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apocalypticavolition · 1 year ago

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Let's (re)Read The Great Hunt! Chapter 13: From Stone to Stone

Yeah it's been awhile but I guess I should get back into the groove. As usual there's going to be nothing but spoilers until the end of the whole series, so people who are just starting reading the books because of the show probably should skip this.

And about the rim, the trees stood blackened and twisted as if a firestorm had roared through them. Everything seemed paler than it should be, just like the sun, more subdued, as if seen through mist. Only there was no mist. Just the three of them and the horses appeared truly solid.

And so we take our first step into a larger multiworld. Jordan's mirror worlds aren't quite the usual take on many worlds theory, and so right away we're confronted with the fact that everything in this "what if" is a lot less real than stuff from the prime reality. Though things get complicated when we add T'A'R to the mix, but thankfully I don't have to worry about that this book so let's not!

Something about the steps caught his eye, the different colors, seven rising from blue to red. “One for each Ajah,” he said.

This is by far the weirdest, most incongruous detail about the portal stones. They predate the modern Ajah system by a great deal, and yet "one for each Ajah"... I've seen two reasonable explanations for it:

In the early Third Age, the Tower channelers came and marked as many Portal Stones as they could with the Ajah colors as a way of saying, "This belongs to the Tower", since unlike the usual objects of Power the Stones can't be moved.

The seven colors don't actually match Ajah colors and are just a generic rainbow which Rand mistakenly conflates with Ajah colors because blue, green, yellow and red are present (and possibly orange seeming to be brown).

A third I'm realizing just now relates to color terms and languages. Basic color terms show up in human languages in a set order: every language distinguishes between white and black (well, warm-bright and cold-dark but still), then red is added, then green or yellow but definitely both if there's five basic terms, then blue (east Asian languages are well-known examples of those that stopped before blue).

After that you usually get brown added, and then other terms like gray. While you can easily end up with languages that have basic terms for purple and orange but not gray, it may well be that both portal stones and Ajahs were decorated for the seven non-Shadow color terms used in the Old Tongue and thus converged naturally.

“Yet even if Aes Sedai can use them, or could, we had no Aes Sedai with us to channel the Power, so I don’t see how it can be.”

Loial is very book smart but he's not exactly a detective, is he?

‘If a woman go left, or right, does Time’s flow divide? Does the Wheel then weave two Patterns? A thousand, for each of her turnings? As many as the stars? Is one real, the others merely shadows and reflections?’

He's also not very good at non-lecture material, since he's pretty baffled by this. I like to think that there were once very plain textbooks but that the only one that survived was "The Tao of World-Hopping" just to make sure that every Third Ager was as confused as possible.

“My Lord Rand, you’ll get us back, won’t you? Back where we belong? I’ve a wife, my Lord, and children. Melia’d take it bad enough, me dying, but if she doesn’t even have my body to give to the mother’s embrace, she’ll grieve to the end of her days. You understand, my Lord. I can’t leave her not knowing. You’ll get us back. And if I die, if you can’t take her my body, you’ll let her know, so she has that, at least.” He was no longer questioning at the end. A note of confidence had crept into his voice.

Poor Hurin. He really doesn't deserve to be tossed into Rand's drama. And he's very brainwashed by feudalism.

Suddenly he knew he could not tell the man again that he was not a lord. All that was holding the sniffer together was his belief in a lord, and he could not take that away, not now. Not here. “No bowing,” he finished awkwardly.“ As you say, Lord Rand.” Hurin’s grin was almost as wide as when Rand first met him.

Seriously, Hurin seems specifically designed by the Wheel to punish Rand and Perrin for their reluctance as much as possible. He should have stuck around Perrin to keep that boy on track.

He reached for it—he was not sure how he reached, but it was something, a movement, a stretching toward the light, toward saidin—and caught nothing, as if running his hands through water. It felt like a slimy pond, scum floating atop clean water below, but he could not scoop up any of the water. Time and again it trickled through his fingers, not even droplets of the water remaining, only the slick scum, making his skin crawl.

So Rand is having some typical Wilder difficulties with channeling and they expose exactly how dangerous the taint on saidin really is. Once the trained male Aes Sedai blew up, the Wilders had no resources to learn to channel effectively so many probably had a lot of experiences like Rand where they reached out and got a double dipping of taint with no actual Source to at least make up for it. There is no safe way for men to channel in this Age.

Loial had a different look, a slightly puzzled frown, but his eyes were on Rand, too. Rand wondered what he was thinking.

Loial is probably trying to come up with a theory that doesn't involve Rand being a channeler because that's just awkward for him.

If Fain and the Darkfriends were here—wherever here was—they might know how to get back. They had to, if they had reached here in the first place. And they had the Horn, and the dagger. Mat had to have that dagger. For that if for nothing else, he had to find them. What finally decided him, he was ashamed to realize, was that he was afraid to try again. Afraid to try channeling the Power. He was less afraid of confronting Darkfriends and Trollocs with only Hurin and Loial than he was of that.

This paragraph is absolutely devastating for Cauthor fans. But seriously, Fain and the dagger versus more Taint sucking is an absolutely horrible choice. Neither option is all that good.

“Rand, that fragment said the Stones came from an older Age than the Age of Legends, and even the Aes Sedai then did not understand them, though they used them, some of the truly powerful did. They used them with the One Power, Rand. How did you think to use this Stone to take us back? Or any other Stone we find?” For a moment Rand could only stare at the Ogier, thinking faster than he ever had in his life. “If they are older than the Age of Legends, maybe the people who built them didn’t use the Power...”

Honestly this detail about Portal Stones is even worse. We certainly aren't about to build Portal Stones in real life and yet we are apparently due to do so in the next couple years before we nuke each other into magic mutations. We can barely manage quantum computers and frankly even if we did they wouldn't last for the requisite thousands of years. Frankly as far as I'm concerned, the book Loial read is wrong and what with stuff like war and famine getting forgotten, people forgot that the Portal Stones were the result of early AoL projects with the power.

Worst of all, though, the land seemed to twist the eye. What was close at hand looked all right, and what was seen straight ahead in the distance. But whenever Rand turned his head, things that appeared distant when seen from the corner of his eye seemed to rush toward him, to be nearer when he stared straight at them. It made for dizziness; even the horses whickered nervously and rolled their eyes. He tried moving his head slowly; the apparent movement of things that should have been fixed was still there, but it seemed to help a little.

This Mirror World seems to be particularly hyperbolic in its geometry, which is confusing to think about (how do you even map the sphere that is the Earth to a hyperbolic geometry and why do I suspect that the best answer means "the north and/or south poles do not actually exist here"). We'll get more into why it's weird further on though, in a chapter or two. For now just hold onto the image of a hyperbolic infinity being overlaid on the closed geometries of T'A'R and the prime timeline and make sure you're picturing it in four dimensions so you have room for the Ways, Ogier-home, and Sindhol, all of which intersect the prime reality in tangential ways.

You can picture four dimensional non-Euclidean geometries, can't you?

#let's read #wheel of time #wot #robert jordan #wheel of time spoilers #wot spoilers #rand al'thor #loial #hurin

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iamnightduchess · 4 years ago

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Improper ReiKasa Outtakes #004

a.k.a Annie, Pieck & Connie say the darndest things

(Alliance's Post-Ending Reunion)

Annie: Pieck and I have a great idea in solving this issue with Mikasa.

Armin: Wait-Annie, what issue?

Connie: We tie her up when she's asleep and drag her back to our ship in case she refuses to come with us?

Jean: What the hell, Connie? That's kidnapping!

Mikasa: Guys, I'm standing right here.

Pieck: This is where Reiner plays a very important role.

Reiner: Me?

Annie: Reiner, stop sniffing a married woman's letters. Mikasa, stop sniffing a dead person's scarf.

Pieck: Both of you should stop sniffing inanimate objects and start sniffing each other starting today. If you both like getting off on sniffing something, might as well make it off each other.

Mikasa: To set the record straight, I don't sniff my scarf. I only ever cried into it every night.

Armin: That's the only problem you're seeing right now, Mikasa?

Annie: You can cry into Reiner's chest from tonight onwards and Reiner can sniff your hair to sleep or whatever creepy pervy thing he does at night.

Pieck: We're burning that letter and that scarf.

Armin: That doesn't make any sense.

Connie: I don't get it either. First they'll sniff each other like dogs. What's next? Doggy style mating? Oh shit, I just realized what you're trying to do.

Mikasa: For the love of God, I'll get on that ship but please just stop talking and don't touch my scarf.

Reiner: Regardless of whatever you guys just said, I can still sniff something right?

Jean: Read the room, asshat.

#ReiKasa #reiner x mikasa #improper reikasa quotes #improper reikasa outtakes #reikasa on crack #reiner braun #mikasa ackerman #ReiKasa canonverse #ReiKasaverse #snk after ending #the alliance deserves a reunion and their very own World Tour spin-off where they do crazy shits Jackass style #these two sniffers belong to each other #armin arlert #annie leonhardt #pieck finger #jean kirschtein #connie springer #ReiKasa reimagines

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slashersins-abandoned · 4 years ago

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nsfw alphabet : vincent sinclair

A = Aftercare ( what they’re like after sex )

vincent will hold you while you both come down from your pleasured high . only letting you go once both of you have been able to calm down and even your breathing . he wants you to be aware , even if exhausted as he takes care of you . aftercare for vincent can last anywhere from minutes to over an hour . it depends on all that happened during your sensual exchange . his desire to touch you has him cleaning you , from damn near head to toe , with a warm wet rag . he’ll wipe away all the sweat with such deft fingers that it might just rile you up again . expect gentle kisses over any bruises left by his hands , or his mouth . if he happened to cum inside you , then he will use those long fingers of his to clean you out , crooking his fingers to drag it out , making sure that his fingers come out clean before he finishes the thorough torture . once clean your clean , he’ll tuck you into bed , taking care of himself quickly before moving back into the bed with you and pulling you close for lazy touches and kisses until sleep takes you both . on the other hand , aftercare can be as simple as cuddling and coddling you as you both come down before leading or carrying you into the shower and doing a quick rinse off . fast and easy so you can start your morning or go about your day .

B = Body part ( their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s )

vincent is proud of his hands . large palms with long slender fingers , trimmed and filed nails . paraffin wax has made it so there are little to no callouses on his hands , they are soft to the touch and surprisingly warm . he also sees his hands as useful tools . able to create art , whether it be painting , drawing , sculpting wax figures . he can do beautiful things with his hands . but they are also tools of destruction , ending lives with ease , strong and deadly and powerful .

vincent finds himself drawn to your lips , your eyes , your thighs . the first being how plush and soft they look . the look of them parted as you look up at him wanting a kiss . the way they glisten when your tongue darts out to wet them . how you push your bottom lip out when you pout . it’s hard for him to fight the desire to drag his thumb over those lips of yours only to see them go back into place before he leans in and tastes you for himself .

your eyes … so expressive . so easy to read . the emotion you hold in them , the want and need , even sadness and anger look beautiful when they dance in your eyes . he finds himself staring into them intently , seeing how your pupils dilate . there are many sketches of your face , of your eyes and those long lashes in his sketch book .

and your thighs .soft and supple . so delicate and perfect in his hands . soft and mailable . he wants to touch over him , to feel his body between them , to have his face buried and feel you squeeze down on him . you’ll find most of the unintentional bruises vincent leaves on your skin are on your thighs , inside or outside , it doesn’t matter . they are vincent’s most desired part of you .

C = Cum ( anything to do with cum, basically )

his cum is thin ( between stu and billy ) , and he cums a surprising amount ( between jason and brahms ) . while it’s easy to swallow , it is a bit bitter . he prefers to cum inside of you , mostly because he will be able to clean you up with his fingers , and seeing you drip satisfies a quiet possessiveness that he rarely shows . the only other place he enjoys cumming in is your mouth . though he isn’t fond of shoving down and choking you on his cock to cum down your throat . he’ll purposely pull back so only his tip is in your mouth , filling it and wanting to see it cupped by your tongue . he has no issue if you spit or swallow , so long as he can see it in your mouth for just a moment .

D = Dirty secret ( pretty self explanatory , a dirty secret of theirs )

vincent is a panty thief . though he often returns them , after they’ve been washed . he is very careful when he takes them and uses them . preferring to feel the fabric against his cock as he thinks of you . if he knows he has a project he’s about to dive into , or there’s a crop of new future wax figures in town , he will take what he needs to make it through those long nights alone . he prefers to steal the lace and silk , used or freshly laundered it doesn’t matter . he may be a panty thief , but he is not a panty sniffer .

E = Experience ( how experienced are they ? do they know what they’re doing ? )

vincent has actually had a few sexual encounters . no more than three . one was a drunken experience that started and ended in a bathroom stall at a bar that bo had brought him to . another was curiously as a teen with someone he can’t remember the name of from school . the other a more intense affair with a prostitute in new orleans , it’d been a strange night as all three of the brothers had … shared said person , not at the same time or in the same room , but over the course of one evening during mardi gras .

vincent has enough experiences to understand the in and outs . thought he discovered most of his own personal preferences on his own and with his own hand and imagination .

F = Favorite position ( this goes without saying )

as vanilla as it sounds , he prefers missionary . anything that gives him a clear view of your face and body as you writhe under him . he enjoys the sight of you , studying you with an intense want . though it’s not the only position he enjoys . having you in his lap is another favorite . the way you bounce up and down , leaning your head on his shoulder as you roll your hips and grow so weak and needy that you have to beg him to take hold of your hips and move you .

G = Goofy ( are they more serious in the moment ? are they humorous ? etc . )

vincent knows that sex can be silly and fun and cute and lighthearted . so he takes each lovemaking session with a grain of salt . while he wants it to be intimate and close and passionate , serious and intense . he will also smile softly if you make a loud strange noise , quirking a brow for a moment before soothing you with kisses , luring you back into the passionate mindset he craves . sex with vincent is likely to lean towards serious more often than not . only leaning towards light heartedness if you are both just smoked and are enjoying a shared high .

H = Hair ( how well groomed are they ? does the carpet match the drapes ? etc . )

unlike the silken , long , black locks on his head , his happy trail and pubic hair is coarse and kept trim and neat . he finds if he trims them too short they feel scratchy and rough , so he keeps them a bit longer than some might , just so that there is a nice softness and not just blunt coarse pubic stubble . scratch against his happy trail or pubes and you’ll find yourself with a suddenly passionate vincent ready to lay you down and have you every way he pleases .

I = Intimacy ( how are they during the moment ? the romantic aspect )

intense gazes , roaming hands , shared glances . the act is always intimate . without that intimacy he’d feel detached and dejected . he doesn’t want you to feel that way with him , and he certainly doesn’t want it either . if you leave vincent’s embrace not feeling as if you are wanted and desired and loved and needed , then vincent did a terrible job and will do everything in his power to rectify it . he wants you to know how much he craves you , and he’s very good at doing so .

J = Jack off ( masturbation headcanon )

jacking off is a quick fix for him . it brings temporary relaxation , a destressor when he is busy . before you , his hand was all he had , and he did it more so as a chore than anything . something he needed to do to force himself to relax . however after you arrived in ambrose it became a need . his want for you so powerful that he thought of a million different scenarios in which you found your way to his bed , or him to yours . after you became his lover however , it went back to being something he had to do because he was too wrapped up in his work to find you , or perhaps you were asleep and he didn’t wish to wake you just to satisfy his needs and leave . however he does jerk off less often , finding that allowing himself to get pent up during a project leads to a passionate and long session when he leaves his domain under the houze of wax .

K = Kink ( one or more of their kinks )

he is a voyeur . watching you intently as you undress , shower , or pleasure yourself . while he might have watched you through a cracked open door in secret before you two became official , now that you are lovers , he will at times simply sit and watch you pleasure yourself . his keen eye keeping track of every movement , ever stroke of your fingers , every twitch of your hips . it’s even common for him to have a sketchbook in hand , doing quick drawings of you to later turn into paintings .

vincent is also an exhibitionist . the thrill and power that comes with sex in semi public places is exciting . the way you both have to be hushed and hurried partly clothed as you desperately grasp at each other . it’s the fear of getting caught , and the fact that getting caught would cement in anyone’s mind exactly who you belonged to that has vincent , on rare occasion , taking you against the walls of the house of wax , in the open fields that surround ambrose , or even right outside of bo’s shop while he works . it’s a power trip that you won’t know he enjoys until you have him pressing you against lester’s truck while he’s out walking jonesy .

L = Location ( favorite places to do the do )

his bedroom . it’s a place for just the two of you . undisturbed by his brothers or the outside world . he’s taken you on the bed , in the comfy chair , against his desk . the dresser . he’s had you so many ways in his room , it’s the perfect place to feel you pressed against him .

he does also like having a roll with you on a blanket in the fields of ambrose . in nature . seeing your hair wild against the grass and small flowers , the smell of earth and how the sun or stars and moon illuminate you , it’s beautiful .

M = Motivation ( what turns them on, gets them going )

sometimes it’s just as simple as you turning to face him , half dressed and getting ready for bed , smiling and welcoming him home that has him itching to strip and make love . other times it’s the way you look at him , how your gaze up so shyly , a flush on your cheeks . it can be from you passing next to him , the scent of your shampoo triggering something in him that makes him want to take you . vincent may not seem like it , but he is very easily swayed into your arms .

N = No ( something they wouldn’t do , turn offs )

there is no impact play . no degradation from either end . no choking . these are turn offs . and as kind and even tempered as vincent can be , doing any of these things will have him removing himself from you and the situation entirely .

O = Oral ( preference in giving or receiving , skill , etc . )

he enjoys giving as much as he enjoys receiving , how ever he is more inclined to give as he enjoys the feeling of your thighs on either side of his head . you are , however , his first experience in giving oral . so he will start out cautious and slow , learning what makes you tremble and shake and moan and using that to his advantage . he is a quick learner . he doesn’t however spend time edging or teasing . when his mouth is on you he is going to work you to completion , not denying you as you cry out for him .

when it comes to receiving he is very open to it . like stated before , he enjoys it just as much as he enjoys giving . don’t expect him to fuck your mouth like a while animal . he will be slow and methodical , wanting the sensation to last . he’s more likely to want you to edge him , to rile him up for a bit . deny him his pleasure once or twice , and he will he in heaven when he finally cums . thought he will pull out till only the tip rests in your mouth while he does cum , seeing your mouth full of him makes him intensely satisfied .

P = Pace ( are they fast and rough ? slow and sensual ? etc . )

vincent can do both. more often than not he will go the slow and sensual route . he likes taking his time , working you both up , building the pleasure until it’s too much to bare . foreplay , during , and aftercare are all kept at the same pace .

the only times he will get fast and rough is when the two of you are clinging to each other in public . against the side of bo’s shop , against lester’s truck , in any room of the house of wax . if you two are anywhere you may get caught , vincent lets himself go and takes you in a assertive and dominant way that leaves you quaking .

Q = Quickie ( their opinions on quickies , how often , etc . )

he prefers actual sex instead of quickies , however if stress becomes too much , and there’s too much on his plate and he can only spare a few precious moments , he will take what he can get . he will leave you with a passionate kiss that tells you he will make it up to you at a later time . and you find yourself enjoying the intensity he shows you when he finds that time to make your little sessions last .

R = Risk ( are they game to experiment ? do they take risks ? etc . )

vincent will do nothing and try nothing that will cause you or himself pain . i would say he is not likely to experiment unless he has a good understanding of what it is that you want to try . and so long as it follows the rules he has in place for the bedroom .

S = Stamina ( how many rounds can they go for ? how long do they last ? )

he can last for two rounds before needing a break of fifteen to twenty minutes . however he will be more than happy to satisfy you with his fingers or mouth until his cock twitches back to life if you desire more than just two rounds during a session .

T = Toys ( do they own toys ? do they use them ? on a partner or themselves ? )

he does own some . he has a few fleshlights that he stopped using once his relationship with you started . before he had you they satisfied him more than just his hand . but after having you , they cannot compare . he also owns a few vibes that he enjoys using on himself and on you .

U = Unfair ( how much they like to tease )

he tries not to tease you much . in truth he much rather be teased than do the teasing . the most teasing he will do will involved making you ask for a kiss , or force you to lean up and steal on for yourself .

V = Volume ( how loud they are, what sounds they make , etc . )

raspy breathes , low moans , heavy panting , grunting . that’s what you get . he doesn’t get too loud , rather quiet in the act . but don’t ever feel as if you aren’t giving him pleasure . you are , he will show it to you in more physical ways than verbal .

W = Wild card ( a random headcanon for the character )

while vincent will agree to it , he is not a fan of being begged or bottoming . he finds it’s harder for him to cum when penetrated . but if it’s something that brings you pleasure he will allow you to do so , you’ll just have to work his cock with your hand , possibly having to pull out completely before he can finally cum .

X = X-ray ( let’s see what’s going on under those clothes )

while he is somewhat broad , he is also lithe . very toned . you aren’t going to find bulging muscles under his clothes . but you can still see the strength in his shoulder and back and arms . his chest toned but not defined . he has a flat stomach , tapered hips and strong legs and calves . follow the happy trail that down , eyeing the v of his hips and you’ll be greeted with a pretty flushed cock . he’s cut , head swollen and rosy , a darker shade than his shaft . he has a few thick veins around his base that curve around his cock . his cock hangs between his legs , even when hard , with a slight curve up . he’s long , 7″ in length and has a good girth . nothing that needs too much prep . he’s a nice snug fit .

Y = Yearning ( how high is their sex drive ? )

before he had a face and name to his want and lust , he didn’t yearn much . he craved , but he didn’t yearn . like stated earlier , his sex drive was low to average , only using his hand or fleshlights to get himself off in order to have a moment of relaxation or to just satisfy an urge like scratching an itch .

after you , he has seen a dramatic shift . while he can push it to the back of his mind while working , he yearns deeply for you . so much so that on the days he doesn’t go into his workspace , he will likely have you two to three times throughout the day . and each time is a session that can last between one to three rounds , depending .

Z = Zzz ( how quickly they fall asleep afterwards )

you will more than likely always fall asleep before vincent does . he’s observant . he likes to watch . he enjoys watching you fall to sleep . and he tends to want to keep watch over you , savoring the closeness of having you pressed against him . so trusting and all his .

#vincent sinclair #vincent sinclair imagine #vincent sinclair x reader #slasher #slashers #slasher imagine #slashers imagine #slasher x reader #slashers x reader

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xtruss · 4 years ago

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Diggers, Denial and Despair: The Macabre Story of the Srebrenica Cover-up!

“A Genocide of Muslims By the Criminal Christian Serb Forces!”

— Alastair Sloan, Peter Oborne | 6 May, 2017 | Middleeasreye.Net

Bosnian Serb genocide deniers are being courted by the Trump White House. Could rising anti-Muslim hatred in Europe lead to another killing spree?

TUZLA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — There is no ventilation in the room where they keep the bodies. There is no central heating in the room the forensics team work in. The cleaners were laid off long ago because there is no money to pay them. The plumbing in one of the lavatories is bust. The rent has gone unpaid for 12 months. The building is a dreary industrial unit with uncleaned windows and broken shutters.

Welcome to the International Commission on Missing Persons in Tuzla where earnest and stretched forensic anthropologists try to identify the victims of the Srebrenica genocide.

'He said he wanted to kill me, he chased us across the field cursing my dead children ... The police did nothing; this is Srpska now'

We had blithely assumed that the international community - and the governments of both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia - would have ensured that the organisation working to find mass graves, painstakingly identify the bodies and then inform the families, would be adequately funded until the very last victim was found. We were wrong: "We wanted to get sniffer dogs to find the remaining graves," the only staff member in the building told us, "but we couldn't afford it."

The rundown building is a perfect metaphor for a genocide that is forgotten by many, ignored by others, and completely denied by many of those most closely involved.

Dragana Vucetic, a 36-year-old Serb, is the director of the centre. A forensic anthropologist by training, she was a child in Belgrade during the terrible civil wars that ripped apart the Balkans in the 1990s.

Dragana joined the International Commission on Missing Persons straight after university and has worked tirelessly in the 13 years since.

Bida Smajlovic, 64, survivor of July 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, stands at a memorial center in Potocari, on March 24, 2016, while pointing at the name of her husband, engraved among names of other victims of the massacre. (AFP)

She showed us half a skeleton in a room next door to the mortuary, laid out on an aluminium table. She holds up a "skeletal inventory" in which they track the bones. Most of the diagram is red, indicating the bones that are missing. "It's a relief every time we identify someone," said Dragana. She described what she knew about the human remains in front of her. They belonged to a male, who was probably killed with a gunshot to the head.

Thanks to modern DNA techniques, the International Commission on Missing Persons has been able to identify him, even though much of his body is missing.

His family have been informed, and they are now ready to bury the remains. Many families, however, delay for years, waiting for more bones to be found. The reason for the majority of these delays is macabre.

Mass Graves Dispersed With Diggers

As Serbian paramilitaries found themselves hounded by international investigators intent on bringing the murderers to justice, they would carve up the mass graves at night with diggers, move the soil and bones to secondary sites, and then perhaps move them again for good measure.

The skeletons of Srebrenica were therefore spread across mass graves up to 20 kilometres apart.

It dawned on us that the genocide had actually worked

In the mortuary we see half a jaw with five teeth left in a semi-translucent plastic bag. On the shelves above each set of remains are corresponding brown paper bags containing whatever clothes, wallets or other scraps of belongings may have belonged to that person.

Most of the mass graves are now thought to have been found, but Dragana tells us there are one, "perhaps two”, still to go. Now that funding has dried up, they may never be discovered.

From Tuzla we drove towards Srebrenica, some 32 kilometres to the southeast, a haunting journey through villages that had been ethnically cleansed by Bosnian Serb forces and Serb militias during the war. Many Bosnian Muslims have left forever, while newly built churches mark Bosnian Serb possession of the territory.

We also realised that that we were taking the same journey – only in the reverse direction – as the so-called "Death March" of 11 July 1995 when 10,000 Bosnian Muslims fled Srebrenica towards Tuzla after UN forces refused to protect them. Of those 10,000, some 7,000 were killed by Serbian forces.

Eventually we reached Srebrenica, the site of the only genocide in Europe since the Second World War. The UN camp, which failed so terribly in its task to protect, has now been turned into a museum.

As at Tuzla, we were in for a very nasty shock. We had come to Srebrenica to learn about the events that led to the genocide. Chillingly, we learnt something else as well. It dawned on us that the genocide had actually worked.

Act of Defiance

With most of the town's former Muslim residents dead or emigrated, Srebrenica is now controlled by Bosnian Serbs, the majority of whom refuse to accept that that genocide took place.

We met a survivor of the genocide who moved back to Srebrenica in an act of defiance, marrying a fellow survivor and having three children.

'They are being taught that the genocide never happened. You turn on the TV and it is like the war never ended'

"For a long time I thought we could make a life here," he told us, but now they want to move away. "Our first child is starting at the local school. They are being taught that the genocide never happened. You turn on the TV and it is like the war never ended."

Nedzad Avdic cannot doubt the genocide took place because his uncle and father, and many other male relatives, were also killed (only the bodies of his uncle and father have been found so far). His story is horrific: he himself survived after crawling away badly wounded from a mound of defenceless men who had been shot dead by the Serbs.

Nedzad Avdic survived the massacre by crawling away (Rooful Ali/MEE)

"The denial of the genocide hurts," said Mejra Dzogaz, whose sons were murdered in the hills around Srebrenica. The elderly lady told us her story in the United Nations base from which refugees were expelled by Dutch United Nations peacekeepers in the hours before the killings began.

"We are still hoping the deniers will turn round finally and think about us and all the other mothers, but all they want to do is deny. If you turn the TV on all you can hear is them denying. We cry and cry and they still deny."

The mother told us that the first time she returned to her home, a neighbour threatened her. "He said he wanted to kill me, he chased us across the field cursing my dead children. Luckily my neighbour came. The police did nothing; this is Srpska now."

Srpska is the semi-autonomous northern and eastern region of Bosnia-Herzegovina which includes Srebrenica and borders Serbia. Since the war ended Srpska has been dominated by Bosnian Serbs.

Mejra Dzogaz told us that many of the same men she remembered carrying out the killings she now sees around the town, some holding offices at the local council or senior ranks in the local police force.

"I put so much sugar in my coffee every morning," she added, "but no matter how much I put in, it still tastes bitter."

Every year, the international community gathers in the cemetery at Srebrenica to commemorate the genocide.

The ceremony remains an important reminder that a genocide in Europe has happened since the Second World War, and that leaders should always be on their guard to avoid it happening again.

Mejra Dzogas says that she still sees people responsible for the genocide walking freely in Screbenica (Rooful Ali/MEE)

This year, the preparations for the memorial must be in doubt. Last October a Bosnian Serb nationalist politician, Mladen Grujicic, was elected mayor of Srebrenica. “When they prove it to be the truth," Grujicic has said, "I’ll be the first to accept it."

Like many Bosnian Serb nationalists, he still refuses to use the word genocide about the atrocities of July 1995 - even though Srebrenica is now regarded as the most well-documented and best evidenced war crime in history.

"I always said that what happened in Srebrenica was a terrible crime against the Bosnian population and that there were also terrible crimes against the Serbian population." Grjujicic has said, adding that "I leave it to competent institutions to qualify it."

Genocide Denial

This is genocide denial. He ignores the fact that the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia have both clearly ruled the killings "genocide".

A United Nations Security Council motion proposing to condemn the Srebrenica killings as genocide in 2015 was vetoed by Russia, Serbia and Republika Srpska's ally, but both the US Congress and the European Parliament have also passed resolutions calling the massacre a genocide.

The chairman of Remembering Srebrenica, Dr Waqar Azmi, said: "It is a cruel irony that the election of a new mayor of Srebrenica, who is a genocide denier, was made possible only because of the ethnic cleansing of its Muslim population." In Serbia itself, one 2015 poll showed 54 percent people do not question the crime's brutality, but an extraordinary 70 percent still deny it was "genocide". In November 2016, Serb legislators excluded Srebrenica from a new law forbidding genocide denial more widely.

Grujicic does not hold a minority view among political leaders in both Srpska and Serbia, and Bosnian Serbs who now live in the Republika Srpska.

Once 2015 poll showed that in Serbia, 54 percent of people do not question the crime’s brutality, but 70 percent still deny it was "genocide". In November 2016, Serb legislators excluded Srebrenica from a new law forbidding genocide denial more widely.

Boak Bollocks Mladen Grujicic, mayor of Srebrenica, with Zeljka Cvijanovic, prime minister of the Republic of Srpska, at the 65th National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on 2 February 2017 (Republic of Sprska Government)

With such a palpable atmosphere of denial everywhere we went, one question lingered on - could such a crime happen again?

It is as if European Jews who survived the Holocaust had found themselves being ruled by the same criminals who denied the gas chambers existed, and who themselves had ordered the killings.

There is more than a little crossover between the anti-Muslim Chetnik Serb nationalist ideology, and anti-Jewish German Nazism.

"It was genetically deformed material that embraced Islam," Biljana Plavsic, the president of the Republika Srpska from July 1996 to November 1998 - regarded as the ideologue who provided the pseudo-intellectual underpinning for the genocide - once said.

She was later sent to The Hague and convicted of war crimes. "And now, of course, with each successive generation it simply becomes concentrated," she continued.

'It really hurts when people deny the murder of your family. It is just like a dagger to the heart, as if they never even existed'

- Lilian Black, chair of the Holocaust Survivors' Association

"It gets worse and worse. It simply expresses itself and dictates their style of thinking, which is rooted in their genes. And through the centuries, the genes degraded further."

Plavsic was a former Fulbright scholar and acclaimed biologist, lending a chilling air of scientific callousness to the "Greater Serbia" ideology of Slobodan Milosevic.

Lilian Black, the chair of the Holocaust Survivors' Association and director of the Holocaust Heritage and Learning Centre for the North, was also on the trip.

Black was shocked by the culture of denial in Srpska, and drew comparisons with her own family's experiences.

"It really hurts when people deny the murder of your family. It is just like a dagger to the heart, as if they never even existed. When we got the Nazi records from the International Tracing Service in Germany of our family’s persecution it was a truly cathartic experience," she said.

"It was like saying yes they were here and this is what happened to them. It doesn't change their fate, but it is somehow a means to helping us accept what happened."

Bosnian Serb Nationalists' Trump links

Hungary was only a few hours drive from where we were standing, where Prime Miniser Viktor Orban has recently framed his own anti-refugee policy on distinctly religious grounds.

"Those arriving have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture," Orban wrote in a commentary for Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung, a German newspaper.

"Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims."

In December, Slovakia banned public authorities from allowing Islam to be recognised as a religion.

Potocari cemetery overlooking the old United Nations base (Rooful Ali/MEE)

In the recent Dutch election, Geert Wilders described Islam as "possibly even more dangerous than Nazism". During his election campaign, US President Donald Trump called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States".

One of the most disturbing aspects of our trip was the discovery of links between the new Trump administration and the genocide-denying tendency amongst Bosnian Serb nationalists.

Mayor Grujicic, who denies Srebrenica was a genocide, was invited to attend the prestigious National Prayer Breakfast event in Washington two weeks after Trump was inaugurated.

Grujicic said he hoped it would be "an opportunity to make contacts with some important persons, and I will try to do something useful for Srebrenica's residents".

Milorad Dodik, the president of the Republika Srpska, also received an invite to the Trump inauguration ceremony, extended by his transition team (before it was knocked down by a concerned US State Department).

'Nobody tries to argue that the Holocaust wasn't so bad because the allies also committed some war crimes'

Dodik has called Srebrenica "the greatest deception of the 20th century".

Our trip, which was organised by the British charity Remembering Srebrenica, was hosted by Bosnian Muslims who had fought or suffered greatly during the war.

Systematic Atrocities

None denied that crimes by Muslim fighters had also taken place against Serbs, but there was an important and qualitative difference between the two.

According to Azmi, who is now working on plans for a Srebrenica memorial centre in Britain, "Nobody tries to argue that the Holocaust wasn't so bad because the allies also committed some war crimes.

"Bosniak [Bosnian Muslim] war crimes were sporadic and isolated, and Bosniaks were fighting for a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society. Serb war crimes were organised and systematic, and Serbs were fighting for a mono-ethnic 'Greater Serbia'."

It is clear when you visit Srebrenica that what happened there in July 1995 was by far the greatest atrocity of the Yugoslav conflict.

It was also not an incident that can be understood simply by tracing out the mechanics of what took place minute by minute, hour by hour, on those particular days.

Srebrenica was the culmination of years of increasingly explicit anti-Muslim hate speech in the Serbian media, and in the speeches and rhetoric of figures like Slobodan Milosevic, and the Bosnian Serb political and military leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.

Milosevic, who was overthrown in 2000, was extradited to The Hague and accused of genocide and other war crimes but died before his trial concluded. Karadzic and Mladic were both captured in Serbia, in 2008 and 2011, respectively, with the former found guilty of genocide and sentenced to 40 years in prison. Mladic's trial, in which he faces two indicted for two counts of genocide, is ongoing.

Yet the strength of their anti-Muslim ideology clearly lives on in Serbia and Republika Srpska. It is this that made us wonder - could a Srebrenica-style genocide in Europe happen again?

— Alastair Sloan focuses on injustice and oppression in the West, Russia and the Middle East. He contributes regularly to The Guardian, Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye. Follow Alastair's work at www.unequalmeasures.com

— Peter Oborne was named freelancer of the year 2016 by the Online Media Awards for an article he wrote for Middle East Eye. He was British Press Awards Columnist of the Year 2013. He resigned as chief political columnist of the Daily Telegraph in 2015. His books include The Triumph of the Political Class, The Rise of Political Lying, and Why the West is Wrong about Nuclear Iran.

— The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

— Photo: A Bosnian woman mourns over a coffin of a relative at the Potocari Memorial Center near the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica on 10 July 2015 where 136 bodies found in mass grave sites in eastern Bosnia will be reburied on 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre. (AFP)

— This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

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the-dragons-knight · 5 years ago

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Prompt #4: Dragons and Pixies don’t Mix

Entry four for the FFXIV Write Challenge for 2019 hosted by @sea-wolf-coast-to-coast

Prompt: “Shifting Blame”

Rating: E

Relations: None

Warnings: Shadowbringers 5.0 MSQ area content

The Warrior of Light and the Scions learn that dragons and pixies are perhaps not the best of friends.

Anything written in ‘( )’ is spoken in fae language just so that is clear! :3

- - - - - - - - - - -

In all her battles and all she’d ever learned in the travels she’d ventured, nothing Katsum had done prepared her for a kind of standoff like this. To see a massive dragon-like Raihogg crouched down like he was about to attack was already intimidating enough, and the whole horde of pixies in front of him only made it even stranger. From beside her, the Scions watched with a mixture of terror and amazement. Urianger, Thancred, and Minfilia had looks of bewilderment. This was probably the first dragon she had ever seen and Kat was sure Urianger and Thancred had never seen or known of Raihogg before now. Alisaie looked over, shaking her head at her brother and looking at the Miqo’te Warrior of Light, “So...is this...normal?”

She sighed and started over to the battling creatures, “Not in this sense...Give me a moment.”

“You’re destroying our beautiful flowers you great dumb...lizard!” One pixie shouted, fluttering bravely in front of Raihogg’s nose, “Your claws are digging up the dirt!”

“Yeah, stay off of our meadows!!” The rest of the fairies joined in, growing braver by the moment.

Raihogg hissed angrily, taking a step forward, “I have done no wrong save for walking. You would have me stay in flight rather than walk?!”

“Oh! Is that too hard for the big lizard to do? Too heavy to stay afloat all day?! Ha ha ha ha!”

It was hard to miss the unmistakable rumble in his voice and the spark in his mouth. Katsum stepped up quickly before he could speak again, setting a hand on his neck to draw his attention away. He simmered down a slight bit, but still held his stance.

“I would not ignite his wrath, pixies,” Katsum was going to do her best to talk this through if she could, “He has a good soul, but one should never make a dragon angry.”

“We aren’t scared of him! This is fae lands here and we do as we please in our home!” They all nodded and the one that spoke folded their arms and flew into Katsum’s face, “In fact, if this is your beast, then it's your fault the flowers are destroyed.”

“Excuse me?” And it just got more complicated.

The pixies all laughed and fluttered about as the one continued, “Oh, yes! And if it’s your fault the flowers are dead, then you have to do something for us to make up for it.”

“Oh oh! Like play with us! Play with us forever and forever!!” They all shouted happily at that, flittering about like it was the greatest idea they had ever come up with.

Katsum sighed, “Do they ever come up with anything else other than that?”

Urianger shook his head, “I am afraid not, though be warned that their idea of “play” is far different than thine own definition.”

The pixies giggled and pointed at Raihogg, “But first! We need to turn this thing into one of our precious leaf sculptures!”

“Oh, yes! Think of how pretty he’ll look!”

Katsum narrowed her eyes and Raihogg hissed lowly. No one was taking him from her; no one messes with her dragons. She went to reach for her sword when a voice spoke out in the air.

“There will be no need for any of that, my sapling~” With a spark, Feo Ul appeared before the Warrior and lifted a hand, “Let me handle this before we have an all-out war on our hands. If anyone knows how to talk to a pixie, it’s a pixie.” She huffed and crossed her arms and mumbled angrily, “Which is why you should have just called upon first.”

Katsum gave her a sour look as the red pixie fluttered over in front of the Miqo’te and the dragon and glared at the still giggling pixies, “Listen up! All of you! As you know, that golden-headed lady is my (precious sapling), and all those others, her friends, are my playthings as well!”

“I am still not sure I like being called that,” Katsum’s ear perked as she heard Alphinaud whisper this to his sister and she shushed him.

Feo Ul continued, “Sooo...if this red-scaled...beast belongs to her, then it is mine too! So you can’t have any of them! Ever!”

“Oh, come on! Not even for a century or two? Not for very long…”

“That’s a matter of perception,” Thancred muttered with a scowl.

“NO!” Feo Ul fluttered her wings angrily, “Not even for a minute! Not even a second!”

“But they destroyed our flowers! Our beautiful gardens!”

“Look around you, you (fluttering flower sniffers)! There are hundreds upon thousands of flowers in Il Mheg! All any of you ever do is worry about your flowers! If you ask me, I think this beast here did you a favor. Now you have more flowers to plant. Isn’t that what you want, hm?!”

The pixie who had spoken before shook with anger, “No no no! They ruined our flowers! They must pay us back for it! They must!!” When one rallied, they all followed suit, the spirits of the pixies rising again.

Feo Ul only grinned mischievously, “The hard way then. Alright, you’ve made your point. Then I offer you one last chance, so listen up!” The pixies quoted and she fluttered back over to Katsum and landed on top of Raihogg’s head. He growled and she shushed him.

“Just go with it, dragon,” He grumbled but obeyed and Feo Ul smirked, “If you won’t let this go and still shout for recompense, then I shall ask this dragon to raze this entire field and burn every last flower until nothing remains.”

The pixies gasped in fear and Raihogg’s anger became a bit more humored, a Dravanian grin taking over the scowl on his lips. His stance became more playful as his tail swung back and forth like a cat ready to pounce on its prey. The sight was unlike any she’d seen and Katsum couldn’t help the grin that broke out on her face.

“You wouldn’t dare, (mad blossom)...” That one pixie tried their best to gather their confidence.

“Oooooh...but I would.” She looked down at Raihogg and held out a hand, “What say you, (thunder beast)?” The great dragon reared back his head, unfolding his wings, and let out a heart stopping roar that echoed through the flower fields to the castle in the distance and even to the mountains far beyond the reaches of the Fae lands. All the pixies scattered, flying every which way in terror, knocking into each other and doing their best to get away as quickly as they could. All the while Feo Ul laughed at their terror, the biggest and most satisfied grin on her face.

She plopped down on his head as he settled again, stroking his scales affectionately, “Perhaps there is some use in you after all, dragon.”

Raihogg huffed, “I am starting to think that perhaps the Moggles were not as dreadful as I once thought. Nevertheless, you have my thanks, pixie.”

Feo Ul nodded, “I knew you’d warm up to me eventually, (thunder beast). And this could be the beginning of a most wonderful friendship.~”

Katsum wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that, but if it kept Feo Ul from yelling at her about being called upon, she’d take it.

#ffxiv #final fantasy xiv #katsum almor #miqo'te #warrior of light #wol #scions of the seventh dawn #pixies #shadowbringers #il mheg #dragons #dravanian #shadowbringers spoilers #ffxiv writing challenge #ffxiv writing #FFxivWrite2019

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enouementiisms-a · 5 years ago

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✰ it’s time to wake up, BURTON ‘GUS’ GUSTER II, you’ve been in cryosleep for too long and the people of PSYCH miss you. when you went into slumber you were FORTY-TWO years old, your pronouns are HE/HIM, and you WERE VOLUNTEERED for the expanse program. now that you’ve awoken, your position as a TEACHER is waiting for you. remember, the expanse thanks you!

THE BASICS;

NAME: Burton ‘Gus’ Guster II

ALIAS(ES): Super Smeller, Super Sniffer, Peter Panic, Gus ‘Sillypants’ Jackson, François, Magic Head, Chocolate Columbo, Doctor Mc … Took, The Jackal, Earnest Lambert Watkins, Mr Vocabulary, Felicia Fancybottom, Bud, D'Andre, Gus T. T. Showbiz, Ovaltine Jenkins, Burton ‘Oil Can’ Guster, the G, Big Head Burton, Burton the Billowy Bear, Magic Head, Tabrickisha Schillington, Cowboy Lendo, Shmuel Cohen, Galileo Humpkins, Schoonie ‘U-Turn’ Singleton, Nick-Nack, Lavender Gooms, Doctor Guster, Tan, Bruton ‘Gasty’ Gaster, Patty Simcox, Fearless Guster, Lemongrass Gogulope, Die Harder, Squirts MacIntosh, Ernesto Agapito Garcés con ya de Abelar, Big Baby Burton, Black Star, Homeskillet, Methuselah Honeysuckle, Chesterfield McMillan and wife, Longbranch Pennywhistle, Scrooge Jones, Gussie, Hummingbird Saltalamacchia, Step Anthony Wally Ali (Cat Stuck in a Tree), Resourceful Gus, Taye Diggs, Dequan ‘Smallpox’ Randolph, Hollabackatcha, Slicks, Sterling Cooper, Trapezious Milkington, Jazz Hands, Shawn, Detective Miles, Gus Brown John Slade, Ron Davis, Rich Fingerland aka Bob Adams, Black Magic, Harry Munroe, Cheswicke, Doughnut Holschtein, Ghee Buttersnaps AKA The Heater, The Vault of Secrets, Clementine Woollysocks, Guts, Ol’ Ironside, Old Iron Stomach, Tin Tummy, Gustice, Jonathan Jacob Jingly Smith, Santonio Holmes, Deon Richmond, Gurton Buster, Chaz Bono, Chocolate Einstein, MC Clap Yo Handz, Road Rash, Mellowrush, Miss Whittlebury, Crankshaft, G-Force, Sher-Black-Lock, Imhotep or He Cometh in Peace, Control Alt Delete, Yasmine Bleeth, Lodge Blackman, Mission Figgs, RadioStar, Gusjay Gupta, Original G-String AKA Crowd Pleasah, Tap-Man, Watson Williams, Benedict Arnold Jackson, Suggs, Ingle Woods, Brutal Hustler, Fellatio Del Toro, Eddie Adams from Torrance, Larenz Tate, Sh'Dynasty, Candyman, Gurn Blandsten, Immaculate Conception, Pootie Tang, Domo Arigato, Jonas Gustavsson, Blue Ivy Carter, Bill Ofrights, Vijay Armitraj, Django Unchained, A Playa Named Gus, Darryl, Flapjack Palmdale, Burton Trout (no relation), Bad News Marvin Barnes, Lil’ Wayne, King Mongkut, Gigi Van Tran, Trending Ontwitter, Robert ‘Booooooooooob’ Jones, My Black Cameron, Dr. Alan Champion, Angela Bennett, Jack Devlin, Jason Bourne, Jack Bauer, Tony Stark, Billy Elliott, Ferris Bueller, Edward Scissorhands, Hans Solo, Hans Landa, Han-Na Montana, Mr. Popper, Mr. Bee, Mr. Ripley, Mr. Deeds, Mr. Pink, Mr. White, Mr. Brown, Mr. Blonde, Mr. T, Dr. T, Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Phibes, Dr. Evil, Dr. Horrible, Dr. Dolittle, Frodo, Gandalf, Bilbo, Neo, Morpheus, Trinity, Simba, Zazu, Ross, Chandler, Joey, Jerry, George, Elaine, Kramer, Kirk, Spock, Picard, Data, Denzel Diggs Underwood Morris Chestnut Washington, Burton Guster Black Spencer.

AGE: 42

BIRTHDAY & ZODIAC: December 1977, Sagittarius

PREFERRED PRONOUNS: He/Him/His

FACECLAIM: Dulé Hill

PERSONALITY: ISFJ-A

A DEEPER LOOK;

BACKGROUND: Status: Alive. For Gus, this has been a very important thing his entire life. That is not an exaggeration. With a best friend like Shawn Spencer, it’s surprisingly easy to be at risk, sometimes multiple times in one day. When Gus was younger, he nearly got away from Shawn thanks to schooling and his parents interference, but when Shawn helped the Guster family, Gus’ parents backed down. Years, and a sham marriage passed, Gus was living his best life as a pharmaceutical sales rep, making 48k a year. He was where he belonged. With a best friend like Shawn Spencer, it’s surprisingly easy to have one’s life plans go awry. Gus still worked as a pharm. sales rep, but too often, he ended up being the getaway driver in the police cases Shawn managed to worm them both into. As the years passed, Gus still complained about it but when the chance came to go back to his comfortable career and say goodbye to his best friend, Gus chose to say goodbye to the comfortable life, knowing it wouldn’t be the same if he was on his own.

KEY RELATIONSHIPS: Bill and Winnie Guster (parents), Joy Guster (older sister), Shawn Spencer (best friend), Burton Guster I (uncle, namesake), Mira Gaffney (ex-wife), Rachael (ex-girlfriend) and her son Maximus.

WEAPONS: The Blueberry.

POWERS/ABILITIES/SKILLS: Tap dancing, expert safe cracker, vocal manipulation, bomb defusal, incredible sense of smell.

GREATEST STRENGTH: His friendship with Shawn.

GREATEST WEAKNESS/FLAW: His friendship with Shawn.

OUTFIT THEY WOKE UP IN: Pinstripe button down shirt, tan slacks, dress shoes.

FAVORITE FOOD: A poached egg with hollandaise sauce on an English muffin.

ONE FEAR: The “head peel.” (It’s his fourth greatest fear.)

ONE HOPE: To survive the strangest case he’s ever been on and to really let Shawn have a piece of Gus’ mind if they ever see each other again.

ONE HEADCANON: Gus won’t go anywhere without The Blueberry to the point of clinging onto it with all his might until he at least gets to have his trusty car with him.

THE QUESTIONNAIRE;

How does your character feel about being dropped into the expanse program? Are they excited? Suspicious? Confused? -- Suspicious as heck. He’s still convinced this entire thing is an elaborate escape room Shawn’s cooked up for him.

What does your character hope to see the most during the expanse 009’s journey? -- Home.

If your character could bring one thing from home, what would it be? -- While it’s not exactly how he remembers it, he has his Blueberry so he doesn’t need anything else.

#expanse:charintro #『introductions ✧ burton guster ii』

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fordllc · 2 years ago

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The Sandlot's Gender Norms

In this entry, I will examine the critical question, what gender norm is constructed or undone in this artifact, how is it rhetorically done, and/or how does it promote a dominant ideology over a marginalized group or push back against the ideology or gender norms? Is it productive or unproductive? To investigate these questions, I examined a few different scenes from the movie, The Sandlot. The Sandlot's rhetoric unproductively promotes gender norms that men are superior to women, and specifically that women don't belong in baseball, which is detrimental to the push for equality and inclusion that the younger generation needs.

The Sandlot was filmed in 1993, however the movie is about a group of young baseball players during the summer of 1962. While gender norms in 1962 were considerably more prominent, by 1993 gender norms had become significantly less segregated. During this 30 year period, several laws were placed to bring equity to women in the workplace, bring women into institutions, and protect women's rights. I will be analyzing how this movie represents gender norms in the 60’s and I will also be diving into the productiveness of doing it in such a way.

The Sandlot constructs the narrative of objectification of women by creating a narrative that boys can find a way to take advantage of women as displayed by “The pool” scene. In this scene, all of the boys are in the pool, staring at the lifeguard, Wendy Peffercorn. One of the boys, Squints, is heard saying “I've swam here every summer in my adult life, and every summer there she is, lotioning, oiling, oiling, lotioning. I can't take this no more”(Evans)! He then proceeds to jump in the pool, knowing that he can't swim. Wendy Peffercorn has to jump in the pool and rescue him, performing mouth to mouth. Squints smiles while she's not looking, then the next she puts her mouth on his, he grabs her head and aggressively kisses her. She freaks out and drags him off the pool deck, and the kids run away proudly. This scene is severely inappropriate for young kids watching this movie, and it is unproductive in the way that it promotes using women. This scene is about a boy who gets so desperate that he uses a lifeguard to prove his “manliness.” The producers make this look so easy, encouraging the audience to act in the same way, using women for their own pleasure. For young boys watching this movie, this could be very intriguing for them. However, it could cause them to get themselves into trouble by trying to do the same thing. The Sandlot constructs the narrative of men being superior to women, especially in baseball by creating a very famous scene that is controversially the climax of the movie. In this scene, two different groups of boys approach each other on the baseball diamond. One group is on bicycles and the other group is walking, acting extremely “tough.” The confrontation consists of Ham and a boy from the other team spewing insults at each other such as, “You ain't good enough to lick the dirt off our cleats!” “Shut up idiot!” “Moron!” “Scab eater!” “Butt sniffer!” “Puss licker!” “Fart smeller!” “You bob for apples in the toilet, and you like it!” Ham gets visibly upset, and there is a pause. “You play ball like a girl”(Evans) Everyone is taken away by this, and then starts to laugh. By having this insult be the one that ends the spewing, the one that blows everyone away and the one that the other kid is insulted by the most, this scene rhetorically infers that women play at a lower level than men, or don't belong on the baseball diamond at all. This encourages boys to leave girls out, and think of girls as less than them. By instilling this into boys at an early age, it is unproductive, setting them up damaging relationships and actions. Also, the “manly” factor that this movie presents is apparent in this scene. The name calling, glove throwing, spitting, it clearly gets the point across that that's how boys should act. The sandlot also pushes the narrative that boys have to be tough, play sports, and “get into trouble” by evolving the character Scotty from a kid that stayed inside, didn't play sports and didn't have any friends to a kid that is tough, has friends and is good at baseball. Towards the beginning of the movie, Scotty’s mom sat Scotty down and said this to him, “I don't want you sitting around in here all summer fiddling with this stuff like you did last summer and the one before, I know you're smart and I’m proud of you. I want you to get out into the fresh air and make some friends. Run around, scrape your knees, get dirty. Climb trees, hop fences, get into trouble for crying out loud”(Evans). This scene implies that boys need to play sports, make a mess, be tough, and have a good team. The problem with this is that not every boy is the same. Not every boy wants to do sports, not every boy wants to get into trouble. What if that boy wants to sit inside and create things, be artistic or musical? These hobbies should be looked at as just as important as playing sports. This scene is detrimental for not only the younger audience, but the adult audience as well. It tells adults that they should get their kids into sports, force them to go outside, and encourage them to get in trouble.

Children are programmed to adhere to their specific gender norms by movies, television, and society as a whole. Many movies and shows are like this, not just The Sandlot. Kids that don’t adhere to their gender norms on the television screen are seen as weird, gay, and different. These productions hinder the ability of society to make it okay to be different, since many children are stuck to the television watching said productions. In their journal, Transformation of Gender Roles in Hollywood Movies, Powers, Rothman and Rothman say, “At the same time, while developments in society have substantially changed the gender roles that many Americans play, our data strongly suggest that Hollywood doesn't so much reflect these changes as it exaggerates them. Far from institutionalizing "bourgeois patriarchy," many Hollywood films—and filmmakers—now embrace extraordinarily liberal (and, in the case of sexual relations) alienated visions of how men and women relate to each other. Their vision is, at any rate, different from that of the American public, which they not only entertain, but seek to influence, and from other elite groups”(Powers, Rothman, Rothman 281). Hollywood producers aren't doing their part to create change. The ignorance to society and what kind of role they could have in creating change isn't valued above the lucrativeness of the business and their personal image. In order for children to be comfortable in their own skin and not be negatively influenced by film, filmmakers are the ones that have to create that change. Deconstructing gender norms have improved since The Sandlot, but a lot of work needs to be done.

Works Cited

Evans, David Mickey, Director. The Sandlot. 20th Century Studios, 1993.

Powers, Stephen P., et al. “Transformation of Gender Roles in Hollywood Movies: 1946-1990.” Political Communication, vol. 10, no. 3, July 1993, pp. 259–83. EBSCOhost, https://proxy.augustana.edu:2138/10.1080/10584609.1993.9962983.

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adapted-batteries · 6 years ago

Text

Beware the Bear

Fandom: The Librarians

Rating: General/sfw

Relationship: Jazekiel

Word Count: 2333

The Library acquires a canine guardian after a mission to a monastery in Tibet, and it turns out he’s more magically skilled than anyone realizes.

Or, alternate summary: How many times did I type "god" instead of '"dog" when writing this? (the answer: it was almost every time I tried to write “dog”)

Also posted on my Ao3 here.

-----

Stone and Ezekiel being more than friends had been happening for a long while. They kept it on the down low, and thanks to Ezekiel’s paranoia, no one knew about them. No one seemed to pay any mind that they left together sometimes, and they carefully timed their entrances after spending the night at each other’s places, though more often than not they ended up at Stone’s place.

For the most part they kept themselves off each other unless they were alone in the Library, though they kept themselves in check more after Flynn and Eve got tethered. Neither of them were sure the new immortals didn’t know everything that happened in the Library. The Librarian and Guardian both assured they weren’t connected to the Library in that manner when the LiT’s berated them with questions about how it was like being tethered, but Stone liked erring on the side of safety. Neither Flynn or Eve ever brought up him and Ezekiel if they did know about the secret kisses had in the depths of the Library, and maybe a blowjob or two, which Stone and Ezekiel indulged themselves in sometimes.

The trio went on a mission to a monastery in Tibet, which according to the Library’s records of the place, was known for the temple dogs they raised. One of the dogs of the previous year’s litter, apparently the runt (Tibetan mastiff like dogs aren’t small, even if they’re the runt of the litter), took it upon itself to help the trio deal with the artifact messing with the laws of magic at the monastery. It turned out the dog was a vital part of the mission, with a nose for magical objects. One of the monks noticed how the dog worked so well with the LiTs, and ended up giving them the dog as the gift.

Eve was certainly surprised when they returned. “Um, is that a dog?”

“It’s a magical dog!” Cassandra said, bounding into the Annex, the small bear of a dog right on her heels.

Jenkins nodded at the dog almost reverently, and then glanced to the newly arrived Librarians. “You didn’t steal this dog, correct?”

“No, it was a gift for helping the monastery out with this,” Stone replied, placing an ornately carved wooden box about the size of a thick phonebook on the main table. Stone looked at Ezekiel sternly. “Do not open this here, no matter how much you want to see what happens.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Ezekiel retorted, patting the dog on the head.

“Before anyone opens it, I will take it to the dangerous artifacts wing,” Jenkins said, picking up the box gingerly before he left the Annex.

“Dangerous artifact taken care of, now the next order of business is him,” Eve said, pointing to the dog. “You need to decide if someone is going to keep him at their place, or if he’ll stay here, get the necessities for a dog, and name him.”

“You’re not gonna help us?” Ezekiel asked.

Eve sat down at her desk. “I’m not the one who brought a dog back.” She looked expectantly at the trio, who just stood there. “Well? Any names?”

Stone went thoughtful. “I always wanted to name a dog after Michelangelo.”

“Oh, I like the name Galileo,” Cassandra said.

Ezekiel eyed both of them with mild contempt for using the famous people in their fields. “How about Bear? Because he’s huge and from a distance kind of looks like a small bear.”

“I vote for Bear too,” Eve started, giving an apologetic look to the somewhat disappointed Stone and Cassandra, “Not that famous people have bad names...but Bear suits him more.”

Bear let out a content boof.

“Sounds like he likes Bear too,” Stone said. Bear looked at him, wagging his tail.

“Time for Bear’s first shopping trip!” Cassandra said excitedly, hurrying down the corridor. Bear loped after her, tail still wagging.

---

Two hours later the trio and Bear returned to the Annex with a nice, plush dog bed, new gold and maroon collar and matching leash (Cassandra insisted he needed it because it suited him, not because he belonged in Gryffindor), a bag of dog food half the size of Cassandra (which Ezekiel carried because he wanted to prove to Stone he could), and probably too many toys and treats because all three of them seemed to be competing for who could spoil Bear the most. Bear certainly wasn't going to stop them, he knew what was best for him.

He liked the monastery where he was raised, but he loved living at the Annex. Not only did he have six people to watch over (even if three were immortal), but the place seemed to heighten his senses with all the ambient magic. The magic certainly made his ability to project his thoughts much easier. It took a few days of trying to communicate to his people for them to realize they were actually hearing him, not just reading his facial expressions super well.

Cassandra was reading something intently, sitting at a stool at the main table. Whatever it was, Bear could tell it was perplexing, complicated enough to keep her hunched over the book for a good two hours, unaware that Bear was watching her. Instead of softly boofing to get her attention, he projected “Time for break” at her.

The thought snapped her out of her study; she glanced around the Annex, everyone else who was in there (Eve and Stone) still working away at their respective desks, not looking at her. Finally her gaze found Bear, watching her expectantly. She tilted her head to the side, thinking for a moment, then started to focus back on the book, so Bear projected the same phrase again.

This time she looked directly at Bear, initial shock flooded by curiosity. She waved a hand in front of her (Bear learned quickly that was how she used her magical ability), and then the words “Did you say that?” in her voice appeared in his head.

“Yes,” Bear thought back.

Cassandra grinned and shot off her stool towards the middle of the Annex. “Guys! Bear can talk!”

Stone and Eve both looked up, Stone a little less focused because he had been deep in research land. Eve blinked at Bear. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“Not verbal, telepathic,” Cassandra corrected. She looked at Bear, gesturing towards Eve.

He hadn’t had any success with getting his thoughts to Eve before, but maybe now that she was focused on him, it would work. “Can project thoughts,” he sent to her, but based on her lack of reaction, she didn’t hear it. Bear looked to Stone, trying the same phrase, but again he got the same blank look. Bear looked back to Cassandra. “They can’t hear me. Not sensitive enough.”

“He says you guys aren’t sensitive enough to hear him. I guess since I can send thoughts, I can receive them easier too,” Cassandra said.

“The monks didn’t mention anything about telepathy,” Stone said.

Cassandra looked at Bear for his answer. “Rare ability. Needs lots of ambient magic,” he sent to her.

“He says it’s a rare ability, and because there’s so much ambient magic here in the Library, it’s easier to do.” Cassandra started heading out of the Annex. “Let’s go find Jenkins or Flynn and see if they can pick up your thoughts,” she told Bear. He happily followed.

Flynn and Jenkins could, in fact, receive Bear’s thoughts, but not as easily as Cassandra could. When they finally found Ezekiel, which didn’t take as long as Cassandra thought it would thanks to Bear’s nose, they learned Ezekiel wasn’t sensitive enough either. Bear hoped with enough time and training from Jenkins, the ones who couldn’t hear him now could eventually.

---

Eventually that did happen for Eve , and once she was able to understand Bear, she used that talented, magical artifact finding sniffer of his to find the Librarians whenever they ran off when there was work to do. When someone got found, they were annoyed...but not for long because who can be annoyed with happy, fluffy dog that weighed as much as a person. Cassandra and Stone were always pretty easy to find, but Ezekiel liked to make it a game, to “keep Bear sharp” he told Eve.

Today Bear was sent to find both Ezekiel and Stone. He followed their scents deep into the Library. Last time Bear found them together, Ezekiel had heard him so he couldn’t surprise them. He was determined to spook the thief today.

Silently he padded around shelves, careful to keep his claws from clacking on the concrete floor. Their scents grew stronger, meaning he was close. There was more than just their usual smells; Bear noticed scents similar to what he sometimes smelled from the older dogs back at the temple, smells that meant in two month’s time, there was another litter of temple dogs arriving in the world.

Bear had seen Flynn and Eve put their mouths together on multiple occasions, but he hadn’t seen any of the others do that until he peeked his head around the edge of the bookcase Stone and Ezekiel were behind. Clearly Ezekiel was occupied enough to not notice Bear, being pressed against the bookcase by Stone, which meant Bear won this time. He boofed at them both to get their attention.

Both men were startled, Stone stepping back a good three feet. “Don’t sneak up on us like that,” Stone said, smoothing back his hair.

“It’s not his fault. Baird probably sent him to get us,” Ezekiel said, brushing out the wrinkled state of his shirt from Stone’s hands. He smirked at Bear. “Though you did good this time, I didn’t even hear you.” Bear let his tongue loll out, his version of a smile.

“Alright, let’s go see what Baird wants,” Stone said with a huff. Bear didn’t know why they seemed so startled; Flynn and Eve didn’t act like that, but then again this was the first time he saw Stone and Ezekiel doing that. Maybe Cassandra would know why. He always asked her questions when humans didn’t make sense.

“There you two are. What were you doing that was more important than being on time to our sparring practice,” Eve asked, that last bit aimed at Stone.

“Oh uh, was doing some research, and ran into Ezekiel,” Stone mumbled, trying to avoid the question.

Bear had no problem reporting to Eve, so he projected an image of what he’d walked into. Stone seemed to realize a bit too late that Bear could do that; as soon as he saw Baird’s jaw drop a little, he quit saying anything. Ezekiel was just intently watching the wall in between Stone and Eve, which meant he was focused on Stone in his peripheral but trying to hide it (Bear noticed he did that a lot). Satisfied his job was done, he plodded over to his bed and laid down.

Eventually Stone cleared his throat. “Whatever he showed you, uh-”

Eve cut him off, trying to do the best with the awkward situation. “I have no problem with you two...um...being intimate, but you need to do that in your spare time, not work time.”

“Understood,” Stone said, clearly ready for Eve to start walking to the sparring room.

Eve wasn’t ready to go just yet. “Can I ask how long this has been going on?”

“Well, you see…” Stone started.

“It’s been awhile,” Ezekiel answered, finally done with Stone’s awkwardness.

“You both know you don’t have to hide anything from us,” Eve said, looking at them both.

Stone and Ezekiel looked at each other, then Ezekiel said, “We know.”

Eve watched them a moment more, then walked towards Stone, heading towards the door. She clapped her hand on his shoulder. “Time to sweat Stone, and you can’t blame Ezekiel for distracting you to get out of the extra ten minutes you’re going to make up for being late.”

“I wasn’t gonna-” Stone started, scowling at Ezekiel when he started snickering. “Next time I’m not gonna listen to you runnin’ your mouth when I’m trying to do work.”

“Then you’re gonna have to do better controlling yourself then,” Ezekiel said smugly. “I didn’t even have to say a full sentence before you had me pinned against the bookcase.” As soon as he remembered Eve was there, he put on a nervous smile. She just rolled her eyes at him.

Stone laughed under his breath at him, then started walking out with Eve. “We’ll finish that later,” he said to Ezekiel.

“You better,” Ezekiel called after them, savoring the embarrassed/frustrated noise Stone made when he said it. Annex to himself, he walked over to Bear, who was just resting his eyes. “Stone’s not mad at you for earlier, you know, he’s just, not a very open guy.”

Bear nodded at him, tilting his head to the side after to get Ezekiel to continue. He knew that already, Stone didn’t smell angry one bit, but he also knew Ezekiel liked to talk to him too.

Ezekiel smiled at him. “You know, you may have caught me at a bad time today, but I’m not ready to let you have another win just yet. Five minutes, then try to find me, okay?”

Bear boofed and nodded at him, standing up and stretching.

“Game on then,” Ezekiel said, patting Bear on the head, then zoomed out of the Annex.

Bear did find him, mainly because Ezekiel didn’t do enough to cover his scent again (it took a lot to hide it from Bear), and managed to sneak up on him again, though Bear noticed Ezekiel’s mind seemed to be other places, so he got Ezekiel to take him outside for awhile.

Bear liked the temple; it was home, it had many kindred spirits, and the monks were very kind caretakers. But he loved being the first animal guardian for the Library.

-----

Post Notes: I had this idea floating around in my ever-growing list of fic ideas for almost a year, mainly when I was reading through The Dresden Files and got to Mouse being introduced. For those who don’t know, Mouse is Harry’s canine companion, a temple dog from a monastery. Essentially the dogs are Foo Dogs in Tibetan mastiff bodies, and act as sentries. They’re tough, but not immortal, and can interact with spirits. They also have a super bark, and are very intelligent.

In the books Mouse only speaks once, in Changes, but I figured with the amount of ambient magic in the Library, Bear projecting thoughts wouldn’t be a long shot.

#flynn writes #jazekiel #the librarians fic #the librarians shipathon #librariansshipathon #shipathon18 #jazekielweek

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winterromanov · 7 years ago

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i want to hold your heart (in both hands) - bechloe fic

No-one else gets a Beca to go home with. She’s literally the only person on this Earth who can say that. (or, the five times Beca Mitchell was really fucking drunk, and the one time it was chloe instead. 4k words. prompt - how drunk was i?)

(i) why did you have to go like that

The ICCA’s are the biggest win the Bella’s have had in years, so understandably the after party has to be pretty spectacular. Spectacular turns out to be Stacie and Cynthia-Rose’s hotel room, apparently—not that Chloe’s complaining, because everything she needs is right here, her weird and messed-up family high on adrenaline and drunk out their minds.

Well. She says high on adrenaline. But Beca is just high.

“Where did you even get pot from?” Chloe asks, as she watches Beca spin round and round and round in the hallway, her shirt a blur of blue mixing with the cream of the walls. There’s a glass of wine in her right hand but most of its now on the floor or her shoes. Chloe’s actually kind of glad, because Beca really doesn’t need any more to drink, but Beca’s the kind of person who adamantly argues she’s sober when puking up vodka in the bathroom. “You can’t have got it from one of us. Aubrey has, like, a sixth sense when it comes to illegal substances. She’s a human sniffer dog.”

Beca laughs, stumbling violently as she finally stops spinning. Luckily Chloe’s not a total mess yet so she reaches out just in time to grab her, gripping onto Beca’s floppy forearms. “Chloe. Chloe. Why are you all blurry? And why is everything green?” Her hands reach out and start touching Chloe’s face, fingers prodding at her cheeks. “God, your skin is so soft. Like, if I could make a blanket out of your skin, I totally would.”

“You’re not making a blanket out of my skin, Beca.”

“A blanket out of your skin?” Beca says, like this is a completely new concept to her and not something she mentioned seconds earlier. She steps back but Chloe clings on, because someone has got to keep this bitch from falling over and slamming her head on the wall. “That’s gross, dude! Why would I even do that?”

Beca’s look of total outrage is so fucking funny but Chloe chews her lip, trying to supress a laugh. “Did Jesse give you the pot?”

Beca narrows her eyes in an extremely drunken way that makes it look like she has no idea who Jesse is. Chloe’s heart shifts uneasily in her chest, thinking about Beca and Jesse. It’s weird. She doesn’t know why its weird, because that whole thing was far from a surprise—she arranged a mix for him, sang to a TV audience for him, kissed him like the whole world wasn’t watching except it was—but she’s the one who has seen Beca naked, so—

“It might have been Jesse,” Beca says, her words slurring and tripping over each other, “But it might have been someone else. Wearing red. But he smelt amazing.” She makes a point of sniffing Chloe’s shirt, her face suddenly inches away from her skin. “You smell amazing too. Like fucking—rainbows, or some shit.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?” Chloe asks, humouring her, “Because last time I check rainbows didn’t smell like anything. Maybe damp air or something.”

“No, no, no! Don’t be stupid. Rainbows are the best smell ever. They smell like…”

For a second, time stops, and Chloe can see the way Beca’s eyes drift to her lips and she wants to (like, so, so much) but Beca’s sort-of got a boyfriend now and Chloe’s many things but she’s not that girl. “You’re very drunk right now.”

“I am not drunk,” Beca says, as expected. The moment is snuffed out like a candle but the electricity remains, stuttering under the surface. Beca squirms out of her grip and it’s like she’s miles away, not metres, because Jesse just so happens to open the bedroom door opposite and catches her like a safety net.

“Ah, Mr Bond,” Jesse says, in a low purr—his limbs are as loose as hers are but he somehow manages to scoop her in perfectly, like she’s always belonged inside his grip. Chloe smiles at the exchange. She’s never noticed the way her stomach just falls before, like the floor is going to swallow her up, forget she was even here. “I’ve been expecting you.”

Beca smiles giddily. Chloe wishes it didn’t kill her, seeing her so happy with someone else. “You’re such a fucking nerd.”

And they kiss, again, like there’s nobody watching, except there is. Chloe tears her eyes away. There’s a Sia song playing in the other room and a shit-ton of tequila and they’re still ICCA champions, which is something, even if it’s only half the happy ending she kind of wished for.

-x-

(ii) just because i’m a mess doesn’t mean this has to end

Chloe knows something’s up the minute she walks into the Bella house and sees Jessica, sitting at the kitchen table, chewing aggressively on a pale-pink thumbnail. When she closes the door, the noise alerts her as well as Stacie, Lilly and Cynthia-Rose, who are all sat round the corner on the couches. They’re giving of the weirdest vibe and it makes Chloe feel very uneasy.

“Why do you all look so terrified?” Chloe asks incredulously, dropping her bag by the coffee table. “Did one of you smash my Spice Girls mug? Because that was limited edition and one of my favourites, so if you have—“

“Beca’s in the closet,” Stacie blurts out, “And she won’t come out.”

“In the closet?” Chloe manically turns around and spies at least half a dozen shot glasses littered across the kitchen table, which can only mean one thing. “Okay. So which one of you let Beca day drink?”

“We couldn’t stop her!” Cynthia-Rose squawks, arms flailing madly, “She said she had a taser in her purse!”

Chloe narrows her eyes. Cynthia-Rose shrinks back on the sofa, as if she’s attempting to melt in between the cushions. “Really. Where do you think Beca would get a taser from?”

“I have a supplier,” Lilly says. No-one hears her, as per, so Chloe just stares at her, faintly annoyed. “Do any of you guys want a machine gun?”

Chloe shakes her head. There’s a loud bang from upstairs and the light-fitting shakes, and everyone in the room looks unanimously terrified. It’s… not the first time Beca’s got in the closet and it never usually ends well. She’s pretty sure Ashley still has a scar. She breathes deeply, in and out, mentally preparing herself for the shitstorm that is inevitably occurring around them. “Okay. Okay. Is anyone up there with her?”

“Amy is,” Stacie says, “But we haven’t seen her in a while so who knows if she’s still alive.”

She’s probably still alive, Chloe reasons, because Beca can be a fierce little fuck when day-drinking but at the end of the day she’s still only five foot two and Amy has vividly retold the time she wrestled six crocodiles and The Rock simultaneously on numerous occasions, so. Amy’s resourceful. She’ll have fashioned a makeshift weapon from tampons and pencil shavings if needs be.

Chloe grabs a bottle of water, a packet of chips and a hockey stick for good measure, before heading into battle solo.

-x-

Beca and Amy’s room looks like the aftermath of a tsunami.

Chloe wades through piles of clothes and toilet roll and notebook paper. A broken toaster lies desecrated on the carpet (she’d always wondered where that had gone) and a string of photobooth pictures are half-melted inside. She can just about see that the warped, grinning faces are Beca and Jesse.

Oh, honey.

She leaves the hockey stick by the door and follows the muffled shouting. Amy’s trying to wedge open the closet door with a spatula, her face streaked in black warpaint (eyeliner) and a very determined expression, gritting her teeth. Beca is basically just screeching. Every so often she can see a glimpse of her tiny fingertips, fighting to keep the door shut.

“What is going on?” Chloe whispers harshly. Amy breaks off her mission for a moment, panting, wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead. She eyes the chips in Chloe’s hands and takes them for herself.

“You brought snacks!” she says, ecstatic, ripping into the bag. “I have been working pretty hard. She’s being a hot mess. Emphasis on the mess. Also hot, because it gets toasty in there if you sit with the door shut for too long. Trust me. Just because it has no windows, doesn’t mean you should make it into a sauna.”

Chloe doesn’t want to know the story behind how Amy managed to work that out. Like, ever. “Why has she been drinking? Is she okay?”

Amy swallows a mouthful of chips. “Movie nerd dumped her. She’s a bit bummed about it. Started slamming the vodka as soon as she got in and hasn’t stopped for several hours. She also smashed your Spice Girls mug, so don’t blame me for that. I told her it was limited edition and she just started crying.”

Okay, so her assumptions are basically confirmed, and she’s not even that upset about the mug, not when Beca’s in this state. A broken heart is more pressing that some broken china, even if that china is a limited edition signed-by-Baby-Spice mug and everything. “Yeah. I saw the… toaster.”

“She tried using the barbecue, but that thing is definitely broken and I thought she might accidentally set the house on fire. I was like Beca, yes, I totally understand why you’d want to burn everything that reminded you of that dick, but maybe not our house too? Because I know we all have little regrets after we’ve been drinking but that would be… like, quite a big and expensive one and also you might go to prison for arson.”

“True,” Chloe nods. She leans forwards, knocks lightly on the cupboard door. There’s definite movement from inside but no response, like Beca’s trying to pretend she isn’t in, which doesn’t really work with a closet. “Beca, I know you’re in there.”

“Fuck off, Amy!”

Even when drunk, it astounds Chloe that Beca can’t tell the difference between their voices. “Beca, sweetie, it’s Chloe. Can I come in?”

There’s a moment of quiet, then a small voice: “Chloe?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” she says, “I’m coming in, so, like, please move any sharp things you’ve got in there—“

She slowly pulls the doors open and Amy stands on guard, spatula at the ready. The sight she beholds is both extremely sad yet somehow adorable. Beca’s curled amongst a fur coat and several pairs of boots, a huge beanie covering her hair, her face streaked with tears. A half-finished bottle of vodka hangs loosely in her left hand.

When Chloe crouches down and brushes some of her damp hair away from her face, Beca chokes out another sob, a loud wail which is totally unlike Beca—she’s the kind that usually sits on her emotions until she eventually bursts, days’ worth of anger or anxiety or depression exploding out of her without limit, usually when drunk. This is Beca blown wide open. The side that nobody is usually allowed to see. Maybe that’s why she’s in the closet, after all. Maybe this is what this whole thing is.

“Oh baby,” Chloe murmurs, wrapping her in the tightest hug imaginable, “I’m sorry. I know, it sucks, I know.”

“I was going to dump him anyway,” Beca says, definitely wiping snot on Chloe’s sleeve, “He wasn’t supposed to do it first.”

Chloe’s not sure how much of that is true. Beca’s always been quite reserved about her relationship, like it was only ever hers, not to be discussed with anyone else. Maybe it would have helped if she had.

(Maybe it would have helped if Chloe didn’t try to change the subject every time Jesse was brought up in conversation, reminding her of what he’s got and she doesn’t.)

Chloe clambers into the closet beside her, shutting the doors, Amy knowing where she’s not needed. They hold each other for a long time. She’s not sure how long, but it’s safe and warm and home, and maybe Beca’s realising the same things she is. Or maybe she isn’t.

“I’m sorry about your mug,” Beca says hoarsely after a minute or maybe an hour. “Sometimes I get mad and inadvertently break things. I never mean to, you know? I don’t break anything on purpose. Things just… naturally shatter around me.”

Chloe presses a kiss to her forehead. Yeah, she breaks things. Everyone does. But Beca—she always tries to put things back together again. And that’s the important thing.

(A few weeks later a mug appears on the sideboard. It’s a Spice Girls mug, signed by Baby Spice, and Chloe grins as she unfurls a note.

I got this shipped over from the UK as nobody over here listens to the Spice Girls anymore, so you better appreciate it. –B

P.S. I promise I’ll never break anything of yours ever again.)

-x-

(iii) you’re alright love

“Hello, you’ve reached Chloe Beale! Pretty please leave a message after the tone and I promise I’ll get back to you!”

Message One (1:56am) FROM BECS

Wow, okay, so you’re not answering, which is—cool, I guess, it must be pretty late in Atlanta? I can’t remember. I’m fucking stupid. Anyway, call me back when you get this. Bye!

Message Two (2:03am) FROM BECS

Yes, I know, another message but like… I’m stuck at this party the label are doing and it’s so dull, you know? It’s like I keep scanning the room looking for you. But you’re not here. And whenever I realise that I think of you waving me goodbye at the airport and I—okay, I’m way too sober and this is way too sappy for me to even begin, fucking Christ. Talk to you later.

Message Three (2:46am) FROM BECS

Holy FUCK these drinks are strong. I feel like I could be in space, but I’m not in space. I’m in LA. And you’re in Georgia. Why are you in Georgia? Can’t you come over here? My apartment is so lonely without you

Message Four (3:15am) FROM BECS

CHLOE!!!!! Oh my god, I’m so fucking drunk and one of the guys I work with keeps giving me the eye and I’m like dude? I’m gay? And I have a girlfriend who I love very much? And she’s two thousand and one hundred and seventy-five miles away which I totally did not just Google on my phone in the bathroom or anything?

Message Five (5:38am) FROM BECS

I don’t know what I’m doing, Chloe. I don’t think I can live here much longer. There’s like this… hole, yeah a hole, and I thought I could manage it like I always do but I can’t and the only person who can fix it is you, and… holy shit, what am I even doing? Is this vodka talking? I think it might be, but also I think it might not be, and I just want to be in bed with you right now and not at this stupid party with these stupid people who aren’t you. I love you so much. It’s actually sickening. Freshman me with her earspike and Doc Martens is looking at me right now thinking who the fuck are you? But freshman me was me before you, and thinking about a time in my life without you in it actually makes me want to cry. Ugh. How many months is it until I see you again?

Message One (7:59am) TO BECS

Okay so you’re the one who isn’t picking up now, which is a bit much to be honest, after all those messages. They were beautiful, Becs. Very poetic, but also very drunk. I’m sure you won’t remember any of them but don’t you worry, I definitely will. I’m not going to forget gems like I love you so much it’s actually sickening in a hurry. For the record, everything you said was what goes through my head on a daily basis. My life is so empty and boring without you in it. I miss you more than Brownie Batter Ben and Jerry’s and believe me, that’s quite a lot. I totally love you, Beca. And to answer your question, it’s exactly three months and twelve days until we’re reunited at the airport like all my favourite romcom couples rolled into one. I’m definitely going to catch you in my arms and spin you round, by the way. Just so you can prepare for it. Call me back when you get this.

Message Six (12:07pm) FROM BECS

I have just woken up discovering that last night I left you exactly five voicemail messages, one about fifteen minutes before I passed out on a fucking garden table. Excuse me while I die of shame then set myself on fire and never live this down for the rest of my life. I still totally love you, though.

-x-

(iv) i’d be a fool to let you go

“Fuck. How drunk was I?”

Beca’s stood barefoot in the kitchen, staring at some rather impressive handiwork—every inch of their kitchen is covered in post-it notes, top to bottom, in a range of colours and sizes. The grill, the counter, the back wall, the television: literally every available surface is electrified with fluorescent pink or yellow or green. There’s a leftover sandwich out on the table (evidence of Beca’s late night snacking) and even that has a post-it note, Chloe peeling it off with her finger and sticking it on Beca’s forearm.

“You’re alarmingly precise when fucked,” Chloe remarks, “These are all, like, perfectly symmetrical.”

Beca narrows her eyes then nods. She wanders over to the refrigerator and opens it, letting out a sigh of relief on noticing that the inside has been left untouched by her post-it rampage. “Where did I even get all this shit from? I don’t remember going to a stationery supply store. Or did I? Those places aren’t usually open at three am, are they?”

“None that I’ve heard of,” Chloe says. Beca turns, utterly stumped. She looks really adorable when confused. It’s hardly Chloe’s fault that she’s just so kissable—even if she’s basically destroyed their tiny kitchen with her late-night interior design sessions. She slinks her arms round Beca’s waist and Beca grins, ridiculously happy, kissing her back with a fervour that having their own apartment together allows.

It’s perfect. She’s in her pyjamas, with her girlfriend, in their own little apartment. It feels like a reward. Something they both deserve. Finally.

“I can’t believe I’m here, with you,” Chloe murmurs softly, “I’m actually living with my crazy girlfriend.”

“You’re going to start regretting it when I keep pulling stunts like this,” Beca says, snatching a quick kiss, “This is why you should always come with me to parties. Then at least we can cover our whole house in sticky notes together while drunk out of our minds.”

“I’ll go anywhere with you,” Chloe says, and it’s the complete and honest truth.

(It’s something Beca always has to hear. I won’t leave you like everyone else did. It’s everything. It’s everything.)

-x-

(v) i’ll still fall in place

FAT AMY

So which one of you bitches gave short-ass a triple fucking vodka

The girl is off her FACE and embarrassing me in front of my boyfriends

STACIE

Boyfriends? U bitch. Unfair that u get all the dick

FAT AMY

It’s my birthday Stacie the least I deserve is some mediocre ex-Treble dick

AUBREY

???

FAT AMY

Oh my God Aubrey you cannot tell me that the vow was a lifelong thing

Because if that’s the case Beca literally dated one of those douchebags for 2 years

Also: she’s just started twerking

She’s killing my vibe and it’s MY BIRTHDAY

LILLY

I killed someone once for a twinkie.

FAT AMY

…

@chloe please come and pick up your gf

I’ve told her I’ve recorded her dabbing on snapchat and she still doesn’t seem to give a shit

CHLOE

Where the hell r u ????

FAT AMY

Outside by the speakers

She’s started beatboxing and it’s probably the worst thing I’ve ever seen

And I’ve seen Bumper’s cock

AUBREY

AMY

DON’T EVER SAY ANYTHING LIKE THAT EVER AGAIN

ASHLEY

I’m near the speakers, I could come and help sober her up a bit?

FAT AMY

Sorry who are you?

Doesn’t matter anyway, Red’s claimed her

And NOW they’re kissing

I can’t believe that twerking-beatboxing-dabbing mess is getting some and I’m not

IT’S MY BIRTHDAY

CYNTHIA-ROSE

Wait Amy where are you?

FAT AMY

Bitch don’t even pretend you’re looking for me

I know what you want

And they’ve both disappeared sooooo

CYNTHIA-ROSE

EMILY

I’ve just seen Chloe and Beca go upstairs! Are we having a slumber party? I forgot my pajamas but I could go back and get them?? :)

FAT AMY

You sweet summer child

-x-

Interlude – i filled a little book with your poetry

Fat Amy’s bed is big, like if she moves she’ll fall off the edge of the world.

But her whole world is right here, her head resting on her chest, eyelids fluttering shut and a smudge of red lipstick on her cheek.

Her world is five-foot-two and feisty and drunk and she’s beautiful.

-x-

(vi) kiss my first love with you on repeat

It’s three am and Chloe’s head is all swirly and her whole body feels weightless, like if it wasn’t for Beca’s arm anchoring her to the sidewalk she’d just fly up and up and up, sitting among the clouds. Today has probably been the best night of her life. But then—she’s with Beca, so every night is probably the best night of her life, and its days like these that she realises she’s the luckiest person in this entire world. No-one else gets a Beca to go home with. She’s literally the only person on this Earth who can say that.

“Dude,” Beca says, her voice the only sound in the silent street, “Can you at least try to walk in a straight line? I can’t keep you balanced and I’d rather you didn’t get run over by a truck. The medical bill would be monster, to start with.”

“Yes, Beca,” she replies, folding in a little too far and causing Beca to stumble, “But I’m not straight, am I? How can you expect me to walk in a straight line when I’m not even straight?”

Beca bites her lip, grinning. “Oh. Wow. You got me there.”

“I did, didn’t I? God, I’m so funny. You’re so pretty.”

“Thanks, Chlo,” Beca replies, smirk prevalent, “You’re not so bad yourself.”

Chloe’s smile is giddy and contagious, happily drunk, her heart beating twice as fast in her chest. Because it’s 3am, and she’s with Beca Mitchell, and everything couldn’t be more fucking right.

“We should get married,” she says, suddenly, like a revelation. They pause in the middle of the street for a second and Beca looks back at her, eyes wide. “Wouldn’t that be the best? We’d be like… we’d be us, but married.”

Beca doesn’t say anything, and looks like she might cry. Then she bursts out laughing.

“Chloe. We’re already married, you weirdo. You really are drunk.”

Chloe presses a hand over her chest, overwhelmed, tears pricking at her eyes. It’s like she’s been told the most wonderful thing ever. Oh yeah. She’s already put a ring on it. “Oh my god. That’s awesome. You’re beautiful. I love you.”

Beca grins and it starts to rain, like actually pour, the clouds rumbling with thunder and soaking them through. Beca gasps, looking up, water trickling down her cheekbones. It’s honestly too perfect a moment to waste.

Chloe grabs her face and kisses her, in the middle of the street, the air smelling like heat and summer and tequila, and she’s kissing her wife and she’s drunk and yeah, this is definitely the best night of her life.

#i totally did not rip off mr right in the second part of this #or anything #pitch perfect #pitch perfect fic #bechloe #bechloe fic #beca x chloe #beca mitchell #chloe beale #anon prompt #drabble challenge #this was a bit more than a drabble

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1921designs · 4 years ago

Text

My daughter and God

FOUR YEARS AGO, driving home from picking up our twelve-year-old daughter from summer camp, my wife reached into her purse for a tissue and lost control of the car. This occurred on a stretch of Interstate 10 between Houston and San Antonio, near the town of Gonzales. The accident occurred as many do: a moment of distraction, a small mistake, and suddenly everything is up for grabs. My wife and daughter were in the midst of a minor argument over my daughter’s need to blow her nose. During high-pollen season, she is a perennial sniffer, and the sound drives my wife crazy. Get a Kleenex, Leslie said, for God’s sake, and when Iris, out of laziness or exhaustion or the mild day-to-day defiance of all teenagers, refused to do so, my wife reached for her purse, inadvertently turning the wheel to the left.

In the case of some vehicles, the mistake might have been rectified, but not in the case of my wife’s—a top-heavy SUV with jacked-up suspension. When she realized her error, she overcorrected to the right, then again to the left, the car swerving violently. They were on a bridge that passed above a gully: on either side, nothing but gravity and forty vertical feet of air. That they would hit the guardrail was now inevitable. In moments of acute stress, time seems to slow. The name for this is tachypsychia, from the Greek tach, meaning “speed,” and psych, meaning “mind.” Thus, despite the chaos and panic of these moments, my wife had time to form a thought: I have killed my daughter.

This didn’t happen, although the accident was far from over. The car did not break through the guardrail but ricocheted back onto the highway, spinning in a one-eighty before flopping onto its side in a powdery explosion of airbags. It struck another vehicle, driven by a pastor and his wife on their way home from Sunday lunch, though my wife has no memory of this. For what seemed like hours the car traveled in this manner, then gravity took hold once more. Like a whale breaching the surface, it lifted off the roadway, turned belly-up, and crashed down onto its roof. The back half of the car compacted like an accordion: steel crushing, glass bursting, my daughter’s belongings—clothes, shoes, books, an expensive violin—exploding onto the highway. Other cars whizzed past, narrowly missing them. A final jolt, the car rolled again, and it came to a halt, facing forward, resting on its wheels.

As my wife tells it, the next moment was very nearly comic. She and my daughter looked at each other. The car had been utterly obliterated, but there was no blood, no pain, no evidence of bodily injury to either of them. “We’ve been in an accident,” my wife robotically observed.

My daughter looked down at her hand. “I am holding my phone,” she said— as, indeed, she somehow still was. “Do you want me to call 911?”

There was no need. Though in the midst of things the two of them had felt alone in the universe, the accident had occurred in the presence of a dozen other vehicles, all of which had now stopped and disgorged their occupants, who were racing to the scene. A semi moved in behind them to block the highway. By this time my wife’s understanding of events had widened only to the extent that she was aware that she had created a great deal of inconvenience for other people.

She was apologizing to everyone, mistaking their amazement for anger. Everybody had expected them to be dead, not sitting upright in their destroyed vehicle, neither one of them with so much as a hair out of place. Some began to weep; others had the urge to touch them. The cops arrived, a fire truck, an ambulance. While my wife and daughter were checked out by an EMT, onlookers organized a posse to prowl the highway for my daughter’s belongings. Because my wife and daughter no longer had a car to put them into, a woman offered to bring the items to our house; she was headed for Houston to visit her son and was pulling a trailer of furniture. The EMT was as baffled as everybody else. “Nobody walks away from something like this,” he said.

I was to learn of these events several hours later, when my wife phoned me. I was in the grocery store with our six-year-old son, and when I saw my wife’s number my first thought was that she was calling to tell me she was running late, because she always is.

“Okay,” I said, not bothering to say hello, “where are you?”

Thus her first tender steps into explaining what had occurred. An accident, she said. A kind of a big fender-bender, really. Nobody hurt, but the car was out of commission; I’d need to come get them.

I wasn’t nice about this. Part of the dynamic in our marriage is the unstated fact that I am a better driver than my wife. I have never been in an accident; my one and only speeding ticket was issued when the first George Bush was president. About every two years my wife does something careless in a parking lot that costs a lot of money, and she has received so many tickets that she has been forced to retake driver’s education—and those are just the tickets I know about. The rules of modern marriage do not include confiscating your wife’s car keys, but more than once I have considered doing this.

“A fender-bender,” I repeated. Christ almighty, this again.“How bad is it?”

“Everybody’s fine. You don’t have to worry.”

“I get that. You said that already.” I was in the cereal aisle; my son was bugging me to buy a box of something much too sweet. I tossed it into the cart.

“What about the car?”

“Um, it kind of . . . rolled.”

I imagined a Labrador retriever lazily rotating onto his back in front of the fireplace. “I don’t understand what you’re telling me.” “It’s okay, really,” my wife said.

“Do you mean it rolled over?”

“It happened kind of fast. Totally no big deal, though.”

It sounded like a huge deal. “Let me see if I have this right. You were driving and the car rolled over.”

“Iris wouldn’t blow her nose. I was getting her a Kleenex. You know how she is. The doctors say she’s absolutely fine.”

“What doctors?” It was becoming clear that she was in a state of shock.

“Where are you?”

“At the hospital. It’s very small. I’m not even sure you’d call it a hospital.

Everybody’s been so nice.”

And so on. By the time the call ended, I had some idea of the seriousness, though not completely. Gonzales was three hours away. I abandoned my grocery cart, raced home, got on the phone, found somebody to look after our son, and got in my car. Several more calls followed, each adding a piece to the puzzle, until I was able to conclude that my wife and daughter were alive but should be dead. I knew this, but I didn’t feel it. For the moment I was locked into the project of retrieving them from the small town where they’d been stranded. It was after ten o’clock when I pulled into the driveway of Gonzales Memorial Hospital, a modern building the size of a suburban dental office. I did not see my wife, who was standing at the edge of the parking lot, looking out over the empty fields behind it. I raced inside, and there was Iris. She was slender and tan from a month in the Texas sunshine, and wearing a yellow T-shirt dress. She had never looked more beautiful, and it was this beauty that brought home the magnitude of events. I threw my arms around her, tears rising in my throat; I had never been so happy to see anybody in my life. When I asked her where her mother was, she said she didn’t know; one of the nurses directed us outside. I found myself unable to take a hand off my daughter; some part of me needed constant reassurance of her existence. I saw my wife standing at the edge of the lot, facing away. I called her name, she turned, and the two of us headed toward her.

As my wife tells the story, this was the moment when, as the saying goes, she got God. Once the two of them had been discharged, my wife had stepped outside to call me with this news. But the signal quality was poor, and she abandoned the attempt. I’d be along soon enough.

She found herself, then, standing alone in the Texas night. I do not recall if the weather was clear, but I’d like to think it was, all those fat stars shining down. My wife had been raised Missouri Synod Lutheran, but a series of intertribal squabbles had soured her parents on the whole thing, and apart from weddings and funerals, she hadn’t set foot in a church for years. Yet the outdoor cathedral of a starry Texas night is as good a place as any to communicate with the Almighty, which she commenced to do. In the hours since the accident, as the adrenaline cleared, her recollection of events had led her to a calculus that rewrote everything she thought she knew about the world. Until that night, her vision of a universal deity had been basically impersonal. God, in her mind, was simply too busy to take an interest in individual human affairs. The universe possessed a moral shape, but events were haphazard, unguided by providence. Now, as she contemplated the accident, mentally listing the many ways that she and our daughter should have died and yet did not, she decided this was wrong. Of course God paid attention. Only the intercession of a divine hand could explain such a colossal streak of luck. Likewise did the accident become in her mind a product of celestial design. It was a message; it meant something. She had been placed in a circumstance in which a mother’s greatest fear was about to be realized, then yanked from the brink. Her future emerged in her mind as something given back to her—it was as if she and our daughter had been killed on the highway and then restored to life—and like all supplicants in the wilderness, she asked God what her purpose was, why he’d returned her to the world.

That was the moment when Iris and I emerged from the building and called her name, giving her the answer.

Until that night we were a family that had lived an entirely secular existence. This wasn’t planned; things simply happened that way. My religious background was different from my wife’s, but only by degree. I was raised in the Catholic Church, but its messages were delivered to me in a lethargic and off-key manner that failed to gain much traction. My father did not attend mass—I was led to believe this had something to do with the trauma of his attending Catholic grade school—and my mother, who dutifully took my sister and me to church every Sunday, did not receive communion. Why this should be so I never thought to ask. Always she met us at the rear of the church so that we could make a quick exit “to avoid the traffic.” (There was no traffic.) We never attended a church picnic or drank coffee in the basement after mass or went to Bible study; we socialized with no other families in the parish. Religion was never discussed over the dinner table or anyplace else. I went to just enough Sunday school to meet the minimum requirements for first communion, but because I went to a private school with afternoon activities, I could not attend confirmation class. My mother struck a deal with the priest. If I met with him for a couple of hours to discuss religious matters, I could be confirmed. I had no idea why I was doing any of this or what it meant, only that I needed to select a new name, taken from the saints. I chose Cornelius, not because I knew who he was but because that was the name of my favorite character in Planet of the Apes.

Within a couple of years I was off to boarding school, and my life as a Roman Catholic, nominal as it was, came to an end. During a difficult period in my midtwenties, I briefly flirted with church attendance, thinking it might offer me some comfort and direction, but I found it just as stultifying and embarrassing as I always had, full of weird sexual obsessions, exclusionary politics, and a deep love of hocus-pocus, overlaid with a doctrine of obedience that was complete anathema to my newly independent self. If asked, I would have said that I believed in God—one never really loses those mental contours once they’re established—but that organized religious practice struck me as completely infantile. When my wife and I were married, a set of odd circumstances led us to choose an Anglican priest to officiate, but this was a decision we regretted, and when our daughter was born, the subject of baptism never came up. Essentially, we viewed ourselves as too smart for religion. I’ll put it another way. Religion was for people who wanted to stay children all their lives. We didn’t. We were the grown-ups.

In the aftermath of the accident, and the event that I now think of as “the revelation of the parking lot,” all this went out the window. I was not half as sure as my wife that God had interceded; I’m a skeptic and always will be. But it was also the case that I was due for a course correction. In my midforties, I had yet to have anything truly bad happen to me. The opposite was true: I’d done tremendously well. At the university where I taught, I’d just been promoted to full professor. A trilogy of novels I had begun writing on a lark had been purchased for scads of money. We’d just bought a new house we loved, and my daughter had been admitted to a terrific school, where she’d be starting in the fall. My children were happy and healthy, and my newfound financial success had allowed my wife to quit her stressful job as a high school teacher to look after our family and pursue her interests. It had been a long, hard climb, but we’d made it—more than made it—and I spent a great deal of time patting myself on the back for this success. I’d gone out hunting and brought back a mammoth.

Everything was right as rain.

In hindsight, this self-congratulatory belief in my ability to chart my own destiny was patently ridiculous. Worldly things are worldly things; two bad seconds on the highway can take them all away, and sooner or later something’s going to come along that does just that.

Once you have it, this information is unignorable, and it seems to me that you can do one of two things with it. You can decide that life doesn’t make sense, or you can decide that it does. In version one, the universe is a stone-cold place. Life is a series of accumulations—friends, lovers, children, memories, the contents of your 401(k)—followed by a rapid casting off (i.e., you die). Your wife is just somebody you met at a party; your children are biological accretions of yourself; your affection for them is nothing more than a bit of well-engineered firmware to guarantee the perpetuation of the species. All pleasures are sensory, since nothing goes deeper than the senses, and pain, whether psychological or physical, is meaningless bad news you can only endure till it’s over.

Version two assumes that life, with all its vicissitudes, possesses an organized pattern of meaning. Grief means something, joy means something, love means something. This meaning isn’t always obvious and is sometimes maddeningly elusive; had my wife and daughter been killed that afternoon on the highway, I would have been hard-pressed to take solace in religion’s customary clichés. (It is likely that the only thing that would have prevented me from committing suicide, apart from my own physical cowardice, would have been my son, into whom I would have poured all my love and sorrow.) But it’s there if you look for it, and the willingness to search—whether this search finds expression in religious ritual or attentive care for one’s children or a long run through falling autumn leaves—is what is meant, I think, by faith.

But herein lies the problem: we don’t generally come to these things on our own. Somebody has to lay the groundwork, and the best way to accomplish this is with a story, since that’s how children learn most things. My Catholic upbringing was halfhearted and unfocused, but it made an impression. At any time during my thirty-year exile from organized religion, I could have stepped into a Sunday mass and recited the entire liturgy by heart. For better or worse, my God was a Catholic God, the God of smells and bells and the BVM and the saints and all the rest, and I didn’t have to build this symbolic narrative on my own. My wife is much the same; I have no doubt that the image of the merciful deity she addressed in the parking lot came straight off a stained-glass window, circa 1975. Yet out of arrogance or laziness or the shallow notion that modern, freethinking parents ought to allow children to decide these things for freethinking parents ought to allow children to decide these things for themselves, we’d given our daughter none of it. We’d left her in the dark forest of her own mind, and what she’d concluded was that there was no God at all.

This came about in the aftermath of our move to Texas—a very churchy place. My daughter was entering the first grade; my son was still being hauled around in a basket. Houston is a sophisticated and diverse city, with great food, interesting architecture, and a vivid cultural life, but the suburbs are the suburbs, and the neighborhood where we settled was straight out of Betty Friedan’s famous complaint: horseshoe streets of more or less identical one-story, 2,500square-foot houses, built on reclaimed ranchland in the 1960s. A neighborhood of 2.4 children per household, fathers who raced off to work each morning before the dew had dried, moms who pushed their kids around in strollers and passed out snacks at soccer games and volunteered at the local elementary school. We were, after ten years living in a dicey urban neighborhood in Philadelphia, eager for something a little calmer, more controlled, and we’d chosen the house in a hurry, not realizing what we were getting into. Among our first visitors was an older woman from down the block. She presented us with a plate of brownies and proceeded to list the denominational affiliations of each of our neighbors. I was, to put it mildly, pretty weirded-out. I counted about a dozen churches within just a few miles of my house—Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ—and all of them were huge. People talked about Jesus as if he were sitting in their living room, flipping through a magazine; nearly every day I saw a car with a bumper sticker that read, Warning: In case of Rapture, this car will be unmanned. Stapled to the local religious culture was a socially conservative brand of politics I found abhorrent. To hear homosexuality described as an “abomination” felt like I’d parachuted into the Middle Ages. I couldn’t argue with my neighbors’ devotion to their offspring—the neighborhood revolved around children—but it seemed to me that Jesus Christ, whoever he was, had been pretty clear on the subject of loving everybody.

This was the current my daughter swam in every day at school. Not many months had passed before one of her friends, the daughter of evangelicals, expressed concern that Iris was going to hell. Those were the words she used: “I don’t want you to go to hell, Iris.” The girl in question was adorable, with ringlets of dark hair, perfect manners, and lovely, doting parents. No doubt she thought she was doing Iris a kindness when she urged her to attend church with her family to avoid this awful fate. But that wasn’t how I saw the situation. I dropped to a defensive crouch and came out swinging. “Tell her that hell’s a fairy tale,” I said. “Tell her to leave you alone.”

The better choice would have been to offer her a more positive, less punishing The better choice would have been to offer her a more positive, less punishing view of creation—less hell, more heaven—and over time my wife and I tried to do just that. But when you’re seven years old, “love your neighbor as yourself” sounds a lot like “don’t forget to brush your teeth”—words to live by but hardly a description of humanity’s place in the cosmos. As the playground evangelism continued, so did my daughter’s contempt, and why wouldn’t it? She’d learned it from me. I don’t recall when she announced she was an atheist. All I remember was that she did this from the back seat of the car, sitting in a booster chair.

After the accident, my daughter spent the better part of a week in her closet.

From time to time I’d stop by and say, “Are you still in there?” Or “Hey, it’s

Daddy, how’s it going?” Or “Let me know if you need anything.”

“All good!” she said. “Thanks!”

There were things to sort out: an insurance claim to file, a replacement vehicle to acquire, arrangements to make for our summer vacation, for which we’d be leaving in two weeks. My wife and I were badly shaken. We had entered a new state: we were a family that had been nearly annihilated. Every few hours one of us would burst into tears. Genesis 2:24 speaks of spouses “cleaving” to each other, and that was what we did: we cleaved. We badly wanted to comfort our daughter, but she had made herself completely unreachable. Of course she’d be confused and angry; in a careless moment, her mother had nearly killed her. But when we probed her on the matter, she insisted this wasn’t so. Everything was peachy, she said. She just liked it in the closet. No worries, she’d be along soon.

A day later we received a phone call from the pastor whose car my wife’s had struck. At first I thought he was calling to get my insurance information, which I apologetically offered. He explained that the damage was minor, nothing even worth fixing, and that he had called to see if my wife and daughter were all right. Perfectly, I said, omitting my daughter’s temporary residence among her shirts and pants, and thanked him profusely.

“It’s a miracle,” he said. “I saw the whole thing. Nobody should have survived.”

He wasn’t the first to say this. The M-word was bandied about freely by virtually everyone we knew. The following afternoon we were visited by the woman who had collected Iris’s belongings: two cardboard boxes of books and clothes covered with highway grime and shards of glass, a suitcase that looked like it had been run over, and her violin, which had escaped its launch into the gulley unharmed. We chatted in the living room, replaying events. Like the pastor, she seemed a little dazed. When the conversation reached a resting place, she explained that she couldn’t leave until she’d seen Iris.

“Give me just a sec,” my wife said.

A minute later she appeared with our daughter. The woman rose from her chair, stepped toward Iris, and wrapped her in a hug. This display made my daughter visibly uncomfortable, as it would anyone. Why was this stranger hugging her? The woman’s face was full of inexpressible emotion; her eyes filmed with tears. My daughter endured her embrace as long as she could, then backed away.

“God protected you. You know that, don’t you?”

My daughter’s eyes darted around warily. “I guess.”

“You’re going to have a wonderful life. I just know it.”

We exchanged email addresses, knowing we would never use them, and said our goodbyes in the yard. When we returned to the house, Iris was still standing at the base of the stairs. I had never seen her look so freaked-out.

“God had nothing to do with it,” she said. “So don’t ask me to say he did.” And with that she headed back upstairs to her closet.

The psychologist, whom Iris nicknamed “Dr. Cuckoo,” told us not to worry. Iris was a levelheaded girl; hiding in the closet was a perfectly natural response to such a trauma. The best thing, she said, was to give our daughter space. She’d talk about it when the time was right.

I doubted this. Levelheaded, yes, but that was the problem. Doing a double gainer with a twist at 70 miles an hour, without so much as dropping your iPhone, was nothing that the rational mind could parse on its own. The psychologist also didn’t know my daughter like I did. Iris can be the most stubborn person on earth. This is one of her cardinal virtues when, for instance, she has a test and two papers due on the same day. She’ll stay up till 3:00 A.M. no matter how many times we tell her to go to bed, and get A’s on all three, proving herself right in the end. But she can also hold a grudge like nobody I’ve ever met, and a grudge with the cosmos is no simple matter. How do you forgive the world for being godless? When she declared her atheism from the booster seat, I’d thought two things. First, How cute! The world’s only atheist who eats from the kids’ menu! I couldn’t have been more charmed if she’d said she’d been reading Schopenhauer. The second thing was, This can’t last. How could a girl who still believed in the tooth fairy fail to come around to the idea of a cosmic protector? And yet she didn’t. Her atheism had hardened to such a degree that any mention of spiritual matters made her snort milk out her nose. By inserting nothing in its stead, we had inadvertently given her the belief that she was the author of her own fate, and my wife’s newfound faith in a God-watched universe was as much a betrayal as crashing their car into the guardrail over a minor argument. It was a philosophical reversal my daughter couldn’t process, and it left her feeling utterly alone.

My wife and I felt perfectly awful. In due course our daughter emerged, with one condition: she didn’t want to discuss the accident. Not then, not ever. This seemed unhealthy, but you can’t make a twelve-year-old girl talk about something she doesn’t want to. We left for Cape Cod, where we’d rented a house for the month of July. I’d just turned in a manuscript to my editor and under ordinary circumstances would have been looking forward to the time away, but the trip seemed like too much data. Everyone was antsy and out of sorts, and the weather was horrible. The only person who enjoyed himself was our son, who was too young to comprehend the scope of events and was happy drawing pictures all day.

The school year resumed, and with it life’s ordinary rhythms. My wife began looking around for a church to attend. To say this was a sore spot with Iris would be a gross understatement. She hated the idea and said so. “Fine with me,” she said, “if you want to get all Jesus-y. Just leave me out of it.”

It didn’t happen right away. God may have shown his face to my wife in the parking lot, but he’d failed to share his address. We were stymied by the things we always had been: our jaundiced view of organized religion, the conservative social politics of most mainline denominations, the discomfiting business of praying aloud in the presence of people we didn’t know. And what, exactly, did we believe? Faith asks for a belief in God, which we had; religion asks for more, a great deal of it literal. Christian ritual was the most familiar, but neither of us believed that the Bible was the word of God or that Jesus Christ was a supernatural being who walked on water when he wasn’t turning it into wine. Certainly somebody by that name had existed; he’d gotten a lot of ink. He’d done and said some remarkable stuff, scared the living shit out of an imperial authority, and given humanity two thousand years’ worth of things to think about. But the son of God? Really? That Jesus was no more or less divine than the rest of us seemed to me the core of his message.

We wanted something, but we didn’t know what. Something with a little grace, a bit of wonder, the feeling of taking a few minutes out of each week to acknowledge how fortunate we were. We decided to give Unitarianism a shot. From the website, it seemed safe enough. Over loud objections, we made Iris come with us. The service was overseen by two ministers, a married couple, who took turns speaking from the altar, which seemed about as holy as the podium in a college classroom. After the hokey business of lighting the lamp, they droned on for half an hour about the importance of friendship. There were almost no kids in the congregation, or even anybody close to our age. It was a sea of whitehaired heads. After the service, everyone lingered in the lobby over coffee and stale cookies, but we beat a hasty retreat.

“Well, that was awkward,” Iris said.

It was. It had felt like sitting in the audience at a talk show. We tried a few more times, but our interest flagged. When, on the fourth Sunday, Iris found me making French toast in the kitchen in my bathrobe and asked why we weren’t going, I told her that I guessed church wasn’t for us after all. “Thank God,” she said, and laughed.

In the end, as in the scriptures, it was a child who led us. To our surprise, our son, Tuck, had become a secret Episcopalian. His school is affiliated with an Episcopal parish, and students attend chapel once a week. We’d always assumed this was the sort of wishy-washy, nondenominational fare most places dish out, but we were wrong. One day, apropos of nothing, as I was driving him home from school, he announced that he believed in Jesus.

“Really?” I said. “When did that happen?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and shrugged. “It just makes sense to me. Pastor

Lisa’s nice. We should go sometime.”

“To church, you mean?”

“Sure,” he said. “I think that would be great.”

Just like that, the matter was settled. We now go every week—the three of us. St. Stephen’s is located in a diverse neighborhood in Houston, and much of the congregation is gay or lesbian. There are protocols, but very loose ones, and the church has open communion and a terrific choir. Pastor Lisa is a woman in her fifties with a gray pageboy who wears blue jeans and Birkenstocks under her robe and gives a hug that feels like falling into bed. She knows I was raised Catholic, and she laughed when I told her that I didn’t mind that she “got some of the words wrong.” I have my doubts, as always, but it seems like a fine church to have them in. My son finds some of the service boring, as all children do, but he likes communion, which he calls his “force field for the week.” He has asked to be baptized next fall.

Will Iris be there? I hope so. But it’s her choice. She has yet to go with us. I know this makes her sad, and it makes me sad, too. It’s the first thing the three of us have ever done without her.

Three years after the accident, in spring 2012, I failed a blood test at my annual physical, then failed a biopsy and found myself, two months shy of my fiftieth birthday, facing a surgery that would tell me if I was going to see my children grow up. Two of my doctors assured me this would happen; a third said maybe grow up. Two of my doctors assured me this would happen; a third said maybe not. We were spending the summer on Cape Cod, where we’d bought a house, and in late July my wife and I flew back to Texas for my operation. When I awoke in the recovery room, my wife was standing over me, smiling. I was so dopey with painkillers that focusing on her face felt like trying to carry a piano up the stairs. “It’s over,” she said. “The margins were clear. You’re going to be okay.”

Two days after my surgery, I was instructed to walk. This sounded impossible, but I was determined. With my wife holding my arm, I shuffled up and down the hall of the ward, gritting my teeth against the discomfort of the catheter, which was the weirdest thing I’d ever felt. The last two months had pummeled me to psychological pieces, but the worst was over. Once again the car had rolled and we had walked away.

From the far end of the hall, a woman was approaching. Like a pair of ocean liners, we headed toward each other in slow motion. She was very thin and wearing a silk robe; like me, she was pulling an IV stand. Some greeting was called for, and she was the first to speak.

“May I give you something?”

We were within just a few feet of each other, and I saw what the situation was. Her body was leaving her; death was in her face.

“Of course.”

She gestured downward, indicating the pockets of her robe. “Pick one.”

I chose the left. With an uncertain hand she withdrew a wad of white cotton, tied with a bow. She placed it in my hand. It was an angel, made from a dish towel. To this she’d affixed a heart-shaped piece of laminated paper printed with these words from the Book of Numbers:

The Lord bless and keep you;

The Lord make his face shine upon you,

And be gracious to you;

May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you; And give you peace.

When I first learned about my illness, a very smart man told me that I should select an object. It could be anything, he said. A piece of jewelry. A spoon. A rock. Since I was a writer, maybe something to do with writing, such as a pen. It didn’t matter what it was. When I was afraid, he said, and thinking that I was going to die, I should take that object in my hand and put my fear inside it.

Wise as his counsel was, I’d never managed to do this. I’d tried one thing and then another. Nothing had felt right. This did. Not just right: miraculous.

then another. Nothing had felt right. This did. Not just right: miraculous.

“Bless you,” I said.

Two weeks later I returned to the Cape to complete my recovery. There wasn’t much I could do, but I was glad to be there. A few days before my diagnosis, I had bought a ten-year-old Audi convertible and shipped it north. Iris had just gotten her learner’s permit, and after a week of lounging around the house, I asked her if she’d take me for a drive. The day was sunny and hot. We put the top down and sped north, bisecting the peninsula on a rolling, two-lane road. From the passenger seat, I watched my daughter drive. In the past year a startling change had occurred. Iris wasn’t a kid anymore. She was taller than my wife, with a full, womanly shape. Her facial features had organized into mature proportions. Her hair, a honeyed red, swept away from her face in a stylish arc. She could have been mistaken for a college student, and often was. But the difference was more than physical; to look at my daughter was to know that she was somebody with a private, inner existence. She was standing at the edge of life; everything was ahead of her. All she had to do was let it come.

“How’s it feel?” I asked. She had perfect motorist’s manners: hands at ten and two, shoulders pressed back, eyes on the road. She was wearing large tortoiseshell sunglasses that would have been perfectly at home on Audrey Hepburn’s face. “Okay.”

“Not scary?”

She shrugged. “Maybe a little.”

Our destination was a beach on the Cape’s north side, called Sandy Neck. From there, on the clearest days, you can see all the way from Plymouth to Provincetown. We parked and got out of the car and walked to the little platform built to take in the view. I knew we couldn’t stay long; even standing was an effort.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” I said.

Iris was looking away. “You didn’t. Not really.”

“Well, I was scared. I’m glad you weren’t.”

She thought a moment. “That’s the thing. I knew I should have been. But I wasn’t. I actually feel kind of guilty about that.”

“There’s no reason you should.”

“It’s just . . .” She hunted for the words. “I don’t know. You’re you. I just can’t imagine you not being okay.”

She was wrong. Someday I wouldn’t be. Time and chance would do its work, as it does for all of us. But she didn’t need to hear that from me on a sunny summer day.

“Do you remember the accident?” I asked.

She laughed, a little nervously. “Well, duh.”

“I’ve always wondered. What were you doing in the closet?”

“Not much. Mostly watching Project Runway on my laptop.”

“And being mad at us.”

She shrugged. “That whole God thing really pissed me off. I mean, you guys can believe whatever you want. I just wanted Mom to feel the same way I did.”

“How did you feel?”

She didn’t answer right away. Boats were creeping across the horizon.

“Abandoned.”

We were silent for a time. I had a sudden vision of myself as old—an old man, being taken to the beach by his grown daughter. The dunes, the ocean, the rocky margin where they met—all would be the same, unchanged since I was boy. It was a sad thought, but it also made me happy in a way that seemed new. These things were years away, and with any luck, I would be around to see them.

“Are you doing all right? Do you need to go back?”

I nodded. “Probably I should get off my feet.”

We returned to the car. Three steps ahead of me, Iris moved to the passenger side, opened the door, and got in.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She looked around. “Oh, right,” she said, and laughed. “I’m the driver, aren’t I?”

She was sixteen years old. I hoped someday she’d remember how it felt, how invincible, how alive. I’d heard it said that one tenth of parenting is making mistakes; the other nine are prayer and letting go. “Yes,” I said. “You are.”

MEGHAN DAUM

0 notes

uniqueeagleenthusiast · 4 years ago

Text

Scan For All Mac Address On Network

How would you communicate with a device when you don’t have the IP?

Mac Address Changer

Mac Address Scanner

Advanced IP Scanner. Reliable and free network scanner to analyse LAN. The program shows all network devices, gives you access to shared folders, provides remote control of computers (via RDP and Radmin), and can even remotely switch computers off. It is easy to use and runs as a portable edition. It should be the first choice for every network. This command will scan your network from 192.168.0.1 to 255 and will display the hosts with their MAC address on your network. In case you want to display the mac address for a single client, use this command make sure you are on root or use 'sudo' sudo nmap -Pn 192.168.0.1 this command will display the host MAC address and the open ports.

You might be in a situation where you don’t have the IP address of a device in a local network, but all you have is records of the MAC or hardware address.

Or your computer is unable to display its IP due to various reasons, and you are getting a “No Valid IP Address” error.

Finding the IP from a known MAC address should be the task of a ReverseARP application, the counterpart of ARP.

But RARP is an obsolete protocol with many disadvantages, so it was quickly replaced by other protocols like BOOTP and DHCP, which deal directly with IP addresses.

In this article, we’ll show you how to find IPs and device vendors using MAC addresses with different methods for free.

Understanding ARP

ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) is the protocol in charge of finding MAC addresses with IPs in local network segments.

It operates with frames on the data link layer.

As you might already know, devices in the data link layer depend on MAC addresses for their communication.

Their frames encapsulate packets that contain IP address information.

A device must know the destination MAC address to communicate locally through media types like Ethernet or Wifi, in layer 2 of the OSI model.

Understanding how ARP works can help you find IPs and MAC addresses quickly.

The following message flow diagram can help you understand the concept:

The local computer sends a ping (ICMP echo request) to a destination IP address (remote computer) within the same segment. Unfortunately, the local computer does not know the MAC address… it only knows the IP address.

The destination hardware address is unknown, so the ICMP echo request is put on hold. The local computer only knows its source/destination IP and its source MAC addresses. ARP uses two types of messages, ARP Request and Reply.

The local computer sends an ARP REQUEST message to find the owner of the IP address in question.

This message is sent to all devices within the same segment or LAN through a broadcast MAC (FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF) as the destination.

Because the remote computer is part of the same network segment, it receives the broadcast message sent by the local computer. All other computers in the LAN also receive the broadcast but they know that the destination IP is not theirs, so they discard the packet. Only the remote computer with destination IP, responds to the ARP REQUEST with an ARP REPLY, which contains the target MAC address.

The local computer receives the ARP REPLY with the MAC address. It then resumes the ICMP echo request, and finally, the remote computer responds with an ICMP echo reply.

Finding IPs with ARP

You can use ARP to obtain an IP from a known MAC address.

But first, it is important to update your local ARP table in order to get information from all devices in the network.

Send a ping (ICMP echo reply) to the entire LAN, to get all the MAC entries on the table.

To ping the entire LAN, you can send a broadcast to your network.

Open the Command Prompt in Windows or terminal in macOS and type.

ping 192.168.0.255

My subnet is 192.168.0.0/24 (mask of 255.255.255.0), so the broadcast address is 192.168.0.255 which can be calculated or found with a “Print Route” command in Windows or a “netstat -nr” in macOS. Or can also be obtained with a subnet calculator.

For Windows:

Step 1.

Open the CMD (Command Prompt)

Go to the “Start” menu and select “Run” or press (Windows key + R) to open the Run application

In the “Open” textbox type “cmd” and press “Ok”.

This will open the command-line interface in Windows.

Step 2.

Enter the “arp” command.

The arp command without any additional arguments will give you a list of options that you can use.

Step 3.

Use the arp with additional arguments to find the IP within the same network segment.

With the command “arp -a” you can see the ARP table and its entries recently populated by your computer with the broadcast ping.

Step 4.

Reading the output.

The information displayed in the arp-a is basically the ARP table on your computer.

It shows a list with IP addresses, their corresponding physical address (or MAC), and the type of allocation (dynamic or static).

Let’s say you have the MAC address 60-30-d4-76-b8-c8 (which is a macOS device) and you want to know the IP.

From the results shown above, you can map the MAC address to the IP address in the same line.

The IP Address is 192.168.0.102 (which is in the same network segment) belongs to 60-30-d4-76-b8-c8.

You can forget about those 224.0.0.x and 239.0.0.x addresses, as they are multicast IPs.

For macOS:

Step 1:

Open the Terminal App. go to Applications > Utilities > Terminal or Launchpad > Other > Terminal.

Step 2:

Enter the “arp” command with an “-a” flag.

Once you enter the command “arp -a” you’ll receive a list with all ARP entries to the ARP Table in your computer.

The output will show a line with the IP address followed by the MAC address, the interface, and the allocation type (dynamic/static).

Finding IPs with the DHCP Server

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is the network protocol used by TCP/IP to dynamically allocate IP addresses and other characteristics to devices in a network.

The DHCP works with a client/server mode.

The DHCP server is the device in charge of assigning IP addresses in a network, and the client is usually your computer.

For home networks or LANs, the DHCP Server is typically a router or gateway.

If you have access to the DHCP Server, you can view all relationships with IPs, MACs, interfaces, name of the device, and lease time in your LAN.

Step 1.

Log into the DHCP Server. In this example, the DHCP server is the home gateway.

If you don’t know the IP address of your DHCP Server/ Gateway, you can run an ipconfig (in Windows) or ifconfig (in macOS/Linux).

This particular DHCP Server/Gateway has a web interface.

Step 2.

Enter the IP address on the search bar of the web browser, and input the right credentials.

Step 3.

Find the DHCP Clients List.

In this TP-Link router, the DHCP Server functionality comes as an additional feature.

Go to DHCP > DHCP Clients List. From this list, you can see the mapping between MAC addresses and their assigned IPs.

Using Sniffers

If you couldn’t find the IP in the ARP list or unfortunately don’t have access to the DHCP Server, as a last resort, you can use a sniffer.

Packet sniffers or network analyzers like Nmap (or Zenmap which is the GUI version) are designed for network security.

They can help identify attacks and vulnerabilities in the network.

With Nmap, you can actively scan your entire network and find IPs, ports, protocols, MACs, etc.

If you are trying to find the IP from a known MAC with a sniffer like Nmap, look for the MAC address within the scan results.

How to find the Device and IP with a Sniffer?

Step 1.

Keep records of your network IP address information.

In this case, my network IP is 192.168.0.0/24. If you don’t know it, a quick “ipconfig” in Windows cmd or an “ifconfig” in macOS or Linux terminal can show you the local IP and mask.

If you can’t subnet, go online to a subnet calculator and find your network IP.

Step 2.

Download and open Nmap.

Download Nmap from this official link https://nmap.org/download.html and follow its straightforward installation process.

Step 3.

Open Nmap (or Zenmap) and use the command “sudo nmap -sn (network IP)” to scan the entire network (without port scan).

The command will list machines that respond to the Ping and will include their MAC address along with the vendor.

Don’t forget the “sudo” command.

Without it, you will not see MAC addresses.

Finding out the device vendor from a MAC address

Ok, so now you were able to find out the IP address using “arp -a” command or through the DHCP Server.

But what if you want to know more details about that particular device?

What vendor is it?

Your network segment or LAN might be full of different devices, from computers, firewalls, routers, mobiles, printers, TVs, etc.

And MAC addresses contain key information for knowing more details about each network device.

First, it is essential to understand the format of the MAC address.

Traditional MAC addresses are 48 bits represented in 12-digit hexadecimal numbers (or six octets).

The first half of the six octets represent the Organizational Unique Identifier (OUI) and the other half is the Network Interface Controller (NIC) which is unique for every device in the world.

There is not much we can do about the NIC, other than communicating with it.

Android flash tool for pc. Allows you to flash an Android build to your device fordevelopment and testing. To get started, you need a development machine and anAndroid device.

But the OUI can give us useful information about the vendor if you didn’t use Nmap, which can also give you the hardware vendor.

A free online OUI lookup tool like Wireshark OUI Lookup can help you with this.

Just enter the MAC address on the OUI search, and the tool will look at the first three octets and correlate with its manufacturing database.

Final Words

Although the RARP (the counterpart of ARP) was specifically designed to find IPs from MAC addresses, it was quickly discontinued because it had many drawbacks.

RARP was quickly replaced by DHCP and BOOTP.

But ARP is still one of the core functions of the IP layer in the TCP/IP protocol stack.

It finds MAC addresses from known IPs, which is most common in today’s communications.

ARP works under the hood to keep a frequently used list of MACs and IPs.

But you can also use it to see the current mappings with the command arp -a.

Aside from ARP, you can also use DHCP to view IP information. DHCP Servers are usually in charge of IP assignments.

If you have access to the DHCP server, go into the DHCP Client list and identify the IP with the MAC address.

Finally, you can use a network sniffer like Nmap, scan your entire network, and find IPs, and MACs.

If you only want to know the vendor, an online OUI lookup like Wireshark can help you find it quickly.

The first step of troubleshooting any network problem is by pinging the IP address. Well, for that you need to know the IP address of the device or in cases IP address of all the devices in the network. There are several ways to do this and it entirely depends on the type of OS you are using. So, here are ways to find the IP Address of other devices in your network whether it is Windows, Android, iOS, Ubuntu and macOS.

Find IP Address of Other Devices on Your Network

In this article, we would be dealing with ways to find the private IP address of devices. Since the public IP address of all the devices within the same network remains the same i.e. the IP address of your router. In case, you are surprised by the word public and private IP address, it’s fairly simple. We have a detailed article on the difference between Public and Private IP and how to find the IP address of your own device.

1. How to Find IP Address in cmd For Network

The simplest way to do that in Windows is via the command line. To open the command prompt, type “cmd” on the Start menu. When you see the command prompt, right click on it and click on “Run as Administrator”.

In case you are using windows 10, you can directly run Command Prompt as an Administrator. Just right-click on the Start icon and click on Command Prompt(Admin).

Once you get the Command Prompt window, type the following command.

This will display the entire list of ARP entries. In case you are wondering, ARP is a network utility which maintains a track of all private IP addresses in the network.

Find IP Address of all Devices on Network Using Windows App

Find IP addresses through the command line might be the simplest way but not the most intuitive one. If you are not good with command line then you should download this Nirsoft utility called Wireless Network Watcher. The app has a portable version as well as exe.

As soon as you open the app, it starts scanning your network. Give it some time and it will list up the active connections in your network. The app will display all computers, smartphones and smart homes devices that are currently connected to the network. Along with the Device Name and IP address, it also presents other relevant information like MAC Address, Device Information etc along with its IP Address.

Read: Useful NirSoft Utilities That Every Windows User Should Try

2. Find all IP Address on the Network on Ubuntu

If you are working with Ubuntu or any Unix based OS then following are the ways. You can find the IP address using arp utility on the terminal. To open the terminal, right-click anywhere on the desktop and select “Open Terminal”.

Alternatively, you can also click on the Activities button at the top-left corner. This will bring up a search bar. Type Terminal on it and click on the Terminal icon once it pops up.

Once the terminal window opens, type the following command.

Another intuitive way to do this is through GUI. You have to install a tool called Angry IP Scanner. To install the Angry IP Scanner, you need to add an entry to the APT repository. APT (Advanced Packaging Tool) will then be able to fetch Angry IP Scanner from that particular location. To add the entry to the repository, type the following command

In case you are facing any issues with IP Scan Installation, make sure you have disabled gpg signatures check. You can do that by using the following command.

Once the entry is successfully added, we need to update the apt-get repository. To do that, type the following command

Once the apt repository is updated successfully, we can install the Angry IP Scanner application. Type the following command to fetch and install the application

Alternatively, if you have a browser you can also choose to install from the Angry IP Scanner website directly. Once you launch the app, it will the network you are connected to. Once, it is completed you can see the active connections in your network.

It has advanced tools like opening an FTP, Telnet, SSH connection for any of the IP devices. One thing it lacks is the inability to show hostnames for the devices. Most of the devices come up as N/A in the hostname. This can, however, be found out by using the host command but that takes an extra step.

Read: How to use Angry IP Scanner – Beginners Guide

3. How to Find who is on my WiFi on macOS

On macOS, the steps are quite similar to that of Ubuntu. To find the IP Address of other devices in your network via the command line, we need to first open the terminal. To do that, hit Cmd + Space to trigger Spotlight Search. Type “Terminal” on the search bar. Click on the Terminal icon when the search results populate.

Once the terminal window opens, type the following command.

This will list down the IP’s in your local network with their MAC Addresses. IPs are listed in round brackets followed by the MAC Address.

You cannot see the hostname (name of the computer or smartphone) through the command line. For that, you will have to do a host search separately for each IP. For example, if I need to find the hostname of 192.168.1.105, then I have to execute the following command

host 192.168.1.105

If the commands sound too much work, you can download a freeware from the Mac App Store called LAN scan. This app will list the IP addresses connected to the Local network along with other details like MAC addresses, Vendor etc. This app does not grab he Hostnames like Wireless Network Watcher. In order to get the hostnames of the devices, you need to get the premium variant. It can be purchased at a one-time fee of $7.

Also Read: Find Out Who’s Connected to Your WiFi

4. Android & iOS

On Android and iOS, there is no native way to check the IP Address of all the devices in the network. Hence, you will have to download a third-party app for this. Fing is a powerful network utility available for both Android and iOS which lets you scan your network. All you have to do is open the app and it will automatically start scanning all of the devices on your network. You’ll see all of their IP addresses, their names.

Unlike all the other apps we tested for Windows and Mac, Fing was the only that can figure out your connected devices brands and models. It can even fetch the device icon – wheater it’s an iPhone, MacBook, Router or Printer etc.

Check out Fing (iOS, Android)

Apart from just scanning IPs, you can also ping them or see the open ports on the particular device.

5. Router

One of the most popular ways to check who is connected to your WiFi network is by using your router’s web interface.

In case you have access to the router web interface, you can simply log in to the web portal and check. The web portal address, username, and password are mostly printed behind the router. In case you don’t have physical access to the router, the web portal URL is mostly the PC’s gateway address. To find that, open command prompt and type the following command.

The default username and password depends on the router’s manufacturer. Mostly, the username and password is “admin”. In case this doesn’t work for you, visit the official manufacturer site to get the default credentials.

Once you are logged in, look out for the Wireless or DHCP option. We need to navigate to the DHCP client’s list. On this page, you can see the entire list of devices connected to the network with their Client Name and MAC Address. You can also choose to block particular devices from this interface. To read more about it, check our article on how to block someone from your network.

The good thing about this approach is that you don’t have to install any software because you can access your router from any device. However, the only downside is that you need to know the router’s login credentials. If you are in a work environment then you might not have access to these details to log into the routers admin page. In that case, you will have to use the methods mentioned above.

Mac Address Changer

Final Say

Mac Address Scanner

Once you have found the IP address of the devices in your network. You can start configuring your network accordingly. You can start assigning Static IP Addresses to your device, configuring SSH, access your computer remotely etc.

0 notes

thetaekswoon · 7 years ago

Text

NCT Taeyong| Boyfriend AU

NSFW!

Taeyong:

So soft. The ultimate soft boyfriend.

I cannot comprehend in words just how soft he is.

Loves you so freaking much, his world would probably stop spinning on its axis if something would happen to you, and he lets you know it.

Tells you he loves you every morning when you wake up and kisses your nose. He tells you while you’re eating breakfast, off to work, through random texts throughout the day, when you get home, during dinner, in the bath, as you’re falling asleep. Taeyong tells you he loves you what seems like one hundred times a day, but to him that will never be enough.

Constantly needs reassurance that your feelings toward him are the same feelings he’s feeling towards you because he can just get so insecure.

Strawberries and snapdragons.

Roses on anniversaries.

Cherry flavored lollipops.

Idk why, probably because of his pink hair, but I just see Taeyong as someone who loves strawberries, the taste, the scent of them. His favorite scent on you is cheap strawberry perfume.

Blushes when you do….,, then becomes embarrassed.

Taeyong is the kind of boyfriend who will buy you random gifts because when he saw it in the store it reminded him of you.

You have so many random things in your drawers, all from Taeyong.

There’s tiny bears and ribbons, phone cases and heart shaped hair brushes. Book ends and newspaper clippings, tiny paintings and mugs, you keep the mugs in the kitchen though.

Chronic hair sniffer. It’s the most safe smell in the world to him.

Taeyong loves nothing more than to hold you tight with his face in your hair after a long day of work.

He’s such a snuggle whore. It’s his absolute favorite thing to do in the whole world.

Sometimes the world just feels like it is coming down all on Taeyong and he falls into a depression and wants nothing more than to hide in your hair, your love and kisses.

… it makes him smile even on the worst of days.

In the cold of winter, Taeyong takes you out for hot chocolate.

In the summer he takes you out for bubble tea and shaved ice.

Sometimes he becomes really childish and wants to do something like play board games with you when it’s raining outside.

Your parents absolutely adore him. Think he’s beautiful and well mannered, they know he treats you right and that you’re happy.

…, they think he’s such husband material lmao.

Taeyong loves coming to all over your family events, dinners and reunions alike.

Knows all of your aunts, uncles, cousins by name.

One time at your family reunion you caught Taeyong playing around with some of your tiny cousins. It melted your heart and soul and you couldn’t help but imagine Taeyong being the father of your children, playing with them in the yard.

Matching ugly holiday sweaters couple.

Like seriously, you probably made them yourselves. They’re full of holes and stitched improperly, the designs are just plain odd.

Cheek and neck kisses in public are fine for Taeyong, but he thinks that kisses on the lips are for goodbyes or otherwise should be private.

He likes to backhug you while he presses soft kisses on your neck.

When you first begin to be intimate with Taeyong, he can come across as a very timid lover.

It can be a little hard for him to show his most vulnerable self to someone else.

He takes his time with you, making sure that you are enjoying what he’s doing as he explores your body.

Boobs >>>>> Butt

In the beginning he took his time with you, learning what you do and don’t like. Running his tongue and hands up and down the sides of your body.

But after you two become comfortable with each other, he turns into a different kind of lover. Taeyong becomes more raw and primal, he becomes more dominant and more eager to try new things.

Surprisingly kinky boy.

Lowkey has a daddy/mommy kink, and even though he is much more confident when it comes to sex, there’s something about this specific kink of his that makes him insecure about sharing it.

Probably something about all the negative connotations about it in society.

He’s into almost every and anything. Not so much being a sub, but would be willing to try if he knew it was something you liked or if you wanted him to call you mommy then boi would he jump on that opportunity

Really into using toys on you. Especially vibrators.

He wants to make you beg for him, and definitely into orgasm torture. He’ll go down on you for as long as he possibly can, switching between his mouth and vibrators.

Loves making you go down on him.

It’s kind of funny though just how fast the normal, shy and loving Taeyong can come back after sex. Basically as soon as the act is done he softens up ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) and wants needs to cuddle.

He kisses behind your ear and spoons you like his life depends on it.

tbh it might.

I swear, if he ever sees you in only one of his white undershirts he may roar, that’s literally the hottest thing for him.

As for your future together… Taeyong wants a family, he wants a family with you and for you to never leave his side.

He wants to raise your kids right and see them going off into the world being truly good people. He doesn’t want to have to worry that they’ll make the same mistakes he did when he was young.

He will sob cry on your wedding day, and doesn’t care what people say about it.

<><> do not edit/remove anything from the original post <><> this AU belongs to me <><>

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whimsically-ominously-auspice · 5 years ago

Text

I woke up again and there was someone pulling at by me like tug of war. Over my body. I jumped up and ran to the bathroom away from the situation. But I was In So much pain.

The pulling helped but ... Like there's no solution.

Snoop helped me many years ago about 6 or 7 to get on the right medication to stabilize my heart and to get me all better and healthier with the help of pills.

He is the only one that did. I wrote about him but used his personal name "Calvin"

Because he was my personal friend. My personal guidance counselor.

He was with me every minute of the day "you need to take a pill about right now I see that pain about to be kicking up"

"You think you can get a different medication not like weed but a pill because this one ain't working"

He was truly my doctor. So i respected him and his privacy and just called him Calvin.

So marrying on his date of choice... "But why snoop?"

I'll give you two reasons. One he was my doctor that got me to the actual local doctor that could prescribe.

Two the whole fold out was over the world wide drug addictions y'all have. Y'all all know you're doing less recreational drugs during rehab with your family and friends in your house -- i mean Quarentine. Wow that secret came out quick out my mouth.

79% less "street" drug use worldwide.

To celebrate 4.20.2020 is an appropriate date..

The 20.20.20.20 goes on and in indefinite.

Y'all know Snoop smoke for a reason and he drink and he take Tums. Like no mother effer know.

Here's our momma helping yall find it. Follow her face she point right down to it.

Same ole game. The Distraction Method.

They went to have sex and her I am all now look and focus on these here Tums. I ain't even wanting to share the post but it's a good PSA for all. So i will.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B92p2Z2H9WW/?igshid=1xwks2o8nb2p5

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A post shared by snoopdogg (@snoopdogg) on Mar 17, 2020 at 4:56pm PDT

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Best Friens. We always got each other's back.

And we got yours. We got safer and healthier and funner FDA approved street drugs.

We will honor old time commitment of old fashioned door to door street sales. Face to face.

Of the Human entitlement. That is something our bodies can and will do without provoking dangerous pain... Just stiffness at times y'all forget to stretch and use them muscles but getting up and walking next door for door to door sales will stretch them body parts right up correct.

I had to get on a "new" prescription today. Hopefully my doctor honors it. I asked for an emergency prescription and I'll talk to her about my other, toppamax in a few weeks.

But Snoops was the one that said I needed something for Fibromyalgia. And encouraged and helped and watched me to ensure I was okay.

He is the one that prayed and worried when the muscle relaxers were too strong and i couldn't swallow. And i could died. Because of Flexeril. Because I been on it too long and it was approved for two weeks max. So i got on a completely different medication for it. And it worked for every day long term yearly use.

So he believes in the world's herbs and medicine. Chamomile. Ginger. Rose Hips. Echinacea.

So four twenty will go on.

I always and he did felt like 420 honors the Earth and its medicine. Not just getting high. But the spirit of Mother Nature.

So marrying on 420 symbolizes that Mother Nature will Continue on. Humans are marrying not just their soulmates and/or Just accepting them as they are.

They are committing themselves to our Planet and it's health and wealth

Hence y'all Quarentine.

Y'all going inside and fighting back this illegal alien caused diseases. Although we committed to changing it and wanting it to spread. Y'all fight the sole reason of its existence. Illegal aliens trying to take control by damaging our precious and beloved planet that we belong to.

Not everyone is getting married. Only y'all on Ships and those in Compton on a specialized piece of magic made equipment approved by Mother Nature.

The ships y'all are on run by paddles 110% guaranteed not to harm sea or wild life. I have committed to Mother Nature and all she loves when building those ships. And to yours and our safety and sanity aboard.

These ships cause no pollution and are sanitized by lights that recharge by laying on ships docks when they run out of energy.

Jesse Number 2 helped me design a way to capture UV rays that are harmless. Not radio active. And perfect to sanitize. What makes laundry clean and crisp in the sun. What we used to long ago to sanitize and clean all our instruments BEFORE aliens came with microwaves. Light form the Sun. So Jesse Number 2. I'll tell you right now. He is Einstein.

So his getting in trouble and kicked outta school. It ain't gonna end. In fact i used that theory he was a bad boy. I left it in him. I didnt correct him. I let that evil sniffer inside him. Because I knew one day that mischief could be used to my benefits. He is so loving and his desire to reach others to teach and be a Nigger is so strong he can't handle it. And his hate for aliens. So deep he had to experiment a way to dispose of them all without the use of magic so it's automatic done.

His wish is granted. Einstein I thank you for Your mischief. Your complete soul level on your own not including your soulmate or any others you drag along with you (kids like me) is -141812711219102.

For your development in Science.

Social level is about 3.

My science level is a little less than yours. Setting about 12 shelves down.

Snoop Science level is -4120191218451687431.

But he's inactive. Thus he is a fortune of information. And has a Science Tree named after him -- which means it captures his personality -- his spirit. And he hides behind the Tree of Einstein adding in deluxe phrases and at times mischief.

The difference is that Snoop knows the words to express what Einstein does. While Einstein only has the heart. So things go wrong at times when it has a delicate balance such as plutonium bombs.

Unfortunately they were stolen from Einstein.

So in the science Scale Eisenstein is lower because of his inability to speak and only feel.

He is autistic mute. Which is why he got kicked out of school. Be aware of the different children you have in the world and how gifted they are. Learning the story of Beethoven will change your entire world and understanding of disabilities.

Einstein cannot perform if must speak.

Snoop doesn't wanna get his hands dirty but he can explain a performance

So the rest of the time with Einstein will be posted and you'll see the truth behind the bombings that closed the NHRA.

I didn't want my babies working. I didn't want them having the stress of competition with each other. I just wanted them to stop for a little while and clear their heads of all that traffic going to their minds.

And let them do what they needed most. War. To finish this fight against human trafficking.

Its not over. Quarantine is for your safety So no one is stolen or bought. We can keep track of you easier.

This is why we meme The Corona.

Because there's a serious SERIOUS real reason we are stopping people from being in the streets.

No one can drug and kidnap you If every one is hyper aware of getting sick

A BIG TIME KIDNAPPER NATHANIEL RELEASED THE KILLER VIRUS INTO CHINA. 175709 EXPERT E. WAS THE DISEASE NAME. THE SOLE. THE #1 ISSUE IS THE CONCRETE FOUNDATION OF EVERYTHING HAPPENING.

This is why we chose not to eradicate the virus. We could yall know. That's why it's in meme.

Jazmine didn't know she followed her heart and voted to change. Her vote was the deciding vote. It was split down the middle. From her spine her backbone for her soul she shouts "Thank y'all for listening to your hearts, too!!!" My kids were scared. Sometimes panic stricken. But they kept going because they knew in their hearts it had to be done. Jazmine says "i didn't know how strong I could be. We've never poisoned so many people!!! But mom and North Korea made it fun and saw how necessary it was. Thank you Kim Young Jon!"

"Kim Young Jon really lighted our hearts to allow us to continue our mission by making jokes about constipation and such So we really just tried to give it to those folks that are evil with constipation!! And it worked! And we feel much better because we had help from the leader of North Korea, Kim Young John" adds Chastity. The quiet one no one knows about. Because she's Chaste. Celibate. Celebration. The girl behind the power of Purity and Joy. "No one knows but I do like my job. Like a lot!"

She admits its been hard and i found All the girls on TV last night so dad will edit in How you can find tree filmed life for them

I will say you will see my kids telling their dad they will date and/or marry them. Its not a daddy complex or sugar daddy thing. It was to keep illegal aliens from taking over his body and also trying to marry him. Keeping him safe and pure for me. So understand that and you can see the films proper. They are tricks. To prove love and devotion to their parent's marriage. They go on "dates" but it's little 3 year old toddlers going out with their Father. It is pure. Just realize the plot lines.... Its sneaky mystery. He knows they are his kids and they know he is their dad. Its simple. Its s conglomerate camouflage to protect themselves, me and dear old dad. Its a real beauty and treasure to see.

And now due to the Ocean Wide Marriage of Mother Nature using her soulmates as power. Never do those occurrences have to happen again.

Now I can say "it's daddy date time lets get you all ready" I can get all my girls dressed and ready and go out with my sons. Then we switch. "Its mommy date time" and the girls get all ready.

Because we are keeping it feminine and old fashion where the girls are taken out for a romantic evening and the parents teach the children proper etiquette and dating procedures.

So the movies he posts are a prelude to our future fun. Although they were seriously and honestly protecting his life.

So although our children are and will be married we will still intervene and remind them to change things up a bit. Come out with us on 2 trial runs check your comfort, expand your mind. Then go out single and have fun.

My mom all my mom's have had agoraphobia. So i get it too, sometimes. So this helps me. So when he wants to take me out someplace unfamiliar to me, new and strange. I am more relaxed. And I enjoy it more. Because I've gone with 2 groups to basically go check the place out for its saftiness and quality.

So, im happier knowing he's picked a good safe place for me to enjoy.

But agoraphobia aside. It is simply beautiful.

Its a Mary Poppins trait. Take the kids. See if it is kid approved then take the whole family to impress the damming father of their knowledge of the restaurant

Its a rich NYC establishment of Socialite traits.

Its absolutely historical. And missing on this Earth.

Our Steam ships will provide times for those "dates" for everyone aboard.

Its great for large families. I have 16 daughters. In groups of 8 we have a nice large meal and great table outing where we can talk and laugh and enjoy each other

Our plans are 2 girl dates and 4 boy dates per week then 1 large dinner table for all.

We have 18 boys.

So two groups of girls of 8 each.

2 groups of boys 9 each.

That's 4 nights of switching with mom and dad.

2 nights of single dates and/or brother sister switch dates which pushes a week into 2 week time frame for specialties.

Every 6 weeks.

Then dinner dates with entire family.

So trees arrange every thing the tables and set up so we can relax, all plans are premwde and preset and predictable. Based on patterns of behavior.

Like I know a 2 week one is a mystery adventure so it's got practical jokes and such to be tricky thus the dinners also have 6 family dinners.

Its spooky scary so kids scream, "I want my mommy!!"

So we all feel good and right as a family it's a live show and humans do it with magic so,then,we also take our turn to do them at their dinner and we dine earlier to make plans.

So the plans aren't laid out. We have bets and guesses what one will do we made long long ago. So we make money that way.

Because we are wealthy. But also for the "lower classes of finances" the mystery solving does earn money. Including Some for wild and fun completely wrong theories will earn a grand prize if it is a solid and GOOD foundation i can build on. There's tons of prizes and fun.

Every 6 weeks. Because the best schools have 6 weeks intercourses then a grade.

So ours is 6 weeks of yall being you then us performing a show and fucking your minds and lives all up for 2 weeks

So when you get home and kids do go to school it is 6 weeks of school. 3 weeks off 2 of which include vacation of international travel.

Which means you go to NYC visit Little Italy. Or you go to San Antonio and visit the Alamo. Go to Alaska and find a Russian Muesuems. Or you simply stay home and go to Muesuems of the past i have created.

International travel does include watching movies of REAL LIFE which will be labeled correctly or if incorrectly a prize for labeling correct like Snoop ssys in this video.

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Note y'all all will have enough money to go over seas but sometimes your family will come visit you. Or you just need rest or wanna explore your own territory.

So history is considered international travel. So you can look at your own home tree made movies.

Then you earn a prize. A souvenir.

So you watch you and you be all dam man i love this lamp i keep seeing. -- i for real bought this lamp and it was so filled with love all i wanna do is wrap,my arms around it.,Idk,why but i miss it and I want it back so bad. I'd take it on vacation i love that big ass lamp. -- so if i see it and i can label every single person correctly in that movie. Then i get the lamp.

So say you know something was destroyed. Broke to high Hell. Dumped in the garbage lit on fire.

Momma gonna get it for you. Out of 8 tons of trash on top of it. And I gonna fix it how you loved it. You had a sticker on the bottom of your eye rolling phone? It will be there. Just the way you had It.

It don't matter what happened to it. I'll magic find it. Fix and you'll get it. All magic. All you gotta do is love that object with your whole being.

Mary Poppins. I won't even know. But momma gonna get it.

Now, ole George had something you wanted... Fine old diamond ring and watch set you always slipped an eye to.

Daddy gonna buy you one Just like it. Father Christmas aka Christopher Columbus promised it Will get built. All your favorites.

Now we say we gonna do it. But we asked the true magic God could we please??.

In 2008 he said in 2020 y'all waited enough.

So we take that credit from nursery rhymes because we are the messengers m

If my father is The One True God

And he created just this planet just for me to keep me safe and it was invaded.

Then I would be Jesus a girl. And i have found out i can not forgive. So welcome to Corona.

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