☝️🤓 it’s because the further you move toward the earth’s poles, the lower the angle of the sun is at the hottest parts of the day, meaning the radiation hits your whole body, causing it to feel 10-20 degrees warmer than the thermometer reading will tell you. People from tropical climes, aka close to the equator, are used to the sun’s radiation hitting a much smaller target- their head and shoulders.
Also the further you move toward the poles the more pronounced the difference between the length of day and night is. Worst part of a far-north (or south) heatwave is it doesn’t get dark long enough for meaningful cooling.
People keep saying the humidity, and yes a humid heat is a specific kind of misery and can be dangerous… but critical to remember, many many tropical climes are humid as well.
Infrastructure and citified heat islands also very much play a factor. And here the angle you’re at on earth also makes it worse. The sun being lower on the horizon can double the amount of solar energy affecting your house. The sun beating through your windows for 16+ hours a day when you have a house built for cold and no AC adds to the misery.
But what I’m talking about here is how hot you feel in your body when experiencing solar radiation from a lower angle. On the upside the sun’s rays have to pass through more atmosphere, weakening the UV strength, hence why populations that migrated north eons ago lost melanin (you still need SPF though). And in general the warming effect on the atmosphere is lessened. The warming effect on your body is magnified. To the tune of 10-20 degrees (yes Fahrenheit) above ambient. Winter gear prioritizes insulating your torso because that’s where all your vital organs are. It follows that the sun beating on your chest and back warms you up fast and with little relief except to get in the shade.
Visitor to Alaska are often surprised at how warm temperatures in the 70°s and 80°s feel. Read about how this phenomenon occurs.
My eye doctor also told me living in Alaska made you more likely to get cataracts younger because the low-angle sun gets directly in your eyes in the summer (unless you’re big on sunglasses) and the snow and ice in winter reflect a lot of UV back up, doubling your exposure. Though the prevalence of cataracts in Alaska and other far-north locales is contributed to by other factors, notably poverty and the resulting lack of medical care. And is still not as likely as in people who live in equatorial climes or high altitudes and get the super-strength UV exposure all year round.
also this is part of a disturbing but sadly not uncommon attitude that progress = women (specifically women most of the time) showing more skin. because not showing skin is "following irrational religious modesty mandates" like the man on twitter says
somehow being progressive and secular automatically means putting women's bodies on display (although of course these people would shame women showing that much skin because they chose to). gee, I wonder why...
(to be clear, religious concealing clothing should also be respected as long as it's voluntary!)
Boxers for women piss me offff there’s no reason for them to be that expensive fuck you but the “just buy mens” advice doesn’t work because they have too much fabric in front and not nearly enough in back for this ass 😤
As he drives home from Evan's loft for what is apparently the last time, Tommy feels like he's driving from the backseat in a body that isn't his. There's a road in front of him but he doesn't know which one, or why he's taking a left at the stop sign or running through an intersection to beat a yellow light. Everything feels so far away. It's like he's on the moon. Maybe he drove off a bridge and just floated upwards. If he rolls the window down, maybe he'll suffocate.
You're in shock, a little voice whispers in the back of his mind.
He's been in shock before, but every time feels like the first time. He's read that some people get used to it, that it makes a home in their bodies, but he's never figured out how. His autonomic nervous system just kicks in and takes over. It's easy to let it.
That's probably why he doesn't register the hulking creature that darts into the road until it's practically splayed over his hood.
The impact knocks him out of the fugue state and, when he slams on the brake, into the steering wheel. Gasping, he looks up and finds himself staring into the familiar dead-eyed stare of something that should no longer exist. It bares its soil-caked teeth at him in a hissing growl, then pushes off the bumper and goes lumbering across the street into Plummer Park.
Every ounce of adrenaline Tommy possesses enters his bloodstream at once, which is also a familiar feeling. Undoing his seatbelt, he wrests control of his body away from his nervous system and chooses between fight or flight.
He kicks open the door and takes off after it.
Thankfully it's late enough that there's hardly anyone in the park, except for a group of screaming kids in the basketball court who try to get their phones up to film as he runs by. He picks up the pace.
His legs are screaming. They're on fire. He can practically feel the lactic acid building up in his muscles, which are splitting open in tiny tears with every step. It's been a long time since he's been forced to sprint like this. Running isn't part of his usual cardio regiment anymore. It was never fun when he wasn't with a group. His team. It's a weak-ass excuse.
In the back of his mind, he hears the memory of a voice cheering, "Go, go, Tommy!"
Sucking in air, he pushes himself impossibly harder.
After what feels like a decade and with the help of a man shouting in Russian and pointing in a specific direction, Tommy finally starts to catch up. By the time he sees it, he also sees Santa Monica Boulevard.
Somehow, he manages to find one last burst of energy and overtakes the thing before it can hit the south parking lot.
Of course, it's anticipating that, and just as he launches himself at its back, it turns on its heel and slams a stone fist right into his gut, sending him careening into the side of a car. It crumples under him and starts blaring its alarm, which is exactly the kind of soundtrack this nightmare was missing.
Grunting, he starts pushing himself to his feet and throws up an arm just in time to block another blow, then sweeps his leg out to knock it off balance. The move buys him enough time to stand, but not enough to put him on the offense. He twists to avoid a stone punch and jumps back, dodging an immediate second. He doesn't manage to avoid a third, catching it right in the eye. The bone cracks and he goes down hard.
Tommy breathes through the pain and rolls the bulk of his body to the side, onto his belly, then slams his palms into the pavement and heaves with all his might. He springs up, then jumps back to put a little distance between them.
Sliding into the old stance is like greeting a long-lost friend. He crouches down and twists his waist ever so slightly, while bringing his arms up, palms out, fingers curled into claws. Powerful, light, and quick. They used to give him such shit for it.
"Look at crouching tiger, hidden dragon over here."
"More like slouching panda, sitting duck."
As funny as the pose is, they never could argue with its results.
When it comes at him again, he's ready.
Tommy loses time when he fights. Always has. It comes so easily to him. The back and forth, the push and pull—he fucking loves it. Muay Thai is fun, but it's nothing compared to this: a no-holds barred, drag-out fight for survival. His blood is singing an aria so high it's got to be shattering windows somewhere.
He has no idea how long they've been trading blows when he finally sees an opening, striking out with one hand to slap down its attempt to hit him and using the other to punch straight through the mud and clay caking its chest. His fingers curl around a cold, solid, pulsing thing, then he jerks his hand out as hard as he can. The heart he's holding gives one last lurch before he crushes it to dust.
With a whimper, the creature collapses to the ground, crumbling into wet soil.
Panting, Tommy stands there for a moment to try and get his bearings, but his eyes start watering. He wishes it was from the pain of what is almost certainly a fractured socket, but everything's hitting him all at once.
He broke up with Evan tonight. Sitting in the loft and watching the future he'd envisioned for them crumble as Evan called him cruel for leading Abby on, it became very clear that Tommy would never be able to tell him the truth about his past. If Evan ever learned that Tommy almost ended the world, that there had been a real chance Evan would never have lived to see the fourth grade because of Tommy, "cruel" is the kindest thing Evan would call him.
Getting that stupid parking spot out front made him think that maybe the universe was trying to throw him a bone. It had been: it allowed him to make a fast getaway.
But to have run into a putty in Los Angeles on this unimaginably awful night is just hilariously shitty luck, even for him.
Tommy blinks a few times to clear the tears from his vision so he can look at the mound of wet dirt and rocks at his feet.
Sometimes it astonishes him that a group of kids managed to take these things down, considering how easy it was to create them. Earth is a terrestrial planet. There's rock and soil and stone and clay everywhere. There was an endless supply for what could've been an army of putties—if one fell, ten more could've risen up in its place. He doesn't know why they only ever fought four or five at a time. Rita never utilized them the way he would've.
Panic starts fluttering in his marrow, but he tries to ignore it. It was only one. He hasn't seen or heard anything about putty sightings until now. It could be a straggler that somehow escaped Angel Grove and managed to make its way down the coast over the course of thirty years. It could be a complete coincidence.
It could be.
He looks around the empty parking lot, searching for a cold, bright gaze and a blinding smile in the shadows. He strains to hear that awful cackle. He closes his eyes and waits to feel the press of talon-like nails into his wrist as a burning-hot hand wraps around it, pulling him into familiar darkness. But all he hears is the sound of traffic on Santa Monica Boulevard.
Opening his eyes, Tommy sniffles a little, then presses the heel of his hand to the edge of his eye socket. He thinks about how gently Evan would touch him there. He flinches, and not just from the pain.
After a while, it's clear that Rita's not coming for him. Sucking in a shuddering breath, he turns around and limps back into the park. With any luck, his truck is still in the middle of the road where he left it.
+
For the uninitiated, putties are mass-produced, golem-like foot soldiers under the control of Rita.
liking a straight woman’s critique of a straight man’s misogynistic video and then taking back my like at the end when she tries to make a joke abt him being gay #lol we’re never getting out of here like we’re neverrrrrr getting out of here why are gay ppl driving the bus all of a sudden
I would like to see more variety in the method of injury in career-ending-injury fics. Car accidents are overdone, have that man get mauled by a bear or stompled by a moose while running in the woods. There was a case in Anchorage where cops thought a man who turned up unconscious and cut to ribbons had been attacked by a human with a knife but it turned out to be a moose’s hooves that Did That. Tell me that isn’t weirder than fiction and so much more compelling than a drunk driver running a red light!
Get nighttime disaster soap weird. He was struck by a meteorite. Or by lightning.
Or go stupidly and frighteningly mundane. He was taking the trash out and tripped and his ankle just Did That. Passed out drunk on his side and caused permanent nerve damage in his shoulder. Tried to fight through a cold that turned out to be the flu that turned into pneumonia and wound up with permanently reduced lung capacity and he’s technically fine for a normal person but not for a professional athlete.
If i was a writer, I’d write the screwball comedy where Ilya is found unconscious and beaten to hell and stabbed a bit in a lightly-wooded part of a public park in Ottawa by passersby, and the news reports on the famous hockey player being assaulted and taken to the hospital and the police are opening an investigation and Shane’s beside himself. And then Ilya wakes up and is like “did they get him?” And the police come to take his statement and he’s like “please tell me someone shot that moose.” And the next day the news has to wind the breathless criminal mystery back and hockey twitter is like “well did anybody ask the moose what Ilya said? He’s a known ragebaiter after all.” And #sticksoutforMooseambe trends.
And after Ilya heals up Shane is like “and here you were afraid of loons.” And Ilya’s like “there are elk in Russia too and they don’t make creepy wolf calls!”
When the air quality is “unhealthy for sensitive groups” and you are a “sensitive group” and you already have a headache and your voice is shot immediately upon waking up, but none of this matters because you have a job.
we need to bring back public hatred for paparazzi. I’m so tired of actors defending themselves against assholes with cameras and being smeared as egotistical divas. they’re glorified stalkers who get paid to harass people. end of. the things these freaks get away with would send normal people to prison but we’re supposed to think it’s okay just bc they’re paparazzi. they SHOULD get shut down for being openly misogynistic. they SHOULD get told off and reported for following someone to their private residence to doxx them. they SHOULD face charges for just about running people over in their pursuit of the next hot celeb. this is not normal. and, actually, these people DO deserve to get punched sometimes.
