#the clouds in western australia are something else

[not-poignant]

Hey Pia! Hope you're well (very new reader here).

I gather that you live in quite a rural area (?) what do you like about living there? What is the flora/fauna like? I'm from the UK and haven't really experienced other climates so I'm interested heh

˶‘ ᵕ ‘˶

Hi hi anon!

I'm in what's classified as 'semi-rural' here in Western Australia, but basically it means that I am smack in the middle of dense suburbia, and then 10 minutes away from farmland and bushland on all sides, lol.

It's weird! Because it means we have a lot of amenities close by (though no hospitals or emergency care, they're all around 30-60 minutes away), but it also means when we travel out of the suburb, we often see kangaroos or alternatively alpacas and sheep (there's a lot of fleece farms up this way).

The weather here is actually quite Mediterranean (literally, Perth is classed as a 'Hot-summer Mediterranean climate' in the Koppen system). We can go months without rain. And we get around 139 clear days per year (no cloud cover), which means we're one of the sunniest capital cities in the world (to my endless dismay).

As to the animals *thinks* it's fairly normal to see kangaroos around here, at large parks and on farmland and clearings in bushland, and sometimes on the side of busy roads (which is not great). They are most common at dawn and at dusk. We also used to see wild emus for a while, but that was a few years ago, and I think this area is now too built up for it!

There are lots of parrots, and they're probably the most common birds we see, outside of like doves, Australian magpies (they are not Corvids), Australian ravens (they are Corvids), and birds of prey. The most common parrots we get up here are Carnaby's cockatoos, rainbow lorikeets, corellas, and pink & grey galahs. We also have a decent population of wood ducks, lol. And a lot of small songbirds. We get a lot of singing honeyeaters and brown honeyeaters in our garden.

Most of our trees aren't deciduous, so they keep their leaves all year round. And Eucalyptus are flowering trees. Right now all the jarrah trees are flowering all at the same time, with puffy huge white and cream blossoms, turning the bushland into the sound of lazy buzzing. Every day this week will be over 36C, so we make sure our birdbath is full, and the birds do actually use it. We have a garden, and I have mostly native plants in there, as well as some pots with curry plant (karapincha) and lemongrass, as well as rosemary, thyme and lavender.

When the weather is hot and there's clouds in the sky, we get the most amazing sunsets. My userpic is of a sunset that happened in my back garden.

These, for example, were all taken in the back garden:

And this is what most of the surrounding bushland around us looks like in summer:

And some extras:

[goldtracing]

1943 – Calcutta

Notes are under the cut.

The sun was rising over the docks of Calcutta, colouring the else muddy waters of the Hugli in a dozen shades of reds and oranges as it flowed into the Ganges delta. Despite the early hour, or exactly because of it, the place was already filled with a melange of different people, shouting orders and receiving them, trading cargo, and making deals.

Nobody really noticed a sole figure standing at one of the empty piers and gazing out in the distance, a cigarette at hand.

It was a bad cigarette, India decided, as he rifted it to his lips for an idle draw for the umpteenth time. Still it was better than none – it was something to keep him busy, to still his nerves and offer a slight distraction from the pangs of hunger that contradicted the large breakfast he had managed to assemble today.

While it wasn���t the first time, he had to suffer such a paradox, he hoped it would be the last.

Polished shoes clicked against the dirty cobblestone in a sophisticated rhyme and in his peripherals, Neeraja saw a familiar bespectacled figure. Silently, Subhas Bose came to stand next to him, gazing out over the river and the cityscape and the green hills and plains beyond that. The human was respectful, dignified in his anger. The restraint and discipline Subhas held over his emotions was something the nation venerated, something he regarded as a mark of greatness.

“And?”, India ask curtly, despite that he already knew the answer – the body language of his companion had already heralded the storm clouds. It was just to assess how bad the downpour and the gales would be.

“They’ve denied any relief. Churchill peevishly asked why Gandhi hasn’t starved yet”, the former politician said bitterly, the stiff cadence one of the few indicators that he was irate. India himself muttered a few choice curse words and furled both hands into fists, making the cig in his one hand crumble, the paper splitting open and spending the grainy tobacco raining down to the ground.“I guess I shouldn’t have expected anything less of that Gora”, he remarked as he then proceeded to fumble for a new one. With a few wooden movements and lit it and raised it to his mouth. Neeraja accepted that he would have to use more in the coming months to distract from the phantom pains of full stomach that echoed the empty ones of the people of Bengal. For a moment he entertained the thought of stretching the tobacco with opium as he had done before in the past, to make the agonizing dreams of famine and epidemic milder.

Yet he decided against it in the very same breath. If anything, he needed his mind to be sharp and clear – the right choices were vital.

“What has the Viceroy done?”, he inquired.

“He told me that his hands are tied”, Netaji said and then went on with his report. “Churchill has the last word, as head of the War Cabinet. Furthermore, trade between the provinces is still restricted. Transports from Australia wouldn’t stop here since they are needed for reserve stockpiles be the British.

“They are tyrants to the very end, with all their words being spoken with split tongues and their promises being empty”, the statement was finished with vitriol. A deserved vitriol because England deserved nothing less after over two centuries of looting.

“As if I didn’t know. The current Viceroy is better than his predecessor, I’ll give him that.”

Neeraja would never forget how the Lord that had once resided in the highest office of governance here in Calcutta had done the same to the Congress as what Kirkland had done to him. The snake-like smile that England had worn that day still made his skin crawl and the conversation never failed to make simmering coals of anger raw back into flame.

“I’m at war with Germany”, the Westerner had said. “And as my colony and jewel in my crown so are you”, he had said. India had pressed his lips to a tight line and reminded the younger country: “You are rather quick to determine such a thing, Arthur.”

The words had been careful, selected, because England had a vile temper that was most easily evoked when he perceived a threat to his power manifesting.

“Yes, we’re facing a very dangerous and amoral enemy. Germany has all the more the demeanour of a rabid dog and we must band together in face of such a force of evil. Action must proceed fast and without hesitation.”

For all his moral posturing, he himself tended to be rather rapacious and manipulative. Not that India had gone so far to outright state it, because such people didn’t take being reminded of their own hypocrisy very well.

England was a special brand of that. The colony knew that the empire wrote of all his misdeeds as necessary and was convinced his enterprise to expand his power across the globe was a just one. He had taken India and cleaved and exorcised parts out of him that he had convinced the world that they were malignant tumours instead of healthy tissue. Then, he had leaved those wounds to fester and become enflamed before attaching parts that didn’t fit to the former empire but were of his liking. Gangrene and other poisons of infect were what resulted from those misdeeds – a Frankenstein of his own creation.

It didn’t stop India from not supporting the war, much to his master’s chagrin, even as he sent men and equipment and food for the war effort.

“What will you other me in return this time”, Neeraja had questioned. At that, Kirkland had frown and cryptically murmured: “We’ll see what you’ll earn.”

This time, he hadn’t instilled his servant with any hopes of gaining freedom that would never be granted. Said servant had now fully come to accept that freedom wasn’t given, it was taken.

“Therefore, affirmative action must be taken now”, Bose said in the present, here and now. The passion the nation had come to associate with the man was now fully rearing its head. “The weakness of the Empire must be exploited while there is still the chance.”

“And you must be careful in an uncertain time like this. You’ve been lucky to solely suffer from prison sentences and house arrests up until now. The time will come when they’ll call for your blood and set you in front of the firing squad”, India reminded the man.

“They are already are”, was the solemn reply that referred to the attempts to liquidate him.

“Then I hope for you and all of us that your dealings with the Japanese Imperial Army pay off.”

The question of how Kirkland would deal with the fallout and what consequences he would enforce was something that kept India awake some nights. No doubt that should he win, he wouldn’t take the treasonous acts of his colony well, especially since the latter was taking steps to knock him off his throne while the whole world was steeped in conflict. No doubt he would twist events and deny them, so that the historians would have a clean version of events to write down. Clear cut distinctions and boundaries were a fiction happily written down in books while reality remained murky with all borders blurred.

“It will”, Subhas assured him, “they are not so steeped in fables of racial superiority as the Germans. Not so overly arrogant as to deny help to potential allies.”

Subhas Bose shook hands with fascists and communists alike, and for that many condemned him. It was just a pity that realpolitik paid little heed to the whimsy ideologies of men. Russia and Germany hadn’t been inclined to help him shake of the fetters of colonialism, so when Japan had extended his hand in order to fulfil that offer, many had been glad to grab it.

“That doesn’t prevent me from being concerned. Empires tend to operate on similar lines. Kiku could just be using me as a steppingstone to ultimate supremacy. I’d rather not exchange one demon for another.”

The famine that the two talk about in the story was the 1943 Bengal famine that cost over 2 million lives. While local politicians, English as well as Indian, advocated that Bengal get aid, those requests were denied by London. Churchill was particularly racist towards Indians, stating once that they were “beastly people with a beastly religion”. Food stuff was further directed towards the troops and Europe, with Australian ships full of food passing by the coast of India as they head towards to Europe.

The Viceroy in charge of India when the war broke out in no way consulted the Congress about the situation and promptly declared that India was at war with the Axis as well. This didn’t sit well with the Congress, who launched the Quit India Movement. This led to thousands of national and local Congress members being arrested. India further continued to not endorse the war.

While it is undeniable that there were Britons that didn’t let racism cloud their view and genuinely advocated for the welfare of the Indian people, it is equally undeniable that the Empire inflicted a lot of damage on the subcontinent.

Subhas Bose was a politician that campaigned heavily for India’s independence and for that, he is a national hero. Yes, he made dealings with the Nazis and the Soviets and the Japanese. Yes, he held the view that the following government in India should be authoritarian. And yes, he advocated for women’s rights, supported liberal and secular ideas. The international airport of Kolkata is named after Bose. Point to case, alliances and the such are not clear cut in real life. Aung San and Ba Maw in Burma/Myanmar, Sukarno in Indonesia had similar stances as Bose and collaborated with the Japanese in hopes of gaining independence for their countries.

The Indian National Army fought on the side of the Japanese in WWII. British attempt to put on a show trial to condemn the officers of INA backfired spectacularly as it prompted mass protests throughout India that made the country ungovernable and was a key contributing factor to the precipitous collapse of the British rule in India.

[sciencespies]

Astronomers are mystified by these ghostly, unexplained circles seen in space

https://sciencespies.com/space/astronomers-are-mystified-by-these-ghostly-unexplained-circles-seen-in-space/

Astronomers are mystified by these ghostly, unexplained circles seen in space

In September 2019, my colleague Anna Kapinska gave a presentation showing interesting objects she’d found while browsing our new radio astronomical data. She had started noticing very weird shapes she couldn’t fit easily to any known type of object.

Among them, labelled by Anna as WTF?, was a picture of a ghostly circle of radio emission, hanging out in space like a cosmic smoke-ring.

None of us had ever seen anything like it before, and we had no idea what it was. A few days later, our colleague Emil Lenc found a second one, even more spooky than Anna’s.

Anna and Emil had been examining the new images from our pilot observations for the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) project, made with CSIRO’s revolutionary new Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope.

EMU plans to boldly probe parts of the Universe where no telescope has gone before. It can do so because ASKAP can survey large swathes of the sky very quickly, probing to a depth previously only reached in tiny areas of sky, and being especially sensitive to faint, diffuse objects like these.

I predicted a couple of years ago this exploration of the unknown would probably make unexpected discoveries, which I called WTFs. But none of us expected to discover something so unexpected, so quickly.

Because of the enormous data volumes, I expected the discoveries would be made using machine learning. But these discoveries were made with good old-fashioned eyeballing.

Hunting ORCs

Our team searched the rest of the data by eye, and we found a few more of the mysterious round blobs. We dubbed them ORCs, which stands for “odd radio circles”.

But the big question, of course, is: “what are they?”

At first we suspected an imaging artefact, perhaps generated by a software error. But we soon confirmed they are real, using other radio telescopes. We still have no idea how big or far away they are.

They could be objects in our galaxy, perhaps a few light-years across, or they could be far away in the Universe and maybe millions of light years across.

When we look in images taken with optical telescopes at the position of ORCs, we see nothing. The rings of radio emission are probably caused by clouds of electrons, but why don’t we see anything in visible wavelengths of light?

We don’t know, but finding a puzzle like this is the dream of every astronomer.

We know what they’re not

We have ruled out several possibilities for what ORCs might be.

Could they be supernova remnants, the clouds of debris left behind when a star in our galaxy explodes? No. They are far from most of the stars in the Milky Way and there are too many of them.

Could they be the rings of radio emission sometimes seen in galaxies undergoing intense bursts of star formation? Again, no. We don’t see any underlying galaxy that would be hosting the star formation.

Could they be the giant lobes of radio emission we see in radio galaxies, caused by jets of electrons squirting out from the environs of a supermassive black hole? Not likely, because the ORCs are very distinctly circular, unlike the tangled clouds we see in radio galaxies.

Could they be Einstein rings, in which radio waves from a distant galaxy are being bent into a circle by the gravitational field of a cluster of galaxies? Still no. ORCs are too symmetrical, and we don’t see a cluster at their centre.

A genuine mystery

In our paper about ORCs, which is forthcoming in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia, we run through all the possibilities and conclude these enigmatic blobs don’t look like anything we already know about.

So we need to explore things that might exist but haven’t yet been observed, such as a vast shockwave from some explosion in a distant galaxy. Such explosions may have something to do with fast radio bursts, or the neutron star and black hole collisions that generate gravitational waves.

Or perhaps they are something else entirely. Two Russian scientists have even suggested ORCs might be the “throats” of wormholes in spacetime.

From the handful we’ve found so far, we estimate there are about 1,000 ORCs in the sky. My colleague Bärbel Koribalski notes the search is now on, with telescopes around the world, to find more ORCs and understand their cause.

It’s a tricky job, because ORCs are very faint and difficult to find. Our team is brainstorming all these ideas and more, hoping for the eureka moment when one of us, or perhaps someone else, suddenly has the flash of inspiration that solves the puzzle.

It’s an exciting time for us. Most astronomical research is aimed at refining our knowledge of the Universe, or testing theories. Very rarely do we get the challenge of stumbling across a new type of object which nobody has seen before, and trying to figure out what it is.

Is it a completely new phenomenon, or something we already know about but viewed in a weird way? And if it really is completely new, how does that change our understanding of the Universe? Watch this space!

Ray Norris, Professor, School of Science, Western Sydney University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

#Space

[justbeingnamaste]

NASA have admitted to spraying lethal chemtrails into our atmosphere – saying that lithium being sprayed into the Earths ionosphere helps to treat people with manic depression or bi-polar disorder.

NASA personnel have come forward saying that lithium, along with other potentially harmful chemicals, are intentionally sprayed into our environment regularly.

Wakingtimes.com reports:

NASA Confesses to Dosing Americans with Air-borne Lithium & Other Chemicals

There’s the official explanation for why NASA is spraying lithium, a pharmaceutical drug most often used to treat people with manic depression or bi-polar disorder, into our ionosphere, and then there is the probable reason(s). It would be easier to accept NASA’s official explanation if they were not so secretive about everything they study and do in space – but one thing is for certain – NASA’s own personnel have admitted that lithium, along with other chemicals, are intentionally being placed into our environment regularly. It is possible that many of NASA’s own employees aren’t even aware of the true motivations for carrying out such a project, ironically displaying the very behaviors that these chemicals/pharmaceuticals are meant to instill.

In the first bomb-shell video a NASA employee (Douglas.e.rowland@nasa.gov) admits that lithium is being sprayed in the atmosphere, and says that it is “harmless to the environment.”

Before I give you NASA’s official explanation of why they are spraying psych-meds over hundreds of thousands of Americans, I’d like to point you to some references so that you can do your own research, and discover that this is no conspiracy theory. It is very real, and there is ample scientific documentation to corroborate what I put forth here:

A Pub Med abstract titled, Feasibility of Aerosol Vaccinations in Humans discusses how an increase in antigen volumes can be beneficial in aerosol delivery of vaccines, and could be used in “developing countries and disaster areas.” The abstract also admits that several thousand human subjects have already been aerosol vaccinated with live attenuated measles and influenza A vaccines. The executive summary further states that aerosol vaccinations are ideal for “large populations.” This has apparently been happening since as early as 2003.

Another discussion of aerosolized vaccinations can be found in The New England Journal of Medicine. A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Aerosolized Vaccines Against Measles states that these vaccines were tested on children in India that were as young 9 months old.

The World Health Organization has been researching aerosol vaccines for years now, as have “philanthropic” agencies which have clear aims to sterilize the population. It is also worth noting that the pharmaceutical industry has been absolved from any legal responsibility for medicating the masses since they were awarded  legal protection from all lawsuits by Congress in 1986. This law was challenged, but upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2011. Many powerful agencies are making sure that we “take our medicine.”

In fact, many nations are participating in our unwitting, forced vaccination, and the dumping of any number of attenuated viruses, chemical concoctions and other ‘chemtrails’ on our heads with dogged frequency.

The Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR) considered giving a license application to PaxVax Australia (PaxVax) for the intentional release of a GMO vaccine consisting of live bacteria into the environment in Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria. They planned to release cholera on their people.

According to the regulator, this GMO vaccine qualified as a limited and controlled release under section 50A of the Gene Technology Act 2000.

Of course, we can’t ignore the USA. Michael Greenwood wrote an article stating that:

“The incidence of human West Nile virus cases can be significantly reduced through large–scale aerial spraying that targets adult mosquitoes, according to research by the Yale School of Public Health and the California Department of Public Health.”

So, hopefully we’ve established that this IS happening. But why?

As more nations refuse genetically modified food, and refuse to drink fluoridated water, which has been named as a neurotoxin by one of the world’s premiere medical journals, the power structure that desires a complicit population has to figure out a way to alter our neurochemistry.

Lithium alters how we think by changing the levels of serotonin and norepinephrine secreted by our endocrine system. Lithium strongly alters the brain system, yet the NASA employee in the above video states that “it is not dangerous” and doesn’t harm the population. Even doctors who normally prescribe this medication for the mentally ill have said that it is dangerous because it is hard to figure out proper dosing. Surely, spraying copious amounts of lithium indiscriminately into the air via aerosols should be questioned – but here’s NASA’s official stance on this practice:

“The project is studying neutral and charged particles in the ionosphere and how each affects the way the other moves resulting in currents in the region. The variations matter because all of our communications and GPS satellites send signals through the ionosphere. A disturbed ionosphere translates to disturbed signals, so scientists want to know just what causes the ionosphere to behave in specific ways.” (NASA)

Meanwhile, should the over-medicated start to actually figure out what is being done to them, the government has imposed gag orders on the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) who might easily refute the ridiculous claims of NASA.

Notably, every single person who works for NASA, the NWS or NOAA are paid with tax payer dollars.This means that we are paying to be medicated and poisoned.

Here, to corroborate information being given by the NASA employee in the video, is the Code 8440 RMMO which states the exact purpose of using Wallops Flight Facility to launch a rocket containing lithium thermite:

“Purpose: The primary purpose of this mission was to test the loading methods for lithium canisters to be flown on the upcoming Kudeki (Kwajalein, April 2013) and Pfaff (Wallops, June 2013) missions, and verify their functionality under sounding rocket launch and space flight conditions.

Rocket Type: Two-stage Terrier MK70 Improved-Orion

Location: Wallops Range

Launcher: MRL

Date of Launch: January 29, 2013

Time: 17:50 EST

Experiment results: Thermistor data looked nominal. Good report from airborne optical platform of recorded video and lithium clouds also visible by ground observation.’

We also learn from this specific call that lithium has been dumped in our skies since 1970. If you wanted to medicate the masses to create mindless, slave-like prisoners who didn’t even know they were imprisoned, this is surely a good way to do it. Spraying lithium into our skies, along with countless other bacteria, viruses, prions, parasites, fungi, carcinogens, toxins, hormone-altering drugs, anti-flora and anti-fauna, as well as gene-altering micro-dust is nothing more than bio-warfare against the world’s citizenry. You can call them chemtrails or something else, the effect is the same.

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. …In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” ~Edward L. Bernays, Master Propagandist

Article By Christina Sarich

Source: State of the Nation

Categories:

Sci/Environment

[my-words-are-light]

Ngawooin: Chapter 1 — Worst Day Ever

I commissioned this image from NOPEYS

Click here to go to Chapter 2

Chapter 1 — Worst Day Ever

She was looking out the window, for lack of anything better to do during the roll call.

“Xavier Knightley?” asked Mr Edward Grady.

“Right here!” Xav’s hand shot up energetically.

Not that there was much to see outside. Ngawooin was in rural Western Australia, which meant it was essentially in the middle of nowhere. There was barely anything to do aside from go to school, and that was boring as well. Soon the teacher would call her name, she’d answer, they’d do the morning routine, they’d go to their classes, and then they’d go home. And so the process would repeat day after day, week after week.

“Neil Lowe?”

Despite that, she didn’t mind it all. The schoolwork and homework of Ngawooin High School was routine but familiar. Nothing was going to jump out at her and give her unexpected stress. That was all she could ask for, really. She hated trouble, even second-hand. She wanted to go through life without any hassles or humiliations. School, in its monotony, granted her that. At least, most of the time.

Mr Grady looked over the class through his square, wood-framed glasses. They made him look professional and no-nonsense, even while his short hair was bright pink. “Neil?”

At least today was alright. It was surprisingly warm for a winter morning but the breeze was cool and her clothes were comfortable enough in it. She wore the standard female uniform of a white dress shirt with purple buttons and a blue skirt.

“Has anyone seen Neil today?” asked Mr Grady.

Neil? If she remembered right, he’d never missed a class before. Was he the one with that tablet laptop? No, that was Koda. Neil… He was the quiet one who had a small smile all the time and kept to himself. He had a soft face and short, kind of messy black hair and he wore his purple-and-blue Ngawooin High-brand raincoat all the time. On warm days like this, it’d be wrapped around his waist.

She took a brief glance around the class. Everyone else was saying ‘no’ while shrugging and looking around. She rubbed her forehead, brushing the fringe of her blonde bob as she did so.

“Hm. Moving on. Tory Moore?”

“Present,” said Tory as she sat still, her long black hair cascading behind her.

Right, back to looking out the window… and she saw Neil outside, walking across the yard. What’s more, he was with Riley Maddison, who was as charming and likeable as a cane toad with a flamethrower. Not that he was ugly—someone might  date him for more than just the bad boy appeal and ‘I can change him’ fantasies—but his personality was awful. He cut holes into the knees of his blue school pants and his faux hawk was dyed a deep red, possibly with the bloody tears of his victims.

“Pride?”

She didn’t hear Mr Grady. Riley was someone she expected to be looming about outside during class hours. Neil, however, was the last person that she would expect to willingly hang out with him. Riley had his arm around Neil’s shoulders as the two strolled by but, even from far away, she could see that Neil was hanging back and Riley had to pull him along while still looking casual. Odd as Neil was, even she could tell this was not his idea of a casual time. The two headed for the gym equipment shed.

“Pride?”

Suddenly, Neil broke away from Riley and made a run for it. He didn’t even get two steps away before Riley caught Neil by the  hoodie around his waist and pulled him in, grabbing him by the arm. Neil struggled as much as he could but he couldn’t stop the other boy from dragging him behind the shed, out of her sight.

“Destiny Pride!”

She jumped with a jolt. One of the things she dreaded more than anything was Mr Grady raising his voice. The other was… ugh, her full name.

Mr Grady’s gaze and expression never flinched as he crossed his arms. “Try not to lose focus at the very start of the day, Destiny.”

Now the class was chuckling at her. Which was inevitable, really; she could never avoid humiliation with a name like hers. Stupid parents.

---

That fiasco aside, the school day was uneventful, as such days normally are. It was the usual routine, aside from the thing she saw with Neil and Riley in the morning. She didn’t think too much about it; Neil had his things to deal with and Destiny had hers.

Right now, Destiny’s thing to deal with was the need to pee before she went home. She made her way to the girl’s toilets and opened a cubicle…

… only to find  Neil sitting there. His face snapped up and their surprised eyes met. His were red, much like his cheeks that looked coarse from being rubbed too much. In his hand, he held a bunch of toilet paper. His raincoat was nowhere to be seen.

She was paralysed, like she was called upon to be in a play she hadn’t even heard of. Questions ricocheted throughout her skull, pushing to the front of the line. What happened to you? Were you crying? Have you been here all day? Why are you in the girl’s toilets? Where’s your raincoat? Did Riley do this to you?

Neil gulped. “I… thought I locked the door…” he mumbled, his voice trembling.

Destiny slowly shut the door and left the toilets without a word.

Not much she could do, she thought to herself. It wasn’t like she was his friend or anything. He had a family at home. He had to have friends, maybe someone online. They could help him out. She had no business talking to him; someone else could handle it better.

She decided she could hold it in until she got to her own home’s toilet.

---

Neil, on the other hand, did not make his way home. Half an hour after the home bell rang, he made his way to a lone shed on the far side of the school yard and sat against the shadowed wall. There were no cameras here and no one seemed to use the shed. He didn’t even know what it was for. He’d be left alone here for at least a few hours until sunset.

When Destiny came into his cubicle, he was alarmed and ashamed of himself for being found in that way. However, a small spark of hope lit in him from seeing her. A part of him wanted her to ask what was wrong, what happened, if he was all right, anything. A part of him hoped so strongly for her to reach out to him, when he was too scared to reach out to anyone.

But she’d left without saying anything.

Alone, all he could do was cry. He stifled the noises he made; even if no one was around, it felt shameful to cry like he was. He needed to be alone for this. He couldn’t let anyone find him.

“What is the matter, child?”

The rebounding, gutteral voice jolted Neil. His back pressed harder against the wall out of shock as his eyes flashed up and down for the voice’s source. The last thing he expected were wisps of inky black to come from around the shed’s corner before rising in front of him, coiling and forming into one long, thin, serpentine creature. Its body curved smoothly but its arms bent at sharp angles and ended in narrow claws. It lacked eyes but it had large, sharp teeth that looked solid compared to its gaseous body.

The creature floated close to the ground. It did not loom over Neil or overshadow him as it spoke. “I apologise if I startled you. That was not my intention.”

Neil could only blink at the spectre-like snake. What was he to say? What was he to do? He thought the stress was finally getting to him and making him hallucinate.

“Allow me to introduce myself.” The demonic creature lowered its head slightly, almost like a bow. “I am Goetius. May I ask what your name is?”

Neil’s breath was rocky as his eyes traced over Goetius’ form. “Neil.”

Goetius’ head leaned in towards Neil’s face. “You seem distressed. Tell me, Neil, what is it that ails you?”

Neil didn’t answer. He frantically looked around, searching for someone, anyone. Even if he wanted to be alone, he hoped someone would see this, or snap him out of whatever weird hallucination he was experiencing.

“Is it truly that awful?” Goetius asked. “To leave you so frightened and hurt?”

Neil’s panic-stricken eyes focused on Goetius for a moment. Then, out of resignation, Neil looked down at the ground.

“I will not force you to talk. But…” Goetius moved back, “… if it will help you to share your problems, know that I will listen.”

Neil closed his eyes. His hands knotted together in his lap. “What’s the point…?”

Goetius remained silent.

“It’s just… there’s a guy I know. For, what, how many years now, he’s… been the worst thing to happen to me. I don’t know… why? I don’t know what I ever did to him. I’ve told my parents, I’ve told my vice principal, and he never stops… It’ll never… stop…”

Goetius remained silent still as Neil’s voice began to break.

Neil sighed. He looked up, his head hitting the shed’s wall. “Sorry to bother you.”

“You did not bother me,” said Goetius. “The woes of others are not a burden to me. I consider it a duty to help when I can.”

“Thanks,” Neil said, more out of habit than genuine gratitude.

“I understand your plight. I know all too well how it feels to be subjected to a tyrant’s whimsy. They prey on those who do not or cannot fight back. I find myself unable to forgive your oppressor. I would punish this tyrant of yours severely for his cruel hubris, were I able.”

Neil’s hands tightened into fists. “That’d be nice. I’m not able, anyway.”

“But what if you were, with my help?”

Slowly, Neil’s head lowered to look at Goetius’ face. “What?” He wasn’t hopeful. At this point, it was just comfortable for something to listen to him for comfort.

Goetius rose. Its long, coiling body hung in the air over Neil like a storm cloud. “Make a pact with me. He has hounded you, so he must be hounded in turn. Allow me into your body and I will grant you the power to answer your tyrant’s.”

Neil didn’t answer immediately. This was surreal, beyond anything he—or anyone else, for that matter—had ever known. “I dunno…”

“Is there anyone else who will stop this vicious cycle? Is there anyone who is able?”

“… No…”

“Then perhaps it may prove worthwhile to risk trusting me. I know I look grotesque, and I can tell you view me as such, but no one else will punish him. It falls to you.” Goetius closed in, stopping just short of Neil’s face. “No other justice will suffice.”

Neil bit his lip. “What do I need to say?”

“All I need is your permission, Neil Lowe.” Goetius smiled. “If you would permit me to enter your body, then you will gain incredible strength. You will be able to enact the justice that has eluded you for so long, that you deserve. Whatever the misery that has befallen you, I will help you make it right.”

Neil took a deep breath. Honestly, this was beyond crazy. But if saying yes to a demon ghost snake had any chance of saving him from Riley when no one else was helping him, then what else could he do? “Alright, Goetius. Do what you want.”

“Perfect.” Goetius floated back a bit. “Hold still…”

Neil obliged, even as his entire being screamed at him to move as Goetius’ smoky body slithered towards him rapidly. He didn’t know what to expect and he was all the more shocked for it when Goetius slipped right through his chest like smoke rushing into a vent.

Neil gasped and fell to his knees as he felt… something running through his body; something burning or oozing or like a rushing wind, or like something else that he couldn’t think of words to describe while Goetius’ entrance was changing him from the inside. His vision blurred and his hearing dulled, the very way he perceived the world around him warping. He struggled to see a black veil surrounding him, looking like it was made of Goetius’ body.

He felt that burning, oozing, and rushing something push against the inside of his body until it felt like it was pouring out through his skin. He felt it in his head as his despair and melancholy ignited into rage and indignation. After several moments, it felt completely natural to him. It was bizarre to recall a time he was ever weak or small.

He saw the tenebrous veil subside. He recognised the school grounds and how he stood tall above them. He was even taller than the shed he was sitting against just moments ago… and he felt strong enough to smash it, too.

He growled, his voice rebounding like Goetius’.

---

The sun was almost entirely below the horizon. Instead of being warm and cosy at home, Destiny was walking back home in the chilly evening. Squashed in her fist was the handle of a green bag containing a variety of groceries, including a couple of spaghetti packets that her dad really should’ve checked they had in the cupboard before he started cooking dinner and sent her to the general store this late. She didn’t even have a phone to call home with if she was suddenly hit by a car. Stupid parents.

As she approached a T-intersection, with Yellowfield Road continuing on in front of her or Stillgate Street splitting off to the right, the ground shook slightly every few seconds. It definitely wasn’t an earthquake but what could possibly be causing it? Destiny didn’t go out much but it’s not like Ngawooin had any elephants… right? 

Destiny turned down Stillgate Street and then her breath left her so quickly that she couldn’t even yell ‘What is THAT?!’

A fifteen-foot giant was walking down the road towards her when it came to a stop, presumably because it saw her. She thought ‘presumably’ because it wore an iron helmet that masked its face, its two horizontal eye-slits too thin for her to see between at this distance. Its entire body was clad in metal armour, which was in turn covered by a thick black tattered cloak that reminded Destiny of a judge’s robe. Two armoured arms protruded from the sleeves, the right carrying a massive axe that looked like a gavel with two crescent blades on each side of its head.

The giant picked up speed and stalked towards her, growling on its way. “Destiny…!”

It knew her name. It was talking to her. Its voice was familiar but how could she think about it in these circumstances? “Who are you?” she asked, quivering and meek.

“You abandoned me…” It loomed over her, its grip tightening against the gavel-axe’s handle. “Like everyone else…! You just ran!”

Then she recognised the voice. She tried to forget all about the toilet incident after school; she occupied herself but the memory clung to her and refused to let go, not matter how much she smothered it in idleness. She almost got her mind off it but now…

“Neil?” she asked, not believing the name that came out of her mouth could be applied to this thing that stood before her.

“Wrong!” he roared. “The name’s Judgement!” He raised his axe and Destiny was so confused and scared that she couldn’t even move as—

A car honked its horn as it sped towards Destiny and Judgement before coming to a sudden stop. Out of the car came Ngawooin’s one and only police officer: Sergeant Judy Coles. Her pitch black hair was shaved to a crew cut and, like always, she was wearing the dark blue jacket of the Western Australian Police Force.

“Hold it!” she shouted. She pointed a pistol at the monster, although she seemed frantic behind the strong front she portrayed that everyone knew her for. She couldn’t possibly have predicted she’d deal with something like this today. “Get away from her!”

Judgement snarled as he turned towards Coles. “Stay out of this!”

Coles’ eyes flashed to Destiny. “Des, run!”

At that order, Destiny went from having wobbly knees to running down the road faster than she ever had before. With a roar, Judgement lunged at her with his left hand.

Coles shot twice at the limb. The bullets bounced pathetically off the metal arm but they succeeded at drawing the monster’s attention from Destiny before he could grab her.

Destiny passed two houses before turning right. Here was a small dirt pathway between two wooden fences, a gap between two houses too small for Judgement to fit through. On the other side was Ngawooin Park, a small plot of land with two swings, a one-and-a-half metre-tall plastic slide, and a wooden bench. None of these particularly appealed to Destiny at that moment, so she turned her attention to a large, dense bush against the fence to her left. She dove in it as quickly as she could and sat.

Once properly seated and concealed in the foliage, she took a moment to get her breath back in her burning lungs. After that, she gathered her thoughts into words.

First of all, AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Secondly, a giant monster that seemed to be a transformed Neil was strolling around like it owned the place. She was pretty sure this wasn’t why people moved to the bush.

Thirdly, said giant monster wanted—and tried—to kill her.

She could still feel the monster’s thudding footsteps through the ground.

What happened to Officer Coles? Destiny couldn’t hear her at all. She hadn’t screamed. Maybe she got away okay? Then… what next? Would Judgement come for her next? What did he even want? Was he just lashing out? Would he ever stop? Could she just go home with that thing on the run? He looked like he could cleave her house in two.

What was she supposed to do?

Destiny’s breath got faster again, this time out of panic instead of exhaustion. She took a deep breath through her nose, held it for a second… then exhaled through her mouth.

Her mind was still going AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH so it didn’t help as much as she’d have preferred. She felt a bit more calm but not by much.

She could still feel footsteps shake the ground.

Her head hit the fence with a sigh. Maybe she could just wait this out until everything breezed over. Maybe Coles had a rocket launcher back at the station that she could shoot at Judgement with. Also, while she was in fantasy land, it would be beautiful if Superman whizzed by and threw it over to Alice Springs. Not much she could do, anyway.

She could see the night sky through a gap in the bush; the sun had finally set. Not that it mattered to her but at least Destiny could see if Judgement suddenly appeared.

There was a bright star shining in the sky. Mum always told her that, in Ngawooin, the stars were brighter than they were in the city and that view was worth treasuring. Destiny never agreed; she’d trade the view for a stable and fast Internet connection any day.

That’s a good idea, actually. Destiny closed her eyes and mumbled quietly... “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. Wish I may, wish I might, for good Internet so GIFs could load in the same hour we saw them. I’ll settle for in the same day if that’s too much.”

… She opened her eyes. Nothing felt different. Then again, she couldn’t be sure if it worked until she got home and checked the computer, assuming Judgement hadn’t smashed it yet. Oh hey, she could still feel his footsteps. Some things never change.

That said, that star looked like it was getting really close—

Her train of thought abruptly ended there as that bright star slammed right through the bush and disappeared into her chest. She yelped, not expecting whatsoever the sudden warm sensation that planted itself inside her.

B-dum

Why was her heartbeat so loud now?

B-dum b-dum b-dum b-dum b-dumdumdumdum

The whole area was illuminated by a bright light and it only occurred to Destiny after a moment that it was coming from her. Her entire vision was blinded by white but, rather than feeling burnt, she felt refreshed. Her entire body felt invigorated by the warmth that shined from her. When the light faded, she blinked rapidly. Her eyes felt fine but… different somehow. Like the rest of her body.

“Huh?”

She raised her hands—“What?”—and saw that they were clad in white metal gauntlets. They looked so thin but durable. The rest of her arms, including her shoulders, were clad in some blue skin-tight thing that was full of twinkling stars. She looked down—“What?!”—and noticed that it wasn’t just her arms but her entire body that had gotten a makeover. Her chest and belly were covered by metal armour that had some bow and arrow-shaped star symbol on the chest. Around her waist was a transparent purple skirt that also sparkled like it had stars inside it with three layers, the bottom layer split in two and wrapped around each thigh. Steel boots on her feet went up to her shins, while the rest of her legs were covered by the same strange skin-tight star stuff that was on her arms.

Her hands clutched her head and something else felt wrong. She ran her hands down her hair and was surprised further by how much of it she was running through. She brought two strands over her shoulders and saw her hair was now white, long enough to reach her waist, and shimmering in the same stellar way as her bodysuit. She checked to see if her fringe was still there. It was, even if it felt a bit more airy and flared than before. Unfortunately, something else was there, too; some glass-like visor that covered her eyes, giving everything a slight blue tinge.

In one night, Destiny Pride had gone from picking up groceries to running from a giant monster to being transformed into a star knight while hiding in a bush.

“WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?!” she yelled as she launched out of the bush. She twisted and turned as she took in her new getup. It amazingly felt very comfortable; not a single article of clothing was too tight or too loose against her. Said comfort was purely physical, however; mentally, this was the worst she had ever been.

She felt the ground tremble more from Judgement’s gait.

Then it occurred to her: Neil was transformed into Judgement. She was transformed into whatever this was. Maybe that wasn’t a coincidence? Sure, she wasn’t the size of a building and she had no weapons, but… maybe she was meant to fight?

No. No no no no no. Stuff that. She wasn’t some superhero; she was just a high school student. She wasn’t even a school captain, let alone a soldier, and she couldn’t even get past level 2-1 in the beep test. No way was she qualified, let alone capable, of dealing with Judgement. She was going to go home and let some other warrior of light deal with this…

… but who?

Who could possibly deal with this? She didn’t think the police could handle it, even if they got here before Judgement cleaved everything in two. The army was in the same boat and they’d take even longer. Were there even any other star knights like her out there? Or was she, by some freak accident, the only one?

All Destiny could be sure of at this time was that, as far as she knew, she was the only one around who was like this. She had something flowing through her. Something glowing, something warm, something that ran through her blood like wind ran through her hair (which would probably look really cool at this point, with its new length). Every heartbeat reinforced the fact that she was stronger and faster than ever before. Her new body surpassed her old one in every way. She could feel that she was superhuman.

Destiny—or whoever, or whatever she was now—clenched her teeth and her fists.

She turned back to the small path between the wooden fences. She didn’t know if anyone else out there could take care of Judgement but she knew that this couldn’t wait. She took a deep breath before walking slowly down the path to face Judgement.

[asterinjapan]

A castle a day...

Well, I guess it would keep some people away, but certainly not me, haha.

That’s right, I visited another castle today! This time a little closer to Okayama, so no 3 hour train ride – just a little under half an hour. That’s just the first step in visiting this castle, though.

Follow me under the link for today’s report on Bitchu Takahashi!

Apparently there are more cities named Takahashi, so to make the distinction, the station in the Okayama prefecture is called Bitchu Takahashi for the western region of Okayama. For eh, most likely understandable reasons, I’ve also seen it written in Latin script at Bicchu. Anyway! There are several trains bound for this station, but the fastest from Okayama is the Yakumo line, which means ‘thick clouds’. Thankfully it didn’t live up to that name today, as the skies were very clear for the most part. The Yakumo only stops at Kurashiki, so it’s a quick trip. Of course, I was once again way too early at the station, so I killed some time by reserving a seat for myself. Not sure if it was necessary, but at least I could sit for sure!

Once at the station, I had my first surprise of the day. The tourist information center isn’t stuffed right next to a convenience store like at Matsuyama yesterday, but instead holds office at the city library above the station, which has four floors and also houses a book store and a Starbucks. I could actually just spend half a day here, haha, but that wasn’t why I was here. I needed a way to the castle, as that was still over an hour and half away by foot. Luckily there is a solution: a shared taxi. Of course, the normal taxi is also an option, but then you need to call one for the way back, and it’s also more expensive. You can call ahead for making reservations or just show up, which I did. Luckily, the next taxi still had place for me. They offer a discount ticket with entrance to the castle, two samurai houses and a temple, so I got one of those and then lingered around to wait for the taxi.

I got talking to several Japanese ladies and a couple from Australia, so I got to practice my languages today, haha. I could uphold conversations! Whoo! It probably helps they were castle related, and as it turns out I have very specific vocabulary now, ahem.

Anyway, I haven’t even told you why it was so necessary to take a taxi. You see, this castle is on top of a mountain at 430 meters above sea level, making it the highest original castle tower in Japan. Because yes, it is one of the only twelve castles of which the main tower is still standing from the feudal age onward. Matsuyama castle yesterday was another one, and to make matters more confusing, this castle today is also called Matsuyama castle. Yay for more double names! Like with Takahashi, it’s often called Bitchu Matsuyama castle to avoid such confusion.

With those facts in mind, you might understand why I was so excited about visiting it, despite the troubles of getting you there. The taxi got us almost all the way up, but from the parking lot, it was still a 20 minute uphill walk through forests. The weather was lovely and the trees shielded me from the sunlight, so that was actually pretty okay, haha. I don’t think walking all the way from the station to here would have worked out for me, so I’m glad for the taxi, but overall, I can’t really complain about the way here. It’s definitely not an accessible castle, though.

Upon arriving, I was immediately treated to some very impressively imposing walls. That is definitely a fortress right there! It might be the oldest surviving castle (although I’ve heard the same thing said about Inuyama castle), and the first construction was already in 1240 on a nearby mountain. That being said, the domain switched hands and the current structure is from a later era, probably the 16th century, a time when castles also became status symbols. Bitchu Matsuyama castle however was primarily constructed as a defensive fortress, very out of reach on top of the mountain and only needing 2 stories, as the height of it meant that they already had a great look-out point.

The views are indeed rather spectacular, especially in this weather with the first leaves turning bright red. But it’s understandable the castle was never really under siege and the Meiji government didn’t bother tearing it down, since without the taxi, it really is a tough one to reach.

Anyway! I made it to the main tower, which is indeed small, but looks amazing on that mountain top. I handed in my ticket and made it into the premises, to be immediately confronted with a very important character: Sanjuro, who was installed as honorary lord of the castle last December. Also, Sanjuro is a cat, haha. (Japan has multiple cats with jobs; just look up Tama, the station cat.) Last year’s summer was heavy on this region and brought floods, so the cat ran away from home and ended up here. He got adopted first as mascot, and was eventually dubbed as lord. And Sanjuro is personally responsible for the return of tourism here, as that had dropped significantly due to the floods in the region. He now lives here and makes rounds twice a day.

Afte that cute intermezzo, I went into the main tower and explored it. They did bother putting up information and displays here, although everything was in Japanese, and since it’s only two rather small floors, you can go through this pretty quickly. I was actually glad for that, because the taxi would come to pick us up only an hour and a half after dropping us off, and we still had to walk back to the parking lot.

Once outside, I walked around the castle and found a spot where I could see the turret from a better angle. The turret, along with a part of the wall and the main tower, are the only buildings left standing, so the premises aren’t big, but combined with the view and the beautiful nature, it makes for a wonderful outing. The whole package makes this castle score very high in my personal favourites, and trust me, I’ve seen quite some castles by now to make a good comparison, haha. I walked behind the castle a bit further to find some remains of I assume walls and a well, although it was mostly overgrown here, but the views and forest remain splendid, plus I saw a really pretty butterfly! Well, the castle does sit on Mount Gagyu, a designated national forest, so there’s that.

I then started making my way back to the parking lot, where I found the rest of the group I had travelled up with. The taxi dropped us off at the foot of the mountain rather than at the station, but for good reason: we were at the entrance of the Orii samurai residence, for which we had a discount ticket. The residence was actually pretty big, and it featured pretty lifesize dolls to bring some extra character into the house. It has a pretty garden, too. Right down the street, there is another samurai residence, the Haibara family one, who were high ranked samurai.  

After these two quick but nice visits, the walk continued to the final discount ticket place: Raikyuji temple. In the early 1600s, lord Ensyu Kobori took up residence in this temple instead of at the castle to be safe from war. He was involved in the development of the tea ceremony and designed gardens, so in this temple, you can find a very pretty rock garden, which is meant to be enjoyed and not walked in.

It really is lovely, although I found myself charmed by something else: there were small Buddha statues spread over the premises featuring the animals of the zodiac, so I had fun spotting them all. Well, all – I miss one, and when I went ‘what was that one even? A snake?’ I uh, ran into an actual snake, so I called it quits before I could accidentally summon other animals, haha.

It was pretty easy to walk back to the station from here, as I just had to follow the train tracks. Along the way, I came across some more temples and shrines, and generally just walked through a very charming town.

Just before the station, I could spot the castle way in the distance, so I whipped out my fancy zoom lens to take a picture of the main keep from here, haha. It really is high…

At the station, I ordered some Halloween specials at Starbucks since I’d only quickly had one bread roll in between all my exploring and settled in for a bit before returning to Okayama. I was lucky and caught another Yakumo, so that was a quick ride back.

And now I’m back in the hotel! I have been for a while, but I had to go back out for dinner and all, haha.

I’m trying to think of what to do tomorrow, as they predict rain for pretty much the entire country on Friday, and my Saturday is already fully booked. As I leave for Tokyo on Sunday morning, tomorrow is my only day with nice weather left, so hm.

I might go on a walk, but I’m not sure if I’m awake enough for that, haha. Regardless, the day trips I still have written out as options are less than an hour from here, so I won’t have to get up super early, yay!

 Good night for now and see you tomorrow!

[megpie71]

Why I don’t ship Clerith

(Because what the hell, I may as well get this out here before the fun and games start next year, and I have to fight off Clerith shippers with a bat)

I think I've worked out the problem I have with Cloud/Aerith shipping, as far as I'm concerned.

[Clarification: this is why I have trouble with it, and won't write it.  I'm not saying other people can't, just that I do have issues with it, and therefore don't particularly like reading it, and I've sort of worked out why.]

Now, there are two predominant "schools" of people who ship Cloud with Aerith.  One of those is what I'd call OT3/OT4 fandom, where firstly, the relationship is happening prior to the Nibelheim event, and generally there's at least Zack mixed in to the bundle (sometimes with the addition of Sephiroth, to make the OT4), and it's generally a bisexual threesome at least.  And yeah, that one I find vaguely believable.

[Could all the anti-shippers who just leapt to their feet shrieking "paedophillia!" because Cloud is canonically somewhere between 14 and 16 in this 'ship, kindly sit the fuck back down again?  Cloud Strife may only be 14 years old, but he is a functional adult in his society, taking on an adult role (member of the army of the One World Government).  He would greatly resent any implication he is a "child", because he gave up being a "child" when he left Nibelheim to join the army.  Also, in the OT3 version, Aerith is about 15 - 17 years old, Zack is between 16 and 18 years old.  None of them are "adults" as we'd define it in Western Eurocentric cultures, but all of them are "adults" according to their own cultural system that they grew up in.  As such, they think of themselves as being adults, they consider themselves to be adults, and given they're performing adult roles for at least two years by the time the Nibelheim event comes along, they're not going to step back into childhood again, either.  If you're going to bitch about this, then start by bitching at the original writers working for Square Enix well before you start bitching at fanwriters, okay?

This is also leaving aside the cheerful fact that "adulthood" norms are generally socially and culturally determined.  So, for example, my maternal grandmother became a functional "adult" at the age of 14, when she came out on a boat from England to Australia in order to find work (accompanied by her 16 year old sister); my mother became a functional "adult" at the age of 16, when she finished her third year of high school and started working; and I became a functional "adult" at the age of 18, when I reached the legal age to vote and drink, even though I didn't have a full-time job and I was still living with my parents at the time.  My paternal grandfather joined the British army at the age of 12 (as a drummer boy, toward the end of World War 1).  What counts as "adult" is culturally and socially determined, and never a fixed point of reference.]

I can find it very believable that Cloud would get involved in a relationship with two people who are roughly around his own age, and that it would be a Good Thing in his life at the time.  He's going through puberty, he's behaving as an adult in his society, he would be doing adult things, including sex and possibly alcohol (although my head-canon is that Cloud is incredibly disappointed with Midgarian beer the first time he tries it, and refers to it as "sex in a canoe" ever after - fucking close to water.  He grew up drinking applejack and brandywine as antifreeze since shortly after he could first toddle).  

The other "school" of people who ship Cloud and Aerith tend to place the potential relationship during the canon time period of the original game, starting not long after Cloud rescues Aerith from the Turks in the church.  Now, I have a lot of problems with that one.

Firstly, I doubt Aerith would really be interested in a relationship.  It's made reasonably clear at the end of Crisis Core (and in "The Last Order" OVA) that Aerith knows when Zack was killed - she feels his spirit rejoin the Lifestream because she is who and what she is.  So her first serious boyfriend has died, she knows he's died, and you can't kid me she wouldn't be grieving as a result.  So I don't think Aerith is in the right emotional place to be starting a relationship.

As for Cloud... oh gods.  No.  Hell no.  So much no.  

Cloud is, at the point where he meets Aerith, a psychological mess beyond belief.  He has been incredibly traumatised, first by multiple years of experimentation, then by prolonged mako poisoning, and then finally, just as he's starting to come out of that, by seeing his best (only?) friend destroyed in front of him by pretty much the whole damn Shinra army.  Zack dies in his arms, and the best interpretation of what happens next is Cloud's mind, overwhelmed by the emotional and sensory overload of dealing with this (because he's not just waking up from mako poisoning, he's waking up from mako poisoning with Sephiroth-level SOLDIER enhancement, which means his sensory matrix has been boosted sight out of mind as well) basically shuts down completely on a conscious level, and wipes the memory, adding traumatic amnesia to the whole mix.  When he re-awakens, he re-patterns himself on a combination of Zack's memory, what he remembers of Sephiroth, and what he thinks a First Class SOLDIER should be like.

Now, mix in that Cloud Strife is carrying around the Buster Sword the first time Aerith meets him, in the plaza in sector eight, just after Reactor One has exploded.  Aerith knows what the Buster Sword is, she knows what it meant to Zack and she knew why it meant that.  So seeing it on someone else's back is probably a very nasty reminder to her that Zack isn't coming back.  She doesn't know why Cloud is wearing it, and I doubt in the shock of the moment (let's not forget: massive explosion about five to ten minutes previously, people running around the square like headless chickens the whole time, she's probably not really thinking all that clearly to begin with, and given Mako is also the Lifestream, she's probably felt a profound disturbance in the localised lifestream flows thanks to the destruction of the mako reactor, which may well have knocked her sideways as well!) she's really able to do much more than recognise it, feel the shock of the recognition, and move on to the next part of the interaction.

The second time Cloud and Aerith meet (and if you're familiar with Crisis Core canon, the second time someone drops through the roof of the Church down onto her flowerbed - if not, go look up who the first example was) she's a bit more capable of sustained thought past the shock.  So she sees it's the same guy with the Buster Sword, and this time, she's determined he isn't going to vanish on her, because there's something hinky going on here.  It gets even weirder for her when you consider Cloud is channelling a lot of Zack's mannerisms in order to be able to get through the encounter himself (I have a strong suspicion Cloud is dissociating continuously throughout at least the first five "days" of the game).  So she "hires" this strange guy as her "bodyguard", gets him away from the Turks who appear to have turned up to collect him (and really, it's much more likely at first approximation that the Turks and troopers are there to collect Cloud, given the ambush President Shinra staged at Reactor Four), takes him home with her, and deliberately makes sure she's able to keep an eye on him by following him back to Sector Seven.  Or at least, that's the plan.

I really don't think Cloud would be an attractive partner for Aerith at that point - not with her grief still fresh in her mind, and with his uncanny behavioural resemblance to Zack.  I think Cloud would be much more likely to creep her the fuck out, rather than turn her on sexually.  And as for Cloud, my head-canon for him is he probably isn't even masturbating at this point in his life - his mind is basically about fifty-seven different types of trauma all shaken up into a constant waking nightmare.  He might have a few wet dreams when the physical pressure gets too great, but he's not even thinking of himself as a sexual being at this point, and certainly not in a space where he'd be interested in an actual relationship.  The flirting is mechanical (and probably comes across as same, too) and I really don't think he would have been physically capable of following through, so to speak.  (Cloud, to my mind, won't be ready for a relationship until about two or three years down the line after the end of Advent Children, if then).

So no, I don't think it's possible for Cloud and Aerith to be involved in a relationship at that point.  Not even if they'd been involved in one prior to the Nibelheim event.  (Actually, in that particular case it would be even more traumatic for both of them - Aerith knows Cloud, but can't tell him because it would hurt him more than he can handle; he's constantly dissociating and suffering from traumatic amnesia, and he's only just got out of a state of complete catatonia - learning the truth in such a fashion would just knock him straight back there, and they need him upright and functioning.  Plus it's physically safer for him if he learns the truth of the matter slowly - if he went catatonic... well, that could very well dump him right back into Hojo's hands again, since it's a fair bet Shinra owns the majority of the medical facilities in the world).  

Then Sephiroth damn near manipulates Cloud into killing Aerith, and when that doesn't work, Sephiroth kills her himself, right in front of Cloud.  If you tell me that wouldn't be the cue for a massive attack of the guilts on Cloud's part, I'm going to ask what the merry hells you're on, because I need my doctor to prescribe me some of that.

[nebris]

British Anti-tank guns in the Desert 

The portee of guns is a pretty basic and, generally, an ad hoc technique.  While it was often used in NA owing to the need for longer ranged mobility and lack of concealed gun positions, the British did use it in Europe.

The first British portee weapons in WWII occurred in France in 1940. They were augmenting their 2-pdr AT guns with French 25mm guns.  They were so flimsy that high-speed cross-country towing was impossible so they were carried by lorries.

Starting in 1941, the British developed the “en portee” method of mounting an anti-tank gun (initially a 2 pounder) on a truck. This was to prevent the weapon from being damaged by long-distance towing across rough, stony deserts, and it was intended only to be a carrying method, with the gun unloaded for firing. However, crews tended to fire their weapons from their vehicles for the mobility this method provided, with consequent casualties. This undoubtedly inspired their Morris C9/B (officially the “Carrier, SP, 4×4, 40 mm AA”), a Bofors 40 mm AA gun mounted on a chassis derived from the Morris “Quad” Field Artillery Tractor truck. Similar types, based on 3-ton lorries, were produced in Britain, Canada and Australia, and together formed the most numerous self-propelled AA guns in British service.

Lorry-mounted 2-pdr anti-tank guns on a practice shoot in the Western Desert. 3 May 1942.The 2-pdr antitank gun equipped RA anti-tank regiments and later infantry battalions for much of the Desert War. This 10mm-calibre weapon was mounted on an ingenious three-legged carriage, giving it a low profile and which allowed the travelling wheels to be lifted clear of the ground so that the gun could easily traverse through 360 degrees. An armoured shield fined with an ammunition box protected its 5-man detachment and it weighed 1,760 lb. in action. Many were carried portee on the back of lorries during the Desert War. but when used this way often proved vulnerable to both small arms and shrapnel. Firing a solid AP round and with a penetration of ’40mm at I,000m, the 2-pdr was highly effective against lightly armoured cars and tanks, but as the Desert War progressed it was quickly outclassed and could only engage with a hope of success from the flank at close range.

The 2-pounder was given a new lease of life by putting it on a lorry-the Portee mounting. This mounting used a 15cwt truck with the sides taken off the back so that it had a flat bed. Using two long ramps a 2-pounder was hauled up and set down on its platform. The wheels were removed and bolted on the sides of the truck. The gun could be fired from the flat bed or it could be unloaded and emplaced. By reversing the truck up to the emplacement and throwing down the ramps, it could be evacuated quite quickly, although it could not be done with safety by daylight. The idea gave the little 2-pounders some much-needed mobility and the Portee gunners soon evolved a technique in which they lay up behind a low mound with only the top of the shield and the barrel emerging round the side of the cover. This was safe enough until the tank moved to a flank whereupon the unfortunate truck began to catch the shot and the gun had to move. One anti-tank regiment lost almost a complete battery in one day early in 1942. When the first of the 6-pounders arrived, they too were mounted as Portees, though they were getting a little heavy for continuously pulling up and down the ramps.

5 CWT truck with Breda 20/65

During WW II Canada produced well over 850.000 military motor vehicles which includes one of the most widely used types: the 4 x 2 type Chevrolet 15 CWT. This vehicle was the backbone of the Australian, British and Canadian Forces but was also supplied to many of the other Allies including the Soviet Union, China and India. The truck was used or transporting troops, ammunition and other war material. The design was based on a British Army design and the vehicle was built by General Motors of Canada as well as in Australia. The engines were also supplied through American manufacturers.

BEDFORD QL with 6 PDR.AT GUN

In 1939 the British War Office placed an order with VAUXHALL MOTORS Ltd of Luton, a British subsidiary of General Motors to design a 3-ton 4×4 truck chassis which would form the basis for various vehicles. Originally this vehicle was built for the transport of 6-pound-guns type M-1 and therefore it was also called Gun-Portee. The gun was placed on the platform of the truck and thus it could not be identified. Thus the Bedford QL truck was created and from 1941 until 1945 a total of 52,245 chassis were produced. The QL was an excellent vehicle and soon became the most numerous tactical 3-tonner of the British armed forces. These models were used on almost all fronts during the Second World War and later served in Korea and the Middle East. In the British forces it was gradually replaced by the model RL.

#

It is important to note that in any battle a significant proportion of the AT fire suffered by British tanks did not come from other tanks at all, as perhaps British tacticians liked to assume, but from towed (ground-mounted) AT guns. The German 5cm gun was particularly potent, and their famous 8.8cm Flak gun even more so, although it was available in far smaller numbers. British tank crews often imagined that they were being hit by tank fire when in fact they were being hit by something much more serious; the literature is crammed with examples of this misconception. This led them to make a false comparison between the supposed power of the Axis tank guns and the perceived weakness of their own – which in turn reinforced the British belief that they did not particularly need to fire HE shells at the enemy. High explosive was not a good weapon against tanks, but was ideal against AT guns. Since the British doctrinal mindset was pre-occupied with tanks fighting other tanks, it simply did not take account of the need to shell AT guns with HE – in diametrical opposition to the German perception of what was needed.

The British believed that they themselves possessed an adequate antitank defence, although it was split into five distinct and different elements. The first was the infantry platoon’s 0.55in Boys AT rifle, which could be useful against very light armour, or sometimes against the flank or rear of heavier tanks, but for nothing much else. The next were the 2-pdr guns fitted on tanks, and the ballistically identical 2-pdr towed guns on ground mountings or portee vehicle mounts. While these guns were recognized as being the best in their category, by 1942 that whole category had become practically obsolete. The fourth prop of British AT defences was provided by the Bofors 40mm quick-firing AA gun, which in practice did some good service with AP shells, but was not often available at the key time or place. Finally and most importantly, there was the incomparable 25-pdr gun-howitzer. This was in fact almost precisely an 8.8cm weapon, although its muzzle velocity was considerably lower than that of the 8.8cm Flak. There were many occasions on which 25-pdrs in the AT role did succeed in beating off the Panzers. A major disadvantage, of course, was that as long as they were firing AP ammunition they could not be firing HE; their dual role thus served to reduce the availability of HE to the British in a ‘tank battle’ still further.

A sixth potential British AT weapon was the 3.7in (92mm) AA gun, which was ballistically better than the German 8.8cm Flak. The question has often been asked why it was not widely used in the same way, to which the answers are many and complicated. There were problems with sights – of which three different types were tried before an effective AT sight was developed – and with the production of AP ammunition. It took about ten minutes to remove the wheels and unfold the static firing platform; and the sheer height of the beast, which did not have a gunshield, made it a more vulnerable target than its German equivalent (although firing both guns kicked up a 100-foot dust cloud). There were also ‘political’ pressures for it to be kept nearer to the Army, Navy and RAF rear base areas than to the front line where it might encounter Panzers. All of these difficulties had been solved in theory by the summer of 1942 (notably by the energetic efforts of Brig Percy Calvert, commander of the 4th Heavy Anti-Aircraft Bde), but with very few exceptions the 3.7in was still not used against tanks.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this was ultimately because British doctrine saw all AT guns as defensive and static weapons, and therefore not really appropriate to take part in a mobile tank battle. If friendly tanks were defeated and forced to fall back upon their AT guns, then all well and good; but pushing the guns forward to accompany an armoured thrust somehow went against the grain. The Germans, by contrast, regarded the deployment of AT guns – including even the heaviest – as an integral part of all tank movements, in the advance no less than the retreat.

https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2018/05/31/british-anti-tank-guns-in-the-desert/

[tachvintlogic]

This is so much worse than a meltdown. Anything not spoken in English is indicated with guillemets (or « ») Words: 4122

Going intangible meant that you could no longer be touched by real world matter. A way of turning on and off the Pauli Exclusion Principle. (It was more complicated than that, but Danny didn't really pay attention to his parents' lectures.)

Intangible things were still affected by gravity. This was really convenient because it takes less than 40 minutes to fall through the Earth and reach the other side.

Elle was currently on the other side of the planet in Australia. Instead of dealing with international flights even more than he was required to, he let Earth's gravity do most of the work for him, then once he slowed down and reached the other side, he would use a map to figure out where he was and where to go from there.

However, this normally mundane trip would come with a very unexpected sight. Just as Danny was passing the core, someone else coming at a different angle fell past. He had just enough time to register them sending a signal that translated to screams of terror before they were too far to see even without a horizon.

Okay.

That was new.

Does...that guy... need help?

He couldn't stop now; he was going too fast for that. He checked his watch. He had a little less than 20 minutes before he reached the other side. That was enough time to make a plan to find that guy.

He was going to need Elle's help for this.

He eventually slowed down thanks to gravity and reached the other side. He started flying before he started falling again and looked up at the sky to check which way was east. It was nighttime and he was currently in the middle of the ocean, so there was no light pollution obscuring the beautiful starry night.

Billions of stars filled the night sky with blue, pink, purple, and white colors. The entire galaxy was visible, making a line through the sky made of clouds of gas and stardust, with the galactic core at the center. Clear as day were the brightest of stars that made of the constellations like the Southern Cross. Really, pictures just did not do it justice.

It was views like these that gave Danny an almost irrational hatred of light-polluting streetlamps. (Though he would argue that it was not irrational at all.)

He floated there for a minute, just to admire it. It wasn’t often he lived somewhere with a view as perfect as this. However, he was still in the middle of the ocean, and couldn’t stay there forever.

He flew east to Western Australia where he was meeting Elle. He was going to tell her all about this, and now that he thought about it a bit more, he was going to need Wulf’s help too, and maybe even a few others.

-------

Wulf got a call from Danny and Elle, his two favorite liminals.

«Hey Wulf! It’s been a while. So I need your help with something.»

«Of course, friend. What do you need help with?»

«There’s this guy who’s falling through the Earth sending out distress signals. We need your help to catch him.»

«We think he might not know how to turn tangible.» said Elle.

«Okay. What do I need to do?»

--------

Turns out the plan was the living do all the math and planning while Wulf does the hard and dangerous part. The hard and dangerous part being getting to the core of the Earth without traveling at 22,000 mph (35,000 km/hr) by the time you reach it.

Wulf could tear an intangible portal there if he knew where that was in the ghost zone. Ghost zone space and Earth space sort of line up but really don’t. Getting to the surface of Earth was easy. Getting anywhere else was hard. So, they were going to have to get there the hard way. Danny had gone ahead and asked his parents if they could lend a hand and procure a jetpack for Wulf. They were all too eager to help.

«Wulf, are you ready?» asked Elle.

«Ready.»

«Are you sure? We could do some more safety tests…»

«Danny! We’ve already done all the safety tests!»

«We can do them again!»

«Friend, if what you saw was real and someone is in trouble, we can’t delay much longer.»

«Alright…»

«Okay! Falling in 5! 4! 3! 2! 1!»

Wulf turned intangible and fell through the floor. Falling faster and faster, until a buzzing noise came from the Fenton Phones in his ear.

«Can you hear me?» said Danny’s voice on the other end.

«Yes.»

«Alright, so you’re coming close to 6 minutes. Activate the jetpack when I say zero.»

There was a brief pause.

«3…2…1…0!»

Wulf clicked the jetpack activating the jetpack. He felt a sudden lurch as his acceleration was abruptly slowed down. His speed on the speedometer the jetpack was equipped with was still increasing, but at a slower rate. He increased the power a little until the needle eventually stopped moving.

«Okay. That worked perfectly. Now we’re going to be keeping this speed for about 15 minutes and then we’re going to want to slow down. Keep your eyes peeled in case the falling guy decides to show up.»

While Wulf fell, Danny and Elle kept him company while he privately wondered how they convinced him to go along with this. Sure, he was the only one who could get back to the surface from the core without much difficulty. He was also the only one of the three who could stay intangible for extremely long periods of time without consequences, while liminals need to breathe sometimes for their organic parts.

Still, they were the ones with training related to staying intangible in hostile environments. Elle was arguably more qualified to do this. She’s done things like this in the ocean plenty of times! He had only gotten the clipnotes of staying-intangible-when-going-tangible-will-certainly-end-you 101.

«Alright, we’ve reached the 15 minute mark. Time to start slowing down.»

Wulf increased the power again and watched the speedometer fall at a steady rate.

«Okay, you seem to be decelerating at a good pace. Keep that up and we should reach just the right spot.»

After many more minutes, Wulf eased off the power as he finally came to a stop just before the very center of the planet. He wasn’t using no power, as even this close to the center of the planet there was some gravitational force that wasn’t being countered by everything above him.

«Position looks good. How are you feeling Wulf?»

«Like if I turn tangible now I will die again.»

«Ha! Yeah that’s maybe true. So don’t do that. You think you’ll be okay there for the next 2 hours?»

«Yes.»

«Hope you don’t get hit by something traveling at—wait let me look this up…Mach 29!» said Elle.

«What? Where did you get that number?»

«Google told me.»

«Let me see…That’s not how the Mach scale works! It’s a ratio between your fluid velocity and the speed of sound in that fluid. There’s no intangible sound because there’s no medium for it to travel through.»

«Well, the closest thing we have to sound is light, but it’s almost the same.» mused Wulf. It was true that there was no way to make sound while intangible. As such, ghosts communicated with light signals that they interpreted as sound.

«Yeah so if we’re using light as sound then it’s impossible to get Mach 1 or higher, unless… wait let me go check if there’s data on the speed of sound in ectoplasm.»

«Hey, Wulf. I got Sam and Tucker on the line if you want to talk to them.»

«Sure.»

«Hi Wulf. It’s Sam. Tucker is busy trying to finish this program last minute. He thinks it will be done in 5 minutes, which actually means it will be done between 10 minutes and 5 hours. How’s the Earth’s core?»

«It is very bright. And very hot though I cannot feel it.» Unlike humans, ghosts and liminals could see things while intangible. Things that were tangible had a hazy-like quality as if they were not really there. However, the core was so dense and bright that it was hard to tell that it wasn’t solid for him at all. It was awe inspiring to think he was at the center of the world. This was the center of where he lived and died. The center of where all human life lived and died.

It was terrifying.

«You know, I know some guys who would really love it if someone could get a look at Earth’s interior up close and personal if you’re interested.»

«I appreciate the offer, but I’ll have to pass. This is enough for me.»

Sometime later, he heard (or perhaps saw, since the signal was carried by light) a distant scream of terror. He checked the ghost finder and it hadn’t detected anything yet. Then, as the screams got louder, it detected something clear as day. The distance between him and the screaming ghost fell to almost nothing in less than a second, and then it was gone.

«Did you get that?»

«Yes! Yes! That’s him! That’s the guy!» shouted Danny. «Tucker! Did you get the data?»

«Yep! Getting a calculation for his coordinates now.»

«Should I come back up now?»

«Yeah! We got no time to lose!»

Wulf tore open a portal and stepped back into the ghost zone. They had tested to make sure an intangible portal could be used underground. Wouldn’t want to get 5,200 °C (9,400 °F) iron in the ghost zone. Fortunately, none of the Earth’s core had come with him.

It took a short while to figure out where he was and how to get somewhere that could lead him back to where Danny and Elle were. When he got back at the lab, it seemed he arrived just in time. Tucker had found the location where the guy was most likely to resurface, and they had only 10 minutes to find him.

The spot was fortunately somewhere that Wulf could easily get all three of them to. Unfortunately, it was in the middle of the ocean. They dived down and split up to try tracking him on their ghost finders and their natural senses. Wulf searched a circle around where Tucker had calculated, Elle searched around that circle, and Danny searched the furthest out.

Looking around at the ocean floor, Wulf could see many strange creatures that were unlike anything he’d seen in life. They were unlike many he had seen in death, but they were also familiar. This strange, dark alien place where gravity was easily overcome by swimming through the surrounding medium reminded him of the ghost zone’s fauna.

But unlike the ghost zone, all these creatures were born here, molded to suit this environment. They were not thrust into it, unable to die without losing the will to live, with many taking refuge on islands where gravity and the surrounding medium felt similar enough to land. For these creatures in the ocean’s depth, this is what the world is and has always been.

No wonder Elle loved studying the oceans so much.

The time limit he should appear grew closer, and Wulf kept a constant eye on the ghost finder. Then, he saw a small blip on the monitor. He spun around trying to figure out which direction the man was coming up from, and then there in the distance he saw a small thin green blob shoot out from the ocean floor.

He flew towards the man as fast as he could, all the while he heard Elle in his earpiece, who was much closer than he was, yell «I got him! I got him! I got him!»

Elle was flying after him from the ocean floor all the way to the ocean’s surface.

«I got him! I got him! Oof! I caught him!» exclaimed Elle through his earpiece.

«I’m coming! Is he okay?» said Danny.

«No, no he isn’t.» He didn’t like Elle’s tone of voice.

Wulf reached the surface and found Elle and the man, and she was right. He was clearly liminal, based on his appearance. His clothes hung loosely on his skeletal frame. While he couldn’t see much of him not covered by his clothes, what could be seen was worrying enough. His cheeks were sunken in, and his arms and legs were practically bone.

But more worrying to Wulf was that his core was utterly silent. How long had he been intangible? How long had his core tried to keep him alive without food, water, or air? It must be so exhausted from that and all the screaming.

There was also the issue that he smelled like the ghost zone equivalent of a septic tank. Wulf didn’t know where this guy came from, or how he became liminal, but it wasn’t from using anything good quality. He didn’t know ectoplasm could smell this bad.

“Come on dude turn back!” yelled Elle. When she saw Wulf, she offered him the guy’s hand. «This guy won’t turn tangible.»

He grabbed the man’s hand and focused. Trying to send the right signals to coax his core into turning tangible so he could breathe again. Danny flew out of the water and grabbed onto the man as well and pushed.

With all three ghosts pushing and coaxing, the man was forced to turn tangible. Immediately his eyes flew open, and he gasped for air. Then his eyes rolled into the back of his head as he made short gasping breaths.

«He needs a hospital.» said Danny quickly while looking at Wulf, who didn’t need to be told twice.

------

When Jason came too, he felt so, so tired. He slowly opened his eyes and closed them again. He wanted to go back to sleep.

Wait…where was he exactly?

He opened his eyes again and looked around. He was propped up in a hospital bed with an IV in one arm. The tips going into his arm were green and secured by bandages that also had a light green tint.

He angled his neck for a better view and wow, his neck felt sore. How long has it been since he moved it? Looking closer at his arms, they were a lot smaller than he remembered them being. How long has he been out?

He sat up, something his complaining muscles and joints confirmed he hadn’t done for a while, and he looked around the room. It was a hospital room, or at least someone put a lot of effort to make it look like a hospital room. The floor, walls, and ceiling were a soft white. Beside his bed was a cabinet and some machines humming and beeping. On the other side, there was a tall potted plant, and a few more plants by chairs that were probably for visitors. The room was illuminated by sunlight coming from the giant window. The blinders made it difficult to tell where in Gotham he was if he was in Gotham at all.

The only weird thing about the room were the doors. They were double doors, wider than normal double doors and twice the height. There were 3 sets of door handles: one averaged sized, one little person sized, and one giant sized.

It was nice to see accommodations for little people, but who was being accommodated with the giant handles? Not that people like Killer Croc and King Shark shouldn’t have accommodations so they could fit into doors. It was just weird because those accommodations were super rare.

Jason looked back at the IV in his arm. Now, Jason wasn’t stupid. Pulling out an IV was a very bad and stupid idea. It risked getting blood everywhere and was also very inconsiderate to the nice nurses, doctors, and Alfred trying to keep him alive.

However, waking up in a hospital bed when you don’t expect to wake up in a hospital bed with unknown fluids getting injected into your veins is, in his line of work, very bad. It could be anything from a supervillain plot to illegal experimentation to plain old torture. And while he was leaning on the side of this being an actual hospital, he couldn’t be sure.

He tried lifting his other arm and with what felt like a herculean effort, was able to drop it on his torso. Yeah, he wasn’t ripping the IVs out anytime soon.

His vision was getting blurry, his eyelids were heavy, and god damn it he was tired. He looked at the door and wondered if someone like a nurse, or maybe a mad scientist was going to come through soon. Maybe if he just…rests his eyes a bit…

Jason woke up not sure when he had fallen asleep. He looked around and saw he was in the same hospital room he had woken up in last time. Everything looked the same except that it was later in the day judging by the sunlight.

What was he worried about again?

Oh yeah, this not actually being a hospital.

He tentatively lifted his leg and felt a tube he had noticed before. Where was it going? It seemed to lead to—

Oh.

Huh.

Okay.

That suggested he had been here a while. He also didn’t know how to remove that. He hoped this was a real hospital, because if not, escaping was going to suck.

Thankfully a nurse or doctor came in around that same time. She walked into the room and when she saw he had his eyes open, she smiled.

“Looks like you’re awake! Hello, I’m Dr. Foley. How are you feeling?” That was a very midwestern accent.

“Kay,” he croaked. On second thought, “tired.”

“Anything hurt?

“Na really.” She was being very nice. Evil doctors didn’t act like this. Well, unless it was a ruse. Considering the effort put into his hospital room, that kind of effort wouldn’t be surprising.

She nodded. “What’s—" Everything she said next was garbled noise.

“Huh?”

“I asked what’s your name?”

“Oh, uh, Jason. Jason…Smith”

“Okay, Mr. Smith. How old are you?”

“21. Where am I?”

“You’re Central Mercy Hospital, in Amity Park, Illinois.”

It was a hospital; that was good. It wasn’t in Gotham; that was bad. How did he end up here?

“Why am I here?”

She sat down in a chair next to his bed. “Well, you’ve were admitted here 10 days ago for severe malnutrition, dehydration, and oxygen deprivation, if that makes sense.”

It didn’t. “How did I get here?”

“You mean to ask what caused any of this to be necessary?”

“Yeah.”

She pursed her lips. “Before I explain that, is it okay if I ask you a few more questions just to gauge how much I’m going to need to explain?”

“Yeah. Sure.” He was feeling more awake now. And also wondering why she was beating around the bush.

“Okay, first of all, what’s the last thing you remember?”

He furrowed his brow. He was trying to snuff out a rival gang. It turned ugly and he was hiding behind cover, looking for a way out. He thought if only he could sneak past them without being seen, everything would be fine. And then…

“I was in a fight, and then I think I was falling? And then it got really bright. I think that’s it.”

She nodded. “Now this may sound strange but, did you at any point die and were resurrected? Or did something happen to you that should have killed you but didn’t?”

The fuck? How…does she know about that? How could she possibly know about that? Was this an actual hospital?? “Maybe,” he answered cautiously, with a suspicious glare.

She ignored the glare. “Did this come with any side effects that might get you classified as a meta? In particular, were you able to float in mid-air, turn invisible, or walk through walls after this event?”

That…wasn’t what he expected the next question to be, and abruptly defused his anger. “Um, no?”

She pursed her lips again, “So, it turns out that your death and resurrection did come with those side effects. You can turn intangible which lets you go through walls and fall through the floor. That’s the reason you’re here. Are you following me?

“Yeah,” he said bewildered.

“So you fell through the floor, and I assume you didn’t know how to turn tangible again, so you fell all the way down to the center of the earth.” She moved a finger down to trace the path that Jason took. “Then as you passed the center you started slowing down all the way until you reached the surface again,” Her finger stopped. “And then you started falling again. And this repeated over and over again until you were rescued.” She moved her finger up and down illustrating Jason’s going up and down through the earth.

And then he remembered. He fell into the bright light, then slowed down and hovered over land or sea, and then fell again. And again. And again into the bright light. He passed out. He woke up and started screaming for help. He gave up. He screamed some more. He lost track of time. He passed out again. He screamed. He gave up all hope for a rescue. He cried. He begged for help. He screamed. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t breathe.

He could hear her, distantly, speaking in a calming and reassuring tone, and he tried to slow down his breathing and take deep breaths, but then it stopped. He couldn’t hear her. Jason turned and stared at Dr. Foley. He could see right through her. She said something, but he couldn’t hear her. He lifted his free hand and it…it…

It went right through her.

He gasped and froze. He didn’t feel any air enter his lungs. He clutched his chest and inhaled again, but there was nothing. He couldn’t breathe! He couldn’t breathe! He couldn’t breathe!

Suddenly he felt a shock and yelped. He gasped and he could breathe again. He took a deep breath in relief. In and out. In and out. He was so relieved he didn’t hear someone trying to talk to him until they said his first name.

“Jason?”

He looked over at Dr. Foley, who was standing with her hand by a red button on a machine he didn’t notice before. “Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, still breathing heavily, “What… what happened?” he slurred.

“You turned intangible.”

“…Oh.”

“I understand this is all very new and scary for you.”

“My hand went right through you.”

“But you didn’t fall through the bed.”

Jason lied there confused as his mind puzzled over that statement. He didn’t go through the bed.

“All the equipment we use in the liminal and paranormal ward is specifically designed so you can’t go through them. You can’t go through the walls or fall through the floor. I know that this is very new and scary for you,” she put her hand and his free one, and he squeezed it, “but you are not going to fall again.”

“How… long was I falling?”

“What’s the last date you remember?”

“Um… March 24th 2019?”

“It’s currently April 10th same year, and you were admitted 10 days ago on March 31st, so you were falling for a week. One of the liminals that I treat found you and he and his friends brought you here. You are quite lucky they found you when they did.”

“How…How am I alive?”

“Because you’re liminal. To put it simply, it’s when a ghost forms and becomes irreversibly attached to and dependent on their original body, often as the person is dying. This resurrects the body, and they are alive again.

“Without air or food or water, your body sort of pauses most processes and your ghost half takes charge until it runs out of fuel. Even so, being without oxygen for so long took a toll on your body, and it will take some time to recover.”

“Okay.” Jason was still trying to not freak out from turning intangible.

So I’m going to check your motor control, and then do you think you can stand?”

“Don’t know.”

“Alright then, so we’ll at some point see if you can take things in your stomach and slowly transition you to solid foods. Then we’ll do some physical therapy and get an instructor for you powers so this doesn’t happen again.”

“Okay,” said Jason. Maybe this was going to be fine. He was going to get better and make sure this didn’t happen again.

Short DP X DC Prompts #24

Jason not knowing how to control his halfa abilities so he accidentally goes intangible for a full week and he goes into a full meltdown because that is fucking terrifying.

[the-daily-tizzy]

Something else to stimulate your imagination...

Ian Rutherford Plimer is an Australian geologist, professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, and the director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies. He has published 130 scientific papers, six books and edited the Encyclopedia of Geology. ====×==== Where Does the Carbon Dioxide Really Come From? Okay, here's the bombshell. The volcanic eruption in Iceland . Since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet - all of you. Of course, you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress - it's that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans and all animal life. I know….it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kids "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cent light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs…..well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days. The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in just four days - yes, FOUR DAYS - by that volcano in Iceland has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud at any one time - EVERY DAY. I don't really want to rain on your parade too much, but I should mention that when the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth. Yes, folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over One year - think about it. Of course, I shouldn't spoil this 'touchy-feely tree-hugging' moment and mention the effect of solar and cosmic activity and the well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keeps happening despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate change. And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud, but the fact of the matter is that the bush fire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year. Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping carbon tax on you, on the basis of the bogus 'human-caused' climate-change scenario. Hey, isn't it interesting how "they" don't mention 'Global Warming' anymore, but just 'Climate Change'. You know why? It's because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming bull artists got caught with their pants down. And, just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme - that whopping new tax - imposed on you that will achieve absolutely nothing except make you poorer. It won't stop any volcanoes from erupting, that's for sure. But, hey, relax... ...give the world a hug and have a nice day!"

[hufflepuff-ravenclaw-reviews]

The Librarians Season 4

And the Dark Secret

So with the start of a new season, arises a new problem. This season's overall minor problem that will carry over for the entire 12 episodes? The Tethering Ceremony. The Library needs a Librarian and a Guardian to tether to it, and, since the last ones have gone now, it's up to Eve and Flynn to do so.

However, we obviously can't solve this in the first few minutes of the first episode if this is going to be a problem for literally the entire season!

So, onward to the actual plot of this episode. There are four cornerstones of the Library of Alexandria, and when they're combined, then they can manifest the physical Library. Jenkins likened what it would be like in a metaphor: imagine Google cloud, and all of the information that it's full of. Now imagine if somebody were to turn The Cloud physical. BOOM goes that data... and squish go lots of people.

As you might have guessed, there's some group who's trying to put them together... because reasons. The reasons aren't important.

However, Jenkins comes up with a plan to get ahead of this group: he's been secretly keeping Nicole down in a basement jail cell for the past hundred years. Just who is Nicole, you ask? She's the previous Guardian, from before Eve. (If you've ever seen the movies, she's from them.) However, there was an accident with HG Well's time machine that sent her spinning backwards 500 years. And now she's immortal... and pissed as hell at literally everything. (Especially Jenkins, but who can blame her? 100 years in a fucking dungeon. Yikes.)

Anyway, with Nicole's help, they figure out how to get to the corner stones, but it's almost too late, as the group already has them, and already has them TOGETHER. However, Cassie destroys one of the corner stones, but the Library is up there, still physical, just unstable. Nicole and Flynn get sucked into the whirling vortex of it, so Eve has to go and get them. Which she does, because she's Eve Baird.

However, when the Librarians are congratulating each other on a job well done... Nicole slips away, to be a problem for another couple of episodes.

And The Steal of Fortune

This episode kicks off when Jake takes Zeke to visit an old friend of his, who has a race horse. However, some men come and take the horse away because the guy apparently lost the horse in a game of cards. Just then, the man is stung by a bee, and starts to have a VERY bad reaction. At the hospital, Jake and Zeke see... a lot of freak accidents. Like being stabbed through the leg with a weather vein, head stuck in decorative headboard, struck by lightening... They begin to suspect that not all is right with this town, and that something magical is afoot.

So they bring the others to the race track, where they're rather disturbed to discover that, upon the completion of the horse race, literally nobody won. NOBODY. That is statistically impossible, as Cassie might say.

Their instincts tell them that it's the track/casino owner, so they set out to steal his ring. But not before Zeke hits the slots and Cassie tries out the roulette table. Zeke is upset about not winning (although, dude, come on. If you want to win, try cards.) So... he does what Ezekiel Jones does best: hack the machine. Cassie, on the other hand, uses math and physics of the ball/wheel to triangulate where the ball will drop.

As it turns out, it's not the owner, but rather, his “arm candy”, who turns out to be the Greek/Roman Goddess, Fortuna. She was turned into a statue some time ago by... I want to say Jupiter? For wanting to turn everything into a 100% luck based system. She was then put in front of a casino, where thousands upon thousands of people rubbed her feet and legs for good luck as they came and went. And one day... poof! Turned real. She sucks luck out from people, which is what keeps the casino/track open and in such good business.

She can also steal luck from people over the TV, so there's video of her blowing kisses all over the casino floor. Her grand plan is to steal the luck from everybody in the world by blowing a kiss on nationally broadcast TV.

However, the team realizes that they can stop her by giving luck to others. Cassie and Zeke have been rendered immune from their previous “cheat the system” actions. So, Zeke sets out to rig all of the slot machines, while Cassie helps people to win at Roulette. Jake gets all but one of the horse jockeys to watch the blowing kiss video, and then Zeke sets up so that everybody's bets were placed on the horse whose jockey didn't watch the video.

And, when everybody discovers that their horse won the race (well, literally the only one who crossed the finish line, but it counts!), Fortuna turns back into a statue. She's then transported back to the Library, where she won't be awoken any time soon...

Oh, and Jake makes sure to get his friend his horse back. So, happy endings all around!

And The Christmas Thief

This episode kicks off with Eve, Flynn, and Jenkins going off with Santa for a vacation, while Cassie, Zeke, and Jake have to stay behind and “babysit” Santa's sleigh. (Why they need a special task just to watch an inanimate object is beyond me, but here we are.)

Almost as soon as the three of them set off, Zeke heads home to Australia, where it's All ThanksTaking/ThanksThieving Day. It's a day for the patron saint of thieves. Zeke's family, which is a woman who took in three girls and Zeke, are all petty thieves who have a literal shrine to this saint, which is decorated with the price stickers and tags of things that they stole. However, Zeke's mum is disappointed that Zeke bought her a trinket rather than to steal it. His sisters also won't stop mocking him about a Faberge egg that he gave her some time ago.

Zeke doesn't want to be a disappointment to his mum, so he takes her to the Library, where... surprise surprise, she steals the magic globe that lets them open doors and go anywhere. With no other way to get back to her and to get the globe back, Cassie, Jake, and Zeke obviously take Santa's sleigh to Australia, where they discover that she's been on a... thieving spree.

But, she has stolen something from this bank for thieves, which is exactly what you think it is... and the punishment for being caught doing something bad is to be literally liquidated. (Haha, get it? Liquidate your assets? /SFW adult humor) Also, in the bank, Zeke's mum overhears a teller appraising another Faberge Egg at like a million dollars, and she's surprised, because apparently, she had no idea what it was or how much that they could be worth. So... ha, I guess?

The owner of this bank is the saint of thieves, or, as he'd probably not like to be remembered as: Santa's brother. He wants Santa's sleigh... because reasons. So obviously Zeke and his mum get caught, “hand over the sleigh, or else”, blah-blah-blah...

Meanwhile, Cassie and Jake call in Jenkins for some help. Jenkins is more than eager to get away from Santa's party, which would make a Spring Break party look tame in comparison.

In the end, Jenkins gives the saint a letter from Santa that says “the sleigh is now yours!” He cannot accept anything that isn't stolen, and, since it was legally given to him, he can't accept the sleigh. And, to make matters even more confusing, he reverts back to a child.

But now Zeke's mum is left with all of the other stuff she stole. So, with Santa's sleigh, the two of them go and, not only do they return everything, but they try to one-up what was taken and make people feel good. So like a child gets a train set around his bed, and an old man with an old TV (you know, the kind with the rabbit ears) gets a new smart TV, and so on. Zeke's mum gets really into the spirit of giving, and is actually disappointed that there's nothing left to give back.

Zeke then imparts that his mum is actually a really good person, because she took in four kids and raised them. And sure, they're thieves, but they're decent people.

And The Silver Screen

As Eve and Flynn go on a date to an old black and white detective movie screening, the two of them get sucked into the movie. 24 hours later, Jenkins, Cassie, Jake, and Zeke go to investigate, because they never came back. They talk to the theater owner for a minute, who shows them that Eve and Flynn are literally in the opening scene of the movie that they went to see, but they can neither hear nor see anybody on the outside.

Eve and Flynn eventually realize that they need to reenact the movie, which is a pretty standard magical thing. Eve's seen the movie a billion times, so she knows exactly what's going to happen, so she helps coach Flynn through everything.

While that's going on, the others are desperate to try and figure out how to help them. Unfortunately, Cassie, Zeke, and Jake get sucked into a movie... but the wrong one! They end up in another screening, of a really awful western. (By the same director/writer. They're all by the same writer/director.)

Jenkins does a metaphorical headdesk for a while before he gets down to work with the theater owner/daughter of the movie director. She's kept all of her father's things, and they search through everything in order to find the magical object that keeps sending people into the movies.

Eve and Flynn, meanwhile, reached the end of the movie, only to just jump right back to the beginning. They start to think that there's something wrong that they should be doing, despite having done the movie the exact way that it should have been. So instead of asking the hot dame who comes in looking for her ruby necklace about the usual questions... they ask what she's really after: her daughter, Pearl.

The entire ending of the movie was changed at the last minute, and completely rewritten, as Jenkins and the daughter discover out in the real world. The original ending was literally ripped out of the script. Oh, and the director... didn't actually WRITE any of these movies, and it's some random person that the daughter doesn't know about, aside from their name.

The actual ending of the film noir movie is that the mother is reunited with her daughter, who was taken from her by the girl's vengeful father. This is a reflection of what happened to the actual writer's life: she had a baby with the director, and he took the daughter from her and left the mother to rot. (Oh, and Zeke, Cassie, and Jake show up to help Eve and Flynn save the day... but not before jumping through an even worse sci-fi movie, so they're wearing blue lipstick and spandex.) With the completion of the actual movie ending, everybody is dumped back into the real world... sans spandex and hair-spray.

And then, as it turns out... surprise! The old lady who'd been hanging around the theater is actually 1) the theater owner's biological mother and 2) the woman who wrote all of the scripts in the first place. So they're reunited, and everybody lived happily, ever after.

And the Bleeding Crown

Imagine, going to bed a high school senior, and waking up a literal senior citizen. It happened in one town... and not just to one kid. To literally everybody. Adults, children, literal babies. All turn to ~70 years old.

Obviously, this seems like a job for The Librarians, who arrive and start poking around, asking questions. They finally uncover one family who is normal, and that's only because they're so poor, they couldn't afford to pay their power bill, so... the magic didn't affect them.

Meanwhile, Flynn runs across somebody completely unexpected: Darrington Dare, one of the previous Librarians from around the Victorian Era. He fell through time on accident, thanks to his nemesis, Ambrose. Ambrose has some sort of... bleeding crown which he is using to suck the youth from everybody in town.

He also captured Eve, Cassie, Zeke, and Jake, and replaced them with old-looking doppelgangers, which he then uses to infiltrate the library. Poor Jenkins.

Also, during this entire time, Darrington keeps telling Flynn that he cannot allow the other Librarians to continue, for the last time there were multiple Librarians... well, have you ever heard of The Dark Ages? Totally caused by warring Librarian brothers. However, Flynn insists that friends help each other out better than just being by yourself all of the time. Oh, and the Library chose all three of them for a reason.

They manage to defeat the Bleeding Crown by putting Jenkins in one of the pods that's sucking the life from the others. The machine is overpowered and the crown breaks.

Jenkins later sends Darrington back to his own time. They are a little sad to see him go, since they know that he's approaching his own end, which they obviously know a lot about from Library records. However, the second he goes back, the records change to show that he reconnected with his friends, who were there when Darrington should have died. He instead lived to be really old instead of dying literally the next day.

But now, the seeds of doubt about the Rightful Librarian have been planted.

And the Graves of Time

And now we're back with Nicole. Because I think that we all knew that she wouldn't stay gone forever. As you might imagine, being an immortal who looks in her mid to late 30's, she has to frequently move on a lot. So this means that she's got a lot of gravesites all over... And she uses them to hide important things. Like... some sort of device that can kill immortals?

Eve joins up with her... not to stop her, but rather, to try and convince Nicole to come back to the Library. Nicole permits Eve to be with her, but only because she finds Eve mildly useful. For the moment.

The others, in the meantime, are worried that Eve is in trouble, and they try to track Nicole down. Jenkins worries about the nefarious plot that Nicole must be plotting, especially with the immortal-killing device, which he believes is intended for him.

Jenkins and Eve eventually get grabbed by the people who are also trying to get the key, but these people are also working to stop Nicole as well. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that. The man exposes that Nicole was once besties with Rasputin. Yes, of Anastasia fame. (No, the real one.) While they're being turned against Nicole once and for all, Flynn and Nicole make it to where this device is located... and get it.

Only for Jenkins and Eve to come around and try to stop them. Only for them to be double crossed. Because as it turns out, their new friend... WAS ACTUALLY RASPUTIN. Okay. Because I didn't see it coming at all. /sarcasm.

However, Nicole's plan all along was to kill Rasputin, because... um... let's see... HE EVIL?! He however, gets a hold of the blade and uses it to stab Nicole instead.

Flynn and Eve then manage to defeat Rasputin by having him stab at a nuclear... holding thing? (They're in Chernobyl, aka that nuclear waste-site, so there's plenty to go around.) He might be immortal, but not even he can deal with some of that shit.

They rush back to the Library, where Jenkins is getting a ceremony ready to save Nicole. However, this means that he gives her his immortality, and makes him mortal.

Also, throughout the entire time that Nicole was with Flynn, she was planting the seeds of doubt in his head, and telling him that the Library was keeping him a prisoner. However, at the end of the episode, Eve shows up to go on the promised bowling date with Flynn, only to hear from Jenkins that Flynn has resigned!!

And the Disenchanted Forest

Following Flynn's disappearance, the remaining three Librarians are starting to fight amongst themselves about who should tether to the Library/Eve. They all think that they should be the one to do it, obviously, and for varying reasons.

Eve decides to whip them into shape, by taking them on a team building retreat... which is also where the clippings book has sent them.

At the camp, Eve is struck by how odd that one team seems to react towards her. Zeke also overhears one of the camp teachers asking another why so many people just... disappear from the camp.

But, Eve's wishes are overshadowed by everything, and she has a mean competitive streak. So she sets out to figure out why these people are so into her... only to find out that they're DOSA. You guys remember DOSA from last season, right? The government version of the Library? Anyway, they're there because strange things keep happening, and people keep vanishing.

Jake, meanwhile, has the hots for the arts and crafts director, who seems to think that there's something odd going on in the camp. He gets a mysterious splinter in his hand, though, and he cannot get it out. (Yes, it's relevant, and not just a camp-related injury.)

Cassie, meanwhile, having been extremely limited on her human interactions, has never been to camp, and thus, has never done camp pranks. She fulfills this itch on Zeke, by doing stuff like putting whipped cream on his hand while he's asleep and then tickling his nose. They unveil a clue when she puts his mattress in the middle of the lake, he falls in... and discovers a briefcase at the bottom of the lake. The briefcase belongs to a man who disappeared earlier that day.

They all rush to tell each other what they learned on their own. And then things go from suspicious to awful when Jake just gets grabbed by some vines and dragged away. Thankfully, the pretty arts and crafts director witnessed everything, and runs to tell the others. The Librarians demand that DOSA tell them everything, which they do: this area is a magical Bermuda triangle, where things just... disappear. These instances have been happening since the Lewis and Clark expedition first discovered the area. The area was owned by the government, until the current camp director came and pulled some strings and bought the land from a crooked politician. Le sigh.

However, they can't seem to find the Mother Tree of the forested area, so that's why they keep coming to the camp. But, with Cassie's know-how, they manage to figure it out, and they go there. Only to find that Jake... is now Groot! The tree uses Jake to talk to them, and basically says this: we don't want the forests of the world to die, so here! Take this magical seed and if anything were to happen to the forests, use the seed to replant all of the trees. The tree then spits out all of the people it “ate”, including some very confused-looking people from the Lewis and Clark era. Whoops?

DOSA also makes sure that no idiot can “sell” the land around there ever again, so that things like this will stop happening. Idiots.

And the Hidden Sanctuary

Cassandra is having more than a little PTSD following a mission in which everybody almost died... and it was all her fault. We don't really see much of this incident, however, only just how it affected her. She decides to take a vacation from the Library to sort through her thoughts, and goes to “the safest town on earth”.

The town in question is celebrating 100,000 days without an accident. Cassie also finds it rather odd that there's no traffic or stop signs or anything of that sort. She also watches as a man with so much in his arms that he literally cannot see... step off the curb, into traffic, avoid being hit by a car, walks under the people putting up the 100k days sign, all without incident.

However, she KNOWS that things are suspicious here, but at the same time, she doesn't want to think that anything is off. Because she wants to be safe.

And she's not the only one. Most of the town is the same way, including the lady that Cassie rents a room from. However, it's the lady's tween son who is the one who is asking the real questions. He keeps checking out thriller books like Stepford Wives and Invasion of the Body Snatchers from the library, where Cassie now works. However, his mother warns Cassie not to be putting ideas into her son's head, because the outside world is just Not Safe.

However, as you might have figured out, good times must eventually come to an end. And the next thing anybody knows, somebody ends up with a broken leg... which can't even be treated properly, because the town doesn't even have a hospital or an ambulance, or even a fire truck. Because they were never needed. Ever.

Cassie asks everybody at the town meeting if there have been anything strange that has happened the past few days, and everybody looks to Cassie, because she's the latest to come to the town. They start to form a lynch mob, and she obviously books it out of there.

She teams up with the son, who has a secret room full of stuff about how weird that the town is. They come to the conclusion that it must be some sort of fairy, because it's in all of the pictures that he took of stuff NOT happening (but as a lens flair). They go to the library to capture the fairy, only for the mayor to come and capture it first.

Years ago, as a boy, he came across the fairy. He was upset because his dad had died in a recent car accident. As a thanks for rescuing the fairy, he was allowed one wish, and he only just wanted for nobody to ever be hurt. Ever. And I get it. It comes from a good place.

However, imprisoning the fairy for so long has only made it super angry, as you might imagine. So after the son smashes the snow globe that it was kept in, it just... gets really big and goes on a rampage.

Cassie and the rest of the town (who no longer want to kill her, since they know the reason for everything), come up with a plan and agree to trap the fairy in the gazebo, which is made of iron. The plan works, and the son sets the fairy free.

The head librarian becomes the new mayor, and starts to work to bring the town up to modern safety standards. Cassie, meanwhile, sets back for the Library, having overcome her PTSD while on her solo-mission, and come to the realization that she would get tired of “boring” and “normal”.

And A Town Called Feud

Cassie, Jake, and Zeke are still fighting over who should tether. Meanwhile, the clippings book sends them to some Civil War Reenactment sight, where ghosts were apparently spotted. Cassie stays behind with Jenkins, while Jake and Zeke set off with Eve.

The town is literally called Feud, and it's the sight of some famous brothers who were on opposite sides of the war, and killed one another. On her deathbed, their mother broke the locket with pictures of her sons and gave them each the halves. They've had one half for a while now, but now... they have the other half, so they're going to put the two halves together in a big ceremony tomorrow.

Needless to say, the Librarians all seem to think that this would be a very bad idea. However, the museum curator is determined to stop them, and scoffs at them whenever they mention seeing any ghosts. Including a literal troop just... marching through the museum. (How do you not notice that?!)

She eventually has them arrested for breaking into the museum after hours and trying to steal the locket halves. They manage to break out of prison using both the skills of Jake and Zeke, and they rush to the museum... only to witness as the woman puts the two locket halves together again.

Suddenly!! Civil war ghosts! They possess the bodies of everybody present, and form a notable divide. Then, the ghosts of the two brothers possess Jake and Zeke, and point their guns at each other. However, both Jake and Zeke don't want to actually kill one another, so they don't, and neither do the ghosts inhabiting the crowd.

As it turns out, the entire story of Feud was made up as a tourist trap. Yes, the brothers had been on opposite sides, yes, the locket had been broken... but they faced each other in battle and realized that they couldn't kill their brother. But, the war raged on around them, and they were both killed at the same time. The woman found the locket together, but split it apart to sell a story.

However, Zeke convinces her that the actual truth sounds much better, and to rename the town. So the ghosts are appeased, and go back to the other side once more.

Zeke and Jake have also learned an important lesson about teamwork and loving one another.

But, while they were doing that, Jenkins and Cassie were trying to track down the belongings of the brothers who were Librarians and set the world into the Dark Ages. We don't find out what was in their letters to one another, only just that when Jake, Zeke, and Eve get back and announce that there should be multiple Librarians, Cassie announces that she's changed her mind and now thinks that there should be only one instead.

And Some Dude Named Jeff (Yes, actual episode title)

This episode starts off by showing us that Jenkins and the titular “some dude named Jeff” have switched bodies. Jeff, as you might imagine, is over the moon about everything. However, his over-eagerness, unprofessionalism, and general lack of knowledge about... anything, is what tips the Librarians and Eve off that he isn't actually Jenkins.

Jenkins, meanwhile, is first baffled, then outraged, to find out what has happened to him. Jeff's mom is an overbearing control freak who lashes out at her son following the death of her husband/Jeff's dad. Jeff works at some IT job (probably for minimum wage), with a bunch of losers. Said losers are seemingly his only friends, and they all play D&D in Jeff's basement... where he lives. Yes, Jeff is easily in his mid-30's.

But, Jenkins isn't going to just sit back and become Jeff... especially not when he realizes that the D&D characters are literally the Librarians, Eve, and himself. So, he tells them who he is and what happened... and they're oddly chill about the entire thing. He spends some time whipping them into shape in order to get into the Library via the back door, because it takes multiple people and a team-effort in order to do so.

Meanwhile, the book that Jeff used to switch bodies with Jenkins turns out to be some sort of binding spell used to seal a Prince of Hell up. He escapes while in the Library, and the Librarians are even more annoyed that they're going to have to deal with that as well.

Meanwhile, Jenkins gets Jeff's friends into the back door, where they're faced with a puzzle, but with every wrong move, the room grows more unstable. They finally figure it out: 20 sided die. The next room is literally just a big DDR arena, which they have to dance across. Jenkins is embarrassed to have to do it, but he does so only reluctantly. The final room is... literally nothing. Just a vast, white room that echoes slightly. Jenkins has a bit of an emotional breakdown, and one of the friends gives him a pep-talk about not giving up. Then they realize that they can “crack” the walls by pounding on the floor, which they do, and end up in the front entrance of the library. Jenkins sends them all home while he deals with whatever horrors await him in the library.

He finds the Librarians and Eve cocooned in stuff, but Jeff is running around in a panic. Jenkins then realizes that Jeff gave this demonic ruby thing that was in the book to his mom, so they rush over there to stop the Prince of Hell from killing Jeff's mom. Which it is about to do.

In the end, Jeff manages to distract the demon with a red ring pop, and that gives Jenkins the opening in order to put the beast back into the book. Oh, and before they left, Jenkins and Jeff took a potion that would switch them back, but they didn't switch back until they were battling the demon.

They all learned an important lesson... although some a little bit more life-and-death than others. Also, the episode ends with Jenkins going to Jeff's place to play D&D with them... although he insists on being the dungeon master, but only because the current one doesn't know anything about anything.

And the Trial of One

The Library is starting to become untethered, as the time for the ceremony draws closer. Jenkins unknowingly leaves out a scroll that contains a spell for “the one”, so they decide to perform it. They get transported to the middle of a forest, where a being in Jenkins's body says that it'll kill Jenkins if they don't agree to go along. It gives them all “nightmare rings” to put on, and sends them to face their fears.

Cassie's fear is a school field trip where she was relentlessly bullied by her classmates, and the teacher apparently just looked the other way.

Jake's is that he goes to some witch doctor to get his magical tattoo removed, only for things to go very badly.

Zeke's is that he's in prison. Which he's not really scared of, and he knows that it's not real.

And Eve... she's technically not a Librarian, but her fear is that she's stuck just watching all of this bad shit happen to her Librarians, and there's nothing that she can do.

As the Librarians's fears unfold, they come face to face with the other two, who are the ones who are torturing them. Jake and Zeke are Cassie's classmates. Cassie and Zeke are evil witches/warlocks. Cassie and Jake are a guard and violent prisoner who want to beat Zeke up. They all eventually succumb to their fear and press the magical button to make them forget.

Once they do so, then they're transported to a field with these... they sort of look like really big grave stones, I guess? There, not!Jenkins tells them that he is in danger, and they have to get to the other side of the field to press the button, but they also have to deal with the other two, who are evil. He says this to all three of them at the same time. He also gives them things to use.

So they all start to fight. Just then, Eve realizes that she has a nightmare ring on as well, which she takes off, and is transported into the arena just as they're about to kill one another. They suddenly remember everything upon seeing her, and they become ashamed of what they almost did.

Just then, not!Jenkins shows up and warns them that only one can win or else Jenkins will be killed. They argue about who should sacrifice themselves for a while, before they decide to take the “suicide vest” off of Jenkins.

However, just when they get back to the Library, the vest comes flying back and stabs him in the heart. And I'd like to remind you that Jenkins gave his immortality to Nicole several episodes ago, so he's been dealing with that for half of the season. They try to save him, but they cannot, and he dies.

They're all so upset that they resign from the Library following a short funeral for Jenkins.

Just as the three Librarians leave Eve alone in the Library, Nicole shows up to gloat... This was all according to plan! And oh no! The Library is starting to untether to reality!! And... it's gone!!!

And the Echoes of Memory

Eve is now in a world without knowledge, where everything is literally black and white, and things like good tasting food don't exist. She struggles to remember the Library, and comes up with three things: Spear of Destiny, lions by the front entrance, Ark of the Covenant.

She finds a TV with a recorded message from Flynn, who was captured by Nicole, and didn't actually resign from the Library. He urges her to gather the others and to remember everything. The TV goes back to its normal programming, where Eve sees an ad for a used car lot... owned by Jacob Stone.

So she goes to him, and convinces him to help her. There, they track down Cassie, who works as... a stapler. Because that's apparently a very important job. She's obsessed with math still, and they convince her to come with them because of that.

However, some g-men show up, so they have to make a quick exit from Cassie's... stapling office? I don't even know anymore. As they leave, Eve asks how they're going to find Ezekiel Jones, but then they say that it's easy, because he's the host of the only TV show in existence: I Fell Down. (If anybody here is familiar with Idiocracy, it's basically a tame version of “Ow! My Balls!”)

However, Zeke has a very comfortable job, and doesn't want to leave it, so he rats Eve out. She gets sent to what's basically the looney bin, where they reprogram people not to think. What kind of thinking gets you in trouble in this world, you ask? Questions like “when was flour invented” and “what does fruit taste like”.

Flynn is also there, and he's just as zaney as usual... if a bit toned down. Nicole doesn't want to do anything permanent to him, so she just keeps zapping him. Eve, meanwhile, has been forgetting more and more, until she doesn't even remember what books are. She follows Flynn being taken down to his room in the basement following another one of his treatments, where she finds that he's “recreated” artifacts and memories by drawing on paper and sticking them behind the wall padding. They kiss, and they remember everything, and they're also transported back to the Library for a few seconds. Nicole comes in, however, realizes what happened, and says that it's time to make them forget. Forever.

Meanwhile, Jake and Cassie realize that they can't just sit back and let bad things happen to Eve. Not when they themselves are starting to remember. They grab Zeke, who only reluctantly goes along. But once they get to the looney bin, they start to remember more and more, which enables them to get into the building.

They free Eve first, and then they take down some guards to get Flynn. Then, being chased by even more guards and some doctors, as well as Nicole, they barricade themselves in an area and they have to remember the library. Which they do, and remembering it brings everything back to normal.

Only... some things weren't fixed. Like Jenkins being dead now.

Flynn grabs this magical artifact and this book that has the history of everything in it, and uses it to jump to the moment when Nicole was about to become immortal. He doesn't take her back, however, but reminds her to be strong, because she is a Guardian. She realizes that she's not a Guardian of a Librarian, but rather, of the Library.

Flynn wakes up... and he's back in the opening of the first episode again. Jenkins is still alive, and literally none of that other stuff happened. Except, Nicole came through and things like the corner stones of Alexandria and that immortal-killing thing are safe in the library.

Eve also remembers everything, and they both eagerly hug Jenkins when he shows up. Flynn then insists that he and Eve tether to the Library then and there, rather than to wait. Jenkins reluctantly agrees (it's the wrong date!!).

And with that... the season comes to a close.

It was a fun ride, although I felt like this season wasn't nearly as strong as some of the others. I blame Nicole, who was more of an anti-hero rather than a flat-out villain like in previous seasons.

Also, I wasn't quite sure where they were going with the “make Jenkins mortal” plot. Either one of two things would happen: he'd die, or they'd somehow recon his choice and give him back his immortality. I just... didn't expect that it would have been both almost simultaneously.

I honestly liked the filler episodes that didn't have anything to do with Nicole or the tethering more than the actual plot episodes. But, like I said, it was fun. And I still love this show.

[locoforadventure]

Bluff Knoll - 1099m above sea level. Remember when I told you there were no clouds on my recent hike to the top of Bluff Knoll? Well I had to come up with something else to highlight the beauty up there, and those rock-formations just made the perfect subject for my photo! If you look around the other mountains in the distance, you can see how flat Western Australia really is. After so many years here, it was amazing to see mountains again. 🏝 Beach or ⛰ mountain - What person are you? 📸 Sony A7Riii - 16mm - f/11 - 1/60sec - Iso125 (at Stirling Range National Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/CGXJfi6hemL/?igshid=1qsza0czzxgk8

[yeonchi]

2019 In Review

This year marked the start (or rather, a continuation) of my transition into society. It kind of sounds weird when I put it that way, but the truth is that I have much to learn about how society works and that despite all my time on the Internet, I’m gonna have to face up to reality sooner or later. I’ve never really created a name for myself outside of my anime posts, English dub rants, or even my work on preserving the Sea Princesses series, but I still hope to continue posting online at times.

Where previous reviews were released on New Year’s Eve, this year’s review will be released a bit earlier for reasons that I’ll elaborate on in this post. Let’s begin after the break.

Sea Princesses

2019 has been a big year for Sea Princesses. During the first half of the year, I worked on transcribing the episodes and writing plot details for the wiki, since not a lot of work was put into them since the other admin, Liggliluff, joined the wiki in 2015 and gave provision for them. In the second half of the year, I renovated the character pages, adding infoboxes and story involvement (highlights for the major characters) to them. I also created pages for the (named) animals that appeared in the series. Since the wiki is pretty much complete at this point with the addition of transcripts and episode plots, any further work on the wiki from me (in regards to the animated series) is up to whether I feel like doing any.

After six months of seeing no further uploads on the Mr Bean and Friends channel, I caved and decided to shell out some money on a premium account to download the Amazon Prime episodes someone had uploaded to a website. Six months after that, I found that someone had downloaded the episodes themselves and uploaded them to KimCartoon. I know this was way after everything I had done, but better late than never, I suppose. The sad thing was that a few weeks after that, someone reached out to me on the Lost Media Archive saying that they had ripped some of the episodes from ABC iView and put a link to their MEGA folder on 4chan /trash/ and not /co/, which led to me not realising it until he told me about it. Regardless, the split English episodes and Spanish Disney Channel raws are still in my cloud drive folder.

While working on the transcripts for the wiki, I also wrote a review of the series. After watching it, I found that there were quite a few disappointments here and there, but the series wasn’t as bad as I had remembered it. Also, from July to October this year, artist Princess Rainbow Channel did some amazing fanart of each character in the series (including background characters) that trumps everything I had seen before and possibly after. Feel free to check it out here along with my reaction and her response.

Public opinion of the series depends on where you are; in Brazil, people are still bringing it up in their childhood memories on Twitter (usually in response to the question “what were some cartoons you remember from when you were young”), while in Australia, you barely get anyone talking about the series and even if you did, quite a few of them would be people trashing it. I’d seen a couple of Americans who had apparently seen the series as well; aside from the Latin American Spanish version, I have no idea which channel the English version was broadcast or where, otherwise I’d have known by now.

So like I said, the wiki is pretty much complete in terms of the TV series. As for the Princesas do Mar books, I am hoping to cover them in the long term when I have the money and capacity to do so. If you want information about them now, then I’m hoping that someone (mostly from Brazil) will be kind enough to provide transcripts and/or snapshots of them. There won’t be anything about the books on the wiki (with the exception of Marcela and the titles of the books) until I get that information, whether it be from a kind volunteer or by myself, so the entire thing’s pretty much on hold until then.

One thing I realised - the author, Fabio Yabu, recently published the first volume of the Combo Rangers graphic novel for free on WEBTOON. No doubt about it, Sea Princesses would have been more popular if it had received as much love as Combo Rangers. Maybe it’s time that Yabu showed some love to the series after nearly a decade since the last Princesas do Mar book published by Panda Books - I wouldn’t mind seeing rereleases, a graphic novel, ebooks or a compendium of the ten books published by Panda Books (those are the titles that I’m hoping to focus on for the wiki, everything else is irrelevant). With my current situation right now, if I can’t get transcripts or screenshots, then I’d be more happy to spend my money buying ebooks than printed books from Brazil.

Doctor Who

Right at the start of the month, the release date for Doctor Who Series 12 was announced to be on New Year’s Day with subsequent episodes to air on Sundays. Like with Series 11, I’ll be continuing the Thirteenth Doctor reviews after the episode airs. The prelude post will come out later with more details. In fact, it’s because of this that I decided to release this post earlier instead of on New Year’s Eve. That’s pretty much the only reason.

English Dubbed Game News and English dub rants

In case you guys missed it, I’m fully moving on from talking about English dubbed games. I don’t know if anyone ever saw this coming since the end of the feud a couple of years back, but I guess my promise to stand tall back at the end of 2017 must sound ironic now.

As I explained back in September, I’ve lost interest in video games altogether and had conflicting thoughts on how to deal with the occasional toxic comments on my pages. I didn’t mention this back then, but in case you were wondering, no, all the Vic Mignogna stuff did not play a factor in my decision. I’ve never been a fan of him so I don’t care and to be fair, innocent or guilty, he is really only one voice actor. In terms of Koei Tecmo games, he only voiced two characters in Dynasty Warriors 7 and 8 (Jia Xu/Xiahou Ba) along with two characters in Samurai Warriors 3 (Mitsuhide Akechi/Yoshimoto Imagawa), which, I should remind you, never made it onto a Warriors Orochi game. If Koei Tecmo wanted to replace him when the allegations came out, they would have done it already. Ironically however, they did just that with Dynasty Warriors 9, but with the whole cast because of the voice actor strike.

Speaking of the voice actor strike, I’ve noticed something that I never did back when I was writing the rants; a lot of voice actors are part of SAG-AFTRA and I’ve deduced that Japanese game companies are being cheap and cutting corners in localisation (specifically, dubbing) because they don’t want to hire union actors because of the cost (presumably). Additionally, I’ve also read that union actors can’t openly do non-union work, which leads to them being uncredited officially. I know I’ve supported the union during the voice actor strike, but I can’t help but think that I should have criticised them at some point during my rants because their rules for union actors kind of play a factor in this whole debacle of video game dubbing.

I’ve suggested crowdfunding as a way to raise funds to hire (union) voice actors, but in recent years, I’ve seen them go the way of Western game companies and put out season passes and neverending DLC packs. Anyone who defends game companies for being cheap and not dubbing their games has no right to complain about them being greedy in other areas. I kind of saw it coming myself, which didn’t come as a surprise to me. As far as I’ve heard, there aren’t any loot boxes or pay-to-win gimmicks in Japanese games, so I guess I’m still relieved.

As for my opinion on all of this or Japanese game companies, including Koei Tecmo, they haven’t changed much, although I’ve become more and more apathetic towards them given my declining interest in video games. Much as I hate to admit, I’ve gotten back into playing older Warriors games I still have for nostalgia and because I was bored and wanted to procrastinate. This shows that regardless of my thoughts, I’m still grateful towards Koei Tecmo for the games that inspired me in certain aspects of my life.

I’m going to burn a few bridges here and say some fuck yous to a few groups. First of all is a big fuck you to the haters, namely the dub haters, sub purists and opinion-neutrals (that much is obvious). Next up is a fuck you to Japanese game companies for being cheap in localisation (and by extension, even cheaper in DLCs), then a smaller, belated and ironic fuck you to voice actor unions like SAG-AFTRA for making the rules that lead to Japanese game companies being cheap in the first place and enabling them to keep doing it. Finally, a really ironic fuck you goes to my fans and all other fans of English dubbing - the fact that nobody else had made something like EDGN by this point, let alone before I found and joined the page, is really telling of what little you do to promote dub advocacy, let alone not being aware that things like said page or #NoDubNoBuy exist or supporting them by liking or sharing my posts.

Anyway, the current plan is to finish posting whatever games I’ve got in the backlog before New Year’s Eve and then unpublish the page sometime after. I’m not going to delete the page out of respect to its creator, who despite still being an admin on the page, has never posted anything since I joined it. The games list will be kept up through this link for reference. Despite the fuck you I just gave my fans (particularly the 230-so followers on EDGN), I want to thank everyone for the support you gave over the years and invite you to continue following me on my Facebook and Tumblr pages.

The state of social media

I felt that I should address something given YouTube’s new measures regarding COPPA, not forgetting that they literally said that they have no obligation to host content. At the start of last year’s review, I stated that there was always something that managed to affect my Internet life in stupid ways. I haven’t been affected directly this year, but YouTube’s measures have led me to think about what would happen if Facebook were to follow suit, particularly because Tumblr already banned NSFW content at the end of last year and Twitter looks like it’s about to follow suit themselves.

Sure enough, YouTube suddenly updated their harassment policy, which resulted in the Leafy Content Cop being removed as a result of retroactive enforcement. I’ve got nothing much to say about this except that it just proves what we’ve been suspecting all along. To be honest, around the time of the NSFW ban on Tumblr, I was kind of expecting that the parody I did would get flagged ironically, but I guess it never got near the radar, not that there would be any justifiable grounds for it.

Anyone who celebrates censorship or deplatforming with the same argument that “private companies can do whatever they want” should really look at themselves in the mirror because if any of this has proved anything, it’s that anyone can be censored or deplatformed with or without reason whether they’re following the rules or not. You’re all just sitting ducks and you don’t even know it even though you play by their rules in the hope that you won’t be next.

On a more lighter note, I wonder if I should use paragraph gaps instead of horizontal rules in future posts, given that Tumblr removed functionality for the latter in the rich text editor. Sure, I could manually add them in the HTML editor, but it would mean that they would disappear when I switched back to the rich text editor, regardless of whether I saved or not, and it would absolutely kill me to put them back in the exact same spots when I’ve changed something there.

In regards to Hong Kong

Back in August, I made a post about how I nearly got deplatformed from Facebook by the guy behind the feud because of what I said in my repostings of Hong Kong news. I really want to look back and laugh at it now not only because him doing so made him look like a pro-Beijing supporter, but because a pro-Beijing politician he scapegoated as a dub hater in a parody post to evade my criticism of him as such lost his seat in the district council to a pro-democracy newcomer.

In that post, I admitted that I did use some racial slurs in some of my repostings. Given the escalating violence (on both sides, police and protesters) since the start of the protests in June, I’m just gonna come right out and say it - if I could use one word to describe it and the negative reaction from those against the protesters (around the world), it would be the hard-r n-word. I used that word against said pro-Beijing politician because like many other people, I don’t think he’s a good person in any way. He’s advocated violence against pro-democracy supporters, has suspected links to the triads and commended old men in white shirts attacking people in black shirts at a train station following a protest some distance away. If that third thing doesn’t remind you of white (shirt) supremacy, then I don’t know what will. Let’s not forget that at the time, I reposted some news about him not being admitted as a solicitor in England and Wales, making him a “fake lawyer n-word”.

In case there are people who disagree with my (former) use of the slur, I want to acknowledge something here. I know I’m using the slur towards Chinese people instead of its historical target, namely people of African origin, but if it helps move the focus away from the latter, then so be it. If I could find another (preferably stronger) word to describe it, then I would, but at this point, I should be lucky that I’m able to control my anger and not use the actual word itself. If you don’t like how I used the n-word at all, then fuck you, you missed the point, but of course, you’re free to leave.

I don’t want to talk about the finer details or criticisms of any party involved in the protests, but I’m quite amazed with the pro-democracy protesters’ motto of not splitting their movement, not condemning the violence from the radical side and not ratting anyone out. In my interpretation, the radical protesters know that their so-called “violence” is illegal, but the other protesters can’t condemn them because words have barely had any effect on the government and they know that the radical protesters are the only people who have a chance of making the government cave into their demands or expose the true sides of Hong Kong and China’s governments to the international community, because their failure to do so five years ago was because they failed to keep their movement together. I probably don’t know as much about this compared to Hong Kong locals or immigrants, but I wager that at least some of my interpretation is spot on.

Two years ago, I said on my personal Facebook page, “I hope that the future of Hong Kong and its politics will improve for the benefit of the people, especially the younger generations, given everything that has happened up to now”. I know it may seem ironic right now, but I believe that the future will continue to improve for the better, but if it turns to the worst, then I hope that due justice may be served.

At the start of this post, I said that I was undergoing a transition into society. I’ll be finishing my university course and graduating at the end of next year, so at this point, I’m currently out looking for work. A lot of people make it look easy, but in truth, it’s been quite excruciating for me; because of some government benefit thing I signed up for, I have a quota of job applications that I need to send per month. It sounds easy, but after a while, it becomes so hard when you look at a job you think you’ll like and realise that you don’t have the necessary skills or experience for it. All I can say for myself is that I’ll keep praying for guidance and hope that I can find something that fits with my timetable, at least until I graduate.

See you all on the other side in 2020.

[shannrussell-blog1]

The Sandy Blight Track is a perfect trip for your 4WD as it is not only a great drive but it is filled with history, adventure and beauty for the whole family. Running north-east to the south-west on the edge of the Gibson Desert and crossing the Western Australia -Northern Territory border due west of Alice Springs the 350 km long. The track runs between the Gary Junction Road, that joins Alice Springs to Port Hedland on the WA coast, and the Great Central Road that runs across the centre of Australia and was part of the Gunbarrel Highway.

The first hour, after leaving Kintore in the NT on the Gary Junction Road, the track looks better over your shoulder. That’s not because it’s so terrible that one wants to go home, but because it presents a different historical aspect.

The track was created by Len Beadell in 1960 to give his Gunbarrel Road Construction Party a north-south access road after the Maralinga Tests. Today, it joins Docker River to Kintore; the Great Central Highway in the south to the north on the Gary Junction Road. The Sandy Blight Track was well travelled in those days but has now been overtaken by the airlines and the Stuart Highway.

The story of the naming of the Sandy Blight Junction Track goes that Len contracted the eye disease ‘Sandy Blight’ just short of Kintore. He couldn’t see to navigate so he told his bulldozer driver to head for the distinctive Mt Leisler. The ‘dozer driver took him at his word and the result is the 50 km of dead-straight road. It makes a good story.

Len made frequent use of roadside markers to record distances and note latitude and longitude for those who would nowadays have maps. It makes one think. He was actually putting the maps together- working on an almost blank sheet of paper. The only people who had been out there, apart from the very few local Aboriginal people, were the explorers and the odd pastoralist. A huge, lonely unmapped place.

While you’re looking for the markers, keep a lookout also for a large, white painted rock. It wasn’t placed there by nature. Len and his ‘dozer driver brought it down from up north and dropped it there as a joke on his crew and, later, geologists.

Despite the inevitable corrugations, the road up to here is great with a solid underfoot. Abreast the Davenport Hills, it deteriorates until it would have trouble justifying being called a track. One wash-away after another. This makes driving interesting…

And look out for the local wildlife. Camels are rampant in this area. They’re never alone but commonly roam in herds of a dozen or more. Expensive to hit, too… They usually stick to open country so, having come across several groups that actually forced us to stop, we were looking forward to the dune section.

Another feature on this section is the wrecked bus. This is almost the only wreck on this road unlike the Great Central Highway, where it is said there is a burnt out car for every kilometer. That says something for the solitude of the Track. What the bus was doing and how it got there, no-one has been able to tell me.

The sand dunes start soon after this. 50 km of driving down the slacks between the dunes until the track goes over a low bit of a dune or around the end. Then back the other way. How Len found his way through the dunes is a testament to his tenacity as well as his ability. The map says the average height of the dunes is 12m. Too high for short cuts. Did I say we were looking forward to the sand dunes? That thought didn’t last long.

At last, we were through the worst of the dunes and, as the sun was sinking, we found a spot to make camp in a small grove of desert oaks. Tent up, fire started, dinner prepared and with a drink in hand looking at a fiery sunset. It doesn’t get much better. Mind you, the thought of rain from those clouds and being stranded hereabouts had us checking the whisky supplies.

Next morning had us up with the larks looking forward to bacon and eggs cooked over a camp fire. Thinking of larks, we remarked at this point on the lack of wildlife. Plenty of camels and the odd emu but little else. The recent rain had brought green to the desert, as can be seen from some of the photos, but very little wildlife. This was September 2009 and the drought was breaking. We were prepared for moderately warm weather but wore shorts on one day only. Otherwise long trousers and long sleeves. Maybe the fauna knew it was just a little early.

Packed up and ready to go at 0800hrs. A quick check of the vehicle and … flat tyre! Found we had been staked the previous day and we knew exactly where. Rounding the end of one of the sand dunes we had skidded off a very wet track straight into the scrub. We didn’t notice anything at the time but an inch off the broken branch was still there and looking at us. Out with the tubeless tyre repair kit and half an hour later we were on our way. As a matter of interest, that tyre is still going strong with its plug still in place. It’s no longer a ‘bush’ tyre but it’s still on my vehicle, left rear, complete with plug.

First stop this day was on top of the Sir Frederick Range in WA, after a 1st gear, low range climb. 2200 ft and no trees to hide the fantastic view. We had to have a brew and add our names to the book in the tin in the cairn.

This range is quite curious. It rises smoothly but steeply from the plain. I have not asked my vehicle to climb any track as steep. It is made up of what looks like river stones with relatively little dirt binding the stones together. The stones are about the size of a football- not large; nothing a man could not easily lift. But they were all rounded like stones, washed by water over centuries. One might think that wind and sand might have worn the stones down over the aeons, but I doubt the wearing would have been so even. If anyone has an answer to this, I would love to hear about it.

Down onto the plain again and back into the sand dunes. Not so fearsome this time, only 10 m average height we were running with them. Len described his frustration when surveying this section when trying to find his way around Lake Hopkins. On a map, the lake looks like a mass of mercury blobs but with tributaries and joining necks of land everywhere. I would not like to attempt this trip without a map, GPS and a track to follow. Again, hats off to Len Beadell.

Then, at last, one emerges from the gradually decreasing sand dunes and low trees onto the plain. The track up till now has been wheel ruts through the sand. Now there is a junction, with another road, going east to the Aboriginal settlement of Tjukurla. The road is suddenly wider and more compacted, and we can pick up speed. We’re running down the slack in between the sand dunes that are wider apart here. The road has also changed direction, from tending southerly and across the dunes to easterly and running with them.

Off to the right we’re now looking at the craggy, shattered rocks of the Walter James Range, quite different to the Sir Frederick Range. This range rises abruptly from the plain and is made of great slabs of shattered volcanic rock. The road goes round the eastern end of the range and heads more southerly as we go.

Finally, we reach the gap between the Anne Range and the Bloods Range and look for the Malagura Waterhole of Lasseter’s Reef fame, as well as the explorer Ernest Giles’ lifesaver. This is a beautiful spot in a very tough country. Unfortunately the day was overcast and chilly. I wish we’d seen it in sunlight. For the first time on this trip, we saw birdlife around this spot. Although we had seen plenty of evidence of running or flood water further up the track, this was the first water we had actually seen.

From here it’s a hop, skip, etc (15 km) to the Great Central Highway; another dirt road. The Malagura Waterhole is a beautiful end to the track. However, reality sticks its rude nose into the day’s proceedings. We were unable to top up with fuel at Kintore and, although we had enough to reach Alice Springs, my principal is to keep the tanks safely full if reasonably possible. Besides we wanted to see Giles weather station and Len’s old grader that made the road we’d just driven down. So into Warburton for fuel and then next door to Giles. This remote weather post is, to my thinking, the real end of the track. After all, Len set out from here and it was his rear support base to which he returned for fuel, water and supplies while building the Sandy Blight Track.

The Sandy Blight Track is a trip I would recommend. Not too difficult, but 4 wheel drive only. I know that people tow trailers on the track, but the way parts of it are deteriorating that wont be for long. Visually, it is full of contrast: the flat open plain to the interminable sand dunes to the gentle rounded heights of the Sir Frederick Range; the jagged Walter James Range; the dry open plain to the relief of the Malagura Rockhole.

And the history of the area. Before starting out I knew a little of the story of Ernest Giles’ expeditions through the area and the tragedy surrounding the naming of the Gibson Desert. I had travelled some of Len Beadell’s roads and everyone knows something of the legend of Lasseter’s gold reef. Since then I have read Len Beadell’s story of the construction of the Sandy Blight Track, Beating about the bush. It is so full of information I had missed that I am determined to travel that road again.

Two words on safety. We were a single vehicle expedition. On the 350 km length of the Sandy Blight Track we saw no one else. Perhaps a dangerous situation, but we had vehicle based UHF radio and a hand-held unit in case one of us had to leave the vehicle. This happened once and the hand-held was useful. It told me when to put the billy on because my companion was almost back from a walk and needed a cup of tea. Seriously, he wanted to climb Haast’s Bluff and, as I was unable to, the UHF radios were invaluable for safety. We also had a satellite phone, and I am coming to regard these as essential equipment for outback travel. EPIRB’s are also a life saver but simply say “trouble”. Sat phones can tell people what the trouble, is which can be a life saver in itself.

The second word. The explorer William Henry Tietkens wrote in his journal, after he climbed Mt Liesler in 1889, “…this desolate and waterless region…”. The explorer Ernst Giles named the Gibson Desert after a member of his 1873-4 expedition, Alfred Gibson, who was lost in the desert without water and not seen again (even by local Aboriginal people). In 1960, Len Beadell commented in his book that he was probably the second white man to climb Mt Liesler. Today the region is still “desolate and waterless”. It is not to be entered without caution.

Happy exploring.

The post The Sandy Blight Track: A 4WDriver’s Dream! appeared first on Snowys Blog.

[xxredwineandambiencexx]

Prompt: It's Klaus birthday in NOLA and Rebekah secretly sent an invitation for Caroline, because the siblings have a secret bet going on about who's present gonna be the best. After 1000 what does one give to someone who can get whatever he wants :D

Kol is sipping a margarita, splayed out on one of the leather couches in their lounge room when she gets back from her shopping expedition in New Orleans.

The radio is on, playing one of those inane pop tunes that Kol for some reason seemed to love, and his foot is swaying lazily to the beat as he stares up at the fan whirring lazily on the ceiling above them.

“What on Earth are you doing?” She asks of Kol, whose eyes flick towards her, a self satisfied smile creeping across his face when he sees her.

“Celebrating.” Kol says with great relish, taking a sip of his margarita. “Can I offer you a drink, sister?”

“Knowing you you’ve probably spiked it with some sort of sleeping potion, so it’ll be a hard pass this time.” She replies with disdain, remembering the last time Elijah had accepted a drink from Kol, and had then promptly broken out in hives that had taken quite a few days to disappear, and only with the assistance of a witch that owed Elijah quite a few favours.

Kol had ended up with a dagger in his chest for a month before Elijah had deigned to make amends with him.

“God you’re all no fun.” Kol mumbles under his breath, sitting up on the couch and planting his booted feet on the floor. “And since you never asked what I was celebrating, I’m going to tell you anyway.”

“Of course you are.” She remarks dryly, tapping her foot against the floor, cursing the humidity that seemed to hang over New Orleans at this time of the year like an unpleasant shroud.

Already she can feel her hair sticking to the back of her neck, her clothes pressing to her skin unpleasantly. Maybe she could go for a swim a little later.

“Well, as you well know Bekah, Nik’s birthday is coming up. And I know that we all try and one up each other when it comes to buying him a gift. God knows why considering how many times he’s daggered us all… If anything he should be buying us presents to make up for it.” Kol is just thinking out loud now, and she can’t help but sigh, massaging her temples.

In fact, Nik had brought her plenty of gifts to make up for the whole daggering thing, knowing that she was materialistic at heart and was far more likely to respond positively to that than murmured platitudes and constant apologies.

She wouldn’t give up her designer wardrobe, villa in Tuscany, and private island for anything.

“Get to the point.” She snarls as Kol continues to mumble under his breath.

“Fine. I just want to tell you and Elijah that you shouldn’t bother trying this year, because I’ve got him the present to end all presents. The perfect gift.”

“You do?” She asks incredulously, because Kol’s idea of a perfect gift is usually a stripper or a gift voucher to some obscure store.

“I do.” Kol says with another smug smile. “So just don’t even go there this year Bekah. You’re not going to beat me!”

With that, Kol drains the rest of his margarita, falling back to lie on the couch once more.

Justin Bieber starts playing on the radio, and as she marches out of the room to escape the stupidity of the song, an idea begins to form in her mind.

Kol wasn’t going to know what hit him.

“I could get used to this.” Caroline Forbes remarks with a laugh, reclining on the pure white sand as the sun beats fiercely down on her skin.

“I’m not sure about the heat.” Enzo has propped himself up on her elbow next to her, Ray Bans covering most of his features as he takes in the crystalline blue water. “Although it is a beautiful corner of the world.”

She’d been dying to come to Australia for some time now, and she and Enzo had spent the last few months wandering the massive island continent. As she very quickly discovered, there was so much more to Australia than the cosmopolitan city of Sydney.

They went dune boarding at Port Stephens, a little coastal town three hours north east of the capital of NSW. They spent a week on the Gold Coast, checking out the bars and clubs that peppered the famous city.

They spent another week on a cattle ranch in the far flung part of Queensland that no one else ever seemed to go to, made friends with the locals as they had to revert back to animal blood momentarily.

The Northern Territory was amazing, as had been Western Australia. The Barossa Valley had been a favourite, rich wine country with vineyards stretching as far as the eye could see.

Enzo had loved Melbourne, loved the coffee culture and all the hip little laneway bars that were only discovered if you stumbled across them by accident. Someone had suggested the Whitsundays for their next destination, and after looking at some pictures online she and Enzo had very quickly booked one of the resorts there.

The past few days had been spent snorkelling on the Great Barrier reef, reclining on the deck of the sailboat they had hired, swimming in clear blue waters, and sampling some of the amazing food at the various restaurants dotted around the island.

She thanked her lucky stars that she technically couldn’t put on weight now that she was dead and all, so had absolutely no guilt about helping herself to a second or third plate of food at dinner time, washing it down with some wine.

“That it is.” She agrees quietly with Enzo, sipping at her bottle of water, watching clouds scud across the cornflower blue sky.  

Someone whistles at them from the shore line, and she raises her hand in acknowledgement towards the skipper of their boat, sitting up and beginning to gather her belongings, shoving them back into the canvas beach bag she carried with her.

She dusts the sane off her as she and Enzo make their way over to the boat, ankle deep in the cool water before they're being handed up onto the deck.

When she gets back to their room, she’s surprised to see an envelope addressed to her. She hadn’t given anyone an address while she’d been travelling, and so she approaches the envelope with a healthy dose of caution.

Picking it up between two fingers, she gingerly breaks the wax seal on the back, pulling out the parchment within and unfolding it quickly.

Caroline,

My brother is celebrating his birthday this year. Although I’m not particularly eager to see you anytime soon, I know that Nik would like it. Details are within.

Rebekah

She can’t help but cover her mouth, snorting with laughter as she hands the folded up piece of paper to Enzo to read.

“Rather direct, isn’t she?”

“Yes, that always has been her m.o.” She replies with another soft laugh, eyes scanning the contents of the invitation before tossing it onto the bed.

“So are you going to go?” Enzo questions curiously, leaning over to read the invitation as well.

“I don’t know. Maybe?” She answers it like a question, becuase to be honest she's still not half sure herself.

Enzo raises an eyebrow at that.

“Maybe? That's a complete 180 from last year when it was a flat out no. Could it be that your feelings towards the big bad hybrid have changed?”

She hits Enzo on the arm good naturedly.

“It’s not like that. It’ll just be… good to see him.” She trails off lamely, knowing that it's a pathetic excuse if ever she's heard one.

To be honest, she'd been thinking about Klaus a lot more lately. She hadn't seen him in almost a decade, the last time being quite a memorable weekend they’d spent together in Tuscany, when they hadn’t done much more than have sex and drink wine from teh surrounding vineyards.

Most of the weekend had been spent in bed, Klaus determined to show her just how good they were with each other, which they were. Klaus continued to be the best sex of her lfie, and if the infuriating smile that he wore on his face every time he brought her to climax was anything to go by, he knew it as well.

But they both had other priorities. She was content to continue her nomadic lifestyle, discovering some of the far flung and forgotten corners of the world, Enzo in tow more often than not.

Klaus had settled into his life in New Orleans, ruling the city with an iron fist, his siblings still with him.

She’d never been. Setting foot into his city would be sending a message, that she was willing to entertain the idea of a forever with him. And she hadn’t been ready for that yet. But now…

“I can see that your mind has already been made up.” Enzo replies with a slow smile. “Are you sure?”

She just takes a deep breath, squaring her shoulders.

“I’m going to need a dress.”

The party below them is in full swing, members of the supernatural community mingling in the courtyard below them.

Kol leans on the balcony beside her, hair swept artfully away from his forehead, tuxedo clinging to the firm lines of his body. He sips at his drink, glancing at her for a moment.

“Did you even try to get him something this year?” He asks with a chuckle. “You’ve been surprisingly tight lipped this year sister.”

She smooths down the front of her black party dress, raising her own glass to her lips as she takes a drink.

“I tried something different this year. Apparently it didn’t work out.” She notes with a shrug, downing the rest of her drink and setting the now empty glass on the tray of a passing waiter.

Kol stares at her for a long moment, trying to figure out the meaning behind her words.

“Shame.” He pronounces with a shrug. “You’re usually much better at this. Did you order something online and it didnt’ arrive on time or something?”

She just smiles to herself, phone buzzing in her hand.

“Something like that.”

And then she thumbs into the message, reading the two words displayed across her screen.

She’s here.

The doorman of course, had been under strict instructions to keep an eye out for Caroline. He’d been provided with a picture of the baby vampire, one from her Mystic Falls days where she’d been polished and primped and wearing a ballgown.

All the same, Caroline Forbes was rather hard to miss, even dressed in plain clothes with her hair in disarray. She would know because she’d seen the girl in such a state during one memorable run in at the MIkaelson mansion in Mystic Falls.

It hadn’t taken a genius to know exactly why Caroline was doing the walk of shame at such an infernal hour of the morning. The younger girl had blushed, hair falling into her face as she had whispered a soft goodbye before letting herself out into the weak early morning light.

She had mentioned this as an aside to Kol, who had promptly teased Nik about it. Nik had snapped his neck and they hadn’t mentioned it since.

“Am I boring you?” Kol’s voice abruptly interrupts her train of thought, and she locks her phone, eyes flicking up towards her brother, who’s staring at her like she’s just grown a second head. “Where did you go just now?”

She just draws herself up to her full height, snagging another flute of champagne.

“Don’t count your chickens before they hatch brother.”

The doorman is staring at her strangely. She can’t imagine why, because she most certainly does not have lipstick on her teeth (she checked). The navy blue party dress that she’s wearing makes her tanned legs look a mile long, and accentuates the curves of her body.

Her hair, which she had spent a ridiculous amount of time on, was twisted into an elegant up do, and she was wearing a necklace that Klaus had gifted to her during their time in Tuscany.

The short of it was, she looked a million bucks.

“Caroline Forbes.” A voice drawls as she steps into the entrance of the courtyard.

Rebekah Mikaelson hasn’t changed a bit, that bored expression on her face ever present. She’s wearing a killer pair of Manolos and she can’t help but eye off the striking shoes with a bit of jealousy.

“Rebekah.” She finally answers, swallowing around the lump in her throat as Rebekah just smiles, pressing a drink into her hand.

“I didn’t think you were going to come.” Rebekah sips at her own drink as she turns, moving more towards the crowd of people, a few of whom eye them off with barely concealed curiosity. “You know, since I didn’t receive your RSVP or anything like that.”

“Sorry.” She replies to the older vampire, smoothing a hand over her hair. “I was undecided until quite recently. I did send word but apparently you didn’t get the message in time.”

“No matter.” Rebekah waves a hand dismissively. “You’re here now and that’s all that matters.”

Rebekah tilts her gaze upwards towards the balcony, and she follows the line of the Original’s gaze. Kol Mikaelson has a drink in her hand, and is gaping at her with his mouth hanging open rather unattractively.

Within split seconds his gaze lands on Rebekah, eyes narrowing as he raises his drink towards his sister in a toast for some reason.

“What was that about?” She asks Rebekah, who lifts one shoulder in an elegant shrug as the crowd clears momentarily and she spots Klaus from across the room.

He looks entirely at ease in this particular setting, his tuxedo clinging sharply to the lines of his broad shoulders, pants tailored to within an inch of their life. He’s got his head thrown back in laughter as he talks to another man, drink in hand and looking like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

“What on earth has he done to his hair?” She hisses towards Rebekah in horror. “It looks atrocious.”

She sees Klaus stiffen at that, and curses his superior Hybrid hearing as his gaze suddenly lands on her, eyes dark.

It’s perhaps the first time that she’s seen him truly caught off guard, and she can’t help but raise her glass to her lips, not realising just how much liquid courage she’d need to fortify herself with for this particular encounter.

The crowd seems to part before Klaus as he moves towards her, Rebekah giving her a gentle nudge, encouraging her to meet him halfway.

If that wasn’t a metaphor for their relationship, she didn’t know what was.

Klaus stops before her, gaze indecipherable as he reaches out, traces a gentle hand along her cheekbone.

The weight of the curious gazes around her is heavy, and she can’t help but lean into his touch as he bends, taking her hand in his, pressing a gentle kiss to it.

He straightens, and his smile is like the sun.

“Hello Caroline.”

It feels strange, being on Klaus’ arm. For a moment, she can’t help but think that Klaus is showing her off, demonstrating his power.

Until he begins introducing her to people, a hand resting dangerously on her lower back, thumb rubbing circles into where her dress does not cover up the skin of her back.

He seems content to take a backseat in their conversation, instead observing silently as she exchanges greetings with various witches and werewolves and vampires.

She sips at her drink as someone else comes to greet Klaus, and it takes a moment for her to realise why this time is so different. Klaus isn’t treating her like an object. He never has, a byproduct of his thousand or so years of existence.

No. Klaus is treating her like an equal, and the thought of that sends a thrill down her spine. So when there’s a break in the conversation she twines an arm around his waist, pressing a quick kiss to his neck.

In response Klaus pulls her closer to him but doesn’t comment, carrying on his conversation effortlessly.

Hours later as the guests begin to filter out into the street, Klaus pulls her in close to her chest.

“What are you doing here Caroline?” He asks in a low voice, tone dangerous. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, of course I am.”

She meets his gaze confidently, hand drifting up his chest to fix the lapel of his dinner jacket.

“I’m here for you Klaus.” She tells him with a smile. “You remember that weekend in Tuscany, when you let me go without a word of protest?”

Klaus’ lips curl into a smirk.

“How could I forget Tuscany?”

“You didn’t push me. And I was grateful for that, even though I did know that you wouldn’t wait around forever for me. And when you kept your distance in the following years, I was grateful. But I also missed not having you around.”

Her eyes drop to the crisp lines of his shirt as her hands drift down towards his waist. His breath is hot against her cheek, and he’s gone unnaturally still as he waits to hear the next words out of her mouth.

“You offered me forever and I wasn’t ready then. But I am now.” She says softly, hands sliding up his chest, twining around his neck as his gaze darkens, mouth hanging open in surprise. “If you’ll still have me of course.

Klaus’ lips against hers is the only answer he provides, the only answer she needs. Klaus kisses her like he’s a starving man, like he’s been deprived of something for so long.

She’s scarcely less eager to return his embrace, missing the feeling of him, the familiar smell of him.

She doesn’t protest when Klaus picks her up in his arms, using his vamp speed to get the from the courtyard to what is undoubtedly his bedroom.

He’s got her pressed up against the closed door before she can even think about it, lips hot against the skin of her neck as he nips at her with a content sigh.

His jacket drops to the floor, and she helps him unbutton his shirt, no doubt in her mind as to the direction that this is heading.

Her hands roam over the skin of his chest, catalouging all the new scars that he’s acquired since she saw him last, hand pausing over a particularly nasty looking scar, no doubt caused by some sort of stabbing.

“You’ll have to tell me that story later.” She murmurs, tipping a finger under his chin and kissing him gently.

“Later.” Klaus agrees in a low voice, hands pausing at the seams of her dress.

She’s reversed their positions in an instant, Klaus pressed up against the door with a surprised look on his face.

“Don’t you dare rip this dress.” She hisses at him, knowing his proclivity for destroying her clothes when he’s in this sort of mood. “I like this one.”

His low chuckle curls around her, a warm feeling in the bottom of her stomach as he turns her gently by the shoulders, a hot open mouthed kiss pressed to the side of her neck.

His hands on the zipper are like fire as he pulls it down slowly, fingers brushing over the exposed skin of her back as he pushes the dress from her shoulders.

It pools at her feet, and she hears his breath hitch in his throat as he runs a gentle hand down her back.

“I’ve missed this.” Klaus murmurs to her, walking her backwards towards his bed, both of them kicking off their shoes, Klaus shucking his socks as they go.

He grips her by the hips, easily lifting her up and tossing her onto the mattress, a giggle escaping her lips as Klaus’s gaze darkens.

“Come here.” She beckons to him as Klaus crawls between her knees, covering her body with his as he takes her into his arms.

The feeling is unfamiliar and familiar all at once, Klaus’ erection pressing into her core as she tangles her lips with his.

A soft moan escapes her as Klaus’ lips scorch a hot trail down her throat, face nuzzling between the valley of her breasts, stubble scratching against her sensitive skin.

“Pants off.” She orders after a momentary pause, Klaus chuckling as he does her bidding.

“A little eager aren’t we?” He asks her with an infuriating smile as he hooks long fingers into the waistband of her panties.

“We’ve got ten years to make up for.” She just breathes, watching as his face softens, hand coming up to cup her cheek delicately as he lines up his body with hers, cock nudging gently at her entrance.

She can’t help but gasp at the feeling, heel nudging at his arse as he smiles down at her.

“We’ve got all the time in the world sweetheart.” He replies before pushing into her heat with one, smooth stroke.

She’s missed this, the feeling of being filled by him, and her eyes roll back into her head at just how good it is, at how good he is.

Klaus had learnt to read her body with an almost eerie sixth sense, and he puts all of his learned knowledge into practice as he sets a rhythm that has her unable to do much more than gasp and hold on for the ride.

Klaus rolls suddenly, reversing their positions as she sways above him, a little startled. Klaus just smiles, still hard inside her as he guides her arms around his broad shoulders, hands hot around her waist as he helps to lift her, guide her up and down.

She’s always loved this position with him, loved the power and the look of awe that always creeped across his face when he saw her like this.

She bends down to kiss him, rolling her hips in a gentle rhythm against his. Klaus’ hand traces down the front of her body, thumb pinpointing her clit with an unerring accuracy.

She shudders a little when he presses there, rhythm broken momentarily as she opens her mouth in a silent moan.

She can feel the tell tale build in her core, the ache becoming almost unbearable as she increases her rhythm, anchoring her hands on his shoulders as he begins to thrust up into her with a look of concentration on his face.

She falls apart in his arms, Klaus catching her, turning and pressing her down into the mattress as he continues to drive into her, the pleasure edging into pain at the sensitivity.

Klaus knows this though, gentles the movement of his hips until it curls low in her belly once more, building impossibly fast to her peak.

They come together this time, her name on his lips as he buries his face into her neck, feels the heat of him inside her.

She runs a hand through his sweat dampened hair, breathing slowly returning to normal as he pulls out and heads for the bathroom, returning in the next few moments with a damp cloth to wipe themselves down with.

When he’s done he pulls her into the circle of his arms, a content exhale as he props one arm under his head, staring up at the ceiling.

They don’t have to say much. They never do in moments like this. But she feels like she has to say this.

“I love you.” She whispers into the skin of his chest, Klaus stiffening momentarily around her before he’s pressing a gentle kiss to the back of her hand, eyes brimming with emotion.

He doesn’t say it back but that’s okay. She knows that he’s felt this way about her for a long time, and she’s not going to get hung up on her insecurities like she used to when it came to him.

The moment is perfect, and she wouldn’t change it for the world.

“I hope you’ve got space in your wardrobe for all my clothes.” She voices out loud suddenly, propping herself up on her elbow to face him.

Klaus’ burst of startled laughter is like music to her hears.

On the lower levels of the house, Rebekah Mikaelson pours herself a victory drink, Kol glowering on the lounge opposite her as the fire crackles merrily away in the hearth.

“Do you concede?” She asks of Kol, who just glares at her, cracking his knuckles a little threateningly.

“I concede.”

[thecreativeseries]

Michael Goh Perth Landscape and Astrophotographer

Firstly, can you start with a little bit about yourself?

My name is Michael Goh, and I’m a professional photographer covering a range of subjects including but not limited to portrait, time-lapses, virtual tours, commercial, events, but I’m mainly known as a landscape astrophotographer. I picked up my first DSLR around November 2009 and am self-taught.

What equipment do you use to create your images, and why did you select it?

My primary camera is a Canon 6D. I have some other cameras as well. I chose it because at the time I was already photographing with Canon cameras and the 6D was (and still is) well regarded for low light performance. I use a range of lenses – mainly the Tamron 15-30mm F2.8 as it is very sharp, fast and has very little coma around the edges. I often use portable tracking mounts – the Move Shoot Move SIFO rotator if I’m hiking/travelling due to it being very light and small and the Skywatcher Star Adventurer for more substantial jobs when I’m close to the car. Also, a remote cable release/intervalometer so that I can take photos from a distance away (can anyone say self-portrait?).

Additionally, I use a Fiesol CT-3442 Carbon Fibre tripod with a Sirui ball head. The Tripod is very light and stable. I also have a range of speed lites and other lighting equipment that can be triggered remotely. I have a Timelapse+ view that assists with the time-lapses when it’s going day to night (and to the moon), so it automatically adjusts the exposure settings. I have a syrp genie mini as a rotator for time-lapses as well.

What inspires your creative vision?

I have been a science fiction fan for as long as I can remember. So this naturally gravitated towards an interest in space and astrophotography and want to show it - so it was a bit about being epic and technical. As time has passed, though, I think I have moved forward a bit towards the emotions and feelings of the space. So with astrophotography, it’s expressing the sense of being small in the universe.

Which photographers have inspired you, and how did they influence you?

Corrie White – Corrie White is a photographer in the UK who specialises in drop collisions – having water drops hitting other water drops and spreading out and being frozen at that moment. When I first got into photography (with my entry-level DSLR), I saw her work in a magazine at the office, and it opened up my mind that photography could do much more than what the eye could see. She was also very open in her techniques and sharing them on Flickr. So this opened up the experimentation with photography and the full sharing philosophy that I have to share knowledge to improve the art.

What drew you to focus on astrophotography as your niche?

Initially, it was a love of science fiction and the technical side of it. I am inclined to continuous improvement and experimenting, so this seemed like a natural direction.

What other genres of photography do you enjoy?

I enjoy photographing people through portraits and event. While astrophotography and landscape help me feel connected to the universe, photographing people helps me have a connection to people. These genres are also useful to promote positive causes. Time-lapses are a fantastic genre. The acceleration of time is impressive, as you can see what you can’t usually see with the eye. It also links in with astrophotography. Virtual tours/360 photospheres are often just fun, and it was a special thing to learn. I too do aerial photography. I have been doing more and more video recently. I used to do many macros – but have drifted from that a bit. I think I like to get outdoors a bit more.

One of my photographic philosophies is – know as many techniques as possible because you never know when you can use it.

What equipment do you typically take with you on an astrophotography shoot?

Camera, lenses, remote trigger/s, Speedlite/s, light modifiers, tripod, star tracker, 2+ light sources (headlamp and handheld torch), handheld GPS, hand warmers, compass, levelling head, panorama head, cold weather gear, drone (good for scouting), first aid kit, gaffa tape, batteries, memory cards, food and water, a coffee machine, light stand.

What has been your proudest body of work to date?

That’s a difficult one, and I have a few for different reasons.

1 – The Light Within – I got someone else to come up with this title. It’s a Milky Way archway over the Pinnacles in Nambung National Park in Western Australia. A crescent moon sits on top of a Pinnacle creating a backlit image with shadows, and the zodiacal light reaches up to the Milky Way core. I’m proud of this particular work as it took me 2 years to get the image, ended up on NASA’s APOD (astronomy picture of the day), won an international photography competition (Photonightscape Awards), was in a book “Universal: A Journey Through the Cosmos” by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw,

2 – Exploring the Great Expanse – a self-portrait image of myself standing in a salt lake with a thin layer of water reflecting all the stars around me. It took a long time to plan, but probably represents the feeling of astrophotography the best, being a tiny person compared to the universe around me.

I’ve got a few others that I’m very proud of, with long stories – but those two are probably the most representative.

How do you prepare before heading out on a shoot? What considerations do you have to make?

Moon cycle and luminosity – I love an amount of moonlight over the landscape. Some additional light lights the whole scene creates depth to the image with shadows. Also, the cloud cover, temperature, over multiple locations. Expected location of the milky way core (using apps). Travel time and conditions, recent historical rain and temperature (depending on the site and time of year). I’ll confess that I do plan the whole year in terms of the sunrise/sunset, moonrise/moonset, moon luminosity to work out the best times of the year to shoot.

What subjects do you generally prefer to capture as part of your astrophotography shoots?

Foreground interest is vital for landscape astrophotography. I’ve been known to take self-portraits a lot with the images. In part, due to the rest of the landscape being limited, the individual adds to the image and creates an additional connection between the person and the universe. Adding a person in the picture emphasises the scale in the image.

Are there any specific tools or tricks you would share that have helped develop your astrophotography skills?

Hmmm – do we have a word limit?

I do workshops, and they take quite a long time 😝.

· Know as many different photography techniques as possible, you never know when you need to use it. Some of my more popular styles have been developed from improvisation.

· Scout when it’s daytime. When it’s dark, you can’t see much so you won’t be able to tell if a better image is 5m away.

· Check your photos for focus before you end up taking a lot of unfocused images.

· Have a plan – frequently I’ve written down a list of different shots I want to take for either tests or compositions. I’ll even have tested some of these before I go out (e.g. panorama types or noise control).

· Make sure you photograph something safe and then get carried away experimenting.

· Challenge your camera and equipment. Get uncomfortable and push it more than what you usually.

· Get constructive feedback from someone you respect.

· There’s an app for that – apps have certainly made planning for astrophotography very easy. I use sky safari and photo pills.

· Remember to set aside the camera and appreciate the night sky. I believe you can best express how it feels by not being distracted by taking photos.

How did you learn about astrophotography and what steps taken to develop your skills over time?

Shortly after starting photography, I discovered Flickr, and it was an excellent resource for people to share their knowledge. I started my first steps into astrophotography that way. To begin with, I made star trails from the back yard. Then I discovered you could photograph the Milky Way, so that was a natural progression. Initially, it was following formulas of exposure, as wide open aperture as possible and go to ISO 1600. I did follow formulas, to begin with, but I can't remember what prompted me to start breaking all the rules, but about four years ago, I started photographing ISO 2000 and then 6400 and beyond.

Now with developing my skills - I write down ideas, visualisations, experiments, and tests and work out how to do them. I practice and test on a very regular basis. When I go out for night shoots by myself, I often have a list of compositions and experiments to try. I may not get through all of them, but I like having a plan as I'll be more productive that way.

Where can we find more of your work?

Webpage

Facebook

Instagram

500px

I have a youtube channel somewhere – I’d better post more to it

Finally, do you have any words of wisdom for photographers looking to focus on astrophotography?

Learn as many techniques as possible as you never know when you need to use them.

Get to the location before it's dark - generally, you'll make a much better composition the more you can see.

Remember that you're taking a photograph, you still need to think about your composition.

After you've taken some "safe" photos, make sure that you experiment.