#and one of them was HORSEWHIPPED bitch

[polinator]

I have come here for one reason. To shout into the void of the internet.

Y'all. Y'all. Y'ALL. Bless your hearts. I love the Bridgerton canon. Since I read TVWLM over 20 years ago... well, liked it since then. Loved it more when I read AOFAG (and yeah, I know some people hate it, but I do not). And I say this as a person who has written fan fiction in this fandom and made physical things celebrating this universe.... It isn't that serious.

These are historical romance novels that lean into comedy a lot of the time. Historical rom coms, if you will. I wish people would stop interpreting them in the most tragic way possible without taking into consideration the intention Julia Quinn had when writing them.

Are there issues with scenes in some of the books? Yes. Do I adore every tiny thing in them? No.

But, what do you think JQ intended? Do you think she intended for her romantic heroes to come off as abusive sometimes? No. (Well, unless you are talking about Turner. For Turner the answer is most definitely yes.) The office scene in TVWLM, the lake scene in AOFAG, the engagement ball scene in RMB, and so on... they were written to be read like physical comedy. Like a screwball comedy. Like I Love Lucy where Ricky spanks Lucy. Is that problematic when we look back at it in 20fucking24? Yes, of course. But was Lucille Ball trying to imply Ricky Ricardo was an abuser? No. It was meant to be funny.

People take Colin to task for thinking about hitting Eloise. Y'all must be fucking saints if you've never thought about hitting your sibling. The fact he only hit her once I find amazing. My sister and I fought all the damn time. The love in the Bridgerton household must have been like a huge bubble. My parents were/are the most amazing parents God had ever put on this earth.... and my sister and I still fought. Also, I've def thought about strangling a boyfriend or two. And a child or two. Did I do it? No. But I thought about it. And you've definitely thought about doing bodily harm to someone. Because it's a human thing. It doesn't mean you are actually going to do it. And it certainly doesn't mean you're an abuser. Good god girl get a grip.

Julia just didn't think about these things as deeply as some in the fandom think she did. Like 20+ years ago when the books were first released they were popular but not that popular. People were not all over it analyzing everything like they are now. (I mean, we were to try to figure out who LW was at the time, but not everything else.)

On the same lines, Edmund was not an abusive father at all. Again, what do you imagine JQ's intentions were when she said Colin was horsewhipped? Do you think she actually meant beaten? No, of course fucking not. Over and over in her canon she shows and tells you what a great father Edmund was. She has absolutely no problem telling you if someone's dad or guardian are trash. Let us count the ways (spoilers below and trigger warnings for real):

Simon's father- pretended he didn't exist because he stuttered, fuck him up so badly he was going to not have an heir just to spite the hateful son of a bitch.

Sophie's dad- didn't give her any attention, left her to be raised by servants, only called her his ward, left her fate in Araminta's hands

Phillip's dad- horrible shit who actually beat Phillip with a whip, his scars are detailed, how he is beaten is detailed, his father's anger is detailed, is a huge part of the book, Phillip is afraid to touch his kids because he doesn't want to be like his father.

Gareth's dad- shit of a human being who treats his youngest son like trash because he is not his biological son, cut him off completely, tried to ruin the estate so he would have a shit ton of debt when he actually died, betrothed him to a girl with intellectual disabilities without his consent and said if he didn't marry her he couldn't go to school

Lucy's uncle- the third to worst person in a JQ book, stole money from their estate, betrothed her to (a very lovely) gay man because he was being blackmailed for treason, said he didn't give a fuck about her, made her believe her father was the treasonous bastard so he could guilt her into marrying the man, threatened Lucy at knifepoint, said he was going to watch while Lucy's marriage was consummated and implied that if her new husband didn't do it he would let the man's father rape her to ensure it happened

And who could forget... Hugh's father- a psychopathic piece of filth so wretched it's hard to list all the horrible things he's done from memory, but just here's just a taste: beats his sons when they do anything he considers to be wrong including misremember some part of their family tree and he enjoys it, repeatedly hired sex workers to rape his gay son and then would encourage them to beat him and helped beat him with his cane when the son wouldn't have sex with them, raped his wife repeatedly (and their sons could hear it), is so obsessed with his lineage that when Hugh, one son, was accidentally crippled he paid men to follow poor Daniel (the guy who slipped and accidentally shot him) to the continent to murder him and didn't stop until his son told him he would kill himself if Daniel died, he bribed servants so he could keep tabs on Hugh because that title is super important, he then kicked Hugh on his painful, injured leg and drugged him so he could tie him to the bed so that he could lock a lady in the room and force their marriage for the sake of that damn title, and more I'm sure I can't remember. AND he did all this without a trace of remorse.

And probably other fathers I can't remember. What does Julia Quinn say about Edmund? He was the best of men and of fathers. Now, thinking about JQ and how she's written alllll these other fathers, do you think she really meant that Colin was actually horsewhipped? No. She probably thought spanking but make it Regency.

I love her books, but do you think she's deep diving into research? Probably not. I mean, she forgot that she wrote Colin's birthday was in January. At the beginning of 'Just Like Heaven' Colin and Penelope are married and in the middle of the story they aren't even engaged yet. She is not thinking about things that deeply.

They are supposed to be fun and romantic and sometimes humorous and the drama... they are not meant to be analyzed and dissected like you would 'Invisible Man.' They aren't supposed to be all moody and intense-- it's not Dickens. Emotional, yeah of course, they are romances, but not taken so seriously.

But you know, don't come for my Bridgerverse canon babies, or I will cut you because I do take my love for them seriously. (Well, not Turner, you can have Turner.)

@your3fundamentaltruths I am not coming at you about Turner... well maybe a little bit. But you and I and maybe like five other people know the Bridgerverse well enough to get the reference.

[noxangelus]

Turbulence

How… did I even get to this point?

The thought crossed my mind as I leaned against the balcony, smoking a cigarette. The scent of the cigarette filled my nostrils and I breathed in the polluted air as I stood there. I always thought smoking was gross. I never understood why people smoked at all. Yet here I was.

I’d always thought that I’d already hit my lowest point, that I might as well just die already. But each time, I still managed to claw my way out of whatever hole I’d fallen into. I’d deluded myself into accepting the fact that I was just a shitty person that would do nothing to fulfill my own needs. Even at the expense of others.

“Elian?”

I turned to see Lyssa sitting on the bed. She looked so vulnerable, sitting there naked. I let out my breath.

“Just go home,” I said.

She looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t. She got dressed and left.

I leaned against the balcony again. The cool metal rubbed against my bare back as I let my head fall backwards. 

“You shouldn’t do that.”

“Fuck off,” I muttered as I closed my eyes. “Can’t you give me some privacy?”

“You’re half naked on your balcony,” he informed me like I wasn’t aware of the fact. “But that’s not what I was commenting on. If you lean back like that, you might fall off.”

“So what if I did?” I opened my eyes and looked at him.

He shrugged at me. “It’d be a pain to clean up. There’s kids in this building. What if they see your body?”

I sneered. “You think I care about kids?”

“Pretty shit thing to do, if you ask me,” he continued. “Why would you want to traumatize a kid?”

“I didn’t ask you shit. Leave me alone.”

He didn’t say anything. His face was turned in the other direction, so I couldn’t see his expression.

I exhaled, then dropped the cigarette on the ground and crushed it with my shoe. I started heading back inside my apartment.

“I saw her.”

I narrowed my eyes and turned to him. “And?”

“She didn’t look very happy.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re my neighbor, not my therapist. Mind your own business.”

He turned to look at me. “Don’t you hate yourself?”

I stared back at him for a few seconds, wondering how I should answer his question. When I couldn’t think of one, I just laughed. He didn’t smile or react at all, just kept staring.

“Are you being cruel to her?”

I stopped laughing. “I told you to mind your own damn business.” Then I went inside and slammed the door shut.

--

I did hate myself.

But the concept was nothing new for me. I couldn’t even think of a time that I didn’t hate myself. For most of my life, I sank into depravity. The bad of the world never really shocked me. What I couldn’t shake, however, was a nagging sense of morality deep inside me. I was cruel to Lyssa. I took advantage of the fact that she had feelings for me. I knew she was lying to herself about being straight. And I kept pulling her into this twisted relationship, deeper and deeper. I knew there was really no way out for her. If she did “break up” with me, then what would she do? Marry a man? It’s not like she could ever admit to herself that she was lesbian. There were nights back then where she would tell me everything. About how she grew up in a repressed, religious family. How her father had sexually abused her. She told me all that because she trusted me. And what did I do? I was cruel.

Lyssa’s story hadn’t shocked me. Maybe I was the only person who took it all in a stride. Maybe that’s why she liked me. I didn’t tell her about my own life, but I had a feeling that she knew even if I didn’t. There was no way that I wouldn’t have reacted if I hadn’t had a similar backstory.

“Are you being cruel to her?”

I don’t know why Dex’s words bothered me so much. He was right, and I knew it. I’d known long before he asked me. But it still fueled this anger inside of me. What the hell did Dex know about either of us? Did he have any idea why I was being cruel? Had he ever considered that maybe I wasn’t a piece of shit? 

Though I hated myself, I still felt defensive of my own actions. Yeah, I had some fucking trauma too. I was screwed in the head too. No one ever tried to protect me back then. Everyone seemed to only see what they wanted in me. They didn’t realize that I was still screaming and clawing under the surface. Maybe things would be easier if I were dead.

--

“Is it good?”

Her yearning expression stirred something inside of me. I stared at her for a second, then kissed her instead of answering. She pressed her body against mine. Our skin was slick with sweat. 

After we finished, Lyssa showered. I sat on the edge of the bed, trying to process my emotions. There was something alluring about her. She wasn’t particularly seductive or anything like that. Lyssa was clumsy and awkward most of the time, but there was just a certain sexual charm to her movements. The thought disturbed me.

After a few minutes, I let out a big sigh before heading to the bathroom. She seemed surprised when I opened the door and stepped in the shower. She opened her mouth to say something, but I kissed her before she could. Our lips crushed together as I pulled her waist towards me. She stumbled forward and her soaped up skin made contact with mine. 

“Wait,” she said breathlessly. “Wait, I--”

I didn’t let her finish, just smashed my lips to hers again. She shivered as I ran my hands over her body.

Shit, I thought.

--

When we got out of the shower, she said she felt dizzy. Her face was all flushed, probably from the heat. I told her to lay down on the bed while I made us drinks. 

As I mixed our drinks, she suddenly asked me, “Why are you being nice to me?”

I stopped and stared at my hands. Was I being nice to her? I hadn’t done anything particularly kind. Clearly, though, there was a drastic change in my behavior since the last time she came over. Enough for her to comment on, at least.

“I’m not,” I said finally.

I turned to look at her. She was still dripping from the shower. She was laying on my bed in just a towel. Her eyes stared at me earnestly. Then she blinked and smiled.

“Okay.” And she turned away.

Why did she accept my words so easily? Did she really trust me that much?

I finished up making our drinks and brought a glass over to her. She sat up and accepted it.

“Thank you.”

“Whatever,” I muttered and sat down next to her.

She sipped her drink quietly. After a few moments, she said, “What if I get drunk?”

“Then you can spend the night.”

I expected her to smile at the suggestion or something, but she didn’t. She frowned at her drink. I considered asking her what was wrong, but I didn’t. I didn’t really care, honestly.

“Stay here,” I said, and went out to the balcony just to put some space between us. 

“Hey, look. You’re not naked for once.”

I shut my eyes. “God, do you ever go inside your apartment?” I snapped. “Or do you just wait out here, trying to catch me naked?”

Dex grinned. “If you didn’t want people to see you naked, you’d put on clothes before coming out in public.”

Something about his face pissed me the fuck off. “What, you think my nakedness is an invitation or something?” I spat. “You make me sick.”

He stopped smiling. “No, I don’t,” he said seriously. 

“Just leave me alone.”

He sighed. He sat there on his balcony for a few more minutes before just going inside. 

I sipped my drink, trying to calm my nerves. I wonder if Lyssa’s feeling better, I thought briefly before laughing to myself. Who was I trying to fool? I didn’t really care.

Her face popped into my mind. That expression on her face. Did she desire me that much? Something about her desire was intoxicating. Who didn’t want to be worshiped? I craved that desire she held for me. But at the same time, Lyssa disgusted me. At times, I thought about hurting her physically. Would she cry? Or would she accept the abuse since it came from me?

I chuckled to myself. There it was. The familiar hatred inside of me. I wasn’t being “nice” to her. I was still the same fucking Elian.

When I went back inside, she was curled up in bed, asleep. She had on one of my shirts. The collar was pulled up over her nose. 

“God fucking damn it,” I muttered. Why did I give her alcohol at all? I should’ve just kicked her out like I always did. I even promised to babysit her. What the hell was I thinking?

I grabbed her empty glass from my nightstand and took it to the kitchen. I dumped both our glasses in the sink before returning to my bed. I stood there, watching as she slept for a few minutes, wondering what I should do with her. I couldn’t think of anything, so I just pulled a blanket over her and crawled in on the other side.

--

I knew how Lyssa felt. I had been in the same position she was in. So why did I continue to treat her like this?

Her name was Julie. 

It was back in high school, when I was still caught up in the shitty living situation with my family. In a moment of vulnerability, the words all tumbled out at once. I told her about what I endured every day. How much I hated my life. How much I hated myself. She wept when I told her. At the time, I thought it was because of her compassion. But now, I don’t know what it was.

Julie had invited me to some dumb party she’d gotten invited to. I remembered drinking, then throwing up a lot. They had weed too, so I smoked some of that. The whole night just felt shitty, and it was painful to think of it even now. I had no idea whose house I was even at. Julie held my hair back when I threw up into the bushes. She gave me water and babysat me the whole night. At the end of the night, when we were sitting in the dirt of the backyard, I told her that I loved her. It just came out.

Her face twisted with disgust after I told her and she left me sitting in the dirt by myself. I cried for hours, just sitting there by myself. When it came morning, I stumbled back home only to find out that Julie died that night while I cried all alone. She’d gotten into a car with a drunk driver and died on impact.

Julie’s reaction and death wasn’t what stirred up the contempt inside me. The contempt had built for years before I even realized I was in love with her. I’d been doomed from the start.

--

I was surprised to see that Lyssa was still here in the morning. I woke up with my face wet from tears. I’d dreamt about Julie. 

Lyssa was still asleep, laying there. I felt a heavy feeling in my heart and pulled her close to me. I buried my face into her shoulder and tried to keep myself from sobbing.

The two of us were deplorable.

[popculturebuffet]

Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Restrospective: The Raider of the Copper Hill! “You Got Rich Son”

Hello all you happy people! And welcome back to my retrospective of the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck! It’s been far too long, almost three months since we last checked in with Scrooge and frankly I feel i’ve been spacing these entries out too much for this one and for the retrospectives that aren’t paid for in general. So expect at least one McDuck adventure a month till I finish, possibly two when I can swing it like this month. 

Now i’m done beating myself up, when we last left off a younger more naive, more optimistic and less experienced Scooge took up a career as a cowboy for  Cattle Baron, gained his first sidekick in the form of his Horse Hortense, and took out some cattle thieves with the help of Teddy Fucking Roosevelt. 

This chapter marks the end of the story’s first act. The first act is about a younger and far nicer Scrooge: still onrey and still a cheapskate, but still a good kid and far more outwardly friendly and welcoming, a far cry from the bitter untrusting man we come to know. This chapter is one of the reasons why, as Scrooge learns a hard lesson about wealth and success, the sacrifices one needs to make for family and about sticking your hand in a lightbulb while it’s plugged in. So join me under the cut as Scrooge meets another valuable mentor, one of his greatest enemies, and about 50 feet of barbed wire. 

We begin with the end of Scrooge’s time as a ranch hand and cowpunch. With homesteaders moving in and dividing up the land, Murdo simply dosen’t have the space for cattle baroning anymore and has to let Scrooge go and head back to texas. We do get a great bit of Scrooge wrapped in barbed wire, having gone to cut some down so Murdo could move the herd out. 

So with his Job done and parting on good terms with his old boss, Scrooge sets up his own homestead on some land near the Anaconda Silver Mine, trying to make it as a prospector, starting on the path that would eventually lead him to riches.. in about a decade and a half.

 So Scrooge bemoans his rotten luck over Dinner with a stranger, Marcus Daly owner of said mine... who just.. randomly sat down to have dinner with a 17 year old. 

Marcus belays his own woes: While Scrooge has failed at what he tried to do, having gotten into both steamboating and cattle punching too late to go anywhere with either, Daly has a silver mine that’s full of copper: decent amoutns of it but still not what his investors wanted. 

Both however find their fortunes reverse in an instant in the weirdest way possible. The light goes out at their table and Scrooge tries to adjust it only to electcute himself. To his shock...

He finds out it’s running on electricty, which is starting to become widespread.. and requires vast amounts of copper wiring. Scrooge is back in the game but finds trouble getting equipment as the local seller naturally is a jackass who jacks up the price. Scrooge instead sells the gold teeth his dad gave him to the nearest gentleman after talking him into it. . And i’ts not even the weirdest transaction i’ve seen this week. 

For the record those weird things are the guy on the left’s skinflakes, his power is to make naked golems of himself out of his dandruff and skin flakes and what have you, while the guy on the right is paying for a mutant with a star for a head. So yeah a scottish cowboy selling his ancestor’s dentures to pay for mining gear is refelshingly tame after all of this. 

So we get the comic equivleant of a montage as Scrooge starts his work at prospecting, making a portable homesteader shack as a miner owns any land he lives on, and moving around to try and find it, but he runs into a problem: with his last two careers he had mentors to help him learn what to do: Pothole taught him riverboating and Murdo helped him learn to ride the trails. Here he has no one and while you can self teach a lot of things prospecting isn’t one of them. 

He end sup finding one though as a rich gentleman asking about the mine happens to wander by: Howard D. Rockerduck. If that names sounds familiar it should as he’s indeed the father of exactly who your thinking of and we meet a young 10 or so year old john who asks him to stop dealing with a grubby workman. We also find out whose responsible for him turning out ot be such a piece of work as his mother’s response to his father telling him “I used to be a grubby workman is well... word’s cant’ do this amount of classist bulslhit justice. 

Seriously his unnamed wife is so odious it hurts. And how the fuck did an honest, kind man like Howard end up with this bitch? It’ sbaffled me every time i’ve read this: did he marry for money? is he a gold digger? go down gold dig get down? Is she just THAT good in bed? Did he just make a horrible mistake one night? Did she lie to him about who she was? Was she replaced by a skrull? I have questions no duck comic has properly explained.. and if they have please tell me.  Also it does tickle me we’re getting a bit with a duck named howard though sadly he wears a top hat instead of a nice little bowler. And if you don’t know who howard the duck is.. shame on you. And if you’ve seen the movie.. my deepest sympathies. 

While Howard laments wanting to horsewhip his son, this was a century ago with change mind you standards were different and also John sucks. Howard crticizes Scrooge’s techqniue after introducing himself, and Scrooge and him get into a bit of a tizzy, with Howard offering to teach him for two cents.. but the hostility quickly desolves hours later as Scrooge realizes Howard was right and he’d been doing things completely wrong and the thrill of hard honest work again has washed away any ego driven competiviness. 

I”ll get more into Howard in a second but he does eventually strike copper, and while the vein is full it’s also thin. But Howard has one final trick and takes Scroogey for an ore test. I tried to find more on this but just found a lot of ways to do it yourself and what not. I”m now really intrigued how they did this and found the content of minerals. I know it’s a dull subject but i’m curious how they did it with the technology of the time. Did they just use acids like I found? If so how’d they get them? I do say this is one of the great qualities of Rosa’s works: he makes you want to learn more about history. I looked up more about TR after the last chapter and now I want to know how the hell metallurgy worked in the late 1800′s. 

We then get an intresting interacton as Scrooge.. warmly greets the townsfolk and vice versa.. yes the same Scrooge who as an adult would be introduced proclaming...

Is warm, optimistic and wholeheartedly belieives...

As you can probably tell by Howard’s reaction and what Scrooge becomes.. this story’s all about shattering that notion and is the first of two to shatter the poor kid’s trust in people and make him into the bitter old sod we know. 

The sample comes back 55% positive... which leaves Howard rushing to get Scrooge to a court house. As it turns out there’s an old, very real for the time, mining law called the Law of Apex: whoever owns the land closest to where an ore vein is on the surface owns the whole thing... so legally Scrogoe owns the ENTIRE ANACONDA COPPER MINE, which at this point as detailed in the time skip has gone from struggling to utterly thriving and sucessful. Whoever owns the land at the time the Judge rules it gets the mine.. and Scrooge’s friends, who seconds ago were concerned about him being dragged into court.. are now all scrambling to take his fortune, something Howard dosen’t seem at all suprised about. 

But while this may be a kinder, more naive Scrooge McDuck, it’s still SCROOGE MCDUCK. His response is to cut a nearbye power wire and swing it tarzan style over to hortense and ride her back ahead of the mob... with the electric wire slapping her rear and causing her to go extra fast.. and also quit. So Scrooge stands alone but manages to take out some of the ruffians with his shack while John and the Judge rush to the site. As for Scrooge well... you want to see what a McDuck family beserker rage against an ENTIRE angry mob of opportunistic assholes look like? 

And this isn’t even the most badass thing Scrooge will do this series. Or even in the next few issues. That’s how awesome this series is: fighting an angry mob SOLO with simply his pure rage and whatever he can grab and throw. And he WINS. He’s exausted and passes out, falling out of the sky on his final opponent.. but he took out what was at the LEAST 50 men, and ONLY passed out because one of them threw dynamite in his out house.. and even THAT didn’t kill him or put him out, simply casuing him to land on said dynamite throwing idiot and wins. 

We find out Rockerduck actually was one of the mine’s owners but helped Scrooge anyway: he has more than enough money and all it’s going to do in the end is go to a greedy brat. Marcus Daly shows up and while he’ll get the law overturned eventually, he still has to shut down while that happens and finds the right officials to bribe. And this is the 1800s... you gotta go by train to do your bribes. You can’t just do that shit over email and hidden bank accounts. Daly offers him 10,000.. but given what Scrooge could earn even before he got his mine back, Scrooge turns it down. 

However this victory is bittersweet as Scrooge warmly greets his friends.. only for one to cuss him out and the other to tell him to get loss. We then get one of my faviorite exchanges in this story.

This whole Panel is a masterwork. The sheer INNOCENCE on Scrooge’s face, almost looking like Donald, desperately wondering what he did, when as Howard points out.. he did nothing wrong. He simply got successful and they resent him for it. 

This has been a hard paragraph for me to write as I want to tread carefully. People do have good reasons to scorn the rich or celebrtiies sometimes. Some rich people or those in the media are genuinely terrible. Jeff Bezos, Tucker Carlson, Mel Gibson, Louie CK, Joss Whedon and even someone as low on the totem pole as Doug Walker is odious. And of course we all can think of one odious example of rich bastard i’d rather not think of, especially when thinking of John D Rockerduck and what he’l lbecome as an adult that i’m not giving a pleasure of the name drop but came to mind. 

But even for good people becoming succesful puts up a barrier between you and other people: Fans of yours will admire you or write fanfic or what have about you without even knowing you, i’ve been on that side, and some people will hate you just because without valid reason, especially in this day and age. Success breeds resentment and even people you trusted and loved can sometimes turn on you. It’s the double eged sword of achieving your dreams: You get what you wanted but you often loose what you had. 

And it was no diffrent two centuries ago, with Scrooge’s friends only being friendly as long as it suited them, turning on him first to steal his chance at glory and then to scorn him for daring to achieve it. Some people.. are only there for you as long as your not above them. And sometimes you can be happy. Look at Tom Hanks, who has a lovely family and a long and storied career. Or Linkara, a youtuber who has been at this for over a decade, has tons of fans, a loving wife with her own succesful channel, and just recently got contacted by his childhood heroes. You CAN be happy and successful.. it’s just very hard to make it that far. 

One of the central points of life and times is that’s often not the case: You can get what you want but it comes at a cost. And it’s how you pay that price that will determine how happy you are. Another central point intertwined with it is it’s not the journey but the destination, and i’ts how Scrooge takes that journey that ultimately leads him where he ends up good and bad. And we get an all to telling all too foreboding hint in how he takes everyone he knew for at least a year turning on him overnight. 

When faced with his first real loss on this Journey that wasn’t material.. he dosen’t care. He has his money and riches and that’s enough. And as we’ll see that attitude will cost him greatly. Howard is irate for a moment, hoping he wasn’t wrong in trusting Scrooge.. and indeed, for now, turns out to have placed his faith in the right person as Scrooge gets a telegram: his family needs him. And while he could stay, turn his back on them, and earn MILLIONS.. he tells Howard  to tell the owner he’s taking the deal. For now when given the choice between his family and his fortune, SCrooge will choose them. Sadly.. that won’t hold true forever. 

With this being the end of his time in the story, as he has a still insufferable John buy him a horsewhip for horrific but darkly funny reasons, as John brags about how rich his father is not realizing he’s buying his own whupping tool, i’d like to touch on Howard D Rockerduck and how amazing he is. Rosa managed to pack a throughly interesting, throughly engaging character into only 8 pages. While Rockerduck DID show up earlier in of ducks dimes and destinys, he wasn’t really fleshed out or named and only showed up for one page so still 9 pages total. 

But in those we see a kind and noble man whose easily what Scrooge COULD have been, kind, noble, generous, hardworking and willing to give up money to help people. He’s a good man.. but even he’s seen the sacrifice Money brings. He’s clearly lost friends, lost a sense of peace, and married the wrong Woman, whose poisoned his children into a spoiled brat who will only grown into an even more spoield adult in both continuities.. if raised quite a bit earlier in the 2017 cartoon as he was made scrooge’s contemporary there rather than a child, but semeantics. Point is Howard hismelf isn’t wholly satisfied with his success.. and that’s what he and Scrooge will forever have in common, with Scrooge, likely as a result of meeting the Rockerducks, fearing an indadiquate inheritor and someone squandering what he worked hard for. Though his reasons for not taking up a wife as we’ll see eventually, if outside the main 12 part story but I intend to cover the subchapters in their own time, aren’t entirely motivated by avoiding goldigging but a broken hard and his own stubborness. 

For now though we bid Howard and america adue. Scrooge however for once ends an occupation with less bitterness. Unlike his last two ventures where he made it out with only enough to get to the next one here he made it out ahead: he now has a decent suit, likely bought for him by Howard given he hasn’t cashed the check yet, I know this as it’s a major plot point for next time, 10,000 dollars.. and experince. He may of not gotten all the money he was due on this venture, but he learned more valuable skills and he feels with a land like america, the next opportunity to earn some dough is just waiting for him to get back. And as the chapter ends he muses that maybe the country could use a symbol of this countries boundless opportunity...

Final Thoughts for the Raider of the Copper Hill:

This chapter is one of my favorites. It’s nicely paced, something Rosa himself admits was often a struggle as he had to cover years at a time, has a wonderful new mentor for Scrooge, and sets up a lot of the tragedy to come in the last act beautifully. It’s a nice closer for our first act, showing Scrooge has come out of his first trip to america wiser, more experinced and more hopeful, but at heart still the same kind and noble kid he left Glasgow as. The next act is about the change of that boy into a man, how he will finally find his fortune after some more adventures.. and how the last viestges of his kindess and optimisim towards others die at the hands of a certain fake scotish gentleman. 

Next Life And Times: As is tradition for this series act openers, Scrooge returns home.. and just in time to get his castle back, fight a duel and go to heaven and back. So an average McDuck tuesday then. 

If you liked this review follow for more. And if you liked it a lot join my patreon so I can keep making these and hit my stretch goals. Even at just the 2 dollar level you get access to my discord and your pick of shorts whenever I do a series of them and with Goofy and Donald’s birthdays being the next ones to be celebrated you can’t pick a better time. patreon.com/popculturebuffet See you at the next rainbow. 

[nellygwyn]

More of his awfulness:

• Forced her to write a confession of her 'crimes' (starting with any misconduct in childhood, until adulthood) and told her if she did this, he would treat her better. Instead, he used her admittance of a couple of sexual dalliances, her abortions and her inability to bond with some of her children due to post-natal depression as a new stick with which to beat her. He ended up publishing these confessions, just because he could, and used them as significant evidence that he was justified to treat Mary the way he had.

• Starved her. In her teens and early 20s, Mary was described as plump and pretty (she had an 'embonpoint') but Stoney thought she was unattractive thus and so, denied her any substantial amount of food. Those her saw her during this period were shocked that her previous round, blushing face was now gaunt and sunken in.

• He didn't allow her to buy ANY new clothes and this is bad in the 18th century because....as her husband (and, despite Mary's initial attempts to bar him from it, the man in charge of her money), he was expected to keep his wife well dressed and well looking. In 18th century divorce trials, abused wives often brought up the fact that their husband denied them new clothes or any appropriate clothes at all. They couldn't see friends or be around other people in the outside world if they weren't appropriately attired.

• He decided that the fits and seizures of anxiety Mary had suffered since she was a child were made up, and that she had them so frequently during their marriage just to upset him. He tried to make her agree but she wouldn't, though he even went so far as to get his personal physician and friend to take his side and suggest that Mary was merely faking illness just to be a bitch.

• Also abused his own younger sister (also called Mary), who came from Ireland to stay at Gibside with her brother and sister-in-law. The elder Mary and the younger became very close as they were both essentially imprisoned by Stoney and he used a horsewhip on BOTH of them. On one occasion, when the two ladies were dressing for the theatre, Stoney stormed in and found his sister not yet ready and so he beat her with his horsewhip. His wife tried to stop him and he beat her too. His sister's lash wounds (on the back of her neck) were so bad that they had to cancel the theatre trip but the following evening, Stoney dragged his sister from her bed and made her attend the theatre, wrapped up in muslin to hide her wounds.

• Hacked off Mary's (his wife) long hair, after seeing it down during breakfast and accusing her of being too familiar with the male servants.

So before embarking on reading this biography of the awful second marriage of Mary Bowes, Countess of Strathmore to Andrew Robinson Stoney, I knew quite a bit about them already because Mary’s estate of Gibside is very near where my mum grew up and my grandparents live. I’ve been to the Gibside estate and Mary’s gardens and greenhouses a few times. Andrew Robinson Stoney is still, collectively, remembered by locals, even though he was around in the 1700s. He’s known as ‘Stoney Bowes’ and he’s the local boogie man, I suppose.

So, I knew that he abused Mary terribly and abused maids and sex workers too. Basically any woman he came into contact with, he used. He might have even murdered his first wife for her money. But honestly, it’s somehow worse than the local rumours had me believing. For example, after discovering that Mary had signed a pre-nup agreement essentially prohibiting him from having the monopoly over HER fortune, he chased her around her room with a sword, cornered her and beat her with the hilt for half an hour, according to servants’ testimony. And he would always beat her thus before she signed anything, particularly when the forms she was forced to sign were about money, because Stoney wanted her to be suitably dazed so she couldn’t read the smallprint and protest. Her dictated her letters; we only know this because she would occasionally manage to slip in a postscript to say that she had no choice but to sound cold in her letters. And he decided what she wore, and if he didn’t like it, he tore the garment or bonnet up in his teeth.

Margaret Wells was truly right when she said money was the only power a woman had in 18th century England, when it boils down to it. Mary had A LOT of money and social clout and Stoney literally beat it out of her until she was and had nothing. That was HER money, not even money from her first marriage to the Earl of Strathmore.