secret book passed out to white children everywhere in this country, telling them to call someone Asian “Chink,” to walk up to them, muttering “Ching-chong, ching-chong.” To sing a song, “My mother’s Chinese, my father’s Japanese, I’m all mixed up,” pulling their eyes first down and then up and then alternating up and down.

I was struck, watching Minari a few months ago, when the film’s Korean immigrant protagonist, David, is asked by a white boy in Arkansas in the 1980s why his face is so flat. “It’s not,” David says, forcefully—so many of us have this memory of someone saying this to us and responding that way. Why did a boy in Arkansas and a boy in Maine, in their small towns thousands of miles apart, before the internet, each know to make this insult?

When I got home from that first day at school, I asked my mother what the word “Chink” meant, and she flinched and covered her mouth in concern.

“Who said that to you?” she asked, and I told her. I don’t remember the conversation that followed, just the swift look of concern on her face. The sense that something had found us.

I was the only Asian-American student at my school in 1973, and the first many of my classmates had ever met. When my brother joined me at school three years later, he was the second. When my sister arrived, four years after him, she was the third. My mother is white, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed American, born in Maine to a settler family. I have six ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War, but none of them had to fight this. I don’t know how to separate the teasing, harassment, and bullying that marked my 12 years of life there from that first racist welcome. It makes me question whether I really had a “temper” as a child, as I was told, or whether I was merely isolated by racism among racists, afraid and angry?

My father dealt with racism throughout most of his life by acting as if it had never happened—as if admitting it made it more powerful. He knew bullies loved to see their victims react and would tell me to not let what they said upset me. “Why do you care what they think of you?” he would say, and laugh as he clapped me on the shoulder. “They’re all going to work for you someday.”

“Don’t get even, get ahead,” was another of his slogans for me at these times. As if America was a race we were going to win.

Two decades after his death, writing in my diary while on a subway in New York City, I began counting off all of my activities as a child—choir, concert band, swimming, karate and tae kwon do, clarinet, indoor track, downhill and cross country skiing—and I asked myself if my parents were trying to raise Batman. Then I looked down to the insignia on my Batman t-shirt, and I laughed.

These lessons my father gave me—to be the best you can be, to fight off your enemies and defeat them, to swim to safety if the boat sinks, and in general toughen yourself against everything that would harm you—these I had absorbed alongside certain unspoken lessons, taken from observing his life as a Korean immigrant. To have two names, one American, known to the public, and one Korean, known only to a few intimates; to get rid of your accent; and to dress well as a way to keep yourself above suspicion. Did I need to train like a superhero just to be a person in America? Maybe.

But if I thought of superheroes, it was because my father was like one to me, training me to be like him.

One legend I heard about my father when I was growing up is the story of a night he was being held up at gunpoint, while he was unpacking his car. Whoever it was asked him to shut the trunk and turn around and raise his hands in the air. He agreed to, slamming the car trunk down so forcefully, he sank his fingertips into the metal.

By the time he turned around, the would-be stick-up artist was gone.

He would often ask me and my brother to punch him, as hard as we could, in his stomach. He was proud of his abdominal strength—it was like punching a wall. We would shake our hands, howling, and he would laugh and rub our heads. One time he even used it as a gag to stop a bully.

A boy on my street had developed the habit of changing the rules during our games if his team started losing. We had fights over it that could be heard up and down the street, and one day I chased him with a Wiffle bat, him laughing as I ran. My father stepped in the next time he tried to change the rules during a game and prevented it, telling him all games in his yard had to have the same rules at the beginning as the end—you couldn’t change them when you were losing. When the boy got mad, he said, “I bet you want to hit me, you should hit me. You’ll feel better. Hit me right here, in the stomach, as hard as you can.”

The boy hauled off and punched my dad in the stomach. I knew what was coming. The boy went home crying, shaking his hand at the pain. His mom came over and they had a talk. The rule-changing stopped.

I tried teasing my classmates back after being told to by my father. Stand-up as self-defense requires practice, though: During a “Where are you from?” exercise in the second grade, I told my classmates and teacher I had “Made in Korea” stamped on my ass, which elicited shocked laughter and a punishment from my teacher. I remember the glee when I called a classmate an ignoramus, and he didn’t know what it meant—and got angrier and angrier when I wouldn’t tell him, demanding that I explain the insult. When told to go back to where I came from, I said, “You first.”

Increasingly, I just hid, in the library, in books. When given detention, I exulted in the chance to be alone and read. I was an advanced student compared to my classmates, due in part to my mother being a schoolteacher, and I learned to make my intelligence a weapon.

The day several boys held me down on my street and ran their bicycles over my legs, to see if I could take it, as if maybe I wasn’t human, that felt like some new horrible level. I don’t remember how that ended or if I ever told anyone, just the feeling of the bicycle tires rolling over the skin of my legs. The day I bragged about my father being a martial artist to my classmates, they locked me in the bathroom and told me to fight my way out with kung fu, calling me “Hong Kong Phooey,” after the cartoon character, as they held the door shut. This was the fourth grade. After I got out of that bathroom and went home, I told my father about it, and he told me it was time to take tae kwon do. I had to learn to defend myself.

I would never be like him, never break boards like him, but for a while, I tried. I still cherish the day he gave me my first gi and showed me how to tie it. I learned I had a natural flexibility, which meant I could easily kick high, and I took pride in my roundhouse and reverse roundhouse kicks. But after a few years, my father took issue with a story he’d heard about my teacher’s arrogance toward his opponents, and he pulled me out of the classes. “It is very dangerous to teach in that spirit,” he told me. And he said something I would never forget. “The best fighter in tae kwon do never fights,” he said. “He always finds another way.”

I have thought about this for a long time. For the ordinary practitioner, tae kwon do and karate prepare you to go about your life, aware of what to do in case of assault. They offer no guarantee, just chances for preparedness in the face of the violence of others as well as the violence within yourself. At the time I felt my father was describing the responsibility that comes with knowing how to hurt someone, but I came to understand it as a principled if conditional non-violence, which, in this year of quarantine and rising racist violence, is one of the clearest legacies he left to me.

Like many of us, I have been trying to write about these most recent attacks on Asian-Americans, some of them in my old neighborhood in New York, and I keep starting and stopping. How do we protect ourselves and those we love? Can writing do that? I know I learned to use my intelligence as a weapon to keep myself safe from racists, starting as a child, and suddenly it doesn’t feel like enough. The violence is like a puzzle with many moving parts, but the stakes are life and death. “You’re really going to homework your way through this one?” I keep asking myself. The people attacking Asians and Asian Americans now are like the boy I met on my first day in the first grade. They don’t care whether or not we are actually Chinese—the primary experience Asian Americans have in common is mis-identification. The person who gets a patriotic ego boost off of calling me a “chink” isn’t going to check if they’re right about me, and I don’t imagine they’ll stop their fist or their gun if I say, “You’re just doing this because of America’s history of war in Asia,” even though we both know this is true. And so I have been thinking of my father and what he taught me.

The most overt way my father fought racism in front of me involved no fighting at all. He founded a group called the Korean American Friendship Association of Maine, which helped new Korean immigrants move to Maine and find work, community, and housing, along with offering lessons on how to open bank accounts, pay taxes, file immigration paperwork, and get drivers’ licenses. For both of my parents, community organizing, activism, and mutual aid like this were commitments they shared and enjoyed and passed along to us, their children, and this led to much of my own work as an activist, teacher, and writer. I am not my father, but I am much as he made me.

There’s a difference between fighting racists and fighting racism. Where my father stayed silent, I have learned I have to speak out, which has felt, even while writing this, a little like betraying him. And as a biracial gay Korean American man, I don’t experience the same identifications or misidentifications he did. I am mistaken for white, or at least “not Asian,” as often as I’m mistaken for Chinese, and have felt like a secret agent as people speak in front of me about Asians in ways they would not otherwise. I learned most of my adult coping strategies for street violence from queer activist organizations after college.

Even as I write, “I wonder if he ever felt fear living in America,” it feels like a betrayal, especially as he isn’t around for me to ask him. I think again about how my father always made a point of dressing well, for example, but it always felt like more than that. Men wearing suits as a kind of armor, that isn’t so strange. He had his suits made at J. Press, wore handmade English leather shoes—shoes that fit me. I sometimes wear them for special occasions. Among my favorite objects of his is a monogrammed J. Press canvas briefcase, the name “CHEE” in embossed leather between the straps. After his father gave him an Omega Constellation watch when I was born, he eventually acquired others. For a time I thought he did this aspirationally, but most of his family in Korea is like this: Well-dressed, with a preference for tailoring and handmade clothes. All of my memories of my uncles coming from the airport to visit us involve them arriving in their blazers.

The first time I followed my father’s advice to wear a sports jacket when flying, I received a spontaneous upgrade. I didn’t have frequent flyer miles and the person checking me in was not flirting with me either. There was nothing but the moment of grace, and the feeling that my father, from beyond the grave, was making a point as I sat down in my new, larger, more spacious seat. Because I had never tried out this advice while he was alive.

Like much of my father’s advice, it came from his keen awareness of social contexts, and it worked. His wardrobe came from the pleasure of a dare more than a disguise. You don’t acquire a black and gold silk brocade smoking jacket in suburban Maine because you want to fit in with your white neighbors. Sometimes his clothes were a charm offensive, sometimes just a sass. The jacket advice may well have been an anticipation of racist treatment, of a piece with perfecting his English so he had no accent, and raising us to speak only English. My mother spoke more Korean to us as children than he did—a remnant of her time living in Seoul.

Now that I am old enough to choose to learn Korean, I still feel like a child disobeying him, just as I do when I dress too casually, or acknowledge that I’ve experienced racism. I know I am just making different choices, as you do when you are grown, but also, I am stepping out from behind his program to protect myself. I feel the fears he never spoke about, and instead simply addressed with what now look like tactics. At these moments I miss him as much as I ever do, but especially for how I would tell him, this may have protected you. It won’t protect me.

In my kitchen the other day, as I was making coffee, I fell into the ready stance, with my right foot back, left foot forward, and snapped my right leg up and out in a front snap kick. This is the basic first kick you learn in tae kwon do. And you do it again, and again, and again, until it is muscle memory. You move across the room this way and then turn to begin again.

I wasn’t sure if my form was exactly right, but it felt good. Memories came back of the sweaty smell of the practice room, the other students, the mirrors on the walls, the fluorescent lights. All those years ago, I had thought my father had put me in those classes in order to become him, but as I sent my practice kicks through the air, I remembered how even learning them made me feel safer, protected at least by the knowledge that he loved me. I could not have said this at the time, but after those attacks, I had feared I wasn’t strong enough to be his son.

I still fear that. I suppose it drives me, even now. It is dehumanizing to insist on your humanity, even and perhaps especially now, and so I am not doing that here. Each time I’ve tried to write even this, a rage takes over, and then the only thing I want to do with my hands doesn’t involve writing, and I stop. But I know from learning to fight that hitting someone else means using yourself to do it. My father’s advice, about fighting being the last resort, has given me another lesson: You turn yourself into the weapon when you strike someone else—in the end, another way to erase yourself—and so you do that last. In the meantime, you fight that first fight with yourself, for yourself.

You may never be able to protect what you love, but at least you can try. At least you will be ready.

Alexander Chee is most recently the author of the essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. A novelist and essayist, he teaches at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont.

[linkspooky]

Nobara and Gojou

Nobara and Gojou have suffered similiar defeats in the Shibuya Incident Arc. They both lost, despite being clearly stronger than their opponent. Every single one of the main trio (Nobara, Megumi, Yuji) parallels a member of the flashback arc’s trio in some way (Gojou, Shouko, Getou), but while Nobara’s most obvious parallel may seem to be Shouko I would also argue she parallels Gojou quite a bit. Both Gojou and Nobara are characters that focus on individualism and duty above all else, in ways that Megumi, and Yuji don’t. Nobara parallels Gojou in the worst ways, she shares all of his flaws. 

1. Strength Isn’t Everything.

Jujutsu Kaisen has always been a manga about nuance and balance. There’s more than one way to skin a cat (or exercise a curse). Which is why we’ve seen the story introduce two seemingly opposing ideas. Number one, we don’t live in a world where you win just by being strong. Number two, you can’t close a gap in strength through petty tricks alone. 

These ideas seemingly contradict one another. The second establishes that if there’s an absolute difference in strength then strategy won’t even matter. The first establishes that strength isn’t that you can’t win a fight just by being strong. However these ideas are not opposites, they’re complementary. What they suggest is that the world is a complex place, and there’s no way one single strategy will win every possible fight. There are times when strength wins the fight, there are times when strategy is the way to go. The solution isn’t to favor one or the other, but rather to find the balance between the two. 

Before Nobara gets into her fight we’re shown a fight where Megumi has the starring role. The world view of the shaman Megumi is fighting against is important for this. 

The shaman that Megumi fights has a world view of “being strong makes me free to do whatever I want.” He believes strength to be permissive. Being strong means being competent enough to accomplish whatever you want, in any situation. 

If you want to do something, and you have the ability to do it, you should be abel to do it. That’s why it’s permissive. Strength grants permission. Getou brings up the idea in Premature Death. Gojou technically has the ability to slaughter every single human that’s not a shaman on the face of the earth. If he’s able to do it, then why can he tell Getou that it’s impossible? If the world really were as simple as Getou suggested it to be, then being strong really would be enough. Gojou would be capable of doing anything, like some kind of god. 

However, even the shaman’s own cursed technique reverses this idea of strength. Attacks that are strong around him become weak, whereas weak counters become strong. There is no idea of absolute strength. No person is going to be strong in every circumstance all the time. 

That shaman is beaten not by Megumi’s decision to face his head on, but rather by his choice to make a tactical retreat and rethink the situation after figuring out his cursed technique. Strength is not the absolute decider of everything. More than that, Megumi and Yuji were both choosing to cooperate with one another, even though cooperation was harder for both of them at this point. 

They both admit the hardest part of the fight isn’t even fighting against an enemy. That it would be easier if they were just strong enough to fight everything individually on their own, however, the fight is won by Yuji listening to Megumi, and Megumi choosing cooperation. 

This is also the exact opposite advice that Gojou gave Megumi. Megumi’s tendency is to sacrifice himself, and defer to others because he has no confidence in himself and his own individual strength. However, once again this reflects the complex nature of reality there’s no advice that applies to every single situation in the world. Gojou’s advice won the fight in Origin of Obedience, but if Megumi fought like Gojou did he would have lost this arc. 

We see Maki, and Nobara who are both characters who parallel strongly to Gojou and think they are people who can accomplish everything they want with the power of individual strength, make several critical mistakes. First, Maki doesn’t even consider the possibility Gojou could have lost. Because, Maki’s world view is the same as Gojou’s, the stronger opponent should always win. Maki is a character trying to overcome her family circumstances just by becoming the strongest possible shaman she can be to prove them wrong. 

Nobara makes a similiar mistake to Maki. We see her lose the fight because of the absolute confidence she has in her own strength, that she can win every situation by being strong enough to fight on her own. 

Rather than keeping the person she wants to protect close to her, Nobara sends her away so she can fight on her own. She assumes the weaker person will only get in her way and is safer farther away from the battle. Which is also literally the premise of Gojou’s entire fight in the subway, he goes in alone because he assumes that any other jujutsu sorcerer would only get in the way, just like the innocent civillians were there solely existing to get in the way of his techniques.

Nobara gets arrogant and refuses to analyze the other person’s jujutsu techniques and gets critically wounded. At which point we see Nobara run against the flaw of her own world view. That if she can only accomplish things with strength, then the situations where she’s weak she’s completely helpless. Nobody is strong all the time, and if she’s weak then there’s nothing she can do. If everything is decided by strength than the weak have no choice. 

2. Nobara and Gojou, Broken in the Same Way 

During Nobara’s introduction chapter Gojou says that Shaman’s have to possess a sort of craziness, to jump into battle risking life and limb like it’s nothing at all. 

While Yuji feels absolutely nothing putting his life at risk to an almost suicidal degree, I would say Nobara is the one who’s actually the closest to what Gojou describes. Just like Gojou she has the single-mindedness to believe that is she’s strong enough that she should be capable of anything. 

Nobara and Gojou assert their individualism over everything else. They don’t bend to the world, they bend the world to the way they want it. Yuji’s strong and confident in a similiar way but he always puts the wants and desires of others over himself in every situation, but Nobara is always about what she wants first and foremost. However, there are two parts to Nobara and Gojou’s world view it’s not just about strength, but also about duty. Gojou and Nobara are extremely selfish people but that doesn’t mean they don’t care about others. They see their absolute strength as an obligation to use it to protect others.

If the situation is to go all out and kill the enemy, or save the life of a person right in front of them they’ll always make the choice that spares the innocent life. They are strong, but their strength is duty bound, it’s something they tend to use for others rather than themselves. Even in Nobara’s choice to send away the aide that was with her, she was using herself as a distraction so she could get away safely. They’re selfish people, but they don’t necessarily put themselves, and their well beings over others. 

Gojou is technically able to get out of the Shibuya situation is he just massacres every human on the inside of the curtain, but he’d never make that choice. So we have Nobara and Gojou caught between the same rock and a hard place. They can’t sacrifice others, but they can’t cooperate with them either. For Gojou and Nobara the most important thing is their own individualism and their world view. 

What Nobara hates is being told she’s wrong in any way. She views her world view as absolute. What she refuses to do is revise her opinions. She can’t be wrong. She cannot accept the fact that other people might have views that contradict hers, and that multiple points of view besides her own can coexist at the same time. 

If you look at the way Nobara judges the difference between Maki and Mai. She accepts Maki because Maki is more similiar to her and she likes Maki, and refuses to accept Mai because she doesn’t really like Mai. If she doesn’t like Mai than she doesn’t even want to bother thinking about her world view. It’s a narrow minded and flawed way of thinking. Gojou and Nobara tend to push other people away from them for two reasons, one they believe they can accomplish everything they want to do alone because they have such absolute confidence in themselves, and two they think they already see everything. Gojou assumes so because he has the six eyes and perceives the infinity, and Nobara because she thinks she’s smarter than the judgemental country people she was raised around. 

Gojou and Nobara lose in a similiar way. If it’s a contest of sheer strength they’ll never lose. Gojou pulls off a miracle and activates his territory for mere seconds, and slaughters thousands of curses at once. Nobara is so crazy, she wins a game of chicken against a literal demon and is completely willing to light herself on fire and let herself burn if her opponent burns with her. They don’t lose because they’re weaker than their opponents. They both get surprised by what they didn’t know. They specifically didn’t know it because Gojou, and Nobara already assumed they knew everything. 

Gojou is blindsided by the fact that Getou’s body still exists in some form and because of that his brain completely stalls in a critical moment. Nobara loses because she doesn’t really understand the cursed technique of the person she’s fighting against so even though it might be weaker than hers she’s still overcome. 

Gojou and Nobara are both people who assume they should be able to accomplish anything with their own strength. They both have inhuman levels of strength and determination. Which is why we see they’re similiar even down to the way they move their bodies, they act and move like inhuman puppets when pushed to their absolute limits. Hunched shoulders, stiff zombie like movements, it’s a clear parallel. 

If everything in the world really was decided by strength and determination than Gojou and Nobara would never lose. Neither of them are lacking in strength, or their determination to help others. But as Gojou says towards the beginning of the manga he has the ability to just murder all the higher ups in the Jujutsu world but that won’t really change anything. Gojou and Nobara are both fundamentally unable to accept other people, and are always distancing themselves from others and trying to fight on their own. That’s why for both of them, it’s not enough for Nobara, or Gojou alone to be strong. 

[forasecondtherewedwon]

Alright on Paper Pairing: Peter Parker x Michelle Jones (Spideychelle) Rating: T (for now) Word count: 1699 Chapter: 1/?

Spideychelle Week Day 4: Fake Dating

Summary: Reading the newspaper has taught MJ a lot about the Avengers' relationships. Doesn't mean she wants to be in one.

Or, MJ fake-dates Spider-Man, but won't commit because she has a crush on Peter Parker.

MJ reads the paper.

Oh, what, she’s supposed to be above reading the paper because print is dead and the internet offers both more news (stories and outlets) and faster access to it? Tough. She still reads it because her dad still gets it. He’s had a subscription since he graduated college and thought reading the Times―tucking it under his arm and flipping through the pages while he rode the subway―was a more accurate measure of adulthood than owning a car. (They still don’t have a car, by the way. MJ is never going to learn to drive. Ugh.)

The appeal that drew her to it, at the age of four, was the occasional editorial cartoon, utterly beyond her comprehension. These days, she’s a little more interested in the articles on domestic politics, but hey, people are allowed to evolve.

So if you’re her, you’re MJ, you’re living in New York and you’re paying attention, you’re going to notice the Avengers. Notice shit like violent attacks and streets covered in rubble―although, that’s basically the city at rush hour during construction season. She’s noticing other things though, Avengers voicing opinions, reviving a feeling of civic interest, pride, and responsibility. She’s noticing the tide turning; citizens less interested in blaming superheroes for unscheduled demolition in Manhattan and more interested in who does Hawkeye’s tattooing or which karaoke bar Thor can most likely be found at on a Friday night.

And the Avengers’ relationships. New Yorkers are feeding on (super-)human interest stories with their faces so close to the pages they just about rub all the ink off with their noses.

It’s a terrible thing to know this, to be as observant as MJ is, tracking these changing attitudes and becoming an accidental expert on the path to good PR for the biologically, magically, genetically, or otherwise enhanced. Reading the paper is what gets her in trouble―sooner, rather than later―when Spider-Man starts hanging around.

Technically, he’s always hanging (that web shit is strong stuff, by the looks of it), and he’s always around. MJ figured out ages ago that Queens is his home base. Still, their borough’s just big enough and just crowded enough that she’d never encountered him in person until a few months ago. Now she sees him all. The. Time. He says coincidence, she says to-mah-to, and it really is him saying that because they’re officially on speaking terms. It’s an improvement to their interactions, mutually decided upon after Spider-Man scared the bejesus out of her when she was standing on her apartment’s balcony one day, glanced over the edge, and saw him crawling up the wall.

The deal became that if he was going to drop by, he better be obvious about it. This led to a routine MJ is loath to describe with the word ‘charming,’ but which may or may not involve her going out to the balcony or chilling by the open window of her bedroom on Saturday mornings, after her parents have left to run errands, and offering Spider-Man a glass of orange juice while they chat and she shares her paper with him. He likes the arts section. She likes watching him read it, sticking to the wall outside her window, the posters for whatever’s in theatres appearing upside down.

He joked one time about them catching a Saturday matinee together. She’s pretty sure he was joking.

The deal evolves as the weeks go by. MJ’s apartment is less of a rest stop between crime-fighting gigs and more of a superhero counselling centre with only one client. Not that Spider-Man is looking to her, a high school student, to mend whatever trauma led to him donning a formfitting red costume and babysitting an entire city, but she’s sure giving him a lot of advice lately.

It’s just… life stuff, really, and MJ doesn’t know where he sees authority when he looks at her, yawning in her jammies as she passes his juice through the open window, but he seems to listen. Maybe her dad was right about the paper; it’s possible that reading it makes her appear wise.

But it makes her act like a damn idiot in a crisis.

She’s heading to a guidance appointment one Wednesday (it’s junior year and MJ is getting some assistance with scouting out colleges) and the halls are empty; she was given permission to leave class five minutes early. When she turns the corner towards the guidance room, there’s Spider-Man. Just standing there. Middle of the hallway. MJ drops a textbook and it strikes the ground with a deafening slap.

This is her comfortable weekend companion, the hero of Queens. She adjusted to understanding that Spider-Man can be both, but there doesn’t seem to be any room in her mind for him to also exist midmorning at Midtown Tech.

He’s staring back at her (she can tell―the aperture of the white eyes on his mask has expanded in shock), arms held away from his body sort of comically, and MJ’s trying to recall if she’s ever seen him upright before when the jarring old-school bell rings and students flood from the door of every classroom.

Spider-Man bounds towards her, grabs her book from the floor, pushes it to her chest until she grips it, and says, “I know what to do.”

Everyone’s starting to make sounds of surprise, recognizing the Avenger in their midst, but even though MJ knows Spider-Man is kind of a hero of the people, he’s not acknowledging them at all. In fact, he’s wrapping his arms around her, and her eyes―boy oh boy―are wide. There’s just one thing on her mind besides what his suit feels like against the backs of her hands…

She’s praying that Peter isn’t seeing this.

“I’ll swing by your apartment later,” Spider-Man promises, speaking quietly near her ear.

He puts another little squeeze into the hug before stepping back. Reeling, MJ watches him give their audience a polite wave as he walks backwards in the direction of the nearest exit.

“Sorry, guys,” he tells the gathered crowd. “Uh, duty calls. I just wanted to stop by and see my girlfriend.”

Heads are swivelling to stare at MJ even before she drops the book for the second time.

\\\

“How?” she demands of him that evening, pacing tightly on the balcony while her parents laugh along to a sitcom in the living room. “How could that be you ‘knowing what to do’?!”

“I was doing what you said,” Spider-Man says defensively. He’s pacing too, along the balcony’s two-inch-wide railing. (She’s too mad to be worried.)

“Excuse me? We’re putting this on me? When was I an active part of that plan, while I was holding that stupid textbook or while my arms were pinned because you were hugging me? I’d really like to know.”

“W-well, it’s what you said about public perception of the Avengers.”

“Specifics!”

“Like Iron Man,” he argues, lowering his voice after how she snapped. “People like hearing about him and Pepper Potts.”

“And have you always modeled yourself after Tony Stark, or is this sudden, public relationship announcement your first foray?”

They stare at each other for a minute, Spider-Man balancing and MJ looking up at him―which is kind of weird after they hugged today and she realized he’s shorter than she is. She sighs, regretting her harsh words.

“I’m sorry,” she offers. “I know what you did was thoughtless―”

“Well―”

“―ill-advised―”

“Literally your advice.”

“―and, frankly, moronic―”

“Hey.”

“―but I get it, you panicked―”

“I had it under control.”

“―so I forgive you.”

“Oh. Well, thanks.”

“Now, come down here so I don’t have to keep resisting the urge to shove you off that railing.”

Once Spider-Man flips down (she’s already forgiven him―what, does he think he’s getting bonus points for landing the dismount?), MJ crosses her arms and gives that red mask of his a stern look.

“Still not thrilled, huh?”

“Good guess,” she says dryly.

“I might be missing something here, but… why? I mean, I didn’t think I did anything to embarrass you. Did I hurt you somehow?”

MJ shrugs and stares at her slippers.

“People saw.”

There’s a pause.

“…We already knew that.” His tone is almost clueless enough to make her apprehensive that this is the guy she and the rest of Queens have protecting them.

“I don’t know if… if a certain person saw.”

She’s blushing hard to admit even this much of a crush and she’d be mortified if she wasn’t making her confession to this socially illiterate superhero.

“Boyfriend?” Spider-Man asks. MJ glances up to see him leaning extremely un-casually against the wall, arms folded a little less tensely than hers.

“You sound skeptical,” she accuses.

“You’ve never mentioned him.”

MJ glares for a few seconds before backing down.

“No, he’s not my boyfriend. And you didn’t know that either because we only ever talk about you.”

“I don’t have a girlfriend,” Spider-Man immediately offers, like he’s trying to even things up.

Groaning, she lets her shoulders slump.

“You do now.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty unlikely that nobody took a picture.”

“Safe to assume the students of a school called Midtown Tech are tech-savvy enough to work a cellphone camera. By the way,” MJ adds, narrowing her eyes at him, “why were you there?”

“Oh, um, gas leak in one of the Chemistry labs. They dispatch the fire department for that kind of thing and I hate for emergency services to get tied up if I can fix it myself.”

“Huh. I had no idea gas leaks were in your repertoire. Thought muggers and bicycle thieves were more your beat.”

She’s teasing him pretty lightly considering he definitely just lied to her. It’s fine, she’ll wait to crack him until he’s forgotten all about visiting her school.

Spider-Man swings his arms nervously.

“If it’s a community problem, I’m on it. I’m just a friendly―”

“―neighbourhood Spider-Man,” MJ finishes. “Yeah, I’ve heard the tagline. And you’re also my fake boyfriend until we figure out a way for you to tactfully dump me.”

He takes an excited step towards her.

“I know wha―”

She cuts him off with a swiftly raised hand.

“Don’t even say it.”

[berniesrevolution]

Food coops, housing coops, credit unions, and other such institutions are sometimes referred to as the “solidarity economy.” How do these institutions relate to working-class power? Do they offer working-class people some shelter or respite from capitalism? Do they perhaps even “create the new world in the shell of the old”? Nick Driedger and Eric Dirnbach, two veteran members of many institutions of the solidarity economy, debate these points.

Eric: We all noticed this recent article about the campaign for “postal banking,” where United States Postal Service branches would offer much-needed banking services for folks who lack access to bank accounts.  The USPS actually used to do this up until the 1960s, and other countries still have it. This would obviously be helpful for many low-income people, who are forced to pay high fees at check cashing stores, and of course Wall Street banks hate the idea because they don’t want the competition. Unfortunately, according to the article, the national credit union association allied with the banks to lobby against it, which was news to me.

Now, I’m a member of a credit union and a fan of the concept. Financial institutions owned and run by their members are a great alternative to handing over our money to the standard, capitalist banks and increasing their power over us. Credit unions are in principle more accountable to their members and their communities, and have policies that are much more progressive than banks. And yet they took this bad stance against postal banking, deciding to protect their turf, just like the capitalists.

This reminded me of the recent Organizing Work exposé about bad labor practices and union-busting at a number of food cooperatives. I’m also a fan of food coops and have been a member of several, and those practices are extremely disappointing. Another problematic example is the Mondragon coop network in Spain, which I think is really impressive, but also incorporates a second-class tier of international workers who are not member-owners and who have even gone on strike against the coop.  

Overall, these are examples of “solidarity economy” organizations behaving like capitalist enterprises. The solidarity economy can be described as a network of organizations and practices like worker coops, housing coops, community land trusts, food coops, credit unions, time banks, community gardens and other entities that are alternatives to capitalist businesses. A segment of the left, and I would include myself here, believes one strategy (along with others like union organizing) to help transition beyond capitalism is to grow this economy in opposition to capitalist practices and prefigure the better socialist world that we want. A hundred years ago they called this idea the “Cooperative Commonwealth.” But these examples of bad, non-solidarity politics undermine that ideal.

Nick: In the article you mention, we see an example of an arm of the United States government being called on to provide a new public service. The City of Cleveland specifically called on the United States Postal Service to provide banking services through post office outlets. These calls are also coming from grassroots campaigns among postal workers’ unions in the USA and Canada, who want the government to expand services, better serve rural communities and undercut payday loan companies, which are often the only way for many working people to cash their paycheques, at exorbitant rates.

I am a member of four different consumer cooperative businesses, and had my first job at one of them. The United Farmers of Alberta is an institution where I live. At one time, it was a political party, and for a number of years, a long time ago, it was the government of the province. I am a member and buy feed for my chickens and ducks there, and when I was sixteen they gave me my first job. It had benefits and clear hours and a job description. It paid head and shoulders above what most businesses in rural Alberta will pay a teenager.

I am also a member of my small town’s credit union. The manager of this credit union is a big player in the local United Conservative Party.  I pay my insurance through The Cooperators Insurance. The manager of this coop was our New Democrat (social democratic party in Canada) representative in the provincial government that just fell in Alberta a couple of months ago. In the past, I have voted for left candidates for the board at Mountain Equipment Co-op (a camping supply consumer coop popular in Canada) who wanted to push for stronger ethical purchasing guidelines and support the cause of Palestinian rights.

Cooperatives in Western Canada are political and there is politics inside of them. They are often on their local chambers of commerce, and there is both a left wing inside the cooperative movement as well as a very strong right wing.

Where I live, coops are also a part of the local history. My family in a Saskatchewan farming community have worked for generations at a consumer cooperative simply called “The Co-op,” which provides groceries and fuel in many communities. In many rural communities in Western Canada, no one would have electricity if not for early rural cooperatives. Later, government services followed, like Alberta Government Telephones (which was privatized in the 1990s). Often coops would establish services that would be picked up as public services later. The words “Cooperative Commonwealth” have a deep resonance with people and a history here. Even a lot of conservatives consider the history of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (forerunner of the New Democratic Party) a history working people and farmers can be proud of on the prairies.

Eric: That is a fascinating history and I’d love to learn more about coops in rural areas. Clearly coops were organized over the years to meet the needs of rural residents. Agricultural supply and electrical coops are great examples of this. More modern examples are the internet service coops.

I’m more familiar with coops in an urban setting.  I’ve lived in my housing coop in New York City for about ten years and was just elected to the board, so I’ve been thinking about this place a lot. Morningside Gardens, with almost 1,000 apartments in six buildings, was founded in 1957 and has a pretty rich history of cooperative activity, with many committees, clubs and other organizations formed. Folks started a cooperative workshop for woodworking and ceramics, a nursery school and a retirement service in the 1960s, which are all still running.  The retirement service allows senior residents to age in-place and not have to move to a nursing home.

Members here have also been involved in community-issue organizing for decades, such as supporting local libraries, fighting for good subway and sanitation services, and campaigning for better local zoning to restrict luxury condos. Residents have formed several babysitting coops over the years. A theatre group was formed in the 1980s which still exists. In the last few years, several buildings have started a “Neighbors Helping Neighbors” mutual aid program, which is like an informal timebank where folks help each other with household tasks.

We had a food coop for over 30 years; that closed in the 1990s. I spent some time reading our old newsletters to learn about it and write up a history. The food coop members advocated for better consumer protection and product labeling laws in the 1960s and 1970s when the entire grocery industry was against more regulations. The coop also supported the United Farm Workers grape boycott and the Nestle baby formula boycott. In the 1960s, it started a credit union, which lasted for 15 years, so low-income members could have access to loans they couldn’t get at a bank. The coop also helped start at least two other food coops nearby, with funding and technical assistance. It made a small profit in most of its years and often returned a rebate to the members, thus keeping money in the community and out of the hands of a billionaire grocery boss.  And it was a union shop. One of my neighbors worked as a bookkeeper there in the 1970s and 1980s and still gets the union pension today.

All this seems really positive to me and was enabled to a large extent by the cooperative setting. Of course, some of this activity could happen in a similarly-sized apartment complex of renters, owned and managed by a landlord, but a lot of it wouldn’t. Bosses and landlords monopolize power, decision-making and wealth. Workplace and tenant unions fight to expand worker and tenant power, of course, but ultimately the boss or landlord still owns the property and extracts the surplus value and rent. The process of people running their own key institutions requires a lot of volunteer work, but this cooperation I think builds skills and confidence and creates more opportunities and the desire to work together on other projects.

Now, I don’t want to overstate the situation here; this isn’t Full Communism. Of course there have always been folks who see it as just a nice place to live and are less engaged in its internal life and politics. And capitalism has intruded on our utopia. The coop was “limited-equity” for decades, meaning that apartments were priced at below market value to keep them affordable. This was because our coop originally received tax breaks and other assistance arising from the 1949 Housing Act, which was intended to create affordable housing (and has a complicated history).  Then there was a contentious, long-running debate starting in the 1990s where a majority of residents voted to shift to market-rate pricing over time.  

(Continue Reading)

[thederailedtrain]

The Mark of Oblivion: City Hall Station [Two]

During Gus’s freshman year, his RA invited everyone on the floor to check out what he called ‘New York’s Best Kept Secret’. It was right at the end of orientation week, and everyone was tired and ready for classes to start.

But not Gus. On top of not knowing anyone before classes started, he’d never even been to America before - that trip his parents took to Boston while his mum was three months pregnant so did not count. Orientation week was a paradise as an extroverted foreign exchange student. He jumped at every opportunity to explore the city and meet new people. That led to him sitting through more than one awkward icebreaker session, but there were plenty other activities he still had fond memories of. The trip to the old City Hall Station was not one.

The only mistake the RA had made was planning the trip for a Friday night. Sure, there was the thrill of breaking the law, but who wanted to see some old subway station when it was the first official party night of the year? Gus hadn’t really made it onto any guest lists yet, so one illegal subway ride it was.

However, Gus wasn’t the only one to show up. Besides their RA, there was one other kid there waiting with him at the Union Square station platform. Standing on that same platform almost ten years later, Gus struggled to remember just what Bryce said in the first ten seconds that pissed him off so much. Gus was pretty sure he deleted the memory as a form of self-defense. Something about making sure he thanked them for being patient enough to wait up for him? Yeah, that sounded pretty on-brand.

Even if he couldn’t recall Bryce’s first remark word for word, taking this subway ride again was bringing up all sorts of memories. Everything was so much easier back then. No werewolves, no Harbingers, no magic. Not to mention Gus didn’t have to deal with his senses going into overdrive in a subway car, empty as it was. On the other hand, he didn’t have Sophie back then either. They hadn’t met until she started grad school two years ago. Gus would be damned if he lost her now.

When the subway approached City Hall Station, Gus made his way between the train cars. It was the last stop in the line before the train turned around, making its way through the abandoned platform. Everyone was supposed to get off, but not those who were peeking at the old station. The trick his RA had taught him and Bryce was to duck below the seats when they got to the end of the line. But catching a glimpse was all that trick was good for. Gus was aiming to actually get onto the platform itself.

This was technically...really dangerous. Going between subway cars while the train was in motion was obviously sketchy, but there was a reason they had to post PSAs warning people off it on every line. This route came with an additional corner so sharp newer cars weren’t equipped to make the turn with people on board. It was the reason the station fell into disuse and here Gus was, standing on the bridge between cars, waiting for the platform to come into view. Good thing being a werewolf gave him superhuman strength, because he knew there was no way he would’ve kept his grip on the railing otherwise.

As the train neared the old station, Gus readied himself to jump. With his strength and the added boost from the train’s speed, he was airborne for a little longer than he’d predicted. Thankfully, he had enough wits about him to roll as he landed. Gus came to a stop in the middle of the platform, crouching low enough that he could lay a palm flat on the floor.

The first thing Gus noticed looking around the platform was a strange sense of familiarity. He’d only seen this place once before from the window of a speeding train car, but it hadn’t changed in ten years.

The second, and arguably more pressing thing was the distinct absence of Bryce and Sophie. Leaded glass skylights let in enough light from the street above that Gus found himself wondering if he was alone on the platform. And yet, he caught faint traces of Sophie’s perfume in the air. The combination of peony and vanilla was overwhelmed by the distinct scent of Harbinger chaos magic.

As the train finally began to leave the station, Gus noticed another sound coming from somewhere closer. By the time he realized it was clapping, Bryce’s voice was already echoing off the tiled walls. “So nice of you to finally join us.”

Gus could feel his senses flip into overdrive in an instant. He jumped to his feet, wildly scanning the room as Bryce’s voice came from everywhere at once. With the ambient light and his improved night vision, he initially assumed he could see the entire platform. On his second pass, he found himself coming back to the far stairwell, which was shadowed so heavily even Gus’s sight didn’t offer him any assistance. As he stared, the shadows began to lift, twisting into Bryce’s form, with Sophie’s much smaller figure at his side.

A million things went through Gus’s mind at the sight of his girlfriend alive and well and staring right back at him. Fury that Bryce had actually gone so far as involving her, relief that she was actually alive, confusion at the unreadable expression on her face. Gus wanted nothing more than to run over to her, but he restrained himself. Bryce was closer to her and he could hurt either one of them before Gus made it halfway across the platform. Not unless he shifted. But with Sophie standing there, that was out of the question. He forced himself to disregard everything his instincts were telling him - protect, attack, defend - and stayed where he was, frozen by indecision.

“You know, you should probably thank us,” Bryce continued and Gus’s attention snapped back to him. “Seeing as we were patient enough to wait up for you.”

Belatedly, Gus remembered exactly what Bryce’s first ever words to him were. He could feel a warning growl rise in his throat, but suppressed it after a quick glance in Sophie’s direction. “Bryce, I’m going to need you to tell me exactly why you kidnapped my girlfriend,” Gus said, his words measured. “Before I do something we’ll both regret.”

“Who said anything about kidnapping?” Bryce’s grin widened. “Sophie’s here with me of her own volition. In fact, she was the one who approached me.”

Both men turned to Sophie at the same time, but Gus was the only one on her radar. That stony, unreadable expression was still on her face, giving up no clues as Gus searched for answers. Now that Bryce’s glamour was gone, Gus could get a better sense of her emotions. She hadn’t cried recently, not that he could smell on her. There were traces of anger, but most of what he was smelling was fear. Or something like it, at least. He wasn’t hearing the raised heart rate that normally went along with panic. Had he put her under a spell?

In the wake of their silence, Bryce gestured to Sophie. She jumped slightly at the hand suddenly in her field of view. “Isn’t that right, Sophie-”

“Don’t. Touch. Her,” Gus ground out, fighting to keep his voice level. It had already taken on that low, rumbling quality that preceded the shift, but Gus refused to let his control slip. In any other situation, he would have at least let his eyes flash in warning. But that was Sophie and this was the one secret he had to keep from her.

“Aw, cute, but how about an actual growl, hm?” Bryce asked. That damn Harbinger was just mocking him now.

Gus closed his eyes, willing them back to their natural hazel before opening them again. “Just let her go,” he said. “Or I’ll make good on all those threats from earlier.” He was shaking with an anger so strong it was threatening to tear him apart from the inside out. This no longer just about trying not to shift in front of his girlfriend. If his control slipped for a fraction of a second, it wouldn’t be him standing on the platform anymore.

Bryce’s laugh sent another burst of rage flooding through his veins. His hands tensed and Gus could feel his claws bite into his palms. He would not shift. He would not-

“Like when you said you would rip my throat out or that time when you told me you were going to break every bone in my body?” Bryce asked, sarcasm heavy in his tone.

“Both if you aren’t careful,” Gus warned, prompting Bryce to laugh again.

They were standing far too close for Gus’s liking. Bryce was smart with his positioning. There wasn’t much Gus could do at this range. A quick check of his pockets told him he only had one talisman on him, and it was one of protection. He was at a serious disadvantage right now and he had no idea what Bryce was planning. And, judging by the way his lips were curling, he was about to try something.

“So, I’m curious,” Bryce began with relish. “How long have you two been dating? I missed a lot while I was in England.”

A second later, Sophie seemed to realize he was speaking to her. Her stare had been so fixed on Gus. “Six months,” was all she said. Like her face, her tone gave away nothing but intensity.

Bryce let out an appreciative whistle. “Damn, congrats, you two,” he nodded excitedly. “Now, I’m just curious...Has he told you where he disappears off to every couple weeks?”

“Don’t you dare!” Gus shouted out before he could stop himself, pointing an accusatory finger at Bryce. His hand shook with an emotion that wasn’t quite anger.

It was anxiety, he realized. Gus was still getting used to his new instincts and the way they could so easily blind him. But with a single question, Bryce had exposed his number one fear and pulled him right back to humanity. If he was really about to do what he was implying, it wouldn’t just be Gus he put at risk.

“No, he hasn’t,” Sophie answered, after a moment spent glancing between the two men. It was the hesitation in her voice that really got to Gus. All he could do was stare at her, open-mouthed. There really wasn’t anything he could do in this situation.

“Pretty big secret, don’t you think?” Bryce pouted, as if he hadn’t already guessed. “Tell me, what would you do if I just told Sophie right now? What would you do to stop me?”

He began to walk down the steps as he spoke. Gus smelled it before anything else, the acrid tang of dark magic rising in the air. Immediately, he looked at Bryce’s hand and found he could just barely make out tendrils of smoke trailing between his fingers. His gaze flew to Sophie next, but she was entirely unfazed. Gus wondered if she could even see the spell Bryce was weaving, if it was pinging off her fight-or-flight response the way it did to his. 

“What’s wrong? You look a little deer-in-the-headlights there,” Bryce said, bringing Gus’s attention back to him. He quickly noticed how careful Bryce was being with his gestures, keeping the chaos magic out of Sophie’s line of sight. He was a right bastard, but he was a smart one too. In the wake of Gus’s silence, he went on, “Or is it more of a cat-got-your-tongue situation? Nah, I’m sure there’s another animal analogy here that I’m missing.”

But for once, Gus was too caught up in his own thoughts to register Bryce’s comments. On one hand, Gus still hadn’t talked to Cedric about what he could tell Sophie, and getting her out of there without showing her some kind of magic looked to be impossible. He would be responsible for breaking some kind of Otherworld exposure laws and Cedric would totally have his ass. But if he did nothing, and Bryce really was planning on using some kind of spell on her, then he would be responsible for whatever happened to her.

“Sophie, you’re the animal behavior expert here. What does Gus’s stance remind you of right now?” Bryce’s words registered somewhere in the back of Gus’s mind. Until then, he hadn’t even noticed his own defensive posture or the curl of his hands.

It was the little point to Sophie with the smoke-covered hand that did it. As if the implication wasn’t clear enough, he let his eyes fade to black and threw in a wink. Gus didn’t even need to think about which option he preferred less. Once again, he felt his senses kick into overdrive and he ran forwards. Just because Gus was an endurance runner didn’t mean he didn’t know how to sprint. The world blurred around him as he raced forwards, preternatural strength pushing his body past the limit of human speeds.

When he reached Bryce, Gus stopped short and grabbed hold of Bryce’s jacket. Using the momentum of his body, Gus threw him as far away from Sophie as he could. Bryce landed with a surprised cry, but seemed otherwise unharmed. Good. That meant Gus was still in control enough of his powers and his emotions.

Finally, Gus let out the growl he’d been holding back, the sound loud enough to echo across the tiled platform walls. In the dim light of the platform, his eyes seemed to glow particularly bright. He sank down into a crouch, one arm up to shield Sophie from whatever Bryce decided to throw at them next.

“Ooh, there it is,” Bryce sounded an awful lot like someone bragging for a man literally picking himself off the ground. “And here I was wondering if I’d get to hear that sound at all tonight.”

“Gus? W-what’s going on?” Sophie’s voice sounded from over his shoulder.

For the first time tonight, Gus could hear genuine worry in her voice, and he spun around to face her. However, it wasn’t Bryce she was staring at - it was him. Gus could see the moment worry turned into actual fear, and it was right when her eyes landed on his face. He knew exactly what she was seeing. The glowing eyes, sharp fangs and claws; he probably looked like a monster to her. Gus winced. Watching her shrink away hurt more than any blow Bryce could’ve landed on him.

“Don’t worry,” Gus tried to assure Sophie, giving her a careful nod. He turned back to Bryce, meeting his pitch black eyes and smirk with a canine-bearing grimace. “I’ll make sure you get out of here safe.”

In just a few hours of work, Kira learned that she wasn’t the only one coming back to Vestibulum Venenatis after some time away. A lot of customers remarked on their disappointment over the sudden closure. But, she was quick to note, none of them were Otherworlders. Cedric offered them all the same understanding frown and excuse;

“I’m so sorry, there was a family emergency over the weekend. None of us saw it coming, it was just so sudden. I really wish I could’ve given more warning, you know I hate letting you all down like that.”

He was so genuine that the customers always offered their condolences and backed off immediately. No one asked what the family emergency was. Only Kira could see the slight tension in Cedric’s jaw, the singular flaw in his perfect excuse.

Either way, Kira was glad to be at work again. It was nice to get back into the swing of things, to feel like she was helping out. Every once and awhile, she even forgot about everything that happened in the past week. The battle in Central Park, Layla’s return…

“You don’t have to help me close if you don’t want to,” Cedric told her as they were beginning to clear out. “You’ve already stayed longer than I would normally ask of you, and I know you have homework to catch up on.”

Kira waved off Cedric’s concern with a shake of her head. “I want to. I’m all caught up on my reading and I’m ahead of schedule with my thesis anyway,” she explained. It wasn’t like she had much else to do when she was trapped in the shop’s basement. “Besides, I want to stay and wait for Salazar to wake up. I need to see him.”

“I understand,” Cedric replied, sighing. “You know what? I can do this on my own. Go upstairs and wait for him. I’ll be down here if you need anything.”

“Are you sure?” Kira asked. It was only to be polite, of course. When Cedric only gave her a nod in response, she promptly dropped the empty jar she was holding and bolted up the stairs.

Finding Salazar wasn’t a hard task. He was still sprawled out across the couch, ChannelOne news playing at a low volume on the TV. His visible eye was closed, and his breathing was calm and slow. Judging by the empty bowl on the coffee table, he’d made himself dinner and went right back to sleep.

As frustrating as it was to see him asleep once more, the fact that he’d gotten up at some point was comforting. Kira walked over to the couch and sat down gently on the arm. Not like she had anything else to do. Again, she found herself staring at Salazar’s unconscious form, studying his features for any similarity to her own.

“Have you been there long?”

Salazar’s raspy voice shocked Kira back into reality. She nearly jumped off the couch, but managed to keep her composure. Just barely. His eye was still shut, so she figured he probably sensed her. Or maybe he just hadn’t been asleep the whole time.

“Oh, um, I’m not sure,” Kira replied eventually. “Less than ten minutes...Did I wake you up?” She cleared her throat awkwardly, willing her heart back down into her chest. For all the time Kira imagined seeing him in the hospital, or her entire shift that afternoon, she hadn’t come up with a single thing to say to him. What was she supposed to say to a father she’d spent her whole life without?

Salazar shook his head in response. “No, I actually almost wasn’t sure I was sensing you until just a moment ago. It’s these damn pain meds the doctors have me on. I’ve been in and out of consciousness all day.” That certainly explained the grogginess in his voice. “What time is it, by the way?”

After a check of her new phone, Kira gave him a quick, “Nine thirty. At night.”

And then they both went quiet. Apparently Kira wasn’t the only one at a loss for words.

“Hey, Salazar,” Kira blurted right as Salazar said, “Kira, there’s something I would like to…” But then he trailed off. This time, he did open his eye, locking gazes with Kira. “You go first,” he told her.

“Did you know?” Kira asked. It was something she’d wondering for days now. The question he’d buried in his mind during the battle, that strange expression on his face when Layla confirmed the truth for the both of them. It wasn’t a look of surprise. “About me...being your daughter, I mean.” There, she’d finally acknowledged the big, paternal elephant in the room.

At that, Salazar let out a sigh. No longer able to keep Kira’s stare, he turned his head away. “I...had my suspicions,” he confessed.

“When did you figure it out?” Kira went on. She’d been so determined to give him the benefit of the doubt, but his answer was making that a little difficult.

“A couple days before the battle. It was something Cedric said to Toni. I realized that was the first time I’d heard your full name,” Salazar explained. “There’s only one other woman I’d met with that name and I think that was when I figured out why I thought you were so familiar in our first meeting.”

Because he thought she looked like her mother. For some reason, Kira could feel her eyes begin to water. She swallowed harshly, blinking the tears away. It had been a long time since Kira had felt the loss of her mother this strongly.

In the absence of a response from Kira, Salazar continued, “That, combined with your neutral magic...I’m sorry, by the way. About how I gave you the Mark. Everything was happening so fast, and the world needs a successor to the line of Mixba’al more than ever. I wanted to warn you, but I thought I might die-”

“It’s alright,” Kira said, cutting off what was probably a very long apology that Salazar had spent the last few days rehearsing at the hospital. “You didn’t have time to explain. I’d say I forgive you, but I’m not mad about what happened.” Yeah, the situation sucked, but Kira understood. She would’ve done the same thing in his place.

“Heard you had some trouble with it when we got back from the park,” Salazar’s apologetic frown deepened, if possible. Kira only gave him a sheepish nod. “It can be a lot to handle. If you’d like, I can try and teach you. I should’ve taught you before the ritual, but...” He winced.

Again, Kira found herself nodding. “Yeah, lessons would be nice,” she told him. “Oh, and I’m not calling you ‘dad’ by the way. It’s just a little too weird right now.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to,” Salazar replied, giving her a soundless chuckle.

When silence fell over the room once more, it was a lot more comfortable. Kira found herself trying to suppress a small grin, turning to the TV when the task proved impossible.

Close to ten, when conversation between the pair turned to small talk, Kira felt something prickle at the base of her spine. It was so faint at first that she just ignored it. By the time she realized it was dark magic, the presence was already downstairs.

“Damn power-dampening rings!” Kira hissed, jumping to her feet. Seconds later, she let out a calm breath. Now that the presence was closer, she could finally recognize it. “Oh, nope, nevermind,” Kira added for Salazar’s benefit, encouraging him to lie back down. “Don’t worry, it’s just Toni.”

Salazar nodded, leaning back against the opposite arm of the couch. Before Kira could argue with him to actually lie down, she was cut off by the sound of two pairs of approaching footsteps. Cedric and Toni burst through the apartment door a moment later. Toni looked particularly winded for a run up a single flight of stairs.

“Kira, Salazar - we have a problem,” she got out between breaths. Then, after a quick nod to Salazar. “Glad to see you back. Nice eyepatch, by the way.”

“Wait, what problem?” Kira asked quickly.

Toni rolled her eyes, and it was a moment before Kira realized the gesture wasn’t aimed at her. “You remember that asshat, Bryce?” The question was rhetorical, but everyone nodded anyway. “Well, I caught onto some Harbinger chatter. Looks like he decided to get even with Gus after losing to him during the battle. And Gus seriously needs our help.”

[oddcoupler222]

Hi can you recommend some of your favorite fanfics

Since you didn’t specify which fandom you want my favorite fics from, I’mgoing to give you ALL OF THEM

Sanvers: (Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer - Supergirl)

by InspectorBoxer -

The Lighthouse Technique - Kara grinned. “I already have a plan. A foolproof technique, in fact, to get Maggie Sawyer’s full attention.” pre 2x08/Sanvers getting together (complete - 4 chapters, 5k words)

also she has tons of short and sweet oneshots and all of them are entertaining and worth reading. And she co-writes:

I Can’t Believe We’re Here - “I don’t know how to tell you this, Detective, but I’d like to introduce you to Jamie. Your daughter.” A post 3x05 fix-it fic, in which Maggie has a surprise daughter and the characters and plot are all A+ (currently incomplete but READ IT ANYWAY. 12 chapters, 71k words)

The above fic is part of the you and i collide series, all comprised of very well-written and in character reunion fics, written by zennie.

More by Zennie -

Worth the Fight - After the kiss, Alex and Maggie struggle to get back to friendship and maybe more. Also, Maggie is targeted by assassins and Alex is protective (complete - 7 chapters, 28k words)

Headstrong - Maggie challenges Alex to a race. It doesn’t end like either of them planned. (incomplete technically, but leaves off in a good place. 6/7 chapters, 11k words)

Also has a ton of one shots/shorter stuff worth reading

by performativezippers -

Spin Doctor (Grown Ass Woman) - Maggie doesn’t really talk to other people while she’s at the spin studio – she’s not, as they say, there to make friends – but everyone tends to do friendly nods and say hi, especially in the locker room, and she does the same. So she’s gotten know most of the teachers and many of the other morning clients by sight. So she’s sure this is the first time she’s seen this new woman. She’d definitely have remembered someone like that. (complete, 9 chapters, 37k words)

Lexie (Five-Inch Heels) - “I’m Lexie,” she says, and it’s clearly a fake name but that doesn’t bother Maggie. She’ll only need to know a legal name if this girl ever gets booked and Maggie has to intervene. She hopes it never comes up.

“Nice to meet you, Lexie.”

Lexie just stares at her, and Maggie can’t tell if she’s smirking of if it’s a trick of the light.

“Sure it is,” she finally says, and oh, yes, she was smirking.

Maggie decides to forgo delicate, and asks her next question bluntly, her hands back in her pockets. “What brings you out tonight?”

“Astronomy.” Lexie deadpans. “Been a while since I’ve last stargazed; thought I’d commune with nature and all that shit.” (complete, 4 chapters, 10k words)

by ReaderExtraordinaire -

Science Fairs and Spring Breaks -

What if Alex and Maggie had a chance meeting at a high school science fair? How much of an impact can one long distance friendship really have? After all, who meets their soulmate at 17? (complete - 18 chapters, 90k words)

by cairophoenix -

Track Changes - Alex is an editor at a New York publishing house, and that means her life is going right. She has her apartment, and the gym, and Kara a subway stop away. So if her apartment’s always empty at the end of the day, that’s just how things are. She spends a lot of time at the office, anyway. She’s making it, and that’s something she can be satisfied with. And then a mysterious book arrives. (Complete - 1 chapter, 44k words)

by colourmeblue -

there’s a piece of me that i’ve been seaching for - The first time she sees Maggie Sawyer, she’s not that impressed. A fake relationship AU (complete - 4 chapters, 30k words)

every inch of me there is to trace - Maggie contemplates Chinese food, beer and Netflix as her evening plan. The proximity to her previous life requires a distraction that only alcohol can achieve. Her mind does flash to Alex, though. What she’s doing tonight. How easy it would be to just call her. Or even see her, if she still lives at the same apartment. However, she’s immediately turned away from that idea at the thought of someone else answering the phone or the door. (incomplete, recently updated. 4/10 chapters, 13k words)

by bltbackwards -

Red Fish Blue Fish - Alex Danvers is the head marine biologist and veterinarian at the National City Aquarium, where Maggie Sawyer is the new night guard. One chance encounter leads to two, which leads to meetings not at all by chance. OR The one where Gertrude is a dolphin, Maggie’s got a prosthetic leg, Alex is a brilliant nerd that keeps food in her lab coat, Kara is the literal ray of sunshine everyone adores, and Lena is a genius who loves marine animals. (complete - 10 chapters, 35k words)

by Roadie -

Ashes and Embers - Fairytale AU. Wherein Alex is sort-of-but-not-really-Cinderella, Maggie is sort-of-but-not-really-also-Cinderella-crossed-with-a-fairy-godmother, James Olsen is the nobility we all know him to be, and Gertrude is a horse sidekick. (complete - 5 chapters, 12k words)

by alittlelesspain -

no hiding place -  So far in the past week, Maggie has been kidnapped, stunned, shot at, and now she has gone and put a considerable amount of professional and personal trust in the woman who had been doing the kidnapping, stunning, and shooting. She should be terrified. Instead, Maggie feels the most alive that she’s felt in years.

Or, the one where Alex is supposedly a criminal, Supergirl is supposedly dead, Lex Luthor is actually President, and Detective Maggie Sawyer has to deal with it all. A canon-divergent Sanvers AU. Slowburn. (complete - 13 chapters, 150k words)

by Lurkz -

I Just Want To Change My Future - Maggie was just hoping to finally have a stable enough job that allowed her to continue helping aliens and maybe finally meet someone who would decide she was worth sticking with. She wasn’t really expecting her new job to involve suspicious acting scientists that happened to be related to her new boss’s girlfriend.

All Alex wanted to do was work in her lab, finish this pseudo-undercover duty at L-Corp, destroy Cadmus, and find her father. She didn’t have time for nosy ex-detective security chiefs. (incomplete/still being updated. 16/? chapters, 77k words)

by thrace -

but the fruit is sweet - Sometimes doing the right thing sucks // Or, Maggie can’t figure out why Supergirl is suddenly giving her the cold shoulder. Post 2x06. (complete - 1 chapter, 15k words)

by seaunicorn -

Cursed - Alex’s sixth year at Hogwarts is thrown for a loop when her father Jeremiah is killed that summer.  It seems the only thing that makes her feel normal anymore is her newfound friendship with longtime quidditch rival (and Hufflepuff’s new team captain) Maggie Sawyer (complete, 1 chapter, 26k words)

To Build A Home - Maggie’s apartment is on fire, so she shows up on Alex’s doorstep… and Alex could never say no to Maggie. (complete - 3 chapters, 15k words)

(and a handful of other good little oneshots)

by izzie456 -

pizza and pajamas - Alex’s finger froze in place and her eyes widened as, under “Special Delivery Instructions,” she read:“send your cutest delivery girl, please ;)”A beat of silence. Then:“Oh. My. God.”“Alex, please don’t–”“What the  hell,  Kara?”

An AU where Kara tries to get Alex to start dating again with an unusual plan, and Maggie is a pizza delivery girl (complete - 4 chapters, 35k words)

by adieu_sweetamaryllis -

communion - Four years — she’d made it four years without having Maggie Sawyer in a single class of hers despite them both going to the same school. If she hadn’t seen her once or twice across campus she would’ve thought the girl never actually ended up attending National City University, despite both of them getting acceptance letters a few weeks before — well, before everything went up in flames. (incomplete - 18/21 chapters, 126k words)

by DisplacedWarrior -

I would move mountains to make you smile - Alex was just looking for a way to handle her giant crush without talking about it, she had no idea creating an anonymous Instagram account for her cheesy sapphic poetry would cause this much of a stir.  It has half the school starry-eyed but what about the one girl it was intended for?  (complete 1 chapter, 10k words)

by swanmills -

let me be your goodnight - alex meets an annoying new agent in the batch of this year’s trainees. alternate meeting au  (complete, 1 chapter, 4k words)

handfuls of other short/sweet oneshots by this author

and because I’m a masochist who is branching out into being a sadist, I’m going to recommend a very much incomplete story that I doubt will ever be finished but I reread it often and bemoan that it’s incomplete because it was SO GOOD and I want to drag everyone else down memory lane with me

wildfire -  Alex has seen beautiful women before, her sister is one of them, but not one has ever taken her breath away so quickly it felt like she was being knocked over.  Maybe it was simply the shock of seeing another person here when the school had seemed so desolate.  Or maybe, maybe, it was because that was the most beautiful woman that Alex has ever seen.or the one where alex teaches chemistry, maggie teaches history, and they teach each other a little something about falling in love (so incomplete. 3/? chapters, 25k words)

by lordvoldyfarts, who also has several shorter oneshots that I adore

moving on!

General Danvers: (Alex Danvers/Astra In-Ze - Supergirl)

Sword of Damocles - Canon divergent from 1x13: When Hank shows up on the rooftop to stop Astra from activating Myriad, Astra manages to outmaneuver him, taking Alex hostage as a means of escape. Now, Alex finds herself a prisoner at the hostile Fort Rozz base, but as time goes by, she and Astra begin to form an unexpected bond, challenging each of their beliefs, and loyalties.(complete - 27 chapters, 134k words)

Occupational Hazard - A comedy of errors in which Astra seriously misinterprets things. Seriously. Misinterprets. Things. This is a Human AU, so she doesn’t even have the excuse of being an alien to justify her Serious Misinterpretation of Things. She’s just that socially awkward of an Environmental Sciences professor who is head over heels for the obliviously charming-as-all-hell medical school dropout Alex Danvers.Basically, everyone is confused, smut runs rampant, as do silly tropes, stupidly oblivious mutual pining, and eventually, Feelings. Also Non is a surprisingly effective wingman, even though he very honestly had no intention of being one. Seriously, everyone is just so confused. (technically incomplete but read it, that is an order. 7/? chapters, 42k words)

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This - In which Astra watches TV for the first time, falls asleep, and has a series of seven very bizarre dreams, each of which ends with her falling in love with one Alexandra Danvers. Which is just silly. Humans are ridiculous. Why would General Astra In-Ze ever fall for a human, even a human as brave, and clever, and kind, and strong, and impassioned, and protective, and brilliant, and beautiful and…damn it. (complete - 7 chapters, 36k words)

all by uisceB. Just read everything this person has authored. Just do it.

Anyway, I have a whole GD fic rec already done! It was done almost a year ago, though, so I would recommend checking out anonymississippi and alittlelesspain to see what they’ve done in the meantime!

Sansaery: (Sansa Stark/Margaery Tyrell - Game of Thrones)

I can provide you with my past fic rec for that here and also with a handful of more recent fics than that first one, here!

Faberry: (Rachel Berry/Quinn Fabray - Glee)

Sooooo many fics! Enough for two previous rec lists here and here!

Bechloe: (Beca Mitchell/Chloe Beale - Pitch Perfect)

Here is a whole rec list :)

Jetra: (Jane Villanueva/Petra Solano - Jane the Virgin)

marry me a little by celaenos - Petra swallows, remembering the night in the stairwell. Thinking about how it was the first time Jane had felt real to her since the day they met, and how she didn’t want it to end, and how that was so, so dangerous. To want like that.(Or, Jane marries Petra to save her from Milos. And things start to get real complicated after that.) (complete - 18 chapters, 110k words)

Cartinelli: (Peggy Carter/Angie Martinelli - Agent Carter)

the mothering of us by QuickYoke and ratherembarrassing - The Black and White Ball was a masquerade ball held on November 28, 1966 at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Hosted by author Truman Capote, the ball was in honor of The Washington Post publisher, Katharine Graham. – Director Carter attends. (one of the best fics I’ve ever read. Complete - 3/3 chapters, 60k words)

Living Arrangements by netgirl_y2k - Angie almost says, I think Peggy and me are basically married, and I don’t think she’s noticed, just to see the look on Jarvis’s face. (Complete - 1 chapter, 3k words)

i broke my bones playing games with you by mooosicaldreamz - Captain America wakes up and causes quite the scene too, bursting into the middle of Times Square and turning circles around in wonder. The video plays over and over on the news, which Angie watches then, over and over, at the diner. There’s the gorgeous Peggy Carter, at the center of a storm of suits and Escalades, staring up at the big lights. She doesn’t look a day over 26, and honestly, Angie thinks she looks beautiful. Modern day AU where Peggy is Captain America. (complete - 2 chapters, 22k words)

Tony and the Gal Pals by comicbooklovergreen - “Hey Peg, you here? You’re never here early. Should I be worried?”Tony froze, looking to Peggy for direction. Only then did she think that perhaps she should’ve consulted Angie before absconding with Howard’s child and bringing him to their home. Or, the one where Peggy gets tired of Howard’s negligence and does something about it. (complete - 3 chapters, 16k words)

Faithfully Yours by nofearqueerhere - Angie sends a letter overseas in a “write to our boys” campaign for the war effort. She doesn’t count on it falling into the hands of Agent Carter of the Strategic Scientific Reserve. But she doesn’t exactly complain, either. (complete - 13/13 chapters, 18k words)

Shoot: (Root/Sameen Shaw - Person of Interest)

the domestic hell series by enginerd - The machine has a funny sense of humor when it gives the team a new setof ID’s.  Suddenly Root and Shaw are married in the New York suburbsplaying house.  What happens when the machine puts you in a house that wasthe block Halloween Party house for years?  

OR: Root and Shaw are in suburbia throwing a Halloween party. God helpthem. (4 words in the series, all one shots between 10k-15k)

Kismet and Other Movements by aelysian - She can’t see her without craning her neck, but she can picture themischievous gleam in brown eyes, the sharp cuspids that add bite to the flirtysmile.

 “Are we playing, Sameen?  You haven’t told me what the rulesare.” Soulmate AU. (complete - 5 chapters, 17k words)

The 32nd Annual IFTEC by ionizable - University AU where Root and Shaw have been forced to work together to plan and run their school’s engineering competition. In no particular order, there will be: “oops I accidentally fell in love with you” Root, an excruciatingly slow build, jealous Shaw, jealous Root, donut thievery, eventual smut, backstories, nerdiness, things moving right along to the complex plane after the midpoint, and most importantly: cheesy science jokes! bad puns and corny jokes! (complete - 12 chapters, 41k words)

connective tissue by bightly_bightly - “In a world where you can always find something to die for, Root gives you everything to live for."Root and Shaw, feelings and sex. This started out as me wanting an excuse to write the line "If you want that, you’re gonna have to do better than pancakes and light bondage” and it just sort of… evolved. (Complete - 14 chapters, 50k words)

Natural Selection by kesdax - They keep their heads down. They survive. Until their number comes up. Post Season 3 finale. (complete - 14 chapters, 55k words)

Fish Out Of Water by donteatmyfingerprints - Completely AU. A mermaid. There is a mermaid in front of her. (Sooooo au, but so weirdly good. Complete - 3 chapters, 15k words)

Swan Queen: (Regina Mills/Emma Swan - Once Upon a Time)

Send Up a Signal (that everything’s fine) by coalitiongirl

Emma Swan is catapulted into stardom, the newest lead actress on asanitized show featuring modern fairytales. Regina Mills is a long-underminedstar with a chip on her shoulder and a thousand reasons why she’s invested.Naturally, they loathe each other on sight.

Their characters’ fanbases, however, have other ideas. (complete - 21 chapters, 117k words)

and everything else by coalitiongirl. Really there are just too many to name.

step into my office baby by foxbones - This is what you get for doing the nice thing, Emma thinks. You do that whole Pay It Forward bullshit - you buy a lady some coffee and you pretend like it isn’t totally motivated by how she looks in a pencil skirt - and she goes and insults your business card and turns out to be your company’s new Executive Director. Real fucking cute.From now on, she is drinking tea. or, the one where they’re in an office. (complete - 16 chapters, 41k words)

Wedding Crasher by misscanteloupe - “My sister, Zelena,” she spits out the name like it’s poison, “Is getting married this weekend in California. My mother is potentially the biggest pain in the ass when it comes to who I take in as lovers. I need someone who will aggravate her to no end and keep her from meddling in the future.”

Emma blinks. “Why me?”

“My mother hates blondes.”

“Oh,” Emma says slowly, and god. She gets the feeling she’s signed herself up for one fucked up family reunion. “Cool.” (complete - 1 chapter, 6k words)

Deliver Me by wistfulwatcher -  “I was told a double rush order would be here in twenty minutes or less,” she said coolly, and gestured to the clock on the wall beside them. 

Looking over, Emma saw the face reading 6:45, just a few minutes past the twenty minute deadline. Eyes narrowing slightly, she licked her lips. “Yeah, it’s just a couple minutes past,” Emma said, and shifted her weight to one hip.

Tilting her chin up slightly she repeated, “Twenty minutes or less,” and Emma felt her head start to pound. What a way to end the day. (Complete - 5 chapters, 38k words)

A Fine Line by hunnyfresh - Upon Regina’s banishment, the small town of Storybrooke becomes protected once again by an enchantment that prevents anyone from leaving or entering Storybrooke. Emma and Regina find themselves on the edge of the town, wishing for a way to the other side. (Complete - 3 chapters, 18k words)

… I’ll see myself out. I hope you enjoy some!

[under-the-lake]

It Has To Be You  -  Fantastic Beasts The Second: What we know (or don’t) so far

WARNING: SPOILERS (writing this 9-10th August 2018)

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - The Crimes of Grindelwald, Second Film of the five-film franchise, coming out 16th November 2018… already there! Can’t wait, to be honest. However, there’s some clues that have been dropped by the Wizarding Community online and that can allow us some kind of anticipatory excitement. Here’s a sort of summary, along with some personal thoughts and dug out information, because why bother only summarize when you can actually think?

Let’s start with the trailers, shall we?

Teaser trailer from Pottermore (PM - posted 13th March 2018): https://www.pottermore.com/news/watch-the-first-trailer-for-fantastic-beasts-the-crimes-of-grindelwald

Second official trailer : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlCKOG9ut8g

Short ID

Warner Bros., Heyday Films, 2018, directed by David Yates, screenplay by Joanne K. Rowling, music by James N. Howard.

Setting: London, Hogwarts, Cliffs of Dover, Muggle and Wizarding Paris (we get to see the local equivalent of Diagon Alley - entrance via a statue), New York, (maybe Godric’s Hollow?), 1927, plus at least Hogwarts in the early 1900s.

Main Characters: Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law), Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp), The Niffler, Pickett, Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), Tina and Queenie Goldstein (Katherine Waterston and Alison Sudol), Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller) and his Obscurus.

Secondary Characters: Leta Lestrange (Zoë Krawitz), Nicolas Flamel (Brontis Jodorowski), Seraphina Piquery (Carmen Ejogo), Theseus Scamander (Newt’s brother, Callum Turner), Maledictus (Claudia Kim), Skender (owner of the Circus Arcanus, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), Abernathy (a Macusa supervisor, Kevin Guthrie), Vinda Rosier (Poppy Corby-Tuech), Spielman (Wolf Roth), Bunty (Newt’s assistant, Victoria Yeates), Torquil Travers (Derek Riddell), Arnold Guzman (Cornell S. John), Yusuf Kama (William Nadylam), Eulalie Hicks (Jessica Williams), Mrs Lestrange (Sabine Crossen), Laurena Kama (Isaura Barbé-Brown), Credence’s Aunt (Linda Santiago).

Rough plot outlines:

The series ranges from 1926 to 1945, when Dumbledore defeated Grindelwald and Tom Riddle graduated from Hogwarts. See… there’s no end to evil, only keeping it at bay.

The story of The Crimes of Grindelwald  is set just after the first film. If you remember well, in 1926, Newt was in New York apparently buying an Appaloosa Puffskein and unofficially releasing his Thunderbird back in Arizona. He gets into trouble because of a 21-year old Obscurial, Credence Barebone, and is condemned to death along with his friend Porpentina Goldstein, by Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA) supervisor Percival Graves. Miss Goldstein was at the time a dismissed Auror from MACUSA - she was investigating the New Salem Philanthropic Society - NSPS - against the orders of her superiors. They escape, along with Tina’s sister Queenie and a No-Maj (US word for Muggle), Jacob Kowalski. The group eventually confronts Percival Graves in the Subway tunnel, and in front of Seraphina Picquery (head of MACUSA) and her crew, they uncover Gellert Grindelwald under the traits of Graves. Grindelwald is taken into custody. Kowalski is Obliviated, along with apparently all the Muggles in New York, by some weird rain that raised a lot of questions, the Thunderbird flies to Arizona and Newt returns to the UK.

In 1927, Newt’s book, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, has been published, Grindelwald has escaped MACUSA and is gathering followers. He wants to expose the Magical Community, and advocates Wizard supremacy over Muggles. Sounds familiar. Newt is sent to Paris by Dumbledore to track down the Dark Wizard, and the Ministry of Magic people don’t seem exactly ecstatic about that. Credence has survived and is becoming more powerful, apparently siding with a mysterious cursed woman called Maledictus who works for a non less mysterious circus called Arcanus. We can imagine that Tina, reinstated Auror for MACUSA, has been sent to track Grindelwald, and she and Newt meet again, together with Queenie and Jacob.

Apparently, from the trailers, we’ll be back at Hogwarts during Newt’s school years but also later.

What Has Been Disclosed So Far

‘Following the declassification of certain secret documents kept at the Ministry of Magic, the wizarding world has recently learned a little more about the creation of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I am not yet in a position to tell the full story of my activities during the two decades that Gellert Grindelwald terrorised the wizarding world. As more documents become declassified over the coming years, I will be freer to speak openly about my role in that dark period of our history.

[...]

It is true that I was the first ever person to capture Gellert Grindelwald and also true that Albus Dumbledore was something more than a schoolteacher to me. More than this I cannot say without fear of breaching the Official Magical Secrets Act or, more importantly, the confidences that Dumbledore, most private of men, place in me.’

(Scamander, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, 2017, pp. x and xii)

A poster made by MinaLima for the Comic Con of San Diego this year reveals a lot (see picture below): People (Dumbledore, Grindelwald, Credence and Maledictus, Leta and Theseus), locations (Hogwarts, London, Paris), a Thestral-driven carriage, the Deathly Hallows and a Snake...

To start with, Grindelwald is free. That was pretty obvious though. It looks like Seraphina Picquery’s cells and measures of protection weren’t enough. In the trailer Grindelwald is seen in a thestral-drawn carriage (I thought the only tame ones were at Hogwarts, and only after Hagrid tamed them, so way later), wands pointing at him. The two men driving the carriage look like back-dressed Willy Wonkas :P and the carriage is followed by two people on broomsticks. What happened? Grindelwald is still with long hair and beard so when does this take place?

Once free, Grindelwald is making his point to a big crowd, trying to convince them to follow him. His inner wish is of course wizard supremacy over Muggles and other non-magical beings like Squibs. His ‘official’ version is that wizards shouldn’t be in hiding. He’s seen working with a woman holding a skull, who is Vinda Rosier (another ancestor to Death Eater Evan Rosier? Even the first names sound similar).

Grindelwald has his own logo, apparently, that looks like two letters ‘G’ put back to back, and that actually resemble a distorted swastika…. (see zoomed picture above). Well, the film takes place during one of the darkest periods of European history, namely the one during which rough extreme dictatorships rose... We don’t see it in the trailer (or I’m really blind), but we can assume that Grindelwald has already stolen the Elder Wand from Gregorovitch. The crew made Dumbledore’s first wand similar to the Elder one, though, as seen on a tweeted picture.. I am not sure if I like it yet.

A second major news is that we’re going back to Hogwarts, on two distinct occurences in time, it seems. The first is 1927, while what seems like a delegation of the Ministry of Magic (MoM - that has a different logo then, more in the fashion of the times) comes to confront Dumbledore about his use of Newt Scamander on a mission in Paris. It makes sense to think they are MoM people because among them is Theseus Scamander, Newt’s brother, who is Head of the Auror Office at the time. Along with him on the MoM team is a bloke called Travers. Rings a bell? His family tree has a Death Eater on it, later in the 20th century. The lines from the trailer are the following:

MoM Official: ‘There’s a rumour that Newt Scamander is headed to Paris. I know that he’s working under your orders. What do you have to say for yourself, Dumbledore?’

Dumbledore: ‘Well, if you ever had the pleasure to teach him, you’d know Newt is not a great follower of orders.’

However, Dumbledore and Newt have a meeting that has to be secret (since it’s shot on the roof of St Paul’s cathedral, London), and that tends to back up the idea that Newt is working ‘for’ Dumbledore. Moreover, Newt owes Dumbledore, who made a strong case for Newt not to be expelled from Hogwarts, as we learnt in the first film.

The second occasion on which we visit Hogwarts is during Newt’s school years as a Hufflepuff boy there. Maybe we’ll have more details about his relationship with Leta Lestrange. We know he loved her, and shared her passion for creatures. When one of Leta’s experiments with a Jarvey went wrong, Newt took the blame to prevent her from being expelled. Dumbledore defended Newt, and we don’t know if the expulsion finally took place or not. However, Newt could keep his wand, which would tend to back up the theory according to which he could stay at Hogwarts and graduate. What also backs up this theory is the fact that he’s been working for the MoM, which wouldn’t have hired someone without top grades in N.E.W.T.s so... yeh. Not expelled, I believe. We also know that later, Leta fell for Newt’s brother Theseus and got engaged to him.

One of the trailer scenes pictures Newt taking over a Boggart. The film crew placed the same cupboard in the DADA classroom as in the Prisoner of Azkaban film, which is all right given the period, I mean on an antiques point of view. Why assume that Boggarts would be hidden in the same cupboard, though? Moreover, who is teaching DADA but Dumbledore. That doesn’t make sense at all. That being said, Newt’s Boggart is funny: a desk full of in-trays and papers (see picture above). Because his worst fear is to be made to work in an office (that’s what he says in the trailer).

To stay with Newt a bit longer, do you remember how he did not have a Wand Permit for the USA? Well, his travelling troubles seem to have no end. From some official documents, we can see that his MoM Travel Permit is pending, because ‘subject uncooperative and evasive on reasons for last trip’. If it had only been a trip to collect data for his book he would not have been evasive or uncooperative…. (picture below)

Among the latest news, we learn that Newt wanted to go back to New York once his book was launched. He didn’t seek celebrity, he wanted to find Tina. Unfortunately for his introvert self, his book is a success. Redmayne says ‘Newt has been grounded in London and unable to leave.’ (Buzzfeed, 10.8.2018). In the same post we learn that Newt has a basement to his London apartment, that Rowling intended as a creature hospital. It is actually an extension of Newt’s suitcase, and is apparently bottomless. The entrance is…. You’ll never guess…. Via a cupboard under the stairs! I’m NOT taking the mickey.

Something unexpected, maybe is the appearance of a well-known prop. The trailer shows lights being sucked from street lamps. That can mean only one thing: Dumbledore had already invented the Deluminator (aka Put-Outer) in 1927. Who’s using it though? The shadows won’t yet reveal the answer. Is the use Ron Weasley put it to going to be displayed too?

Another point that has been fantasised about is Credence. Credence has survived the blasting in the Subway tunnel, and is now more powerful and seems more angry than ever. At one point in the first trailer, he is in the circus and frees some kind of creatures from a glass ball, or so it looks like at least. He’s also seen intensely looking at the posters advertising the circus….

From one fishy character to another… Who is Maledictus? She is Credence’s companion as it appears. She is said to bear a blood curse that transforms her into a beast, and that she’s one of the attractions of the Circus Arcanus, owned by Skender, currently on tour in Paris. One of the posters says ‘Snake Girl’... and Maledictus means ‘cursed’ but also ‘ill spoken’. We also know that the Circus was on tour in New York late 1926, and left only at the beginning of January 1927 to cross the Pond to France. Hm….. could Credence and Maledictus have met before? Or is it a new acquaintance? Why would Credence be in Paris otherwise?

The most unexpected visit to the film might be that of Nicolas Flamel. It makes sense since he lives in Paris (or does he still? We know from the Dumbledore Frog Card from 1991 that he lives in Devon), but I wonder what is going to be his role. He meets Jacob, that’s sure, from the trailer. Will he be meeting Dumbledore? Some kind of alchemical discussion could be really nice, and offer a rest in the probably action-packed-CGI-ed film. It appears from pictures that Newt will at some point hold an alchemical symbol, which, if I remember well, is that of gold. It’s a circle with a dot in the middle. What significance to this? Link with the Hallows? Or the Philosopher’s Stone? 

Another point is that there’s a hint, on Pottermore, that the film will show us younger versions of the main characters. Does that mean yet another flashback? Apparently. That fits the fact that we are to see Newt at school, in the early 1900s, but it also says that there is going to be a younger Grindelwald. Would that mean that maybe we could have a glimpse of that visit he payed to his great-aunt Bagshot in Godric’s Hollow the summer after Dumbledore graduated?

Let’s move to Creatures: the series is called Fantastic Beasts, after all. Pickett is back, and the Niffler. There’s all sorts of other creatures. In the trailer, Newt is seen riding an underwater creature. What could it be? A water dragon (he’s been training dragons for WW1, after all), a Kelpie (but it would likely eat him)? There’s also some sort of weird bird I’d say is an Augurey, and Thestrals. That bird appears to be sort of controversial in its determination: I mean that some people think it’s a Fwooper. Well, according to Scamander, in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the book, of course, Fwoopers are brightly coloured, which this bird is not. As a pet, it would be quite dangerous to have one, since it’s cry drives one mad. Moreover, It doesn’t match Rowling’s illustration for it at all. The bird from the trailer does, however, match the description of an Auguery a bit more: a vulture-like creature (all right it has feathers on its head, vultures, as scavengers, don’t), blueish grey, used as a home weather-forecaster.

Ok this kills me: there are going to be BABY NIFFLERS! FantasticBeasts retweeted a post about that and here’s the picture in there. 

This is not a joke, There are really baby Nifflers. There are four different colours actually, as published by PM today 10th August. One adult Niffler was already some kind of a Weasley twin.... what about FOUR?

Here they are:

And HA another of their tweets lists creatures. And the bird IS an Augurey, but there is also indeed a Kelpie (wondering why, and how Newt is going to escape). The weird thing walking in the streets at some point in the trailer is called a Zouwu, that seems, from what I saw on Twitter, to be a Chinese creature. In the trailer, there’s also a weird-looking crumpled-antlered stag/elk-like creature, that some people refer to as a Leucrotta, but the usual description doesn’t fit here, some think it might be a Crumple-Horned Snorkack. There’s no description matching the beast in Newt’s book, unfortunately.

That’s what I’ve dug out so far. There is new info coming out all the time, and I probably have missed some. If that’s the case, please comment under the text :)

Paris, London, New York and the Wizarding World in 1927: Short Description (more after the film is launched)

I wanted to do a tiny bit of research on 1927 in Paris and London, mostly, and have a more deeper go after having seen the film, to put things more into context.

As The Crimes of Grindelwald set in 1927 directly follows Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, set in 1926 New York, there’s not much point into dwelling into what New York looked like at that time. There are a couple of papers on this blog about that:

http://under-the-lake.tumblr.com/post/157988584836/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-the-film (first deeper impressions after the first film, mainly deeling with Speakeasies and Immigration Rules)

http://under-the-lake.tumblr.com/post/158268815626/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-the-film (first deeper impressions part 2: laws and death penalty)

http://under-the-lake.tumblr.com/post/159376016836/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-the-film (first deeper impressions part 3: the NSPS and Credence)

http://under-the-lake.tumblr.com/post/153419399321/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them-first (Very first Impressions)

Paris in 1927

President of France at the time: Gaston Doumergue (1924-1931)

Here’s an 8-minute video of Paris in 1927. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QDmzfyqNJM It shows really how life was in the streets.

Among the artistic life of the 1920s in Paris were people like the Missouri-born Josephine Baker, who was spotted in New-York in 1925 by French producers who were looking for an all-black cast for their Parisian Revue Nègre. Josephine was chosen and she moved to the French capital in the same year. She was one of the stars of the nightlife there from then on (see picture above). She was not the only foreign artist to set quarters in Paris. They came from the USA but also from the whole of Europe, mainly the East and South: Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Spain. The whole neighbourhood of Montmartre, with its Moulin Rouge and Bateau-Lavoir, and that of Montparnasse and the Quartier Latin, were exploding with modern artists from poets to painters and composers, trying things, often living on nothing, often collaborating, often also hating each other in peace. The 1925 Exposition of Decorative Arts had also launched the period of Art Deco. The Expo hosted works by artists like Lalique or Le Corbusier.

It was also the period of weird circuses. Fêtes foraines were travelling fun fairs with carrousels and other attractions, but also with displays of ‘monsters’ or other ‘unusual’ creatures, including humans. Famously, of course, bearded women and elephant men, or dwarves, were showed to the public. Audience were attracted via posters and even music, like barrel organ music, that could be heard up to 3 km (1.8 miles) around. From what the trailer of The Crimes of Grindelwald shows, the Circus Arcanus is exactly along those lines. The name itself should be enough for us to know that something fishy is coming, ‘arcanus’ meaning ‘mysterious’ or ‘secret’ in Latin. Plus there are snakes and that evil cloak-holding being on the poster.... and that phrase, Le musée des curiosités vivantes (the museum of living oddities, like a live curiosity shop). According to Wikia, the Circus was in New York for a fortnight in late 1926 and travelled to Paris, France, in early January 1927…

London in 1927

King: George V (reigned 1910-1936)

PM: Stanley Baldwin

There is footage from London in 1927, and Simon Smith has replicated the shots in 2013:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kml92pPjx0

In 1927 the UK was recovering from the General Strike of 1926. The lower class had lost for many reasons, and the majority of the population was in a worse state then than before the strike.

The posh London society youngsters were known as the Bright Young Things. They were offspring of those who had gone through WW1 and were either fighting their parents’ values or taking life at face value, living carpe diem because of the war that had slaughtered so many young people. Maybe, for the young women, it was a way of showing their newly born independance. Maybe the reason was a mix of all. At any rate, it was a time of party, alcohol, drugs, freedom, jazz and a feeling of fighting the establishment. That latter was expressed, among other things, by the full acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships, which were, at the time, banned by the British laws.

Among them were people like photographer Cecil Beaton (see pic by him above), who is partly responsible for starting the cult of celebrity in the UK, via his portraying of the Bright Young Things. Since they were children of rich families, they had also connections with tabloids and could use them to spread their image, which they did. By the start of the 1930s, unemployment, Wall Street Black Thursday and global unhappiness were getting people bored by the growing excesses of that group.

On the cultural side, BBC (British Broadcasting Company) was created in 1927 (it was really founded in 1922 but was granted a Royal Charter in 1927). Authors who published in this year were among others Agatha Christie, Virginia Woolf and P. G. Wodehouse.

The Wizarding World in 1927-ish

In February 1927, Gellert Grindelwald, notorious Pureblood supremacist, makes an escape from MACUSA prisons in New York, while a month later, in March, Jacob opens his bakery, thanks to Newt’s Occamy Egg shells (Fantastic Beasts Screenplay, scene 123). Newt is doing well too, his book being published somewhere between January and March. The launch is set on 19th March 1927 at Flourish & Blotts, Diagon Alley, London.

By December, Seraphina Picquery has made the Thunderbird a protected species. She has instituted a Protective Order on it (While in the Muggle world Theodore Roosevelt had made Pelican Island a protected area in 1903, and the first protected list of species was used in 1918 jointly by Canada and the USA).

Dumbledore has been writing for Transfiguration Today for a year in 1927.

A French Ministry of Magic? Well, if the USA have their MACUSA and the UK have the MoM, why not a French Ministry. At any rate, the trailer gives us a glimpse of a glass dome with constellations and creature names written in pseudo-French: Le Niffleur, Hippocampe, Le Nundu, Le Doxy….  (there is even a typo because ‘centaur’ in French takes an ‘e’ at the end). I cannot vouch for this being the building of the French Ministry, but at least we know there is one, mentioned by J. K. Rowling in her writing about Beauxbâtons Academy on Pottermore. In French it is called Le Ministère des Affaires Magiques de France, which translates into ‘French Ministry for Magic Affairs’. According to Wikia, it was founded in 1790 during the French Revolution, and has ‘Incanté, Envoûté, Conjuré’ as a motto, which would translate into ‘Cast, Bewitched, Conjured’. The latest news from today tell us that the entrance is via one of the multiple public drinking fountains scattered all over Paris, called Wallace fountains. How can people enter via such a thing, search me. In London, you could either use Apparition, or the Visitor’s Entrance in the telephone box that you could actually enter, or later the public loo that you could get flushed in. The French thing is a fountain. Are people going to be suck via the plumbing after shrinking themselves or something? What about the Statute of Secrecy??

I must acknowledge that I hadn’t thought about Voldemort when I started this piece of writing. However, since Grindelwald’s defeat is followed by Voldemort’s rise to power, it must be considered. Merope Gaunt eloped with Tom Riddle Sr. in 1925-1926, and Tom Riddle Jr. was born on 31st December 1926 at Wool’s Orphanage, London, after his father left Merope, probably due to her stopping to feed him on Love Potion. So if we put two and two together, Tom Riddle Jr. had a nice model to worship when he was at school...

UK Minister for Magic: Hector Fawley (1925-1939)

US President of MACUSA: Seraphina Picquery (1903-1928)

French Ministre des Affaires Magiques: Unknown yet

Grindelwald and the Deathly Hallows: Dusting Our Memories

According to Rowling in her writings for PM, Gellert Grindelwald was born somewhere around 1883, somewhere on planet Earth. However, he was sent to Durmstrang Institute, that is located somewhere in northern Norway or Sweden (according to J. K. Rowling, see report of her reading GoF). He was ‘as ‘precociously brilliant as Dumbledore’ (Deathly Hallows, ch. Eighteen). Grindelwald was expelled when he was sixteen. The official reason is that he was making ‘twisted experiments’. They must have been really nasty if he was expelled from a school that favours Dark Magic.

Grindelwald knew about the Deathly Hallows and believed they would give him limitless power once united. He stole the Elder Wand from Gregorovitch the wandmaker. He wanted the other two Hallows, the Resurrection Stone and the Invisibility Cloak, badly. We don’t know if he wanted to be Master of Death or just have power, but he was obsessed with overruling the Muggle world and put the non-magic people in their rightful place. He engraved the Hallows sign on one of the Durmstrang walls. Later Dumbledore draw it on the front page of his copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard.

How lucky then that Grindelwald’s great-aunt, Bathilda Bagshot, happened to live in Godric’s Hollow, which, apart from being the Potters’ and the Dumbledores’ family village, was the place where the Peverells had lived. Ignotus Peverell and his two brothers are said to be the Three Brothers of the tale, and thus the first owners of the Hallows.

After being expelled, Grindelwald went to visit his great-aunt. How very convenient… and there was Dumbledore, having to spend his summer looking after his family instead of taking his Grand Tour of the Wizarding World with Elphias Dodge. Bathilda introduced the two men, and it was like a bubble of fresh air to Dumbledore, according to Rowling. The two became inseparable, writing to each other about Wizard domination over Muggles for the Greater Good (that’s what Dumbledore thought) when they couldn’t talk about it. The relationship lasted two short months. Albus was besotted and that cast a gloom on his family, because he would not fulfill his obligations. His brother Aberforth eventually reacted, and the result was a three-way duel and Ariana’s, their sister, death. Needless to say, Grindelwald vanished. (Deathly Hallows, chapter Eighteen).

He travelled through Europe, gathering followers, and tracking down the Elder Wand, the easiest Hallow to trace, due to its bloody history. Apparently, he avoided Britain.

Europe having probably given out what it could, Grindelwald crossed the Atlantic and hired himself as MACUSA Auror Percival Graves. I guess he had heard about Obscuri and about Credence, because why go exactly there otherwise. Credence would be a wonderful weapon of destruction if he learnt to control his powers. Pottermore says that Grindelwald discovered Credence later, but I can’t think of any other reason for someone to go to the USA while the wizarding community there was so much more restrained than in Europe, and hopes of bringing it to the light were therefore so much smaller. Using an Obscurial to wreak havoc and thus expose the community would be a huge blow for his enemies. And of course we know that Grindelwald was already tracking down the Hallows, and knew of their existence, as proven by the necklace he gives Credence in the first film. Actually, I just read that according to Rowling, Grindelwald is a Seer… and had a vision about Credence’s immense power (see tweet). 

During his stay in the USA, Grindelwald was discovered by Newt Scamander, and captured and imprisoned by MACUSA. Not for long, though. That’s what the second film is telling us.

Questions Raised by the Trailers and the Written Info

Some of these questions, together with the fact that since Rowling wrote the screenplays herself, make things that were canon from the Harry Potter series and Fantastic Beasts collide….

- Now were we hoodwinked in the first film? I mean drawn into thinking that Newt is an innocent Magizoologist, trying to gather information for his book? Was he actually already on a mission to track down Grindelwald? Because honestly, that’s what he does in the end. Nothing about collecting stuff for his book. Setting Frank the Thunderbird free seems like a nice cover story.

- If he was indeed on ‘innocent’ business in New York, then why are MoM officials monitoring his movements, and why is his current MoM travel authorization pending? Why are MoM officials coming to Dumbledore to inquire about Newt? Or are they actually investigating Dumbledore? And remember, MACUSA was already tracking Newt from the start of the first film...

- What are Queenie and Jacob doing in Europe? If Tina is probably on MACUSA duties or tailing Credence because she’s still on the NSPS trail, I can’t imagine why a baker would leave his flourishing new business and why a witch like Queenie would leave her makeup and brushes to travel to Europe.

- Who’s that bloke with long white hair and beard levitated by apparently officials in some kind of prison?

- Is Maledictus the Snake Lady? If she is, it would be clever for her to hide her curse in a circus, given the intolerance of the age for differences of any kind. Some rumours actually have it that she would become Nagini...

- How did Credence survive? And after recovering, did he join the circus? Otherwise it doesn’t make much sense that he’s in Paris, right? Nor that he knows Maledictus.

- From research done by SuperCarlinBrothers, Credence is related to Corvus Lestrange and is half-brother to Leta Lestrange, Corvus having had offspring by two women. It’s all here in their video, time 7.27  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3ChukSDGRU  

Now how did Credence end up in the care of Marylou Barebone in the first place, please?? Or is that name a fake one?

- That family tree bears the name of Laurena Kama, a black witch. The film cast says that there’s going to be a character there called Yusuf Kama, played by William Nadylam. Family? And we know from cast that Credence has an aunt...

- And now we’re talking about Credence and his family tree... what about Modesty? Is she going to appear some time in this film or the next ones? What’s the point of developing her character so much in the first film if she has no role to play in the story later?

- Tina looks dark. ‘We’ll all have to pick our side’.... ? And it appears like she feels the urge to look after Credence… and maybe she’s a bit jealous of Bunty, Newt’s assistant, who in turn might be a bit infatuated with Newt, from what Redmayne says.

- WHY the bloody hell is Dumbledore teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts (DADA)???? That is so not canon. He’s a Transfiguration teacher. By 1927 he had been writing regularly for Transfiguration Today for a year. He was never mentioned as a DADA teacher, and it sounds really wrong. I know some people argue that DADA didn’t exist then, and that maybe Care of Magical Creatures was merged with it, as well as Transfiguration, but that doesn’t make any sense. Dark Wizards have always existed, and bad curses, hexes, jinxes, and dangerous creatures, if not dark ones. It makes no sense to ‘invent’ DADA just because Voldy was on the loose, or after Grindy was sent to Nurmengard.

- What’s that orb the woman next to Grindelwald is holding in her hand? Looks like either a Crystal Ball or a big version of a Prophecy. That last would be ruled out since it is too big to be one, but again, tampering with canon stuff seems to be the fashion. Unless, since everything seems to happen in Paris, it is a French Prophecy. Actually, new theory: from pics where you can see the two protagonists from the front, it seems Vinda is actually holding a skull with glowing orange eyes.

- Who’s the woman walking with the three thestralish cats? I found out she’s called Melusine…. That could open a lot of speculation.

- What’s Grindelwald saying to Dumbledore in the Mirror of Erised? And why does Dumbledore see Grindelwald in the Mirror in the first place? While actually at the end of the HP books, it is hinted that he’d be seeing his family… If the deepest desire of his heart were to see Grindelwald finished, then the latter wouldn’t be alive in there.

- Why always ‘it has to be you’? Same with Harry Potter and Severus Snape. Reminds me of Lord of the Ring, where people with the Rings of Power (that is Galadriel, Gandalf and Elrond) can’t take over Sauron and it has to be a Hobbit. Or David and Goliath. Oh wells. Always puppets played by experienced puppeteers.

- Last but not least. Why is Jacob working with wizards? Is he a descendant of wizards himself? I’ve been giving this some thought myself, but haven’t had time to work out all the connections. HOWEVER, there IS a theory that he’d be a descendant of Helga Hufflepuff, and it’s really interesting how the blokes who thought this came to that conclusion. It would explain, for instance, why Jacob has not been totally Obliviated by that rain that was destined for Muggles only (he makes pastries in the shape of all the animals he saw in Newt’s case, for instance). If you are curious about this theory, check this video by SuperCarlinBrothers :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT7i4Lu55pg (for details about disagreements on some names used in the video, check the comments under it :P ) There’s further evidence to be read in the comments below the video, because one of the people mentioned a Quentin Kowalski playing Quidditch for the USA in 2014, which would mean there are Kowalskis in the wizarding world, maybe a descendent of Jacob?

- Ok not last. I just rewatched the trailer and here comes one more question: HOW COME those people can just APPARATE on the bridge at Hogwarts??? I thought you couldn’t Apparate on the premises. At least according to Hermione, Severus and Hogwarts: A History. However, it is possible that those protection measures were put on later than 1927. On the other hand, Rowling says, on PM, that the castle and ground have always been protected by Anti-Apparition charms…

Of course, more info will be released the closer we get the the launch, on 16th November. We will see if any of those theories are confirmed, any questions answered… - can’t wait!

Meanwhile, as all these questions, all these thoughts, are obviously only assumptions and ramblings of my own mind, sometimes backed up by others, sometimes not, feel very free and very welcome to discuss any point you might feel worth it! Either in the comment thread under the article, or on our facebook page!

Happy anticipation to everyone!

Sources

https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/beauxbatons-academy-of-magic

https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/durmstrang-institute

https://www.pottermore.com/features/gellert-grindelwald-the-story-so-far

https://www.pottermore.com/news/watch-the-first-trailer-for-fantastic-beasts-the-crimes-of-grindelwald

https://www.pottermore.com/writing-by-jk-rowling/the-hogwarts-express

https://www.pottermore.com/news/introducing-the-baby-nifflers-in-fantastic-beasts-the-crimes-of-grindelwald

http://www.redhotjazz.com/josephinebaker.html

https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Bright-Young-Things/

https://fromthebygone.wordpress.com/2017/12/30/the-bright-young-things-captured-by-cecil-beaton-1920s/

Full Credits currently available:  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4123430/fullcredits

Latest update, 10th August 2018: https://www.buzzfeed.com/eleanorbate/fantastic-beasts-crimes-of-grindelwald-set-secrets?utm_term=.cvKd2rJEw#.gnnJo7gP0

J. K. Rowling reading Goblet of Fire report: http://www.accio-quote.org/articles/2000/1209-hpfgu-scruton.html

Scamander, N. (2017). Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Bloomsbury Publishing, London, in association with Obscurus Books, Diagon Alley, London.

Rowling, J. K., (1999). Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Bloomsbury, London.

Rowling, J. K., (2007). Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Bloomsbury, London.

Rowling, J. K., (2007). The Tales of Beedle the Bard, Bloomsbury, London

Rowling, J. K., (2016). Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - The Original Screenplay. Bloomsbury, London.

[randomnotesofmyown]

Psycho Pass (9-10)

Episode 9 - Paradise fruits

Kogami, Tsunemori and Ginoza at the Oso Academy to continue their investigation. Ginoza brought Kogami aside to apologize for his misjudgment. Kogami responded that he hadn't felt as lively for a long while.

Morning next day, Tsunemori was told about a news report video recommended by the Ministry of Welfare in which a Senguji Toyohisa was interviewed and talked about how immortality could be achieved by turning human into cyborgs.

As Tsunemori drove to pick up Kogami, she played that video in her car. Kogami was not interested in what Senguji said, he looked out of the window when that video played. Nonetheless, Tsunemori asked:

"...by becoming a cyborg?"

Kogami answered immediately, without looking at Tsunemori, that he was not interested. "LIfe as a latent criminal isn't the sort of thing you'd want to go on forever." Tsunemori countered that if the social system became more developed, the rights of latent criminals might improve. Kogami laughed it off, saying no wonder Tsunemori's psycho-pass tended to stay clear. The video continued. The host asked Senguji about a survey that showed people's reluctance in becoming more than 50% cyborg, and Senguji responded that everyone had become more or less cyborg now. Even though they did not have artificial body parts, they had become totally dependent on portable information terminals, AI secretaries and similar technologies that functioned as their second brain. And he concluded that the history of science was a history of the expansion of the human body's functionality, in other words, the history of man's cyberization.

Tsunemori kept driving without talking with Kogami. They arrived at a private property. Both quietly got out of the car.

As Kogami pressed the doorbell, Tsunemori commented that she didn't see much environment hologram in use there. Kogami replied that the owner didn't like those kinds of things.

Door opened. Kogami greeted and addressed the owner as professor Saiga.

They were invited in. Seated, Saiga started doing profiling on Tsunemori, saying that she was from Chiba, not bad at athletic activities, but couldn't swim, and both her parents were still alive...

Saiga continued talking about how Tsunemori's parents saw thing, their opposition to Tsunemori becoming a Public Safety agents, and Tsunemori's relationships with her grandma.

Saiga, "Just some simple observations. People manifest all sorts of signs unconsciously. Once you get the knack of it, you can easily read those signs."

Kogami then said to Saiga that he had two favors to ask for. First, Saiga taught Tsunemori how to do profiling, and second, Saiga showed Kogami the list of past course attendees.

Saiga asked who it was that Kogami was looking for. Kogami replied, "I think this guy is the worst criminal since the creation of the Sibyl system. He's a high-level intellectual criminal and is probably fit and in good health, too. He's someone with unique charisma. He rarely kills people with his own hands. He controls other people's minds and influences them. Much like a music conductor, he orchestrates one crime after another." Saiga asked Kogami to define chrisma. "I used it to mean the nature of a hero or a ruler." Saiga said he would give that answer 20 points. Then he gave his answer:

1. The nature of a hero or a prophet; 2. An ability to simply make you feel good when you're around them; and 3. The intelligence to eloquently talk about all sorts of things.

Then, Saiga asked Kogami which of the above elements did the guy he was looking for have. "All of them."

At the Public Safety Office, Masaoka showed the profile of Shibata Yukimori, an elderly man whose identity was used by someone who taught art at Oso Academy. 

Another agent added that all the video data had been destroyed and that there was no way to reconstruct his appearance. Both creating a traditional photofit picture and drawing a composite sketch failed.

Kogami asked if Tsunemori found the crash course helpful. Tsunemori replied it helped a lot, then she wondered why Saiga's course was not in the Public Safety Bureau's archive.

Kogami said that was impossible. Saiga's courses were specially set up for Public Safety inspectors. But some of the people who attended the courses had clouded hues and high crime coefficient readings.

Tsunemori was surprised by this.

"Say there's a dark swamp and you can't see the bottom. In order to check the swamp, you have no choice but to jump in. Mr. Saiga is used to it since he's dived in to investigate it so many times. But it's not like all students can come back safely after diving into the swamp. There are gaps in their abilities and simply their suitability, too." "You seem like someone who'd dive deep...and yet come back safely."

"Well...at least the Sibyl system decided that I couldn't come back."

Cut to Maikshima. He was accompanied by his guest, the hunter who killed Rikako, the chairman who appeared in an interview, Senguji Toyohisa.

Senguji smoked with a pipe made of Rikako's bone.

Makishima asked Senguji that since he had overcome aging in his body, "all that's left is your mind?"

Senguji replied, "Yes. You maintain a healthy and sound life by sacrificing other lives. But if people only seek youth for their bodies and lose sight of the means to cultivate their minds, then naturally it will only lead to an increase in the number of living dead. How foolish, don't you think?"

"The energy that comes from thrills. It's a dangerous reward that goes hand in hand with death, huh?" 

"That's right. In hunting, the tougher your prey is, the fresher the youth you can gain from it." Senguji replied. "With all that in mind, I think I can arrange for your next prey to be an exquisite one. It's an Enforcer from the Public Safety Bureau (MWPSB). His name is..."

Walking along with Kogami, Tsunemori said checking Saiga's lecture attendees list didn't help much.

"But if Makishima is a living man, he's left a trace somewhere for sure."

As soon as Kogami and Tsunemori entered the office, Ginoza reacted.

"That's because I asked him to," said Tsunemori.

"...making her a latent criminal who strayed from the right path like you?"

"A brat who's confused about anything and everything! Why do you think we have the classifications of Inspectors and Enforcers? It's in order to avoid the risk of having healthy people's Psycho-Pass get clouded by criminal investigations. We use latent criminals, who can never return to society, in our place. That's precisely why you can fulfill your duty while protecting your mind!" Kogami listened without making any objection.

Tsunemori though...

"That's not teamwork! Solving crimes or protecting our own Psycho-pass, which on earth is more important?!" "Do you wanna throw away your career? Are you going to sacrifice everything you've built so far?" "It's..."

"It's certainly true that I'm new. And you are a respectable senior to me, Inspector Ginoza. But please don't forget that we're on equal footing in terms of our rank! I'm managing my coefficient just fine. You may be senior to me, but I'd like you to restrain yourself from questioning my ability at the workplace and in front of the Enforcers!"

Tsunemori was really angry. Ginoza walked off without saying anything.

Facial expressions of enforcers Kunizuka Yayoi, Ginoza and Kogami when Tsunemori talked back.

Tsunemori walked out of the office, Masaoka followed her and talked her out of making a complaint to the Bureau chief.

In a one-on-one conversation, Masaoka told Tsunemori that Ginoza's father was a latent criminal.

"Terrible misunderstandings and rumors about latent criminals were common in [the days when the Sibyl system was just put into operation]. If a family member happened to show a high crime coefficient, that alone caused the rest of the family to be treated as if they were the same. I'm sure he suffered quite a bit. When a detective gets deeply involved in an investigation, in the end, the Sibyl system starts keeping an eye on them just like it does the criminals. Committing a crime or cracking down on crimes. Both sides face the same phenomenon called crime. There's no difference."

"Now there are Enforcers, but before they created that position, there were many detectives who were diagnosed as latent criminals like that. Inspector Ginoza's father was one of them."

"That's why he can't forgive those who run a risk on their own. And yet, Kogami, his former colleague was also...He feels he was betrayed twice. First by his father and then by his colleague. That's why he acts like that towards you."

"Missy, you do have a family and friends too, don't you? If your Psycho-Pass gets clouded, this time, those people will suffer the same hardships Nobuchika did. In order to avoid that, we, Enforcers, are here." 

"he used to. But now...he might be oblivious to everything that's not related to that Makishima guy." Cut to Sneguji in a conversation with Makishima. Senguji said he would not capture the target alive.

"It seems that you haven't noticed it yourself, so I'll tell you this. Kogami Shinya...When you speak that name, you look quite amused."

Another version of Ode to Joy was played in the background as this conversation went on.

End of episode 9.

Episode 10 - Methuselah's Game

In the middle of her sleep, Tsunemori was awoken by an alert of an incoming email from her friend Funehara Yuki.

Accompanied by Kogami, Tsunemori went to the site Funahara specified.

Tsunemori felt the place was strange and appeared like a trap. Kogami agreed and said Tsunemori should be the target.

Kogami then requested to be armed and entered the obsolete subway station on his own to check things out, while Tsunemori waited for the back up and guided him underground.

Kogami walked as Tsunemori said via a device that "In the back there..." Interference jammed the message. Kogami walked on nonetheless.

What Tsunemori said was, "In the back there, there's a dead end." And Tsunemori was struck by what she saw.

When the interference stopped, Kogami heard Tsunemori's voice telling him to keep going.

Then, Tsunemori's voice told Kogami to check the train cars.

Some water rushed by, followed by a train. Kogami held onto that train as he tried to communicate with Tsunemori to no avail. 

All he heard was

And Tsunemori could not get her message to Kogami either.

Kogami entered the train compartment and saw a girl blindfolded in it. He removed her blindfold, produced his warrant card, and asked the girl who she was. "Funahara Yuki."

On the ground, other members of division one arrived.

"From the smell, it's definitely polluted water mixed with liquid waste. If something like that gets poured on you, you'll be in for a world of hurt." "But Mr. Kogami unmistakably moved ahead beyond that point. In fact, he went even further, going through the wall!" said Tsunemori. Kagari folded his arms and threw a question at Tsunemori with a voice of distrust, "Isn't that a problem with the navigator?" Kunizuka voiced her comment as she checked the surroundings. "The issue might not be with the hardware, but the software. Since this area has been repeatedly redeveloped, you'd never know if the entered data matches the actual condition. "

"Aren't you the only one who got deceived, Inspector Tsunemori?"

"Kogami left your surveillance and his location is lost. In other words, he might've staged this situation from the start to run away." Masaoka chimed in. "Suppose we trust the navigator instead of the map data, do you know in which direction Kogami was headed? Did the signal show any strange movements?"

"Come to think of it...after a while, he suddenly started moving in a straight line really fast. He must be in some vehicle now. Isn't there a subway line around that runs in a north-south direction?" Kunizuka replied, "There is."

"The subway Ginza Line. But it was discontinued sixty years ago."

Kogami asked Funehara if she had any clue what happened and the girl hadn't the faintest idea. She got home from work, took a bath and slept as usual. When she woke up, she was already on this train. Kogami still thought Tsunemori was the target, but then he had second thought. He played Tsunemori's voice and determined it was a fake created from voice samples. "They knew all along that she wouldn't be the one to come to the basement, but someone else instead. "

The train stopped.

An electric hound emerged, Kogami and Funehara had to take the stairways and headed straight to Senguji's hunting ground. 

"Things have been going as we planned so far. It seems they're quick to pick up on things, too. The smarter the prey, the more enjoyable the hunt becomes." Said Senguji. "Looks like it will be a worthwhile game to watch from the bleachers." Makishima commented. "Why don't you take part in the hunt for a change?"  Senguji probed. "My interest lies in what will transpire during this hunt. So it would be best for me to observe things as a third party."

Kogami inspected the hunting ground, and found a bag with chemical light sticks and bottles in it.

Kogami carried that bag and made use of the chemical light sticks to find their way out. As they walked, Funehara asked if Tsunemori was doing okay with her work. Kogami replied that Tsunemori had faith and intuitively understood what it meant to be a detective. 

Funehara continued talking about Tsunemori. And Kogami threw another light stick and heard different sounds. He sensed a trap. and confirmed it with the torch in his hand.

Funehara saw a bag identical to the one Kogami was carrying, and ran to grab it right away. Turned out it was a device that would guide an electric hound right to them.

As the two ran from the hound, Senguji fired at Kogami. He missed.

Kogami told Funehara to stay hiding while he went out to try take down one of the hounds.

He attacked one with a transponder attached to it. That hound struggled and stepped right into a clamp, it then darted to the position of the other trap and was destroyed. Kogami grabbed the transponder and ran.

Senguji fired and missed again.

Kogami ran to Funehara and told her to run with him. The transponder in his hand had battery, he needed to find an antenna to communicate with his colleagues.

Senguji was impressed with Kogami. Then he asked Makishima added in some plot into the game that he wasn't aware of. Makishima started, "When a man faces fear, his soul is tested. What he was born to seek...What he was born to achieve...His true nature will become clear." "Are you trying to mock me?" "It's not just that Kogami guy. I'm interested in you, too. Mr. Senguji. An unforeseen situation...an unexpected turn of events..."

"I know that is the thrill and excitement you've been seeking."

Makishima then pondered if Kogami understood the meaning of this game.

Kogami tried to figure out what was going on. "With you as bait, they lured in Tsunemori. But they knew it would actually be me who came looking for you instead. They factored all that in when setting up this hunt." "It's you who they want to play with, right? I'm just...dammit! I'm just being dragged into this, right?!" "That's right. With regard to you, your role should have been over when your email was sent. And yet...why did they put you on the subway?" "isn't it to make it difficult for you to run away?" On hearing this, Kogami figured out something. "This fox hunt is not just a one-sided game. They are hinting that I've got a chance, too. In other words, I'm being tested. Whether I abandon you during this game or not, I bet it's also one of the keys to winning this game. "

Then, Kogami ordered Funehara to take off her clothes, "If you want to survive, just do as I say." Funehara complied. Then, Kogami asked if Funehara usually coordinated her bra and he asked her to hand those over.

Kogami found the antenna he needed.

On the ground, Ginoza was laying out his plan for agents to go in and, based on the premise that cymatic scan couldn't be fooled, ordered Kogami be shot with a dominator as soon as he was spotted so as to see his true intention. If Kogami didn't intent to run away, he coefficient would stay the same and he would be paralyzed; but if he did try to run away, the eliminator mode would be activated and he would be killed. Tsunemori protested, pointed out that Kogami was his friend. Ginoza coldly said, "If Kogami ends up dying, the fault will lie on you due to your poor supervision." 

"If you had Kogami under control, this wouldn't have had to happen. How do you feel about someone dying because of your own incompetence?"

Masaoka stepped in, grabbed Ginoza by the collar of his jacket, hoisted him, and asked

Then Masaoka tossed Ginoza aside.

Kogami made contact and told the team his location.

The team went in.

Tsunemori's thought as she ran inside, "Mr. Kogami, please let us make it in time."

End of episode 10

Comment Episode nine: The scene in which Tsunemori talked back to Ginoza was an important moment of growth for this character, taking into consideration that Japan would probably remain a male-dominant society at the time when this anime took place, in like almost a hundred years from now, Tsunemori, as a woman, a junior Inspector, showed her courage, determination in a vocal way that surprised Kunizuka, Kogami and annoyed Goinza. And it is the most memorable part of this episode for me. Another thing worth noting was that Masaoka referred to Ginoza by using his given name, Nobuchika. Given that addressing someone by their given name is a sign of closeness, this would be an implicit indication that the relationship between Masaoka and Ginoza was close.

Episode ten: The episode's title carries that name that became synonymous with longevity, so this episode was like a quest for longevity, and the one who craved it the most was Senguji. And Makishima changed the hunting game, turning it into a duet between Senguji and Kogami. Despite mounting disadvantages, Kogami managed to take down one electric hound and found a way to make contact with his colleagues.

A side note for Ginoza, a person keenly aware that his career was at stake, he tried hard not to be influenced by emotions. But in this episode his judgment was clearly clouded by feelings: his distrust of and disappointment in Kogami and his contempt of Tsunemori, and he spoke in a way that was coldhearted, mean, and as Masaoka put it, sinister.  But then, on a second thought, Ginoza found himself in a situation that he needed to act tough or people would not take him seriously. He was not happy with it and when Tsunemori protested by saying that Kogami was his friend, Ginoza exploded. He needed to take it out and Tsunemori provided the perfect vent.

[breziarchive]

a punch a day keeps the yakuza away

i ain’t got time to proofread shit this is majimakoto fic one of eight billion that i finally actually finished

post-0 or whatever, rated pg, pg-13? fuck it! it’s fluffy but it involves cutscene typical violence. the kind of cutscenes that, i don’t know, don’t destroy you viscerally maybe? it’s 4am.

extreme disclaimer that the title is a misnomer.

~~~~

Makoto let out a small hum of relief, relaxing her shoulders as she found the crowds dispersed as she made her way to her subway platform. The rainy season was just letting up, and since people were seeing the sun for the first time in well over a month they were taking every opportunity to walk or bike their way around the city. Granted, she was going home early. Work was slow enough that she could leave it in the hands of her assistant, and at his behest she took a half-day. It was the calm before the storm, after all. Good weather meant more strain and injuries from more outdoor activities—soon her cozy little clinic would be overrun with groaning sportsmen and older individuals under the presumption that they were still in their youth for the summer.

But for now, she could take a half-day. Go home. Enjoy the weather and the relative silence of the subways on her way there. Her eyes were mostly healed but colorful city crowds, coupled with the noise, tended to overstimulate her to headaches if she remained in them for too long. It had been long enough that she resigned herself to the idea that she'd always have this problem. At least it was more of a nuisance than a curse.

Her spine coiled up, thrusting her shoulders up and her chest out as she heard whooping calls and hollers from the cavity of her subway platform. It sounded vulgar and low-life. It sounded like yakuza. She felt her muscles become iron piano wires in danger of damage due to hyper-tension as the first elbow of a flashy suit came into her vision. A group of about six or so men, ranging from just below her in age to perhaps several years above, were rough-housing on the platform, near enough that their shoes more than once stepped onto the yellow strip meant to caution people away from the tracks.

Makoto quickly swept her eyes around the platform. Only a ragged elderly man snoozed on a bench facing the opposite of the yakuza and where her train would be arriving—and from the looks of it, he had been there for a while and probably missed his train twice over. Essentially, it was just her and the yakuza. She inhaled a steely breath and readjusted the position of her jaw.

She had survived much worse situations.

The yakuza seemed too preoccupied with their brand of horseplay to pay her much heed as she stood for her train, far away from them. Ducking her chin, she pulled out a novel from her purse and slipped the bookmark between her fingers as she pretended to read. Her eyes skimmed the pages, minimal information was given, she flipped the page, she continued to listen to the pack next to her. Several of them had loud voices, but one seemed more grating than the rest. Her ear seemed particularly tuned to it, and each word he said made claws rake down her skin. It was like he was unhinged, unpredictable—mad. Even if the cadence to his words were jovial and over-the-top even for Kansai, there was something immeasurably off about the screech to his voice.

With no warning the soothing but loud chime in her wristwatch went off. Makoto tried not to jerk so hard in surprise. Usually it went off to remind her to break for lunch or she'd forget, but with her taking a half-day, it decided to serenade proudly to everyone on the platform. Her, the still-sleeping man on the bench, and the pack of yakuza to her left. Resisting the urge to clamp a hand over her wrist, she clenched her jaw and pretended not to notice the chime, pulling the book closer to her nose as if she'd look more convincingly engrossed. To her dismay, as the chime continued the yakuza's ruckus simmered down to harsh, assumedly lewd whispers as they were finally forced to turn their attention to her.

Before the chime had even died out she saw the pack begin to move in her peripherals, spreading around her until the only escape was the track, and even that was blocked off by a battering ram of a young man.

“Hey, sis,” one of them addressed her, and she wished she could've pretended to ignore it but the anxiety drove a spike into her neck, striking the piano wires rigid and forcing her to look up from her book with a stony gaze, “That's a cute li'l song. Won'tcha play it again?”

The yakuza talking to her had a flashy blue pinstripe suit, topped with a coral tie that had some sort of stain at the tip. Makoto narrowed her gaze and her voice was polite but strained.

“It plays at specific times of the day.”

“What, time fer you to get onna train? Don't they have schedules for that?”

“Oi, where y'off to anyways?” the one to her side prodded, “'Specially on a day like this? Yer too pretty to be hoppin' trains when it's sunny-shine out.” He looked to be one of the older ones, with a brain so knocked about that one corner of his lip seemed permanently limp.

“I'm avoiding the crowds,” Makoto answered, flicking her gaze between the encroaching wolves, “Crowds like this one.”

“Hey, don't it take like, fifty people to make a crowd?” one piped up. His suit was far less flashy, and she got the impression it was because he did a lot of rolling in the dirt.

“No, you idiot, two's company, three's a crowd, it's basic math—but we all know you failed math,” another snapped. Technically, the style of his suit was the sharpest out of all of them there, but the colors and the composition of the patterns clashed so harshly he might as well have been colorblind or fashionably lacking in areas that weren't proper grammar and tailoring.

“That applies to relationships, not law-abidin' cityfolk, bozo-brains,” another half-sharp reply, from a freshly-made adult with short, fat lips and slick hair.

Makoto grunted. Inane though it may have been, the banter was only serving to twist the wires tighter.

��Hey, what's got ye all scared?” the latest yakuza turned to her, “I just said we're law-abidin' cityfolk, what y'got to be afraid of?”

“Plenty,” Makoto growled despite herself, “Please leave me alone.”

“No need to get so cold, sis,” the first one said, “There's plenty o' places to go fer a lady like you, but we're waitin' on a train, here. We already mentioned the sunny-shine,”

“If you're waiting, then please wait somewhere else. There's a whole platform, and I'd like to be alone, please.” she reiterated, clutching her novel so hard the pages bent. The slick-haired one stepped forward and grabbed at her book, forcing her attention as his voice oozed poisoned honey.

“Hey, but it's dangerous for a lady to be alone,” he said, “We could protect ya, easy!”

“For sure!” The dirt-roller nodded, “All's it takes is a small fee or two!”

“We could start at, hmm,” the grammar-brain said, obviously cunning enough to be the brains behind this, “30,000 yen an hour. How does that sound?”

“Each,” Blue-suit pitched in, “Otherwise we'd be splittin' it so much we couldn't afford no ramen to beef our muscles for ya.”

“I don't need protection!” Makoto yelped, curling herself away from the yakuza, relinquishing her novel to the slick-haired one to do so. Baring her teeth though it wouldn't do any good, the whites of her eyes showed as more than half of them began to chuckle.

“Shure ya do!” Limp-lip proclaimed as Dirt-roller moved forward, “Or we're gonna show ya why ya needs it!”

Makoto's breath felt cold as the wolves closed in. Closing her hands into fists, her mind raced as every lesson and memory raced through her head. It was too late to wish for something different. Her nails bit into the flesh of her palm as she tried to keep each yakuza in her sight. The old man on the bench was still asleep, and suddenly she got a pang of fear that they had murdered him quietly before she got there. Brain firing all cylinders in panic, she felt her heart race the likes of which it hadn't since she was last in a life-or-death situation.

A harsh, crazed peal of laughter sliced through the tension and all the yakuza flinched and righted themselves, half out of fear, some out of embarrassment it seemed. All bowed (or cowered?) and moved out of the way in respect as a tall, wiry man stepped forward. Silver-tipped boots clacking on the concrete platform with each stride, the alpha yakuza barely seemed to notice the sea he was parting. Arms, long and lanky, were casually slung over a well-loved, well-beaten bat that had scuffs and stains that could not have possibly come from baseball. His clothes clashed with everything decent in the world—a harsh, snake-skin jacket that moved freely about his bare chest while his leather pants clung a little too tellingly along his legs. A gold chain graced his collar beneath a neatly-trimmed beard pulled sideways in a lopsided smirk that hung on a dangerous pause. Most significantly, though, was the patch covering his left eye. Makoto froze in recognition, wide-eyed stare moving from the patch to meet his remaining eye. Once, several years ago, that eye had gazed at her with such sadness she was almost sure he knew her better than anyone had any right to. Now it was almost condescending, looking down on her from a throne. She blinked. Long ago he had saved her from a similar situation, but here he was at the helm of the wolves. Maybe he didn't recognize her, but either way she was ready to sneer back and bite at that throne, for this was the yakuza with the unhinged voice. All the other ones were lackeys, but her heart knew true danger when she saw it.

He opened his mouth to speak, and the remaining cloud of smoke from the cigarette he had been nursing while his lackeys tormented her escaped, making him look like a demon, “Ain't you boys been listenin'? The Miss says she don't need yer protection.”

Malicious laughter rippled through the yakuza, making Snakeskin's eye gleam. Something was off about it, like everything else that was off about him. Off-beat, out-of-tune with his pack—and somehow he seemed aware of this.

Tipping his feet upwards and bending forward so that most of his weight was on his heels as he lowered his face to be more in-line with hers, bat still set parallel to his shoulders, he hummed with a smile, looking her up and down. Scrutinizing without changing his expression, he continued, “Hmm, yup, I'd say protection is the last thing the Miss needs,”

More laughter, but some of it slowed—particularly from Limp-lip, whose eyes started to widen as he took an extra step back. Some of the other ones that seemed to hold more experience were catching on to something not quite being on the same beat as them, and they started glancing at each other nervously. Makoto's heart raced, but she didn't dare take her eyes off of Snakeskin. If the other yakuza were unsure of what was going to happen next, then she should be even more afraid. She should run. Bolt. Go back upside and throw the half-day in the trash and go back to work. Despite her inner thoughts she willed herself now to cower and kept her back straight and her expression firm as it was unwavering. Snakeskin craned his neck closer, tipping it at an angle as he continued to hum study her. A grin split his face like it was elastic and she wrinkled her nose at his narrow, discolored teeth.

“S'nice melody though, really. Does it warn ya of danger?” he split his cadence as if it was in time to the watch's melody, but his memory was poor and his notes even moreso. Makoto brought her wrist up with the watch in question and grasped it protectively.

“It warns me that I need lunch.”

A peal of laughter from Snakeskin, but the other yakuza didn't know what to do or say, suddenly transfixed in worry at the scene unfolding before them.

“Oh! A big mouth! A big, big, biiig mouth!” Snakeskin celebrated, “Where'd ya learn to have a mouth that big, Missy?”

Makoto couldn't help her voice becoming dark and hateful, “Running into people like you.”

“Oho!” The white of Snakeskin's eye showed around his iris as he laughed from his stomach, whooping until the singular oho's became a string of them, echoing in the empty platform. Some of the yakuza began to laugh again, though whether because they were nervous or eased it was hard to say. Makoto narrowed her eyes. His harsh laughter pierced her ears, painful and infuriating. He was laughing at her, like she was some cute innocent dolly out of place in the action figures' section. Anything to shut him up, to kick at that throne, so she wouldn't have to deal with him and his irritating voice anymore. Why it was irritating she couldn't say, it was just something in the air he breathed, she supposed. No matter. She was high-strung from the encounter and she had to wrestle control back into her hands. (After all she would not, could not be taken lying down again.)

Makoto slapped the cheek of his ruined eye and cut his laugh short.

“Hey! You bitch!” Slick barked along with his comrades suddenly calling for her blood for such insolence. All of them rolled their shoulders forward like they were going to fight a bear, not gang up on a girl, and Slick moved faster than any of them, youthful face snarling in rage as he lunged.

Makoto flinched as wind rushed past her, shutting her eyes for one terrifying moment where everything was blind again. Too afraid to keep them closed, she opened them, and her lips pursed together in shock.

The blunt end of the bat Snakeskin had been toting was now wedged in the precious, fleshy gap between Slick's jawbones. Snakeskin was glaring but his smile was wide, eye gleaming with what Makoto could only describe as unchecked rage though his voice was the same as ever.

“Oh, my bad, Ogawa-han,” he drawled, “I forgot that a bat's longer than a knife.”

Shoving him backwards into his neck, he swung the bat in a comfortable circle and it resumed its place parallel to his shoulders for his arms to rest on as Ogawa collapsed on the ground, sputtering desperately for air without being able to use his tongue for words. Dirt-roller began sizing imaginary objects with his hands, the dim light in his head brightening until he realized what the others did—Snakeskin did not just forget the length of the bat. And if he did, then that would mean that the blade of the knife was headed for Ogawa's throat anyways. Makoto felt her limbs freeze from the outward in. She had instigated the violence—was she now fair game?

“Nahh, you disappoint me, Missy!” Snakeskin ignored the rest of the yakuza as he hung his head and shook it, “If yer gonna hit a man, hit a man, like ya really mean it! We ain't duelin' with pool noodles, y'gotta put some snap into your slap!”

Everyone, Makoto included (though excluding Ogawa, who was still writhing on the ground) gave a distinct, bewildered eh?! Snakeskin frowned at her, continuing to lecture.

“You just dragged yer fingerpads 'cross my cheek like you were a toddler who ain't got the concept of personal space yet. Y'call that a slap? Y'gotta wind it up!”

He gestured with the bat, bouncing it up and down on his far shoulder, “Imagine if home-run hitters just swung with their arms. They'd get nowhere! They swing with their whole body—all the way! If yer gonna throw down, y'best be bringin' yer A-game like that!”

Makoto stared at him in wonder the more he lectured, rolling his shoulder and doing demonstration swings with the bat that made every lackey around him nervous and step back. She held her ground, his words melting to mush in the background. There was still condescension in his eye, but she was starting to realize that there was something behind it—something a bit more true to form, something closer to the day he rescued her from the yakuza accosting her on the street.

Only one way to see what was behind the mask.

“Jeez, is this how they teach women nowadays? Back in th' day you'd see grannies with grips of steel right terrifyin', this is just pathet—,”

Makoto reeled back and threw everything she had into another slap. Mid-word Snakeskin's head snapped to the side, spittle flying from his mouth as he stumbled back on one boot. The bat swung down on his own instinct, catching him like a third leg before he fell completely to the floor.

“B-Boss!!” his lackeys cried, all jerking like they meant to leap forward to help but too wary of the consequences. Some of them shot glances in her direction, but none of them dared to lunge at her as Ogawa had sufficiently become catatonic for the time being on the ground. Snakeskin was quiet. The namesake of a jacket hung at a wonky angle from his shoulders, revealing the tattoos on his pectorals to also be snakes. She briefly wondered if that's all the tattoo was or if there was more to it. The curiosity didn't last as Makoto quietly damned herself as he poked the cheek she had now slapped a second time and turned so his good eye could see her.

There. A flash of something else in his eye, but it wasn't cruel or enraged or upset. Pure something, and from that something he smiled. It soon split into a maniacal grin as he began to cackle once more, but she had seen it in the precious few seconds he had given her.

Yeah.

He most definitely recognized her.

Snakeskin righted himself, still laughing, “Now that's what I'm talkin' about!” The lackeys looked on, dumbfounded, though Limp-lip started to crack a smile that was almost genuine as he looked between the two players on the stage.

“Li'l bit of practice and you'll have men spinnin' to the pavement! Awright, Missy, hit me agai—,”

Makoto did without hesitation, curling her nails so they raked across his flesh. Snakeskin yelped, pinwheeling backwards into Dirt-roller and Blue-suit. The bat clattered to the floor, nearly tripping Snakeskin completely before he found his footing with the help of Dirt-roller. Raising a gloved hand to his cheek, he looked at her in complete and utter shock as he gingerly pressed against the scratch marks that were starting to ooze blood.

“O-Oi,” he stuttered, “Nails are next week's lesson.”

Makoto felt the eyes of every yakuza on her as she straightened her shoulders, now strangely relaxed despite everything, and replied, “I learn quickly.”

Another smile that came from that something that Makoto was having a hard time naming. His voice still annoyed the ever-loving shit out of her, but she was getting the nagging feeling that it was because of something other than its initial repulsiveness. Snakeskin righted himself, straightening his lapels as he bent down and picked up the scarred bat. A train arrived—not hers, but the one the yakuza were waiting for in the first place. Snakeskin swung the bat onto his shoulders, turning away from her.

“Motozawa, stop gawkin' at the Miss like you got a slappin' fetish. Hey, someone drag Ogawa into the car,” he ordered, “I ain't comin' back for his sorry ass.”

She watched them pile into the car, one by one by dragging-Ogawa's-sorry-ass one. Though Snakeskin had swaggered in, as soon as it seemed he was clear of her he slumped onto a seat, bad eye towards her. Spreading his long legs outward so no one could even consider sitting near him, he leaned on the bat like it was a cane and pressed his forehead to his folded hands on the pommel. His lips were pulled into a frown that was more than just a natural resting state, distorting the scratches she left on him. It looked painful for reasons she was sure she didn’t know about.

The train sped off. Somehow this was the one thing in the entire world that jerked the old man behind her awake. She barely listened as he turned, standing up and hobbling over to her to ask the time. Glancing down at her watch, she gave the answer in a distant voice, transfixed by the ticking second hand.

S'nice melody though, really. Does it warn ya of danger?

Did it warn her of danger, or did it draw it to her?

She wiped a smudge from the glass face. Perhaps a little bit of both?

Makoto reminisced on the sadness of his eye coupled with the ferocity of his attacks as the station announced her trains arrival within the next two minutes.

Perhaps a little bit of both.

[stupidpianist]

2 november 2018

05:30: Oh Christ almighty I’m awake but I want to be able to fall back sleep for a bit, I don’t have to leave for another hour, but now that I’m conscious, and I’m conscious of needing to take this GRE, my adrenaline is going haywire, and I’m sort of just flopping around in bed like a beached dolphin. Went to bed way too late to be responsible, and I’m totally not hungover or anything, so not hungover, there’s no sarcasm here, you must look: elsewhere, for the SARCASM. Okay okay do I get up?

06:02: Still in bed. Trying to “allocate system resources” so that I can leave bed. Feeling extreme sense of dread regarding my personal future, trying to remind myself, “it’s just the cortisol, it’ll even out, don’t worry, it’s just the cortisol.” Repeating that in my head. It’s working, a little, maybe? This has been happening most mornings for weeks now, just a really “pervasive sense of dread,” just worrying both over things I have no control over, and over things that I have control over but just haven’t done. Shouldn’t be dwelling on this, should just be focused on making incremental, concrete changes in how I’m living life, not. Not just, like, feeling sorry and afraid over myself.

06:10: Feeling slow resurgence of self confidence. Or, no, that’s not the right word, that’s the wrong terminology, it’s not like, I mean, I’m pretty self confident, never had “self confidence issues,” more like, just “overly anxious over things I shouldn’t be overly anxious over.” Debating, in my head, whether or not I should take public transit to the test centre… It’s all the way west on the island, and it’ll take like an hour and a half via subway and bus… I mean, no, here’s what I’ll do, I’ll splurge, I’ll take an Uber there, because the last thing I want right now is to just enter a terrible headspace by immediately heading to a subway station while it’s raining outside (DID I FORGET TO TELL YOU? yeah it’s REALLY RAINING outside, like HEAVILY) and then sitting on a train all wet and then switching to a bus and then riding a bus through the black of Montreal winter mornings and then sitting in a windowless room staring at a screen for four hours taking an exam.

Yeah, okay, deciding, definitively, to take Uber there. Will be relaxing, one of my favourite activities, barring when I’m feel nauseous, is just sitting in the backseat of a car, not shotgun, and listening to music and staring out the window. It’s really relaxing and puts me in a nice and contemplative mood. Same goes for subways, just, not, like, when it’s six in the morning, on little sleep, you know?

06:14: Brushed teeth, put on bunny sweater for “comfort and protection,” put on corduroy pants, put on boots, put on “puffy white jacket.” Going to walk across the street to the grocery to buy something caffeinated, and “test day snacks,” probably some granola bars, or something. Sensing myself growing increasingly determined, in a way I always get when I’m about to do something I know I’m not exactly ready for, feels like a dramatic scene in a movie right before the big climax before denouement. Putting on a “Let’s Get Down to Business” vibe.

06:20: Got Monster “lo-carb” energy drink, box of granola bars. Calling Uber with phone now, standing under the roof thing of my apartment building. It’s so black out it could be any time between 18h and 19h, I forgot just how little sunlight there is during the winter. Always thought I had, like, reverse seasonal affective disorder. Have I talked about this before on here? Well, if I have, get ready to hear about it again, you maniacs. Like, usually, during the summer, I’m feeling pretty down all the time, and during the winter my mood improves dramatically, but this could be circumstantial? Usually during the summer I’m away from people I want to be around, and feeling like I’m wasting a lot of time? Maybe that’s it, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the seasons? In any case, feel like the sun doesn’t really have much an effect on my emotional state, even though I do like using those therapy lights. Those are cool. Very fun. Heheh.

06:23: Chugged can of Monster and ate one bar. Somehow already got an Uber within three minutes of requesting a ride, seems egregious at this hour and at my location? Sitting in backseat. Quite comfy, it’s a Volkswagen of some sort, I forget the model, pretty sure it’s a Golf just from how it looks. Driver has the radio tuned to 96.9, French language “contemporary hits” radio station, is not engaging in conversation, thank god. I’m putting on album Lifa by band Heilung, one of my favourite albums ever, this Nordic experimental folk band, and, like, closing my eyes, and am doing, like, “meditation-related” things, like breathing in slowly and breathing out even slower. Feeling extremely comfy, really comfy, and sort of wishing this ride last longer than the estimated forty-five minutes, it’s really peaceful, just staring out of the window at everything passing, city lights, other cars, etc. etc., and the rain that’s dampening everything. Reminds me of Burial’s music, as always.

06:50: Nearing the test centre. I’m there early, only need to be there by 7h30, but I guess the earlier the safer?? Finding myself appreciating this car ride, feeling like I’m “sinking into the seat” and just “taking the world in,” appreciating all that I have in my life right now and the people in my life. Caffeine from Monster seems to have done minimal, really not feeling much of a “kick,” but I guess that makes sense? Hard to counteract that little sleep, combined with hangover. Thinking over the minimal preparations I’ve done for this exam, and, like, not kicking myself, because “what’s done is done,” but still feeling confident? Always have had a “knack” for standardized testing, it’s sort of fun, like, feels like a game, maneuvering around answers you can tell the test makers put in to “trip you up”?? Or, when you get “in the zone” and you get hyper focused on the questions, and you start “tearing them up,” just “ripping through them.” Getting to that point is fun, yeah, yeah.

07:06: Arrived. Test centre is in an office building in part of a strip mall, in an area that seems like it’s all a bunch of strip malls interconnected by roads and parking lots in a complex-esque thing. I’m doing a terrible job of describing it, and I didn’t take a photo, but I’m sure you know what I mean, just an area of a bunch of retail shops and fast food eateries and chain restaurants?? Feeling memories of taking SAT and ACT exams, noticing differences between going to a “testing centre” and going to a high school, like for the SAT/ACT.

07:15: Waiting on the floor of the testing centre. There’s one other guy here too, briefly spoke to him casually while taking a granola bar “to the face.” He seems really nervous, is sighing a lot and just generally looks uncomfortable. Feeling pretty excited and unanxious myself, reading from Disaster Artist while waiting for test centre to open. This office building is particularly depressing, like, almost cliche in its “office-ness”... I guess most office buildings are like this, it’s hard to inspire creativity or foster it when you have to build up office buildings everywhere, seems like they’d all have to, for practicality’s sake, follow more or less the exact same layout. Jesus now this is depressing me even more. Going to stop thinking about this.

07:30: Inside test room. I guess because it’s a computer exam, there is no set start time for everyone to begin simultaneously?? Wow I’m an idiot, that’s what I assumed by the registration saying the test would start at 08:30. No, the receptionist is like, “as soon as you fill out these forms you can get started.” Okay, okay, signing my name and putting my bag in a locker. Feels almost like I’m about to go through airport security, on the form it’s like “you have to empty all your pockets and lift your pants above your ankles and we’re gonna scan you for metal with a wand and you have to take off your glasses so we can inspect there’s no recording devices on them.” Sure sure sure, yeah, whatever you like is fine, I’m about to crush this test, let’s get this over with, yada yada yada

11:44: Jesus Christ it’s over, it’s all over, we did it, people, we did it!! WE DID IT!!! IT’S OVER!!!! Hey you want to hear the good news first, or the BETTER NEWS FIRST???? Here’s what I’m going to do, first I’m going to hit you with the GOOD news: your boy here scored well!! NO I’m not gonna share it publicly you silly goose but let me tell ya to your FACE--NICE. It was NICE. I’m proud of what I got, especially given the circumstances. You know the BETTER news??? BOUT TO RIDE THE BUS AND METRO HOME AND NAP THE HECK OUT OF A FEW HOURS. Gotta make up some of this SLEEP DEBT, gotta sleep really HARD.

It stopped raining too, I’m bout to hop on this shuttle bus, I’ll see you later. Jk, that’s a quotation from a standup bit by Hannibal Buress. Lookie here, guys, it’s a forty minute bus ride, and another forty minute metro ride, and then a ten minute walk, and then I strip my disgusting clothes off and I slam my head into the pillow and I close my eyes real good. Close em real nice, real nice closing of the eyes.

Really grateful I somehow did well, if I did poorly it would’ve been such a shot to both my overall mental state right now, and my confidence in my own abilities as like a thinking, reasoning being. I know the idiocy of standardized testing, but it feels good knowing that, despite unideal circumstances, I was still able to perform well on mathematical and verbal reasoning tasks.

Going to switch from Heilung to something more upbeat, maybe some Ghost, maybe some Clarence Clarity, for this ride back. Glad I can also “celebrate” via hanging out w/ A, if I did poorly on this exam I also would feel guilty or just generally be in a less-than-gregarious mood, glad that I’ll be able to “enjoy this fully.”

Feel like doing something crazy with the keyboard, here goes nothing, eal;kjfiweoiriskljfdkldfkdfdklfvc. jkdfgjklfgdkjlgkjgkjgkjgfkjgfkweiroqiqwwpeowqen qqmmciieieiieroeioqwqpoqoiwqpoiwqpwe

hahahahah

13:21: Back in “home sweet home,” thinking, “home, home sweet home, sweetie pie home.” It smells better than I remember?? Who did this, who came in here and sprayed stuff, what have you done? I do not, I don’t deserve this, these “good scents,” in my place of rest…

Going to take pants off and crawl right the heck under my sheets, maybe watch a YouTube video or two to “unwind” and then drift off to sandman village. Setting alarm for 16h30, that should give me enough time to still be productive before hangout?? Have been, throughout my life, a chronically bad napper, but this time feels different. Got all the checkmarks, did well on the exam, barely got any sleep, still hungover, caffeine wearing off even if I didn’t feel it in the first place. Seems like everything “in place” for a real good “sleep session.”

16:14: “Ouuauughhgh” is what it sounds like my head is going right now, or, like, “oouuauuUUUGAUAAUUUGHHHHH,” yeah, YEAH, that’s more like it. Man I slept SO GOOD, can’t remember ANY of my dreams, even though usually when I nap I have really, really vivid nightmares that I’m able to remember for a LONG TIME afterwards. Mouth has a funny taste in it, the way it often does after napping. Why does this only happen after napping, and not after sleeping a longer period of time?? Does keeping your mouth open longer do something to the quality of your breath?? I’m confused, but at least it’s not as bad as, like, when you drink milk right before napping, that’s, that’s the worst. Always hate having morning breath, I don’t mind when other people have it, but if I have it I can’t focus on anything until I brush it out, then I can, like, do something like return to sleep more, but once I’m up, if I realize that I have bad morning breath that day, nOPE, gotta take care of that crap.

Going to head to the practice rooms now and see how much I can get done before 20h. Unsure if I’m going to be updating past this point, seems “dubious.”

Renewed sense of self worth after taking that exam, I think. I know it’s so arbitrary, and probably dangerous to feel such a renewed sense of self after something as ridiculous as a standardized test, but, like, I don’t know… Felt such severe self doubt of late that it’s good to at least be reaffirmed that I can, like, answer objective questions correctly. That’s a start, right? Maybe it will carry over to the practice rooms??

[seriestrash]

London’s Calling

1 || 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 || 6

Chapter Seven: Lonely

Word Count: 2640

☏ ☏ ☏ ☏

Riley Matthews may be considered a chump to many but she’s clever when it comes to hiding her feelings from her loved ones. In the months that have passed since Riley’s first day of school she has been living two lives. One, the version of reality she shares with her parents each evening when she returns from school, similar stories told to her friends back in New York and two, the truth. 

Riley’s first day of school; the story told to her parents.

Nerve wracking of course, new school, new people but overall she’s positive about it. The people are nice and welcoming, her teachers are helpful and the whole experience was one she rambled on and on about. The brunette spins a similar story to Lucas when he calls her that evening. 

Riley wasn’t exactly sure why she lied to them. Part of her felt embarrassed about the truth. Without seeming conceded, Riley partially thought that she’d be big news at the school, being a new student and American but things didn’t exactly go as she imagined. 

Riley’s first day; the truth. 

Finn dropped Riley off in administration. Riley was then left alone to get her class schedule, locker code and number, along with some school books. Riley then juggled the large pile of books in her hands and searched for her locker. 

After offloading the huge pile, Riley was unsure what to do in her free time so she decided to spend it mapping out where her first class would be. It was only minutes before Riley was approached by three girls. Riley looked at their uniforms compared to her own. Each girl had accessorised in different ways which struck Riley as odd considering the prestige-ness of the school that they’d be allowed to wear the uniform in such a manner. Later, Riley would come to realise that money was exactly why these girls - along with many other students at the school - get away with anything. 

“You must be the new girl,” One of the strangers spoke up. 

“Yeah, I’m, Riley,” She nodded politely. 

“So American,” Another girl let out a gasp. 

“I’m Charlotte, this is Mia and that’s Olivia,” The first girl spoke again, introducing the other girls on either side of her. 

“Nice to meet you,” Riley smiled. For a moment Riley was relieved, had she possibly made three new friends already? No.

“I love your bunches, they’re so adorable,” Charlotte said. 

“My what?” Riley laughed nervously. 

“You know,” Charlotte gently flicked one of Riley’s pigtails. 

“Oh right,” Riley ran her fingers through her hair, “Thank you.” 

The three girls snickered and it was obvious to Riley they were making fun of her but instead of running away and crying like she wanted to she channels her inner Maya. Since the blonde wasn’t there physically to protect her Riley would fight her own battles. 

“I see that you think your little joke was lost in translation,” Riley stated calmly, “I know you’re making fun of me. What I think you don’t understand is that I don’t care.” 

“Whoa, calm down, sweetie,” Charlotte is taken back by Riley’s response, “We’re just looking out for a friend. It’s not cool to wear pigtails, we’re not children.” 

“Oh, well in that case I’ll take it into consideration,” Riley exaggerated a smile, “Thank you.” 

With that she walked away making a mental note to wear pigtails for the next week straight to prove a point to the mean girls. Riley was quietly proud of herself for standing up to them, so much so that she wanted to race home and tell Maya about how fierce she was but as the day went one Riley grew more embarrassed about it and how things were going for her so she decided to give the sugar coded version. 

Riley shared nothing of how excluded she felt, how snobby the rich kids were to her. How she got lost between classes, how one teacher publicly made fun of her for spelling things incorrectly, which in her defence were spelt correctly but the UK and American ways differ. Even knowing this, the teacher still called her out for it and not so delicately reminded Riley that she wasn’t in New York anymore. 

Riley filed the day away thinking it would get better. First days suck, things were new and scary so the little problems probably felt worse to her than they were. She knew this is exactly what Lucas would have told her if she shared her worries with him, still she doesn’t in fear of disappointing him almost. 

When a few weeks pass and things don’t seem to be getting better for the New Yorker she starts to accept that this is how it would be for her now. Maybe it was the school, Riley had met plenty of British people in her building and in passing before whilst she was out and about whom were lovely. So Riley didn’t dare generalise everyone into being from ‘a rude country’. Instead Riley feels that maybe it’s the school, the people in it are from wealthy families and Riley figures that maybe their lavish upbringing has made them less humble. Still, she puts on her best smile and charges through each day. 

Despite the less than pleasant time Riley has had in the weeks since starting her new school there was one tiny light in her life. The Finn of it all. Nice boy, handsome, charming and flirty in nature. He reminds Riley of a British Zay, for that alone she likes him instantly. 

Although, over time Riley becomes very aware of his ‘rich boy nature’ as she more delicately puts it rather than snobbish. He is just as accustomed to the lavish lifestyle that Riley blames the other students behaviours on, except Riley knows Finn doesn’t mean to come across as overly showy. He’s kind to her and for that she’s thankful. For a while Riley is concerned that he’s only being nice to her at his mothers request but as the weeks pass he could have easily dropped her as a companion but he doesn’t.  Finn has offered to accompany Riley to school as his route out of the city and to the high school passes her apartment building. Even though his lavish penthouse is of far more ganjuer to the Matthews’ apartment - even though the family is doing very comfortably with Topanga’s new pay check - it’s still in the same area. 

Riley however, declines politely and opts to take the underground to the main train station where she gets a train to school. Sure it takes her longer than the direct car ride would but something about the travel via underground and trains made Riley feel connected to Maya in a distant way. They always took the subway together to school, only now they took them to different schools. It was weird and she knew Finn wouldn’t understand so she keeps the reasoning to herself and persists on. 

Finn is one year level above Riley but the way his friends act around her you’d think she was still in middle school. It was abundantly clear to Riley that they only tolerated her presence as a courtesy to Finn. At first Riley didn’t notice it, she was already too blinded by her nerves but then she started to catch on to the subtle ways they were making fun of her. Asking her to repeat certain things, the fact that most were laughing at her rather than with her. Riley is very insecure around these people but since Finn is her only friend in this foreign school she wasn’t going to let go of him just yet. 

A light in her life yes, but even with someone on her side it wasn’t enough to keep Riley from her decreasing mood about her lack of communication with her friends. Since they’re all at school now, busy with classes and extra school activities, like science club, art classes and baseball. Not to mention Riley was doing extra study trying to catch up with a whole different curriculum. This made finding time to FaceTime and what not with each of them near impossible. Sure, she managed to text them here and there but Riley was really missing home. 

Even though Riley had been doing an impeccable job of talking things up to her parents they had noticed her lack of socialising outside of school. Topanga was constantly on Riley’s back about inviting friends over or hanging out with them after school and on the weekends. Finn had asked Riley a few times whether or not she wanted to tag along on his plans but Riley never felt comfortable to do so, she didn’t want to intrude and spend the whole time feeling like an outsider. 

But one day, Topanga’s nagging was too much for Riley so she lies to her mom and says she’s going to a party with Finn. Finn had been pestering Riley to come to the party he was hosting at his apartment for the whole week, Riley had dodged a direct answer each time he brought it up but there was no going back now, Riley had to accept. 

When the night of the party rolls around Riley dresses up and Cory drops her off at Finn’s apartment. She’s let in by two complete strangers and she wanders into the sea of people congregating in small groups around Finn’s living space. Riley had only been there once before when Finn’s mother - Topanga’s partner at her firm - invited the family over for dinner. 

Riley stands awkwardly on her own for a moment, the party was loud and buzzing around her. Riley locks eyes with Finn who's across the room. He waves for her come over in which she does quickly. 

“Hello, love,” He pulls her in for an embrace. The British using ‘love’ still makes Riley giggly. 

“Hey,” Riley shouts over the music. 

“Quick selfie?” Finn waves his phone about and Riley leans her head in and smiles for the picture. At least now there would be photographic evidence to get her mother to lay off. 

Once the photo is taken, Riley takes a step back, “So ‘just a small get together’?” Riley laughs at what Finn told her versus what actually was. 

“You know how these things go,” Finn chuckles. “Do you want a drink?”

Riley has a look of panic on her face. No, she didn’t want alcohol. Finn notices her wides eyes and chuckles. 

“It’s okay, we have fizzy drinks too,” Fin says with a smirk, “Or soda,” he imitates a poor american accent. 

Riley loosens up, laughing at her awkwardness and accepts Finn’s offer for a soda. Once they leave the kitchen Finn introduces Riley to a few people from school and a few friends from outside of school. The brunette tags along with her only friend for a while before he leaves her to go mingle. Riley assures him she’ll be fine but ends up sitting off to the side on her own. After an hour of people watching Riley is approached again by Finn. He slots in the seat beside her. 

“What’s got you so down, McCheese?” Finn is obviously slightly intoxicated. 

“I wish I never told you that,” Riley sighs with an embarrassed laugh. 

“Come, come,” Finn stands and holds a hand out for Riley. 

“I don’t feel like dancing,” Riley shakes her head. 

“I want to show you something,” he continues to wave his hand until Riley takes it. 

The Brit leads them onto the roof where Riley is in awe of the rooftop garden. 

“Much quieter,” Finn lets out a breath of relief as he sits on a bench seat and pats the space beside him for Riley to join. 

Riley takes the space beside him, still admiring her surroundings, “It’s so beautiful up here.” 

Finn doesn’t seem too fazed by his surroundings, instead he’s more interested in what’s going on with Riley. “What’s up, buttercup?” Finn says with a laugh, but quickly softens, “When your mom told my mum about you she said that you were quirky, unique, bubbly, loyal..” 

“She said that?” Riley’s mouth curls into a smile. 

“Yeah, apparently she went on and on,” Finn chuckles. “What I’m trying to say though is that you’ve been lovely, but so quiet. I was expecting some exuberant American I could have a laugh with.. Which leads me to believe that you’re not transitioning well with this whole move.” 

“Is it that obvious?” Riley sinks in her seat. 

“You do a good job at hiding it,” Finn playfully nudges her with his shoulder, “But if you want to talk about it I’m here.”

Riley looks at him for a moment and studies his face. She’s uncertain if she should confide in him or not but he seems genuine so Riley opens up. She tells Finn about how she never really wanted to leave New York, which of course, who would want to pack up and leave their life behind. Riley tells him about how she’s finding school difficult, she talks more about curriculum change rather than friends. Riley didn’t want him to feel pity for her and look out for her more than he already does. Then Riley shares her woes about the distance with her friends from back home, how hard it has been lately to find time to speak to them. 

“I guess I just feel a little lonely sometimes,” Riley chews on her bottom lip. 

“You don’t need to feel that way, you have me!” Finn says holding Riley’s hand. 

Riley coaxes her head with a smile and brushes a tear from her cheek. “Thank you.” 

“Besides, there are plenty of ways to feel less lonely,” Finn smiles. 

“Yeah?” Riley asks, desperately wanting to feel more at home here. 

“Yeah,” Finn says and leans in, kissing Riley. 

Shocked at first Riley didn’t know what to do but after a few seconds she pulls away. “Uh, Finn..” Riley presses her fingers to her mouth. 

“I’m just trying to help,” He says with a shrug of his shoulder. 

“I’m going to go.” Riley stands to leave.

“Riley?” Finn grabs her hand. 

“I know you’re kind of drunk but I just opened up to you about how down I’ve been feeling and you tried to take advantage of that,” Riley yanks her hand free, tears building in her eyes again, “That really sucks, ya know?” 

With that the brunette leaves. She calls her father and goes home. Topanga is waiting up on the sofa with a bunch of questions for Riley about how her night went. Riley lies and says she had a blast but was really tired and wanted to go to sleep. 

Once in the comfort of her own room Riley grabs her phone and locks herself in the closet. She freezes at the call screen for a moment, unsure who to ring. Eventually she decides on Maya. 

NYC: 6:13pm  LND: 11:13pm

Maya answers on the second ring, “I am dying to speak to you Riles but I’m about to go out to dinner with mom and Shawn.” 

“Oh, sorry,” Riley sucks back her tears, “We can chat later?”

“No. We chat now.” Maya says firmly, noticing that Riley’s upset, “Honey, what’s the matter?” 

Then she cries and tells Maya about the party and the kiss. Riley keeps the past few weeks of feeling lonely to herself though.

“It’s so stupid,” Riley sniffles. 

“It’s not stupid,” Maya insists. 

“Finn is really nice to me and sure maybe it wasn’t the right time to make a move but even if it was.. It felt wrong.” 

“Because he’s not Lucas?” Maya asks delicately. 

“Yeah,” Riley blinks out more tears. 

“Oh honey...” 

End Note: This is probably my least favourite chapter I’ve written for the whole story but I didn’t know how else to write it.. Riley’s loneliness starts to become a pivotal part of the story so idk. It will do. 

As alway, please review and let me know if you want more! 

Next Chapter: Riley and Lucas finally catch up

[wemustbearwitness-blog]

Day Four: Cold War Day

Today is WWII/Cold War Day. I forgot to mention that there is a Michelin Star Restaurant in our hotel. That’s relevant because we eat in there every morning for breakfast because the main dining room for breakfast is being refurnished. I can official say I have eaten in a Michelin Star Restaurant! 

Our first activity of the day was the Berliner Unterwelten, or Berlin Underground. We had the incredible opportunity to take a tour through one of the only remaining WWII bunkers in the city. After the Soviets took control of the city, they destroyed most of the bunkers to ensure that Germany could never again start a war. The reason this particular shelter wasn’t destroyed is because it was built next to the Subway so it would’ve been unwise to blow it up. It is important to mention that these bunkers are not bomb-proof, they are merely air-raid shelters which, if hit, would actually collapse. So why build them you may ask? Well, it made people feel safe to go underground so it had more of a psychological effect than anything. When Hitler rose to power he promised the German people that he was going to make steel bomb shelters and an incredible air force for the impending war. He promised the German people that no planes would fly over the Berlin city and that he would protect them. The latest shocker... he lied. Hitler put all of the government funding into building a secret air force because, after WWI, Germany was not allowed to have an air force. As a result, the German people got non bomb proof bunkers. The only shelters which were actually bomb proof were above ground and there were only three in the city. As a result, only 10% of the city could fit in these bunkers both above and underground. The rest of the city was forced to hide in their cellars and as a result, many people died from the bombings. The bunkers were a fascinating tour. We first walked through the toilets first which were separated by men and women of course. During WWII, the Germans created their own word for toilet, Abort, because the traditional words toilette (French) and water closet (British) were words of the enemy. Additionally, WC stood for Winston Churchill so obviously there had to be another word created. Today, nobody in Germany uses the word Abort. Only WC and toilette. The toilets in this particular bunker had plumbing but not all did. Some used soil to mask the smell and became eco-friendly toilets. The waste was used to sprinkle on the potatoes for fertilizer. Our tour guide was funny. The toilets generally were relatively small, but she showed us one bigger toilet in the corner. It looked different from the others. Evidently, it was a toilet from an SS bunker. She called it the toilet for the “big assholes.” The next room was very cool. It had glow in the dark paint (toxic of course). We couldn’t touch the walls. The glow in the dark paint was used for two purposes: 1) when the power went out in the bunkers they used the paint so people could see as not to cause a panic, and 2) business people had to spend the daytime in the bunkers after 1943 and they had to be able to see their papers even when the power went out. After 1943, there were air raids during the day by the Soviets and at night by the British. These raids would last an hour to an hour and a half and worst of all, oxygen availability was a large concern. The bunkers had no ventilation system and they were 4 times overcrowded. As a result, they had to use candles set at three different heights to gauge the oxygen availability. The oxygen closest to the ground would run out so the first candle on the floor would go out. Then, the second candle on the bench would go out and the people would have to stand up. If the candle set just below their heads went out, panic would ensue and people would have to fight there way out of the bunker. This did happen during the war. Certain shelters had beds in them for working mothers and their children. Certain bunker rooms had artifacts from the war. There was even an enigma machine on display-- this was extremely cool. One room contained a cart which was used by German women to remove the rubble after the War in an attempt to clean out Berlin. Any materials that were found were recycled as Berlin was destroyed and Germany suffered from a terrible famine. For example, a helmet was on display that had been converted into a colander. Part of a bomb casing was used to make an outdoor stove. People, German women especially, had to be resourceful in attempting to rebuild their lives with very few resources. An interesting fact that we learned in the bunker is that Europe is still finding bombs from WWII that were not detonated. In fact, Berlin alone finds on average one bomb per month! When that happens, they have to evacuate the area and attempt to deactivate it because there is still a risk of it going off. In some horrible cases, a bomb explodes in the city-- most often during construction. Other cities in Germany are even more bomb-ridden. Hamburg for example, finds on average 1.5 bombs per month. Anytime companies build on German soil they have to make sure that no bombs are on the land because if they buy it then the bomb becomes their own property. In Germany, the government does not pay for the bomb deactivation because they believe that the bombs don’t belong to them. In England, the government pays for bomb deactivation when they are found (which is also pretty often evidently). In the bunker tour, we did discuss the Furhrerbunker which is the fully bomb-proof bunker that Hitler made for himself in Berlin and where he lived his final days before his suicide. The Furhrerbunker was attempted to be destroyed multiple times but due to it’s fierce construction it was never able to be fully annihilated. Despite this, Germany has decided to completely seal it shut. Never to be reopened. They feared that keeping it as a historical site would attract Neo-Nazis. 

Something that I find very difficult during this trip is the concept of good and evil and how no longer do I see that definitive line. For example, the tour guide in the bunkers, clearly anti-Nazi, was portraying the history in a manner which made the listener feel sympathetic for the German civilians. She discussed the terrible danger and fear that the German civilians as well as the harsh realities of their situation. For example, she told a story of a hypothetical German woman with two children who lost their home in an air-raid. Freezing, they had nothing to wear and the German army brought them clothing to wear. The woman puts on her coat and notices the name of a polish, Jewish last name. She thinks about where this coat came from, but in the moment, she was freezing with no place to live and just wanted to stay warm. It seems that in many cases, German people knew of what had been happening to the Jews, but were also preoccupied with their own safety and survival. It seems that after 1939, all chance to dissent the Nazis had long passed. I find it difficult to blame the German people after that point because resistance meant arrest and death. The Nazis utilized fear in every aspect of their rule. For example, if you forgot to black-out your windows at night, the Nazis assumed you were a traitor trying to help the enemy see the city at night and they’d arrest you or kill you. In short, I’m learning the importance of questioning and dissenting is crucial in the early stages of injustice. The small injustices that the German people ignored early on rendered them powerless when it mattered most. Silence during the initial stages of anti-semitism and racism makes one a collaborator and the inability of the German people to protest or speak out later on does not dissolve them of their responsibility. Some German officers had worked for the German army their entire lives and did not question the army when the Nazis came to power and later found themselves doing unimaginable things and fighting for an unjust, inhumane cause. We, as people, have the responsibility to question everything and trust nothing at face value. I truly felt bad for the German civilians who had to endure the constant fear during the end of the war, but I also feel angry at them for staying quiet when the issues did not involve them in the beginning. It’s easy to sympathize with the German civilians after 1939, but what about the years leading up to that in which the German people fueled Hitler’s horrific dreams? I remain confused and disheartened. 

After the bunker, we took a bus tour of Berlin. The tour guide was very nice and I dozed a little while I listened to the tour. We got to see many of the Embassy’s around the city. We also saw some incredible art on the Berlin Wall created by artists around the world. The one pictured above is Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev giving the East Germany President Erich Honecker a passionate kiss on the lips-- this is evidently the Soviet greeting. The blurry street sign is a photo of Tiergartenstrase, the street where Hitler opened the T4 program. The name T4 is an abbreviation of Tiergartenstraße 4, the street address of the Chancellery department set up in spring 1940 in the Berlin borough of Tiergarten, which recruited and paid personnel associated with T4. Under the program certain German physicians were authorized to sign off patients "deemed incurably sick” and they euthanized them. In reality, this was the systemized murder of those deemed unworthy of life by the Reich due to a disability. Many of these patients were children. 

After the tour, we were allowed to explore the city for lunch. I finally got to try a Berlin Döner, which is a type of lamb schwarma famous in Berlin. It was delicious. 

After lunch we went to the Holocaust memorial in the city which contains a museum underground. The memorial and museum are done well. The memorial quite literally looks like a scar on the Berlin city. It is grey concrete blocks of all different sizes spanning a square in all directions. You can walk in between the blocks and in come cases they span as high above your head. It was designed by architect Peter Eisenman. 

After the Holocaust memorial, we went for dinner on our own in the city. Myself and some of the girls on the trip went for sushi. It was good! I got to try some German beer which was exciting. After that, we went to a show at the Friedrichstadt-Palast Berlin entitled, The One. We had incredible seats close to the stage (my iphone picture does not do the distance justice). It reminded me of cirque du soleil combined with erotic S&M costume choice all conveyed through the dream of a young man confronting his demons and searching for his soulmate. It was definitely not an American show-- that’s what was so cool about it. It was crazy, and the acrobatics were incredible. Our group leader wanted to do something fun to take our minds off of the heavy topic for a night. He succeeded. 

[scootoaster]

Thirteen science questions about COVID-19 from teens

Most people have no reason to worry, but we can all take precautions. (Unsplash/)

Popular Science has spent the last few weeks working hard to keep our readers informed about COVID-19, the novel strain of coronavirus that’s infected close to 100,000 people worldwide since December. Here, we answer a few questions from students at Vineland High School in New Jersey. Still have questions of your own? Let us know in the comments and we’ll do our best to find answers.

What are the best methods to prevent getting the virus?

The best way to keep yourself from getting COVID-19 is to wash your hands frequently (and adequately) and try not to touch your face. This is because respiratory viruses like COVID-19, the common cold, and the flu are primarily transmitted from droplets of spit or mucus, which are easy to transfer from person to person via handshakes and food preparation if people aren’t washing their hands frequently. When you touch your face, you expose your eyes, nose, and mouth to these bits of virus. So, by limiting how much you touch surfaces in public areas (like subway poles) and washing your hands well and often, you can drastically reduce your risk of getting the virus. Hand sanitizer is a good substitute in a pinch, but not a replacement for washing your hands.

You should also keep your distance from people who are actively coughing and sneezing.

Should we be scared?

It’s understandable to feel frightened by news of a novel virus, but the risk to individuals in the United States is still very low. Most people who get COVID-19 have only mild cold or flu-like symptoms. The important thing is to do what you can to practice good hygiene, which will minimize your risk of getting COVID-19, and keep you from spreading it to others if you do contract it. You should keep yourself informed using trusted news sources (like PopSci!) and stay home if you’re sick. For now, that’s all you should be doing!

Which is better for cleaning hands? Soap and warm water or alcohol?

Most people don’t wash their hands properly. Here are instructions on how to do it right. A summary: Use soap and warm water (the temperature doesn’t matter, just use what’s comfortable) and lather the soap for 20-30 seconds before rinsing.

Hand sanitizer is not as good as a thorough hand-washing session, but it’s better than nothing if you can’t get to a sink and soap. Make sure you’re using a hand sanitizer that’s at least 60 percent alcohol. Check the label of the product you’re using to see how much you should dispense, then squirt that amount onto the palm of one hand and rub your hands together. It’s important to rub the sanitizer all over your hands and fingers, and to continue doing so until your hands are dry—don’t just wipe the sanitizer off on a towel or your clothes.

Without media do you believe the whole COVID-19 issue would be present?

While the fatality rate of COVID-19 is around 2 percent—much lower than some pandemics, like SARS or Ebola—it has infected and killed enough people in China that it would definitely have caused public health officials to be concerned, even before the age of digital media. But the spread of disinformation that exists online is certainly dangerous during international incidents like the COVID-19 outbreak. Research shows false information often spreads quicker than actual facts do, and we’ve already seen people try to take advantage of the situation by selling “cures” for COVID-19 to their online followings. There is no cure or treatment for COVID-19, and you should only get news from trustworthy publications like The New York Times, STAT News, The Washington Post, Popular Science, and Reuters. These aren’t the only trustworthy sources out there, but they have health reporters I know and trust.

With so many pandemics in the world, should COVID-19 be taken serious in everyday life even though you are nowhere near the areas that are in effect?

Pandemics aren’t actually all that common—and thank goodness for that! Pandemic isn’t a term with a strict definition, but an epidemic is when we see a surge of case numbers above what is considered normal for any given disease, and a pandemic is generally what we call an epidemic that has spread significantly across multiple continents. Epidemics don’t happen every day, and pandemics are even less common. Public health officials consider AIDS to be an ongoing pandemic, but most disease outbreaks do not reach that scale.

To answer the second part of your question, the best way to keep COVID-19 from affecting your area is to practice good hygiene before it becomes a problem. In the Pacific Northwest, health officials are seeing cases that make them suspect the disease has been circulating in local communities for weeks. This is not surprising, given how mild COVID-19 symptoms are for most people, how bad most of us are at washing our hands and not touching our faces, and how difficult it is to take time off work and isolate ourselves for what seems to be a minor cold. COVID-19 was able to spread in that area because people went about their everyday business while coughing and sneezing. That’s not their fault, but we can learn from what happened there and try to do better. (Seriously, I’m writing this from my couch because I have a cough).

If I was to boost my immune system would it help fight the virus?

The idea of being able to do certain activities or eat something specific to boost your immune system such that you can become an illness-fighting ninja sounds incredibly enticing. But unfortunately, it’s not exactly how the immune system works. Your body builds up immunity by encountering a pathogen and learning to recognize it and fight against it, so there’s nothing you can do before it encounters the virus to get it ready.

On the other hand, you can do some things to make sure your body is in its best fighting shape when it has that first encounter with a new virus.

The best thing you can do to help your body fight off disease is to get plenty of sleep. You should really aim for eight hours or more! Eating a healthy, balanced diet is also a great way to stay healthy. Doing these things won’t protect you from every potential health threat, but eating a poor diet and depriving yourself of sleep will definitely leave you more vulnerable.

You should also get your flu shot, if you haven’t already done so. It won’t protect you from COVID-19, but it will lower your chances of getting influenza—which can be just as dangerous!

How long do you think the virus will be a problem?

It’s too soon to tell how long COVID-19 will remain significantly active. Some public health experts think it will stick around as a new virus that picks up every season, the same way the flu does. Influenza and the common cold are both types of coronaviruses, so COVID-19 may follow some of the same patterns. However, if COVID-19 does stick around as a persistent threat, it’s likely that we’ll have a vaccine developed by this time next year, and we’ll know to keep an eye out for it and try to minimize this spread. It’s worrisome to imagine such a mysterious virus persisting for months or years, but the upside is that COVID-19 is mostly a problem because of how little we know about it. The longer it stays around, the better our tools for tracking and fighting it will get. That being said, we’ve been dealing with influenza for all of modern history, and it still kills tens of thousands of people in the United States every year. Adding another potentially dangerous respiratory virus to our annual list of concerns will definitely strain the healthcare system, even if it won’t produce dramatic outbreaks like this one annually.

Are they going to shut down the schools?

While individual communities with high case rates have shut down some schools and public gatherings, there is no reason to do this before COVID-19 is obviously circulating in any given area. However, schools and businesses should be as flexible as they can be about people taking sick days and working remotely to prevent the spread of disease.

If a vaccine is developed, could the virus somehow adapt to the treatment?

Many viruses originate in non-human animal hosts. We call these zoonotic diseases. The fact that they jump from animal to human hosts means they’re more likely to catch us by surprise. But they’re not all as scary as COVID-19: The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 60 percent of the infectious diseases that affect humans originated in another animal. Microbes mutate all the time, because of how quickly they reproduce—the reason we need new flu vaccines every year is that influenza mutates into new strains so rapidly—but there is no reason to think COVID-19 will be particularly resistant to vaccination or treatment.

What makes COVID-19 different from other pandemics? (Flu, etc?)

As mentioned above, the World Health Organization does not yet consider COVID-19 a pandemic. But COVID-19 does pose some unique challenges compared to other viruses. It appears to be more contagious than the average seasonal flu, though not nearly as contagious as some other viruses like measles. It also presents in incredibly mild symptoms for most people who are infected, which means many people with COVID-19 have been going about their usual routines and exposing others to the disease. But like the flu, COVID-19 can cause serious or even fatal pneumonia in some cases—which becomes much more likely in people who are elderly or sick with underlying health problems. Another difference between COVID-19 and your typical seasonal flu is that a higher rate of infected patients seem to experience these dangerous symptoms: While the fatality rate of influenza is less than 1 percent, estimates for COVID-19 have gone as high as around 3 percent. However, it’s difficult to know how reliable those estimates are. Because so many cases of COVID-19 are easy to ignore, it’s possible that infection rates are much higher than we’ve been able to calculate, in which case the percentage of patients who have died would be much lower.

The flu kills hundreds of thousands of people each year, so adding another virus with similar fatality rates—let alone much higher ones—to our seasonal illness rotation could put serious strain on our healthcare system. However, because COVID-19 is new, we’ve had no chance to develop immunity to it (or to engineer our immunity by crafting a vaccine). If it sticks around for months or years, it will become less deadly as we get better at diagnosing and treating it, and as our immune systems start to recognize it.

Where are scientists currently with the vaccine or medicine?

Several pharmaceutical companies and research institutions around the globe are working to find potential treatments or vaccines for COVID-19. A U.S. biotech firm says its vaccine is ready for preliminary testing, but the process of approving it could take as long as a year. It could easily take months to get a formula that works well enough to test on humans, let alone something that can be broadly deployed.

Many claims of cures or preventative treatments are circulating online, but the World Health Organization confirms that there’s no known supplement, food, or medication that can protect people from COVID-19. However, it is advisable to get a flu shot if you have yet to do so: The similar symptoms between the two viruses could lead those with influenza to take up valuable space and time in hospitals, and a compromised immune system could leave you more susceptible to catching COVID-19.

Was the coronavirus ever seen in humans prior to recent cases?

Coronaviruses have existed in humans for a long time, but this particular coronavirus is new.

Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that often cause mild respiratory symptoms (the common cold is one of them), but some can cause serious illness. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), which jumped from bats to humans in China’s Guangdong Province in 2002, infected more than 8,000 people worldwide and killed at least 774.

COVID-19 wasn’t detected in humans until December 2019, when it started showing up in patients in Hubei Province, China. The outbreak may have originated due to close contact between humans and wild animals at a market in Wuhan, but the exact time and location of the initial jump from animal to human isn’t yet known.

With the process of a universal vaccine in the making, could we possibly ever stop a pandemic or another virus from happening?

No one is at all close to developing a vaccine that kills all viruses. Vaccines work by introducing certain molecules from a virus or strain of bacteria into your body; this gives your immune system the chance to learn to fight the disease before you actually encounter it. Obviously it’s a tricky business to create a cocktail that looks enough like a dangerous virus to help your body out without actually hurting you in the way the virus would, which is why it takes months to study and approve a new vaccine even under the absolute fastest and well-funded timeline.

Because a vaccine works by mimicking the virus or bacterium it protects against, there’s no way to create a “universal” vaccine (at least not with the understanding of biology and technology that we have today). Even the hunt for a universal flu vaccine is going to require several more years of effort, if we can manage it at all. Right now, scientists have to attack a few select strains of the flu with each year’s vaccine, based on research about which strains will be most dangerous. If we could create a universal flu vaccine, we might be able to get one flu shot and be done with it. That would be a huge deal in terms of lowering humans’ overall risk of flu transmission, but it wouldn’t have any effect on the risk of other pandemics.

[gunnersalley]

How to Defend Yourself in a Large Crowd

Terror can strike anywhere that people gather. If you’ve taken a look at the news recently, you’ll hear several stories of dangerous people in the middle of a crowd committing deplorable acts of violence. From the truck attack in Nice, France, to the shootings in San Bernadino, this horror seems destined to aim for crowds of people. In addition to these glorified “mass shootings” we hear about in the news there are thousands of small scale incidents that happen every day in crowded places. A mugging in the subway, a car jacking in a crowded intersection, or a pick pocket in a shopping mall.    But what are you to do if you are in a situation that calls for response, in order to keep yourself or others safe, if there are  innocents surrounding you on all sides ? In this article we are going to take a look at some methods for  how to handle a situation in a crowd  that will make sure that you remain safe. We’ll also take a look at what to do once you are in safety, and how to pacify the situation in the best way possible so as to not cause more collateral damage.   Why Big Crowds Are Dangerous  With  terrorists and unhinged narcissists  looking for a way to get onto the news, because of their violent actions, the more you are in crowded places like malls, stores, churches, restaurants, movie theaters, stadiums, schools, concerts, etc; the more chance you can become a target for these madmen.   When you combine modern day narcissism with violent tendencies or anger, you have the foundation for many of these mass shooters. The man, whom I will not give the satisfaction of naming, behind the Virginia  Tech Massacre, murdered 32 people. He had a deep anger for his world and decided to take his rage out in one of the worst shootings in U.S. history. This man knew that if he did what he did, and sent a message along with doing it, he had a much better chance at being heard and getting his name out there. That’s why, on the day of the shooting, he mailed both a video and a 23 page manifesto to NBC News, in hopes that he would be heard. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. NBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, and CNN all took the bait, exactly as he wanted.    That’s why these situations are more commonly occurring. Why crowds are becoming targets. These are people with strong violent and sociopath tendencies who only see a crowd of people as a number and will not back down before unleashing their violent message.   In addition to the crazed mass shooters, large crowds are also soft targets for various  common criminals . Their ability to escape, blend into a crowd, and work as a team lends to places with bigger crowds like subways, busy streets, and shopping malls.  Your Ideas Of How To Respond Might Be Misguided      Most of us have imagined these situations. Either a mass shooter like so many we have heard about or even just something as simple as a pick pocket / thief on a crowded street who becomes a little too violent when confronted. Sadly, many of us may have misguided ideas of how to properly respond in those situations.     Common   FALSE   Assumptions About Responding:    I will be able to quickly identify the target  I will have line of sight to fire without any innocent people between me and the target  I won’t have to worry about over penetration beyond the target  I won’t have to worry about missing the target altogether  If a Law Enforcement Officer is near or chooses to respond he will be able to identify me as the victim   When there are dozens or hundreds of people in a crowd and any sort of incident begins the natural human instinct is to scream and run. In that environment it is unlikely that any of the above assumptions will prove true … and even less likely that ALL of them will prove true.  How Should You Respond To Any Incident In A Crowded Place  1: Assess The Threat  There are different situations that can occur in a crowd that call for different responses. This is going to take some quick and calm thinking though.  There’s an immense difference between a person wanting to steal your wallet and someone who is planning on killing a number of people. The latter calls for a much larger response than the former. Always assess the threat and find a protective solution that will use both minimal effort and cause minimal panic.  2: Go On Defense  If your threat is a shooter; GET OUT of the firing line. Seek cover or seek distance between you and your threat.  3: If Necessary Become Offensive  If your threat is still active or if you feel there is still a threat to others and you have the means and the opportunity to stop that threat, proceed carefully.  The Gun Is NOT Your Friend In These Situations        Now comes an incredibly important part. If you feel that you have a shot at taking out the aggressor   Don’t become an action hero and begin discharging your firearm.   Once you have a safe place, and only if you get a 100% chance to take out a target without hurting anyone else should you take it. Patience and keeping calm are the keys to your survival as well as saving the lives of others.    Even well trained police officers and soldiers have had their share of unfortunate crossfire incidents. Take    this story from Fox News   . Even with time and proper setup, innocent people were harmed by the police.    The idea of firing upon someone should be a last resort, because if you are unable to stop the aggressor or hit someone else in the process, you will be just another person causing chaos. Real life is not a Schwarzenegger film. These are real lives that are in the balance, and you have to take a long and hard look at if you are prepared to not only kill the gunman, but what could happen if you were to hit a civilian. Could you handle the emotional and legal stresses of accidentally adding to a kill count of a massacre or knowing you took the life of someone’s son or daughter?   Your Hands Are Your Greatest Response Tools   There are alternatives to firing a gun into a crowd, or even pulling your firearm in the first place. But these tactics take training. Though, if you are fully prepared for a situation like this, or others that call for self-defense, your chances of survival and pacification increase immensely. Being in a big crowd is one of several  situations where you shouldn’t respond with a firearm .     This is why we have partnered with the most effective, credible, and highest regarded trainer we could find of basic hand to hand defensive combat.     The idea here isn’t to train at a Karate Studio twice a week for 10 years. The objective is to learn a system for you that will:     Be Easy to Learn    Have a SUPER high probability of stopping any attacker of any size    Work to your own physical situation no matter what it is     Let me recommend two different programs for you to look at:     INSTA-D-FENSE: Learn 9 Effective Moves to Disable Any Attacker no matter how out of shape, small, or unpracticed you are.      STREET FIGHTING MATRIX: The most comprehensive fighting course ever. Learn basic techniques to deal with knives, guns, clubs, etc from any position with any number of attackers. Developed for the government and available to you.     So as with any situation, you need to know how best to handle it. But in this case it’s not just for your safety, it’s for the safety of others. Situations in crowds can test every decision making choice you have in your arsenal. So in order to find better answers to these choices, you need to grow your mental arsenal and prepare for anything.

https://www.concealedcarry.com/training-2/how-to-defend-yourself-in-a-large-crowd/

[2700fstreet]

DANCE / 2017-2018

Architecture in Motion®: Passengers

YOUNG PEOPLE’S CONCERT

DIAVOLO

Jacques Heim, Artistic Director

Bodies fly, jump, and twist through the air. Gigantic structures shift, spin, turn, and collide—disassemble, then reconfigure into something new. The pace is relentless. The timing, split-second. Don’t blink or you’ll miss something. But then again, you may want to shield your eyes.

WELCOME to the DANGER ZONE. The DIAVOLO DANGER ZONE! Brace yourself for an intense adrenaline rush. Not convinced? Just watch this:

So, What’s Going On?

DIAVOLO’s name comes from the Spanish word for “day” (día) and the Latin word for “I fly” (volo). And the dancers of DIAVOLO truly seem to fly—flipping from the heights of staircases, rocking massive wheels and ramps, and falling into the waiting arms of their fellow performers.

Perhaps the best description of their work is the interaction between human bodies and the architectural environment. The dancers move in, above, and around oversized pieces of construction, thinking of themselves as extensions of the structures on stage. The dancers and the architectural environment work together to explore how humans are affected by the spaces they inhabit.

Watch how carefully designed structures are an essential focus of each artistic work. The dancers perform choreography that fuses contemporary dance, everyday movement, ballet, acrobatics, martial arts, and hip-hop. Instead of telling a narrative story, DIAVOLO often explores broad themes in each of their works. The dancers take on themes like “human struggle, “chaos and order,” “freedom,” and “fear.” Their work L.O.S.T. (Losing One’s Self Temporarily) looks at the human experiences of vulnerability and control. The piece Passengers is the second part of L.O.S.T., and is a bold examination of what divides and unites humanity.

Get a taste for DIAVOLO with a preview of Architecture in Motion: Passengers (The Train):

And one more thing: CAUTION: Don’t try this at home.

Who’s Who

Jacques Heim. Photo by Leandro Damasco

DIAVOLO was created in 1992 by French choreographer and visionary Jacques Heim. For 25 years the Los Angeles-based group has toured across the country and the globe, merging contemporary dance with 21st-century technology and architecture. Although DIAVOLO is directed by Heim, the entire company of dancers choreograph each piece. Heim views himself as an “architect of motion,” guiding and directing the natural and purposeful movements of the talented dancers in the group.

Heim’s unique vision earned him a reputation in the world of dance, and in 2005 he was hired by the entertainment company Cirque du Soleil to choreograph its show Kà. He’s also served in guest roles choreographing for BBC America’s Dancing with the Stars and Bravo’s Step It Up and Dance, in addition to many movies, TV shows, and live events. In fact, only last year, DIAVOLO competed on America’s Got Talent. They won the Judge’s Choice Award to advance to the Finals and introduced America to a new concept in dance.

Watch DIAVOLO at their America’s Got Talent audition:

In addition to performing, DIAVOLO holds education and community outreach as a priority. The group hosts open rehearsals, workshops, and masterclasses at schools and in their own studio in Los Angeles. L.A. Familia is a multi-generational dance event that combines creative movement and dance to bring families together. Another outreach, T.R.U.S.T., takes DIAVOLO into schools, incorporating trust exercises with student participation.

Check This Out…

Art comes to life. DIAVOLO wants the audience to feel like they are in an art gallery, viewing a live, abstract painting. How do the dancers accomplish this? What is “abstract” about the way they move and interact with the structures on the set and one another? Here’s a clue:

DIAVOLO is thrilling, yet meticulous. Intensely athletic, yet graceful. Artistic director Jacques Heim describes his dancers as simultaneously performers and creators. Every dancer brings his or her own creativity and style of movement from ballet, hip-hop, contemporary, and even acrobatics. Heim allows the dancers to move freely which in turn encourages self-reliance in the creative process. Yet at the same time, the performances are intricately choreographed by Heim and the dancers. How does DIAVOLO’s presentation show both creative self-reliance and carefully planned teamwork?

The structures DIAVOLO uses are, frankly, huge. For a traveling dance company, they don’t shy away from bulky, hard to move equipment. But it’s the equipment that makes their productions so unique. Keep an eye out for how DIAVOLO creates a train, a subway car, a ship, a submarine, and a staircase. Watch how the dancers move and change the equipment, shifting it to new positions and interacting with it in different ways as the theme is developed.

Activate your ears: While there’s no shortage of action to watch on stage, DIAVOLO’s music choices are equally important. The music supports the theme of each work, helping to tell the story. Notice, too, how the music informs the movements of the dancers and influences how they interact with one another and the architecture. For more on DIAVOLO visit their official site.

Think About This…

Why is the dance called Passengers? What message is DIAVOLO making about people and the challenges of modern-day life?

In educational programs, DIAVOLO emphasizes concepts like trust, responsibility, and liability in live performance. Watching DIAVOLO perform, it’s easy to see how they exercise trust and rely on one another for both artistic expression and safety. In your experience, what role do these concepts have in dance? Other art forms?

For DIAVOLO, architectural structures serve as a backdrop to movement and serve as metaphors for humanity's everyday struggles. The dancers respond to the modern world by exploring relationships, life, and the attempt to maintain humanity in today’s technological world. What other ways can the arts help people come to terms with our rapidly changing world?

These dancers must use intense focus to protect one another—the structural pieces they interact with could very literally hurt them if not manipulated precisely. And yet, the dancers seem to operate and move the structures effortlessly, all the while exercising explicit trust in their colleagues. Do any aspects of your own life require such intense focus and collaboration?

Take Action: Risk It

The dancers of DIAVOLO aren’t afraid to take risks. They endanger their safety with every leap and flip. They fly across the stage, darting in, around, and between gigantic structures. But their risk-taking isn’t only physical. Their artistic vision focuses on abstract concepts, also gambling on audience understanding and approval. And sometimes conceiving and executing an idea can be a bigger uncertainty.

So how do you take risks through art? Do your gambles take on a physical form, like the stunts of DIAVOLO, or are they more symbolic? What impact have you seen on your own life or art by engaging in risks?

Snap a picture or take a video of your artistic risk and post it to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, or any other platform. Make sure if other people are part of your risk-taking that you have their permission to include them in your post. Then, tag five friends and ask them to share how they “risk it” through art. Use #riskit as your hashtag.

Explore More

Go even deeper with the DIAVOLO Performance Extras.

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PHOTO (top) by George Simian.

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This performance is made possible by the Kimsey Endowment; The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; and the U.S. Department of Education.

Major support for educational programs at the Kennedy Center is provided by David M. Rubenstein through the Rubenstein Arts Access Program.

  Kennedy Center education and related artistic programming is made possible through the generosity of the National Committee for the Performing Arts and the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts.