#The Wealthy Barber Returns

[pansexualkiba]

so here's the scenario:

Izuku Midoriya, a young lad whose father passed at sea, is the apprentice to a local mapmaker. One day, while the master's away, a man who seems to tower over any other, haggard and booming, crashes in through the door, demanding a map.

When he sees that Izuku's the only one in the entire business, quite a lot of bravado leaves him, and he deflates into this raggedy older man. He explains that he wishes to leave in three days time to the Southern Seas, and he would also like to hire Izuku as his navigator.

Izuku, feeling a spark of adventure, decides to accept, completely forgetting to mention he isn't actually a mapmaker yet. However, he IS very good at reading and interpreting maps, and that's half the job right there.

Izuku is then tasked to take care of a few essential roles on the voyage: food, entertainment, and, most importantly, money. The mysterious man shall take care of the rest. So, as Izuku wanders through the marketplace wondering where he could possibly find a financier, in walks Shouto Todoroki, the youngest son of a very wealthy nobleman and the current heir after a series of various incidents.

Shouto Todoroki, for quite some time now, has been crushing on the mapmaker's apprentice, you see, and upon hearing that he needs a large sum of money, he immediately offers to find staff positions for Izuku's voyage himself, and he shall personally come to oversee the voyage he's investing in. In this way, he hires Katsuki Bakugou the cook, Eijirou Kirishima the butcher, Hanta Sero the carpenter, Mina Ashido the barber-surgeon, and two tavern musicians by the names of Denki Kaminari and Kyouka Jirou. The rest of the staff is hired by the mysterious man, who assumes the role of captain.

The deadline does approach, and the ship has a crew of at least twenty strong, but by the orders of Enji Todoroki, Shouto's father, Shouto's betrothed, Momo Yaoyorozu, is to join the voyage, as a reminder to Shouto that he must return and not "run off to sea and a life of debauchery" as his eldest brother certainly had done before perishing. Still, the ship departs for the south.

Naturally, there is some bonding between Izuku and the older man. It's quite a long time, traveling the ocean by ship, and Izuku comes to see him as a father figure - his real father, Hisashi Midoriya, had been murdered by pirates at sea, and Izuku's hated pirates ever since.

However, soon, Izuku's crew is beset by two separate rival pirate factions - one helmed by Tomura Shigaraki, who aims to become the next Dread Pirate of the Southern Seas; the other helmed by Neito Monoma's crew, who mutinied against their old captain a year back and have become a sort of Robin Hood-type crew. After the second one, the captain comes clean to Izuku: he is actually the Great Pirate All Might, Scourge of the Northern Seas, who lost his entire crew following the long and bitter fight with the Dread Pirate All for One, of the Southern Seas.

Naturally, Izuku sort of blows up, and declares that this must be a betrayal - he had thought of All Might as a sort of replacement father, and his own blood father had CERTAINLY been a good man. Then comes the reveal that All Might's old captain, before he had become the Great Pirate All Might, had been none other than Dread Pirate "Fire-Breathing" Hisashi Midoriya, Terror of the Northern Seas. In fact, they're on a treasure hunt right now for Hisashi Midoriya's last greatest treasure, thought to have been lost in the territory war with All for One.

Will Izuku come around to the pirate lifestyle, especially when a grand majority of the crew are pirates themselves? Will Shouto gain the courage to call off his arranged marriage (certainly with no love lost) and pursue his romance on the high seas? Will All Might get the Lost Treasure of "Fire-Breathing" Hisashi? And what of the rival crews - and the naval vessel commanded by the mysterious Lieutenant Aizawa?

[opera-ghosts]

From The New York Times; Dec. 30, 1920

SELMA KURZ HERE FOR AMERICAN TOUR; Famous Polish Prima Donna Has Mastered Her Fear of an Atlantic Crossing. NOTABLE CAREER ABROAD Long Favorite of the Vienna Opera Going Public, She Owes Her Success to a Chance Discovery of Her Voice.

Selma Kurz; known throughout Europe ‘as a leading coloratura soprano and famous particularly for her echievements at the Vienna Opera House, of. which she has been the pride for many years, has arrived in this city, almost unannounced, to make a tour of the United States.’ Her first appearance will be on Sunday, Jan. 9, at the Hippodrome with the National Symphony Orchestra, of which Artur Bodansky is conductor. In an interview with a Times reporter in her suite at the St.Regia; Mme.Kurz yesterday expressed keen delight over her forthcoming opportunity to sing before the American public, which she has been informed is most cordial. She is under the management of Otokar Bartik. Mme. Kyrz’s rise in the operatic.world is the.story of a girl in: humble surroundings, whose gift of song, discovered. by accident, was. developed by wealthy benefactors, who had the satisfaction in return of seeing their protége sought by the leading operatic managers of Europe. At Covent Garden, London, she won the admiration of British audiences and her success was no less when she sang in Paris. In thé days of the Czar she was literally showered with gold’ and gems when she sang .in Moscow and Petrograd.

Yet Mme.. Kurz somewhat wistfully admitted yesterday, as she reclined on a couch recuperating from her voyage and from her first strenuous. sight-seeingi n New-York, that hey destiny in her A hood days seemed” to lead to no more hopeful. than the life of a seamstress. , ‘““My parents were poor,”’ said Mme. Kurz, “‘and my needlework was necessary to help keep our family of eleven children together. My father was an umbrella mender in the little town of Bieliza, Poland. As I was skillful with the needle, I devoted most of my time to needlework, Perhaps it was that which made me want to sing to break the tedium of the work. ‘‘‘‘ In the factory where I used to work t| 1: often burst into song almost unconsciously. Sometimes I did not realize what was doing until the forewoman would touch me on the shoulder and give me this gentle reprimand: * You. should not sing so tempo—so slowly—because the other girls are. listening,- and it makes them work slowly, too. You should sing a lively melody, stitch . they will stitch with more spee While singing ‘as shé went about hérduties at home one day the giris voice attracted the attention of two boy playmates of her brother Mano, now a resident of San Francisco. They told the cantor of the synagogue in Bieliza about the wonderful voice they had heard, and on seeking. her out and hearing her sing he wee equally impréssed. He . inte ed in her behalf with -a wealthy Polish family, who agreed to provide for her musical education, When she appeared in. Vienna in the ttile réle of Thomas's "Mignon ’’ her success was immediate.

Mme. Kurz has a voice of great compass, her range being from low. A. to High F. Tp. describing it. Mr. Bartik a that Kienzl, composer of the ras ‘ The Evangelist ’ and “ Ran des Vaohes,' has. confirmed several times, with the watch in hand, that her trill has lasted forty seconds.’’ — her principarts are Gilda, Rigoletto; Luela the Queen, in — Meyerbeer's “ Huguenots * ; the title réles. in ‘‘ Traviata,”’ Lakmé,’’ and ‘ Dinorah ’’; Rosina, in ‘ The Barber of Seville ’’; Adina, in “ Elisir ’' Amina in La sonnambula; Norina, Don Pasquale ”’ Marie, in “La Fille du régiment‘; Queen of the Night, in Mozart's and Martha’; Elvira, in “‘ Ernani,”’ Other than coloratura parts include Madame Butterfly.”Mignon'', Eva in Meistersinger,’’ and Marguerite, in ‘' Faust. In deference to the American public a number of selections in English during her present tour. Among. these are ‘Il Penseroso,’’ by Handel, to Milton’s ‘words, and a number of familiar lyrics. She sings in French, Italian and Polish. In addition and: Polish, in addition English Mme. has been occasioned largely by the attractive compensation given ‘to prominent artists'here. It is necessary for her: to reco re her finances because, as she explain ever since the beginning of the war she has devoted her services to. the Vienna Opera’ House without charge, as did moſt of the other stars, who Were willing ~ ——— financial remuneration rather than see opera come to a standstill She planned to come to America ‘when Heinrich: Conried was head of the Metropolitan Opera company. She then contracted ninety performances, tly the agreement was not eesh ould "te said . that “her trip” to s time was marked by. no tuntoward — although she admitted that she was quite seasick the first day.

[pluralsword]

A Contrast of Prowls

The nice thing about writing Prowl (we do have more plans for her) in our orig cont Autosignet Cycle stuff is that we get to reclaim and enjoy the Prowl/Arcee dynamic as a t4t aesthetic crush thing in Honey I'm Cheering for You But No (might do more with that and have at least Aileron involved) with prowl being a sweetspark (who went from librarian to shipping logistics specialist and the last we saw of her she was unemployed trying to figure out her life and aesthetics with the help of Arcee, Aileron, Greenlight, Wheeljack, and Jazz) rather than a cop. Cops aren't really a thing that prewar Cybertron and the Autobots have in our orig cont stuff, instead they have collectivist public/community services and goods (and thus no poverty or ultra wealthy), deescalation and mental health specialists (helping with the mental health component), and at most bodyguards, intelligence analysts, and as a last resort the armed pacifist military (who really only get involved with fighting hegemonic militia/military threats). Seeing more gal Prowl content has led us to wanting to give her a bigger role later in the Autosignet Cycle during the Great War, specifically as a commando/espionage agent, who of course by this point is dating Jazz. :3

We say all this because after reading EXRID, Prowl comes off as having been absolutely awful to Arcee and we just can't enjoy the ship people have of the two because of the way they trust/don't trust each other and the tension there. Not saying people can't ship them ofc but it just really feels like a situation where Arcee had to find her way out of a toxic situation while rebuilding and redefining herself. Whereas Prowl only cared about her to the extent that she was able to perform a use to his dirty work and idea of what the Autobots should be, and did not want her breaking away from that, which she of course did. It just... reminds us of how trans women get tokenized by a violent hierarchic society that doesn't actually care about us when we're seen as useful to the military industrial complex, while still actively hurting us. We think that read is very much intentional by Barber even if he wasn't familiar with the history, he meant it for Arcee's story (see: OP #21 where Victorion astutely observes that Arcee wants to stop being a warrior, and Arcee says earlier during the Titans Return one-shot to Prowl that she doesn't really feel as into fighting to kill/battle as she used to be, while the OP series shows she still clearly enjoys sparring since she does that to honor Sideswipe's life and death) because of how opposed to her Cybertronian societal structures were. Spoilers but we're actually going to write Prowl as a bit of an antagonist at the end of Addendum because of all this and other things and will have a later Addendum Nexuses story that involves Arcee and her loved ones and friends taking down what's left of the New Institute in the Autobot fold under Prowl's command (still figuring out how that would look after the end of IDW1).

(As an aside, separate from this a dear trans gal friend of ours exposed us to a read of IDW1 Prowl and Tarantulas as trans gals who are deeply buried in the androcentrism they grew up with to the point of not really having words for their trans contexts during the canon run of the story. We might have that be something that is navigated later at least regarding Prowl, who btw is kinda remorseful about how she treated Arcee by the time we reach the not yet released end of Addendum, but she hasn't figured out fully how to treat her better.)

So yeah, stay tuned for that. :3 Actually have spoons to work more on Rekindling Flight because of this. BTW for those who don't know Prowl in our orig cont is primarily green and is chubby.

[silvestromedia]

SAINTS NOVEMBER 03 "There is only one tragedy in this life, not to have been a saint."- Leon Bloy

St. Peter Francis Neron, Roman Catholic Priest and Vietnamese Martyr. He served as the director of the main seminary until he was arrested and beheaded by authorities.

St. Winifred. According to legend, she was the daughter of a wealthy resident of Tegeingl, Flintshire, Wales, and the sister of St. Beuno. She was most impressed by Beuno, was supposedly beheaded on June 22 by one Caradog when she refused to submit to him, had her head restored by Beuno, and sometime later, became a nun of the convent of a double monastery at Gwytherin in Denbigshire. She succeeded an Abbess Tenoy, as Abbess and died there fifteen years after her miraculous restoration to life. A spring supposedly springing up where Winifred's head fell is called Holy Well or St. Winifred's Well and became a great pilgrimage center where many cures have been reported over the centuries. She is also known as Gwenfrewi.

St. Vulganius, 704 A.D. Irish or Welsh missionary and hermit. After working to evangelize the tribes of the Atrebati in France, he became a hermit at Arras.

St. Cristiolus, 7th century. Welsh confessor, the brother of St. Sulian. Cristiolus founded Christian churches, including the parish in Anglesey.

St. Elerius, 6th century. Welsh saint who was a companion of St. Winefred. He was an abbot in a monastery in the north of Wales.

St. Englatius, 966 A.D. A Scottish bishop also called Englat and Tanglen. He lived at Tarves, in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

St. Malachy O' More, Bishop famous for writing prophecies of the popes. Also listed as Mael Maedoc ua Morgair or Maolrnhaodhog ua Morgair, Malachy was born in Armagh, Ireland, in 1095. He was ordained by St. Cellach or Celsus of Armagh in 1132 and studied under Bishop St. Maichius of Lismore. Malachy reformed ecclesiastical discipline and replaced the Celtic liturgy with the Roman when he served as abbot of Bangor. In 1125 he was made bishop of Connor, using Bangor as his seat. He also established a monastery at Iveragh, Kerry. He was named archbishop of Armagh in 1129. In 1138, he resigned and made a pilgrimage to Rome. He visited St. Bernard at Clairvaux, France, wanting to be a monk there, but returned to Ireland to found Mellifont Abbey, also serving as papal legate to Ireland. He returned to Clairvaux and died on November 2 in St. Bernard’s arms. St. Bernard declared him a saint, an action confirmed in 1190 by Pope Clement III. Malachy is known for many miracles, including healing the son of King David I of Scotland. Malachy’s prophecies did not appear until 1597. Tradition states that Malachy wrote them while in Rome and that they were buried in papal archives until 1597, when Dom Arnold de Wyon discovered them. Serious doubts remain as to the true authorship of the prophecies.

ST. SYLVIA, MOTHER OF ST. GREGORY THE GREAT

St. Martin de Porres, Dominican lay brother at the Dominican Friary at Lima and spent his whole life there-as a barber, farm laborer, almoner, and infirmarian among other things. https://www.vaticannews.va/en/saints/11/03/st--martin-de-porres--dominican.html

[lboogie1906]

Lucy Stanton Day Sessions (October 16, 1831 - February 18, 1910) an Educator and Abolitionist is believed to be the first African American woman to graduate from college, completing a Ladies Literary Course from Oberlin College in 1850.

She was born as a freed inhabitant of Cleveland. Her father, Samuel, was a free-born African American barber who died before she was two years old. Her mother, Margaret, remarried John Brown, a wealthy African American businessman and abolitionist who was active in the Underground Railroad. The family often harbored enslaved runaways in their home. African Americans were not allowed to attend public schools in Cleveland, so he organized the city’s first school for African Americans.

In 1846, she enrolled in the Oberlin Collegiate Institute. In 1849 she was elected president of the school’s Ladies Literary Society, and her commencement speech was a moving appeal for antislavery.

She moved to Columbus, Ohio to become principal of a school but returned to Cleveland when she married Oberlin classmate William Howard Day, a librarian who edited an abolitionist newspaper, the Alienated American. In 1854, she became the first African American to have a fictional story published when she wrote a short story on slavery for her husband’s newspaper.

The couple moved to Buxton, Canada to teach fugitive enslaved and in 1858 had a daughter. William Day left on business for England, abandoning his family and requesting a divorce. She returned to Cleveland, finding work as a seamstress to support her daughter but remained active as an abolitionist. In 1866 she was sponsored by the Cleveland Freedman’s Association to teach in Georgia and Mississippi, where she met and married her second husband, Levi Sessions, in 1878.

The couple moved to Tennessee where she continued her philanthropic work, including serving as president of the local Women’s Christian Temperance Union. She and her husband moved to Los Angeles. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[boxofbonesfic]

hi! can we get an unwrapped update with andy, reader and their baby?

….damn you, nonnnie, you started a mini-series. i started drabbling out the update, and then it just… got away from me. for those of you who are new here, this is a direct sequel to Unwrapped.

Title: Return to Sender [1 of 7]

Pairing: Dark!Andy Barber x Reader

Summary: Andy Barber promised he would never let you go, and come hell or high water, he’s going to keep that promise.

Warnings: Dubcon/Noncon, Kidnapping, Minor Violence, Gaslighting, Basement Wife Trope, Manipulation

A/N: i never actually intended to revisit this series, but… the muse strikes where she strikes, lol.

The bright sunlight makes you squint, raising a hand to shield your eyes from the sudden intensity as they adjust. The air smells clean and fresh and distinctly summer; cut grass and charcoal smoke. The baby gurgles in her carrier, and you adjust her on your hip, peering down to make sure the sun-shield is properly covering her sensitive skin. She coos at you, reaching chubby hands up to grab at your fingers. Wide, blue-grey eyes peer up at you from the soft roundness of her face—her father’s eyes—and apprehension knots your stomach. 

 Suddenly the air around you feels thick and crowded, and you wonder if maybe you should go back inside, back to your room, and wait until next week. 

 I’m fine, you tell yourself, your knuckles going white as you grip the infant carrier. You know that the only reason you want to return to the comfort of your home—your prison—is because of Andy. For the last fourteen months, he had condensed your world down to a single point. 

 Him. 

 The ankle monitor you’d left on the dresser upstairs had made quite sure of that.

 I just want you to be safe, sweetheart. Don’t you understand?

 Dove claps her hands together and blows wet raspberries in her carrier, snapping you back to the present. If you stay any longer, you’ll miss the bus, and you know what tarrying means—

 Another week of Andy and his relentless affection. The syrup-sweet praise on his tongue turning sour on yours, another week of feeling your walls crumble against the poisonous kindness he pushed on you at every turn. It would have been better if he was cruel, because then you think it might be easier to hate him. Instead, you look down at Dove and remember Andy’s hand on the swell of your belly, him whispering softly through your skin to her as she grew. 

 Tears gather in your eyes as you fight through the cloud of anxiety to the front gate. Most of your neighbors—Andy’s neighbors, you try to remind yourself that this isn’t your home, Andy isn’t your husband, despite the diamond on your finger—will already be gone for work now. 

 Less people to see us leaving. 

 You know Andy will be angry when he comes home and finds you missing, the monitor abandoned. But that won’t be for some time yet, not until he comes home from work. 

 And by then, you’ll be with Irene.

 You puff a little, hefting Dove’s carrier onto your shoulder as you make your way to the bus stop. There’s only one, at the mouth of the wealthy cul-de-sac. You’d found her number scrawled in the back of a self help book at the library, one Andy had promptly made you put back. 

 “What do you need that for, sweetheart? I don’t hit you. Don’t scream at you. Am I really so bad?” Your throat tightens, and you hate yourself for wondering the same thing.

 I can help you get out, her first email had been blunt. But you need to be ready to start from zero. 

 You run over the plan in your head as you wait for the bus, trying to hide behind the curtain of your hair as cars roll by. You’re supposed to take the bus into the city, where Irene would meet you. And then from there—Canada. 

 I can’t wait if you’re late, she’d warned you. There are other people depending on me too. 

 The bus arrives, lowering itself with a hiss. The doors slide open, and you press change into the driver’s hand. You can’t use your card, not anymore. You settle yourself against the window, an arm over the carrier. Dove coos as the bus rocks forward, and the old woman in front of you turns around, a wide smile on her face. 

 “Adorable baby.” 

 You force a smile, railing against Andy’s indoctrinated anxieties—no one will protect you like me, honey, the world’s a scary place—

 “Thank you.” You grit out the words. She waves down at Dove, who promptly sticks her own foot into her mouth. 

 “How old?” 

 “Six months.” 

 “Oh how wonderful! Congratulations!” She beams another cheerful smile at you, and you have trouble returning it. Her gaze falls to the duffel bag you have shoved up against the window. “Do you have a long trip planned?” She asks, and you can tell that though she’s being polite, she’s prying. Panic rises further in your chest, bile burning in your throat. Does she know Andy? Has she been watching you? Watching you for him? 

 You’re being paranoid, honey. You can hear his taunting voice in your head, and with jerky movements, you lower the sun shield on Dove’s carrier, blocking her from view. 

 “Are you meeting your husband somewhere? It must be such a pain to travel with all these bags and the baby—” You yank on the cord, signaling to the driver that you want the bus to stop. 

 “No—I mean yes, I’m—I have to go,” you stammer, grabbing your bag and Dove and barreling out into the aisle as the bus slows down. This isn’t your stop—you’re a full four stops early—but you can’t be on the bus anymore, you just can’t. Not with this old woman and her questions, and—what if this is all Andy? Testing you? 

 And you’re failing it?

 You’re panting, tears gathering in your wide eyes as you practically flee the bus, half running down the sidewalk until it passes you. You keep your head down, you don’t want to know if the old woman is still watching you. 

 What if she was just trying to help?

 You shake your head—it doesn’t matter. Irene had told you to try and keep as low of a profile as you could, and that meant not making new friends while you were fleeing the father of your child. Finally, the adrenaline peters out and you slow to a walk, your legs cramping. You haven’t moved like that in a long time—mostly because you’re confined to the house when Andy isn’t around. “For your safety”, he says, but you know better.

 He doesn’t want you getting out, going home to the parents he’s been feeding lies upon lies about your condition. 

 But you aren’t going back to them at all—you’re doing what Irene said you should do. You’re starting from zero. 

 You’re five minutes late when you finally arrive at the bus terminal, your throat tight with anxiety. What if she’d left without you? What if you’d blown your only chance at escape by being exactly what Andy said you were—

 A mess. A lovable mess, but honeybee, you need me to make the pieces fit—

 “You’re late.” You turn, tears brimming in your wide eyes to face the stranger behind you. Irene is short, shorter than you, but you can see she’s muscular underneath the t-shirt she’s wearing. “You’re lucky I waited, come on.” She motions for you to follow her, and after a moment you do, still juggling Dove and your bag. 

 “Y-you’re Irene, right?” 

 “Yep. Car’s this way, in the back. You said he gets off of work at five, it’s three thirty. Let’s get a move on.” You follow her to a gray Subaru behind the bus depot, with California plates. She opens the trunk, and you mumble out a thank you when she motions for you to hand her your bag. “You’re not the first person I’ve done this for, but I want to make sure you aren’t the last. He’s not put any… tracking devices on or in you, right?” 

 “N-no. I had an ankle monitor, but I-I left that at the house. And my phone, and credit cards too. No computer, or anything.” 

 “Good.” 

 She helps you load Dove into the car-seat, and you hesitate to get into the front. 

 “Is it okay if… if I sit back here?”

 “Sure.” 

 When the engine starts, you feel both relief and apprehension—you know Andy won’t give up easily, but his reach could only extend so far, right? You were going to disappear, to vanish like smoke through his fingers.

 You just had to want it bad enough. 

 ��

 Andy pulls into the driveway, leaving his briefcase on the seat as he exits the car. Jacob is in the back seat, crashing two action figures together as he makes explosion sounds with his mouth. Andy chuckles at the sight of it. 

 “You ready to go see your sister, bud? I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you,” Andy replies as he unbuckles him. Jacob nods vigorously. 

 “Yeah! And m-mom.” He’s still getting used to calling you mom, but it grows less and less noticeable each day, especially with how good you are with him. You’re a natural, just like he’d known you would be. Jacob hops down out of the car, and scrambles for the front gate. It usually gives him trouble—his little fingers can’t quite manage the latch just yet—but it’s wide open this time. 

 Andy narrows his eyes. 

 “Wait for me, bud, okay?” He says, catching his son by the arm. Something’s not right. He walks up the familiar steps, holding his keys quiet with his palm so he can listen before unlocking the door. Jacob bounds inside, dropping his action figures one by one as he goes. 

 “Dove!” He calls, his little voice sing-song-y. “Mommy!” 

 There’s no answer. 

 At this time of day, you’re usually feeding Dove, dinner ready on the stove for him and Jacob—but the oven is cold, and there’s nothing set out at all. Andy moves quickly up the stairs to check the baby’s room, and he grits his teeth when he finds the crib empty, and the sheets cold to the touch. The master bedroom is empty too, the dresser drawers pulled out, and—

 Your fucking monitor.

 Andy wants to yell, throw things—and he contemplates it as he scrubs his hands through his hair and down his face. 

 You’re gone. Really gone, and the baby, too.

 “Daddy, where’s—”

 “She went to go see some friends,” Andy replies quickly, his voice cracking just a little. “Mommy will be back soon.”

 He heats up leftovers from the fridge for Jacob, and while he eats messily at the dinner table, Andy pulls out his phone, scrolling through his contacts. He can’t believe you’re really gone, that you’d really left—

 That you’d dared.

 Three weeks in the basement wasn’t long enough. 

 Andy had taken his time, soundproofing the little suite downstairs and outfitting it for your comfort. Minimal comfort, of course—he needed you to appreciate life upstairs. No contact, only your own thoughts and the drugged food Andy left for you while you’d slept. It had been hard on him, too, knowing you were down there alone and miserable, but he needed you to see things his way. 

 Clearly you don’t—not yet, anyway. 

 He knows he can’t trust his first instincts, the ones that are screaming for  him to pack up the house, to smoke you out of hiding and bring you right back where you belonged. Here, with him. He’d done everything he could to make sure you were cared for, provided anything and everything you needed. And, once he’d thought you could be trusted, he’d take you on outings. To the store, to the library, anywhere you wanted to go. 

 You just couldn’t go alone.

 “Eat up, Jake. I’ll be right back.” Andy steps out of the kitchen, standing in the living room as he holds his phone up to his ear. 

 “If you’re calling me, I know you’re waist deep in something terrible.” The man on the other line drawls, the voice dripping with pleased smugness. “Are you?”

 “Shut up, Odinson,” Andy snaps. “You’re lucky I let you slide on that—”

 “Yes, yes, I know, I owe you. Racketeering. Ugly word.”

 “With worse charges.” Andy reminds him. “I need you to find someone for me.”

 “Oh, interesting. Alive or dead?”

 “Alive. And they had both better be so when I see them next or so help me, I will—”

 “Fire and brimstone, Barber. I’ve quite got the picture.” Andy can hear Loki’s satisfied purr through the receiver, and it makes him want to hang the phone up, and try a different avenue all together. “So who did you lose?”

 “My wife.” Andy grits. “She took the baby. She’s… she’s not well. I need you to find her, bring her home. I can take care of it from there.” 

 “Ouch. Opening up old wounds for you, eh Barber?” 

 “You have a week,” Andy growls. “To bring me my wife and daughter.”

 “And on the off chance that I should fail?”

 “Your case is just wrapping up, isn’t it?” Andy asks, enjoying the power flowing back in his direction as he tightens the reins. “I think it would be a shame if the prosecution were to discover new evidence.” He pauses to let the weight of his words sink in. 

 “And presumably you’ll be, what, waiting out the clock?”

 “A week.” He hangs up without a further word. He doesn’t like Odinson, doesn’t trust him, but he knows people.

 The kind of people who would be able to track you down, and return you to him without asking too many, if any, questions. Andy pokes his head into the kitchen to peek at Jacob making a mess of his spaghetti and meatballs, and verifies that at least some of the food is making it into his mouth before he makes another call. He needs to flush you out, spook you from your hiding place. 

 “Hello 911?”

 Andy swallows thickly before answering, like his voice is heavy with tears he isn’t actually shedding. 

 “Yes, hello, police?” He says, his voice distraught. “I’d like to report a missing person.”

next

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[imaginedreamwrite]

you’re so good with asks and I have an idea, if you could…

Silverfox!Lawyer!Andy Barber finds out Jake screwed up and got a girl pregnant. Andy takes care of the baby…but could you also include a twist? Something different?

Absolutely!

The door was closed, however it didn’t stop them from their loud and cantankerous arguing nor had the closed door made it impossible for you to hear it. You could hear everything they were saying, everything Jacob Barber was screaming about you in all your ‘disgusting laudation’, the undesirable traits that made you, as a human, good enough to screw but not good enough to stay with.

Even with your pregnancy, you were seen as undesirable in his eyes. You were human and he was…something else. It was fine for you to be screwed by the man-child after a less than stellar date but now that you were pregnant…

“Once again I have to clean up your messes.” The door opened, his father and mother stepping out of the office following him. “You’re a pathetic excuse-“

“Andy!” His mother with greying hair and deep brown eyes had seethed, glaring at his father with discontent. “You need to be so harsh!”

“Laurie,” Jacob’s father spat with disgust and deplorable anger, “you ruined our son. He’s a little brat who thinks he can fuck around with anyone he wants and get away with it.”

“Our son doesn’t want to be bound to some human-“ Laurie Barber had stopped talking, she snapped her mouth shut as she settled her eyes on you. Her brown eyes appeared aged and as if they had been turned to mud, her face had turned sour and any beauty she once had was faded.

His father, however, his age had turned him into a heightened sexual being. A beautiful creature who was not deterred by age, by the silver and gray hairs and the older age, he was made more beautiful.

“Stupid whore.” Jacob growled under his breath, taking a step forward that was ceased when Andy Barber’s arm shot out and he had grabbed Jacob by the back of the neck, shoving him into the wall.

“Watch your fucking tongue, boy. Mind who you’re talking to.” Andy cursed his own son, he displayed great power before he left him to and straightened his suit jacket.

“Don’t cry, sweetheart. The little snipe isn’t worth it.” Andy addressed you with a turn of softness. “Come in to the office, we have some things to discuss.”

Andy had waited for you to walk toward him, and then he had slipped his hand upon the small of your back. He led you passed Jacob, glaring at his own son.

“Don’t worry, Jacob.” Andy growled. “I’ve taken the burden from you. Now you can return to your usual string of whores and gold-diggers.”

His hand was heavy upon your back, his scent was a mix of spice and natural woodsiness. He was tall and broad, thick and sturdy as he kept himself close to you. You could feel warmth radiating from beneath his fine suit jacket and his button down shirt.

“I should apologize for my son,” Andy had ushered you forward toward the chairs in front of the desk while he had closed the door, giving you an opportunity to study the placards hung on the wall.

He was a Harvard graduate, studying law and practicing with a reputable firm. He was a partner now and had great success, clearly becoming a very wealthy man with charm and charisma.

“Please sit,” Andy walked around the desk and came to sit on the other side, his hands folded on the surface, “my son is a real piece of work. My ex-wife, she spoiled him endlessly and he doesn’t have the self awareness to know when he needs to put his dick away.”

You rest you hand on your belly and avert your gaze, you focused back on the frames hanging up on the wall. You focused on the achievements he had garnered for himself, and then you look at the status framed.

Andy Barber was a creature, he was not entirely human like you. Creatures and beasts had different rules, different customs and ways of bonding.

“It was one night, I didn’t mean to start anything. I just…I thought he deserved to know.” You looked back at Andy, studying this beautiful man who was silvered and greyed but no less beautiful.

“You know,” Andy had reached to the right and picked up a few forms, setting them in front of himself, centred perfectly, “creatures like Jacob and myself…things are different and when he had…planted a seed, it had created a bond between you two.”

“Was I…am I..?”

“Don’t worry, sweet human.” Andy had smiled charmingly and soothingly before he cleared his throat. “You were meant to be bonded to my son however things have changed.”

“Things?” You wondered what he meant, your stomach flipping with anxiety. “I don’t-“

“My son lacks the capacity to care for anyone but himself. A bond created would have failed in every measure, he would not have cared for you or your child and you would suffer.” Andy had pushed himself to stand, his hands loosening his tie, the forms still sitting perfectly lined up.

“I however, cannot sit back and let this bond be squandered.” Your heart raced, your palms had begun sweating.

“Where my son has failed, I will not.” Andy stopped before you, he reached for your hand and squeezed. “The bond is unbreakable, but it can be transferred. I have taken the bond upon myself.”

“I-I don’t understand…” you found it impossible to breathe, nothing was making sense and your head was pounding. “What is-“

“For all intents and purposes, you are mine now. You are my responsibility and my partner, mates if you would. You will be recognized as my woman, my human woman, and your child…it is now my child.”

“Mr. Barber-“

“Andy, sweet girl.” His smile was still charming, despite his possessiveness. “You can call me Andy, Mrs. Barber.”

[cockslutpadalecki]

💖 coming soon 💖

updated 28th june

💗 when daddy’s not around - dadsbestfriend!bucky

a cockroach infestation in y/n’s apartment block forces her and her parents to stay with her dad’s best friend— the wealthy bachelor james barnes. And when her parents are out of town for the weekend, the sexual tension that has been brewing between the pair finally boils over. warnings: age gap relationship (reader is 18), heavy sexual tension, explicit sexual content, bucky being a little tease, bucky being a slut, bucky in just a towel, female masturbation, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it kids), multiple orgasms, definite size kink, cream pie, 18+.

💗 written for @sweeterthanthis’s “quote me on it” challenge

~ coming 30th june (this fic is already available on patreon) ~

💗 american beauty / american psycho - soldier boy/nomad!steve

y/n wakes up to what should be every woman’s fantasy— sandwiched between the heroes of america as their own personal fuck toy. but the super soldiers aren’t playing very fair. warnings: soldier boy/captain america’s love/hate relationship, explicit sexual content, dub-con, double penetration, anal play, multiple orgasms, forced orgasms, mentions of oral sex (female and male receiving), deep throating, little slapping, degradation, threats of cream pies to every orifice, 18+.

~ coming 7th july (this fic is already available on patreon) ~

💗 forget me not - dean winchester

sharing a birthday with sam winchester, stacey knows that dean’s loyalties will be conflicted. their first year together, he was away on a hunt— but this year, there’s no excuse… right? warnings: a little angst, dean being a bad boyfriend (allegedly), fluff.

💗 written for @princessmisery666 x

~ coming 14th july (this will be available on patreon 30th june) ~

💗 the shadow at my window - dark!steve rogers

y/n is forever losing things, and when she misplaces her purse one day, it’s down to steve to return it to her. warnings: non-con, dub-con, explicit sexual content, cream pie, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it kids), forced entry, 18+.

💗 written for @syntheticavenger’s “how it started/how it’s going” challenge

~ coming 23rd july (this will be available on patreon 7th july) ~

💗 10 things i hate about you - andy barber

requested by anon: andy and y/n are opposing counsel in a big criminal case. y/n is as good as andy, they have been rivals for years, and she wins the case for her client. y/n gloats to andy then dub-con/ hate sex ensues because andy is pissed and tired of her. warnings: dub-con, hate sex, face slapping, explicit sexual content, degradation, sex in a public bathroom, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it kids), mirror sex, rough sex, threats of deep throating, 18+.

~ coming 28th july (this will be available on patreon 14th july) ~

💗 tell me a lie - catfish!ransom

when ransom intercepts his uncle’s email, one from an unsuspecting fan and novice author— desperate for her novel to be published— catches his attention. pretending to be walt, he befriends the girl and invites her out to “meet” walt and harlan in the hopes of getting a book deal. it’s all a game to ransom at first, but the more he talks to her, the more nefarious his intentions become. warnings: catfishing, meeting strangers from the internet (please always take someone with you and meet in a public place), slightly naive!reader, explicit sexual content, non-con, multiple orgasms, forced orgasms, slight stockholm syndrome, manipulation, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it kids), 18+.

~ coming 4th august (this will be available on patreon 21st july) ~

💗 use me - steve rogers

steve wants y/n to use him in her favourite way. warnings: explicit sexual content, use of a vibrator, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it kids), reverse cowgirl, 18+.

~ coming 11th august (this will be available on patreon 28th july) ~

[mostlysignssomeportents]

VICTORY! New Free File rules ban tax-prep firms from hiding their offerings, allow IRS to compete with them (a love-letter to Propublica)

Six months ago, Propublica began beating the drum about "Free File," a bizarre, corrupt arrangement between the IRS and the country's largest tax-prep firms that ended up costing the poorest people in America millions and millions of dollars, every single year.

The scam is one of those baroque, ultimately boring and complex stories that generally dies in the public imagination despite its urgency, because "boring and urgent" is the place where the worst people can do the worst things with the least consequences.

With that warning, here's a short summary: in most wealthy countries, the tax authority fills out your tax return for you, using the information your employer already has to file every time it pays your wages. If all the numbers look right to you, you just sign the bottom of the form and send it back, without paying a tax preparer. If, on the other hand, you want to claim extra deductions, or if something complicated is going on with your finances, you can throw away that free tax return and fill in a form from scratch, either on your own or with the help of a professional.

When Americans asked to have the same courtesy extended to them -- a move that would save the vast majority of Americans millions and millions of dollars they were currently paying to the likes of HR Block and Intuit/Turbotax, every single year of their entire working lives -- the tax-prep industry mobilized to kill the proposal. The industry (which is highly concentrated and dominated by a small handful of firms whose top execs have mostly done time in all their competitors' board rooms, making them into essentially one giant company whose different divisions have different shareholders) lobbied the IRS very hard, and won a resounding victory.

That victory is called "Free File." Under Free File, each tax prep company is required to serve a slice of working Americans with free, online tax-preparation. The arrangement was hailed as a victory for public-private partnerships, harnessing the efficiency of the private sector to perform this public duty of the state. Importantly, it meant that the IRS would not expand its headcount or budget, both of which had been slashed by successive right-wing presidents and their legislative enablers. The move was cheered by anti-tax extremists like Grover Nordquist, who was delighted by the "efficiency" of you saving a bunch of pieces of paper the government already had, typing them into an online form, and hoping that a company's website came up with the same calculations that the government had already made about your tax-bill.

Part of the Free File deal banned the IRS from creating a competing offer and it banned the IRS from advertising the existence of the program or telling people where to find the free offering.

As soon as the ink was dry on Free File, the tax-prep companies set about to sabotage it. Intuit -- a massive company led by a bizarre cult figure -- and its competitors hid their Free File offerings deep in their sites, and used the "robots.txt" system to instruct search engines to hide them. They took out search ads for the phrase "Free File" that directed users to paid offerings with the word "free" in their names. They created "Free File" systems that would make you go through hours of work entering your data before surprising you with a notice that you didn't qualify for Free File because you'd paid interest on a student loan (or some other normal thing) and then ask you if you wanted to pay to keep your work and finish your tax-return in the non-free system.

There's a simple name for this kind of activity: fraud.

But it was a fraud in plain sight, one that went on for years and years, and which created a stealth tax on the majority of Americans, which they had to remit not to the IRS, but to the tax-prep companies, which used the money to lobby to make it even harder to get away from handing them your money every year.

Enter Propublica, whose relentless reporting did the seemingly impossible: it made a complicated, boring important thing into something that millions of Americans cared about. Something they cared about so deeply that they actually managed to shame the IRS into taking action.

Remember, the IRS is an administrative agency, under the direct control of the Trump administration. That means its commander-in-chief is a guy who said dodging his taxes means that he's "smart." While the IRS has many good, hardworking staffers, it has also been demoralized and gutted by the right, who have convinced millions of poor people that it's somehow in their interests if it's easier for rich people to duck their taxes.

Despite all this, the IRS has enacted new Free File rules: first, these rules ban tax-prep companies from hiding their Free File offerings, and it bans them from using deceptive names for non-Free File offerings (Turbotax will no longer be allowed to confuse Americans by offering "Turbotax Free" -- which is not free -- as a competitor to "Turbotax Free File," which is).

Second, the rule allows the IRS to develop its own competing Free File product, which means that the government agency that already knows how much tax you owe will allow you to review its findings each year and then either challenge them, or simply click OK, without paying a single cent of tax to Intuit or HR Block, and free you from filling in lengthy, bureaucratic forms.

This outcome is nothing short of miraculous: it did not come as the result of Congressional action. It did not come as the result of the Trump administration's inattention (the release came out the same day that the Trump administration revised its tax rules to allow money launderers to retain billions in the loot they've stashed offshore).

It came about as the result of fucking journalism. Propublica wrote its way into a better world, with relentless, deep, accessible reporting that made this boring, important thing come to life.

I am sympathetic to the idea that talking about politics isn't doing politics, but that's not entirely true. Learning about what's going on and telling the people you know about it and getting them to tell others is part of how we make change. Propublica's excellent reporting wouldn't have mattered if people hadn't read it -- and talked about it.

And Propublica has done this repeatedly over the past year, deeply reporting on naked, grotesque corruption in ways so vivid and undeniable that they actually changed things, and not in some abstract, boring way, but in ways that matter to the immediate, lived experience of real people who had been brutalized and poisoned and jailed and mistreated with impunity, for years, until Propublica wrote about it.

Here are some examples, just from the stories I paid attention to this year (Propublica does so much good work that I can't manage to cover all of it):

* Reformed South Carolina's "magistrate judge" system that let "judges" with no legal background and less training than barbers sentence poor people (most of them Black) to prison in defiance of their constitutional rights;

* Dismantled Illinois's system of Quiet Rooms where special ed kids were put into solitary confinement, sometimes for days at a time;

* Shamed a "Christian" hospital into ending its practice of suing thousands of patients, many of them its own employees, for inability to pay their medical debts, and forcing it to jettison the private army of debt collectors it kept on its payroll.

* Killed an Illinois scam whereby affluent parents temporarily gave up custody of their own children so they could steal college grants earmarked for poor children;

* Got two Louisiana cops fired for encouraging people to murder Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez;

In addition, Propublica has done lots of reporting that hasn't yet created political transformations, but has changed our debate and laid the groundwork for change to come: called attention to the penniless hero of the ransomware epidemic; discredited a "walking polygraph" system used by police forces to frame their preferred suspects with sheer junk science; documented the link between pharma company bribes and doctors' prescribing; named every former lobbyist in the Trump administration; tracked every penny of the 2008 bailout money; documented Wayne LaPierre's self-dealing from the NRA's war-chests; documented the grifty conservative PACs that scammed millions out of scared old white people with racist Obama conspiracies and then kept the money for themselves; published a blockbuster story on the theft of southern Black families' ancestral lands through a legal grift called "heirs' property"; debunked the "aggression detection" mics being installed in America's classrooms; outed a "ransomware consultant" that was working with ransomware crooks to simply pay the ransom, while pretending that they were able to get you your files back without enriching the crooks who locked them up; named and shamed Alabama sheriffs who lost their re-election bids and then spent thousands of public dollars on frisbees or stole discretionary funds, or destroyed food earmarked for prisoners, or drilled holes in all the department computers' hard-drives in a form of "vindictive hazing"; followed the payday lender industry to a Trump hotel where it staged an annual conference, funneling millions to the president's personal accounts shortly before Trump reversed Obama's curbs on predatory lending; documented how TSA body-scanners single out Black women for humiliating, discriminatory hair-searches; revealed the secret history of wealthy people destroying the IRS's Global High Wealth Unit; and did outstanding work on the Sackler family, a group of billionaire opioid barons whose products kickstarted the opioid epidemic that has now claimed more American lives than the Vietnam war.

2019 was a dumpster-fire of a year and 2020 could be worse -- or it could be the dawn that breaks after our darkest hour. Finding Propublica's victory lap on Free File on New Year's Day was just the sunrise I needed to give me hope for the year to come. Sometimes, simply finding the truth and telling it to the people can make a change.

I'm a Propublica donor, and an avid reader. I admit that sometimes when I see that PP has published another 15,000-word expose, I am slightly dismayed at the thought that I'm about to lose 1-2 hours of my life to digesting and writing up the new story, but that dismay is always overcome by excitement at the thought that they have turned over a new rock and found something genuinely awful beneath it, and that, with all our help, we can sterilize that foetid sludge with blazing sunshine.

https://boingboing.net/2019/12/31/go-propublica-go.html

[somedayonbroadway]

I love your writing so much you’re amazing!!! Do you think you could expand on/ do mood boards for the In the Heights au? You definitely don’t have to and sorry if this is annoying. ❤️❤️❤️

In The Heights AU

Characters

Jack Kelly — Usnavi

Racetrack Higgins — Sonny

David Jacobs — Vanessa

Katherine Plumber — Nina

Sarah Jacobs — Benny

Medda Larkin — Abuela

Joseph Pulitzer — Kevin

Hannah — Daniella

Smalls — Carla

Spot Conlon — Graffiti Pete

Crutchie Morris — Piragua Guy

Okay, so little disclaimer here, In The Heights is one hundred percent a BIPOC show and none of the characters should ever be portrayed by anyone else, and I know that, I’m just here escaping reality for a moment and merging two stories together and taking out the issue of race completely. Instead, I’ve made everyone gay. Nothing you see here is meant to be taken seriously in any kind of way.

Anyways,

They lived in New York City. Manhattan where the streets were made of music and their community was so tight knit that everyone helped everyone else.

Jack runs a small convenience store where he sells his art on occasion. His cousin Race who is under Jack’s care helps him run that very shop. Jack dreams of running away to Santa Fe where his daddy is from and Race just wants to grow up and make a difference.

David works at a small barber shop with Hannah and Smalls. He wants to move uptown and go to school to get a law degree but his family can’t afford such a thing.

Katherine is coming home from college as the only one who made it out of Manhattan because of her wealthy father, who owns every store on the block.

Sarah is a travel assistant who runs an entire location on her own.

Medda is the neighborhood grandmother and treats everyone like her own children, loving them unconditionally.

Jack spends most of his days being teased by his younger cousin because he won’t ask out David, but he always gives him free coffee and a free lunch. Eventually though, as David comes in for a soda, Race asks David out for him and David laughs and Jack eventually Jack works up the courage to ask him to go dancing later that night after the welcome home dinner for Kat.

David agrees. Jack has no idea that David had gotten into a law school he can’t afford and was depressed about it before.

When Katherine comes back to town, the only person she wants to see is Sarah who welcomes her back home and explores the neighborhood with her before they go to the pool to cool off.

When Jack and Race go to do the same, Race picks up the phone to find that someone had a winning lottery ticket in their neighborhood. They won $96,000 and Race immediately runs to the pool and tells the whole neighborhood and Jack reveals the lottery numbers only for no one to come forward.

Later that night, everyone gathers at Medda’s apartment to celebrate Katherine’s return home. However, after her father finds out Katherine was going to drop out of school, Pulitzer decides to sell the convenience store in order to pay for her tuition and even more perks for her to go back.

Angered at that, Jack leaves the apartment because he will now be without a job and David follows quickly. Sarah takes Katherine out to stop another argument from breaking out and they all end up at a club where Jack and David get separated during a city wide blackout.

Jack rushes to find Race who he knows ran back to the store to try to protect it and David ends up finding his sister Sarah and Katherine who get them all to safety. Jack doesn’t get to the store in time and Spot, a delinquent friend of Race's, is nursing Race’s black eye and trying to get him to calm down.

Everyone except for David makes their way back to Medda’s and Jack sets up games for them to play before helping Medda into bed.

Only an hour later, she passes away in her sleep.

The entire neighborhood is devastated by this. Jack especially, as he had been raised by the woman ever since his parents had passed away. The entire community comes together to honor her by lighting candles and helping her spirit move on.

Jack is determined to move to Santa Fe after this, meaning that Race would be sent back to his addicted mother. Katherine caves, and decides to go back to college and after Jack finds a winning lottery ticket in Medda’s old apartment, a mysterious donation is made for David to go to law school. The rest of the money goes to Race’s future.

David goes to see Jack before he leaves, insists that Jack stay here, closer to him in order to take care of Race. When a small argument begins, Jack and David share their first kiss before David runs off.

Meanwhile, Sarah and Katherine pack Katherine’s bags before she goes back to school. Sarah and Katherine confess their feelings for each other and promise to visit each other throughout the year and Sarah takes Katherine through one more stroll down the neighborhood.

The morning that Jack plans on leaving, he goes to find Race and finds David, Race and Spot inside the story which they had all pitched in to buy at a discounted rate from Pulitzer. They tell Jack that it’s his brand new art store and that Jack can paint all he wants and send the paintings back over to them to sell.

Jack is so stunned and touched by this that he tells them he isn’t going anywhere and tells Spot and Race to tell the whole neighborhood.

Race hugs him so tightly with excitement before doing just that.

Because they’re home. Just so long as they have each other.

For more Mood Boards and AUs, click here!

[opera-ghosts]

OTD in Music History: Legendary 19th Century Italian opera composer Giacchino Rossini (1792 - 1868) dies in France. Born into a musical family, Rossini began to compose at the age of 12, and saw the premiere of his first opera in Venice at 18. Between 1810–1823, he wrote a whopping 34 operas -- although this productivity necessitated an almost formulaic approach for some components (such as overtures) and a certain amount of shameless "self-borrowing." Rossini's operatic output includes "opera buffa" classics like "L'italiana in Algeri" ("The Italian Girl in Algiers," 1813) and "Il barbiere di Siviglia" ("The Barber of Seville," 1816), although he also composed some notable "opera seria" works, including "Otello" (1816) and "Semiramide" (1823). Rossini was by far the most popular and well-compensated composer of the period; he became a very wealthy man as a result of a veritable "Rossini craze" that swept across Europe during the first third of the 19th Century. Following the premiere of his final opera, "Guillaume Tell" (1829), Rossini went on to enjoy a nearly 40 year retirement. From the early 1830s to 1855, he lived in Italy and wrote relatively little. After making a grand return to Paris, however, he became renowned for hosting weekly musical salons at his mansion -- which were frequented by leading musical figures of the day including Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791 - 1864), Franz Liszt (1811 - 1886), Guiseppe Verdi (1813 - 1901), Anton Rubinstein (1829 - 1894), and Camille Saint-Saens (1835 - 1921). These events inspired him to begin composing a charming series of "light entertainment" pieces which he dubbed, "Péchés de vieillesse" ("Sins of Old Age"), many of which are still performed today. PICTURED: A very rare original libretto from an early performance (1829 in Bologna) of one of Rossini's greatest operas, "Moses and Pharaoh" (1827). Rossini has signed and inscribed this copy on the cover.

[whattoreadnext]

Crime

Crime fiction began in 1841 with Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Murders in the Rue Morgue, and its popularity has never waned. Stories concentrate either on events leading up to the crime or on detection. Some crime-centred books are darkly psychological, exploring the mind of the criminal compelled towards the crime. Others are ‘caper’ novels, showing the detailed planning and execution of the crime and concentrating on the relationships of everyone involved. Many detection-centred books are procedural, following the investigation of a crime step by meticulous step. Others centre on the character of the detective (an eccentric genius; a dogged cop with a complicated private life; a private eye who is the guardian of morality and integrity in a corrupt world). In 99 per cent of all crime fiction, from Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) to the latest Sue Grafton or Ian Rankin, the crime is murder. In the first heyday of crime fiction (the 1930s) people favoured ‘snobbery with violence’ (as in the books of Dorothy L. Sayers) and ‘locked room’ mysteries (such as those of John Dickson Carr). Nowadays, in the second heyday, we prefer psychological thrillers (such as those of Barbara Vine), procedurals (often set in the past, or abroad) and private eye stories.

Lawrence Block, The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart (1995). Block has written a cherishable series of books about the amiable, witty burglarcum-bookseller Bernie Rhodenbarr and this title, in which Bernie adopts the persona of Bogart, is one of the best.

John Dickson Carr, The Blind Barber (1933). Classic tale of beautiful women, international playboys, priceless jewels, stolen films, diplomatic incidents and murder, set on a transatlantic liner. Wonderful sense of period; one of the most rollicking of all ‘locked room’ mysteries.

Harlan Coben, Tell No One (2001). A doctor whose wife was murdered eight years earlier receives what seems to be an e-mail from her and is plunged into a nightmarish world of mystery and betrayal in Coben’s tense and suspenseful novel.

Colin Dexter, The Jewel That Was Ours (1991). Opera-loving loner Morse and his assistant Lewis investigate murder among a group of Americans doing the Oxford Heritage Tour.

Michael Dibdin, Dead Lagoon (1994). Dibdin’s policeman Aurelio Zen returns to his native Venice and finds himself anything but at home as he struggles to solve the disappearance of a wealthy American and to disentangle webs of deceit both personal and political.

James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia (1987). The first in Ellroy’s powerful LA Quartet, this fictionalized account of a famous sex murder from the 1940s reveals Ellroy’s mastery of period, dialogue and characterization and his dark, obsessive imagination.

Reginald Hill, Dialogues of the Dead (2001). Hill skilfully weaves together the investigations of his two policemen, Dalziel and Pascoe, and the inner world of a serial killer who is a word-obsessed maniac intent on playing games with them.

William Hjortsberg, Falling Angel (1979). Cult classic, memorably filmed in 1987 as Angel Heart by Alan Parker, in which seedy, hard-boiled hero Harry Angel homes in on some terrible truths. Trespassing rewardingly on other fiction genres (horror, fantasy), this is a crime novel like no other.

Joe Lansdale, The Bottoms (2000). Deftly combining a murder mystery with an elegiac coming-of-age story, Lansdale’s book is set in east Texas in the mid-1930s. Its narrator, Harry Crane, on the verge of his teenage years, has his life changed forever when he discovers a mutilated body in the river bottoms near his home.

Donna Leon, Death in a Strange Country (1993). Commissario Brunetti, the protagonist in all of Leon’s Venetian tales, finds his inquiries into the death of an American soldier on the mainland are blocked by high command.

Peter Lovesey, A Case of Spirits (1975). Lovesey specializes in period detective stories. In this, nineteenth-century Sergeant Cribb investigates murder and spiritualism among the snobbish middle classes of suburban London.

Gladys Mitchell, Laurels Are Poison (1942). Classic eccentric-detective tale, in which Mrs Lestrange Bradley, witch-like psychologist and sleuth, investigates the murder of the warden of an all-women teachers’ training college.

George Pelecanos, Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go (1998). Super-boozer and P.I. Nick Stefanos awakes from a bender in a public park to find a body being dumped in the river nearby. In a novel filled with pop-culture references and 1980s hedonism, he pursues the killers.

Ellis Peters, One Corpse Too Many (1979). Ellis Peters wrote a series about worldly-wise monk and herbalist Brother Cadfael in which cosy crime met the Middle Ages. TV has now given her books an even wider readership than before. This one, in which monks burying the dead from a battle find one more body than they bargained for, shows Cadfael at his most likeable.

Ian Rankin, Black and Blue (1997). Rankin provides a wonderfully wide-ranging panorama of contemporary Scotland as his series character, Rebus, investigates a series of killings which has echoes of a famous case from the past.

Rex Stout, Too Many Cooks (1938). Classic story in which fat, woman-hating, orchid-growing genius Nero Wolfe and his legman Archie Goodwin investigate murder at a conference for master chefs at a West Virginia luxury hotel.

Also recommended:   James Lee Burke, Cadillac Jukebox    Patricia Cornwell, Post-Mortem    Edmund Crispin, The Moving Toyshop    Loren Estleman, The Hours of the Virgin    Francis Iles, Malice Aforethought    John D. MacDonald, The Deep Blue Goodbye    Walter Mosley, Devil in a Blue Dress    Peter Robinson, Gallows View    James Sallis, The Long-Legged Fly    Julian Symons, A Three Pipe Problem    Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time    Scott Turow, Presumed Innocent    Barbara Vine, A Fatal Inversion    Charles Willeford, Miami Blues    Robert Wilson, A Small Crime in Lisbon    Margaret Yorke, No Medals for the Major    See also:    Margery Allingham    Raymond Chandler    Agatha Christie    Classic Detection    Sue Grafton    Great (Classic) Detectives    Dashiel Hammett    Jack Higgins    Patricia Highsmith    Marsh    Police Procedural    Private Eyes    Ruth Rendell    Georges Simenon   

[silvestromedia]

SAINTS NOVEMBER 03

St. Peter Francis Neron, Roman Catholic Priest and Vietnamese Martyr. He served as the director of the main seminary until he was arrested and beheaded by authorities.

St. Winifred. According to legend, she was the daughter of a wealthy resident of Tegeingl, Flintshire, Wales, and the sister of St. Beuno. She was most impressed by Beuno, was supposedly beheaded on June 22 by one Caradog when she refused to submit to him, had her head restored by Beuno, and sometime later, became a nun of the convent of a double monastery at Gwytherin in Denbigshire. She succeeded an Abbess Tenoy, as Abbess and died there fifteen years after her miraculous restoration to life. A spring supposedly springing up where Winifred's head fell is called Holy Well or St. Winifred's Well and became a great pilgrimage center where many cures have been reported over the centuries. She is also known as Gwenfrewi.

St. Vulganius, 704 A.D. Irish or Welsh missionary and hermit. After working to evangelize the tribes of the Atrebati in France, he became a hermit at Arras.

St. Cristiolus, 7th century. Welsh confessor, the brother of St. Sulian. Cristiolus founded Christian churches, including the parish in Anglesey.

St. Elerius, 6th century. Welsh saint who was a companion of St. Winefred. He was an abbot in a monastery in the north of Wales.

St. Englatius, 966 A.D. A Scottish bishop also called Englat and Tanglen. He lived at Tarves, in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

St. Malachy O' More, Bishop famous for writing prophecies of the popes. Also listed as Mael Maedoc ua Morgair or Maolrnhaodhog ua Morgair, Malachy was born in Armagh, Ireland, in 1095. He was ordained by St. Cellach or Celsus of Armagh in 1132 and studied under Bishop St. Maichius of Lismore. Malachy reformed ecclesiastical discipline and replaced the Celtic liturgy with the Roman when he served as abbot of Bangor. In 1125 he was made bishop of Connor, using Bangor as his seat. He also established a monastery at Iveragh, Kerry. He was named archbishop of Armagh in 1129. In 1138, he resigned and made a pilgrimage to Rome. He visited St. Bernard at Clairvaux, France, wanting to be a monk there, but returned to Ireland to found Mellifont Abbey, also serving as papal legate to Ireland. He returned to Clairvaux and died on November 2 in St. Bernard’s arms. St. Bernard declared him a saint, an action confirmed in 1190 by Pope Clement III. Malachy is known for many miracles, including healing the son of King David I of Scotland. Malachy’s prophecies did not appear until 1597. Tradition states that Malachy wrote them while in Rome and that they were buried in papal archives until 1597, when Dom Arnold de Wyon discovered them. Serious doubts remain as to the true authorship of the prophecies.

ST. SYLVIA, MOTHER OF ST. GREGORY THE GREAT

St. Martin de Porres, Dominican lay brother at the Dominican Friary at Lima and spent his whole life there-as a barber, farm laborer, almoner, and infirmarian among other things. https://www.vaticannews.va/en/saints/11/03/st--martin-de-porres--dominican.html

[chiseler]

Downward Christian Soldiers

Father Charles Coughlin, 1930s

On January 14 1940, the FBI arrested 18 men in New York City accused of plotting the overthrow of the U.S. government. Fourteen were snatched up in their homes in Brooklyn, the others in The Bronx and Queens. Searches yielded more than a dozen Springfield rifles, a shotgun, some handguns, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and the materials for homemade bombs. J. Edgar Hoover said they were plotting a terrorist campaign targeting transportation, power, and communications facilities; their goal was to rouse the military into staging a coup, placing a strong dictator like Hitler or Mussolini in power, and cleansing the country of Jews.  

The men were mostly of German or Irish descent, and ranged in age from 18 to 38. If employed (a few weren’t), they held low-end jobs, including an elevator mechanic, a telephone lineman, a chauffeur, a couple of salesmen, a couple of office clerks. The 18-year-old was a student. Most troubling was the fact that six of them were National Guardsmen.

They were all followers of a Father Coughlin-inspired movement called the Christian Front. In his mid-1930s heyday, Coughlin was arguably the most powerful pro-Fascist voice in America. An Irish Catholic originally from Canada, he had first turned to radio in the 1920s simply as a way to expand his ministry beyond his tiny congregation in Royal Oaks. He had a strong radio voice, and when CBS started syndicating his weekly sermons in 1929 it was an instant success. The crash and start of the Depression politicized him. His condemnations of Wall Street and President Hoover brought him tens of thousands of fan letters a week, and his high praises for Hoover’s opponent FDR surely had an impact on the 1932 elections. Then, when the invitation he craved to sit among President Roosevelt’s circle of advisors didn’t come, he turned bitter as a jilted lover. He began denouncing Roosevelt, his New Deal, his Jew York advisors, and his friends in the labor movement as all facets of an international Jewish-Communist conspiracy to destroy Christianity and democracy. He also praised Franco, Mussolini, and Hitler for defending their people against this spreading evil.

Coughlin’s call for a “Christian Front” to combat the Communists’ mid-1930s Popular Front coalition with other groups on the left resonated with the Depression-driven anger and paranoia of many Americans, especially in cities like Boston and New York with large communities of lower- and lower-middle class Irish Catholics, who tended to be shut out of other right-wing movements precisely because they were Irish and Catholic. At his peak, Coughlin had tens of millions of listeners to his Sunday radio sermons, a million readers of his weekly magazine Social Justice, and received millions of dollars in small donations.

By 1938, rabid anti-Semitism had become the centerpiece of Coughlin’s message. That year, at a Christian Front rally in The Bronx, he allegedly gave the Nazi salute and declared, “When we get through with the Jews in America, they’ll think the treatment they received in Germany was nothing.” In Social Justice he reprinted the anti-Semitic hoax The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which also topped Henry Ford’s list of favorite reading. In the autumn of 1938, when Coughlin said the Jews had brought Kristallnacht on themselves, radio stations, including WMCA in New York, dropped him. Several thousand Fronters “picketed the station, its advertisers, and Jewish-owned stores throughout the city,” historian Robert A. Rosenbaum writes. “The pickets returned every Sunday afternoon for many months. In the meantime, gangs of Christian Fronters roamed the streets and subways, peddling copies of Social Justice, distributing anti-Semitic leaflets, and orating on street corners, while harassing and assaulting people they took to be Jewish.” The city’s police force, which was nearly two-thirds Irish, turned a blind eye; some number of them were Christian Frontiers themselves.

The Front thrived in parishes in all of New York City’s boroughs. Some of the first Front meetings took place in a church hall near Columbus Circle, and some of the most frequent and well-attended were in The Bronx. In Brooklyn, Father Francis Joseph Healy, the pastor of the St. Joseph’s parish in Prospect Heights, was also the editor of the Brooklyn diocese’s weekly paper, The Tablet, which he made a platform for extremely anti-Communist, pro-Fascist, and pro-Coughlin thought. After Father Healy’s death in 1940, his managing editor Patrick Scanlan continued the paper’s reactionary slant. Scanlan ran Coughlin’s rants on the front page. Healy’s successor at St. Joseph’s, Father Edward Curran, was also a major supporter of Father Coughlin and other pro-Fascist and isolationist groups. During the war in Spain Father Curran wrote dozens of pro-Franco columns for arch-conservative publications around the country.

By 1939 small cells of Fronters in Manhattan and Brooklyn were calling themselves “sports clubs,” though the only sport they practiced was target shooting at rifle ranges. The Guardsmen in the group evidently pilfered the rifles and ammo from their posts, and trained other Frontiers in how to use them. 


Along with the cops and Guardsmen, the Front cells were also peppered with spies. The FBI had informants keeping tabs on them. Two independent investigators would write very successful books in which they claimed to have infiltrated the Front as well, and dozens of other underground hate groups. Richard Rollins’ I Find Treason would be published by William Morrow in 1941; John Roy Carlson’s similar Under Cover would be a runaway bestseller for E. P. Dutton two years later, galloping through 16 printings in its first six months. Both writers used pseudonyms. Carlson was actually Arthur Derounian, an Armenian immigrant. Rollins was apparently Isidore Rothberg, an investigator for Congressman Samuel Dickstein of the House Special Committee on Un-American Activities. Partly because the writers used pseudonyms while naming scores of individuals they claimed were pro-Hitler and pro-Fascist, both books were widely denounced on the right as fabrications and smear campaigns.


Derounian wrote that he was riding the subway one day in 1938 when he picked up a leaflet of “bitterly anti-Semitic quotations” published by something called the Nationalist Press Association on East 116th Street in Italian East Harlem. He decided to research, and found himself exploring a vast underground world of wannabe Hitlers and Mussolinis, society matron super-patriots, racists, Anglophobes, White Russians, and assorted conspiracy theorists and kooks.
 Born in 1909, Derounian had grown up in another world of hate. After struggling to stay alive as Armenians in Greece at a time of chaos and slaughter in the Balkans, his family fled to New York in 1921. Arthur learned English and earned a degree in journalism at NYU in 1926. In 1933 he learned that the turmoil in the Balkans had followed him across the ocean, when the archbishop of New York’s Armenian Orthodox Catholics, while serving Christmas Mass in his Washington Heights church, was stabbed to death by radical Armenian nationalists opposed to his politics.

So when Derounian read that hate sheet on the subway in 1938, he was primed to follow up. The 116th Street address was an old tenement with a barber shop on the ground floor. The Nationalist Press “office” was a dingy back room stacked to the stained ceiling with right-wing books, newspapers and pamphlets. Poking around in the gloom were a few Italian men and Peter Stahrenberg, a tall blond Aryan type “with blunt features and a coarse-lipped, brutal mouth,” who wore a khaki shirt and a black tie with a pearl-studded swastika tie tack. Stahrenberg was the publisher of the National American, a pro-Hitler newspaper whose striking logo was an American Indian giving the Nazi salute before a large swastika. He was also the head of the American National-Socialist Party. Derounian, calling himself George Pagnanelli and expressing interest in the “patriotic movement,” wormed his way into Stahrenberg’s confidence.

As he explored Stahrenberg’s twilight world, Derounian claimed, he found pro-Nazis and pro-Fascists all over New York City, holding meetings and rallies in every borough. It was a topsy-turvy world where street thugs from the city’s poorest neighborhoods mingled with wealthy Park Avenue crackpots, and Irish Catholic Fronters convinced that Communism was an international Jewish plot sat in the same meetings with Protestant zealots convinced that the Vatican was a Jewish front. He met rabidly anti-Communist D.A.R. socialites, and retired military officers who were certain that FDR and the Jew Dealers were leading the nation to ruin. He met the prominent conservative organizer Catherine Curtis, introducing himself as George Pagnanelli; she kept calling him Mr. Pagliacci. He even found black pro-Nazis in Harlem. Some were attracted by Hitler’s anti-Semitism; others simply cheered the idea of a white man making trouble for other whites.

When the Christian Front clique was arraigned in Brooklyn’s federal courthouse in February, they all pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy and theft of government property. The lawyer for 12 of them was Leo Healy – Father Healy’s brother. A crowd jeered and booed as they were perp-walked into the courthouse. Winchell and La Guardia both derided them as “bums,” La Guardia adding that if they were the best the enemies of democracy could muster, no one need lose any sleep. But the defendants also had their sympathizers. Father Curran was the keynote speaker at a large rally in Prospect Hall to express support for them.  

Fourteen defendants were left when the trial began in April; one of the original 18 had committed suicide, and charges against three others were dropped. As the trial sputtered along through May, it began to appear that the FBI and prosecutors hadn’t built a very strong case. When the proceedings stumbled to a close on Monday June 24, the jury acquitted nine of the defendants and pronounced themselves hung on the other five.


It was a major embarrassment for Hoover. The Front and their supporters cheered it as a great victory, and would continue to spread hate and violence well into the war years. Through 1942 and 1943 there would be numerous reports in the press of roving gangs of young men, mostly identified as Irish and affiliated with the Front, beating and sometimes even knifing Jews in neighborhoods like Flatbush, Washington Heights and the South Bronx, where Irish and Jewish communities abutted. Many shops, synagogues and cemeteries were vandalized. Jewish leaders pleaded with Mayor La Guardia and Police Commissioner Valentine, but they took little action.

Coughlin would rant on into 1942, when the federal government shut down Social Justice as a seditious publication, and the Archbishop of Detroit finally ordered him to stop all political activity. Father Curran, however, continued undeterred, making anti-Semitic, anti-war speeches to Frontiers and others through the entire war.

by John Strausbaugh

[instruth]

REFLECTIONS ON THE DISAPPOINTMENT

OF EMIGRATION

Do thou, sweet Mother, weep in vain

Thine fair tribes now add on to thy pain?

Thine children knock on doors for bread

Chilling bones, in hunger desperation led

Good folks forced to sell their daughters

No faults of theirs that they should falter

Bless me - had we brothers any sister

Our decision would not have been better

Painful to watch sweet little girls in tears

Pretty innocents in their helpless years

I weep as I watch them in their charms

Shaking wildly in their fathers' arms

Crying mothers kiss their mindless babes

Strike their breasts looking up in gapes

I see the fairies and nymphs degraded

In my dreams I see my heaven has faded

Painful hard truth in such times of shame

Best to forget than find someone to blame

Statesmen brag as their ale goes round

Laughing, with haughty looks profound

Such luxury migrants can ill afford

Even simple pleasures dismiss accord

Wealthy men arrive from world around

Suits and hats, stunning ladies surround

Of wealth designed in tempting display

Truth in my mind I mindlessly survey

Disgraceful in the hearts of false leisure

I’m sickened by this man-made pleasure

An accumulated wealth stored in pride

Buy a lass to play as an obedient bride

Repossess the cuddly space of the poor

For their horses, hounds and more

Lawful acquisition to rob the timid folks

Stealing their meals of oats and yolks

Dressing up their females well adorned

To reign secured while simple folks mourn

The statesmen divide the wealth acquired

To wives, sons and relatives as required

Beating my chest in bitter memory recall

In senses with unfailing truth reveal it all

Oh past the plain the surging joy prevail

That which I have loved can never fail

The broken teacups I had taken with me

Stir my will, daily sipping my humble tea

No tales or news from barbers or farmers

It's fine - all return at meals as we gather

No theatre, no ballad, no talent time

Everything comes handy in sublime

Make our own feathered balls and stuff

Marbles roll, guessing games and bluff

Obscure, it sinks deep in souls and hearts

Simple treasures, everlasting will not part

My vacant mind frolicking in the pond

Caress my soul, my spirit neatly bond

Contented on my stool writing my poetry

Pass my time in imagined peasantry

Raise my native strength for greater gain

Instead of indulging in pitiful afflicted pain

Plant my seeds, pull out the weeds annoy

With compliments from God, my daily joy.

©Johnny J P Lee

09 December 2020

Photos Credit J. P. Lee

[the-awkward-outlaw]

could you maybe write something about Arthur falling in love with a rival gang member? like a bit like romeo and juliet or something, you can choose the ending, thx :)

I tried to keep this one short but then I puked out like thirteen pages, so have fun, Anon! Thanks for sending this in! 

You’ve been running with the O’Driscolls for many years. Most of your life, really. Ever since you were a young teen. You’d been living with your parents and older sister in a cabin on the border of Ambarino and New Hanover. When you were thirteen, you had a habit of dressing like a boy even though you’re a girl. You just preferred the more comfortable, free moving clothing that boys wore and you kept your hair short to spite your mother. She’d been trying to push the woman’s lifestyle on you and you were just not having it. In order to rebel against her, you cut your hair so it was only a few inches long. 

Your father didn’t care how you looked or dressed, he thought you should do what felt right. He taught you how to hunt and shoot a gun when you were young, and he did this with your older sister as well. She didn’t take to it as well as you did as she didn’t like getting her hands dirty. She was too much like your mother and you were like your father. He was the one who bought you pants and button-down shirts to wear and a hat to shelter your eyes and head. 

It was the combination of your clothes, hair and that you always seemed to be covered in earth or dust from the road that saved your life. At the age of fourteen, the O’Driscolls came to your cabin one night. It was only a small group of them, but Colm O’Driscoll heard a rumor that your father was wealthy and just pretended to be poor for the sake of appearances. 

This was true as your grandfather had been a railway magnate until he’d been forced out of his business and decided on a simpler, less stressful life. He’d left his fortune to your father, who decided to hide his inheritance. Your family lived on a small ranch, which made it easy to pretend like you had just enough to get by. But somehow word had slipped out about your family’s money and Colm came to steal it. 

Colm and seven of his men barged their way into your cabin. They shot your father only seconds after breaking the door down, then your mother. Colm’s men grabbed your sister and dragged her off into the night. You never saw her again, though you still sometimes hear her screams when trying to sleep. Colm looked hard at you and thought, because of your appearance, that you were a boy. 

“You’re gonna be one of us, boy,” he said in his oddly soft voice. “You’re gonna be one of us or end up like your daddy.” 

You just nodded and went with them. You were forced to join the gang but you knew the consequences for trying to run. Of course, you also continued to dress like a boy. As you grew, you started growing your hair out to respect your mother in her death. Luckily plenty of Colm’s men had longer hair, so they suspected nothing. That changed when you started to grow older and parts of your body visibly changed. You had to wear a tight wrap around your chest, but there was nothing you could do about your wider hips. You managed to threaten a tailor to make a duster with padded shoulders to make them look bigger and hide your feminine figure. 

Years passed from when Colm destroyed your family and you stayed in his gang. You would have left when you were close to twenty, but you knew what would happen if you deserted. One boy made this mistake and Colm hunted him down and within days of him leaving, Colm killed him. The matter of his death was neither easy or quick, so you knew if you left, the same thing would happen to you. 

Of course it wasn’t easy being in Colm’s gang. Since you were smaller than most the others, you got picked on a lot and you got stuck with some of the more unpleasant tasks, like shoveling horse shit and cleaning up after the others. 

Shortly after you were incorporated into the gang, you’d heard of Dutch Van der Linde and his boys. You only knew his name and that he and Colm were rivals. Every once in a while, you’d hear about them interfering with one another’s work, but whenever you asked why Colm had such a fury towards Dutch, the others would just tell you to shut up. You thought for a long time that Colm detested this Dutch just because he was another gang leader and they happened to cross one another frequently. 

You’ve been in the gang more than ten years now. Ten long, miserable years. You want nothing more than to get out, but to do so means your inevitable death. You also know it can take mere seconds for Colm to figure out you’re a woman. He doesn’t like women in the gang, says they only slow the gang down. If and when he finds out, he’ll happily put a bullet in your head. 

Colm has never liked you much. You think the only reason he brought you into the gang was because you were a child. Maybe Colm has something against killing kids or maybe he just thought you might have potential. You don’t take his malcontent personally. He doesn’t like most the men he runs with, only keeps them around because they’re good with guns and sometimes manage to pull a score successfully. 

You’ve climbed up in his ranks though. You had no choice. In order to survive and to hide your gender, you learned quickly. Even though you knew how to shoot a pistol and a varmint rifle, you had to learn how to shoot a bigger gun. So you taught yourself. Colm’s boys taught you the craft of acting mean, targeting people and robbing them. You were good too. Perhaps it was just your feminine intuition on how to play people since you couldn’t physically fight too well because of your size, but you had a knack for tricking people and robbing them blind. Colm appreciated this and you moved up quickly. 

You hate him though. No matter what he does or how much money you get through him, you hate him. You’d like nothing more than to slit his throat while he sleeps. But you’re afraid of him too. The first time you’d ever seen him was putting a bullet in your father and then killing your mother. You know he had something to do with your sister and there’s little doubt in your mind he ravaged her and then killed her too. Only a monster could be capable of that, to orphan a child and then force them to work for the one who killed their family. 

You walk into the bar in Valentine, thirsty and sore. The past few days have been hell. For some dumb reason, Colm decided a couple weeks back to move the gang up to some fallen apart town near Colter. Then you all got trapped there during a blizzard. He’d been out with some of his boys when the blizzard hit. He came back with his right hand man, a fat man with a bushy beard named Hoskins. The others never returned, but Colm figured the idiots had gotten lost and died in the snow. 

He told you and some of the other higher ups that you were all up here to rob a train owned by Leviticus Cornwall. You’d heard the name of course. He was a big, but impossible target. Cornwall was known to go after any idiot who robbed him with a vengeance. Colm told you all to stay up here for another couple of days before the robbery. Then he sent one of the newer members, some fidgety nervous guy named Kieran, out to scout for the train. He left and told you and some of the others to go hunt some game to keep everyone fed. 

You split off from the others and managed to find a deer grazing out in the frozen wilderness, but when you came back to the hideout, it was littered with corpses. Only a few men were left standing. When Colm returned and found out the plans for the train robbery had been stolen, he lost it. He hit one of the other men right in the face. Only you seemed to notice that the kid, Kieran, hadn’t returned, but you said nothing. 

Colm set his hands on the back of a rickety chair and glared into a lamp. 

“There’s only one fella stupid enough and bold enough to steal a score from me. Goddamn Van der Linde. Well, I have a surprise for him. This is the last time he steals from me. I heard he and his bunch are wanted in Blackwater. Hoskins, you’ll help me find a way to get him.” 

You rarely saw Colm after that, but he moved the gang to Hanging Dog Ranch in Big Valley. He ordered you and the others to hunt for new scores and for the whereabouts of Dutch and his boys. 

You’ve been riding for days with hardly any sign of either gang. That’s why you’re in this shit hole of a town Valentine. Always muddy, always smelling of shit. You rap on the bar and order a beer. You’re in need of a bath, but you need to go back to camp tomorrow. You’ve been gone long enough and they might start to think you’ve deserted. Despite your hatred towards Colm, you do feel a strange sense of obligation towards him. Despite him having destroyed your family and livelihood, he taught you how to fight, how to rob and how to get away with it. Perhaps that’s just a lie you tell yourself. Maybe the only reason you’re loyal to him is because you’ve been part of his gang most your life. 

Just as you’re finishing your beer, the doors swing open and a man walks in. You only glance at him for a second and spot his leather hat and blue shirt. He stalks towards the barber’s seat and gets his hair and beard trimmed. After he’s done, he comes and leans on the bar not too far from you. He orders a beer as well. 

Something about him intrigues you. It’s rare for you to take an interest in men, and in this town he’s not out of style. Hell, he’s covered in dirt and his clothes are years old, from the looks of them. Still, he has this force and presence that drags your attention to him. You study him for a moment. 

He glances over at you and your eyes meet. He’s got stunning blue eyes. You blink and look away. You both ignore each other and buy a few more drinks. After your third, you decide that’s enough and start to head out. Just as you leave the bar, you collide with the man. 

“Sorry,” you say, forgetting in that split second to make your voice sound deep and gravelly. You’re usually so careful, but when you’re not around the gang, it’s harder to maintain. 

The man lowers his brow, clearly confused. “It’s alright, mi… well, can I call ya miss?” 

He looks you up and down, clearly confused. After all, your disguise is very convincing. 

“Sure,” you say. “Long as you don’t tell no one else.” 

He huffs a small laugh. “And who’d I tell that I met a young woman who looked just like a young, very small man?” 

You smile. “I guess no one.” 

He tips his hat. “You have a fine day, sir.” He gets on his horse and rides off. 

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

You’ve bumped into this man a few more times since that first meeting. You found a mutilated corpse under the railroad and he did too at pretty much the same time. Another day, you stumbled upon a strange rock carving near the Cumberland River and he showed up only seconds later. Another time, you were just heading back to Hanging Dog Ranch and you saw him in the big meadow skinning a pronghorn. You’ve never crossed paths with a stranger so often. 

You’re in Valentine again and just heading over to the train station. A couple months back, you bumped into some annoying feller who offered you money for bundles of cigarette cards, and you’ve finally found enough that they might be worth something. Hopefully this idiot wasn’t pulling your leg. Just as you’re about to reach the doors, they open and the man you’ve met a handful of times comes out. 

“Excuse me, sir,” he says, then stops. His eyes rake over you and he smiles. “Again? How many times you and I gonna cross paths?” 

You smile. “Don’t get the impression that I’m following you, that’s not what’s happening.” 

He smiles back. “Course not. Well, don’t let me keep ya.” 

You’ve never been a big believer in fate or destiny, but the fact that you’ve run into this man so often has got to be more than mere coincidence. As he starts walking over to his horse, you turn. 

“Sir, we keep bumping into each other. Now I don’t believe in divine interference when it comes to people and their lives, but… there’s gotta be a reason we keep running into each other. Let me buy you a beer.” 

He grins. “That’s awful kind o’ ya, miss. Guess I can grab a drink. Though not Smithfield’s. Bar owner ain’t too keen on me right now.” 

You agree and go to the smaller, quieter saloon in Valentine. You make good on your promise and buy him a drink. There, you both get to talking and introduce yourselves properly (though not entirely honestly). 

“So tell me,” Arthur says, setting his bottle down. “Why’s a girl like you dressin’ like a man? Judgin’ by how well you do it, my guess is you’ve done it a long time.” 

You sigh. “It’s…. It’s a long, boring story. Let’s just say it’s safer for me to dress like this than a woman. No offence, but men have a disgusting habit of targeting women because we’re the weaker sex.” 

He smiles a bit. “Yes we certainly have a habit of doin’ that. However, I know you’re leavin’ somethin’ out.” 

“How would you know?” 

“Because,” he says, “you’re way too vague and you’re the only woman I seen dressed like this. So what’s the real story?” 

You know you can’t tell him about Colm’s gang, but perhaps you can just tell him a vague bit of the truth. 

“I run with a bunch of boys who aren’t too keen on runnin’ with women. Guess they don’t really like us, I don’t know. In order to keep on runnin’ with ‘em, I dress like this. They buy it well enough.”

“Don’t seem like a particularly good bunch if they can’t handle you bein’ a lady. Why don’t you just leave?” 

“It’s… it’s complicated,” you say, hiding your eyes beneath your hat. “Let’s just say they ain’t keen on people abandoning them.” 

He doesn’t press further and then he thanks you for the drink. You kind of hope you don’t see him again, he already knows too much about you for your own safety. 

Just as you’re leaving Valentine, Colm and Hoskins bump into you. 

“There you are, you son of a bitch,” Colm snarls when he sees you. This is a usual greeting so you think nothing of it. “Saddle up, boy. We gotta go to Six Point.” 

“Why?” you say, mounting up on your horse. 

“I left Lowman and McCann up there with some of the others. They were supposed to stash the money from that stage robbery and meet us at Hangin’ Dog. I ain’t seen hide nor hair of ‘em. Little bastards better not be dead drunk.” 

You ride with the two to the cabin Colm sometimes uses as a hideout. You find the other men scattered around, dead but not drunk. Colm’s furious again and he kicks a bucket halfway across the site. He investigates the cabin and finds the money gone, as well as a double-barrelled shotgun he had mounted up on the chimney. 

“You, boy,” he points at you. “You stay here. Get this shit cleaned up, and stay here until I come for you in case the shits who did this come back.” 

“You want me here alone in case a possible group of expert gunman come back?” you say, not liking the odds. 

“Yeah, don’t be yella. Just do what you’re told. I’ll come get ya in a few days.” 

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

What Colm said would be a few days has turned into a few weeks. He’s had you stake out places like this before, so you know the drill: sniff out any possible leads from the closest town. While you’ve been trying to dig up clues, you bump into that Arthur Morgan time and time again. 

The first time you did since buying him a drink, he offered to buy you one. After that, whenever you meet, you both go for drinks and get to know one another a little better. It isn’t long before you start to feel a sense of friendship towards him. He’s just as vague on his lifestyle as you are, but you don’t push out of respect. Before long, Arthur asks you to meet him in places to go hunting. He seems to like the company. 

After one particularly long day, you part his company in Valentine and return to Six Point. You spend the next couple of days missing him. You miss him more than anyone else you’ve ever known and that’s when you’re hit with it: you like him. 

The next time you meet, you try to keep things cool between you and him, but you can’t help but stare at him. He is handsome after all. Plus you know that while his temper can be quick to flare up, he can be incredibly gentle and caring. There was one time you both stumbled into a cabin where the occupants had died due to a fire. The cabin was relatively intact and it looked like they’d died from the gas. Arthur picked up a pen and a children’s book. When you questioned him on this, he just smiled. 

“I have a couple of friends who mentioned they wanted a pen and a book like this.” 

“Ah, so if I was to ask you to fetch me somethin’, would you get it?” you ask before you could stop yourself.

“Of course. Anythin’ in mind?” 

You were almost surprised, but happy. “Now that you mention it, I wouldn’t mind a watch. I accidentally dropped mine and it broke a couple days back. Haven’t had the chance to replace it.” 

He smiled and promised to bring you one. The next time you saw him, he had it. When your fingers brushed his, he blushed. Was it possible he had something for you too?

From then on, your relationship with Arthur changed. There was just a sense of electricity between you both, like you were magnetized. You went from purposefully bumping your hand into his to touching his upper arms and shoulders to brushing his hair when he had his hat off. It wasn’t long after that when you had your first kiss. It had taken you completely by surprise.

You’d both been drinking heavily that night and you were doing everything to control yourself with him. You’d been more attracted to him than ever, but you weren’t sure if he liked you too. However, in your drunken phase, the candlelight hit him just right and you just leaned over and kissed him. He was taken by surprise, but when you started to pull away, he stopped you and crashed his lips to yours. 

After that night, the two of you met almost daily, even if it was just for five minutes. Arthur kissed you as often as he could. It didn’t take long before the two of you finally made love. You’d been out hunting and it rained hard, chilling you both to the bone. You were both forced to strip down to your undergarments as your clothes had been soaked. You nestled close to one another and one thing led to another and you ended up sleeping with him. Arthur was more than satisfactory in bed, he knew how to push buttons you weren’t even aware existed. He seemed pleased with your performance as well. 

After having sex with him, you start to feel guilty for hiding so much from him. You’ve made love to him several times now and you feel incredibly close to him. More than anyone else you’ve known. He makes you feel like you don’t have to hide, you can be yourself. Perhaps now is the time you open up about your past. 

You meet Arthur in the saloon, where you always arrange to meet. You’ve made up your mind when you walk up to him. He smiles when he sees you and wraps an arm around you. He kisses you softly, not caring who might be around to see. 

“Well, should we go off huntin’ or do you wanna hit the hotel first and have a little fun?” he asks with a small growl. 

You blush a bit. “I’d love to go have some fun, but… we need to talk first.” 

His smile fades, but he nods. You feel even more guilty, the poor man probably thinks you’re going to break up with him. You take his hand and lead him outside to your horses and mount up. You lead him away from the town where you won’t be overheard. 

You dismount and Arthur follows suit. He walks over but doesn’t touch you, clearly under the impression you’re going to end things. 

“Arthur I… I feel I owe you an explanation,” you say, looking at your feet. “I haven’t been honest with you. Most of the things I’ve said have been little less than lies.” 

He furrows his brow, clearly taken aback by this. You look up at him. 

“I don’t want to lie anymore, Arthur. I’m….” you prepare yourself for the worst. Most men you can think of would be upset at dating an outlaw. “I’m an outlaw. The boys I run with are a gang.” 

He sighs and smiles. “Jesus, darlin’! You nearly scared me to death!” 

You look at him in shock. “What?”

“Honey, I don’t care that you’re an outlaw. You wanna hear one of my secrets?” He grabs your hands and leans in. “I’m an outlaw too. I run with a gang. Men, women, even a kid. Not my kid, course, but he’s a good boy.” 

You smile up at him, your gut feeling considerably lighter. “Oh thank God. Can I ask which gang?” 

He scratches the back of his neck. “I run with Dutch Van der Linde.” 

Your heart skips a beat. “Van der Linde?” you say.

He nods. “Somethin’ wrong?” 

You swallow. “Possibly. Arthur, I… I run with the O’Driscolls.” 

He lowers his brow and his eyes widen. His hands let go of yours. “The O’Driscolls? You run with those assholes?” 

“Arthur, I can explain. It wasn’t really my decision and-” 

“Save it,” he growls. “Your gang has caused nothin’ but heartbreak and anger for my gang. Van der Linde is like a father to me and Colm killed his girl.” 

“And Van der Linde killed his brother!” you say. You’re not really sure why you’re getting defensive, but you know one thing: Arthur has a huge problem with your truth. 

“Word is Colm hated his brother more than anyone else,” Arthur snarls. “But he killed Dutch’s girl. They were gonna get married! And you run with those fools? I can’t even tell ya how much trouble you’re bunch has caused us?” 

You blink away some tears. “I thought… Arthur, I thought you wouldn’t care. Just because I run with them doesn’t mean I’m like them. I hate Colm more than you can know, but I can’t get out.” 

“No one’s forced to do nothin’. You can leave whenever you want. But I’m gonna tell ya somethin’, Y/N.” His eyes darken and he squares his jaw. “If you choose to stay with them, you and I can’t be together no more. I refuse to be associated with a goddamn O’Driscoll.” 

You lower your head and look down. You want nothing more than to leave, but if you do, Colm will butcher you. “I want nothing more than to run away from him, Arthur. But… he’ll kill me.” 

He sighs heavily. “So you’re gonna choose to be a coward. Well, forget about things with me then, Y/N. I refuse to waste my time on an O’Driscoll.” 

His words sting and he marches over to his horse, mounting up and leaves. Out of all the things that could have happened when you decided to come clean, this was not it. Your chest suddenly tightens painfully and your stomach just feels like it’s gone. You take a step over to the cliff’s edge and sit down. You’ve never despised your gang more. They’ve taken everything from you. Your family, your freedom, and now your lover. You can’t say you blame Arthur for leaving and you can understand his loyalty to his gang. He’s also right about you and you feel like a coward. 

After a bit, you get yourself up and ride off to Six Point. When you get there, you finally let yourself cry. How can you go on with your gang now? You’d been so happy with Arthur, happier than you’ve been in years, and now it’s gone. Life with your gang seems even darker than before. 

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

The next day, Colm comes, but he doesn’t want you to return to the gang’s hideout yet. 

“Turns out Van der Linde was behind the massacre here,” he says. “Only one way he could’ve known about this place. That coward Kieran must’ve been behind this. I also heard a rumor.” He glares at you. “One of my boys said he saw you talkin’ with a fella named Arthur Morgan. You know he’s one of Dutch’s boys, right?” 

You swallow. “Yes. I was merely telling him this is our turf and he should get lost.” 

“I see, though I doubt it. From what my boy was tellin’, you looked like you were friendly with him. More than friendly even. I can handle one of my men feelin’ attracted to other men, as long as they don’t act on it. But I will not accept anyone falling for a Van der Linde, you got me, boy?” 

You nod your head. “Yes, sir. I am not attracted to Morgan, but I understand.” 

“You always was a bad liar. Now I need to go somewhere for a few more days, but when I come back, you’re comin’ with me. Now if I hear you’re fraternizing with any more of Dutch’s boys, you ain’t gonna like what I do to ya.” 

With that, Colm stomps out of the cabin and rides off. You’re left shaken. “Goddamn it, Arthur,” you say quietly. “Why must you be… you?”

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

Two days later, you’re still at Six Point. You haven’t left the cabin since Colm threatened you. You’re sure he’s staked out some of his men in Valentine to keep an eye on you. As far as Arthur goes, you’ve heard and seen nothing. You miss him more than you care to admit, but you’ve already given up on ever seeing him again. He made it perfectly clear how he feels about you. 

You’re beginning to wonder if running and taking your chances would be worth staying with Colm. After all, it’s not like you get much money from his jobs and you’re no more safer staying than you are running. He’s turned around and shot his men several times over stupid things. You weren’t one of them out of mere chance. More than that though, you’re tired of hiding. Hiding who you are and what you look like. 

Just as you’re beginning to think of a plan of escape, where you’ll go and what you’ll do, a knock comes on the door of Six Point. It’s not Colm. He never knocks. Perhaps it’s just a weary traveller in need of shelter from the torrential rain outside. You readjust your high bun and put your hat back on, pulling the masculine disguise back together. 

When you open the door, you don’t find a traveller. Arthur’s standing on the porch, his hat in his hands. 

“What are you doing here?” you say quietly, trying to cover your emotions. Your voice is surprisingly steady. You fold your arms around yourself, waiting for his anger. 

“I came to apologize for the things I said, Y/N,” he says softly. “I know I made some assumptions without botherin’ to ask you if they’re true. I know you ain’t runnin’ with Colm out of affection. He’s the reason you gotta dress like a man, I’m guessing.” 

You nod and take your hat off. “Yes. If he ever finds out, I’m dead.” 

Arthur purses his lips a bit. “Well, darlin’, I… I’m wonderin’ if I can propose somethin’ to ya.” He waits for you to respond. When you don’t, he goes on. “I was thinkin’ you could abandon Colm, come with me into my gang. You’d be the safest there.” 

You look up at Arthur. “Does Dutch know? Does he know that I’m an O’Driscoll?” 

He sighs. “I told him about ya. He knows. He… weren’t too happy when I told him how I feel about ya. But I told him you’re little more than a prisoner with Colm. You’re only loyal out of fear.” 

You sigh and turn around to face the interior of the cabin. “I’m guessing it’s not enough to convince this Dutch to let me in. He’ll probably question my loyalty to him as well.” You turn and look at Arthur. “If I stay here, I’ll remain a prisoner. But if I go with you, I’ll still be a prisoner. Arthur, I’m trapped no matter what I do.” 

He walks in after you. “Not if I have anythin’ to say about it. It ain’t like I’m bringin’ ya in against your will. I got a lot of weight in my gang, Y/N. If I say you’re stayin’ and you’re alright, Dutch will listen to me. It’ll help a lot when he sees how useful you are to have around. Just help with the work and you’ll be accepted soon enough. I ain’t sayin’ it’ll be easy, but it might be the best chance you have.” 

He waits for you to respond. He’s right, of course. You know you’re already walking a thin line with Colm and it’s only going to get thinner. Arthur may very well be your salvation and, like he said, within the ranks of Colm’s greatest enemies is where you’ll be safest. 

“Do I have to keep on disguising myself?” you ask. 

Arthur smiles. “Absolutely not. We got plenty o’ women in camp and none of ‘em are ashamed of looking like women.” 

You smile and reach up, undoing your bun. It feels good to let your hair flow down just past your collarbones. You run a hand through it, aware you need a shower. You quickly change into a set of more feminine clothes, which you bought with Arthur a few weeks back. After washing your face, you look hardly recognizable from the man the O’Driscolls think you are. You’ll be able to slip past them easily enough.

“Okay, Mr. Morgan,” you say. “Take me to Van der Linde.”