#waterspout

[pinkblanc]

The Great Waterspout in Vineyard Sound, 1896

[acatpiestuff]

punk tactics animation meme WIP moment

ft. my spidersona waterspout 🥺

its still very unfinished, but yippee

[lionfloss]

Waterspout

[shirleydanders]

“Reunion”

CHARACTERS: River Cartwright x James ‘Spider’ Webb

SUMMARY: It’s been about a month of silent hospital visits before River hears that Spider’s awake. He goes to see him and their game, as ever, is on.

WORD COUNT: 1,664

WARNINGS: Angst, violent imagery, bad language, deep, deep sadness and weird dudes.

NOTES: This is kind of a fix-it fic because I refuse to accept Spider’s death as laid out in either the book or the show. Also, I tried to do a bit of a character study into why River is so pathetic and Spider is such a fucked up little freak, so I hope you enjoy that.

River knows how it feels. To be worth more vivisected than whole. Maybe he can sympathise. There’s something more compelling about his destruction than the half-life he’s slipping through.

So loneliness will always be preferable to the feeling of being sifted through for something more valuable. He watches as the light in everyone’s eyes dies on contact with him. He carries on talking even though no one’s listening. He was made a pawn, but the game’s over.

He knows he’ll let his guard down eventually. Sooner or later, he’ll offer himself to someone, to be broken down into those familiar disembodied bits. He can feel useful then, if only for a moment.

Pathetic, that’s what most people would call it. River has given up trying to justify himself. He doesn’t have the energy. He’s half a person; half the vital functions. His thoughts dissolve as soon as they arrive. Any emotion feels a hundred miles away. If he does catch up, it’s already petered out.

He thinks about his mother briefly. How she left him on his granddad’s doorstep at seven. Well, of course she did. She could see it, even then. He’s always been a ghost.

He thinks that’s why he doesn’t stay whole for long. Whatever he is isn’t worth being saved, not even an entire being in the first place. And haunting people is so painful. So he lets them take him apart. All the pieces. Until he’s just a husk, and they’ve slinked away.

Spider’s anxieties are different altogether. He is sure of his importance; knows he’s needed. But the idea that someone could overtake what he’s managed to achieve makes him sick. The constant need to sabotage, to prove himself above others. He marks his card as one of the elite, but the conviction he embodies it with doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

Taverner never liked him. He doesn’t need her to, so long as she doesn’t like anyone else either. But she did before. She liked River. So when she came with the request to ruin him, a Shakespearean betrayal, he’d done what he had to. There was no place for him but the top of the food chain.

It’s never bothered him. There’s always someone undeserving in the place he should be. Who was the one weeping, smeared across the floor in the torture resistance training? Not him, that’s for sure.

It’s not personal. What River is or isn’t to him has never even been a consideration. It’s London Rules, as it always has been. Covering your arse is a lot easier when you can push someone down to do it for you.

When they meet again, for the first time since Spider woke from his coma, there is that stilted silence – the great unsaid. That has always been a game they played. There’d always been a hushed nature to their… relationship. Before the resentment kicked in, there was something else that was keeping them apart.

Now, even the love’s gone, but the distance remains unchanged. They’re too incompatible for that to be overcome.

Nevertheless, they are drawn together every single time.

River is the first to speak.

‘Long time, no see.’

Spider nods – a smile, half expressed, half tangled up in another moment, resting on his lips. He catches River’s insinuation. That Spider hadn’t seen him, even though he’d visited.

‘You gonna use that against me? The coma?’

‘Well, I’ve never been in one.’

The pair laugh, acidicly.

‘Never too late to try something new.’

The thin veil of playfulness shatters. They both wilt, as though resigning themselves to the opposite. It is too late. It’s all too late, and too messy, and too much.

‘That’s the last time I ask your lot for a favour.’

‘Yeah, well, we’re slow horses,’ River replies, teeth grinding slightly as he forces it out, ‘what did you expect?’

‘I would’ve thought not letting people get shot while you’re running security is common practice, even among your kind.’

They both know they’re not here to speak as though they’re on the record, in some unseen competition. They want to be candid. To possibly even be vulnerable. The trouble is, someone’s got to break first. Spider had never knowingly broken in his life. Ah, but River…

‘I thought you were gonna die.’

Spider’s eyes snap up to River, quiet satisfaction setting his lips in a smile.

‘That was never on the cards.’

‘Be fucking serious, I…’ River began with the anger that only really expresses itself for Spider. Every other inconvenience he felt was par for the course, worth little more reaction than an eye roll, but Spider is the one who gets under his skin. It’s impressive, really, how instantly he can boil River’s blood. He starts again, softer. ‘It just made me think about training.’

The glint in Spider’s eyes extinguishes itself.

‘You know, they say that when you’re in a coma, you’re aware of everything around you. That wasn’t true for me.’ Spider begins the observation in a cold, guarded way. As though armouring up in the terrible event of his vulnerability.

‘I heard nothing. Saw nothing. One minute I was awake, the next minute I was awake again. Nothing in between.’ There’s a pause, as he draws breath like a gun. ‘It’s what I imagine your life’s like at Slough House.’

River looks at him, really looks. If this is a joke at his expense, it hasn’t landed. Spider’s as serious as a heart attack, his words grave.

‘And, so what? You– you feel sorry for me?’

Spider just looks away. Maybe he thought about training too. What they had been through– only for Spider to leave his legacy in blood on a marble floor. For River to still experience a living death, everyday. Maybe he considered how sitting at that desk must feel to someone with the world to give.

Or maybe not.

The blood’s up again in River’s ears. His cheeks are beet red and his jaw aches from clenching. So much has changed. So much has stayed the same. They walk a hall of broken mirrors; a corridor leading to the abstract nothing. The walk had almost ended for Spider, but he clung on. If only to throw River ahead of him.

Why does River continue the cycle? Why is he even here? A voice in the back of his head answers:

Because he’s the only one who knows what to do with the bits you break down into.

‘I haven’t missed you being such a prick.’ River is serious when he says it, but it’s an evasion. It’s pointless too. Spider can see it for the hubris it is.

‘Cartwright,’ River hates when Spider calls him by his surname. Like an old schoolmaster. It’s loaded with association, too. His grandfather, the super spy, and him, Cartwright the Younger. The disappointment. The black sheep no-one had the decency to send to slaughter. ‘They tell me Taverner’s coming down. You might wanna make yourself scarce.’

Something like vengeance flashes in River’s eyes. How sweet it feels when the upper hand begins to guide you.

‘If they’re sending her down in person, there’ll be two choices.’

He let that hang. Maybe Spider had already considered this.

Maybe not.

‘I don’t choose Slough House.’

‘Didn’t think you would.’

‘As a new expert on fates worse than death–’

‘Yes, fine.’

It irks River. That, even while lying in a hospital bed, Spider still commands the room. His confidence, misplaced though it is, is like a dagger between River’s shoulder blades. The first piece begins to come away.

‘When will you be discharged?’

‘End of the week, all being well. Few more tests.’ He’s vague, lest River mistake his condition for any sort of weakness. It was simply a matter of record keeping that he had been shot. Dodging death in a manner almost offensive, and powering ahead like he still has the world at his feet.

Only, it’s starting to settle in. What River had said. When one choice is Slough House, the other is quit the Service. There’s no route back to the Park. This isn’t the minor blip he’s pretending it is. This is as good a death as he’ll ever get.

River might feel sorry for him. Under all the resentment, there might be a tiny sliver of him that wouldn’t wish his life on anyone else. Especially Spider, for some reason.

They sit in their torturous silence. When they built their walls, they’d been too close to see that they’d hemmed each other in with them. Stuck in a hellish limbo between saying nothing and saying everything. The goodwill between them, if it ever had existed – in the liminal ‘before’ – had run dry. There remained only an itch, like a phantom feeling for something that could still exist, but never will again. River needs to be broken down, and James needs to consume him. That was the unspoken order of things. But, to admit it would be the worst betrayal. Instead they sit, in this prison of their own making, thinking of what life would look like, as if they didn’t already know.

‘I’m gonna go.’ As River turns to his coat, he finds the forgotten bouquet beneath it. Spider’s eyes widen. ‘Oh, yeah. I got you these.’ He extracts them, now more than slightly squashed, and hands them to Spider. ‘Lilies, in case you’d died.’

Receiving them now, Spider knows what he should say. He’s opened up a clear line of sight. You got me flowers, you pathetic fuck? But he can’t. Some unseen chain snags around his neck. He holds the flowers, plastic crinkling as he turns them over in his hands.

‘I wouldn’t make it that easy for you.’

River finds himself smiling, despite himself. Despite everything.

‘I’m sure.’ He throws on his coat. ‘Give Taverner my love and… erm– enjoy unemployment!’

‘Fuck you, River.’

‘Fuck you, Spider.’

And although they both wish it weren’t, the world as they’d always known it is back.

[thatshowthingstarted]

Waterspout in the form of a hound, early 1st century CE, Roman, 

Terracotta 

Courtesy of the Princeton University Art Museum

[moon-jellie]

What if watson was the main character and sherlock was way cuntier and also they hated each other. Have you guys heard of slow horses

[octahedral-chaos]

Okay so silly thingy but I realised that most of you guys might not know about this so have some interesting Trinidad and Tobago weather trivia!

Trinidad and Tobago, very, VERY rarely get tornadoes. They're mostly EF0 - EF2, with one recorded EF3 I think?

However, waterspouts are a bit more common!

[sunnydaysinamusicalhaze]

[quasarlasar]

MELISSA AND THE ALLIES OF GAIA ART DUMP 2 - THE WATERSPOUTS

More art of the storm avatars Melissa encounters in Episode 9 of the story I posted on Wattpad, this time the waterspouts.

The first image shows the fair-weather waterspouts. They are summoned by a cumulus congestus cloud that turns out to be a weaker form of the supercell encountered later in the episode. They're quite playful and fairly harmless, to the point they hi-five the fishermen controlling them with their little sub-vortex arms. A pair of fishermen on a charter boat have been using them to suck up entire shoals of fish and deposit them on the boat for them. Since this is basically a complete misuse of nature (and cruel to the fish besides), Melissa has to stop them.

The lead waterspout, however, seen in the second image, is a true tornado, summoned by the supercell in its full-powered form. It has a stark white color, and means business. Melissa tries to stop it like in the legend of Pecos Bill lassoing a tornado, except this time by wrapping it up in fishing line. The tornado's subvortices resemble fish fins, with a pair like pectoral fins and another pair like a caudal fin. The caudal fin I imagine rotates with the rest of the tornado like the blades of a propellor, churning up the water. It turns out the fins are semi-solid and can catch a fishing hook.

As you can probably guess, this doesn't work out well for Melissa. The tornado's just too powerful, and sucks Melissa out of the charter boat. I have no idea what EF rating this guy would have, but it's strong enough to lift the charter boat high into the air and crumple it up like it's a wad of tissue paper.

Fortunately, Melissa is able to soar all the way up the supercell's updraft and free it from the evil weather magic artifact that's controlling it. It's explained more in the story, but supercell avatars are ridden by basically going inside them and piloting them like they're some giant mothership/airship.

Here's a sketch of the supercell again, but in profile, showing how her anvil is very elongated when seen from the side (I feel like my original drawings made it look very rounded like there's no wind shear...it really would be elongated downshear). It is mentioned in the story that her original pilot is a man who wore a cowboy hat. I'm thinking of having the pilot show up in a sequel, where he will be revealed to be this stormchaser who unwittingly stumbled upon the Allies of Gaia doing a mission with their storm avatars. He was originally sentenced to have his memory wiped, but he ended up loving the idea of riding storms so much he became a member. I imagine the supercell (who Melissa will call "Mr Thunders") was actually given the name Empress by her original pilot.

My original idea was that the pilot would basically be someone who looks like Pecos Hank but with the personality of Reed Timmer, but then the Twisters movie trailer came out and did exactly that with one of the characters. So I'm not sure yet what his personality will end up being.

In any case, I was totally listening to the song released for Twisters, "Ain't No Love in Oklahoma" by Luke Combs, while drawing these. That, and, "Vicarious" by Tool. Both could potentially be anthems for storm watchers, lol.

[true-equal]

[milestoearth]

[acatpiestuff]

I've finished my spidersona animation meme!

[wtfearth123]

A rare phenomenon of a swirling column of water and air, known as a waterspout, was seen on the Kama River in the Perm region of Russia on July 13, 2023.

[mediumsizetex]

Storm by BlueNoteFS

[alteredstatesstuff]

open sea storm