That over a YEAR ago I promised @dancinbutterfly with lo these very tippy-tappity fingers that I WOULD INDEED bring resolution and peace to Red and Bai from Except it Abide, but instead I merrily fucked about for approximately eighty gazillion months and lovingly moved commas around in my delicately hand-crafted paragraphs, etc. But yesterday, in a surge of very Rogers-esque guilt-ridden energy, I DONE WROTE THE THING, and here it is you y’all to peep at. WARNINGS for discussion of suicidal thoughts/ self-harm, brief sexy bits, cussin’, sadness, schmaltz, and a complete lack of actual proofreading that I beg you to regard as ~grit and authenticity~.
(Also, this will make less than zero sense if you haven’t read Except it Abide in the Vine.)
This is such a good image. I want this as a poster.
If this painting hadn’t been an uncredited repost, you would have been able to find it as a poster here.
The painting is by Tristan Elwell, a very talented painter. This particular piece is called Curses, INC, and was commissioned to be part of Vivien Vande Velde’s short stories, “Curses, Inc.”
Look how many links I put in. One to Tristan’s print sales page, one to Tristan’s art page, and one to the commissioner’s book. Those are three potential advertisements that were lost because this image was reposted without credit.
What I ended up with is a little askew from the prompt, but it is Shrinkyclinks with besotted WS!Bucky and people being surprised Steve is his boyfriend, just with the surprise going the other direction.
Sam did one more circuit in the air just to confirm that everything was under control. The wannabe-despot of the week was being loaded into the back of a SHIELD van in handcuffs, and the three bioengineered chimeras she’d released in Central Park were all safely contained. They were part hyena, part cat, and part…actually, Sam had no idea what the hell was making them glow faintly purple, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t normal cat or hyena behavior
Fortunately, the chimeras weren’t nearly as aggressive as their creator had hoped. Once the Avengers had herded them into a sunny area by a fountain, the chimeras had settled down to bask on the warm stone, ignoring their creator’s increasingly frustrated commands to make with the rampaging already.
“Can we keep them?” Clint was shooting boomerang arrows from the top of the fountain. One of the chimeras was lying on its back, batting lazily at the arrows passing overhead. “I’ll feed them and walk them and not let them maul any civilians, can we keep them, sir, pretty please with a cherry on top?”
“No,” Coulson said. Sam could see him standing by the SHIELD van, arms folded as he watched Clint.
“I want this one.” Natasha sat on the ground by the fountain, posture relaxed, apparently ignoring the chimera five feet to her left. The chimera ignored her back, except to twitch an ear in her direction.
“No,” Coulson repeated, but only after a pause long enough signal defeat.
Natasha rolled slowly onto her side. The chimera tracked the movement, then put its head down on its paws and half-closed its eyes. “I’m naming her Boadicea.”
“So we’re done here? We’re done here,” Sam said, and turned his comm off before he could get sucked into the argument.
He touched down outside the SHIELD perimeter, where Tony was shedding his suit like a lobster shucking off its shell one segment at a time. Each piece folded up neatly into the briefcase at his feet. The Winter Soldier was standing next to him, his face blank but calm.
The Soldier had been an official part of the team for a few months now. Sam still didn’t have much of a read on him. The Soldier had been invaluable during the whole Hydra/SHIELD clusterfuck, and that was enough to earn him a lot of goodwill, but just about the only things Sam knew about the Soldier were his fighting style and his call sign.
“Hey, Cap,” Tony greeted him. “Where are the spy kids? Let’s do post-battle brunch, I’m starving.”
“They’re trying to convince Coulson to let the mad science experiments follow them home.”
“Good luck to them, but God help them if they try to keep them in the Tower, Pepper put her foot down about pets. You buy out one animal shelter because the cages are too small and all the animals look sad and suddenly everyone thinks you’re a hoarder. I don’t get what the big deal was, we weren’t using that floor of the Tower for anything important anyway. Tacos?” Tony suggested. “I’m thinking that place by Fordham. BattleBot, you in?”
“Can’t,” the Soldier said, typing something into his phone. “I have a date.”
Tony stopped talking for an entire three seconds. “You. Have a date.”
The Soldier looked up and blinked, clearly nonplussed to find Sam and Tony both staring at him. “Yes.”
“With who?”
“My boyfriend.”
“You have a boyfriend. You have a boyfriend?” Tony looked like he’d just walked into a lamppost, and then the lamppost had handed him a birthday present.
There’s a song that’s been proven
to reduce anxiety by 65%. It’s called
Weightless by Macaroni Union, and it
was specifically designed to slow your
heart rate, reduce blood pressure, and
lower cortisol levels. It’s so effective
that it’s dangerous to drive while
listening to it because it
can make you drowsy. SourceSource 2Source 3
Sound therapists and Manchester band Marconi Union compiled the song. Scientists played it to 40 women and found it to be more effective at helping them relax than songs by Enya, Mozart and Coldplay.
Weightless works by using specific rhythms, tones, frequencies and intervals to relax the listener. A continuous rhythm of 60 BPM causes the brainwaves and heart rate to synchronise with the rhythm: a process known as ‘entrainment’. Low underlying bass tones relax the listener and a low whooshing sound with a trance-like quality takes the listener into an even deeper state of calm.
Dr David Lewis, one of the UK’s leading stress specialists said: “‘Weightless’ induced the greatest relaxation – higher than any of the other music tested. Brain imaging studies have shown that music works at a very deep level within the brain, stimulating not only those regions responsible for processing sound but also ones associated with emotions.”
The study – commissioned by bubble bath and shower gel firm Radox Spa – found the song was even more relaxing than a massage, walk or cup of tea. So relaxing is the tune, apparently, that people are being Rex advised against listening to it while driving.
The top 10 most relaxing tunes were: 1. Marconi Union – Weightless 2. Airstream – Electra 3. DJ Shah – Mellomaniac (Chill Out Mix) 4. Enya – Watermark 5. Coldplay – Strawberry Swing 6. Barcelona – Please Don’t Go 7. All Saints – Pure Shores 8. AdelevSomeone Like You 9. Mozart – Canzonetta Sull’aria 10. Cafe Del Mar – We Can Fly
One of the comments suggests pairing it with Rainymood.
When I was literally unable to sleep at all, my senior at work gave me this song to listen to!
My wife uses this song when she’s having near-meltdown levels of anxiety right before bed and it helps her relax and shed some of that stress enough for her to attempt to lie down and sleep.
While it;s not a substitute for my meds, this song is really, really great for breaking the must-stay-awake cycle for me and really helps me sleep. There’a 10-hour version on yourtube.
So, when my maternal grandmother died, we had to find loving, permanent homes for all five of her cats because otherwise she would have risen from the grave to kill the entire family. We took in Chloe because Chloe was my grandmother’s favorite, and she made my mom promise to look after her. Now my mother treats Chloe like her third child, and the cat is basically plastered to her 24/7 when she isn’t hiding from some imagined enemy like the dustbuster or my dad’s footsteps.
Anyway, we wound up giving the rest of the cats to this couple that runs a joint called Kitty Korner. They try to find loving homes for all the cats they take in, but will care for the unadoptables (read: assholes) for the rest of their lives. That’s great, because one of the cats we gave to these poor women was Tobey. I have no idea why my grandmother ever adopted Tobey. He was a huge schmuck. The most handsome orange tomcat you ever saw, and he loved to crawl in your lap. But if you ever tried to touch him, he would switch immediately into Kill Mode and you could say goodbye to your hand. Needless to say, having him in your lap was awkward. It was like holding a bomb.
Kitty Korner sends us detailed letters every year to give us updates on how Tobey’s doing. Basically, they are status reports on how much of a douche Tobey is and continues to be. These women are saints. I guess they really like cats, because these letters are like a full page of single-spaced text. But more or less, they amount to:
2003: Tobey has a real colorful personality! But, uh, we don’t think he’s suited for adoption yet
2004: Nope, still not suited for adoption
2005: I think this is pretty much a lost cause
2006: WTF
2007: Tobey is trying to kill us and every other cat in the house
2008: Tobey is still trying to kill us and every other cat in the house
2009: Tobey is a vicious dictator and can only find pleasure in the subjugation of other organisms
BUT!!!! The past few years, Tobey has apparently been making steady improvement. And in our most recent letter, we have been informed that he is no longer doing things like venturing upstairs expressly to beat the living shit out of the other cats at Kitty Korner. He will also let you pet him, and when he’s had enough he’ll give a warning nip instead of removing your limb. In fact, Tobey, at a ripe old age of 14, is ready for a new home! With an experienced cat owner, comes the necessary caveat, and like… no kids. At all. Ever. Or other cats, probably. But at least he’s no longer a psychopath.
WE GOT ANOTHER LETTER FROM KITTY KORNER AND WE THOUGHT TOBEY HAD FINALLY KICKED THE BUCKET BUT IN FACT HE HAS FOUND A NEW HOME, AT AGE 16, WITH AN ELDERLY MAN WHO RECENTLY LOST HIS OWN CAT.
I MAY CRY.
2/1/2016: old man Tobey still loving his forever home :’)
Amazing
The adoption story to end all adoption stories. Hey, does Kitty Korner have a Kickstarter anywhere?
The outpouring of love for this post is amazing! I’m going to cry at the office.
They do not have a Kickstarter, however, as a no-kill foster home run exclusively through volunteer work, they always welcome donations and you also have the ability to sponsor a cat. You’ll get detailed photos and status reports on your kitty, and should he or she get a happy ending like Tobey, you’ll be the first to know!
My grandmother was a card-carrying crazy cat lady until the day she died, and she was a big supporter of Kitty Corner. The women who run it are as devoted to rescue animals as she was her entire life. Wherever she is now, she’d be humbled to know just how many people were touched by Tobey’s comeback story.
Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.
(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)
Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.
All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.
I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.
Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.
And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.
Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.
I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.
Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.
No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.
They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.
This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.
In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.
At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.
I think the least we can do is remember them for it.
An inspiring story that should be told every time anyone mentions Titanic
Of course, the real way to tell whether you’re in a Hard SF novel is if people keep providing you with unsolicited explanations of basic physics and everyday technology which you should, by rights, already know.
So every single woman is in a Hard SF novel is what you’re telling me
…You know, it’s occurred to me that this would actually be a very good way to do exposition in hard SF novels without needing anyone to break character.
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