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emma-nation · 3 years

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Ticker Than Water - Bloodbound AU (Chapter 4)

Summary: When Amy changes the course of the events at the Opera House, she could never imagine the consequences she would have to face. After being by Rheya’s side for five years, she’s finally ready to be reunited with her friends and find a manner to defeat her. But when the time comes, what will prevail? Her love for Kamilah Sayeed and her friends or her family ties with the First Vampire?

Genre: Angst, Drama, Romance

Tag List: @slytherinthoughts7, @lightning-fury, @spacecarrousel, @gavryllo, @kamilah-the-bloodqueen, @whoinvitedalx, @sheyah, @imnotdonewiththeelementalists, @belvoiresqueenbee, @morvengarde, @tephy24, @iam-the-fuckin-queen, @scorpichoices, @leavemeandmyshipsalone, @jen825, @andreear17, @justejuste727, @evexofxtime, @zoe6111, @shanuuh, @ilovekamilahsayeed, @kenna-and-val-are-my-queens, @fal-carrington, @spookyjellyfishlove, @samgtt700, @just-thinking-loudly, @martachm, @masterofbluff, @rice-wifee, @lifeisadance96, @serafinedupontownsme, @hellyeah90sbaby

4 years ago - Japan

The first signs of Winter started showing on the city outside. Kamilah wondered what she'd be doing if she was still living in New York. Working, perhaps. And also planning the next Dark Solstice.

The necklace. She didn't have time to retrieve it from the secret drawer in her office when they ran away. It would be her only memory from something that didn't exist anymore - her relationship with Amy.

"I did it," the penthouse door opened in a slam, making Lily completely lose focus on her video game or Jax stop sharpening his katana. Adrian seemed to be in ecstasy. "I... I managed to grow a seedling from the sample we obtained from the Tree Of Death. This could stop Rheya for good."

"How great," Jax replied with some sarcasm. The last few months turned him into a version of his late master, Takeshi. "And what about the others? Also, how long is it going to take?"

The others. Kamilah's stomach flipped. Amy was one of them, along with Rheya's husband and daughter. And she was so strong as the First Vampire herself.

"It's a start, Jax," Lily added. "It'll be easier to take her down once she becomes a Feral."

"Fine, but I'd like to do the honors."

"Kamilah?" Adrian approached, touching her shoulder briefly. "Did you hear what I said?"

"Yes," Kamilah told. She was too invested in her own thoughts, reflecting about the part where she'd have to face Amy again. What if they had to kill her? Would she be able to do that? "We will wait. When the time comes, we'll fight again."

Lily suggested a celebration, Jax agreed and so did Adrian. Since their arrival, they barely left that penthouse. Except for the occasions where they attended Kano's training sessions. The psychic vampire taught them how to guard their minds from Rheya. And also Amy.

"You can go. I'll stay here."

"Come on, Kamilah," Lily started dragging her to the door. "You never say no to booze."

"I'm saying this time."

"Lily is right," Adrian said. "You are coming with us. It'll be a good distraction."

"Yeah," Jax agreed. "We must stick together. Remember?"

This manner, the three younger vampires managed to make Kamilah to go out for the first time in months. Still a little insecure about their safety, they decided to visit The Five's nightclub. In the end, it was not terrible. Jax and Akeyo engaged in a singing competition, while Lily attempted to copy The Evolved's robotic dance moves. The female vampire let out a small laugh.

"Finally," Aiko slowly approached her. "Acceptance is the last stage of grief."

"I guess so," Kamilah replied in a dry tone.

"She's not coming back. She made a choice."

"I know."

The reminder of that fact hit Kamilah's heart like applying salt in an open wound. One year had passed. Amy was still doing atrocities together with Rheya. She showed no signs of regret or mercy. Not even a trace of the old Amy still existed in her eyes. The powers had changed her completely.

"I need another shot," she ordered to the bartender. Then she looked at Aiko, who observed her with the same old and seductive smirk. "Two shots actually."

----------

A blow from one of the mythological creatures that surrounded Amy in the mindscape forest threw her hard against a tree. Though the fight was happening inside her mind, the pain felt extremely real, as if her skull had been fractured.

"Ouch..." she moaned in pain. "Can't... back... down..."

A fire blast started to form in the center of her palm. If she could maintain the focus, it should be enough to stop the creature that was about to strike again.

"Ha!" Amy released the fire ball, that disappeared mid-air. "Fuck!" She screamed, punching the floor repeatedly. Noticing her frustration, Kano pulled her back to reality.

"There's something wrong," he spoke in all his wisdom of a 500 years old man, in a 5 years old body.

"Not even when I'm mad - and trust me, I'm really mad - I can make this work."

"You won't be able to do this moved only by anger. You need focus and discipline."

"Kano," Amy squeezed the water bottle she held, "we've been training for hours. I can't conjure one decent blast. I'm focused, I'm doing all the meditation exercises you taught me... I just can't. Maybe she drained my powers while I slept."

"It's not that," Kano handed her another water bottle, that she drank all in one sip. "There's something blocking you from reaching your potential."

"What could it be?"

He forced her to face all the nastiest skeletons in her closet for a second time that day. Starting by the childhood trauma caused by her mother's behavior. Though Amy knew the reason behind her rage outbursts, the marks would always be there.

The child version of herself was drawing in the kitchen when her mother entered, completely disturbed.

"Mommy!" She called. "Look what I've made for you."

"Nice," the woman barely looked. She was too busy inspecting the cabinets for her painkillers. "Where are them?"

She swallowed a couple of pills and little Amy's heart filled with hope that her mother would finally be able to give her some attention and love.

"Can we play teacups now? I missed you. You spend the whole day in the bedroom."

"Can't you see it, Amy?" The woman yelled at the child. "I am sick! Why can you just respect me? Why can you just be quiet, huh?!"

As she slammed the bedroom door, the little sat down on the floor breaking into tears.

"What did I do wrong?" She asked herself.

"Nothing," adult Amy sighed at the scene. "You did nothing wrong."

Then they moved to the Opera House. What else could be there to be seen? Amy did both of her crucial decisions - the one where she decided to tempt the fate and avoid the death of one of her friends, becoming a monster in consequence. And the one where she took the dagger. That was the most painful to watch. She had already seen Lily dying in her arms, as Kamilah plunged a stake in her heart to prevent her from becoming a Feral. She also saw Jax, sacrificing himself to die as the warrior he was, not as a disgusting rotting creature.

This time though, it was Adrian who took the fall to save her life...

"Not her! Never her!"

"Adrian!" The past version of herself screamed, kneeling down on the floor near the male vampire. "W-Why did you do this? Y-You didn't have to..."

"Amy..." he clutched the injury in his abdomen. His skin was already acquiring a grey coloration. "I had to. I was the one to bring you to this world in first place. I swore to protect you."

"But..."

"Shhhh, it's okay. I've had a long and accomplished life. I made a lot of mistakes too and somehow I think this how I must pay for them. I... I'm ready to be reunited with Eleanor and Charles."

She glanced at the rest of the group. Lily was sobbing uncontrollably. Jax punched the wall in anger and denial. Kamilah was also kneeled by Adrian's side. She was trying hard to prevent the tears from falling.

"And Amy?" Adrian said, before handing her a stake. "Take care of Kamilah. She needs you."

"No!" Both versions of herself screamed at the same time, as Adrian forced her hand to stake his heart. She collapsed to the floor before they moved to the next memory.

She and Rheya were terrorizing some citizens in New York City. Those who still refused to bend to their orders and obey their every command.

"I condemn you to be my prisoners," Rheya smiled deviously, staring at the small group of people restrained inside a TV station. They secretly planned to leak information about the Apostolous family to other states, including their ability of controlling and manipulating minds. "You can be my servants after all. You could entertain me, feed me... or even fight for me."

Amy emerged from a door in the back. Her hair was a mess and she had bags under her eyes. She was in a terrible mood, what lead her to slowly approach and start to snap the neck of each one of the victims. One by one.

"Foolish creature! What the hell do you think you're doing?" Rheya asked, visibly annoyed. "I wasn't going to kill them yet, they could be useful to my purposes."

"Getting things done faster," Amy told. "I'm starving, I'm tired. I can't wait to get home and feed."

"Of course, you spent the whole night out with Serafine, going to clubs and using your psychic powers for recreational purposes. I told you I needed you in shape this morning. You disappoint me."

"I'm sorry, Rheya. You were going to kill them anyways. They're all useless insects, isn't it what you always say?"

"You're right," the First Vampire approached and touched her chest using her indicator finger. "But I give the orders here. We may have the same blood, the same powers powers but I'm in charge. Do you understand?"

Amy was back to the same mindscape as earlier, surrounded by creatures in a forest. She felt angry at herself, yet she accepted it. She embraced the fact she was weak to resist the darkness inside her. It was part of who she had became. And now she wanted to change and make things right.

"I can do this," she closed her eyes, focusing on conjuring a psychic wave strong enough to push the horde of monsters away from her. When she opened them, ready to hit them... nothing happened.

"What?!" She yelled, back at Kano's office. "This time I did it. I faced the Opera memory and how things should have went. I embraced the fact I did horrible things too."

"There must be something else. Something you're refusing to face and let go."

Amy had no idea what it could be. At Kano's suggestion, they ended the training session for the day and she went back to the hotel to rest and reflect on what could be blocking her powers. After a long bath, she stared at the bed. The same bed she and Kamilah shared an intimate moment in the previous night, before she told her about her engagement with Aiko.

She finally turned on her phone. Iola had been trying to reach her all day.

"You need to return home, immediately. She has lost her mind."

"What is it this time?" Amy asked, getting dressed to meet Lily at the penthouse she lived with the rest of the group.

"She wants to-"

"Amy?!" Rheya seemed to have taken the phone from her daughter's hands. "I wanted to speak to you, darling. Are you finished with The Five yet? I need you to come home."

"Why?"

"I've signed a contract with a TV channel. Next week they'll begin to film our own reality show: 'The Apostolous'. Isn't it wonderful?"

No. It wasn't. Together with her insane ancestor and her family, Amy would be locked in the mansion with Priya, Serafine and Dracula, while every detail their daily routine was registered by the cameras and shown on television to the whole world.

"Rheya..." Amy sighed, thinking of some excuse. "Why don't you wait a few more days? I mean, a party with your new allies would be a great start for the reality show. Wouldn't it?"

"You're right," the First Vampire answered after a pause. "I don't know when you've gotten so smart, but you're having some good ideas lately. Anyways, I must start planning our party then. Talk to you later, darling."

Only a lot of alcohol could make Amy relax with all the latest news. When she arrived, Lily was still the only one in the penthouse. Jax, Adrian and Kamilah were doing some personal businesses.

"Why didn't you tell me earlier?" Amy asked, taking a sip directly from the bottle of sake before aiming her next shot at the pool game.

"I was going to," Lily told, observing as she sank three balls in a row. "I couldn't imagine Kamilah would go straight to your bed in the very first night."

As Lily finished her own turn, Amy noticed she was about to win the game. However, she would never be able to make the right move with that one question bothering her mind.

"Does she love her? Aiko?"

"Do you want the honest truth? No, she doesn't. She only got in that sudden relationship with her to forget you. And if you ask me, I bet Aiko is forcing her to get married."

A hint of a smile appeared on the corners of Amy's mouth. She still had a chance. With the right shot, she could win Kamilah's heart back.

"I win," she grinned as she cued the last ball into the pocket.

"Best of three?" Lily asked, after taking a sip of the sake. "So, now tell me about Rheya going all Kardashian."

Amy rolled her eyes in annoyance. She was about to start talking about Rheya's reality show when the penthouse's door opened, making her heart speed up inside her chest.

"Oh," for her disappointment, it wasn't Kamilah. "Hey, Jax."

"Hello, Lily and..." he glared in her direction, clearly uncomfortable with her presence. "You."

"Jax, come here," Lily called, assuming some alcohol and games would be able to seal the peace between them. "Amy was about to tell me about Rheya's latest bullshit."

"Later, Lil. I gotta... I gotta take a shower. I was training with Akeyo all day."

As soon as he left to the bedroom, Amy sighed:

"He'll never forgive me."

Kamilah arrived right after she finished her sentence. She didn't say a word, she walked directly to the bar, serving herself some expensive whiskey.

"We're not allowed to bring visitors," she scolded Lily. "After five years you should know that."

"I asked Adrian first," Amy told in her defense. "He said I could..."

"Oh, Amy. Congratulations on your new show. It's all over the internet. You must be loving the attention, aren't you?"

"Thank you. By the way, for someone who doesn't care care you're way too updated about my life."

There was a heavy tension between them. Years of unresolved feelings and unsaid words were affecting the whole environment surrounding them, like an earthquake.

"I-I..." Noticing that, Lily started walking away too. "You two must have a lot to talk about. I'll be in my bedroom."

Amy still tried to prevent Lily from leaving, but it was useless. She was alone and under Kamilah's hard cold gaze.

"You shouldn't be here," the female vampire said once again.

"Why?" Amy decided to confront her. "My presence is bothering you?"

"Not really, but it put us at risk. She could come here any second searching for her spawn."

"She won't. Besides, I can fight her."

"Oh really? How's the training going by the way?"

"Good," Amy lied. "I'm... I'm finding myself. Finding a balance between my powers and the darkness they can bring."

As if she still could read her, Kamilah raised an eyebrow and opened a small sadistic smile. Was it so obvious she was failing miserably? Did Kano tell the others how poorly the training session had gone? She swallowed dry.

"About yesterday..." Amy opened her mouth to speak, changing the subject. She had to know how Kamilah felt about the other night.

"Nothing happened yesterday," Kamilah nodded.

Before she could speak again, Adrian emerged from the elevator.

"Amy, good to see you here," he wanted to show her something in a secret Raines Corporation HQ he had built. "Come with me."

She gave Kamilah one last look. It wasn't over. She wasn't going to give up and pretend nothing happened between them. She wasn't going to act like the feelings weren't still there, alive and strong as ever.

"What?" Adrian asked with a smile during their way to the building.

"Nothing," Amy smiled back. She had never been so happy to see him. That vision had struck her really hard. "I'm just glad you still trust me."

The building was highly secured. Adrian guided her to the laboratory in the basement. Some scientists were still working late night, on many different projects.

"Only a few people know about our secret weapon," Adrian told while he typed a password on a keypad, opening a heavy metal door. "Only us and The Five. After all, anyone else could have their minds accessed by Rheya."

After walking through a long corridor, they stopped in front of a glass. Behind it, Amy spotted a small growing tree.

"Is it..."

"The Tree Of Death. I managed to obtain a sample and grow a seedling from it. It's still small and young, its sap is not so poisonous. It won't cause much harm yet."

After Demetrius was brought back to life, the Tree Of Death and the island ceased to exist. With that, there was nothing that could stop Rheya. Until now.

"Adrian..." Amy remembered testing her powers, or when Rheya used to grow different plants and flowers in the backyard, according to the occasions. "I can make it grow faster with my powers."

#bloodbound #kamilah sayeed #kamilah x mc #rheya apostolous #bloodbound fanfiction #playchoices #choices stories you play #thicker than water

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five-rivers · 4 years

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Recipe (For Disaster?)

A holiday truce fic for @wastefulreverie ! I was your replacement gifter. I’m sorry it took so long to get this done. Your prompts kind of ran away with me. Or I ran away with them? I hope you enjoy!

Recipe (For Disaster?)

Before he opened his eyes, Danny knew he had died.

It had hurt. It had hurt a lot.

It still hurt.

His muscles (or whatever had replaced them) spasmed, grinding his skin into the harsh tile floor. Something else moved inside him, something cold, powerful, and lighter than air. It bubbled and roiled, twisted and turned, settling into his burnt and burning bones.

(Still, he was behind himself, in the portal, pressing that button, and screaming screaming screaming forever and ever two worlds straining through his brain and it hurt.)

He twitched, pressing his face into the floor, the rough edge of the tile and the grout abrading his cheek. A gust of air, a wheeze, just shy of being a whistle, escaped his throat.

(Why was he breathing if he was dead?)

He forced himself up onto his hands and knees. The tiles seemed to sting, biting into his flesh, his skin sticking to the inside of his gloves.

(Burning and tingling, outlines of lightning creeping along his skin. No.)

Slowly, he opened his eyes. The light against them made them feel like they were cooking.

(Like in the portal. Stop. Stop.)

His hands wavered into view, rippling beyond his tears, which dripped to the ground from the tip of his nose. They looked wrong. Why did they look wrong?

The gloves- They were white. A weird, silvery white that glistened and shone. His knees and elbows were gray-black, but somehow still glowed. His tears were glowing.

He knew he had died, knew he was dead, but seeing it was something different. He shuddered, and climbed to his feet. To his feet, and then farther. He floated, an inch above the floor. A squeak escaped his lips, and he dropped. More than an inch. He had fallen more than halfway through the floor before he managed to curl up on the floor again. His limbs flickered. Was that his eyes playing tricks, or..?

Once more, he stood up, this time successfully, and stumbled to the deep lab sink in the corner of the basement. There was a mirror hung above it. A dirty, tarnished mirror, but still. He needed to know what he looked like.

He gripped the edge of the sink and looked into the mirror. An alien face looked back. Instead of blue eyes, he looked into great green disks, the same color as the portal swirling behind him. Instead of black, his hair was the same moonlight white as his gloves. His skin was burnt tan, rather than milky. His freckles, usually almost unnoticeable, were a dim green. Shaking, he reached for the reflection.

That was really h-

Light.

Bright and blinding.

Almost as bright as the inside of the portal as it turned on.

(Almost as bright as the light that had killed him.)

He doubled over and vomited into the sink. Huh. He hadn't known ghosts could do that. Shouldn't his stomach be back with his body, if it hadn't been entirely vaporized by the portal?

Was- Was he dying again? He remembered his parents talking about how ghosts needed ectoplasm to survive. Should he have gone to the portal instead of the mirror?

Dazed, he looked up into the mirror. Blue eyes looked back at him through a fringe of dark hair, his skin was almost paper white and slick with sweat. His pulse throbbed visibly in the arteries of his throat.

... what.

He was-? Was that-? He didn't understand.

(Was he alive?)

Part of him wanted to drop to the ground, but he was afraid that if he did that, he wouldn't get back up. He shuffled around the sink, and slid against the wall until he reached a counter, and used that to prop himself up the rest of the way to the stairs. He crawled up them on his hands and knees, ignoring how burnt and melted his left glove was.

At the door, he rested. He put his forehead against the cool metal door, and breathed. In, out, in, out. With his right hand, he felt up the door, searching for the doorknob. As soon as he found it, he twisted it, not thinking about the consequences, and the door swung out under his weight, dumping him onto the kitchen floor.

He curled and wheezed.

"Danny?!"

Danny fiddled with the IV in his arm. Maddie took his hand with both of hers, and pulled it away.

"Alright, Danny," said Maddie, "tell us exactly what happened."

They were in Danny's room, which had been stuffed full of various ectoplasm-run and ghost-related medical machinery. His parents had stripped him of his hazmat and clothes, and gone over him with every scanner they had available, before finally putting him to bed in his pajamas.

There hadn't, as much as they searched, as ragged and burned as his clothing had been, been a single mark on him, inside or out. His temperature had been weirdly low, he was dehydrated, and he couldn't stop shaking, couldn't stop the pictures that flashed through his mind every time he blinked, afterimages of his death using his eyelids as a projector screen, but there wasn't a scratch, or burn, or bruise anywhere to be found.

Danny's eyes flicked from his mother to his father, one sitting by his bed, the other looming awkwardly in a corner, unable to find a safe place to sit.

"You're not in trouble," said Maddie, reassuringly. She had done so several times. "We just want to know what happened, so we can help you, and figure out what's going on."

Danny bit his lip. "I- Um. You and Dad, you were upset. You were really, really upset. When the portal didn't work, I mean, and I- Sometimes, sometimes when you're working on things, you miss things." He tilted his head to the side, finding the wall near his bed suddenly very fascinating. "Like, obvious things. Like- Like not plugging things in, or missing some wiring, or, you know... Forgetting about, you know, a button... on the inside of the portal... I thought I'd check." He trailed off.

"Oh, honey," said Maddie. "You hit it?"

"Not on purpose!" protested Danny. "I put on my suit, and looked around- I wasn't going to touch anything!- but I tripped over something on the ground. And it- It turned on. It turned on and it-" Tears started to prick at his eyes. "It turned on, and it... hurt. It hurt a lot and I-" How to describe what he had felt? What he had seen? The way he had been sure, absolutely sure, he had died? How, for a split second, he thought he had heard someone else screaming with him? "Then I was on the floor in front of the portal. And I got up, and I went to the mirror, and I realize I had- I had snow-white hair and glowing green eyes, and my skin was all weird, and I- Before I got to the mirror there were weird things happening." He bunched up his sheets in his free hand and rubbed them between his fingers.

"Weird things like what?" prompted Maddie, after he fell silent.

"Like... For a second I couldn't see my hands, even though I was looking at them. Then I kind of... I floated? Like, I flew. When I got back to the ground, I almost fell through the floor like- like I was in a video game with the collision turned off!" He bit his lip. "I thought I was dead," he admitted, quietly. "I thought I was a ghost."

"No way, Danny-boy!" boomed Jack. "You're a Fenton! Fenton's don't become ghosts! Besides, you're definitely alive now!"

"Jack's right," said Maddie, patting Danny's hand. "After all, you can't be alive and a ghost at the same time. I'm sure it was just a side effect of being exposed to so much ectoplasm all at once. A temporary thing." She sighed. "We'll look into it. Just focus on feeling better, alright, Danny? And then, maybe, we'll do a refresher on lab safety." She made a face. "You'll probably have to be decontaminated, too, but that can wait. It's a good thing school doesn't start for another month."

"Okay," said Danny, already dreading whatever decontamination entailed.

"Okay," repeated Maddie. "Jack, will you stay here? I want to go down and check on the portal, make sure it doesn't-"

Something inside Danny went deeply, impossibly cold. He arched back, grasping at his chest as whatever had come to life inside it pulsed and grew, rippling and buzzing as it intersected his skin, light throwing his room into stark contrast.

It stopped. Danny was wearing gloves. White gloves, over black sleeves. He looked up at his parents, flinched back at their shocked expressions, and kept going, floating into the corner of the ceiling above his bed.

"Mom?" he said, hugging himself, confused and alarmed. "Dad?" His voice broke. Where was the IV? Had he pulled it out of his arm as he levitated?

"Danny?" said Jack, oddly hushed.

Danny nodded convulsively. "What's happening to me?" he asked, desperate. The portal had done this, so they had to know, didn't they? They had built the thing, pouring their lives into it.

(Danny was honestly surprised his mother and father hadn't left to check on the portal earlier.)

Jack stepped up to the bed, and reached for Danny, gently taking him by the elbow and pulling him down to the bed. "It'll be alright, Danny. We're Fentons! We'll figure this out!"

Jack and Maddie frowned at the latest machine readout as Danny perched on his stool and fiddled with one of the wires attached to him. Jazz was sitting angrily in the corner of the room, her arms crossed. She'd been in denial about this whole thing, thinking Danny had finally succumbed to their parents' particular brand of insanity, until Danny had accidentally... transformed in front of her. Now she was just permanently angry at Jack and Maddie.

"Well?" said Danny. He'd been living with this thing for almost a month and he'd gotten better at preventing himself from changing, but he didn't want to be like this forever. He especially didn't want to be like this at school. Middle school was hard enough without a condition that turned him into a ghost once a day. "What is it? Can you fix me?"

Maddie pursed her lips, and shook her head. She looked at Danny, then walked to him, pulling out a (significantly shorter) stool to sit on so she would be at eye-level with him.

"Danny," she said, then paused for much longer than was comfortable. "Danny, I'm sorry. We can't do anything. Not yet."

"Why not?" asked Danny, trying not to hyperventilate.

"Simply speaking," said Maddie, "we don't have the tools to separate you from... whatever this is." She briefly touched Danny's glowing knee. "We're still not sure what's causing this and..." she trailed off.

"And what?" asked Danny, rather more harshly than he had planned.

"We aren't sure," she said, looking back at Jack, who shrugged, "but we think it might be keeping you alive. Some of the blood tests we did, when we filtered out the ectoplasm in the samples..." She looked pale. "There were a few promising trials, but after a while..."

"They disintegrated!" said Jack.

"Oh," said Danny, sagging. "So I would-?"

"We don't know that," said Maddie, quickly, "but we'd rather be safe than sorry, and it doesn't seem to be doing you any harm, now. In fact, your body seems to have adapted to it quite well, all things considered. It's just inconvenient."

"But we can help! We've got all sorts of things we can invent! Just you wait, Danny-boy!"

Maddie sighed. "If only we had more data on ghosts, then maybe-"

Jazz snorted. "Typical! Even after this, all you care about are your inventions and ghosts!" She stormed up the stair, slamming the door hard behind her.

"Oh, dear," said Maddie.

"Why don't- Why don't you go talk to her?" suggested Danny. He would be lying if he said he wasn't enjoying the extra attention he was getting from his parents, lately, even if he hated the reason for it. He understood how Jazz felt right now.

Maddie went upstairs.

"Well, Dan-o, don't you worry," said Jack, jauntily. "We Fenton men eat inconvenience for breakfast! Why, when I was a boy..." Jack rambled on, barely pausing for breath.

Feeling somewhat guilty, Danny tuned him out. He had heard all the stories before, and they rarely made sense. Instead, he turned inwards.

He was stuck like this, stuck as a freak. Could he even be called human anymore? Maybe when he looked normal, when he looked like himself, but in this ghost form? Not a chance. He had tried to distract himself with the idea that he had cool 'powers,' but he barely had any control over them.

What if his parents never figured out how to fix him? What if he was like this forever?

He would never be able to be an astronaut. Not with all the weird physical things that had shown up in his body over the last couple of weeks. Not with his low temperature, weird heartbeat, and contaminated blood.

A chill went through Danny's body, and he shivered, exhaling vapor. He tensed. Before, he'd been feeling sorry for himself, but he'd also felt... secure? Safe? Whatever. Now he felt on-edge. Something was wrong. Or about to be wrong.

He slipped off the stool, feet hitting the ground without a sound. Barely thinking about it, he phased off the wires and his hazmat suit reformed around his body. Something was wrong. Something was dangerous, a danger, a threat. His eyes roved over the inventions piled against the walls, the beakers of ectoplasmic sludge, whatever Jack was fiddling with, and finally landed on the portal.

Danny narrowed his eyes, and stepped forward, only to leap back as an over-sized, sucker-covered tentacle burst through the portal, and latched, perfectly silent, onto the wall and ceiling above. It flexed as Danny watched it, pulling from the portal a translucent, glowing, green octopus. A second one dragged itself out a moment later, and they floated in front of the portal, as if in water, malevolent red eyes scanning the lab.

Danny stayed still, holding his breath, hoping they'd go back to the Ghost Zone. Each octopus was bigger than him!

Jack kept talking.

The octopuses glare fell on him. Their tentacles reached out.

No.

"Tell me what happened again," said Maddie, as she cleaned a tiny cut over Danny's eyebrow.

"A couple of ghost octopuses came through the portal and tried to attack Dad, so I fought them and threw them back into the Ghost Zone."

"And you didn't notice this at all, Jack?" The question was delivered in a tone halfway between exasperation and real anger.

"Not until I looked up and saw Danny standing by the portal."

Standing was a far too generous term for what he'd been doing at the end of the fight, but Danny didn't dispute it.

"We'll have to pull the lab camera footage," said Maddie "But, you're alright, Danny?"

He nodded. Surprisingly, he felt better than he had in a long while, as if using his powers had taken a weight off his shoulders.

"Okay," said Maddie. "We'll need to make some doors for that." She frowned at the portal. "It isn't actually supposed to let anything in."

"It isn't?" asked Danny, surprised.

Maddie shook her head. "It was supposed to be a window, not a door." She put the swab aside, and stuck a band-aid over the cut. "Now, if you get any odd bruising, or start to feel odd, tell us right away."

After all the scrutiny at home, going to school was a relief. Sort of. At least it was a change. Every day, Jack and Maddie loaded Danny down with all sorts of things that were supposed to prevent his powers from surfacing and a cellphone with strict instructions to call and come home if anything unexpected happened.

For the first week, nothing did. It was school as usual. Banal, boring, and a little harder than middle school, but still. On the upside, he finally got to hang out with his friends again. Danny had been isolated from Sam and Tucker throughout his recovery from his 'illness.'

(Actually, if he thought about it, it kind of was an illness, wasn't it?)

But the second week, when Sam proudly revealed that she had convinced the school board to do a 'vegetarian' week? When she was, consequently, attacked by a ghostly lunch lady? One that interrupted their onslaught to ask if they wanted cookies?

Yeah, that was unexpected.

Sadly, Danny was too busy trying to keep her from killing Sam to call his parents, who would probably have done a much better job at containing the ghost. Well, at least his mom would have. Danny wasn't so sure about his dad. He had seen Jack practice with the ectoweapons before, after all.

So, he fought the ghost. He punched, he kicked, he threw random objects, and, finding all of that generally ineffective, he grabbed his friends and ran. Well. Flew.

Then he passed out.

"You understand that you can't tell anyone," said Maddie to Sam and Tucker, some time later. They and the Fentons, including Jazz and Danny, were seated around the kitchen table, three boxes of pizza stacked between them.

"Well, yeah," said Tucker. From his slightly glazed look, Danny guessed that he was still processing the situation. "It'd be, like, in a comic book or something, right? There'd be people wanting to study you. And, you know, cut you u-"

"Tucker! What is wrong with you?" demanded Sam, giving him a shove. "You can't just say that!"

Danny made a face. "Well, I don't think anyone is going to, like, dissect me or anything, but, yeah, basically." He shrugged. His parents had talked a lot about hunting ghosts before, but now they rarely brought the subject up. At least in those terms.

"Don't worry, Danny, we can keep secrets," promised Sam. "You know that."

Tucker nodded in agreement. "But, like, how does this all work? How did this happen? And those powers? Those were wicked man."

"It's a bit of a long story," said Danny. It wasn't. He just didn't want to talk about his maybe-maybe-not-death. "But what are we going to do about the lunch lady ghost? What if she comes back?"

"We talked to your school and asked them if we could do a sweep!" said Jack. "But they didn't believe us about the ghost!"

Maddie picked at her lip. "I think the best thing to do right would be to return the menu to the way it was. That would probably appease the ghost, at least temporarily-"

"What!" exclaimed Sam. "No way! I campaigned for vegetarian week all summer! We can't adopt a policy of appeasement! When will it end?"

"Well, I think that's a great idea, Mrs F," said Tucker. "The old menu is much better than this one, anyway."

Sam whirled on him. "Say that to my face, meat-eater!"

"Alright. I will. Your food sucks and tastes like dirt! Also, it made a ghost try to kill us!"

"You're just narrow minded!"

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah!"

When Danny arrived at school the next day, he didn't know what was worse, that his friends had both somehow whipped up utterly insane protests in front of the school overnight, or that his parents had decided to camp out in front of the school in the 'Ghost Assault Vehicle' (actually a heavily modified and armored RV, and a hazard to all other road traffic) all day, in case the ghost was still there and still angry.

A few minutes later he decided that, no, the worst part was how each of his friends were pressuring him to choose their side or face an unspecified doom.

Actually, no. The worst part was that Tucker's protesters had brought a lot of real meat that the lunch lady ghost could use to make a giant meat monster.

This sucked. A lot. But what could Danny do but fight?

Danny put the cap on the thermos, breathing hard, and stared at the invention. That had been... bizarre, at best. But what was his life except bizarre, at this point?

His friends came running up to him, followed shortly by his parents.

"Danny!" said Sam. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah!" said Danny, meaning it. "I'm fine. Better than fine! I-" he looked down at the thermos, turning it over in his hands. It gave him an odd satisfaction, knowing he had stopped the ghost from causing any more damage, stopped her from hurting anyone, stopped her from hurting his friends. He looked back up at his friends and family, at the other people still running around behind them. He had protected them. "I feel pretty good, actually. Exhausted, but good."

"Really?" said Maddie. "You've just used your... abilities more than you ever have before. We don't know how that will affect you."

Danny felt his good mood wilt somewhat. "It's just," he said, trying to rally, "I feel like I finally know why this happened to me. Why I got these powers. I mean, imagine if you got the portal opened without," he gestured to himself, hoping to get the point across, even though he was in human form, "this. How would this have worked out?"

Jack and Maddie exchanged a glance, and Danny could practically see what they were thinking. None of their weapons or techniques, bar the thermos after Danny had done... Well, Danny wasn't quite sure what he had done with it to make it work, but it had, and it was the only thing that had been really effective against the lunch lady. If Danny hadn't been here, hadn't had his powers, this could have been bad.

Danny glanced at the red smears of raw meat scattered across the school's front lawn. Really bad.

"We probably would have worked something out," said Maddie, but Danny could tell she was dubious. "I think we ought to go back home and give you a checkup."

"Mom," groaned Danny, "I'm fine."

"I still want to check. Would you two like a ride home, or..?"

Sam snorted. "Honestly, they're probably not even going to cancel school."

"Yeah," said Tucker. "I mean, what are they going to say, that they were attacked by a giant meat monster? Please."

"Hey, Mom?" asked Danny, as he ate breakfast the next morning. "Do you think ghost cookies are, like, a thing? I mean, what would they even be like?"

"Ghost cookies?" repeated Maddie. "Where did you even get that idea?"

Danny shrugged. "I don't know. Something that ghost said the other day. Never mind, it's not important."

"If you say so, sweetie."

"Jack," said Maddie, after Danny had left. "Have you noticed that Danny seems a bit depressed, ever since the accident?"

"Depressed? No! Quieter that usual, but not depressed!" Jack looked down. "But I'm not really the most observant person, I guess! Why would he be depressed?"

"Jack, really. Wouldn't you be depressed?"

The length of time it took Jack to respond was unusual, and showed that he was really thinking about the question. "I guess I would be. I'd be scared, too, not knowing what's going on." He paused. "I'm really glad he didn't get ecto-acne, though, like Vladdie! That would have been really hard."

"I think it's because of how well his body adapted to the ectoplasm," she said, then shook her head, pulling herself out of scientist mode. She sat down on the couch next to Jack. "I don't think we've been very helpful, either."

"What do you mean?" asked Jack. "We've been doing our best to help!"

"Emotionally, I mean," said Maddie. "You remember all the things we've said about ghosts. About how ghosts are evil. About what we wanted to do to ghosts."

"But Danny knows we'd never do that to him! And he's not a ghost!"

"Yes, but he's still... Some of our tests... I guess the best way to put it is that he's a sort of hybrid, and remembering what we've said, it must be disheartening." She paused. "Jazz gave me some papers on internalized racism, and some of it made me wonder. We haven't really taken any of it back, and it isn't like we ever had any empirical evidence for it! Just anecdotes, from your ancestors."

"All the ghosts we've seen so far have been bad!" protested Jack.

"Not Danny," said Maddie, "and based on our original theories, what happened to him shouldn't be possible. Based on Danny's description, the lunch lady ghost was more complex than we thought a ghost could be, too. We need to get rid of our assumptions, Jack, and we need to make sure Danny knows we aren't making those assumptions anymore."

Jack picked up one of the pillows on the couch, and began to fiddle with the embroidery. "I guess," said Jack. "But if he's really depressed, do you think it's going to be enough?"

"No," said Maddie. She slouched into the couch, almost sinking into the gap between the cushions. "I was thinking about something he said yesterday, and it occurred to me, maybe we're being too negative about this."

"It is a negative thing!"

"Yes, but it could be something he's stuck with for the rest of his life! We don't know if we can ever fix this, if we can ever remove this, and if we can't... Maybe we should focus on some of the positive aspects of this." She put her hand to her head. "I just- I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to make him feel better about this, after I shot him down, yesterday."

"You didn't shoot him down," said Jack, confused. "Neither of us hit him at all!"

"Metaphorically speaking," said Maddie. "I brushed off what he said about getting his powers for a reason. I ignored him."

"Well," said Jack, "when I was first diagnosed with autism, my mom made me my favorite fudge, and that made me feel better about it! Fudge always makes things better!" He frowned, and scratched his cheek. "I don't know if it will help Danny, though. This isn't really the same thing."

Maybe... Or maybe the two situations were more alike than they seemed at first glance. Maddie struggled up out of the gap between the couch cushions. "There was something he said, earlier, before he left."

"About his powers?"

"No," said Maddie. "Jack, do you think it would be possible for us to make cookies with ectoplasm?"

Maddie would admit that she was not the best cook in the world. In fact, cookies were the only food item she had consistent success with. Everything else had a slight tendency to come to life, explode, catch on fire, disintegrate, turn to mush, or somehow become so ectocontaminated as to be inedible. Or just be bad.

But now she was purposefully trying to contaminate a batch of cookies with ectoplasm, in a way that would make them edible and nutritious to him. In a way that would show him that she and Jack weren't against him, his new situation, and his ghost powers. In a way that would let them reconnect. In a way that would show Danny that they accepted him, that they would always accept him.

It was a lot to put on a batch of cookies. Especially when she wasn't sure they were even possible.

She poured over Danny's latest test results, picking at her lower lip. She didn't want to introduce anything harmful into Danny's system. That was the first priority, above appearance, taste, or any other condition.

Purified ectoplasm would probably be a safe choice to start with.

It had taken more time than Maddie had expected to actually get a cookie that worked as a cookie. Two months, to be exact. Two months in which her poor baby had been repeatedly beaten up by ghosts. Her little cookie project was pushed back by more necessary tasks. Such as setting up protections for Amity Park that wouldn't affect Danny and battling violent ghosts.

On a more and honestly shocking positive note, Danny had befriended one of the ghosts. A little gray ghost that haunted the school. If Danny hadn't already scrapped Jack and Maddie's theories regarding the morality of ghosts, this ghost would have done it.

In any case, here, now, in this first week of November, Maddie had a batch of fragrant and faintly-glowing cookies. They were rather plain. Maddie had wanted to limit the number of variables in the cookies, the number of things the ectoplasm could react poorly to.

But they wouldn't be a success until Danny tasted them.

She sat down at the table, exhausted. She could only imagine how Danny felt. She knew he snuck out at night to fight ghosts that their scanners missed but his 'ghost sense' picked up, and that on top of all the fights he had during the day and all his schoolwork.

The cookies sat delectably on the counter. She dearly wished she could do more to help him than make cookies. Yes, she was doing other things, but they didn't seem like enough. Not nearly enough.

Especially after all the trouble she and Jack had given him during their anniversary, and the trouble he had gotten into in the Ghost Zone of all places. With the Ghost Law. Or at least a ghost that claimed to be the law and attempted to arrest Danny. Maddie was still wrapping her head around the idea that ghosts had a society complex enough to support such a thing or a lie about such a thing, as the case may be.

She rested her elbows on the table, and put her head in her hands. Here she was, making herself depressed, right after her big victory. Or before her hopeful victory, she corrected herself.

The front door swung open and Maddie looked up.

"Wow, that smells good!" said Danny. "What are you making, Mom?"

She heard a thump, probably his backpack, but not the two that usually followed it as Sam and Tucker came in.

"Cookies," said Maddie, standing. "Are Sam and Tucker not with you?"

"No, they had to go home today," he said. "Apparently their families are missing them." He walked into the kitchen, rubbing his shoulder.

"Are you alright?" asked Maddie. "Was there a fight?"

"Nah, I just banged into the corner of the lockers at school. It's been pretty quiet today." He quickly rapped on one of the cabinets. "Knock on wood, right." His brow furrowed. "Are those cookies glowing?"

"Yes, I put some ectoplasm in them. I'd been thinking about it since you mentioned them."

"Really? But that was months ago." He sat down at the counter, and poked at one of the cookies. There was an odd expression on his face. "Can I- Can I try one?"

"I made them for you, sweetie. Just- Only one for now. I don't know how they taste, and they should be safe, but..."

Danny's lips quirked up, but something wavered in his eyes. Maddie's heart dropped. Did he think that she was using him as a guinea pig?

"I get it, you don't know how I'll react. Better safe than sorry, and all that. I had wondered, though, seeing all that ghost food in Walker's prison..." He picked up a cookie, and nibbled at it. He took a larger bite. Another one. His chin trembled.

"Is it not good?" asked Maddie.

"No," said Danny, his voice cracking. "It's good. It's really good." A tear tickled down his cheek. He sniffed and took another bite of his cookie. He hiccuped.

"Danny..?"

"I'm okay!" he said around the cookie in his mouth. "I'm okay. I just- Just-" He shook his head. "I'm sorry."

Maddie rubbed Danny's back. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"It's just- You made this for me. And it's not- It's not a weapon. It's a ghost thing, but it's not a weapon, and-"

"Oh, sweetie," said Maddie. "I'm so sorry that you thought that we..." she trailed off, not knowing what to say, even if it was what she had been afraid of.

"It's just- Ghost cookies." He laughed a little, and shoved the rest of the cookie into his mouth. "It's good," he said, slightly muffled. "Are you sure I can't have another one?"

"Maybe in a couple of hours? You don't want to ruin your dinner."

Danny laughed.

#danny phantom #holiday truce #holiday truce 2019 #winter truce #gift #my writing #wastefulreverie #phanphic #phanfic

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minhyunluvr · 4 years

Text

look | empiricism

"Plus ultra!" Present Mic yelled from the presentation stage. You mumbled the catchphrase under your breath, promptly standing up and stretching. Before the two people in between you and the aisle could stand and block your way out, you crammed yourself in between their legs and the seat in front of them to leave.

A breath slipped through your lips as you stared up at the mock city in front of you in awe. It was fascinating how someone could re-build such a life-like structure year after another, its only purpose being destruction. Chatter rose from the examinees, triggering thoughts of disapproval from you. 'Why can't they just stretch in silence instead of catching up with friends?' A bitter taste settled in your mouth as you felt a pang inside of your chest. Were you jealous? Amiability and opportunity were always things you had been deprived of as a child, leaving many doors unopened. The only companion you had known as a youth was your adoptive brother, Woojin. There was a three year age gap, and he had entered U.A. when he was fifteen, just as you were about to.

The large gates creaked open, symbolizing one last burst of opportunity. This was a huge part of the test, and you would probably need to pass to enter the school. Your throat bobbed as you swallowed the lump beginning to form in your throat before taking off into the structure, but god did you hate running. Flustered sounds came from the other potential students as they attempted to catch up to you. It was to no avail. Your speed didn't seem as impressive when you were alone, running in a large back yard. By the time anyone else had stepped foot in the city-scape, you had demolished the first five robots at the door, successfully racking up nine points.

Roughly nine minutes later, a loud creaking noise came from your left. Once you released the three-pointer suspended in the air, you turn over to see the infamous robot worth zero points, therefor none of your time was to be wasted on it. You had not kept track of the points acquired, but it was surely enough to pass based on your observations of the other students. Glancing back at the newly created rubble from the fragmented machine in front of you, you caught a glimpse of a girl entangled in debris. Directing your quirk at her, you envisioned another robot lifting up the zero-pointer. A bead of sweat rolled down your cheek as the artificial robot took physical form, pushing the other in your direction. Surprised noises came from the students on the other side, loud enough for you to hear in the back half of the exam area. The one created for the exam was lifted further into the air, lugged along by yours.

A figure shot up into the sky, rapidly gaining speed toward the zero pointer. Sighing, you continued pulling it in your direction in a more urgent manner. "People really do try to steal credit for others' work, just like in the books..."

Before the person could make contact with the machine, he began to fall. A fist had previously been poised in the position to punch the exam robot, but now his arms flapped helplessly in the wind as he nosed-dived toward the ground. A broken piece of a robot began to float beneath the large one that was now behind you, a girl with her hand outstretched sitting on top of it. His body looked weak. Utterly helpless, even. You almost felt pity, for a second. But you continued doing your job as a future hero and had your machine raise the robot higher in the air before dropping it, effectively crushing the piece of trash.

"And, stop!" The same booming voice from ten minutes before yelled through the microphone, drawing out the first word longer than necessary. The girl and boy were no where to be seen when you turned back to them. Letting out a loud, clipped sigh, you stood and dusted the dirt off of your knees. An old lady pushed her way through the crowd about one hundred feet in front of you, where the zero pointer originally was. She leaned down and pressed a kiss to what looked like the ground at your angle, but the boy who had attempted to punch the robot stood up from the space a few seconds later. Another whine left your lips as you began to walk in their direction. Your knees felt as though they were about to break, but walking was the only option, as you couldn't lift yourself off of the ground.

"Oh, it was you who made the second robot appear out of nowhere!" A boy with blue hair pointed in your direction, eagerly walking over to meet you by the old lady who identified as Recovery Girl. "I am Iida Tenya, I hope to make your acquaintance. I saw you run in when Present Mic told us that the time had started! Your speed is remarkable..." He let out a pant in jest.

"Thank you. That's a lot coming from someone with engines in his calves. I never thought it was that impressive until I saw how slow all of the other potential students were.... I suppose I overestimated the future generation of heroes." Your face was impassive at his open expression of shock. "I suggest you keep your face devoid of emotion when you encounter villains. You wouldn't want to give off too many of your feelings, correct?"

His eyes hardened at your words, seemingly taking in your advice. "It almost sounds as if you're a villain yourself... I will keep that in mind. Would you mind telling me your name?"

"Choi Yunseo, but I prefer being called '(Y/n)'. Japanese honorifics are unnecessary. I hope to see you in U.A."

"You as well, (Y/n)." Iida looked at you skeptically as you walked towards the exit of the city-scape. His thoughts drifted back and forth between you and his score, becoming more and more curious about you as the day continued.

"Hello, Young Choi! This is a projection!" All Might yelled on the wall, light shining out of a circular container. You winced at the surname he addressed you with, noting the fact that you would have to correct your instructors in person when you inevitably make it in. "You actually placed first in the entrance exam, both in the written and practical sections... And it seems that you've been home schooled? Well, you must have a very nice curriculum." The projection flashed to a board of scores, you in first with 70 villain points and 57 rescue points. Someone named "Bakugou Katsuki" was in second place. "You beat Young Bakugou by 50 whole points, Choi! Be ready for him to go off on the first day, though. I don't think you should tell him your name, for your own safety. Anyway, check the packet that carried the projectional device for more details. Good luck, Young Ch-"

You cut off the video before he could say your legal name once again. "Why was he admitted to a hero school if I'm going to be in danger for surpassing him in skill...?"

"Please take your feet off of the desk, Bakugou! It is disrespectful to our elders and the fine craftsman who built the desks solely for our usage." The first thing you witnessed in your high school career was Iida reprimanding another student, presumably named "Bakugou" for resting his feet on a desk. 'As in... that Bakugou?'

"Shut it, fuckface. What middle school are you even from?" The blonde boy replied, albeit harshly.

"I am from Somei Priva- oh, hello, (Y/n)! I see you made it in!" Iida turned his attention to your annoyed figure in the doorway.

"Hi, Iida. But... Bakugou, is it? Are you not the kid who placed second... behind me?" A smirk fell onto your cheeks as you let the tease slip out. By the once sentence you had heard him utter, it was made apparent that he would be interesting to pick at.

"Wait, so you're Yunseo? God, I thought I would have to wait until attendance to bash your fucking face in..." With the last few words, he made a few flashes of orange energy appear next to his head, standing up.

"Oh, so you have an explosive quirk? Good to know... By the way, you shouldn't threaten people when you're in the hero course. Nor should you reveal your abilities when around a potential opponent, not that I fall into that category." The smirk slid off of your face as you restored your usual, cool demeanor. Turning away from Bakugou, you turned to walk to a seat. "Also, I prefer being called '(Y/n)'."

"Huh? Should I really be taking advice from a whore?" A few whispers started up in the quiet classroom.

"Is that because you find my body appealing? If so, the feeling isn't mutual, babe." With that, you continued walking to an open seat in the back of the classroom, which happened to be near a student with heterochromatic eyes. Your eyes narrowed as a vague feeling of recognition washed over you, but no further thoughts were spared on the matter.

Iida's face resembled a peach, at that point. A burst of laughter snorted out of his nose, effectively gaining Bakugou's attention. The latter boy's eyes had been following you as you moved to the back of the room, plotting revenge.

"Bro, you just obliterated him. No pun intended." Another male student chuckled from behind your seat. "I'm Kaminari Denki, by the way. And you are?"

"(Y/n)." Turning around to Kaminari, you took note of his features. His blond hair was slightly long, a black zig-zag which seemed to resemble a lightning bolt in his bangs. A small, button nose rested in the middle of his face, golden eyes above it. He was attractive, but not too eye-catching. Good combination.

"That's cool. May I have your number? You're kinda cute." He shot a wink down at you, hands resting on the back of your seat.

You pulled out a piece of paper from your backpack and quickly jotted down your cell phone number, handing it back to the boy. "I don't use my phone that much, so you might be ignored."

His face fell slightly at the last comment, but it quickly restored it's earlier vibrancy. "'Aight, but what's your quirk? If you don't mind me asking..."

"Did you not hear me talking to Bakugou about how he shouldn't unnecessarily reveal his quirk? I tend to follow my own advice." Your head fell to the side in annoyance.

"Did I just hear my name?!" The explosive blonde screeched from his seat up in the front of the classroom.

"Yes, you did." You spoke passively, not moving your attention from Kaminari. "Anyway, you will probably have to wait and see what my quirk is from when we do some sort of... training? I'm not entirely sure how this school works, yet."

"Deal, as long as you explain afterwards." He stuck his hand out for you to shake. Your nose scrunched slightly at the gesture, but you reached over nonetheless.

"Haha, that would ruin its abilities." With that, he walked away. Then, the room went quiet.

"It took eight seconds for you to quiet down." A shaggy-haired man groaned at the doorway as he crawled out of a sleeping bag. "I'm Aizawa Shouta, your homeroom teacher. I'm not going to waste time on learning your names, get dressed into your gym clothes and get outside to the grounds."

[m.list]

#bnha #boku my hero academia #mha #my hero academia #fanfiction #x reader #anime #manga #shouto todoroki #shouto todoroki x reader #izuku midoria x reader #izuku midoriya #katsuki bakugou #bakugou katsuki x reader

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kootenaygoon · 5 years

Photo

So,

I wasn’t quite asleep yet, and the swirling night wind smelled like smoke.

It was too warm on our back porch for my sleeping bag, so I was laying on a foamie with Muppet nuzzled into my bare chest while the shadows deepened around us. Paisley had been working on her desserts for hours now, stressed and playing Workaholics in the background, and through the open windows I could hear those fictional stoners up to their typical shenanigans. I was sunburnt and half-drunk, feeling satisfied with our summer life and ready for slumber. We’d been in Nelson for over a year now, and I was really starting to feel like this was becoming my real, true home. A refuge from the rest of the world.

The back door banged open, and Muppet jumped to attention in alarm. Paisley was cradling her open laptop, and she thrust it in my direction.

“There’s like a huge forest fire on the other side of the big orange bridge, everyone’s posting about it on Facebook,” she said.

“Look, see? You can actually see it from here.”

I quickly clambered to my feet in my boxer shorts, a little unsteady, and squinted off into the distance. There was a diagonal stripe flickering beyond the right flank of Elephant Mountain, a mix of deep oranges and blood reds, and it seemed to be growing downhill towards the lake. The flames gave off an ominous Mordor-style glow. Pink smoke billowed above the black landscape. Right away I realized it must’ve started during the windstorm we’d reported on days earlier, which featured multiple lightning strikes. Things were getting apocalyptic around here lately.

I took the laptop and examined the pictures that had been posted on social media, trying to will myself toward sobriety. People were in panic mode, talking about evacuation, sending out updates about road closures and successfully retrieved family members. I took a deep breath through my nostrils.

“We gotta head out there, like right now. I’ve gotta call Greg,” I said, handing back the laptop and searching for my pants.

“Are you coming?”

Paisley loved to come on assignments. Sometimes she took pictures, other times she actually suggested who I should interview or what I should pay attention to during a community event. Comp tickets were always flying at me, so I took her to free movies and free plays and free fundraisers. She worked her way into my columns as a character, and though she pretended to be embarrassed by the attention that earned her at work, I liked to think she enjoyed having this public persona. She was that Paisley, the girl from the newspaper, the Kootenay Goon’s girlfriend. She’d made a name for herself with her dessert company and her burlesque performances, and I figured one day she would end up being a YouTube chef or something like that. At the very least she would release a cook book, or start a blog. Supporting her ambitions was my favourite thing, and I liked puttering off to pick up ingredients for her on lazy Saturdays, knowing I was helping her achieve a dream.

We stopped at the 7-11 in town before driving out to the fire, where we picked up Red Bull and Doritos. I needed something to wake me up. I wasn’t sure if the highway would be blocked off, if we’d even be able to make it all the way to the blaze, but I was determined to get as close as possible. We drove with the windows down, talking about Tolkien. We’d seen each of the three Hobbit movies together in succession, as an annual tradition, and we’d been increasingly disappointed. That being said, we still considered ourselves aspiring hobbits and spoke longingly of a future world that was a little more like the Shire. The Kootenays didn’t seem too far off that, actually, as it seemed to be full of fairy hideaways and pastoral communes. If we could make things work long term here, we figured, we could become increasingly hermit-like as the years progressed.

“You’re my Samwise Gamgee and I’m the little Frodo, and we’re on our way to Mount Doom,’” Paisley said.

“You sure I’m not Gollum? Or maybe I want to be Boromir, since he’s my favourite character. I could even be a dwarf, maybe.”

“No, you’re Sam. You even kind of look like him, but with a beard.”

“You think I look like Sean Astin?”

“Yeah, you’re burly like him. And kind like him. And innocent.”

“I’m not fucking innocent.”

She shrugged, then leaned out her window to get a better look at where we were heading. As we rounded corners the fire came into and then back out of view. It was nearly midnight and there was no traffic, no noise, no spectacle. Just a looming threat. I couldn’t believe we hadn’t seen emergency vehicles yet, or heard choppers. Was the whole firefighter apparatus working like it was supposed to? Were people going to be losing their houses here? I clenched the steering wheel and wondered how much mayhem I could expect to encounter. That’s when I started seeing cars lined up along the side of the road, with people crowding the dark shoulder in packs. There were houses to both my left and right, and I found a place to park that had a sight-line of the burning slope. I left Paisley the keys so she could wait with the car, and she stood taking videos with her phone for social media as I hiked across the street. My main goal was to get some quotes from a resident, someone who was being menaced directly. I decided to walk up the driveway of the first property I saw, where I found a woman uncoiling a hose by a row of vehicles.

“Excuse me, sorry to bother you. I’m a reporter with the Nelson Star, do you live here? Can we talk?”

She was an older woman, and seemed shy. She waved her arm in the direction of the backyard and told me to head back there to find her husband Bob. I took out my phone and used it as a flashlight to work my way around the side of the house, wondering for a moment about the safety of what I was doing. When I rounded the corner to the backyard I saw multiple sprinklers methodically spraying all along the perimeter of the lawn. In the middle of the grass was Bob, calmly gazing up at the conflagration. It was like he was watching a drive-in movie, one the universe had arranged just for him. There was an empty chair next to him, and once I introduced myself he invited me to sit down.

“I don’t know how they contact you in situations like this. I think they resort to going door to door,” he said. “But I haven’t heard anything yet.”

He said there was a plan for if things went truly awry, but he was hopeful the fire wouldn’t be able to make it all the way down the hill. There was a lot of wind, he said, and the firefighters were on their way. They must be. He went through all of this in a monotone, never glancing over, just staring up the hill with a muted look of dread in his eyes. The sprinklers continue to hiss and spray, creating a contrasting soundtrack to the flames’ crackling, which somehow sounded a bit like boiling water.

“Aren’t you scared right now? Like this thing could wipe out your house, your possessions? The wrong wind and it’s game over, right?”

He snorted, smiled. “That’s one of the most important things you have to learn in life, Will. There’s some things you can control, and there’s some things you just can’t no matter how hard you try.”

“That’s pretty Zen.”

He smiled, turned to me. “What, you think it’ll make a good quote?” The Kootenay Goon

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memorylang · 3 years

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February’s Holidays in America | #50 | February 2021

Been feeling great! 2O2I goes well for me. I’m excited to have received more word from the Peace Corps that they’ll be in touch when they have a final timeline for reinstatement. Till then, I’m savoring my weeks still stateside.

February 2O2I encompasses many holidays, including Lunar New Year, U.S. Presidents’ Day, St. Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday. Some Americans may consider the Super Bowl a holiday, too! (Ah, if only Kansas City could make lightning strike twice this year.) Anywho, this month’s tales are on how I’ve spent my holidays. I’m ecstatic to have gotten in another national parks trip!

Lunar New Year 2O2I

I begin these tales from Lunar New Year’s. (I’ll double back to recount January adventures toward the end of my tales in this blog story.) This year, my LA sister who was in wanted to celebrate the Lunar New Year with more activity, so she’d returned to Vegas, she decorated, we wore red, and we cooked.

We made dumplings and 包子 /bāozi/, which were tasty. I enjoyed getting to show my sister how Mom had shown me how to pinch them. I remembered too cooking with my Mongol host family two summers ago. This year, our older brother and his girlfriend came over to celebrate, as well as a couple of my sister’s friends.

This year’s Year of the Ox is my zodiac year. It’s the first one I remember, since in that year when I’d turned 12, I’d been still adjusting to life in Vegas after having moved from Indiana with my family the year before. Here in 2O2I, though, at what was midnight in China, I called our relatives over WeChat. We chatted briefly in Chinese and English. Many got confused about which of my sisters was which, which amused me. I felt glad to have gotten to reconnect.

For the rest of my friends and relatives, I shared photos from Tsagaan Sar 2O2O. Last year, I hadn’t posted much amid hastily packing as a Peace Corps Volunteer to evacuate Mongolia. This year’s been calmer.

Later that Lunar New Year’s Day, I and my national parks friends like Victor Del Valle embarked on a new adventure, this time to Utah’s sites. Having my driver’s license felt empowering.

The Mighty Five

By our trip’s end, I’d reach 14 national parks! I look forward to getting to share these experiences with folks abroad who want to visit the States.

On Friday, our first day, my friends and I visited Canyonlands National Park then Dead Horse Point State Park. I enjoyed seeing the canyons within canyons. Since the Wednesday before was a virtual high school reunion, I decided to wear my ol’ student council shirt.

That night we checked into this awesome and affordable place, the “Rustic Inn” in Moab, Utah. I recommend it to anyone coming through the city. It was so fantastic that I wrote a Yelp review.

On Saturday, we reached Arches National Park early, standing below the iconic Delicate Arch before rain picked up. Despite the cold wind and rain, I loved the hike to the Double O Arches. The trek involved rock scrambling what I call the ‘rock vault’ and walking across elevated slabs that I consider the ‘train cars.’ On rock scrambles, I felt like Spider-Man. Across the elevated slabs, I felt like Violet Evergarden or Captain America. We’d taken so many cool photos that day that my recap post for social media contained numerous photos from Arches.

For the Feast of St. Valentine, that Sunday, Feb. 14, my aunt who’d visited last summer had mailed ahead candy. Her gift was a pleasant surprise. Coincidentally on that Sunday, my friends and I saw Capitol Reef, to which she’d taken me last summer. But, my friends and I entered from a different side than when I’d seen with my relative. My friends and I also hiked to Cassidy Arch, along a remarkable trail that I hadn’t seen on our first trip. Though I first overshot the destination by a half-mile, I enjoyed the sights! That arch reminded me of Sedona’s Devil’s Bridge.

"A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one”

On Monday, my friends and I had meant just to see Bryce Canyon but fate had other plans. Winter snow and ice limited our Bryce options such that after experiencing its safe sites we went to Zion. Still, we enjoyed the Dr. Seuss-like sound of “hoodoos” and questions like, “What do the hoodoos do when who doesn’t?”

Zion felt like Disney, with its wonders at every turn. I’d never seen rock formations like those of the park. Its overlook path, which my friends insisted wasn’t even one of its best hikes, blew my mind. I wish that we’d had more time to see Zion. Our time was short. I resolved to return someday.

Up next is Redwood National Park in a few months! I’m so excited. Redwood was one of the first national parks of which I’d heard when I was young in Indiana reading about California. I hope that those tall trees are amazing indeed.

From 2O2I’s First Week

Presidents’ Day made my friends’ and my trip possible this month. So, in honor of Presidents’ Day, I want to share some January 2O2I experiences with its major event, Inauguration Day! With all that led to it, this year’s was one to remember.

I kick off my Inauguration Day stories with Wed., Jan. 6, an especially tense day for Americans. That morning, I’d been still in Reno, having arrived to ring in the New Year. That Wednesday, my folks and I were following results from the Georgia run-off election. Georgian friends said not to hold my breath. Well, I felt amazed to see that the two Democrats won.

But later that day, when I and my D.C. friend were to begin our usual 3 p.m. EST video call on my week’s Bible readings, we began with a different conversation. She asked me if I’d heard about what was happening at the Capitol Building. I hadn’t. She said that police were trying to protect Congresspeople from rioters who’d broken in—American rioters.

I hadn’t imagined that day that I’d be praying for the safety of our leaders, but I felt moved to do so. I tried not to let the news get to me, too much. I hoped that things would sort themselves out. I’d underestimated.

“What a year this month has been”

The next Monday, Week 45 (Jan. 8–15), I felt a bit ashamed to try explaining to my group of Mongols learning English about the U.S. Capitol events. I wasn’t certain about the facts, beyond that rioters opposed the certification of our November election’s results. Ultimately, I suspected that the media had overplayed the drama of the events. Still, I felt ashamed that not outsiders but American citizens had attacked our own Capitol.

That week’s Sunday, I also attended and later spoke at a Zoom service in remembrance of my late supervisor, Rich Siegel, co-chair of the Honors Community Advisory Board for which I’m secretary. Many on the call wondered what that man, a champion of the American Civil Liberties Union, would have thought about the violence at the Capitol. He would surely have condemned it. After our service, I spoke briefly in gratitude for Rich’s mentorship. A woman at the service contacted me with thanks for sharing my experiences with him.

On a later week, my English-language learners in Mongolia asked me to weigh in about my trust in the election results. I explained my usual position that I tend to believe whatever our courts conclude about the security of our processes. Our courts declared the election secure, so I trusted our results. Regarding America’s Capitol riots, to my amazement, my Mongol friends compared them to moments in Mongolia’s young democratic history of riots outside of their parliament building and leaders resigning. I felt strangely comforted by similarities.

Inauguration Day

At last came Wednesday, Jan. 2O. I was back in Vegas, glued to the telly from dawn till dusk. This was the first Inauguration Day I could recall when I wasn’t in school, so I decided that I’d watch the whole thing. By that day, I’d also finished much of the yard work and had even gotten halfway through the “Kafka on the Shore” book to which I’d been listening.

On Inauguration Day, I kept downstairs with a Snuggie, sitting in a soft rocking chair with a space heater between me and the TV. I set the telly to a channel showing four stations at once—this time showing CNN, FOX, MSNBC and the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies (JCCIC). I liked most the JCCIC broadcast since its hosts sounded passionate about our inaugural setting, having usually given tours of the Capitol. Commentators felt delighted that despite the violence just two weeks earlier, the area was safe and secure now.

I felt a little disappointed to learn that President Trump had decided not to attend the inauguration, instead taking off quietly from Washington. I’d loved seeing U.S. Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama gathered. I hope that in the future, Trump stands among them as a fellow past leader of our great nation.

Inauguration

As President-elect Biden and VP-elect Harris arrived, I felt moved. I remembered my time as a young journalist reporting live during Election Night, November 2OI6. Seeing our new administration arrive in January 2O2I, I remembered the faces of people, many of color, who had felt saddened half a decade prior.

Though I live in Vegas, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy much Lady Gaga’s performance of the national anthem. Generally, I’m not that interested in her music. Well, I felt awed. I found her rendition of our anthem among the most moving versions that I’ve heard. She performed in ways like a guide on our nation’s musical journey.

In terms of speeches, I enjoyed hearing Rev. Dr. Sylvester Beaman bring to light important issues of diverse communities and felt blown away by the poet Amanda Gorman. Her words resonated powerfully. Her references to “Hamilton” were wonderful, too. That the Biden-Harris administration had given the green light to this magnificent speaker of my generation gave great hope.

Inauguration Night

I spent the rest of Inauguration Day texting friends as I watched the feeds on traditional Day 1 activities of new U.S. presidents. I especially loved watching that afternoon the Biden-Harris administration’s first press conference. We’re returning to transparency.

That evening, I saw the virtual concert commemorating our day. I enjoyed seeing talks and performances by Bon Jovi, Foo Fighters, Yo-Yo Ma, Broadway stars and John Legend. New to me yet delightful still were “Better Days (feat. Justin Timberlake)” by Ant Clemons and “Colors” by Black Pumas. Our sun set on what felt for many a renewed nation.

I didn’t see much other inauguration coverage besides a James Corden treat. He’d made a parody of “One Day More,” which I showed many. I found its lines, “What a year this month has been,” and, “Politics are dull again,” so comical.

As days went on, I felt delighted to see Dr. Fauci on TV looking far more chipper than during preceding weeks. I felt amused by Stephen Colbert’s return to jesting about political norms instead of contested facts. Thus our world turns.

Back to Reno

After my Week 49 (Feb. 11–16) Mighty Five Utah parks trip with my friends, I returned from Vegas to Reno. That Tues., Feb. 16, I got to drive the hundred miles from Tonopah, Nev., to Hawthorne, Nev.! I felt delighted. Seeing the sunset while listening to my friend’s party music evoked joy in possibilities of where I can go and what I can do in life.

The next day, Feb. 17, was Ash Wednesday. That day I returned to my college parish since I’ve been singing for this year’s virtual “Living Stations of the Cross” production. Revisiting the parish and chatting with our staff returned to mind among my favorite undergrad experiences. Meanwhile, our student coordinators have worked so hard to make their office into a recording studio. I look forward to sharing our performance video when it goes live this Lenten season.

With Ash Wednesday as the first day of the season’s fasting, I had a bagel and tea for breakfast then water throughout the day. That evening, after a series of delightful meetings, I saw a long-time friend when he had a moment free. The homie was Darren Dang, one I’d met when we’d lived in the same residence hall, fall 2OI5.

That afternoon, Darren and I visited Roberto’s Taco Shop down the street, where we caught up like we’d done a couple years ago, before I’d graduated the University. COVID causes weird circumstances, but we make the most of them. Coincidentally, I’d reconnected too with a mutual friend, through a Pokémon GO group chat when I’d asked what I’d need to do to complete the week’s challenge.

My friend wished me Happy Lunar New Year in a traditional Vietnamese greeting! I enjoyed that greatly. I knew informal New Year’s greetings in Mandarin and Mongolian, so I said those in exchange. Seeing long-time friends warms my soul.

Lent 2O2I

Later this February marks the first anniversary since I learned that I’d evacuated from Mongolia. So by the time I next blog, I’ll have been back in America for a year. Expect March tales to feature my reflections. I’m coming back to Vegas in March to see off my LA sister before she moves for work in Seattle!

The rest of February, I mean to focus on singing for the church production and revising my research for resubmission by early March. I’ve enjoyed seeing WandaVision while not working. My language and outreach projects continue.

This Lent I've also resumed my habit of praying a rosary a day in addition to daily walks and stretches. I've added, too, Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer. Let me know if you'd like to pray with me! For now, I leave you with this copy of the text that I’d found cited on Wikipedia (195I):

God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, Courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Living one day at a time, Enjoying one moment at a time, Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, Taking, as Jesus did, This sinful world as it is, Not as I would have it, Trusting that You will make all things right, If I surrender to Your will, So that I may be reasonably happy in this life, And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.

You can read more from me here at DanielLang.me :)

#Peace Corps #Mongolia #nationalparks #memorial #WithMe #COVID-19 #Zion #Nevada #Coronavirus #lunarnewyear #news #winter #inauguration #Utah #USA #memoryLang #God #Catholic #story #memoir

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madehq · 3 years

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Digital Here to Stay

At 1AM on Friday, October 9th, I got a group text from a playwright friend: Broadway was once again pushing back its reopening date to June 1st, 2021.

I wish I could say it came as a surprise. Only a couple weeks earlier the Metropolitan Opera cancelled its 20/21 season, and anyone who’s remotely considered event logistics in the past 6-7 months could rattle off a hundred hurdles involved in reopening any kind of venue. That list grows exponentially when the venue houses a minimum of 500 people in a city where you’re lucky to get 6 inches let alone 6 feet. Rather than shocking the community, this announcement reiterated once again that the performing arts industry will be one of the last to return. So it’s time for organizations to ensure their digital solutions are going to service long-term needs, and seize underlying opportunities.

One Step at a Time

Performing arts’ biggest strength has been the live in live theater. It’s a double-edged sword: creating economic barriers and gatekeeping for many, but also generating a unique high for those that are able to experience it even on a small scale such as school recitals, or indie theater. At the beginning of the pandemic, artists at every level of the industry rapidly pivoted to produce content without its biggest strength.

Zoom became prevalent not just for teleconferencing, but for digital events and classes. One of the most common requests I’ve gotten in the past few months is “can we embed a Zoom link in our order confirmation?” (the answer is “yes”). But while artists explored radio dramas, wrote plays specifically for digital forums, held digital festivals, and tried to make do, the focus was always on what it would look like to return home. As often as I’ve been asked about embedding links in confirmation emails, many organizations have opted to hold off on radical changes because of the ever shifting landscape and the knowledge that the current state of affairs is temporary.

Last Friday’s announcement makes it clear that “temporary” is going to last a lot longer than we hoped. Even regions that are beginning to reopen for outdoor or distanced performances need to find a way to cater to patrons that cannot safely return to venues, and contend with the impending arrival of winter. This is no longer about creating a safety checklist, and measuring the width of seats. Top to bottom, organizations must consider digital viability in all programming for the next year. We can no longer say “hold, please” to infrastructure changes that will support the performing arts during the rest of this pandemic, particularly when it has the potential to increase accessibility across the board.

Plan Ahead

Distance makes planning even more important than when leadership was able to collaborate in person. In a normal year, every production season is planned to suit a wide variety of audiences, tastes, and artistic messages. Once shows are selected, resources are allocated and accounted for. A formal delay in the return to venues means these conversations now need to include digital logistics. Content curation must consider what pieces will work best when performers must be distanced or in completely different locations. Think carefully before slating a piece that requires physical intimacy or confrontation, consider smaller pieces over large ensemble productions.

No matter what content is selected, organizations should get in the habit of identifying opportunities for content creation. For many organizations, the Watch & Listen section was a repository for the passionate user, and good for SEO, but not a priority. Other organizations were only able to record content for archival purposes rather than public consumption. The early days of the pandemic quickly revealed this produced a gap between the potential of the digital space, and the available content. As we continue to oscillate between digital and physical spaces, and reach out to patrons who cannot safely attend performances, generating assets and high quality recordings will be a priority.

A 5-Star Hotel, not a Bates Motel

Digital content is a great way to continue to foster relationships with patrons while in-person interaction is limited or impossible, so organizations must ensure that the experience is a positive one. If you don’t have a natural home for videos already, start having conversations with hosting platforms to see which might be the right fit for you and your website. Consider whether you want to make the jump towards OTT platforms which allow users to access content on other devices rather than being tethered to a phone or computer. Whether you’re new, or a seasoned digital veteran, keep an eye on analytics to identify pain points in the digital path. Ensure that the journey through your content is a curated, and welcoming experience for patrons. Just as you would provide users with additional event information before expecting them to book, avoid abandoning users in a vast sea of videos with no context. Your event pages likely don’t bury the link to purchasing tickets, similarly your video landing pages should make it easy for users to choose what they want to watch and navigate to other recommended content.

Nice to E-Meet You

While it is tempting to stick with known, and familiar faces during uncertain times, the pandemic has also raised a fear that the performing arts will become even more exclusive. Organizations must take advantage of the opportunity to diversify and expand their network of collaborators and audience members. With no additional travel or housing costs, organizations can now reach and collaborate with people that would have been inaccessible before. Use this to your advantage - increase the diversity of the artists you work with and collaborate with organizations around the world that are succeeding in producing theater that represents their audience. Revel in the fact you can now compete for audiences that are outside a one hour drive of your venue. Expand your community and make your art more accessible to everyone so that when we are able to return, you’ll have an even wider community.

White Noise or Unique Contribution

The performing arts doesn’t have to beat Netflix at its own game, we need to stand apart. Before the pandemic every million dollar media company in entertainment was already entering the “streaming wars.” 10 years ago there was Netflix and YouTube, now there is a specialized streaming service for every channel and category of content clamoring for people’s cash and attention. It can be daunting for nonprofits to enter the ring without the massive production budgets available to cinema and television unless you remember what makes live art precious.

A live event is a unique blend of elements that can be recorded, but never be replicated. Even shows with extended runs will never have the same performance twice whether it’s a stubborn wig, a backstage prank, or the crash of thunder outside. Live art is real. There’s no CGI, no second take, it is all happening before your eyes. Hollywood spends millions of dollars every year trying to replicate reality by using extended takes and marketing multi-class actors doing their own stunts. I’ve binged more Netflix than I care to admit during the past 7 months, I’ve cried and cheered at my local AMC, but theater brings an audience together down to its pulse. And I get the same buzz of nerves before a digital performance that I did putting on my makeup in a utility closet turned green room, because live art done right is lightning in a bottle.

Nothing can be accomplished overnight. Everything I’ve mentioned is a long term commitment to the digital sphere, and there will be many trials before we reach tribulations. No matter how successful, none of this will replace live theater. It never could. Under the current timeline, Broadway will be shuttered for a total of 14 months, and smaller theaters are unlikely to lead a charge that Broadway won’t. An entire year, both creatively and financially, will be gone and many organizations with it. Broadway’s announcement sent only the most recent national wave of grief through the performing arts industry. Audiences are hurting over the loss of these shared experiences that made up their community. Hundreds of thousands of artists are yearning not just to perform, but to create and play without endangering ourselves. We miss creating with our friends and colleagues. We miss watching their performative joy, pain, and skill. But while we grieve, reality waits, and it is your responsibility to make sure that if you can survive, you do everything possible to thrive.

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rowingchat · 7 years

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US Masters Rowing National Championships – Day 1 musings

Charles Sweeney reports from the big event….and muses on life, rowing and streams-of-consciousness

I wasn’t supposed to be here, at the Masters Nationals, in Oak Ridge Tennessee, with my crew, the Capital Rowing Club.

Literally the day after last year’s Nationals, in Worcester, Massachusetts, a nagging back problem blew up into a sciatica case that damn near crippled me and crashed not just a very successful season but a personally important one.

I’d spent a few years trying to hammer myself – in the pejorative, rowing sense — into the boats that won races and went to the Charles. I worked hard and I was pretty strong but, apparently, I just wasn’t that good at this rowing thing.

And last season started out the same as the others: bitter, frustrating.

I remember one practice. Elena, our assistant coach/coach’s wife/Olympic Medalist, who narrates and critiques each practice nonstop in a Russian-accented voice that jumps from operatic praise to severe scolding in an instant, jumped on me like a terrier on a rat and tore me up so long and so hard that I was literally looking around trying to figure out how to get out of the boat in the middle of the river and stomp away from the team, forever.

And there were so many spring mornings where I’d get home and I just wanted to stamp into the shower and wash the stinking Anacostia River and the sweat and shame off my body, and my girlfriend Laura would be lying there quizzing me like a mom to her kid after a bad day at school, “so, how was it, honey?”

I suck. Rowing sucks. Life sucks. That’s how it was. I don’t want to talk about it.

But, like the peasant turned into a newt by the witch in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I got better. I started getting into good crews. Guys would say things like “you’re rowing pretty good this year. I mean, last year you kind of sucked, but this year you’re not so bad.” They could have put it nicer, but I took in the spirit in which it was offered. I even started rehashing practice voluntarily with Laura.

I felt like I had finally earned the respect of guys who I respected a great deal. That was probably more important than winning, and the winning was pretty fun, too.

And then it all blew up in a day.

By late winter, I was convinced I’d miss this season or be so sloppy and slow when I finally made it back that that no one would miss me if I went instead with Laura to Sun Valley, where she had a conference this week. And we could backpack and fly fish the Sawtooths instead of rowing. When they asked, I said I was “tentative, probably not” for Nationals.

But I finally started erging gently in late winter and then went gently back on the water in May (conveniently missing all that crappy early spring weather. But that’s not why I waited. No, really, it’s not). People seemed glad to see me, which was heartening. Also in May, Laura got drafted into another conference in San Francisco (where she is today), screwing up the Sawtooths jaunt. In June I started racing.

A cabin in the woods for Masters Nationals

And now I’m here, in the town that produced fuel for the atom bomb and birthed America’s peaceful nuclear program – promising clean plentiful nuclear power generated so cheaply that there won’t even be any point in metering it. (I was driving back to my cabin in the woods after racing today and there was a mist rising from the river and I thought “Should I be worried about this?” “No,” I figured, I’m sure the government would tell us if there was something we needed to know about.)

There was a mist earlier, too, this morning, coming from the sky, so they postponed racing for a few hours and I ate a humongous breakfast and typed a little, then drove into a generic section of Knoxville to get my yuppie bearings by picking up a map at the REI (an upscale camping store) and checking out the Whole Foods, whose fish looked sub-par. No Simpson’s three –eyed lake trout, either, despite the nuclear thing.

I’d heard a rumor that Ace Hardware had eclipse glasses, so I could look at the eclipse coming through the Tennessee hills Monday and not go blind, but they were hoarding them — the line formed outside and the sale started at 4 o’clock, when I was supposed to be on the water. Oh well. They tell you that lots of things will make you go blind and I’ve done most of ‘em, so we’ll see what happens Monday.

I dropped off my erg and discovered another 30-minute lightning delay and that the guys at the next trailer were playing hideous whiny Pearl Jam-type music at a significant volume. So I fled down the road and around the corner to the firing range I’d come across.

First, I read the safety rules and signed a document stating that I was of sound mind, had no felony or domestic violence convictions or drug addictions, and was not currently subject to a restraining order. Then, I watched a short safety video. Now, I’m good to go for a little target practice tomorrow.

The next-to-last thing Coach said to me today was “when you go to sleep tonight, think about finishing high – blades on the water.” But really, this East Coast urban liberal will be thinking “revolver or automatic?”

Finally, about 4:30, I started getting that pre-race adrenaline, doing a little erging, seeing how I felt. I always feel like something’s wrong. Like I didn’t warm up right and my back is waiting to explode. Or I should have eaten a better lunch and now I’m weak. Or I have cancer and it’s showing itself by attacking my thigh muscles.

The first race was the Mixed D class. I love racing in the mixed boats because, with the women, the boats set better and it’s generally a nicer row. And it’s just fun to row with people you don’t normally get to row with – nothing gets you closer to your teammates than racing with them, and my teammates are pretty cool.

I hate rowing with the women because I think that they secretly (sometimes not so secretly) think that the men are just a bunch of artless muscle-heads. And I’m the team poster boy for artless muscle heads, though not as muscle-y as I might like (especially when I’m wearing my uni rowsuit) and I feel like – especially from five seat – I’m confirming the worst fears of the four mean girls immediately behind me.

The winsome foursome rowing behind me are incredible rowers with years more experience and way more big wins at the highest competitive levels than I have, and I knew that if we boys could work enough artistry into our muscling to keep the boat reasonably set, we all might come away with some hardware.

Allison reminded me not to spazz out at the start (she said it nicer than that, our women are only “mean girls” in my paranoid imagination) and we got off the line in third, not bad for us. Chinook, who’s always tough, had us by a seat and Ashville had them by two more.

It was like “Ashville?” We’d never rowed against them, that I can recall, and certainly never gunned down to the line for a photo finish with one of their boats.

I wanted to like Ashville. Seems like kind of the place you want to move to when you chuck the rat race and open a little steak frites joint with unisex bathrooms to piss off the conservatives and host traditional acoustic mountain music Tuesday nights and acid jazz on Thursdays. You know: work, camp in the Great Smokey Mountains and row for a club that wins a few big races.

But not this race. Not against us. We caught them at the halfway point and slowly walked past. It was Chinook we had to fight off in the end, finally putting them away with our monster sprint which was actually only like four strokes long because our cox misjudged the finish line and it wasn’t ten seconds after she yelled “take it up” the horns went off. If she’d called the sprint a little earlier we might have won by more than eight tenths of a second. But, no harm, no foul. Besides, we’re all afraid of her, so what are we going to say?

Sue was back for the next race, the men’s E-8. We won a race earlier this summer with the E boat lineup and the coach said “good win – you’re defending national champions, remember” which was a thought I‘ve always found slightly surreal. I’ve never been “defending national champion” in anything and a few years back, when I read the Capital Rowing Club website before coming back to the sport, I read “competes on a national level” and decided to go out for the less gung-ho club team. But, there it was.

There were some changes from last year. I was coming back from the injury, another guy had a baby and a third guy had been creamed by an idiot while cycling to practice and was out. But we rowed the new lineup regularly and you could really feel the boat coming together, rowing pretty well. I like rowing with the old guys, the geezer boat – eight of us raging against the dying of the light but with a certain élan.

And this year, maybe because I’d expected to have such a lousy season, I was more attuned to the boat as a whole — to being part of a lineup rather than a guy whose first priority was trying to fight his way into the lineup. The boat felt good.

Ashville lined up next to us again, a boat with a distinctly thuggish look which made me want to move there and join their club even more, steak frites and acid jazz or not. Boats where the guys mostly look like dive bar bouncers not only win races, I suspect they’re fun to drink with after.

But it was Western Reserve and Riverfront Recapture who jumped out on us, taking seats at the start — as someone always does, dammit! But, if we didn’t row as pretty as we’ve rowed in practice, we rowed pretty good and caught ‘em — as we often do. And with Sue calling the sprint at a more appropriate distance from the finish we raced into a two second win over two strong crews.

It must have been sometime in January and I was laying off the hydrocodone [opioid pain medication] and my back hurt and I was out of shape and bitter and the weather was cold and I was looking at unemployment because I worked in government and the government was changing, and I was stomping around and whining that “next season is fucked, just fucked!” And Laura, who probably also saved my life after my wife, Stephanie, died, gave me this look she saves for when I’m just being stupid (she’ll take a little whining, but she hates stupid) and just said “no, no it’s not.”

And she gently encouraged the self-rehab and the cult gym workouts that seem to help your body’s balance and, eventually, the erging even when it was inconvenient to her and when she had to listen to tedious analyses of the day’s workout.

And the guys, our team, welcomed me back and did the hardest thing: showing up every morning tired and sore and determined to work to the edge of exhaustion and row better every day — and forge eight of us into one boat.

And women’s and mixed boats medaled in two other events, a great start to this year’s racing.

And Guennadi and Elena – who have patiently coached me up over six seasons and once again showed their talent for bringing out our best when it matters most.

And seven months after I though the season was busted, I was in Tennessee, doing that asshole thing of strutting around with two medals on my chest, showing off and enjoying what a friend of mine calls “the clank factor” and feeling a little amazed and very grateful.

It was a great day – for the team.

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itsfinancethings · 4 years

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New story in Politics from Time: At the Republican National Convention, You Might Think COVID-19 Was Over

Listening to the speakers at the Republican National Convention, you might be forgiven for thinking that the coronavirus pandemic is over.

Many have largely ignored the virus that has killed nearly 180,000 Americans, despite the fact that it continues to seriously disrupt life in the United States, including their own event. Others, like White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, referred to the pandemic in the past tense: “It was awful,” Kudlow said on August 25. “Health and economic impacts were tragic. Hardship and heartbreak were everywhere. But presidential leadership came swiftly and effectively with an extraordinary rescue for health and safety to successfully fight the COVID virus.”

When Vice President Mike Pence took the stage Wednesday night, his speech was a striking example of the Trump Administration’s attempts to reframe the history of the pandemic that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives worldwide and nearly ground the American economy to a halt. “Thanks to the courage and compassion of the American people, we are slowing the spread, we are protecting the vulnerable, and we are saving lives, and we are opening up American again,” Pence said, speaking at Fort McHenry in Baltimore, MD. “Because of the strong foundation that President Trump poured in our first three years, we’ve already gained back 9.3 million jobs in the last three months alone.”

Pence was named chair of the White House coronavirus task force in late February. Experts point to the failure to set up a speedy and functional testing and tracing system, the inconsistent guidance coming from the White House on mask-wearing and other crucial mitigation measures, and the early push to reopen states as costly missteps in the Trump Administration’s response to the virus. In August, more than six months after COVID-19 began sweeping through the U.S., the country continues to lead the world in confirmed cases of COVID-19 and number of deaths. Americans have experienced unemployment rates unseen since the Great Depression. The U.S. will almost certainly surpass 200,000 deaths from the virus before the election. Until a vaccine is approved, testing delays are hampering reopening throughout the country.

For the Trump Administration, it’s a dire situation just over two months before Election Day. According to polls tracked by FiveThirtyEight, 58.2% of Americans disapprove of Donald Trump’s coronavirus response, compared to 38.7% who approve, and that disapproval has been steadily rising since the U.S. surpassed 10,000 deaths in April.

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Most of the political speakers Wednesday night avoided talking about the pandemic entirely. Neither senior White House aide Kellyanne Conway nor Second Lady Karen Pence mentioned COVID-19 explicitly; both made only an oblique reference to “everyday” American “heroes” including healthcare workers, teachers and frontline workers. Rep. Elise Stefanik from New York didn’t mention the virus, but said Trump is “working to safely re-open our Main Street economy” while Democratic challenger Joe Biden would keep business owners and workers “locked up in the basement.”

Rep. Lee Zeldin from New York was the sole speaker in Wednesday’s lineup to devote the entirety of his remarks to the Trump Administration’s response to the pandemic. Zeldin praised Trump and described being on the phone late at night with senior adviser Jared Kushner to get needed personal protective equipment (PPE) to his district— nearly 1.2 million items of PPE in one month, according to Zeldin, including masks and gowns. “During a once-in-a-century pandemic— an unforeseeable crisis sent to us from a faraway land— the President’s effort for New York was phenomenal,” Zeldin said.

The alternative history spun out during the convention portrays COVID-19 as an unpredictable lightning strike sent from China against a U.S. left unprepared by the previous administration. But Trump had already been in office for three years when the pandemic washed ashore—mostly through Europe—and Trump’s White House had stripped away an office for pandemic response and ignored plans developed after the 2014 Ebola outbreak. More damaging, Trump repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of the virus as it spread in American cities through the spring, and when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended Americans cover their faces in April, Trump said he himself would not.

During his speech to end the night, Pence heralded the administration’s work fighting the virus. Pence said Trump’s decision to halt travel from China saved “untold” numbers of American lives. He said the federal government was able to “launch the greatest national mobilization since World War II” and “forge seamless partnerships with governors across America in both political parties.” And he offered a hopeful prediction: “America is a nation of miracles,” the Vice President said, “and I’m proud to report that we’re on track to have the world’s first safe, effective coronavirus vaccine by the end of this year.”

The determination to move past the harsh realities of COVID-19 is contradicted by the format of the convention itself: as speakers talk about the virus in the past tense, or announce that it has been successfully subdued, they have been speaking in pre-taped videos, to empty rooms or in outdoor spaces, because it remains unsafe to gather large groups of people inside.

When Trump has spoken about COVID-19 this week, he called it the “China virus” and “the plague,” and talked about it as an external force over which he had little control on influence. During a 53-minute rambling speech to 336 GOP delegates gathered in a hotel ballroom in Charlotte, North Carolina, on the opening day of the convention, Trump called for some magical thinking: “But think of your life just prior to the plague coming in. It was the best it’s ever been.”

He promised to deliver a “super V” shaped recovery. He described his administration’s response as “incredible,” while at the same time shunting responsibility onto others, saying many governors were “totally ill-prepared” and that the virus response should be run by the states and the “governors are supposed to do it.” He blamed earlier administrations for not having prepared, saying the “cupboards were bare” of supplies, and promised that Americans will “soon see vaccines pouring out years ahead.” (Earlier this month, Trump said a vaccine approved before Nov. 3 “wouldn’t hurt” his reelection chances.)

Even when the moment calls for it, Trump slides past the destruction the virus has brought to millions of American lives. Later on Monday, as the GOP convention kicked off, Trump visited a farm distribution facility near Asheville, N.C. that has packed boxes of food for delivery to families in need during the pandemic, but he didn’t meet with any of those families on that trip. The same night, a taped segment of Trump standing stiffly in the East Room, talking at a six-foot distance with two nurses, two law enforcement officers who had recovered from COVID-19, a trucker and two postal workers impacted by the pandemic, aired as part of the evening convention program. “These are the incredible workers that helped us so much with the COVID,” Trump said. “We can call it many different things from China virus — I don’t want to go through all the names because some people might get insulted because that’s the way it is — these are great great people.”

Trump has rarely spoken to the devastating loss and economic hardship families are feeling right now. His wife and Vice President took on that role during the convention. In her Rose Garden speech Tuesday night, First Lady Melania Trump expressed her “deepest sympathy” for “everyone who has lost a loved one.” And in his speech the following night, Pence said, “In this country, we mourn with those who mourn, and we grieve with those who grieve.”

But as much as Trump and the Republicans who have spoken this week may be ready for America to move on, the pandemic itself is not yet finished with America.

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newstechreviews · 4 years

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Listening to the speakers at the Republican National Convention, you might be forgiven for thinking that the coronavirus pandemic is over.

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But as much as Trump and the Republicans who have spoken this week may be ready for America to move on, the pandemic itself is not yet finished with America.

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vsplusonline · 4 years

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Sports stars and adventure enthusiasts offer tips for a proactive routine during the COVID-19 lockdown

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Sports stars and adventure enthusiasts offer tips for a proactive routine during the COVID-19 lockdown

PV Sindhu

Meditation, innovative fitness regimen and onion pakodas! For badminton champion PV Sindhu, the current lockdown is proving to be an unusual experience. While she still focusses on fitness, this phase is also helping the shuttler dabble in new things, such as cooking. And, yes, cleaning the house.

The 24-year-old insists that it is important to be patient and stay positive. “I have been trying to prepare snacks like onion pakodas,” she says. “My mom (P Vijaya, a former international volleyballer) is giving me invaluable tips.” Despite the pakodas, Sindhu is still fairly disciplined about her diet. “I am not supposed to eat much even if there is mutton kheema which I like a lot. Occasionally, I manage to taste it now,” she laughs, adding, “I am also helping my mom keep the house clean.”

To keep fit, she follows a fitness app, issued by her trainer VM Srikanth, under the guidance of her father (PV Ramana). “There are fitness routines using terra bands, weight jackets and dumbbells of different weights,” says Sindhu, adding “I do meditation thanks to the guidance of Sri Ram Chandra Mission (Hyderabad).” And what about practice? “I have to stay in touch with the sport and my father conducts wall-practice sessions for 45 minutes which maintains the desired reflexes.”

The champion performer says she also gets to spend time with her nephew Aaryan now, besides listening to music and watching Netflix.

Can sports be a priority now? Sindhu says, “No one can think of anything else except fighting the virus. It is the responsibility of every citizen to respect the guidelines of both the Central and the State Governments which are doing a great job.”

-VV Subrahmanyam

Sathiyan Gnanasekaran

When international table tennis star Sathiyan Gnanasekaran, 27, usually returns home to Chennai after a long tour, his mother says in jest that he is back at his guest house. For, like many professional sportspeople, his visits home are sparse and short. So, even a quotidian affair, like a family dinner, becomes special. The COVID-19 lockdown, in this regard, has been an unasked-for boon for Sathiyan. He has been eating home-cooked meals, watching Malayalam movies (he mentions Trance, Kumbalangi Nights and Ustad Hotel) with his mother, and restarted a hobby he had abandoned after college: reading. (He is currently reading Usain Bolt’s autobiography, Faster Than Lightning and Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life.)

But Sathiyan understands he is not in the middle of a summer vacation. “This is an unprecedented situation and it’s been tough for all of us,” he says, “You got to keep your mind and body active to not lose track of your game and fitness.”

He wakes up early morning every day for his fitness routines with trainer Ramji Srinivasan (who has had a stint with the Indian cricket team as well). “I head to the terrace and via video call, I work on my fitness with him. I do some jumps, strength training and exercises with some equipment I have.”

In the evenings, he plays table tennis against a remote-operated robot (Butterfly Amicus Prime for advanced players) that he had recently imported from Germany.

He has also taken to yoga and visualisation techniques. He spends the rest of his time talking to junior players and his fans on social media. With the lockdown now extended till May 3, Sathiyan is planning to take up gardening, too.

-Praveen Sudevan

Sajid Chougle

Mumbai-based Saijid Chougle’s joy in life is to jump off cliffs or aeroplanes. A BASE jumper and a sky diver, he travels all over the world exploring new spots to dive from. This includes cliffs in Norway, Chikmagalur in Karnataka and Konkankanda in Maharasthra. “I started skydiving in 2011 when I was in Philadelphia and in 2017 I got hooked on to BASE jumping,” says Chougle.

Now at home, he satiates his adrenaline rush with videos. One of his latest Instagram videos shows him strapped up in safety gear, a helmet and a backpack as he prepares to launch off what looks like a folded rug. He then glides through air, on the way encountering squeaky toy ducks and paper flying past. Shot in his bedroom, the whole sequence was recorded with him lying on the floor as he enacted movements that normally happen during the course of a jump. “The camera was tied to the ceiling fan,” laughs the 37-year-old. “I dragged my mother to help me with the deployment sequence. She had to pull the parachute,” he adds. His latest video shows him leaping out of a plane and landing on his bed.

Chougle is also keeping himself busy with regular abdomen exercises and a stretching routine. “I do three sets of crunches, cycling, wind shields and planks. I use an app called Splits Training to improve my flexibility and get to full splits,” he says.

-Priyadarshini Paitandy

Sunil Chhetri

With football and all other sports coming to a standstill around the world, India and Bengaluru FC (BFC) star Sunil Chhetri is doing his best to keep himself occupied. He tried his hand at cooking, but it didn’t go as planned. The experiment ended with Chhetri being kicked out of the kitchen by his wife, after he somehow managed to get a small bowl stuck inside a bigger one. The normally supremely-fit footballer is not ashamed to admit that he has let himself go a little bit. “I’ve lost the plot at the moment — chole-puri, samosas, vegan pizzas are being demolished at an alarming rate,” Chhetri posted on Twitter a few weeks earlier, accompanied with a ‘gif’ of a man stuffing his face with food.

With cooking out of the picture, Chhetri is back to the more familiar routine of reading. At the moment, he is reading best-selling science book Cosmos, written by astronomer and Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Sagan. “I’m spending time reading, catching up on some fantastic shows on TV, and keeping myself fit. There are household chores that I’ve slowly become very good at. I’m also turning to games of Ludo online every day with a few of the lads on the team. I have to keep the competitive edge alive,” Chhetri says.

Chhetri does miss being on the football field, but he is aware that there are bigger issues to tackle. “What’s made this a little bearable is that we just got done with our season. But I will be honest, football is the last thing on my mind at the moment. It’s easy for us sitting at home to talk about what we miss doing. We’re fortunate. There are so many out there who are struggling to get meals and don’t have a roof over their head,” says the 35-year-old.

-Ashwin Achal

Issack Koshy

24-year-old Isaack Koshy misses his team mates. In this case, two beautiful horses named Unique and Ricardo. He’s been training with Ricardo for eight years and with Unique for six years. Koshy, a former national level equestrian and currently the chief trainer at the Madras School of Equitation, Guindy, is accustomed to the outdoors, starting his day at 4 am with horses. He rides Unique and Ricardo and then trains children in the fine art of equitation. Then by 9.15 he’s at his workplace — Chola Wealth where he is part of the Digital team.

But the recent lockdown has turned his schedule topsy turvy. He now wakes up at 8 am and by 8.30 starts his office work from home. “I miss training, teaching and interacting with students. That is my passion,” says Koshy. The junior and senior instructors whom he has trained reside within the premises of the riding school and they send Koshy videos of the horses. “I give them a weekly plan for the horses. This includes free schooling and lunging,” he explains. In order to make up for the break in training and keep abreast of what is the latest in the world of riding, he watches videos on Show Jumping Clinic, a website where top level riders upload content of what they do.

Earlier, evenings were spent going for long walks. But Koshy now prefers to remain indoors. “In the evenings I do a 100 each of pushups, squats and crunches. On some days, I also do Tabata workouts,” he says. He confesses he used to be meticulous about his diet, usually two boiled eggs for breakfast. Lunch would be rice, vegetable, dal and chicken; and chicken soup for dinner. “Now I eat whatever mom’s cooking,” he laughs.

-Priyadarshini Paitandy

Prajnesh Gunneswaran

Sports, in these unprecedented times, is inessential — despite millions of us missing it, longing for its return, hoping to watch our favourite stars in action once again. For some of the athletes — especially the accomplished stars — the lockdown is perhaps an unforeseen vacation. But for many, who are still building their career, this is temporary unemployment.

This is especially true in the case of tennis. It’s tough to earn points and money if you are ranked outside the top-50. The lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic for Prajnesh Gunneswaran, ranked 132nd (second-highest Indian in the ATP ladder), is understandably an undesirable situation. But he acknowledges that his struggle pales in comparison to millions of underprivileged people across the world. “Tennis, at this moment, isn’t that important. The main concern should be safety, putting food on the plate,” he says.

Being confined to his home isn’t new for Gunneswaran, a few prior injuries had done this to him. But there is a risk of getting stuck in a rut if the players are fit but aren’t playing. Gunneswaran acknowledges this challenge. “You have to keep your mind sharp and the body fit. So, I do some basic exercises everyday.”

A fan of Tamil movies, Gunneswaran is catching up on the ones he had missed. “Like most Tamilians, I like Rajinikanth. I recently watched Darbar. And, I watch a bunch of shows on Netflix. Money Heist is something that I am currently watching.”

-Praveen Sudevan

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terryblount · 4 years

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Ori and the Will of the Wisps PC Review

It is hard to believe five years have passed since Ori and the Blind Forest debuted on our screens. Developers Moon Studios crafted a momentous game that not only reinvigorated the metroidvania genre, but also reminded gamers how beautiful and intricate these titles can be. Now the long-awaited sequel is finally on our shelves, but how could any studio follow up on lightning in a bottle like this?

The answer is in Ori and the Will of the Wisps. I mentioned in my Rage 2 review that all good sequels have the ability to reach the full potential of their I.P’s. It is not just about more, bigger or prettier. Good sequels elevate themselves to those untouched areas of gameplay that their predecessors never reached, and this is precisely what Moon Studios achievedwith their second Ori game.

Enjoying the pleasures of home

If ever there was a write-up willing to criticise Ori and the Will of the Wisps (hereafter Ori 2), you will not find it here. Perhaps this will not be a review of Ori 2, but my best attempt to express what a masterpiece this sequel has turned out to be. Moon Studios maxed out every strength from their first game, and remind us once again why metroidvanias can be some of the most fulfilling experiences in our industry.

A picture is worth a thousand words

One of the highlights from Ori and the Blind Forest was Moon Studios’s incredible talent for using visual language. Like many other metroidvanias, the first Ori game could impart a lot to the player using only modest resources. There wasn’t much exposition, there were limited snippets of dialogue, and the game had a very conservative use of cut scenes.

Nonetheless, it was still an experience you could get lost in. The devs allowed their game itself to communicate with the player on a visual level, and this design philosophy spills over into almost everything in Ori 2. In short, Ori 2 is a game that shows rather than tells in that the visuals of Ori’s story are a fundamental bridge between both the narrative and the gameplay.

Take the eponymous (and very cute) Ori, for example. Even a noob taking a cursory glance at this little critter would immediately tell there is something agile, yet vulnerable about… it. Hold on a second, is Ori a boy or a girl? Only thing I know is that the name has a Hebrew origin meaning ‘my light’, so perhaps Ori is Jewish?

Name of the game (Image from Ori and the Blind forest Wiki)

Anyway, I digress. True to the sloping lines and gossamer-like luminance of the character model, Ori once again felt super smooth and an utter pleasure to control for the thirteen-ish hours I spent leaping and bounding throughout the various biomes. There is a weightless momentum in how Ori handles, which encourages the player to keep moving and to experiment with acrobatics.

It seems that virtually niggles and annoyances have been ironed out from the first game, and it is clear the devs wanted to push the boundaries of traversal in this series to the next level. Moreover, Ori’s revamped animations are equally slick in this sequel, both in the twirls or somersaults when leaping weightlessly through the levels, but also in the combat or ranged attacks against enemies.

A battle in spirit

Ori has been given quite a substantial upgrade in terms of how players will fight against the malicious bugs, slugs and even bosses scattered around the world. Combat is now closer to the metroidvanias that have followed in the interim from the first game’s release (for example, Hollow Knight) in that Ori can now swap on the fly between a spirit sword, ranged spirited projectiles, heavy weapons, and more.

The player will really have their reflexes tested on normal or hard difficulties since the combat is fast and frantic. I strongly recommend a first playthrough on ‘easy’, particularly since you cannot adjust the difficulty later. Nonetheless, this spirit bunny is every bit as agile and responsive during battle as he is with traversal, and there is a decent variety of ranged and melee attacks to make up your fighting strategy.

The spirit trees that give Ori his abilities

It is from the combat I noticed that Ori 2 now boasts a more varied menu and progression system. Moon Studious have swapped out the linear style of the previous game, and have implemented something closer to an RPG’s structure, which allows for abilites and weapons to unlock quicker, and thereby leaving the choice to the player on what to upgrade and define their own playing style.

The forest lives on

The reason why Ori possesses these abilities and, frankly, why he glows in the dark, is because he was one of several spirits inhabiting a mystical willow tree – the heart of the entire forest’s spiritual energy. The first game saw Ori being adopted by a creature called Naru after falling out of the willow tree during a great storm, and eventually setting out to rescue the forest dying from a malicious corruption.

With the forest now restored to its lavish glory, Ori 2 opens with a touching scene of the pair living a serene life, along with their new friends Guma and Ku. All is well until Ku, who is the cutest little owlet EVER, finally becomes overwhelmed by the desire to fly. Unfortunately, Ku’s tiny little wing got mangled, leaving the owlet grounded and very depressed as it watches the other birds go by.

First flight

Ori and co. therefore try to help Ku with a makeshift wing which seems to work quite well until, during its first flight, Ku is caught in an angry storm, not unlike the one that shook Ori from its tree. With Ori riding on Ku’s back, the duo crash land in a desolate area of the forest, and they become separated.

The stage is set for Ori to embark on a rescue mission, and as a surprise to no one, Ori finds that all is still not well in the deep, forgotten places of the forest. The mission to rescue Ku therefore becomes intertwined with restoring the forest’s life force to an abandoned and hostile world, and Ori soon finds that it is not only Ku’s life that hangs in the balance.

In certain segments there are chase sequences. You really feel Ori’s vulnerability here, and it is utterly terrifying.

Thanks to absolutely superb animation and expert use of potent imagery, the story in Ori 2 is nothing less than sublime. Without spoiling anything, I will just say that the narrative plays out as a riveting and engrossing mix of fairy tale tropes, which are interspersed with gut-wrenching climaxes of triumph and failure.

The hauntingly beautiful soundtrack is also a crucial component here. The melody is a beautiful reflection of the game itself in that the orchestral swells alongside dream-like notes are constantly tinged with an undertone of sadness and melancholia.

In all honesty, I was taken on a rollercoaster ride of emotions during my play-through, and it has been a long time since a game has had this effect on me. Seeing that poor baby owl frightened and alone in the dead forest wasteland brought me right to verge of tears, while I beamed like adoring parent during the more happy moments. This is really fantastic story-telling.

Breaking boundaries

Both the story and the gameplay is of course sustained by two immaculate pillars: The graphics and the level-design. You often hear about video games blurring the boundaries between art and entertainment, but Ori 2 utterly shatters this division. This game IS art. The visuals are so imaginative and aesthetically pleasing that it looks like you are playing through Bob Ross painting brought to life.

With Unreal dominating the source-available market at the moment, I am really glad Moon Studios showed us how Unity still has a lot more to offer

Running on the Unity engine, the devs have created a massive world rendered with more detailed textures, a much higher particle count, and a more complex lighting system than the first game. The forest feels alive and breathing with several different biomes for Ori to explore, and each area has been coloured with a very distinct palette to reinforce the player’s awareness of location.

I mentioned visual language earlier, and it is in environmental design that Moon Studios have really put this to work. The greens, browns and blues represent colours that guide Ori, that beckon the little critter to safety. The reds, yellows and purples on the other hand represent danger, and it is astounding to see how consistently the devs have endorsed this system throughout the entire game.

I simply could not get enough of this beautiful world. From races against the ghosts of other players, to doing small quests for animals that inhabit in the forest, to feeling that satisfaction of nimbly making it through heavily-spiked, narrow corridors, it is mesmerizing that all of this is functioning so well in one game. It is a model of excellence in environmental design.

Ori, the paragon

We often hear people complaining that ‘they don’t make games like they used to’ and I somewhat agree. I feel like modern studios tend to put money before their vision for making their game because of how alarmingly competitive the industry has become. As such, games rarely take risks, and the industry often faces something of an identity crisis.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps stands as a shining contradiction to this ethos. This game oozes creative energy, and was quite obviously made by people who really have a passion for this genre. It shows how we can use technology not just to enhance everything in a game, but also how complex systems can be made to function alongside one other.

It is so rare that we see excellence in our games these days, which is why Ori and the Will of the Wisps truly is a non-negotiable moment. This is not just a game: It is an education to what gaming as a medium can accomplish. You simply have to play this.

Breathtaking soundtrack

Gorgeous art style

Immaculate level design

Great story

Controls well

Good dev support

Some bugs

Long start up loading time

PC Specs: Windows 10 64-bit computer using Nvidia GTX 1070, i5 4690K CPU, 16GB RAM – Played using an Xbox One Contoller

The post Ori and the Will of the Wisps PC Review appeared first on DSOGaming.

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biofunmy · 5 years

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Drunken Scooter Riders in Denmark Face a Police Crackdown

Trendy electric scooters have been popping up on the streets of Europe for months, from Paris to Prague, allowing riders to zip along city streets with ease. But the police in Copenhagen have a clear message for potential users:

Don’t drink and scoot.

Over the weekend, 28 people were arrested in a crackdown on drunken scooter riders, Copenhagen’s police force announced on Twitter on Monday, as part of a larger push by Denmark’s traffic authority to keep intoxicated drivers off the road.

Of those arrested, 24 people were charged with drunken driving and another four were charged with operating scooters while under the influence of narcotics. They face fines of up to $600 for first- and second-time offenders, or potential jail time for more frequent violators.

The battery-powered electric scooters provided by private companies can be picked up and parked anywhere in Copenhagen by riders who rent them through mobile apps. Their popularity has grown quickly in the city since January, when the vehicles were introduced there.

At the time, Denmark’s traffic authority issued a set of rules for scooter use: A rider must be at least 15 years old, have a blood alcohol level below 0.5, and not ride on the sidewalk or in pedestrian zones.

This week, Copenhagen’s local government announced that 13 companies had applied for permission to bring a total of nearly 21,000 electric scooters and electric bicycles to the city in the coming months. The city government said that decisions would be made by the fall about how many companies and scooters would be allowed to operate on the city streets.

The city has long been known for embracing alternative modes of transportation. Many people see scooters as an eco-friendly way for commuters and tourists to get around, and they have proven popular in Denmark, a leader in the push to combat climate change. After debuting in Copenhagen, they have been brought into smaller towns around the country.

But the influx of the self-propelled scooters has left cities struggling to quickly introduce safety regulations, as accidents increasingly make their way into the headlines.

Last month, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, said in a news conference that the French capital would limit the number of electric scooters on the city’s streets, and the number of companies renting them.

Just days after her news conference, a 25-year-old man on an electric scooter was killed in northern Paris when he was hit by a truck. It was the first deadly collision involving a scooter since they appeared on the city’s crowded streets a year ago.

Standing behind a lectern emblazoned with the message “Scooters in Paris, do away with anarchy,” Ms. Hidalgo said the issue was a matter of safety, and introduced a series of new measures that took effect July 1.

“Every week is marked by a news item — a woman hit in a garden, an elderly person knocked down on a pedestrian crossing and dying,” Ms. Hidalgo said, according to the French news outlet Le Point. “My role as mayor is to defend these victims and avoid others.”

Famed Parisian streets like the Champs Élysées and Grands Boulevards have been overwhelmed with people riding scooters on their way to work and tourists tooling about.

Ms. Hidalgo said that by this fall, parking electric scooters on a sidewalk or other footpath would be illegal and that riders would be subject to a speed limit of 20 kilometers per hour, or about 12 miles per hour, throughout Paris among other measures.

David Chong, 48, a Parisian who recently bought his own scooter, said he would not be bothered by the new restrictions, though they will force him to change his habits. He currently takes his son to school on his scooter, but the city council plans to prohibit two people from riding on the same vehicle together.

“I’m fine with that,” said Mr. Chong, who considers his scooter a convenient way to move around the bustling city. “It has become a mess. I understand that new rules must be applied.”

Driven by a handful of Silicon Valley start-ups, electric scooters first gained popularity in the United States, becoming an alternative to bikes and public transportation in many cities.

New York State, where electric scooters have been prohibited, has been an exception. And although state lawmakers recently reached a deal to legalize them, under the new law, Manhattan will remain off-limits to rental companies like Bird and Lime.

While Copenhagen’s scooters have many fans, locals and tourists alike, others see them as an inconvenience or even a danger. Some have pushed the city and the scooter providers to do more with regard to safety concerns.

One Danish Twitter user noted that scooters discarded in the middle of a sidewalk made for difficult passage for blind people or those with reduced mobility.

Yael Bassan, who owns Copenhagen Bicycles, posts images and videos on Twitter that show her regularly removing electric scooters parked in front of her shop, which rents and sells bicycles in the city center. She called the scooters a “daily irritation” and said they were unfair competition for local businesses like hers.

Earlier this year, Line Holm Nielsen, a Danish journalist, wondered whether the electric scooters should be allowed on the streets of Copenhagen at all.

“They are lightning-fast, silent, without light, being used by children (sometimes two on one …) and generally by people without a helmet,” she tweeted. “Are they not a fatal accident waiting to happen?”

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easilymakermoney · 5 years

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Hey Alexa: How Do I Bake Voice Search Into My B2B Advertising and marketing Technique?

Are you able to think about if we truly talked to at least one one other the identical approach we’ve traditionally talked to search engines like google and yahoo? It could make for some awkward interactions.

“Minneapolis film showtimes.”

“Um… come once more?” “Showtimes Captain Marvel 55441.”

“Are you –”

“Film showtimes least expensive theater arcade video games. I’m feeling fortunate.”

“Sir, it is a Wendy’s.”

It’s solely becoming I suppose that our adherence to Google’s robotic algorithms has, in flip, made us extra robotic. Searchers turned skilled to talk within the engine’s keyword-driven language. Entrepreneurs crafted search engine marketing methods accordingly.

Immediately, the arrival of voice search is making our conversations with search engines like google and yahoo extra… conversational. It’s not incidental that we activate this characteristic on our smartphones or voice assistants by addressing “Alexa” or “Siri” — this dynamic could be very a lot supposed to humanize the units, which is a little bit creepy and dystopian if you concentrate on it, but it surely’s finest not to consider it.

In any occasion, this motion towards extra conversational search aligns with a normal concentrate on humanizing B2B manufacturers. So let’s check out how entrepreneurs can adapt and thrive within the age of voice search.

Voice Search and B2B Advertising and marketing Technique

In January, TopRank Advertising and marketing’s Affiliate Director of Search and Analytics Tiffani Allen outlined search engine marketing predictions and traits for 2019, and voice search was after all one of many pillars.

“In 2019 and past it will likely be more and more necessary for entrepreneurs to optimize and create content material that lends itself to voice search,” she wrote, stating that — in keeping with Gartner projections — 30% of internet looking periods will likely be performed with out a display by subsequent 12 months. “From a technical perspective, the standard suspects of web page velocity, web site safety, and area authority will play an necessary function right here. However on the finish of the day, it’s all about making certain your web site content material might be simply discovered by way of voice search.”

So, past these mainstay technical facets, how can we guarantee our content material is discoverable for the appropriate individuals?

Basically, the answer lies in finest reply content material. We not too long ago mentioned the methods through which a finest reply search engine marketing technique strains up with voice search, as a result of it compels us to know the mindsets of searchers and converse their language. That put up options a lot of prompt strategies for studying concerning the questions your clients are asking. When you’ve accomplished this groundwork, it’s all about creating content material that comprehensively solutions these queries.

Past this overarching guideline, right here a number of particular gadgets for B2B entrepreneurs to bear in mind when assessing their go-forward method to voice search.

Suppose Cellular

The vast majority of voice searches come from cellular units, growing the emphasis on what ought to already be a central consideration. Analysis reveals that some 50% of B2B queries come from smartphones, and Boston Consulting Group expects that determine to achieve 70% by 2020.

Responsive design and lightning-quick load instances would be the large difference-makers right here. When you haven’t currently, we suggest working with an company or your inner search engine marketing and analytics workforce to conduct a full cellular audit in your web site and another key digital actual property.

Suppose Native

A good portion of voice searches carry some stage of location-based intent. That is usually at odds with digitally oriented B2B manufacturers, which are usually much less reliant on attracting bodily clients and thus much less prone to prioritize native search. However if you wish to be seen (er — audible) in voice search outcomes, it’s price exploring methods you may put money into native content material.

Suppose Vocal

This brings us again to the “finest reply” crucial we talked about earlier. When conceiving and creating content material, achieve this with a literal question-and-answer format in thoughts, based mostly on the analysis you’ve performed to know your viewers’s high curiosities. And I imply actually answering the questions, not simply fulfilling the search question. Almost each piece of content material we generate ought to tie again to some specific query which may observe a “Hey Alexa…”

Google has been prioritizing semantic search ever because the Hummingbird replace, so it is a consideration that extends past voice.

B2B Entrepreneurs: Discover Your Voice

Regardless that one latest research means that the seemingly unstoppable momentum of voice search is slowing only a tad, there’s no query that it has change into a large think about buyer journeys and can stay one going ahead.

The excellent news is that optimizing your B2B content material technique for voice search doesn’t must be a separate and distinct focus. Many of the practices which are conducive to voice search traction are simply plain usually advisable for B2B manufacturers:

Reply your viewers’s most burning questions in conversational phrases. Summarize the core substance of your content material early on for traction in featured snippets. Ship a seamless cellular expertise at each step. Faucet into the hidden B2B alternative that’s native search.

The underside line is that B2B corporations must be much less robotic, and extra human. The rise of voice search is solely one other development feeding the urgency.

For a deeper dive into the mixture of finest reply content material and search, learn: How B2B Entrepreneurs Win at Search with Finest Reply Content material.

from Easily Maker Money https://easilymakermoney.com/2019/04/01/hey-alexa-how-do-i-bake-voice-search-into-my-b2b-advertising-and-marketing-technique/

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ironpandatheorist-blog · 6 years

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Save Your Battery And Sanity By Modifying Your Android Notifications

Holds most 9.7-inch tablets, together with the iPad 2, three, and 4. Amazon also sells a Child-Proof Case ( $29 ) for its 2017 HD eight Hearth pill ( $129 ) For those who purchased your Fire tablet earlier than May 2017, you'll most likely need a case for sixth (2016) or fifth (2015) technology Fireplace. If you happen to decided to purchase the $50 Fire 7 pill as an alternative of the Kids Version mannequin, you can nonetheless get a case made only for your new slate. This is an inventory of the finest and cutest child pleasant cases on the market that can defend your tech. The youthful your youngsters are, the greater the odds they may by chance break them, especially if their smaller arms have a case of the butter-fingers, and will drop their new toy. In case you're giving your child the present of a tablet this holiday season, you may want to assume twice earlier than handing it over and not using a case. Whole Safety Nice build high quality and worth for money. I like my new phone case! It took awhile to get this case...but it's price the wait...it is a MONSTER!...easy to assemble...perfect match...awesome FASHION...heaviest case of them all...don't assume you might destroy it if you happen to tried...I like it!!!...Anthony in NYC. Like the case however makes phone to heavy like carrying a brick. Weight the cowl (approximately as the phone itself) however appears cool of course.

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newstfionline · 6 years

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A few months after Harvey, Houston’s long recovery quietly heads inside

By Scott Wilson, Washington Post, November 11, 2017

When Hurricane Harvey hit and hovered for days above this city, a half-dozen school district employees manning pumps stayed at Kolter Elementary School in the flood-prone Meyerland neighborhood. Eventually, they had to be rescued from the roof.

The flooded school is now full with construction crews, its students miles away in a cramped campus to which they arrive on charter buses, the deluxe kind fitted out with video screens. “To them, it’s like they’re going to the Grammys everyday,” said Julianne Dickinson, the school’s principal.

For Dickinson, the novelty of displacement has worn off. Like many here, she feels fortunate that her ruined school has a new home, even if the campus is holding 200 more students than it was ever meant to. Improvisation has become an art, as it has for many in the country’s fourth-largest city.

The school halls bear the familiar crayon-and-construction-paper decor of student drawings. Kids in costume lined up one recent morning for the Parade of Book Characters, a literary twist on Halloween unique to Kolter Elementary.

But it is not the same place. Two special-needs classes have been taken in by an undamaged school with more room. Palettes of donated copier paper and print cartridges line the already tight hallways. The small cafeteria holds only one class at a time, so lunch hour runs all day. The entire staff shares an office, and at home, Dickinson has taken in a fourth-grade teacher whose house was destroyed in the flood.

“We’re only eight kids short of what we anticipated,” Dickinson said, noting that, despite it all, just a few families moved out of the district after the flood. “It’s pretty wonderful, and it says something about us and all these people wanting to stick it out.”

Nearly three months after the historic storm, a very public disaster has become a largely private one.

To the eye, the city has returned to a semblance of normal. Schools are open. The power is on. The International Quilt Festival packed in visitors on a recent weekend in the downtown convention center where thousands sought shelter during Harvey.

Much of this has happened ahead of schedule. The federal government has paid out about $1.4 billion in emergency housing and other assistance to people in Houston and the other counties designated disaster areas, money to fund the immediate repairs needed to make homes livable as quickly as possible.

But the challenges, which will take years to solve and will redraw this city’s geography in doing so, have moved inside homes and classrooms and government offices.

Debris piles have mostly disappeared. They have been replaced by contractor trucks parked in the driveways of thousands of Houston homes, the pounding of hammers and buzzing of saws coming from inside.

More than 9,000 city residents are adjusting to life in hotel rooms. The steady soundtrack of radio ads offering cash for damaged homes is evidence of the private money that is turning once-stable, now gutted neighborhoods into a speculator’s paradise.

In addition to the emergency housing aid, the federal government, strained by competing disasters in South Florida and Puerto Rico, has paid out more than $4.2 billion in flood insurance claims associated with Harvey. But some, particularly those who have the least, complain about weeks-long delays and backed-up bills.

The government’s bills lie ahead. Houston schools opened within a month of the storm, a recovery that far exceeded expectations after more than 200 of the district’s 287 campuses were damaged. But the repair costs will be exorbitant, probably exceeding $200 million, including the likely need to rebuild at least four schools from the ground up.

The weakened state of the city is working against the district’s ability to raise the money. Houston public schools are funded by property tax revenue, and those are projected to plummet in the years ahead because of the extensive storm damage.

“I’m very, very pleased with the speed of the recovery and how the city is bouncing back,” Mayor Sylvester Turner (D) said in a recent interview. “That is not to say that there are not tremendous needs. There are tremendous needs, so let me be clear about that. But I don’t think any other city could have responded more quickly than this city has.”

Harvey dumped more than four feet of rain on Houston over a few days in late August, and even as boat rescues continued in residential neighborhoods, Turner began to look ahead to recovery. His early priority, after ensuring public safety following a storm that killed scores and left tens of thousands homeless, was to make the city feel as normal as possible.

He turned to baseball. His office helped coordinate an appeal to the New York Mets, who agreed to keep their doubleheader date with the now-world champion Astros in downtown Minute Maid Park before the storm had even cleared the city. The Astros won both games, including a win against Mets starting pitcher Matt Harvey.

He called Janet Jackson.

The singer had a concert planned for the Toyota Center the following weekend, and she considered canceling, given the state of the city. Turner talked her out of it, and she visited the nearby George R. Brown Convention Center beforehand to spend time with the more than 1,000 Houstonians sheltered there. All emergency shelters have closed. Many have returned to patched-up homes or moved in with families. More than 50,000 others statewide are living in hotel rooms.

Now Turner is looking at the long-term costs of the storm and the way the aftermath will determine how and where Houston, which has flooded each of the past three years, is rebuilt.

Local officials have identified 65 neighborhoods, comprising roughly 3,300 homes, that have flooded repeatedly. Turner said the city and county governments will look to buy out hundreds of homeowners--on a voluntary basis--before they rebuild in those high-risk areas that lie at least two feet below the flood plain.

Future development will also come under closer scrutiny. Earlier this month, Turner used his prerogative to pull consideration of a new housing development off the city council’s agenda to allow for more study.

Reservoirs will have to be built to protect the city’s vulnerable west side. The poor and the elderly, who suffered severely in a storm that generally did not discriminate by class, will need long-term assistance to regain purchase on disrupted lives.

“We are living in the post-Harvey world, and so we just have to be mindful of the impact of what we do,” Turner said. “But we are still the same city. We are still developing.”

Congress approved $15 billion for Harvey assistance, and the state of Texas has given another $50 million to Houston so far. Turner believes the recovery cost for the region may run as high as $180 billion, and his city and the counties around it need money quickly.

He has lobbied the state for additional funding. So far Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has declined requests to open the rainy-day fund for emergency relief, saying Houston has enough money so far. Abbott has said he would reconsider his position as the recovery progresses, and Turner believes he will eventually send more money when the costs become clearer.

“It’s like we we’re just waiting on the dollars to come down from D.C. so we can get into these homes and put them in better shape,” Turner said. “It’s like a wheel. We are moving, and we’re moving at lightning speed. We simply want the others to do the same.”

In the Gulf Meadows neighborhood southeast of Houston’s downtown, Drucilla Bolden is one of those waiting.

She is 64 years old, a retired schoolteacher, and her sister and housemate, Vera, is 70. The two were among 200 women evacuated by fishing boat from the suburb of small, single-story houses as Harvey poured down. Her home for the past 25 years suffered severe water damage, and on a recent day, a contractor sawed through moldy drywall in the effort make it livable again.

Bolden does not have any money to pay him. She received a $40,000 advance against her federal flood insurance claim from the government, but the money only paid for supplies and a bit of labor.

The contractor has been working on credit for weeks. During Bolden’s frequent trips to Lowe’s, she hears from many others in her neighborhood lingering in the same financial limbo.

The sisters have been staying with another sister not far away. But Bolden said she feels like a burden with no money to contribute for the emergency hospitality.

“Vera always tells me to ‘pack my patience,’” Bolden said. “My patience is done.”

In the city’s low southwest side sits Meyerland, a comfortable upper-middle-class neighborhood whose design ethic has been shaped by successive floods.

There, Jim Dubbert has made the decision to leave, only he cannot. His original midcentury modern home, built in 1961, is a complete loss. It flooded two years ago with 18 inches of water; Harvey filled it with 44 inches.

He and his wife, Mary-Dodd, would have moved the last time if he could have sold the house for enough to pay off the mortgage. Instead, he began making the renovations himself, unable to hire a contractor for the work, because the home itself does not meet city code.

The back of the house is all glass, making it impossible to raise. A semiretired consultant, Dubbert worked on the renovations against the clock, knowing another flood was inevitable, but he was unable to finish in time to sell before it came.

He has begun again, the TV news on in the background, his dog Auggie nearby. Out back is an RV, which he and Mary-Dodd call “Harvey,” lent to them by friends so they do not have to sleep inside the musty house.

“If you don’t have friends, you have no chance at a time like this, no way to do it by yourself,” said Dubbert, who is 72. “But if we flood again, sorry, the bulldozer starts on that end of the house and pushes all the way to that end.”

#Hurricane Harvey #Houston rebuilding

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