#Curating America's Painful Past

[his5067forjvg]

Who are National Museums For?

In Curating America's Painful Past: Memory, Museums, and the National Imagination the author, Tim Gruenewald, discusses the legacies and present of American Museums and how they contribute to the creation of a national narrative of history. He contextualizes the book within the social upheaval of 2020 examining our collective memories as a way of pushing for current solutions. 

In chapter 4 of Gruenewald’s book, he examines the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI.) In 2018 I had the fortune of visiting this institution and while I had historical context for much of the treatment of Native Americans due to personal interest and enjoyed the communal and hopeful tones of the NMAI, I understand the criticism leveled in this chapter. Had I not taken previous steps to understand the constant upheaval between the U.S. government and Native peoples I think I would have noticed missing elements. The approach of this museum is fundamentally flawed like Gruenewald asserts, you can not celebrate survival without an understanding of what people had to overcome. In their attempt to decolonize the museum they in fact removed the context in which native people lived and still live. For an institution such as this I also agree that it's strange the only memorial on the National Mall for Native Americans is specifically for veterans. 

I think this chapter as well as the other examples explored call greater questions of what these museums are for, If not presenting a well nuanced forum for discussion about our nation’s past, present, and future. Due to their location on the National Mall you would think these Musuems are for us, the people, but Gruenewald's work left me asking these questions: Are they merely propaganda? If the white house is the people’s house, are these museum’s not the people’s as well? And if they are, then are they fulfilling their obligations? 

[dorielyyy]

blog 5

This week introduced two new movies called “Beloved” and “Devil in America” with similar but different storylines that included backgrounds in slavery and racism. In “Beloved,” the story begins with suspense with many eye-opening foreshadowing and imagery. When old movies are curated with ghosts and special effects, it adds more energy and tension to a film. I enjoy watching movies like “The Sunken Place,” which uses a different kind of supernatural behavior: "hypnotism.” The way the ghost would haunt Sethe and terrorize her life for sacrificing her kids is very shocking to me. The fact that slavery and racism haunt the mother for her decisions made it such a tragic and devastating storyline. Beloved, the ghost, reminded Sethe of the good that she thought to believe. Still, she was terrorized to be reminded that she was an African American who endured slavery and was about to have her children undergo the horrific reality of their people. As the story progressed, it reminded me of how my parents did a lot to leave Iran to live a better life in America but are still surrounded by the tragedies and realities that are currently taking place in their homeland. As a Persian-Jewish woman, my mother was not permitted to practice her religion or the freedom to partake in regular activities that included males due to her gender. To be reminded of the person you initially are and raised to be, only to be hated on and discriminated against, is hateful. There are many religions and cultures of the world today that revolve around hate and discrimination. Along the track of discrimination, “Devil in America” is the other movie discussed this week that has traits of white supremacy between a kid between “Easter” and a white man who encounters the tobacco field. Easter is an African American protagonist with angels on her shoulders. Within this story, I understand how the past of her family was reprimanded for being African American. She was taught that there is a devil, and her understanding of the devil was white supremacy. It pains me to hear that at a young age, children are cautious about their actions and how their society is endangered due to the color of their skin. As history catches up to Easter, she learns that the past is vital to her life and how she is treated. However, the story's use of angels is fascinating since they test her conscience of right and wrong. Overall, both of these films revolve around the themes of slavery and racism from hundreds of years ago and how these tragedies will haunt families forever. 

[biglisbonnews]

Near Cape Town, the São José Shipwreck Is a Unique Symbol of A Painful Legacy This piece was originally published in The Guardian and appears here as part of our Climate Desk collaboration. In 2015, a delegation from the Smithsonian Institution traveled to Mozambique to inform the Makua people of a singular and long-overdue discovery. Two hundred and twenty-one years after it sank in treacherous waters off Cape Town, claiming the lives of 212 enslaved people, the wreck of the Portuguese slave ship the São José Paquete D’Africa had been found. When told the news, a Makua leader responded with a gesture that no one on the delegation will ever forget. “One of the chiefs took a vessel we had, filled it with soil and asked us to bring that vessel back to the site of the slave ship so that, for the first time since the 18th century, his people could sleep in their own land,” says Lonnie Bunch, now the secretary of the Smithsonian. For Bunch and his colleagues, the importance of the find cannot be overstated. Although the São José—which was bound for Brazil—is the first ship to be recovered that is known to have sunk while transporting enslaved people, it was just one of the tens of thousands that plied their trade over the four centuries of the transatlantic slave trade, during which more than 12 million African men, women, and children were enslaved. And yet, as Bunch points out, maritime archaeology has tended to focus its masked eye on the wrecks of rich and famous ships rather than those that traded in flesh and blood. Redressing that archaeological, academic, and sociocultural imbalance was the driving force behind the Slave Wrecks Project, a partnership established in 2008 between the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and other institutions and organizations in Africa and the United States. “People talk about the slave trade; they talk about the millions of people who were transported, but it’s hard to really imagine that, so we wanted to reduce it to human scale by really focusing on a single ship, on the people on the ship, and the story around the ship,” says Bunch. “Yes, we tell you about the thousands of ships that brought the enslaved, but we also say: ‘Here’s a way to humanize it.’” The basic idea, he adds, was to tell people that “discovering your enslaved past is as important a treasure as finding the Titanic.” As well as locating the wreck of the São José, the Slave Wrecks Project has developed programs to broaden and diversify the field by training people in Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa, and the Caribbean in diving, archaeology, and museum conservation and curation. Today, the project is investigating a handful of slave wrecks in Brazil, the Caribbean, West Africa, and North America. “We need to think about how these matters that seem submerged and lost are really waiting there for us all to find, and to change our scope of how we understand our world,” says Paul Gardullo, a curator at the NMAAHC and director of the Slave Wrecks Project. “This search is connected to something much, much bigger than any one particular search for a ship; it’s a search for ourselves and it’s a search for how we relate to each other in the world and how we make the world better.” The Smithsonian’s activities, however, extend well beyond the seabed. Bunch and Gardullo were in Lisbon last month to take part in an international symposium on slavery, museums, and racism. The choice of host country is not accidental. Like other former slave-trading colonial powers, Portugal—the European country with the longest historical involvement in the slave trade—has struggled to confront its past. In 2022, Europe’s top human rights body, the Council of Europe, urged Lisbon to rethink its approach to teaching colonial history, saying: “Further efforts are necessary for Portugal to come to terms with past human rights violations to tackle racist biases against people of African descent inherited from a colonial past and historical slave trade.” As Gardullo notes: “Portugal is very proud of its maritime heritage, but is very silent about that heritage’s connection to slavery and colonization.” Both he and Bunch hope the conference—which included a one-day symposium with visitors from Angola, Brazil, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands—will reinvigorate stalled efforts to get Portugal to reflect on its past. “Often we’re prophets without honor in our own land and in essence when someone else comes in and says these are important issues, suddenly that then stimulates a lot of what people are doing,” says Bunch. “Part of it is saying that this is OK to wrestle with—it’s more than OK, it’s crucially important.” “Part of it is saying that this is OK to wrestle with—it’s more than OK, it’s crucially important.” In December 2022, the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, formally apologized for the role of the Netherlands in the slave trade, saying it had “enabled, encouraged, and profited from slavery,” and done things that “cannot be erased, only faced up to." For Bunch, the need for honest conversations “about the underlying issues that we have to grapple with” has been underlined by the murder of George Floyd, by Black Lives Matter, and by the Brixton riots. At its most basic, it is about being truthful about a painful and shameful shared history. “I think that people are really ambivalent about discussing slavery and looking at its past because the notion is: ‘Is this about guilt?’” Bunch says. “For me, it’s about: ‘How do you understand yourself?’ There’s a big part of who you are—whether it’s [in] Portugal, or Brazil, or the U.S.—that you can’t understand without that. I’ve always been struck by how people are comfortable recognizing that their great-grandfather or great-grandmother’s DNA shapes them, but what they’re not as comfortable understanding is the history that shaped their great-grandfather and which also continues to shape them.” It is also about respect, remembrance, and perseverance. When the day finally came to scatter the earth from the Makua elder, the conditions in Cape Town were all too reminiscent of those that must have accompanied the sinking of the São José in December 1794. “We’re there and we can’t get the boats out because the water’s so bad, the wind and the rain are so bad,” says Bunch. “The divers swim out as far as they can and then they sprinkle the soil. And on all that’s holy, the sun came out, the rain stopped, the wind stopped blowing. It was the most beautiful day you could imagine. “I had never in my career really talked about ancestors or spirituality, but that moment made me realize that there is something so much greater than what we can be: Literally the moment that soil was poured, the weather changed dramatically as a way to say that remembering is powerful.” https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/sao-jose-shipwreck-slavery

[paigelts05]

Renegade AU Lore Dump: FazFrights edition.

Only select Fazbears Frights stories are cannon in the Renegade AU, and the post ending outcome is generaly greatly different at that.

'Fetch' takes place in 2007 and Greg is the father of Gregory. As of security breach, Greg is comatose in a hospital in Norway and is known as 'the man with the dog bites', whilst Gregory is orphaned in America.

Sarah gets to grips with being a pile of scrap and repairs the disk.

Millie survives, having lost a hand (and later taking FT Freddy's as her prosthetic). She opens an antiques store at 18 and starts dating Sarah. There is a desk flip calendar on her desk labelled with "days since Sarah last ran into traffic to save someone", and it never gets past 7. Sarah gets scrap off of Millie (who hordes the stuff) to repair herself.

The ball pit balls were all handed over to Millie as those who had parts of themselves stuck in the balls kept on walking into her shop whenever the police brought the balls around. So they just leave them with her. One of the balls reversed the body swap that occurred in 'loney freddy'.

'In the flesh' is the story of a stray bullet and actually has nothing to do with William any more than a Scientist, Camilla, saying 'you ordered my daughters death, now feel pain'. Camilla is the mother of Celes, C location's Chica spirit, and Susanna, Y location's Jeremy(guard). Celes (11 as of 87) died, and Susana (22 as of 87) had her head bit by Mangle but survived. The code forces a buffer overflow and uses that to cause 'changes' to a person (Dr Grimm's notes really helped her out). The project this code was meant to be in was supposed to be worked on my the C location manager, but instead wound up getting worked on almost two decades later by some shmuck. The rabbit child was found by Paranormal Responder Cassy Taper, and it imprinted on her immediately, so it's just a slightly odd kid really. The moral is manage your heap and stack bozo if I see one more overflow error I swear.

Yes 'Fazgoo' exists. It's remnant but with a bunch of additives to try and more cheaply contain and use it. Remnant + ONE containing substance (blood, metal) = just remnant. Remnant + silly putty or some shit that remnant does not properly adhere to = 'Fazgoo'.

Due to the instability caused by an unsuitable containing substance, It's a DNA altering biohazard, but it's not AS dangerous as it's portrayed in the books; it only seems that dangerous as when synthesised and curated to the degree Fazbear Entertainment do, it can do very specific things, and naught more than that, like how the disks have to have extensive codes and a form to follow else they won't work right.

Most of the Tales of the pizaplex things did not happen:

Sean, an electrician and police mole, makes sure of that. Half of the areas that exist only in those books were destroyed and had their main attractions destroyed by Sean before construction got anywhere.

Ok, springtrap sweep somewhat happened? Not read that one yet, but the initial crew who laid the foundations were murdered by Afton AND some Faz Ent execs. Sean used this huge vacancy to get in.

'The world parties with you' is an AR game inside a VR experience (hence why there was nobody guarding the off limits thing; 'Maya' was meant to go there to test it). 'Maya' does not really exist. In the real world, she is a 30 year old Fazbear Entertainment executive called Madaleine. The reason why things go to an apocalypse is some latent code left behind by Dr Grimm to make this project crash and burn; by making a harrowing and traumatising bug that'll turn anyone away from Fazbear Entertainment (in part thanks to this 'bug' he made also causing amnesia in those who experience it for too long, taking advantage of the 'fake life' part of the VR simulation).

Madaleine becomes a police mole as a result.

For any given story really, it's either 'Mike and Sean stopped it', 'That was an exec', or 'Damnit Foxwell'.

Maybe the daycare ones will happen? Not read them yet.

But anything that gives a new attraction? 'Damnit Sean you ran over the robot. Sean where are you taking that refuse sack where is the main robot we can't restart construction of this attraction without it.' And Sean burns the robot in the police incinerator.

[rebellconquerer]

hi, I don’t know if your inbox is still open for requests,if not that’s completely fine :). If so, I would like to request “Fuck, I need a drink to deal with you.” For Bucky x Sarah. Thank you.

It's a little long and a little different from my other bits of writing, less cute, more character study but I hope you still like it anon! Cross posted to AO3

She watches them get out of the truck, loud and boisterous in that way she's learnt means that they're ok. She knows they've been back stateside for several days already, spending extended time at the base in DC while Sam trains Torres and James continues his cross-country journey training special forces personnel. Hell, she had even video chatted with them but there is some part of her that does not settle, cannot settle, until she can touch them and see for herself that they are safe.

"You're a menace Buck, you know that right? Is it something about the 40s that made you and Steve like this or did the two of you find each other because everyone else saw how fucking crazy you were?" Sam asks, voice light with laughter.

Sarah watches the easy line of James' shoulders as he reaches into the back for his duffle, she can tell a lot about the headspace he's in based solely off of how he holds himself. She's had to learn his little tells because he still doesn't talk as much as she'd like.

"I trained with 12-year-old Dora's that were more impressive than this asshole and that was practically their after school program. It's not my fault he took exception to that comparison." James replies, glaring mockingly at Sam. She can tell they've been having whatever conversation this is for a while.

"You know if you keep breaking their soldiers the US military isn't going to continue inviting you back." Sam's smirk is playful though, clearly harassing James more for the sake of the harassment than out of any actual concern.

"Thank-fucking-Christ. See if I miss them." James grumbles, turning to face her with his duffle draped over his shoulders.

She is moving towards them before she consciously tells her feet to go. She isn't some damsel left behind though, so there will be no running and leaping into his arms, no matter how much she may want that. Instead, she strolls casually out her front door and down her porch steps with her arms tucked safely in her pockets, face excited, but in a cool and controlled way.

She watches as his smile broadens into a grin at the sight of her and her cool and controlled expression fails immediately as she grins back at him.

Sam makes a retching sound somewhere to the right of her but she isn't paying him any attention, thank you very much.

"Welcome back." She manages around her smile, technically to both of them but she's staring at James.

"Thank you, kind sister. You know it was a really rough couple of weeks, but it's the support of family that really holds us togeth- oh Christ, just kiss him already. It's not like watching the two of you make eyes at each other is any better." Sam ends in an exasperated mutter.

She chuckles lightly, her eyes darting around James' face, taking in the familiar blue of his eyes along with the healing bruises high on his left cheek. Her brother occasionally has good ideas.

He drops his bag on the dew-wet grass of the early morning and is reaching for her as she stretches up slightly to meet his soft, chapped lips.

"Sam, is it very hard being Captain America and having to stop white panther over there from doing stupid shit every ten minutes? As a matter of fact, yes, it is. Thank you for asking, sister of mine." Sam's voice grumbles as he moves away from them towards the front door.

His solo conversation forces a huff of laughter from her lips. It's become one of her favourite things, laughing into James' mouth. She pulls away from him, feeling sorted for the first time in weeks.

"Hi Sam! How are you? It's been so long since I last spoke to you 10 hours ago." She says brightly.

She watches the back of Sam's headshake ruefully as he keeps walking away from them and hears James pick back up his bag as he begins strolling lazily beside her.

"What's all this, then?" Sam asks as he gets to the porch, looking down at the three boxes piled outside.

"I'm not sure. It came last night. It's for you." She says with a small twist, turning to face James.

He raises his eyebrows in surprised confusion.

"For me? And it came here?" He questions.

Sam leans over, grabbing the still-sealed envelope off the top of the boxes.

"It came 'Care of Captain America' but yeah, it's for you." She says easily, hopping up the steps in one go and turning to lean her hip against the old wooden railing.

"Do you mind?" Sam asks James, already moving to open the envelope. James shakes his head, leaning on a post on the other side of the staircase.

Sam's eyes scan quickly back and forth over the letter before his mouth narrows into a small frown.

"It's from the Smithsonian." He finally says, handing the letter over to James.

"The Smithsonian?" James mumbles, taking the letter and she watches his expression freeze then go utterly blank as he reads it.

"Why is the Smithsonian writing to you?" She asks with concern.

Neither answer her for a moment just long enough that she starts to feel genuine concern.

"Dear Sergeant Barnes," James begins to read, pausing to clear his throat.

By the end of the sentence, James' voice has just the barest hints of a wobble.

"My name is Eloise Lambert and I have been the lead curator and researcher behind the Captain America and the Howling Commandos exhibit for nearly 40 years. I understand this must seem a drop in the hat to you, but it has represented my life's work. While I cannot begin to understand what it must be like to find out strangers have been heavily involved in the study of your life while you were still living it, please forgive me the eccentricities of an old woman to tell you that you were always my favourite.

During the initial stages of the creation of the exhibit in Washington and at its sister sites, several pieces of memorabilia were gifted to the institution by your family. In the intervening years, through research and the continued graciousness of your siblings, we have amassed quite an impressive list of items from your pre-war life. Additionally, in the often hard and lonely years that followed the blip, Captain Rogers also donated several items related to both your lives. It is my belief, however, that he gave us these items in good faith, believing you were permanently gone.

In the aftermath of the returns and the continued examination of the cultural damage that can be wrought by museums, especially with the years of discourse that followed the attack on The Museum of Great Britain, the Smithsonian has wrestled with what to do with the pieces that we have that are not fit for public showing. It is my honest belief that not only would your family and Captain Rogers want you to have these items, but that good morality compels us to return them to you. This endeavour has turned out to be harder than initially anticipated as though I am assured you returned after the blip, no one seems to know quite how to find you. With our continued efforts to locate you failing, and possible sightings of you with Captain America, we have decided to send these items to Captain Wilson in the hopes that they will eventually find their way to you.

Time is a cruel mistress, and as I approach the end of my life, the meaningfulness of old memories has become increasingly clear. I hope this has remained true for you as well, even through your painful but most extraordinary journey, however, should these items bring more pain than happy remembrance, please feel free to return them. The appropriate address is enclosed below."

He looks down at the unassuming boxes with the same carefully blank look on his face.

"Well… that's unexpected." He finally says, looking over at her with questioning eyes.

James drops to his knees, pulling one of the boxes to him at random and opening it gently. He lets out a soft breath as he pulls out the object on top.

Sarah strays closer, looking over his shoulder. It's a framed photograph of him in his military uniform, smiling easily at something behind the camera and in the right lower corner, held in place by some kind of cloth housing, is a small medal.

"Holy shit. Is that a Silver Star, Buck?" Sam asks, stooping down beside James whose thumb brushes reverently over the frame.

"Yeah," James says, voice cracking a little but a small smile curving his lips. "They gave it to me after Azzano, when I got back from Austria… the first time Zola…" he drifts off, glancing over at Sam.

The first time he had been captured. The first time he had been experimented on.

"I had sent it to my ma. They'd sent her a letter listing me as missing and presumed captured. Becca said she'd spent every spare minute she had in the pews at St. Leo's." He huffs out a small laugh, eyes going unfocused. "So I sent her the star and the picture in my next letter, as an apology."

Both Sarah and Sam are quiet, unsure what to say. A moment later James seems to shake the fog away and pushes the photo back into the box, standing abruptly.

"I'm gonna grab a shower, get cleaned up before the boys wake up." He mutters, old Brooklyn accent seeping in around the edges to soften his consonants, the way it always seems to when he gets lost in his past.

Sam stands slowly, making eye contact with her for a second before she steps up beside James.

"Are you ok?" She asks lowly.

He pushes the open box to the side of the door with his foot, then leans in and drops a quick kiss on her cheek.

"I'm good. Honest. I'll come back to it." He replies, shouldering his bag and stepping inside. She turns to look at Sam. He just shrugs and follows James into the house.

**********************************

The rest of the day continues like every one of her weekends since she began to be called mom more often than Sarah.

AJ wakes first and is downstairs pulling out dishes and mixing bowls for her because 'weekend mornings mean pancakes, mom!'

Then he's in the living room, TV on, watching whatever cartoon is his latest obsession. This month it's Clone Wars.

Sam comes down next, surprising AJ who hadn't noticed the truck in the driveway or the shoes by the entrance, so he's folded into the mandatory cartoons.

Cass is a late sleeper. Will sleep till the early afternoon if left to his own devices usually, but if Sam is AJs favourite adult, James is Cass's, so she's not all that surprised to see him at James' elbow when he does come downstairs in grey sweats and an old, soft-looking graphic T proclaiming Wakanda Forever. Bucky wanders into the kitchen, Cass right behind him and sets up to help with breakfast.

So the morning goes, with laughter and sticky spills and chocolate chips, until Sarah all but forgets about the boxes heavy with history sitting on her porch. It's not until much later, when the dishes are already washed and packed away, loads of laundry completed and her eyes tired from staring at income and expense spreadsheets from the restaurant, that she realises she hasn't seen hide nor hair of James and his shadow in some time.

Needing a break from excel, Sarah stretches languidly, feeling the bones in her back pop and realign before she stands, strolling through the house to find them. She hears the soft murmur of James' voice and the gentle cadence of Cass asking questions coming from the porch.

The door is propped open, only the screen door closed, so she can see them from the entryway and she has to stop to take it in for a moment. They are sitting on the floor, Cass in between James' outstretched legs with his back curved into James' chest, going through one of his boxes from the Smithsonian.

"And what about this?" Cass asks, pulling out a piece of ancient-looking folded paper.

"You tell me," James replies softly, unfolding the delicate age stained paper, hand over hand with Cass.

"Um, it's another letter. From Ruth?"

"My youngest sister,” James mumbles. “What does it say?"

"De-dearest James,” Cass begins to read. “I was so ple-ple-as-"

"Pleased," James corrects lightly.

"Pleased to read your most re-recent letter. We are so glad that you are away from the front for the next few weeks… what does that mean? Front of what?" Cass asks, turning to look up at James, whose eyes are sombre but kind, seemingly unable to look away from the old words.

"It means where the fighting was during the war."

Sarah stands watching the easy care James takes with her son and feels like she can't catch her breath. He's not doing it for her, she knows. He is sitting and sharing his life with her child, going over his reading with him, solely because he wants to. Because Cass wants to be near to him. She moves her hand to her chest, rubbing absently, trying to work out the heavy feeling that has settled over her heart.

"Why didn't she want you to fight? You're really good at it." Cass says with the carelessness of the young.

James hums consideringly, going through the rest of the letters in the batch in his hand. "I wasn't as good at it then, and she was worried about me."

She chooses that moment to join them. "What're ya'll up to out here?" She asks, coming to sit cross-legged on the other side of the boxes.

James looks up at her, eyes lighter than she expects, and smiles. "Just going through them, you know," he replies. She wants to ask if he is ok, if he needs time or space or any of the 20 other things she could probably come up with but thinks it might be better to just let him be.

She reaches into the box in front of her and comes out with another stack of papers. She gently pulls them apart then freezes. They're copies of his enlistment documents. The top right-hand corner of one has a faded, black and white photo of a man, barely more than a boy really, with familiar blue eyes but no hint of the darkness James carries.

"Bucky Barnes I presume." She says softly, holding the picture out to him.

Cass' little hands pull James' arm down to his level as he takes the photo so he can see too.

"That's not you!" Cass says, scrunching up his nose.

James makes a face and looks down at him askance.

"And why not?"

Cass shrugs. "You look so old now"

James absolutely cackles at that. Head thrown back, hand over his heart. Sarah tries to stifle her own laugh and look disapprovingly at Cass. Nothing beats the open honesty of the innocent.

"Real vicious, kid. I think I look ok for 106." He finally gets out.

Cass seems unimpressed, scrambling away from James to poke at another box as Sam’s head appears around the front door.

"What's going on out here? Grandpa is laughing?"

James just shrugs.

"Your nephew is speaking truth to power," Sarah replies with a smirk. James gives her a baleful glare while Sam takes in the scene around them, giving Sarah a significant look that she can't really read.

"Is this you too, Uncle Buck?" Cass asks, holding up a sketchbook.

Sarah looks over to see an impressive likeness of a young James in side profile, a small smile curving his lips as a thin cigarette dangles from the corner of his mouth.

James nods, holding his hand out for the sketchbook as a grin overtakes his face. Sam comes to sit, dropping down heavily beside her as Sarah switches to laying on her stomach, head perched on her hands. James places the dog eared book on the floor between them.

Cass scrunches up his nose again. "Is that a cigarette? Those are bad!"

James nods, looking up as Cass comes to lean heavily against his shoulder. "You're right but gimme a break. It was 1938. We didn't know that yet."

Sarah reaches out and flips through the book. There are drawings of the view from a fire escape at different times of day with the vague outlines of people coming and going, a few of a young woman with old, old eyes and a lot of sketches of James. Sometimes just bits and pieces of him, how his eyes look happy or sad or tired. His hands holding a cigarette or a beer or fixing things. Some are whole body portraits, from James in a full suit to him in nothing but an undershirt and trousers, his suspenders hanging off his shoulders.

The last few pages have several drawings of a delicate-looking young man who’s almost pretty, soft hair and a pointed chin, but with eyes that blaze.

"Who's that?" She asks.

James gets a complicated look on his face, wrapping an arm around Cass's small frame.

"Portrait of the artist as a young man." He whispers.

"No shit," Sam says softly, reaching to twist the book more towards himself. Sarah is so shocked she doesn't even remember to yell at Sam about his language.

She stares down at the image. She's seen the hologram of Captain America before the serum in museums, like everyone else, but it's always the same image: him in some military clothes with an ill-fitted helmet on, before it slides into that famous shot of him, almost 6 and a half feet of righteous fury. She studies the picture some more. She thinks she can see it, see him, in the curve of his mouth and the intensity in his gaze. She supposes America doesn't want the world reminded of the small boy behind one of the greatest symbols of 'American Exceptionalism'. She doesn't really know much about the man that Steve Rogers was. She never particularly cared for what he represented. She wonders now if he even liked what he came to be seen as.

"And the woman? She's in here a lot too." Sam asks.

James smiles crookedly. "His ma. Her name was Sarah."

When Sarah's sharp eyes flick to him, he's already looking at her, smile widening minutely before he sighs.

"She died a month after my 18th. TB. Money got even tighter after that. Eventually moved with him into a tiny little apartment near Red Hook, let my Ma rent out my room at home. Anything for a buck, you know."

Cass gets bored with the conversation and wanders back inside, probably to harass his brother.

Sarah looks at her namesake, trying to wrap her mind around this whole other life that James has lived. She flips through the pages again. By far the most common subject is James, the lines of him traced with familiarity and clearly with love. Sarah flicks her eyes up to James who is watching her quietly.

“Ask” he commands.

She makes a face. “What? I don’t know what you-”

“Just ask, Sarah.” he interrupts, eyes playful. She looks back down at the drawings, unable to resist trailing her fingers lightly along the charcoal lines.

“Well… I mean there are a lot of drawings of you here… were you two ever-”

“No,” he says with a put upon smile.

“Hey! You told me to ask! I didn’t even get to finish my question!” she chuckles. James rolls his eyes heavenward.

“God, I need a drink to deal with you,” he mumbles. Sarah pouts and Sam also starts to laugh. “You think you’re the first person to ask if I was sleeping with Captain America? God, if I had a nickel every time someone asked me, I’d be a millionaire.”

Sam shrugs. “Man, if I had a nickel every time someone asked me if you were sleeping with Steve, I’d be a millionaire.”

Bucky laughs at that. It takes him a minute to settle down.

"Steve got real sick winter of '37. Didn't really shake it for the rest of the next year. Would get a couple of good weeks then his breathing was shit again. Spent most of the year in bed. Couldn’t manage to do too much but draw… didn't have too many models though. So it was what he could see from the window and well… me. I think the priest came to the house 3 or 4 times that year.” he trails off, eyes seeming to stare past the sketches.

“Priest?” she asks.

Bucky nods, leaning back against the house. “Steve's ma was real religious. Wouldn'ta let us live it down if Steve passed without last rights. It was touch and go a few times.”

They’re all silent for a bit after that, letting it sink in. She looks back down at the drawings, how much they seem like they are about to start moving, how well they seem to capture James’ essence.

“He loved you though, you can’t draw someone like that without a lot of love.” She whispers looking up to see Sam and James share a look.

“Steve loved… hard,” Sam replies. James nods.

“Could be real irritable about it, but yeah. His pa died when he was real little. Ma never remarried. Between Steve being so sickly and his ma being a single mother, things were rough. My parents owned a little deli. Wasn’t much but it meant we were doing a lot better for a lot longer than a lot of people until we weren’t.” James says with a shrug. Sarah barely breathes, she’s never heard him talk about his past so freely.

“We lived in the same building. My ma had a real bleeding heart. Came over from Italy as a teenager… I don’t think she ever forgot how people looked at her in the beginning when her accent was real strong.” he scoffs. “Never forgot being run out of her own country either. Didn’t much take to what other people thought. Helped out whenever she could, practically adopted them. There were times when things got bad, I was all he had.” James eventually finishes.

She supposes she can see it then, why Steve Rogers risked his life, risked his freedom, to get James back. Sam just nods slowly, like he’s heard it all before. Hell, he probably has. Sam pulls the last unopened box to him and starts carefully going through it as Sarah relaxes in the gentle breeze in the early afternoon.

“Damn. Didn’t think they’d give this back.” Sam says, pulling a dusty old leather case with a glass front out. He flips the case open slowly, turning it to face James who lets out a quiet release of breath.

Sarah frowns. It’s a medal of some kind, but she doesn’t recognize it. “What is that?”

Sam looks at her, his face very solemn. “It’s a medal of honour. Highest military award you get. A lot of times posthumously.”

James takes the medal, looking down at it with wonder. “I’d never seen it,” he says softly. “Steve said it was Peggy who made sure we both got them. Wanted the world to know that we died for something even if no one could be told exactly what. I don’t even know who it was presented to." James stares at the small medallion with an expression of adoration on his face.

A moment later there is a loud crash from inside the house followed by a suspicious silence. Sarah moves to stand but Sam waves her off, standing first to go investigate.

James leans back against the wall, just staring at the small medallion while Sarah watches him. He's occasionally so much more than she expects and yet still so very human.

"You are handling all this a lot better than I expected you to." She says, unable to keep the thought in.

James pauses. "Honestly, I don't think I ever expected to get any of these things back, and I certainly never expected to have anyone to share all this with." He replies, looking at her with such deep affection, she has to look away.

"Can I ask another question that may make you uncomfortable?"

"You literally asked me if I was fucking my best friend 10 minutes ago, I don't think anything is off the table." He replies with a small smirk and a head tilt. She huffs out a quiet laugh at that.

"How come more things from this century don't seem to… shock you? No 'for coloured only signs', gay marriage, interracial dating… “ she adds, pointing between the two of them. "Most people your age have pretty set opinions on a lot of those things. "

He frowns, tilting his head in that way that she knows means she has shocked him.

"Where's this coming from?"

She shrugs, reaching for one of the small piles of letters littering the floor between them. If she's honest it's a thought she's had before, but always assumed it had something to do with him not being fully unaware of the passage of time given the intermittent awakenings of the Soldier, or the fact that he'd basically been kept as property himself. She'd never felt entirely comfortable asking before, but this James, the one who reads his old letters to her son, seems so much more like an open book than ever before.

"Just… being reminded that you really were born in 1917 and the world of your youth looked very very different." Is what she chooses to say.

James seems to think for a minute and she appreciates that. Appreciates him trying to give her an answer that feels honest to him.

"A strong man who has known power all his life may lose respect for that power, but a weak man knows the value of it. Erskine said that to Steve before he gave him the serum. Steve was fond of that quote." He says quietly.

She frowns.

"Not to call you out James but this guy might have been a few pounds lighter than you but I don't know if anyone would call him weak." She replies holding up the enrollment form with his picture.

He shakes his head, digging into the box in front of him and pulling out another old frame with an ancient-looking sepia portrait, colour bleeding at edges. He hands it to her.

She looks down at it. It's a family. Woman, man, four children. Taken in that old-timey way that you only ever see in horror movies these days. James looks like he's maybe 16 or 17. It's truly stunning.

"This is them, isn't it? Your whole family." She asks. He nods, looking down at his hands.

"You know how I said, my ma came over from Italy?"

"Yeah"

"Well she did, but her first language wasn't Italian. It was Romani."

"Romani?" Sarah asks with a frown, she doesn't think she's heard of that before.

"They used to call them gypsies. Weren't real popular in the US. Neither in Europe. She'd spent a lot of her life afraid simply for being born what she was, but she was proud and tough and unwilling to be afraid anymore. She wasn't going to let any of us forget her roots. Wasn't going to allow any of us to turn into bullies."

Sarah stares at the faded photo focusing on the woman.

"What was her name?" She questions.

"Maria." He replies, voice soft.

She looks tiny next to the man in the photo, a dainty little thing with full lips set in a stubborn looking line and proud eyes. She can see the resemblance to James though, can trace the lines of his features in her face.

"She sounds like an amazing woman," Sarah says looking up, surprised to find James studying her with almost the same intensity that she was studying the photo.

"Yeah… I seem to know a lot of those." He replies, with a strange, crooked little smile.

She blushes at that, feeling heat spread along her face and down the line of her throat at the unexpected compliment. She holds his gaze though, lets the moment sit between them warm and heavy somewhere in her chest as the bird songs continue and the wind rustles through the trees. For a moment, sitting amongst the ancient memories that helped create this impossible man, time finally seems to pause in deference to them.

[stagandsteer]

Complete transcript of the Wonderland interview, by Catherine Santino, below the cut :)

In 1993, the year in which Freeform’s new thriller series Cruel Summer opens, actor Froy Gutierrez was yet to be born. Chat rooms and beepers, just two of the symbols of 90’s culture featured in the show, were absent in Gutierrez's own childhood. Instead, the 22 year old grew up among the endless, glowing feeds of social media — and the inevitable pressures that they create.

“There’s a kind of self-awareness that comes from growing up with the internet, which everyone in our cast did,” Gutierrez, who stars in the upcoming series, tells me over Zoom — his boyish charm tangible across the screen. “We’re all technically Gen Z or like, older Gen Z. And so you have to unburden yourself from curating a persona online.”

Due to the dizzying evolution of technology in the past two decades, Gutierrez and I had drastically different experiences with the internet growing up — even though he’s only seven years my junior. I fondly remember a time without the prevalence of social media, while Gutierrez was born into an era where internet presence was not only common, but expected.

Like most of Gutierrez’s peers, the actor was active on social media from a young age, but his presence has quietened over the years — even with 1.7 million instagram followers. “If there’s a general consensus on the internet of a certain readership or viewership, you know about it, because people tweet about it directly to you,'' he says. “There’s a kind of lumping in of the character you’re playing with who you are, that people do. I don’t know if it’s intentional. It’s probably just a human thing, but that happens. And it can be hard not to internalize what you read about yourself, you know? Words have power.”

In 2017, Gutierrez appeared on supernatural MTV drama Teen Wolf, a show with a massive internet fandom. Suddenly, fan theories and commentaries about his character, Nolan Holloway, came in droves, something that the young actor wasn’t necessarily prepared for. “I was still a teenager,” he says. “Around that time, you're an adult, but you’re still figuring things out. So I learned where to set my boundaries because I didn’t know where they were beforehand.”

When Cruel Summer came around, Gutierrez assumed he would be portraying the “desirable young male” he was used to auditioning for. “The first time I read the character, it definitely felt like an archetype. When I auditioned for it, I walked in and was very much myself, and Michelle Purple and Jessica Biel responded very well to it.” However, after he got the role and production ramped up, he was pleasantly surprised. “It didn’t really hit me that they were wanting to take him in such a unique direction until I showed up for wardrobe one day to do my first fitting for the pilot,” Gutierrez recalls. “I looked at the mood board for Jamie and it was like, young Heath Ledger, Keanu Reeves and Kurt Cobain. And I was like ‘Oh shit, I need to step my game up,’” he laughs. “I couldn’t get by doing the same thing that I’ve always done when it comes to characters like that.”

Cruel Summer takes place over the course of three years — ‘93, ‘94, and ‘95 — showing splices of each year in every episode. Produced by Jessica Biel, Tia Napolitano, and Michelle Purple, it centres around the kidnapping of a teenage girl and the fallout of the crime in her community in Skylin, Texas. Gutierrez plays Jamie Henson, the boyfriend of the missing girl, Kate. In her absence, a quiet nerd named Jeanette suddenly rises the social ranks and assumes Kate’s place — including dating Jamie. When Kate returns, Jeanette is suspected to be involved in her disappearance, throwing Jamie into some seriously challenging circumstances. His character could easily be a one-dimensional archetype — and truthfully, I expected him to be — but Cruel Summer took the opportunity to explore toxic masculinity and its widespread impact.

We see Jamie caught in the middle of conflict, unsure how to respond to a traumatic event that certainly no teenager expects to be faced with. He’s not a hero, but he’s not a villain either. It’s unclear whether we’re supposed to root for Jamie or not, which makes him that much more interesting to watch. “He talks a lot about his desire to protect the people around him, regardless of whether or not they asked him to protect them,” Gutierrez says of his character. “He kind of superimposes his own idea of what the people around him need. In order to maintain the peace of the people around him, he kind of robs the people around him of their agency. It’s just a really fascinating character to play in that way.”

Gutierrez has also been able to explore the ethics of true crime in a time when the genre is exploding in popularity. Though Cruel Summer is fictional, it questions the effect that public opinion can have on criminal cases — and perhaps more importantly — the well-being of the people involved. “When it comes to the investigation of a crime, you have to weigh the good it can bring into the world versus the bad it can bring. Or making one person seem suspect, or airing the dirty laundry of a private citizen for the viewership of loads of people.”

Despite his eloquent reflections on Jamie throughout our conversation, it’s clear that Gutierrez doesn’t take himself too seriously. He speaks into the camera like we’re old friends on FaceTime, and when my dog unexpectedly jumps into my frame, he gushes excitedly and asks what her name is. He’s able to laugh at himself one minute and share poignant truths the next. It’s refreshing, much like Cruel Summer.

Another likely contributor to the show’s authenticity? The fact that the cast was kept in the dark when it came to overarching plot points. Instead of knowing the show’s trajectory ahead of time, the actors would receive scripts for the next episode while they were filming — and they were subject to change. “We didn’t know where it was going,” Gutierrez says. “And we were told, “‘This might happen here, or this might happen there.’ And it would shift around.”

Without foresight into their character’s arc, the actors have no choice but to focus only on where they were in that moment — a difficult task when a single episode spans three very different years. Gutierrez faced an even greater challenge, as, unlike the two female leads, his character didn’t undergo any drastic physical transformations over the three years.

“I didn’t really compartmentalise the character,” he explains. “I kind of thought of the different years as different phases in my own life. The first year, ‘93, was a complete absence of any regret. You’re still very young, I was just thinking of like, a complete golden retriever,” he laughs. “A 16-year old boy who just wants the best and isn’t aware. ‘94 is me right before I made the decision to go to therapy, where I was making all these bad decisions and I didn’t know why. And then ‘95 was a whole desire to wrestle with those things and really look at yourself in the mirror and take accountability.”

Gutierrez didn’t only infuse personal experience into his behind-the-scenes work — some aspects made it onto the screen. The actor, whose father is Mexican, grew up spending time between Mexico and Texas and is a native Spanish speaker. Because Cruel Summer is set in Texas, Gutierrez suggested creating a similar background for Jamie.

“I was talking with Tia Napolitano, the show-runner, and I was like, ‘Hey, you know what would be really cool? What if the character is half-Mexican, too?’” Gutierrez says. “And she's like, ‘Oh, yeah, let’s write it in the script.’ And I got to write a couple lines in Spanish, which is really cool. [Jamie] could have been this mould of a cool, likeable jock. And then he ended up being this very nuanced human being, which is awesome.”

Though he is learning to appreciate all parts of his heritage, Gutierrez hasn’t always embraced his identity. “I remember feeling like I might have been not American enough for America, and not Mexican enough for Mexico,” he says. “And I remember having a bit of time in which I had an accent in both languages. Even my name — in Mexico I always went by ‘Froylan’, which is my full name. And then in the U.S., I went by Froy, because I thought it would be easier for other people to say.”

He continues: “I identify as Latino, but I”m also very wary of auditioning for Latino roles because I’m aware I don’t look like a typical Latino person. I don’t want to be someone that you can just sub in for that role, when I’m really white and blonde. And so whenever I do get a role like this, one where he’s not written to be any particular direction and we’re able to collaborate, I’m able to inject some of myself in there. So it’s been really cool to embrace all sides of my history.”

But of course, as is true for Gutierrez, Jamie’s cultural background is only a small part of who he is. Cruel Summer is committed to portraying him as a nuanced character that breaks the moulds of masculinity while tackling complex inner conflict. “Living in his shoes and walking in them, a big question that came up for me was, ‘What is the difference between guilt and shame? [Jamie]’s coping mechanism was terrible and unhealthy, and caused more pain for the people around him. But at the same time, the shame that he internalized made it worse for him. One thing I really learned, is that shame is about yourself and beating yourself up. And guilt is about taking accountability and apologising, moving forward without expecting the relationship to come back. It's just about trying to heal what happened and then moving on, on the terms that the other person sets. It’s not about you, and I think that’s what the character learns throughout the show.”

[twilitty]

Waiting- twilight fic

“Waiting”

by: @twilitty​

Rosalie and Emmett are babysitting Nessie for Edward. The rest of the Cullens are predisposed and seem to have branched off into their own lives. Rose and Emmett were given one-way plane tickets from Alice and told to meet her in South America. 

word count: 1.6k

Part 1/?

WAITING

Edward is late, again. Rosalie is standing in the foyer of the Cullens main home, the windows tinted with the dark guise of twilight and eerily dry. It seems to be the one day of the year it hasn’t rained. She’s dressed in an outfit curated by her fashion-oriented sister. All designer, of course. Yet, her jeans have creases around the knees and upper thighs, her sweater sleeves rolled up past her elbows in a way that would make her sister cringe. Her hair had started out in a casual ponytail but is now laying around her shoulders in frizzy waves. It’s the carefree disarray of a new moms wardrobe.

Then, like the angel of messes, Nessie sits in her arms snoring lightly. Her cheek, soft and warm, is against Rose’s collarbone and has been for the last twenty minutes. Rose had happily agreed to watch Nessie while her father went off to feed. Bella was at a business meeting in Port Angeles, a monthly occurrence that the family seemed to consciously not discuss. Edward was supposed to be back forty minutes ago, which was coincidentally also the exact time that the little angel was throwing a tantrum and pulling Roses hair. 

But, Rosalie doesn’t mind watching her. She enjoys the thick teardrops that roll down her puffy cheeks when she gets mad and the melted ice cream that coats the front of Nessie’s shirt after a snack. And as soon as she starts to get fussy it seems that Rose is the only one who can truly calm her down. It’s strange, being so involved in this child when she barely has any rights to her. 

Emmett is upstairs, packing the last of their suitcases and making sure the room is in order. This is why Rosalie is frustrated with Edwards' lateness, he was going to make them miss their flight. It also just happened to be her luck that the rest of the family is happily distracted when she needs them. 

Alice and Jasper had left days ago for somewhere in South America, Alice claiming that she just had to be there and not giving a date for return. She had, instead, also bought Rose and Emmett a one way ticket to a small airport an hour outside of Brazil. The travelling was not uncommon of the couple, Alice moving as she pleases and Jasper following without question. Maybe it was his devotion to her, or maybe it was the uncomfortable silence that always followed him throughout the house. In a group of vampires it’s difficult to find a point of discussion that isn’t based in the past, and the family is not one to tolerate Jasper's discussion of the past. 

That leaves two people left to watch Nessie as Rose and Emmett catch their flight: Esme and Carlisle. Carlisle picked up a job in Seattle, working overnight at a care clinic for the elderly. He never said it, but Rose just knew that it was because he had similar interests to the seniors he cared for. She had overheard him telling Esme one night that he almost wishes he aged into his forties so that he could hold a conversation and base it on his experience, not say his grandfather told him stories. Esme was with Carlisle in Seattle, she funded a series of group homes for at-risk youth and occasionally would go and meet with the kids. If only she was here to watch her grandchild. 

“Rose,” it was Emmett at the top of the stairs. He was whispering, thankfully. He had probably heard Nessie snoring and knew not to wake her. He saw her temper tantrum the last time someone woke her up from a nap and was not looking to face it any time soon. “I have the things packed.” Rose looked over her shoulder at the staircase just in time to see him appear at the bottom, two suitcases at his feet and a neck pillow cradling his head. 

All it took was a raise of her eyebrows for him to fall into a defensive position. Palms facing her, he approached quietly. “I wanna look the part,” he explained. 

“Your neck doesn’t cramp,” she retorted with a smirk. She wouldn’t be able to talk him out of the dumb pillow, the same way she wasn’t able to talk him out of sunscreen the last time they went to Bora Bora. 

“But tourists' necks cramp, why else would they sell these things?” He went up to the main door, opening it and looking outside. “It’s not like the pillow industry is trying to scam vampires.” Rosalie doesn’t have to ask him what he’s looking for, the tenseness in his shoulders tells her enough. He doesn't want to miss their plane and wants Edward to get here already. Out of all the Cullens, Emmett is the most frugal. He hates wasting money. 

He closes the door softly and turns to his wife and their niece, taking off the dumb pillow and tossing it onto the suitcases. A smile cracks open across his face. “Can I?” She nods and his knuckles brush against her chest as he gingerly brings the toddler up to cradle her. His large arms seem brutal next to Nessie, her tiny frame nearly disappears as he hugs her to his chest. Her head lolls onto his shoulder, snores breaking for a moment as she sighs in content. His eyes dance in the light, looking down at her as she sleeps peacefully in his arms. 

Rosalie has always loved Emmett, but the first time she saw him holding their niece, the way he carefully smiled with his mouth closed and crouched to seem smaller, that was when she knew they would have a family. Emmett was initially afraid of scaring the baby, afraid he would seem too big compared to the rest of the family. Like a giant. He would talk quietly around her, always making sure to hide his teeth when he smiled and sit on the floor when she played. 

A movement pulls Rose from her thoughts. So quickly that a human would have missed it, the door opens and closes, the child blinks awake at the noise. Edward stands beside Rosalie, his shoulders slouched forward and his mouth pulled up into a painful smile. “Rose,” he nods to her, “Emmett,” he nods to his brother. 

Emmett ducks down quickly towards the little girl, pressing his lips to the back of her head as she looks over at her father. “Nessie has a lot to show you,” he says with a laugh. His heart isn’t in it. Edward must read it in his mind and politely disregards it, because he strides up to his daughter and lifts her out of her uncle's arms. 

Nessie plants a hand on her fathers cheek, his smile widening as he watches a play by play of her afternoon. 

Regretting her earlier wishes of Edward coming home, Rosalie speaks to break the moment. “We’re leaving. We were supposed to have left forty minutes ago but somebody must have never developed an interest in punctuality.” She receives a glare from Edward, his jaw rolling forward in what must be residue annoyance from some other event. 

Emmett notices this, “Bella spoken to you?” 

“Yes.” He jostles his daughter, raising her so that she can play with his shirt collar. He doesn’t say anything else. 

“Well, Rose and I are heading out so we’ll see you later,” Emmett says jovially, waving a hand at his favourite- and only- niece. She waves back with vigor, a toothy smile spread across her dimpled cheeks. Her father only watches with mild disinterest, his thoughts clearly occupied by some other matter.

They grab their suitcases quickly, Rose planting a sweet kiss on the little girls cheek as they pass by towards the door. 

Against Emmetts pleading, they’re taking Rosalie's car. She had a difficult time understanding why taking his giant Jeep, suited for off-roading, would be ideal for travelling to the airport. 

“Are you okay?” She asks him, turning the key in the ignition and driving out of the garage into the night. He hadn’t said anything as he loaded the suitcases into the trunk, and when she turned on talk radio he didn’t complain or try to change the station. All abnormal.

“I’m gonna miss her,” he pauses, his adam's apple bobbing, “I hope she doesn’t change while we are gone.” 

“I know, me too.” Rosalie doesn’t try to alleviate his anxiety, she knows it would be a lie to tell him Nessie would look the same when they get back. She’ll probably be a little longer, her teeth larger, maybe she’ll have new interests. Every change they miss will hurt them both.

“But we’ve got to go.” His voice is hard, finality ringing through it as if he’s trying to convince himself.

“We’ve got to.” She agrees softly. 

They pull into a parking spot near the front entrance of the airport just in time to make their plane. Her phone rings after take off, the face of her sister smiling up at her from the screen. “Alice?”

“Rose, tell me you’re on your way.” The girl says hurriedly, excitement layering her words. 

“Emmett and I are on the plane now,” she responds. Emmett looks over at her curiously, neck pillow adorned. 

“Jasper and I have a lead.” She then goes to rattle off the details of their current location and where they will be tomorrow night. The phone hangs up. 

Emmetts face is reserved, but the corners of his lips are twitching with barely contained happiness. “A baby?” Rosalie’s pale hand comes up to cradle his cheek, her pink lips turning up at the corners. “Yes, a baby.”

[newhistorybooks]

“Curating America’s Painful Past explores the vital contest between the dream of casting America’s past as a virtuous story and the need to come to terms with the pain and suffering it has caused. Tim Gruenewald’s insightful probe of the tension between these competing frames on national memory in new museums on the National Mall dedicated to the experiences of groups like African Americans and Native Americans makes it clear that this raging debate is far from over.”

[e350tb]

The Owl House: A Blight on Gravesfield (Chapter Two)

Two

Luz wakes up.

So, ten Puritans walk into Connecticut. Sounds like the start of a joke, doesn’t it?

To be fair, ‘Puritans’ might not be the right word here. Most of them were, certainly, like Goodfaith Smathers, and the excellently named The-Lord-Shall-Damn-Ye-Sinners Marlowe, who seems to have insisted on his full name being used in all conversation. But then there’s the pair we’ll be talking about today, Philip and John Wittelsbane.

You’ve all seen the statue, I’m sure, but nearly all the ‘common knowledge’ about them is actually false.

See, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the Wittlesbanes were big on the whole ‘family history’ thing, but not so much on the whole ‘truth telling’ thing. The story that John Wittelsbane personally chose the site of Gravesfield, and that he personally converted a local Pequot village to Christianity? There’s no evidence of that, and indeed it seems very unlikely, because John was sixteen at the time, and Smathers was the real leader of the exhibition.

Of course, Smathers died in the Pequot War, and The-Lord-Shall-Blah-Blah-Blah Marlowe went out from smallpox in 1639. The others were illiterate, so most of the records of early Gravesfield come from the Wittelsbanes. So it’s very easy for their family to pretend they were more important than they actually were.

Now, in 1642, something very big happens. It doesn’t happen in America, but it’s effects cross the Atlantic. Can anyone tell me what that is?

The Thirty Years War? Close, that was just about ending at this time. Any other guesses?

That’s right, the English Civil War! Or the War of the Three Kingdoms, as some call it today. To put it simply, you had the Cavaliers supporting the King on one side, and the Roundheads supporting Parliament on the other. It’s a gross oversimplification but it’s all you really need to know for this class.

A sixth of all the men in New England went back to England to fight for Parliament, and most people generally supported the Roundheads. Most people. Do you remember what I said about dissenters? Fascinating people with bizarre names, like Fifth Monarchists and Muggletonians. Some of them were very egalitarian, at least for the time.

It seems the Wittelsbanes got themselves mixed up in a particularly weird form of dissension. In 1645, Philip starts writing a lot about witches - but not in the same way that someone like, for example, Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder-General in England, might have. This wasn’t fear; it was curiosity. He and John began to believe that magic was a gift from Christ.

This was a privately held belief of cause. The war was breeding suspicion in the Puritan populace of Connecticut, and in 1647, something happened in that colony. Something that would set the course for a split between the Wittelsbane brothers that would never be healed.

It was the beginning of the Connecticut Witch Trials.

---------

It was storming in earnest now, the wind shaking the house as the sounds of driving rain pounded on the windows. It was dark enough that Camila had had to turn the lights on, although the artificial light did little to abate the sense of gloom that hung over the house.

They had moved Luz and the other girl into Camila’s bedroom - there was more room to lay them down on the bed. That had been about an hour ago, and Camila was getting more than a little restless. She sat on her chair, facing away from her desk, rapping on the wood with her fingers. Vee paced by the door, looking no less antsy.

“We should call an ambulance,” declared Camila at last.

“What’re we gonna tell them?” asked Vee.

“I… I don’t know,” replied Camila, “But…”

There was a cough.

Camila’s eyes widened as Luz slowly began to sit up, rubbing her head.

“...man, I feel like I got hit by a truck…”

“Luz!”

Camila leapt out of her chair and darted over to her daughter, instinctively pulling her into a hug.

“Cariño, I’m so glad you’re okay,” she said, her voice breaking. “I was so worried! I…”

“M-mom?”

Luz blinked; it seemed like she didn’t know how to process her surroundings. She blinked, and a few tears ran down her cheek.

“Mom!”

She returned the hug, chest heaving. Neither of them moved for some time - there was a sense of unreality, the sudden ability to see each other, to touch each other. For a brief and beautiful moment, nothing else in the world mattered; just them, reunited at last.

Eventually, Camila pulled out of the hug.

“Oh, mija, never scare me like that again,” she sighed.

“Mom, I…”

Luz’s face fell, her eyes widening.

“...wait, where’s Eda?” she asked. “Where’s King? Where’s…”

She looked to her right, her eyes falling on the girl unconscious next to her. She gripped the bedsheets, starting to shake.

“Amity?” she exclaimed. “But… but we’re in the human world! Which means there’s a portal! We’ve gotta get Amity home!”

“Yeah, about that…” said Vee, rubbing the back of her head.

Camila frowned.

“The… portal disappeared,” she said.

Luz swallowed.

“So… we’re stuck?”

“We’re stuck?” The words came out before Camila could stop herself.

Luz’s eyes widened and she shook her head.

“No, no, that’s not… that’s not what I…”

She reached out, seizing Camila’s hands in hers.

“Mami, I don’t want to leave you again, I didn’t - I never wanted to hurt you, I just…”

Camila took a deep breath, closing her eyes.

“Luz,” she said, as evenly as she could, “I think we both need to talk about this.”

Luz bowed her head.

“I know.”

She turned to Amity.

“Is… is Amity okay?” she asked. “I don’t remember her getting hurt.”

“She cast a spell, I think,” replied Camila. “Something about… sharing the pain?”

Luz swallowed, and a few more tears spilled down her cheek.

“Oh Amity,” she said. “You didn’t… you didn’t have to do that for me. You didn’t have to do any of this…”

“Amity?” Vee tilted her head. “Amity Blight?”

Luz turned and nodded.

“Yeah,” she replied. “How do you know… oh yeah, Blight family, duh.”

She turned back to Amity - just in time to see her eyes slowly start to open.

“L… Luz?” she murmured.

“It’s okay, Amity, I’m here,” Luz replied. “We’re gonna figure this out, okay? Just…”

She sighed.

“...it’s just a little complicated.”

 -------

“He really believed in witches from Mars?”

The Gravesfield Historical Society had been closed for the past two weeks; this was the first time somebody who wasn’t a policeman had stepped in since the Jacob Hopkins Incident. But the Society had to keep going, and that meant the museum needed a new curator.

Enter Professor Fabian Stearne.

Stearne was an older man, somewhere between fifty and sixty, and looked every inch the prof. The tweed jacket, the blue shirt (tie roguishly discarded), the purple cardigan and the fire-engine red vans painted the picture of a charming eccentric, not hindered by his half-moon glasses, comb over, and trimmed grey moustache. He was a Gravesfield ‘lifer,’ who had rejected esteemed job offers from Yale and Harvard to head the history department at the small Gravesfield College.

And he’d never wanted to be a curator; if anyone had asked him, he’d tell them he was a researcher, preferring to dig up new theories than present old relics. Yet now there was literally no one else to do the job, so it was up to him.

“I did my PhD with him. Never thought he had that sort of thing in him.”

His assistant, Ben Frakes, was helping him clean the staff room - clearing the mess of weird conspiracy theory paraphernalia to make it a little more professional. Much younger than Stearne, Ben was fairly junior in the history department; he was convening his first course, ‘History and Myth in Gravesfield,’ a small, niche course that he nevertheless enjoyed.

Stearne and Frakes went back many years; Ben’s whole progress from history undergrad to PhD had been done under his watch. The lanky young man, brown haired, clean shaven and with a propensity for leather jackets, owed his career to Stearne, and he was always keen to give back when he could.

If that meant taking doctored photos of ‘owl beasts’ off a wall, then he was happy to do it.

“Yes, it’s a shame what happened to Jacob,” nodded Stearne. “But he’s not the first historian to run afoul of the law. Hopefully, once he’s gotten the help he needs, he can get back on his feet.”

He took the photo from Ben’s hands.

“He’s a clever man,” he said. “Just prone to wild imagination.”

“And animal endangerment?” said Ben, raising an eyebrow.

Stearne chuckled.

“What is a historian without eccentricity?”

“I’m surprised you took this job,” mused Ben, grabbing a box to take out to the trash. “You were always so critical of museums.”

“Well, there are worse ways to spend your twilight years than curating,” shrugged Stearne. “And Mr. Wittelsbane made a very compelling case. The town needs this museum. We can’t lose track of our past.”

Ben chuckled.

“Well, I’m gonna take this out back,” he said. “You need me to carry anything else?”

“No, my boy, not just yet,” replied Stearne.

“Okay, see you when I get back!”

Stearne watched as Ben walked away - as soon as he was gone, he looked down at the photograph, running a hand across it.

“Oh, my dear Jacob, so close and yet so far,” he sighed. “But worry not, worry not.”

He smiled - or perhaps it was more of a smirk.

“Redemption comes for all of us, in the end.”

[cluttermind]

The Cannons Fire in the Distance

Summary: In continuing writing holiday-themed one shots here's a Fourth of July one! The fireworks bring Killian back to times he'd rather not remember.

Rating: G

Read on ao3 here

Although they usually fall asleep in some tangled mess of limbs, wrapped in the warmth of knowing the other would be there through it all, they somehow always end up sleeping next to each other, only touching slightly. Especially now, in the heat of early July. What they had was a beginning, a start, a story yet to be written or told. For both Killian and Emma, a life together was a fresh start filled with something neither ever thought they deserved: true love.

It was Fourth of July weekend, a first in Storybrooke. Upon returning from his first semester of college, Henry campaigned for the school to continue teaching American history - the good, the bad, and the ugly - despite the curse having been lifted and Storybrooke being a community of fairytale characters and their children. He wanted to give them the same chance to experience life outside their small town in Maine that he has. He even got Regina to fund new history textbooks for each grade. Henry loved history, the telling of events through stories. He loved weaving fairytales and historical events together and creating an exceptionally unique story. As the Author, he had a knack for writing and saw himself following in his grandmother’s footsteps to eventually teach, potentially in a high school or at a university, while he worked on writing his novels - plural because he has far too many ideas swirling around his head.

Mary Margret, being Mary Margret, knew about the Fourth of July from her curse memories and now from the new history books for her elementary school students and decided a celebration must be held. Storybook loved a good excuse to celebrate. Everyone was abuzz with the opportunity to celebrate America’s independence from Britain, a notion that sometimes made Killian scowl playfully. His own experience serving in the Navy under an English King was exactly what led him to piracy in the first place. Captain Jones. He took a different path to the title than his brother did. Liam was his captain when they served in the King’s Navy.

If he was being honest with himself, everything about this “holiday” tugged at a place in his heart that he kept locked away, a place that hadn’t truly been touched since his wedding day when Liam wasn’t there to stand beside him as he married the love of his life. Captain Jones. Liam would’ve loved Emma. Really they would have loved each other and teamed up against him on far too many occasions for his liking. Time would never heal the pain of losing Liam.

Killian admired Liam. Captain Jones. He loved him more than words could qualify and more than numbers could quantify. He owed Liam more than he would ever be able to to give him, to repay him. For standing by his side while he drank his way into darkness attempting to escape the reality of the slavery their own father sold them into. For working harder than any man should ever have to work to buy them both a way out. For constantly looking after him. For always loving him.

Emma’s hand rested under Killian’s and her sock-covered foot rested against his bare foot under the covers. His sleep was restless. His mind was racing. His dreams were unpleasant.

He was back on the Jewel of the Realm. It was the first time a cannon was fired at him. He had just made sub-lieutenant. He wasn’t afraid. Liam was at the wheel, commanding his men with a natural Naval leadership.

“What now, Captain Jones?” A crewman asked.

Liam didn’t fire back. Liam hated war, he hated fighting, he hated, or really feared, the thought of death. “We put an end to this before it has the chance to start.” He stated, calmly. He signaled to the other ship. He negotiated a treaty. It ended before it began.

The first firework exploded outside his bedroom window. He flinched and his mind pulled him back into an unsettling dream.

Killian now wore a Lieutenant’s insignia on his jacket. Captain Jones. Liam saw the pirate ship ahead of them before anyone else did. Quietly, calmly, he prepared his men. Killian watched, in awe when his older brother grabbed his sword, ready to lay his life down for his King, and in terror when he instructed Killian to grab his own sword. The sound of the cannon firing from his own ship shook Killian to his core.

It was a slaughter. 20 men on his ship alone had died when all was said and done. When a truce was eventually called because neither side could stand to lose more men. Killian had killed 5 men and wounded even more that day. He wasn’t a stranger to death. He had seen it countless times while he was at sea. He wasn’t a stranger to pain. He had received countless lashings and other physical punishments during his indenture. Killian was, however, a stranger to killing a man, to taking a life, until now.

“What now, Captain Jones?” A crewman asked Liam. His voice broke the silence that had fallen over the ship as both sides retreated.

Liam responded with grace, poise, and confidence. “We honor the dead, scrub the deck, and move forward.”

Killian, who according to his wife always ran hot, was shivering in bed despite the blankets covering him. His eyes were wide open, fixated on the ceiling above him. His mind, however, was trapped in the cycle as the soft cracks of exploding fireworks in the distance continued.

The blood stained the deck. It took days to scrub it clean, to lay the bodies to rest in the sea, to rid the ship of disembodied limbs, to erase the evidence of the massacre. He looked to Liam, standing at the wheel, captaining the ship forward while the rest of the crew was hard at work, the stench of death lingering in the wooden planks of the deck. He wanted to leave this life. He wanted out. But he didn’t want to leave Liam. He saw something in Liam’s eyes that had been growing since they had joined the Navy together. It was the loss of any childhood innocence that Liam had clung to all his life - hope that things would get better, faith in himself and in his brother, belief that life was worth living - replaced with misplaced loyalty in a cowardly and dishonorable King and indifference towards death. The indifference growing behind Liam’s eyes scared Killian the most. The war was far from over. He was starting to wonder if the war they were fighting in reality and in their minds would ever end.

The fireworks slowed in the distance. Killian was trembling, frozen in place and drenched in sweat.

A cannon fired at their ship.

“What now Captain Jones?” A man asked.

“Fire back.” Killian didn’t hesitate to answer. The Jolly Roger was the fastest ship in the realm. He could have outran the ship flying the British flag behind him. But the thrill of the fight was addicting. Killian no longer donned his Naval uniform. When Liam died, he traded the blue coat and white linen for black eyeliner and black leather. He took his brother’s place as Captain.

He was no longer afraid to kill. He was no longer afraid to run into battle, sword in hand. He was no longer afraid to die. Because Killian no longer had anything to live for. The indifference that he once saw in Liam’s eyes, the indifference that he once feared, consumed him.

He told himself he lived for the code he curated and lived by. He told himself he lived for Liam. He told himself he lived for himself. But in reality, none of those things were enough to keep him alive. He was fearless in his piracy, his pillaging, his thievery, his murdering because he had nothing to fear. Except himself when he was alone at night.

The cannons fired rapidly.

Killian was trapped in a past he desperately wanted to escape. He had tasted heroism, he had tased kindness, he had tasted love. He couldn’t go back to who he was, to what it was. He didn’t want to go back. He didn’t want to remember. He didn’t want to relive. But it wouldn’t stop.

He watched his own men die for him. He had commanded them to die. He knew, every time he led them to fight it was a death sentence for some, sometimes many. Killian, in his darkest moments, in his worst moments, didn’t second guess those decisions to send those men to die because he would always be fighting alongside them. That was his code. Don’t send a man to fight a battle you wouldn't fight yourself. Except that the fearless, broken, pirate captain Killian Jones feared nothing, and sometimes craved death, and would fight any battle.

A firework exploded close to their home, nearly shaking the entire house. The room was lit with red as Killian leapt out of bed and grabbed the sword he kept hidden under there, ready to fight. He was hyperventilating, stuck in a trance he was unable to break. He was back on the Jolly. The world around him fell away. The fireworks were cannons.

Emma was startled awake when Killian jumped out of bed. Her heart caught in her throat as she saw him staring over her, right through the wall of their bedroom, sword in hand. Where the fuck did he get that sword from?! Emma thought.

“Killian?” She asked softly, her voice cracking slightly as she started to wake up.

“What now, Captain Jones?” He heard a familiar voice ask.

“Arm yourselves. Prepare for battle.” Killian commanded. His voice was loud, clear, and confident despite the tears falling down his face. Emma had never heard him use this voice before. She had watched him captain the Jolly a number of times, and had even taken orders from him a handful of those times. But never did she hear him speak like this. Like a captain heading into battle. Like the fear, the pain, the love, he had ever experienced had been stripped from his soul. “Fire back.”

Emma looked outside and saw the flashing colors of the fireworks. “Killian. There’s no battle.”

“Captain, we’re outmanned. We need to recruit more. You have you outrun them.”

Killian gripped the sword harder, his knuckles turned white. “Fire. Back. I have to protect her. As long as they live they will be after me which means she is in danger. Fire back,” Killian ordered, his voice echoing off the walls of their empty bedroom.

Emma flinched, momentarily afraid of the man in front of her, a ghost from Killian’s past that had consumed her husband. He was so far away, so far adrift in another world. “Killian,” Emma cooed, attempting to pull him back to the present, back to where he was in their bedroom in the house they owned together as a married couple. “You’re home. Come back to me. You’re home.”

“But Captain -”

“THAT’S AN ORDER,” Killian shouted, anger rising in his belly that his crew wasn’t listening to his orders. He was their Captain, damn it. He had to protect Emma. He wouldn’t let anyone hurt Emma. Why was no one helping him protect Emma?

Emma’s breath caught in her throat. He had never raised his voice at her like this.

Another firework exploded outside their window and Killian flinched, nearly curling into himself as if he was trying to hide. He doesn't know how much time had passed since he had last heard the sound of a cannon firing at him. It had been long enough that he now found the sound, that he once found thrilling, unnerving.

Emma didn’t know what else to do other than to keep talking to him, desperate to bring him back to her. He was talking right through her. He was so clearly in another world. So she recited the words they had framed in their living room, hoping that they’ll ground him, her voice shaking with each word. “Killian. I spent so much of my life on my own. And then Henry found me and brought me to Storybrooke and helped me find the rest of my family. But just because you learn that you come from true love doesn't mean you believe that you will ever find it. But thanks to you, now I have.”

Killian let the sword drop to the floor. Captain Jones. He choked on a sob, the Jolly fading away, his crew fading away, Liam fading away. “Emma,” Killian sobbed.

Emma instantly slipped out of bed and pulled him into her arms, soothingly stroking his hair. “Shhh. I’ve got you.”

Killian held her tight against him, as if she was the only thing keeping him both from falling and from leaving this plane of reality for a life he desperately wanted to leave behind. There will always be a part of him that feared falling back into his old habits, his old ways. Part of him will always fear a ghost will come back to haunt him, that someone from his past will come back to try and hurt Emma and that happening would be entirely his fault.

He feared death in a way he never had before. He was captaining an entirely new ship, one that held the people he loved the most, one that held a future, one that held hope. Killian flinched again when another loud firework went off. He couldn’t stand this anymore. Every explosion sounded like a cannon. Every explosion sounded like war. Every explosion sounded like death. Every explosion was a screaming reminder of the deaths he caused, the men he led shamelessly into battles, the lives he had selfishly taken, the brother he had lost before he even had a chance to die, the parts of him he lost when the numbness to death began to consume him. They were a reminder of the war in himself. The war between needing that numbness to get through this night whole and never again wanting to feel that.

Killian could barely breathe. “I can’t - It’s too - Make it stop,” he managed between sobs.

Emma led him to their bathroom. It was the quietest room in the house with no windows. “I’ll be right back.” She kissed his cheek before sprinting around the room, grabbing as many blankets and pillows as she could hold before plopping them in front of Killian who was not curled up on the floor, covering his ears. She touched his hair gently to remind him that she was there for him before leaving again to grab her laptop, charger, and bluetooth speaker. She closed the door behind her when she returned to the bathroom, blocking out the rest of the world.

Laying their fluffy comforter on the floor she arranged the pillows against the side of the tub, using it at a makeshift headboard. Emma wrapped Killian in a blanket and wet a washcloth to dab at the sweat and tears on his face. “You’re okay, Killian. I’m here.” She whispered. He grabbed her hand when the next firework exploded outside, thankful that the door and the blanket Emma rolled up to cover the space between the floor and the bottom of the door muffled the sound.

Emma opened her laptop and connected the speaker. She started playing Love Actually, a Christmas favorite of theirs, and turned the volume up on the speaker to drown out any unwanted sounds.

“You love this movie.” Emma said, trying to get Killian to open his eyes. “Babe, look at me, please.” Killian was still trembling but not hearing much of the fireworks anymore was able to calm his breathing a bit. “It’s just you and me and that guy who plays Professor Snape in Harry Potter who you like.” She knew the last thing Killian would do is tell her what was happening in his mind. That’s not what Killian did when his emotions got the best of him. He’ll talk when he’s calmed down. He’ll tell her tomorrow. She knew her husband well enough to know he didn’t need to talk at this moment. He needed her. He needed to come back home.

It broke her heart in a million different ways, ways she didn't even think were possible, to see Killian like this. To see her strong, confident, sexy, brilliant husband fighting a raging battle inside, a battle she couldn’t even comprehend.

“You’re home. You’re safe. You’re in Storybrooke,” Emma started. “You’re strong. You’re loved. You’re kind. You’re not who you once were Killian. You’re safe. There are no cannons. The only people you usually fight with are me when I leave clothes piling up on the chair or say something stupid, and David when he tells you to take a break from work and you refuse to, and sometimes WIll because he’s an idiot and enjoys getting on your nerves. There’s no more battles to be fought, Killian. We fought them and we won them and it’s all over now. We get to live the life that we want to live, together. You are home. You are safe. You are loved.”

Killian pulled her into his arms and she settled into his lap. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“Lucky for you, you never have to find out.” Emma leaned up and kissed his jaw. She reached over and turned her laptop to face them, and brought the speaker closer to them to keep the scary sounds of exploding fireworks at bay.

Eventually Killian opened his eyes and his heart rate slowed down to normal. They watched the movie, curled up on the bathroom floor. Emma turned the lights off halfway through the movie. There was something comforting about the way the movie barely lit the room. It was like their own personal movie theater.

Neither of them ended up getting back to sleep until early in the morning, after the sun had already emerged. They spent all night watching Christmas movies.

The following night would be the big fireworks show the town was putting on. Emma decided Killian might find comfort with someone who was just as afraid of fireworks as he was. So in the late afternoon when they were both finally awake, they made their way to the animal shelter where Killian picked out the cutest Border Collie that he named Sailor.

Emma, Killian, and Sailor all ended up spending another night locked away in the bathroom, with hordes of junk food and playing Christmas movies at full volume to drown out the sound of the fireworks that seemed to never end. Killian was far from okay that night. But at least he had Emma and Sailor to see him through it.

If only Liam was there to see the life he had built, to be a part of this story they were writing.

[multiverseforger]

Christopher Powell was born in Queens, New York. While witnessing his policeman father accept a bribe from a crime boss at an abandoned amusement park, teenager Chris Powell discovered a mysterious amulet. This amulet allowed him to switch places with a powerful android that his mind controlled. Powell vowed to use the amulet as "an edge against crime." In this role, he worked with other superheroes and battled a number of costumed villains.[8]

Darkhawk soon encountered his first supervillain, the Hobgoblin, and battled him alongside Spider-Man.[8][9] He next fought Savage Steel,[10] and then Portal.[11] He next battled the U-Foes alongside Captain America.[12] He battled the villain Lodestone, who attempted to remove his amulet.[13] He battled Savage Steel again, this time alongside the Punisher.[14] Darkhawk battled the cyborg Midnight, Thunderball, and the Secret Empire alongside Spider-Man, the Punisher, Night Thrasher, Nova, and Moon Knight.[15] Darkhawk then battled assassins from the Foreigner's 1400 Club.[16] He battled Tombstone, who successfully removed his amulet from his chest.[17]

Darkhawk occasionally worked with the New Warriors and was a provisional member of the West Coast Avengers. Darkhawk also battled a number of costumed villains, including the Brotherhood of Mutants.



Darkhawk's second android body. Art by Ron Lim.

Powell discovered that the android was stored and repaired aboard a starship in a dimension called Null Space. When he used the amulet to access the android body, his human body switched places with it. Five Darkhawk amulets were commissioned by an alien crime lord named Dargin Bokk. The scientists who created the technology eventually used them to assault Bokk. After Bokk destroyed the other scientists two of the scientists beamed their minds to Earth and merged with two Earth scientists there. Byron/Ned Dobbs and Mondu/John Trane created a sixth amulet which is the one that turned Christopher Powell into Darkhawk.[18]

However, the events of War of Kings: Ascension cast doubt on how much of this—even the existence of Bokk himself—was real.[19]

Later, Powell and Darkhawk were split into two separate beings, each with Powell's memories.[20] The Darkhawk body was then transformed into a new shape when it accidentally downloaded data from the ship,[21] later re-emerging so that Powell could change back and forth between the two without teleporting to Null Space.[22]

Excelsior (the Loners)Edit

Powell later joined a group of former teenage superheroes who were struggling with their current lot in life called the Loners (formerly known as Excelsior). Members of this group included Phil Urich (a former Green Goblin), Turbo from the New Warriors, Lightspeed from Power Pack, and Ricochet from the Slingers. The group was hired by a mysterious benefactor – later revealed to be former Avengers sidekick and Captain Marvel and Hulk partner Rick Jones – to track down the Runaways in Los Angeles.[23]

Powell displayed trouble controlling his anger in his Darkhawk persona, leading to a short skirmish with Turbo. Dismayed with himself, Powell admits to his teammates that he suffered a nervous breakdown.[24] Powell decided to never turn into Darkhawk again, but this decision did not last long, as shortly thereafter the group battled the notorious Avengers villain, Ultron. Darkhawk delivered the final blow, using a darkforce blast at point blank range to blow Ultron to pieces. Following the battle and the revelation of Jones' involvement, Excelsior opted to remain together and act as a more traditional superhero team.[25]

Excelsior eventually change their minds about being superheroes and instead become a 'superhero support group' due to the events of the superhuman Civil War rendering moot their original purpose to dissuade and/or help young superheroes cope with their powers/superhuman identities, as this role was now being officially fulfilled by the U.S. government[26] (though Excelsior's new group mission was also fulfilled by the U.S. government). However, a new addition to the group, Mattie Franklin convinces Powell to use his powers in order to help her take down the MGH dealers that moved to Los Angeles. Powell inconsistently displays his rage issues during this time, mostly acting as a peacemaker between Mattie and Ricochet after the three team up to battle crime.[27]

Secret InvasionEdit

Deciding to register with the government, Darkhawk is assigned to the position of Security Chief at Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S.. During the Skrull invasion, he teams up with his old team-mate Nova[28] for two issues of that character's own title, but is also seen in the background of several issues thereafter.

War of KingsEdit

Darkhawk is involved with the War of Kings event in a four-issue series written by Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning called War Of Kings: Ascension.[29] With the Loners series ending with low sales and unlikely to be followed with a sequel series, series writer CB Cebulski was assigned to write a two-issue War of Kings: Darkhawk series, with Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning co-scripting the second issue to ensure it tied into their own 'Ascension' series.[30][31]

A second Darkhawk armor appears near the Powell family home, and the unknown occupant of the armor forces Powell to transform to his own armored form shortly before an explosion rocks the immediate area.

Powell's family survives the blast, but his mother is critically injured. The new Darkhawk introduces himself as "Talon" and claims to be part of "The Fraternity of Raptors", an order created as "the curators of history, and the custodians of the future," of which he and Powell are the last two members. He also explains that Powell's anger issues are a direct result of the amulet not being designed to work with humans. Talon offers to assist Powell with the amulet, and after some deliberation he opts to do so; the two then retreat to the Negative Zone.

The story picks up in War of Kings: Ascension. Powell and Talon are fighting a group of Chitinauts, bug troops that serve Catastrophus, a lieutenant of Annihilus, where Talon's brutal techniques horrify Powell. Later, Powell reveals that he wanted to be just like his friend Nova. Talon explains to him that the Nova Corps are nothing compared to the Fraternity of Raptors, referring to themselves as "architects of fate". Eventually, after being tricked by Talon into fighting just as lethally, Powell manages to connect to the Datasong of the Null Source, which gives him visions of the true past of the Fraternity—a history of kidnappings and assassinations which lead Powell to conclude that the Fraternity are "the bad guys." At this point, Talon attacks him, purging Powell's consciousness from the armor, which manifests a new persona: Razor.[32]

Talon and Razor then recover the Cosmic Control Rod from Catastrophus, Talon stopping briefly to implant a suggestion in the gestating Annihilus, and proceed onward. Powell's personality is revealed not to have been wholly destroyed yet, and a vision of his father tells him that much of what he believed about the armor was false; the prior history, even Evilhawk himself, was a lie made up by his own mind, the other armor a second configuration that took control to cover earlier anger issues. Horrified, Powell's psyche breaks free of the prison it was locked in, only for Powell to find himself on a great tree adorned with thousands of amulets like his own, where he encounters gargoyle-like creatures that urge him to return to the one which he has just emerged from. Meanwhile, in the Negative Zone, Talon and Razor offer Blastaar the Cosmic Control Rod, in exchange for his assistance influencing the outcome of the War of Kings.[33]

Powell encounters a Skrull on the tree mentioned earlier, who has a relationship with Talon much as Razor has with him. However, the Skrull also confides that humanity, as a newer race, cannot be wholly accounted for or controlled by the Raptors, and that Powell's own outbursts of rage have been growing pains in his own control. With this understanding, Powell is able to reassert control over the Darkhawk armor, but not before Razor shoots several Shi'ar and kills Lilandra.[34]

Powell later confronts Talon, and while he is able to force the other Raptor to release the Skrull temporarily, he is quick to begin asserting control again. The Skrull commits suicide to prevent Talon from manifesting, but not before he charges Powell with destroying the rest of the Raptor amulets before they can bring the Fraternity of Raptors back.[35]

Realm of KingsEdit

In Realm of Kings, the Shi'ar Imperium declares Darkhawk the "Galaxy's Most Wanted," making Powell an intergalactic fugitive. His old friend Nova, not willing to believe Powell could be a murderer, tracks him to the planet Shard, which is in danger of falling into a rift in space known as the Fault. Nova offers to help Powell clear his name, but they are interrupted by an attacking biomass from the Fault, and by the awakening of another Raptor, named Gyre. All three are trapped on the planet as it is disintegrated by the Fault.[36]

Darkhawk finds himself saved, alongside Nova, by Nova's old enemy the Sphinx, who seems unaware of Darkhawk's presence. Together, the two heroes join past versions of Reed Richards, Black Bolt, and Namorita in helping the Sphinx combat his younger self. The young Sphinx draws his own warriors, including Gyre, into the battle, and Darkhawk faces and defeats Gyre in single combat, exorcising him from the Kree archaeologist he had possessed. During the fight, Gyre reveals that many more Raptors are re-awakening. Ultimately, the elder Sphinx defeats his counterpart, and mentally controls Darkhawk into giving him his younger self's Ka Stone. Nevertheless, the heroes are able to defeat the double-powered Sphinx and return to their proper places in time (except Namorita, who is pulled into Darkhawk and Nova's time).[37]

Darkhawk returns to Earth and Project: Pegasus to help Nova fight the evil Quasar from the Cancerverse on the other side of the Fault. The evil Quasar damages Darkhawk so badly that his suit shuts down, leaving him alive but unable to accompany Nova as he goes to warn the universe about the threat posed by the Fault. Nova leaves Darkhawk in the care of Project:Pegasus' medical team.[38]

Avengers ArenaEdit

Darkhawk appears in Avengers Arena as part of the Marvel NOW! event. He is among the young superheroes that are abducted by Arcade and sent to Murderworld despite not being a teenager himself. Arcade expects his captives to fight to the death.[39] Darkhawk is later attacked by an unidentified cybernetic creature, which tears his transformation amulet from his chest.[40] The amulet is found by Chase Stein, who transforms into the new Darkhawk.[41] The attacker was later revealed to be Death Locket (who was in turn controlled by Apex).[volume & issue needed] When Death Locket stumbled into an underground facility, she comes across a room where Christopher Powell's body is alongside the others who have died in battle.[42] A few days later, when Death Locket and Apex raid the place, it is revealed Darkhawk is alive and Death Locket releases him. He then attacks and knocks out Arcade.[43] Arcade soon talks Apex into letting the war play out, and she controls Death Locket into shooting Darkhawk in the shoulder.[44] Once the series ended, Darkhawk was taken away to parts unknown, injured but reunited with his amulet.[45]

Infinity CountdownEdit

After the events of Avengers Arena as seen during the "Infinity Countdown" storyline, Powell is shown to have joined the New York Police Department and is engaged to a woman named Miranda, with whom he has shared his history as Darkhawk. He experiences frequent visions of the Tree of Shadows in Null Space despite the Darkhawk amulet being damaged and no longer allowing him to change form. One day, he is sent out to the Wonderland Amusement Park, the place where he first became Darkhawk, to investigate a disturbance. There, he is accosted by two dirty cops and almost attacked when he refuses their offer to take bribes. The group is soon attacked by two members of the Shi'ar Fraternity of Raptors, with one able to take Powell's amulet and use it to change into a heavily damaged Razor. The Razor personality asserts control, defeats the other Shi'ar, and teleports Powell to the Datasong in a place it calls "The Perch," where all of the android's memories of its time with Powell are stored. Razor, now calling itself Darkhawk, tells Powell that his compassion and dedication to justice have imprinted upon it, with it wants to rejoin with him in order to stop the Shi'ar Raptors from releasing the true Fraternity of Raptor androids from Null Space. Powell accepts and becomes Darkhawk once more, merging in both body and mind with the Darkhawk android and gaining a new, more powerful form.[46] Seeking a means to get to space, Darkhawk soon encounters Death's Head, who is on Earth to collect a bounty for Darkhawk's armor. After a brief scuffle, Darkhawk realizes that Death's Head would have a spaceship and moves to strike a deal.[47]

Before he goes, Powell says one last goodbye to Miranda, but upon arriving, the Raptors attack Death's Head and swarm Darkhawk to a secret Shi'ar outpost, easily overpowering him in his Darkhawk armor. The Raptors' leader Gyre (who escaped the Null Space along with his fellow Raptors) goes on to reveal to Powell that the amulet is really the key to unleashing the Ratha'kon or Dark Starhawk, which the Shi'ar intended to be a "predator" to the Phoenix Force. However, to bring it to life, two tributes were required, one who's willing and one who's forced. Gyre wanted Powell's amulet because of how special it was, since Powell actually convinced his amulet's persona, Razor, to break free from the Fraternity's stronghold, thus developing sentience. Gyre punches through Powell's chest, leaving him for dead, and then uses his amulet as the forced tribute to fuse with the willing tribute, who turns out to be none other than Robbie Rider, thus allowing Ratha'kon to possess the latter's body. Gyre then takes the Dark Starhawk and the Raptors to Earth — a place where the Phoenix loves to go — for a mysterious mission.[48]

As Powell dragged himself across the ground, he encountered his other half Razor who revealed to him the origins of the Tree of Shadows, a creation of the Gardner and of the first Raptor who was of primitive Shi'ar/Skrull descent. After some coaxing from Razor, Powell tapped into his hidden strength and emerged with a new Darkhawk body after fully fusing his mind with the armor. Powell then flew after the Raptors to stop them.[49]

Powell battled the Raptors with help from Death's Head and Nova Prime. Nova made it difficult to fight Dark Darkhawk as he preferred to reason with his brother Robbie than fight him. Dark Darkhawk then shockingly turned on Gyre and destroyed him while stating that he would bring order to the universe, not Gyre. The Raptors were eventually stopped when Death's Head rigged the power core of the Kree ship the Raptors stole to explode. Only Dark Starhawk survived the explosion, though stunned, allowing Powell to reclaim his Darkhawk Amulet. Dark Starhawk then disappeared in a flash of light after striking his Nega-Bands together. Grieving over the loss of Robbie, Nova angrily told Powell to stay on Earth or he would have him locked up. After Powell returned to Earth, he decided stay out of space for a while. Later that night, he was met by Sleepwalker while he dreamed, telling him that the influence of the Infinity Stones threatened the Mindscape and that the only way he could protect it was to become a Sleepwalker.[50]

Guardians of the GalaxyEdit

Chris would later turn up again at a meeting of great and powerful cosmic players set up by Starfox, brother to the Mad Titan Thanos. While going over the deceased cosmic brigand's last will and testament, this great congruence was attacked by the Cull Obsidian; The Black Order. Contracted by the death goddess Hela, to retrieve what was left of her former consort from their court. All while leaving the galaxian enclave to be sucked into an artificial black hole in order to cover their tracks.[51] Powell would later find himself stranded in the middle of deep space while being brought into the clutches of the Universal Church of Truth. They had him in a mental simulation where he believed himself to have been separated from Razor, run through and across time and space; seeing past, present and future iterations of himself while in the black hole, only to finally find release in the care of a ship piloted by the Kree, Shi'ar and Skrulls. Three races whom are known to be the bitterest enemies in the universe, his final hallucination stems to finding himself a child again while adorning his Raptor body. Something he confirms to his shock and horror when he takes off his helmet only to see his childlike visage staring back at him in the mirror.

[for-your-therapeutic-smile]

They Never Teach You How to Stop

Rarely do I lack the words to express myself. Perhaps this reflects my failure to maintain my journal consistently throughout 2020. Here goes an honest attempt to capture and document my mental state and the fatigue of Covid, the inertia of this shelter-in-place, the anxiety of this political crisis we face as a nation, the pressure of being a 1L in law school against the backdrop of civil unrest and Justice Ginsburg’s death, coming out - my dad told me he was disappointed -, the possible erosion of my relationship with someone I love, and this feeling of absolute dread and resentment for a system that continuously fails my and future generations (robbing us of a social contract that promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness), among many other things I’m too tired to consider. When did we accept a $0 baseline as the American Dream? Oh, to be debt free - free from this punishment for having pursued an education. Stifling the educated to prevent them (myself included) from organizing and mobilizing the masses so we can supplant this system with a better one is the overall objective of the oppressive class (read: Pedagogy of the Oppressed); it’s the conflict between the bourgeois and the proletariat. The proletariat has swallowed the middle class, leaving only the ruling class. I am essentially on autopilot, forcing myself to go through the motions so I can survive another day. I know others join me in this mental gymnastics of unparalleled proportions, one social scientists and medical researchers will soon study and subsequently publish their findings in an attempt to explain the unexplainable. Despite a lack of air circulation, we are breathing history; the constitution, like our societal norms, must adapt accordingly. Judge Barrett: there is no place for originalism. While I seldom admit weakness or an inability to manage life’s curveballs, this series of unfortunate events seems almost too much to bear. 

And yet somehow I continue to find the energy to submit assignments due at 11:59 p.m., write this post at 1:38 a.m., “sleep”, wake at 7 a.m. so I can read and prepare (last minute!) the assigned material leading into my torts or contracts class. I find the energy to text my boyfriend (or ex-boyfriend) so I can attempt to salvage the real and genuine connection we have, cook elaborate meals to find some solace, wrestle with whether or not to hit my yoga mat (I don’t), apply to a fellowship for the school year and summer internships, prepare my dual citizenship paperwork, manage a campaign for two progressive politicians, and listen to music in an attempt to stay sane . . . ~*Queues John Mayer’s “War of My Life” and “Stop This Train”*~ . . . I realize I have to be kinder to myself, give credit where credit is due. I hate feeling self-congratulatory though.

Mostly, I am too afraid of the repercussions if I stop moving at a mile/minute, that I can just work away the pain and be the superhuman who numbs himself from the low-grade depression and nervous breakdown. My body tells me to slow down, as evidenced by the grinding of my teeth, but I take on more responsibility because people rely on me. I must show up. I am a masochist in that way. This is what I signed up for and I’ll be damned if I don’t carry through on my promise to do the work. Pieces of my soul scattered about like Horcruxes, though they’re pure, not evil, so I hope nobody resolves to destroy them. 

My mind rarely rests. It’s 3:08 a.m., one of the lonelier hours where night meets morning; it’s the hour for and of intense introspection. It makes you consider pulling an all-nighter, one you reserve for an “important” school or work deadline. We always put our personal lives on the back-burner. 3 a.m. sets the tone for a potentially awful day. But that doesn’t matter right now. I’m letting some of my favorite albums play in the background: Joni Mitchell’s Blue, Mac Miller’s Circles, Rhye’s Blood, Alicia Keys’ ALICIA, Coldplay’s Ghost Stories, Frank Ocean’s Blonde, Miley Cyrus’ Dead Petz in addition to other playlists, Tiny Desk performances, and tracks (I unearthed last week, like When It’s Over by Sugar Ray). I need to feel something. I need to feel anything. I need to feel everything. We experience such a broad spectrum of emotions throughout the day that we lose track of if we don’t pause to absorb them. Music reinforces empathy; it releases dopamine.

I spent the past two hours reading through old journals and posts, as scattered as they were, on a wide range of topics: poems I had written about falling in and out love, anecdotes about my world travels, and entries on personal, political, and professional epiphanies. The other night I found one of my favorites, a previous post from my time living in Indonesia, centering on the dualities of technology. It resonated with me more than the others. To summarize, I wrote about my tendency to equate the Internet with a sense of interconnectedness (shoutout to Tumblr for being my digital journal; to Twitter for being a place of comedy and revolution; to Instagram for curating my *aesthetic*; to Facebook where I track my family’s accomplishments and connect with travel buddies displaced around the globe all searching for a home). And yet I feel incredibly lonely and disconnected whenever I spend too much time using technology, so much so that I set screen time limitations on my phone recently to curtail this obsession with constant communication and information gathering. Trump and Biden admitted that it’s unlikely we’ll know the results of the election on November 3rd during their first presidential debate. Push notifications don’t allow us to learn of trauma within the comforts of our own homes. I’m already fearing where I will be when that news breaks. 

This global pandemic and indefinite shutdown of the world (economy) undeniably exacerbates these feelings. This is some personal and collective turmoil. But I was complicit in the endless scrolling and swiping of faces and places long before Covid-19. Instead of choosing to interact with my direct environment (today’s research links this behavior to the same levels of depression one feels when they play slot machines), I am still an active on all these platforms, participating the least in the most tangible one: my physical life. I am tired of pretending. I am tired of being tired. I am tired of embodying fake energy to exist in systems that fail me. I am tired of the quagmire. Like Anaïs Nin, I must be a mermaid [because] I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living. This particular excerpt from that 2016 entry was difficult for me to read: “The fantasy of what could have been if a certain plan had unfolded will haunt you forever if you do not come to peace with the reality of the situation. I hope you come to terms with reality.” I am not at peace with my current reality. But is anyone?

It’s a bit surreal for my peers to have suddenly started caring about international relations theory. It’s transported me back to my 2012 IR lecture at Northeastern: are you a constructivist or a feminist? Realist or liberalist? Neo? Marxist? The one no one wants you to talk about. Absent upward mobility, this is class warfare. But I cannot be “a singular expression of myself . . . there are too many parts, too many spaces, too many manifestations, too many lines, too many curves, too many troubles, too many journeys, too many mountains, too many rivers” . . . It feels like America’s wake-up call. But I know people will retreat into the comforts of capitalism if Biden wins and, well, we all enter uncharted waters together if the Electoral College re-elects #45. For those who weren’t paying attention: the world is multipolar and we are not the hegemon. Norms matter. People tend to be self-interested and shortsighted. Look to the past in order to understand the future. History, as the old adage goes, repeats itself. Once a cheater, always a cheater. Taxation without representation. Indoctrination. Welcome to the language of political discourse. Students of IR and polisci have long awaited your participation. Too little too late? Plot twist: it’s a lifelong commitment. You must continue to engage irrespective of the election outcome or else we will regress just as quickly as we progress. Now dive into international human rights treaties (International Covenant on Civil & Political Rights; International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights), political refugees, FGM. No one said it wasn’t dismal. But it’s important. We need buy-in.  

While I am grateful for the continuation of my education, for this extended time with family, for this opportunity to be a campaign manager for two local progressive candidates (driving to Boston to pick up revised yard signs as proof that the work never stops), it would be remiss of me, however, not to admit that I am lonely: I am buried in my books, in the depressing news both nationally and globally, and in precedent-setting Supreme Court cases (sometimes for the worst, e.g. against the preservation of our environment). In my nonexistent free time I work on political asylum cases, essentially creating an enforceability framework of international law, for people fleeing country conditions so unthinkable (the irony of that work when my country falls greater into authoritarianism and oligarchy is not lost on me). I am fulfilling my dream of becoming a human rights lawyer which stems back to middle school. I saw Things I Imagined (thank you Solange). I have held an original copy of the Declaration of Independence that we sent to the House of Lords in 1778 and the Human Rights Act of 1998 while visiting the U.K. Parliamentary Archives as an intern for a Member of Parliament. This success terrifies and exhausts me; it also oxygenizes and saves me. Every decision, every sacrifice, has led me to this point. 

“It’s the choosing that’s important, isn’t it?,” Lois Lowry of The Giver rhetorically asks. This post is not intended to be woe is me! I am fortunate to be in this position, to have this vantage point at such an early age, and I understand the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. My life has purpose. I am committed to the work that transcends boundaries; it is larger than life itself. It provides a unique perspective. But it makes it difficult to coexist with people so preoccupied in the drama they create in their lives and the general shallowness of the world we live. It feels like there is no option to pump the brakes on any of this work, especially in light of our current climate, and that pressure oftentimes feels insurmountable. Time is of the essence. It feels, whether true or not, that hardly anyone relates to my experience, so if I don’t carve out this time to write about it, then I am neither recording nor processing it. 

Tonight, in between preparing tomorrow’s coursework, I realize that I have an unprecedented number of questions about life, which startles me because typically I have the answers or at least have a goal in mind that launches me into the next phase of life or contextualizes the current one. These goals, often rooted in this capitalistic framework, in this falsity of “needing” to advance my career as a means of helping people, distract me from asking myself the existential questions, the reasons for why we live and what we fundamentally want our systems to look like; they have distracted me from real grassroots community organizing until now. They distract me from the fact that, like John Mayer, I don’t know which walls to smash; similarly, I don’t know which train to board. Right now feels like we are living through impossible and hopeless times and I don’t want to placate myself into thinking otherwise despite my relatively optimistic outlook on life. As we face catastrophic circumstances – the consequences of this election and climate change (famine, refugees, lack of resources) – I do not want to live in perpetual sadness. I am searching for clarity and direction so I can step into a better, fuller version of myself. 

It’s now 3:33 a.m. Here is the list of questions that I have often asked myself in different stages of life, but recently, until now, I have not been willing to confront for fear that I might not be able to answers them. But I owe it to myself to pose them here so I can have the overdue conversation, the one I know leads me to better understanding myself:

Are you happy? Why or why not?

What do you want the future to hold? What groundwork are you going to do to ensure it happens?

What does your ideal day/week/month/year/decade look like? Why?

With whom do you want to spend your days? Why?

Who do you love and care about? Have you told people you care about that you love them? Does love and vulnerability scare you?

What do you expect of people – of yourself, of your partner, of your family, and of your friends? Should you have those expectations? Why or why not?

What do you feel and why?

What relaxes you? What scares you? What brings you joy?

What do you want to improve? Why?

What do you want to forgive yourself for and why?

Does the desire to reinvent yourself diminish your ability to be present?

Do you have a greater fear of failure or success? Why?

How do you escape the confines of this broken system? How do you break from the guilt of participation in it and having benefited from it?

How do we reconcile our daily lives with the fact that we’re living through an extinction event? This one comes from my friend (hi Jeanne) and a podcast she listened to recently.

How do you help people? How do you help yourself? Are you pouring from an empty cup?

How will you find joy in your everyday responsibilities, in the mission you have chosen for yourself? What, if any, will be the warning signs to walk away from this work, in part or in its entirety? Without being a martyr, do you believe in dying for the cause?

So here are some of the lessons I have learned during this quarantine/past year:

“I’ve Got Dreams to Remember,” so do not take your eyes off them. Chasing paper does not bring you happiness.

Be autonomous, particularly in your professional life.

Focus on values instead of accolades.

Do everything with intention and honest energy.

Listen to Tracy Chapman’s “Crossroads” & Talkin’ Bout a Revolution for an energy boost and reminder that other revolutionaries have shared and continue to share your fervent passion . . . “I’m trying to protect what I keep inside, all the reasons why I live my life” . . . When self-doubt nearly cripples you and you yearn a few minutes to run away when in reality you can’t escape your responsibilities, go for a drive and queue up “Fast Car” . . . “I got no plans, I ain’t going nowhere, so take your fast car and keep on driving.”

With that said, take every opportunity to travel (you can take the work with you if absolutely necessary). Go to Italy. Buy the concert ticket and lose yourself in the moment. Remember that solo excursions are equally as important as collective ones. But, from personal experience, you prefer the company. Find the balance.

Detach from the numbers people keep trying to assign to measure your personhood.

Closely examine the people in your inner circle and ask them for help when you need it.

“And life is just too short to keep playing the game . . . because if you really want somebody [or something], you’ll figure it out later, or else you will just spend the rest of the night with a BlackBerry on your chest hoping it goes *vibration, vibration*” (John Mayer’s Edge of Desire) . . . so love fiercely and unapologetically.

Be specific.

Go to therapy even when life is good.

[violetsystems]

#personal

I can’t really tell if my mood is better or worse on Sunday mornings rather than the typical Saturday.  Things have reached a point where it’s just not worth explaining how awful life can be.  My life story at this point is slightly more convoluted than a side job in Cyberpunk 2077.  It’s also seemingly just as insignificant.  That is until I realize I’ve been writing here weekly for over two years at this point.  I’ve been posting on this platform for what seems like over a decade.  The value of this kind of journaling has been impossible to gauge.  I just paid a full year for LinkedIn to keep my career contacts alive.  I post in the hashtag cybersecurity almost every day.  I have a solid list of five contacts that follow my company.  I post the zero day news as it happens.  I promote my brand and employability.  As if this is the only thing that is valuable.  A twenty year resume with management experience that gets picked over by AI and human just the same.  I also forget sometimes I’m a musician.  I was reminded last night when I posted the RP Boo “Bangin’ on King Drive” video.  I was at that video shoot.  Years ago I would just run into Bu in the street with his wife randomly.  I appear nowhere in that video as I was edited out much like I was the only artist edited out of a Pitchfork review for a footwork compilation from Japan that protested Nuclear proliferation.  If there were any more alarming trend for me it’s that most of what I try to succeed at is locked beyond a brick wall.  I sit here from week to week trying to figure out ways to keep myself from disappearing.  I worry about where I can actually pivot and when.  I lay awake at night alone in my bed calculating what my runway for cash positivity is before I have to leave this city altogether.  It sometimes feels completely futile and useless.  Everybody in America is winner take all when there’s nothing left to take.  It’s cutthroat and we’re all in this together at the same time.  The amount of bullying I have to process per day has left me broken down and angry ninety percent of the time.  And yet angry is a shitty look for me.  I lose at video games all the time.  And lately I feel as if I’m living in one.  To explain that any further gets into some territory of oversharing.  I’ve written paragraphs upon paragraphs about my life here.  And yet nobody seems to acknowledge I exist other than here.  Which leads me to believe a very few amount of people actually have the reading comprehension over 140 characters to look deeper into someone’s life, liberty and value therein.  I think sometimes that it shouldn’t be this hard.  That something is very wrong and deeply troubled about it all.  And there’s not much I can really do about the things I’m up against when it’s only me fighting it from day to day out here.  So I’ve fallen back to what I know.  We are still very much in the middle of a pandemic.  I’m happy the relief bill has passed.  I’m waiting to pay my taxes until it’s official.  Which puts me back in the same mood I’ve been in the last eight months.  A complete state of abandon.  This nefarious field of people watching you every day waiting to pin something on you.  It never comes because I know better than to fall back into that trap as much as I can these days.  

The worst of this mindfuck is over for me.  I don’t actually really care too deeply about how wrong things are.  Mostly because I’ve done my best to make due under impossible circumstances.  You’d think someone like me after all these years would have something to celebrate.  I kind of do.  My birthday didn’t matter to anyone really out here much last month.  It was a clear indicator that I had no real peers out here anymore.  As evidenced as how everyone in footwork I helped back in 2014 has literally just ghosted like the rest of my professional network.  I had a couple of things to fall back on.  But it’s impossible to fall back onto anything when people would rather pretend you didn’t exist.  I’m always supposed to read into these psychotic projections by society because somehow I’m supposed to realize more is expected out of me.  I can’t figure this out completely.  Like I brought all this upon myself.  That’s the vibe I get from day to day.  That because I don’t share my plans, agenda, or strategy with the real world I’m shit out of luck.  The irony is that I do share it verbatim.  Week to week.  In a very coy, oblique way this is true.  But I am also a writer.  This is another talent I’ve been taught by society that has no value.  I wrote emails for my bosses for years on my days off.  On my birthday even.  This doesn’t mean it is worthless.  The audience is out there.  If it weren’t I would have quit sharing my feelings a long time ago.  I’m fairly aware at some point I’m going to have to put this all behind me.  Hopefully when the world wakes up and returns to normal like nothing ever happened.  That’s going on as we speak and I don’t even have a vaccine in my arm.  It’s a constant state of fear and missing out projected back at you.  That the reason I’m not happy is totally because of what I choose to take on in my life.  And I’m supposed to get the message when people don’t actually communicate.  I had this strange realization yesterday when I discovered all my videos were closed captioned.  I watch movies with subtitles all the time simply because I love to read.  My videos barely get ten views if that.  I often think content is content.  If you put it out there someone will eventually find it and wonder about it’s value.  In the age of semi-spiritual machines it’s true that the algorithms seem to be the only curators out there listening.  Everything I say out loud is transcribed and mothballed somewhere on Siri’s or Alexa’s servers.  When I take a screen shot of the things I say off the top of my head, I’m often aware that something acknowledges I actually said them.  It’s just nobody human really wants to pay attention. They are hardcoded over my videos as proof of the value of my words.  Not like you can sell the speculative value of it yet.  The first tweet is being auctioned off as a NFT and you wonder how worthless I have to feel at this point.  I’m sure we all feel a little of this deep down.  Disconnected and in some sort of weird emotional exile.  I think it just makes me realize more of what I am connected to.  A history of authenticity.  A life that trades the catwalk for the streets as brutal and unforgiving as they are.  Nobody can stop talking shit about me.  But it’s almost always a hallucination.  For a person who puts it all out there, I must be a shitty fucking writer.  I can spend week to week writing the same thing.  That I’m completely abandoned and ghosted out here on my own.  And how it’s less unsafe and more simply a degraded quality of life when it comes to my rights as a human being to be happy.  I’m supposed to get the message when nobody can bother to read mine.  The writing is on the wall I guess.

So instead of pining on and on about it which I just did for two paragraphs, I still look for solutions.  I still broadcast weekly to let people know I’m still alive.  I make funny jokes to myself and screencap them to mask deep emotional scarring that is no fault of my own.  I literally feel trapped and under duress almost all of the time.  And yet, I don’t really have the luxury of taking the shit when I’ve had the hope choked out of me until I can’t breathe.  If the answer is to keep ignoring the problem, it’s hard to be me.  Because nobody can leave me alone.  No one seems to have any sense of dignity as to what I’ve been through.  I never claimed to be a victim.  That’s not really me.  I’ve survived and been resilient.  I can see that working a six figure corporate job in New York or China is probably more worth my time in the not so distant future.  I can also see that I’m worth more than what people sell me short for.  I know we are in a dangerous time of confidence tricks.  I don’t really have much to lose other than cash positivity.  I can wait this out until the end of the summer for sure.  And then I start to think about spending another winter being hunted and shunned at the same time.  Mentally I can’t fuck with this city after what it’s done to me alone.  I can’t keep being a superhero for people who can’t be bothered to understand how painful it is to be taken for granted after all these years.  I just give up on everything in the past that isn’t working and move forward as best as I can.  Just like they threw the entire contents of my office in the trash I can let it go.  There is a very real emotional exhaustion I have to deal with from day to day.  The level of psychological torture and abuse I’ve witnessed first hand in this city is at a level that is unlawful and unhealthy.  I know too much about what it’s all connected to.  And I know I’m better than all of this.  I don’t know how to proceed.  And this is a very real and dangerous situation that I am stuck in the middle of a shark tank feeding frenzy of well meaning but rabid idiots and the pricks that prod them with a sharp stick.  I don’t have a future here in this city.  I don’t have a future in this state or country if you wanted me to be real about.  And yet I have so much potential if I just hold on for one more year.  For one more decade.  For another forty years when they turn my blog into a NFT after my death like I’m the next Van Gogh.  Everybody will talk about how they knew me and how tortured an artist I was.  I was so misunderstood and it was beautiful.  They’ll fund a school with the proceeds that kicked me out the door because I was a blight on their payroll and budget.  And I’ll be a digital ghost just the same.  I feel like that very ghost now every waking fucking moment.  It is a pain I cannot describe in words.  It is a suffering that is goaded on in the worst syndicate driven way.  I have nothing good to say about any of this shit anymore.  I have no more room to break down and make things worse for myself.  I just have to adjust my schedule and manage my emotions with it all because it’s my fault.  This is the message I keep hearing in my head projected by silent looks as I picked up my prescriptions on foot avoiding everyone who wants to see if it’s true.  If I really am the bogeyman.  The source of the problem.  Someone to blame.  The scapegoat for everything that is wrong with the world.  Convenient but ultimately not worth my time to humor.  Which is why I don’t really know what to do anymore other than to stay inside and wait for justice.  If there’s anything poetic about it, it’s that it runs pretty seamlessly at 1440p.  Much clearer resolution than what this city wants to offer me after what it’s put me through.  <3 Tim

[misscrawfords]

top 5 kdramas so far?

Ahhhh I’ve been waiting for a chance to do this!

With one exception these are all dramas I’ve finished watching because I think you need to see the whole thing through to get a full impression.

1. Romance is a Bonus Book (Netflix)

This is probably my all-time favourite drama I’ve seen. It’s just really beautiful and lyrical and understated. I really appreciate many things about it - that the characters express themselves through literary references, that it is as much about getting over someone and moving on as it is about romance, that the characters who are jealous and bitter get over it, that it’s ultimate friends-to-lover story. There’s a lot to love and no real downsides. Basic plot is that a divorced woman in her thirties is forced to start again at the bottom of the employment pile due to her age and being out of the work force and moves in with her (younger, male) best friend who has been in love with her forever. 

2. Mr. Sunshine (Netflix)

I’m putting this with the reservation that I’m only half way through it. It’s so intense that I can only watch one at episode at a time and then I need about 2 months to recover from it. I also suspect it’s going to end in tragedy so I’m wary. But it is beautiful. It is honestly the most gorgeous drama in terms of cinematography, music, costumes... everything... that I’ve ever seen. It is PAINFUL and often confusing and yet I feel that it is worth it all and I would recommend it to anyone because it has something for everyone - history, romance, war, political intrigue, humour, family saga, tragedy, espionage and the gorgeousness mentioned about.  The basic plot is set during the Joseon era of Korean history when America, Japan and other nations are all fighting for control of Joseon, a Korean-American soldier arrives in Korea and gets caught up with local politics and especially with a noblewoman who is secretly a Korean freedom fighter.

3. Her Private Life (Viki)

What I really loved about this drama was that the main characters were adults and actually communicated and talked about important things at the appropriate times and resolved their problems like functional humans. It was really refreshing. It was also really funny, often very emotional, I loved all the characters, and the kisses were great! I did think that a couple of plot lines got dropped towards the end and it ended weaker than it started but overall I really loved it. The plot is that the highly competent curator of an art gallery moonlights as a super fangirl of a k-pop idol and has to keep this from her new boss, a Korean-American former artist with a mysterious past. It’s as lyrical about art as Romance is a Bonus Book is about books.

4. Because this is our first life (Netflix)

An understated drama that’s easy to fly under the radar but arguably the most perfectly executed out of all of them, because apart from some doubts about one of the beta couples, I can’t think of any way in which it puts a foot wrong. I started watching it for the “marriage of convenience” trope but was seriously impressed by its quietly feminist takes. Korean dramas work within a broadly conservative model (though the parameters can’t be precisely compared to Western values) but nevertheless frequently manage to tell more interesting and female-centric stories than anything going on over here. This is certainly the case in this drama where female agency is put centre stage through the differing lives of its three main female protagonists. Sexual assault in the workplace as well as every day sexism is fully addressed and at once point a character calls out her male boss for suggesting her bad mood is down to her being on her period. You’d never see this done so seriously in a Western drama, I really believe. And these are just the obvious examples. The hero is also a quiet feminist. It’s really refreshing! So the plot is that the heroine quits her job as a drama writer and finds herself destitute so she ends up in a marriage of convenience to pay the rent. This drama really touches on the experiences of Millenials! Actually this should probably be number 1. It’s definitely the best written and, unexpectedly, most original drama on the list.

5. What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim? (Viki)

Stars the same actress as Her Private Life (the wonderful Park Min-Young) and felt very similar in style. This was light-hearted, knew it was ridiculous, dealt with the sad-backstory-and-love-triangle as quickly as it could and got on with being cute and building a great relationship between the protagonists. This is a real feel-good drama with great chemistry from the two leads. To be honest, I suspect that Park Min-Young would have insane chemistry with a house plant. What I really appreciated was seeing two ~30 year old virgins not being treated as being ridiculous for their lack of experience. I mean, I love this about Korean dramas in general but particularly in this one. The basic plot is that the heroine has been a super hard-working secretary to a narcissistic CEO for nine years and abruptly quits because she wants to get a life. He can’t imagine life without her and immediately sets about trying to get her to stay. What happens next will astonish you.

Shout out in addition to Crash Landing on You which I am enjoying so much, but I haven’t finished watching it yet so I will reserve judgement. 

Ask me my top 5/top 10 anything

[dustedmagazine]

Damaged Bug — Bug on Yonkers (Castle Face)

Bug On Yonkers by Damaged Bug

There’s never been another rock guy like Michael Yonkers. He built his own guitars and amps to produce an instantly recognizable, cavernously echoing sound. He started recording in the 1960s, but due to bad luck and a freak accident (he was working in a warehouse and had some shelves fall on him, bad enough, but the doctors gave him a treatment that made him much worse and he’s lived in pain ever since) never got a big commercial break. He’s best known now for the otherworldly freakbeat/alterna-drone masterpiece Microminiature Love reissued in the early aughts by De Stilj and again in 2011 by Sub Pop, but he also dabbled in eccentric acoustic folk music, foreshadowing the New Weird America movement by a couple of decades. Last I caught up with him, for Dusted (old Dusted, unfortunately, the piece has disappeared), he was gracious enough about talking about the past, but really, mostly on fire about his new collaboration with the Blind Shake.  Anyway, lovely guy, singular guy, late life fame could not happen to a better person.

John Dwyer of Coachwhips, the Ohsees and, in this instance, Damaged Bug, is likewise, a singular force. He is one of the best and most demented of all punk front men still working, but also a thoughtful curator of current and older music. Pretty much everything on the label he co-heads, Castle Face, is worth a listen, ditto to the man’s own output, which is prodigious. And, here comes the Reeses Peanut Butter moment that I’ve been winding up to this whole review so far: put them together and it becomes something very special indeed.

In Bug on Yonkers, Dwyer’s Damaged Bug revisits nine Michael Yonkers songs. Four are from 1968’s Microminiature Love, Dwyer’s point of entry into the Yonkers catalog (and, honestly, almost everyone’s point of entry). One is a very early (1966) cut from Yonkers’ pre-Microminiature Love outfit, Michael and the Mumbles. Two are from his psych folkie experiments Lovely Gold (1977) and Grimwood (1968), and one is a previously unreleased song. Yonkers has never played live much because of his damaged back, but he and Dwyer did one show together around the time of the Sub Pop reissue and kept in touch by email. Dwyer, thus, had access to lots of Yonkers rarities, on CDRs made by the artist himself. He says in an interview that he roughed out about 40 Yonkers cuts, then got high and cut them down to nine.  

With the Ohsees, and now Damaged Bug, Dwyer has evolved a psychedelically expansive, motoric-ly propulsive rock and roll sound that is both elementally simple and familiar and deeply, mind-shiftingly strange. As such, he and his crew (Tom Dolas, Nick Murray, and Brigid Dawson) are almost ideally suited to interpret Yonkers, whose rock material shares these very same characteristics. The two cuts that elicited the first listen, “holy shit, what is this?” from yours truly were “Sold American” and “The Thunder Speaks,” two pounding, howling, vortex-staring cuts that set up a short hypnotic riff, then implode it from the inside with explosive drumming and big guitar chords. They are both insanely great songs, both from Yonkers’ great defining 1968 record, both delivered hot and raw and without reverence.

The odd acoustic folk songs are somewhat more of an acquired taste, but Damaged Bug does justice to them as well. Bridget Dawson takes over the vocals for “Sunflower,” the lone cut from Grimwood, an airy, lullaby sheathed in echo with a sax blowing softly in the background; it is as pretty, and as unusual, as the Yonkers original. “Lovely Gold” written a dozen or so years later, pumps harder, but with whimsy, a Roky Erikson-like jug sound percolating in the interstices.

The disc closes with a Michael Yonkers song you’ve probably never heard, an unreleased ballad called “I Tried” which Damaged Bug plays slowly and sweetly with a steady undercurrent of cello sound. “And I have found a way, and I will be okay, and I can be around the lights, that I don’t understand,” intones Dwyer. You can hear one artist reflecting on another’s accumulated art and wisdom and nodding in recognition.

Jennifer Kelly

[fakeyellow]

50 years after the battle, Kamilah deals with the aftermath of her betrayal and the loss of Laia. 

Meanwhile, Anya is a 22-year-old Londoner who can’t remember the first 18 years of her life.

Summary: Kamilah and co. win the war against Gaius but at great personal cost. Fifty years have passed since their pyrrhic victory when a stranger, looking exactly like the woman they lost, enters their lives. Part 1 here.  Part 3. Part 4.

It was remarkable, Kamilah mused as she walked down the streets of London, how everything could at once stay the same and be different. 

She’d last stepped foot on this island over three hundred years ago, before she’d made the move to America, and while technological advancements had replaced the candlelit lamps with lightbulbs, it was still the same, bustling city she had once known. The New York Massacre of fifty years ago hadn’t even touched this island and their people walked blissfully unaware of the existence of the supernatural.

Her thoughts returned back to her home, New York City. Despite Gaius’s forces ravaging the city and forcing it into a state of evacuation, once Gaius had died, everything had returned to normal. Coming from a small port city, Grant Emerson had successfully burst on the scene, running for senator on the campaign of New York’s restoration and improvement. Adrian had been all too happy to donate to his cause upon sitting down with the man and New York had returned to its glittering city of edifices once more. 

The massacre had been explained away by a gas leak, carbon monoxide leaking into the streets and wreaking havoc on people’s minds until they grew crazy and attacked anyone around them. There had been scientists researching the traces of gas they found, searching for the compound that had caused such mania but even their numbers had dwindled until the massacre was just a footnote in New York’s illustrious history. 

It was amazing how resilient and ignorant mortals were willing to be in order to make everything fit into a neat narrative but then she had seen this happen all too many times before. 

And yet, even with their knowledge of the true events, vampire society had also returned to normal, the Council reforming to continue its all-encompassing rule over New York. Their numbers had been severely diminished in the battles but vampires were not a species that would easily allow itself to become extinct. 

All in all, it seemed everything had returned to normal upon Gaius’s death.

But Kamilah knew better.

She had lost the trust of her friends the moment she’d pretended to join Gaius again and it would take centuries before they trusted her again. Jax was outright hostile to her still, while Lily was uncharacteristically careful around her. Even Adrian, who had said he’d understood her actions, was distant with her, reminding her of the times when they’d first known each other. 

And Laia...

Something had broken in her the moment she’d seen the light disappear from Laia’s eyes, when she’d felt the life pour out of Laia’s body and spill all over the ground.

She had lost not only thousands of years of her life to Gaius, but the only person who mattered. There had been others, of course, whom Kamilah had loved but Laia. Laia had been the only woman to break past her defences and make her feel as if she were living again. 

Kamilah had done despicable things and committed countless atrocities that she had thought put her past the point of redemption. She’d wondered whether death would ever come for her, if her past acts would eventually catch up with her, and she’d resigned herself to a bleak eternity of guilt and shame.

But Laia had made her want to live. Laia had made her see that even vampires were capable of change and she’d made Kamilah want to be better not only for Laia, but for herself. She’d made her see that even despite her two thousand years on this Earth, there were still things unknown to her, experiences that she’d never had. And she had wanted to share all of these things with Laia. 

They just… hadn’t had enough time.

And now Kamilah was alone, and she hadn’t expected it to hurt this much. For her to so keenly feel the absence of the woman who should have been by her side. Fifty years had passed but the pain was still fresh and ever accumulating. She hadn’t been able to stop seeing Laia everywhere she looked, smelling Laia’s scent, hearing her laughter, the first ten years, but even now, sometimes she swore she could smell the faint scent of strawberries and violet.

Kamilah froze. 

That wasn’t in her imagination. She could smell the sweet scent wafting towards her from an unknown source and even though she knew it was impossible, even though she’d chased the scent down so many times only to realise it had been in her head, Kamilah began running.

All thoughts of her impending business meeting vanished, her mind consumed by that light aroma as she chased it down with her honed instincts. 

And there.

Kamilah felt the breathe escape from her in one fell gasp as she stared at the woman standing just down the street from her. Her ombre honey blonde hair was gone, replaced with warm chestnut tresses with the slightest tint of auburn, but her eyes were the same. The slanted arch of her eyebrows, the slope of her nose, the curve of her lips, the dimple in her cheek. They were all the same.

As if she hadn’t died fifty years ago, Laia was standing in front of her. 

—-

Ever since she’d woken up from the accident, Anya had felt a restlessness inside of her. 

The doctors had told her that she was lucky to be alive, that the amnesia, while uncommon, was something that happened in some patients and her memories were just as likely to return as they were to not.

They never returned. And although she had baulked at the thought of living a life where the first 18 years of her life were completely blank, she had learned to move on. 

The first few months had been the roughest and it had only been through the support of Sera, that Anya had finally learned to leave the past behind. The woman had been with her from the very moment she’d woken up, and even though Anya couldn’t remember anything about her, Sera had been an infinite source of comfort and knowledge about who she was.

But still, even as Anya learned that her parents had died when she was a child, that she had been visiting Sera in Paris before she entered university back in London, that she had always wanted to become a museum curator, even as she slowly pieced together who Anya Altomare was… she felt a restlessness in her. 

She didn’t feel whole; it was as if there was something absolutely vital missing in her, an empty hole in her heart that couldn’t seem to be fixed no matter what she did. It had taken a year for her to stop bursting into tears whenever she smelled the scent of lavender and Sera hadn’t been able to provide her an explanation. 

But she had needed to move on and so Anya had gone to university for four years, immersing herself in her studies and making friends even as she felt like she was only masquerading as Anya Altomare and that there was somewhere else she desperately needed to be. 

This feeling hadn’t disappeared even after she’d graduated and Anya had spent a year in an archaeological dig, excavating the ruins of a newly unearthed fortress in the deserts of Egypt, as if she would also be able to discover who she was. 

Yet, even that had failed and still feeling like only a shell of a person, Anya was back in London, looking for jobs as a museum curator. Her friends had decided they needed to celebrate her return to London at their favourite bar, but the nonstop stream of chatter quickly wore away at her. 

That was why Anya was outside right now, reflecting about the half-life she was living and morosely wondering if she’d ever feel whole. Anya sighed and turned to go back inside when she suddenly made eye contact with a woman at the end of the street. 

It was dark but there was no mistaking that this was the most beautiful woman Anya had ever seen and the sight made her heart feel like it would swallow her whole. Her eyes were a bottomless brown that Anya could have drowned herself in, her face framed by gleaming sheets of hair that Anya longed to run her fingers through. 

Her every feature seemed perfect as if they had been lovingly chiseled by a sculptor, but there was something devastatingly tragic about her, as if there was a wasteland of heartbreak underneath her composed exterior. Anya instinctively stepped towards her, feeling a need to comfort the woman, to embrace the woman, to caress her cheek when suddenly-

“ANYA!” 

Her friends called out to her in the bar, and by the time Anya looked back towards the woman, the street was empty as if she had never been there. Only the faint smell of lavender lingered behind and shaking the strange wistfulness that had overcome her, Anya went back into the bar. 

—-

(1 day later)

Kamilah furiously tore at the ground with a shovel, calluses forming and bursting open on her hands only to instantly heal over. She was a woman with a single-minded determination that had caused her to cancel all of her London appointments and fly straight back to New York, going immediately from the jet to the cemetery she was now in. 

There was no way Laia was alive. She’d seen the life leave her body, she’d felt the cold, heartless corpse against her arms, she’d Turned Laia too late. It was impossible. 

Her white silk blouse turned brown from the dirt but she paid no attention to it, focusing solely on the coffin that was slowly being revealed with each throw of dirt. At last, she threw her shovel to the side in frustration and lifted the lid using sheer force only to unceremoniously drop it and slump over in shock.

It was empty.

—-

(5 days later)

Anya cupped a mug of coffee, sipping on it slowly as she checked her email. She was currently staying at a friend’s after having returned from Egypt but she needed to find a job and an apartment soon. She couldn’t stand being a freeloader for long. 

She had sent her resume out to a variety of museums focusing particularly on ones that had ancient Egyptian exhibits (her specialty) but it seemed there just weren’t many museums looking for new curators. Sighing in frustration, she quickly refreshed her inbox only for her thumb to freeze over the new email that had appeared. 

Anya immediately pressed on it, her eyes rapidly skimming the letter that had arrived as if she were afraid it would disappear. 

“Dear Ms. Altomare… highly recommended by Professor Cunningham…  curator for a private collection of Ancient Egyptian artefacts… full benefits and a fully furnished apartment in the company building…”

She let out a scream of delight, jumping up and down as she clutched her phone to her chest. This had to be a dream. There was no way she could get her dream job in her dream field with a staggeringly high compensation rate. Suddenly furrowing her brows in worry, Anya rechecked the email, looking at the signature.

“Sincerely, Gabriel Sapienti, Assistant to Kamilah Sayeed, CEO of Ahmanet Financial.”

A quick search online revealed that Ahmanet Financial wasn’t only reputable, it was the company for all things finance-related and it was in the heart of New York. While she’d always wanted to go to the city across the oceans, Sera had always advised her against it, citing the violent, busy, and dirty nature of the streets. 

Anya sighed at this; if Sera were here, she’d definitely warn Anya away from this job. She could practically hear her friend’s voice in her head talking about how things that seemed too good to be true were exactly that: too good to be true. But everything seemed to check out and Anya wasn’t going to let go of this perfect opportunity. 

With a tremulous heart and a resolve to tell Sera later, Anya emailed back the assistant. 

She was going to New York.

—-

A/N: Bonus points to anyone who knows where I got Anya’s full name from. 

I ended up changing the time skip from 1 year to 50 years because that opened it up to a lot more angst and possibilities. Don’t worry, I have an explanation for all of the years/ages and it’ll all be revealed soon. Just hold tight! 

There should be 3-4 more parts to this and I hope you’ll continue to read. Thanks so much for all the support!!