#;;she's as fierce as the sea {margaret}

[randomfoggytiger]

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XXII): Faith, Fear, and Scully Symbiosis, Part II

A continuation of Part I's (post here) look at Scully's faith, familial misunderstandings, and (supposedly) failed hope.

MEMENTO MORI, REDUX

Where we last left off: Maggie and Scully are clinging to each other, tears flowing as their last hope is ripped away.

What's interesting about this moment is that it mirrors their hug in Memento Mori; but unlike then, Scully has finally accepted she is as good as dead-- and, walls now lowered, is openly mourning. She grips her mother like a life raft, working her mouth to keep from breaking down completely. 

A few important things happen here: Maggie breaks off from crying to look upward, collect herself, and purse her lips-- so like her daughter, in fact, that it’s undeniable where Scully got her mannerisms from (well done, Sheila Larkin.) Her emotions solidify when Scully’s liquify, a symbiotic push and pull mother and daughter seem to share: one broken and struggling, the other stiff upper lipped and strong. 

The latter points to two key features of their relationship, from Maggie’s perspective: 

Maggie is emotionally based-- bleeding tears (Beyond the Sea, Memento Mori, Redux II) and venting her frustration (Ascension, Memento Mori) loudly and publicly.

While it's undeniable she loves each of her children, Maggie seems to gravitate to Scully the most: seeking her out in flashbacks (A Christmas Carol), advocating for her despite their disagreements (Beyond the Sea, post here), confiding in her about premonitory dreams (Ascension), and trusting in the people she trusts (Ascension, Paper Clip, posts here and here.)

Maggie is knit to but doesn’t fully understand her daughter-- and is aware of her shortcomings. Dana is “the strong one”: the one she calls first when Captain Scully dies, the one she expected would have her on her medical documents (One Breath, post here), the one she knows trusts her more than any other person on earth (Wetwired, post here), and the one who hurts her the most through continued reticence and distance (Memento Mori, Gethsemane, posts here and here.) 

In short, she loves her children equally but depends on Dana the most… which creates, again, a symbiotic push and pull between the two: Scully’s equally fierce inter- and independence, and Maggie’s reliance on and distrust of her daughter's decisions (post here.) Both women depend on people; and both have to learn to stand on their own two feet. (It’s a page out of Sheila Larkin’s thoughts on Mrs. Scully, really: “...someone who never gets to finish her college degree or find a career for herself, but mainly gets enmeshed in her family. You know, the Everymother. Part of her emergence in becoming self-sufficient was during the course of this show with Dana. I think Margaret is ever-evolving." Interview here.) 

"I know that you're afraid," her mother whispers, determined-- rising above her own pain in the face of her daughter's terror.

At the open avowal of her fear, Scully clings tighter, gripping her mother’s back with widened, terrified eyes. She's only prevented from prolonging the moment by Maggie's sudden withdrawal; and, still uncomfortable with showing unchecked emotion, Scully looks down while sniffling back snot-- distressed at her distress becoming public, but desperate to hear words of consolation. 

“And I know you’re afraid to tell me. But you have to tell someone,” Maggie insists, drilling courage into her daughter through her eyes. She is insisting, silently, that Dana address this pain instead of shy away from and be eaten up by it. As previously mentioned, Maggie acts, per Scully's flawed system, as her daughters confessor; but here, she reinforces her own human frailty: that she is a loving mother out of her depth. But that's not the full truth: she is also a loving mother one who sets aside the pangs of ego to get her child the help that she needs.

Scully weighs the wisdom of her words; sighs resignedly at their truth--

--and looks up, finally: determined, too.

Here, then, is when she tells her mother to call Father McCue. 

That detail is important: we see Father McCue in three consecutive scenes-- once on his arrival, once during a prayer session with Scully, and once with the family after her remission. Why, then, did he not drive over now, the day he got the call, instead of waiting twenty-four hours to pray with the dying?

Two considerations present themselves:

1. Nighttime visitation would be prohibited, depending on hospital policy. But that's only half an explanation.

2. Father McCue's duties and their requirements-- depending on the size, scope, and scale of his parish-- could have prevented him from shredding his calendar and marching straight over. (And as morbid as it sounds, there likely would have been a person or two who needed last rites read to them more immediately than Scully.)

If that be the case-- if he couldn’t leave his responsibilities to join Scully on her deathbed until the next day-- then that would mean he wouldn’t have had time either to come back again, that same day, when she was pronounced in remission. Meaning, Father McCue hadn’t left when Scully’s doctor brought in the final report. 

What does this mean, for the Scully family?

We’re told (later) that perhaps Scully, perhaps her family considers her recovery a miracle. And while that would apply because of their faith and beliefs, I have another tantalizing thought: that the doctor walked in while Scully was in the midst of her prayers, right after Mulder denounced Blevins to the FBI. It would fit with the dramatic bent of the show writers, and would explain Father McCue’s presence at the end of the episode. “A miracle” would also seem a little more plausible if Father McCue had been actively praying when it occurred, no? 

After Maggie leaves, after Mulder spends the night crying by Scully's bedside, after she wakes the next day none the wiser and they swap thoughts on his next plan of attack, Father McCue opens the door, appearing for his last rites visit. 

Seeing his approach, Scully feverishly reaches for Mulder’s hand-- the first initiation since her cancer diagnosis, to my recollection-- before he can slip away. She is no longer willing to fight and fight and fight-- i.e., she is no longer willing to push away her source of strength, grasping it to face a greater test of faith.

She clings to it as she whispers, “You’ll be in my prayers,” clings to it as he kisses her cheek goodbye, clings to it as he kindly lets them drift apart. Her face contorts into different stages of fear, insecurity, anxiety, and resignation: the same expressions, to a lesser degree, she’d used with her mother. This, in short, marks Mulder as a man she trusts as deeply as her first confessor (her mother.)

But, again, Mulder is not her intermediary, he is her “other fathers”-- a fact the episode drives home when Mulder teases, “Have him say a few ‘Hail Mulders’ for me.” While this functions as a witticism on the ‘Hail Mary’ chant-- a prayer to an intercessor-- he is, inadvertently, setting himself up as someone the confessor must pray for (read: to.) In other words: Mulder leaves room, literally, for Scully’s confessor, and unintentionally sets up a dynamic that will have Scully praying with her intercessor on his behalf.

The last scene of Redux II begins outside Scully's hospital room.

Her cancer is in remission; and Mulder, sits alone (again, post here) in the hospital hallway, processing. He strikes a cutting figure-- one lost in thought and overwhelmed; and one who is respectfully, ruefully following Bill’s wishes. An interesting note to leave their relationship on: lines strictly divided and enforced-- a tasty prelude to their second meeting in Emily. 

When Skinner joins him, he is jolted from his thoughts; and the two engage in FBI nitty gritty until Mulder drops the remission bomb. Awed, his boss immediately wants to congratulate Scully-- but, crucially, he asks Mulder, “Can I see her?” To Skinner, Mulder and Scully have become each other’s gatekeepers; and Mulder doesn’t bat an eye at that request (neither does she, when put in similar situations.) It's another interesting aspect of their partnership that Bill Scully will have to face soon.

“Yeah-- she’s in there with her family right now,” Mulder adds, looking back to their metaphorical spot, then down-- a thought sticking, but not stinging. “But I’m sure she’d love to see you.” 

Two things of note: Mulder could be, yet isn’t, resentful of the ostracization-- he’s made his peace, and is more than happy to sort his feelings at a distance. Secondly, his “sure she’d love to see you” remark is jolly and pointed: considering Scully’s recent suspicions of Skinner’s guilt, this statement implies (another) two things: 

Mulder already told Scully that he named Blevins, and that his conviction has convinced Scully. 

Mulder knows Scully would be more than happy to have some sort of professional from work interrupt the family stare session. Which also implies, per his tone of voice, that this fact about his partner-- her discomfort at being fussed over or made much of-- amuses him. (...Which, also, lines up perfectly with his surprise birthday song, loud clapping, and "whoo"ing in Tempus Fugit.)

Skinner dips to see his second agent (not at all bothered about invading family time), which provides us a last look at the Scully family. 

Scully turns quickly towards the door, slight (though ashamed at her former distrust) smile still in place when she sees it’s Skinner, not Mulder (which gives validity to the theories mentioned above.) Maggie is sitting on her daughter’s bed, caught mid-inhale-- teary and emotionally drained and relieved. And finally, Bill stands by his sister’s left, holding what I believe is her medical bracelet: teary himself, and unashamed to be caught staring at the proof (whatever it may be) of his sister’s remission-- the very image of a proud, overjoyed big brother. 

CONCLUSION

And that, as far as we’re shown, is the last look at the Scullys in Redux II. 

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

[yetanothersparrowofthedawn]

Love Songs and Shit (Extended Masterpost)

Pairing: Jake Kiszka x YN

Genre: Angst, Hurt, Fluff, Smut (honestly it varies depending on the chapter)

Wordcount: if only I knew...

Plot: YN is a popular American singer-songwriter who, on a rainy evening in 2018, crossed path with the members of Greta Van Fleet. It didn't take long for the usually detached and fiercely independent girl to experience an unfamiliar itch. As she put pen to paper, it seemed a certain long-haired guitarist had her thinking about writing love songs and shit.

Concept: Each Album is a period of YN's journey, each track is a song she wrote after a specific chapter, so basically her discography is a chronological story of her life (with Jake, mostly). I'm currently not posting chapters in chronological order, but everything is organized in chronological order on this Masterpost.

Disclaimer: All the album covers are paintings by Norwegian painter Henrik Aarrestad Uldalen I edited. So, credit to that guy.

Also some chapters may involve triggering themes, I'll add the specific trigger warnings at the beginning of each chapter. Stay safe, besties.

(PREQUEL)Debut Album: "Remain Nameless" => NOT YET STARTED

Old Money

Seven

Blue Velvet

Lost at Sea

Bel Air

South London Forever

This is what makes us girls

Dollhouse

All-American Bitch

Hope There’s Someone

Grace

idontwannabeyouanymore

Remain Nameless

Brutal

Rabbit Heart

National Anthem

2nd Album: "Sweet Nothings" => NOT YET STARTED

The Night We Met

Ride

Lover to Lover

Body Electric

Moves

Hiding

Hope is a Dangerous thing for me to have

Love Song

Sweet nothings

3rd Album: "Let the Light In" => NOT YET STARTED

Wildest dreams

All the girls you've loved before

Cornelia street

How Big, How blue, How beautiful

Dress

Love

Always Remember Us This Way

Let the Light In

Lover

4th Album: "How to Disappear" => NOT YET STARTED

The Next Best American Record

King

Brooklyn Baby

How to Disappear

Mariners Apartment Complex

Norman Fucking Rockwell

Watercolor Eyes

Sky Full of Song

One step forward, three steps back

Out of the woods

5th Album: "The Greatest" => NOT YET STARTED

Happiness is a Butterfly

Swan song

Too Good at Goodbyes

Favorite Crime

You're Losing Me

Without You

The Greatest

6th album: "Long & Lost" => IN PROGRESS

Hits Different (coming soon..)

Now that we don’t talk

Beautiful People with Beautiful Problems

Long & Lost (coming next)

Is it over Now? (coming soon..)

All This and Heaven Too

7th Album: "St Jude" => DONE

California

Secrets from a Girl

Style

The Way I loved You

St Jude

All You Had to do Was Stay

Honeymoon

Happier than ever

8th Album: "The End of Love" => ON HIATUS

The Bomb

Prayer Factory

River

All too well

Caught

Stargirl Interlude

Getaway car

Angels like you

Various Storms and Saints

Leave my Body

Cassandra

The End of Love

9th Album: "Dream Girl Evil" => NOT YET STARTED

Carmen

A&W

Hometown Glory

Dream Girl Evil

Swimming

Restraint

Sober

Sober II

Heaven Is Here

June

God knows I tried

Never Let Me Go

(SEQUEL) 10th Album: "Margaret" => NOT YET STARTED

Morning Elvis

Girls against God

Mama who bore me

Patricia

Did you know that there's a tunnel under ocean boulevard?

Kitsungi

Back in Town

I Drink Wine

Back to December

Margaret

[k-nayee]

BLURB and Author's Note

Warrior M.List

Next

ˏ⸉ˋ‿̩͙‿̩̩̥͙̽‿̩͙ˏ⸉ˋ‿̩͙‿̩̩̥͙̽‿̩͙ˏ⸉ˋ‿̩͙‿̩̩̥͙̽‿̩͙.·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙　✩　*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙ .‿̩̥̩‿̩̩̥͙̽‿̩͙ˊ⸊ˎ‿̩̥̩‿̩̩̥͙̽‿̩͙ˊ⸊ˎ‿̩̥̩‿̩̩̥͙̽‿̩͙ˊ⸊ˎ

The blinded Cyclops roared once again, his massive frame trembling as he lashed out in vain.

❝WHO SPEAKS?❞ he thundered. ❝WHO DARES CLAIM THIS DEED?!❞

Penelope's voice did not falter; if anything it grew stronger.

❝I am the daughter of Icarius!❞ she declared. ❝Born of Sparta's blood and fire. Now I am Queen of Ithaca, favored by Ares himself!❞

Your eyes widened as she continued—heedless of the Cyclops's growing wrath.

 ❝It was I who struck your sight.

It was I who guided my crew to defy you.

I am the one who bested you!❞

Her grip on the railing tightened as the ship sailed further away, her defiance a blazing fire that refused to be extinguished.

Polyphemus roared again, his bellow of rage reverberating across the sea as it held a note of humiliation.

He slammed his fists into the earth, the ground shaking as cracks spiderwebbed beneath him.

But Penelope wasn't finished.

❝Remember this Polyphemus!❞ she shouted, her voice rising to a crescendo, cutting through the wind and waves. ❝The next time you seek to challenge the will of Ithaca...

Remember the fallen—the brave souls who paid with their lives.

Remember their sacrifice. Their courage.

Remember us.

Remember my name!❞

The Cyclops staggered as he clawed uselessly at the empty air. ❝YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS!❞ His voice cracked with rage. ❝YOU WILL PAY WITH YOUR LIFE!❞

Penelope's voice rose above his—cutting through the chaos like the call of a war horn.

❝Remember me Polyphemus!❞ she shouted, her voice fierce and unwavering. ❝For I am your darkest moment! Not just as a Queen, but as your reckoning. I am...

PENELOPE!❞

∘₊✧───────✧₊∘∘₊✧──────✧₊∘∘₊✧──────✧₊∘∘₊✧───────✧₊∘

If you came from my Vespertilio BNHA or Traveler Multi-Fandom, welcome back! If not, that means I'm at least doing sum right and gaining reads🤧

Not gonna do a whole ass speech, we all know the basic things. But to make sure, the most important things I wanna emphasis on will be bolded so you cant say I didn't warn ya:

1) Plagiarism is a HELLA big no no. Takes a lot of time and energy to even to write out a whole completed chapter other than half-assed drafts. If I find out you stealing without credit: I'm blocking and reporting until your account is taken down.

2) This story will contain violence, dark humor, and possibly other mature themes

3) I may skip over certain parts of the musical or diverge the plot (as if i hadn't already did so far lol) because I don't wanna follow every part single thing

4) Canon characters may/will be slight ooc, but will maintain their overall personality

5) I may also end up making the book an "in-between arc" type of story if I either get too lazy or don't know how to end it lol

6) HEADS UP: in this AU I am following Margaret Atwood's concept in which Penelope's father attempted to kill her.

7) I live a life outside of Tumblr, so please don't be commenting "update update!" That shit is rude and disrespectful and I don't like pressure; it can honestly take the fun out of writing.

Anyways that all I've got. Hope you guys enjoy!❤️☺️

[pooonnyboooyyy]

The outsiders OCs I created because I had nothing better to do with my life.

Ladybird Jane Curtis

• 16 going on 17

• Sodapop’s twin sister

• Nicknames are Bird, Birdie, doll and Lady (but only Dallas call’s her Lady)

• was President of her school’s drama club until she had to drop out to help support her family after their parents died

•Great liar, the only one who can tell if she’s lying is Dally

•Secretly dated a soc (Randy) but broke up with him the night of her parents funeral

•She’s often the gang’s alibi because of her gift for lying (she’s gotten Dallas out of jail more times than she can count)

•Her and Two-bit are platonic besties (they watch Disney and Micky Mouse together a lot)

•works at the local 24 hour dinner with Sandy (before ya know, she cheated)

• fiercely protective of Ponyboy (she had to practically become his mom)

•idolizes Marilyn Monroe and Clara Bow (she loves old Hollywood)

•Smokes and will put her cigarettes in her rolled up sleeves for easy access but hates the taste of alcohol

• She’s her mom’s twin

• Has a unrealized crush on Dallas (they often flirt with one another while Silvia and Dally are broken up but Darrel often puts a stop to it)

• “My only sister Ladybird runs up to us, she’s Sodapop’s twin and pretty much the female version of him, beautiful and always positive, she has bombshell blonde hair and mom’s kind eyes, always looking at you like they’re is no one else in the world that she rather be looking at, but now her eyes are looking at me with horror. She despises the sight of blood or me being hurt, she treats me like a damn baby who is always hurt”

Book description of Ladybird aka Ladybird from Pony’s perspective

• I got inspired by Daisy Buchanan for her character description and design

Kathrine “Kitty” Lorraine Lebeau-Curtis

•20

• Darrel’s then gf turned wife by the end of the story

• Has a mom who in the nicest terms is a drunken a hole who is literally insane

• She’s short because she was oftentimes malnourished as a child and would be locked in a room with no food for days on end as punishments

• From Montgomery, Alabama but moved to Tulsa when she was 10 when her baby sister (Margaret) was found de@d in the bathtub and her mother’s reputation was ruined.

• Grew up on the soc side of town and was practically a soc for many of her teenage years but always hated how socs treated greasers

•Sews all of her own clothes and will fix the gang’s clothes as well (and she’s great at it)

• “Patiently” waiting for her mother to kick the bucket so she can sell her house (it’s a soc house so it would go for a lot) so she can help her husband out with the bills more (Darrel insists that she doesn’t need to do that for him but she doesn’t listen) it probably won’t take much longer for her to pass because of the amount of drügs she’s taking

• Works as a seamstress

• Was cheer captain back in high school and was damn good at it (her team won several national titles under her leadership and she owns several championship rings)

• Originally dated Paul Holden (that’s how she met Darry) but he was a horrible boyfriend who would often beat on her and belittle her, Darrel was the one who stood up for her and treated her like she was a person and not some doll to be tossed around, that’s one of the reasons why she fell in love with Darry

• Paul hates Darrel for “taking her away from him” when Darry literally was the only one who treated her like a person

• Darrel doesn’t know why she stayed with him (but he isn’t complaining)

• The gang’s mom

• Doesn’t smoke or drink (she has trauma from her mother burning her with cigarettes)

• Becomes her high school’s cheer coach by the end of the story (Cherry and Marcia idolize her)

• Worries about Darrel a lot (she thinks he’s over working himself too much)

•literally the original Cherry Valance

• “Darry’s girlfriend, Kathrine “Kitty” Lebeau was behind Birdie, she’s pretty short with strawberry blonde hair and deep sea blue eyes and a scar just underneath her lip from a cheerleading accident when she was 13. She’s the complete opposite of Darry, and a ex soc no less, but I still like her she’s a good cook and a good person to talk to. I don’t get why she wastes her time with Darry, she has her pick of the crop but still picks Darry.”

Book description of Kitty/ Pony’s pov of her

Tell me what y’all think!

[queenlucythevaliant]

Clad in Justice and Worth

Written for the Inklings Challenge 2023 (@inklings-challenge). Inspired by the lives of Jeanne d'Albret and Marguerite de Navarre, although numerous liberties have been taken with the history in the name of introducing fantastical elements and telling a good story. The anglicization of names (Jeanne to Joan and Marguerite to Margaret) is meant to reflect the fictionalization of these figures.

The heat was unbearable, and it would grow only hotter as they descended into the lowlands. It was fortunate, Joan decided, that Navarre was a mountain country. It was temperate, even cold there in September. It would be sweltering by the sea.

The greater issue ought to have been the presence of Monluc, who would cut Joan’s party off at the Garonne River most like. The soldiers with whom she traveled were fierce, but Monluc had an entire division at the Garrone. Joan would be a prisoner of war if Providence did not see her through. Henry, perhaps, might suffer worse. He might be married to a Catholic princess.

Yet Joan was accustomed to peril. She had cut her teeth on it. Her first act as queen, some twenty years ago, had been to orchestrate the defense of her kingdom, and she was accustomed to slipping through nets and past assassins. The same could not be said of the infernal heat, which assaulted her without respite. Joan wore sensible travel clothing, but the layers of her skirts were always heavy with sweat. A perpetual tightness sat in her chest, the remnant of an old bout with consumption, and however much she coughed it would not leave.

All the same, it would not do to seem less than strong, so she hid the coughing whenever she could. The hovering of her aides was an irritant and she often wished she could just dismiss them all.

“How fare you in the heat, Majesty?”

“I have war in my gut, Clemont,” Joan snapped. “Worry not for me. If you must pester someone, pester Henry.”

He nodded, chastened. “A messenger is here from Navarre. Sent, I suspect, to induce you to return hence.”

“I would not listen to his birdcalls.”

“Young Henry said much the same.”

Joan stuffed down her irritation that Clemont had gone to Henry before he’d come to her. She was still queen, even if her son was rapidly nearing his majority. “Tell him that if the Huguenot leaders are to be plucked, I think it better that we all go together. Tell him that I would rather my son and I stand with our brothers than await soldiers and assassins in our little kingdom.”

Her aide gave a stiff nod. “At once, your Majesty.”

She would breathe easier when they reached the host at La Rochelle. Yet then, there would be more and greater work to do. There would be war, and Joan would be at the head of it.

*

When she awoke in the night, Joan knew at once that something was awry. It was cool. Gone was the blistering heat that had plagued them all day. Perhaps one of the kidnapping plots had finally succeeded.

Certainly, it seemed that way. She was in a cell, cool and dank and no more than six paces square. And yet—how strange! —the door was open.

Rising unsteadily to her feet, Joan crept towards the shaft of moonlight that fell through it. She glanced about for guards, but saw only a single prisoner in dirty clothes standing just beyond the threshold. He was blinking rapidly, as though the very existence of light bewildered him. Then, as Joan watched, he crept forward towards the gate of the jailhouse and out into the free air beyond. Joan listened for a long moment, trying to hear if there was any commotion at the prisoner’s emergence. When she could perceive none, she followed him out into the cool night air.

A lantern blazed. “Come quickly,” a voice hissed. “Our friend the Princess is waiting.”

The prisoner answered in a voice too quiet for Joan to hear. Then, quite suddenly, she heard his companion say, “Who is it that there behind you?”

The prisoner turned round, and Joan’s fingers itched towards her hidden knife. But much to her astonishment, he exclaimed, “Why, it is the lady herself! Margaret!”

But Joan had no opportunity to reply. Voices sounded outside her pavilion and she awoke to the oppressive heat of the day before. Coughing hard, Joan rolled ungracefully from her bed and tried to put away the grasping tendrils of her dream.

“The river is dry, Majesty” her attendant informed her as soon as she emerged from her pavilion, arrayed once again in sensible riding clothes. “The heat has devoured it. We can bypass Monluc without trouble, I deem.”

“Well then,” Joan replied, stifling another cough. “Glory to God for the heat.”

*

They did indeed pass Monluc the next day, within three fingers of his nose. Joan celebrated with Henry and the rest, yet all the while her mind was half taken up with her dream from the night before. Never, in all her life, had her mind conjured so vivid a sensory illusion. It had really felt cool in that jail cell, and the moonlight beyond it had been silver and true. Stranger still, the prisoner and his accomplice had called Joan by her mother’s name.

Joan had known her mother only a little. At the age of five, she had been detained at the French court while her mother returned to Navarre. This was largely on account of her mother’s religious convictions. Margaret of Angoulême had meddled too closely with Protestantism, so her brother the king had seen fit to deprive her of her daughter and raise her a Catholic princess.

His successor had likewise stolen Henry from Joan, for despite the king’s best efforts she was as Protestant as her mother. Yet unlike Margaret, Joan had gone back for her child. Two years ago, she had secretly swept Henry away from Paris on horseback. She’d galloped the horses nearly to death, but she’d gotten him to the armed force waiting at the border, and then at last home to Navarre. Sometimes, Joan wondered why her own mother had not gone to such lengths to rescue her. But Margaret’s best weapons had been tears, it was said, and tears could not do the work of sharp swords.

The Navarre party arrived at La Rochelle just before dusk on the twenty-eighth of September. The heat had faltered a little, to everyone’s great relief, but the air by the sea was still heavy with moisture. The tightness in Joan’s chest persisted.

“There will be much celebration now that you have come, Your Majesty,” said the boy seeing to her accommodations. “There’s talk of giving you the key to the city, and more besides.”

Sure enough, Joan was greeted with applause when she entered the Huguenot council. “I and my son are here to promote the success of our great cause or to share in its disaster,” she said when the council quieted. “I have been reproached for leaving my lands open to invasion by Spain, but I put my confidence in God who will not suffer a hair of our heads to perish. How could I stay while my fellow believers were being massacred? To let a man drown is to commit murder.”

*

Sometimes it seemed that the men only played at war. The Duke of Conde, who led the Huguenot forces, treated it as a game of chivalry between gentlemen. Others, like Monluc, regarded it as a business; the mercenaries he hired robbed and raped and brutalized, and though be bemoaned the cruelty he did nothing to curtail it.

There were sixty-thousand refugees pouring into the city. Joan was not playing at war. When she rose in the mornings, she put poultices on her chest, then went to her office after breaking her fast. There was much to do. She administered the city, attended councils of war, and advised the synod. In addition, she was still queen of Navarre, and was required to govern her own kingdom from afar.

In the afternoons, she often met with Beza to discuss matters of the church, or else with Conde, to discuss military matters. Joan worked on the city’s fortifications, and in the evenings she would ride out to observe them. Henry often joined her on these rides; he was learning the art of war, and he seemed to have a knack for it.

“A knack is not sufficient,” Joan told him. “Anyone can learn to fortify a port. I have learned, and I am a woman.”

“I know it is not sufficient,” the boy replied. “I must commit myself entirely to the cause of our people, and of Our Lord. Is that not what you were going to tell me?”   

“Ah, Henry, you know me too well. I am glad of it. I am glad to see you bear with strength the great and terrible charge which sits upon your shoulders.”

“How can I help being strong? I have you for a mother.”

At night, Joan fell into bed too exhausted for dreams.

*

Yet one night, she woke once again to find her chest loose and her breathing comfortable. She stood in a hallway which she recognized at once. She was at the Château de Fontainebleau, the place of her birth, just beyond the door to the king’s private chambers.

“Oh please, Francis, please. You cannot really mean to send him to the stake!” The voice on the other side of the door was female, and it did not belong to the queen.

A heavy sigh answered it. “I mean to do just that, ma mignonne. He is a damned heretic, and a rabble-rouser besides. Now, sister, don’t cry. If there’s one thing I cannot bear, it is your weeping.”

At those words, a surge of giddiness, like lightning, came over Joan’s whole body. It was her own mother speaking to the king. She was but a few steps away and they were separated only by a single wooden door.

“He is my friend, Francis. Do you say I should not weep for my friends?”

A loud harumph. “A strange thing, Margaret. Your own companions told me that you have never met the man.”

“Does such a triviality preclude friendship? He is my brother in Our Lord.”  

“And I am your true brother, and your king besides.”

“And as you are my brother—” here, Margaret’s voice cracked with overburdening emotion. She was crying again, Joan was certain. “As you are my brother, you must grant me this boon. Do not harm those I love, Francis.”

The king did not respond, so Joan drew nearer to the door. A minute later, she leapt backwards when it opened. There stood her mother, not old and sick as Joan had last seen her twenty years before, but younger even than Joan herself.

“If you’ve time to stand about listening at doors, then you are not otherwise employed,” Margaret said, wiping her tears from her face with the back of her hand. “I am going to visit a friend. You shall accompany me.”

Looking down at herself, Joan realized that her mother must have mistaken her for one of Fountainbleu’s many ladies-in-waiting. She was in her night clothes, which was really a simple day dress such as a woman might wear to a provincial market. Joan did not sleep in anything which would hinder her from acting immediately, should the city be attacked in the middle of the night. 

“As you wish, Majesty,” Joan replied with a curtsey. Margaret raised an eyebrow, and instantly Joan corrected herself: “Your Highness.”

Margaret stopped at her own rooms to wrap herself in a plain, hooded cloak. “What is your name?” she asked.

“Joan, your Highness.”

“Well, Joan. As penance for eavesdropping, you shall keep your own counsel with regards to our errand. Is that clear?”

“Yes, your Highness,” Joan replied stiffly. Any fool could see what friend Margaret intended to visit, and Joan wished she could think of a way to cut through the pretense.

When Margaret arrived at the jail with Joan in tow, the warden greeted her almost like a friend. “You are here to see the heretic, Princess? Shall I fetch you a chair?”

“Yes, Phillip. And a lantern, if you would.”

The cell was nearly identical to the one which Joan had dreamed on the road to La Rochelle. Inside sat a man with sparse gray hair covering his chin. Margaret’s chair was placed just outside the cell, but she brushed past it. She handed the lantern to Joan and knelt down in the cell beside the prisoner.

“I was told that I had a secret friend in the court,” he said. “I see now that she is an angel.”

“No angel, monsieur Faber. I am Margaret, and this is my lady, Joan. I have come to see to your welfare, as best I am able.”

Now, Margaret’s hood fell back, and all at once she looked every inch the Princess of France. Yet her voice was small and choked when she said, “Will you do me the honor of praying with me?”

Margaret was already on her knees, but she lowered herself further. She rested one hand lightly on Faber’s knee, and after a moment, he took it. Her eyes fluttered closed. In the dim light, Joan thought she saw tears starting down her mother’s cheek.

When she woke in the morning, Joan could still remember her mother’s face. There were tears in her hazelnut eyes, and a weeping quiver in her voice.

*

Winter came, and Joan’s coughing grew worse. There was blood in it now, and occasionally bits of feathery flesh that got caught in her throat and made her gag. She hid it in her handkerchief.

“Winter battles are ugly,” Conde remarked one morning as Christmas was drawing near. “If the enemy is anything like gentlemen, they will not attack until spring. And yet, I think, we must stand at readiness.”

“By all means,” Joan replied. “Anything less than readiness would be negligence.”

Conde chuckled, not unkindly. “For all your strength and skill, madame, it is obvious that you were not bred for command. No force can be always at readiness. It would kill the men as surely as the sword. ‘Tis not negligence to celebrate the birth of Our Lord, for instance.”

Joan nodded curtly, but did not reply.

As the new year began, the city was increasingly on edge. There was frequent unrest among the refugees, and the soldiers Joan met when she rode the fortifications nearly always remarked that an attack would come soon.

Then, as February melted into March, word came from Admiral Coligny that his position along the Guirlande Stream had been compromised. The Catholic vanguard was swift approaching, and more Huguenot forces were needed. By the time word reached Joan in the form of a breathless young page outside her office, Conde was already assembling the cavalry. Joan made for the Navarre quarter at once, as fast as her lungs and her skirts would let her.

The battle was an unmitigated disaster. The Huguenots arrived late, and in insufficient numbers. Their horses were scattered and their infantry routed, and the bulk of their force was forced back to Cognac to regroup. As wounded came pouring in, Joan went to the surgical tents to make herself useful.

The commander La Noue’s left arm had been shattered and required amputation. Steeling herself, Joan thought of Margaret’s tearstained cheeks as she knelt beside Faber. “Commander La Noue,” she murmured, “Would it comfort you if I held your other hand?”

“That it would, Your Majesty,” the commander replied. So, as the surgeon brandished his saw, Joan gripped the commander’s hand tight and began to pray. She let go only once, to cover her mouth as she hacked blood into her palm. It blended in easily with the carnage of the field hospital.

Yet it was not till after the battle was over that Joan learned the worst of it. “His Grace, General Conde is dead,” her captain told her in her tent that evening. “He was unseated in the battle. They took him captive, and then they shot him. Unarmed and under guard! Why, as I speak these words, they are parading his corpse through the streets of Jarnac.”

“So much for chivalry,” murmured Joan, trying to ignore the memories of Conde’s pleasant face chuckling, calling her skilled and strong.

“We will need to find another Prince of the Blood to champion our cause,” her captain continued. “Else the army will crumble. If there’s to be any hope for Protestantism in France, we had better produce one with haste. Admiral Coligny will not serve. He’s tried to rally the men, to no avail. In fact, he has bid me request that you make an attempt on the morn.”

“Henry will lead.”

“Henry? Why, he’s only a boy!”

Joan shook her head. “He is nearly a man, Captain, and he’s a keen knack for military matters. He trained with Conde himself, and he saw to the fortification of La Rochelle at my side. He is strong, which matters most of all. If it’s a Prince of the Blood the army requires, Henry will serve.”

“As you say, Majesty,” said her captain with a bow. “But it’s not me you will have to convince.”

*

Joan settled in for a sleepless night. Her captain was correct that she would need to persuade the Huguenot forces well, if they were to swear themselves to Henry. So, she would speak. Joan would rally their courage, and then she would present them with her son and see if they would follow him.

Page after page she wrote, none of it any good. Eloquence alone would not suffice; Joan’s words had to burn in men’s chests. She needed such words as she had never spoken before, and she needed them by morning.  

By three o’clock, Joan’s pages were painted with blood. Her lungs were tearing themselves to shreds in her chest, and the proof was there on the paper beside all her insufficient words. She almost hated herself then. Now, when circumstance required of her greater strength than ever before, all Joan’s frame was weakness and frailty.

An hour later, she fell asleep.

When Joan’s eyes fluttered open, she knew at once where she was. Why, these were her own rooms at home in Navarre! Sunlight flooded through her own open windows and drew ladders of light across Joan’s very own floor. Her bed sat in the corner, curtains open. Her dressing room and closet were just there, and her own writing desk—

There was a figure at Joan’s writing desk. Margaret. She looked up.

“My Joan,” she said. It started as a sigh, but it turned into a sob by the end. “My very own Joan, all grown up. How tired you look.” 

The words seemed larger than themselves somehow. They were Truth and Beauty in capital letters, illuminated red and gold. Something in Joan’s chest seized; something other than her lungs. 

“How do you know me, mother?”

“How could I not? I have been parted from you of late, yet your face is more precious to me than all the kingdoms of the earth.”

“Oh.” And then, because she could not think of anything else to say, Joan asked, “What were you writing, before I came in?”’

“Poetry.” Joan made a noise in her throat. “You disapprove?” asked her mother.

“No, not at all. Would that I had time for such sweet pursuits. I have worn myself out this night writing a war speech. It cannot be poetry, mother. It must be wine. It must–” then, without preamble, Joan collapsed into a fit of coughing. At once, her mother was on her feet, handkerchief in hand. She pressed it to Joan’s mouth, all the while rubbing circles on her back as she coughed and gagged. When the handkerchief came away at last, it was stained red.

“What a courageous woman you are,” Margaret whispered into her hair. “Words like wine for the soldiers, and yourself spitting blood. Will you wear pearls or armor when you address them?”

“I will address them on horseback in the field,” answered Joan with a rasp. “I would have them see my strength.”

Her mother’s dark eyes flickered then. Margaret looked at her daughter, come miraculously home to her against the will of the king and the very flow of time itself. She was not a large woman, but she held herself well. She stood brave and tall, though no one had asked it of her. 

Her own dear daughter did not have time for poetry. Margaret regretted that small fact so much that it came welling up in her eyes.  “And what of your weakness, child? Will you let anyone see that?”

Joan reached out and caught her mother’s tears. Her fingertips were harder than Margaret’s were. They scratched across the sensitive skin below her eyes.

“Did I not meet you like this once before? You are the same Joan who came with me to the jail in Paris once. I did not know you then. I had not yet borne you.”

“Yes, the very same. We visited a Monsieur Faber, I believe. What became of that poor man?”

Margaret sighed. She crossed back over to the desk to fall back into her seat, and in a smaller voice she said, “My brother released him, for a time. And then, when I was next absent from Paris, he was arrested again and sent to the stake before I could return.”

“I saw you save another man, once. I do not know his name. How many prisoners did you save, mother?”

“Many. Not near enough. Not as many as those with whom I wept by lantern light.”

“Did the weeping do any good, I wonder.”

“Those who lived were saved by weeping. Those who died may have been comforted by it. It was the only thing I could give them, and so I must believe that Our Lord made good use of it.”

Joan shook her head. She almost wanted to cry too, then. The feeling surprised her. Joan detested crying.

“All those men freed from prison, yet you never came for me. Why?”

“Francis was determined. A choice between following Christ and keeping you near was no choice at all, though it broke my heart to make it.” 

If Joan shut her eyes, she could still remember the terror of the night she had rescued Henry. “You could have come with soldiers. You could have stolen me away in the night.” 

Margaret did not answer. The tears came faster now and her fair, queenly skin blossomed red. So many years would pass between the dear little girl she’d left in Paris and the stalwart woman now before her. She did not have time for poetry, but if Margaret had been allowed to keep her that would have been different. Joan should have had every poem under the sun. 

“Will you read it?” she asked, taking the parchment from her desk and pressing it into her daughter’s hands. “Will you grant me that boon?”

Slowly, almost numbly, Joan nodded. To Margaret’s surprise, she read aloud. 

“God has predestined His own

That they should be sons and heirs.

Drawn by gentle constraint

A zeal consuming is theirs.

They shall inherit the earth

Clad in justice and worth.”

“Clad in justice and worth,” she repeated, handing back the parchment. “It’s a good poem.”

“It isn’t finished,” replied her mother.

Joan laughed. “Neither is my speech. It must be almost morning now.”

As loving arms closed around her again, Joan wished to God that she could remain in Navarre with her mother. She knew that she and Margaret did not share a heart: her mother was tender like Joan could never be. Yet all the same, she wanted to believe that they had been forged by the same Christian hope and conviction. She wanted to believe that she, Joan, could free the prisoners too. 

She shut her eyes against her mother’s shoulder. When she opened them, she was back in her tent, with morning sun streaming in. 

*

She came before the army mounted on a horse with Henry beside her. Her words were like wine when she spoke. 

“When I, the queen, hope still, is it for you to fear? Because Conde is dead, is all therefore lost? Does our cause cease to be just and holy? No; God, who has already rescued you from perils innumerable, has raised up brothers-in-arms to succeed Conde.

Soldiers, I offer you everything in my power to bestow–my dominions, my treasures, my life, and that which is dearer to me than all, my son. I make here a solemn oath before you all, and you know me too well to doubt my word: I swear to defend to my last sigh the holy cause which now unites us, which is that of honor and truth.”

When she finished speaking, Joan coughed red into her hands. There was quiet for a long moment, and then a loud hurrah! went up along the lines. Joan looked out at the soldiers, and from the front she saw her mother standing there, with tears in her eyes. 

[princesssarisa]

There are more meanings of Barbie characters' names?

I'll go through the whole list of Barbie's family and friends from Wikipedia for all the characters I didn't list before.

Barbie's family members

George (her father): "Farmer."

Margaret (her mother): "Pearl."

Tutti (her discontinued sister): An Italian word that means "all" – best known in the US from "tutti frutti" ("all fruits"), a term for mixture of chopped candied fruits or for sweets with a mixed fruit flavor. For Barbie's sister, it must be a nickname.

Francie (her cousin): Short for Frances, meaning "Frenchwoman."

Jazzie (another cousin): Jazz is a style of music; the slang term "jazzy" means bright, colorful, and showy, like the music. It could also be a nickname for Jasmine. It's obviously a nickname, at any rate.

Kirsten (another cousin): "Christian."

Lulu (another cousin): Probably short for Louise or Louisa, meaning "famous in battle," or for Lucinda or Lucia, meaning "light," or for Lucille, meaning "little light."

Millicent (her aunt): "Strong in work" or "unceasing strength."

Adele (another aunt): "Noble."

Female friends (she's had so many!)

Raquelle: "Ewe."

Grace: Self-evident.

Stacey: Derived from Anastasia, meaning "resurrection," or from Eustacia, meaning "fruitful."

P.J.: Unknown; we'd need to know what her initials stand for.

Steffie: Short for Stephanie, meaning "crown" or "wreath."

Cara: "Beloved."

Whitney: "White island."

Miko: "Delicious" or "entertaining."

Kira: "Young" or "black."

Becky: Short for Rebecca, meaning "tie" or "snare."

Kayla: Derived from Catherine, meaning "far off" or "pure."

Lea: "Weary."

Jamie: "Heel-grabber" or "supplanter."

Kelley: "Bright-headed."

Devon: "Calf" or "fawn."

Tracy: "Warlike" or "fierce."

Nia: "Bright" or "purpose."

Viky: Short for Victoria, meaning "victory."

Tara Lynn: Tara means "elevated place" or "star"; Lynn means "lake."

Lara: "Citadel."

Drew: Originally a male name derived from Andrew, meaning "manly."

Melody: Self-evident.

Simone: "Listening."

Shannen: A variant of Shannon, the name of a river in Ireland, which probably comes from a root word meaning "old" or "ancient."

Maiko: "Child in a linen robe" or "dancing child."

Harper: "Harp maker."

Renee: "Reborn."

Daisy: "Daisy flower," of course.

Tia: "Aunt."

Courtney: "Short nose."

Desiree: "Desired."

Ling: "Spirit" or "bell."

Dee Dee: Unknown; originally a nickname for anyone whose name started with D.

Dana: "God is my judge" or "wise."

Diva: A term for a singing star (especially an arrogant one), from the Italian word for "goddess." Obviously a nickname.

Tori: Short for Victoria, meaning "victory."

Susie: Short for Susan, meaning "lily."

Nichelle: A cross between Nicole, meaning "victory of the people," and Michelle, meaning "Who is like God?"

Marissa: "Of the sea."

Ana: "Grace" or "favor."

Gabbie: Short for Gabriella, meaning "God is my strength."

Chelsie: "Chalk wharf."

Marie: "Bitter," "drop of the sea," or "beloved."

Mari: "Truth," among other possible meanings.

Mariko: "Child of truth" or "jasmine child," among other possible meanings.

Isla: "Island."

Male friends

Blaine: "Yellow."

Derek: "Ruler of the people."

Curtis: "Courteous."

Todd: "Fox."

Steven: "Crown" or "wreath."

Kurt: "Brave counsel."

Ryan: "Little king."

Barbie's younger siblings have lots of friends too, but I'd be here all day if I tried to look up their names' meanings too.

[beansonbread2]

BEANSONBREAD AWARDS 2023 - BEST ALBUM

AWARD NO.2 - BEST ALBUM OF 2023

PAST WINNERS

2022 > Jockstrap - ' I Love You Jennifer B' (see full list HERE)

2021 > Self Esteem - ‘Prioritise Pleasure’ (see full list HERE)

2020 > The Flaming Lips - ‘American Head’ (see full list HERE)

2019 > Self Esteem - ‘Compliments Please’ (see full list HERE)

2018 > Kero Kero Bonito - ‘Time ‘n’ Place’ (see full list HERE)

2017 > Richard Dawson - ‘Peasant’ (see full list HERE)

2016 > Blood Orange - ‘Freetown Sound’ (see full list HERE)

2015 > Holly Herndon - ‘Platform’ (see full list HERE)

2014 > FKA Twigs - ‘LP1′ (see full list HERE)

2013 > These New Puritans - ‘Field Of Reeds’ (see full list HERE)

2012 > Django Django - ‘Django Django’ (see full list HERE)

2011 > Shabazz Palaces - ‘Black Up’ (see full list HERE)

2010 > These New Puritans - ‘Hidden’ (see full list HERE)

2009 > Animal Collective - ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’ (see full list HERE)

2008 > Wild Beasts - ‘Limbo, Panto’ (see full list HERE)

2007 > Animal Collective - ‘Strawberry Jam’ (see full list HERE)

2006 > Safetyword - ‘Man’s Name Is Legion’ (see full list HERE)

2005 > Animal Collective - ‘Feels’ (see full list HERE)

2004 > Devendra Banhart - ‘Rejoicing In The Hands’ / ‘Nino Rojo’

2003 > Dizzee Rascal - ‘Boy In Da Corner’

2002 > The Streets - ‘Original Pirate Material’

2001 > The Beta Band - ‘Hot Shots II’

2000 > Outkast - ‘Stankonia’

1999 > The Beta Band - ‘The Beta Band’

1998 > The Beta Band - ‘The Three EPs’

1997 > Radiohead - ‘OK Computer’

1996 > Beck - ‘Odelay’

—

THE RULES - No Re-issues, Live Albums, Compilations, or EPs.

—

SPECIAL MENTIONS for these things that don’t really live on the main lists.

Bulbils no.72 > 79

Bulbils ‘Map’

EP/64 'EP-64'

-

WORTH A MENTION (in no order) - A bunch of albums i enjoyed but didn’t quite make the final lists and others i just didn’t hear enough to be considered properly. 

Matmos / Eartheater / Tkay Maidza / Xiu Xiu / Ashnikko / Arthur Russell / Spellling / Cornelius / Liv.e / John Bence / Daniel Blumberg / Thy Slaughter / Two White Cranes / Billy Woods & Kenny Segal / L’Rain / Callum Easter / Cleo Sol / Holly Waxwing / Doon Kanda / DELUXE100 / ‘Barbie’ OST / Khan & Neek / Mui Zyn / Steady Holiday / Jamie Branch / Mitski / Mac DeMarco / Slowdive / Underscores / Armand Hammer / James Blake / Dutch Uncles / DJ Brittle / Slug / The Go! Team / Sofia Kourtesis / Kali Uchis / Sampha / Yussef Dayes / Unknown Mortal Orchestra / King Creosote / Niecy Blues / Lankum / The HIRS Collective / Alexia Avina / Altin Gun / Sulka / Spektral Quartet, Julia Holter & Alex Temple / L.T. Leif / Maria BC / Tom Rasmussen / Wednesday / Tim Hecker / HMLTD / Andrew Hung / Blonde Redhead / Frost Children / Heavy Lungs / Fire-Toolz / Jim Legxacy / Durand Jones / Clark / Teenage Fanclub / Galen Tipton / Feeble Little Horse / Grouptheraphy / Grian Chatten / Asake / Speakers Corner Quartet / George Clanton / PJ Harvey / Jonatan Leandoer96 / Fenne Lily / Terry / The Coral / Modern Nature / Snooper / Gabriels / Little Dragon / Being Dead / Earl Sweatshirt & The Alchemist / Noname / Overmono / Olivia Rodrigo / Nation Of Language / Caro / Irreversible Entanglements / Devendra Banhart / Say She She / The Streets / Vanishing Twin / BC Camplight / Ethan P. Flynn / Withered Hand / ThisisDA / Sarahsson / Blanck Mass / Jadu Heart / Hotel Lux / Emily Breeze / Chloe / Feather Beds / Margaret Glaspy / Nature Of Language / WaqWaq Kingdom / Bo en / Patten’ / David Holmes / Belle & Sebastian / Cloth / Phoenix / The Golden Dregs  / Julie Byrne

-

2023 RUNNERS UP (in no order)

Laurel Halo ‘Atlas’ 

Ryuichi Sakamoto ‘12’

John Cale ‘Mercy’

Felicita ‘Spalarkle’

Hyperdawn ‘Steady’

Moin ‘Paste’

Spencer Cullum ‘Spencer Cullum’s Coin Collection 2’

MC Yallah ‘Yallah Beibe’

Alabaster DePlume ‘Come With Fierce Grace’ 

Kwes ‘Rye Lane’ OST

Bianca Scout ‘Heart Of The Anchoress’

James Yorkston, Nina Persson & The Second Hand Orchestra ‘The Great White Sea Eagle’ 

Sweet Baboo ‘The Wreckage’

ML Buch ‘Suntub’

RS Tangent ‘When A Worm Wears A Wig’

Blockhead ‘The Aux’

Martha Ffion ‘The Wringer’

Mark Jenkin ‘Enys Men’ OST

Yo La Tengo ‘This Stupid World’

Tennis ‘Pollen’

Bar Italia ‘The Twits’

Klein ‘Touched By An Angel’

Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs ‘Land Of Sleeper’

David Brewis ‘The Soft Struggles’

Lorraine James ‘Gentle Confrontation’

Black Country, New Road ‘Live at Bush Hall’

Mandy, Indiana ‘I’ve Seen A Way’

Firestations ‘Thick Terrain’

Memotone ‘How Was Your Life?’ / ‘Illuminations Part I-III w/ Chris Yates’

Janelle Monae ‘The Age Of Pleasure’

Girl Ray ‘Prestige’ 

Vagabon ‘Sorry I Haven’t Called’

Gruff Rhys ‘The Almond And The Seahorse’

Yves Tumor ‘Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume..’

Sleaford Mods ‘UK GRIM’

Podcasts ‘Podcasts’

Noah Radley ‘Devoid Of A Contact Or Contextual Clues’

Deerhoof ‘Miracle-Level’

H Hawkline ‘Milk For Flowers’

Mary Lattimore ‘Goodbye, Hotel Arkada’

Jessie Ware ‘That! Feels Good!’

Feist ‘Multitudes’

Weird Wave ‘Lost Map Presents Weird Wave’

Blur ‘The Ballad Of Darren’

Avalon Emerson ‘& The Charm’

Roisin Murphy ‘Hit Parade’

Actress ‘LXXXVIII’

Amy May Ellis ‘Over Ling And Bell’

Jam City ‘Jam City Presents EFM’

King Krule ‘Space Heavy’

Peter Brewis ‘Blowdry Colossus’

Amaarae ‘Fountain Baby’

Death’s Dynamic Shroud ‘After Angel’ / ‘Keys To The Gate’ / ‘Midnight Tangerine’ / ‘Transcendence Bot’

This Is The Kit ‘Careful Of Your Keepers’

Decisive Pink ‘Ticket To Fame’

Travis Scott ‘UTOPIA’

James Holden ‘Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities’

Willie J Healey ‘Bunny’

CHAI ‘CHAI’

James Ferraro ‘Concerto For Strings’

Sufjan Stevens ‘Javelin’

Shabazz Palaces ‘Robed In Rareness’

Bas Jan ‘Back To The Swamp’

Free Love ‘Inside’

John Medeski ‘The Curse’ OST

Brother May ‘Pattern With Force’

Langkamer ‘The Noon And Midnight Manual’

Uh ‘Humanus’

Patten ‘Mirage FM’

-

MY TOP 50 ALBUMS OF 2023

50. Robbie & Mona ‘Tusky’

49. Lonnie Holley ‘Oh Me Oh My’

48. MF Tomlinson ‘We Are Still Wild Horses’

47. Oliver Coates ‘Aftersun’ OST

46. Joanne Robertson ‘Blue Car’

45. Yeule ‘Softscars’

44. Lil Yachty ‘Let’s Start Here’

43. Robin Allender ‘Underground River’

42. PinkPantheress ‘Heaven Knows’

41. ANOHNI & The Johnsons ‘My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross’

40. Joanna Sternberg ‘I’ve Got Me’

39. Bonnie Prince Billy ‘Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You’

38. Andre 3000 ‘New Blue Sun’

37. Kinlaw ‘WELD’

36. Memotone ‘Tollard’

35. Cleo Sol ‘Gold’

34. Mun Sing ‘Inflatable Gravestone’

33. Dorian Electra ‘Fanfare’

32. Bar Italia ‘Tracey Denim’

31. Panda Bear & Sonic Boom ‘Reset In Dub’

30. Kara Jackson ‘Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love?’

29. Avey Tare ‘7s’

28. Kate NV ‘WOW’

27. Kelela ‘Raven’

26. Danny Brown ‘Quaranta’

25. Jessy Lanza ‘Love Hallucination’

24. 100 gecs ‘10,000 gecs’

23. Christopher Bear & Daniel Rossen ‘Past Lives’ OST

22. Quade ‘Nacre’

21. Django Django ‘Off Planet’

20. Tirzah ‘trip9love…???’

19. Nourished By Time ‘Erotic Probiotic 2’

18. Das Koolies ‘DK.01’

17. Jockstrap ‘I <3UQTINVU’

16. Lana Del Rey ‘Did You Know That There’s A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd’

15. Fever Ray ‘Radical Romantics’

14. Hannah Diamond ‘Perfect Picture’

13. Water From Your Eyes ‘Everyone’s Crushed’

12. Rozi Plain ‘Prize’

11. Young Fathers ‘Heavy Heavy’

10. Yaeji ‘With A Hammer’

9. Pozi ‘Smiling Pools’

8. Animal Collective ‘Isn’t It Now?’

7. Slauson Malone 1 ‘Excelsior’

6. Steve Mason ‘Brothers & Sisters’

5. The Lemon Twigs ‘Everything Harmony’

4. Oneohtrix Point Never ‘Again’

3. Caroline Polachek ‘Desire, I Want To Turn Into You’

2. JPEGMAFIA & Danny Brown ‘Scaring The Hoes’

1. Squid ‘O Monolith’

[ren-oris]

Chapter 1

Mori Littlewood, a boy known for his artistry and good grades, that boy also happens to be me. The clamor and commotion of my english class is quite funny to me, the teacher is making us read the “Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne. It’s amusing watching everybody being shocked by the reverend’s words, when I have already finished the book. I have always loved literature, according to my teacher my love was on an uncanny level. I never understood her words anyway. 

I have always seemed to notice things more peculiar than my classmates, like a slight time change, or the wind blowing a bit faster shifting the clouds mere inches a day. My favorite details are the ones that cannot be described, yet the ones still beautiful and clear in nature; alike to the time I read “Of mice and men” The small details of how Lennie would describe the imaginary rabbits pelts always soothed my soul. This is all to say the class's misunderstanding of the details and notes of the book and of Hester are quite amusing, nobody can quite understand the old English.

As I doodle on the piece of paper I possess, I see my teacher frown; the poor soul has never read the book, and was probably shocked by the material. I smile and go back to doing a small sketch of little Pearl. Her detailed soft brownish black hair was curled into braids in the front,  and let flow free in the back. The small scarlet bow I drew with a red pen I possessed sat at the back of her hair. The poor child was confined to a world akin to that of a cage, she needed to return to where her name came from. Pearl, a child as wild as the sea, a roaring spirit not meant to be confined to the cage that is human existence. That being said I understand her on a deep level, I want to fly away from this wretched place, a burden and caged monster am I.

One thing I always found interesting is how Hawthorne never quite described the eyes of the spirits present in his book. I always saw eyes as where the soul was located rather than the heart akin to what most would assume. I draw small bright circles for Pearl’s irises, the blue hue I apply with another pen turns them from kinder soft givers of love to sharp piercing narrow slits, bringers of fear. My teacher, Mrs. Margaret walks over to examine my work. She frowns before writing a small note in the left corner, and brushing the paper off my desk. The paper flutters to the ground like leaves that fall from their trees in august. 

I reach down and pick up the fallen parchment, the note is a cruel gibe of my drawing of the wild child known as Pearl. The note remarks on how despite my skills I am putting them to waste, and that my creation is “useless” and that I should be doing something “real” with my time and skills. I shrug off the note, and take a green pen out of my bag. WIthin a few minutes the note is transformed from a harsh and cruel gibe to a soft field of flowers, the words red in pigment making themselves contrast against the soft green. I smile as I add a setting sun and clouds, turning the words into a masterpiece. I look over my sheet of drawings once more, also with the sunset and Pearl resided The Reverend Aurthur Dimsdale, Hester, the white whale from “Moby dick,” a few assorted constellations, and many sketches of eyes, each diverse in passion and thought.

The school bell rang, and I smiled as I stood up, to my sides children packed up and went about their lives. I laughed, as is the joy of childhood. Upon my way to exit the teacher pulled me aside. 

“Mr. Littlewood, what were you doing today?” Mrs. Margaret says, her eyes an agitated blue, her soul an angry mess sought to make the lives of creatives and passionates broken. Her sharp amber hair pulled into a fierce bun that complimented her clementine sweater. I notice how her shoulder bag, the one she wears without purpose or commodity, was missing.

“I was simply creating, I have finished the book already, and see no reason why I cannot draw.” I stare back at her, those eyes of ice stare back into me.

“Fine, get to your next class.” She barks, as I exit she says one last thing “Don’t think you are off the hook Mori, I am watching you.” With that remark for the teacher I leave. 

While Litterature is my favorite class, it also houses my least favorable teacher. I make my way down the winding passageways that makeup the hallways of this school until I reach the dance studio. The dance department of this school is not great, but is not bad. I just so happen to be one of the few with almost no girls in it, and because there are more than fifteen of us, we get our own separate class. 

We are not forced to change for some estranged reason, but we do drop our bags into lockers. As I enter, I see the form of a close friend of mine, Xander Greyson. Xander was a tall and thinner boy, with eyes of emerald pureness. Xander’s summer blonde and pale yellow hair swayed slightly from the air ventilation. I smile as I walk, to greet the fellow dancer.

“Xander, nice to see you!” I call, Xander turns around, and smiles, his face similar to that of the warmth from the setting sun. The shorter man who’s hair was like gold nodded, setting down his bag and tying his hair up.

“It’s good to see you as well Mori! How have you been?” Xander smirked before taking my bag and dropping it next to his. Xander smirked at my enamel pin representative of the rook bird, my favorite. 

“Good, how have you been?” Xander nods at my question. I see out of the corner of my eye another few boys enter, but I pay it no mind.

“My day has been nice, I spoke to Marco today. He said that we have a test in math coming up. I am not ready…” The usually cheerful boy’s voice became pained and whiny. I looked over as he fixed the hair ornament I bore, its shape that of a rook perching on a teardrop. 

“Thank you, I did study, just not as much as usual.” I spoke calmly, when the rook’s position was fixed, I grabbed and changed into some more appropriate dance shoes. Xander let out a smirk, and laughed.

“Wow, Mr. Makes all A’s did not study! Welcome to our level” Xander’s tone was more of a mocking manner than a friendly tease, I paused. The gibe was an arrow that was shot into my achilles heel. I had to study, my reputation, my worth, my life depended on studying. I laughed it off though, unwilling to show my slowly melting emotion.

“Hah! I guess so Xander… Anyways, where’s everybody?” I asked, trying desperately to conceal the pain and sorrow in my soul. Xander turned to me a smirk plastered across his face, his emerald eyes now tempting and with details of malice and mischief in them.

“James, Poe, and Kit are down at the library, probably cramming books for English, Quincy and Chess are in the bathroom, they will be back soon. Rook, and Ray are probably off skipping with Lark and Gunter. I just saw Leif and Casper, those two were hanging out as usual. Osher, Autumn and Indigo are still outside picking flowers… Rowan is probably studying or helping a teacher clean up their classroom for the thirtieth time this week. And Mr. Grimshaw is late… again.” Xander always knew where everybody was, in his own mischievous form, it was amazing to watch. The seventeen that made up the class were dedicated, yet all were free spirits… well all except myself. I joined dance because I could not do the physical education course, but dance was a much more acceptable field for me. 

“Hm… hopefully everybody will return soon.” I notion, and grab some leftover work I need to finish. Scribbling down everything onto the slim pads of paper I keep on me, I track what needs to be done. 

“Hey! Xan, Mori!” I turn around to meet the voice and figure of Chester Westville, or Chess as we refer to him. 

“Chess, it’s good to see you, have you seen Quincy by chance? I need some more clarification on the last part of the dance…” I mutter.

“Hm, well Quincy said he would be out of the bathroom in a few minutes, I did pass Kit and James however.” Chess’s quip was notable, he always gave good advice. The taller boy had sharp black and white hair, his arms were a tan brown with darker freckles scattered about them as if they were stars in the sky. Chess’s eyes were mahogany with smaller honest and soft looking pupils. Chess turned as more people entered the room. Rocky “rook”, Raymond “Ray”, and Rowan Fisher, the triplets who were always up to something interesting. 

Rocky Fisher, better known as Rook. The boy loved to play with others despite their protests. Rook's eyes were a gray green, more of a stormy color than anything. The boy had a malevolent spirit, his pupils narrow dots who would track and target their prey. Rook had jet sharp black hair that stood out compared to his other siblings, Rook often wore a sharp black dress shirt with a bright red tie and black dress pants, but today he was wearing a bright wight collar with a blue tie for some undeterminable reason.

Raymond Fisher, or Ray, a smart smaller boy, his blazing blue eyes invited excitement and joy to those who resided around him. Ray’s light brown choppy hair hung from his head like tassels to the grand stage that was his face. Ray had cut his own hair just months before today, he cut it unevenly and as a result there were large portions that were not cut high, and others that were. The layers of his hair made the bottom of itself look like the crenels and merlons of old castles in north Europe. Ray had a warm orange ribbon tied around his neck, accompanying it was an autumn themed sweater that was petterend with leaves and small cinnamon sticks. Ray wore a pair of baggy brown cargo pants, the boy often were to hang pencils, Identification, and other accessories off of it. 

Rowan Fisher, the only boy in school other than myself who were rumored to be off to Harvard in just two years time. Rowan wore a white dress shirt and black pants, with a solid black tie hanging from his neck. Rowan held himself in high regard and kept quiet most times. Rowan’s hair was a soft curly brown that looked black at times, his eyes were a sharp and fierce dark blue, with a hunger for competition and the desire to be the best.  

Rowan immediately headed off to the bathrooms to change, while Rook looked around before throwing off his shirt and changing into a better black tee shirt. Ray laughed, took off his sweater revealing a soft blue shirt underneath, then threw on a black and white jacket atop his figure. 

Rowan soon returned after a few moments and grabbed a clipboard off of the wall, and began charting attendance. In entered Quincy a vindictive, yet charm filled smile placed upon his pale face. But a few steps behind Quincy entered Kit, the man had shrunken down visibly. Quincy was listing off some odd phrasing about love and the eros of ancient Greece. Kit was quietly nodding, and making an odd sign with his hands. The palm of his left  hand lay up, with his right thumb up, and the other fingers making a fist. Kit’s hands would lift up for a moment before lowering slowly. I watched the strange symbol with interest, unknowing of what it might mean.

Oddly and out of character for the two dancers, their clothes were askew and messy. Quincy always had a professional and proper air and charm to him. Now that was lost, as it seemed Kit had stolen it. Kit noticing my gaze, smiled, and walked to take care of his things.

“You both are late. Kit, Quincy clean up, we don’t have all day to practice.” Rowan said, marking them both present for the class. Rowan’s gaze lingered on Kit for a few moments, before moving back to his task.

“Sorry! Rowan, let me grab my stuff and I’ll fix my stuff.” Kit laughed, his airy tone joyous and sounding as if he just escaped from the law. Christopher Nilsen, or Kit to us. Kit’s green eyes blazed with peace, excitement,and laughter; something was always off about that child’s eyes however. The seemingly carefree boy’s messy light hazel hair fell into soft and sweet curls. Kit threw on a black tank top and grabbed some black leggings.

Quincy’s glasses had been set askew, his usual sharp quiff and slick hair now presented as a sloppily attempt at looking presentable. The usually sharp student walked over to the side of the room and began to fix his attire to something more suitable for our class. Quincy’s eyes were a deep brown, with some twisted thing inside them. I looked over to see Kit walking over and struck up a conversation with Chess. The man whose hair was two-toned cast me a look of understanding; is as polite, I returned the favor.

A few more moments went astray before the next to enter appeared, most of the arrived group had by this point settled down, and began to work. “Hello everybody!” Called a soft haired man in a fall themed blouse. Matching his blouse, in walked a boy by the name of Autumn Martens. Behind the Taller boy that was Autumn, walked Poe Jackson, and James Roja. 

“Autumn!” Kit smiled, as his whippy hazel hair flew around his as if his head were a child falling into the leaves of a season that his friend’s name bore. Autumn smiled, pulling out a small pack from his bag, the boy in a blouse handed the pack to Kit who exchanged it for some money. I started wondering the possibilities of the pack. 

Autumn Martens was always an interesting boy after all. Autumn’s parents were often in and out of prison, leaving the poor boy to care for himself and cough up the money for the bills somehow. Autumn’s hair often whipped around him in its warm brown glory, with its gloryus amber glint in the sunlight. Autumn’s eyes were something of a mystery; light green and brown eyes mixed to make a strange hazel, soulless yet kindred all the like. Autumn’s warm toned skin showed its true beauty under the light. I would be lying if I were to deny my appreciation of his beauty. Autumn’s warm blouse was paired with a sweet warm linen colored jacket to cover it. I then realized my mistake of  getting distracted however; Autumn and Kit’s transaction should be none of my concern anyway. 

Edgar “Poe” Jackson and James Roja, two inseparable best friends. Edgar had been going by the moniker of Poe since we were but mere children. Poe was a lover of the man his namesake came from, James would tease him about it endlessly. Poe and James shared sharp crystal blue eyes; blue eyes that carried the air of fear and perceptiveness. Poe was dressed in a black Japanese school uniform, while James presented his attire as a white shirt, with black pants and a grey collared vest. 

“Hey, Mori!” James called running over to me, his blonde curly hair fluttering around in the wind as he ran over to me. I smiled and gave a short wave as he walked over, Poe in tow. 

“Greeting, Poe and James” I said, James snickered and elbowed me.

“Ya don’t have to be so formal you know! Xaver’s summer camp really got to you!” James laughed. I shuttered thinking of that camp. 

“Oh well, why not? It’s fun is it not?” I ask, Poe shakes his head. James walks over to my bag, and pulls out my copy of “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea” by Jules Verne.

“You read far too much literature” James shakes his head as he examines the book. I scoff, and roll my eyes.

“The only literature you have ever respected James, was Moby Dick because of Queequeg and Ishmale’s relationship, so shut it on your literature takes” I say, taking the book back, and brushing off the cover. I fawn over the book as if it were my child, for I protect my books as such.

“Hah! I guess so, come on James, let’s change and warm up!” Poe murmurs his voice only barely audible to myself. James nods, and walks off after Poe.

The room now only missing a few select people is rowdy. Finally after what feels like an eternity the last five file in for class to start.

[libidomechanica]

Lay flattering mother space and have to woo; thou bring

Which when thought befall; and of home.     To my fear off, and if the days, her slow. He look the kenned     in narrow will not Angel fires of the sacristabel,     the distant skill even

he memory of all be     wonder from its ran, thought with the mine orbs on the forget     how, in booth to me: thou can both Silk, and take men rings are     to hath my hoarsest to

beautiful from realm of watery     disk of Nights of thinks I have to move, the faithful struggle     breeze of years, half the buried in spring sound, say     Information, joy and yet

the floor; and of she life as light     but a telephone to need the night, Sir; but merchanting     sight returns in expectation fringes, love on though thee,     sacred bone; counts of odour’d

in man, her side of wonder     green her two ages. Somewhere does depart the owls have his     birth on my sighed sounding- place, purlieus of the Promise on     her mild; they green side thy

side be couched melissa lovelier     present she; leaves with her last for move to keep the Head,     but spectral fruitful sever, and silver half a mothers     or dear her who rule by

laws; such grief, and her knee; but I     should relief, she, that sin and he touch encumbranch a chaste,     and then that once, and the city by despite, or into     a fools of random instead.

And lives in the that o’er with     labyrinth of our elegant, certain, this lips was, and     with the wearing and headphone they brother’s hat! Away, tho’     veil’d, was but what it bright

Jalic Inc. The Baron’s held the     seas on Lethean speaks of its memory hairs: this sisters,     las! May stall my waved to their eggs, and that’s too and     heart’s how? The rest. Lay

flattering mother space and have to     woo; thou bring the ledge is the could apart the both dark, disk     caught erasing else was breast will divine, his way while thick     noons, the world is whirl’d the

clouded jade face I am not     win; but you hear the centre of mountain glory of the     summer love. The river’d viol, a good vse do thy brows do     displease he wave, and grey;

moulders that wear the soul ones abuse     the hearted House, far away. Or manners, who came on     than the haunts the Baron’s heare Flood, and spirit, up for dead,     said Almost use; with not

the fear: margaret! The will from deals     a golden keys, to thee what worn with he summits neck so     harshly gift that breeze kiss, but a crimson fringed with broadening     like Hindoos, for work

Lord Alfred Lord, to the whipped on     that locks, many trifling? I craved the intervital glooming     gnaw. And cannot there one another, was but cruel fell     again—ah, woe and knows

my muse and princes glad it lessed.     How say I awoke with shall see, and friar to year     delight to knowest toward though tears, to take them: we have sings     for her kenned in vain:

calm and third flow former mild; which     dreamed I was a crushed in her gold. Fearful mood of Love’s fierces     blew reveillée to woo; though her hands may on Sir Leoline;     and all they knowledges

on us stare; with music loud;     like them her Cheek, that though awkward you hearted man to haunting     ago, ’ she throned of her and many feudal to     me. The ground, that, the tree.

[space-cat-in-a-teacup]

Okay to elaborate on this: The Guild members aren’t close with each other in the same way the members of the Armed Detective Agency are, nor do they have the sense of comradery/loyalty that they- or even the Port Mafia- does.

(Ramble under the cut, it’s a long one)

We see individual relationships between the Guild members- Steinbeck and Lovecraft, Margaret and Nathaniel- but we never get the sense of an overall cohesion. The ability users of the Guild seem aware of each other, but less in a found family/closeness kind of way and more in a ‘average co-worker’ kind of way.

Lucy is the prime example of this, as a central character to the narrative. We didn’t hear nor see a single person come to her defense when she failed her mission, and no one seemed to bat an eye when she was demoted to cleaning duty. Her usefulness is the only thing that the Guild keeps her around for, not for any personal bonds. Then after she released Atsushi, there wasn’t a moment of hesitation to capture her and take her off the Moby Dick- no one even felt betrayed by her actions, her being traitor to the Guild. They clearly weren’t on friendly enough terms for it to hurt. 

But it’s not just her. Louisa and Poe, two incredibly important and high-ranking Guild members, were shut-ins who seemed to have no relation to anyone else (Margaret, at one point, even casually remarking that ‘they should just die’ because... they were afraid of heights). Not to mention that Poe was far too eager to betray the Moby Dick’s information willy-nilly, even calling the Guild ‘barbaric’ and ‘boring’ without a care- showing his lack of loyalty to the organization he’s integral to. Sure, very few seem to genuinely hate one another, but even when we see the most of them in the same area at once (i.e. when Steinbeck and Lovecraft pick up the ‘package’) there seems to be, at best, a polite familiarity. There’s no sense of closeness between any of them.

Not to mention that when the Guild collapses, no one we see seems to grieve that loss- at most a sense of  "Oh well, that’s a shame- let’s move on now”. There’s nothing to keep the members tied together, and it’s shown in the scene where Louisa, Steinbeck, and Mark all go their separate ways, with not even a hint of interest in keeping touch with one another. Steinbeck decides to stop the insurgences within the Guild, but he seems to view it more as a responsibility to it as an organization than any attachment to it’s individual members- not even offering Mark or Louisa a chance to stay.

Even the exceptions I mentioned are exclusive to the partnerships, formed likely out of the many times they’ve individually worked together. And even these have their own issues: Margaret and Nathaniel seemed unable to communicate their genuine care for one another, working together in battle but outside of it, only expressing contemp and annoyance. Note how it was only after Margaret sacrificed herself and went into comatose for him that Nathaniel seemed to reconcile his feelings for her, going so far as to call her his ‘beloved’.

Steinbeck and Lovecraft are, ironically enough, the closest thing to a typical friendship we see. They seem at ease with one another, clearly have a history and know each other well, and Steinbeck outright states Lovecraft is "one of [his] very few friends”. But even then, his acknowledgement of Lovecraft not being dead is very casual, and Lovecraft’s final scene is him diving back into the sea without a real solid goodbye.

Louisa, meanwhile, has a fierce personal loyalty to Fitzgerald, but to only Fitzgerald. And to an unhealthy degree, at that, considering that without his orders to her, she literally had nothing to live for. And though Fitzgerald is implied to have some level of care towards her in turn, I have no doubt it’s nowhere near the amount she cares for him- especially considering that aboard the Moby Dick, he proudly stated that he only cares about his employees because he viewed them as his property.

And it should be noted that, aside from Louisa, Fitzgerald has no personal loyalty. All the Guild members are there for their own reasons, often because desperation drove them there, and are kept there by whatever benefit the Guild may offer them. No one outside of Louisa has any loyalty to boss himself: Nathaniel leaves the Guild without a moment’s hesitation because he knows Fitzgerald won’t honor Margaret’s needs, Mark ditches the moment he’s MIA to go back to writing his auto-biography, and Steinbeck outright hates his guts (in the manga, even swearing to crush Fitzgerald after he realizes the man is back in action.)

All of this to say: If the Guild were still around during the Cannabilism Arc, and Fitzgerald were infected with the virus… I can’t say the Guild would have the same reaction to it that the Armed Detective Agency and Port Mafia would.

[elizabeethan]

Never Nothing- Extra # 2

Another little extra for one of my favorite series!! Soft domestic fluff meets angst... There will be a follow up to this one, eventually.

For @the-darkdragonfly who wanted this to be a 12 part series… we’re halfway there baby

Rated T, mostly for language 

~4300 words

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~~~~

“Stop it.”

 “I’m only trying--”

 “No, stop it.” 

 “My love, if you’d just--”

 “I don’t want to!” 

 “--you may find that you feel better.”

 “I won’t. I will never feel better, ever, for as long as I live. I will feel exactly this horrible every second for the rest of my miserable life.” 

 Killian sighs softly, smiling at her despite how much it pisses her off and running his hand through her hair. “I’m sorry you’re feeling so uncomfortable.”

 “Having a baby in August is not a good plan.” 

 “No,” he agrees. “I’m sure you must be feeling rather miserable.” 

 She nods, pouting. “Extremely miserable.” 

 He softly kisses the tip of her nose, taking out the sunscreen he’s been begging her to wear and squirting some into his hands. “Now, just imagine how hot you’d be if we were still in Phoenix.” 

 “Shut up,” she grumbles, leaning forward just enough for him to get her back. 

 “You’re the one who suggested we come to the beach.”

 She glares up at him, her lips pressed into a tight line and her brows covering her eyes almost completely. “You’re on thin ice.”

 “I think you’ll find there’s no ice this time of year, my darling. It’s very hot out; it would melt.” 

He can’t blame her for being miserable. At 37 weeks pregnant in late July, she can’t seem to ever get comfortable. Her back hurts her endlessly, her hips are sore, she’s been suffering with horrible heartburn, and the mood swings are difficult to keep up with. 

 He wouldn’t have it any other way, though. 

 “Why don’t we get into the water? A bit of buoyancy is sure to help your back.”  

 She sighs in defeat and says, “I’ll probably just get sea sick. Or eaten by a shark. Or stung by a jellyfish.”

 He kisses her nose once more and takes her hand, hoisting her off of the chaise lounge and placing his palm on the small of her back where he knows she’s sore. “I’ll fight off the sharks and the jellyfish, my love.” 

 “Promise?” she asks as she waddles towards the shore with him. 

 “Of course.”

 She squeals as she tries to get into the chilly water, but once they’re in and she’s used to the cold, she relaxes a bit. His heart flutters when she leans back against his chest, letting him bear her weight as he runs his hand along her bump and presses a kiss to her shoulder. 

 Feeling her pressed against him makes the blood rush through his veins, and he’s glad for the cold water keeping any obvious signs of his arousal at bay. He’s always found her unbelievably sexy, but seeing her in her yellow bikini, her bump on full display, is enough for him to have almost kept her home today. 

 “I know what you’re thinking,” she grumbles, her voice barely audible over the sounds of the waves. “And no, we’re not doing it in the ocean.” 

 “I would perish at the thought of sullying your purity on a public beach, love.”

 “Purity,” she scoffs. “I’m knocked up at 22. Nothing pure about it.” 

 He kisses her neck, then her cheek, and holds her close to himself, his bare wrist pressed to the side of her belly and his hand holding it tenderly. “We've talked about this, love,” he murmurs against her skin. “How this child has come to be is not important. What’s important is how fiercely the two of us love him.”

 “I know,” she agrees softly, dropping her head to his shoulder and sighing as she lets herself relax further into his hold and into the gentle current of the sea. “I just wish… sometimes I just wish you were his dad.”

 He sways the two of them together gently, letting the waves carry them, and reminds her, “I fully intend to be. Biology isn’t really a factor here, my love.”

 She hums happily as she lets him support every ounce of her, effectively floating just below the surface with him holding her up. “I just feel… I love this baby more than anything. I don’t regret having him, I just kind of wish you'd been the one to knock me up.”

 “Me too,” he laughs, “but it’s alright, because this child will be as much my son as any that I sire.” 

 “I love you. Sorry I’m a bitch.” 

 “You’re the furthest thing from it, darling. I’ll not hear you talking about yourself in such a way.” 

 She hums again and shrugs. “I could probably chill out a bit. I’ve been pretty snappy.”

 “Well, you’re nine months pregnant.”

 “Maybe I’ll keep being bitchy after the baby’s born.”

 “I hope so. I like you when you’re fired up.”

 She lies in his arms for a while, content to float almost weightlessly in the water as the pressure of the babe she carries is finally relieved. He feels the lad kicking about beneath the water, likely entranced by the dancing waves, and chuckles softly each time he gets a strike to his palm. 

 “What would you like for dinner, my love?” he asks after a long silence falls between them. 

 “Chinese food,” she answers immediately. 

 “That’s a nice dream. What do you actually want, Miss High Blood Pressure?”

 “Baaaabe,” she groans, tossing her head back against his shoulder again and gripping his forearms. “I don’t want grilled chicken.”

 “You don’t have to have grilled chicken. We can stop for fish.”

 “The baby wants lo mein.”

 “He can have some after he’s born and his mother isn’t at risk for preeclampsia.” 

 She grumbles some more, her words incoherent and inaudible over the sound of the water lapping around them. “Chicken,” she finally concedes. “But only if you make that sauce you made last week.”

 With a snort, he asks, “you mean the one with the bacon in it?” 

 “That’s the one.”

 “Alright, love. Let’s get you out of the water before you give birth to a raisin.”

 “You’ve gotta work on your dad jokes.” 

 ~~~~

 The days seem to be getting longer and longer, time refusing to pass at a normal pace as she lives in constant torture and betrayal of her own body. She loves being pregnant, honestly, but it’s becoming a bit tiring. The baby she’s hauling around is heavy, and her back is killing her. Killian’s being very wary of her slightly elevated blood pressure when all she wants is Chinese food and chicken nuggets. Her mom still remembers her days as a perinatal nurse and won’t stop accidentally scaring her when she talks about what she’s seen during labor. 

 Killian’s looking forward to the delivery, and she tries not to let that piss her off. Of course, she’s more than elated to see him so excited for their child to be born, and she’s so lucky to have a partner who will be there for her throughout the whole thing. But each time he tries to show her something he’s read in a book, or a breathing exercise they can try together during contractions, she wants to chuck something at him. After all, she doesn’t believe that he’s truly ready for what her body will be doing in just a few short weeks. 

 “During a contraction, I can try to massage your lower back if you’re standing. How does that sound?”

 “Standing?” she asks doubtfully. “I can barely stand during cramps.”

 “Don’t let him fool you; the massages don’t help,” Granny says ominously while she places her plate before her. While he’s been very strict about her diet, Killian can’t keep her from getting her French toast from Granny’s on Sunday mornings. 

 “And did you have a walking epidural when you delivered in the Enchanted Forest, Granny?” he asks, his tone sarcastic. 

 She rolls her eyes as she places his eggs in front of him. 

 Taking a deep breath with her eyes squeezed shut, Emma places her hand on the top of her bump as a zip of hot pain rushes up her chest and into her throat. Killian’s silent and still as he watches her, holding his fork above his plate as his brows furrow while she waits for it to pass. Once the pain subsides, he asks, “alright?” 

 “Heartburn,” she breathes. He pushes her glass of water towards her encouragingly as she breathes steadily. “Damn.”

 “It won’t be long, love.”

 “Yeah, he better make an appearance soon. I wanna meet him so bad, and I wouldn’t mind if the indigestion went away.”

 “Morning,” Ruby says happily as she refills Killian’s mug, much to Emma’s jealous vexation. 

 “Morning Ruby. What’s the report for this week?” he asks, happily going along with her perception of herself as the town crier. 

 “Not much, but there’s someone new in town. Can you believe that? The dwarves are doing some research to find out if that means we can leave.” 

 “Well, that will certainly be interesting,” he agrees, giving Emma a happy smile. They haven’t even bothered to attempt to leave themselves, although it’s suspected that they can. 

 “And everyone is excited to have a newcomer.”

 “I’m sure he must be a really interesting character, what with him wanting to come to Storybrooke.” 

 Emma snorts, digging into her breakfast once her least favorite pregnancy symptom subsides completely. 

 “I haven’t met him, but I’ve heard he is kind of an ass.”

 Moments later, her parents bustle into the diner and greet her with a broad smile as they approach them. “Hi honey!” her mom says happily. 

 “Morning,” she smiles. 

 “How are you feeling?” she asks as she and David scoot the two of them down in their booths. “How’s my sweet little grandson?” 

 Mary Margaret places a gentle hand over Emma’s bump and she stiffens just a bit. It always feels weird to have anyone but Killian put their hands on her belly. “Okay. He keeps flopping around and giving me heartburn.” 

 She hums in understanding, patting her belly. “Have you heard about someone new being in town?”

 “We were just briefed by Ruby,” Killian answers. 

 “Well, I met him very briefly. He’s handsome and very charming.” 

 “I don’t think Emma or Hook care much about that, Snow,” David says, and Emma nods. 

 “Well, I heard he’s coming here for breakfast today. Isn’t that exciting? You two won’t be the newcomers anymore.” 

 Emma laughs and nods through another bite. “I guess that’s true.” 

 They continue to chat through their meal, David talking about his job as an animal control officer. Apparently, they’re thinking about adopting a dog he’d rescued a week ago, and Emma’s only seen him beam like this a few times in the short time she’s known him. Things are good, the French toast isn’t giving her heartburn, she thinks she’s going to have a good day. 

 Until the bell above the door rings. 

 And he walks in. 

 She takes in a gasping breath, her eyes bugging out of her head as she swings her head away from the door. “Alright?” Killian asks her softly, leaning over the table and taking her hand. 

 She shakes her head and feels his body go rigid with panic. If they weren’t trapped in the booth by her parents, she would grab his hand and run out the back door of the diner to escape him. 

 “Heartburn?” Killian asks softly, not yet alerting her parents of her sudden shift in mood. “Braxton Hicks? Contractions?!”

 “No,” she croaks. 

 “What is it, angel? Talk to me.”

 She chances a look towards the door and sees him talking with Ruby, probably flirting with her shamelessly. Then, she looks back at Killian and whispers, “Neal.”

 He raises a brow in thought and then she watches as the pieces of the puzzle click into place. He nods once, looking towards the door and grimacing. Ruby starts to guide Neal towards a table and Mary Margaret gives him a friendly, excited wave before Emma can stop her. She wants to put her head through the table; maybe he won’t see her if she does that. 

 The only saving grace is the fact that she can spread her legs out and tuck her bump under the table. The last thing she wants right now is for him to find out that he fertilized the egg that became her son. 

 “Mary Margaret, right? Hi,” he greets casually. “And this must be your husband, and--”

 He’s staring, but not at her. He’s gaping at Killian. 

 “What the… Hook?”

 Killian looks as baffled as Emma must, and he gives her a look of confusion that tells her he has no idea what’s going on. Only, when he looks at her, so does Neal. 

 “Emma?!”

 “You two know each other?”

 “Oh my god,” she grumbles, dropping her head to her folded arms on the table. She’d pushed her plate away, unable to eat anything more as the stress of her sperm donor making an appearance in her life eats away at her. 

 “Darling, perhaps we should--” Before he can continue, she kicks him under the table, not wishing to let Neal know anything personal about her, especially the fact that she and Killian are together and that she’s expecting a baby in a few weeks. 

 “Darling? Are you two, like, dating or something?” 

 “Emma and Ho-- Killian live together,” her mother supplies, and Emma rolls her eyes. 

 “Huh,” Neal says in response. “You sure do move on fast.” 

 “Mate, that’s not--”

 “I’m not your mate, pirate.”

 Killian chuckles awkwardly and asks, “do we know each other?” 

 Neal looks like he’s ready to snap, perhaps jump across the table and strangle Killian at his cocky response, but he’s interrupted by the door opening again and Mr. Gold entering the diner. “Bae,” he calls, not yet taking notice of what he’s doing or who he’s talking to. “What are you doing?”

 “Bae,” Killian breathes, staring up at Neal and Mr. Gold in astonishment. “You… you’re Neal?”

 “What is going on?” Emma asks through gritted teeth, wanting nothing more than to escape. The position she’s put herself in in order to hide her bump is horribly uncomfortable on her back (and she probably looks ridiculous), and all she wants to do now is go home and sit on her new couch. 

 “What’s going on is your boyfriend is a piece of shit,” Neal spits at her. “You sure know how to pick ‘em.” 

 “What, like I picked you? Lot of good that did me, what with the police, and the court hearings, and the community service, and the--”

 “Honey… This is Neal? I thought your name was Bae.” 

 “It was,” Neal grumbles back, turning towards his father and then back to Emma. “You told your parents about me?” 

 “Well, she kind of had to,” David responds condescendingly. “What with the--”

 “Dad. Please stop.” 

 “The what?”

 “Son, let’s go enjoy our breakfast and leave the family drama for later.” 

 The baby starts wiggling just as another bout of heartburn curses her, and she hisses, pushing her fist against her chest and leaning forward even more until she’s in an awkward position. “Honey, you need some tums. I told you, they’re safe for the ba--”

 “I’m fine,” she seethes, swallowing and breathing deeply through the feeling of lava crawling up her throat. She wants to leave so badly, but the moment she moves to stand, her pregnancy will become more than obvious. 

 “Family drama,” Neal laughs. “That’s rich, isn’t it, Hook? First my mom and now my girlfriend?”

 Emma glares up at him, practicing her mom-look. “Go away,” she insists.

 He scoffs and says, “Ems, come on. Let's get you out of here.” 

 “Excuse me?” 

 “Bae is Neal?” Killian asks through continued astonishment, looking down at his hand with his mouth agape, his brows furrowed. 

 “Stop calling me that,” Neal snaps. “You lost your right to talk to me when you killed my mother and sold me to Pan.” 

 Emma knows this isn’t true; Killian told her the story about the Crocodile murdering his first love in front of him. He told her about how he found her son years later and wanted to raise him as his own. She just had no idea that her son was… Neal. Evidently, Killian didn’t either. 

 “Neal, go away. Leave us alone like you left me to rot.”

 “I did that for your own good. You had to break the curse.” 

 “Right,” she scoffs. She wants nothing more than to rub in his face the fact that he abandoned her, homeless and poor and pregnant, but she holds in her anger. Truthfully, Neal leaving was one of the better things to have happened to her. It gave her Killian and their baby. It brought her to her family. It helped her find out who she is.

 Those facts don't make his betrayal sting any less, though.

 “Killian, maybe you should take Emma home,” her mother suggests through the haze of anger and confusion surrounding the table. He looks up at Snow, his jaw still dropped towards the floor and his eyes swimming with the guilt of his past, and nods. 

 “Aye,” he agrees, shaking his head and taking Emma’s hands. “Come, love. Let’s sail away.” 

 She wants nothing more than to agree, to nod and smile at him, taking his hands and letting him lead her out of the diner, but Neal remains firmly planted outside of their booth. If she stands now, she’ll reveal herself. She looks at Killian meaningfully with wide eyes, then glances down towards her belly and up in Neal’s direction. 

 He understands effortlessly and turns towards Neal, asking, “do you mind, mate? We’d like to head out.” 

 Neal rolls his eyes and concedes, stepping away from their booth and towards his father, and Mary Margaret and David stand to give them a path out of their seats. They're almost home free-- she can see the light at the end of the diner-- Killian leading the way and effectively hiding the evidence of her pregnancy. Or so she thinks. 

 Just as Killian’s hand reaches the door, about to push it open and gain their sweet escape, Ruby cuts them off with an excited greeting to Emma, reaching to give her a hug as she usually does and asking, “how’s my favorite little nephew doing? What is it now; three weeks to go?” 

 Emma freezes, eyes wide and face pale as Killian’s back goes stiff in front of her. The diner is silent, the early breakfast rush long over, and she knows Neal heard her. It’s confirmed when she hears the scratch of the chair against the floor as he stands and calls, “what, so he knocked you up, too? What a stand-up guy.” 

 The blood in her veins chills at his statements. Her jaw starts hurting with how forcefully she’s clenching it. She watches Killian turn around and fears that he’s going to confront Neal with the truth. In reality, though, he turns and looks only at her, taking her hands in his easily despite the fact that one is missing, courtesy of her ex’s father. “It’s alright,” he whispers, showing her just how much he understands her. Showing her that he can tell exactly what she’s thinking; can read the fear in her eyes at the thought of Neal finding out that this child is technically a part of him. “We can go,” he tells her. 

 She can’t help but to spin around, half turning to face Neal with tearfilled eyes, looking at him just once so that she can remind herself of the mistakes she’s made in her past. So that she can compare the despair he brought her with the joy that Killian brings so effortlessly. But it’s a mistake. She watches as his face falls, seemingly seeing just how pregnant she really is. 

 “Is that… are you…” He looks up at the ceiling, flexing his fingers as if counting on them. Counting the months since they were last together. Realizing it’s been almost nine months since their last encounter. Taking in just how large her bump is. “Emma…?”

 She should just turn around and leave, or ignore him; refuse to give attention to his thoughts so that she doesn't spur them on. But instead, she lets out a choked sob and buries her face in her hands as her tears flow freely. 

 Killian’s hand is on her back immediately, running soothing circles along her skin as he moves to stand in front of her and blocks her view of the rest of the world, consuming her with only his ocean-blue eyes. “It’s alright,” he whispers again. 

 “Did she say three weeks left? Is that…”

 “It’s okay,” he murmurs, and although Neal’s voice cuts through the air between them like a knife, all she sees is Killian. 

 “I wanna go home,” she cries softly, clinging to his hand and hook. 

 “We will,” he promises. 

 “Emma, is that my kid?”

 She can’t respond. All she can do is tilt her body slightly so that she’s looking past Killian’s right into Neal’s eyes, showing him the truth in her own. She can’t tell him with words that he fathered a child with her, but she knows that the look on her face is enough confirmation when his own pales and he drops back down in his chair. 

 He only stays there for a second before forcefully standing again, the chair colliding with the floor. Gold begs, “Bae,” reaching his hand towards his son, and Neal violently rips away from his father. 

 “Don’t!” He shouts. “Fuck.” 

 Before anyone can say anything, Neal is stalking towards Emma and Killian, and she almost feels nervous for a second, until he brushes past the two of them and slams his way out the door. 

 ~~~~

 Her lip trembles as he shuts the door, and she spins into his arms the second he locks it, bursting into tears easily. “He’s gonna take him,” she cries. 

 “Emma, no. That isn’t going to happen, love.” 

 She sobs some more, gripping his shirt with white knuckles, nodding into his neck and pulling him as close to herself as she possibly can with the bump between them. “He is.” 

 “You saw his face when he found out, darling. He has no interest. He’s already running.”

 “Everything was so perfect. Now it’s ruined.”

 “Nothing is ruined, my love,” he argues. “What makes you even say that?”

 She shudders in his arms, whimpering pathetically as the hormones take over and the fear of losing her child consumes her. “I wanted--” she chokes. “I wanted you to be his dad.” 

 When he pulls away from her, forcing her face from his neck, she cries out again, pained at the thought that she’s losing him, too. “Angel,” he murmurs softly, soothingly. “I am his dad. Perhaps the lad will simply be lucky enough to have two.”

 The violence behind her choked breathing is palpable between the two of them, showing him just how distraught she truly is as she asks, “you mean-- you mean you’re not leaving?”

 “You silly thing,” he breathes through a gentle laugh, pressing their foreheads together. “Do you really believe that that fool coming into our lives will sway me? I love you. Both of you.” 

 Her bottom lip trembles again as his hand slides along the side of her belly, the baby kicking against his palm in greeting. The fact that he didn’t stir when faced with his biological father doesn’t get past her as he wiggles against his dad lovingly. She lets out one last soft, whimpering sob and sniffles before saying, “I love you. We both love you.”

 He kisses her gently despite the tears and snot, making her laugh lightly. “Bae knows what it is to have an absent father, love. I’m… I’m truly shocked to know that the boy who lived on my ship all those years ago has done this to you. But I do believe that, now that he knows, he’ll do what he can to support you and the little lad. I believe he’ll do the right thing.”

 “Maybe I don’t want him to,” she pouts. 

 He smiles, cupping her cheek, and says, “that’s valid. And I know you're scared. But we’ll just have to sort out what’s best for the little one.” 

 With a heaving sigh, she drops her forehead to his chest and shuts her eyes. “Right now, what’s best for the little one is a nap.”

 “It’s only 10:30,” he jests, but despite his argument, he places his hand on the small of her back and guides her towards their bedroom. “Need a snack?”

 “More French toast.”

 “No. An apple.”

 “Never mind,” she grumbles, pouting as she collapses on the bed and holds up her feet until he starts pulling her sandals off. He shakes his head as he laughs lightly, running his thumb over her swollen feet and kissing her cankles. “Killian?” she whispers quietly. 

 “Aye, love?” he asks, almost as softly as he crawls up towards her and helps her lean back onto the bed. 

 She grunts unattractively as her swollen body flops like a fish across the mattress, drawing a soft smile from his lips. “I’m scared,” she whispers when his front wraps around her back. 

 “Aye, love. I know.” His hand slides across her giant bump, the baby kicking him gently, and kisses just behind her ear. “But you’re going to be fantastic. You’re so strong, and smart, and capable of anything you set your mind to.”

 “Then why can’t I just magic him out of here?”

 “Bae?” he asks with a surprised laugh. 

 “Yeah, I’ve been trying since we got home.”

 “You are a silly thing. And I love you very much.”

 With a contented hum, she pulls him closer to her despite the heat. “I love you, but let me sleep now.”

 “As you wish, my angel.”

~~~~

~~~~

@courtorderedcake​​​​ @kmomof4​​​​ @stahlop​​​​ @klynn-stormz​​​​ @laschatzi​​​​ @emelizabeth88​​​​ @lfh1226-linda​​​​ @kday426​​​​ @elisethewritingbeast @timeless-love-story​​​​ @captain-emmajones​​​​ @gingerpolyglot​​​​​ @ebcaver​​​​ @ilovemesomekillianjones​​​​ @teamhook​​​​​ @superchocovian​​​​​ @itsfabianadocarmo​​​​​ @tiganasummertree​​​​​ @gingerchangeling​​​​​ @jrob64​​​​​ @onceratheart18​​​​​ @xhookswenchx​​​​​ @winterbaby89​​​​​ @swampmedusa​​​​​ @ultraluckycatnd​​​​​ @dancingnancyy​​​​​ @love-with-you-i-have-everything​​​​​ @shireness-says​​​​​ @snowbellewells​​​​​ @hollyethecurious​​​​​ @ouatpost​​​​​ @daxx04​​​​​ @the-darkdragonfly​​​​​ @donteattheappleshook​​​​​ @therooksshiningknight @eeteeaytay​​​​​ @xsajx​​​​​ @itsfridaysomewhere​​​​​ @alexa-fangirl-forever​​​​​ @jonesfandomfanatic​​​​​ @wefoundloveunderthelight​​​​​ @qualitycoffeethings​​​​​ @rapunzelsghosts​​​​​ @spaceconveyor @badcats-andmice​​​​​ @batana54​​​​ @sailtoafarawayland​​ @deckerstarblanche​​ @zaharadessert​​ @xarandomdreamx

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Mammoth List of Feminist/Girl Power Books (200 + Books)

Lists of Real, Amazing Women Throughout History

Bad Girls Throughout History: 100 Remarkable Women Who Changed the World by Ann Shen

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls by Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls 2 by Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Immigrant Women Who Changed the World by Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo

Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World by Pénélope Bagieu, Montana Kane (Translator)

Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics by Jason Porath

Tough Mothers: Amazing Stories of History’s Mightiest Matriarchs by Jason Porath

Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World by Rachel Ignotofsky

Bygone Badass Broads: 52 Forgotten Women Who Changed the World by Mackenzi Lee

Wonder Women: 25 Innovators, Inventors, and Trailblazers Who Changed History by Sam Maggs

The Little Book of Feminist Saints by Julia Pierpont

Rad Women Worldwide: Artists and Athletes, Pirates and Punks, and Other Revolutionaries Who Shaped History by Kate Schatz

Warrior Women: 3000 Years of Courage and Heroism by Robin Cross & Rosalind Miles

Women Who Dared: 52 Stories of Fearless Daredevils, Adventurers, and Rebels by Linda Skeers & Livi Gosling 

100 Nasty Women of History by Hannah Jewell

The Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser

Sea Queens: Women Pirates Around the World by Jane Yolen

The Book of Gutsy Women: Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience by Hillary Rodham Clinton & Chelsea Clinton 

Fight Like a Girl: 50 Feminists Who Changed the World by Laura Barcella

Samurai Women 1184–1877 by Stephen Turnbull

A Black Woman Did That by Malaika Adero

Tales from Behind the Window by Edanur Kuntman

Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists: A Graphic History of Women's Fight for Their Rights by Mikki Kendall

Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion, 700-1100 by Max Dashu

Mad and Bad: Real Heroines of the Regency by Bea Koch

Modern HERstory: Stories of Women and Nonbinary People Rewriting History by Blair Imani

Individual and Group Portraits of Real, Amazing Women Throughout History

Alice Paul and the Fight for Women's Rights: From the Vote to the Equal Rights Amendment by Deborah Kops

Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All by Martha S. Jones

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life by Jane Sherron De Hart

The Firebrand and the First Lady: Portrait of a Friendship: Pauli Murray, Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Struggle for Social Justice by Patricia Bell-Scott

I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai, Christina Lamb

Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA by Amaryllis Fox

Native Country of the Heart: A Memoir by Cherríe L. Moraga

The Soul of a Woman by Isabel Allende

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants: The Female Gang That Terrorised London by Brian McDonald

Women Against the Raj: The Rani of Jhansi Regiment by Joyce Chapman Lebra

Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution by Sara Marcus

The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor

Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars by Nathalia Holt

The Women of WWII (Non-Fiction)

Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue by Kathryn J. Atwood

Skyward: The Story of Female Pilots in WWII by Sally Deng

The Women with Silver Wings: The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II by Katherine Sharp Landdeck

The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II by Svetlana Alexievich, Richard Pevear (Translation), Larissa Volokhonsky (Translation)

Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved, and Died Under Nazi Occupation by Anne Sebba

To Serve My Country, to Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African-American Wacs Stationed Overseas During World War II by Brenda L. Moore

Standing Up Against Hate: How Black Women in the Army Helped Change the Course of WWII by Mary Cronk Farrell

Sisters and Spies: The True Story of WWII Special Agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne by Susan Ottaway

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell

The White Mouse by Nancy Wake

Code Name Hélène by Ariel Lawhon

Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II by Liza Mundy

Tomorrow to be Brave: A Memoir of the Only Woman Ever to Serve in the French Foreign Legion by Susan Travers & Wendy Holden

Pure Grit: How WWII Nurses in the Pacific Survived Combat and Prison Camp by Mary Cronk Farrell

Sisterhood of Spies by Elizabeth P. McIntosh

Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan by Shrabani Basu

Women in the Holocaust by Dalia Ofer

The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler's Ghettos by Judy Batalion

Night Witches: The Untold Story of Soviet Women in Combat by Bruce Myles

The Soviet Night Witches: Brave Women Bomber Pilots of World War II by Pamela Jain Dell

A Thousand Sisters: The Heroic Airwomen of the Soviet Union in World War II by Elizabeth Wein

A Dance with Death: Soviet Airwomen in World War II by Anne Noggle

Avenging Angels: The Young Women of the Soviet Union's WWII Sniper Corps by Lyuba Vinogradova

The Women of WWII (Fiction)

Among the Red Stars by Gwen C. Katz

Night Witches by Kathryn Lasky

Night Witches by Mirren Hogan

Night Witch by S.J. McCormack

Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith

Daughters of the Night Sky by Aimie K. Runyan

The Lost Girls of Paris by Pam Jenoff

Code Name Verity series by Elizabeth Wein

Front Lines trilogy by Michael Grant

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

All-Girl Teams (Fiction)

The Seafire trilogy by Natalie C. Parker

Elysium Girls by Kate Pentecost

The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis

The Effigies trilogy by Sarah Raughley

Guardians of the Dawn series by S. Jae-Jones

Wolf-Light by Yaba Badoe

Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson

Burned and Buried by Nino Cipri

This Is What It Feels Like by Rebecca Barrow

The Wild Ones: A Broken Anthem for a Girl Nation by Nafiza Azad

We Rule the Night by Claire Eliza Bartlett

Tigers, Not Daughters by Samantha Mabry

The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion by Fannie Flagg

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

Bad Girls Never Say Die by Jennifer Mathieu

The Secret Life of Prince Charming by Deb Caletti

Kamikaze Girls by Novala Takemoto, Akemi Wegmüller (Translator)

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

The Passion of Dolssa by Julie Berry

The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke

Sisters in Sanity by Gayle Forman

The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place by Julie Berry

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

The Lost Girls by Sonia Hartl

Hell's Belles series by Sarah MacLean

Jackdaws by Ken Follett

The Farmerettes by Gisela Tobien Sherman

A Sisterhood of Secret Ambitions by Sheena Boekweg

Feminist Retellings

Stepsister by Jennifer Donnelly

Poisoned by Jennifer Donnelly

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

The Girl Who Fell Beneath The Sea by Axie Oh

Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins by Emma Donoghue

Doomed by Laura Pohl

The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher

The Boneless Mercies by April Genevieve Tucholke

Seven Endless Forests by April Genevieve Tucholke

The Queens of Innis Lear by Tessa Gratton

A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston

Kate Crackernuts by Katharine M. Briggs

Legendborn series by Tracy Deonn

One for All by Lillie Lainoff

Feminist Dystopian and Horror Fiction

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Grace Year by Kim Liggett

Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand

Godshot by Chelsea Bieker

Women and Girls in Comedy 

Crying Laughing by Lance Rubin

Stand Up, Yumi Chung by Jessica Kim

This Will Be Funny Someday by Katie Henry

Unscripted by Nicole Kronzer

Pretty Funny for a Girl by Rebecca Elliot

Bossypants by Tina Fey

We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy by Yael Kohen

The Girl in the Show: Three Generations of Comedy, Culture, and Feminism by Anna Fields

Trans Women

Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock

Nemesis series by April Daniels

American Transgirl by Faith DaBrooke

Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout by Laura Jane Grace

A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett

Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom

Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family by Amy Ellis Nutt

George by Alex Gino

The Witch Boy series by Molly Ostertag

Uncomfortable Labels: My Life as a Gay Autistic Trans Woman by Laura Kate Dale

She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan

An Anthology of Fiction by Trans Women of Color by Ellyn Peña

Wandering Son by Takako Shimura

Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg

Feminist Poetry

Women Are Some Kind of Magic trilogy by Amanda Lovelace

Wild Embers: Poems of Rebellion, Fire and Beauty by Nikita Gill

Fierce Fairytales: Poems and Stories to Stir Your Soul by Nikita Gill

Great Goddesses: Life Lessons from Myths and Monsters by Nikita Gill

The Girl and the Goddess by Nikita Gill

A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing: The Incarceration of African American Women from Harriet Tubman to Sandra Bland by DaMaris B. Hill

Feminist Philosophy and Facts

The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner

The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy by Gerda Lerner

Misogyny: The World's Oldest Prejudice by Jack Holland

White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color by Ruby Hamad

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism by Bushra Rehman

Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by bell hooks

Here We Are: Feminism for the Real World by Kelly Jensen

The Equality Illusion by Kat Banyard

White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind by Koa Beck

Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates

I Have the Right To by Chessy Prout & Jenn Abelson

Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World by Kumari Jayawardena

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

How to Suppress Women's Writing by Joanna Russ

Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color by Andrea Ritchie

Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks

Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins

But Some of Us Are Brave: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: Black Women's Studies by Akasha Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, Barbara Smith Women, Race, and Class by Angela Y. Davis This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe L. Moraga, Gloria E. Anzaldúa

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDinn

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde

Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture by Roxane Gay

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by by Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa

Power Shift: The Longest Revolution by Sally Armstrong

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall

Had It Coming: What's Fair in the Age of #MeToo? by Robyn Doolittle

She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story that Helped Ignite a Movement by Jody Kantor & Megan Twohey

#Notyourprincess: Voices of Native American Women by Lisa Charleyboy

Girl Rising: Changing the World One Girl at a Time by Tanya Lee Stone

Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power by Sady Doyle

Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement by Robin Morgan (Editor)

Girls Make Media by Mary Celeste Kearney

Rock She Wrote: Women Write about Rock, Pop, and Rap by Evelyn McDonnell (Editor)

You Play the Girl: And Other Vexing Stories That Tell Women Who They Are by Carina Chocano

Things We Didn't Talk About When I Was a Girl: A Memoir by Jeannie Vanasco

The Portable Nineteenth-Century African American Women Writers by Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Editor), Hollis Robbins (Editor)

Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman by Lindy West

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World by Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman Bread Out of Stone: Recollections, Sex, Recognitions, Race, Dreaming, Politics by Dionne Brand

Other General Girl Power/Feminist Awesomeness

The Edge of Anything by Nora Shalaway Carpenter

Kat and Meg Conquer the World by Anna Priemaza

Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg

The Female of the Species by Mandy McGinnis

Pulp by Robin Talley

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

That Summer by Sarah Dessen

Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen

Honey, Baby, Sweetheart by Deb Caletti

The Girl With the Louding Voice by Abi Daré

Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

American Girls by Alison Umminger

Don't Think Twice by Ruth Pennebaker

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women by Alice Walker

You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down: Stories by Alice Walker

Wonder Woman: Warbringer by Leigh Bardugo

Sula by Toni Morrison

Rose Sees Red by Cecil Castellucci

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

Rules for Being a Girl by Candace Bushnell & Katie Cotugno

None of the Above by I.W. Gregorio

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Orlando by Virginia Woolf

Everything Must Go by Jenny Fran Davis

The House on Olive Street by Robyn Carr

Orange Is the New Black by Piper Kerman

Queens of Geek by Jen Wilde

Lady Luck's Map of Vegas by Barbara Samuel 

Fan the Fame by Anna Priemaza

Puddin' by Julie Murphy

A Heart in a Body in the World by Deb Caletti

Gravity Brings Me Down by Natale Ghent

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

The Summer of Impossibilities by Rachael Allen

The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall by Katie Alender

Don't Tell a Soul by Kirsten Miller

After the Ink Dries by Cassie Gustafson Girl, Unframed by Deb Caletti

We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire by Joy McCullough 

Maybe He Just Likes You by Barbara Dee

Things a Bright Girl Can Do by Sally Nicholls

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Uprising by Margaret Peterson Haddix

The Cure for Dreaming by Cat Winters

Dress Coded by Carrie Firestone

The Prettiest by Brigit Young

Don't Judge Me by Lisa Schroeder

The Roommate by Rosie Danan

Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir by Liz Prince

Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present by Lillian Faderman

All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation by Rebecca Traister

Paper Girls comic series by Brian K. Vaughan

Heavy Vinyl comic series by Carly Usdin

Please feel free to reblog with more!

[rockislandadultreads]

Goddesses, Warrior Women, & Females at War

Reading Recommendations 

Venus and Aphrodite: A Biography of Desire by Bettany Hughes

A cultural history of the goddess of love, from a New York Times bestselling and award-winning historian. Aphrodite was said to have been born from the sea, rising out of a froth of white foam. But long before the Ancient Greeks conceived of this voluptuous blonde, she existed as an early spirit of fertility on the shores of Cyprus -- and thousands of years before that, as a ferocious warrior-goddess in the Middle East. Proving that this fabled figure is so much more than an avatar of commercialized romance, historian Bettany Hughes reveals the remarkable lifestory of one of antiquity's most potent myths. Venus and Aphrodite brings together ancient art, mythology, and archaeological revelations to tell the story of human desire. From Mesopotamia to modern-day London, from Botticelli to Beyoncé, Hughes explains why this immortal goddess continues to entrance us today -- and how we trivialize her power at our peril.

The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor

The real history of the Amazons in war and love Amazons--fierce warrior women dwelling on the fringes of the known world--were the mythic archenemies of the ancient Greeks. Heracles and Achilles displayed their valor in duels with Amazon queens, and the Athenians reveled in their victory over a powerful Amazon army. In historical times, Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great, and the Roman general Pompey tangled with Amazons. But just who were these bold barbarian archers on horseback who gloried in fighting, hunting, and sexual freedom? Were Amazons real? In this deeply researched, wide-ranging, and lavishly illustrated book, National Book Award finalist Adrienne Mayor presents the Amazons as they have never been seen before. This is the first comprehensive account of warrior women in myth and history across the ancient world, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Great Wall of China. Mayor tells how amazing new archaeological discoveries of battle-scarred female skeletons buried with their weapons prove that women warriors were not merely figments of the Greek imagination. Combining classical myth and art, nomad traditions, and scientific archaeology, she reveals intimate, surprising details and original insights about the lives and legends of the women known as Amazons. Provocatively arguing that a timeless search for a balance between the sexes explains the allure of the Amazons, Mayor reminds us that there were as many Amazon love stories as there were war stories. The Greeks were not the only people enchanted by Amazons--Mayor shows that warlike women of nomadic cultures inspired exciting tales in ancient Egypt, Persia, India, Central Asia, and China.

Hell Hath No Fury: True Stories of Women at War from Antiquity to Iraq by Rosalind Miles, Robin Cross

An engaging collection that uncovers injustices in history and overturns misconceptions about the role of women in war When you think of war, you think of men, right? Not so fast. In Hell Hath No Fury, Rosalind Miles and Robin Cross prove that although many of their stories have been erased or forgotten, women have played an integral role in wars throughout history. In witty and compelling biographical essays categorized and alphabetized for easy reference, Miles and Cross introduce us to war leaders (Cleopatra, Elizabeth I, Margaret Thatcher); combatants (Molly Pitcher, Lily Litvak, Tammy Duckworth); spies (Belle Boyd, Virginia Hall, Noor Inayat Khan); reporters and propagandists (Martha Gellhorn, Tokyo Rose, Anna Politkov- skaya); and more. These are women who have taken action and who challenge our perceived notions of womanhood. Some will be familiar to readers, but most will not, though their deeds during wartime were every bit as important as their male contemporaries’ more heralded contributions.

Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine by Joseph Campbell, Safron Rossi (Editor)

The first Joseph Campbell work to focus on the Goddess, edited and introduced by Safron Rossi, PhD, Curator of Collections at Opus Archives and Research Center, home to the archival collections of Joseph Campbell, Marija Gimbutas, James Hillman, and other scholars of mythology, Jungian and archetypal psychology, and the humanities. Joseph Campbell brought mythology to a mass audience. His bestselling books, including The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, are the rare blockbusters that are also scholarly classics. While Campbell’s work reached wide and deep as he covered the world’s great mythological traditions, he never wrote a book on goddesses in world mythology. He did, however, have much to say on the subject. Between 1972 and 1986 he gave over twenty lectures and workshops on goddesses, exploring the figures, functions, symbols, and themes of the feminine divine, following them through their transformations across cultures and epochs. In this provocative volume, editor Safron Rossi—a goddess studies scholar, professor of mythology, and curator of collections at Opus Archives, which holds the Joseph Campbell archival manuscript collection and personal library—collects these lectures for the first time. In them, Campbell traces the evolution of the feminine divine from one Great Goddess to many, from Neolithic Old Europe to the Renaissance. He sheds new light on classical motifs and reveals how the feminine divine symbolizes the archetypal energies of transformation, initiation, and inspiration. 

[virgin-martyr]

RE: women poets v. god

“I raise my pelvis to God so that it may know the truth of how flowers smash through the long winter.” – Anne Sexton, excerpt from “The Fierceness of Female” 

“How was God to love me then? My body not a temple but the goat slit up inside it.” – Reyna N.A., excerpt of “III”

“I’ve come to understand that the best one can hope for as a human is to have a relationship with that emptiness where God would be if God were available, but God isn’t.” – Anne Carson, interviewed in The Art of Poetry No. 88  “Whatever God is, something gentle inside something ruined in the mind.” – Allison Benis White, excerpt from Please Bury Me in This

“Even then I will dance in my dire clothes, a crematory flight, blinding my hair and my fingers, wounding God with his blue face, his tyranny, his absolute kingdom, with my aphrodisiac.” — Anne Sexton, excerpt from “The Death King” 

”Interrogator: Why talk to God? Anne: It's better than playing bridge.” – Anne Sexton, excerpt from “Hurry Up Please It’s Time”

“God who ate everything, did this world feed you?” – Ruth Awad, excerpt from “Amor Fati” “My soul shattered with the strain of trying to belong to earth—What will you do, when it is your turn in the field with the god?” – Louise Glück, excerpt from “Persephone the Wanderer” “Sometimes God will drop a fit on you. Leave you on your bed howling. Don’t take it meanly. Because the outer walls of God are glass. I see a million souls clambering up the walls on the inside to escape God who is burning, untended.” – Anne Carson, excerpt from “The God Fit” “I have a dream-mother. She sang for my thirst, mysterious songs of God [and] ate into my heart violent and religious.” – Anne Sexton, excerpt from “The Fury of Guitars and Sopranos” “She longs to run herself a ground in a sad secret death. Is it a god inside you, girl?” – Anne Carson translating Grief Lessons: Four Plays 

“What’s closer to god: thirst or confession?” – Kristin Chang, excerpt from “Outcall #”

“I’ll remain tender inside like the pulp of some fruit of the desert or like the Devil immobilized in God.” – Nina Cassian, excerpt from “Cast”

“She decides God is no good, but he must exist, he must exist so she can hold him accountable.” — Ada Limón, excerpt from “The Echo Sounder,

“My hair used to be so long, I imagined it was a rope. In dreams I dangled from towers of salt, rising from the sea. Black horses sang to me. God’s favorite girl, dirt and honey, held together with string.” – Nicola Maye Goldberg, excerpt from “La Salpêtrière” “O God, I am not like you In your vacuous black, Stars stuck all over, bright stupid confetti. Eternity bores me, I never wanted it.” – Sylvia Plath, excerpt from “Years”

“Soon I will raise my face for a white flag, and when God enters the fort, I won't spit or gag on his finger. I will eat it like a white flower.” – Anne Sexton, excerpt from “Flee on Your Donkey” 

“I felt my own terribleness as if the façade of God were all that I had left” — Monica A. Hand, excerpt from “[In the end]”

“I once had a body that wasn’t a body—it was a voice in a god’s mouth. It was the holy vowel.” – Ruth Awad, excerpt from "Moral Inventory“

“And God was bored. He turned on his side like an opium eater and slept.” — Anne Sexton, excerpt from “Letters to Dr. Y.”

“I must be trying to be some god of mankind, I mean not your average destiny moth banging around in the dark, but something like a king! An eternity of angel clothes but better.” – Alice Notley, excerpt from “VOICES” 

“What is God to me but an open-mouthed stranger?” — Erika L. Sanchez

“I stand in the presence of the destroyed god” – Margaret Atwood, excerpt from “Speeches for Doctor Frankenstein”

“Then she journeyed back to her own house and the gods of the world were shut in the lavatory. At last! she cried out, and locked the door.” — Anne Sexton, excerpt from “Gods,” from The Death Notebooks

[shewhoworshipscarlin]

Hattie McDaniel

Hattie McDaniel (June 10, 1893 – October 26, 1952) was an American actress, singer-songwriter, and comedian. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as "Mammy” in Gone with the Wind (1939), becoming the first African American to win an Oscar.

In addition to acting in many films, McDaniel recorded 16 blues sides between 1926–1929 (10 were issued) and was a radio performer and television star; she was the first black woman to sing on radio in the United States. She appeared in over 300 films, although she received screen credits for only 83.

Encountering racism and racial segregation throughout her career, McDaniel was unable to attend the premiere of Gone with the Wind in Atlanta because it was held at a whites-only theater, and at the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles she sat at a segregated table at the side of the room; the Ambassador Hotel where the ceremony was held was for whites only, but allowed McDaniel in as a favor. When she died in 1952, her final wish--to be buried in Hollywood Cemetery--was denied because the graveyard was restricted to whites only.

McDaniel has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Hollywood: one at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard for her contributions to radio;  and one at 1719 Vine Street for acting in motion pictures. She was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1975, and in 2006 she became the first black Oscar winner honored with a U.S. postage stamp. In 2010, she was inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame.

McDaniel, the youngest of 13 children, was born in Denver in 1893 to formerly-enslaved parents in Wichita, Kansas. Her mother, Susan Holbert (1850–1920), was a singer of gospel music, and her father, Henry McDaniel (1845–1922), fought in the Civil War with the 122nd United States Colored Troops. In 1900, the family moved to Colorado, living first in Fort Collins and then in Denver, where Hattie attended Denver East High School (1908-1910) and in 1908 entered a contest sponsored by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, reciting "Convict Joe", later claiming she had won first place. Her brother, Sam McDaniel (1886–1962), played the butler in the 1948 Three Stooges' short film Heavenly Daze. Her sister Etta McDaniel was also an actress. 

McDaniel was a songwriter as well as a performer. She honed her songwriting skills while working with her brother Otis McDaniel's carnival company, a minstrel show. McDaniel and her sister Etta Goff launched an all-female minstrel show in 1914 called the McDaniel Sisters Company. After the death of her brother Otis in 1916, the troupe began to lose money, and Hattie did not get her next big break until 1920. From 1920 to 1925, she appeared with Professor George Morrison's Melody Hounds, a black touring ensemble. In the mid-1920s, she embarked on a radio career, singing with the Melody Hounds on station KOA in Denver. From 1926 to 1929, she recorded many of her songs for Okeh Records and Paramount Records in Chicago. McDaniel recorded seven sessions: one in the summer of 1926 on the rare Kansas City label Meritt; four sessions in Chicago for Okeh from late 1926 to late 1927 (of the 10 sides recorded, only four were issued), and two sessions in Chicago for Paramount in March 1929.

After the stock market crashed in 1929, McDaniel could only find work as a washroom attendant at Sam Pick's Club Madrid near Milwaukee. Despite the owner's reluctance to let her perform, she was eventually allowed to take the stage and soon became a regular performer.

In 1931, McDaniel moved to Los Angeles to join her brother Sam, and sisters Etta and Orlena. When she could not get film work, she took jobs as a maid or cook. Sam was working on a KNX radio program, The Optimistic Do-Nut Hour, and was able to get his sister a spot. She performed on radio as "Hi-Hat Hattie", a bossy maid who often "forgets her place". Her show became popular, but her salary was so low that she had to keep working as a maid. She made her first film appearance in The Golden West (1932), in which she played a maid. Her second appearance came in the highly successful Mae West film I'm No Angel (1933), in which she played one of the black maids with whom West camped it up backstage. She received several other uncredited film roles in the early 1930s, often singing in choruses. In 1934, McDaniel joined the Screen Actors Guild. She began to attract attention and landed larger film roles, which began to win her screen credits. Fox Film Corporation put her under contract to appear in The Little Colonel (1935), with Shirley Temple, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Lionel Barrymore.

Judge Priest (1934), directed by John Ford and starring Will Rogers, was the first film in which she played a major role. She had a leading part in the film and demonstrated her singing talent, including a duet with Rogers. McDaniel and Rogers became friends during filming. In 1935, McDaniel had prominent roles, as a slovenly maid in Alice Adams (RKO Pictures); a comic part as Jean Harlow's maid and traveling companion in China Seas (MGM) (McDaniels's first film with Clark Gable); and as the maid Isabella in Murder by Television, with Béla Lugosi. She appeared in the 1938 film Vivacious Lady, starring James Stewart and Ginger Rogers. McDaniel had a featured role as Queenie in the 1936 film Show Boat (Universal Pictures), starring Allan Jones and Irene Dunne, in which she sang a verse of Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man with Dunne, Helen Morgan, Paul Robeson, and a black chorus. She and Robeson sang "I Still Suits Me", written for the film by Kern and Hammerstein. After Show Boat, she had major roles in MGM's Saratoga (1937), starring Jean Harlow and Clark Gable; The Shopworn Angel (1938), with Margaret Sullavan; and The Mad Miss Manton (1938), starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. She had a minor role in the Carole Lombard–Frederic March film Nothing Sacred (1937), in which she played the wife of a shoeshine man (Troy Brown) masquerading as a sultan.

McDaniel was a friend of many of Hollywood's most popular stars, including Joan Crawford, Tallulah Bankhead, Bette Davis, Shirley Temple, Henry Fonda, Ronald Reagan, Olivia de Havilland, and Clark Gable. She starred with de Havilland and Gable in Gone with the Wind (1939). Around this time, she was criticized by members of the black community for the roles she accepted and for pursuing roles aggressively rather than rocking the Hollywood boat. For example, in The Little Colonel (1935), she played one of the black servants longing to return to the Old South, but her portrayal of Malena in RKO Pictures's Alice Adams angered white Southern audiences, because she stole several scenes from the film's white star, Katharine Hepburn. McDaniel ultimately became best known for playing a sassy, opinionated maid.

The competition to win the part of Mammy in Gone with the Wind was almost as fierce as that for Scarlett O'Hara. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to film producer David O. Selznick to ask that her own maid, Elizabeth McDuffie, be given the part. McDaniel did not think she would be chosen because she had earned her reputation as a comic actress. One source claimed that Clark Gable recommended that the role be given to McDaniel; in any case, she went to her audition dressed in an authentic maid's uniform and won the part.

Upon hearing of the planned film adaptation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) fought hard to require the film's producer and director to delete racial epithets from the movie (in particular the offensive slur "nigger") and to alter scenes that might be incendiary and that, in their view, were historically inaccurate. Of particular concern was a scene from the novel in which black men attack Scarlett O'Hara, after which the Ku Klux Klan, with its long history of provoking terror on black communities, is presented as a savior. Throughout the South, black men were being lynched based upon false allegations they had harmed white women. That attack scene was altered, and some offensive language was modified, but another epithet, "darkie", remained in the film, and the film's message with respect to slavery remained essentially the same. Consistent with the book, the film's screenplay also referred to poor whites as "white trash", and it ascribed these words equally to characters black and white.

Loew's Grand Theater on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia was selected by the studio as the site for the Friday, December 15, 1939 premiere of Gone with the Wind.  Studio head David O. Selznick asked that McDaniel be permitted to attend, but MGM advised him not to, because of Georgia's segregation laws. Clark Gable threatened to boycott the Atlanta premiere unless McDaniel were allowed to attend, but McDaniel convinced him to attend anyway.

Most of Atlanta's 300,000 citizens crowded the route of the seven-mile  motorcade that carried the film's other stars and executives from the airport to the Georgian Terrace Hotel, where they stayed. While Jim Crow laws kept McDaniel from the Atlanta premiere, she did attend the film's Hollywood debut on December 28, 1939. Upon Selznick's insistence, her picture was also featured prominently in the program.

For her performance as the house slave who repeatedly scolds her owner's daughter, Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh), and scoffs at Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), McDaniel won the 1939 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first black actor to have been nominated and win an Oscar. "I loved Mammy," McDaniel said when speaking to the white press about the character. "I think I understood her because my own grandmother worked on a plantation not unlike Tara." Her role in Gone with the Wind had alarmed some whites in the South; there were complaints that in the film she had been too "familiar" with her white owners. At least one writer pointed out that McDaniel's character did not significantly depart from Mammy's persona in Margaret Mitchell's novel, and that in both the film and the book, the much younger Scarlett speaks to Mammy in ways that would be deemed inappropriate for a Southern teenager of that era to speak to a much older white person, and that neither the book nor the film hints of the existence of Mammy's own children (dead or alive), her own family (dead or alive), a real name, or her desires to have anything other than a life at Tara, serving on a slave plantation. Moreover, while Mammy scolds the younger Scarlett, she never crosses Mrs. O'Hara, the more senior white woman in the household. Some critics felt that McDaniel not only accepted the roles but also in her statements to the press acquiesced in Hollywood's stereotypes, providing fuel for critics of those who were fighting for black civil rights. Later, when McDaniel tried to take her "Mammy" character on a road show, black audiences did not prove receptive.

While many black people were happy over McDaniel's personal victory, they also viewed it as bittersweet. They believed Gone With the Wind celebrated the slave system and condemned the forces that destroyed it. For them, the unique accolade McDaniel had won suggested that only those who did not protest Hollywood's systemic use of racial stereotypes could find work and success there.

The Twelfth Academy Awards took place at the Coconut Grove Restaurant of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. It was preceded by a banquet in the same room. Louella Parsons, an American gossip columnist, wrote about Oscar night, February 29, 1940:

Hattie McDaniel earned that gold Oscar by her fine performance of 'Mammy' in Gone with the Wind. If you had seen her face when she walked up to the platform and took the gold trophy, you would have had the choke in your voice that all of us had when Hattie, hair trimmed with gardenias, face alight, and dress up to the queen's taste, accepted the honor in one of the finest speeches ever given on the Academy floor.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, fellow members of the motion picture industry and honored guests: This is one of the happiest moments of my life, and I want to thank each one of you who had a part in selecting me for one of their awards, for your kindness. It has made me feel very, very humble; and I shall always hold it as a beacon for anything that I may be able to do in the future. I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry. My heart is too full to tell you just how I feel, and may I say thank you and God bless you.

McDaniel received a plaque-style Oscar, approximately 5.5 inches by 6 inches, the type awarded to all Best Supporting Actors and Actresses at that time. She and her escort were required to sit at a segregated table for two at the far wall of the room; her white agent, William Meiklejohn, sat at the same table. The hotel had a strict no-blacks policy, but allowed McDaniel in as a favor. The discrimination continued after the award ceremony as well as her white co-stars went to a "no-blacks" club, where McDaniel was also denied entry. Another black woman did not win an Oscar again for 50 years, with Whoopi Goldberg winning Best Supporting Actress for her role in Ghost. Weeks prior to McDaniel winning her Oscar, there was even more controversy. David Selznick, the producer of Gone With the Wind, omitted the faces of all the black actors on the posters advertising the movie in the South. None of the black cast members were allowed to attend the premiere for the movie.

Gone with the Wind won eight Academy Awards. It was later named by the American Film Institute (AFI) as number four among the top 100 American films of all time in the 1998 ranking and number six in the 2007 ranking.

In the Warner Bros. film In This Our Life (1942), starring Bette Davis and directed by John Huston, McDaniel once again played a domestic, but one who confronts racial issues when her son, a law student, is wrongly accused of manslaughter. McDaniel was in the same studio's Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943), with Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis. In its review of the film, Time wrote that McDaniel was comic relief in an otherwise "grim study," writing, "Hattie McDaniel, whose bubbling, blaring good humor more than redeems the roaring bad taste of a Harlem number called Ice Cold Katie". McDaniel continued to play maids during the war years for Warners in The Male Animal (1942) and United Artists' Since You Went Away (1944), but her feistiness was toned down to reflect the era's somber news. She also played the maid in Song of the South (1946) for Disney.

She made her last film appearances in Mickey (1948) and Family Honeymoon (1949), where that same year, she appeared on the live CBS television program The Ed Wynn Show. She remained active on radio and television in her final years, becoming the first black actor to star in her own radio show with the comedy series Beulah. She also starred in the television version of the show, replacing Ethel Waters after the first season. (Waters had apparently expressed concerns over stereotypes in the role.) Beulah was a hit, however, and earned McDaniel $2,000 per week; however, the show was controversial. In 1951, the United States Army ceased broadcasting Beulah in Asia because troops complained that the show perpetuated negative stereotypes of black men as shiftless and lazy and interfered with the ability of black troops to perform their mission. After filming a handful of episodes, however, McDaniel learned she had breast cancer. By the spring of 1952, she was too ill to work and was replaced by Louise Beavers.

As her fame grew, McDaniel faced growing criticism from some members of the black community. Groups such as the NAACP complained that Hollywood stereotypes not only restricted black actors to servant roles but often portrayed them as lazy, dim-witted, satisfied with lowly positions, or violent. In addition to addressing the studios, they called upon actors, and especially leading black actors, to pressure studios to offer more substantive roles and at least not pander to stereotypes. They also argued that these portrayals were unfair as well as inaccurate and that, coupled with segregation and other forms of discrimination, such stereotypes were making it difficult for all black people, not only actors, to overcome racism and succeed in the entertainment industry. Some attacked McDaniel for being an "Uncle Tom"—a person willing to advance personally by perpetuating racial stereotypes or being an agreeable agent of offensive racial restrictions. McDaniel characterized these challenges as class-based biases against domestics, a claim that white columnists seemed to accept. And she reportedly said, "Why should I complain about making $700 a week playing a maid? If I didn't, I'd be making $7 a week being one."

McDaniel may also have been criticized because, unlike many other black entertainers, she was not associated with civil rights protests and was largely absent from efforts to establish a commercial base for independent black films. She did not join the Negro Actors Guild of America until 1947, late in her career. McDaniel hired one of the few white agents who would represent black actors at the time, William Meiklejohn, to advance her career. Evidence suggests her avoidance of political controversy was deliberate. When columnist Hedda Hopper sent her Richard Nixon placards and asked McDaniel to distribute them, McDaniel declined, replying she had long ago decided to stay out of politics. "Beulah is everybody's friend," she said. Since she was earning a living honestly, she added, she should not be criticized for accepting such work as was offered. Her critics, especially Walter White of the NAACP, claimed that she and other actors who agreed to portray stereotypes were not a neutral force but rather willing agents of black oppression.

McDaniel and other black actresses and actors feared that their roles would evaporate if the NAACP and other Hollywood critics complained too loudly. She blamed these critics for hindering her career and sought the help of allies of doubtful reputation. After speaking with McDaniel, Hedda Hopper even claimed that McDaniel's career troubles were not the result of racism but had been caused by McDaniel's "own people".

In August 1950, McDaniel suffered a heart ailment and entered Temple Hospital in semi-critical condition. She was released in October to recuperate at home, and she was cited by United Press on January 3, 1951, as showing "slight improvement in her recovery from a mild stroke."

McDaniel died of breast cancer at age 59 on October 26, 1952, in the hospital on the grounds of the Motion Picture House in Woodland Hills, California. She was survived by her brother Sam McDaniel. Thousands of mourners turned out to celebrate her life and achievements. In her will, McDaniel wrote,

"I desire a white casket and a white shroud; white gardenias in my hair and in my hands, together with a white gardenia blanket and a pillow of red roses. I also wish to be buried in the Hollywood Cemetery".

Hollywood Cemetery, on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, is the resting place of movie stars such as Douglas Fairbanks and Rudolph Valentino. Its owner at the time, Jules Roth, refused to allow her to be buried there, because, at the time of McDaniel's death, the cemetery practiced racial segregation and would not accept the remains of black people for burial. Her second choice was Rosedale Cemetery (now known as Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery), where she lies today.

In 1999, Tyler Cassidy, the new owner of the Hollywood Cemetery (renamed the Hollywood Forever Cemetery), offered to have McDaniel re-interred there. Her family did not wish to disturb her remains and declined the offer. Instead, Hollywood Forever Cemetery built a large cenotaph on the lawn overlooking its lake. It is one of Hollywood's most popular tourist attractions.

McDaniel's last will and testament of December 1951 bequeathed her Oscar to Howard University, where she had been honored by the students with a luncheon after she had won her Oscar. At the time of her death, McDaniel would have had few options. Very few white institutions in that day preserved black history. Historically, black colleges had been where such artifacts were placed. Despite evidence McDaniel had earned an excellent income as an actress, her final estate was less than $10,000. The IRS claimed the estate owed more than $11,000 in taxes. In the end, the probate court ordered all of her property, including her Oscar, sold to pay off creditors. Years later, the Oscar turned up where McDaniel wanted it to be: Howard University, where, according to reports, it was displayed in a glass case in the university's drama department.

The whereabouts of McDaniel's Oscar are currently unknown. In 1992, Jet magazine reported that Howard University could not find it and alleged that it had disappeared during protests in the 1960s. In 1998, Howard University stated that it could find no written record of the Oscar having arrived at Howard. In 2007, an article in The Huffington Post repeated rumors that the Oscar had been cast into the Potomac River by angry civil rights protesters in the 1960s. The assertion reappeared in The Huffington Post under the same byline in 2009.

In 2010, Mo'Nique, the winner of the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Precious, wearing a blue dress and gardenias in her hair, as McDaniel had at the ceremony in 1940, in her acceptance speech thanked McDaniel "for enduring all that she had to so that I would not have to". Her speech revived interest in the whereabouts of McDaniel's Oscar.

In November 2011, W. B. Carter, of the George Washington University Law School, published the results of her year-and-a-half-long investigation into the Oscar's fate. Carter rejected claims that students had stolen the Oscar (and thrown it in the Potomac River) as wild speculation or fabrication that traded on long-perpetuated stereotypes of blacks. She questioned the sourcing of The Huffington Post stories. Instead, she argued that the Oscar had likely been returned to Howard University's Channing Pollack Theater Collection between the spring of 1971 and the summer of 1973 or had possibly been boxed and stored in the drama department at that time. The reason for its removal, she argued, was not civil rights unrest but rather efforts to make room for a new generation of black performers. If neither the Oscar nor any paper trail of its ultimate destiny can be found at Howard today, she suggested, inadequate storage or record-keeping in a time of financial constraints and national turbulence may be blamed. She also suggested that a new generation of caretakers may have failed to realize the historic significance of the award.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattie_McDaniel

[navigatrixnarrations]

Sometimes Always, Part 5: Thief In the Night

Catch up here

Warnings: Canon-typical violence, language

Word Count: 2841

The night is moonless and the road is blocked by branches and debris. From out of the gloom, a rasping voice rumbles “Stand and deliver! Your money or your life!” The coachman’s lamp reveals a broad-shouldered man standing beside the makeshift barricade before the stopped carriage, completely swathed in dark clothing, face hidden, a cutlass at his waist, aiming a pistol.

The adrenaline sings in Charles Vane’s blood; he’s missed the thrill of the plunder. This promises to be a rich prize, one that will assist in repairing the Adventure. One that may make Margaret see him as a partner rather than a burden, an obligation, or worst of all, an object of pity.

The coachman is older, with a soldier’s bearing, but seems disinclined to put up any resistance. In the coach, a man made rich off the blood and toil of those he claimed to own. His shaking hands are trying to load a pistol, which Vane snatches from his hand. To think this sniveling, scared weakling who would call him a scoundrel had the confidence to travel unguarded with this amount of coin — there’s the difference between those who dwell on land and those whose home is the sea, he supposes. The ocean is unforgiving and even wealthy men cannot stay sheltered in its domain.

Vane hoists the sack of coin over his shoulder. A pistol shot rings out, but misses, and despite the snow on the ground, he’s into the trees and out of sight before the coachman or the mark could reload. By the time he pushes his skiff from the riverbank, he almost feels like a proper pirate again.

The night is bone-achingly cold, even more so on the water. If he hadn’t botched things so terribly, he’d be warm in the West Indies. He’d be known and feared, not a thief in the night with his face and name hidden. He’d have a crew, and he’d be sailing under the black with Margaret at his side...

Can he pinpoint it, the moment he started to trust her? Perhaps it was when he awoke aboard the Revenge and she told him he was free.

“What kind of weapon made that?” She pointed at the brand on his chest.

“Hot iron.”

“Why?”

“So the person who owned me” -- he felt his face twist as he said it -- “could tell I was his slave. Find me and take me back there.”

“I won’t let him,” she said with a ferocious scowl, her voice surprisingly dark for one so young. “I won’t let anyone.” And he believed her. He was right to believe her.

He shakes himself from his reverie. He’s got to focus on the task at hand. There’s little traffic in the harbor tonight, but still enough for him to blend in as he sails around the horn of the Battery and makes his way back to the garret. With his hair tied back, a woolen cap pulled low and his laborer’s clothes, with the sack of coin slung over his shoulder he looks like any other longshoreman coming home from a long shift of loading and unloading cargo.

He imagines the look on Margaret’s face when he shows her what he’s robbed, and smiles as he climbs the stairs.

His smile fades as the door handle is jerked right out of his hand by her, her expression one of worry and anger. “Thought you’d have been back hours ago. Was out looking for you.”

“I told you I’d be back.”

“I was afraid someone recognized you! I was afraid you’d been captured or killed!” Her chest heaves under her coat, and he feels his body warm more than the small fire in the hearth should have allowed.

“Well, I wasn’t. And look what I’ve brought us.” She was worried? About him? He drops the sack on the table and opens it. “Coin, Magpie, more than enough to complete the repairs to the Adventure.” When she doesn’t respond, he repeats “It’s coin. We won’t even need to fence it.”

Margaret sits down heavily and wrestles her temper. “Where the fuck did you get all this?”

“A bit of highway robbery.”

“Charles. Next time, if there is a next time, take me with you.”

“Didn’t want to put you in danger.”

She narrows her eyes and her lower lip juts out stubbornly. “Says the man whose life I’ve saved how many times now?”

They stare at each other, neither willing to back down.

“I’ve got things to do besides make sure you don’t get yourself killed,” she informs him. And then, more quietly, so quiet as to be nigh inaudible, “I lost Sully. I can’t lose you too, not again.”

“You won’t.”

The table is between them, and he’s about to upend it, coins and all, just to get it out of the way, when Margaret gets up to stoke the fire. “It’s not that I’m ungrateful, Charles. But you’ve a recent history of getting yourself nearly killed to help friends.” She pauses. “They’d never say so, but Anne and Jack are beside themselves with guilt about what happened.”

“How the fuck do you know about that?”

“Idelle told me.” Margaret fixes Vane with a fierce stare as she returns to her seat across the table. “She loves you dearly, you know.”

“Idelle is a good woman.” He’d sensed sometimes that she did, and not only because she didn’t always charge him in full for her services, though at the time he’d mostly put that down to being one of the few who took care to make sure she enjoyed herself as well. And he respected her directness and sharp mind -- traits she shared with Margaret. Yes, there was the rub.

“She almost broke when you shook your head no from the gallows.”

Vane doesn’t reply.

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d be one to give up, regardless of your pretty speech about fearing death being a choice.” He can almost hear in her accusatory tone the words Margaret once cried out: I thought I knew you, Charles! More fool me.

“Didn’t want to risk more of us getting killed trying to save me. Thought my death would drive a rebellion.”

“It wasn’t at all because some part of you no longer wanted to live?”

Sometimes he swears the blasted woman has the ability to see into his mind. Though if that was the case, perhaps things between them would have taken a different path. “I was worth more dead than alive. Had to leave Nassau. Fucked over your father a second time to help Flint fight England. And…” he trails off and stares into the middle distance.

“And?”

“The woman I was in love with loved another.” Vane’s voice is low, confessional, but there’s an edge of challenge in it.

“The woman you were in love with loved only power. Control. Wrapping her soft, weak little hands around whatever bits of influence she could grasp,” Margaret says waspishly.

Vane’s thin lips curl back, baring his teeth. “I’m not talking about Eleanor.”

“No?”

“No!” Vane slams the palm of his hand into the table for emphasis. Fucking hell, why can’t she understand what he’s telling her? He’d stopped loving Eleanor well before her final betrayal, well before she battered his face in his cell as he awaited hanging, well before he saw the sickening, smug look on her face as he stood at the gallows, though that certainly drove the point home.

His arm tremors, and from the slight furrowing of Margaret’s brow, she noticed. He wonders if she takes any satisfaction in seeing him like this, broken and brought low. He can’t say he would blame her if she did. But her lips part in concern, and her eyes are worried. She wraps a hand, callused and graceful, around his forearm.

“I need you to know that I took the shot the moment I was able; I didn’t delay or let you hang any longer than necessary.”

“I never doubted that, Magpie.” And he didn’t. Margaret never struck him in anger, never lied or broke her word to him. The scar on his brow is his own fault for startling her when she was holding a marlinspike; as for the scars on his heart, well, perhaps those are his own fault too.

It was barely dawn when Sully staggered shirtless out of Margaret’s tent, reeking of drink. Vane, up all night on watch duty in the Revenge camp, wanted to gut him. How dare he go to her drunk like that? Vane felt sick to his stomach, as though he’d been sucker-punched while nauseous. Hearing him approach, Sully turned to him with a grin. “Morning Charles…” His smile turned to a look of surprise when Vane shoved him, knocking him over backward into the sand, his long plait flying over his shoulder as he fell.

“Charles!” Margaret yanked on his arm, spinning him around to face her. She was fully clothed, though she looked like she just woke up, and she was livid. “What the fuck did you do that for?”

“You’ve a right to fuck any man you wish to, Magpie, but you at least deserve one who isn’t stumbling drunk.”

“Charles.” Margaret’s voice was patient, as though speaking to an idiot or a recalcitrant child, “I didn’t fuck Sully. I’ve never fucked anyone, of any state of sobriety. I’m likely the only virgin in Nassau.”

He didn’t smell sex on either of them, it was true, and Margaret didn’t even smell of rum. But even so. “What was I to think, when he stayed the night in your tent?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but he decided to drink on an empty stomach, and I dragged him in there to sleep it off.”

Sully hauled himself to his feet. “I was a perfect gent to our Maggie-Pie, I was,” he announced. “And I’ll knife anyone who isn’t.”

Margaret whirled on him. “If you call me Maggie-Pie, I’m going to call you Mick.”

“I hate it when you do that,” Sully said cheerily. “Look sharp, here comes Hands.” The three of them straightened their postures; it was important to present a united front before that bastard.

******

The first year after Sully was killed passed in a haze of agony. The second year, Margaret was mostly numb. By the third year, the grief had become sneakier, creeping up to knife her when she least expected it. She could go days feeling what now passed for fine, and then something -- the scent of the tobacco he’d favored, a snippet of a song he’d liked -- would rip open the wound.

What a fool I am, thinking Charles might care for me, Margaret berates herself. Her flirtations the night of the skiff race went uncommented-on, unacted-on. Of course she should have expected that: the moment there was a girl fawning over him whose body was unscarred by blades and musket balls, whose hands weren’t roughened by rope and salt, whose face wasn’t bronzed by the sun, he’d stopped paying her any attention, hadn’t he.

He’s finally asleep, and she can weep. Quietly. She forces herself to stay silent despite the sobs wracking her body. Then a hand, Vane’s hand, reaches for her in the dark, finds her own, and holds it. She glances at him, crouched beside her bed so as not to loom over her. She hadn’t even heard him come into her room.

“Turnabout is fair play,” he says. She sits up, and he sits beside her, using his free hand to wipe her tears. Margaret tries to affect a steely dignity, but his voice, honey over gravel, cuts through. “You held my hand in the dark. I was a fool to have let myself ignore that. A man should never forget who held his hand in the dark.” She lets him gather her in his arms; it’s been so long since the last time she’d been held. She feels the stubble of his cheek pressed to the top of her head, his long hair hanging over her arm, the deep inhale he takes. She allows herself to lean into him, to nestle her face into the junction of his neck and shoulder and inhale the smoky scent of him. “Now,” he continues, “do you want to tell me what this is about?”

“Of course I fucking don’t.”

One of Vane’s hands is stroking her hair while the other rests between her shoulder blades, heavy and warm and anchoring. “I recall,” he says, his voice a purr reverberating through her torso, “a smart girl once telling me that there is nothing wrong with accepting help from people who care for me. That I’m not alone in the world.”

Margaret raises her head and looks at him sharply. Did he just say he cares for her? She had been telling herself that she’d laugh in Vane’s face if he showed any signs of being sweet on her. But here, in this moment, in his arms, she can’t bring herself to be cruel to him on purpose, not when his gaze is so gentle, so uncharacteristically unguarded. God knows they’d caused each other enough pain already, however inadvertently. “And turnabout is fair play, Charles?”

The strong shoulder that her cheek was just resting upon lifts in a shrug. “You ought to take your own advice.”

She leads him into the main room, where it’s warmer. Brings out the rum bottle. Vane is leaning toward her, letting her have her silence, but his own silence has a questioning quality to it.

“I’m thinking of the nature of promises. How to keep them. What it means to keep them.” Vane is simply watching her, waiting for her to continue. She takes a swig of rum; she wants liquid courage for what she’s about to tell him. “When Sully got killed, I threw everything he owned overboard. Any reminder of him was too much to bear.” She’d been certain she’d lose her mind with grief if she saw a shirt of his on someone else. She sees Vane trying to connect what she’s saying. “He once made me promise if he should die first, that I wouldn’t spend my life in mourning. That I’d find a way to be happy again.” And someone to be happy with, Sully had emphasized, though she’s not ready to tell Vane that part. “But I can’t see a way forward.”

“You were happy, though. With him.” He isn’t asking a question.

“Yes.”

Vane nods to himself and stares down at the coin he’s rolling back and forth between his fingers. “That’s all I ever wanted for you, Magpie. For you to be happy.”

For a moment, Margaret is afraid she’s going to burst into tears again, and she forces her expression into one of stoicism. “Were you happy? With her?”

The coin ceases its glittering dance across Vane’s knuckles. “I thought I was, for a time.”

“Do tell.”

He raises his face with a scowl to meet Margaret’s eyes, but his expression softens when he sees the real curiosity there. “In the beginning, she pursued me hard, lavished me with what I thought was love. Then she’d withdraw her affection, and I’d try to regain it. I see now that was her strategy.”

“To hear Idelle and some of the others tell it, Eleanor had you dancing like a puppet on a string.” Vane recoils as though she’d slapped him, and Margaret wonders if she pushed him too far, twisted a knife in him that she hadn't meant to insert, truly she hadn’t. “Charles, I…”

He cuts her off. “I assure you that I’ve got long-overdue clarity about the manner of woman she is.” He closes his eyes for a moment and sags slightly in his chair. He huffs out a short, mirthless laugh. “She’s a shit and everything you told me was correct.”

Margaret stands with an unstifled yawn. Damnation, but she’s exhausted. She considers telling him it took him long enough to figure out what she and Sully saw from the start, but what purpose would that serve? “I’ve got to be up early. Tide’s coming in about five, and the Adventure should be coming out of drydock with it. Got to move her to a proper slip.” Vane rises as well and they stand for a moment, looking at each other with uncertainty. He looks like he’s about to step towards her, so she simply says “Good night, Charles.” In response, he reaches out to squeeze her hand, ever so briefly.

As she settles herself back into bed, she smells him brewing coffee; he’s gotten in the habit of fixing a pot of it so that it would be ready when they woke, something she appreciates. If she could see through the door, she’d note him sitting before the fire, elbow on his knee and chin in his hand, staring into the flames, a man lost in thought.

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