#Dawn Throne just looming in the background

[humblemooncat]

Since those pictures of Ori yesterday came out so... purple, I took another set right as the sun was setting. She looks better in gold anyways. xD

She's so pretty, I love her. <3

[mischiefandmedicine]

Very Full - Chapter 2: Hear Me

Summary: An enchanting voice, carrying across dimensions, beckons Loki to a karaoke bar of all places, where a captivating song leads him to meet Saoirse's mother. Her mysterious departure leaves him yearning for more, igniting a quest that promises to intertwine their destinies.

Word Count: 4,137 words.

Chapter Warnings: Minor violence (Loki gets slapped).

Soundtrack Link

This Chapter's Inspirational Music: Main character sings Hear Me by Kelly Clarkson, but imagine the other songs playing in the background afterwards.

Hear Me by Kelly Clarkson

Dark Horse by Katy Perry

Break My Heart by Dua Lipa

Into You by Ariana Grande

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Previous Chapter: Chapter 1

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Loki settled into the deep green armchair, flitting his expansive cloak of interwoven timelines behind him, fixing his gaze on the expanse of space sprawling around them. With a measured breath, he began, his voice carrying the weight of ages past, each word meticulously chosen to weave a tapestry of truth and longing. “Once, in the epoch before the multiverse bloomed into its myriad of existences, there sat a realm of unparalleled splendor. A place where the convergence of cosmic energies birthed wonders beyond mortal comprehension. It was a world steeped in the ethereal embrace of magic, where the veils between the realms were thin, and destinies intertwined like the dancing tendrils of the great Yggdrasil itself.”

His gaze shifted, locking onto Saoirse’s eyes, her face displaying a mélange of skepticism and lingering pain. “In that realm, nestled amidst the splendor of Asgard, lived a being of immeasurable complexity. A god, known to many as Loki. A name ensconced in tales of trickery ambition, and the eternal dance between chaos and order.”

As Loki paused for effect in his story, Saoirse rolled her eyes with a sigh, crossing her arms angrily. “Just get on with it…”

Loki laughed, shaking his head knowingly, he let Saoirse’s words hang in the air before continuing, “As I was saying, within the intricate tapestries of my existence, lies a thread that transcends the bounds of divine whims and cosmic happenstance. It is a thread spun from the fiber of love, sacrifice, and enduring legacy…of Asgard…of Midgard…of her…”

Loki’s expression softened, memories flickering across his mind like the fragments of an unfinished mosaic. He was too eager to tell this story but wanted his daughter to revel in the beauty of it. It was his favorite story. One that had played in his mind repeatedly after he had returned to his throne.

“Your mother, a woman of unfathomable grace and strength, walked a path entwined with mine. Her presence in my life, Saoirse, altered the very fabric of my being,” a tinge of sorrow and remorse echoed in his voice as he continued.

“Our story begins with yours truly sitting on that throne there,” he turned to point to the gilded throne high up above the pair. “I had destroyed the loom that was responsible for keeping the strands of time from spiraling out of control since the dawn of…well…time,” he laughed nervously.

“I sat upon my throne, adrift on the sea of thoughts of friends lost – people who had helped shape me into the god I was meant to be – wondering if this was all I would ever be. Questioning if there would be a time when I could live for myself again. I had sacrificed everything to make sure all timelines would endure, ultimately saving countless lives in the process.”

Loki paused to wipe a tear from his eye, while Saoirse looked on in bewilderment. All she had understood about her father were his mischievous and trickster ways. She had not heard of him becoming emotional like this. Before she could say a word to fill the silence, Loki huffed out a single laugh before huskily resuming his story.

“Before I knew it, I had grown weary from my journey. It had, after all, taken centuries to overcome the threat of all existence nearly being destroyed. I closed my eyes, if only for a moment before my dreams were taken over by the sound of her sweet voice singing to me across the expanses,” Loki closed his eyes, feeling his powers pulling him back to the moment when he could hear her voice calling out to him.

*****

It was like a siren song calling out to him on the throne. He could hear the song calling out to him in his dreams. The words echoed through his ears, as they hypnotized the god on the throne at the end of time, weary from his travels to this moment.

You’ve gotta be out there, You’ve gotta be somewhere, Wherever you are, I’m waiting. ‘Cause there are these nights when I sing myself to sleep. And I’m hoping my dreams bring you close to me, Are you listening?

Loki found himself poised at the threshold between realities, the vast tapestry of timelines shimmering around him like iridescent threads. He concentrated on the faint, enchanting melody, a haunting voice that resonated across the cosmic expanse. With a calculated flicker of his cosmic powers, he projected himself out into the cosmos, navigating the intricate web of realities; timelines that seemingly called his name as he followed the tantalizing echo of the song that drew him in.

Hear me, I’m crying out, I’m ready now. Turn my world upside down, find me. I’m lost inside the crowd, it’s getting loud, I need you to see, I’m screaming for you to please, Hear me. Can you hear me?

In a kaleidoscope of lights and swirling energies, Loki phased through realities, guided solely by the captivating call of the woman’s voice. The ethereal echoes of the words reverberated through the countless timelines, seeming to overtake an entire branch of the makeshift Yggdrasil of intertwined realities. Her voice was a beacon that had summoned Loki across the universe. He had to find who had such power over him.

Finally, his projection emerged in a reality unlike that of his throne at the end of time, finding himself inside a vibrant, bustling tavern that seemed a universe away from his cosmic throne. The ambiance was alive with the spirited chatter of patrons, punctuated by the clinking of glasses and the hum of conversations. Yet amidst the indistinct chatter, Loki’s focus honed in on the stage, where a lone figure stood, bathed in the glow of stage lights. She exuded grace and otherworldly charm as she sang, her voice carrying a poignant, yet powerful rendition of a song Loki had not heard before.

I used to be scared of letting someone in, But it gets so lonely being on my own. No one to talk to. No one to hold me. I’m not always strong, oh I need you here, Are you listening?

Loki found himself ensnared, not by the chaotic revelry of the bar, but by the mesmerizing woman’s voice. He stood at the periphery, his emerald eyes fixated on the singer, studying her every curve, captivated by her impassioned performance. He watched as she swayed in time with the music, bare feet, and bare legs leading up to a dark leather skirt, hugging her hips effortlessly. Her torso was adorned with a dark green short-sleeved shirt scrawled with the words “Beautiful Disaster” in gold lettering. Her mocha skin glistened in the stage light as her wavy black hair framed her face, kissing her shoulders, and swept down her frame.

Hear me, I’m crying out, I’m ready now. Turn my world upside down, find me. I’m lost inside the crowd, it’s getting loud, I need you to see, I’m screaming for you to please, Hear me. Can you hear me?

The song itself carried a depth that struck Loki to the very core of his existence, stirring something ancient and profound within him. The lyrics seemed to echo sentiments he had long forgotten, evoking memories buried beneath layers of time and duty. He thought of Sylvie and how she had opened his heart to the possibility of love before spurning his advances. Ultimately it was she who had helped him to see that he could be more than just the god of mischief. Here and now, this woman had captured his very being…with a song.

I’m restless and wild, I fall but I try, I need someone to understand. Can you hear me? I’m lost in my thoughts, And baby, I’ve fought for all that I’ve got. Can you hear me?

As the song reached its crescendo, Loki felt an inexplicable resonance with the woman on the stage. Her voice had transcended the realm of mere sound, weaving a spell that seemed to echo through the dimensions, beckoning him closer. With an enigmatic smile playing on his lips, Loki stepped forward, making his way through the patrons toward the stage. His movement slow and deliberate, he was guided by an inexplicable pull toward the singer whose voice echoed a tale that continued to enchant him.

Hear me, I’m crying out, I’m ready now. Turn my world upside down, find me. I’m lost inside the crowd, it’s getting loud, I need you to see, I’m screaming for you to please, Hear me. Can you hear me?

Staring up at the stage, Loki fixed his gaze upon this mysterious woman who had, by now, noticed his presence and locked eyes with him with a playful smirk as she sang. Intrigue and wonder danced in his eyes as he stood breathless, ensnared by her smile as she reached the climax of the song.

Hear me, hear me, Hear me, can you hear me? Hear me, Hear me, Hear me.

The performance of the song had reached its culmination, the last note lingering in the air as the audience erupted with applause. The woman’s gaze remains fixed on Loki, a glint in her eyes as she blushed and whispered a breathless and exasperated “thank you” into the microphone before taking a playful bow to cheers from the patrons surrounding the tavern. 

The woman walked towards Loki, placing a hand on his shoulder as she alighted from the stage, moving lithely, her presence commanding yet graceful. Landing in front of Loki with a barely audible thud, she stood before him at a height that contrasted her powerful voice, her stature defying expectations. The top of her head barely reached his collarbone, causing her to look up at him as she steadied herself, bare feet contacting the tavern’s dark hardwood flooring.

Loki, momentarily taken aback, could not help but voice his surprise, “Where’s the rest of you?” he blurted out, his eyebrows arching in puzzlement. Though his question demonstrated his fascination, it too echoed a subtle admittance of his unexpected curiosity about this hypnotizing woman who, despite her petite frame, had possessed such a captivating aura and voice summoned him from across the dimensions.

The woman laughed heartily, grinning at the bizarre question, “What do you mean, ‘where’s the rest of you?’” she said, mocking Loki’s voice the best she could.

Loki’s eyes glint mischievously as he flashes a playful smirk. “Oh, my apologies. I just didn’t expect the voice of a Valkyrie to come from someone who needs a booster seat,” he quipped, his voice laden with both a teasing jest and a hint of seriousness as he eyed the woman before him.

“Watch it, buddy, I’ve been told I pack quite the punch, even in a small package,” she replied, her voice carrying both amusement and a touch of mystery. Her response was measured, revealing nothing of herself, yet inviting a still-stricken Loki to comment further.

Loki’s playful smirk lingered, his eyes glinting in the light of the tavern. “Ah, that explains it, you are a Valkyrie in compact form. Quite intriguing,” he remarked, his voice laden with playful sarcasm as he assessed her further. “You almost had me fooled there for a moment. I thought your kind had been all but extinct?” His words carried a teasing cadence, yet the underlying curiosity hinted at an interest in uncovering more about this mysterious woman.

The woman’s laughter rang again through the tavern, a sound that seemed to echo with both amusement and a touch of secrecy. “What is a Valkyrie?” she replied with a giggle, her gaze meeting Loki’s with a curious twinkle in her eye. “You have an odd sense of humor, stranger.” Her response was perplexing, leaving Loki momentarily taken aback by the seemingly feigned ignorance but intrigued by her banter.

Loki’s smirk grew wider, reveling in the teasing exchange. “A Valkyrie,” he began, assuming an air of grandiosity, “In the tales of old, Valkyries were fierce warriors, guardians of Asgard, chosen by the All-Father, Odin, himself to escort the fallen warriors to Valhalla. Strong, skilled, and cunning, they commanded respect, even among the gods.” His words were laced with a hint of theatricality, painting a vivid image of the mythical beings from Asgardian lore.

The woman tilted her head, eyes playing at an innocent expression with a smile, “Hmmm, that sounds impressive,” she responded with a pinch of sarcasm dancing in her voice. “But I hate to burst your bubble, I’m not a Valkyrie. I’m just a regular ol’ human being,” she added, her tone carrying a spirited yet assertive demeanor.

Loki chuckled, astonished by her response, “A human being, you say? Well, that would certainly explain the lack of winged steed and armor,” he quipped, a glint of amusement twinkling in his eyes, still in disbelief. “But forgive me, you do have a certain…otherworldly quality about you. A human with such a captivating voice is quite the rarity.”

With a blush taking over her face, the woman chuckled softly, the sound like music to Loki’s ears, “You’re quite the charmer, but alas,” she mocked his accent, “I’m just your average karaoke bar singer, nothing more, nothing less.”

Pulling her away from the stage so that she might hear him better, Loki leaned in slightly, his voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper, “Oh, come now, don’t sell yourself short. I don’t know what a karaoke bar is, but you certainly have all its patrons under your spell,” he paused, voice growing deeper as he gestured to their surroundings. “It’s rather perplexing, and I’m fond of mysteries,” he teased.

The woman grinned, speechless, eyeing Loki carefully.

“A human with such an enticing voice and demeanor like yours might have a few tricks up her sleeve,” Loki continued.

The woman pivoted to walk past Loki with a smile, “You think you’ve figured me out?” she shrugged knowing that Loki was following close behind her as she pushed her way through the crowd, “I’m afraid I have to disappoint you again, but I’m just a girl who enjoys a good song, a good drink, and…,” she paused to look Loki up and down over her shoulder, “a good conversation.”

Intrigued by this woman, Loki matched her pace, reveling in the challenge that this human presented with her snarky demeanor and small stature. He leaned in close to her ear, “A good conversation, you say?” Loki echoed her words, allowing his voice to mimic her playful tone and accept the challenge she presented. “Well then, allow me to introduce myself properly.”

He halted her progress gently, grabbing her by the arm and turning her to face him, his gaze holding hers in a momentary pause as she shrugged his hand off her with a glare. “I am Loki,” he declared theatrically, a smirk playing upon his lips as he bowed slightly, his coat draping around him adding to the dramatic flair.

“I know who you are,” she said raising an eyebrow, an amused smile tugging at her lips before smacking him square across the face.

The sting of her hand against his cheek took him by surprise, a sharp crack resounding through the bustling tavern. He recoiled slightly, more from the shock of her action than the actual impact. His hand rose to his cheek, rubbing the spot where her slap had landed, more amused than offended.

“Well, that was unexpected,” Loki remarked, his voice tinged with genuine surprise and an ounce of admiration in it. He glanced at her half in amusement and half something else. “The absolute audacity.”

The woman stood there, her expression a mix of amusement and defiance, indicating that she was, in fact, toying with the god who was now towering over her silently as they approached an empty table in the corner. “I do hope that gets your attention,” she said, the hint of a smirk curling at the corners of her lips. “Do not touch me again unless I ask you to,” she pointed a finger at him scolding.

Loki, recovering from the shock, despite the sting of her hand lingering, could not help but chuckle. “As you wish,” he took a step back, pulling a chair out for her. “A swift introduction, but I believe we might have skipped a fundamental step,” he said as he looked at her, taking a seat across from her. “I’ve presented myself, yet the mystery of your name still eludes me. Might I have the pleasure of knowing the name of the woman who wields both voice and palm with such finesse against me?”

The woman’s smirk softened to a faint smile as she perched her face in her hands, regarding him from across the table. “And what would a name do for you, Loki?” she quipped, playing along with their alluring exchange.

“Names hold power and significance. They are keys that unlock hidden doors and open realms of possibility,” Loki replied with a smile, his voice carrying a charm that seemed almost impossible to resist.

The woman chuckled lightly, eyes questioning the very nature of the conversation, the air between them seemingly heating up. “Melara,” she said, her voice floating with a playful, yet guarded tone, leaving Loki to wonder if it was truly her name or another layer to the enigma she seemed to be.

“Melara,” Loki echoed, savoring the name as if it held a secret within its syllables. “A pleasure, indeed,” he said with a bow of his head, acknowledging her with an exaggerated flourish of his hand.

Intrigued by her boldness and the hint of light-heartedness that underscored her actions, Loki leaned back in his chair, his expression changing to amusement and curiosity as he watched her closely, studying every feature of her face.

“And how exactly do you know of me, Melara?” Loki inquired, a quirk of his lips betraying his interest in her response.

Melara’s gaze met Loki’s with a hint of recognition and a trace of wariness, though she remained composed and unfazed in his presence. With a tone that conveyed acknowledgment rather than trepidation, she spoke, her words laced with curiosity of her own. “I’ve heard tales whispered in corners about a certain someone causing quite the stir in New York,” Melara remarked, her voice carrying a blend of intrigue and calculated neutrality. “I have even heard of someone like you visiting here in Wisconsin a few times, once when I was a little girl. Seems like mischief follows you wherever you go, doesn’t it?”

“Wisconsin? Is that what you call this realm?” Loki asked, puzzled.

Melara laughed emphatically at his question, pausing to gaze into his eyes before laughing again. “No, it’s a state. For someone who was supposed to take over everything here, you sure are clueless, aren’t you?” she giggled.

Loki’s expression shifted subtly, a faint shadow passing over his features, addressing her awareness of his past exploits. He hesitated for a moment, his eyes reflecting admiration for the joke at his expense. “Ah, yes, that version of me did indeed relish in causing such commotion,” he replied, his voice tinged with a hint of embarrassment, indicating a change from that brash persona. “But I must confess, I’ve evolved since then. Times change, people change…even gods,” Loki added with a charming smirk, attempting to deflect from his former self, leaning into thoughts of his more recent deeds, particularly following his ascension to the gilded throne at the end of time.

As the dimly lit tavern hummed with the lively chatter and the faint scent of liquor lingered in the air, Melara and Loki had unknowingly found themselves entangled in a conversation that felt like a dance – one filled with intrigue, charm, and the enticing allure of the unexpected. Loki’s revelations about his transformation since the chaos of New York had woven a captivating narrative, his words carrying the weight of reflection and change. In the depths of his emerald-green eyes, she saw traces of a past laden with hurt and mischief, a tumultuous history teeming with complexities the god himself was attempting to unravel as they sat.

“Change is a curious thing,” Melara remarked, her voice threaded with understanding and an insatiable curiosity for the mysterious god seated across from her. “Many claim to embrace it, but few truly do.” Her words hung in the air, a contemplative pause in the midst of their vibrant exchange.

She observed the subtle changes in Loki’s demeanor – the nuances in his voice, the fraction of vulnerability peeking through his charismatic façade. There was a momentary glimpse of acknowledgment in his gaze, a silent understanding. It was as though they were sharing fragments of their past selves without explicitly uttering a word. Together they were navigating the labyrinth of change as they sat across from each other in the dimly lit tavern, conversation deeper than most strangers would ever share.

“Indeed,” Loki replied, his past experiences coloring his voice with wisdom forged through countless trials and the passage of years he had not even begun to fathom. “Our experiences can reshape us in unforeseen ways.”

Their conversation flowed like a river meandering through uncharted lands, each exchange adding layers of complexity to their connection as they sat, the indistinct background chatter melting away as they spoke. With each shared word and exchanged glance, the boundary between intrigue and caution blurred – a tantalizing edge teetering on the brink of unspoken truths and the allure of the unknown.

As the hours slipped away into the embrace of the night, Melara sensed the subtle shift in the atmosphere of their interaction. The magnetic pull of Loki’s charisma intertwined with the intoxicating atmosphere – or perhaps that of the drinks she had consumed lost in Loki’s stories – wove a spell that beckoned to the depths of her soul.

Yet, amidst the alluring mystique of the moment, a quiet unease nestled in the recesses of Melara’s thoughts – a reminder of vulnerability that lay beneath the surface of enchantment. It was the duality of fascination and caution that whispered the danger in her ear, urging her to tread lightly in the captivating presence of the god of mischief himself.

Sensing the subtle shift in the air, Melara made a decision wrapped in a smile tinged with finality. As Loki spoke, with a graceful excuse and a gaze reflecting the desire for one more moment hearing his voice, Melara stood, collected her belongings – which included the shoes she had removed earlier – and departed quickly. Loki watched her, astonished, as the woman ran out of the tavern, leaving the promise of an unfinished tale that lingered in the tavern’s hushed whispers.

Though he could have let the night end there, and he might even have used magic to follow her, Loki instead stood to run after Melara. He exited onto the street, and she was nowhere to be found. Just as quickly as this woman had entered his existence, so too had she vanished without a trace. For a human, she certainly had cast a spell on him so effortlessly and then just as easily eluded him, besting him before he had even known that a game was afoot.

Loki looked up at the night sky, letting out a silent plea to find this Melara again, if only for one moment. He closed his eyes with a heavy sigh, reopening them to find that he was back on the throne at the end of time. No longer seeing through the eyes of his makeshift avatar, he was already longing for the presence of someone he had just barely met. He knew this feeling and it ate at him.

Isolating the strand of time that he had just returned from, he glanced at the branches running through his fingers. He noted that the strand glowed much brighter than the others surrounding it. Playing with the strand as it danced through his fingers, Loki noted how it was stronger and thicker than the other timelines. Should anyone have the strength to find themselves here, fighting to destroy the realities he protected, this one would surely take much more strength than others to break off. That fact caused the curiosity within him to surge. There had to be a way to find her again.

But first, he had to rebuild his strength. It had taken so much power within him to cast a projection of himself that could interact with Melara’s timeline all while his corporeal body continued to wield the strands of time and keep them alive, the task he had taken on for which he had sacrificed so much. Now this human with the power to summon him with a song threatened to upend his very existence. She was even wearing his colors when they had met, quite the cosmic coincidence. She was just as her shirt said, a beautiful disaster.

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Taglist: @mischief2sarawr

[chxrrysangel]

Stark Tea Time

Summary || Morgan Stark drags Bucky to one of her legendary tea parties, Sam leaving him to drown in pink fluff and glitter.

Warnings || Bucky actually smiles

You do not have permission to post my work anywhere else

“Lay up Cyborg, live a little. It’s not like I’m gonna di—”

“Look! Sam, I drew something for you!”

The two men’s attention is diverted from their conversation as little Morgan Stark comes barreling down the hallway, paper flapping in one hand and an assortment of crayons in the other. Her hair is covered in little butterfly clips, strands adorned with a wide array of colors from the chalk dye strewn across her cherry wood floors. She’s wearing a massive tutu, dressing to the 9s in a blue ballerina costume.

Sam smiles at the little girl, always excited to see what she has to offer. Ever since Tony passed, all of the Avengers men have taken on a father-like role towards the child, always making sure she feels loved and cared for. It’s the least they can do.

He bends down to her eye level, giving her his full attention. The smile on Sam’s face is in complete contrast to the grimace adorning Bucky’s features.

“What’s up sweetheart? Whatcha got?”

The little Stark giggles in excitement, overjoyed to see her two favorite Avengers come to see her again. They’re always quite busy, saving the world and everything. So each visit is quite meaningful to her. They’ll never replace Tony, but they ensure that his memory and love for Morgan is something she’ll never lack. They’d all die before that happens, and she knows that.

She takes the drawing from behind her back and lays it out for both of them to see. It resembles some sort of bird-like figure, Sam thinks to himself. Next to it is a robot-type figure, not failing to notice the frown etched into his features with a Crayola marker. Shaking with excitement, the little Stark looks at the two men expectantly.

“What is it?”

Morgan sighs loudly, annoyed by their stupidity and lack of “artistic vision”. The two men have yet to figure out where she learned such a concept.

“It’s you guys! Duh!” Their mouthes form into an ��o’ shape in understanding.

“Well it’s stunning. It’s absolutely beautiful Morg. You know, I might have frame this one actually. When you become a famous painter, this is gonna be worth so much money!” Morgan squeals, jumping around excitedly as Sam praises her.

“I think it’s kind of ugl—” Sam cuts him off by sending a small electrical current to Bucky’s arm, causing him to hunch over in pain as he’s being electrocuted.

“What he was trying to say is that it’s very avant-garde, meaning unique in the art world. Don’t worry little Stark, it’s a good thing.” Sam smiles at her encouragingly, hoping Terminator’s harsh words back there wash over her. She nods in understanding, James’s words already long forgotten.

The two men attempt to continue their conversation from before, discussing details about their next mission. There’s a hostage situation in the Palace of Westminster, the perpetrators threatening to blow the whole thing up with everyone in it. But before they can really strategize how to scope out the place, Sam feels a tap on his leg.

“Yes princess?”

“Can you guys come to my tea party?”

“Actually Morgan, we have to go so—” Bucky starts to say before being rudely cut off my bird-man to his left. Sam shoot daggers in his partner’s direction and the words die in his throat.

“Actually, I have to go take care of something really quickly. But Bucky can join you.” At those words, Bucky’s head jolts in his direction, giving Sam one of the meanest looks he’s probably ever seen. But the big man is all bark and no bite, so Sam just laughs in his face. Bucky’s fists tighten at his sides, thinking of all the ways he plans to torture and murder Sam when they leave the Stark house.

Morgan, on the other hand, is practically bursting at the seams. Bucky doesn’t know this, but he’s her favorite of all the Avengers, especially because his titanium arm reminds her of her dad’s suit. She feels closer to him when she’s with Bucky. Plus, they’re both kinda stoic, but it’s only an act in her eyes. She knows that deep down, he has a heart of gold.

Morgan takes Bucky by the hand, dragging him down the hallway back to her room. Meanwhile, Bucky looks back at Sam, pleading for some kind of mercy or aid. Sam, of course, provides no such thing and only cackles at his best friend’s misfortune. He says goodbye to Pepper, promising to be back once he finishes talking to Torres.

Meanwhile in a certain Stark’s bedroom…

Morgan bounced from corner to corner of her large bedroom, capturing all of the items she needs for this special occasion. It’s not often she has a guest for her weekly tea parties, let along James Buchanan Barnes of all people. She has to make a good impression if he’s ever going to come back.

Standing like a dark looming giant,surrounded by tiny chairs and more pink and purple than he’s ever seen, Bucky is clearly out of his element. At 6’0 tall, he stands taller than anything in this room, standing neck and neck with the canopy bed in the middle. Morgan doesn’t take notice of his discomfort however, she’s just happy to have him. She whips around him, gathering her stuffed animals at the table and setting up the placemats for each guest.

Almost as if having an epiphany, the mini Stark girl gasps and runs out the bedroom, yelling that she’ll be right back. Bucky wanders around the room, taking notice of all the little trinkets and toys that he, along with the rest of the team, gifted to her over time. His lips contort into a ghost of a smile, reminiscing all the times Morgan screamed for joy every time they came bearing gifts. The gifts didn’t really matter to her, though. It was just their presence that set her heart into cardiac arrest and her cheeks aflame. They were her family.

Not soon after, Morgan returns dragging a more normal sized chair into her room. Bucky is surprised at this action, as the small girl is barely breaking a sweat. That is, until he noticed the two small gadgets attached the back of the chair, marked with Tony’s insignia. So little Stark is smart, just like her dad.

Morgan sets the chair down next to her own pink, fluffy and bedazzled throne at the head of the table. She sits down, motioning Bucky to take a seat and calls the tea party into session. Bucky’s eyes wander over the pristinely white tabletop, taking in the wide assortment of snacks. From shortbread, frosted oatmeal cookies, to cheeseburgers and mini sandwiches, you name it and she’s got it. The baked goods are Pepper’s doing of course, courtesy of her daily afternoon attempts to become the next Martha Stewart. Morgan doesn’t mind at all, eager to indulge in a daily sugar high as the designated guinea pig.

“Tea?,” the child offers, “it’s raspberry, your favorite.” James can’t help but blush as her consideration of his tastes. For a kid, she’s a pretty decent host. He quickly covers up his blush by coughing and nods firmly.

After filling up the China tea cups lined up around the table, Morgan moves towards introductions. “Bucky, these are my friends. There’s Mr.Whiskers, Genevieve, Fae, Natasha, Tony, and James. They’re very happy to have you here with us. They think you look quite nice today.”

James? As in… Bucky can’t help but blush again, honored that Morgan named one of her beloved stuffed animals after him. He smiles shyly, staring at the lavender Elephant across the table. The girl doesn’t fail to notice his smile, happy that he’s happy.

“So James, how do you feel about glitter?”

~~~

The doorbell rings sometime around 7:00, just after sunset. Pepper opens the door to a smiling Sam, carrying a mysterious box by his side. He just left Torres house, the two men agreeing to scope out the place just before dawn when everyone is still sleeping. That way, they can get a good picture of what it looks like on the inside without having to use night vision technology.

“What’s in the box?”

“Lemon Merengue. For Morgan.” Lemon Merengue is Morgan’s favorite dessert. So by bringing her some, Sam hopes that she’ll forgive him for taking a rain check on one of her illustrious tea parties.

“They’re still down the hall.” Pepper points in the direction of mini Stark’s room, before returning to her baking. Tonight, she’s trying devil’s food cake.

Even from down the hall, Sam can hear the chatting of two distinct voices, a deep scratchy one and a much higher, daintier tone. He shakes his head at Morgan’s complete lack of an inside voice when she’s excited. They must be having a blast in there.

To Sam’s surprise, Bucky actually seems to be enjoying himself. He stands in the doorframe, watching the two chat back and forth while a Disney movie soundtrack plays in the background. From the distinct piano, Sam recognizes Beauty & the Beast (also one of Morgan’s favorites).

Sitting down obediently, Bucky gives Morgan his full attention as she places puffy stickers on his titanium arm and adds little doodles to his real one. He smiles as he watches her drawing a picture of the two of them with princess tiaras and feather boas, just like they are now. She babbles away, telling him the details of the movie she wants them to watch together. It’s called Tangled, he learns.

Sam decides to leave the two alone, going back to help Pepper bake in the kitchen. Although, not before snapping a picture of the two together, reminding himself to print it and put it on the fridge. He knows that Pepper isn’t exactly the kindest person to be in the kitchen with, as she is very bossy and demanding. But he’d take that over ruining this special moment in the princess-themed room down the hall.

He can still hear the faint giggles and screams of Morgan, this time begging Bucky to stop tickling her. She pleads for mercy but he refuses to budge, only making her laugh harder and her giggles to bounce off the walls like they’re in an echo chamber. And to think, he was gonna say no earlier.

[maladaptive-ninja-returns]

It’s The Avengers (03x15)

Loki x Reader Avengers The Office AU (Slowwwwww Burn)

Season 3 Episode 15: Not All Rainbows

Series Summary: Living in the Avengers facility post-apocalypse in a better timeline   Tony Stark has decided to capture every moment by pulling The Office on the Avengers. All of housemates are pretty used to the idea except for you, who had just come here to finish her degree, and the newest member- Loki.

Warnings: did someone just go and tell the otp about the otp?

Word Count: you know that feeling when you have had a bad experience on some project or assignment or homework before. And you know that thing is going to come around again next month or something like that. And you just age yourself by giving yourself anxiety by thinking everything that could go worse in that area. Yeah. So, I kinda shut that off for a few hours and wrote this.

MASTERLIST in bio, darlings. Tags are open (check bio)

An ice pack sits partially on the sofa’s arm and partially on the head that is being knocked softly- but repeatedly- by its designated owner. The fist taps that forehead with the vigour of a dedicated hammer that is softly checking the tensile strength of its mettle. The second camera takes the liberty to zoom in on Tony’s face that has the tension the size of the Alps looming over his head. Other spectators sit around, going about their activities with their five senses while the sixth was stuck on Tony. One camera panned on Wanda’s figure standing in the kitchenette, stirring her coffee cautiously, locking eyes with the lens.

Wanda: Only if you could see the monstrous cloud looming over his head. *stretches the corner of her lips* It’s made less of anger and more of worry and embarrassment. *blinks and furrows her brows* And choco-chip ice cream for some reason. *shrugs* Though I'm just glad that nothing was broken or smashed today. *stops midway* *raises her index finger* Although...

Scott: *glows inside out with a big smile stuck on his red face* *swings from side to side in the chair* Huh? What? *shakes head* Nothing. Just *inhales* I'm worried about Tony *continues to smile*

"So-" Steve took the first step and everyone held their breath- "now we know why we weren't able to reach Carol before. She is clearly...kinda...sorta stuck right where Y/N and Loki are? I think the kids are safe now." "Oh? The kids are safe? I must have missed the scene where they returned home with another weird pet," Tony remarked monotonously with his eyes still closed. Peter leaned in towards Scott. "So Loki is one of the 'kids' now." Both the shippers fist-bumped discreetly before looking all serious. The camera swivelled right towards Wanda, who shared a look of bewilderment while pointing at the joy of the shippers who were clearly not reading Tony's wavelength. And Tony was not the only one on the wavelength. There in the corner on the dining table, Clint sat lost in some thought so deep that his resting face was now a resting bitch face while he dipped his arrows in tiny bottles- the purpose of which only he knew- and handled them like his own babies. "You still have to find a way to stab him with these," Natasha was quick to mention as she walked towards her friend and sat opposite him. "Oh, I'll find a way. I was in his head too, remember," Clint pointed out. "He completely underestimates me." "Hmm," she scrunched her nose, "just remove that itch-like thing on your neck before you go after him though." "Where?" He asked as he scratched the side of his neck with the end of his arrow, his furrowed brows suddenly releasing themselves at the dawn of realisation before disappearing from the camera frame to fall down from the seat with a thud. "Told you not to wipe both ends with the same cloth," she muttered while wistfully looking down at an unconscious Hawkeye.

That One Steamy Dungeon™ No one knew how, when or why Lulu was sitting there in Carol's lap like he knew her for ages. No one knew why Carol was stroking him with the back of her fingers while her eyes were stuck on you like two magnetic poles finding that one direction and sticking to it. And you genuinely did not know why you could not stop looking at Carol. All of Carol Danvers. Especially her lips. "What?" Carol finally dismissed the silence with one casual word. "Ag-sa-wuu-you're looking beautiful," was what you came up with. Loki stared at Lulu's camera with one long blink of...slowed surprise. The buzzing camera caught all three of you sitting in the returning silence over dried hay, looking at each other before you scooched down a little to hide the embarrassment visible over your face.

You: *whisper* W-well, she does look pretty despite all the dirt she's lying in. I mean *violently points at Carol in the background* look at her!!! How can someone look sooooo fucking beautiful??? *lick your lips* Except for Loki of course. That dude is on a whole another level.

Carol threw a shirt over Loki's face from her backpack. "Weren't your looks enough this time?" "Wasn't your hairstyle enough this time?" came the retort. You sat there in the middle, your eyes moving between both of them to calculate this new chemistry you were seeing. The camera caught you pulling your legs closer to your chest. "I didn't know you two were so...close to each other."

Javier: *signing* Why? *Furrows his brows* does that make you furious, Y/N? *wiggles his brows up and down in question* Hmm? *zooms in on his face* Hmm? *turns the camera towards the screen from which he and Green are watching the live broadcast*

"Close? I met him on one mission and this punk would have been dead had I not saved his ass back then." Carol smirked through the sentence and you did not realise any time sooner that you were staring at her, your mouth almost at the edge of drooling. "You blew my cover," Loki stressed while putting on the grey free size shirt. "And then she had the audacity to make me pay for her bar bill on the next stop," he gasped while looking at you. Javier took the opportunity to make his drone zoom at your iris, catching your pupils dilate in 4K as soon as Loki started narrating the story to you while you nodded in enthusiasm. "You do realise your ex-girlfriend wants to cut off your new girlfriend's head right this moment, right?" Carol was generous to point out while getting up and wiping off all the dirt and hay. "I'm not his girlfriend." "She's not my ex-" Both of you had the synchronisation of an orchestra. Carol took this opportunity to let her eyes pass the judgment- which played from one face to another and back for sheer entertainment.

Carol: *shrugs* *runs her hand through her pixie cut hair* Priorities, I guess. *nods*

"Anyways," Loki tried to cut this weird air surrounding the three of them that apparently Lulu was the only one enjoying, rubbing himself all around Carol's leg, "do you have a plan to get out of here?" "Of course," Carol simply jerked her shoulders, "punch my way through." You blinked at the camera.

You: Is that why they are called Captain? It has to be, right?

You shook your head and looked around in the ground, leaving Loki to do the bickering on your part as well. "Well, Miss one-punch woman, this time you are not the only one that needs to escape." You found a stick in the corner. It seemed to be made of the same ashen wood that Aellae sat on in her throne room. "We have tiny mortals to save too." Carol chuckled. You raised the stick your eye level, feeling the weight in your hands when suddenly your eyes grow wide and your mouth turns into a horror-filled 'O' "What? Where is the comedy?" A violent grunt came from your lungs, turning both Carol and Loki into attack and defence mode in your direction. Lulu's camera caught you taking the stick out of the orc's stomach. The dull creature blankly looked at the blood turning into sparks flying against the gravity before slowly consuming the whole creature, taking him with them. The next twenty seconds were a pause on every breath. You finally turned around, the stick still in your hand. "Did I kill him?" you asked in a whisper. Loki and Carol shared a glance. "It was just a bruise" Loki shoved your concern away with his hands. "He's in heaven now," Carol sang. "He was a bad guy, right?" "Yes," both of them nearly shouted. "It's good that he disappeared. You helped the universe get rid of a bad guy," Loki clapped his hands before give you an awkward thumbs up. You blinked at both of them. The smile eroding on your lips slowly turned the duo uncomfortable. "Good." Was all you said for your stature completely transformed. "Because that felt..."  you did not finish the sentence, clearly concerning your company. Well, Lulu seemed to like whatever vibes you were giving off. “Y/N,” Loki pretty much sang your name cautiously, slowly lifting his hands in the air to have a word with you to process whatever you were feeling. But you were already running outside with the most suspicious giggle the room had ever heard. Carol even shivered a bit to shake it off of her.

My daddy's got a gun My daddy's got a gun My daddy's got a gun You better run

The one buzzing drone in the hallway caught the slow-motion emotion of you walking into the hallway with the ash stick in your hand like a gun- locked and loaded- with something fierce burning in your eyes. Behind you Loki was trying to catch up with the adrenaline rush you were feeling, calling out your name to stop you. Carol was close behind, cheering you on as much as she could.

My daddy's got a gun My daddy's got a gun My daddy's got a gun Ga-ga-ga-ga-ga

The orcs didn’t even seek you out. One of the reasons was the fact that you were running towards them first, swinging your arms with as much force as your body allowed, screaming your lungs out and jumping with fueled excitement whenever they went up in flames. Loki had to take a moment out of those crucial seconds to look at you. To look at that animalistic look in your eyes. Pausing for a millisecond to consciously question whether to admire it or fear it, he almost smiled. He might have stood there for a few seconds more had he not felt the blue plasmic force run by his side to destroy the one orc aiming for you from your blindside.

It started with the hayloft a-creakin' Well, it just started in the hay (loft) With his longjohns on, pop went a-creeping Out to the barn, up to the hay Young lovers and they are not sleeping Young lovers in the hay (loft) With his gun turned on, pop went a-creeping Out to the barn, up to the hay (loft)

"Seriously?!" He shouted at the glowing Captain who flew past him. "Catch up. Catch up!" she teased him while leaving a trail of bodies in her way. "ANARCHYYYYYY!!!!!!!" You howled as you ran, following your new crush. Loki sighed, his head trying to hang as low as possible as he looked at the sleek shackles around his wrists. Breathing in a lungful, he grabbed the nearest iron rail from the window looking out at the barren mountains and bent it till it broke in his flexing hand. "Is this why I am still alive?" He whispered to himself while continuing to walk in the direction you just dashed in.

My daddy's got a gun My daddy's got a gun My daddy's got a gun You better run My daddy's got a gun My daddy's got a gun My daddy's got a gun Ga-ga-ga-ga-ga Ga-ga-ga-ga-ga

Throne Room Aellae sat on the ash throne frozen in thought when one of her underlings interrupted her daydreaming with its presence. "What?" She did not disguise her displeasure. There has been a mishap on the laboratory floor, my lady." Her body automatically shifted on her seat. "Four guards are dead. The source is unknown." "Is it the woman?" "No, my lady. I just checked up on her after locking Master Loki up." "Then who is it?" "We are yet to find out. My lady." "Then why are you wasting my time by standing here and doing nothing about it?" The skinny elf-like underling bowed down to her and scurried in the opposite direction. It had reached the entrance of the throne room when a weak scream left its lungs and it stepped back- falling down in the process- to make way for the uninvited guest. The poise on Aellae's face took a turn as she looked at the person casually sauntering in her direction, never realising when she got up. "Oh, don't stand on my account," White mentioned breezily with a smirk, coming to a halt right in the middle of the room. "Zune." She called out the name like spitting a curse. "It's been a while, my least favourite Witch of the West Galactica." Zune smiled his precious smile, standing bright in stark contrast to his dull surroundings. "Last time we met, you were grovelling on the floor, begging for mercy in front of the Silver Court, asking them not to punish you for the endless crimes you committed in the last century." The composure was evidently crumbling away in little pieces. Aellae's stone-like glare was slowly turning into fast blinks. Her usually unruffled breaths were now a mocked laugh. "And the court decided to send you to arrest me? Where is the rest of the coven?" She pretended to guess before snapping her pale fingers. "Oh, right. I burned them all. Poor boys. J'uke, Fae and Mi'in were still so young." Zune huffed and smiled. "Hmm. They were really young when they fought you, weren't they? And to answer your question, no. The court did not send me here." Now this made Aellae burst into laughter. "So, you are here for revenge? For your mates?" Licking his teeth, he bit his lip and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, all the playfulness in his feature draining out with every passing second. "I am just here to clean up the mess that you made. But they are the ones who are here for revenge." Taking a step back, Zune gave Aellae a few seconds to realise that they are not the only ones in this room. And just when it dawns upon her, she sees the rest of the 'coven' come out of the shadows, surrounding her from every probable escape route this place could have. "Fae," she whispered with a deep-rooted horror in her throat, backing up into her throne when she looked at the familiar red figure walking towards her. "When you were setting us up on fire-" Fae carried no empathy in his eyes as he moved closer with every step- "you forgot that you cannot make Gods made up of ancient stars disappear when you please." Every cell in Fae's body vibrated with a demonic aura that made the witch go down on her knees. Her breaths shook and her eyes watered. The claustrophobia resulting from just his presence made it hard for her to breathe. "No," she shook her head, trying her best to mask her fear. "No. This cannot be. I destroyed you. I destroyed the senate. I destroyed everything that stood in my path. I cannot fail this time. This world needs to kneel before my power. That God needs to kneel before me. NO!!" The six looked at their leader to begin the ceremony. "Aellae of the covens abandoned, child of the dark refugees, you are hereby sent to the endless pits of the universe for your crimes against the creatures of the universe." The screams of the witch echoed throughout the castle till every last ounce of life in her voice could be heard fading away by the other group at the far end of the other wing. By the time Carol arrived, all that was left were the seven boys and a pile of ash resting by the throne. “That was fast,” she did not refrain from mentioning, “I thought it would take more than that to get her to give up.” Zune shrugged. “Well, it was easy because we had you and your friends this time. She did not have much to distract us with, unlike the last time she was in prison.” Carol smiled a kind smile at them. “I hope they didn’t give you any trouble?” Fae stretched the corner of his lips. “When you first called us to go around the universe to look for a human, we were a little sceptical. But we were glad to have met her.” “Especially Zune,” Mi’in quipped, earning a yank by the ear from the leader. “Thank you for protecting her.” “No biggie. We would have protected her even if you didn’t tell us to.” Carol furrowed her brows at the statement. “Because Loki had already asked us for that favour,” Zune mentioned, clearing any doubts, “and we owed him from way back.” Feeling the ‘ah’ of a satisfactory conclusion coming on her face, she stopped midway to hear your scream turn louder the second you got closer till you turned the corner to enter the hall with your stick, forcing yourself to stop your lungs from going any further than that. “Oh,” you straightened your stance, giving up on the attack position as soon as you realised there was no more threat, “looks like you guys already cleaned the place.” “You almost sound disappointed,” J’uke stressed, judging by your disapproval of the lack of bad guys. Loki stepped in next, clearly having taken care of whatever tried to attack them from the back. "She hurt my friend. I at least wanted to watch her burn," you simply shrugged. Fae patted your head softly. "Don't worry. You'll get your chance." He smiled the most ridiculously comforting smile. "How?" You whined, "you guys already finished her." All the seven boys, Loki and Carol shared a look with each other while you stomped her foot in the ground while staring daggers at the pile of ashes.  "Yeah-" Zune blurted out, scratching an itch in the back of his neck- "we definitely, for sure, totally killed her. Like-" he pretended to chop the air with his hand- "so smooth." Everyone nodded in agreement. Our elder boys of the group supported their leader while Carol gave them soft applause. Loki gave them a thumb's up.

You: *turning away from the scene in the background where everyone now sits outside the castle having a chat with each other* Aww *smile widely* it feels so good to watch them get along like that!! *start staring in the distance* *smile still stuck on your face* I wish my family could get along this well too. You know. *tilt your head* If all of them got along with Loki, I feel like half of the world's problems would vanish just like that. *watch Javier sign something to you* What? Merch store? *reads some more* Manga?? *looks closely at Javier as he continues to sign* Fanfi-what does any of it have to do with Loki? *camera pans in on your confused innocent face*

"Here's my little monster!" Carol talked in a tone that one used on babies while stroking a very excited Lulu. "Who's a scary boy! Who's a scary boy!!! You are!!! Yes!! You are!!!" You chuckled, watching Lulu enjoy the love and attention from the Captain, bumping his head with hers, wiggling in her lap before settling down in her arms, his adrenaline going down. "Who's that?" Carol asked him, pointing at you. Lulu chirped. "And who's mamma's boy?" Lulu chirped again. "Aaaand who's gonna protect mamma from bad guys?" Lulu growled. And then he chirped again, hiding his faceless husk hairy face in his paws. "Oh my God, he growls!!!!" you gasped. "Oh, he is got a lot more to show you, mamma! Give him time." You sat down next to Carol and stroked a yawning Lulu, who was now making biscuits in her arms. "This one's helped me a lot through this weird, fatal, dreamy galactic trip," you mentioned wistfully. The camera- as well as Carol- noticed how your brows furrowed slightly before your teeth bit down on your lower lip and you turned your gaze up to search for something in the rocky terrain before finally resting on Loki. Carol watched this subtle shift, patiently spectating how Loki too was stealing glances your way while having some serious looking chat with the boys.

The boys and Loki: *standing in the grey terrain like a bunch of Gods modelling for luxury hair products* Loki: It's spelt Z-U-K-O Zune: You named a dog after the fire God? Loki: Wha-no. It was all her *points at you*. Apparently, Coco was a bit too mushy for her. Something about 'Zuko reminding her of a guy who was in his redemption arc right now'. Whatever that means. Zune: *looked at the camera panning in on his face*

"So, you wanna go back now?" Carol asked you, her hands still busy stroking a purring Lulu. You inhaled to answer but felt yourself turning to look at Loki. Carol noticed it too. "Of course. H-how, long will it take?" you scratched your forehead. "We were actually pretty close to getting Loki free of his...cuffs. And I'm sure two powerful beings is always better than one." Carol chuckled and nodded. "Tell you what-" she took your hand in hers, something that you were not expecting- "I will go and take care of a couple of things for our return journey. Till then-" she stroked your hand- "you find out for yourself. Whatever it is that you're looking for." That gentle tone and those cryptically simple words changed some spectrum of the emotions on your face. You stared at her for a long while with your mouth agape. "What are you talking about?" Your breath asked in exasperation. "Cuffs, I guess?" she proposed softly with a knowing smirk. You forced out a laugh. "I have no idea what you're talking about," You chuckled and found yourself looking back at Loki again.

The boys- well, at a few of them- tried to calm down the God who seemed to be picking up a rock from the ground. "Okay now-" Gin, our green jellybean, raised his hands- "let's all calm down and talk about this." "Yeah, yeah. How about we all go to the nearest oasis and have a cup of starry vodka and discuss how we are all alive. Right, Mi'in?" Me'isri, sweet yellow candy boy suggested casually. "Right," Loki nearly sang. His every step towards the boys made them retreat two. "We should be happy that the witch is gone for now. What could we possibly have had to do with her anyway? Hm? What's that? Oh! She was the one who stole my essence you say?" "Look," Ho, the sky blue cheery lad was suddenly not feeling so cheery at all, "we did not know-" "You numbnuts were the one who told me that!" Loki was practically hissing through his teeth right now, his steps breaking into a jog that was letting out some potential screams waiting in some lungs. Lulu was having a gala time just jumping in whichever direction the boys ran into as Loki chased them.

[sunseteyes]

HOW FAR I’LL LET GO FOR YOUR WORLD

theme/s: moana, frozen, and little mermaid inspired. the story of a queen and a prince who lived in two different worlds. which one would let go of their throne, title, and family for the other?

word count: 1,937 words

roze’s note: i know those are three disney inspirations and that it’s not really explicitly shown in this oneshot but i hope you all will like this! for me, i think this is one of my best works so far. i enjoyed writing it~ anyway, enjoy reading!

once upon a time, there was a queen.

“all hail (y/n), queen of atlantis! long live the queen!”

the roar of the chant continued on, their voices muffling inside your head as you refused to look at all of them in the eyes. instead, you glanced at your father, his gaze already on yours with a troubled look on his face, one that you could say that could mirror yours.

your breathing was normal but deep inside, your heart was pounding by your chest that if someone were to come close to you, they would have been capable of knowing your fears and anxiety. but even if they looked closer, your tear-stained cheek will not be in view for it was already washed away by the water—or rather, your water. it’s yours now, you own the sea.

“what seems to be bothering you, our queen?" glancing over at one of your most loyal bodyguards, neito, you found his eyes gleaming with concern over your state. you could clearly read them well—the eyes. it's one of the perks of being a mermaid. without using your mouth, any mermaid or merman can have a conversation with either just by looking into the eyes. it's one of the advantages they have against the humans.

yet still, there are casualties in the population.

"don't mind me, monoma." you say, glancing away in hopes your emotions were kept in check, most especially now—where everyone is relying and looking up on you, with their stares and wary gazes focused on your figure, observing each and every move or expression that comes across your face.

he looks like he wanted to talk some more into you but another guard stops him, one that you could say you trust the most.

“apologies, my queen. is neito bothering you again?” kendo, your personal bodyguard. she was a commoner thus the officials did not really want her in such a high position but since your parents trusts her too, she was entitled as the “royal commander”, the guardian of the younger princess of atlantis just because everyone thought that there would be an army for the future queen and it should only be fair to have someone by the princess’ side.

how they thought so wrong.

“no worries, itsuka-chan. monoma was only asking how i was.” you answer as you look around the hall, still finding it a bit dull despite the celebratory theme of the party.

after all, what’s there to celebrate about when yo were just a replacement of a throne that was not really yours since the beginning?

“congratulations for getting the throne, princess (y/n)!”

your eyes landed upon an unpleasant sight of the siren that had been lurking around the kingdom for years.

"she is no longer a princess, dabi. please address the queen correctly." kendo scolds the man and he instantly apoogizes.

"my bad, my bad." he doesn't sound regretful at all. "it appears that your highness is still grieving for her sister and i only wanted to place a smile on her beautiful face once again."

you were trying hard not to show any kind of expression in front of everyone at his words. it was a good thing kendo stayed by your side or else you would have banished your sister's fiance instantly—rather, ex-fiance. sirens were not originally allowed to lurk with the mermen but your family allowed it because your sister claims that she loves the man.

and to think he would have became king if she indeed wed him. you were actually close to coming into conclusion that he wanted to be one, that's why he was with your sister. it could be possible but you couldn't linger in that thought for long or else you'll burst out from the thoughts that clouded your mind.

"excuse me, i need to take a breather."

"wait-your highness!"

you were already swimming away from them—from everyone. you couldn't handle it. to be crowned as queen the day after your sister was declared as dead.

it was all suffocating.

your hand reaches out into the light outside, your lips parting with a silent call—for help? redemption?

whatever it is—you just want to—

you saw how fast darkness envelops the sky from above the water, pulling you away from your train of thoughts. pursing your lips, you suspected a storm would sooner than later.

you were about to head down back to the castle when your attention was called out by a shadow that looms over your figure—something that you certainly could identify.

a ship.

memories of your sister's smile the last time you had seen her pass your mind and you were close to the temptation of that feeling that you never thought you'd ever come by—revenge by pure hatred. yes, that's it. who would have thought that you would ever hate humans?

before you could ascend further, something gets thrown into the water and you were no stupid to not think it was a human. a specie that has legs—of course.

you found yourself colliding with the figure—not too hard though. you were able to prevent it from hitting you hard, but the impact was still there at least.

it was because of his face—that face. you stared at it too long.

you had never seen a human before so you certainly had never seen anyone that could compare this one to. but he looked much like any merman would, minus the gills and the tail. were you enamored because you had never seen anyone with this kind of face? this kind of beauty?

it sooner came to you that he wouldn't be able to breathe without gills.

you have a chance of killing this human.

yet...

pulling him with you, you swam as fast as you could towards the surface, farther from the ship that he fell into. once you had gotten him out, you were able to breathe the fresh air of the outside world, giving you a sense of freedom you always feel when you go out of the water.

you didn't know what you were thinking as you placed the boy down the shore, a hand on his chest. light emitted from where your hand was and as you hovered them further up into his face, the light followed.

water came out of his mouth, just as you had intended. a sigh came out of your lips when the boy coughs and was able to breathe once again. you might have not seen a human before but you have studied them through books and asking from those who have interacted with them.

that’s why it was so hard to resent them. when you learned that your sister was killed by pirates, you couldn’t believe it. yet for some reason, you still did.

you wanted to blame someone—anyone. and that thought of killing this man earlier dawned to you that you were willing to do murder just for revenge.

your sister wouldn’t have liked that.

“who... who are you?”

when you look up to his eyes, every little thought in your mind vanishes away like fire when poured by water. you never knew anyone could have two eye colors and now that you have seen this man, you became much more fascinated.

he doesn’t move away as you lean forward and stare at the turquoise and grey of his orbs, but you could see him glance down and feel his gaze by your tail, an indication that you were not of his kind.

but he remained still.

“you’re...” he looks up again. “you’re a mermaid.”

there were no ill-tone in his voice and you begun to wonder what was on his mind as you continue to keep silent.

your skin crawled for the first time when you two gazed at each other as seconds pass by, too enamored to look away from each other.

was it the same for him? you thought. though as you were to open your mouth and speak, voices from the background catches both of your attention.

he had a troubled look on his face and you didn’t fail to notice it.

“find him! find the prince! make sure he’s dead!”

mermen had could understand human language. and you were no fool to not understand what the situation was.

your hand finds his and as he looks at you again, words slips out of your lips.

“come with me.”

questions towards yourself came as soon as you spoke. you refused to answer them and instead waited patiently for the boy.

you’d just have to make do for later.

what’s important is now. you can’t just let this boy die in front of your eyes. not when you had felt a connection with him.

he glances down at your hand that was on top of his and then made eye contact once again. he has this expression that you couldn’t read, but it only intensified the curiosity you felt towards him.

“how?” his voice was much clearer this time and you couldn’t help but notice how tingles came by your arm as you felt him interlace his fingers with yours, already deciding despite of his question.

you lean forward and he didn’t bulge. there was no fear in the hues of his eyes and all you could feel was the calmness of his soul and the fire that was on your stomach.

“you have to be a siren.” you answer, coming out as a whisper, as if it was a secret that shouldn’t be heard by anyone.

“a siren?”

you nodded, raising another hand to his chest, you felt the warmth emanating from it, much different from how a merman’s body would feel.

“what’s your name?”

“shoto. prince shoto todoroki.”

“prince.” you say, remembering back to the echoes of the voices from earlier.

nodding your head in acknowledgement, you introduced yourself curtly. “i’m (y/n).”

although after he had shook his head in response, you had pulled him backwards—towards the water, dragging him with all of your strength. he didn’t have time to struggle, and you preferred it that way.

because in order to be a siren—to let go of his humanity and become impure in front of the living, the prince has to die first.

you didn’t let go of his hands as he lost the oxygen of the above. and before he could breathe his last breath, you lean in and placed your lips on shoto. it was the very last step of living as an impure being living under the water; having the same breathe with someone who does the same—which meant you.

when you pulled away, you saw shoto’s eyes flutter open again; the once turquoise and grey were now dark, as well as the hair that were once crimson and white. he begun to mirror the features of a merman, yet with the same dullness that your sister’s fiancé has.

shoto reminded you of dabi, most probably because dabi was once a human too.

yet their features do look alike. are humans usually like this? you questioned in your mind.

a gentle squeeze on your hand alerts you of the completeness of the process, his senses coming back to life that was once dead—or much closer to death.

“i... what have you done to me?” he was breathless despite having gills and nose to breathe. though, the expression in his face told you a whole different story.

“i made you one of us now.” you say, holding tightly onto the same hand that you’d been interlaced with since earlier.

“i am the queen of atlantis. welcome to my world, prince shoto.”

[blurrypetals]

Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas - blurrypetals review

originally posted oct. 25, 2018 - ★☆☆☆☆

I have suffered through 160 and a half hours of this series. I have read all 4,800 pages of the books that tell this story. I've seen it all, I suffered through this whole damn series and all I got in the end was the sort of angry passivity only those who have fought in wars experience. I am so endlessly frustrated by Sarah J. Maas and Throne of Glass as a whole that I am just plain exhausted even thinking about the review I'm about to write and I take absolutely zero joy out of the things I'm about to say here tonight. For those of you who are still starry-eyed enough to care, if I write a spoiler in this review, it will not be tagged. I never quite know where to start and stop with spoiler tags, especially when we're talking about the seventh book in a series, where I could also be spoiling the first six books. Plus, I'm way beyond caring about much of anything in regards to Throne of Glass and have been for a very long time, so I honestly don't care if I spoil someone's experience with these books because Sarah J. Maas already does enough of that herself. Something Maas has struggled with ever since Heir of Fire is sufficiently raising the stakes and making the things that happen feel like they have weight to them. Aelin is literally ripped to pieces and healed back to brand new at the very start of this book and while this event isn't completely devoid of weight, it's glossed over and fixed so quickly that I don't even have the chance to blink before the possible ramifications have a chance to settle in. That's how I've felt about pretty much every big reveal, close call, or any other looming peril about this series since the end of Heir of Fire, where Aelin goes from kickass protagonist, Celaena Sardothien, who's very skilled in a lot of ways, but still feels vulnerable in a lot of ways, both emotional and physical, and turns into Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, god-tier queen who literally can do no wrong, has skin made out of plot armor, and, most detrimentally, stops being vulnerable in all the interesting ways. She stops being a character and becomes a caricature of herself, like she's an AU fanfiction version of herself...because she is. Not only did Aelin become, for all intents and purposes, invincible at a certain point, but then we got a whole new cast of characters, which means the pre-existing cast of characters, all of whom were mid-arc just got hardcore sidelined for the rest of the series, with the exception of Chaol, who got his own book all to himself and it was painful because it was clearly written in an effort to correct past mistakes, like someone who has gotten all the wrong information out of a complaint. Sarah J. Maas heard us all complaining that the old cast got sidelined and thought Tower of Dawn would correct that mistake. It didn't because Tower of Dawn was a big dumb stupid terrible waste of my time. Speaking of big dumb stupid terrible wastes of my time, fine, okay, I'll finally talk about the book at hand. The whole thing I was just talking about with stakes and Maas's failure to properly raise and enforce them renders nearly everything in this book completely null and void. We already know Aelin and friends are going to win. We all know Sarah J. Maas doesn't have the guts to kill off any major characters. We all know Aelin and Rowan are going to be icky and gross and make me regret ever reading any book ever. We know how this goes, so why are we looking at this big, "grand" almost 1,000 page finale as if it will provide something we aren't already expecting? I know I wasn't expecting anything other than victory for Aelin and co. I knew there was no chance anyone important would die and I was right, they didn't. I knew this book would not surpass my expectations and yet, here we are, I'm at the other end of the book and I feel exactly the same way about the series as I did at the beginning of this criminally long audiobook, which is 33 hours long and feels like it should be 12 at most. My opinion of Sarah J. Maas and the incredibly shitty people that populate this universe did not improve, just like I didn't expect it to. It did decline, because I wanted something out of this experience. Empire of Storms, for all the dumpster fire bullshit it was, at least made me angry, I was upset when I read it. This book, though? I feel so ambivalent and numb about everything I just listened to. The only thing that upset me was that I was tricked yet again into reading another Throne of Glass book and all I got out of it was...well, just another program on my Audible account, an almost 1,000 page book to set on my shelf and look ugly. I got nothing out of this. I often say it's worse to be boring and forgettable than it is to be spectacularly awful because, at the very least, I'm going to remember the spectacularly awful work in 10 years, where the boring one will just fade into the background within weeks. Again, even though Empire of Storms was an absolute train wreck, I'll always remember it because of how poorly it did just about everything. But Kingdom of Ash here? I'll remember the Dorian chapters, because that was always what I stuck around for; I did it for him. He actually had a pretty cool and interesting arc, but it took up maybe 10% of the whole book and he got an ellipsis of an ending, not a period which, for the record, is just fine with me. Don't write Dorian a spinoff, Sarah. Just let it die. Anyway, other than Dorian Havilliard, the one I suffered through all this material for, I'm sure I'm already losing details about many of the things about this book because, at the end of the day, it was nothing. It didn't excite me, it didn't make me angry, it didn't make me feel anything by the end, other than a quiet longing for things to have gone differently ever since Crown of Midnight. It was just empty, this whole time. And that, with 160 and a half hours of audiobook and 4,800 pages of content, just to culminate in this? Well that, that's the real tragedy here. Wasted potential, broken hearts, and empty promises. I got exactly what I expected out of this book and, in my opinion, that's the worst thing to get from a book: exactly what you think you're going to get. No surprises, no intrigue, nothing. Just nothing.

[clericmalo]

The Hammers of Tydsford - Tournament 607 Y.E. Begins

Urd, Knights the 4th, 607 Y.E. to Katala, Knights the 5th, 607 Y.E.

The quartet of Hammers more puissant in the art of weaponry spar only lightly on the final day before the big tournament. To a one, they refrain from even light drinking or anything too strenuous. Wine and Gamin more than make up for their restraint.

Finally, the day of Katala dawns, colder than normal with ominous rain clouds looming on the horizon. She is War Incarnate, the Battlemaiden Made Flesh, the six-armed demon goddess of war. All true warriors worship her whether they know it, or not. Today will be rife with sacrifices in her name.

The Hammers make their way up to the keep. His lordship has arranged for the courtyard to be transformed into a battle arena. Surrounding the arena on three sides are wooden bleachers have been hauled out of storage. At the head of the tournament area a platform has been raised. Lord Gauwis Tydsford’s ornately carved oaken throne has been placed upon it, with an empty seat of honor immediately to its right.

There are other lesser seats arranged for immediate members of his court, but none are for family. It’s a cruel reminder that Gauwis has no wife, nor heirs. Blue-blooded nobles look down on his kind. He’s a self-made man who took his title by taming a portion of the wilderness. While most nobles look down their noses at such a person of unsophisticated breeding, the prince in Haystone respects him, at least to an extent. As evidenced by that city’s immense arena, Prince Stomund Ever values competition from his subjects, whether born high or low.

Some of the Hammers’ hirelings have entered the lists. Hammond is throwing his hat in the ring for the main melee, while Brinne and Eryn are staking some of their pay to enter the archery contest alongside Marellye, who is entering both. Elladriel will also be competing in dagger throwing and encourages Wine to do the same. Drink in hand, he laughs her off. Why would he want to spend his coin on a chance of winning when he can save his energy for their forays into the wilderness where the rewards are much greater?

Answild has also chosen not to participate, though she’s a whirling dervish with her two blades when needed. Instead, she stands ready in case anyone accidentally gets seriously injured. A cleric of Huum, the Blade’s Edge and champion of man, joins her as well as a priestess dedicated to Skurn, the lord of light and life. The former is a member of the adventuring band called the Golden Hounds, from which Elladriel learned of the Pit of Fell Horror. The priestess is part of Lord Tywin’s personal retinue.

The tournament consists of more than just melee, though it is the main event. Skill in archery, as well as axe and dagger throwing, have their own side competitions. But these are not celebrated as importantly because they’re not considered as exciting. The peasantry likes the thrill of people beating on each other. Much to Gamin and Aenbrun’s consternation, there is no competition for skill in the use of crossbows, which many regard as weapons that anyone could use. Just point and pull the trigger, right?

Lord Gauwis opens the tournament with a declaration of Tydsford’s prosperity. Great things lie ahead for the hamlet, he declares. As a sign of their riches, he offers a guaranteed prize of five hundred gold coins from his personal treasury in addition to the ten gold entry fees of however many participate. Gasps and cheers erupt from the hundreds gathered in the small courtyard. The side competitions will have base purses of one hundred gold each.

He hushes the crowd with a raised fist and adds that, as is customary, the winner of the tournament on the second day of the holiday will be his lordship’s honored guest at the feast tomorrow night. This person will sit at his right hand. Many regard this assured access to the noble as worth more than any bag full of gold.

[The unskilled at combat vastly outnumber the skilled. My assumption is that the first bracket is going to be full of many who are seeking their moment of fame, whose egos far outstrip their capabilities, or those who don’t mind burning their entrance fee to the tournament on the hope of a long shot. These are 0-level persons with some weapons training, such as Hammond.

There are 5 brackets in total. To get past the 1st bracket, the Hammers only have to avoid rolling a natural 1. In the 2nd bracket, and each bracket thereafter, things get tougher. The skilled winnow out their lessers and advance. The first three brackets are fought on day 1 of the holiday, while the final two are conducted on the second day.

In brackets 2-5, each Hammer will make an attack throw against a target of 10, as will their opponent. The combatant with the greater margin of success is the winner and moves on. Ties are rerolled. Natural rolls of 1 are automatic losses, while a natural roll of 20 will be an automatic advancement. Each bracket has an assumed skill level represented by an increasing bonus to the attack throw by the NPCs. Bracket 2: +1, Bracket 3: +2, Bracket 4: +4, and Bracket 5: +6. In ACKS terms, a +4 to the attack throw would be the equivalent of a 7th-level fighter who has no other forms of bonus, such as that which come from greater strength or magic weapons.]

BRACKET 1 RESULTS Elladriel - Throwing Daggers throw: 20+1 = 21 [nice start!], Advance Elladriel - Archery throw: 8+1 = 9, Out Elladriel - Melee throw: 5-1 = 4, Out

Fara Darragon - Melee throw: 17, Advance

Marellye - Melee throw: 4+1 = 5, Out Marellye - Archery throw: 14, Advance

Aakisun - Melee throw: 15+2 = 17, Advance

Hammond - Melee throw: 19, Advance

Brinne - Archery throw: 15, Advance

Eryn Haucey - Archery throw: 2, Out

And already members of the Hammers have been eliminated. While Elladriel impresses everyone with her skill at throwing daggers, she does not fare as well in archery nor the melee. This surprises her compatriots, but it goes to show how fickle the gods can be with their favors.

Fara, Aakisun, and Hammond advance in the melee. But to everyone’s amazement, it’s the latter who ends up eliminating Marellye from that competition. By way of good sportsmanship, she rewards his skill with a kiss on the cheek while she whispers that if he wins it all, she’s going to give him some talking points to bring up with Lord Tydsford.

However, all is not lost for the spellsword. She and Brinne advance in the archery contest. The younger archer receives cold glares from her family, who are present like everyone else in the domain. Eryn, who was eliminated, takes her by the shoulder and the two find other diversions until the next bracket.

BRACKET 2 RESULTS Elladriel - Throwing Daggers throw: 12+1 = 13, margin: 3, Advance Opponent - Throwing Daggers throw: 3+1 = 4, margin: -6

Fara Darragon - Melee throw: 10, margin: 0, Out Opponent - Melee throw: 11+1 = 12, margin: 2

Marellye - Archery throw: 1, Automatic Out Opponent - Archery throw: 6+1 = 7, margin: -3

Aakisun - Melee throw: 19+2 = 21, margin: 11, Advance Opponent - Melee throw: 11+1 = 12, margin: 2

Hammond - Melee throw: 5, margin: -5 Opponent - Melee throw: 19+1 = 20, margin: 10

Brinne - Archery throw: 9, margin: -1, tie Opponent - Archery throw: 8+1 = 9, margin: -1, tie

Brinne - Archery throw: 11, margin: 1, Advance Opponent - Archery throw: 1, Automatic Out

Going into the third bracket, only Elladriel, Aakisun, and Brinne advance. Fara barely loses her fight and is really down on herself. Given her background in the arenas of Haystone, she expected to advance further.

Marellye manages to break a bowstring while her arrows flies wild. She nearly skewers Symas, the owner of the Crossed Hammers who is selling mutton nearby. The elf is embarrassed and buys two shanks on the spot by way of apology.

The group’s infantryman, Hammond is thoroughly trounced in his second bout. So much so, in fact, that Answild has to tend to his injuries. These tournaments, though dangerous, do not often result in serious injury. The man Hammond was fighting, a warrior from the band known as the Iron Devils, even kicked him while he was down. This drew mixed cheers and boos from the crowd.

After Answild invokes her goddess’s blessing upon Hammond she makes a point of confronting the man responsible. Putting her finger in his face, she warns him that Darra watches all in the dark of night. The fighter, whose name is Exard, dismisses her out of hand. He answers to no worshipper of the Lady of Night. Katala is his mistress and her eyes are upon him. Should she deem his actions inappropriate, she will make her displeasure known because he’ll be dead. The blade-initiate nods and affirms his words as self-fulfilling prophecy before taking her leave.

BRACKET 3 RESULTS Elladriel - Throwing Daggers throw: 15+1 = 16, margin: 6, Out Opponent - Throwing Daggers throw: 19+2 = 21, margin: 11

Aakisun - Melee throw: 16+2 = 18, margin: 8, Advance Opponent - Melee throw: 14+2 = 16, margin: 6

Brinne - Archery throw: 13, margin: 3, Advance Opponent - Archery throw: 4+2 = 6, margin: -4

At the end of the day, only two of the Hammers’ retinue advance to compete the next day. While she put on quite the performance, Elladriel loses out in the thrown dagger competition to a local woman known for her prowess at darts. Of all things, she thinks.

Aakisun and Brinne keep the flame of hope alive for the group. The fighter’s spear, flanged mace, and shield work has been vexing his opponents. Young Brinne especially is surprising everyone with the skill she’s exhibiting.

[avaduvernayfans]

How Oprah & Ava Duvernay’s Queen Sugar Has Transformed TV ARIANNA DAVIS JUNE 19, 2017, 12:00 PM Describing her network’s series Queen Sugarduring press interviews at the Four Seasons in Los Angeles on June 6, Oprah Winfrey said: “It’s the many shades of us.” The television mogul would then explain to dozens of writers and reporters — frequently peering out over her thick, silver-framed eyeglasses and gesticulating the way she’s known to do when speaking passionately — why the Ava DuVernay-created series is not just good, but important. It’s not typical for a network head to spend hours with the media talking about just one of her company’s many, many shows. But then again, Oprah isn't your typical network bigwig, and Queen Sugar isn’t just any show. The series, which centers on the highs and lows of the Bordelon family and their Louisiana sugarcane farm, a loose adaptation of the novel by Natalie Baszile, has posted impressive numbers since its September '16 debut. The two-night premiere last season averaged 2.4 million viewers, the second highest debut for OWN, and its December finale was ranked that night's number one cable telecast for women. Alongside Greenleaf (a juicy drama about the family behind a megachurch that debuted last June) Queen Sugar, which Winfrey also executive produces, has helped propel The Oprah Winfrey Network from home of wholesome reality series and a slate of Tyler Perry sitcoms to a network boasting some of the most popular dramas on cable. There’s a reason critics and fans alike adore this show — and why the first season earned an NAACP Image Award for Best Drama Series and a People’s Choice Award nomination for Favorite Cable Drama. Simply: Television has never seen anything like it. While last year (finally) delivered a slew of scripted stories starring people of color (Atlanta, Insecure, Luke Cage), Queen Sugar is unique in its layered, realistic, and relatable portrayal of a Black family, with a narrative that is neither sitcom nor soap opera. The three Bordelon siblings alone provide quite a few “shades,” as Winfrey put it, figuratively and literally: There’s the estranged NBA wife, Charley, played by Dawn-Lyen Gardner; journalist-slash-healer Nova, played by True Blood alum Rutina Wesley; and formerly incarcerated single father Ralph Angel, portrayed by (budding heartthrob) Kofi Siriboe. The show is also cross-generational: Charley’s soul-searching son, Micah, is often torn between being a carefree teen and embracing the harsh truths that come with adulthood, and the trio’s aunt Violet is a middle-aged Black woman who Winfrey says is purposefully depicted as healthy, vibrant, and sexy, an antidote to the “feeble” church-going Southern stereotype. Never before have we seen a Black family so layered. Or so poetically poetically captured for television, thanks to cinematographer Antonio Calvache. Or so rooted in the reality of the kind of Black family viewers either know or come from, with lyrical dialogue set to a soulful soundtrack and a setting where half-drunken orange soda bottles, sinks full of collard greens, and Violet’s impressive wig collection lie in the background. Queen Sugar also finds a way to address current events head-on. Season 1 touched on everything from the way formerly incarcerated Black men are treated when they return to society (Ralph Angel’s character was given less pay simply because his boss decided he would, and should, take what he could get) to the different views women of color can have toward the Black Lives Matter movement. And in a preview of season 2, we see that Micah will have a run-in with the police that eerily — but accurately — echoes the news in real life. Hard as it may be to watch, these events are fodder for the conversations we should be having. “I was so grateful when many of the events of last year took place, specifically the election,” Gardner said at the press event. “I was grateful to know that we would be coming back for a second season and that I had a project I fully believed in, where I knew the writers would include the urgent conversations that are happening in our world. As an actress, you don’t always get that opportunity on a TV show. It’s relieving when we read our scripts and say, Ah, so we are going to talk about this.” And while Queen Sugar is sending important messages onscreen, it’s also empowering people behind the scenes: For the second season in a row, DuVernay has hired an entirely female slate of directors. After Shonda Rhimes took a chance and gave DuVernay her first TV directing gig on a 2013 Scandal episode, DuVernay decided Queen Sugar would be her way to pay it forward. Having two 16-episode seasons in a row directed solely by women is no small feat in Hollywood, especially when handing an hour-long episode to a lesser-known name is a pretty big risk. But DuVernay says it has paid off. “I always say if Game of Thrones can have three seasons of all male directors, why can’t we have three seasons of all women directors?” she said at the press event. “A great majority of our women from the first season have at least one film under their belt. Can you believe that these women had directed a film that had played at film festivals around the world...and couldn’t get hired in Hollywood for one episode of television? Like, on any network, they would not be allowed in the door.” But since DuVernay took a chance on directors like Neema Barnette, Tina Mabry, Kat Candler, and Salli Richardson Whitfield, they've have gone on to work on shows including American Crime, Dear White People, Underground, Grey’s Anatomy, Famous In Love, and more. “All of the women in our season 1, every single one of the women has gone on to be heavily booked,” DuVernay said. “I got a call from a really well-known television show just last week asking, ‘We had a drop out, we had someone drop out as a director, can you refer us to one of your season 1 directors?’ I got on the phone and tried. None of [them] are available. Not one of them.” With just a single show, DuVernay has demonstrated that getting more women behind the camera is quite simple, actually: Just hire them. And other television directors have followed suit. Last fall, Melissa Rosenberg announced that she was also only hiring female directors for season 2 of Jessica Jones, and Ryan Murphy launched a “Half” initiative to ensure half of the directors on all of his series were either women or minorities. It’s clear that the beginning of Queen Sugar was a success, both as groundbreaking entertainment and a changemaker for Hollywood’s (mostly white) boys’ club. But as with every follow-up to a hit first season, there is, of course, that looming question: Is there any fear of a sophomore slump? The question isn’t even asked in full, when Winfrey — who recently confirmed it will begin production on a third season in 2018 interjects. “We are not gonna slump,” she said, without a single blink behind those silver glasses. “We are rising.” The first two episodes of Queen Sugar’s Season 2 premiere June 20 and 21 at 9 P.M. on OWN.

[olympiansrpg1-blog]

Congratulations, Harper! You have been accepted as Atlas (FC: Ricky Whittle). Richard shows a lot of intensity and promise, things that we were looking for in our skeleton of Atlas. Please be sure to message the main within 24 hours of acceptances with your account, read over the checklist, follow everyone on the masterlist, and track all tags. Congratulations, once again, and welcome to Olympians!

*Below is a sample application, please bear in mind that this does not reflect everything that is expected in an application as I went into full detail of my character.

OOC information

Name/alias: Harper

Pronouns: She/her

Age: 21

Time zone: GMT+10

Triggers: Extreme gore

IC information

Skeleton wanted: Atlas

Faceclaim wanted: Ricky Whittle, Brett Dalton, Godfrey Gao, Ryan Guzman, DJ Cotrona

Character’s full name: Richard Regulus Johnson

Richard: Means "brave power", derived from the Germanic elements ric "power, rule" and hard "brave, hardy". The Normans introduced this name to Britain, and it has been very common there since that time. It was borne by three kings of England including Richard I the Lionheart, one of the leaders of the Third Crusade in the 12th century.

Regulus: Roman cognomen meaning "prince, little king", a diminutive of Latin rex "king". This was the cognomen of several 3rd-century BC consuls from the gens Atilia. It was also the name of several early saints. A star in the constellation Leo bears this name as well.

Age/Birthday: 29/August 12th

Character biography OR para sample:

You have always been a king, this is a legacy that you have always known, the blood of royals running through your veins as your father let the heavy weight of the crown turn him into something cruel and marred by years of complacency.

It all started when you were a child, little legs running around the streets of New York City with not a single care in the world. You had always had the men and women with dark suits surrounding you at all times, so much so that they had faded into the background of your life. Your father wanted to always assure that his little prince would be protected, that there was nothing to fear in this life so long as you were safe. And for some reason, you always believed him. His words were like honey, sweet and filled with liquid gold. Your earliest recollection is sitting in his lap as a child, bouncing on one knee as he promised you that you would hold the weight of the world on your shoulders one day like he did. New York City was your birthright, Olympus was yours to claim whenever he would become too old to manage it.

“Richie, all of this will be yours, I promise you.”

The words echoed in your ears at night, satin sheets comforting you in the night as you slept on peacefully, assured that nothing in this life would be amiss. It was until halfway through your seventh year that life would hit you harder than it ever had before. You can still remember the way your mother clutched your hand, a firm and tight hold as tears ran down your cherubic cheeks. You can remember your father kneeling down on his knees to apologize to you, something in his tone telling you that he was both relieved that you and your mother were leaving but mournful of it as well. That was why you never once regretted moving to Germany with her, that was why your tears stopped spilling over the moment you both climbed into that town car with all of your belongings packed up into a suitcase. It was a dawn of a new era, young as you were, you knew that you had to become something that your father would be proud of one day as he was no longer here to watch you grow.

Moving to a new country was far harder than your pre-teen mind could have imagined, getting acclimated to a new environment when all you’ve ever known was a metropolitan city where everyone spoke English and you practiced safety in numbers with employees of your father. Your mother, however, always remained resilient through it all, every wayward spill and every heartbreak, she was there to save you from it all. You were just a mere child, unsure of what the rest of the world could do to you, but it was only when you grew to a teenager did you understand the toll that you were taking on your own mother. Where you could not understand the distant look in her eyes when your father called when you were younger, you knew now that it was because of the distinct female voices that you could clearly hear on the other side of the line. Where you did not understand why you had to leave, you once began to realize the veiled truth behind it all when your father would visit for only days at a time, making excuses that he had a business to run before jetting off once more.

The more and more you grew into Germany, the same Germany grew into you. This was home, you could hardly remember the urban jungle that was New York until you were reminded that a legacy was still a legacy and it was your rightful place in the throne when you were ready to claim it. You often heard whispers, tiny inklings of the things that were happening as you would often open news articles of strange misgivings that took place there. You heard tales of the Greek who ran the city, running it amuck and controlling it with fear and power, a thorn in your side as you heard of the mere existence of Zeus and Hades, two deities that represented so much in mythology as well as being known as Cronus’ sons in them as well. The title should have been yours. After all, you were the one true child of Cronus and it was your duty to lift up the world that he had built for you, you would remind them all that it was for you. Anger was not an emotion that you often greeted with open arms, quite the opposite, really. Determination was ever present in the forefront of your mind, coaxing itself to prove your worth more and more with each passing day. It was the only way that you could show that you deserved it far more than they did, the two looming figures that were ever present in Cronus’ life where you were absent. Every time he visited, you were sure to show him just how far you had come since the last time, proving that there was far much more to you than just being his son.

It was when you graduated that you knew that you had to prepare yourself. After all, your father had promised you a kingdom, but what would a kingdom be without loyal subjects? You had no doubt that he had his own who had done his bidding for an entire lifetime, but you did not know them nor did you trust them in the same manner that he did. So, you began collecting and analyzing, only the best of the best allowed to serve as you promised them a life much more than the ones they lived now and family to always return home to. Just because yours was splintered did not mean that you could not make another one, this one stronger and with a bond better than one simply rooted by a child. You were becoming a king in your own right, growing up from the little prince your father once called you and your mother was the high priestess who you would turn to for decisions that you were not sure you could not make alone. Gone were the large eyes of curiosity that only a child could hold, gone was the innocence that your father often mistook for weakness in you, gone were the dreams of a conflictless world where you reigned supreme. It was all replaced by strong shoulders, a devious look in your eyes, and a smile that could light up the world but hands that could strike out the moment something went amiss. You became a weapon, your own body purely made for the fight, but you had others who could fight for you first before you could even raise a finger. You only looked for the genuine, the loyal, garnered and gained their trust in the most intimate way you possibly could.

It was only when you heard about the passing of Eurydice did you dare to reach out to a member of the Olympians, offering your condolences to the one who called themselves Orpheus a mere few months after the “accident”. It was easy to sway them, to pluck them from the ranks of your father’s officers and coerce them to offer up the details of the incident as well as the aftermath along with everything that came along with the gang. It did not take very long or much thought for you to open your arms up to Orpheus, knowing full well what it was like to have been left behind by someone that you thought cared for you. You did not do it out of jealousy, no, you did it because despite all the claims you make, you still have a kind heart for the wayward souls that floated through life without any semblance of a family. The strong would only be weak without a foundation, it was your duty to give that to them as well as a shelter to run to when the storm grew too strong for one person. Right before your very eyes, you all became a cohesive unit, a family that you could be just as proud of as the one you left behind, if not more. Your legacy was finally beginning to come together.

Or so you thought. When you heard the news of your father’s untimely demise, it was like a lightning bolt through your spine. You could feel death’s cold clutches coming for you too, how fitting for Zeus and Hades to have claimed the defunct family that was now Olympus as their own. You laughed at the cruelty of life, your father having left you nothing as though he had forgotten about you. Something cruel began to sprout from the ground that which you stood, balled fists at your sides as you saw your life’s purpose crash down before you. The weak would have given up, but no, you were Atlas. You were Richard Johnson, son of the once great Harvey and it was only right that you take back what was rightfully yours. They say heavy is the head that wears the crown, but not if they had been born with it pressed upon their heads... And you’ve always known  it was meant for you.

So you watched, in the shadows, allowed the prey to believe that they were predators and take each other out while you waited for a proper time to rise. You sent others out in your steed to gather information as you planned with them all, mechanically took out those who were weak in mind, but strong in body to them all. It was easy for the Olympians to become just as complacent as your father had been, never expecting those to infiltrate from the outside and wreak havoc on a place that was never theirs to begin with. You could only watch them with a laugh, lighting their world ablaze as you brought your own into New York City. They say Atlas carries the world on his shoulders: a heavy burden to bear in the face of what the world is now, but what would his purpose be without it?

You are coming for the throne and you will never lose sight of it ever again, such has always been your birthright.

Character Development:

I’d certainly love to have Richard make some really questionable decisions, letting his want for revenge truly affect him, so much so that the Titans would band together and try to urge someone into talking to him about it.

Although I’d love for Atlas to come out on top, I do think he needs a bit of a reality check. Running a mob in New York City isn’t the easiest thing in the world, especially when he only trusts a certain amount of people. Every gang needs its lackeys and you could have to be able to recruit in order to get some, something that he isn’t entirely familiar with.

Even if he wasn’t close to his father, I would still also like to have him grieve for Cronus for a little bit, especially if/when he finds out that Hera is responsible for his untimely death and it wasn’t simply a case of passing away due to age and stress.

I would also, maybe, like for the international arms dealing to eventually make its way into Tartarus, rather than just gambling. Even though Rhea is handling things in Germany for him, this is a new territory and Richard would rather have connections to things around him than those that are thousands of miles away and too far to help immediately.

Maybe an actual rational conversation between him and Zeus/Hades, where they can actually all acknowledge the fact that they’re all a little bit responsible for the fall of Olympus and maybe realizing that they all need each other to survive. This, of course, is probably far into the future.

Other:

-- Harvey was the one who put a gun in Richard’s hand as a child, urging him to learn how to shoot before he could even learn how to ride a bike. However, it was Rhea who was the one who taught him how to shoot with accuracy. She was the one who taught him where it would hurt most to shoot a man without killing them and where it would simply be a clean through and through and where the vital organs were. Like most things in his life, it seems as though Cronus would start them and Rhea would finish and forge them into an ability and so much more.

-- Prior to Orpheus’ visit to Germany, Richard was in the process of rooting a crime syndicate in the heart of Berlin, eventually planning on taking Olympus international in his time as the boss as he thought he would automatically assume the throne. With the announcement of Harvey’s death, he has left the up and rising weapons dealing venture to the capable hands of someone he trusts while he attempts claim Olympus.

-- While cruel to others, there is no one he loves more than the Titans he’s surrounded himself with. While they have strength in number, for him, that is also where they are weakest. There is nothing he wouldn’t do in order to help them in their times of need, even going on a suicide mission just to rescue them from someone else’s clutches and there is no one he trusts more to have his back when he needs them. The basis of their relationships is all founded on a mutual trust that he knows cannot be broken just by pure torture or manipulation.

-- (TW: Abuse) During his attendance at the University of Mannheim, Richard came across a puppy that had clearly not been taken care of by its owner. With matted black fur, multiple scabs, and a limp, it was only logical to him that he took the dog and nursed it back to health in the confines of his own apartment. Since then, he has found a lifelong companion in Hyas, named after the archer son of Atlas who hunted monsters. He has not left his side since that fateful night and Richard has never once thought about leaving him behind.

-- Richie holds a certain fascination for the night sky, constellations glittering as though they were alive, framed by the light of the moon. He is able to recite all the constellations by heart, a spark in his eyes as he talks about their origin stories as well. There is nothing more that he enjoys than to lay in the grass and stare up at the sky when he has the time to do so. Unfortunately, with his arrival in New York, not only is he not able to look at all the stars with the pollution in the air, but he does not have the time either.

-- (TW: Torture) Ruthless as he is, Richard is known to occasionally make an appearance during interrogations, not wanting to put Hyperion solely in charge of such an important matter despite the fact that he knows that they are the best of the best. After all, he wants to be able to have his fun with people that have crossed him as well as those who seated themselves at the feet of those who have wronged him. Though his method is not brutal, it is more emotional and mental and he often enjoys driving them crazy from simple things like loud, noisy music being played over and over on a sound system for hours and dragging a subject into freezing cold water until they crack under the pressure.

-- After the dissolution of Rhea and Cronus’ relationship, something inside of Richie changed. Though young and not quite understanding the truth of what had happened, he vowed to himself that he would never put love before his business. Though he’s had a few flings in the past, they have never been serious as he has not allowed them to be. Love is mostly an idea to him, something that is, above all, a distraction when it comes to his goals in life. While this may be true, that does not mean he does not know how to be charismatic. In fact, it’s rather the opposite. He uses his looks to his advantage, twisting his good looks whenever he can to get what he wants outside of those he considers family.

-- Though he considers manipulation one of his favorite methods, Richard is a big believer in assuring that things are done the right way by doing them himself. He is not about delegating jobs out to others to take care of, but taking part in them and putting himself in the line of fire as he is a man of action as well as showing face so others realize that he is not afraid to give his life for those he considers close. He knows that Zeus and Hades’ ultimate downfall is that they do not know their people and their people ultimately do not trust them in the same manner that his team does with him.

-- Richard’s earliest memory is one of Cronus and Rhea strolling in Central Park with him clinging onto both of their arms, his father endearingly calling him “little king” as they swung him back and forth. He can still remember the look of joy on Rhea’s face and the laughter that left his own lips as they formed one united front. It is, by far, one of his dearest memories and one he holds close to him. Though he knows he can never get that back, especially with Harvey’s demise, he hopes that his mother can one day find the same happiness with another.

 (x) (x) (x)

[lodelss]

Laurie Penny | Longreads | June 2020 | 21 minutes (5,360 words)

“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.” — Winston Churchill, unpublished memorandum

“Will Mockney for food.” — Alan Moore, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol. III

This is a story about a border war. Specifically, a border war between two nations that happen, at least in theory, to be precisely the same place. One of them is Britain, a small, soggy island whose power on the world stage is declining, where poverty, inequality, and disaster nationalism are rising, where the government has mangled its response to a global pandemic so badly that it’s making some of us nostalgic for the days when all we did was panic about Brexit. The other is “Britain!” — a magical land of round tables and boy wizards and enchanted swords and moral decency, where the sun never sets on an Empire run by gentlemen, where witty people wear frocks and top hats and decide the fate of nations over tea and biscuits.

One is a real place. The other is a fascinatingly dishonest, selective statement of fact, rather like describing how beautiful the countryside was in the antebellum American South. A truth so incomplete it’s worse than a lie.

Every nation-state is ninety percent fictional; there’s always a gap between the imaginary countries united by cultural coherence and collective destinies where most of us believe we live, and the actual countries where we’re born and eat breakfast and file taxes and die. The U.K. is unique among modern states in that we not only buy our own hype, we also sell it overseas at a markup. “Britain always felt like the land where all the stories came from,” an American writer friend told me when I asked why she so often sets her novels in Britain. Over and over, writers and readers of every background — but particularly Americans — tell me that the U.K. has a unique hold on their imaginations.

Every nation-state is ninety percent fictional; there’s always a gap between the imaginary countries united by cultural coherence and collective destinies where most of us believe we live, and the actual countries where we’re born and eat breakfast and file taxes and die.

That hold is highly profitable. Britain was kept out of recession last year by one industry: entertainment. Over the past four years, the motion picture, television, and music industries have grown by almost 50 percent — the service sector, only by 6.  So many shows are currently filmed in England that productions struggle to book studio space, and even the new soundstages announced by London Mayor Sadiq Khan in 2018 will be hard-pressed to keep up with demand. As historian Dan Snow pointed out, “[O]ur future prosperity is dependent on turning ourselves into a giant theme park of Queens, detectives, spies, castles, and young wizards.”

There is hope: the statues are coming down all over Britain, starting in Bristol on June 7, 2020. Black Lives Matter protesters pulled down a monument to slave trader Edward Colston, who is remembered for how he lavished his wealth on the port city and not for the murder of 19,000 men, women and children during the Middle Passage. Colston’s statue was thrown into Bristol Harbor, where it remains. In Oxford, students demanded the removal of monuments to Cecil Rhodes, the business magnate and “architect of apartheid” who stole vast tracts of Africa driven by his conviction in the supremacy of Anglo-Saxons. In Parliament Square, fences have been erected to protect Winston Churchill himself, the colonial administrator and war leader whose devoted acolytes include both Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. Young Britons are  demanding a reckoning with a history of colonial conquest, slave-trading, industrial savagery, and utter refusal to examine its own legacy.

Meanwhile, the economic disaster of a no-deal Brexit is still looming and Britain has the highest COVID-19 death toll in Europe, putting further pressure on an already-struggling National Health Service. Under Boris Johnson’s catastrophic leadership, or lack thereof, there are no signs of changing tactics on either. Fantasy Britain is having a boomtime. Real Britain is in deep, deep trouble.

* * *

I was homesick. That’s my excuse. I had been in Los Angeles for six months, writing for TV shows set in England. I woke up every day 5,000 miles from home, in a city of sweltering tarmac and traffic jams and palm trees, to try and explain how British people speak and think. I fell asleep every night to the radio from home, listening to the logic of xenophobia capture the political mainstream as my country circled the drain. I watched my British friends who are Black or brown or who were born overseas trying to stay brave and hopeful as racism became more and more normalized. I was homesick, and people do silly things when they’re homesick.

So yes, I went to see the Downton Abbey movie.

Specifically, I went to the Downton Abbey Experience, a special screening where you could spend a few hours in a mocked-up Edwardian drawing room, nibbling on tiny food and pretending to be posh. I was expecting it to be rubbish, forgetting that this was Los Angeles, where talented actors and set dressers can be had on every street corner. I couldn’t help but be a bit charmed by the commitment: the food was terrible, but two of the waiters had concocted an elaborate professional-rivalry backstory, and the accent-work was almost flawless. It really did feel as if you’d stepped, if not into Downton itself, then certainly onto the show’s set. And I finally understood. The way Americans feel about this is the way I feel about Star Trek and schlocky space opera. This is their escape from reality. This is their fandom. Not just Downton Abbey — “Britain.”

I do try to resist the temptation to make fun of other people who take uncomplicated joy in their thing. The British do this a lot, and it’s one of the least edifying parts of the national character. Fandom is fine. Escapism is allowed. No semi-sensitive soul can be expected to live in the real world at all times. But watching the whitewashed, revisionist history of your own country adopted as someone else’s fantasy of choice is actively uncomfortable. It’s like sitting by while a decrepit relative gibbers some antediluvian nonsense about the good old days and watching in horror as everyone applauds and says how charming.

I decided not to be charmed and sulked on an ornamental sofa, angrily eating a chocolate bonbon and resenting everyone else for having fun. This was where I met the only other British person in the room, a nice lady from Buckinghamshire in a fancy dress. What did my new friend think of the event?  “I don’t like to complain,” she said, “but I’m sitting here in a ballgown eating bloody bread and jam. Honestly, it’s not worth the money.”

Which was the second-most-British thing anyone said all evening. The most British thing of all had been uttered half an hour earlier, by me, when it dawned on my friend and me that we really should have worn costumes. “It’ll be alright,” I said, “I’ll just take my accent up a bit posher and everyone will be pleased to see us.” Living in a place where all you have to do is say something in your normal accent to be told you’re clever and wonderful is all very well, until you start believing it. This is as true in politics as anywhere else: just showing up and being relentlessly British at people does not constitute sociopolitical strategy. It doesn’t even constitute a personality. I know that there are a lot of British expats who will be cross with me for giving the game away, and chaps, I really am so terribly, terribly sorry. But you and I both know that someday we’ll have to go home, and people won’t automatically be pleased to see us just because we said some words.

This is as true in politics as anywhere else: just showing up and being relentlessly British at people does not constitute sociopolitical strategy.

I write for TV shows set in Britain, or a fantasy version of it, and American Anglophilia is endlessly fascinating to me, as it is to most British expats. It comes in a few different flavourways (ed.: Normally we’d edit this to the u-less American spelling, but in this particular case it seemed appropriate to let it go). There’s the saccharine faux-nostalgia of Downton fans, the ones who love The Crown and afternoon tea and the actual monarchy. They tend to be more socially conservative, more likely to vaporize into angry drifts of snowflakery at the mere suggestion that there might have been brown people in the trenches of the First World War. But there is also a rich seam of Anglophilia among people who are generally suspicious of nationalism, and television is to blame for most of it. The idea of Britain that many Americans grew up with was Monty Python, Doctor Who, and Blackadder; today it’s Downton, Sherlock, Good Omens, and The Great British Worried-People-Making-Cakes-in-a-Tent Show. And of course, Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, which technically take place in Middle-earth and Westeros but, in practice, are set in the version of medieval Britain where all epic fantasy tends to settle — in days of olde when knights were bold and brown people didn’t get speaking roles but dragons were fine.

(No British expat can honestly criticize a franchise like Downton for taking advantage of the North American fascination with Englishness, not unless we can say we’ve never taken advantage of it ourselves. Occasionally we catch one another at it, and it’s deeply embarrassing. Not long ago, waiting for coffee in the morning, I listened aghast as an extremely pretty American lady with her arm around an averagely-attractive Englishman explained that their dog was called something not unlike Sir Humphrey Woofington-Growler. “Because he’s British — my boyfriend, I mean.” Said British boyfriend’s eyes were pinned on the middle distance in the full excruciating knowledge that if he’d given a dog a name like that at home, he’d have got a smack, which would have upset the dog.)

Lavish Britscapist vehicles like Downton Abbey, The Crown, and Belgravia are more popular with Americans than they are at home. Trudging through Finsbury Park in London on a cold morning last Christmas, a poster advertising The Crown had been gleefully tagged “royalist propaganda” by some local hero with a spray can. My American friends were confused when I explained this to them. “Don’t you like your royal family?” They asked. No, I explained. We like Hamilton. The stories we export lay bare the failing heart of Britain’s sense of itself in the world — the assumption that all we have to do, individually or collectively, is show up with a charming accent and say something quaint and doors will open for us, as will wallets, legs, and negotiations for favorable trade deals.

This is a scam that works really well right up until it doesn’t.

* * *

It was irritatingly difficult to remain uncharmed by the Downton Abbey movie. I found myself unable to work up a sweat over whether there would be enough lawn chairs for the royal parade, but I rather enjoyed the bit where the Downton house staff, snubbed by the royal servants, decided to respond with kidnapping, poisoning, and fraud. There was also a snide rivalry between butlers, a countess with a secret love child, a disputed inheritance, an attempted royal assassination, a perilous tryst between closeted valets, a princess in an unhappy marriage, and Maggie Smith. It was disgustingly pleasant right up until its shameless closing sequence, where fussy butler Mr. Carson and his sensible housekeeper wife had a conversation about whether the Abbey would last into the next century. Yes, said Mr. Carson, sending us off into the night with the promise that “a hundred years from now, Downton will still be standing.”

And there it is. It’s not a good or noble or even an original lie, but it’s at least told with flair. As the British Empire went ungently into its good night offscreen last century, many great English houses were repurposed, sold, or demolished in part so that families did not have to pay inheritance tax on the properties. Highclere Castle — the estate where Downton Abbey was filmed — is an exception and remains under the stewardship of  the Earls of Carnavron, who live on the estate. They can afford to do this because a lucrative show about a lost and largely fictional age of aristocratic gentility happened to be filmed on the grounds. Let me repeat that: the only way the actual Downton Abbey can continue to exist is by renting itself out as a setting for fantasies of a softer world. Which is, in microcosm, the current excuse for a government’s entire plan for a post-Brexit economy. With nowhere left to colonize, we gleefully strip our own history for the shiniest trinkets to sell. The past is a different country, so we’re allowed to invade it, take its stuff and lie relentlessly about the people who actually live there.

It’s not a good or noble or even an original lie, but it’s at least told with flair.

The uncomfortable truth is that America doesn’t love Britain the way we want to be loved. That white-innocence fantasy of rolling lawns and ripped bodices is only palatable (and profitable) because Britain doesn’t have much actual power anymore. Our eccentricities would be far less adorable if we still owned you. If we were still a military-industrial juggernaut on the scale of Russia or China, if we were still really an imperial power rather than just cosplaying as one for cash, would the rest of the world be importing our high-fructose cultural capital in such sugary sackloads?

I don’t think so — and nor does Britain’s current government, the most nationalist and least patriotic in living memory, which has no compunction about turning the country into a laundry for international capital and flogging our major assets to foreign powers. American businesses already have their eyes on the National Health Service, which will inevitably be on the table in those trade deals a post-Brexit British economy desperately needs. In one of its first acts in power, the Johnson administration shoved through a controversial arms deal selling a major defense company to a private American firm, which is somehow not seen as unpatriotic.

This summer, Black Lives Matter protests are boiling around a nation that has never reexamined its imperial legacy because it is convinced it is the protagonist of world history. Conversation around what “British” means remains vaguely distasteful. “Culturally our stories are of plucky underdogs,” historian Snow told me. “But actually our national story was of massive expenditure on the world’s most complex weapon systems and smashing the shit out of less fiscally and technological societies.”

“Nations themselves are narrations,” wrote Edward Said, pioneer of postcolonial studies. Britain’s literary self-mythologizing spans several centuries. During the Raj, teaching English literature to the Indian middle and ruling classes was central to the strategy for enforcing the idea of Britain as morally superior. The image of Britain that persists in the collective global unconsciousness was founded deliberately to make sense of the empire and romanticize it for ordinary British citizens, most of whom had neither a complete understanding of the atrocities nor the voting rights that would make their opinion relevant. Britain wrote and rewrote itself as the protagonist of its own legends, making its barbarism bearable and its cultural dominance natural.

Bad things happen to people who have never heard a story they weren’t the hero of. I try not to be the sort of person who flashes the word “hegemony” around too much, but that’s what this is and always has been: a way of imposing cultural norms long after we, as my history books delicately put it, “lost” the British Empire. The stories are all we have left to make us feel important.

The plain truth is that Britain had, until quite recently, the largest and most powerful empire the world had ever known. We don’t have it anymore, and we miss it. Of course we miss it. It made us rich, it made us important, and all the ugly violent parts happened terribly far away and could be ignored with a little rewriting of our history. It continues to this day with tactful omissions from the school syllabus — in 2010, Education Secretary Michael Gove, later one of the chief architects of Brexit, pushed to teach British children a version of the “exciting and appealing” Imperial history that cast their country as heroic. According to one 2016 study, 43 percent of the British public think the Empire “was a good thing.” For most British people, the Empire came to us in pieces, in jingoistic legends and boys’ adventure stories with as many exclamation points as could be crammed on one book cover. The impression I was given as a schoolgirl was that we were jolly decent to let the Empire go, and that we did so because it was all of a sudden pointed out that owning other countries wholesale was a beastly thing to do — of course old boy, you must have your human rights! Really, we were only holding on to them for you.

The last time Britain truly got to think of itself as heroic on the world stage was during the Second World War. The narrative with the most tenacity is the “Blitz Spirit” — of a plucky little island standing firm against impossible odds, pulling together while hell rained down from above, growing victory gardens and sheltering in the stations of the London Underground. Those black-and-white photographs of brave-faced families wrapped in blankets on the train platforms are instantly recognizable: this is who we are as a country. Most Britons don’t know that soldiers from the colonies fought and died on the frontlines in France. Even fewer are aware of the famine that struck India at around the same time, leaving a million dead, or of Britain’s refusal to offer aid, continuing instead to divert supplies to feed the British army as the people of India starved.

What all of this is about, ultimately, is white innocence. That’s the grand narrative that so many of our greatest writers were recruited to burnish, willingly or not. White innocence makes a delicious story, and none of its beneficiaries wants to hear about how that particular sausage gets made.

* * *

Many of the biggest narrative brands of Britain’s fretful post-colonial age are stories of a nation coming to terms with the new and eroding nature of its own power, from James Bond (a story about a slick misogynist hired by the state to kill people) to Doctor Who (which I will defend to the death, but which is very much about the intergalactic importance of cultural capital). We are a nation in decline on the international stage; that’s what happens when a small island ceases to own a third of the earth. Rather than accepting this with any semblance of grace, we have thrown a tantrum that has made us the laughing stock of world politics, the sort of tantrum that only spoiled children and ham-faced, election-stealing oligarchs are allowed to get away with.

In this climate, the more pragmatic among us are seeing that what we actually have to offer the rest of the world boils down to escapism. Fantasy Britain offers an escape for everyone after a hard day under the wheel of late-stage capitalism.

There’s no actual escape, of course. Good luck if you’re a refugee. Since 2012, the conservative government has actively cultivated a  “hostile environment” scheme to make life as difficult as possible for immigrants, highlights of which include fast-tracking deportations and vans driving a massive billboard reading “GO HOME OR FACE ARREST” around the most diverse boroughs in London. Seriously. If you want to escape to actual Britain you need at least two million pounds, which is how much it costs for an Investor Visa. Non-millionaires with the wrong documents can and will be put on a plane in handcuffs, even if they’ve lived and worked in Britain for 50 years — like the senior citizens of the Windrush generation who came to Britain from the West Indies as children with their families to help rebuild the nation after the Second World War. In the past five years, hundreds of elderly men and women, many of them unaware they were not legal citizens, have been forcibly deported from Britain to the Caribbean. The subsequent public outcry did almost zero damage to the government’s brand. In 2019, Johnson’s Conservatives won a landslide victory.

“Take your country back.” That was the slogan that Brexit campaigners chose in 2016. Take it back from whom? To where? It was clear that the fictional past that many Brexit nostalgists wanted to reclaim was something not unlike the syrupy storylines of Downton Abbey — quiet, orderly, and mostly white. But to make that story work, British conservatives needed to cast themselves as the plucky underdogs, which is how you get a Brexit Party representative to the European Parliament comparing Brexit to the resistance of “slaves against their owners” and “colonies … against their empires,” or Boris Johnson bloviating in 2018 about Britain’s “colony status” in the EU (although he also believes that it would be good if Britain was still “in charge” of Africa). 

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What really won the day, though, was the lie that leaving the EU would leave us with 350 million pounds per week “to spend on the NHS.” Boris Johnson rode up and down the nation on a big red bus emblazoned with that empty promise. The British people may not trust our politicians, but we trust our National Health Service — almost all of us, from across the sociopolitical spectrum, apart from some fringe internet libertarians and diehard neoliberal wingnuts, most of whom, unfortunately, are in power (though they couldn’t get there without promising to protect the NHS).

After the COVID-19 lockdowns end, Brexit is still happening. The actual changes don’t come into effect until 2021, and Boris Johnson, whose empty personal brand is forever yoked to this epic national self-harm project, is clearly hoping to sneak in a bad Brexit deal while the country is still reeling from a global pandemic. Leaving the EU will not make Britain rich again. It will not make us an imperial power again. In fact, the other nations of Europe are now taking the opportunity to reclaim some of the things we borrowed along the way. Greece wants the Parthenon Marbles back, more than two centuries after a British tourist visited Athens and liked them so much he decided to pry them off and ship them home. Spain has made noise that it wants Gibraltar back, and we’ll probably have to give it to them. So far, the only way in which Britain is returning to its days of High Victorian glory is in the sudden re-emergence, in communities ravaged by austerity, of 19th-century diseases of poverty, and now of the highest rates of COVID-19 infection in Europe, after Johnson’s government pursued a disastrous “herd immunity” strategy that transparently invited the elderly and infirm to sacrifice themselves for the stock market. British kids are not growing up with a sense of national heroism; they are growing up with rickets and scurvy. As a great poet from the colonies once wrote, it’s like 10,000 spoons when all you need is for the sneering Eton thugs you inexplicably elected to stop stabbing you in the back.

As it happens, I want my country back, too. I have spent enough time baking under the pitiless California sunshine. I have been to Hot Topic. I’m stuck in the States until the lockdowns end, but want to go back to the soggy, self-deprecating country I grew up in, the country of tolerance and diversity and kind people quietly getting on with things, the land of radio sketch comedy, jacket potatoes, decent bands, and basic decency.

I know that that country, too, is imaginary; just as imaginary as any of the “Rule Britannia” flag-waggery. I don’t believe that Britain is Great in anything but name, but I do believe it can be better. I do not care to be told that I am any less of a patriot because I choose to know my country, or because I can imagine a future where we do more than freeze in the haunted house of our past glories, stuffed with stolen treasures and trapdoors we never open. It’s where I’m from, where my family and friends live, and where I hope to grow old and die. It worries me that we have not even begun to develop the tools to cope with our material reality, one in which we are a rather small rainy island half of whose population currently hates the other.

* * *

Since we’re all talking about myths and revisionist history and the Blitz Spirit, here’s something else that never makes it into the official story.

Those working-class Londoners sheltering in tube stations during World War II? They weren’t supposed to be there. In fact, the British government of the late 1930s built far too few municipal shelters, preferring to leave that to private companies, local government councils, and individuals and when the first bombs first fell, the hardest hit areas were poor, immigrant, and working-class communities in the East End with nowhere to go. Elite clubs and hotels dug out their own bomb shelters, but the London Underground was barricaded. On the second night of the Blitz, with the flimsy, unhygienic East End shelters overflowing, hundreds of people entered the Liverpool Street Station and refused to leave. By the time the government officially changed its position and “allowed” working-class Londoners to take shelter down among the trains, thousands were already doing so — 177,000 people at its most packed.

Eventually it was adopted into the propaganda effort and became part of the official mythos of the Blitz, but the official story leaves out the struggle. It leaves out the part about desperate people, abandoned by their government, in fear of their lives, doing what they had to — and what should have been done from the start — to take care of each other.

This failure is the closest thing to the staggering lack of leadership that Britain, like America, has displayed during the weeks and months of the coronavirus crisis. As I write, more than 42,000 British citizens have died, many in our struggling NHS hospitals and countless more in care homes. On the same January day that the Brexit treaty was signed, Boris Johnson missed the first emergency meeting of COBRA, the government’s effort to determine a response to rumors of a new and horrifying pandemic. Johnson went on to miss four subsequent meetings, choosing instead to go on holiday with his fiancée to celebrate Brexit as a personal win. As vital weeks were squandered and the infection reached British shores, it emerged that the country was singularly underprepared. Stocks of protective equipment had been massively depleted because, with everyone’s attention on Brexit, nobody had bothered to consider that we might have to deal with a crisis not of our own making. Worse still, the National Health Service was chronically underfunded and hemorrhaging staff, as migrant doctors, nurses, and medical professionals from EU countries fled a failing institution in a hostile culture. In the years following the Brexit referendum, over 10,000 European medical staff have reportedly left the NHS.

Over 10 years of wildly unnecessary cuts to public services, successive Tory governments deliberately invoked the Blitz Spirit, promoting their economic reforms with the unfortunate slogan “we’re all in this together” — as if austerity were an external enemy rather than a deliberate and disastrous choice imposed on the working poor by politicians who have never known the price of a pint of milk or the value of public education. Today, it is perhaps a signal of the intellectual drought in British politics that the slogan “We’re all in this together” has been recycled to flog the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Their other slogan — plastered resentfully on podiums after a decade of decimating the health service — is “Protect the NHS.” The National Health Service is perhaps the last thing that truly unites every fractured shard of the British political psyche, and the Tories hate that, but 10 years of gutting hospitals, scrapping social care schemes, and blaming it all on the very immigrants who come from overseas to care for us when we are sick has not made the British love socialized medicine any less. Every Thursday night across Britain, since the lockdowns began, the whole country comes out to applaud the healthcare workers who are risking their lives every day to fight on the front lines of the pandemic. The mumbling rent-a-toffs the Tories shove up on stage to explain the latest hopelessly ineffectual lockdown strategy have no choice but to clap along. Because, as the murals mushrooming up around the country attest, the best stories Britain tells about itself have never been about Queen and Country and Glory — they’ve always been the ones where the broke, brave, messed-up millions of ordinary people who live here pull together, help each other, and behave with basic human decency.

* * *

I’m not arguing for us all to stop telling stories about Britain. For one thing, people aren’t going to stop, and for another, stories by and about British people are currently keeping my friends employed, my rent paid, and my home country from sliding into recession. And there are plenty that are still worth telling: if you want to shove your nose against the shop window of everything actually good about British culture, watch The Great British Bake-off. If you like your escapism with a slice of sex and cursing and corsets, and why wouldn’t you, curl up with the criminally underrated Harlots, which does an excellent job of portraying an actually diverse London and also has Liv Tyler as a trembly lesbian heiress in a silly wig. And if you want to watch a twee, transporting period drama with decent politics, I cannot more heartily recommend Call the Midwife, which also features biscuit-eating nuns and an appropriate amount of propaganda about how the National Health Service is the best thing about Britain.

I was supposed to be home by now. Instead, I’m in quarantine in California, watching my home country implode into proto-oligarchic incoherence in the middle of a global pandemic and worrying about my friends and loved ones in London. Meanwhile, my American friends are detoxing from the rolling panic-attack of the news by rewatching Downton Abbey, The Crown, and Belgravia. The British film industry is already gearing up to reopen, and the country will need to lean on its cultural capital more than ever.

But there is a narrative chasm between the twee and borderless dreamscape of fantasy Britain and actual, material Britain, where rents are rising and racists are running brave. The chasm is wide, and a lot of people are falling into it. The omnishambles of British politics is what happens when you get scared and mean and retreat into the fairytales you tell about yourself. When you can no longer live within your own contradictions. When you want to hold on to the belief that Britain is the land of Jane Austen and John Lennon and Sir Winston Churchill, the war hero who has been repeatedly voted the greatest Englishman of all time. When you want to forget that Britain is also the land of Cecil Rhodes and Oswald Moseley and Sir Winston Churchill, the brutal colonial administrator who sanctioned the building of the first concentration camps and condemned millions of Indians to death by starvation. These are not contradictions, even though the drive to separate them is cracking the country apart. If you love your country and don’t own its difficulties and its violence, you don’t actually love your country. You’re just catcalling it as it goes by.

There is a country of the imagination called Britain where there will never be borders, where down the dark lane, behind a door in the wall, David Bowie drinks gin with Elizabeth Tudor and Doctor Who trades quips with Oscar Wilde and there are always hot crumpets for tea. This idea of Englishness is lovely, and soothing, and it makes sense, and we have to be done with it now.  If Britain is going to remain the world’s collective imaginative sandbox, we can do better than this calcified refusal to cope with the contradictions of the past. We can liberate the territory of the imagination. We can remember what is actually good about Britain  — which has always been different from what was “great.”

* * *

Laurie Penny is an award-winning journalist, essayist, public speaker, writer, activist, internet nanocelebrity and author of six books. Her most recent book, Bitch Doctrine, was published by Bloomsbury in 2017. 

Editor: Michelle Weber Fact checker: Matt Giles Copyeditor: Ben Huberman

[lodelss]

Tea, Biscuits, and Empire: The Long Con of Britishness

Laurie Penny | Longreads | June 2020 | 21 minutes (5,360 words)

“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.” — Winston Churchill, unpublished memorandum

“Will Mockney for food.” — Alan Moore, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol. III

This is a story about a border war. Specifically, a border war between two nations that happen, at least in theory, to be precisely the same place. One of them is Britain, a small, soggy island whose power on the world stage is declining, where poverty, inequality, and disaster nationalism are rising, where the government has mangled its response to a global pandemic so badly that it’s making some of us nostalgic for the days when all we did was panic about Brexit. The other is “Britain!” — a magical land of round tables and boy wizards and enchanted swords and moral decency, where the sun never sets on an Empire run by gentlemen, where witty people wear frocks and top hats and decide the fate of nations over tea and biscuits.

One is a real place. The other is a fascinatingly dishonest, selective statement of fact, rather like describing how beautiful the countryside was in the antebellum American South. A truth so incomplete it’s worse than a lie.

Every nation-state is ninety percent fictional; there’s always a gap between the imaginary countries united by cultural coherence and collective destinies where most of us believe we live, and the actual countries where we’re born and eat breakfast and file taxes and die. The U.K. is unique among modern states in that we not only buy our own hype, we also sell it overseas at a markup. “Britain always felt like the land where all the stories came from,” an American writer friend told me when I asked why she so often sets her novels in Britain. Over and over, writers and readers of every background — but particularly Americans — tell me that the U.K. has a unique hold on their imaginations.

Every nation-state is ninety percent fictional; there’s always a gap between the imaginary countries united by cultural coherence and collective destinies where most of us believe we live, and the actual countries where we’re born and eat breakfast and file taxes and die.

That hold is highly profitable. Britain was kept out of recession last year by one industry: entertainment. Over the past four years, the motion picture, television, and music industries have grown by almost 50 percent — the service sector, only by 6.  So many shows are currently filmed in England that productions struggle to book studio space, and even the new soundstages announced by London Mayor Sadiq Khan in 2018 will be hard-pressed to keep up with demand. As historian Dan Snow pointed out, “[O]ur future prosperity is dependent on turning ourselves into a giant theme park of Queens, detectives, spies, castles, and young wizards.”

There is hope: the statues are coming down all over Britain, starting in Bristol on June 7, 2020. Black Lives Matter protesters pulled down a monument to slave trader Edward Colston, who is remembered for how he lavished his wealth on the port city and not for the murder of 19,000 men, women and children during the Middle Passage. Colston’s statue was thrown into Bristol Harbor, where it remains. In Oxford, students demanded the removal of monuments to Cecil Rhodes, the business magnate and “architect of apartheid” who stole vast tracts of Africa driven by his conviction in the supremacy of Anglo-Saxons. In Parliament Square, fences have been erected to protect Winston Churchill himself, the colonial administrator and war leader whose devoted acolytes include both Boris Johnson and Donald Trump. Young Britons are  demanding a reckoning with a history of colonial conquest, slave-trading, industrial savagery, and utter refusal to examine its own legacy.

Meanwhile, the economic disaster of a no-deal Brexit is still looming and Britain has the highest COVID-19 death toll in Europe, putting further pressure on an already-struggling National Health Service. Under Boris Johnson’s catastrophic leadership, or lack thereof, there are no signs of changing tactics on either. Fantasy Britain is having a boomtime. Real Britain is in deep, deep trouble.

* * *

I was homesick. That’s my excuse. I had been in Los Angeles for six months, writing for TV shows set in England. I woke up every day 5,000 miles from home, in a city of sweltering tarmac and traffic jams and palm trees, to try and explain how British people speak and think. I fell asleep every night to the radio from home, listening to the logic of xenophobia capture the political mainstream as my country circled the drain. I watched my British friends who are Black or brown or who were born overseas trying to stay brave and hopeful as racism became more and more normalized. I was homesick, and people do silly things when they’re homesick.

So yes, I went to see the Downton Abbey movie.

Specifically, I went to the Downton Abbey Experience, a special screening where you could spend a few hours in a mocked-up Edwardian drawing room, nibbling on tiny food and pretending to be posh. I was expecting it to be rubbish, forgetting that this was Los Angeles, where talented actors and set dressers can be had on every street corner. I couldn’t help but be a bit charmed by the commitment: the food was terrible, but two of the waiters had concocted an elaborate professional-rivalry backstory, and the accent-work was almost flawless. It really did feel as if you’d stepped, if not into Downton itself, then certainly onto the show’s set. And I finally understood. The way Americans feel about this is the way I feel about Star Trek and schlocky space opera. This is their escape from reality. This is their fandom. Not just Downton Abbey — “Britain.”

I do try to resist the temptation to make fun of other people who take uncomplicated joy in their thing. The British do this a lot, and it’s one of the least edifying parts of the national character. Fandom is fine. Escapism is allowed. No semi-sensitive soul can be expected to live in the real world at all times. But watching the whitewashed, revisionist history of your own country adopted as someone else’s fantasy of choice is actively uncomfortable. It’s like sitting by while a decrepit relative gibbers some antediluvian nonsense about the good old days and watching in horror as everyone applauds and says how charming.

I decided not to be charmed and sulked on an ornamental sofa, angrily eating a chocolate bonbon and resenting everyone else for having fun. This was where I met the only other British person in the room, a nice lady from Buckinghamshire in a fancy dress. What did my new friend think of the event?  “I don’t like to complain,” she said, “but I’m sitting here in a ballgown eating bloody bread and jam. Honestly, it’s not worth the money.”

Which was the second-most-British thing anyone said all evening. The most British thing of all had been uttered half an hour earlier, by me, when it dawned on my friend and me that we really should have worn costumes. “It’ll be alright,” I said, “I’ll just take my accent up a bit posher and everyone will be pleased to see us.” Living in a place where all you have to do is say something in your normal accent to be told you’re clever and wonderful is all very well, until you start believing it. This is as true in politics as anywhere else: just showing up and being relentlessly British at people does not constitute sociopolitical strategy. It doesn’t even constitute a personality. I know that there are a lot of British expats who will be cross with me for giving the game away, and chaps, I really am so terribly, terribly sorry. But you and I both know that someday we’ll have to go home, and people won’t automatically be pleased to see us just because we said some words.

This is as true in politics as anywhere else: just showing up and being relentlessly British at people does not constitute sociopolitical strategy.

I write for TV shows set in Britain, or a fantasy version of it, and American Anglophilia is endlessly fascinating to me, as it is to most British expats. It comes in a few different flavourways (ed.: Normally we’d edit this to the u-less American spelling, but in this particular case it seemed appropriate to let it go). There’s the saccharine faux-nostalgia of Downton fans, the ones who love The Crown and afternoon tea and the actual monarchy. They tend to be more socially conservative, more likely to vaporize into angry drifts of snowflakery at the mere suggestion that there might have been brown people in the trenches of the First World War. But there is also a rich seam of Anglophilia among people who are generally suspicious of nationalism, and television is to blame for most of it. The idea of Britain that many Americans grew up with was Monty Python, Doctor Who, and Blackadder; today it’s Downton, Sherlock, Good Omens, and The Great British Worried-People-Making-Cakes-in-a-Tent Show. And of course, Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones, which technically take place in Middle-earth and Westeros but, in practice, are set in the version of medieval Britain where all epic fantasy tends to settle — in days of olde when knights were bold and brown people didn’t get speaking roles but dragons were fine.

(No British expat can honestly criticize a franchise like Downton for taking advantage of the North American fascination with Englishness, not unless we can say we’ve never taken advantage of it ourselves. Occasionally we catch one another at it, and it’s deeply embarrassing. Not long ago, waiting for coffee in the morning, I listened aghast as an extremely pretty American lady with her arm around an averagely-attractive Englishman explained that their dog was called something not unlike Sir Humphrey Woofington-Growler. “Because he’s British — my boyfriend, I mean.” Said British boyfriend’s eyes were pinned on the middle distance in the full excruciating knowledge that if he’d given a dog a name like that at home, he’d have got a smack, which would have upset the dog.)

Lavish Britscapist vehicles like Downton Abbey, The Crown, and Belgravia are more popular with Americans than they are at home. Trudging through Finsbury Park in London on a cold morning last Christmas, a poster advertising The Crown had been gleefully tagged “royalist propaganda” by some local hero with a spray can. My American friends were confused when I explained this to them. “Don’t you like your royal family?” They asked. No, I explained. We like Hamilton. The stories we export lay bare the failing heart of Britain’s sense of itself in the world — the assumption that all we have to do, individually or collectively, is show up with a charming accent and say something quaint and doors will open for us, as will wallets, legs, and negotiations for favorable trade deals.

This is a scam that works really well right up until it doesn’t.

* * *

It was irritatingly difficult to remain uncharmed by the Downton Abbey movie. I found myself unable to work up a sweat over whether there would be enough lawn chairs for the royal parade, but I rather enjoyed the bit where the Downton house staff, snubbed by the royal servants, decided to respond with kidnapping, poisoning, and fraud. There was also a snide rivalry between butlers, a countess with a secret love child, a disputed inheritance, an attempted royal assassination, a perilous tryst between closeted valets, a princess in an unhappy marriage, and Maggie Smith. It was disgustingly pleasant right up until its shameless closing sequence, where fussy butler Mr. Carson and his sensible housekeeper wife had a conversation about whether the Abbey would last into the next century. Yes, said Mr. Carson, sending us off into the night with the promise that “a hundred years from now, Downton will still be standing.”

And there it is. It’s not a good or noble or even an original lie, but it’s at least told with flair. As the British Empire went ungently into its good night offscreen last century, many great English houses were repurposed, sold, or demolished in part so that families did not have to pay inheritance tax on the properties. Highclere Castle — the estate where Downton Abbey was filmed — is an exception and remains under the stewardship of  the Earls of Carnavron, who live on the estate. They can afford to do this because a lucrative show about a lost and largely fictional age of aristocratic gentility happened to be filmed on the grounds. Let me repeat that: the only way the actual Downton Abbey can continue to exist is by renting itself out as a setting for fantasies of a softer world. Which is, in microcosm, the current excuse for a government’s entire plan for a post-Brexit economy. With nowhere left to colonize, we gleefully strip our own history for the shiniest trinkets to sell. The past is a different country, so we’re allowed to invade it, take its stuff and lie relentlessly about the people who actually live there.

It’s not a good or noble or even an original lie, but it’s at least told with flair.

The uncomfortable truth is that America doesn’t love Britain the way we want to be loved. That white-innocence fantasy of rolling lawns and ripped bodices is only palatable (and profitable) because Britain doesn’t have much actual power anymore. Our eccentricities would be far less adorable if we still owned you. If we were still a military-industrial juggernaut on the scale of Russia or China, if we were still really an imperial power rather than just cosplaying as one for cash, would the rest of the world be importing our high-fructose cultural capital in such sugary sackloads?

I don’t think so — and nor does Britain’s current government, the most nationalist and least patriotic in living memory, which has no compunction about turning the country into a laundry for international capital and flogging our major assets to foreign powers. American businesses already have their eyes on the National Health Service, which will inevitably be on the table in those trade deals a post-Brexit British economy desperately needs. In one of its first acts in power, the Johnson administration shoved through a controversial arms deal selling a major defense company to a private American firm, which is somehow not seen as unpatriotic.

This summer, Black Lives Matter protests are boiling around a nation that has never reexamined its imperial legacy because it is convinced it is the protagonist of world history. Conversation around what “British” means remains vaguely distasteful. “Culturally our stories are of plucky underdogs,” historian Snow told me. “But actually our national story was of massive expenditure on the world’s most complex weapon systems and smashing the shit out of less fiscally and technological societies.”

“Nations themselves are narrations,” wrote Edward Said, pioneer of postcolonial studies. Britain’s literary self-mythologizing spans several centuries. During the Raj, teaching English literature to the Indian middle and ruling classes was central to the strategy for enforcing the idea of Britain as morally superior. The image of Britain that persists in the collective global unconsciousness was founded deliberately to make sense of the empire and romanticize it for ordinary British citizens, most of whom had neither a complete understanding of the atrocities nor the voting rights that would make their opinion relevant. Britain wrote and rewrote itself as the protagonist of its own legends, making its barbarism bearable and its cultural dominance natural.

Bad things happen to people who have never heard a story they weren’t the hero of. I try not to be the sort of person who flashes the word “hegemony” around too much, but that’s what this is and always has been: a way of imposing cultural norms long after we, as my history books delicately put it, “lost” the British Empire. The stories are all we have left to make us feel important.

The plain truth is that Britain had, until quite recently, the largest and most powerful empire the world had ever known. We don’t have it anymore, and we miss it. Of course we miss it. It made us rich, it made us important, and all the ugly violent parts happened terribly far away and could be ignored with a little rewriting of our history. It continues to this day with tactful omissions from the school syllabus — in 2010, Education Secretary Michael Gove, later one of the chief architects of Brexit, pushed to teach British children a version of the “exciting and appealing” Imperial history that cast their country as heroic. According to one 2016 study, 43 percent of the British public think the Empire “was a good thing.” For most British people, the Empire came to us in pieces, in jingoistic legends and boys’ adventure stories with as many exclamation points as could be crammed on one book cover. The impression I was given as a schoolgirl was that we were jolly decent to let the Empire go, and that we did so because it was all of a sudden pointed out that owning other countries wholesale was a beastly thing to do — of course old boy, you must have your human rights! Really, we were only holding on to them for you.

The last time Britain truly got to think of itself as heroic on the world stage was during the Second World War. The narrative with the most tenacity is the “Blitz Spirit” — of a plucky little island standing firm against impossible odds, pulling together while hell rained down from above, growing victory gardens and sheltering in the stations of the London Underground. Those black-and-white photographs of brave-faced families wrapped in blankets on the train platforms are instantly recognizable: this is who we are as a country. Most Britons don’t know that soldiers from the colonies fought and died on the frontlines in France. Even fewer are aware of the famine that struck India at around the same time, leaving a million dead, or of Britain’s refusal to offer aid, continuing instead to divert supplies to feed the British army as the people of India starved.

What all of this is about, ultimately, is white innocence. That’s the grand narrative that so many of our greatest writers were recruited to burnish, willingly or not. White innocence makes a delicious story, and none of its beneficiaries wants to hear about how that particular sausage gets made.

* * *

Many of the biggest narrative brands of Britain’s fretful post-colonial age are stories of a nation coming to terms with the new and eroding nature of its own power, from James Bond (a story about a slick misogynist hired by the state to kill people) to Doctor Who (which I will defend to the death, but which is very much about the intergalactic importance of cultural capital). We are a nation in decline on the international stage; that’s what happens when a small island ceases to own a third of the earth. Rather than accepting this with any semblance of grace, we have thrown a tantrum that has made us the laughing stock of world politics, the sort of tantrum that only spoiled children and ham-faced, election-stealing oligarchs are allowed to get away with.

In this climate, the more pragmatic among us are seeing that what we actually have to offer the rest of the world boils down to escapism. Fantasy Britain offers an escape for everyone after a hard day under the wheel of late-stage capitalism.

There’s no actual escape, of course. Good luck if you’re a refugee. Since 2012, the conservative government has actively cultivated a  “hostile environment” scheme to make life as difficult as possible for immigrants, highlights of which include fast-tracking deportations and vans driving a massive billboard reading “GO HOME OR FACE ARREST” around the most diverse boroughs in London. Seriously. If you want to escape to actual Britain you need at least two million pounds, which is how much it costs for an Investor Visa. Non-millionaires with the wrong documents can and will be put on a plane in handcuffs, even if they’ve lived and worked in Britain for 50 years — like the senior citizens of the Windrush generation who came to Britain from the West Indies as children with their families to help rebuild the nation after the Second World War. In the past five years, hundreds of elderly men and women, many of them unaware they were not legal citizens, have been forcibly deported from Britain to the Caribbean. The subsequent public outcry did almost zero damage to the government’s brand. In 2019, Johnson’s Conservatives won a landslide victory.

“Take your country back.” That was the slogan that Brexit campaigners chose in 2016. Take it back from whom? To where? It was clear that the fictional past that many Brexit nostalgists wanted to reclaim was something not unlike the syrupy storylines of Downton Abbey — quiet, orderly, and mostly white. But to make that story work, British conservatives needed to cast themselves as the plucky underdogs, which is how you get a Brexit Party representative to the European Parliament comparing Brexit to the resistance of “slaves against their owners” and “colonies … against their empires,” or Boris Johnson bloviating in 2018 about Britain’s “colony status” in the EU (although he also believes that it would be good if Britain was still “in charge” of Africa). 

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What really won the day, though, was the lie that leaving the EU would leave us with 350 million pounds per week “to spend on the NHS.” Boris Johnson rode up and down the nation on a big red bus emblazoned with that empty promise. The British people may not trust our politicians, but we trust our National Health Service — almost all of us, from across the sociopolitical spectrum, apart from some fringe internet libertarians and diehard neoliberal wingnuts, most of whom, unfortunately, are in power (though they couldn’t get there without promising to protect the NHS).

After the COVID-19 lockdowns end, Brexit is still happening. The actual changes don’t come into effect until 2021, and Boris Johnson, whose empty personal brand is forever yoked to this epic national self-harm project, is clearly hoping to sneak in a bad Brexit deal while the country is still reeling from a global pandemic. Leaving the EU will not make Britain rich again. It will not make us an imperial power again. In fact, the other nations of Europe are now taking the opportunity to reclaim some of the things we borrowed along the way. Greece wants the Parthenon Marbles back, more than two centuries after a British tourist visited Athens and liked them so much he decided to pry them off and ship them home. Spain has made noise that it wants Gibraltar back, and we’ll probably have to give it to them. So far, the only way in which Britain is returning to its days of High Victorian glory is in the sudden re-emergence, in communities ravaged by austerity, of 19th-century diseases of poverty, and now of the highest rates of COVID-19 infection in Europe, after Johnson’s government pursued a disastrous “herd immunity” strategy that transparently invited the elderly and infirm to sacrifice themselves for the stock market. British kids are not growing up with a sense of national heroism; they are growing up with rickets and scurvy. As a great poet from the colonies once wrote, it’s like 10,000 spoons when all you need is for the sneering Eton thugs you inexplicably elected to stop stabbing you in the back.

As it happens, I want my country back, too. I have spent enough time baking under the pitiless California sunshine. I have been to Hot Topic. I’m stuck in the States until the lockdowns end, but want to go back to the soggy, self-deprecating country I grew up in, the country of tolerance and diversity and kind people quietly getting on with things, the land of radio sketch comedy, jacket potatoes, decent bands, and basic decency.

I know that that country, too, is imaginary; just as imaginary as any of the “Rule Britannia” flag-waggery. I don’t believe that Britain is Great in anything but name, but I do believe it can be better. I do not care to be told that I am any less of a patriot because I choose to know my country, or because I can imagine a future where we do more than freeze in the haunted house of our past glories, stuffed with stolen treasures and trapdoors we never open. It’s where I’m from, where my family and friends live, and where I hope to grow old and die. It worries me that we have not even begun to develop the tools to cope with our material reality, one in which we are a rather small rainy island half of whose population currently hates the other.

* * *

Since we’re all talking about myths and revisionist history and the Blitz Spirit, here’s something else that never makes it into the official story.

Those working-class Londoners sheltering in tube stations during World War II? They weren’t supposed to be there. In fact, the British government of the late 1930s built far too few municipal shelters, preferring to leave that to private companies, local government councils, and individuals and when the first bombs first fell, the hardest hit areas were poor, immigrant, and working-class communities in the East End with nowhere to go. Elite clubs and hotels dug out their own bomb shelters, but the London Underground was barricaded. On the second night of the Blitz, with the flimsy, unhygienic East End shelters overflowing, hundreds of people entered the Liverpool Street Station and refused to leave. By the time the government officially changed its position and “allowed” working-class Londoners to take shelter down among the trains, thousands were already doing so — 177,000 people at its most packed.

Eventually it was adopted into the propaganda effort and became part of the official mythos of the Blitz, but the official story leaves out the struggle. It leaves out the part about desperate people, abandoned by their government, in fear of their lives, doing what they had to — and what should have been done from the start — to take care of each other.

This failure is the closest thing to the staggering lack of leadership that Britain, like America, has displayed during the weeks and months of the coronavirus crisis. As I write, more than 42,000 British citizens have died, many in our struggling NHS hospitals and countless more in care homes. On the same January day that the Brexit treaty was signed, Boris Johnson missed the first emergency meeting of COBRA, the government’s effort to determine a response to rumors of a new and horrifying pandemic. Johnson went on to miss four subsequent meetings, choosing instead to go on holiday with his fiancée to celebrate Brexit as a personal win. As vital weeks were squandered and the infection reached British shores, it emerged that the country was singularly underprepared. Stocks of protective equipment had been massively depleted because, with everyone’s attention on Brexit, nobody had bothered to consider that we might have to deal with a crisis not of our own making. Worse still, the National Health Service was chronically underfunded and hemorrhaging staff, as migrant doctors, nurses, and medical professionals from EU countries fled a failing institution in a hostile culture. In the years following the Brexit referendum, over 10,000 European medical staff have reportedly left the NHS.

Over 10 years of wildly unnecessary cuts to public services, successive Tory governments deliberately invoked the Blitz Spirit, promoting their economic reforms with the unfortunate slogan “we’re all in this together” — as if austerity were an external enemy rather than a deliberate and disastrous choice imposed on the working poor by politicians who have never known the price of a pint of milk or the value of public education. Today, it is perhaps a signal of the intellectual drought in British politics that the slogan “We’re all in this together” has been recycled to flog the COVID-19 lockdowns.

Their other slogan — plastered resentfully on podiums after a decade of decimating the health service — is “Protect the NHS.” The National Health Service is perhaps the last thing that truly unites every fractured shard of the British political psyche, and the Tories hate that, but 10 years of gutting hospitals, scrapping social care schemes, and blaming it all on the very immigrants who come from overseas to care for us when we are sick has not made the British love socialized medicine any less. Every Thursday night across Britain, since the lockdowns began, the whole country comes out to applaud the healthcare workers who are risking their lives every day to fight on the front lines of the pandemic. The mumbling rent-a-toffs the Tories shove up on stage to explain the latest hopelessly ineffectual lockdown strategy have no choice but to clap along. Because, as the murals mushrooming up around the country attest, the best stories Britain tells about itself have never been about Queen and Country and Glory — they’ve always been the ones where the broke, brave, messed-up millions of ordinary people who live here pull together, help each other, and behave with basic human decency.

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I’m not arguing for us all to stop telling stories about Britain. For one thing, people aren’t going to stop, and for another, stories by and about British people are currently keeping my friends employed, my rent paid, and my home country from sliding into recession. And there are plenty that are still worth telling: if you want to shove your nose against the shop window of everything actually good about British culture, watch The Great British Bake-off. If you like your escapism with a slice of sex and cursing and corsets, and why wouldn’t you, curl up with the criminally underrated Harlots, which does an excellent job of portraying an actually diverse London and also has Liv Tyler as a trembly lesbian heiress in a silly wig. And if you want to watch a twee, transporting period drama with decent politics, I cannot more heartily recommend Call the Midwife, which also features biscuit-eating nuns and an appropriate amount of propaganda about how the National Health Service is the best thing about Britain.

I was supposed to be home by now. Instead, I’m in quarantine in California, watching my home country implode into proto-oligarchic incoherence in the middle of a global pandemic and worrying about my friends and loved ones in London. Meanwhile, my American friends are detoxing from the rolling panic-attack of the news by rewatching Downton Abbey, The Crown, and Belgravia. The British film industry is already gearing up to reopen, and the country will need to lean on its cultural capital more than ever.

But there is a narrative chasm between the twee and borderless dreamscape of fantasy Britain and actual, material Britain, where rents are rising and racists are running brave. The chasm is wide, and a lot of people are falling into it. The omnishambles of British politics is what happens when you get scared and mean and retreat into the fairytales you tell about yourself. When you can no longer live within your own contradictions. When you want to hold on to the belief that Britain is the land of Jane Austen and John Lennon and Sir Winston Churchill, the war hero who has been repeatedly voted the greatest Englishman of all time. When you want to forget that Britain is also the land of Cecil Rhodes and Oswald Moseley and Sir Winston Churchill, the brutal colonial administrator who sanctioned the building of the first concentration camps and condemned millions of Indians to death by starvation. These are not contradictions, even though the drive to separate them is cracking the country apart. If you love your country and don’t own its difficulties and its violence, you don’t actually love your country. You’re just catcalling it as it goes by.

There is a country of the imagination called Britain where there will never be borders, where down the dark lane, behind a door in the wall, David Bowie drinks gin with Elizabeth Tudor and Doctor Who trades quips with Oscar Wilde and there are always hot crumpets for tea. This idea of Englishness is lovely, and soothing, and it makes sense, and we have to be done with it now.  If Britain is going to remain the world’s collective imaginative sandbox, we can do better than this calcified refusal to cope with the contradictions of the past. We can liberate the territory of the imagination. We can remember what is actually good about Britain  — which has always been different from what was “great.”

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Laurie Penny is an award-winning journalist, essayist, public speaker, writer, activist, internet nanocelebrity and author of six books. Her most recent book, Bitch Doctrine, was published by Bloomsbury in 2017. 

Editor: Michelle Weber Fact checker: Matt Giles Copyeditor: Ben Huberman

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