#charles is absolutely right: HE is a large part of the problem today

[il-predestinato]

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[suga-kookiemonster]

It's interesting you talk about Magneto, etc, because we had a large (far right) part of geek channels going absolutely insane because the main character in The Boys (captain something that is the personification of white supremacy) was being "controlled" by a black woman now?!? And started going with the good old "the woke culture is ruining things for us". god forbid a black woman is one of the main characters😒 there was more to it, but mainly this and how sometimes we don't see things from different perspectives until a second time viewing

I think the older I get the more I see things differently. Magneto was portrayed as a traitor who lost himself in the sauce but everything he always did was show everyone that hiding and conforming doesn't work at all. Charles subsided his expectations and got to the point of making a private oasis for his students whilst thousands of other mutants kept going out there on their own either because they couldn't find him or because their powers weren't "pretty" enough

What Charles did with Jean was also very fucked up, he entrapped and brainwashed her to the point she wasn't exerting her full powers because it wasn't beneficial for his idea of "subsided civilized" people just to be betrayed and be treated as monsters that needed a cure

I think he's aware of it though, because throughout everything he still calls Magneto his friend and vice versa, he might know he's wrong, but still kept going, even fighting against his own people to appease the good human kind that have never been kind to them

It's pretty simple, complying only works until one of your own dies/get's hurt/get's neglected, we got here where we are through violence much like in X-Men, it wasn't easy, it wasn't without a fuss and it wasn't without resistance. So everything we do to break this cycle and create our own will be nothing short of violent because we're changing something, it's simple as that

But people still blame him because we're taught that complying works, they just forget to tell us for who this complying works for

phewwww, truly a word this good monday morning! 👏🏾👏🏾 your last paragraph sums it allll the way up. charles is part of the problem, and so are people who say they support a cause until that fight starts to affect them specifically. if you wanna think about the bigger picture, then THINK about the bigger picture and understand that if you benefit in any way from injustice against a people, then fixing that injustice is going to therefore make you uncomfortable.

charles is a mutant, but the way his mutation presents is not visible, so he can easily pass as human. he also is a wealthy man, so that should tell you exactly what kind of worldview and privilege he has. he and raven are NOT the same. the world doesn’t allow her the same grave it allows him by default. so 1000% agree with you on your point of him making a fantasy safe haven while all other mutants are stuck being discriminated against he never was and never will be. just willfully blind to keep himself and his warped sense of what’s “right” comfortable smh. just ignoring the fact deferring to the forces trying to keep you in line will NOT make things better for you if it doesn’t benefit them to do so, because without force, things typically don’t move.

with everything going on in the world today, i guess it’s no wonder that charles ass triggered me lol. life lesson for everybody today: don’t be a white feminist. don’t be a white savior. don’t be an uncle tom. don’t be a charles. gone and kumbaya somewhere else unless you have actual plans on how to really help the people who deserve justice! until then, revolutionaries will always fight for their right to survive, and you can’t dictate how they choose to do that!

also, i really need to watch the boys! i think i’ve seen three episodes or so—I started watching it because I watched all of gen v and was intrigued by that world, but i got distracted by life. you just convinced me to pick it back up!

[denimbex1986]

'Moviegoers turned out in droves this weekend for writer-director Christopher Nolan's new film Oppenheimer, fueling an expectations-shattering domestic box office debut of $80 million. The three-hour-long biopic recounts the life story of J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), the theoretical physicist widely known as the “father of the atomic bomb,” and has been praised by critics for its nuanced examination of a complicated historical figure.

The movie is based on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2006 biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of numerous accounts of Oppenheimer's life and legacy. But according to Oppenheimer's grandson, Charles Oppenheimer, the famous physicist's family has their own their own approach to depictions of him and additional nuance to include.

Charles was born near Santa Fe, N.M., in April 1975, after both his grandfather and grandmother, Katherine "Kitty" Puening Oppenheimer (played by Emily Blunt), had passed away. However, he says he grew up having a very open dialogue about his grandfather's work with his father, Peter Oppenheimer, who spent several years of his early childhood at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project.

TIME spoke with Charles about what Oppenheimer gets right about his grandfather, what he would have changed, and the work he's doing to further Oppenheimer's legacy today.

TIME: How was your grandparents' story told to you when you were growing up?

Charles Oppenheimer: Like most kids, I heard about my grandparents through my parents, and there was a marker at one point that stands out in my memory of speaking about Robert Oppenheimer being a famous person who had done his duty during World War II. He might have been a soldier, but his skills were in science, so he used science to do what he had to do during the war. But within the family, we had very open conversations. So my dad was always there if I had a question once I started hearing more about how we were related to a person that other people were talking about. I was always able to initiate a conversation and I do that to this day, especially with my father Peter.

So there was ongoing, open communication about who your grandfather was.

With a very big dividing line. Within the family, we absolutely talked about it as much as possible. With anyone outside of the family, my father doesn't discuss anything [about him] if he can avoid it.

Do you feel there are misconceptions about your grandfather?

There's such an incredible historical record of him. It's impressive, like every detail of every conversation of his spring break in 1924 is analyzed. If you have that much information and enough people writing and rewriting and interpreting, you can pick up any thread of meaning and narrative. The one that's developing right now is about as positive and as famous of an interpretation of him as you could have. And I find that being related to him and having insight into who he was doesn't always seem that interesting to other people. They're happy to ask a historian or a writer, and it's not necessarily true that my impression of his values is taken as the answer. So I kind of struggle with saying that I have a view of who he is and what he cared about and it not always getting across. That being said, I think with as much attention as is put on him, there is a large understanding of the complexity of the stuff he dealt with and the problems and opportunities of ushering science into the world.

You saw the movie. Were there parts that hit you the hardest, emotionally?

I was bracing myself for not feeling great about it, even though I talked to Chris Nolan and was very impressed by him. I saw him work on the set with an amazing intensity when I visited once or twice, and we had a great conversation. But I didn't know, am I going to love it? Am I going to hate it? I often have that reaction to biographies and pundits when they talk about my grandfather. I feel like they're missing something. And sometimes it really feels personal. Like when somebody wants to start a fight with you on the schoolyard, they'll talk about your family member. But during the movie, I found myself accepting and liking it. I thought it told a compelling story and I could just take it as art that was really engaging. I was really happy to have that reaction. I didn't expect it.

Were there parts that struck you as historically or emotionally inaccurate?

When I talked to Chris Nolan, at one point he said something roughly like, 'I know how to tell a story out of this subject. There are going to be parts that you have to dramatize a bit and parts that are changed. As family members, I think you're going to like some parts and dislike some parts.' That's probably led into my acceptance of the movie, even though I saw it very late, just when it came out. As a dramatized representation of the history, it was really largely accurate. There are parts that I disagree with, but not really because of Nolan.

The part I like the least is this poison apple reference, which was a problem in American Prometheus. If you read American Prometheus carefully enough, the authors say, 'We don't really know if it happened.' There's no record of him trying to kill somebody. That's a really serious accusation and it's historical revision. There's not a single enemy or friend of Robert Oppenheimer who heard that during his life and considered it to be true. American Prometheus got it from some references talking about a spring break trip, and all the original reporters of that story—there was only two maybe three—reported that they didn't know what Robert Oppenheimer was talking about. Unfortunately, American Prometheus summarizes that as Robert Oppenheimer tried to kill his teacher and then they [acknowledge that] maybe there's this doubt.

Sometimes facts get dragged through a game of telephone. In the movie, it's treated vaguely and you don't really know what's going on unless you know this incredibly deep backstory. So it honestly didn't bother me. It bothers me that it was in the biography with that emphasis, not a disclaimer of, this is an unsubstantiated rumor that we want to put in our book to make it interesting. But I like some of the dramatization. I thought Einstein's conversation with Oppenheimer at the end was really effective even though it wasn't historical.

What was your role, if any, in the movie?

The family policy around media, books, and what I'd call the cult of Oppenheimer, is not to participate in it. It's a business to write and talk about Oppenheimer, and the model that my dad chose is: 'It's not very classy, and I'm not going to be involved in publicly representing Oppenheimer in ways that other people do as a business.' But when I saw this movie was coming out, I said, 'Wow, that's going to be really big.' I also have a big interest in representing my grandfather's values for today's world. That's the most important thing in my opinion. So I reached out said, 'Hey, could I get involved?', and Chris Nolan was nice enough to give me a courtesy call through Kai Bird—whose book I just criticized. I do think American Prometheus is really good, I just had a complaint about that one part.

So Chris Nolan gave me a call. He had finished the script and he said, 'I have so much material with American Prometheus.' I explained that my dad probably would be unlikely to talk. But I don't think he needed input from the family. And as an artist, he obviously has every right to do that. You need art to tell this story. And it's just a fact that when somebody writes a biography about our family, we don't have input or the ability to make decisions. The chain of this movie was American Prometheus was published and then Nolan licensed it. I tried to give my perspective, but there wasn't any official involvement.

Is there anything you would have advised them to do differently, had you been asked?

I definitely would have removed the apple thing. But I can't imagine myself giving advice about movie stuff to Nolan. He's an expert, he's the artist, and he's a genius in this area. But one amusing family story is that, if I invited myself to the set, they would entertain me coming, which I did twice. And so one time I visited the set in New Mexico. I saw them film and, in that particular scene, Cillian Murphy walks into a room and part of his line was calling someone an 'asshole.' And when I went back to Santa Fe and told my dad, he was horrified. He said, 'Robert Oppenheimer never swore. He was such a formal person. He would never, ever do that.' And I was like, 'Well, it's a dramatization.' But I was worried that in the movie he would be this swearing, abusive guy. Anyway, I think he said one swear word in the movie and I just happened to be in the room. So there is a chance that if we had been consultants, we could have added some details and depth. But there's such a complete record. It was enough for Nolan to tell the story he intended to.

Did the movie help you come to any kind of deeper understanding of your grandfather?

When I saw how Nolan put this together, I was like, wow, there are thousands of pages of more details than what he put in there. But he was able to summarize it to the effect of: are we going to destroy ourselves as a species? That told as a story is really important. It's not exactly a revelation, but it's an important message. I always look at my grandfather's actual words instead of what other people said about him. And I think his advice is really relevant today, because he was right about how to manage atomic energy. If we had followed his actual hard policy proposals, we could have avoided an arms race right after World War II.

Robert Oppenheimer saw where we should go and he was right at that time. That really counts for a lot. It's not just the fact of like, ‘Oh, I regret something I did.' He put in effort to affect policy that could have literally changed history, and being overruled and discredited, which is what Nolan tells the story of, is important in that light. The way he told this story through [Lewis] Strauss’ perspective was really masterful.

There have always been two facts in tension: on the one hand, Oppenheimer helped create a weapon of mass destruction that was used to kill hundreds of thousands of people. On the other hand, the existence of nuclear weapons has succeeded as a deterrent for nearly 80 years, with superpowers like the U.S., Russia, and China avoiding war for fear of what would happen if those weapons again got into play. What are your thoughts on that complex legacy?

To me, that's the most interesting part and the most relevant today. The movie, while really good, had less emphasis than I would have put on the period of 1945 right before the bomb dropped to 1947, which was the time where we could have avoided an arms race. It is true that he ushered these weapons in, and then we went into an arms race, and we haven't destroyed ourselves. But the difference is him and [Niels] Bohr saw the arms race coming and said, ‘We really must avoid this.' It's not good enough that we just haven't died yet. It was a disaster that we got into an arms race and it was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of science, as illustrated in the scene they have in there with Truman where Oppenheimer had been telling people that if we don't co-manage this with our allies, which were the U.K. and Russia at the time, we're going to get into an arms race and it's going to be extremely dangerous.

The gut reaction from Truman and others was, let's just make as many of these bombs as fast as possible and we'll keep it secret and the Russians will never get the bomb. So you have a scientific expert that's telling the government, this is what we need to do, and you have the government doing the opposite. We got into an arms race not because of a hard-nosed, pragmatic understanding of we need to build these bombs, but a scientific misunderstanding that we could keep it secret. Robert Oppenheimer's deepest message is that the world had changed around the atomic bomb dropping. But it wasn't just atomic bombs, it was the fact that the scope of our technologies had increased to the point where we could destroy ourselves and we had to unite in a new way. And that's exactly what he said: Mankind must unite or we will perish. That's the message that we can bring into today's world.

You started the Oppenheimer Project to continue your grandfather's work today. Can you tell me a little bit about what the organization does?

Even though I spent a lot of time in this interview trying to correct some historical detail, you never win that discussion. But if you look at Robert Oppenheimer's values, what he wrote, what he said, how he led scientists, it’s clearly an amazing record. He led scientists to solve a hugely difficult technical problem under the threat of existential risk. And then he talked about, how do we manage the outcome of improving science and technology at that speed? He had a poetic way of talking. So when he spoke about what should we do about it, it wasn't just an engineered answer. He had a really deep, rounded view of it because of his education and interest. And what he said was, we need to unite in a new way—and his policy tried to put that in place.

It's exactly what we need to do today in the world. We can draw dots between the idea that if we hadn't gone into an arms race, we would have actually been able to use that scientific discovery for abundant nuclear energy. The same science could have made unlimited energy. We had a little bit of a push there of making it, but we were making bombs constantly at the same time, and that eventually sabotaged the public acceptance of nuclear energy. Now, we've gotten carbon output and climate change. So if we could use the idea of ushering in technology in an industrial scale effort to affect a really threatening problem, like climate change and lack of enough energy, we could apply the same type of effort that we had in the Manhattan Project towards today's problems. And it wouldn’t include creating a bunch of bombs, because that method of warfare stopped working in 1945. It doesn't work. Our institutions haven't caught up with that insight.'

[do-y0u-have-to-let-it-linger]

Hi! Can I get a ship? I'm an INFP, straight girl with social anxiety. I listen to music all the time. (mostly rock) I never leave the house without my earphones. I enjoy movie nights, reading books (romance and mystery are my favourite genres), playing videogames, goofing around with my friends. My friends would describe me as kind, helpful and loyal. I'm really into photography. I wanted to be a photographer as a kid, but it's just a hobby nowadays. I'm a hopeless romantic and a night owl. It takes time for me to open up to people, but once I'm there I can be pretty talkative. I'm 5'8" tall, I have half long brown hair, dark brown eyes and I wear glasses. If I have to describe my style it would be somewhat 80s grunge. Thank you!

(tw: swearing and eating)

I ship you with Scott Summers!

You never got along very well with Scott Summers.

He always came across as a bit of a preppy asshole. Not that his preppy-ness was necessarily correlated to his asshole-ness, but it did seem to enhance it.

You may think that not getting along perfectly with some random boy who happened to live in the (large) building you live in is not much of a problem, but you are incorrect.

When your best friend (and dorm-mate) of ten years, Jean, is on a so-called "superhero team" with and is good friends with said boy, it is not exactly easy to avoid him.

Since Jean's biological family was not around, she made her own.

The first member of her so-called found family was you, who arrived just a day before she did. When she first entered your dorm, you were adjusting all of your newly unpacked trinkets. You were both young enough to immediately become friends, no questions asked, and your friendship stuck. You two tended to keep to yourselves and each other, until you two were older.

When Jean was invited to join the X-Men with some of her friends, you couldn’t have been prouder. The problem was that when you met this other part of her found family, it did not go well. None of you clicked whenever in the same room, and Scott immediately made fun of you the moment he met you. You ultimately decided to avoid her other friends, but be supportive of them. Not because you couldn’t handle Scott, but because you didn’t want to put Jean in a position where she had to choose between you and them. Overall, this just made Jean desperately want you and her other friends to get along.

"Come on, just sneak out with us this one time!" Jean was sitting on the edge of your bed, making puppy dog eyes at you and clasping her hands together.

She always tried to convince you to hang out with her friend group. Even if that meant, in this case, convincing you to break (very reasonable) rules with them.

"No. Absolutely not. Jubilee is going to try to 'catch me a man', and Scott's going to try to be funny but just end up making fun of me. Besides, why would I break school rules and steal a car for a trip to the mall?"

"Because you haven't seen Empire Strikes Back yet, and I bought you a ticket for 1:00 PM today."

"Shit. You're evil, you know that? This is unfair. You know me too well."

Jean beamed at you. "Thank you, I try. Now, get dressed, you're going to love this."

"I am dressed, and you can’t make demands. I’m the one being convinced here!"

"I will not be pestered by Jubilee's pleas to let her give you a makeover! Just throw on jeans instead of your sweatpants or something! Now chop, chop! We're leaving in 10 minutes!"

"I'm sorry, 10 minutes?"

"I knew if you had more than 15, you would change your mind. Meet me by the front door when you're ready to go!"

After Jean left your shared room, you threw on some different clothes and hastily grabbed everything you needed to go. With your sneakers in your hands, you ran into the school's kitchen and shoved a granola bar in your mouth. As you were hopping, trying to force your shoes on your feet, someone spoke from behind you.

"Well, you look elegant as ever."

You froze, squinted your eyes, and clenched your jaw. Well, as much as you could with the previously mentioned granola bar in your mouth.

Scott Summers.

You swallowed and turned around, plastering on a smile in preparation to respond to his sarcasm.

"Well, you know me, unwaveringly ethereal."

Once you finished your attempt to keep the peace, your grin dropped off your face and you went to tie on your shoes, occasionally having to push your glasses back up your nose as you did so.

Jean then started talking to you while making her way into the kitchen.

"Come on, we need to go before Charles's class ends- well, well, well, look at you two!" she spoke in a sing-song tone at the end.

"Trust me, there's no 'you two' here." Scott hissed at her. Hissed! The audacity, would it be so terrible for him to be theoretical friends with you?

"Calm down, I just mean that I'm glad you two are talking," Jean said. "But we need to go. Like- now."

Jean then grabbed you by the arm and started to pull you out of the room, wiggling her eyebrows at Scott on the way out. Scott got up to trail behind you two, if he could glare at people with the glasses he wore, then he would have been glaring at her.

You elbowed Jean in the side and whisper shouted at her.

"What was that? What was the purpose of the eyebrow wiggle?"

"What eyebrow wiggle? I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You're a menace to society, you know that?"

"I am aware that you don't actually think I'm a menace, but I appreciate the compliment." She leaned down and messed up your hair. "Now let's move it!"

When you got to the minivan you were all "borrowing" from Charles, most everyone was already there. Kurt, Jubilee, and Peter took the back seats, and Ororo was sitting in the driver's seat.

You walked to sit shotgun, but Jean sped up to beat you to the seat.

Suspicious.

Squinting at her, you went to sit in the middle row, where Scott also made to sit.

It was silent for the first minute of the drive until Jubilee tried to strike up a conversation.

"So! Y/N, I'm so glad you decided to hang out with us! I love your outfit. Ooh! Peter, hand me my bag! I have a scrunchie that will match perfectly."

Peter looked at her with mock disbelief. "Yeah. dude, make me reach behind my seat and into the trunk of the car."

Kurt clearly did not want to be part of this conflict.

Jubilee smiled sweetly at Peter. "Shut up and grab me my bag, please?"

Peter sighed half-sarcastically. "Yes ma'am."

Well, Jean's friends were just as you remember (aka slightly crazy).

You heard Jean's voice in your mind "If you don't wear that scrunchie it will genuinely hurt Jubilee's feelings, and I will never forgive you."

You looked at her through the mirror and raised your eyebrows.

Jubilee's voice took back your attention. "Here it is! Scotty, I can't reach. Can you hand this to her?"

Scott visibly winced at the nickname "Scotty" but handed you the scrunchie anyway. After trying to hide your amusement at the use of "Scotty", you attempted to put your hair up with the scrunchie, and you saw Jean smile. You were determined to make friends with these people for Jean.

"Thanks, Jubilee," You smiled at her. "So, how do I look?"

Scott chimed in immediately. "Like you're twelve."

"Ok, shut up Scott. You look cool, Y/N." Ororo gave you a thumbs up from the front seat. They were all clearly told to make friends with you by Jean in the same way you were. Well... told or threatened. Who's to say.

The car ride was awkward, to say the least. When you finally arrived at the mall and exited the car, you felt like you could finally breathe. You spoke first while you were all walking into the mall.

"So, how are we planning on killing time before Empire?"

"Well, Jubilee wanted to pick up some more eyeshadow with me, and Peter, Kurt, and Ororo are probably going to buy even more colored leather jackets," Jean said.

"Where does that leave me and your wallflower?" Scott asked Jean. You turned to look at him, attempting to make your lack of amusement clear. "What?" He shrugged, "It's true!"

"Ok, first of all, she's not actually that shy, you're just mean. Second of all, I was hoping you two could go into the book shop together until we're done."

Your eyes widened as you turned to Jean, silently begging her not to leave you and Scott alone.

"What? Why are you looking at me like I'm crazy? Maybe I thought you would try to get along because you both love me and I want you to be friends!"

Scott responded first. "You're totally guilt-tripping us right now."

"Yes!" Jean responded. "Yes I am, and you better be feeling guilty. Now, we're all going inside, and you are going into that bookstore together, you are going to bond over your cheesy dreams about falling in love, and, Scott, you are going to be kind! Or I will be very upset!"

You and Scott looked at each other (slightly afraid) before you turned to Jean and nodded your head at her.

"Ok. Let's go, Scott." You looked at him and he nodded at you both of you then started to head to the bookstore.

In the door of the shop, you glanced at him awkwardly. "So... is there a specific section you want to visit? Or-"

"Uh, I usually just... wander." He was bouncing on his heels.

"Oh! Ok, uh... where you lead I will follow!"

He spun around and started to walk aimlessly, actually trying to make conversation.

"So- you take photos?"

"...How did you know that?"

"I've seen you. That sounds creepy, I just mean that I saw you with a camera once when you walked Jean to training. It seemed nice. Only a dumbass would own a nice camera and not use it."

"How kind of you to not see me as a dumbass," you mumbled as you ran your hand across the book binds. "Do you have any hobbies?"

"Not really to be honest. Well, actually- I like... cars."

"...Cars. Huh. Elaborate."

"My brother, his name is Alex, taught me how to fix up cars when I was younger. Ooh- recently we found this beautiful 1962 AMC Rambler- I mean, it was basically a pile of garbage, but we're fixing it up."

"What's a Rambler?"

"W- 'What's a Rambler?'" He looked at you like you were speaking another language. "A 1962 AMC Rambler is only the car of my dreams!"

"The 'car of your dreams'?"

"Uh, yeah. What- do you not have a dream car?"

You laughed at him, "No? I don’t know that much about cars."

"You don’t have to know shit about cars to have a dream car! Come on, you don't have any car you would want to drive?"

"A school bus."

"...What do you mean."

"I mean- I bet I could live in a school bus. It's big, has a lot of windows, it's yellow." Scott was surprisingly easy to talk to.

"A school bus. Huh."

"I thought of that on the spot, it's not a long-term dream of mine."

"No, I see the appeal. I do think it's weird that you listed it being yellow as one of its positive attributes though."

"Holy shit. Holy shit!"

"What? What's the problem?"

You grabbed the book you spotted and held it out to him with your arms fully outstretched, it almost hit his nose. "Do you know what this is?"

Scott's hands appeared at the top of the book, and he pushed it down so you could see his confused expression. "A... book?"

"Very funny, Scotty, but no this is not just a book. This is a sequel."

He crossed his arms across his chest. "... 'Scotty'? I'm gonna kill Lee."

"Who's Lee?"

"Jubilee."

"If you can call her 'Lee' why can’t she call you 'Scotty'?"

"Because 'Scotty' makes me sound like I'm twelve!"

"Well, according to you, this scrunchie makes me look twelve. So I guess we're even, Scotty."

"I see why you and Jean are friends. You’re both evil."

"I called her evil not 10 minutes ago! Look at us, 'bonding' and all."

"Speaking of a 10 minutes ago, and that whole 'twelve' thing, I'm sorry."

"What do you mean?"

"Sorry for calling you twelve... and a wallflower. You seem... neat."

"Thanks... I think."

"Neat is a good thing."

"I'm kinda messy actually."

"I meant neat as in like- cool. Plus, you’re the first friend-ish person I've had that also wears glasses!"

You smiled at each other for a moment.

This was amusing.

He was amusing.

Unfortunately, someone popped the bubble encasing you and Scott. "Wow, 'friendish'? That's an upgrade from them low-key hating each other."

You whipped your head around to see Peter and Jean standing on the other side of the aisle, clearly having been observing and talking about you.

Scott spoke first. "How long have you two been standing there?"

"Long enough," Jean smiled. "You two get along."

"...So?" Scott asked.

"So, about an hour ago that seemed completely impossible."

An hour? That couldn’t be possible. "Wait, what time is it?"

Jean responded. "12:45, you’ve sure been chatting for a long time."

Scott cleared his throat and turned to you, "So, uh, you should buy that book, and then we should head to the movie theater room thingie."

You looked back at him. "Yeah! Ok, so... yeah."

After you and Scott walked away, Peter leaned over to whisper to Jean. "Well, that was a long glance. We've really gotta lock 'em in a closet together or something."

Jean shoved Peter, and you all went about your mall trip as you did before, except that now you might have a new friend... ish.

[amphxtrite]

ginny weasley x fem!reader

Royalty Au

Warnings: spelling/grammar mistakes

Summary: the reader has to choose someone to marry from the Weasley family and she falls for the only girl.

enjoy <3

___________________________________

y/n l/n Princess of Felicitatem, next in line for the throne, treasure of the Kingdom of Prosperity. 

Yawning as you sit yourself up in your lush 4-poster bed, you stretch your arms out and throw back your covers, swinging your legs off the edge of your mattress and sighing at the feeling of your feet meeting the cool marble of the floor beneath you. 

“Good morning Princess.” you hear a voice call out to you from the doorway. “Good morning Melina, beautiful day isn’t it?” you answer back, gazing out your large window into the beautiful garden. “Yes it is indeed Princess, I’m here to fetch you for breakfast.” Melina steps into the room and closes the door behind her. You murmur a quick mhm before scooching over to face her.

Melina was like the older sister you never had, you two were very comfortable around each other, but she still liked to stick to formalities when she was unsure if anyone was around. “Mellie there’s no need for that Princess stuff around me, you know that!” you grin. “I know, but I thought I saw Sebastian coming around here, and you know how much of a blabbermouth he is.” She sighs, flopping down onto your bed. You shrug, standing fully up and heading to the bathroom, you begin to run a brush through your hair as Mellie informs you on the castle’s gossip. “So I heard the head chef and one of the chambermaids were caught snogging in a broom closet,” She giggles. “And, Alex says the gardener is pregnant, Oh, and we got a cute new stable boy.” She rattles on, you can feel her blush from here. You smile. Beginning to brush your teeth, Mellie comes into the bathroom and begins to braid her hair, “It’s parcel day too, I think I saw a whole stack with your name on them.” She looks over at you. You rinse out your mouth before answering. 

“Oh yeah, the Potter’s kingdom is trying to sign a deal with my parents, and they think spoiling me will convince them.” you answer nonchalantly. 

“Do you think it’ll work?” Mellie asks curiously. “Oh, Mother was going to sign it anyways, she's just a bit busy right now.” You snicker, “The fabric in their kingdom is to die for though and they send the most beautiful dresses, so I’m not complaining.” you turn and head towards your closet. “You want to borrow anything today?” you call out to the blonde trailing behind you. “Do you have that ribbon I like?” She asks as you walk to a drawer and pull out the baby blue silk hair ribbon and toss it over to her. “You can keep it, you know, since you like it so much.” You smile at her. She squeals and hugs you tightly, thanking you over and over again, you simply smile and hug her back. She helps you put on a casual white dress and you walk down to the dining room talking about the kingdom’s news, you separate once you arrive at your destination, waving goodbye as you open the large doors.

“Ah, y/n there you are!” Your father calls out to you as you step into the large room. “Good morning father.” You answer “Good morning mother” you greet your mother beside him at the head of the table. Your father stands and walks over to you, “We have guests today darling,” He says motioning to a large family of red-heads, you immediately recognize them as the Weasley’s from the Western Kingdom. You curtsey to them, “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” You greet. “Oh thank you darling.” A short woman with a kind face answers, she must be Mrs. Weasley. “You have a very kind daughter Charles.” Mr. Weasley compliments, you smile. You scan your eyes down the row of ginger children seven in total, skimming over each one of them, your eyes stop at the only girl there, the youngest one too you presumed. She sends you a small smile and you find yourself staring. She was so beautiful, long light ginger hair, ocean blue eyes and pretty pink lips. You grin back as you walk with your father to the head of the table taking a seat on the other right side of your him, directly in front of Mr. Weasley, The adults continue talking and you find your mind wandering, your eyes goes back to the girl you had made eye-contact with just a few moments ago, she’s picking at her eggs, you smile but catch yourself in the act, you shake your head slightly, you’ve never felt this way about a girl before, what was going on? Despite these thoughts there was a part of your brain saying to just go with it. You’re brought out of your thoughts by your father’s voice.

“You’re probably wondering why the Weasleys are here?” Your father asks, reading your mind. You nod. “Well dear, we’ve decided to join our kingdoms and would like to have you and one of their children marry to unite us when you’re crowned queen.” He explains. You freeze. “So you’re arranging my marriage?” You ask, fear lacing your tone. “Well not exactly,” Your father tries to reason with you. “The Weasley’s have six boys in their family and 5 for you to choose from, aside from Bill the oldest who is already married, who you choose is your choice though of course.” You nod nervously, thinking back to the girl at the other side of the table. You glance in her direction and she’s looking back at you blushing. You feel a surge of happiness and turn back to your father. “Any… of the Weasley’s father?” You smile at him. “Of course darling, you have my word.” He nods to you unknowingly, your mother looks between you and the girl and back at you again, you raise one of your brows at her and she smiles, nodding. You feel a rush of excitement, quickly eating your oatmeal and drinking your tea before you stand hoping to greet the girl. “y/n why don’t you give the kids a tour around the castle?” Your father suggests, “to get to know them better.” He continues a grin on his face. “Um- of course! If you would kindly follow me?” you call out to the seven gingers, they all stand and walk towards the doors with you introducing themselves one by one. There was Bill, Charlie, Percy, Fred, George, Ron and the beautiful girl that caught your eye's name was Ginny, what a gorgeous name. For the rest of the morning and afternoon you run around the castle, showing them every room and every crevasse you thought was important, but in the end most of your time was spent in the garden, playing football with the family, you grew tired after a couple games and decided to sit under your favourite cherry blossom tree to watch. 

The Weasley’s were such kind people and you knew any of them would make a perfect partner, but only one of them had left you speechless. Ginny was absolutely perfect, she was so kind, strong and mature compared to most of her brothers, and on top of that, so very beautiful. You watch with heart-eyes as she runs around in her long dress throwing and catching a ball around with her brothers, you watch her eyes light up, her smile grow, and her hair sway and you knew she was the one you wanted to choose. You were conflicted though, you’ve never felt this way about a woman before, but with Ginny it just felt so natural, she made you laugh, blush and hang onto her every word, she was everything you could ever ask for and more, but you knew there was a problem, what if she didn’t feel that way about you? What if she found you disgusting for having these feelings for her? What if your father didn’t allow it… He did say sons after all. You could feel someone's gaze on you and you see Ginny standing with her twin brothers Fred and George, you smiled and waved at them, wondering what they’re talking about.

“Really?!” Fred says to his sister, his eyes wide in shock. Ginny rolls her eyes, “raise your voice a bit Fred I don’t think she heard you.” She whispers to her brother sarcastically. “But, you’re serious?… You like y/n?” George whispers back, Ginny glances back to you a pink dust on her cheeks and a smile spreading on her face, “Yes, she’s absolutely marvelous!” She answers George.  “Look Gin, I’m happy for you, really, but what are mum and dad going to say?” Fred questions, slightly concerned. “Well, I haven’t really thought that far yet, but I’m sure they’d be fine with it!” Ginny answers looking back to you again, she sees your eyes raise to hers and she can almost see your future together in your eyes, baking in the kitchen together, running through your castle hand in hand, and kissing you under the moonlight, the thought made her blush. “I’m going to tell her!” Ginny confidently starts to walk over, George grabs her by the arm. “Gin wait a second, how can you tell she feels the same?” George asks worriedly, not wanting his sisters heart broken. Ginny only grins, turning back to look at your rosy cheeks, she says dreamily, “I just know,” before releasing her arm and walking over. 

You see Ginny walking towards you and you start to panic. Did your hair look okay? Was there food on your face? Did your breath smell okay? Were there any stains on your dress? Ginny sits down next to you and as you look into her stunning eyes all your insecurities wash away. “You’re beautiful you know.” She says finally, grinning happily as she watches your face go bright pink again. “Thank you Ginny.” You respond meekly, feeling small under her intense gaze. “Really y/n, you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met.” She says tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. You sat there stunned, wishing you could stay in this moment forever, Ginny staring into your eyes, her hand running through your hair, sitting under the pink cherry blossom tree, basking in the warm spring sunlight. 

“I want to choose you.” you utter unconsciously, staring lovingly at the girl in front of you. Ginny freezes, did she just hear you correctly? Her jaw drops. You snap out of your daze, taking her silence as rejection and stand up quickly. “I-I’m so sorry, I’ll just go.” You say stuttering, rushing off, tears in your eyes. You must’ve read the signs wrong, oh how stupid you were for thinking she felt the same way… 

Behind you Ginny shakes off her shock and stands up, following you and calling your name, you don’t stop and continue running until you reach a hidden alcove, your favourite one you had decorated with flowers, plants and pillows. You turn and drop into the alcove, hugging your knees to your chest. You hear Ginny calling for you again, you don’t answer, you hear her footsteps getting closer, you pray she doesn’t find you, but alas, luck wasn’t on your side. “Y/n! There you are!” She calls out. Great, you think to yourself, looking up at her with tears running down your face. Ginny steps into the alcove and wipes the tears from your eyes with her thumbs a small smile on her face, you turn away and hide your face from her embarrassed. She kneels in front of you and removes your hands from your face, holding them in her own. She takes a deep breath. “I want you to choose me too.” she says in a happy voice. “y/n, I’d love to be with you!” she breathes out with a smile on her face. “I know we’ve only just met today, but I feel something between us I don’t want to let go of, we can go slowly if you want. I'm in no rush. I just want to be with you.” She opens her mouth to speak again, but you shush her with a kiss, feeling her lips against yours was heavenly, your mouths moved in sync and you could feel her nibbling on your lips. You didn’t want it to stop, but you need to say something to her. You pull away reluctantly, and look deep into her eyes. “Then I choose you, Ginny Weasley, to be my queen, my love and my light, to stay by my side forever, do you accept?” You ask with a renewed feeling of confidence, “Yes, y/n I do.” She replies without hesitation, pulling you to her again and joining your lips together again, your hands on her soft cheeks and hers grasping the fabric of your dress. You would worry about any issues later on. Right now it was just you and your love sitting together in the hidden alcove. 

[drhxnkmccoy]

If I Could Turn Back Time - Peter Maximoff x Reader

a/n: hi guys! i know. i’ve been gone for a REALLY long time. i’m really sorry! sporadic posting seems to be my calling. our holiday season at my store was absolutely insane and between forty hours a week and school i kind of forgot about this. sorry i kinda suck! anyway! this one was a request and it was super fun to write, i was a little bit stuck on the idea but i think it turned out pretty cool. i hope you guys enjoy! please leave me some requests too, i’m trying to get back into the groove of writing whilst we’re all under quarantine :)

Summary: Y/N has no idea what she did, or how she got there. But she knows exactly who she’s with.

She wasn’t quite sure how she got there. Hell, she was completely and totally baffled as to how she got there - nonetheless, how she would get back. As Y/N stood up from the charred grass around her, she stared in awe at the huge mansion in front of her, surrounded by a picturesque blue sky and fluffy white clouds. The image reminded her of a painting, too beautiful to be true. She slowly started walking towards the house, taking note that the beautiful watch Peter had given her was gone. A frown took shape on her face, but she resigned to getting out of here first and finding the watch later. As she knocked on the big, wooden door, she looked up, taking in the beautiful exterior and woodwork that graced the white walls and how the sun shone brightly off the roof. Honestly? She wished the mansion still looked like this.

“Can I help you?”

She looked back down to see a teenaged boy with silver hair holding the door open for her. He wore black jeans and a metallic, silver jacket. His hair would have fallen into his eyes if not for the goggles that sat on the crown of his head. His goofy little smile, though: that was what she recognized. As if she could ever forget the way his lips curled up, showing off his dimples like a model.

“Peter?” She gasped, awestruck at how… young he looked. He couldn’t be more than nineteen, and the whole concept quite frankly freaked her out.

“Uh. Yeah. Do I know you, or something?” He squinted his eyes at her, trying to think of how he could possibly know her, “You’re not a cop, right?”

“No!” She laughed, watching as relief flooded his features, “I… well, I’m not really sure how to explain who I am. Could you, uh, tell me what year it is first?”

Peter quirked his eyebrow, looking around in the background behind her. Maybe she was a spy? Peter’s head spun, as he went back and forth trying to come up with where this mysterious chick could have come from and how she knew him.

“It’s 1982. Seriously, where the hell did you come from?”

1982? She hadn’t realized how far she had gone back. Panic started to run through her veins as she suddenly became painfully aware of how far away from home she was, with no knowledge of how to return. Y/N began to breathe heavily, as Peter’s presence started to fade in light of her sudden anxiety.

“Whoa, hey. Calm down. It’s okay - WHOA!” Peter took a step back as she took in a sharp breath and her hair caught fire as if she was a tree struck by lightning. “How did you…” he took a second to watch the flames dance through her hair, understanding just why she wasn’t screaming out horribly in pain, “Are you a mutant?”

Y/N closed her eyes, trying to focus on the situation at hand. Her anxiety lingered, but the calm she was trying to force upon herself was able to subside it - for the most part. She felt the heat begin to die down and soon enough, the flames began to extinguish. 

“Uhhh… okay. Okay, this is fine. Everything is fine,” Peter mumbled to himself as he watched the flames disappear. What would Charles say in this situation? He knew exactly what Charles would say. Peter could practically hear Charles’ voice in his head, telling him to invite her in. “Do you, uh, want to come in?”

Y/N opened her eyes. The anxiety had faded and she had zoned back in at the sound of Peter’s invitation. Noting the look of mild terror on Peter’s face, she nodded, “Yes.. yes I would. Thank you.”

The mansion looked ginormous, and it only got bigger as she stepped inside. A huge staircase that split and went two ways as you opened the door, classrooms to the right and dormitories to the left. It looked almost the same as when Charles had recruited her, sometime around 2012. She gazed around in awe as Peter shut the door, unsure of what to do next.

“As interesting as this has been, I’m curious. Where the hell did you come from? You’re obviously a mutant… are you here looking for Professor? If you are, you couldn’t have come at a better time, considering he’s THE PROFESSOR again..” Peter babbled, mostly to himself, at a speed faster than she could comprehend.

“The Professor? Professor Xavier is here?” Y/N found a bit of hope in that statement. Hopefully, Charles would know what was going on and how she could be here… Charles always knew what to do, even when he didn’t.

“Yeah! I mean, no. Usually, yes. But I guess there was some type of emergency, like there always is, and well, I mean, if you know the professor you know he’s always the first one out there to solve the problem. So right now? It’s just you and me.”

“Was that your convoluted way of telling me Charles is on a mission?” Y/N sighed - young Peter was a lot more… zealous, she’d say, than adult Peter.

“Yeah! Wait - how do you know about missions? Wait - never mind, you’re a mutant. Duh, Peter”, he shook his head, “Are you one of Charles’ students? You look kind of old to still be a student,” Peter tilted his head.

Y/N shook her head, “Uh… yes. You could say I’m… a student of Charles.” It wasn’t a lie - she had been a student of Charles.

“Oh.. cool. Well, you can hang until he gets back. Oh! We should order a pizza!” Peter’s mind quickly got occupied and he turned to search through a drawer filled with take out menus. 

“Peter! Focus! I need your help.” Y/N was too impatient to sit around and wait for Charles, maybe Peter knew something about how and why she was here - she could only hope that the butterfly effect wouldn’t somehow ruin their relationship in the future.

“Whoa, okay. What?” Peter didn’t look up from the drawer, but Y/N knew her next words would change that.

“I’m from the future. I don’t know how and why I’m here, just that I don’t belong here and I have to get back.”

Peter’s eyes practically bugged out of his head. 

“Whoa! The future! Wait, that’s so crazy because a couple years ago some guy came back from the future - he was all mean and grumpy, maybe you guys are from the same place! Wait, what year did you come from?” Peter struggled to focus on one point at a time, as usual.

“2020. I’m from 2020. I - Wait, grumpy? Are you talking about Logan?” Y/N shook her head, “Nevermind that. I just need to figure out how to get back to where I came from.”

“Hmm. Sucks. I don’t know anything about time travel. But hey, tell me about the future!” Peter zoomed beside her, and in the two seconds it took her to turn and face him, he was already cozy on the couch.

Y/N approached the couch as well, wondering if it was really her place to tell him what the future holds - what if she told him about their relationship and then it never happened? She didn’t want to change the course of history.

“Well…” She sheepishly took a seat beside him, “There’s… a lot of big stuff that happens in the future. For one,” she pointed at the small television seated upon a cart at the door of Charles’ office, “there are televisions four times the size of that. And there are more than three channels. And -”

“That’s cool! Hey, are the X-Men still a thing? Oh, and who’s the president? Oh, hey, do you know me in the future?” Peter cut her off with the force of his questions.

This was it. Would Y/N tell him? Would that endanger their future together?

“I… do. Yes, I know you in the future.” She smiled at the way his eyes lit up when she said that. 

“No way! Are we friends?”

Her voice was caught in her throat. She knew Peter - he was a curious guy, this question was to be expected. And yet, she still had no answer for him.

“We -”

“My, my, Miss Y/N.” She was cut off by Charles’ arrival, the wheels of his chair squeaking slightly as he entered the room. “How nice it is to see you again.”

He looked so… different. Y/N had never seen Charles with hair before - only in pictures. 

“Professor,” she stood and shook his hand, “it’s always a pleasure.”

“I believe this,” he pulled her watch out of his pocket, “belongs to you.”

Y/N looked at him with large, wide eyes. He had found her watch! This meant he had to know what she was doing here. Right?

“Whoa,” Peter glanced over the couch, “My dad has a watch, like, exactly like that.”

Charles grinned at Y/N, trying to hold back a laugh at the look of confusion mixed with terror on her face, “As lovely as it is to see you, darling, unfortunately we’ve got much to do today. Peter should be studying for that quiz tomorrow, hm?”

Peter’s eyes widened and before Y/N could even blink, he was gone.

Charles laughed, heading towards the door,” Perhaps, if you don’t mind visiting on another day,” Charles was already escorting her out the door.

“But, Professor -”

“Don’t worry, dear,” Charles opened the door for her, “I’m sure whatever it is,” he winked, “can wait a little bit.” 

And with that, he shut the door.

Y/N gasped, opening her eyes to see the dingy walls of her office. She stood from her desk chair, looking around the familiar room. The ceiling looked like it was about to cave in, the wood beginning to rot. The paint on the walls was peeling, adding to the old, abandoned look of the room. Everything looked like what she remembered - not what she had seen.

“Babe?”

She whipped around to see Peter standing at the door, “Are you coming? I thought you were supposed to be done with class, like, an hour ago - Whoa! Okay!” Peter stumbled back as she ran into his arms.

“What year is it?” Y/N looked up at him - he was the Peter that she had come to know and love. 

He looked at her with a look of concern, “Are you okay? It’s 2020, crazy. Are you sick?” Peter held a hand up to her forehead, which she quickly slapped away.

“I’m fine,” Y/N straightened out her skirt, “I’m sorry. I guess I just… lost track of time. But I’m done, let’s go.”

Peter grinned and took her arm, leading her away from the office, “Wow, nice watch,” he winked, drawing her attention to the beautiful piece of jewelry he’d given her, “Wonder who could have given it to you. So, how was your day?”

“Crazy. Like you wouldn’t believe…”

[whenimaunicorn]

The Heart of Admiration - Part 2

Charles Vane x Reader, slow burn adventure/romance, written in a series of short scenes.

Part One Here

This episode’s prompt: “ “I thought they’d killed you. I lost my temper.”

The sea spray leaves the taste of salt on your lips as the ship crashes through another unexpected wave. It feels good to be sailing again, even with a crew you were all but press-ganged to join, and even with the weather now threatening to turn dangerous.

You had pled for mercy for Captain Fisher’s life, and those of his men. They had been your crew for going on five years, and though the plan to steal the cargo from Vane’s ship had been a foolish one, you couldn’t just let them die for it. That moment in which you watched Captain Vane’s eyes smolder while he considered your plea had been the longest one of your life. “So long as they leave Nassau,” he had finally said. “They leave, and you stay.”

You watch your new captain now, down on the deck below, alternately barking orders at the men and peering up at the darkening clouds moving in from the southeast. His heavy brow and bold cheekbones give his face a rugged sort of handsomeness, like he was carved by gods more primal than the Christian one, out of tougher stuff than other men. No one in Nassau knew where Vane had come from, only that he rose through the ranks of Blackbeard’s crew and barreled through the island like a storm.

He catches you looking at him, and responds only by calmly staring back. He looks at you too much. He has not yet been crude, but you fear you know what it means regardless.

It’s hard for a woman to survive as a pirate without becoming somebody’s woman. It would be safer that way, too. Easier. Anne Bonny may be an absolute hellcat, but surely the place she’s carved out on this crew stays comfortable because everyone knows she’s the quartermaster’s woman. It would be easier to have that kind of protection yourself, too, but the idea rankles you. You joined the pirating life because you wanted independence. You made it on the last crew because of your quick wit, and because your skills with celestial navigation were unique and indispensable. Although it helped that the captain was married to your sister and treated you like kin.

You had assumed those skills were the reason Vane wanted you for his own crew, as well. Very few people in this life are educated enough to read the charts and almanacs, to decipher the celestial bodies and figure a precise location in the middle of the ocean. But he looks at you too much. This may be an uglier trap than you had thought.

A lock of hair that escaped your braid flies across your face. The prevailing winds are changing. Perhaps the only thing this particular long look signifies is Vane’s awareness that this storm means the course you’ve been marking out for him will have to be corrected. The course that, if the weather doesn’t blow you too far off from, will take you to meet the intended course of a merchant vessel, whose schedule just happened to fall into Vane’s hands, much farther out from land than most pirating crews would ever hope to be able to find.

You’re already up here to take the noon measurements, but the sun is not quite at its zenith. Once you have the number, a flurry of calculations will follow, and you’ll give Vane your course corrections based on precisely where on the open ocean this ship is located right now, and where the other ship is most likely to be. But you’re already feeling extra tension in your chest looking at those thick clouds; if they cover the sun before you’re certain it has reached its apex, your faulty measurements could throw your course off by miles. And if that storm catches the Ranger, all you can do is wait for the skies to clear to figure where the hell it has blown you. Your chest tightens further when you see the captain mounting the steps to come up to your deck.

Even though you had intended to wait a little longer to take the next measurement, you find yourself lifting the backstaff toward the horizon again while you listen to Vane’s boots approaching you from behind. It’s careful work, to line up the sun’s shadow as the deck rolls in the waves. And it’s only getting more difficult as the nearby storm makes the sea choppier.

“Nineteen point three, and…” You mutter the numbers under your breath as you get them, not wanting to forget the figures before you have a chance to write them down. “Eighty-two point four.”

“Is that what you were expecting?” Vane is standing so unexpectedly close behind you that you jump at the sound of his rumbling voice.

You step away from him, quite deliberately, as you answer his question. “I’m not certain that’s the precise number we’re looking for, but yes, I believe we are still on-course.”

Vane closes a little of the space you had drawn between your bodies. But not enough to be worthy of further correction. “You look worried.”

The last thing a woman trying to hold her own on a ship should do, is admit vulnerability. You roll your eyes at him. “Fuck off. This is not my first storm at sea.”

A smile cracks the captain’s stony face at your response. “Fair enough.” He looks to the south. “We should be able to skirt the edge of that one without much difficulty.” His heavy gaze falls back on you, a sudden gust of wind pulling at his long, twisted locks. “But it will take us off the course we’ve been plotting.”

Usually you have no trouble looking a man in the eye; it’s something particular to Vane that has you dropping your head. You draw your little notebook from its pocket to excuse the movement. “Now who’s the one that’s worried? It’s no problem. I can correct for that just as soon as we get another sighting after it’s passed.” You flip to an open page, and lift your pencil. 19.3, you write, and then… “Fuck me, what was that last number?” Normally you have a good memory. The captain is just being too damn distracting.

You hear Vane chuckle. You refuse to look up. “If I tell you, do I get to?”

It takes you a half a second to run back through the precise words you just said, and catch his meaning. Your voice turns acid. “If you are not going to be helpful, then get out of my way. I am attempting to do the very work you pressed me into service on this ship in order to perform.”

Vane rocks back on his heels. “Is that what I did.”

Your exhale is a sharp burst of irritation, on many, many levels. “You can’t say you gave me much of a choice, about joining this crew.”

You risk a glance directly at Vane’s face again. He looks pensive, behind the general air of aggressiveness that usually suffuses his features. “You’ll be happier here,” he growls out after completing his thought.

You arch an eyebrow at him, just about as high as it will go.

“You were wasted on the Starling.”

 ~*~

 Every pirating crew hopes to avoid violence. They ready themselves for it, bristling with threat and menace as they wait for the ships to close tight enough for boarding, but the most preferable option is negotiation, always, with a prompt surrender on the part of their quarry before any blood is spilt.

That ideal outcome is not playing out today. This merchant vessel’s crew must have been largely made up of former naval soldiers, given the competence with which they are resisting Vane’s vanguard, and the discipline you are observing in their ranks from atop the Ranger’s quarter deck.

“Get belowdecks,” Jack Rakham, standing by your side and watching the battle just as closely, suddenly urges you.

“What? Why?” you bristle on reflex.

Jack interrupts himself to bark orders across the locked sides of the ships: “Watch those riflemen! Aft!” Three men peel off the main fighting to interrupt the knot of sailors that Jack had spied franticly reloading near the back of the other vessel.

You raise your chin as one of Vane’s crewmen severs a man’s arm at the elbow with a deft strike of his axe. “I assure you, I am not squeamish.” You are accustomed to observing the fighting from one of the higher decks with your old crew. On just about every run, unless… Jack’s fingers close tightly around your elbow. With a little shove, he directs your gaze.

A knot of enraged seamen are pushing through the Ranger’s men, dangerously close to one of the gangplanks connecting the ships. “If they get across, you’re a target,” Jack says sternly. “Seeing as you are not disguising your sex. Hide yourself. Now.”

You’d been held hostage once before. It was not a pleasant experience, for you or for your crew. You forgive Jack for shoving you as you start to make your way down.

The fear starts to set in as you scramble toward the ladder that leads to the lower deck; enemy boots stomp onto the Ranger just before your head disappears down the hatch. You hope that Jack, or some of the other men still aboard, notice in time to resist them, but that officer’s eyes landed on you with heavy interest as you scurried away. It seems likely they are indeed intent on a hostage.

The long knife you keep belted to your waist is in your hand as you scurry through the belly of the Ranger. You whip your head and turn back and forth in the muted light belowdecks, changing your course more than once in a way that you are dimly aware signifies panic. This is not your ship. This is not your home. You don’t know where to hide in this unfamiliar place.

Booted feet are pounding somewhere behind you. No way to know if they are friend or foe. And would your new crewmen even care enough to defend you? You duck into the doorway ahead of you and then put your back to the wall beside it, clutching your knife to your chest and readying to ambush anyone that comes through after you.

Your eyes land on a bed, bolted into the bulkhead. You’ve somehow chosen the captain’s cabin in which to hide. Not that it means much more than that you ran straight to the back of the ship. You’re much more concerned with getting your breathing under control, until your great gasps are not making quite so much noise, so you can listen to the sounds of approaching feet.

A figure steps through the door, and your knife flashes out with barely any choice on your part. You bury it almost to the hilt in his chest. You may not be one to ever storm another ship in the vanguard, but you’ve been training to defend yourself for years. You wrench it out of him and blood flies as the startled man stares down at you, not even realizing he’s already dead.

His last earthly act is to attempt to grab you about the arms, which unfortunately means that when his body sags into dead weight, he’s falling directly into you. You had got the knife free to stab again, but that’s not going to help you against his two hundred pounds of inertia. You have to twist with him in a macabre dance, his life’s blood still spurting, in order to not be knocked directly to the floor.

Which, unfortunately, puts your back to his fellows, rushing into the room after him. You hear a couple of enraged voices screaming at you and then a sharp crack, which instantly creates a thundershock of pain reverberating up from the back of your skull before everything goes dark.

 You wake to shouting, then screams. Ugly, ragged, tortured ones, of men too far gone in pain to retain either sense or hope. You feel your body, laying flat on the deck, and a splitting headache that rouses you quickly to consciousness. The sun is harsh against your eyes. Somehow you’ve gotten abovedeck again.

You lift your head; you don’t quite feel ready to move anything else. Your eyes focus dully on a dead man’s face in front of you, his cheek wet in a pool of blood that’s slowly expanding. You don’t know him.

Somewhere past your feet, you hear a voice call “Mercy.” The only response is a bestial snarl and then the wet sound of something slamming over and over again into meat.

You know that snarl. There’s only one voice in the West Indies pitched like that, rasping over blown-out vocal chords. You push up on your hands and look over at the men fighting less than two paces away from you.

The fight is over. Vane hacks once more with his cutlass and the head of the man who was just begging for his life drops to the deck and rolls.

It looks like most of the crew is back on the Ranger. How long had you been knocked out? “Captain…” comes the voice of Jack Rakham, and he’s pointing at you.

Vane’s face is feral as he turns, his long hair matted up with other men’s blood, sweat glistening on his exposed chest. His eyes widen, and your name falls from his lips. He takes a long step toward you, and drops to his knees at your side.

“Are you wounded?” His voice is low, and you’re surprised at the concern you see in his steady gaze.

You push with your hands so you can sit up on one hip, then reach up to the back of your head. “Quite a lump here,” you report, wincing.

Vane reaches to your chest, pinching up a bit of the fabric of your shirt. The whole front of it is soaked red with blood.

“That’s not mine.”

Vane lifts one scarred brow.

“You’ll find the first of the men that came after me belowdecks, with a hole in his chest.”

Your captain nods, looking pleased.

You notice that several sprawling corpses surround you on the deck, each one a red ruin, hacked more brutally than would have been needed to kill them. The would-be hostage takers? You look back at Vane for answers.

“When I saw them dragging you up here, covered in blood, I thought they’d killed you.” Now it’s your turn to raise an eyebrow at him. “I lost my temper.”

Your chest fills with some unexpected emotion that feels rather too complex for you to even attempt to sort out. “You can’t be losing the asset you just went to such lengths to attain for your crew,” you say wryly.

Captain Vane fixes you with eyes as blue and deep as the sea. “No one else could have guided us this far out to meet the prize,” he acknowledges. “But I have a feeling I’ve only barely begun to discover your worth.”

Part 3 Here

Notes: if you liked this, thank @acebreathesfire too, she’s my source on navigation facts and basically has been co-creating this OC with me. If not for her encouragement none of this fic would have happened!!!

Taglist is open: @acebreathesfire @kind-wolf @that-was-not-supposed-to-happen you are all pressganged into this ship but anyone else is free to request to be put on the list!! Also I am creating this series entirely out of prompt fill drabbles, so if you come across any dialogue prompts you think would inspire good chapters, please pass them my way!!

Link to More Vane Action

[hazbinextgeneration]

Into the Casino Ch12

The trip back home wasn't anything he hadn't been expecting. She was quiet for the most part with only gazing out the window and him patting her arm in reassurance and smiling in glee. He had made good progress today. Found out a whole bunch of stuff for his curious mind to disect like a frog in class and exploit it when the time was right. But for now, he preferred to get home and get some greatly deserved rest. And that they did. But Amalfia still couldn't shake the....strange feelings she that was still bouncing around her skull. Mostly around one particular issue....Who was Lou? Now that question could easily be answered with 'He's your boss of course.' or 'He's the guy courting you.'. Or another number of things. The casino's owner. The one who helped her. Mr. Lou- But she wasn't interested in that. She still got a strange feeling whenever she stared into those red eyes. They held something behind that smile. She tried asking Cyber about him....buuut

"Eh- I don't think it's my place to really say. Everyone's past down here is personal to them. Why don't you ask him yourself? Ain't he supposed to be the one you're dating or something?" And her answer told her if she asked anyone else they would give the same answer or refuse...Frankly she did ask once or twice more about the topic, but he expertly dodged it and changed the topic back to her and asked her questions on her likes and interests. Not that she didn't appreciate he seemed to want to know about her but she barely knew anything about him. And this wasn't about to be another one sided romance with a man she barely knew. She wasn't about to be put through that thing again. Not if she could help it. But that idea was pushed back for now because after a few days of her normal routine of waking up by Cyber and working on whatever list Lou gave her for the day, she was surprised when one day when Lou came up and announced they were again going to that side shop he knew and getting her a new dress for her. She blinked and asked why. He chuckled. "The ball of course.~ You don't think I would let a beautiful young lady like yourself go in just any dress, did you? Oh no, no. My dear. Nothing but the best for the woman I ...adore.~" So once again she was whisked off into the car, down to the Black Market, and taken into that little clothes shop. But this time he introduced her to the small ladies who ran the place and beckoned her to be taken to the back...Well she wasn't to be taken back there by herself with two absolute strangers and gripped onto him as one tried to reach out to take her. Making Lou raise a brow and get to play the hero as he gently assured her and brought her into the back room himself. After explaining exactly what they were looking for, in Lou's words: "I want something resembling the radiance and grace of a peacock. I trust you ladies to work your magic with what I pay you." She blinked up at his request and rose a brow. A peacock? He wasn't going to ask her what she wanted in the dress? She didn't have to ask when she was ushered by the women and was made to pose out as they took measurements of around her midsection and chest, height, and strangely enough her arms. All the while she nervously glanced back between them and Lou who always gave a smile and those strange red eyes. And funnily enough, as soon as they were done it was time to go back home. All of that which took the amount of one hour to happen. He had no interest in stopping anywhere else it seemed, wanting to hurry and get her back home. In their hurry she didn't even notice Cyber had tagged along until she was back in the car. ...He was that much in a hurry huh? But once and a while-...The question and worries would still bounce around and cause her to sometimes space out in thought. But other than that, she didn't think about it once...That was until she was gathering dirty laundry to clean and when she picked up the very same dress Cyber had her squeeze into before that 'date' and wouldn't you know it? A small pink piece of paper slide out and she almost missed it if the golden shiny words written on it hadn't shimmered in the light and caught her eye as it landed by her hooves. Making her pause and blink at it. She slowly bent down and picked it up, bringing it too her face to read the small print. And those eyes lit up. This was-...This is the card Rita had handed to her. And the words were still neatly printed and bold enough for her to read the address and name of the club she owned. And an their conversation came rushing back to her. "W-Well he knows Mr. Charles-"

"Oh! Trust me. Those two know each other very well. They have past connections through their second businesses...Still do."

... ..... ......?!

Charles KNEW Lou. And he knew enough it seemed about him to have an actual past and enough to hate him....He could answer all your questions, a small voice whispered to her and her eyes widened. She could find out exactly what he was like. What he did. WHo he was. Her body lighting up at the excitement of it all....Before it all came crashing down. She wasn't sure how Lou would feel about her leaving let alone going to one of his rivals and talking with a man who clearly made it clear they hated each other even if Lou's smile hid it very well. He would definately be against the idea if he didn't tell her no first....And that's when the idea came to her. She quickly tucked the card into her dress pocket and grabbed the laundry. She had a certain set of Rules to check. ***************************************************************************************************** The familiar clanking footsteps of Cyber's feet came down the hallway. Another day of waking up Fuzzy and getting her groggy self ready to go do whatever Lou decided to haul her around to do. He was certainly enjoying taking his time with this whole take over plan. He was acting most days as if there wasn't any plan and looking through schedules and taking care of the fools betting souls and watching the flow of new ones steadily come to him. It what made him the powerhouse he was...but if this whole scheme of using her magic worked...he just might become one of the new overlords. She saw the lust for power he always had when he made contracts or one a particularly hefty pile of souls to add to his ever growing power and collection. But it always increased by a large amount when he spoke of the many things he wanted to do with her magic once he figured out how to extract it from her. But she still thought the party was a stupid idea. Too many people could see her for what she really was and it could turn into a real problem. She has TRIED to explain it too him- "I don't think this is a good idea, Boss. What if someone sees her? The horn is a pretty dead give away." "Cyber, you underestimate me. 'Sides, no one really feels any energy off her correct?" "Well...no. She radiates about as much energy as the janitor. But those outbursts though, big crowds and curious demons has a high possibility of causing a trigger to that magic, and to be honest...That one thing I might not fully be able to save you from." "Oh, trust me. I rarely ever make mistakes. And I have thought long and hard about this choice. If someone does find out or Rita blabbers her mouth, then we'll get 'curious' people who might want to take a peak and id the decide they want my dear pet for themselves, then it could cause quite the problem. Especially if someone on a higher level of magic and power catches wind of her." His red eyes narrowed slightly as if the thought made him slightly angered. "I already put too much time and effort into this already to have any set backs, and the very last thing I need is her dead or falling into someone else's hands.....Keeping her a secret is key, but now that word must've already gone around by the few times we went out ...and Rita- It'd be wiser to let others see she's 'weak'. Let them think I'm only humoring another woman for amusement like Rita already thinks. Hiding her now would only cause suspicion." Dang it! She hated when he had good points. But right now she had to wake someone up. So it was quite a surprise to her when she opened the door to shake her awake and she wasn't laying on the bed. Which looked made like no one slept in it at all. And the room was empty as well...Cyber blinked...Where was- "Cyber!" She whirled around to find said unicorn all groomed and dressed, holding a peice of paper, and smiling. "Sorry if I wasted your time, but I decided to get up early today to get my list done." She lightly shook the paper. Cyber still paused studying her but relaxed with a smile. "Finally getting used to the work schedule, huh?" "Oh yeah! Im hoping to finish everything Lou wanted me to do by noon. I wanted to ask him something important, but I think I can only do it i-if everything's finished before then." "Oh..And how do you figure that?" "Im in charge of his schedules. He's supposed to be meeting with an important client from the black market today about trading good with him." She rose a brow and hummed. "Well, if that's the case, then I guess I better head back. He'll be needing me on the floor if you're already up." Amalfia nodded. "That's what he told me. He's waiting for you by the lounge, and don't worry about breakfast. I made sure the cook made you and him something." Her brow rose further as she hummed again and made her way past her. Oh she was up to something. It was clearly obvious and she wasn't trying to hide it. So that begs the question. What was it? ..Lou was pretty interested too when he was informed, but he merely chuckled and told her they would wait for noon and see what she intended on planning on asking him. In the meantime, the busy floor easily took up their time as Lou did the usually laugh and greeting. Encouraging some poor bloak to bet more than needed or speaking with a curious few people who looked interesting to him. Every once and a while they would catch sight of her quickly running past with something in her hands or going somewhere on the upper floors, but that was about it. LOu raising an amused brow everytime she did go past. Time pasted. And guess who finally showed up to talk with him. The dirty man was definately from the scummier side of the city but Lou still smiled, shook his hand, and offered to escort him to his office where he usually conducted business...the one with carniverous plants and a heavy duty door in case things went south or if he wanted to do 'extra' persuasion. And on the way up, there wasn't any signs of Fuzzy anywhere. Guess she was busy doing something. So they opened the office door, gestured for the man to enter, he did, and was about to go in themselves- "LOU!! W-Wait!!" He paused and looked up amused when a white blur came jogging down the hallway towards them both. He watched with a smile as she stopped and leaned over with a wheeze. Trying to catch her breath from darting all the way down from where ever she came from. "I-I...*sigh* f-finished e-everything." "Marvelous. This must've been your fastest time yet. Now you can have the rest of the day off yo relax." He opened the door more and was about to enter when a rather rough tug was received on his arm and he was actually turned around by the desperate looking unicorn and ..paused in shock for a brief moment. "W-Wait! I-..I n-need to ask you something.'' "Darling, Im always happy to answer your questions, but as you can see-" He gestured to the inside of his office. "I have a very important meeting t-" "I want you to let me go out somewhere on my break." She snapped interrupting him. Which was a..minor shock to him. She had never done something like that before during her stay...how long has it been now? Almost a full year. Time seemed to slip by when you were planning and had her do the same things everyday. Her face was determined and her hands were still wrapped around his arm in a tight grip-...He blinked and quickly recovered. Cyber having an almost confused look. "Now why in all hell would you want to do a thing like that? Demons out there would use you like a rag doll til you were nothing but broken pieces on the sidewalk-" "According to your employee policy,which I happened to have read the whole thing last night-" She interrupted him again making him pause. "- employees are permitted to leave to other places on t-their break but to be back before their break ends and as long as they report to you or your floor manager first, and since I have the rest of the day that means I just have to get back before nighttime. Which according to your own policy is eight thirty for most day staff including me." ....He opened his mouth- "I want to go out and I-..." She inhaled. "I w-want to visit Rita's." Silence. Cyber blinked, caught off guard by what just came out of her mouth and one look to Lou, told her he was definitely not prepared for something as bold as that. As he just paused and stared down to her with a blank expression...before that smile came back and he gave a huff of dry laughter. "Now why on earth would you even want to go to a place like that? A pure being such as yourself would be eaten alive there-" "She invited me." Technically that wasn't a lie. Rita did invite her to drop by sometime for a chat even if it was never a personally invitation. Lou how ever gave slight narrowed eyes with that smile at the now suspicious situation. But paused again when he felt something on his hand and one dart to it gave him an answer as she intertwined their fingers with one hand, small rose ring glimmering on it, and her face turned into one of pleading. "P-Please. ...D-Do it as a favor for me. A-And I promise I'll make it up to you later." .....Red eyes blinked back to her. Those purple eyes giving an honest look...and something jolted in him."....I" "HEY!!" They all turned to the impatient looking man waiting for him. "Are we conducting business or are you playing cutsie with the dame?" "Oh..Of course! This won't be but a moment!" He slowly turned back to her with a forced smile. Cyber could tell right away he was holding back the urge to just say no for sake of not being rude to her and ruin any progress he had made....But this was RITA they were talking about and Charles was there....Those two could easily ruin everything. But for some reason....This gal was dead set on going and by the sudden surprise and bold display they just witnessed, she wasn't about to take no easily....He could've just easily let Cyber take her but...his eyes side glanced back to the man. This guy claimed to have angelic weapons. Usually most if not all were instantly bought off the market usually by higher and the strongest demons to increase their own strength and to help prevent these things from being used on themselves. He had a chance to gain quite a few if this gentleman did hae some like he claimed and if this deal went right...Which means he NEEDED Cyber's backup......Which meant his brain had to bust into over drive and form a plan quickly....And this one involved the only other capable person he could trust at this moment. With a sharp inhale between clenched fangs, he turned back to her with a smile. "Very well....but on the condition. You don't go alone. Cyber and I are in a very important meeting so Disease will be accompanying you there and back...I would like you to stay close to him. If you agree, then you may go." She stared at him, before sighing and giving a smile with a nod of the head. "Y-Yes. Yes! Of course!" He hummed and turned to Cyber. "Get him immediately. Now." She didn't have to be told twice as she literally ran off without saying another word and he sighed- The further closing of her hand around him made him look back to her smiling face..and pause again. "T-Thank you. I-I know how you must feel about this, but I have to do it....I-It'd be rude to not show up." "...Yes. Not showing up when expected can be rude." They stayed like that for a few seconds, tensely waiting and while they were she slowly released her grip from his hand. He slowly flexed his squeezed fingers out, looking to them for just a moment, before putting his arms behind him back just in time to see Cyber rushing around the corner with a confused Disease in tow. He blinked as she pushed him forward and they stopped right in front of them. "Uh...You wanted me?" He sighed. "Yes. My darling here-" He nodded to her. "-wishes to visit..R-Rita." Disease blinked confused. "Myself and Cyber can't be spared and Midnight would probably...not do as good of a job as your could." He hated admitting this but Disease smirked up at his compliment anyways. "I need you to take her there and back. Do you understand what Im saying?" The snake man gave a salute and smile. "No problemo, Bosssss. Ssshould be there and back in no time!" Amalfia beemed and sighed in releif- "Hey! Are we doing business or not!?" She jumped and quickly began walking away from the door. "Ok. Thank you, Lou. Ill be back. Bye." She mumbled quickly as she scurried off. Disease was quick to make a move after her, but gagged and gave a tiny yelp when Lou grabbed the hood part of his hoodie and turned him around to face the bright red eyes that narrowed at him. "Listen good. Watch her every move carefully, and do NOT leave her alone with Rita or any of those workers." A grimace can over his features. "I don't need her findout out any information that could scare her off. Im counting on those abilities of yours, Disease. Do NOT let me down." Disease merely gave a thumbs up before wriggling out of his hold and dashing off in the direction she left. With a sigh he stood back straight up and rubbed his face. This wasn't what he wanted to get into right now, and one look to Cyber told him she was mentally saying the same thing he was. 'I don't like this'. But he didn't have time to think on it right now. With a forced smile he turned back to the scruffy looking man. "Now. Where were we?"

All characters except for Amalifa belongs to @palettepainter

[yetanotherramblingfangirl]

Carson/Hughes for the shuffle ask?

You're a good woman and a good friend / You've got a good heart, even when it's busted and bent - “May Your Kindness Remain” by Courtney Marie Andrews

[This is set after Mr. Bates’s trial.  This also went way more melodramatic than I originally intended, but here we are.  It’s also like 2000+ words long, so I’m putting it under a cut.]

Elsie leaned back against the closed door, her eyes drifting shut for a brief moment.  The day had hardly started and already she was ready for it to be over.

Opening her eyes and releasing a deep breath, Elsie decided a walk was definitely in order.  She wasn’t fit for company.  She just didn’t have the patience for it at the moment.  Slipping on her coat as she slipped out the door, she was careful to close it as quietly as possible.  She paused for a moment to pull her gloves from her coat pocket.  She worked her fingers into the lined leather, flexing her fingers to adjust the fit.  Satisfied, she folded her arms over her chest and set out across the courtyard at a measured pace.  

The air was cold and crisp, not at all unusual for January.  A steady wind tugged at her hair and stung her cheeks.  The sun shone brightly in a cloudless sky.  The bright cheeriness of it did little to brighten her mood.

With no real destination in mind, Elsie found herself heading toward the folly.  She usually didn’t take that path.  Perhaps that was precisely why she’d gone that way today.  The others weren’t likely to go looking for her there.  It was the perfect place to think, especially about things she didn’t wish to discuss with either Mrs. Patmore or Mr. Carson.  And this feeling of failure, this horrible gnawing guilt, was one she didn’t wish to discuss with anyone.

Frustrated with herself, she kicked at loose bits of gravel.  It surprised her how much satisfaction she gained from sending the small stones sailing through the air.  A distraction from her troubled thoughts, that’s all it was.  Something to focus on other than that so often suppressed inner voice that questioned whether she’d made the right choices.

She veered from the path, the grass soft beneath her feet.  She missed having something to kick at.  Despite the lack of distraction, she did not increase her pace.  To do so seemed unnecessary.  Time was immaterial today.  The family was away and the others had been given the day off.  She had work to do, but it was nothing that wouldn’t keep.  She didn’t often have free time.  And if she decided to spend what little she did manage to find pitying herself then that was her prerogative.  However, that didn’t mean her practical nature wouldn’t rail against the very notion.

“Just stop thinking about it.  You made choices, choices you cannot change and cannot fix,” she said under her breath.

Had anyone else been around, she would have been mortified.  She wasn’t usually one to talk to herself.  But this needed saying, and as she couldn’t talk about it with Mrs. Patmore or Mr. Carson, that left only herself to do the talking.  She wished for her mother.  If she was there she would have someone to not only tell her she was being ridiculous, but someone who would also offer kind words and a hug.  She felt very much in need of a hug.

Finally she reached her destination.  The wind had been steadily increasing in strength as she neared the folly.  Her ears were very cold and she knew her cheeks must be quite pink.  She wished she’d grabbed her scarf before coming out here.  But it was too late for that now.  Lowering herself carefully to the ground behind a pillar, she was relieved to find that it provided a break from wind.  However this relief was not very long-lived.  The damp chill of the stone seeped through her coat and dress into her body.  An almost violent shiver ran through her, but she refrained from moving.  If she just waited a few moments she would adjust.

Then there was the fact that the thought of going back to the house before she sorted herself out made her queasy.

It seemed that nothing was going to keep her from having these stupid irrational thoughts.  The only thing to do was to wait them out.  So, head in hands, she leaned against a pillar and allowed her thoughts free reign.  It was only a matter of moments before the first tears began to fall.

The tears didn’t last very long, just long enough to release the pressure that had slowly been building within her.  She still wasn’t happy and she still felt an almost overwhelming guilt, but at least she no longer felt like an exposed nerve.  Pulling a handkerchief from inside her sleeve, she wiped beneath her eyes.  A few more minutes of quiet reflection would be enough time to mentally prepare herself for her return to the house.  If she was circuitous in her route it might also be enough time for her appearance to return to normal.

Elsie wasn’t sure how long she sat there before she heard the first tentative footstep on the stone steps behind her.  Startled, she froze.  No, no, no.  She wasn’t ready for company.  She might no longer feel like a woman on the verge of emotional collapse, but she certainly wasn’t ready to speak with anyone either.

“Mrs. Hughes?” the butler’s voice called.  He hadn’t seen her yet.  She sent up a silent prayer that he wouldn’t venture far enough into the folly to find her.  She was in the middle of promising never again to indulge in such ridiculous behavior when Mr. Carson came into sight.  

He turned his head to the left, his eyes lighting on her immediately.  A look of relief flashed across his features before quickly transitioning to confusion.  “What are you doing sitting on the ground?”

His confusion was almost enough to make her chuckle.  At least he hadn’t ventured upon her while she was in tears.  The poor man would have been completely at a loss for what to do.  That thought did make her chuckle as she attempted to stand.  Unfortunately, the cold had made her limbs stiff and her body refused to cooperate.  She wavered unsteadily before falling back to the ground with a soft thud.  Before she could attempt to right herself again, Mr. Carson was at her side, kneeling and offering her his hands in support.  She was absolutely mortified.

“Thank you, Mr. Carson,” she said after he had helped her to stand.  She could feel a fierce blush spread up from her chest, spreading across her face.  Knowing that her face must be practically incandescent only served to further add to her embarrassment and thus fuel her flush.  She couldn’t bear to look him in the eye.  She brushed the back of her coat and looked down at her trembling hands to avoid his gaze.  “I do apologize for appearing so undignified.”

He waved aside her apology.  “Are you quite alright?  How long have you been out here?” he asked softly, his concern evident in his furrowed brow.  A large part of her was touched, but an even larger part of her was embarrassed.

Elsie could feel his eyes upon her and silently prayed he wouldn’t badger her into telling him what was bothering her.  She couldn’t tell him.  He would think her ridiculous, and that was the last thing she ever wanted.  God, this was awful.  Clearing her throat, she looked just over Mr. Carson’s shoulder.  “Yes, perfectly.  I can’t have been out here for very long.”  

The last part was a bald-faced lie.  She knew it, and she knew that he knew it.  But he seemed content to leave her alone, at least for the moment.  She nearly sagged under the weight of her relief.

Mr. Carson watched her as she readjusted her coat and gloves.  “Shall we head back?”

She offered him a weak smile.  “I suppose we should.”

He returned her smile and gestured for her to lead the way.  She did as he bade, hoping they could walk back in companionable silence.  Maybe if she didn’t say anything, he wouldn’t either.

She should have known better.

Several minutes passed in blissful silence.  Elsie took great comfort in Mr. Carson’s presence at her side.  Her shoulder bumped lightly against his arm by mistake.  She shot him an apologetic look, which he answered with a small smile.  They continued on.

The next bump was his, but it was no accident.  Elsie could tell.  He nudged her lightly with his elbow, looking at her out of the corner of his eye.  He was offering his arm.  Wordlessly and without his usual grace, but he was offering all the same.  Elsie’s heart skipped a beat.  She wrapped her arm around his and allowed herself to be drawn closer.  He was so solid and warm.  And, in his own particular and often infuriating way, sweet.  But he also didn’t know when to leave well enough alone.

“You would tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you?” he asked a moment later, his gaze flitting to her before returning to the lawn before them.

There were many things Elsie could admit she loved about Charles Carson, but his inability to leave her be when she most wanted him to was not one of those things.  She tried to formulate some sort of response that would reassure him that she was fine.  The problem was she just couldn’t bring herself to do it this time.  Not today, not when she felt this gnawing consuming guilt.  So instead of offering paltry assurances, she remained silent.

Mr. Carson pulled her just a fraction closer.  “Because you know I’m on your side.  Don’t you?”

Elsie looked up into his face.  “I do know that,” she said, squeezing his arm reassuringly.

He stopped walking and stared at her.  She grew uncomfortable under his scrutiny, but she refused to fidget.  Her heart thudded painfully against her ribcage.  He doesn’t believe you.  He thinks you’re lying.

It felt like an eternity before he spoke.  “I know what it is to regret a choice, Mrs. Hughes.  To blame yourself for events you couldn’t possibly have predicted and which would have carried on without your involvement regardless. And Mr. Bates would very likely tell you the same thing.”

She dropped his arm and backed away.  Tears welled in her eyes.  This was absolutely mortifying.  It only got worse when the first few tears trickled down her cheeks.  Her breaths were coming in shorter and shorter gasps.  Mortified at the display she was making of herself and incapable of stopping, she buried her face in her hands.

Elsie Hughes, you’ve brought this upon yourself by listening at that grate.  Mam always warned you that your curiosity would bring ruin, she thought bitterly.  Her shoulders shook with effort not to sob outright.  She wished the ground would open up and swallow her whole.

It surprised her when Mr. Carson rested a gentle hand on her shoulder.  But she couldn’t stop her stupid tears.  She couldn’t catch her breath.  She couldn’t do this.  It was all too much.

“It might not seem it, but you’ve done nothing wrong,” he whispered.

“I failed Mr. Bates and because of that I failed Anna,” she said, her voice muffled by her hands.  She couldn’t bring herself to say anything else.  What else could she say at this point?

“You’ve failed no one as long as you told the truth.  And I know you to be nothing if not honest.”

They stood there for several silent moments as Elsie slowly regained control over her emotions.  She swiped at the tear tracks on her cheeks.  Sniffling, she said, “You must think me ridiculous.”

“I could never think that.”

“I don’t see how you couldn’t.”

“Well, I believe I should be the judge of what I think is ridiculous.”  He said it with such an air of authority that it drew a short laugh from Elsie.  “Ah, that’s better.”

Though it did little to improve her mood, the laughter at least allowed her to regain some of her footing.  “Please forgive me, Mr. Carson.  I’m so embarrassed.”

Mr. Carson let his hand fall back to his side before taking a handkerchief from his pocket and handing it to her.  “You’ve done nothing for which you need to be embarrassed.”

She took the proffered token, using the soft linen to wipe away the last of her tears.  She offered him a watery smile.  “And yet I am.  Please accept my apology and let us head back to the house.”

[slingsendarrows]

To His Coy Master

“I have often reflected on upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive…My homemade education gave me, with every additional book I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness, and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America.” — Malcolm X “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”

Photo by Will Small

It never ceases to amaze the length, and breadth white people will go to willfully deny history in as much as it tells them the truth about themselves. I don’t blame them. It is a bitter pill to swallow owning up as a member of a people that has wreaked such havoc and extended so much unmitigated violence. Your domination in pursuit of betterment for your people and racial superiority was at the unquantifiable expense of others.

Now, before we get bogged down in the mire of wilfully confusing terms, let me resentfully explain what I mean by the words I am using. I say resentfully because expounding upon the injustices heaped upon my people requires I justify my position and take care not to offend the sensibilities of those I am addressing. It is dormant trauma indicative of the master/slave dichotomy I still have yet to shed. For it is only the oppressor that necessitates the oppressed exercise restraint and caution in stating and expressing his grievances, however vile and repulsive, adjusting for nuances and individual circumstances as if his subjugation wasn’t abrupt, violent, and complete. What is the virtue of incremental progress if the oppressor committed the original sin with absolute expediency? But, I digress.

“White people” or “white men,” refers to the collective white man, woman, and child as befits the ideologies of white supremacy, meaning those originating from Europe and the inheritors of their ancestors’ misdeeds. I will not deign to account for individual acts or attitudes of “good” white people because it is irrelevant. It is a tactic the oppressor uses to detract from the larger truth about himself.

Also, in speaking collectively, I will use the masculine pronouns, reflexive and otherwise, in an umbrella fashion similar to holy writ, signifying patriarchy as the apex of privilege and tyranny. Occasionally, I may address collective “white people” as women and men, specifically. “Master” is not restricted to those who owned slaves in actuality but those who propagated ideas of white superiority and black subjection.

Finally, and for what I hope will be the last time, privilege is a Russian doll ladder in that some have more than others in the broader context of the hierarchical structure as well as within each rung. Privilege is the exemption from specific experiences due to the inherent characteristics of race, ability, sexuality, gender identity, sex, socioeconomic status, etc. I have privilege within my rung as educated, able-bodied, cis-gender, and heterosexual. I shall leave it there.

I know you are, but what am I?

There are things you can’t unsee. I can neither unsee injustice nor abide civility for civility’s sake. Living as a black woman person is a burden, but one I am learning to carry with pride. You live in the depths of a valley with a clear perspective of the surrounding landscape. I look about me these days, and I yearn to be free. Natural freedom, not granted, but inborn and awakened through the conscious effort. Freedom rising from truth and understanding, painful though it may be. But master, I must tell you the truth about yourself, for I see now, as Malcolm X stated, you love yourself so much you’re often surprised to discover we do not share your “vainglorious self-opinion.”

Bettmann Archives/Getty Images

The cyclical nature of oppression angers me: outcries and marches, cosmetic salves for change, and disingenuous support that lasts just long enough for us to return to business, as usual. I don’t want to mince words anymore. It no longer serves to be palatable. You must swallow whole my incredulous raging despair and dubious hope for change. You will taste every unpleasant bite as I tell you the unflavored truth about yourself. I will not be distracted by dog-whistle racist dismissals of reverse-racism and black supremacy. Pipe down! You know I do not have the power to alter a fraction of your daily existence fundamentally.

For all your talk of progress, history shows very little of significance and import has materially changed. Individual achievement is pointless if institutionalized racism persists, unimpeded since the advent of colonial conquest when you left your lands to “discover” ours. It matters little that some of us make it if most of us continue to suffer the same injustices bereft of reprieve through education, wealth, and status. In short, your surface efforts at woke-ness and allyship are of little use if, in your white homes and white spaces, you propagate or remain silent in the face of racist sentiments and ideologies.

I reason real change calls for radical action. The how eludes me. Real change requires rooting out the problem in its entirety, a problem so deeply ingrained and pervasive it infects every facet of our daily existence. It is institutionalized. But our subjugation was so final we forgot our names. We have been in the wilderness far too long, thirsting for understanding and starving for identity. You hope we never figure out our freedom was never a matter for your consent.

In the midst of my hungering, I have awakened to two fundamental realizations: 1) we are and have only ever been as free as you have allowed us to be, 2) truth comes through knowledge of self, and knowledge of self comes through self-education.

It’s been a long, long time coming, but I know change is gonna come.

During moments of considerable racial unrest, you remind us to be grateful for the crumbs that fall from your feasting tables and make it into our mouths. With each protesting hamster-wheel cycle for change, you erroneously juxtapose our grievances against your apparent signs of progress, as if the two are analogous. You caution against violent reactions when your institutions murder us, and you selectively misquote our advocates out of context to suit your purposes and invalidate our rage. The conversation inevitably becomes about how we are not decent people, and our behavior courted death; therefore, we deserve to die. There is no need to mourn, much less to protest. Still, during our tear-gassed and rubber-bulleted peaceful protestations, you implore us, once again, to be patient. Someday we’ll all be free. Incrementalism over expediency!

Photo by Charles Moore

You ask us to remember Abraham Lincoln and his hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers. Do we not recall the numerous, albeit contradictory, supreme court decisions that have brought us thus far? Lyndon B. Johnson and his predecessors awarded us civil rights, benefitting the electorate with the sacrifice of black bodies. The matter of reparations is a non-starter — sins of the father, and all that; it’s in the past. See our constitutional amendments, white abolitionists, James Meredith, northern white liberalism, and lest we forget, the progressive black achievement permitted in your industries and society.

But the fact that we’re still witnessing black firsts 400 years later is not a sign of progress; it is the opposite.

Our schools teach the efforts and white generosity of Abraham Lincoln liberated black people in America. However, a cursory glance at your records will show this is factually incorrect. I am tired of being reminded to pay homage to the “Great Emancipator,” whom we remember, in large part, due to this astounding act of condescending deference. Master Lincoln is an excellent example of your self-conceit that our freedom is yours to grant or deny. And to add insult to injury, you congratulate yourselves for it. The overarching white supremacist belief you can deign to give us freedom is a glaring reminder we are only as free as you enable us to be. Your love for this lie is so profound; you pull it out each time issues of race arise. But Lincoln, a white man, freed you! He might have been black too.

So let’s set the record straight.

Lincoln did not free slaves out of moral imperative but political expediency. A cursory study of his papers and thinking at the time show he was willing to maintain slavery if it meant keeping the Union intact because “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Before the Missouri Compromise of 1820, a carefully maintained 1:1 ratio determined the slavery status of newly admitted states. This balancing act was codified when Maine and Missouri sought admittance; the former was free, and the latter legally permit slavery. The law also prohibited slavery north of the Mason-Dixon line.

At the onset of the Civil War, Missouri demographically split between confederate and union allies. In 1861, witnessing Missouri’s descent into chaos, Union Major Generals Fremont and Hunter issued emancipation proclamations calling for the execution of those found guilty of taking up arms against Union and the confiscation of their property, including freeing their slaves. Shortly after that, Lincoln fired the generals and annulled the proclamation. He issued a Second Confiscation Act in July 1862, allowing for the confiscation of slaves owned by the rebels, freeing them at the discretion of the court.

District of Columbia. Company E, 4th U.S. Colored Infantry, at Fort Lincoln

Slaves were commodities of considerable economic value. Slaves were mortgaged collateral and settled debts. Losing slaves would result in a substantial financial loss for southern masters. The Union knew that, so they exploited it. Freeing slaves robed the Confederacy of its free and disposable labor, eliminating the possibility of slaves fighting against the Union army at the behest of their rebel masters. Lincoln did not issue the Proclamation of 1863 because he thought black people were inherently equal and deserving of justice under the law. Asked about his decision-making process, he stated, “…if I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that…” The Civil War did not end slavery in acknowledgment of black equality. Slave emancipation crippled the Confederate economies and, in so doing, weakened the southern rebellion. Emancipation was a means to an end.

Lincoln could not conceive of a nation with black people as equal if not, primary stakeholders. Nevermind their backs built the wealth of the country. Now that the problematic part of nation-building over, he could simply return them from whence they came and be done with it. He thought it better to return black Americans to Africa and failing that, create a whole separate nation unto themselves.

Reportedly the only known photo of a black American Union soldier and his family. (Library of Congress)

In 1854, before the Civil War, Lincoln stated, at a speech in Illinois, his “…first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them back to Liberia.” It was the only foreseeable solution to the race issue. He considered the coal-mining prospects of the Chiriqui region in modern-day Panama an option for deportation and resettlement. Still, the idea met fierce abolitionist opposition when he tested it on a sample slave population in Delaware. He supported a congressional bill that would “…aid in the colonization and settlement of such free persons of African descent […] as may desire to emigrate to the Republic of Haiti or Liberia or such other country beyond the limits of the United States as the President may determine.” After signing the Second Confiscation Act, in August 1862, Lincoln invited a delegation of five prominent black men to the White House to clarify that white and black people cannot coexist; therefore, separation was the most direct path to peace. He wanted their support for a mass black exodus.

Liberia presented a logistical nightmare. The Chiquiri coal was worthless, and the land in dispute with Costa Rica. Approximately 450 black people moved to an island off the coast of Haiti, of which almost 25% died of poor nutrition and illness before the remainder returned to the U.S. Defeated, Lincoln, considered deporting “the whole colored race of the slave states into Texas.” Days before his death, he stressed, “I can hardly believe that the South and North can live peace unless we can get rid of the negroes…I believe it would be better [for the whites] to export them to some fertile country…”

Getty/Library of Congress

In conclusion, asking me to celebrate a white master for granting me what is rightfully mine is ludicrous — honoring him for a decision that only benefitted me as a secondary consequence of his primary purpose is the height of white arrogance. It merely cements you don’t believe freedom is ours by right; it is yours to give in the manner befitting your white sensibility stretched out over the expanse of time. Time to legitimize the numbing effect of revisionist history and position us in gratitude toward master’s acquiesce and tolerance, however slow. Master is doing his best. After all, his wife, at a time, condescended to teach Frederick Douglass to read and write.

And yet, here we remain, yearning for crumbs off of master’s table. Asking, begging, pleading, for what is ours.

The real nightmare scenario for white supremacy is an actualized black mind, educated and conscious of its pervasive and pernicious effects. Global black unity jellies the white man’s spine in fear of retribution for his crimes. It is why you champion incremental progress and hail peaceful protest as the height of moral discourse. You only understand violence for violence is what it took to achieve your dominance. You cannot conceive of any other possible outcome, and you cannot revise history with enough “good” white people committing “good” white acts to cover the rancid stench. You know it stinks, and since you cannot find a solution outside your oppressive playbook, you must deny, obfuscate, distract, appease and roll the ball down the road of historical replay.

To that, I now turn a deaf ear. We must educate ourselves about our people and history if we are to be truly free. We cannot depend upon you to what is right. You have made it abundantly clear.

[chainofbeing]

Something has gone wrong with the Avian Ark. Adam goes to investigate, hoping to find some evidence of whatever it was that destroyed the Gorlan

Narration: David M. Sledge

Old Man: David Charles

PAGAA: Nathan James

Adam Delta 5 and, Sound Design: Cai Gwylim Pritchard

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[a deep voiced narrator speaks over clicking pipes and a deep low rumble]

A soft gurgling can be heard in the pipes buried within the bowels of the AEN avian ark. Surrounded by a thousand other pipes with a thousand other jobs; this gurgling would go unnoticed by a crew of humans. Which is why the Alliance of Earth Nations felt it necessary to design and construct one of the largest self sustaining systems of AI controlled maintenance drones ever conceived of. It's not long before a circular drone scatters along and begins to scan the pipe for blockages. All of a sudden the whole station falls silent as a large and indescribable presence drifts by. The complexity of this presence supersedes all code written into this drone and it stops. Proximity alone to this thing that occupied every aspect of existence, even beyond those of the physical and logical realms, this oppressive force beyond forces, causes the entities within the avian ark to shift internally, even down to the code that drives them. This indescribable, incomprehensible pressure emanates something which moves the station to behave in a way so vastly different to how the multitude of coders and engineers intended for it to behave, one might be driven to call it possession.

[Adam is now narrating]

I’m sat in a carrier, it’s hurtling through space at speeds which cause the ship to shake and rumble lightly but with total surety. Back in the old days speeds like this were impossible to achieve, but since the discovery of the widening field; travelling across the universe became easy as- well it's still extremely expensive and difficult to achieve but still possible. Sat across from me is an old Veatorian man. Strapped into the economy class seats and surrounded by luggage, his skin has faded into a light blue with age and he stares at me with the look of a man who was not expecting to see or experience anything new until death, but has been rudely ripped from his resignation into the haze of old age.

“Hello! Nice to meet you, my name is Adam. As in capital ‘A’ Adam” I say to him, masking my discomfort with friendliness in the hopes that he’ll at least give me attention in a nicer way

“Isn’t every Adam ‘capital A’ Adam?” He replies, maintaining his demeanour

“Well- uh-“ I start,

“And I can tell who you are. The glass horns give it away”

I reach up and touch the glass protrusions coming from my forehead. At least he didn’t zero in on any of my other features that differentiate me from regular humans. The two of us are the last passengers on this 400 seat, 50 year old well worn and slightly dingy carrier. I stand up and move to the cockpit of the carrier in order to avoid the old man's gaze. The two pilots are making their final preparations to land and drop me off. The ships jolts and docks with the orbital station, the ships AI doing most of the work.

[the sounds of a creaking and broken station can be heard]

The Hangar for the Avian Arc looks like shit, space stations are usually built to deal with a minor problem, if they’re designed well enough and nothing interferes with them. I had heard stories of Demons materialising inside space stations fusing with them in the orbit of planets, at which point the punished such as myself have to get involved. It sounds strange but I’m hoping it is that. Seeing that symbol shook me, something about being reminded of Eden has given me this pit in my stomach I can’t seem to shake, for a few reasons, unfortunately. In terms of cold hard facts All that I know is that the Avian Arc sat along the predicted course of whatever it was that destroyed the Gorlan and that every warning was set off at once. The data received was completely unreadable and seemed...panicked. At least to me. When I said that to the investigators they looked at me like I’d insulted them personally, but being alive for as long as I have teaches you a lot of things, chief among them being that science and logic don't explain everything. Regardless, it seemed like the two were related. The avian arc was designed to house all manner of species of birds. One of many other preservation centres, it was meant to preserve and propagate in the face of the loss of Earth. There's no engineering department on stations like this, The whole station is fully automated making it somewhat vulnerable to attack and looting. The station does have some defence capabilities but it's mostly reliant on outside, human security that is stationed on the nearby planet.

Currently the blast doors of the hangar are shut, they very rarely get opened unless it's to accommodate large craft delivering supplies or ships that don’t have normal docking capabilities. The hangar is barren, save for a few empty boxes. The unusual thing is that it seems like it’s being dismantled. The lights in the ceiling are mostly off and there are great swathes of exposed wiring hanging loose from the walls and ceilings. The surfaces are built up with grease and dust and the whole room just seethes with dilapidation. I see three decontamination chambers at the end of the room, two of them are still lit up but the last one is dark, and as I walk closer, carefully avoiding missing floor panels and debris, I see that the interior has been completely and meticulously stripped clean. Panelling, wires and the tubing that spray the visitor with an anti bacterial solution. Essentially all that was left was just a hole in the wall. Not being one to let anything get in the way of proper procedure I decide to use a working chamber

As I enter I hear a depressing spurt as a few drops of cleaning fluid trickle out of the sprinkler overhead and onto my horns. I step over the gap where the seal used to be and I'm in a long corridor. it's curved slightly around the main column of the "avian arc". this particular station is a large core surrounded by 3 rings. At the centre column are the habitats, dozens of artificial biomes designed to replicate earth's atmosphere as close as possible to the real thing. It's not though. No amount of machinery could replicate that.

At either end of the corridor there's 2 staircases, one going up and one going down. There's a terminal in front of me with a touch screen, I press the activation button, nothing comes on. I press the button above labelled “help”. A red light flickers on and a voice comes seemingly out of nowhere.

[the voice is natural sounding, with a slight robotic quality]

"hi! I'm PAGAA the protector and guide to the avian arc! How can I help you today?"

An AI, thank gods, that makes things far easier

"PAGAA, can I port you to my visu-link?

"Absolutely, I am a state of the art AI"

"Not anymore"

"I didn't catch that, sorry"

"Nothing, What has happened to the avian arc?"

"I'm afraid that information can not be accessed at a public terminal"

"Ok, how do i get access to this information?"

"You would have to converse directly with the overseer, would you like me to schedule a meeting? It usually takes 3-5 days for them to get here"

"I’m in a bit of a hurry, on which floor is the overseers office located?"

“allow me to escort you, please follow the markers on your HUD”

I begin making my way up the stairs, the curve around the central column is very slight, almost i unnoticeable, the notice boards on the walls flicker on and off, some missing the internal circuitry entirely

"Can you tell me why the Avian Arc is missing so many components?"

"Station protocol states that under certain circumstances resources can be re-appropriated for use in repair and upgrade of the maintenance drones"

"Which circumstances were met?"

"I'm afraid that's restricted information"

As I'm following the path highlighted on my visu-link, I see to my right Where there is usually a set of double doors only one remains. Out of curiosity I shuffle past and step through.

[transition from station ambience to the sounds of a savanna, wind, water and insects]

The room is large, it's more of a hall then anything, the pressure feels almost immediately different that, along with the humidity and heat, knocks the breath out of my lungs, the whole space is done out like a savanna, large acacias, tall grass waving gently in the artificial wind. At the sides of the room where there should be a wide sweeping unbroken facsimile of the sky there are large chunks absent, ruining the illusion.

"This is a restricted area, please leave immediately or I will be forced to call security"

"What? Am I gonna be waiting a week to get arrested?”

"no, security is on board currently"

"That can't be right, automated security was banned long before this station was constructed"

"Due to certain circum-"

"Certain circumstances bla bla. But if there’s no onboard defence, and the security team aren’t here, then you must mean self-constructed security right?"

“Please leave the area,”

I don’t want to wait and find out what sort of machine a station creates to protect itself after being shocked into emergency shutdown and so I make my way out, but before I reach the door a thought strikes me

"Wait a minute, where are all the birds?"

The whole room is silent, there are a few insects buzzing lazily through the air as well as the rustle of leaves and flowing of water.

"Station protocol states that under certain circumstances resources can be re-appropriated for use in repair and upgrade of the maintenance drones"

"You've already said that but, what does that mean? What does that have to do with the birds?

"please leave the area,"

I pace out of the room, as I leave the artificial savanna and step back into the staircase I spot a maintenance drone, it's a wide flat thing designed to be as unnoticeable as possible without being a tripping hazard. A series of arms suddenly pop out from underneath the metal carapace and begin to dismantle something within the walls, it removes the panelling and I see it pull components and wires out. It doesn't move or act like any sort of typical automated drone would, it's sloppy and almost seems organic, the fervour with which it pulls the walls apart almost seems hungry.

"Let's take a look at you,"

As I reach out to pick it up it turns and hisses at me and an appendage pops out from underneath. What I thought was mechanical seems more like bone, muscle and sinew. I pull my hand back and it scurries away.

“Weird,”

I follow the drone along the course set for me by PAGAA, picking up my pace slightly to keep up. Suddenly it veers off to the left down a long corridor that leads to the first of the three rings. I see that the path on my visu-link is bringing me up further along the edge of the main column.

“Thanks for the help PAGAA but I’m going to take a little look around on my own,”

“Please stick to the set path”

Ignoring PAGAAs request. I follow the trail of the drone, I can see it in the distance as it races to the entrance of the ring. On either side of me are long uninterrupted windows which give a glimpse into the vastness of space, I can just about make out the other corridors that connect the detached 1st ring to the rest of the station.

“Please turn back, you are about to enter a restricted area”

“Don't worry about me, I'm just going to have a look,”

“Please state your business on the Avian Ark”

“Restricted information unfortunately, I'm sure you understand”

the security doors on either end of the corridor suddenly close and I am left trapped.

“PAGAA what’s going on?”

[PAGAA says something but it is completely corrupted and sounds like static]

I hear the clunking of machinery and the panel above me detach. With a deadly immediacy I feel my body pulled out into the cold and unforgiving vastness of space.

[zarcake-writes]

Gifts

This was commissioned by @im-not-sad-im-just-depressing and features their OC Thea attempting to court Charles Smith. It’s sweet and cute. I really like Thea, I think she’s adorable. Enjoy!

Warnings: fluff, shy gift giving, shy flirting

The leather bracelet in Thea’s hand feels heavier than it is. Her heart is pounding, her palms are sweaty, and her stomach is in knots. It is times like this she wonders if she really is cut out to be an outlaw. Robbing and killing folks don’t bother her, at least not anymore. Running cons with Hosea is easy, and often times fun. Thea even dresses the part of an outlaw; with pants and suspenders, a button-up shirt, a hat on her head, and a gun on her hip.

While her outfit and actions scream outlaw, the rest of her does not. Standing at barely five feet, she is one of the shorter members in the gang; hell, she probably is the shortest person in the gang. And her anxiety, god she is worse than Kieran. When someone she doesn’t know talks to her, or she was not prepared for the conversation, her face always gets bright red and hot, and she finds it difficult to talk.

While conversations are hard for Thea, giving someone a gift and showing them affection is even harder. Not many people have caught her eye, but Charles Smith did the moment he joined the gang. His looks were the first thing she noticed; his handsome face and his broad shoulders made her stumble when she first saw him. But it was his personality, his calm and patient attitude, and his soft smile that made her fall head over heels for him.

It took a long while for Thea to summon the courage to say one word to Charles, and even then, she nearly messed up the word ‘Hi.’ Eventually, though, she was able to have small conversations with him, and before she knew it, Thea was courting Charles. Even if it was in an awkward and shy way.

The first gift Thea gave to Charles was a colorful rock she found at Horseshoe Overlook. She was on guard duty when she found it or rather stumbled over it. The rock was covered in dirt and mud, but once she wiped it clean, the colors were clear for all to see. And it was smooth, so smooth and round. It reminded her of a worry stone.

It was later that night, when almost everyone was asleep, that she gave the rock to Charles. He was sitting by himself on the edge of the camp. His attention was on the clear night sky. Thea steeled her nerves and approached him.

“Hey Charles, mind some company?” she asked.

Charles turned to her and gave her a soft smile. He scooted over on the rock he sat on and motioned for her to sit next to him. Thea could feel her face grow warm and prayed he wouldn’t be able to see her red face.

“It’s a nice night,” she said.

“It is.”

“Oh, look at this pretty rock I found.”

Charles took the rock from her outstretched hand and smiled at it. “It is pretty and smooth. You found it like this?”

“Yes, right here in camp. I tripped over it.”

“Well, you are very lucky.”

“You can have it,” Thea said without thinking.

Charles gave her a surprised look. “Really?”

“Oh, um, yes! Yes. Go ahead and have it. Consider it, um, a gift.” She managed to get out. She gave him a smile then looked away. Thea could feel her face burning and her anxiety begin to eat away at her.

“Thank you. I’ll treasure it.” Charles tucked the rock into his pocket and continued watching the sky. The sincerity in his voice made her chest warm and heart pound.

The second gift Thea gave to Charles was a book on the local plant and wildlife in New Hanover. She found it in the Valentine General Store. The cover was worn and the spine was cracked, but whoever owned it before clearly loved the book. There were little notes on some of the pages telling the reader the best places to find sage and berries. Some of the handwritten notes were about some of the local animals, like the large buck that lived in the area and the best fishing spots.

For some reason, the book reminded Thea of Charles. She bought it with Charles in mind and tucked it away into her coat.

Later that night, Thea approached Charles, the book in her hand. He was sitting near the fire by himself, which she was thankful for. If anyone else was around, her anxiety would have made her run. Else she would run the risk of stumbling over her words and making a fool of herself.

Charles glanced up at her when he heard her approach. His face instantly softened and he gave Thea a soft smile. The way the light from the fire reflected off of Charles’s features was breathtaking.

“Mind some company?” Thea asked.

“Course not. Sit.” Charles motioned to the spot next to him and scooted over a bit.

Thea smiled and sat beside Charles. She stared into the fire and ran her fingers over the edge of the book nervously. You can do it, she thought.

“Is that a new book?” Charles asked.

Thea jumped in surprise and glanced at Charles. He was looking at her expectantly. “Oh, yes. I got it in Valentine today. It’s um, well, I actually got it f-for you.”

“For me?”

“Yes. I-I thought you would like it. It talks about the local animal and plant life.”

Charles took the book from Thea’s hand and opened it. He flipped through the pages and studied the pictures. He read the print and smiled at the little notes the old owner of the book left.

“I take it you didn’t leave the notes?”

“Oh, n-no. Some of them are helpful, a few are funny.”

“Funny?”

“Yeah, go to the page with the coyotes. They mention one that enjoys stealing bags and clothes.”

Thea and Charles spent the next hour reading the book together. Charles would often point to something in the book and make a comment. Like when he pointed to the image of a buffalo, he told Thea about his mother and how her tribe would follow them. The tender moment between Thea and Charles came to an end when Sean and Karen joined them at the fire.

Ever since that night, Thea found herself thinking more and more of Charles. She remembers how warm his body was next to hers, how solid he felt when she leaned against him. The memory of his voice, soft and low, next to her ear made her blush and her body grow hot. Thea couldn’t help but imagine spending every night like that with Charles.

The third gift Thea has for Charles is the braided leather bracelet in her hand. The leather is soft and dark, and there are small turquoise beads at the ends. She bought the leather and the small beads and made the bracelet herself. It took her a while to make a perfect one, but once she did, she was ecstatic.

While the other gifts were a spur of the moment things, Thea wanted this gift to be special. She planned to give Charles the bracelet and then confess her feelings to him. But the problem with her plan is that Thea cannot summon the courage to give the bracelet to Charles. And she’s tried multiple times to give it to him, but each time she panics and basically runs away.

Despite how much Thea has been building herself up, she knows this next attempt will end the same. She’ll walk up to Charles and talk with him. During the conversation, her anxiety will win and she’ll leave without giving him the bracelet or telling him how she feels. Each time Thea leaves with the bracelet safely tucked in her coat pocket, she can’t help but think about how much of a fool she is.

Charles is sitting at the edge of camp when Thea finds him. He’s been in camp all day, helping out with chores and guard duty. She looks around and is thankful that not many people are around. She takes a deep breath and walks towards Charles.

“Ch-Charles?” Thea asked.

Charles turns to her and smiles. In the light of the evening sun, Charles looks absolutely gorgeous. His dark eyes shine, the soft smile on his face, and the way the wind lightly tussles his hair, Thea almost forgets how to breathe. “Hey, Thea. How are you?”

“I’m good. Do you mind some company?”

“Not when it’s you. I’ve come to enjoy your company and our little talks. Here, take a seat next to me.”

Thea smiles and looks away, knowing that the blush on her face is obvious. She takes a deep breath as she sits next to Charles. “I’m glad to hear that Charles.”

They sit there in silence for a moment. Thea is so anxious about giving Charles the bracelet and confessing how she feels that she can’t even think to start a conversation with him. Her mind brings up images of Charles laughing at her for making the bracelet. The thought of Charles scoffing or growing mad at her for confessing that she likes him, scares Thea. The feeling of Charles’s hand coming to rest on her shoulder makes Thea jump in surprise.

“Oh, I’m sorry Thea. Didn’t mean to startle you. Are you ok?”

“Y-yes. Just… I have something to tell y-you.” Thea glances at Charles, who is looking at her expectantly. He has a patient and warm look on his face. His eyes, so dark and beautiful, shine with a hopeful look.

“What is it, Thea?”

“Um, I… I like… Shit. I’m sorry, Charles.” Thea stood up and steps away from Charles.

“For what? Thea? Are you ok?”

“No, I mean yes. Fuck, I’m sorry, I’m so weird and awkward and you… you’re wonderful and so handsome.”

Charles’s eyebrows rise in surprise, and a small smile graces his features. And when Thea realizes what she said, she wishes the ground would open and swallow her up. She can feel her face grow hot, hotter than it already was. She turns to leave, but Charles’s hand wrapping around her wrist stops her. His grip is firm, but not crushing or painful. Thea can pull away, and as much as she wants to, she savors the feeling.

“You think that about me?” Charles asked.

“Y-yes. I do.”

“Is that why you’re giving me these gifts? Because you like me?”

“Yes. And I… I have a third gift for you.”

“You do?”

“Yes.”

Charles releases Thea’s wrist and scoots over. She takes a deep breath and slowly sits back down next to him. She pulls the bracelet out of her pocket and hesitantly hands it to him. Charles takes it and smiles down at it. His fingers glide over the leather and fiddle with the beads. The smile on Charles’s face makes Thea’s heart pound and leaves a warm feeling in her chest.  

“You made this? For me?”

“Yes.”

“Thea, it’s beautiful. Thank you.” Charles wraps the bracelet around his wrist, smiling softly to himself.

“You’re welcome.”

“How long have you planned this?”

“A while now. I was just… I was scared that me confessing how I feel would upset you. Or you would laugh at me.”

Charles’s hand comes to rest on Thea’s, taking her breath away and sending chills along her skin. “I would never mock you. You’re a brave person, and I’ll admit, I’ve been interested in you for a while as well.”

“You have been?”

“Yes, and I would like to get to know you better. Would that be ok?”

“Yes, that sounds wonderful.”

Charles smiles and stands. “There’s a nice spot down by the river I think is the best spot to watch the setting sun. Would you like to accompany me?”

“Yes.”

Charles smiles and holds a hand out for Thea to take. He helps her stand and leads the way to the horses. Sometime later, the two are riding out of camp together, side by side. Thea knows her face is red, but she can’t find it in herself to care. When she glances at Charles and sees he’s watching her, with a gentle look in his eyes, the warm feeling in her chest grows.

[fanficimagery]

Imagine marrying Charlie Weasley (Part 4 of 4).

Sam Heughan as Charlie Weasley.

Charlie X Reader

Staring out the top floor window and into the back field that's been transformed into a very mystical wedding venue, you can't help the smile that spreads from ear to ear. Today is the day you become an official Weasley and you couldn't be any more happier to bind your life and magic to that of Charlie's.

The door opens and you whirl around from the window to find Ginny, Hermione and Fleur all walking into the room. Two out of the three expressions morph into shock and the other absolutely beams.

"Tu es magnifique!" Fleur gushes. She eagerly closes the distance between the two of you, she delicately kissing both of your cheeks in greeting.

"Charlie's gonna die when he sees you." Ginny gapes before softly laughing. "You look hot, woman!"

"You do look very beautiful," Hermione agrees once she composes herself. "Is that a muggle creation?"

You glance down at your chosen dress, nodding. The dress itself is backless, it's sleeves fitted down to your wrists. The neckline plunges almost dangerously low and the fabric of the top half of the dress is so sheer that strategically placed sparkling embellishments perfectly hide your naughty bits. And the skirt- the skirt starts just a little bit above your hips, the heavy, layered satin falling in a slight flare down to your feet. "Muggle made, but magically altered. Molly and my mom weren't too keen on the sheer fabric, but I ended up getting my way after letting them darken the fabric just a smidgen."

The three women continue to just drink in the image of you in your wedding dress and you eventually blush under the gazes. "Okay, okay. Stop," you nervously laugh. "Is everything all in order?"

"Knock, knock!" The door opens yet again and your father pokes his head in, a hand clamped over his eyes. "I hope everyone's decent!"

All four of you women chuckle. "Yes, dad. All the traumatizing bits are covered."

His hand falls away and his smile falters before completely vanishing. As he steps into the room and shuts the door behind him, he chokes on a sob. "Oh, sweetheart..."

"Dad, no! Don't you start crying," you say, your eyes immediately tearing up as you frantically fan your face. Fleur, Ginny and Hermione are faring no better as they frantically dab a tissue at the corners of their eyes. "If you start crying, I'm going to start bawling and I don't care if my make-up is magically water-proof! Stop that right now!"

Ginny snorts out a laugh, Hermione and Fleur also dissolving into giggles.

Clearing his throat and slapping his cheeks gently, your father finally gets himself under control. "Yes, yes. All right. Just be prepared when your mother sees you as you walk down the aisle. Once she starts crying, your sister-in-laws are going to start crying." He inhales largely and then exhales, he smiling proper once more as you laugh at what's sure to come from your side of the family. As the baby of them all, you know there's going to be plenty of waterworks. "Well, darling, are you ready?" He offers you his arm and as you walk towards him to take his elbow in arm, he turns to the other three. "Ladies, what are you waiting for? Go take your seats. Chop, chop!"

"Yes, Mr. Y/L/N," Fleur, Ginny and Hermione say. They each press a kiss to your father's cheek before they depart, you then fully hooking your arm with him.

"Well.. let's do this thing."

"Yes. We better hurry and bind Charlie to you before he comes to his senses and sends you back to your mother and I."

"Ha. Ha," you deadpan. "You're hilarious, old man."

You and your father then carefully make your way downstairs, the two of you taking your time to turn corners as Ginny and Hermione shoo out lingering people in the house and telling them to take their seats outside. The sun has just dipped beyond the horizon, the sky lit up in brilliant shades of blue, pink and orange.

Before you can exit through the back door, your father stops you and takes one last look at you before casting disillusionment charms over the both of you. The both of you walk out arm in arm and the excitement slowly starts creeping in the closer you get towards your guests- said guests split on other side of a white carpet. You can see Charlie standing underneath an arch of violet larkspur one step below the wedding officiant at the front of the aisle, and his brothers all eagerly poking fun at him since he's in a white dress shirt and slacks. Charlie wasn't one for dress robes and since he let you get away with no bridesmaids or groomsmen you let him wear whatever the hell he wanted much to Molly's displeasure.

Drago, being the smart dragon he is, senses you and your father from your position just a few feet away from the beginning of your carpet aisle. He trills happily, garnering the attention of your guests as he circles you an your father's legs. "Silly boy." You reach down and smooth a hand over his scaly head, he leaning into it while blowing steam from his nostrils. One of your sister-in-laws approaches and though she can't exactly see you, she blindly holds out a bouquet of blushing calla lillies. "Thanks, sister."

"No problem." She huffs a small laugh, glancing down at Drago and the pillow that's been charmed to his back holding the two wedding bands. "I can't believe you made your pet dragon part of your wedding."

"He's practically our child. Of course he'd be part of our wedding," you snort. "Now shutup and go sit down," you say while grabbing your bouquet. "I want to marry Charlie."

Once everyone is seated, it takes a few more minutes before the wedding processional starts. Everyone goes deathly quiet as they stand and face the aisle, and your father casts a finite over the both of you. Several people gasp in appreciation and Drago starts the march down the aisle by scrambling on all fours towards Charlie with his head held high.

The second your peep-toe shoes hit the carpeted aisle, Charlie finally glances up and meets your gaze as you start walking towards him. His eyes widen before his lips twitch into a smile and you chuckle at his expression. Fred and George wolf-whistle, Molly and your own mother are practically sobbing, and your many nieces and nephews ooh and aww when they see you in your dress close-up.

Charlie looks down when Drago circles his feet before settling down, Charlie then stumbling towards you and your father to take over for walking you up the couple of stairs and onto the small platform where the ceremony was to take place. "Bloody hell," he groans once your father takes his leave to sit down next to your mother. "You're killing me, witch."

"Mhm. I knew you'd like the dress."

"I love it. But I think I'll love what's underneath the dress even more."

As your walking towards the Officiant, you snort and gently elbow Charlie in his side. "Cornball."

"You love it."

As you and Charlie take your place before the Officiant, facing each other with such radiant smiles, the Officiant starts the ceremony with, "We are gathered here today for the magical binding of Charles Weasley and Y/N Y/L/N..."

Husband and Wife.

You are Charlie's and Charlie is yours.

You are now officially Y/N Weasley.

After several songs of being passed between Weasley's, Potter and your own cousins, you've finally found a seat to rest your aching feet. Hovering wreaths conjured up of dripping sparkles, that vanish after falling several inches into thin air, provide the light for your guests, as well as Drago who's off in the distance blowing fire into the night air as he plays with Charlie's Romanian friends.

Warm hands grasp at your shoulders before a kiss is being pressed to your cheek, you then turning slightly to meet familiar blue eyes. "Hello, husband."

"Wife," Charlie greets, eyes sparkling in both merriment and slight drunken-ness. "Having a good time?"

He nudges you up from your seat, you quickly standing as he slips into the seat himself and tugs you down into his lap. He nuzzles at your neck and you laugh while patting his cheek. "I'm having the best of times. I knew our families would get along with each other, but I didn't expect they'd get along this well."

You and Charlie glance out, both of your families mingling and laughing and drinking together.

"Yeah. Last I saw the twins had a horde of children following them around like ducklings. Don't be surprised if mayhem breaks out before the end of the night."

"Oh I welcome the mischief," you muse. "So long as they don’t damage my dress, I welcome it."

Charlie shifts you sideways on his lap, one hand smoothing up and down your bare back. "Mmm. I am rather fond of this dress."

"Of course you are." There's a shriek of horror from the other side of the dance floor, and you and Charlie both tense. But then raucous laughter erupts and you slump against him, the sight of fleeing children putting you at ease. "Who was the victim?"

"Uhh.. I think it was Fleur's little sister?" He guesses, chuckling. "Her once blonde hair is now a fluorescent green."

You wince in sympathy before laughing softly and tucking your face away in Charlie's neck. "I hope the twins know what they got themselves in to. Should Gabrielle retaliate, all those little ducklings are going to band together and go after Fred and George for not protecting them." Charlie's rumbling laughter makes you smile, you teasingly sinking your teeth into the flesh of his neck. "But that's their problem. The problem I'm having right now is whether or not it's an appropriate time to slink off to our home for a night of christening our house as Mr. and Mrs. Weasley."

Charlie groans. "You're gonna be the death of me, wife."

"Oh, but what a way to go, husband."

[highlevelencounters-blog]

Call of Cthulhu: an over long analysis

In trying to give any video game a fair review, one faces difficulties, because games try to be and to do such a varying range of things.  I think this is especially true of Cyanide’s Call of Cthulhu.  There are so many metrics by which one could measure the game. Is it engaging?  Is it scary?  Does it do what it does well;?  Is it well made?  Is it true to its Lovecraft source material?  Is it true to its roleplaying game source material?  Is it worth the price?  If you are short of time, and I would not blame you if you were, then very quickly: yes; no; yes; depends what you mean but no; sort of; yeah and that depends but probably not.  If you are not short on time, then let me explain myself (in very great detail) by taking these points in turn.  It is difficult to appraise the game without spoilers, but I will warn you when they are coming.  If you do not want them, skip to the next heading.

Is Call of Cthulhu engaging?

Yes. Not the most engaging game, mind, but its story, characters and general sense of intrigue carry the game.  There are technical problems with the writing that I will deal with below, but those are the video game equivalents of bad grammar and spelling errors (of which, while we are on the subject, I noticed a bit in the subtitles and item descriptions).  Despite the animation problems, also mentioned below, the characters are well fleshed out both through direct speech and context.  The graphics are nothing sensational, but are definitely good enough to create a world you want to explore. One of my favourite things, though, is that the game does not treat you like an idiot, nor does it leave you behind.  My problem with the few investigation-based games I have played before is that they are determined to leave no man behind, so they bash you around the head with everything that they have lying around.  Call of Cthulhu does not do this.  Cut-scenes and mandatory conversations make sure you know what is going on even if you are not paying attention to anything else that is around you, but if you are looking at the details in the world, even the ones that are not in any way highlighted by the big buttons that appear over everything that you can interact with, then you can start to piece together why things are happening, as opposed to just finding out that they are happening.  Intelligence, time and exploration are rewarded with details, but none are essential for understanding the gist of the story.  It is difficult to say much more without spoilers, so here are some SPOILERS:  

While Officer Bradley was clearly the best character, standing out from most modern video game characters you see today by being wonderfully human, but not in a broken, flawed way, I want to prove my point about good characters by pointing to Charles Hawkins.  While this character is never explicitly explained, we know he has been in on everything since the beginning.  He is literally a wife-beating monster and definitely a villain of the piece.  But he is also conflicted and caring.  He genuinely wants what is best for Sarah, even if that means abusing her.  He is a bad, angry man, but he is trying to do right.  And the beauty is that the game never actually tells you this.  It shows you.  No one really ever says anything about Charles’s character, but reading into what he says and watching what he does really gives you a feel for his character. Which is impressive for a character with such little screen time.  

Is Call of Cthulhu scary?

No. I do not play horror games so I am not the person to ask really.  Or maybe I am the perfect person to ask.  Either way, for what it is worth, I was not scared by this game.  I hate being chased and a couple of sequences made me tense up in my chair, but I would not take that as a massive indication of anything.  The same fear of being chased is what made me stop playing Mirror’s Edge and that game is very far from scary.  In the game’s defense, however, jump scares are cheap and I hate them and this game seems to aswell.  I counted exactly two and one of them was mostly just a creepy musical trill and the other one was so obviously coming it did not even startle me.  So Kudos there.

Does Call of Cthulhu do what it does well?

Yes. What I mean by this is, if you boil the game down to what it actually is, it does that well.  What that means, is that it is a very good walking simulator.  If that is not what you want, do not play this game.  This is a walking sim with some very light RPG elements and a few sections where, undoubtedly, someone higher up the chain came in and said “we need a stealth section!” or “we need a combat section!” or “we need a horror section!” or “we need an action section!” and the developers obliged, put in one instance of each and moved on.  These sections, except maybe the fun but very basic stealth section, are by far the weakest parts of the game (oh my, that combat section!).  The exceptions are the many puzzles, which, like the plot in general, do not treat you like an idiot. Except for one part of one, which honestly feels like the developers made a mistake (what is supposed to be the clue for where to look for the answer instead just straight up gives you the answer, despite the fact that all the stuff for actually reasoning out the answer is right there in the game!).  

I only have one problem with the walking simulator nature of the game. There are a few sections which are clearly only there to pad out time.  Most of the game is a pretty tight linear tour through the story, but occasionally you are given an adventure game style ‘puzzle’ that just boils down to, “walk around this area you have already walked around for ages until you find the thing that you have to poke to make the story progress”.  Anyone who has played the game will know what I mean by ‘the bust bit’.  And there is another section which might work as a horror piece, maybe, but just seemed to me to be “run around this same small area 5 or 6 times till we arbitrarily let you out”.  ‘Lamps’ is the clue word for that one, if you’re curious as to what I mean.  But these are nit-picks.  Generally the game is an excellent walking simulator.

Is Call of Cthulhu well made?

That depends on what you mean.  Games are hugely multifaceted, but what often differentiates a good game from a poor one is the ability of its developers to work to its strengths.  It would be an unfair criticism of Indie darling Limbo to say that it had bad facial animations.  It definitely did, but this is not a problem because the characters effectively have no faces.  This seems like a facile point, but I think it is important to remember that Cyanide, the developers of Call of Cthulhu, have previously been known for the Styx games, a few Games Workshop titles, a buttload of cycling games and little else.  Call of Cthulhu is not triple-A, but it’s not Indie either.  The game, at least visually and narratively though, tries to do everything a triple-A title would attempt to do, as opposed to the usual Indie approach of making at least one aspect in some way minimalist.  This is not an excuse, merely something to keep in mind as I say that the animation is some of the worst I have seen in games for a very long time.  It’s not quite as funny as Mass Effect Andromeda’s, there is not quite enough going on for it to be quite as bizarrely broken.  Dialogue lines would come out of characters whose mouths were shut, arms would constantly drift around like they had slightly confused minds of their own and I hope the ‘facial expressions’ were enjoying their trip to the uncanny valley.  

The writing was a bit all over the place as well.  Writing, mind, not story or character construction.  There is a reasonable amount of choice in the game, but an annoyingly large number of the lines of dialogue do not seem to match up with the choices you make.  In the first main scene, you can go straight into a conversation with someone and mention in one conversation branch that you know that a character is a big deal on Darkwater island, and then immediately choose another conversation option where you reveal you have never even heard of Darkwater island before.  In a subsequent scene, a man told me he would meet me somewhere later, but then, when I got there, my character had several lines questioning why the man was there. There are numerous moments like this and it really takes you out of the experience every time it happens.  A similar issue is present whenever you enter an enclosed space and your vision starts distorting.  I only knew that this was a representation of the main character’s claustrophobia because the developers mentioned it in press releases.  I did not notice any mention of it in the actual game.

A bit more nit-picky, but there are a few times when the game simply does not tell you something that would be useful to know.  The most egregious of these is when they give you something which has limited uses but do not tell you either that it has limited uses or how many uses are left until you have used them all up.  It is never a particularly large problem, but it would have been nice to know.

Still, looking at the game as a technical work, I must say that the graphics are nice.  The art style has a Dishonored feel to it, which I personally have lots of time for.  It is not quite as stylised, but the game is generally very pretty, which is a good thing too since you will spend a lot of time shoving your camera into every corner of it.

Is Call of Cthulhu true to its Lovecraftian source material?

Ah, the fun question.  The answer really depends on how much of a deep dive you want to do.  But before I jump in, it is important to note that the developers explicitly said their game was based on the table-top RPG, rather than Lovecraft’s stories.  What follows, then, is a piece of literary critique (read: w**k) and not necessarily a criticism of the game.  It will also be absolutely riddled with SPOILERS:

Call of Cthulhu gets a lot right about the common conception of the Lovecraftian aesthetic: the green tinge that permeates everything gives it a distinctly Cthulhu-y vibe, the rural town is a common motif of Lovecraft’s (the game is very Shadow Over Insmouth here) and Cthulhu as an entity is almost used well.  As I said at the top, SPOILERS!  Cthulhu actually shows up, for about one second, in one of the game’s four endings and is presented as an unstoppable, maddening, world-ending force.  This is doing Cthulhu right.  There is no fighting Cthulhu: once he has been awoken from his fhtagn, the world will crumble around him.  The only hope one has is to prevent that from happening, so it is appropriate that, if it is allowed to happen, the game gives you no chance to resist.  The game also takes a good approach to sanity and curiosity.  Fuller is the character who most explores the concept of curiosity and it is shown to warp and twist him as it opens his mind to new possibilities.  This fear of curiosity is at the heart of Lovecraft’s writings.  The game also plays with sanity, another of Lovecraft’s main themes, although most of the mechanical implications of that are better discussed in relation to the Call of Cthulhu table-top RPG.

However, there is one thing that the game gets seriously wrong about Lovecraft.  In those moments when the game is scary, the story itself is not one of cosmic horror.  Much horror is about holding a mirror up to humanity.  It is about showing and exploring our darker sides.  Werewolves explore our animal nature, vampires (at least traditionally) were an exploration of sexuality, serial killers explore human psychopathy, zombies represent rampant consumerism.  The monster, at the end of the day, is us.  This is not the goal of cosmic horror.  Lovecraft is not writing stories about people.  His horror is metaphysical.  “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all of its contents” is how he begins his story The Call of Cthulhu and this one sentence, I think, underpins all of his work.  His protagonists go mad not because they saw something scary, they go mad because they saw something they cannot explain.  Their very understanding of reality is thrown out of whack and they are shown that the safe, pedestrian, societal lives they thought they were living were facades: the ignorance that our subconscious chooses for us to protect us from realisations about the universe and our tiny, utterly insignificant part in it.  His entities are often not even evil, they are simply so alien and disinterested that we matter as much to them as ants matter to us.  This is why Lovecraft was so revolutionary, he moved away from the traditionally biblical kind of horror where the monsters are manifestations of our own sins and turned instead to the secular world of science for his horrors.  “The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little”, he continues in Call of Cthulhu, “but someday the piecing together of previously disassociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age”.  I say again, Lovecraft is not telling stories about people.  He is telling stories about the universe and our inability to understand or cope with it.  The truth that science will one day unlock, Lovecraft seems to be suggesting, is that we do not matter at all.  This is cosmic horror.  But Call of Cthulhu (the video game, that is) seems to miss this.  Pierce’s sanity (or insanity) progression comes the closest. I say more on this mechanic below, but the final choice that Pierce must make is the most Lovecraftian moment of the game.  

There are four endings to the game, one default and three others unlocked through story actions, which is a system I like.  On a very quick side note, I also really like how there is a save point just before the end, allowing you to go back instantly and replay the endings you did not choose, but only if you unlocked them (I unlocked three of the four endings on my first play-through).  Suicide and accepting the ritual both present “go mad from the revelation” endings, each with a different but totally appropriate flavour of madness, while the ‘it’s over’ ending represents a flight back into a dark age, Pierce sticking fingers in his ears and yelling “la la la it’s all a dream!”  I also like here that you have to unlock all but the ritual ending.  I was annoyed with this ending until I found this out.  The game does not really give you any reason to complete the ritual.  The Leviathan and the cult have all clearly been bad the whole way through the game, there is not ever any good reason for Pierce to surrender at the last moment and perform the ritual. Having it as the default, though, makes this lack of motivation slightly more excusable, as it represents Pierce simply surrendering to what he has been told is his destiny, as opposed to having worked for the will to fight back in some way.  The fourth ending, the counter ritual, is by far the poorest, which is a shame because it could so easily have been fixed.  You know that Drake is planning something, but Pierce, or at least my Pierce, was never told exactly what that was.  My Pierce would not logically even have known that there was a counter ritual, never mind how to do it and certainly never mind what it actually does (a point that I am still completely in the dark about).  This is something, as far as I can tell, that the game never explains, even if you do choose this option.  Just a little bit of exposition, probably delivered by Drake, would have cleared this all up.  

But I digress.  Call of Cthulhu is essentially a game about people.  It is about a group of people who are more or less tricked by some powerful alien being into doing its bidding.  And as I said above, it does this well.  But in being about people and their struggles, it fails to focus on what Lovecraft himself actually focuses on.  Now, a quick disclaimer: I do not know for a fact that Lovecraft was a racist and viewed minorities as ‘less human’ than white people (although there is evidence for this in his work), but I am going to assume this is the case, at least in some way, for what I am going to say.  I think it is telling that most of the cultists in Lovecraft’s work are minorities, because this distances even his human villains from the (I think) exclusively white protagonists of his stories. This separation between the human and the alien is completely ignored in the sequences in which Pierce is visited by the Leviathan in prison.  The fact that the Leviathan would take humanoid form and use human manipulation tactics to get Pierce to do what it wants is totally non-Lovecraftian.  Where is the horror at our utter inconsequentiality here?  Cthulhu is scary because it does not care about us, we matter so little there would be zero point in it or any of its ... associates (for want of a better word) attempting to use tactics to manipulate human kind.  In The Call of Cthullhu (the story now, not the game), Cthullhu pretty much tells people to come and they just do.  No need to take human form, no need to use psychological methods.  Lovecraftian horrors use us like the dumb insects that, compared to them, we are.  

Further the visions that haunt Pierce are visions of people, mostly, and the awful things that they do to each other.  He questions his senses, but he never really questions his position in the universe or what it would actually mean if all the things that he is seeing were true. Lovecraft’s protagonists usually do believe what they see and this is what drives them mad, while Pierce is driven mad by questions about whether or not to believe what he sees.  The biggest crime though, the moment that really made me feel that the developers had missed the point, is in the after-credits half of the ritual ending. Here we see the cultists all engaged in a murderous brawl, screaming with delirious madness as they punch and kick and bite each other while, presumably, Cthulhu gets on with the important job of destroying the world just off camera.  But this is the wrong kind of madness.  Sure, everyone would go mad as their understanding of reality snapped at the vastness and alien-ness (alienitude? alienosity?) of Cthulhu, but for all of them to just go kill-crazy? It doesn’t make sense.  That does not seem to be the madness that comes of having your entire knowledge of reality shattered.  It feels more like a madness that makes a flashy ending to a video game.

Is Call of Cthulhu true to its roleplaying game source material?

Yes, broadly.  Firstly, I am not a CoC (which is what I’ll call the rolepaying Call of Cthulhu, because this is getting stupidly confusing) expert.  I have played and run a few games, but it is not my main game.  That being said, I think I know enough to say that Call of Cthulhu does a good job of translating CoC into a video game. Its plot is a little more big-leagues (bigly) and showy than your average CoC game, but that is fine.  It’s the same thing that happens when a film is made from a TV series.  And in this regard, Call of Cthulhu is hardly a huge offender.  This might just be me, but I really like stories that know how to reign in their scale and Call of Cthulhu does a pretty good job of this.  With the exception of one particular sub-plot (which is by no means overblown just a little elbowed in (the whole painting sub arc, btw)), everything is pretty well contained and not much is thrown in to escalate things to stupid levels as the game progresses.  

Call of Cthulhu continues the well-practiced trend of CoC games of being incredibly linear, but while this is an actual problem for roleplaying games, where the only limitation is imagination, in a video game, which is fenced in by budget and deadline constraints, this linearity is not so much of a problem.  

An area where Call of Cthulhu differs from CoC is in its use of skills. The skill list for 6th edition CoC (which is the edition I know, so don’t pester me about 7th ed) is over 50 skills long.  Call of Cthulhu, on the other hand, has 7 skills.  This means you never have those horrible moments where you absolutely NEED a successful library-use roll or else-you-will-all die-in-the-next-encounter-because-you-did-not-know-the-monster-is-weak-to-salt-but-you-put-all-your-points-into-Fast-Talk-so-I-guess-you-are-all-just-going-to-die-and-no-I-am-not-still-bitter. This, I feel, is an improvement.  It could be argued that it reduces the scope for roleplaying, but with the limited conversation options and the actually quite well written and characterised Pierce, you are never going to be totally in control anyway.  Call of Cthulhu is also paced very much like a CoC game as well, with slow, social information gathering at the beginning, ramping up to more action/horror moments later.  This does make some of the skills more useless later on in the game, but this is not a major problem and a difficult one to avoid (and certainly one that CoC games usually fail to avoid).  Also like CoC, there is, I think, a clearly right thing to do at character creation, but while in CoC it is because some skills (I’m looking at you, operate heavy machinery) are simply pointless, in Call of Cthulhu character gen is the only time you can use experience points to level up Occultism and Medicine, something you are definitely going to want to do and something the game does not do a good job of telling you.

CoC’s main selling point, as a system, is its sanity mechanic, something that Cyanide obviously spent a great deal of time looking at when making Call of Cthulhu.  I have heard that some people did not think it was used well, but I have to disagree.  Sadly though, to explain why I have to make liberal use of SPOILERS!

In CoC, sanity is effectively your character’s long-term health bar. Your sanity level sticks around from adventure to adventure with very little you can do to raise it if it falls.  It is, in many ways, your character’s expiration date.  It goes down whenever you see something Cthulhoid, but there is a random element to it.  Clearly, this would not work for Call of Cthulhu, not in the same way anyway. If Call of Cthulhu were a CoC game, it would take at most three or four sessions, and that is not really fast enough for a character to melt completely into a gibbering puddle of insanity.  So Call of Cthulhu does something very different and I think it does it very well.  

At the beginning of the game, you have some control over your sanity being reduced.  The most clear example of this is when you have the option of whether or not to read the Malleus Monstorum.  But as the game continues, you have less and less choice over whether you get to see sanity-breaking stuff or not.  It basically just happens to you. This means that really, your loss of sanity is almost 100% controlled by the game’s story.  Therefore the moment that you break mechanically is also the moment that weird stuff starts happening, by necessity, in the story.  Pierce starts to have visions, some of them obviously fake, some of them much more plausibly real, and because his sanity has broken we know that we are in a situation where we should be questioning everything, as opposed to earlier in the game when the lines were much more clear cut.  This is a co-opting of mechanics by story, which I have not really seen before in a game. The game gives you something that appears to be in your control but then slowly and subtly takes it back.  You could see this as a reduction in player autonomy, because it really is, but I think this fits very well with the themes of destiny and inevitability in the story.  It also produces an organic way to show the deteriorating mental state of Pierce without it being exposition-y.  If we had felt, right from the beginning, that the sanity bar had nothing to do with our own choices, the moment when Pierce breaks would have felt contrived.  But by giving us that illusion of choice we are engaged with the progression of that sanity bar in a way that we would not be otherwise and when it finally shifts from stable to psychotic, we do not see this as a simple narrative move, we see this as an organic part of the story and the choices we made in it, even if really it is not.  I also love how the sanity manifests itself.  It is subtly done and I think interesting debates could be had about what is real and what is not (I have strong feelings about when the last time we really see Colden is, for example).  A brilliant example of this is how we shoot Fuller in what is obviously a dream-scape and then come back to what we think is reality and find we have shot him there too. But this, itself, is also shown to be an illusion when, in one of the ending sequences, we hear him talking to a nurse.  It is all very Inception-y and I really like it.  It was a nice subversion of expectations, as I was expecting the sanity meter, as a player influenced mechanic, to be able to affect only aesthetic things and maybe minor story elements.  I noticed this exactly once (a painting had blood spatters on it which disappeared when I approached), but the way the game takes control of the mechanic and allows it to have serious narrative impact, while a removal of player autonomy, was very refreshing.

Is Call of Cthulhu worth the price?

At time of writing, Call of Cthulhu is selling for £40.  It is not worth that.  You can go and pick up Divinity Original Sin 2, a game that is basically empirically perfect, for £10 less than that and get at the very least ten times as much play time out of it.  Where the price point of Call of Cthulhu should be for you is something only you can decide.  £15 seems like a more reasonable price point to me.  What I look for is usually a strong enjoyment/hour ratio as opposed to a good hour/money ratio, and Call of Cthulhu has a very good enjoyment/hour ratio, but this is certainly helped by its short length.  At the end of the day, I would say that whatever you would be willing to pay for two engaging, thoughtful, just below Hollywood tier films is probably the right price for Call of Cthulhu.  Especially since the game has basically no replay value.  In many ways it is very average, but if you have a thing for walking simulators or Lovecraftian worlds, then this game is a must buy for you.  But maybe wait until the price has dropped.

[rheaitis]

Writing has been #difficult this week. I was gonna write about my own mental state as part of Mental Health Awareness Month, but apparently I'm not well enough to be able to write that stuff out for strangers yet. Moving on, then.

Today marks the first day of US Pride Month, so the five media posts this month are all gonna be queer as hell. And, like, happy; no dead queers here, so buckle in that rainbow seatbelt, cause this is gonna be one gay-ass ride.

Today's media is some 38 episodes long, and both diverse and diversely queer. It's got transformative work, it's got early eighteenth-century politics, it's got pirates, it's got treasure, it's got lesbians and bi women and genderqueer historical figures, it's got long-term committed poly folk, it's got blood, it's got gore, it's got amaaaazing black women ruling their own communities with care and compassion, it's got disabled folk being given focus and allowed agency, it's got conspiracies and alliances and mentoring between people of all genders and generations, it's got really lovely cinematography and music, it's got Toby Stephens' fabulous micro-expressions.

That's right, gentlefolk, today's media consumption is Black Sails. This is more of a weekend binge project, or a month-long thing if you're inclined to be sensible about things. It is also aimed at creasedknees, because I want her to watch it so we can squee.

Black Sails is a prequel of sorts to Treasure Island, dealing with the adventure that leads to the discovery and burial of that treasure. It takes up Captain Flint (Toby Stephens), Billy Bones (Tom Hopper) and of course John Silver (Luke Arnold) from the novel, and peoples itself with various fictional and fictionalised historical figures of the time, most significantly Jack Racham, Anne Bonny, and Charles Vane, who function as foils to our heroes throughout the show. I'm going to talk about them in just a bit but first Our Hero Captain James Flint, whom I adore entirely. (I want to like John Silver, but as in the novel Silver is a marvelously done character, without ever being someone it's safe to trust wholeheartedly or really at all.)

Captain Flint kills someone in the very first episode, and he doesn't actually get any nicer. (Even that killing is preceded by the pirate crew taking a ship with due savagery, so if you dislike gore I sadly cannot recommend watching this series.) In fact he escalates considerably, up from individual acts of piracy to cannonades directed at cities, and the show doesn't particularly gloss over this violence or the human cost entailed. Flint is the most consistently Slytherin character I have ever seen (and the fact that he resembles his mother to the last and most infinitesimal degree is often jarring): a man of vaulting ambition and enormous rage, with a capacity to hold onto grudges undiminished over a decade and longer. I love him. I love him absolutely, and not just because he is so wonderfully tender with all the women around him without ever doubting or trivialising their personhoods or capacity for doing what they set hands and minds to, though that is admittedly a very large part of why.  Flint is always furious, always hurting, always ruthless with himself and his crew and associates, groaning away from a primal wound.

Primal wounds are maybe a good way to talk about this show without showering people with spoilers, as so many of the main characters have such wounds, inflicted by living in systems characterised by ills ranging from slave trafficking, bonded labour, debt prisons, early marriage, sexual violence, weaponised misogyny and institutionalised homophobia, and too often and deeply realistically by the rutted interstices of such injustice. Again realistically, the show's leads do not emerge from these experiences as noble crusaders, but rather as a den of Slytherins desperate to get ahead in whatsoever manner they can, and find whatever they think of as safe harbour: from Max (one of the characters original to the show and superbly played by Jessica Parker Kennedy) who wants to leave behind her miserable childhood and exploited adulthood by gaining entry into the Big House where life is soft and easy, to Madi who wants to lead her enslaved people into liberty, to Rackham who wants to make his mark on the world through narrative instead of having his story told as one of crushing poverty and debt. Our villains have stories as well, but even the few delineated in any detail are effectively subsumed in the institutional machines of which they are privileged cogs.

But important as all these stories are in motivating and substantiating the show, Flint's is the wound at the core of Black Sails. There are problems with this centering of white queer trauma in a show that, set in West Indies, could and almost certainly ought to have instead centered PoC and enslavement. It does deal with these issues, and inarguably allows Max and Madi Scott together as much space as Flint. Still, one has to accept at the start that this is a show about queer resistance that includes other aspects of marginalisation, rather than being a show of marginalised resistance against the institutions  perpetrating and perpetuation said marginalisations. Significantly, Max and Mr. Scott are not initially characterised as being interested in working towards liberation, but the viewer complaints about the slow reveal of Mr. Scott's plans in this regard seem as facile as the screaming about Flint being queer.

I can go on about this show endlessly, as T, poor child, can easily testify, because I love everything about it, from the cinematography, to the gore, to the wlw relationships and just Anne Bonny queen of my heart and every violent impulse. And I do think that if I was a better person I would dwell longer on the gorgeous and deeply complex relationships between Charles Vane, Jack Rackham Anne Bonny and Max, and how I want them all to be alive and married but for Charles and Max to never ever ever touch, OR for Charles to scrub himself raw and bleeding before he's ever allowed to be near Max, and also Max's brilliance and subtlety and compassion and ruthlessness, how she's clung on to kindness in a deeply unkind existence and how that in no way signifies a lack of Nature, red in tooth and claw, and the way her change of clothing reflects and reiterates her change of status and and just. Her faaace, her golden glowing beauty and that heart-stopping smile. But the thing is my interests were set early and I imprinted on exactly one sort of character as a child and I continue to love them more than anything, and much as I adore Max, and much as I worship Madi Scott's regal compassion and strategic mind and her trust in and friendship with Flint and her renewed affection for Eleanor (whom I love also! and who is so sharp and such a merchant-prince and so tramelled by her gender), well. Look. I love Flint. I love his anger, and his sorrow, and his everything. I think it's remarkable how Flint’s story goes from Achillean (my lover is dead I will go to war, my lover is dead I will burn down this town, fight this empire, challenge fate/gods) to Odyssean (I am home from the wars and here is my lover who has longed for me as I for him). But what I love the most is how in a story that is almost entirely about stories and how and when and by whom they are told, Flint gets to say, angry and wounded and betrayed again,

This is how they survive. You must know this. You're too smart not to know this. They paint the world full of shadows... and then tell their children to stay close to the light. Their light. Their reasons, their judgments. Because in the darkness, there be dragons. But it isn't true. We can prove that it isn't true. In the dark, there is discovery, there is possibility, there is freedom in the dark once someone has illuminated it.

I love it so much, so intensely, so much more than Rackham's playing around with narratival style and truth, I love my sad bi ginger pirate uncle, and so would you if you gave the show a chance. It's all on directseries.net, at fairly good quality, with subtitles and everything. Please pretty please?

[bitletsanddrabbles]

Not a ship, but characters: Elsie Hughes or Cora? Carson or Robert?

First off, and this is very important, I really love all of these characters. Truly. I would have been really upset if anything had happened to any of them. I say this, because I'm about to rag on one of them a bit. I will likely use words that, in our time period, are considered near-obscenities. This is not from dislike, but rather an academic examination of their faults, using proper language.

Secondly, I will undoubtedly refer to the shooting scripts with commentary by Julian Fellows. I bought the one for first season as reference for my fan fiction and bought seasons two and three because I loved the commentary so much! I am seriously beyond annoyed that the later seasons aren't available, in no small part because I suspect it would shed light on the problem of Henry's personality. Anyway, they're great and I highly recommend them.

Next, I apologize for any massive grammatical errors, logic jumps, and other such communication glitches. I don't really intend to spend hours revising this, and I suspect my eyes will be crossing by the end.

And lastly, get comfortable. Get some tea, maybe a snack. Use the loo. Make sure you have no urgent appointments.

You will be here awhile.

In fact, in the interest of not taking up your entire dashboard, here. Have a 'keep reading' cut.

Mrs. Hughes vs. Lady Grantham is a difficult call because they're ultimately such similar and yet different characters. They're both involved in running the estate, but Mrs. Hughes is more involved with the back end schematics and Lady Grantham is more involved in presentation to society as a whole. Some would consider Mrs. Hughes's job more important, and ultimately it might be, but at the turn of the century Lady Grantham's job was not to be underestimated, by any means. She was essentially the sales, marketing, and public representation departments all wrapped into one person. Mrs. Hughes was production.

They are also bother nurturing to their 'families': Cora to her daughters and husband and Mrs. Hughes to her staff. They both do this well.

At the end of the day, having to choose, it becomes a call between Cora's growth as a character, which is interesting, and Mrs. Hughes's stability as a character, which is necessary to allow the movement of everyone else. Steady anchor points are often overlooked in stories, but they are terribly important to keep things moving along and stop them from devolving into a three ring circus. While I enjoy Cora's growth immensely, I think I'm going to have to choose Mrs. Hughes for this one. Downton really would fall apart without her, even if her husband doesn't want to admit it.

Which brings us to the easy choice: Robert.

Hands down Robert.

Charles Carson is an entertaining and enjoyable character. As a human being, he is a basically good man, but is an unfortunate product of his society. Very unfortunate. He is, by dictionary definition (see here) a bigot. He's rarely willing to change his opinion on things, sometimes flat out refusing. Despite his protests to the contrary, he's rarely sympathetic with anyone. He doesn't realize how much the firm structure he requires for comfort hurts others and will deny it when pointed out unless something really, astonishingly bad happens. You know, like one of his underlings trying to kill himself.

When not being asked to choose characters, I'm willing to overlook all of this to a certain degree, because he is human and he does try. The harm he causes is almost entirely unintentional, and when it is intentional, it's generally caused by the belief that he needs to be firm to be a good leader. Show them who's in charge, allow no shenanigans, etc. This is how he was trained. It also hurts him as much as it hurts everyone else. I mean, who else is actively leery of having fun?

No, generally Mr. Carson is a curmudgeon whose bark is worse than his bite and, along with his wife, I love him for his good points and despite his copious glaring faults.

Robert Crawley still easily wins.

People really like to go on about Robert's faults and his prejudice. After all, he is a "privileged white man" and our society hates those. We don't want to understand them. Papers can (and have) been written about how prejudiced Robert is.

The thing is, and what I find more important, is how prejudiced Robert isn't. Seriously, for a privileged white guy at the turn of the twentieth century, he could be far, far worse (see Larry Grey). Here, let's take a look at a few things, shall we?

We'll start with something very general. We'll start with his response to change. There sure is a lot of it in this show! And let's be honest, change is stressful. A lot of people don't handle it well. It's actually quite understanding that Robert's not fond of it. Up until that time period, things had moved around rather slowly. There would be the occasional war or medical discovery. There were always new fashions. That 'industrial revolution' thing had happened and things had started going faster, but compared to today's world when a phone you've had for a year is an old model, time might as well have stood still.

Robert still handles this change with relative grace for his age and station. Okay, Matthew and Tom, both being younger, from more hands-on view points, and more in touch with the world handle it better, but Carson and Lady Violet both handle it worse. Especially Carson. Robert handles it like a horse who has had something new suddenly introduced to the paddock: he shies, he bucks, he might run a bit or kick out a time or two, but if you slowly lead him back around to this strange thing enough times, he eventually figures out "Oh, hey. This thing isn't really a big deal after all, is it?" And he accepts it - embraces it even, in some cases - and moves on.

This brings us to the first point of actual prejudice and the one he is most undeniably guilty of, classism. First off, people ignore the fact that classism runs both ways. Miss Bunting was probably the single most classist bigot of the show, followed by the Sinderby's butler, then Lady Violet (who, according to every poll I've seen, is the most popular character in the show). Robert's classism (as with most of his prejudice, honestly) is institutionalized rather than personal which doesn't make it okay, but does make it easier to understand and fight once it's attacked in a rational manner. In other words, yes, he pitched an ever loving fit when Sybil married the chauffeur, but he got over it. He went from "you will have no money!" to "...okay, you haven't asked for it, but the money thing can happen" far faster than Carson went from "I will not dress the former chauffeur!" to accepting "Branson is part of the family now”. Carson also didn't have the excuse of feeling like his daughter was actively being taken away from him, off to a different country, a different life, and that he had somehow failed as a parent, which is undoubtedly how Robert felt.

Admittedly, once started, it wasn't all forward progress, but the hiccups there were tended to be fairly legitimate. Grief over Sybil's death combining with the last vestiges of feeling like Branson had taken his daughter away from him. Finding out his son-in-law had abandoned his pregnant daughter in hostile territory after helping to burn down someone's house. I mean I understand why Branson was doing what he was doing, but having an arsonist in the house is something to worry about!

The other thing to note about this is that while Robert definitely believes in the class structure and holds to it and sees himself at the top, he actually values the people below him. The reason Mrs. Patmore was so panicked about her failing vision in season one and so relieved when Robert sent her for surgery rather than turn her out with a meager pension is because so many people wouldn't have. It would have been "thank you for your services, good luck" and that would be that. He sees employing people and making it so they can have a wage his job and when he started not being able to pay a competitive wage or replace people when they quit, he saw it as a personal failure. His decision had created the underbutler position and I don't think he was really happy to have to do away with it (and, observant and in touch with things as he isn't, I am positive he didn't realize how pushy Carson was being about the whole thing. I doubt he would have liked it). He shows up at everyone's weddings. His perception is skewed, but his heart is in the right place.

And speaking of Miss Bunting, there is the point of his not being able to produce Daisy's name on demand. He doesn't deal with Daisy on a regular basis, so he would absolutely be less aware of her than he would be of, say, Carson or the personal staff. However, he did attend her wedding and she has been there for fifteen years. So what makes more sense - that he honestly doesn't know her name or that he straight up blanked on it? I think the second. After all, I once spent probably fifteen minutes all told unable to remember the name of my oldest cousin. He knew her at her wedding, he certainly knew her at the auction in season six and after!, I'm pretty sure when not being put on the spot by someone aggressively vilifying him to his face, he'd do a bit better.

The next big prejudice covered by the show is religion. This is one Robert has, but not in the way you would expect. In a society that could be very anti-Semitic, he doesn't give a flying fig if you're Jewish. His father-in-law was a Jew. Lady Rose married a Jewish boy and there's no indication of disapproval from Robert what so ever. He does have a problem with Catholics and that, Julian Fellows explains, was largely a point of national patriotism. England, as a whole, did not trust a religion that answered to an Italian instead of the Kng. It was seen as something of a conflict of interest. Again, this doesn't make it alright, but it makes it understandable within the context of the society (especially when your Catholic son-in-law burnt down someone's house) and was really more political than anything.

There were more issues at play with Sybbie's being Catholic, of course. There was that whole grieving thing, again the lingering feeling that Branson had taken Sybil away, etc. As usual, though, once it was clear he was outnumbered and the change was happening, Robert set aside fears that his granddaughter might go burning houses if that Italian guy thought it was a good idea and got on with life.

(Seriously, this really does seem to be comparable, at least in the mindset of the English, to a modern day Englishman following the president of a different country rather than the Queen. Not necessarily terrible, but potentially so, especially if war breaks out and the two countries are suddenly on opposing sides. Treason is a thing that can be kinda messy.)

Then there's sexism. I honestly think Robert gets way more flack for this than he truly deserves. It's not that he isn't sexist at all (again, institutionalized sexism), but that most of his worst offenses are actually a combination of his being legitimately not-super-observant and the aforementioned "horse in paddock" syndrome. He is used to his family behaving in a certain way. He is also, as with Cora, part of the sales/marketing/pr department. He is concerned about what the neighbors think because he is expected to and people in this day and age just don't get how important that was. The thought that his family would be seen poorly was not just a threat to him and his masculine pride, but to them and their opportunities in life. A lot of his keeping them at home was honestly trying to protect them, even if it was also underestimating their abilities, and really - they were just discovering their abilities! How was he supposed to know all about it?

Suddenly the war happened and his wife and daughters started behaving differently. He was legitimately confused, and no wonder! Can you see season one Mary slopping pigs? Can you see season one Edith running a magazine? People really did think that things would go 'back to normal' after the war, but they didn't. The women in his life started moving without warning and left him struggling to cope with the unexpected change.

Once he circled back around enough times to realize this big, scary change really wasn't big or scary, he was proud of them. He was proud of Mary for taking on the task of agent. Heck, he was practically proud of her for growing up enough to have an affair with Tony Gillingham! He accepted Marigold without batting an eyelash and got to the point where he was pleased to call Edith an "interesting woman". He was really, really proud of Cora after Rose lured him, carrot in hand, to the hospital!  He had never been more proud or the woman he loved.

And he loved her. She was the pillar holding him steady, and that is not just a pretty turn of phrase. One thing our society that has not changed one whit in the past hundred years is that men are supposed to be emotionally dependent on the women they are intimate with. There is huge pressure put on men to have a girlfriend or to be married, and it's not all machismo and Mummy dearest wanting grand kids, it's "this is the person you should talk to about your problems." This leads to emotional discussion being firmly linked, in the male view, with sex. Women, being encouraged to have friends to talk to, don't have that mental connection, and this causes a metric ton of relationship problems. So we come to his affair, if you want to call it that, with Jane (And honestly, while it nearly went beyond two kisses, I still think calling it an affair is giving it an awful lot of credit).

The war was over. Things were changing. While it might be socially permissible for him to discuss the politics of the changes with Bates or some other man, the resultant emotional turmoil was something Cora was, by societal standards, supposed to help him get through. For over half of his life, she had done just that. Now, he needed that emotional support and suddenly it wasn't there because his wife was off learning how to be useful and important. This was a great thing for her, and ultimately for them as a couple, but everything has consequences and the immediate consequence of this was that she didn't need to lean on anyone, he did, and he didn't have anyone. It is really rather unbecoming for a fifty year old man to go crying to his mother every time he needs bucking up.

Jane was young, pretty, was going through the rough transition of losing a spouse, was lonely as a result, and had a son, which appealed to Robert since he'd always wanted one. I seriously think he initially took an interest in her as much to take an interest in something as anything. Things got worse the longer he went without someone to talk to about his feelings, and she wasn't getting any less lonely or in need of someone to make her feel wanted.  Then, finally, Cora got the flu. While it seems outrageous that he would have an affair with a maid while his wife was maybe dying, his wife maybe dying was why he badly needed the emotional support of his wife, which he in turn couldn't have because his wife was maybe dying. Again, at fifty, running to Lady Violet at this juncture would have been viewed as A Bit Much by a lot of people. The fact that those people were absolute prats from a modern view point doesn't change this.

So, while both his society and ours agree that having an affair at the time was wrong, the real question here is what his society would have considered right. Please do ring me up when you've figured out the answer, because honestly? I've no clue.

Of course, once Cora didn't die, he looked back at things, got his head on straight, and ended things with Jane like a gentleman. He did the right thing, in the end. I consider this to be a far more material point than the fact he didn't intuitively pull a graceful way to maneuver a situation that he had no real coping mechanism for out of his ear.

There is one prejudice that I've seen him assigned in fan fiction, and it pisses me off every time: homophobia. This is one prejudice that Robert has barely any of. Yes, it's there in his little chuckles with Bates, but honestly? Compared to Carson? Compared to Jimmy and Alfred and the police and parliament? A little chuckle in private that is meant without malice is hardly a complaint. Thomas isn't happy at Downton most of the time, but he's there. Other employers would have sacked him the second they put two and two together. Heck, left to his own devices and reasonably assured there would be no scandal, Carson probably would have sacked him. I am quite certain that at some point there was a conversation in which Robert brushed that concern off as absolutely no reason to sack a perfectly good footman. This doesn't mean he didn't make a hash of things on a regular basis, but that was more from not understanding the problem than actual malicious intent. If, for example, someone actually pointed out that in hiring Bates he'd basically told Thomas "I would rather have a normal man who will never be able to do his job than a filthy degenerate like you" I would expect him to balk ("I never said that!"), bolt ("Pff, none of the staff would think that!"), and then, when finally reaching the point of accepting it, feel absolutely terrible. He flat out lied to the police to keep the man out of prison, for crying out loud!

While he is not an advocate for gay rights, by any means, it is something that he is absolutely not fussed about.

He has other legitimate flaws. His temper. His passiveness in many situations. But he is a genuinely good man. He cares about his people and wants them to do well. He wants to protect them and provide for them and make their lives comfortable. He is genuinely interested in improving the world as a whole.

There are so many people you can not say that about, and many of them get far more credit.

And on that note, I am going to bed.