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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

Note

"The Untamed", but Jiggy has a white cat whom he tells everything.- May or may not be sentient or 'spiritual' like Fairy in the book. (From an idea I've thrown around with my friend @yraelviii)

ao3

He found the cat in Qinghe.

“What are you doing here?” Meng Yao said, crouching down to try to scoop out the little handful of white fluff underneath his cabinet only for it to bare its infantile fangs and him and hiss, moving its butt around as if it thought his fingers ought to be running in fear from its fearsome pounce. “How did you even get in here?”

The cat – a kitten, really, small and scrawny, dirty and covered in ashes as if it had just run out of a forge, but no less passionate for it – squirmed in his hand as he picked it up.

“Who owns you?” Meng Yao asked, and the cat hissed viciously as if to shout no one owns me!

Something about that echoed in Meng Yao’s heart – no one owns me, he thought – and so he fished up some extra meat from his plate, filled a small platter with water, and used the sleeve of an old outfit that needed to be taken to be laundered anyway to wipe the grey ash off of the cat’s white fur while it was distracted by sniffing suspiciously at the food and water that it ultimately declined to consume.

“Just this once,” he told it.

Doing good work will often only bring you more work, Meng Yao reflected, and so it was with the cat as much as with anything else. He still didn’t know how the cat managed to get into his rooms, and he sometimes dwelled on paranoid suspicions that there were hiding-holes in his chambers designed to allow others to spy on him, just as there had been in certain rooms in the brothel – though even at his worst moment of uncertainty and doubt he didn’t really think so. He knew that it wasn’t Nie Mingjue’s style even if Meng Yao had been someone important enough to care about, and anyway he didn’t question his own ability to discovery such a thing if it had really existed. He’d checked.

At any rate, however it kept getting into his rooms, the cat was now a regular presence there, lurking around.

It didn’t want to be petted and greeted all attempts to feed it with utter disdain, but despite its general standoffishness it seemed to like being in the same vicinity as Meng Yao, enjoying nothing more than to settle haughtily by the window in his room and watch over Meng Yao as if it thought he might get lost without its supervision.

Meng Yao thought it was probably someone’s pet gotten lost, or maybe even just a feral cat from outside (Qinghe had a fair number of them) that had figured out that it could access the good life by going inside, but it was very hard to sincerely worry over the ill-intentions of a cat, and he was already very busy.

If he didn’t need to care for it, then it wasn’t adding to his troubles. Let the cat sit where it liked!

Meng Yao had found that life in Qinghe was both different and similar to life in Yunping, the only life he had to compare it to, and it amused him to think of the great and righteous Nie sect as an overly large brothel, with the main difference being that they sold their strength where women sold their bodies. In both places there needed to be order, someone to sort things out and tell people where to put things and what to do; in both places Meng Yao, with his quick mind and excellent memory, his sense of understanding people and anticipating their needs, was utterly invaluable in arranging such things.

He had, admittedly, expected it to take a little more time to climb up to the top – the only person he couldn’t understand in this place was Nie Mingjue, who was far too easy to deceive and smiled at him like he really thought they were friends instead of just being master and servant, who appreciated his talents and told him so, who shrugged off his mistakes and had faith that he would do better, who ignored his status instead of lording it over him the way Meng Yao had expected him to. Even when he was angry, when he shouted and slammed his hands against things, Nie Mingjue never once mentioned Meng Yao’s background, and the only things he seemed to hold against him were his own mistakes.

Meng Yao still didn’t know why Nie Mingjue would act so rashly as to promote someone he had just met to a position as high as viceroy, much less actually trust him, but it didn’t really matter. However quixotic his method of reaching a place of power, he was here and his next task was to keep his place until he’d made a reputation for himself.

Part of that he did through his work, good critical work that people needed and which had always won him gratitude even if not respect, but the other part of it was in cultivation. That was the way in which the Nie sect was not like a brothel: you couldn’t just be clever, you couldn’t even just be beautiful - to be respected, you had to cultivate.

Not that wanting to cultivate was a problem for Meng Yao.

He’d always had a memory like a sponge and a body that obeyed his every wish, his childhood of mimicking the beautiful dances of his mother and her ‘sisters’ serving him well in transitioning to learning the sword even if he was years behind everyone else; his mother had bought a thousand fake cultivation manuals for him and he’d learned them all, each one of them more useless than the next, and now that he was here in the cultivation world at long last, he was finally, finally, finally able to cultivate for real.

Using Nie sect methods, of course, even if that wasn’t what he really wanted.

He’d started as soon as he could when he arrived, endlessly grateful that the Nie sect provided training sabers without cost, and he’d snuck one away back to his room so that he could practice on his own time, knowing it would take a long time to form his golden core. He’d debated with himself for a long time as to whether or not it was worth it to invest in a real one – if the training sabers were free, then real proper Nie sabers were somehow three times as expensive as the swords you could buy in the marketplace, and you could only put in a deposit without any notion of when you’d actually get the saber, apparently subject to the contrary dispositions of the spiritual weaponsmiths that made them.

In the end he decided to go for it more or less on a whim, emptying out his hard-built savings to place the order, even though he knew he would one day need to discard whatever they made for him in favor of a sword.

The Jin sect would accept him one day. He would make them.

(If the Nie sect cultivation style was good for one thing, he thought as he went through endless drills of slashing and thrusting, it was that you could work out your anger while you were doing it. There was nothing quite like imagining the face of someone you hated and then bringing down the practice saber in a vicious slash, and oh, but Meng Yao hated so very many people.)

The cat liked watching him train most of all, although Meng Yao suspected it was because seeing him jump around panting was funnier than watching him sit at his desk and gracefully write out letters. It would occasionally start purring, a sound a little like a crackling fire, and eventually Meng Yao got into the habit of going to run his fingers through its fur as a reward for himself when he successfully completed a training sequence.

After a while, he started talking to it, too.

“That commander,” Meng Yao said as he brought the training saber down. His real saber was still on the order, probably stalled purposefully; the smith assigned the task was probably one of the people that thought they were too good to deal with him because of who his mother was, and it’d all been a waste of money in the end. Completely a waste, even if Nie Mingjue had smiled so happily at him when he’d heard about Meng Yao placing the order, his eyes warm and soft and how had that man survived so long in this wretched world of politics and pain, didn’t he know he would always be deceived and betrayed?

Why should he be the exception to the rule, when everyone else had to suffer?

Meng Yao threw away the unhelpful thoughts and thrust the saber forward, as if piercing his invisible opponent straight through the chest.

“That commander.” He minutely corrected his form and stabbed again, this time as if piercing through the belly: a gut wound, a slow and awful way to die. “He’ll regret what he said to me.”

The cat’s purring intensified.

Meng Yao briefly had the wild thought that it approved.

“I just –” Another thrust. “– need to figure out –” An overhead slash. “– how.”

Meng Yao ended up taking the cat with him when he left Qinghe.

It probably was someone’s pet and he was opening himself up to a charge of stealing, a charge he wouldn’t be able to defend himself against now that he no longer had Nie Mingjue’s protection –

(Nie Mingjue who had wept tears and blood at what Meng Yao had done, betrayed at last after having finally encountered a deception he could not swallow, who had banished him from the Unclean Realm even after everything Meng Yao had done for him – who had, despite it all, still hidden an entire bag of gold and Meng Yao’s favorite Qinghe snacks in Meng Yao’s things with a short note claiming that it was for unpaid wages. As if Meng Yao had ever let a single pay period go by without claiming exactly what he was due. As if Nie Mingjue still cared despite throwing him out, as if he worried about how Meng Yao might live, as if he hadn’t given up the privilege of caring about things like that – )

He didn’t really care.

He wanted the cat, so he took it. It was the least Qinghe could do for him.

The cat spent all its time in his new rooms in the hotels he stayed out as he traveled: in his bedroom and study, the little gardens that, when available, he liked to use to train in the mornings and evenings. It would even follow him when he took a bath (although that was with great reluctance on the part of the cat, and only if Meng Yao were taking an especially long time in the bath and the cat was worried he’d drowned, yowling angrily as if it could revive him through the power of its voice). If it had once belonged to someone else, it now belonged to Meng Yao, and Meng Yao didn’t give away anything that was his.

“I’ve made worse mistakes,” he said defiantly to the cat, which blinked at him from its side of the carriage he’d used some of the gold to rent. “It’s only that I don’t want to review them in order to think of which ones those might be.”

The cat got up, stretched its back, and walked over to butt its head against Meng Yao’s hand before turning and going back to its spot by the window.

Meng Yao wasn’t sure if that was a sign of agreement or if the cat just thought there was a treat in his hand. Not that the cat had ever accepted treats from his hand.

He still wasn’t sure what the cat ate, actually, but he was sure the cat would make its feelings known now that they weren’t somewhere with a dependable kitchen, though he supposed there was always the possibility that it would start picking up hunting.

“Wen Chao said that they’d aimed at the Cloud Recesses,” Meng Yao said, deciding not to dwell on the things of the past. There was nothing he could do about it. Nothing he could do about Nie Mingjue’s betrayed eyes or the snacks he hadn’t even known Nie Mingjue had known he’d liked, about the hand-me-down guans and trinkets that Nie Huaisang had insisted were part of his wardrobe when he’d helped him pack even though he knew Nie Huaisang still wore them sometimes, about the fact that he should have been ordered to take the Nie sect’s braids out of his hair when he passed by the gates for the final time since he didn’t deserve them anymore but the two disciples there had just nodded at him and let him pass without a word – nothing to do about the saber he’d ordered, still on the list to be made, and maybe if he made something of himself out in the world alone he would one day come back to claim it at last. “That’s where we’re going now. Lan Xichen might be in danger. I have to help him.”

The cat made a sound like it was considering hacking up a hairball.

“He was kind to me,” Meng Yao said, feeling defensive. “The only one who never judged me –”

Since he’d decided to forget about Nie Mingjue and Nie Huaisang, wiping it out of his mind as if it had never been, that was even true.

“– and he’s a proper gentleman, a good man. I’ll help him.”

That Lan Xichen was also a powerful man was something he wished he didn’t think of, but he couldn’t help the way he was.

“After I help him, I’ll figure out what to do next,” Meng Yao said, like a liar, and the cat looked at him like he was stupid – which he was being, because of course he’d already planned out what to do next, figured out his next move, and there was no point in lying to a cat about it. Meng Yao had skills that were only useful in management, not labor, and the only thing he left to sell was information about the sect from which he’d just been ejected. “No one owns me, right? Let it be the Wen sect.”

The cat did not purr, but it didn’t condemn him, either.

That would have to do.

It was a good thing that Meng Yao’s cat was self-sufficient, he thought, because he had neither the time nor the stomach to feed it during his time at the Wen sect.

If he had thought he had worked hard at the Nie sect, he now knew differently: at least there the worst he had faced from his colleagues had been disdain and not outright murder attempts, back-stabbing and undercutting to try to show off to Wen Ruohan, and all the while the man himself demanded more and more from him without the slightest care for his own well-being. He was grist to the mill for Wen Ruohan, no matter how much the Chief Cultivator enjoyed having another man’s prized deputy as his own – Wen Ruohan might had been very nearly driven insane by the Yin Metal, but he still remembered old grudges – and it was night and day away from Nie Mingjue’s reliance on him that was based on trust, rather than reluctantly satisfied suspicion and paranoia.

Meng Yao had hidden the cat as best as he could from the start, thinking rightfully that people would try to use it against him, and to his relief it seemed that no one else had yet laid eyes on it and identified it as his own, despite its white fur standing out like a beacon to his sight. Unfortunately there were some people that had managed to figure out that he had a cat, even if they didn’t lay eyes on it themselves, and he’d had more than a few incidents in which someone had left poisoned meat out on the floor by his room in order to catch it.

The cat seemed as unimpressed with that as anything else.

Instead, the cat seemed to have taken up hunting as its pastime. It brought back the corpses of small birds, the Yin Metal-infused little spies, full of resentful energy, that Wen Ruohan had developed for his sons to use. At first Meng Yao worried about the cat getting somehow poisoned by them, but time went on and it seemed to be fine, even thriving. It had grown into a proper cat now, no longer a kitten, and it enjoyed licking its white and shining fur until it was gleaming.

It didn’t like Meng Yao’s training sessions as much – he trained with a sword now, two-faced just like him, and in a dozen different styles, Wen and Jiang and Jin, always Jin – so sometimes Meng Yao would go back to doing the old Nie sect style again, knowing the cat would recognize the familiar movements, and it was a surefire way to get the cat to purr.

The Nie sect style was also still the best for getting out anger, all aggression and sharp movements, and Meng Yao still had a lot of anger inside of him. He was starting to think he always would.

At least here in the Nightless City he could kill the people he hated, as long as he did so in low and dirty ways that didn’t trouble Wen Ruohan or interfere with his plans, and yet every time he did it, he felt no relief, only a vile and wretched stickiness that came, perhaps, from that awful Yin Metal that he had schemed over yet couldn’t seem to escape.

The cat didn’t like the Yin Metal one bit. It hissed and scratched, and in one notable incident seemed like it was going to pounce on it directly if Meng Yao hadn’t caught it mid-leap and shoved it into his sleeve before anyone had noticed it.

“You’re going to get me into trouble,” Meng Yao told the cat next time he trained, using the soft sword he’d hidden away for a time of need to hack and slash in the Nie way, which didn’t work with a soft sword at all but which made him feel strangely better. He was currently imagining Wen Ruohan’s head underneath a saber, his head and the heads of all those corpse puppets he’d created. “I will cut you loose if you do that.”

The cat rolled onto its back and showed its soft and fluffy belly, which only the truly unwise would seek to lay a hand on – Meng Yao still had scars – and Meng Yao rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, I know,” he said. “No one owns you, not even me. But do me a favor and don’t screw this up for me. Not when I’m so close.”

Lan Xichen had been accepting his letters and feeding them to Nie Mingjue, who trusted as blindly as he ever did. Meng Yao wished sometimes that he didn’t, that he would learn, that he would put some defenses up on that stupid reckless heart of his, but on the other hand it suited his plans very well that he didn’t.

Soon, he thought. Soon.

Soon he’d know what he needed to do.

“Now he chooses not to trust people,” Meng Yao complained to his cat. “Now. Now!”

The cat purred.

It wasn’t that Meng Yao (damnit, Jin Guangyao, he had a new name, he was Jin Guangyao now) couldn’t understand Nie Mingjue’s reluctance to trust him – fool me once, fool me twice, but three times seemed to be the other man’s breaking point – and in some ways he understood it more than ever now that he had been accepted back by the Jin sect, clothed in the gold he’d always deserved to wear.

Jin Guangshan hadn’t lost much in the war, not like the other sects, and the second it was over he was already scheming. Meng Yao – Jin Guangyao – was pulled right into the thick of it at once, less for his spying capability than for his sheer disposability, the fact that Jin Guangshan wasn’t willing to burden his pure and righteous heir with black matters that he was more than happy to taint the son of his whore with. With Nie Mingjue, general and hero of the Sunshot Campaign, representing the only real threat to the Jin sect’s domination, even if he didn’t want to be, Jin Guangyao was bound to be in opposition to him.

It made sense for Nie Mingjue not to trust him.

It irritated him regardless.

Still, lack of trust or no, Nie Mingjue had succumbed to Lan Xichen’s impassioned arguments and had agreed to swear brotherhood with him, even if Jin Guangyao suspected that Nie Mingjue’s primary motivation was to keep a better eye on him and scold him the way he did Nie Huaisang. It would be politically beneficial to Jin Guangyao to be tied in such a way to Nie Mingjue – it would suit his own desires as well, though that was less important – and so he had of course agreed as well, and he was planning on going to their oath ceremony in the outfit he had chosen for himself, gold from neck to foot, a sword he’d taken from the treasury since no one would order him one of his own, and a hat on his head like the ones his mother so admired to make up for his lack of height and to hide the Nie sect braids he still habitually wore underneath.

An old habit, and one he really ought to break, really. Ideally before Nie Mingjue figured it out and told him to cut it out.

There was a knock on the door, a familiar pounding, and the cat looked up, intrigued, even as Jin Guangyao sighed voicelessly to himself. Perhaps he had waited too long.

Perhaps it would be better to make a clean cut in this way, too.

He opened the door.

“Sect Leader Nie,” he greeted, thinking to himself that it would only be a few more hours before he was entitled to call the man da-ge as if they were nearly equals and how strange that would be. “Can this humble one help you?”

“Can I come in?” Nie Mingjue asked gruffly, his eyes lingering on Jin Guangyao’s uncovered and Nie-braided hair, just as he might have expected. Had expected.

Jin Guangyao nodded and stepped back, allowing him in, and closed the door behind him. “Could I get the sect leader some refreshments?” he asked politely, but Nie Mingjue seemed to have come to a stop right in the entranceway, surprise written all over his features. “Sect Leader Nie?”

Nie Mingjue was staring at Jin Guangyao’s cat.

“…Sect Leader Nie?”

Did Nie Mingjue not like cats? There were an endless number of feral cats in Qinghe, so it seemed implausible, and yet, here Nie Mingjue was, looking at the cat like he’d never seen such a thing before in its life.

Of course, at that exact moment, Jin Guangyao’s cat, the traitor, hopped off its pillow and went straight to rub itself against Nie Mingjue’s leg, purring like a little maniac.

Jin Guangyao stared at it, feeling thoroughly betrayed by what he would have previously said was his thoroughly unsociable cat, who had taken years to warm up to him enough to give him half the attention it was now bestowing freely on Nie Mingjue. Was this the heavens deciding to mock him for his earlier betrayals?

Alternatively, Nie Mingjue might just be very good with cats, which Jin Guangyao could believe. Perhaps he even carried in his pockets some of the Qinghe vine that cats were said to be so enamored of, although certainly Meng Yao’s cat had never once before shown an interest in such things before.

“…what’s its name?” Nie Mingjue croaked, voice hoarse. He was still staring fixedly at the cat, looking as though his entire world had shattered around him. He hadn’t even looked so unsettled when Jin Guangyao had so viciously mocked him at the Nightless City, and at the time he’d thought he was going to die and be turned into a corpse puppet to murder all his loved ones.

Jin Guangyao was tempted to say something rude or facetious, something like ‘I just call it Cat, why, do you name random cats?’, but the cat had been a good companion of his for a long time now and he couldn’t do that to it, even if he was currently planning on taking an extra long bath to force the cat to miserably linger by the door to the bathing room, screeching in unhappiness at the wet, but bravely (if grumpily) supervising him to make sure he didn’t drown.

“Hensheng,” he said, because that was in fact what he’d named it – it meant hatred for life, which was not exactly an auspicious name but which had stuck from the very moment he had thought it up – and waited to hear Nie Mingjue’s judgment. “It’s not normally quite so sticky,” he added in an attempt to save some face. “With most people.”

“Well, it’s me, that’s different,” Nie Mingjue said, and maybe the man really was just the human incarnation of the plant cats liked so much. Meng Yao really wouldn’t put it past him. “You...you cultivate in the Nie sect style? Still?”

Jin Guangyao blinked, surprised by the change in subject.

“Yes,” he said, a little hesitantly. He cultivated many styles now, although it was always the Jin sect style when he was in public. But he still had all the anger in his belly to vent – even more so now than before, anger at his father, anger at Madame Jin, anger at his brother born to a blessed life, anger at all those disciples that sneered at him even after he’d been legitimized, anger, anger, anger – and the Nie sect style had always been the best for that.

And anyway, it made the cat purr.

“Is that a problem, Sect Leader Nie?” he asked.

“Not at all,” Nie Mingjue said, and when he turned to look at him his eyes were warm and soft the way they’d been all the way before the fiasco with Xue Yang, shimmering with tears of joy and a smile that seemed to come straight from his heart, the foolish easily deceived man. It was so unexpected that Jin Guangyao actually took a full two steps back, his jaw dropping a little. “I’m happy for you. Very happy.”

He actually wiped at his eyes with his sleeve, dashing away the tears.

“You should come back to the Unclean Realm to pick it up when the brotherhood ceremony is done,” he added nonsensically. “I can’t imagine how long it’s been waiting for you.”

“…what?” Jin Guangyao said. “Pick up what?”

“Hensheng,” Nie Mingjue said, which – what? “Your saber. Hensheng.”

His saber?

The saber he’d never gotten, having been banished from the Unclean Realm before the order was finished, the one he’d spent all his savings on just in putting in the deposit, the one he’d never actually finished paying off? He remembered it, of course, and sometimes it still itched under his skin that he’d never gotten what he was owed because everything that was owed to him he deserved to get in the end. But…

“Hensheng is my cat,” he said.

Nie Mingjue blinked at him. “That’s not a cat,” he said. “That’s a saber spirit.”

Jin Guangyao’s gaze dropped down to the cat.

The cat that never seemed to eat anything or drink anything, that never once fell for the poisoned meat or accepted his offers of treats, that no one in the Nightless City had ever seen with their own eyes; the cat that could consistently get into his rooms despite there being no holes for it to enter, as if it had simply passed through the walls like a ghost.

Like a spirit.

The cat, which purred whenever Jin Guangyao practiced the Nie sect forms, swinging a saber with rage in his heart.

The cat to which he had confessed all his anger, all his frustration, all his rage, all the feelings he never gave to any human being around him – the sabers of the Nie sect thrived on such emotions, those feelings that encouraged them and strengthened them, developing the saber spirits that made each one of them a spiritual weapon unlike any other, with power and rage infused into the very blade.

Saber spirits, which only those born into the Nie sect or adopted early, raised in their ways, one of them, could form.

“A saber spirit?” Jin Guangyao said weakly, and his knees suddenly didn’t seem strong enough to hold him; he swayed and Nie Mingjue stepped forward quickly, catching him by the shoulders to steady him. “I cultivated a saber spirit?”

“The saber is back in the Unclean Realm,” Nie Mingjue said, not without kindness. “It was only ever waiting for you to pick it up once you developed the spirit, so that you could introduce the two.”

“It hasn’t been – I would have thought it would have been thrown away, or repurposed –”

“It’s a Nie saber, Meng Yao. It won’t obey anyone else ever again, not in this life; it is yours, yours alone. When one day you die, it will be buried with honor in our saber halls, just like all the others.”

The cat looked up at him and purred.

No one owns me, Jin Guangyao thought – the first thing the cat had said to him, and he’d always had a good understanding of what the cat wanted from the very first. No one had owned that wild spirit then, but it had stayed by his side, at first from curiosity and later from habit, and it was his now.

His, and no one else’s.

“Will you come pick it up?” Nie Mingjue asked, hope in his eyes. “Will you come home, if only for a little while?”

“Yes,” Jin Guangyao said. “Yes, I will.”

Later, Jin Guangshan told his son to kill Nie Mingjue, that fool who trusted too much and didn’t know when he was being deceived, finding him in his rigidity and righteousness too much of a burden on the power he planned to wield.

Jin Guangyao bowed as deep as he could, a smile on his lips, saying nothing, and the next day, when Jin Guangshan went to the brothel as he always did, drinking tea served by his son the way he always did, he never did figure out why his heart had stopped.

(The saber Jin Guangyao began to wear openly after the funeral – a gift from his sworn brother, he said with a smile, in remembrance of his time at the Nie sect – purred in pure satisfaction.)

#mdzs #jin guangyao #meng yao #nie mingjue #my fic #my fics #unawakened #prompter I have no idea what you were looking for #and it's probably not this #but this is what came to mind #omgpurplefattie

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daintyduck99 · 2 years

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Clicheeeeessss

X finding comfort in Y, a character they're supposed to dislike, Sweet Tarts 👀

Reggie flies into the tech booth, wincing as the door slides shut with a definitive bang. He loves the tech booth. It's his favorite spot in the whole school, with its panels and glowing machinery and the large, dark window that make it seem secluded and like something straight out of Star Trek.

It's also the perfect place to let your mask slip. The actors belong on the stage, after all. No one’s meant to look into the booth.

Here, he can mope without worrying anyone, without ruining Luke and Julie's time together or distracting Alex from that big history test he's been studying for.

He hunkers against the wall, rubbing his jaw. It hurts from smiling so much.

There's a metaphor in there, but he's not Luke. Luke, who knows exactly how to twist his feelings into lyrical prose, who goes for what he wants and gets it.

He lets out a little hysterical laugh, burying his face in his hands.

He's not Luke. He's just Reggie.

Reggie wipes furiously at his eyes as the door slides open, drawing his knees closer to his chest. Crimson toenails peek back at him from a pair of black heels, and he sighs.

"What do you want, Carrie?"

Her heels clack as she strides into the booth, and her red dress pools on the floor as she folds her legs gracefully, like—like a deer, but not a newborn deer, although she does have the big brown eyes to match.

He's a sucker for girls with big brown eyes, apparently. He can't escape them.

Carrie cocks her head, looping a lock of dirty blonde hair around her finger.

"You Phantoms are always so testy. That's not very ghostly of you, you know. Although I guess hiding away up here is."

Reggie snorts. "Ghosts can be lots of things. It's like—a metaphor. What, did I steal your hiding spot?"

"Sure, Casper," she deadpans. "I don't hide in here. I wanted to talk to Jake about the lighting sequence for the next Dirty Candi show, but I found you, instead."

"Congratulations."

She scans him with keen eyes, and he tries not to shiver. He doesn't know what she's looking for, but she's always sharp, always ready to cut someone to the quick.

"Where's your shirt? That plaid monstrosity you've always got on. It's—weird to see you without it. Like, if you were a ghost, it would definitely be a part of your ghost outfit."

It's so unexpected and relatively non-offensive that he tells her the truth, and he manages to do so without his voice wavering. He sits up straighter, tapping his fingers against the floor.

"Oh, that. I gave it to Julie."

Her face softens for a fraction of a second, then she purses her lips.

"At least you can still get it back."

Reggie must look like a total idiot, because he has no idea what she's getting at.

"Sorry, what?"

Carrie rolls her eyes. "The shirt. Your friendship. You'll get to keep them. You haven't done anything that would ruin your relationship with her. Right?"

Oh. Oh!

He's gaping again. He can't help it.

"You mean," he breathes, "you—but she—"

Carrie gives a curt nod. He doesn't dare say anything else about it. He swallows.

Maybe she doesn't hide in the tech booth, but she does hide, burying her pain in animosity, shunning vulnerability for venom. She's an excellent actress. It's not that different from what he usually does, really, although he prefers to smile and slip into the role of a space cadet.

"For what it's worth, she still misses you." He scrambles to continue as her hands clench in her lap. "I know it's not the same. Trust me, I get it. But she would forgive you if you stopped being so nasty to her."

Carrie flushes. She studies her hands as she speaks.

"It's stupid. She was my best friend, so like, of course I miss her. I miss what we had, not even—anything more. But I can't—stop, I don't know. Ugh, this wasn't even supposed to be about me."

"Ah," Reggie says triumphantly, and it's only because it's Carrie that he doesn't boop her nose, "but you made it about both of us by relating to me. After you said the most bonkers thing you could possibly say, which forced me to stop wallowing."

The smile she responds with is small, but it reaches her eyes, and his heart gives a traitorous little lurch.

Goddammit.

#reggie x carrie #jatp sweet tarts #cliche prompts #more midnight fic from me lol #ficlets with ash #julie and the phantoms

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introvertguide · 4 years

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Movies and the Tracking Shot

In the language of film, there are many ways to place actors, props, or cameras in a way that conveys a message to the audience. The tracking shot is a specific way to include the audience into a situation on film and it really intensifies the experience. Some of the most anxiety inducing horror shots as well as introductions to a new world have happened with the tracking shot. Technically, any shot with camera movement could be described as tracking, but the really good ones tend to follow a character or group through a situation or world that is realistic but in some way other worldly because of the circumstances. Our current film under review for the AFI top 100, Goodfellas, has one of the most famous tracking shots, so I wanted to highlight it along with some other great tracking shots in film history:

THIS IS PRETTY SPOILER FREE, BUT SOME OF THE CLIPS ARE VERY VIOLENT AND INTENSE SO DON’T FOLLOW THE LINK IF YOU THINK IT WILL TRIGGER ANXIETY!!!

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Paths of Glory (1957)

This is one of the first real tracking shots and the camera is literally on a track. You can actually see the track along the ground as you are lead through a trench in WWI along with Kirk Douglas. It is horrifying in that it really displays the British idea of keeping a “stiff upper lip” as hundreds of men who are obviously terrified, as they are surely about to get slaughtered, make way for their commanding officer to lead them over the trench wall. This film was a favorite of Winston Churchill how complemented the realistic depiction of officers in trench warfare. The film was directed by Stanley Kubrick, who later showed his affinity for this type of shot. Here is a link to the clip which also shows the raiding run after the trench tracking shot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gyyGHHXfck

The Shining (1980)

The initial lack of sound and the steady cam shot by operator Garret Brown that follows Danny Torrance through the halls of the empty hotel is haunting. As the boy pedals his tricycle, creepy music slowly builds until he finally runs into the infamous twins. It establishes the loneliness and the inability to escape. There is nothing for this child to do but explore alone, an activity which will only lead to danger. It is not an intense scene per se, but there are few better ways to establish the world of the Overlook Hotel. Here is a clip that shows the scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy7ztJ3NUMI

Goodfellas (1990)

I love this scene because it goes from a dirty alley back through the kitchen/ backroom and into a fancy club. It shows the lead character progressing from the streets and through the life of a working stiff (paying off people as he goes) and ending at a table prepared just for him at the front. He basically walked his new girlfriend through his life in a single 2 minute shot through the club. An absolute masterpiece of cinematography by Martin Scorsese. Here is a link to the clip as well as a link to the deep dive discussion with the steady cam operator:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCYwcObxl78

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVDC95rprFs

The Russian Ark (2002)

I have seen this film a couple of times and it is more of a technical accomplishment than a great story. The film is made up of a single study cam shot with almost 1000 actors and 3 orchestras all filmed in a single museum in Russia. It is the story of a French aristocrat dreaming about 200 years of Russian history and the constant movement does make it all feel dreamlike. The producers could only manage one day to use the museum and they could not damage anything or add structures to set up cameras so the entire 96 minutes was done with a single shot in a single take. The amount of rehearsals and planning that were needed for this is mind boggling and it is worth a watch to give respect to the effort along. Here is a link to the trailer if you want to get an idea of what the film is like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV1kphEEXn8

Children of Men (2006)

This is the most constantly intense movie that I have ever experience and I do not rewatch it because even individual scenes cause me great anxiety. I have seen it once all the way through without pausing and that was enough for me. There are actually many tracking shot scenes throughout this film that last from 5-10 minutes at a time, and this is including my personal most panicky shot that I remember experiencing in the theater. There is a car ambush scene that has the camera in the place of someone in the car swiveling around to try and keep up with what is coming. It is active in that you feel like you are being attacked, yet it is passive in the way that there is nothing the audience can do to help or protect themselves. Straight out of a nightmare. I kind of a hate the scene for how bad I felt afterwards, but I love it because I recognize how good the cinematography was to affect me so strongly. I have a link for the clip below and, although it does not affect me the same since I have watched it many times, I want to give a quick warning to watch at your own risk because it is violent and intense:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVg66ndzfpU

Birdman (2014)

This film won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Cinematography as the entire film is made up tracking shots. The lead character is suffering through a mid life crisis as the character he played as a young man has almost become his identity and haunts him as he tries to re-establish himself as a serious actor director and not “the guy the used to be Birdman.” There are many great tracking scenes, but I think my favorite is one in which he gets trapped outside the theater and he has to run through time square in his underwear to get back around to his dressing room. Here is a link to that scene, but I recommend checking out the movie and try to count how many cuts you can actually see. There aren’t many:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O8wiwu0elA

The Revenant (2015)

I also saw this film in the theater and it is extremely intense, but I was ready for it because a friend of mine compared the opening to Children of Men. That put me on guard and I am glad because it is brutal and unforgiving like the situation. DiCaprio plays maybe the toughest character ever based on a real person and the man suffers greatly all in the name of vengeance. He is with a group of fur traders and they are attacked by Arikara warriors. Walking along as a bystander as the horrors unfold for six minutes is an amazing way to introduce the savagery and pain of a fur trader’s life in the new world. These men did not belong there and those tribes who did belong were not welcoming to outsiders destroying the food source. There is also a bear attack sequence in this film, but the computer graphic additions kind of ruined it for me. Here is a link to the opening attack scene and, again, it very violent and intense so watch at your own risk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x0oa0zyC4A

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There are many other films that utilize this kind of tracking cam and often the effect makes it end up like a first person shooter video game. This is a perfectly viable way to have a tracking shot, but I don’t feel like it gives the same intensity as the above examples. I movie that was done completely in first person was Hardcore Henry (2015) and it is fun to watch; Doom (2005) has an extended first person scene as well. Chase scenes in horror films will have this first person view as well, although a with a prime example being Halloween (2018) does a fantastic job of this during the trick or treating home invasion scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy2kMtJa2q8 (warning! very violent)

The tracking shot is a great tool to bring the audience into the director’s world and it can be used to great effect. Are there other examples not listed that exemplify the technique?

#film technique #tracking shot #film #director of photography #movie production #goodfellas #the revenant #Stanley Kubrick #the shining #children of men #movie critique #introvert #introverts

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allthefilmsiveseenforfree · 5 years

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Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Is there anything more idealistic than a monster movie? The human race coming together in the face of a force bigger than themselves. In the face of a government that is actively ignoring every single iota of scientific fact surrounding climate change, human rights, and sustainability, a monster movie is the exact kind of wish fulfillment fantasy that feels like the perfect escapism in these dark times. And, as the title indicates, Godzilla is the King of the Monsters. Is he worthy of the title in this follow up to 2014′s Godzilla? Well…

I mean. Yeah. He’s fucking Godzilla.

So not that you really need a plot summary, because if you want to see a Godzilla movie does it even matter what happens in it? I think not. But anyway, the basic story here is that Godzilla hasn’t been seen in 5 years since the events of 2014′s film. Dr. Emma Russell (Vera Farmiga), working for the monster-studying organization Monarch, has invented a technology that can allow humans to talk to and somewhat control the giant monsters that have been chilling inside the earth this whole time, like Mothra and Godzilla and whatnot. But she and her daughter Madison (Millie Bobby Brown) get kidnapped by a mysterious bad guy (Charles Dance, aka Tywin Lannister and you know if he shows up he’s gonna be a mysterious bad guy) and it’s up to Emma’s estranged husband Mark (Kyle Chandler, who is at peak Dad Capacity here) to get them back. Oh and also there’s the eensy, tiny complication of all the giant monsters waking up and just fucking. shit. up. all over the world.

Some thoughts:

It’s refreshing to know that secretive government monster-hunting organizations allow “take your daughter to work day,” because that’s a real good opportunity for women in STEM, you know?

There is a group of Very Good wolves who are just doing their best. Shout out to the wolves.

So I’m about 5 years late to this party, but I just started watching Silicon Valley on HBO and I am currently deep, deep in the depths of a very severe Thomas Middleditch Situation. SO apart from giant kaiju beating the shit out of each other, I was mainly showing up for him playing Sam Coleman, the Monarch director of technology, and he did not disappoint. He’s mainly used for comic relief, but he still gets to be smart and brave and there’s a really excellent beard happening and he’s wearing a lot of suits and sometimes running in the rain, and it’s all just really good. Good shit, good shit.

Kyle Chandler plays essentially the same character in everything he’s ever done, and Mark here is no exception. He is 1) The Most Dad and 2) he hates Titans. Whatever you’re imagining that looks like, that’s exactly what it looks like, and you know what? It works! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I could honestly go on and on about every member of the cast. This movie is big and this cast is bigger - diverse, interesting, amazing.

Special shout out to Millie Bobby Brown, who gets to be the young brave plucky scientist teen that in years past would have been played by a boy. While no role in the movie is really revolutionary, she’s giving it her all and she’s a world-class crier, so I was very proud of her.

Like most giant CGI action-fests, the color saturation is through the roof here. It can get to be a little eye-searing at certain moments, but the overall spectacle is exactly as it’s meant to be - spectacle.

I call bullshit on literally everything that happens in Antarctica though. Everyone’s hanging out with no hats on, their faces exposed - you would all have frostbite in minutes. This should honestly have become a sequel to Face/Off real damn quick.

During Vera Farmiga’s big speech, did she like…put together a montage? Did she have access to PowerPoint while she was kidnapped? Where did she find the time? She’s got the embedded videos and dissolving screenwipes and everything, that shit takes a minute to put together.

Lazy screenwriting note: whenever a character says “I couldn’t be more sane,” it pretty much always means they’re not. Maybe find another way to tell us this.

Another entry in the somewhat-related-to-climate-change pantheon where the villain isn’t wrong, but like…it’s still murder.

How the fuck is your plan to defeat Rodan - who literally has skin made of magma - to shoot him with fire? This monster organization is really pretty fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants and kind of terrible at their jobs. Oh you’re gonna leave your one of a kind world changing monster Doppler radar unattended? Of course, who could possibly forsee any consequences there. I mean, get your shit together.

One really cool sequence that I appreciated was the specific calling out of the difference between Eastern/Western conceptions of dragons and monsters and how that affects our larger cultural responses to Godzilla et al. For an increasingly globalistic film market, I thought this was an interesting conversation and I would love to see more content like this in future global blockbusters!

Can we talk about Godzilla and his character design? I just love him. I love crotchety old grumpy Godzilla. I love that his face looks like my pit bull’s face when he’s smiling. I love how sassy he is, all “I was taking a nap, minding my own damn business when y’all motherfuckers come wake me up, make me do your dirty work and clean up YOUR MESS.” Sassy Godzilla for president.

Did I Cry? A little bit during Ken Watanabe’s big showstopping scene.

The credits for this movie are some of my favorite I’ve seen all year. They do a good job of setting up next year’s Kong vs. Godzilla, and also list credits like “Godzilla - Himself” and “Mothra - Herself” which I fucking love. Plus there IS a post-credits scene, so make sure to stick around for that!

I enjoy big-budget action movies, especially monster movies. The action sequences here really are something to behold, and there are fewer things I love more than a cold theater on a hot day with a big, loud, fun spectacle unfolding before me. That’s exactly what you get here.

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

#119in2019 #godzilla king of the monsters #godzilla kotm #godzilla king of the monsters review #Vera Farmiga #kyle chandler #thomas middleditch #o'shea jackson jr.#charles dance #millie bobby brown #ken watanabe #movie reviews #film reviews

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legggoes2qatar-blog · 7 years

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First Offshore Job!!

I went for my first job on March 6th and stayed offshore until May 8th when I got to go back to land for the casing break (after begging the company man to let me go to drink beer) then I returned to the rig for the last section May17-28th.

Here’s what I documented while offshore:

Day 1:

Arrived to the heliport at 5:30am. It is just like an airport but much smaller and no carry-on liquids limit! Watched a pre-boarding safety video, put on lifejackets and earplugs then loaded the helicopter. This was my first helicopter ride! I was surprised how gently the helicopter took off and landed, much more gentle than any airplane I’ve ridden. The platform we are working on for the next undetermined amount of time is smaller than I thought but from what I’ve gathered from other people this is a normal size except the accommodation is very, very small. I think the maximum number of people on here is around 200. I cannot see any land or buildings in the distance. However, it is quite hazy today. The water is a very pretty blue color and the waves today are bigger than I expected! Everyone has told me I will start hating all the blue soon but I am optimistic because blue is my favorite color. J

I am sharing a room with 3 coworkers. I am the only female on this rig. We share a bathroom with 2 other guys, 6 total. Due to the high capacity, there are no extra rooms to give me a private one but I don’t mind sharing so it’s a non-issue for me. Our room has bunk beds; I’m in one of the top bunks. There are curtains that go around the entire bed so you do have your own private area…kind of! The bed is comfortable except for the pillow, which is hard. There are constant PA announcements so it is not a little difficult to get a good night’s rest. The water depth here is only 12 meters so the waves don’t sway the rig, the drilling does. It feels like a small earthquake so I woke up twice confused because I wasn’t in California, haha! The food is very good! The water in the shower only stays hot for 2 minutes at a time so quick showers only.

So far I have enjoyed my first day offshore. The rig is still in set-up mode so we are looking at a possibility of not having anything to do for the next 3-7 days. I’m loving every second out here watching this operation!

Day 2:

We still have no internet. There is not much more we can do until we are granted access to the rig internet. After dinner, I got to go up to the rig floor and stand in the dog house (driller’s cabin) to watch them make up the Bottom Hole Assembly (BHA). We are starting a new well so the first section will be the conductor pipe; water table protector, largest hole size. The tools used to drill the conductor are huge. I’ve seen big bits before but never a hole opener! **Note to self: find picture of 36” hole opener to post** We should begin drilling tomorrow if all goes according to plan!

Day 3:

Still no internet—the struggle is real. We are able to call the base to talk to the Drilling Engineer and our Field Service Manager (FSM). Again, not much to do today. I learned a lot about running electrical cables and the sequence of the wires when using the crimping tool to change/add a head. We were supposed to start drilling today but it looks like we won’t start until early tomorrow morning. I am still enjoying myself. The SLB team that is with me is one other MWD Engineer and two Direction Drillers (DD). The DD’s are the age of my dad and the other MWD is 9 years older than me. All of them are very smart and funny. Hopefully, tomorrow we get internet so I can do some studying on the tools we are going to be running.

Day 5:

The mudloggers wouldn’t let us share their internet cable that runs from their unit, which is right next to ours, to the company man’s office in the accommodation and to the geologist’s office next to the accommodation. So, we had to run our own cable which required opening ceilings, drilling holes through walls and lots of zipties. It was a long process but, luckily, we have extra down time because there were some issues spudding the well. SLB won’t be running any of their MWD and directional tools until the 3rd section which was supposed to begin on the 10th of March but will likely happen around the 12th or 13th.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned how awesome the laundry service on offshore rigs are. You just put your dirty clothes outside your room and 3 hours later they’re back nice and clean. I think I would prefer staying offshore 24/7 if we got internet access. I’m still loving the ocean view!

Day 6:

I slept so good last night! Best sleep since being here. At breakfast, I convinced the kitchen staff to let me have some of the company man’s strawberries…early win for the day! They are running conductor pipe today so nothing to do for us. Still no internet access, which is real annoying. The mudloggers got their internet access yesterday. l won’t be able to access the internet from the accommodation, but I can in our unit. I didn’t properly prepare for coming offshore. I learned I should have brought less clothes and downloaded a lot more books, I guess not that many lessons lol! I am very appreciative of my co-workers, we laugh a lot and talk a lot.

I’ve been doing a lot of studying during all this downtime. I will be going to school sometime in June and July. By then, I will be very prepared. Most people do this schooling with no field experience and I will have 5 months field experience. Because I don’t have internet access, I only have the first two school’s information downloaded and I have gotten through that material so I’ve begun bugging our DD’s about their job. I got a lot of the DD school information from one so I can start looking through that.

Day 7:

Still no internet. In the accommodation room, on the 1st floor, there is a small collection of books so I won’t die of boredom after I finish the last 10 pages in the book I’m currently reading. I’ve also been collecting movies and TV shows from various people around the rig. I should have brought my big hard driver—another lesson learned.

This week has gone by fast. It is easy to lose track of the days. I’m excited to get to the section of the well where we start running our tools—it will be another big learning curve I am excited to learn but nervous about remembering everything in such a short time period. I will get to shadow during the 26’’ section and then be on my own for the rest of the well. Still not sure if they will keep me out here until Total Depth (TD).

Day 8:

We finally got internet access!!! We requested for 11 mac addresses to be granted internet access but they only gave us 4. So, to compensate we set up one of the laptops as a hotspot and now have wifi in the unit. But no one knows and no one should find out. It was so exciting to finally get on the internet and let everyone know I am okay. I had emails from people I wasn’t expecting and from people I wanted to contact to talk drilling stuff. The rig crew is installing to BOP so we aren’t neglecting work to play on the internet.

I was able to download two more books even though I already started a new book that I got from the Rec room. Progress is happening! I think I will be out here from at least another 2-3 weeks.

Day 9:

We are finally drilling. Still not running our tool so I have more time to prepare for my job. The other MWD out here with me is leaving to go back to land and they are sending a new MWD on loan from Algeria. I’ll be switching to night shift tomorrow, hopefully things will be calmer during the night shift and I won’t have to talk to so many people (company man/manager/town). J

Day 13:

Time is flying by! I can’t believe I’ve already been here for almost two full weeks! It feels like 5 days. Night shift is really relaxed, partly because we still haven’t run our tool downhole and partly because most people are sleeping so no one is bugging us for data. I miss the sun because I liked looking at the ocean and watching the waves. Today we had TWO drills. Went to bed at 7am, woke up for the first drill at 10am, went back to sleep for maybe 5 minutes and the second drill started. Thankfully, I was able to go back to sleep. I had worked a double the day/night before so sleep exhaustion helped to get back to sleep quickly!

The night DD is fun. He plays music and dances! He’s become like my second dad—very protective. He says he doesn’t like the other guys here asking about me and talking to me so whenever the driller calls for a survey print out I send Yuri up to deliver it. But if the company calls, I’m the one that’s sent. I’ve been put on a mission to figure out how the guys in the surface room are able to get on facebook when it’s blocked for the rest of us. My coworkers tell me I need to use my “woman power”. I just laugh. Disclaimer, no one has been rude to me, just Uncle Yuri looking out!

I’ve been assigned a mentor just 2 days ago. Turns out to be a Texas A&M alumn! I thought I escaped all the Aggies because I’m working in Qatar and not Texas! He’s been extremely helpful, kind and very intelligent. I’m very appreciative for all of his help and for all that he is teaching me! I need to figure out a way to thank him BIG for all he has done for me!

Day 19:

We have been on standby for 6 days now because of a bad cement job. I’ve been gathering 3-6 movies from people around the rig every day so my collection is getting pretty good. In the mornings I’ve been going up to the helideck to walk/run (running gets boring pretty quick without music and running in small circles). I especially enjoy watching the sun rise, it’s so beautiful over the water. Yesterday it was a really, pretty pink sunrise! I saw a big, brown sea turtle, first sea creature I’ve seen since coming here!

My normal schedule has become:

16:30-roll out of bed, throw on my coveralls, put on socks and crocs, brush teeth, head downstairs to the galley for dinner

17:30-walk into the unit, get the update for current operations and what happened during the day, joke around, get the latest rig gossip (yes boys gossip a lot!)

18:00-start shift

00:00-go to the galley (if operation permits) for some soup

5:00-6:00-go have breakfast

6:30-go to helideck (weather permitting) and walk/run

7:30-go take a shower

8:00-read until I fall asleep

REPEAT

Day 21:

The new joke in our unit has become “are you speaking English?” any time anyone has to ask “what”. It started because the other MWD from Algeria and the day DD from India have a really hard time understanding my English because of “my accent”. I also have a hard time understanding their English but we’re making it work. I’ve been learning some Hindi, French, Arabic, and Indonesian. Just a few words, mostly naughty words.

Day 23:

Today and yesterday have been long! We got H2S (hydrogen sulfide gas) at surface so we’ve had to muster for 5 hours total yesterday and so far 3 hours today. H2S is a toxic gas, smells bad at low concentrations but can’t be detected by smell at medium-high concentrations which makes it very dangerous. Our unit is located right above the shakers where H2S is usually located. Because I am working night shift, my sleep has been majorly disturbed. After waking us up throughout the day to stand at our muster stations with SCBAs on, when day shift went to bed they decided against having everyone muster and just have those working night shift to muster. So, us working night shift are getting screwed out of sleep. I’m ready to get this section over with!

Day 30:

We are experiencing problems with the well. We almost got to go home because it was going to take longer than a few days to remedy the issue but town called with a new plan that requires us to stay. I was looking forward to going back to land but I was also kind of bummed because I wanted to work with a Rotary Steerable System (RSS) that we are running in the next section. Right now it looks like I will be staying, you never know though, decisions are always made last minute!

The night DD working with me found some real coffee, not the instant nescafe crap! We don’t have a proper coffee machine nor do we have filters but in Indonesia they don’t make coffee the way we do in America. You scoop the ground coffee into your cup, add boiling water, stir, let it sit for ~5 minutes for all of the grounds to settle to the bottom and enjoy! It was a little weird at first but it’s totally worth having good coffee.

FINALLY BACK TO LAND!

As soon as I arrived on land, I dropped my bags off at the hotel, changed into normal clothes and met the Oil Installation Manager (OIM), rig superintendent and the mud engineer at a hotel bar to celebrate finishing the section. How good beer tastes after so long! After spend a couple of days in base testing tools and a few days sitting by the pool, I returned to the rig to finish drilling the well.

It was fun returning to people I knew. Drilling only took us about a week, the geologist called early TD because we hit water (not what you want when drilling for oil). One of the tools we ran in this run is brand new, only three in the world and two were on board with me. I was very nervous going into this run because I hadn’t run the older generation of this tool, never ran a LWD tool so I had to do a lot of studying and research to gain knowledge about the tool to be prepared for any issues during drilling. PLUS it was even more important for this run to go well because the tool is in the field test stage. Inshallah, all went really well and only took ONE run to finish! This was SO unlike the previous section where it took 9 runs to finish. It was such a happy feeling when TD was called. After all of the problems experienced throughout this well, I didn’t think we would actually finish it.

My first hitch offshore was great. Challenging yet rewarding. It was an experience I won’t soon forget! Now it’s time to prepare for school in RUSSIA!

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