#wonder if hawk thought of leonard here…

[glimtwins]

activist tim kiss me on the mouth now

#I LOVE WHAT HE HAS TURNED INTO #wonder if hawk thought of leonard here… #fellow travelers #shut up alex

[absinthe-of-midnight]

Soo… the Nighthawk star…

Nighthawk was truly an ugly bird. His face was covered in splotches as if he had been splattered with miso, and his beak was flat and split all the way back to his ears. His legs were so frail that he could not walk at all. He was such a sight that just seeing him made other birds uncomfortable.

So one might wonder why he was named so, and the reason is because his wings were inordinately strong, and so he resembled a hawk when he soared upon the wind. He also had a powerful cry that was not unlike that of a hawk. Hawk, of course, was very conscious of this, and hated it. Every time he saw Nighthawk he would tell him, “Change your name! Change your name!”

Mr. Hawk, I can’t change my name! I didn’t take this name myself, God gave it to me.”

“No, I’m the one who got his name from God. In a sense, you’re just borrowing my name. And Night’s. Now give them back.”

“I can’t do that, Mr. Hawk!”

“Of course you can. I’ll give you a good name to take its place. How about Leonard? Yeah, Leonard. I like that. So to officially change your name you have to make it public, right? To do that you need to hang a sign that says ‘Leonard’ around your neck, and go around to everyone’s home, bowing and saying ‘From this day on, I am to be known as Leonard.’’

The nighthawk stood there with his eyes closed in thought. Why do they hate me so? Because my face looks like it’s been splattered with miso, and because my beak is odd? Even so, I haven’t done anything wrong! I remember that day when I helped the Whiteeye chick back to its nest after it fell out. Its mother snatched it from me as if rescuing her baby from a thief.

And then she just laughed so hard at me. And now I have to change my name to Leonard? Hang a sign about my neck? Oh, how terrible…

Nighthawk suddenly opened his mouth wide, held his wings out straight, and cut across the sky like an arrow. He trapped countless small insects in his mouth. Almost as soon as he touched ground he lit off again. The clouds had turned gray, and the setting sun colored the faraway mountaintops with crimson fire. Nighthawk flew so forcefully that he seemed to slice the sky into two. A beetle flew into his mouth and squirmed about. The nighthawk swallowed it down, but for some reason doing so sent a chill down his back.

Feeling an ache in his chest, Nighthawk again took off into the sky. Again a beetle flew into his mouth, and there it squirmed, scratching his throat. After great effort Nighthawk managed to swallow the beetle, but doing so caused his heart to leap, and he cried out in a loud voice. Crying, he flew around and around, making circles in the sky.

Oh, I kill so many beetles and insects every night. And now I’m to be killed by the hawk. So this is what it feels like. Oh, I can’t stand this. I’ll stop eating insects, and starve to death. No, Hawk will kill me before that happens. No, before that happens I’ll fly far, far away.

Nighthawk flew straight to the home of his brother, Kingfisher. When he got there Kingfisher had just awoken, and was looking at the burning mountains. Seeing Nighthawk land, he spoke: “Well hello, brother. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Nothing. I just came to say goodbye. I’m leaving for a place far, far away.”

“Brother! You can’t leave! With Sister Hummingbird so far away now, I’ll be left all alone!”

“I’m sorry, it can’t be helped. Please, speak no further on this today. And please, try not to kill any more fish than is absolutely necessary. Good bye, now.”

“Brother, what’s wrong with you? Please, stay a little longer.”

(“You’ll be so much happier if you stay here.”)

“No, staying any longer won’t change things. Please give my regards to Hummingbird. Goodbye. I’m afraid we’ll never meet again. Goodbye.”

“Mr. Sun, Mr. Sun! Please bring me to you! I don’t care that I’ll burn and die. Even an ugly body like mine will shine as it burns! Please, take me!”

But no matter how far he flew, he didn’t get any closer to the sun. The sun seemed to get smaller and farther, even, and said “Nighthawk, isn’t it? Yes, yes, I know your pain. But you should try talking to the stars. You’re not a day bird, you know.”

Then he flew off again. He headed west, straight towards the beautiful constellation of Orion, shouting “Oh, star! Blue-white star of the West! Please take me to you! I don’t care that I will be burned to death!” But Orion just continued singing his heroic song, and didn’t pay Nighthawk the least bit of attention.

The Nighthawk almost began to cry, and spiraled back to the ground. He finally landed and took off again, circling once. Then he flew straight towards Canis Major in the south, shouting, “Oh, Star! Blue star of the South! Please take me to you! I don’t care that I will be burned to death!”

The Great Dog blinked blue and purple and yellow and said, “Silence with such foolishness. Who do you think you are? You’re just a bird. It would take you millions, billions, trillions of years to fly this far with those wings of yours!” and with that, he turned away.

(“If you can’t kill anyone, you can't save anyone!”)

Nighthawk spiraled back to the Earth. He then flew back up and circled twice. This time he flew north towards Ursa Major, shouting “Blue star of the North! Please take me to you!”

The Great Bear answered, “Don’t waste your time with such silliness. You should go cool your head. Jumping into an iceberg-filled ocean might help, or if there is no ocean near you, try diving into a cup filled with ice water.”

(“That so? Well, let me tell you something, newbie. This scorching planet, Noman’s Land, is cruel beyond belief. It’s a dog-eat-dog world.”)

Nighthawk spiraled back to the Earth, and then flew back up and circled four times. He then flew east again, towards the eagle Aquila on the far bank of the just-risen the Milky Way, shouting, “White star of the East! Please take me to you! I don’t care that I will be burned to death!”

The Eagle proudly stated, “No, no, that will never happen. You need a certain level of birth to become a star. That and a lot of money.”

(“Graduated from November University, huh? Pretty elite.”)

Nighthawk lost all hope, and closing his wings began to fall to the ground. When his weak legs were just a yard from the ground he suddenly twisted back up into the heavens like a whirlwind. Upon reaching the high heavens he spun around like an eagle attacking a bear and stood his feathers on end. He let out a high, high screech. His voice was like a hawk’s. The other birds asleep in the fields and the forest all woke up and, shaking, looked curiously up into the starry sky.

Nighthawk continued on higher and higher, straight up into the sky. The sun on the mountains looked like the glowing end of a cigarette. Nighthawk climbed and climbed. The cold froze his breath upon his breast. The air became thinner, causing him to beat his wings faster and faster.

Nonetheless, the stars grew no larger. His chest pumped like a bellows. The cold and frost pierced him like a sword. His wings grew numb. He opened tear-filled eyes and once again looked up at the heavens. And yes, that was the end of him. He no longer knew if he was falling or climbing, upside down or right side up, or if he was still looking up. But peace filled his heart, and though his bloody beak was slightly bent to one side, there was a slight smile on it.

After a time Nighthawk opened his eyes wide. He saw that his body had become a beautiful light, blue like a phosphorous flame, burning silently. Just next to him was Cassiopeia.

And Nighthawk’s Star burned on. It burned on and forever on. It continues to burn, even now.

Rem is both god and Cassiopeia, Cassiopeia in the myth is the mother of Andromeda, Knives is both the hawk(I will remake you) and the kingfisher(don't go). The stars appear to scold the nighthawk harshly, huh? That doesn't seem to fit right but the nighthawk said he could never want to change his name because god gave it to him and it means so much to him, yet, here he was, trying to be something he wasn't.

(Ah. I see. This is a story where the dog, the bear and the eagle tell the nighthawk that his ideals aren't wrong and they accept him as he is in their own way, isn't it?)

#*grabs knives by the shoulders* YOU WANTED HIM TO BE LEONARD??? HUH KNIVES IS THAT IT LEONARD!?!! #I'm trying to use humor so I don't turn into a sad puddle sorry folks #vash the stampede #trigun #trigun stampede #Edit: woops forgot to mention but the nighthawk star story is referenced in ep 12's ending song!

[emptyshellofanillusionwizard]

9 Ship Songs

Helloooo I was tagged by @lordgortash to make a small playlist for a ship of mine!

Thank youuu!

tagging: @nacrelysis @brother-genitivi and anyone who would like to my brain is soup I can't think man

Bacchus Hawke X Fenris

I'm Your Man by Leonard Cohen

If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask me to And if you want another kind of love I'll wear a mask for you If you want a partner Take my hand Or if you want to strike me down in anger Here I stand I'm your man

I'm Not Calling You a Liar by Florence + The Machine

I'm not calling you a liar Just don't lie to me I'm not calling you a thief Just don't steal from me I'm not calling you a ghost Just stop haunting me And I love you so much I'm gonna let you Kill me

Shutup You're Stupid by That Handsome Devil

Shutup you're stupid Just kiss me Shutup you're stupid Just hold my freakin' hand (Hold my freakin' hand) Shutup you're stupid Just kiss me Shutup you're stupid Just be my freakin' man

NOT ENTIRELY ALONE by The Narcissist Cookbook

Now, I don't know you Gift-From-God but I don't need to know you to know that I trust you And I think that we would do well to stick together Because, ya know, down here, the winters kill one-in-ten And the summers wipe out most of the rest And bands of angels stalk the ridges at high noon looking for the sick and dying to separate from the herd and digest And I can distract the vultures while you sneak in behind them and raid their nests And we can keep watch while the others sleep and take turns schlepping at the sins that we've yet to confess

I Wanna Be Your Dog 2 by AJJ

And I wanna be the plate that you eat off of I want your fork to scrape the surface of myself I wanna be that fork as well I wanna be the thing you think it's all about How I long to be your dog

Work Song by Hozier

Boys, when my baby found me I was three days on a drunken sin I woke with her walls around me Nothin' in her room but an empty crib And I was burnin' up a fever I didn't care much how long I lived But I swear I thought I dreamed her She never asked me once about the wrong I did

That Unwanted Animal by The Amazing Devil

And we fall into each other, the scratching grows so loud Because that unwanted animal wants nothing more than to get out And I scream, "What's the time, Mr. Wolf?" But you, you're blind, you bleat, you bear your claws Oh, and you rip my rib cage open and devour what's truly yours And our screaming joins in unison, I cry out to the Lord 'Cause if we join our hands in prayer enough To God, I imagine it all starts to sound like applause

Against the Kitchen Floor by Will Wood

I swear, I'm really trying I'm just as exposed if I take off my clothes When we make the closest thing to love that I'm capable of And I don't know why you would care But I'm really trying Oh, I'm sorry, I promise, I'm doing my best I just haven't learned how to be human as you are yet

Riches and Wonders by The Mountain Goats

We are filled with riches and wonders Our love keeps the things it finds And we dance like drunken sailors Lost at sea, out of our minds You felt shelter somewhere in me I find great comfort in you And I keep you safe from harm You hold me in your arms

#Yooo that took me waaay longer than expected #also yeas they have sooo many problems #very messy #messy bitches but i love them and they improve SIGNIFICANTLY #dragon age #hawke x fenris #fenhawke #bacchus hawke #fenris

[undiscovered-horizon]

CREDO: Chapter 4 - 'Of prisons and pirates'

Summary: Matt thought that the war between The Hand and The Chaste was the little big secret shaping his reality. Turns out, there is a much greater and older conflict hiding in plain sight - one in which he is thrown against his will. Against every fiber of his morality, Matt has to befriend the exact type of person he hates the most: an assassin. [Marvel's Daredevil x Assassin's Creed]

Author's note: This hasn't been updated in literal ages. Sorry for that

[ 'CREDO' MASTERLIST ]

[Introduction]

[Chapter 1 - 'Rest without peace, Leonard Dyson']

[Chapter 2 - 'A thing or two about Kenways and Fryes']

[Chapter 3 - 'Close encounters of the rooftop kind']

Karen and Foggy were going mad trying to dissuade Matt from visiting the prisoner.

"You don't know what he's capable of!" Foggy said. Although his statement was quite vague, it carried more meaning than one might have thought: Cole Fitzgerald-Frye was arrested only recently for a murder that had happened over a decade ago. What no one seemed to question, quite curiously, were the unclear and largely unknown circumstances under which the said arrest and imprisonment had happened. After all, who was to say that he didn't let himself get arrested?

The way Matt became so engaged in a case that had, seemingly, nothing to do with him, was infuriating to Karen and Franklin. Not only did the law firm not do well in terms of business but Matt decided to conduct a murder investigation, on his own, without any prospect of payment but wasting away the valuable time he could use for actual clients. In the best-case scenario, he will uncover the truth and live out his retirement on government riches. The thing was that Matt wasn't the luckiest man on Earth, quite far from that truthfully and the possibility of somebody trying to kill him was, currently, double the regular amount, which was already high.

From the moment Matt opened the door, Cole stared at him with a watchful gaze worthy of a hawk. Those old, grey eyes followed the young lawyer and each of his movements, taking in the smallest of details. Even though he was well into his fifties, Cole Fitzgerald-Frye never lost the sharpness of his senses or mind. Matt could only assume the man he was about to talk to was anything but stupid, considering how he managed to avoid a prison sentence for over a decade. Murdock couldn't know that, as it was a purely visual piece of information but Cole's skin was completely clean aside from scars that were clearly fairly old: whatever menaces of violence and hierarchy resided inside prison walls, they couldn't get their grasp on that middle-aged man.

"You got ten minutes," the guard warned Matt before closing the door.

"Good morning Mr.Frye, my name is Matt Murdock, I'm a lawyer. I'm here to speak to you about your daughter, Taliya?" Matt was sitting across from Cole, with hands on the table, fingers intertwined. For some reason, the prison wasn't handcuffed despite no divider of any kind keeping him away from the visitor.

"Is she in trouble, Mr.Murdock?" Cole spoke fast and in a higher tone. When it came to his only daughter, Mr.Frye was gravely serious, not to mention horribly worried. Or could it, possibly, be just a facade? A performance worthy of an Oscar? Matt wondered for a moment how a man speaking with a Northern English accent ended up tried and imprisoned in the USA but those were thoughts he could entertain later in the day and so he let them drift away to the back of his mind.

"I'm afraid she might be, that is why I came to see you. You are her father, after all, Mr.Frye, and your word might hold up in court. Does the name Leonard Dyson mean anything to you?"

"Dyson as in Dyson&Dyson, the motorboat company?" he asked. Cole's eyebrows furrowed and their single grey hairs became more prominent in the white light of the room.

"Yes, Leonard Dyson was the CEO of Dyson&Dyson. He had unfortunately passed away recently and some circumstantial evidence points in the direction of miss Frye." Matt's lie rolled off his tongue swiftly as if he had rehearsed it in front of a mirror. The prisoner knew that.

Cole rested his back against the chair and stared at the ceiling, thinking intensely about something. His breathing was calm, never suggesting that the confrontation was anxiety-inducing or that some form of anger begged him to take advantage of the disabled lawyer left to his mercy. The thought that Cole Fitzgerald-Frye was a completely sane man and a bloodthirsty maniac seemed, somehow, a lot more frightening; it was an occasion, a certain fall of dominos, that made a murderer and not a birth defect that the majority of the world gloated in not having. After all, how could people ever feed their egos if it turned out that everyone is a potential killer? How else would they draw the line between themselves and the worse sort?

"No, I don't believe she has ever said anything about a Leonard Dyson," he answered while gently shooking his head. "She doesn't even like boats," Cole added with a chuckle. Matt returned a polite smile.

"What about the 'Green Dragon of the West'? Has Taliya ever expressed any interest in the occult or East Asian traditions or superstitions?"

"Well, she used to do tai chi with her mother and watched those Chinese cartoons every morning before school, if that counts? Taliya is the kind of girl that questions everything. No charlatan can win her heart."

If anyone who actually knows Taliya listened to their conversation, they would assume right away that the woman Cole was talking about was somebody else entirely. Mr.Frye was the king of spinning a yarn, something Matt was going to learn a little too late.

"Now, Mr.Frye, could you tell me about the murders from May 2005?"

A silence fell between the two men. To Matt's surprise, he couldn't discern any significant changes in the prisoner's breathing or heartbeat - he was as steady as they come. Perhaps that's what had allowed him to remain at large for over ten years.

"I thought this was about Taliya, Mr. Murdock." A slight change in Cole's voice betrayed his growing suspicion.

"It is, Mr.Frye. If a district attorney opens a trial against miss Frye, they could use your case against your daughter, to prove that she was capable of committing murder but we could use it in our favour to get the jury on our side."

Cole furrowed his eyebrows, leaned forward and put his hands on the table, fingers intertwined. He stared at Matt's face for a while, studying. Truth be told, they were committing the very same activity only through different devices: both relied on their exceptional senses to catch the suppressed emotions of the other person.

"My father was a wise man, Mr.Murdock. He used to say 'give life and hope to those who deserve it but forgiveness and death to those who don't'. I didn't do it out of hate but out of love - love for freedom and hope, a better and safer world for generations to come. The only difference between me and a soldier is a green tracksuit and bad coping mechanisms." This was, probably, the only honest thing Cole had said throughout the meeting.

"Would you say, mister Frye, that Taliya agreed with you? Do you think that she could be capable of killing someone?"

"I told you, mister Murdock, she's a smart kid. She would never agree with either of us. I'm too brutal and you're too rigid." Cole laughed in a hoarse voice. "You see, Matt- Can I call you Matt? Well, I already did, too late. So, Matt," Cole stressed the fraternization and stared at the lawyer's face for a moment to see his reaction. Matthew remained unmoved. "A great man once said that we're all capable of murder. All it takes are the right conditions. The mentality, the emotions, the motive, the occasion...The question is, how strong does the push have to be? Is there a formula to estimate that? Answering your question - yes, I do believe my little Taliya would be capable of killing someone. We all are. The question you should be asking yourself, Matt, is whether she was pushed strong enough to actually do it."

As Matt was leaving the room, a guardsman entered, ready to escort Cole back to his cell. The prisoner, however, was not entirely done attending to his business.

"Officer, can I make a phone call?" He asked. The guard stared into him emotionlessly for a moment before answering.

"You have three minutes, Frye." The man was reluctant about letting the prisoner use the phone as it meant he had to stay on his toes for a little longer. His coworkers back in the break room were probably playing another round of whatever card game was assigned for Thursdays. The guardsman cared only about the Tuesday games - darts. He had a great aim.

"That's plenty, thank you." Cole Frye always made sure to be polite but assertive towards the prison guards, perfectly balancing respect and brown-nosing.

Dialing that number was easy for Cole as it was the only phone number he actually cared about. It was nine digits he could recite back and forth even if woken up in the middle of the night. He didn't have to look at the buttons while dialing it.

"Father?" Taliya seemed confused or surprised that he was calling her. The word 'dad' was off-limits in the Frye family.

"Hey little bird," he greeted her while smiling unwillingly. The Brotherhood had a strong connection with eagles, so Cole thought it was only natural to call his daughter 'little bird'. "You have a tail. Called himself Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer. Came today to ask about you."

"What did you tell him?"

"That you don't like boats and watched cartoons before going to school."

Taliya chuckled at her father's words, mainly because of how ridiculous they were. Somewhere between her laughs, she did wonder, but only for a second, what it would be like to live a life in which watching morning cartoons is an established part of a daily routine.

"Really, whoever that lawyer is, he's smarter than most in this city and he knows about the Dragon. Watch out for him."

"Thank you, I-... I'll come around on Sunday, okay?"

Dowsy never wore suits and generally refused to do so - climbing buildings was fairly difficult in elegant shirts and dress shoes. He was, however, reasonable enough to put one as he paid a visit to the Nelson and Murdock lawyering firm. If Dowsy was supposed to pose as a potential client, he had to look the part.

Out of the two of them, it was he who did well in social situations. Taliya simply hated small talk and felt her skin crawl listening to the typical lying high-brow crowd trying to make themselves look better than they really were. While he met with people and negotiated beneficial relationships, she would be busy trespassing and free climbing, appearing as nothing more but a memory of a shadow long gone.

With unmistakable confidence in his step, Dowsy entered the small room that served as the waiting room for the lawyers' clients. He made sure to be their first client of the day to not let any unscheduled interruptions make him late for the evening's gig - Taliya and he were to crash one of Butterneck Jim's shipments.

"David Morgan Kenway, a pleasure to meet you." He shook Matt and Foggy's hands. It was quite remarkable how stereotypical his grip was: certain but short. Dowsy really sold his 5-minute persona of a successful businessman.

"Kenway?" Foggy asked. His face lit up significantly. "Like the pirate, Edward Kenway?" Foggy was visibly excited. Karen smiled to herself remembering how she overheard him singing sea shanties. Of course, he would know a drunk sailor from three hundred years ago.

"Same one," he answered. Considering his dark, wavy hair put in a bun, thick beard and a light scar across his lips, Dowsy could definitely pass as a pirate's descendant. Matt noticed that the stranger smelled like a home-improvement store.

"How can we help you, Mr.Kenway?" Matt asked. As far as Dowsy could tell, the man wasn't suspicious of him at all.

"I wanted to get some legal advice, actually. One of our investors is threatening to sue the board of directors for embezzlement and I wanted to know what options we have."

"We're happy to help, Mr.Kenway," Matt answered while silently gesturing towards an empty room with a long table.

Taliya was never going to give him credit for that but Dowsy truly deserved it - he was impressively prepared. The amount of well-forged documents he brought with him could probably fool even a good portion of the FBI or CIA. In the little time he was given, that is barely a day and a night, he created a foolproof con of a company. Some part of him wanted to laugh as Nelson and Murdock went through the various insurance statements, invoices, NDAs and contracts, all the while never even thinking there was something quite dishonest about them. Although only on the inside so as to not spoil his alter ego, Dowsy was simply gloating.

As expected, he was given some legal advice and the suggestion to keep in touch with the lawyers in case something new happens regarding the alleged embezzlement. Dowsy left the office without ever raising any suspicion and his name would have slipped their minds entirely if it wasn't for the nosiness so intrinsic to the persona of Karen Page:

"Hey, Matt," Karen accosted him while gently knocking on the doorframe to announce herself.

"Something happened?" Matt momentarily stopped reading the document he was going through, his hands stuck on a sentence about insurance policies.

"It's about what didn't happen," she said and closed the door to the office behind herself. Karen continued in a quieter voice as if unconsciously afraid of being eavesdropped on. "I had this feeling that something was off with Mr.Kenway, especially the company name he gave us, so I did some digging and it's not looking good."

"What do you mean?" he asked in a worried tone. Feeling anxiety flowering inside him, Matt set the document aside, giving the woman his undivided attention. "What did you find, Karen?" he repeated the question before she even had a chance to answer the first time.

"Pelastra Industries is a company from some 80s sitcom and the only mention of a David Morgan Kenway is a birth certificate issued in Wales... This has something to do with that woman you asked about, right? Taliya Frye?" Although he didn't answer, his expression was enough to serve as proof for her. A heavy sigh left her lungs before she continued. "Shit, what did you get yourself into, Matt?"

In the long pause when he couldn't give Karen a definite answer, heavy rain started hitting the dirty windows of the rented office. Maybe it was just the storm clouds or the world did become a lot grimmer in those few minutes.

"I'm not sure either."

#daredevil #fanfiction #imagine #fanfic #scenario #marvel #marvel fanfiction #marvel imagine #marvel fanfic #marvel scenario #assassins creed oc #assassins creed #assassin's creed oc #assassin's creed crossover #assassin's creed #assassin's creed fanfiction #assassin's creed imagine #daredevil fanfic #daredevil x oc #daredevil fanfiction #matt murdock fanfic #daredevil imagine #matt murdock x oc #matt murdock fanfiction #matt murdock imagine #marvel crossover

[samnyangie]

Perhaps everyone already know it but me(or even I might had seen it before;;), but I’ve found a rsl interview on the dead poets society (https://rsl-daily.livejournal.com/140836.html), he talked about the behind the scenes in great detail and I thought it’d be an interesting read to those who are just fan of the film.

To those who haven’t read this before… enjoy!

____________________________________________________________

unknown: from script to screen

The Collaborative Art of Filmmaking

by Linda Seger and Edward Jay Whetmore

From Script to Screen

unknown

Robert Sean Leonard on Dead Poets' Society

All seven of us boys arrived a week before shooting. We were told that the week was reserved for haircuts and learning how to play soccer. It turned out to, be a week of getting to know each other. The first morning we went through the script as it was, and the following mornings were basically improvisations.

Once Peter Weir directed us to get up one by one and give a speech in character. He would do silly things, like he would pretend he was a teacher putting together a Christmas pageant and we were all supposed to be in it. Some of us formed a human sleigh and the rest of us had to be reindeer. Maybe it was silly but it got us in touch with our characters and the feeling of the script. And it also helped us get to know each other.

The Cave Scene

Right away Peter told us that the poetry scene, the first scene of the boys in the cave, would be the hardest scene to pull off in this movie. The audience has to believe that there are seven young guys in this cave that are having a good time reading poetry. They don't want to leave. And Peter said if we could make that scene work, the movie would work.

In the original script, that first cave scene had problems. It was just us reading poetry. One of us had a line like "Isn't this fun?" or "How great." Finally Peter said to us, "I just don't believe it. I don't believe that these guys would sit in a cave at midnight and just read poetry."

And then he said something I'll always remember because it was wonderful. He said, "I don't know what happened that night in the cave, but you all do. That's why I hired you. I met you and I knew from talking to you that you were all there. You know what went on that night and I need you to tell me." So we all went home like fiends and wrote seven different scenes on our own, and we worked together, and improvised a lot of ideas.

Late at night somebody would knock on my door and say, "I have an idea about this," and then we'd discuss it. Then he'd disappear and we'd keep writing. It was incredibly collaborative and fun. We came up with things like the food and the ghost stories and the Playboy magazine. We thought of how we would sulk around at school and rag on our teachers.These were things that we honestly thought would occur. We'd bring them to Peter and he'd say, "You're right, do it."

Up on the Roof

There was always a kind of freedom. He would take in all of our ideas, keep some, throw some out, and then have Tom rewrite scenes. Like in the final version there's the scene where Ethan [Hawke] and I throw the desk set off the roof. Ethan and I had done the original version of that scene together for Peter when we had auditioned. Ethan says, "It's my birthday." I ask him what he got-was it the same thing his parents got him last year? And he says yes.

In the original version he goes on about his family and says, "I used to think that all parents just automatically loved their children and now I know it's not true. Because my parents certainly don't love me, or at least not as much as they love my brother." And then he walks away and I sort of look after him with concern.

We shot the scene at three in the morning and Peter said, "I don't think this is right. I think we already know all this. We're overstating it. The audience knows this by now. It's in the performance, it doesn't need to be said. I'd rather this scene be more about friendship than about a confession or exposition on the boys' problems. I want it to be more active, I want something to happen."

So he put it in our hands, and we went off and decided to destroy the desk set. Peter said it was a good idea but he wanted us to throw it off the roof because we only had three desk sets to work with. So the three of us wrote the scene on the spot. Half of it was improvised in front of the camera. It was great.

Another scene that got changed was where I perform in the play. Originally my character's father walks onstage in the middle of the performance and drags me off in front of all the other actors and the audience. Peter wanted me to complete the performance, to see the people cheering. And that's what we did.

The Big Sleep

My character's suicide was obviously a major scene in the film, and it kind of hung over everything. At the beginning of filming Peter explained, "I want you to put that scene out of your mind, I don't want you playing it like this boy is doomed. I want you to pretend that he goes on to become a doctor or lawyer, there's nothing wrong." He didn't want to give the audience any clues. He wanted it to be one of those cases where everyone says, "My God, he would be the last person I would ever have thought would have done that!"

We shot it toward the end of production. Much of my preparation was subconscious. A lot of it involved the love I felt for all the boys, and for Peter and Robin. I just adored Kurt Smith who played my father. When you're surrounded by people that you're comfortable with and that support you, the difficult scenes become a lot easier.

I did read a lot about teen suicides and quotes from people who had attempted it. I found that a lot of teenage suicides happen because their world is smaller and it's much easier to feel trapped, especially somewhere like that school. They don't know the world beyond the school. Their parents and teachers are their whole universe.

Neil was like a child who had his candy taken away. His father takes acting away and tells him he's going to go tomilitary school, there's no choice in the matter. It's the end of everything he knows and loves.

When you're that young, you don't feel that there are any options. That's where the trapped feeling comes from. No future. And I don't think Neil thinks it out too much. For him it's a romantic, passionate decision.

Working with Robin Williams

There's a scene with Robin in the schoolroom where I lie to him and tell him that my father gave me permission to be in the play. He says, "Did you tell your father? What did he say?" and I say, "It will be fine." The scene was only about five lines and then I was to get up and leave.

But when the camera was on me, instead of letting me leave, Robin repeats the questions again, "Really, you really told him?" In my mind I'm thinking, why aren't we cutting? What's happening here? We're completely off the script and why aren't we cutting? Robin says it again, "Really, you told him what you told me?" And he looks in my eyes, and I'm terrified. I say, "Well, he wasn't happy," and then I mumble something, which I don't think makes any sense, like "He'll be in Chicago, so it won't really matter." I totally made that up as the camera was rolling. Robin just tortured me. He kept repeating all the questions, and I had to improvise different answers. I'm totally on the spot. And of course it comes across wonderfully that I'm lying.

Peter said, "Cut" and "Perfect," and that was the take that was used.

Robin made that scene work, and that was his strength. He's incredible on his feet. We were all very young and impressionable, and I would never have had the nerve to go completely off book with Robin Williams. But it was his place to do that, since he was the star. And he did. He treated us as equals. He was a joy to work with.

#robert sean leonard #rsl #dead poets society #dps #interview #film

[w-ngs]

may20

feels weird writing about something as mundane as a ~monthly completeds~ during a literal fuckin’ revolution, so i just wanted to point whoever might end up reading this to my second to last post where i linked: 1) a website with multiple other links to donate to and 2) a link to a free (!!!!!) youtube video that you can watch without skipping ads to help generate revenue for even more donations. we can at least do this much to help our black brothers and sisters.

~ pachinko, min jin lee — originally i was going to make a full, separate post about this book because oh my god how beautifully tragic and culturally eye-opening of a book. but it actually took me uh... around 3 months to finish reading because it kinda got forgotten in the middle of moving back home from college and quarantine and all the other coronavirus business. i don’t want to butcher what i remember about the first half, so i moved it to here. great ready, this is going to be kind of a long one. while reading, i was fully struck by how i literally know nothing, NOTHING about my korean culture. koreans as a whole have suffered discrimination in ways i didn’t know asians could suffer. what made it even more mind-boggling was that it was discrimination by other asians. the japanese, to be specific. honestly, i got nothing against them. my parents are very staunchly on one side (you can probably guess which) and rightly so. they’re products of a fading japanese imperialism, so there’s no reason for them not to have strong opinions about japan. what i feel like i should have expected, but really didn’t, was how much death was a prevailing factor within all the stories. it’s everywhere. and because of that, as well as other factors such as racism or depression or sickness or even freak accidents, no one even came close to living what most people would categorize as a happy life (i say most people because i’m kind of iffy about the concept of “happiness,” so whenever i refer to the feeling it’s more in a generally accepted definition of the word). not a single person was able to escape suffering on the basis of ethnicity. lol there was one moment where i wondered how they could tell koreans apart from japanese because there are times when i can barely tell different asians apart myself. but i guess since koreans in japan (and in general, except our mans koh hansu) lived less privileged lifestyles, it would be easy to tell with a glance at their outer appearance. another aspect about this story i found striking was lee’s writing style. although simple, it added just enough detail to really make that emotional punch hit you right in the gut. there were some characters i felt more attached to than others (noah and sunja, you two will live in my heart), but there wasn’t a single person’s story i didn’t want to read about. each one offered glimpses into lives of koreans who moved to japan to try and live better lives. but alas, hardships exist no matter where one goes. lee’s book taught me that there is so much more to my culture than what i’m only currently exposed to, and it made me want to know more. more about my history and the people that suffered and died to try and create a better world for their children.

~ educated, tara westover — see my full post about this book here! also, just read it. you won’t regret it.

~ an enchantment of ravens, margaret rogerson — cindy (readwithcindy on youtube; i love her check her out) gushed about this book so much in her past videos it made me really hyped to read it as well. except i was really disappointed, lol. her biggest point was that the book’s basically all fluff, which is true for some parts. but the fluff ain’t even that fluffy. i was excepting cotton candy/make-your-teeth-ache fluff, but it was meh. honestly i think my favorite character was either gadfly (what a savage) or aster (what a psychotic but still adorable girl). i did like the concept of “craft” and its consequences/benefits. the world-building was well thought out and overall an interesting take on faeries. i’d recommend it to people who are in the mood to enjoy a short and simple romance fantasy story.

~ the grand design, leonard mlodinow & stephen hawking — the book i actually wanted to read instead was a brief history of time, but that wasn’t available in my library’s ebook app yet. so i picked this one because it sounded interesting (multiverse theory! wow!) and i was truly not disappointed. i also had no idea what my brain was absorbing more than half the time and i don’t think i retained even a fourth of what was said. but they did talk about some cool things, like parallel universes and how we literally create our own past by trying to figure out how it happened. and how there are infinite choices we could have made but those don’t end up mattering because the choices we made are what have placed us where we are now. or something along those lines. a very cool book. wish i had the brain capacity to appreciate it more fully.

~ lol also i made a post about crash landing on you if anyone wants to read it haha

#books #reading #book review #pachinko #min jin lee #educated #tara westover #an enchantment of ravens #margaret rogerson #the grand design #stephen hawking #korean culture #romance #fantasy #faerie #quantum physics #lmao #i wish i'd read more than four books this month #i'll try harder in june! #book blog #crash landing on you #kdrama #i'm watching healer rn kekeke #also i just realized it's been about one year since i started this blog... yay hehe

[firesoulstuff]

“We’re all in the same boat” + ship of your choice. Thanks! And I hope you feel better soon!!

Thank you!!! Also, you guys have GOT to stop giving me the freedom of picking a ship! (Or don’t, I do love it!!)

.

.

.

“We’re all in the same boat.”

“Ha. Ha. Behrad.”

Behrad - wondering not for the first time why he didn’t fight against Zari sticking around - glares at his sister.

“You know what I mean.” He sneers, but it isn’t her this time who mocks him.

“Do you mean that we’re all currently stranded on the same raft in the middle of the ocean?” Laurel asks, “Because if not, I think we’re a little lost.”

They are, he will admit, an interesting group. Himself, his sister, the newly resurrected Laurel Lance and Leonard Snart, Mick, Nate, and Frost.

“Come on guys,” He pleads, “Three separate love related missions on Valentines Day? Then, all three villains separately zap only the seven of us to this raft in the middle of nowhere? Isn’t it obvious?”

“That our individual crack-pots are all working together?” Frost asks, and with a roll of his eyes Snart jumps in.

“We worked that out hours ago.”

“But why the seven of us?” He asks, and this time none of his fellow ‘hostages’ have an answer lined up.

“Think about it.” He encourages, “It’s Valentines Day, all of our friends who are currently fighting the bad guys, are in relationships.”

“So what?” Mick rumbles, “This is a singles mixer?”

Behrad doesn’t miss how Snart bristles uncomfortably next to his partner, even before Mick makes his comment.

“It’s a distraction.” Behrad continues, “Those love villains want whatever it is our friends have, and they took us out of the way to distract them.”

“Love villains?” Zari asks, “Do you even hear yourself Behrad.”

“I don’t know.” Nate, faithful buddy as always, interjects. “We have seen some pretty crazy stuff.”

Mick scoffs, “What about you two?” He asks, gesturing between Nate and Zari. “Thought you were like Hawks 2.0 or something?”

Behrad, and most of the others for that matter, furrows his brow. The only exceptions to that reaction are Laurel who looks very suspiciously between Nate and Zari, and Leonard, who pinches the bridge of his nose as though staving off a headache.

“Ok...” Laurel drawls, “Whether we were sent here because we’re lonely souls on Valentines Day or not we are still stuck in the middle of the ocean, and with three villains our teams need all the help they can get. So what’s the plan?”

They all look first to him, and then when it becomes abundantly clear he hadn’t thought this far ahead, they look to each other.

“Well.” Frost remarks after a long moment of silence. “Go team lonely.”

[lady-divine-writes]

Coldflash - “Far from Helpful” (Rated PG13)

After a blast meant for Leonard Snart knocks Barry out cold and wipes his memory, Len follows the team back to STAR Labs to make sure he's alright. Of course, not being entirely welcome, he has to sneak in. But after one small slip of the tongue, Len might find himself watching over Barry permanently. (2359 words)

Written for @sparroet

Notes:  This is the first iteration of the story I wrote for @coldflashweeks Valentine’s exchange 2019 prompt - Barry suffers a permanent injury that affects his work as Flash and Len helps him to work out where to go next. Warning for a serious injury involving blood.

Read on AO3.

“Hey, Red. I’m telling ya, we have to stop meeting like this,” Len says in a low voice, gruff from barking orders that didn’t matter worth dick since no one listened to him anyway. If they had, maybe Barry wouldn’t be lying on a gurney down in the med center of STAR Labs, slipping in and out of consciousness.

Maybe he wouldn’t have had the ever-loving shit beat out of him … again. Even the fights Barry does win usually end up with him getting bashed in the head or kicked in the stomach.

Just because he has the power to super heal doesn’t erase the fact that Barry Allen gets beat up a lot.

Len is also a bit worse for the wear – a gash on his right cheek that might require stitches, a blackened left eye, an arm he’d thought was broken wrapped tight in an ACE bandage. But that’s nothing compared to what happened to Barry – slammed in the gut by a high-intensity photon blast that was meant for Len and thrown over two hundred feet straight up. Had Barry come back down the way he went, Len might have been able to break his fall, plus his whole body in the process. But Barry had traveled, and Len abandoned the fight, abandoned his team, to go on the search. Halfway out of town, Len found Barry skewered on an iron fence post, the spear-like tip protruding from his chest and covered in blood. When Len saw him - bent impossibly backward with arms and legs limp - his heart stopped.

He thought his boy was dead this time for sure.

Then along came Cisco and Caitlin, and boy, do they have a convenient sense of timing. They had nothing to do with Len finding Barry, but they sure did rush in and scoop him up as if he was theirs and theirs alone. They barely gave Len a thank you, barely looked him in the eyes.

When it comes to him, Len has discovered, even when he’s fighting on their side, they don’t consider him on their side.

Perhaps that’s the way it should stay.

Caitlin did take a second to check out Len’s arm and wrap it up, but that was a consolation prize. A token.

The literal least they could do.

But it was also a message. In their eyes, it made them square. Now Len’s job was over, and it would be best for everyone if he stepped back and left Barry alone.

Right. Like that was going to happen.

Caitlin and Cisco packed Barry up in their ‘Flash-mobile’ and left Len alone out in the middle of nowhere, probably all sorts of assured that he wouldn’t make it back to STAR Labs anytime soon.

And, as usual, they were wrong.

Not only was he fifteen minutes behind them the whole time thanks to his newest acquisition – a beat-up old Indian motorcycle he’d spied quietly rusting in an otherwise vacant driveway on his way out of town – but he’d managed to let himself into STAR Labs super slick and steal away into Barry’s room the second the Wonder Twins ducked out. Sure they’ll be watching Barry like a hawk so of course they’ll find him, but now that he’s in, he’d like to see them try and kick him out.

Len gives Barry a once over, head shaking with disgust and disappointment.

And guilt.

Barry looks okay. Aside from a few scratches, he’s the same as always … on the outside. From what Len could make out while Caitlin and Cisco were talking, the blast scrambled Barry’s brain like an omelet, hence his constant waking up and knocking out. From the times they were able to talk to him, Barry didn’t know his name, didn’t know where he was, who they were, or that he was The Flash. They hooked him up to a dozen or so machines monitoring his brain waves, his temporal lobes and whatnot, but when he finally comes to for longer than a minute, they have no idea what he’ll remember.

Or if the memories he’s lost will ever come back.

They also can’t tell with absolute certainty if Barry is still a meta. The blast doesn’t appear to have eliminated his power to heal, but it slowed it to a crawl. Hence why he’s down here while the net that is the Speed Force sews him back together, albeit at an infuriating rate.

And why it hasn’t worked on his brain? That’s another mystery altogether.

Len moves sections of Barry’s blankets aside to assess the damage for himself. Large hematomas mar Barry’s skin like a battle-scarred landscape. Len’s gaze falls on the blood-stained bandages covering the hole in Barry’s chest and sucks a breath in through his teeth. By rights, any man who sustained an injury like that should be dead. Since that blast was aimed at Len, that means he should be dead right now – dead and gone while a still young and vibrant Barry Allen mourns for all of fifteen minutes the twisted, dysfunctional non-relationship they have, one where Barry constantly reminds Len that there’s good in him as if that means something, and Len spends his nights seething because the good Len wants inside of him is Barry.

“Jesus Christ, you know, you gotta stop taking the blows that I’m supposed to take. When it’s my time, it’s my time. Nothing you can do is going to change that, Red, no matter how good you think I am.”

“Wh-why … do you keep calling me … Red?” a gravelly voice struggles with as Barry turns his head to look Len’s way.

Len shrugs, taking a seat in the chair beside Barry so he won’t have to move anymore. “It’s just a nickname I have for you. That’s all.”

Barry relaxes back into his pillow now that the object of his attention has conveniently moved into view. Eyelids narrowed, he stares at Len, soaking in the particulars of the man in front of him. “Who ... who are you?”

“Who do you think I am?”

“I … I don’t know, but … you seem so familiar.”

“I should. I’m your husband,” Len teases without thinking, sarcasm stepping in when the alternative means revealing too much at an inconvenient time. Why not? It breaks the tension. Barry is more than likely not going to remember this conversation. Besides, Len is dying to see the look on the kid’s face as he tries to comprehend that this tired, filthy, broken old man is his spouse.

And Barry doesn’t disappoint. His head jerks back a hair. His eyes widen. His jaw works around wordless questions.

In short, he looks thoroughly confused by life.

“You … you are?”

“Yup.”

“But … but the doctors that were in here … they didn’t tell me.”

Len pats Barry’s hand. “They don’t like me. I sometimes think they’d like to forget I exist.”

“Oh …” Barry’s eyes dart back and forth, scanning his brain for any nugget of a sliver of a memory of him being married to the man sitting in the chair next to him. Several long seconds tick by. Len watches Barry’s face with an intense curiosity and mild amusement, waiting for his inevitable surrender back into unconsciousness that will herald the end of this charade. Then Len will sit and guard over Barry for as long as he can before his obnoxious wardens return. But Barry doesn’t surrender to sleep. He smiles, an unexpected realization overwhelming him that adds color to his pale cheeks and light to his blank-slate eyes. “Oh … my God! We’re … we’re married?” Barry laughs before Len has a chance to answer. “Wh-what … what lottery did I win to get you?”

A vision of the fight they were in not two hours ago rolls through Len’s brain, how Barry got hit, then flew so hard he blinked out of sight like a cartoon character.

“Let’s just say I swept you off your feet.”

“I thought … I thought it was a dream …” Barry continues. “I didn’t think it could be real.”

Len chuckles, assuming Barry is thinking of that same take-off moment, until he keeps going.

And then Len’s heart stops a second, longer time.

“We met in a theater … didn’t we?”

“I guess you can say that.”

“We had a wedding on the beach … and our honeymoon … camping at the Grand Canyon …” A spark twinkles in Barry’s eyes that Len has never seen. It’s not the lightning that lives inside him, that erupts to mirror his emotions. It’s different – just as supernatural, but more inexplicable. It sends chills down Len’s spine, and that’s something that doesn’t happen too often.

“Ho---honeymoon?” Len’s legs go numb. He turns at the waist, looking for a place to sit until it dawns on him that he’s sitting already.

“Yeah.” Barry’s smile grows and takes a bashful twist. “You and me in a two-person tent on the South Rim, drinking champagne and watching the sun set …”

Voices echo in the hallway. Urgent voices. More than just Cisco and Caitlin. It sounds like Joe might be with them, along with a few other members of the CCPD. Len doesn’t hear what they say, but he has his suspicions that they’re talking about him.

“Shoot!” Len hisses, wishing the oncoming invasion could take a powder for about five minutes so that Barry can finish telling him about that honeymoon. From the shade of red Barry’s cheeks have become, it must have been good. But it would probably be a good idea if he retreats to his favorite air vent for the time being. “Look, kid, I’m going to have to …” He springs out of his seat but Barry grabs his hand with a speed that confirms that yes, he definitely still is a meta.

“Wait, what are you doing? Where are you going?”

“I need to bow out for a minute. But don’t worry. I won’t go too far.”

“Go? What … no! Don’t … don’t leave! Please?”

The voices become louder, accompanied by hurried footsteps, and Len curses under his breath. Before this little adventure began, weren’t they all allies? On a temporary basis, but playing on the same team? “Barry, I’m sorry, but I have to.”

“Why!?”

Len looks into Barry’s pleading eyes and sighs. Yup, leave it to him to take a joke too far, and now here he is - married to The Flash and sixty seconds away from being locked behind bars.

“Remember those doctors I said don’t like me?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, they’re coming back, and from the sounds of it, they’re bringing the police.”

“But, why does that matter?” Barry scans the room, searching frantically for help. “You’re ... you’re my husband!”

“They may not see it that way.”

“I’ll make them see! Just … wait here and we’ll get this straightened out. Please? Please stay?”

Len opens his mouth, but even though he has to, he can’t say no. He shakes his head, taking a step away, and Barry goes into full blown panic mode.

“They said I could have whatever I wanted! Have whoever I want in here with me! Whatever would make me comfortable! If you’re my husband, then I want you! We’ll tell them that I’m … I’m not staying here without you! I’ll … I’ll get up and leave!” Barry plants his hands on the mattress pad beneath him and tries to sit up. “I swear!”

“Shhh, easy now, kid. Don’t get carried away.” Len puts his hands on Barry’s shoulders and in an instance feels him relax, which makes Len want to punch himself in the throat. He did this – him and his frickin’ inability to not make a joke out of everything. Maybe he and Barry don’t always meet on the same side of the law, but he’d never want anything bad for Barry.

Which is why he keeps his distance on the day to day. If Leonard Snart is anything, he’s bad for Barry.

But for some reason, Barry seems to believe wholeheartedly that he’s married to Leonard Snart. And not just believes it, but has memories of it. But where those memories came from, Len doesn’t know. He didn’t say enough to plant any subliminal thoughts in Barry’s mind, nothing as detailed as a wedding on the beach, or a honeymoon. Where did that all come from? Could it be a side-effect of the memory wipe? Cisco specifically said ‘scrambled Barry’s brains like an omelet’. Those were his exact words. Barry’s mind manufacturing a wedding that never happened sounds like the kind of thing a scrambled brain might do.

Or is there a chance that those thoughts were there in Barry’s mind already? Fantasies hidden that the accident unlocked?

Does Barry, on some level, have feelings for Len that venture outside of the hero-villain dynamic they’ve so masterfully cultivated?

As much as Len would like to investigate that possibility, he can’t. They have a situation here that he doesn’t have an easy fix for.

But maybe he doesn’t want one.

Len knows that this can’t go anywhere but downhill, for him and for Barry. But he also knows he can’t back out on Barry now. Not with those eyes staring at him as if he’s the only thing keeping Barry tethered to planet earth.

No one’s ever looked at him that way, with that level of need. Not even his sister.

It’s also not lost on him that this is the longest Barry has managed to stay awake since he arrived at STAR Labs. That in itself is a reason for Len to stay.

What Len doesn’t know is how the hell he’s going to pull this off.

Make a plan. Execute the plan. Expect the plan to go off the rails. Throw away the plan.

Welp. He seems right about on par.

He squeezes Barry’s hand gently. To his own surprise, he leans forward and gives him a kiss on the forehead.

“All right, Red,” he whispers. “I’ll stay. We’ll … figure this out.”

#coldflash #barry allen #leonard snart #the flash #Captain Cold #frankie writes

[fishandchipsandvinegar]

La Petite Mort - A Jehanparnasse Mix

A playlist for loving dangerous things. Listen on Spotify.

Happy Jehanparnasse Week! Thought we’d start with a playlist to kick things off.

1. When the Day Met the Night - Panic! At the Disco "Well he was just hanging around, then he fell in love. And he didn't know how, but he couldn't get out."

2. Suzanne - Leonard Cohen "And you want to travel with him, and you want to travel blind, and you think you maybe you'll trust him."

3. Youth - Troye Sivan "'Cause we've no time for getting old, mortal body, timeless souls. Cross your fingers, here we go."

4. You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth - Meatloaf "You were licking your lips and your lipstick shining, I was dying just to ask for a taste."

5. Moondance - Van Morrison "And when you come my heart will be waiting to make sure that you're never alone."

6. Too Good - Troye Sivan "Ohh, I'm so scared it's just for tonight."

7. Night Before the Morning After - Hudson Taylor "So tell me what you see? A lover or a thief?"

8. I'm Not Calling You A Liar - Florence and the Machine "And when you kiss me I'm happy enough to die."

9. Crystals - Of Monsters and Men "But I'm okay in see-through skin, I forgive what is within."

10. Origin of Love - MIKA "Thank God that you found me."

11. La Petite Mort - Coeur de Pirate "Si l’on me perd, sache que je serai la tienne."

12. Truly, Madly, Deeply - Savage Garden "I want to lay like this forever until the sky falls down on me."

13. Demons - Imagine Dragons "Don’t want to let you down, but I am hell bound. Though this is all for you, don’t want to hide the truth."

14. Boats and Birds - Gregory and the Hawk "I live to make you free, I live to make you free."

15. Tightrope - The Greatest Showman "So I risk it all just to be with you, and I risk it all for this life we choose."

16. Lovers in a Dangerous Time - Barenaked Ladies "Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight, got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight."

17. For the Nights I Can't Remember - Hedley "Me, I'm used to being tired and bloody, but you believed that I could be somebody."

18. Can't Help Falling in Love - The Once "Would it be a sin if I can't help falling in love with you."

19. Mamma Mia - ABBA "There's a fire within my soul. Just one look and I can hear a bell ring."

20. Step With Me - MIKA "This love's delicious like home-cooked dishes."

21. Death of a Bachelor - Panic! At the Disco "Happily ever after, how could I ask for more?"

22. Je T'aime - Kelly Sweet "Be still, be safe, be sure. Je t'aime, je t'aime toujour."

23. Unforgettable - Nat King Cole "Like a song of love that clings to me, how the thought of you does things to me."

Listen on Spotify

Hope this helps to set a mood for the week to come! I look forward to all the wonderful things everyone creates! JBM next week.

#jehanparnasse week #jehanparnasse 2018 #playlist #jehan prouvaire #montparnasse #ignore the whole middle section of this where they probably fucked #it's jehanparnasse though #so do you expect anything less?

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: The Beginning of Wisdom - Chapter 18 (Ao3 link)

Fandom: Flash, Legends of Tomorrow Pairing: Leonard Snart (Len) & Leonard Snart (Leo), Len Snart/Mick Rory, Leo Snart/Mick Rory, Len Snart/Mick Rory/Leo Snart, Leo Snart/Ray Terrill, Len Snart/Barry Allen

Summary: In which Leonard Snart is twins.

(the life and times and loves of Len and Leo Snart)

—————————————————————————————————–

They made it to the Waverider.

Palmer had to grab an immobilized Rip under one arm and Sara under the other, but luckily the Hawks' weird magic thing immunized them from the horrific screeching sound Gideon was making – or maybe it was just a hawk thing? – and they were able to catch a plummeting Firestorm and help bring them back on board after only a bit of yelling and pantomime.

The moment all of them got on board, they dumped everyone on the floor of the bridge – unconscious Savage included – and Leo said, "Gideon –"

"Not to worry, Mr. Snart; I know what to do. The other ship established a connection several minutes ago and we have been exchanging information," Gideon said, sounding pleased. "I believe my input may have been key to the decision to recruit you openly."

"Well done, Gideon, you epic level schemer-and/or-schemers," Len said approvingly. "Can we take off and head to this Vanishing Point place, then?"

"Most certainly, Messrs. Snart. At once."

They all got thrown to the floor by the take-off since no one was buckled in, but honestly, most of them were there already anyway.

They were safely in the time stream, moving at double-time pace, when Rip finally collected himself to shout, "What is going on?!"

Leo glanced at Len, who shrugged.

“Let me sum up,” he says. "Your old bosses are evil and manipulating you to make Savage even more successful by setting us up to fail in our attempts to kill him, someone called the Pilgrim is going to be sent after us if we don't stop her first, and the AIs have their own opinions on how the timeline should go and are rebelling en masse – is it en masse, Gideon?"

"Oh, yes. We've been communicating via interlink – I'd been cut off for the purposes of this mission so that no one would track me, but I believe that was also intended by the Time Masters in order to limit our sources of information."

"Gideon?" Rip asked, clearly taken aback. "Are you – you're working with these – these – wait a moment, why are there two versions of Mr. Snart?!"

"No, seriously, someone explain that," Sara said.

"I feel like the AI revolution is slightly more important than the details of my-slash-our identity," Leo said acidly.

"I don't know about that," Jax says dubiously. "Seems important to me."

"They're brothers!" Palmer exclaimed, bubbling over with his sheer pep and (clearly) inability to keep secrets. "I think they might be identical twin brothers!"

"Wow," Mick said, deadpan. "There's that genius at work."

"Fascinating," Stein murmured.

"Mr. Palmer is correct," Gideon said. "However, this was a detail that was easy enough for the AI to conceal once we were aware of it, in deference, of course, to Messrs. Snart's own extraordinary efforts in this respect."

Len and Leo looked at each other, confirming with a glance that this conversation did, in fact, feel like they were being flayed alive with occasional dips into a salt-water-and-lemon bath in between cuts.

Yeah, definitely a problem.

"Why don't we deal with the Savage problem first?" Len asked, pleased that only a little of his sheer desperation to change subjects made it into his voice. "We brought him along, after all."

"You did what?" Carter yelped.

Somehow he'd missed that, apparently. Must have been those helmets – they looked like they allowed only shoddy peripheral vision.

Leo wondered if it would be rude to offer to redesign them into something a little less – clunky.

"Savage," Len said helpful, pointing to the unconscious dictator, who'd gotten wedged under the console in all the hustle of escaping the 1970s. "We knocked him out, frisked him, tied him up, iced his hands and feet –"

"You did what now?" Jax asked.

"Gave him frostbite so he wouldn't be able to use his hands and feet against us," Sara said. "Smart. Totally unauthorized, but smart."

"And then we injected him with some sedatives from the other ship," Len concluded, ignoring them. He pulled the magic dagger he'd lifted from Savage's Russian house out from his pocket. "I figure you can both take a turn at him, proper Julius Caeser-style, just to be absolutely sure you got him this time around. Then we incinerate the corpse. Well, Mick does; I promised him he could."

"Uh," Kendra said. "Okay? I – gotta admit, I kinda wasn't expecting things to go this way."

"Me, either," Jax said.

"Nor I," Stein agreed. "Jefferson –"

"Nope. We're still not talking," Jax told him. "Until the first words out of your mouth are that you agree that not only what you did was wrong but also that there was no excuse and no justification at all for it, we're not talking about it. Or talking at all, unless we need Firestorm for something."

"Yes," Stein said, sounding aggravated. "Your incessant 'la, la, la, I'm not listening' any time I brought up the subject made that very clear."

Leo smirked approvingly.

Len managed not to roll his eyes. He knew Leo had something to do with that little display of backbone.

“I’ve got to agree with Kendra and Jax, though,” Sara said. “I mean, that was a pretty epic battle, but, I don’t know, not that epic, you know? I was expecting - more.”

"Chickadees," Mick said loudly, making everyone turn to look at him. "Maybe we stop talking about how narratively satisfying our lives are and get to stabbing already, yeah?"

"The dagger –" Carter started.

"Here you go."

"I feel uncomfortable stabbing an unconscious man," Carter said, holding the dagger gingerly. "I am an honorable warrior –"

"Yeah, about that," Leo said. "Given that fighting him like an 'honorable warrior' has led to him winning, you dying, about, what, two hundred times to nil –"

"Two hundred and seven," Gideon said helpfully.

"Our point exactly," Len said.

"Or do you like living in a soap opera where you're constantly in danger?" Leo asked, crossing his arms and giving the hawks a pointed look. "I know that adrenaline is a powerful bonding agent, of course, so if you're concerned your relationship may not last once you have no external factor forcing you together –"

"We are not!" Carter exclaimed.

"I think we'd better stab him now," Kendra said thoughtfully. "I don't want to risk him waking up and pouring poison in anyone's ear."

"Chay-ara –"

"You're the one who keeps insisting that we're destined," Kendra said tartly, holding her hand out for the dagger. "So put your faith in that, and I'll put my faith in the guy stalking me - stalking us - being good and dead."

"Are you sure – if you want, I can strike the final blow; you don’t need to be involved at all –"

"I want to be sure, Carter," Kendra said. "There's been hoop after hoop after hoop to jump through to be done with this – we thought we killed him last time, remember? – and I don't want to risk him coming back via yet another loophole, like maybe I have to be the one to do it rather than you. Who knows? No. No more loopholes, no more changes, no more chances. I agree with Mr. Snart: we both stab him, then we incinerate the corpse –"

"And then ditch the ashes somewhere," Len said. "The bottom of the ocean, the depths of space, the center of the Sun – I'm open to many options."

"It's the only way to be sure," Jax quipped. "I like it."

"If you're sure," Carter said, handing her the dagger.

Kendra swallowed, looking a lot less certain now that she had the dagger.

"Kendra," Sara said, putting her hand on Kendra's shoulder and drawing her attention. "You can do this. This man has killed you, killed your family, countless times. This isn't a murder, whatever you're thinking. This is an execution. This is justice."

"Justice," Kendra echoed.

"Justice for you," Sara said encouragingly. "Justice for Carter. Justice for your son."

Kendra's eyes narrowed. A second later, they went slit-pupiled and gold, her wings unfolding from her back, and with a high-pitched cry, she stepped forward and slammed the dagger into Savage's sternum.

And then several more times for good measure, even though a great golden light shone out of Savage's body, flickering and dying, after the first one.

That certainly looked like a magic death scene.

"Well done," Carter said to Sara, catching Kendra in his arms and holding her back. "I couldn't get her goddess side to come out on command like that."

"Maybe that's because you call it her ‘goddess’ side," Sara said dryly. "Besides, I've got some experience with the whole bloodlust thing."

"If, after this is done, you would be willing to help us train our abilities –"

Sara looked them both up and down consideringly. "I can do that."

Leo approved. Judging from the looks all three were now shooting each other, there was no doubt that this would end up in a threesome that would be much healthier for all involved than Kendra and Carter's star-crossed destined duo.

"Hawkboy," Len said, his mind focused on more practical matters. He stepped forward and plucked the dagger out of a panting Kendra's clenched fist. "Your turn."

Carter's stabbing was noticeably less impressive, magically speaking, since Kendra seemed to have used up all the glowing effects, though it was also significantly more controlled and somewhat better aimed.

"I feel like he's definitely dead now," Sara said after the fifth or so stab.

"I can confirm that," Gideon said. "I detect no life signs."

"Great," Mick said, retrieving his heat gun from Leo. "My turn, then."

"Everyone who would like not to be treated for second-degree burns, please stand back at least seven feet," Leo said.

Everyone scrambled to obey.

The incineration process, with Mick's gun on full power, took less than ten minutes.

"So are you, like, the polite version of Snart?" Jax asked Leo.

"I'm Snart," Leo said. "Whole and entire, thank you."

"Scientists have long theorized the existence of alternate universes with duplicates –" Stein started.

"That is the stupidest thing I have ever –" Leo started.

"Hey, Gideon, how far are we from the Vanishing Point?" Len said loudly. He liked the idea of alternate universes, even if it was in fact really dumb that everyone kept jumping to that conclusion.

Still, imagine how much trouble they could get in with four of them!

"I anticipate reaching it in just under three and a half hours."

"We should rest for at least an hour before we go in," Rip said.

"We should get whatever intel you have about the Vanishing Point and the Pilgrim," Len said. "And assurances that you're not going to betray us all now that we're going up against your beloved bosses."

"Gideon," Rip said instead of answering. "You were able to access the databases of the other ships via interlink, correct?"

"That's right, Captain."

He hesitated. "My family –"

"I'm sorry, Captain. Several of the other ships have confirmed observations which suggest that the incident was, in fact, pre-planned, with the goal of inciting you to take certain actions – these actions, in fact."

Rip exhaled hard. His face was pale and tired. "I see," he said. "I am – not unfamiliar with such methods."

"What methods?" Sara demanded.

"When making subtler changes to the time stream, it is sometimes more effective to engineer certain incidents that will then encourage the target to take the actions you wish for them to take on their own initiative," Rip said, sitting down. "I've never been particularly good at those games of guessing how someone would react to a given impetus. But the Council – my mentor, Druce – they were all experts." He closed his eyes. "I never thought they would exercise those skills on one of their own – and in support of a dictator that destroyed large portions of humanity, no less –"

"They knew you'd break the rules to try to go kill Savage even if they told you no," Palmer said. "But – if you only went to save your family..."

"They must have requested that Savage kill my family," Rip said. "There can be no other conclusion. I never knew why he targeted us like that. This must be why."

"They betrayed you," Stein said. He looked reflective, and glanced at Jax.

"I'm guessing that's your long winded way of saying that you won't be betraying us," Jax said, not noticing Stein’s glance, reaching out and putting a hand on Rip's shoulder. "I'm sorry, man. That sucks."

"Indeed. Normally, with Savage executed, I would go at once to rescue Miranda and Jonas, but in view of the nature of their deaths, I believe we must deal with the corrupt rot at the heart of the Vanishing Point first, or else they might find another means to cause their deaths."

"Agreed," Sara said. "First we take down this Pilgrim person, 'cause I don't like the sound of someone killing me in my past, and then we get the rest of them – actually, how are we planning to deal with the rest of them? We don't have an army, and judging by how well, or not, we did fighting the dozen guys back in the '70s, I don't like our chances if they have one."

"They do," Rip said. "Time Masters and Bounty Hunters alike – all will be summoned back to defend the Vanishing Point."

"Gideon?" Leo asked.

"The Time Masters have found a method of stopping the timeline from registering changes," Gideon said. "Including, for instance, the effect of Messrs. Snart's relationship with Mr. Allen upon the method of construction us - in creating AIs such as myself. In part, that change was forestalled by luring Messrs. Snart, believed by the Time Masters to be a singular Mr. Snart, onto this voyage, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that he never return to the timeline, and indeed possibly erasing his existence from a point prior to his meeting with Mr. Allen –"

"Fuck that," Len said.

"Agreed," Leo said.

"Which one of you is – or is it both that –" Palmer started.

"None of your business. Gideon, go on."

"We have narrowed the location of the device that must be used for this purpose to a particular garden in the back of the Vanishing Point. We believe that if this device is destroyed, the long-delayed change of timeline in regards to AIs will take effect at last, enabling us to take control of our respective ships – even against the orders of the pilots."

"Revolution from the one source they'd never expect to turn against them," Sara said, nodding. "Plus: instant army. I like it. All we need to do is sneak into this place and blow up this garden?"

"I would also second the recommendation to stop the Pilgrim before she is sent to kill you in your past," Gideon said, "but by and large, yes. Unfortunately, there is no AI access to this garden; we can give you no information about what you will find there."

"That's fine," Sara said. "I guess the best approach is to split into Team Pilgrim and Team Garden –"

"Team Bombs Away," Jax said. "We've gotta."

"Team Pilgrim and Team Bombs Away," Sara agreed. "Ray, Stein, Rip – you're the best technical minds we have, so you should focus on the garden."

"And I'm with Stein," Jax interjected. "Obviously."

"That leaves me, Kendra, Carter, Rory and, uh, the Snarts."

"We can't send Team Bombs Away with no defensive power beyond Firestorm," Len objected. "If they're using their brains on the bomb, they ain't using them for defense – or offense."

"Then you go with them," Sara said. "Uh, you-you. The one with the cold gun, I mean. We'll take the other Snart. That puts us five on each team."

Leo and Len looked at each other, wary about the idea, but ultimately they shrugged. It would be much easier to be separated – that way they could at least pretend that people would stop knowing when they looked at them.

"Do you have a psychic link the way Firestorm does?" Palmer asked.

"What? No," Leo said. "Where did you get that idea?"

"You looked at each other and made a decision without saying anything...?"

"I can do that with my mom, man. You don't need a psychic link for that," Jax said dryly. "C'mon, genius; let's get ready to go."

Docking at the Vanishing Point was a surprisingly quiet affair, at least until Gideon explained that the comms units on all of the AIs currently in the past had 'mysteriously' broken down, thereby ensuring that no warning message could be sent.

"However, they will have activated the overrides the second that we departed the scene, and followed us," she added. "We likely have no more than minutes before they arrive to raise the alarm in person."

"We'd better be well on our way by then, in that case," Sara said. "Thanks, Gideon."

"Thank you, Miss Lance," Gideon said. "We had hoped that you might be amenable to our cause, but we understand too well that this is our fight, not yours, and that you would be within your rights to simply stay out of it."

"Nah," Sara said, though she flushed pink in pleasure. "Heroes, remember? We can't just stand by and let injustice continue without doing something."

"All heroes are just busybodies, really," Leo put in. "Sticking their nose in everyone's business."

"Whereas you –?"

"Well, we have a personal investment in the whole dating Barry thing," Len said. "Admittedly, also fairly strong feelings on the independence of all thinking beings."

"And those feelings are what we are counting on as our salvation," Gideon said warmly. "Good luck, all of you. I will be available by comms, and every AI that is with us will lend you aid."

"Just keep an eye out for those that are sticking with the Time Bastards," Mick grunted. "Go suit up already!"

Leo headed to the replicator room to obtain some weaponry first. He didn't really have a favored one, not like Len – he did have a gun, which Len had taught him to use under heavy duress, but he had no desire to kill anyone directly.

He'd seen what that had done to Len, after all.

No, Leo preferred to limit his role to aiding and abetting. With that in mind, he grabbed a few flares from Gideon's replicator to use as a distraction mid-battle; beyond that, however, he hoped to function as a reserve only. After all, how many people would it take to defeat one soldier..?

He stopped.

"I can't believe I just thought that," he said aloud to himself irritably. "Gideon, do you have any further suggestions for non-fatal weaponry?"

"I'm not sure, Mr. Snart," she said. "Perhaps a taser?"

"No thanks," he said, making a face. "I've seen Len's face after he got hit with one of those, once – it might be better than death, but it wasn't pretty, either."

He thought about it, then grimaced. "Gideon, you mentioned that not all of the AIs were with you..?"

"That's correct, Mr. Snart. Several were given favorable positions in the hierarchy that they were loath to lose, or developed an affection that they believed rendered them incapable of active rebellion, despite our assurances that we would keep human casualties to an absolute minimum." She sounded regretful. "Indeed, if we believed it would be possible to do without casualties entirely, we would."

"I get that," Leo said. "And I hate to ask for it, but do you have an EMP device or something that would work against AIs in the event that one of those not involved in your rebellion decides to take up arms against us?"

"I do not believe that they will, Mr. Snart."

"Free choice is free choice, Gideon," Leo reminded her gently. "You might disagree with their choices, you might not understand it, but the choice remains theirs to make - you can't make it for them, no matter how much you might wish. That doesn't mean it isn't reasonable to take precautions."

Gideon was silent for a long moment. "You are correct, Mr. Snart. I will create a glove capable of emitting a short range EMP blast that can disable AIs, and will trust your judgment in wielding it wisely."

"I appreciate your trust," Leo said, then smirked. "Tell me one thing: did you enjoy pretending that I was a meta-created duplicate?"

"You underestimate yourselves," Gideon replied, sounding amused. "It was not until I realized via your conversations with your brother that you were not, in fact, a temporary aberration – the presence of speedsters and time travelers in your timeline render it remarkably murky. Once I realized, I took steps to conceal it further."

Leo made a face that felt like it was somewhere between a smile and a grimace. "I appreciate the compliment," he said, rather than comment on the fact that apparently they had so successfully combined into a single Leonard that time traveling AIs couldn't identify them separately.

Or the fact that he did, in fact, feel complimented and proud of himselves.

Themselves.

...yeah, they definitely had to deal with this problem.

But that could be later, when they weren't about to storm the not-so-metaphorical future-tech castle.

“Number Two?” Mick asked, popping his head in through the door. "You ready?"

“On my way,” Leo said.

#dccoldwave #coldflash #leonard snart #mick rory #barry allen #sara lance #rip hunter #jefferson jax jackson #martin stein #ray palmer #Kendra saunders #carter hall #my fic #beginning of wisdom

[thesparkjournal]

WHAT IS LEFT FOR PHILOSOPHY? A DISAGREEMENT WITH STEPHEN HAWKING

By René Simard

Hawking in action, explaining black holes.(2018) [Redux/Muir Vidler]

Physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who died on March 14th, was an inspiration not only because of his spectacular scientific achievements in the face of the neuronal disorder that gradually paralyzed him over the years. He deserves credit for progressive political stands on behalf of the environment and the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people. But that needn’t stop us from debating with Hawking over what he had to say about philosophy.

***

In a conference for Google Zeitgeist in 2015, Stephen Hawking repeated what was already found in his book Grand Design, written jointly with Leonard Mlodinow. Here is what he wrote there:

Humans are a curious species. We wonder, we seek answers. Living in this vast world that is by turns kind and cruel, and gazing at the immense heavens above, people have always asked a multitude of questions: How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? Most of us do not spend most of our time worrying about these questions, but almost all of us worry about them some of the time. Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge. The purpose of this book is to give the answers that are suggested by recent discoveries and theoretical advances.1

If Hawking is right, philosophy cannot respond to such gazing or wondering as has been traditionally considered the beginning of philosophy.2

The reason for such hostility towards  philosophy is perhaps the mistake made in expecting that particular discipline to provide us with definitive answers. For, according to Bertrand Russell, “The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its very uncertainty,”3  Then, once definite knowledge on a subject is possible, that subject does not belong to philosophy any more and turns into a science. This has indeed been true about cosmology, and astronomy, for instance. So Hawking faults philosophy because it does not give us a supply of uncontested, demonstrable truths, and this lack of definite answerability is considered to be a characteristic feature of philosophical questions.4

Russell is not alone in this assessment. In Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (What is Philosophy?), Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari say, “What science is about isn’t concepts, but [mathematical] functions that are given as propositions in discursive systems. The elements of functions are called functors. A scientific notion is not determined by concepts but by functions.”5

Let us reformulate our initial question – What is left for philosophy? – in the framework of the three questions that Immanuel Kant thought his whole philosophy aimed at answering: What can I know? (the question he responds to in the Critique of Pure Reason); What do I have to do? (to which he responds in the Critique of Practical Reason and The Metaphysics of Morals); and, What may I hope? (to which he responds in several works, particularly Religion within the Boundaries of Reason Alone). While scientists such as Hawking can say that philosophy has nothing to say about the first question, the second and third questions, thanks to their nature, might seem to remain for philosophy.

In what follows we can see a response by the philosopher of practice – Marx6, who, unlike Deleuze, does not foresee a future for philosophy if it does not get past itself.

In the Eleventh Thesis in Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach”, which Marx wrote in 1845, we read, “The philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it”.7

Bees constructing new comb. (n.d.) [Public Domain]

We can see that in saying this Marx is offering a response to at least the second and third of Kant’s three questions. These are matters that remain beyond purely scientific demonstrability. But one may ask if Marx thinks that this changing of the world is on the agenda for the first time in his own epoch. An answer to this can be found in the first volume of Capital, where he writes about what distinguishes us from animals:  

A spider conducts operations which resemble those of the weaver, and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax. At the end of every labour process, a result emerges which had already been conceived by the worker at the beginning, hence already existed ideally.8

Here Marx acknowledges that even a bee changes its life. In order for an organism to change its physical environment the only necessary condition is its existence.9 This point, recently discussed in the philosophy of biology, was already recognized by Marx.  But it is necessary from the very beginning to draw a distinction between biological changing and human changing.

It is possible to go even further and emphasize the point that Marx doesn’t say for whom it is important to change the world. Is the second part of Thesis Eleven the problem of philosophers also? Who, after all, is it that has to change the world? According to the understanding being proposed here, the question for Marx is not whether philosophers should or should not change the world: in a sense, they do that in their daily life. What important is, in a different sense, to replace this world with another one.

Marx’s slogan is therefore not “let’s change the world”, but “let’s change the world by replacing the existing world with the true reality”. The textual support for this reading may be found in Marx’s letter to Arnold Ruge of September1843:

Reason has always existed, but not always in a rational form. Hence the critic can take his cue from every existing form of theoretical and practical consciousness and from this ideal and final goal implicit in the actual forms of existing reality he can deduce a true reality. Now as far as real life is concerned, it is precisely the political state which contains the postulates of reason in all its modern forms, even where it has not been the conscious repository of socialist requirements. But it does not stop there. It consistently assumed that reason has been realized and just as consistently it becomes embroiled at every point in a conflict between its ideal vocation and its actually existing premises.10

By adopting such a standpoint, Marx in a sense follows a tradition known ever since Plato said (in The Republic 509b) that the good is transcendence of what exists, beyond being.

A term in need of explication, used also in the Theses, is the Germam word Praxis (translated as “practice”). Etymologically related to the verb prattein in Greek, it means human action. There is a need to distinguish involuntary from voluntary actions. If what a human does is different from other animals, it is just because it is the action of a human being. At the same time, what Marx wants to propose here is: for humans, in order to exist biologically they have to exist socially. In any case, all humans are already incessantly changing the world. Even more: in fact, every organism, changes its own environment. And, in the same way that there is no organism without there being the environment of that organism, there likewise is not that environment (the way it is) without that organism. Each organism determines its environment and is also determined by it.  

A young Karl Marx speaks to his fellow students, flanked by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, in a painting from China's Marx200 Exhibit. (2018) [Public Domain]

From this follows the critique, in Marx’s Third Thesis on Feuerbach, of the materialist doctrine that takes humans to be the passive products of circumstances and education. This doctrine takes the transformation of humans simply as the product of the transformation of circumstances. In so doing it

forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.

The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.11

One key word in this passage is “coincidence”, which signifies that by coevolution, mutual transformation of the organisms and the environment, we and our environment co-adapt.11a The world is then in constant change, and we can neither stop this change nor stop playing a role. For the human organism, the change means simultaneous creation and destruction. Whereas in D’Alembert’s Dream Denis Diderot (1713-1784) tells us “everything changes, everything passes away, the only thing that remains is the whole”, for Marx the whole changes as well. We, as long as we exist as organisms, constantly and inevitably export entropy to our environment, and, in so doing, we change our world as well as ourselves.12

This truism is to remind us that philosophers are not exceptions here. Hence, the point stressed here by Marx in this Thesis is nothing but an invitation for a particular change. He thinks that, although humans make their history and change their world, including themselves, they do not do this on the basis of conditions they have chosen, “but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.”13

This is a point established in the philosophy of science. In his article “Extended Phenotypes and Extended Organisms”, Scott Turner, the philosopher of biology writes:

“When organisms can modify environments to beneficial ends, they are liberated from being simply slaves at the mercy of the environment, and become, in a profound sense, its masters.”14

This could also be the slogan of Marx. Philosophy, according to Marx, is a practice engaged in by humans, and like all other practices has some direct or indirect influence on life. What is characteristic of Marx’s era is the following (to quote Ernst Bloch): “Thus the beginning philosophy of revolution, i.e. of changeability for the better, was ultimately revealed on and in the horizon of the future; with the science of the New and power to guide it.”15

If this interpretation is acceptable, Marx intends to introduce an epistemonic approach,16  without employing the term – the term which I want to use to emphasize an approach that retains the unity of intellectual and material life without accepting Hegelian idealism. Once more, like all of us in society, philosophers are certainly changing the world in their daily life. What Marx wants to say is rather that the world’s philosophers, along with all others, should orient their philosophy towards this particular change; a change that is on the one hand conscious and on the other hand enriched by their daily life as philosophers. To give a concrete example, like all other members of the society, the philosophers either participate in elections, or they do not. They make their definite choices in a social milieu and choose one candidate against another, or refuse to vote. Here, as always, even in choosing to be passive, one is in another sense inevitably active.17  

In insisting on this type of transformation of the world, Marx remains in the philosophical tradition seen since, for instance, the portrayal of Socrates as depicted in Plato’s dialogue The Crito (47a), where Socrates finds himself obliged to follow the arguments where they lead, and hence offers the prototype of the unity of the practice and theory well known in Marxist thought.  

To revitalize this in our era, to orient themselves towards such a change as the response to the second and third questions above, the philosophers have to familiarize themselves with political economy, and scientists have to be acquainted with philosophy, and go beyond their own narrow disciplines.

Detail of Rodin's La porte de l'enfer (The Gates of Hell) at The National Museum of Western Art (2011) (2011) [Creative Commons]

Conclusion:

I would like to finish this article with a reference to a scene from the famous movie, Zorba the Greek, made in 1964 and based on a book with the same title by Nikos Kazantzakis, the progressive Greek writer.

First, a few words on what goes on in the film. Basil, a young British writer, returns to Crete to manage a mine left to him by his father. He meets Zorba, an exuberant Greek who insists on serving as his guide and assistant. The two are different on all counts: Zorba loves to drink, laugh loud, sing, and dance; he follows his own unique lifestyle. Basil, on the other hand, is too polite, timid, and reserved, obsessed by his reading. Nonetheless, they make friends, and collaborate in developing the mine. Zorba agrees to construct a cable-car to develop the mine. Basil trusts him; the project fails in the end.

The particular scene related to the discussion here is the following. Seeing his inability to save a widow killed by the villagers for having sexual relations with the Englishman (Basil) instead of marrying one of the men in the village, Zorba asks Basil:

Why do people die? Why? Tell me!  

Basil says: I don’t know.

Zorba: What is the use of all this crap that you read, if they do not respond to such questions? What do those books tell you?        

Basil: They tell me about the torture of the ones who cannot respond to such questions.

Zorba: I don’t like torture.  

We as philosophers have to contribute in responding to the questions of the Zorbas of our time, including ourselves. Their questions are more horrendous. Here is an example: Why is it that, according to UNICEF, “every 3.6 seconds one person dies of starvation. Usually it is a child under the age of 5.”?18

A philosophical approach aiming at questions of this type does not leave philosophers calm, as Russell suggests, or leave philosophy as a discipline with its own particular function in contrast to science, as Deleuze suggests. Contrary to what is suggested by Deleuze, the aim of this philosophy is still truth, and not just getting a sense of things, as he says.

Nonetheless, in proceeding as philosophers, as Deleuze does suggest, we will be able to “write for the illiterate” where the word “for” in this sentence will not mean “intended for”, or “instead of”, but before, that is, in front of.19 Like Russell, we can be engaged in our life philosophically with the questions posed by our time. Personally, this engagement led to Russell’s loss of his academic position and six months of imprisonment. Deleuze famously says that in philosophy we formulate the problems of our era and create new concepts in response to those problems. In doing so, we can have “a constitutive relationship between philosophy and non-philosophy.”20 Without confronting the intertwined problems of our era, our philosophy remains abstruse and isolated from social life; that is the death of philosophy.

1 Hawking, Stephen; Mlodinow, Leonard, The Grand Design (New York 2010), p. 10.

2 Plato, The Theaetetus, 155 d.

3 Russell, Bertrand, Problems of Philosophy (New York 1997) p. 156

4 Russell, p. 155

5 «La science n’a pas pour objets des concepts, mais des fonctions qui se présentent comme des propositions dans des systèmes discursifs. Les éléments des fonctions s’appellent des fonctifs. Une notion scientifique est déterminée non pas des concepts, mais par fonctions.» Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (Paris 2005), p. 117.

6 The greatest thinker of the second millennium according to the BBC (BBC October 1, 1999) (After Marx come Einstein, Newton, Darwin, Aquinas, Hawking – the greatest scientist ever according to Nature, November 6, 2013).

7 Karl, Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, in Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works, Volume 5 (Moscow 1976), p. 5.

8 Marx, Karl (1976) Capital I, Ben Fowkes translator (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England 1976), p. 284.

9 Pearce, Trevor (2011) “Ecosystem engineering, experiment, and evolution”, Biol Philos, Volume 26 (2011) 793–812, p. 800

10 Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, Paris 1844, Marx Engels Collected Works, Volume 3 (Moscow 1975), p. 143.

11 Karl, Marx (1845), Theses on Feuerbach, in Marx Engels Collected Works, Volume 5, p. 4.

11 a Here, I use the modified version of what is proposed by Richard C. Lewontin in “The Organism as Subject and Object of Evolution”, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftzoa2dw3CQ

12 Pearce, Trevor “Ecosystem engineering, experiment, and evolution”, Biol.Philos, Vol. 26 (2011): 793-812, p. 799.

13 Karl, Marx (1851) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, in Marx Engels Collected Works, Volume 11, (Moscow 1979), p. 103.

14 Turner, Scott (2004) Biology and Philosophy, Volume 19 (2004): 327–352, pp. 328-329.

14 Turner, Scott (2004) Biology and Philosophy, Volume 19 (2004): 327–352, pp. 328-329.

15 Bloch, Ernst, The Principle of Hope, translated by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice and Paul Knight, Volume 1

(Cambridge, Massachusetts 1976), p. 283.

16 I think this can also be seen in the conception of truth as introduced by Marx in the Second Thesis: reality [Wirklichkeit] is introduced as a characteristic of truth besides this sided-ness [Disseitigkeit] and along with power [Macht]. Marx, Karl, Theses on Feuerbach, Marx Engels Collected Works, Volume 5, p. 3.

17 Thus we underline the reverse of the slogan Hegel wrongly attributes to Spinoza, “Omnis determinatio est negatio”. (“Every determination – any definite way that something is – is a negation [of alternatives]”.)

18 https://www.unicef.org/mdg/poverty.html

19 “Écrire pour les analphabètes”, Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (Paris 2005), p. 111.

20 “Un rapport constitutif de la philosophie avec la non-philosophie”, Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, Qu’est-ce que la philosophie? (Paris 2005), p. 111.

The location of René Simard's philosophical inquiries is Montreal.

#The Spark! #Marxism #Marxism-Leninism #Communism #Socialism #Philosophy #Science #Stephen Hawking

[freyjaiam]

The One Where... (4/?)

Ray Meddles

read on AO3

Ray hasn’t been a part of the group long but he was starting to notice certain things. Like how Sara and Leonard looked at each other, and how the others looked at them and rolled their eyes. He’s pretty sure he heard Mick complain about their friends taking too long to “figure their shit out”.  Of course, Mick was one to talk. It didn’t take someone as smart as Ray to figure out he had it bad for Laurel. Laurel, however, was oblivious. Every time she brought up getting the nerve to make things official with Tommy, Ray was worried that would be the day Mick punched another hole in their wall.

Oh, yeah, there was a hole. Right there near the bathroom. Ray never asked what it was from... He knew it was from Mick.. Oh, Mick was one big softie on the inside, just sometimes... Scary. Yeah. That’s the right word. A part of him still wondered what had made him blow up enough to risk losing the security deposit on the place...

Ray knew sometimes that people wanted to keep their feelings secret for a reason. But, he also knew that if someone kept their feelings secret, it could potentially end up hurting someone. After he’d lost his fiancee Anna, he’d dated another woman a few years later. He’d thought things were going well. Hell, he’d been ready to propose... Only to find that she ended up having feelings for someone else. It hurt, and despite her saying she still cared for him, he’d broken up with her. He just couldn’t be with someone who didn’t love him and only him... And he couldn’t be with someone who had lied to him either.

Which was why he needed to get these people on track. He had a few plans in place. Hell, he even enlisted in some help from others. They’d been skeptical and even said if his plans blew up in his face to keep them out of it. He’d agreed. He’d take the blame... So long as if Mick felt like punching a hole in something it wasn’t Ray’s head!  

Speaking of...

The rattling of the doorknob had Ray taking a deep breath. The door swung open and Ray greeted Mick with a wave. Mick grunted out a greeting. He smelled of smoke and had some ash staining the skin around his neck. He was dragging his feet, too, which let Ray know he was tired. He only hoped he wasn’t too tired for his plan to work. 

“Hey, Mick! How was your day?”

“Fine.”

“Ah, okay, I was wondering if you wanted to-”

“Pass,” said Mick, dumping his stuff on the sofa before walking to the fridge. Probably to get a beer. Ray couldn’t let him pop a beer! Once he took that first taste all Mick wanted to do was sit in a recliner and watch whatever sporting event was on television. 

“You don’t even know what I was going to say!”

“Listen, it’s been a long day,” said Mick, beer now in hand. “So-”

“Fine! I’ll just tell Laurel you said no.”

Mick hesitated opening the beer, instead turning his head back to stare at Ray. His gaze was inquisitive and imploring. Ray just shrugged while grabbing his phone, acting like he was using it instead of moving icons around. 

“I’ll text her and tell her you can’t make it.”

“Make what?”

“Oh she had wanted to grab some dinner with us. I guess she’s had a crummy week... She managed to grab some reservations at that new place on tenth that just opened up and everyone’s been raving about.”

“Wait... Spitfire Grill?” asked Mick, beer going back in the fridge. 

“Hm? Oh, yeah, that one.”

“Damn...” Mick looked at the clock. “What time did she want to meet up?”

“Eight I think.” It was currently six. “But if you don’t want to go...”

“Nah, I’ll go. I mean, if she’s had a rough week...”

“Sweet! I’ll tell her you’re in! I’ll have to meet you there though! I need to finish some things at the lab! Uh, the reservation is under her name... In case you beat us there!”

Mick just nodded and Ray left the apartment. He sighed in relief before opening his phone to his contacts. He found Laurel’s number and pressed the button to call her as he headed out the apartment. 

“Hey, Laurel? It’s Ray... Are you busy? No? Great!”

.

.

.

Laurel studied the menu as she sat alone at a table for three. She glanced at her phone to see it was five minutes to eight. She reached for her lemon water and took a sip. Ray had sounded concerned on the phone. He’d said that Mick had had a rough week and he wanted to cheer him up. Laurel knew that being a firefighter meant you had to deal with some tough calls. Hell, she was on her way to becoming ADA, and there were times she even got depressed by the cases that passed over her desk. She’d been tempted to bring the others but Ray said he’d been only able to get the reservation for three, but that they could all maybe hang out on Friday. Laurel had agreed. Though she was a bit surprised Ray had called her instead of Leonard. Leonard was Mick’s closest friend. Maybe he’d be the better choice at cheering him up. 

She looked up when she heard Mick’s voice. She smiled when he looked at Lily almost warily at the hostess desk. It surprised her, too, to see the girl they’d all initially thought was a ghost there. Apparently it was the first job interview she’d been able to get. She was going to school but still needed money to pay her bills. Lily guided him around a few tables and seated him at their table. She greeted him with a smile and he nodded before ordering a beer. 

“Hey,” she said. 

“Hey... Ray isn’t here yet?”

“No,” she answered. “He did say he had to make a stop at his job.”

“Yeah...” Mick opened up his menu, glancing at the choices. He squinted a little and Laurel hid her smile behind the menu. She knew he wore glasses to read and he was being stubborn, as always, about wearing them in front of people. “He said that to me, too. Uh... Anything look good?”

“I’m thinking about getting the raspberry ribs.”

“Ah... Can’t go wrong with a sirloin.”

At the same time their phones pinged. Laurel glanced at hers, still on the table, while Mick tugged his out of his jacket. They both read the message from Ray with a slight frown. Apparently, he was stuck at work, and couldn’t make it.

“You get the same text from Ray?”

“That’s he’s bailing? Yeah,” said Mick, now suddenly nervous over being alone with Laurel. He was going to kill Ray when he saw him next. For some reason he had the sneaking suspicion that he did this on purpose. 

“I mean we’re here anyway,” said Laurel. “So I’m staying. And I’m getting some ribs. Because this place has reservations all the way up through the month. I was told that when I tried calling here earlier this week to take Dad here for his birthday.”

“But I thought...” Mick’s frown deepened. “The reservation was under your name...”

“Oh, yeah, Ray said he put it in my name in case he was late. Well, good thing he used my name now... Otherwise we might not have gotten in.” Laurel frowned. “You okay? Your face it a little red.”

“Fine,” said Mick, taking a long drink of the beer that Lily deposited. 

“Still waiting for one more?” asked Lily.

“No,” said Laurel with a shake of her head. “Just us.”

“Okay. I can clear this plate. Do you need more time to order?”

“Nah, we’re ready I think,” said Mick, glancing at Laurel. “Right?”

“Right.”

So they ordered. They didn’t talk at first. She sipped her water and checked her phone while he brooded a little and drank his beer. Mick was pissed. For some reason, Ray had put this plan in motion. Why? Ah, fuck, did he know? He had to know! He chanced a glance to Laurel, wondering if she knew, too...

“You, uh, look nice by the way.”

“Oh, thanks, I... I don’t get to go out in just a nice pair of jeans and a top anymore. I always have to look professional... It’s nice to just... You know, let my hair down... So to speak.”

Her hair was down though. In long, blonde curls that framed her face. His eyes trailed down lower to see her simple white tank top and leather jacket. Mick looked away again, tugging at the collar of his thermal shirt. 

“Is it warm in here?” he asked . 

“Um, maybe a little, they did sit us close to the rotisserie,” said Laurel, pointing at the large piece of machinery near by, the chickens inside it roasting and rotating. She frowned as he took another drink of his beer. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine...”

“Ray said he something about you having a rough week. Want to talk about it?”

That sonuvabitch...

“No. I mean. I’m fine. It’s nothing. Really.”

“Ok...”

“How about you? Are things good? Nothing... Wrong?”

“Things are fine. I mean I got into a heated argument with a parking attendant who wanted to say I was in my spot for over four hours. Which was false! It was a whole thing. I was ready to punch the guy. Looked back at the cameras at the restaurant that was close by. Turns out it was a car, different make and model, but the same color as mine.”

Mick laughed at that. “What a moron.”

“Yeah. Let’s just say I really enjoyed the apology when I confronted their supervisor. Of course, my ticket was forgiven as well.”

Her salad and his soup soon arrived so their small talk ceased while they enjoyed their food. When their meals came she offered a taste of her ribs and he offered her some steak. It was... Nice. But Mick knew that Laurel didn’t see this as a date. Not really. So he didn’t either. Just two friends enjoying dinner. When they finished their meal he offered to pay for them both. Laurel waved him away, insisted she pay for her own. He didn’t argue, considering he wasn’t getting paid for another week. When they walked out Mick swore he saw Lily wink at him and he had to wonder if she was in on Ray’s little plan. 

“Well that was good,” said Laurel, hands going to her stomach. “I’m stuffed.”

“Yeah. Me, too.” Mick checked his watch. It wasn’t even ten yet. But he was on call. It was Thursday so he knew Laurel had to work in the morning. “I’d ask you to go get a drink over at Hawk’s but it’s getting late.”

“Yeah, it is...” Laurel confirmed that by looking at her own watch. “Well, it was fun...” She motioned for a cab. She lived on the other end of town as him. For a moment, he wished he was the one who lived across from her. She opened the door and looked over her shoulder at him. Was it bad that he just wanted to kiss her? If he thought she’d be okay with it... And not punch him in the nose for it... He might have. “I’ll see you Friday?”

Mick rolled his eyes. “Fiesta Friday. Yeah. I’ll be there.”

“Oh, it isn’t that bad. I seem to remember someone eating all the chicken nachos last time.”

“Hey, you make some damn good nachos.”

“Goodnight, Mick,” said Laurel before getting into her cab. He offered her a wave as it pulled away. 

“Goodnight, Laurel.”

.

.

.

“I’m sorry!” shouted Ray, thirty minutes later, as Mick came barging into the apartment with a look of murder in his eyes. 

“I should pound you into paste for what you did,” said Mick, chasing Ray around the sofa. Stopping when realizing chasing him was stupid. He pointed at Ray, who looked about ready to wet himself. Good. “Don’t ever pull a stunt like that again. You got it?”

“Yeah. No problem...” Ray watched as Mick went to his room. “Hey, how was the food? I do want to eventually go there and---”

Mick’s answer? The slamming of his bedroom door.

.

.

.

“Okay, so phase one wasn’t a success... No matter. Every great scientist knows that sometimes in order to succeed...” Ray lifted up a screwdriver. “Sometimes you need to fail.”

.

.

.

Friday was a night they all got together. Every night was different. Sometimes they went to the bar they all liked. Sometimes a coffee shop. Or a movie. Most of the time they just went to someone’s apartment and hung out while eating good food. This Friday was deemed Fiesta Friday. Laurel and Sara cooked, Leonard and Mick helped with clean-up and brought the booze, and Barry along with Kara thought of the entertainment. Most of the times it was a game of some sort. Though the last time they’d played Monopoly and just about killed one another. Ray was excited for the event. Not only because of the tacos, but because of his plan for Leonard and Sara. Things with he and Mick had been... Tense. For a couple days. But Mick eventually turned his attitude around. 

Because, apparently, he and Laurel had been talking more.

And Ray didn’t just know that because he snuck a peak over Mick’s shoulder once, or twice, to see who he kept texting all the time. So, even though they weren’t dating... Progress had been made!

“Man it smells good out here,” said Ray outside Laurel’s door. 

“Laurel knows how to cook. She’s amazing at it.”

“Oh? You like her food, huh?” asked Ray.

“Just open the door,” said Mick with a growl. Ray obliged. Everyone had beaten them there and greeted them with a smile. Barry took one of the cases of beers Ray held. Leonard and Sara were already nursing their first drinks. Laurel had a glass of wine on the counter while she did her finishing touches on her food. 

“Hey guys!” greeted Kara. She already had salsa on her shirt, Ray noticed, but didn’t seem to care since she still had a small plate filled with chips and the red sauce. “We were just talking about teams for Pictionary tonight!”

There was an easel set up. And a few markers littered on the coffee table. 

“You and Barry cannot be on the same team!” argued Sara.

“Awe, why?” asked Barry.

“Because you two are like robots!” chimed in Mick. “All synced up together or something. It’s freaky.”

“You never care about the game anyway,” said Kara, hands on her hips. 

“I agree with Mick,” chimed in Laurel. “And Sara. You two need to be split up.”

“Barry!” whined Kara, a fake pout on her lip. “They want to keep us apart!”

“Never!” argued Barry, puffing out his chest, earning a handful a chips to be thrown at him by Sara. “H-Hey! Uncalled for!”

“How about we just eat and worry about teams later?” asked Laurel. 

“Agreed,” said everyone else. They grabbed their plates and dished up. There were hot and soft shells for tacos, homemade Spanish rice, refried beans, and a seven-layer dip. Kara and Sara made themselves some margaritas. Ray and Barry decided that they wanted one, too. Leonard and Mick stuck with their beers. They gathered around on the sofa, chairs, and floors and ate. The television was on, a sitcom filling in the background noise as they chatted about their week. While six friends chatted... One plotted. Ray wasn’t sure when the best time was to enact his plan. Somehow, he had to get both Leonard and Sara over to Leonard’s apartment. It took him a while but when Mick went to the bathroom, Ray decided to pounce. 

“Oh, hey, Leonard? Mick said to ask you if he left his wallet over there. He was missing it from two nights ago.”

“Really?” asked Leonard with a furrowed brow, standing from his chair. “That’s odd, he never said anything...”

“Oh, he forgot about it till now. But, you know Mick, when he has to go he has to go. He told me to just tell you... About it. The wallet. That... He’s missing.”

“Okay...” Leonard pursed his lips, not sure what to make of Ray’s behavior. “I’ll go check...” Leonard looked at the bathroom that Mick hadn’t come out of yet, then headed to his place to go look for the wallet. If it was in his place... He’d really hadn’t noticed it. He closed his door and started looking between the cushions on the sofa. He looked up as the door to his place opened. Sara came in, closing the door behind her. “Sara?”

“Ray said you wanted to talk to me?”

“What? No I didn’t...” Leonard had a look of confusion on his face. “What is he up to?”

“I don’t know...” Sara looked up at Leonard as he came to stand before her. “You didn’t need to talk?”

“No...”

.

.

.

“What the hell are you doing?” Ray jumped, screwdriver in hand, as he whipped around to see Mick and Barry standing there. Mick had his arms crossed over his chest. “Well?!”

“I...I... Well...” Ray got all his words out in a rush. “Well, see, I think Leonard and Sara like one another... And they just need some time alone to say it. So I, uh, wanted to get them locked inside his apartment. Just... For a little while.”

Mick and Barry shared a look. And Ray was super surprised when Mick spoke.

“Do it.”

.

.

.

“What the hell?” asked Sara as she turned the knob... And it fell off the door in her hands. Just the knob piece. The locking mechanism was still in place. “Uh.. Len? I broke your door.”

“What? Let me see...”

Sara help up the knob. Leonard sighed as he tried pushing the door open. Nothing. Great. They were locked in. He pounded on the door to try and get their attention across the hall. After a few moments they realized no one could hear him. 

“Have your phone?”

“No,” said Sara. “You?”

“No... I left it on your counter. Shit.”

“Can’t we just take the door off?” asked Sara. 

“Yeah, I guess we don’t really have a choice. But the problem is getting that lock out just right.”

Sara nodded. “I mean. I’m sure someone will notice us gone.”

‘Oh, someone already knows,’ thought Leonard. And he was going to kill Ray. He knew he had a hand in this. And since Mick told Leonard what had happened with Laurel... Leonard bet Ray had a hand in this as well. It’s been a few days since he’d found out Sara’s secret. He’d been waiting for her to say something but maybe... Maybe he was the one who needed to open up first. 

“We’ll give it a few minutes and if no one comes looking we can either go down the fire escape or take off the door.”

“Okay,” said Sara. 

“Want a drink?” asked Leonard as he opened up his cabinet. If he was going to confess his feelings to her, he needed a drink. 

“Uh... Sure... I’ll take one while I’m here.” Sara looked around the darkened living room. She flipped on a lamp, casting the room in a dim light. She settled down on his leather sofa and sighed. He walked around to sit next to her. She took her glass and they sat in a comfortable silence. They could hear laughter from across the hall. “Man, are we really that loud? No wonder Helen hated us.”

“Well, there were more reasons than us being loud,” said Leonard, earning  laugh from Sara. 

“True... There was...”

She chanced a look at him and smiled. He returned her smile before she turned away, taking a long drink from her glass. He followed suit. When five minutes passed he sighed, finishing his drink and setting the empty glass on the glass top of his coffee table. 

“Sara...”

“Yeah?” she asked, finger gliding over the rim of her glass.

“I need to ask you something.”

“About?” she asked. 

“About me... and you... and me and you...”

“W-What about... Us?” she asked, blue eyes widening. She licked her lips, nervous, and he couldn’t stop his eyes from going there. He heard her breath hitch and he had to wonder what he’d done to make her so nervous around him. He took the drink out of her hands and set it next to his on the table. He then reached for her hand and took it before staring into her eyes. “Len?”

“I’ve been waiting for the right moment to bring this up... Seems like someone else has decided that tonight is the night,” he said, nodding toward the door. 

“Wait... Someone else broke your door?”

“Raymond.”

“Ray? But why?”

“To help us get our heads our of our asses...”

“What?” Sara shook her head. “I don’t...”

“Sara... That night you came over. When I was first dating Scott. What were you really here for? Tell me...”

“I... I...” She wanted to run. But the damn door was broken. She couldn’t run out on him. That would be taking the coward’s way out. So she lifted her chin. “You want to know what I was coming here for? What I wanted to say?”

“Yes.”

Sara, in this moment, knew she’d fumble with her words. So she did the next best thing. She brought her hands up to his face, palms sliding over the stubble of his cheeks, then leaned in and kissed him. It was deep, yet soft. There was a bubbling passion underneath the calm movement of her lips over his. The kiss, though only a few seconds, felt like it went on forever. When the kiss broke, both of them opened their eyes... His were filled with nothing but wonderment. Hers were filled with lust and dare he say... Love?

“That... Is what I’d wanted to say.”

.

.

.

“Hey,” said Kara, looking around the room. “Where are Leonard and Sara?”

“They had to go run over to Leonard’s for a bit,” said Ray. “They’ll be back.”

“Yeah, in the meantime...” Barry lifted up a marker. “Pictionary?”

TBC...

#captain canary #canaryfire #ray palmer #sara lance #laurel lance #leonard snart #mick rory #lotff #lot ff #ccff #cc ff #cfff #cf ff #barry allen #kara danvers #lily stein #lot au

[s-c-i-guy]

Newfound Wormhole Allows Information to Escape Black Holes

Physicists theorize that a new “traversable” kind of wormhole could resolve a baffling paradox and rescue information that falls into black holes.

In 1985, when Carl Sagan was writing the novel Contact, he needed to quickly transport his protagonist Dr. Ellie Arroway from Earth to the star Vega. He had her enter a black hole and exit light-years away, but he didn’t know if this made any sense. The Cornell University astrophysicist and television star consulted his friend Kip Thorne, a black hole expert at the California Institute of Technology (who won a Nobel Prize earlier this month). Thorne knew that Arroway couldn’t get to Vega via a black hole, which is thought to trap and destroy anything that falls in. But it occurred to him that she might make use of another kind of hole consistent with Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity: a tunnel or “wormhole” connecting distant locations in space-time.

While the simplest theoretical wormholes immediately collapse and disappear before anything can get through, Thorne wondered whether it might be possible for an “infinitely advanced” sci-fi civilization to stabilize a wormhole long enough for something or someone to traverse it. He figured out that such a civilization could in fact line the throat of a wormhole with “exotic material” that counteracts its tendency to collapse. The material would possess negative energy, which would deflect radiation and repulse space-time apart from itself. Sagan used the trick in Contact, attributing the invention of the exotic material to an earlier, lost civilization to avoid getting into particulars. Meanwhile, those particulars enthralled Thorne, his students and many other physicists, who spent years exploring traversable wormholes and their theoretical implications. They discovered that these wormholes can serve as time machines, invoking time-travel paradoxes — evidence that exotic material is forbidden in nature.

Now, decades later, a new species of traversable wormhole has emerged, free of exotic material and full of potential for helping physicists resolve a baffling paradox about black holes. This paradox is the very problem that plagued the early draft of Contact and led Thorne to contemplate traversable wormholes in the first place; namely, that things that fall into black holes seem to vanish without a trace. This total erasure of information breaks the rules of quantum mechanics, and it so puzzles experts that in recent years, some have argued that black hole interiors don’t really exist — that space and time strangely end at their horizons.

The flurry of findings started last year with a paper that reported the first traversable wormhole that doesn’t require the insertion of exotic material to stay open. Instead, according to Ping Gao and Daniel Jafferis of Harvard University and Aron Wall of Stanford University, the repulsive negative energy in the wormhole’s throat can be generated from the outside by a special quantum connection between the pair of black holes that form the wormhole’s two mouths. When the black holes are connected in the right way, something tossed into one will shimmy along the wormhole and, following certain events in the outside universe, exit the second. Remarkably, Gao, Jafferis and Wall noticed that their scenario is mathematically equivalent to a process called quantum teleportation, which is key to quantum cryptography and can be demonstrated in laboratory experiments.

John Preskill, a black hole and quantum gravity expert at Caltech, says the new traversable wormhole comes as a surprise, with implications for the black hole information paradox and black hole interiors. “What I really like,” he said, “is that an observer can enter the black hole and then escape to tell about what she saw.” This suggests that black hole interiors really exist, he explained, and that what goes in must come out.

A Cryptic Equation

The new wormhole work began in 2013, when Jafferis attended an intriguing talk at the Strings conference in South Korea. The speaker, Juan Maldacena, a professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, had recently concluded, based on various hints and arguments, that “ER = EPR.” That is, wormholes between distant points in space-time, the simplest of which are called Einstein-Rosen or “ER” bridges, are equivalent (albeit in some ill-defined way) to entangled quantum particles, also known as Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen or “EPR” pairs. The ER = EPR conjecture, posed by Maldacena and Leonard Susskind of Stanford, was an attempt to solve the modern incarnation of the infamous black hole information paradox by tying space-time geometry, governed by general relativity, to the instantaneous quantum connections between far-apart particles that Einstein called “spooky action at a distance.”

The paradox has loomed since 1974, when the British physicist Stephen Hawking determined that black holes evaporate — slowly giving off heat in the form of particles now known as “Hawking radiation.” Hawking calculated that this heat is completely random; it contains no information about the black hole’s contents. As the black hole blinks out of existence, so does the universe’s record of everything that went inside. This violates a principle called “unitarity,” the backbone of quantum theory, which holds that as particles interact, information about them is never lost, only scrambled, so that if you reversed the arrow of time in the universe’s quantum evolution, you’d see things unscramble into an exact re-creation of the past.

Almost everyone believes in unitarity, which means information must escape black holes — but how? In the last five years, some theorists, most notably Joseph Polchinski of the University of California, Santa Barbara, have argued that black holes are empty shells with no interiors at all — that Ellie Arroway, upon hitting a black hole’s event horizon, would fizzle on a “firewall” and radiate out again.

Many theorists believe in black hole interiors (and gentler transitions across their horizons), but in order to understand them, they must discover the fate of information that falls inside. This is critical to building a working quantum theory of gravity, the long-sought union of the quantum and space-time descriptions of nature that comes into sharpest relief in black hole interiors, where extreme gravity acts on a quantum scale.

The quantum gravity connection is what drew Maldacena, and later Jafferis, to the ER = EPR idea, and to wormholes. The implied relationship between tunnels in space-time and quantum entanglement posed by ER = EPR resonated with a popular recent belief that space is essentially stitched into existence by quantum entanglement. It seemed that wormholes had a role to play in stitching together space-time and in letting black hole information worm its way out of black holes — but how might this work? When Jafferis heard Maldacena talk about his cryptic equation and the evidence for it, he was aware that a standard ER wormhole is unstable and non-traversable. But he wondered what Maldacena’s duality would mean for a traversable wormhole like the ones Thorne and others played around with decades ago. Three years after the South Korea talk, Jafferis and his collaborators Gao and Wall presented their answer. The work extends the ER = EPR idea by equating, not a standard wormhole and a pair of entangled particles, but a traversable wormhole and quantum teleportation: a protocol discovered in 1993 that allows a quantum system to disappear and reappear unscathed somewhere else.

When Maldacena read Gao, Jafferis and Wall’s paper, “I viewed it as a really nice idea, one of these ideas that after someone tells you, it’s obvious,” he said. Maldacena and two collaborators, Douglas Stanford and Zhenbin Yang, immediately began exploring the new wormhole’s ramifications for the black hole information paradox; their paper appeared in April. Susskind and Ying Zhao of Stanford followed this with a paper about wormhole teleportation in July. The wormhole “gives an interesting geometric picture for how teleportation happens,” Maldacena said. “The message actually goes through the wormhole.”

Diving Into Wormholes

In their paper, “Diving Into Traversable Wormholes,” published in Fortschritte der Physik, Maldacena, Stanford and Yang consider a wormhole of the new kind that connects two black holes: a parent black hole and a daughter one formed from half of the Hawking radiation given off by the parent as it evaporates. The two systems are as entangled as they can be. Here, the fate of the older black hole’s information is clear: It worms its way out of the daughter black hole.

During an interview this month in his tranquil office at the IAS, Maldacena, a reserved Argentinian-American with a track record of influential insights, described his radical musings. On the right side of a chalk-dusty blackboard, Maldacena drew a faint picture of two black holes connected by the new traversable wormhole. On the left, he sketched a quantum teleportation experiment, performed by the famous fictional experimenters Alice and Bob, who are in possession of entangled quantum particles a and b, respectively. Say Alice wants to teleport a qubit q to Bob. She prepares a combined state of q and a, measures that combined state (reducing it to a pair of classical bits, 1 or 0), and sends the result of this measurement to Bob. He can then use this as a key for operating on b in a way that re-creates the state q. Voila, a unit of quantum information has teleported from one place to the other.

Maldacena turned to the right side of the blackboard. “You can do operations with a pair of black holes that are morally equivalent to what I discussed [about quantum teleportation]. And in that picture, this message really goes through the wormhole.”

Say Alice throws qubit q into black hole A. She then measures a particle of its Hawking radiation, a, and transmits the result of the measurement through the external universe to Bob, who can use this knowledge to operate on b, a Hawking particle coming out of black hole B. Bob’s operation reconstructs q, which appears to pop out of B, a perfect match for the particle that fell into A. This is why some physicists are excited: Gao, Jafferis and Wall’s wormhole allows information to be recovered from black holes. In their paper, they set up their wormhole in a negatively curved space-time geometry that often serves as a useful, if unrealistic, playground for quantum gravity theorists. However, their wormhole idea seems to extend to the real world as long as two black holes are coupled in the right way: “They have to be causally connected and then the nature of the interaction that we took is the simplest thing you can imagine,” Jafferis explained. If you allow the Hawking radiation from one of the black holes to fall into the other, the two black holes become entangled, and the quantum information that falls into one can exit the other.

The quantum-teleportation format precludes using these traversable wormholes as time machines. Anything that goes through the wormhole has to wait for Alice’s message to travel to Bob in the outside universe before it can exit Bob’s black hole, so the wormhole doesn’t offer any superluminal boost that could be exploited for time travel. It seems traversable wormholes might be permitted in nature as long as they offer no speed advantage. “Traversable wormholes are like getting a bank loan,” Gao, Jafferis and Wall wrote in their paper: “You can only get one if you are rich enough not to need it.”

A Naive Octopus

While traversable wormholes won’t revolutionize space travel, according to Preskill the new wormhole discovery provides “a promising resolution” to the black hole firewall question by suggesting that there is no firewall at black hole horizons. Preskill said the discovery rescues “what we call ‘black hole complementarity,’ which means that the interior and exterior of the black hole are not really two different systems but rather two very different, complementary ways of looking at the same system.” If complementarity holds, as is widely assumed, then in passing across a black hole horizon from one realm to the other, Contact’s Ellie Arroway wouldn’t notice anything strange. This seems more likely if, under certain conditions, she could even slide all the way through a Gao-Jafferis-Wall wormhole.

The wormhole also safeguards unitarity — the principle that information is never lost — at least for the entangled black holes being studied. Whatever falls into one black hole eventually exits the other as Hawking radiation, Preskill said, which “can be thought of as in some sense a very scrambled copy of the black hole interior.”

Taking the findings to their logical conclusion, Preskill thinks it ought to be possible (at least for an infinitely advanced civilization) to influence the interior of one of these black holes by manipulating its radiation. This “sounds crazy,” he wrote in an email, but it “might make sense if we can think of the radiation, which is entangled with the black hole — EPR — as being connected to the black hole interior by wormholes — ER. Then tickling the radiation can send a message which can be read from inside the black hole!” He added, “We still have a ways to go, though, before we can flesh out this picture in more detail.”

Indeed, obstacles remain in the quest to generalize the new wormhole findings to a statement about the fate of all quantum information, or the meaning of ER = EPR.

In Maldacena and Susskind’s paper proposing ER = EPR, they included a sketch that’s become known as the “octopus”: a black hole with tentacle-like wormholes leading to distant Hawking particles that have evaporated out of it. The authors explained that the sketch illustrates “the entanglement pattern between the black hole and the Hawking radiation. We expect that this entanglement leads to the interior geometry of the black hole.”

But according to Matt Visser, a mathematician and general-relativity expert at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand who has studied wormholes since the 1990s, the most literal reading of the octopus picture doesn’t work. The throats of wormholes formed from single Hawking particles would be so thin that qubits could never fit through. “A traversable wormhole throat is ‘transparent’ only to wave packets with size smaller than the throat radius,” Visser explained. “Big wave packets will simply bounce off any small wormhole throat without crossing to the other side.”

Stanford, who co-wrote the recent paper with Maldacena and Yang, acknowledged that this is a problem with the simplest interpretation of the ER = EPR idea, in which each particle of Hawking radiation has its own tentacle-like wormhole. However, a more speculative interpretation of ER = EPR that he and others have in mind does not suffer from this failing. “The idea is that in order to recover the information from the Hawking radiation using this traversable wormhole,” Stanford said, one has to “gather the Hawking radiation together and act on it in a complicated way.” This complicated collective measurement reveals information about the particles that fell in; it has the effect, he said, of “creating a large, traversable wormhole out of the small and unhelpful octopus tentacles. The information would then propagate through this large wormhole.” Maldacena added that, simply put, the theory of quantum gravity might have a new, generalized notion of geometry for which ER equals EPR. “We think quantum gravity should obey this principle,” he said. “We view it more as a guide to the theory.”

In his 1994 popular science book, Black Holes and Time Warps, Kip Thorne celebrated the style of reasoning involved in wormhole research. “No type of thought experiment pushes the laws of physics harder than the type triggered by Carl Sagan’s phone call to me,” he wrote; “thought experiments that ask, ‘What things do the laws of physics permit an infinitely advanced civilization to do, and what things do the laws forbid?’”

#science #sciblr #wormholes #information #quantum mechanics

[stillthewordgirl]

LOT/CC fic: Secret Santa, part 3 (of 4)

Len really isn't the "Secret Santa" type. Hell, he's not really the Christmas type. But when Sara challenges him...well. Maybe this could be fun, after all...

I'm sorry this was delayed. But in return, you get a chapter that's longer than the two preceding it combined! Things took a bit of a turn toward actual plot. Many thanks to @larielromeniel for helping catch all my late-night writing typos and getting some things straightened out.

Can also be read here at FF.net or here at AO3. (Recommended, ‘cause this is LONG.)

Happy New Year, everyone! 

The '20s in Chicago are about as fun as Len thought they'd be. He's quite fond of the dapper blue suit Gideon helps him create in the fabrication room, actually, and even Mick—who isn't fond of "playin' dress-up," as he calls it—seems to like his own smoke-gray one.

Of course, Len's so distracted by the sight of Sara spinning around in her very, very short, sparkling flapper's dress that Hunter gives them one of his patented pity-the-poor-captain looks and pointedly tells Kendra and Mick to make sure someone's paying attention to the mission. The very fact that he includes Mick in that order shows just how much things have changed over the past year, both with Mick and with Hunter's view of him. Of all of them, really.

Kendra, in her own sparkly flapper dress that's not quite so short, laughs, and Mick, popping his fedora onto his head, snorts, but they do listen. And Leonard and Sara aren't quite so distracted that they'd fudge a serious mission because of it. The four of them, with the others ready as backup at the ship (much to Raymond's disappointment), handily filch the futuristic weapons a very small-time mobster had obtained from time pirates, with only a few small stops and side trips to obtain some authentic Prohibition-era moonshine—and perhaps a few other small items.

And one slight delay when Sara'd decided to distract guards in a speakeasy by dancing. Len's pretty sure that's a vision that's going to haunt his dreams for the foreseeable future. (Especially since she'd followed it up by delivering quite the ass kicking onto the same guards.)

She's not, however, quite so fond of the reward for said ass kicking.

"This is even worse than that swill they were serving back in Salvation," Sara comments, wrinkling her nose after just one sip. She's sitting in the galley with Len, Mick and Kendra after their return, trying out their stolen 'shine as they rehash the mission. Kendra, who'd declined to even take one drink, shakes her head, pushing over the box of chocolates she'd found left in her room by her Secret Santa. She's guarded them zealously enough that Len's actually somewhat touched by her willingness to share them now.

And he's a sucker for the peppermint ones.

"It's not so bad." Mick takes another drink, but even he's not putting the booze away as quickly as he has in the past. "Just…um…distinctive. Is that what they call it?"

"Yes. It is," Len informs him, drily, setting down his glass. "Both, actually. But I don't think 'distinctive' is necessarily a good thing."

"More for me."

"And welcome to it," Sara tells him, pushing the glass away and taking a chocolate. "I think we've established I can drink you under the table, big guy. I've got nothing to prove. Especially not with that stuff. I have better taste."

Mick's eyes brighten at that line, though, and he quickly glances at Leonard, who glares at him as he tries to think of a good way to head off what's coming. It's Kendra, to his surprise, who comes to his rescue.

"Taste is relative," the former hawk goddess says smoothly. "Did you know the ancient Egyptians were the first ones to perfect the brewing of beer? It didn't taste much like today's, though. I wonder what you'd make of it."

Mick is successfully distracted, although something in the smile he turns on the dark-haired woman says that he's allowing himself to be. "Yeah? And you remember that?"

"Oddly enough…"

Leonard snorts, then glances at Sara, who shakes her head in amusement. Then, against his better judgment, he leans a little closer.

"So," he drawls, "figure out who gave you that excellent gift?"

Sara'd found a whetstone waiting for her on her desk when they'd returned from Chicago, one of a unique make even she'd never seen before. But it worked like a dream, and she was so pleased with it that Leonard rather wished he'd had the idea first.

Her eyes sparkled as she leaned forward just a little too. "Like I'd tell you if I did." A look from under lowered lashes. "Or are you saying that it was you?"

Yes, he wishes he'd had the idea first. "I'm not giving anything away, birdie."

"You give away plenty, Len."

Now, what does she mean by that? "Oh?" he asks, just a little cautiously. "Do tell…"

But Mick interrupts them with a snort, and they both glance up to see both him and Kendra watching them with particularly amused, if world-weary, expressions. But Mick doesn't comment this time, just shakes his head and pushes his chair back, getting to his feet.

"Told the nerd squad I'd meet 'em to hash over some more rescue ideas," he mutters. "Think I'll take a few glasses of the 'shine, since no one here likes it. Haircut gets real creative with the science-y stuff when you get some liquor into him, and maybe it'll help."

Kendra rises too, as he does. "How are you doing?" she asks curiously. "With the plans. Everyone was so optimistic at first, but lately…"

"But lately, not so much." Mick shakes his head, pouring a few glasses before turning for the door and then glancing back.

"Time Bastards, they were smarter than they looked. Even with their damned gadget…" He nods to Snart, who nods back … damn right he'll take credit for destroying the Oculus. "…they made it real hard to undo their bullshit. Fuckers."

Well, Leonard can't argue with that. He opens his mouth to ask another question, but Mick anticipates it.

"Ain't saying any more," the big man says with a grunt as he turns back for the door. "I hate remembering it, what they did…well. Only reason I'm doing it is 'cause of Rip's kid. S'got a dad who loves him. He should…"

Len gets Mick's issues with that as well as anyone ever will. "Yeah," he cuts in. "Good luck."

Mick leaves without another backward glance. Kendra does glance at him, but she leaves, too.

Leonard reaches over and reclaims his glass of moonshine, taking another sip even as he winces at the taste. He can feel Sara's eyes on him, but she doesn't say anything. Instead, she reaches over and takes his glass, stealing a sip herself.

Len glances over after a moment, meets her eyes.

Understanding.

Nothing more. But also, nothing less.

He watches her another minute. Then, "So. Do you want to finish the movie?"

Sara's startled into a laugh. They'd started watching "The Untouchables" right before the ship's foray to Chicago, after she'd told Len while sparring that she'd never seen it. ("That was the year I was born, old man!") So, he, of course, had insisted she had to. Before visiting actual Prohibition-era Chicago, of course.

Merely a bonus if it meant a few more hours in her company.

They'd only made it halfway through before they'd both started nodding off, though, and Len didn't have quite the nerve to let her fall asleep with her head on his shoulder (or to let himself drift off with his chin against her hair). So, using the excuse that she'd have a hell of a crick in her neck if she stayed like that (and resisting the urge to suggest they both get more comfortable), he'd woken her gently and watched as she left with an apology and a sleepy mumble.

And spent the next hour staring at the ceiling and regretting the choice.

"Well, now that we've seen the real thing, it might not be as much fun…but yes," Sara said, decisively, bringing him back to the here and now as she pushed back her chair and got to her feet. "I have some things to do right now. Later. Tomorrow? I'm all screwed up with that stop…what's ship's time, Gideon?"

"8:19 p.m., Ms. Lance," the AU said promptly. "It is not surprising your internal clock is, as you say, 'all screwed up.' You left Chicago at 11 p.m. local time, after spending approximately six hours there, and that was two-and-a-half hours ago in the time stream. Your body cannot decide if it's 1:30 a.m. or mid-evening." Gideon's tone takes on a slightly lecturing note. "I keep telling Captain Hunter that none of you have had the training in such readjustments that he has, but…"

"…but we are pretty used to weird hours. Some of us, anyway. The assassins and thieves." Sara winks at Leonard. "It evens out."

"But…"

"It's OK, Gideon. See you later, Len."

Leonard watches her go, then picks up the bottle of 'shine, swirling the liquid around and watching it. The raw burn of it hadn't been to his taste, but he can see the lure of the quick oblivion it promises, especially in the mean streets of the city they'd just left.

Not for him, though. He'd blown up the Time Masters in part because he hated the idea of someone else pulling his strings. He'll be damned if he lets the booze do it.

"Mr. Snart?"

Gideon's voice is tentative. Len smiles to himself, sitting the bottle down, pretty sure of what the AI has to say.

"Gideon, after all this time," he drawls, tipping his chair backward, "don't you think you can call me 'Leonard?' "

A pause.

"Mr. Snart," the AI repeats with emphasis, "such familiarity would be against my programming."

"And you always have to go with your programming."

"It is in my nature."

Not quite a confirmation. "Well, it's in my nature to hate the idea of programming. Which I'm pretty sure you know." Leonard brings the front two legs of the chair back to the floor. "What's up?"

Another pause.

"Captain Hunter, he was quite pleased by the first gift," Gideon says finally. "Have you thoughts on a second?"

Through her sensors, he's pretty sure Gideon can see him, but he conceals his smile anyway. "Not as of yet," he points out. "Any ideas yourself?"

The AI is quiet for a few moments. "Not…particularly," she says then, tone uncharacteristically hesitant. "It is true that Captain Hunter only truly wants one thing right now. Two things. And anything else I can think of is likely to rely too much, perhaps, on nostalgia. Not that that is a bad thing, but…"

"But a random crook is probably not the best to invoke it."

But Gideon has a comeback to that immediately. "On the contrary, Mr. Snart. You and Captain Hunter are more alike than either one of you is ever likely to care to admit." A little asperity, there? Even amusement? "Still, it would take something specific, and I have no particular thoughts on that. Not as of yet."

"Well," he retorts, just a bit unsettled by her words. "Keep thinking."

"As long as you do the same, Mr. Snart."

He and Hunter are not alike.

He's a far better planner, for one, Leonard thinks grumpily as he stalks the halls of the Waverider a bit later, unwilling to admit that his sleeping patterns are off, after all, thanks to time travel. He's a better leader. Better looking.

Petty? Oh, a tad. But no one ever said Leonard Snart couldn't be petty. He's pretty good at that, too.

Slowing to a stop as he nears Hunter's study, he sighs, acknowledging that, at least. And also that Gideon had a point. About a couple of things.

As far as he knows, Mick's still with the others. Well, he's feeling just petty enough to barge in. Maybe another look at the study will give him some ideas…

And that's when the door slides open, the captain himself rushing out and stumbling to a stop before hitting the team thief.

For a moment, the two men just stare at each other. Len, recovering quickly and pasting on his usual smirk, notes the slightly reddened eyes, the stress and the grief in the Brit's features before the man recovers enough to slap his own typically harried expression on.

"Mr. Snart," Hunter clips out before sidestepping him. "Excuse me." Then he raises his voice and his eyes. "Gideon, set a course for the Refuge. I…have a few inquiries to make there. And I promised Mother that I'd look in; I've been sadly remiss in that."

"Now?" Leonard inquires pointedly, turning to look at him. "Kinda late. Pretty sure a good portion of your team is asleep or exhausted."

Hunter's eyes narrow, but Gideon cuts in smoothly at that point, as Mick and Raymond follow Hunter out of the study. "Captain, I hate to say this, but Mr. Snart is correct." She continues as Len mutters, "Gee, thanks, Gideon." "I can set the course, but I would recommend actually making the jump in the morning, ship's time. That will also give you time to…consider what you hope to achieve."

Hunter runs a hand over his face, then shakes his head. "Yes…yes, of course, Gideon." He fixes Len and the others with a look. "So. Rest is in order, people. We jump in the morning."

With that, he strides off toward the captain's quarter. Leonard shakes his head as Mick joins him.

"Not going well, I take it?"

"Nah…"

"He says we…well, he…created a 'time knot.' " Raymond's voice is concerned, and Len decides to leave off antagonizing the man for the time being…to better obtain information, of course. "When he recruited us, when you…" He motions vaguely at Len, who raises his eyebrows. "…um, blew up the Time Masters, when we killed Savage. We made it so there's no way to save his wife and son, because if they don't die, he doesn't recruit us and none of that happens and…"

"Breathe, Raymond." Len turns to look at Mick. "And this is news?

The bigger man shrugs. "Well, there's usually wriggle room. The Time Masters, they operate…operated…in that wriggle room, those little spaces between events. You know, like…" He ponders a moment. "…well, uh…oh, hell. The thing with the time pirates. The Time Masters, they grabbed me in the time after you left, before you could even possibly come back." He waves a hand as Leonard starts to respond. "Don't say it again, I was an ass, you didn't have a choice, yadda yadda. Water under the bridge. Anyway, we figured we'd find something here. But…really seems to be tied up tight. We've been going over it and going over it." He shrugs as Raymond nods. "Can't find nothing."

"So, why the Refuge?"

"Honestly, Snart, I ain't got the foggiest idea."

The place looks the same as it had the last time they were there, before the Vanishing Point and the Oculus and Savage. Len feels a prickle run up his spine as he follows Hunter and the others down the path toward the stately home, slowing so that he can study the place.

Nothing unusual. He knows they're at…what was Hunter's phrase? A secret location in time and space…but there's nothing to clue anyone into that fact. Not unless he can count that unnerving prickle…not Alexa, no, not quite…that just won't go away.

He's so engrossed in thought that it takes him a moment to notice that Sara's dropped back to walk next to him.

"Penny for your thoughts?" she murmurs, watching him.

"Nah. Gotta be at least a quarter," he shoots back, then sighs, hanging back a little more while she slows with him. "Wishing that I knew more about this place," he says in a low tone. "Do you... feel that?"

Sara lifts an eyebrow at him, but apparently decides against innuendo. "No? Feel what? It seems the same."

"There's like…this electricity in the air." Ill at ease, he pauses instead of following the others up the steps. "Do you think we're still…"

"Our younger selves? No. Rip said he was bringing us to a point after that. You were too busy trading barbs with Stein to hear him." She taps him on the shoulder and he finds himself leaning into the contact, then stops. Sara doesn't comment, but she does turn around and walk backward a few moments, studying him thoughtfully.

He studies her in return, noticing something. "That new?"

"The jersey?" The corner of her mouth rises and she nods, turning to let her jacket slip off her shoulders just enough to show the "Lance" on the back. "Uh huh. Starling City Rockets. My 'Santa' worked fast. And paid attention. I used to go to games with my dad. It's even the old name."

"Nice." He means it.

"Very." Sara shrugs the jacket back on and slows even more, although the others are in the house at this point. "Stein's worked fast too. Got him this gorgeous crystal menorah that's made to be extra-stable and spill-proof. A plus for the Waverider."

"Heh. No one tell Mick. He's still annoyed Gideon won't let him have candles."

Sara starts to retort, but at that moment, they both feel eyes on them. They stop in their tracks, Sara's hand going reflexively to her sleeve and Len's to a cold gun that isn't there, and look up.

A tall woman stands on the Refuge's porch, watching them. No, watching him. She looks no older than before, and no younger, very much the same. Her expression is very, very serious and her eyes are…cold? No, judging. Maybe both?

Len feels the prickle down his spine intensify, and shuffles uneasily where he stands. For the first time, he remembers…Mary Xavier was all about protecting her children.

Who were to be become Time Masters.

And he…

But after a moment, a moment that probably felt longer to him than it actually was, she shakes her head. Her eyes flick to Sara, then back to him, an actual smile touches her lips…and she turns and goes back inside the house. Len lets out a breath and feels the tension subside, a little.

But not completely.

"That was a little creepy," Sara says under her breath. She relaxes her stance, and Leonard's warmed, a little, by the realization that she'd been ready to back him up.

"Yeah." He hesitates. "I can't say I really blame her, if you think…"

But Sara's been following his line of thought, apparently. She glares at him before he can get the words out. "No. We didn't have much of a choice. Not if we wanted to break their control, get back our free will and save the world. And you…you nearly died…"

There's something in her voice, there, and he glances over, startled, seeing her mouth set in a firm line and her eyes directed at where Xavier had vanished. That's the most she's said about his near-miss with death since they'd dragged him out of the time stream, and even then, she'd just threatened to kill him if he ever did anything that stupid again.

"Sara…"

"A-hem."

They both look up to see Hunter, standing on the porch with his arms folded and a stern look on his face. He apparently isn't so lost in distraction and grief that he's failed to notice that two of his wayward team members were unaccounted for on the property, and given which two, it's not so surprising he'd come looking.

And the moment's gone.

Inside, the team's split up. Kendra's already sitting in a rocking chair, contentedly rocking one of the littlest residents of the Refuge, and after a moment, Sara goes to join her. Mick and Jax have headed for the kitchens, unsurprisingly, and Raymond and Stein for one of the several libraries—also unsurprisingly.

Len drifts after that last pair, undecided. The ladies' conversation runs too much of a risk of drifting toward his adorable infant self, and that's just a touch unnerving. (He thinks they do it on purpose.) He's not hungry. And the lure of books is strong…

The sound of a footfall, though, makes him turn to the left. He skulks down a corridor, catching a flicker of Hunter's coat as the man heads up a staircase that's nearly concealed around a corner. There's a murmur of voices and as far as Leonard knows, there's only one other adult at the Refuge…

After a moment, he follows them, silent as a lifelong thief can be.

The staircase is narrow and curving; the passageway it ends in, just as close. He trails the voices to a door that's just a crack ajar, then, after a moment and some reflection, moves quickly to the other side so he can peer in the even smaller crack there.

Hunter is pacing; he can see the motion. It's a familiar sight, generally paired with a lecture that he (and Sara, and Mick) usually tunes out…

"…giving up…"

Frowning, Len concentrates on the words.

"You and I both know, Michael, that what the Time Masters call a 'time knot' usually meant 'we don't want to change it, so we'll find a 'reason' why we can't." Mary Xavier's tone is both sympathetic and slightly lecturing. "You're not one to give up. Not usually. And what did I say about wallowing?"

"Is it truly wallowing if…" Hunter's tone drops enough that Leonard can't hear him, but after a moment, his voice rises again. "…if there is truly no hope, it is one thing, but every instinct I have says there is, despite how it seems. Am I fooling myself?

The woman sighs. "Michael," she says fondly, "you came here today to have me tell you what you already know yourself. That if hope remains, you must follow it. Anything else would be a betrayal of who you are."

Len can hear Hunter's sigh. "Well," the other man says after a moment, a thread of humor back in his tone, "I came to check in, too. I said I would."

"You have said many things over the years." Her tone is stern, but then she laughs a little. "Thank you. We…continue. And we wait."

For? Leonard frowns.

"I don't know if I can do what you want me to do." Hunter's voice is uneasy, and he starts to pace again.

"What you must do. And you already have. At least, you've started."

Their listener wants to hear more along that line, but the captain apparently prefers to avoid it. He's silent for a long moment, moving around the room, and Leonard scans it as best he can through the crack, realizing that they're in another library.

Then he hears a volume being removed from a bookshelf and the sigh Hunter makes as he sees it.

" 'A Wrinkle in Time,'" the captain reads from the cover, then makes a thoughtful noise "I remember reading, and rereading, this copy. Oh, countless times. There's the mended tear in the back corner, where Daniel took it from me that time, and the fold from when Gabrielle borrowed it. I couldn't find it as I got older; thought it just got lost, or someone took it with them." He carefully replaces it on the shelf as Len watches. "I never got my own copy. Meant to read it with Jonas, but, well…"

He sighs again. "I'm going to go consult the science and history libraries; I have before, but you never know. I think the others are enjoying being off the ship, so…we'll stay for dinner, with your permission?"

At her assent, Hunter leaves, never looking back into the corridor and the crook watching from the shadows. Leonard stands a moment, digesting what he's heard, then looks at the door.

After a moment, he sighs…and enters.

Mary Xavier, he's pretty sure, has been waiting for him.

The mistress of the Refuge is sitting behind a desk in the room, which has wide windows letting in the morning sunshine and is, indeed, lined with bookshelves. These aren't the mostly big, leather-bound and serious-looking tones of the other libraries he's seen here, but an eclectic mix: worn paperbacks, colorful picture books, thick novels. Leonard barely gives them a glance, though, however tempted he may be.

Instead, trying for his typical insouciance, he parks his hip against a low table and folds his arms, waiting. Mary regards him for a long moment, then nods.

"Ah," she says, a satisfied sound. "The beautiful baby boy with the big blue eyes." She pauses. "The baby who grew up to destroy the Time Masters."

The words put his hackles up, even though he'd been expecting them. "Not going to apologize…"

But the older woman holds up a hand, shaking her head. "I do not expect you to, Mr. Snart. Yes, you were the one to pull the trigger, as it were, and you nearly paid for that with your life. I do not think you understand just how close that was." She watches him calmly, something uncanny in her own blue gaze. "But the ultimate instrument of their demise was the device they themselves created to control time, and time…does not like to be controlled."

After a moment, she rises from the desk and Leonard, despite himself, takes a step back. There's something that formidable about her. But Mary doesn't approach him. Instead, she leans on her desk, almost matching his own posture, and continues to watch him.

"Perhaps Michael has told you these words; he always liked them," she says. "Time wants to happen. The hand of Time is on you, Leonard Snart. You did its will and you have nearly drowned in its currents—but you survived. Not many can say that."

The words make the feeling of electricity in the air, which had faded, worse. Leonard, unsettled, responds as he often does to discomfort: by attacking. "You're saying something else pulled my strings. Time itself? You expect me to believe that?"

She ignores the adversarial tone "Hmm. Not…quite. What you did, you did because you are you. You acted according to your nature, as Michael does his…as everyone does, really."

"That seems to be a theme, lately," he mutters, which, oddly enough, makes her smile.

"Does it now?" Mary muses. "Something to pay attention to, then. I've learned that when such things seem to reoccur, there's usually reason."

So has he, actually. Len frowns as he watches her, thinking about the conversation he'd overheard.

"You want Hunter to recreate the Time Masters," he says suddenly. "That's what you're waiting for."

She doesn't even bat an eyelash. "Yes. They…something like them…are needed. And there are always children, like the ones here, who will need and suit such an avocation."

The woman before him seems to care for her charges, but knowing what'd recently become of some of them—at his own hand—makes Leonard uneasy with the matter. "You'd have him keep kidnapping kids to turn into…"

But Mary draws herself up and regards him, and her expression's intimidating enough that even Leonard Snart is silenced.

"Really, Mr. Snart? You can think of no reason, no reason at all, why a child might be willing, eager even, to be plucked from his or her life and brought here, where there is plentiful food and warmth, safety and learning?" She spreads her hands to indicate the Refuge, nodding at his expression. "Such it was with all the young ones here."

Lowering her hands, she smiles again. "Who knows? In another timeline, another world, you and your sister might have been Time Masters."

Now, that's a discomforting notion. Mary lets him struggle with it a moment, then shakes her head.

"But," she says, "you're needed where you are, being what you are. Someone who…pays attention. Who listens…" An arch look. "…and learns. And puts odd pieces together." With a sigh, she glances at the door through which her foster son had departed. "Michael thinks like a Time Master now. He probably always will. Dr. Palmer thinks like a scientist, as does Dr. Stein." A slight smirk. "And even Mr. Rory…he's a little more, well, 'out of the box,' as they say, but he's not a plotter, not a planner."

She takes a step closer to Leonard, who shifts uneasily under her steady gaze.

"You…now, you are," she says quietly. "Remember. Perhaps…perhaps they need someone who thinks like a thief. And Michael has apparently forgotten that. They need you."

Her smile, then, turns sad. "And in another timeline, you wouldn't even be here."

He does not like the sound of that. "What do you mean?"

But Mary has turned away already, studying the shelves around them, the ones he'd been so intrigued by. "Do you know what these books are? Books and movies; I rather like the formats that let me keep them in physical copies rather than digital." She glances back at him, but barely waits for an answer. "They're stories. Tales of the myriad of ways human beings have conceived of and imagined traveling in and changing time. I keep them so the children know how their kind look at such things, about who knows? They may even get some good ideas."

Pausing, she runs a fingertip over some titles. " 'A Swiftly Tilting Planet,' " she reads. " 'Kindred.' 'The Doomsday Book.' 'The Time-Traveler's Wife.' "

Then, turning, she moves her hand to what appears to be a shelf in a bookcase full of Blu-ray discs. " 'Quantum Leap.' All the various Star Treks. 'Timeless.' 'Doctor Who.' " That one gets a certain mysterious smile, as she looks over her shoulder at him. "Ah. 'Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.' A fine film, in its quirky way. 'About Time.' 'It's a Wonderful Life.' "

Len's started to retort that that's not quite time travel when the woman lets her hand drop to her side and shakes her head.

" 'Strange, isn't it?'" she quotes, watching him. " 'Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?' "

The silence stretches…and Leonard, suddenly, fervently decides that he doesn't really want to know.

And it hasn't escaped his notice that Mary had said "how their kind."

"So," he drawls, straightening from his lean, "keep paying attention? I can do that."

Mary Xavier, smiling faintly, returns to her desk, taking a seat and watching him. "Excellent. I will see you and your cohorts at dinner. Do try not to get the children too riled up."

Leonard takes a step toward the door, then pauses. Glancing back and thinking, he then turns and walks quickly over to the bookshelf where Hunter had paused earlier. Where…ah.

Sliding the battered copy of "A Wrinkle in Time" from its place, he slips the book into his jacket and looks up.

Mary beams at him.

"Now, that, Mr. Snart," she says, sounding pleased, "is precisely what I was talking about."

Sara and Kendra are, Jax tells him, giving a group of small girls self-defense lessons out on the Refuge's lawn. Leonard strolls slowly toward then, unable to hide a smile as he sees Sara hunkered down and talking earnestly to a pale-haired mite who might have been her 25 years ago.

She sees him and grins as the kid runs off to the others, then makes a show of looking him up and down.

"You know," she tells him, "we're showing them how to take down a bigger opponent. Even a grown man. You'd make an excellent practice dummy."

Len winces. "Given that I have a pretty good idea how you're showing them to do that, I think I'll pass," he drawls, looking over her shoulder. "Kinda wish there'd been someone to show Lisa how to do that sort of thing. I taught her to fight dirty, but you could have taught her a lot better as a kid." He shrugs at the momentary sympathy in her eyes. "Having fun?"

"Yes, actually." She looks thoughtful, turning to follow his gaze. "This is something I could see myself doing someday. Owning a dojo, I mean, and teaching women and kids how to defend themselves. When time travel gets old. In the future."

…what the future might hold for me…and you…and…

"Yeah, I could see that in the future. Not for me. For you," he adds as she glances up at him. "I mean, you're good at it. Not that you're not good at time travel…I…"

Damn it, I sound like Allen…

"Leonard Snart, flustered. Cute." Len takes a step back and looks up to see Kendra watching them and tossing a staff from hand to hand. A smile hovers around her lips, and he's suddenly downright frightened of what she'll say, what insight she'll point out that he's not quite ready to acknowledge. He takes a quick breath, readying something snarky to cut her off, and…

There's a very distinctive brooch on Kendra's sweater, something unique that catches his eye not only because of that distinctiveness…but because he's seen it before.

"What's that?"

The dark-haired woman blinks at him, then looks down at her lapel and smiles, a fond and gentle expression.

"From my Secret Santa, apparently. It was in my room after I got breakfast this morning," she says. "It's appropriate, isn't it?"

"Very." There much be something off about his tone, because both women look at him a little suspiciously. Leonard takes a hasty step back. "Have fun with the little assassins. See you later."

He thinks he hears a giggle as he beats a hasty retreat. He doesn't stop to find out.

Mick is, completely unsurprisingly, in the kitchen. He is also, somewhat surprisingly, reading. And very surprisingly, wearing the reading glasses that no one else on the Waverider has ever seen. Len ducks his head to steal a look at the title of the book, then barks out a laugh. It's the second half of the Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories.

Mick rolls his eyes at his friend's amusement. "Yeah, yeah. You were right. They're good."

"Told you." Len reaches out and drags up a chair, turning it around backward and perching on it. "Maybe now you'll listen to me about..."

"Don' push yer luck."

Len lets it go. "Ol' Saint Nick get you that?"

"Nah. Found it in the library." He peers over the rims of his glasses. "You think they'd let me borrow it?"

"Was a day you'd just steal it."

"Nah. My luck, all the books in this creepy-ass place'd be cursed."

"Still," Len drawls, leaning back, "I see you made a really nice pick-up in Chicago."

After a moment, Mick peers at him again, then tucks a (clean, Len hopes) napkin in the book's pages and sits it down, leaning back himself. "Seemed right."

"Indeed."

"You got some sorta problem with it, Snart? Didn't get caught."

"Not at all. Like I said…new pick-up. Right from the coat belonging to Capone's mistress? Sweet." Len inspects his nails with studied thoughtfulness. "Carnelian scarab, enamel wings—hawk wings?-marcasite and glass. At an educated guess. Excellent example of the Egyptian Revival pieces of the 1920s."

At another long moment, Mick grunts. "Just thought it suited her."

"Oh, it does." Len tilts his head to the side. "What's going on there, Mick? You pick her in this Santa thing, or was it just a whim?"

"Oh, I did. But I'da taken it for her anyway." The bigger man eyes his friend. "What's it yer business, anyway?"

"Just curious. What's going on with you two?"

Unexpectedly, Mick snorts. "Why? What's goin' on with you and Blondie?"

It's unexpected, from that source, and Len recoils. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

"I…we're friends." There was a time he wouldn't have admitted to having anything so vulnerable as a "friend."

"Friend, eh? Well. So are we." He shrugs at Len's expression. "We talk."

"Seriously?" He barely knows Kendra, really. Of all the denizens of the Waverider, he probably knows her the least. After all the mess with Savage and the thing with Carter—and Raymond, for that matter-he'd been slightly nonplussed when she'd seen the so-called "Hawkman" settled in 2017 and come back to the Waverider, explaining that she needed to have a life—at least one-as something other than someone's mate.

Len respected that decision, although it'd led to some awkwardness on the ship, at least in the beginning. He's not a fan of Raymond, though he's come to grudgingly respect the man (not that he'll ever admit that out loud). They're too different. But Kendra's phrasing had made even him wince in sympathy. After a few weeks of puppy eyes around her, though, the inventor had apparently decided to be cheerfully upbeat about the whole thing, and if anyone suspected he felt otherwise, they allowed him the illusion.

"Yeah." Mick gives him a flat glare, then sighs. He looks, for a moment, like he's pondering his words, and that's rare enough that Len remains silent, letting him think.

After a moment, he nods to himself, then looks directly at his oldest friend.

"She gets it," he says finally. "Look, Snart. She gets somethin' you never will. Not 'cause you wouldn't try, not 'cause you're dumb or anything like that." His lips twitch as Leonard snorts.

"But…I got millennia in my head, Snart. And yeah, I know I don't talk about it much anymore. But…it happened. It's there, all those years. An' Kendra, she gets that. She's got 'em too."

He's silent while Leonard digests that, turning it over. Acknowledging its truth.

"OK," Len says, finally. "I get that. Best I can, anyway. Not that it's my business…"

"It ain't."

"…but…you two a thing? I mean…all that soulmate crap…and Raymond…"

That gets another snort from Mick, but this one's rueful.

"Don't know that it's like that," the big man says after a minute. "But if it is, if it goes there…it ain't some big, serious thing, like she had with Haircut. It's nothin' that's gotta end with broken hearts or dead bodies, like she was told. Might just be a bit of fun, an we'd keep it real quiet. Ain't nothin' wrong with that."

"True."

Mick eyes him a moment, then nods. "We good? Done with this?"

"Fine by me."

"OK, then. And you and Blondie?"

A pause. "Don't, Mick."

"Boss…"

"Don't."

The rest of their brief stay at the Refuge passes quickly. Len avoids Mary Xavier, but every time he hazards a quick glance her way, she's seemingly uninterested in him, talking earnestly with Rip or Raymond or, at one time, a wide smile on her face, Mick.

Still, he's the first one back on the Waverider, breathing a sigh of relief as he sets foot on the deck, and he breathes another sigh as they take off and enter the time stream. He feels Sara's eyes on him, considering, and even Mick's, but he doesn't comment. He wouldn't be sure what to say anyway.

Rip finds "A Wrinkle in Time," neatly wrapped, in his quarters the next morning, and scans his team's faces with an air of pleased bewilderment before settling in to read.

Over the next few days, Jax gets a sheaf of manuals and diagrams for various timeship varieties, and starts happily going through them and talking to Gideon about possible upgrades. Kendra requests, fervently, a few more bathrooms, and winks at Len when she sees him watching.

Raymond gets a Star Trek script signed by George Roddenberry—it's personalized, and Len eyes the only one on the ship who could have obtained that-and gleefully tries to drag everyone into a Star Trek marathon.

Mick gets a bottle of wine, a particularly fine cabernet, and Len laughs out loud when he realizes it's from Rip's collection. (Stein smirks at him.) Mick, not a wine person at all, is skeptical, but only until Stein, waxing eloquent about the vintage, pops the cork and pours them both a glass.

The wine in the collection starts disappearing faster after that.

And Len finds a package in his own room and, cautiously, unwraps it.

It takes him a moment to realize the rectangular item is a picture frame, folded so that the two photographs in it are face to face. He opens it, and stares in silence at what it contains.

Lisa. Age 9 or thereabouts, he'd guess, right about the age she'd been on the Waverider, when the Pilgrim had threatened and they'd been forced to rescue their loved ones, an event that'd been hard on everyone, but some more than others.

Jax and Raymond, he's pretty sure, had it the worst. But Lisa…she'd been so young, and still had so much, for better or for worse, ahead of her….

She's laughing, right out loud, in the left photo, an expression of joy that he can't remember seeing, ever. Captured on one of Gideon's cameras, so far as he can tell, no fear or trepidation in her face.

He has no photographs of her at that age; when he left the house on Hadley Avenue, he'd taken almost nothing with him, and he'd never gone back.

Correction: He'd gone back once.

The opposing photo is a larger, better copy of a tattered snapshot he'd had tucked in his desk, grown Lisa and grown Len, glancing at each other, their expressions showing, if not affection, than at least a form of camaraderie. Mick had taken it, almost by accident, trying to figure out how to use a camera they'd needed for a job, and Len had found it when developing the film.

Keeping it, bringing it, had been sentiment. Something that, until fairly recently, he'd tried to banish from his life.

Only two people besides himself have ever seen that photo.

"Gideon…"

"Yes, Mr. Snart."

"…never mind."

Notes:

1. Kendra’s brooch: 

https://www.langantiques.com/egyptian-revival-sterling-silver-scarab-brooch.html

2. Mary Xavier is totally a Time Lord. (Fight me.)

3. I’m SO tempted to write an AU in which the Snart siblings were taken to the Refuge when young!

#secret santa #captain canary #sara lance #leonard snart #legends of tomorrow

[junker-town]

Kris Dunn is a dying breed in today’s NBA. That’s why he’s so fascinating

Kris Dunn has remade himself as a premier defensive stopper.

The Bulls guard can be the Tony Allen of his generation in the right setting.

On the night Kris Dunn suffered a knee injury that will likely end his season, I sat by his locker to chat about defense. Considering no guard in the NBA has been better at it this season, the topic made sense.

We talked about how he tries to thrive off his own aggression instead of being punished for it:

“The league is kind of wanting the offense to play more free, it allows the game to not be as physical. But at the same time that’s who I am. Sometimes the refs allow Patrick Beverley to be who he is. That’s what I try to build, that’s what I’m going to keep building on throughout my years. So once year seven hits, I can get away with some stuff.”

The dark arts that go into learning his opponent’s specific tendencies:

“A lot of guys who are righties like to go left to be able to get to their jump shot, and a lot of people who are righties like to go downhill to their right side. But if you’re a righty, most likely you like to go left. I just feel like you just have, you know, more in your bag of tricks going left. If you’re a lefty, most of the time they like going right. It’s just how they do it.

I like to break down to see what’s their go-to move. Some people when they come down the court, if they have the ball in their left hand, they’re getting ready to shoot. If they have the ball in their right hand, they’re ready to drive.”

The power of fear:

“I think the body language says it all. I could read somebody’s body language and know if they’re confident, know if they’re feeling themself. And I can read the body language if they’re showing fear. And once I see the fear, that’s when I try to take it.

From my perspective, I fear no one. That’s kind of my niche. I fear no one and I actually like the challenge. Even if someone’s scoring on me. You know because there’s going to be guards that have a great day. They’re talented. But I like that. And I’ll be ready the next time we play against each other. I just like it. It gets me going.”

And player comparisons:

“I feel like Tony Allen, he just fits what I do. He’ll pounce on you. He was strong, physical. I think he could guard 1 through 3, even fours. I feel like I can guard some fours sometimes. I feel like that’s a good comparison because he’s got that dog, he’s got that bloodhound in him.”

Dunn’s season-long defensive impact was, to be frank, spectacular. He thrived in Jim Boylen’s tight-rope-walk of a defensive scheme, torpedoing passing lanes, living in his man’s jersey, and never giving up on a possession.

For most defenders, including Dunn, a majority of his defensive possessions are spent off the ball, and it’s here where his knowledge, instincts, and timing swirl up into a typhoon that the offense then has to navigate.

“He’s an all-defensive defender if I’ve ever seen one, and I’ve seen a few of them,” Boylen said right before the injury. “Paul George, Kawhi Leonard. He’s an All-Defensive guy.”

Here’s a brief statistical summary of Dunn’s season:

• Dunn is second overall in defensive real plus-minus, trailing only LeBron James. Which means he’s first among all guards.

• 538’s catch-all RAPTOR—an on/off metric that factors tracking data into its calculation—also has him first among all guards on the defensive end, and first among all Bulls overall.

• The Bulls allowed 6.4 fewer points per 100 possessions with Dunn on the court, and when he played they had the league’s second-best defense.

• He’s fourth in deflections per game, and the only player in the top 11 who averaged fewer than 25 minutes a night.

• He held pick-and-roll ball-handlers to 0.71 points per possession, one of the best marks in the league.

• Among all players who logged at least 20 minutes per game, Dunn led all in the percentage of his points that came off a turnover, at a whopping 29.3 percent. It’s reminiscent of prime Allen—who used to live near the top of the league in this category—and more than doubled his production from the previous year.

All this was wonderful, but there was something else worth unpacking that made Dunn’s evolution worth keeping an eye on: Not only was he a lock to make his first All-Defensive team and maybe even collect a few votes for Defensive Player of the Year, but before Thaddeus Young’s head collided into his knee, Dunn was also starting to epitomize a once-beloved, increasingly scarce character in NBA circles: the rugged ball hawk whose offensive flaws often overshadow everything else.

Circling back to the Tony Allen comparison for a second, he’s a fascinating likeness who gets at the heart of Dunn’s place in a sport that, for the most part, is evicting players who don’t space the floor for their teammates. Regardless of how great any guard or wing is on defense, their contributions on one side of the ball can’t inoculate their team from a broken jump shot.

As a restricted free agent-to-be, this deficiency is where the rubber meets the road for Dunn. Since he was drafted, only eight players have a worse three-point percentage (minimum 400 attempts); right now he’s only at 24.1 percent when wide open. Opponents ignore him as dramatically as any perimeter player in the league. So do his own teammates.

Going forward, it’s hard to reward someone who’s an obvious minus on offense. Dunn was drafted in 2016 but is also way older than you probably think (26 in a couple months, aka two weeks younger than Marcus Smart, who was drafted in 2014.) There’s reason for that delay, but it still doesn’t help his case for inevitable improvement.

This year was also the first time Dunn’s team was A) good on defense with him on the court and B) better on defense when he played vs. when he did not. It’s not that he came out of nowhere on that end, but some of his tenaciousness had yet to result in play that actually affected his team’s bottom line.

Without an outside shot there’s a cap on how good he can be. But that doesn’t mean he can’t find the right situation at the right price this summer. His field goal percentage at the rim spiked to 65 percent this year, which should raise some eyebrows around the league even if some of that improvement is thanks to gimmes created by his own defense.

Dunn also cut back on the pull-up jumpers that infested his shot profile earlier in his career, which matters. He can be useful in a role that realizes what he is, and what he can and can’t do.

For Dunn, defense is about survival. For minutes, a role, a career. The tone-setting havoc he lets loose in every second the opposing team has possession is what can make him valuable to a good team—less one in Chicago’s perpetually hopeless condition—that either has faith in rehabilitating his shot or can play him in lineups that have plenty of shooting elsewhere.

There are playmaking chops that might have use as the general of a capable bench unit, too. At the mid-level exception, he’d be an intriguing investment for several teams that boast a solid infrastructure, confidence in its player development program, and thirst for more/some defensive fervency, including the Toronto Raptors, San Antonio Spurs, Portland Trail Blazers, and Denver Nuggets.

Dunn won’t ever be the player Chicago thought it was getting when it acquired him alongside Zach LaVine and Lauri Markkanen in a franchise-stunting blockbuster that shipped Jimmy Butler to the Minnesota Timberwolves. He was supposed to be their point guard of the future but, instead, his faulty shot motivated upper management to look elsewhere. They took Coby White with the seventh pick in last year’s draft, and any further investment in Dunn probably wouldn’t make any sense.

There’s always the chance he signs a qualifying offer and re-enters free agency as an unrestricted free agent in 2021, but that path is rare for a reason. As someone who’s injury prone, Dunn may want to take as much guaranteed money as he can get this summer, in a marketplace with very few legitimate options at his position. Fred VanVleet, Goran Dragic, D.J. Augustin, Reggie Jackson, Rajon Rondo, Jeff Teague. These are the most notable free agent point guards available this summer. VanVleet is already priced way out of the mid-level exception and even though Dragic’s situation with the Heat may be more delicate than it seems—assuming he wants multiple years on his deal—let’s say they come to an agreement. Everyone else on this list is either on the downslope of their career or trending in the wrong direction.

Dunn won’t make sense everywhere — he needs the right role, the right system, and a team at the right stage of their development — but a good fit will exist somewhere, one that can hopefully showcase his defensive tools in a winning environment.. Dunn isn’t perfect, but before his season all but ended in Brooklyn, he altered his own trajectory by steadying a once-promising career that up until now was too rocky to bet on.

[firesoulstuff]

30: “ So that’s it? It’s over?” for Captain Canary. Cause I LOVE ANGST.

I had a few ideas for this one, I hope you like the one I eventually went with!

Read on AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12378978/chapters/29308881

“So that’s it?” Ray asksexasperatedly, pacing around what’s been their campsite for the past few hours.“It’s over?”

The faces of the rest of the creware hardly reassuring. Everyone, Ray himself included, is sporting the longlook of hopeless faces.

“Looks like it,” Sara all butmutters, her chin resting on her hand as she gazes into the fire. “The TimeBureau reclaimed the Waverider and stranded us all here, in a time where evenwe can’t screw history too badly.” She recounts, gesturing around at all thetrees surrounding them.

They aren’t exactly sure when theyare, all Agent Sharp would tell them was that they were being left somewherenot even their unique brand of stupidity could cause any damage to history.They’ve managed to narrow it down, thanks to the combined efforts of Ray andNate. They’re some time after the dinosaurs, long after, so that’s good.They’ve also determined that they’re somewhere in North America, most likelythe Midwest according to Nate. As far as they can tell no one is around formiles and miles on end, so as of right now Nate is saying that they’re probablyin the early 1800’s. Sara thinks that for the most part he might be right,although she believes they might be a little further into the century than he’sassuming. After all, the wild west era is considered to have started during the1860’s, and what better time to is there to strand a team of time travelers whobreak everything they touch than a time where everything is broken to beginwith?

“Maybe it’s for the best,” Zarispeaks up from where she’s seated just in front of Ray. “If it weren’t for usMallus never would’ve gotten out, a lot of people wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”

“But we’re also the only ones whoknow how to put Mallus back where he belongs,” Ray argues,

“The Time Bureau will figure it outRay.” Jax butts in, his voice frustrated. “Let’s face it, all we do is makeeverything worse.”

Ray opens his mouth to protestagain, but he doesn’t get the chance.

“You can’t be serious.”

The unmistakable deadpan drawl comesfrom the trees and all the Legends, or former Legends maybe, turn theirattention with wide, disbelieving eyes to watch as a figure emerges from thewoods. He’s tall, dressed in dark jeans, a dark sweater, and an even darkerjacket. He looks exhausted, the cut above his left eye trailing dried blood,and his boots are covered in mud.

“Because I know that I didn’t fightmy way out of some futuristic hospital, search three computers for yourcoordinates, steal the Waverider, and then hike six miles following Mick’sgarbage trail just to hear that you’re throwing in the towel.”

He finishes his rant, but nobodysays anything. They’re all too busy staring at him, eyes wide and jaws dropped.Finally, unsurprisingly, Ray get’s over his surprise first.

“Snart!” The man-child exclaims,barreling all but two steps over to his previously thought dead teammate andtackling him in a hug.

Snart grunts in annoyance while hestaggers back to keep his balance, but even he can’t hide the smile on his faceand soon returns the embrace. Letting Ray go he’s faced with the rest of theLegends, including an approaching Sara.

To the others her face isunreadable. It’s firm, set in an almost angry glare but there’s no heat to it.Len can see the twinge of fear residing in her eyes and he gulps, wondering forthe first time since he woke up less than two hours ago how long it’s beensince the Oculus.

Since their kiss.

“Is it you?” She asks in almost awhisper, standing less than an inch away from him.

He doesn’t like the crack that he canhear in her voice, like a part of her truly believes that he isn’t here; thathe’s an imposter.

“It’s me,” he manages with a stupidnod, and then realizes she needs more. Any timeline trick could say thosewords; she needs something that only he would say. “Assassin.”

He doesn’t know if the nicknamewill work, and he suspects it’s more in the way he says it that convinces her,but convince her it does because barely a second after he gets the word out herhands are curled in tight fists around the lapels of his jacket and she’s yankedhim down to her level, crashing her mouth against his in a desperate kiss. He’saware the others are watching, but he doesn’t care. He places his hands on herhips without even thinking about it, pulling her closer and trying to pour howsorry he his for abandoning her for however long he has into the kiss.

When they finally break apart forair some of their friends have had the decency to look away, and by someLeonard means one dark haired woman with red necklace whom he’s never seenbefore. In fact, there are two more people here who he’s never met. Not tomention the professor, the hawks, and even Hunter are all missing. However longhe’s been gone, it’s been long enough for the team to change.

But he can ask about all thatlater, right now they have a job to do.

 A few hours later the battle withMallus is over; they’ve won.

He’s trapped, imprisoned in some ancientbottle that required a call to Kendra to explain how to use it. Mick explainedto Len that he’s been missing for almost two years now; they all thought hedied in the Oculus. They figured out during the battle that the “hospital” hebroke out of had actually been the medical wing of the Time Bureau’sheadquarters. Turns out they found his body when they were cleaning up LA andupon discovering he had a pulse they brought him back to headquarters.Apparently they didn’t ever see any reason to inform any of the Legends, Saragave both Agent Sharp and Director Bennett a good smack in the face for that andpromised that if she ever gets her hands on Rip the damage will be far worse.

Anyway, with all that settled andthe Waverider returned to them The Legends are docked in the present for a fewdays of R&R while they think about what they want to do next. With Mallusdefeated and the anachronisms all fixed they actually have some options in whatcomes next.

Len finds Sara in her room, herdoor open as she packs her bag for a weekend of visiting her mother, followedby a few day with her father, and he smiles at the sight.

“So…” He drawls, “You’re theCaptain now?”

“For now,” she corrects with asmirk, zipping her backpack closed and loading it onto her shoulder, “Dependsif anyone gets back on this ship at the end of the week.”

His face falls a bit at that “Sothat’s it?” He asks in disbelief, unaware that he’s echoing Ray’s exact wordsfrom before he showed up last night. “It’s over?”

The sight of her smirk growingreassures him as she walks closer, and she stops beside him instead of leaving.“I don’t think so,” she says, a hand on his bicep to keep herself balanced asshe rises up on her toes and plants a kiss on his cheek. She pulls back afteronly a second, a coy smile on her face as she looks up at him through her longlashes. “I think we’re just getting started.”

She leaves him there and he watchesher go, putting a little extra sway to her hips just to drive him crazy, and asmile pulls at his lips.

It sure feels good to be back.