#emily is Trouble with a capital T

[scorpsik]

When Nighmares Return; ch 3 - Haunted

Emily is in deep trouble....

JJ had been unable to sleep all night. She told Will not to come back in case he led Askari to her. They’d talked over the phone for hours, trying to soothe one another’s fears… listening to one another cry. God… all she could think about was her little boy afraid and crying for her. He would be wondering why his mommy and daddy hadn’t come to save him. Jesus. And to top it off, she’d vented her anger onto Emily, who had flown all this way to try and help.

She sighed and dialled Emily’s number. It went straight voice mail – and why shouldn’t it: it was past one in the morning. But there was something niggling inside her. A sense that something was wrong. She wanted to go and see Emily, but Hotch had made her promise to stay at the BAU until all was clear. She gnawed at her lip and dialled Emily again.

Her gut was telling her to go, and she listened. Her instincts had never let her down before. Within five minutes, she was in the SUV tearing through the streets towards Em’s hotel. She screeched to a halt and ran in, flashing her badge at the guy on the desk. “I need access to room 189.” She demanded. “Right. Now.”

“Yes ma’am.” The man said, grabbing a master key and leading the way.

JJ barged into the room as soon as the lock clicked, her gun in hand. “Em!” she called. She jumped in shock as Emily’s computer bleeped at her, and she swiped the screen to reactivate it.

*

Emily turned the car’s headlights off when she got within two blocks of the place, driving slowly and carefully. She killed the engine and walked the last half block, her hand on her gun, her breath making puffs of steam in the still, cold air. She automatically crept around to the back, ducked under the police tape and went through the same sliding door as she’d been through just yesterday.

There was a sound to her right, and her gun was immediately trained on the figure who stood there. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked, his accent British.

“Hastings, right? Who am I? I’m the woman who’s gonna stop you.”

He scoffed. “Nice try. Where’s Jareau.”

Emily eyed him in the darkness. “She’s too busy to deal with the likes of you. She sent me. And I know you, Hastings. I know ALL about you. CIA grad, right? Plenty of missions…you tracked Bin Laden, right? So why throw in your hand with Askari?”

“Money’s better.” He said, his own gun glinting under the moonlight. “So are the perks.”

“Perks? You mean rape.”

“Call it what you will.”

“I call it rape.” She nodded. “You’re hard to find, Hastings. Records list you as deceased - you faked your death, right? Made a pretty good job of it, too.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, that isn’t an exclusive club. Been there. Done that.”

“Where’s Jaraeu.” He hissed.

Emily smiled and opened her mouth as if to answer him. Instead her finger squeezed the trigger on her gun and she saw the flash, felt the recoil travelling through her body, warm and powerful. She didn’t blink, not until she saw him fall.

She watched him until he hit the ground, her aim true, her shot taking out half his head. Maybe she shouldn’t have watched for so long, because in that second as Hastings dropped, something smashed into the back of her head.

*

JJ’s heart pounded in her chest when the tablet came to life, illuminating the dark room, and she gasped when she saw whose face was on screen.

“Em, I thought – “ Clyde Easter frowned when he realised it was NOT Emily Prentiss staring back at him. “Who are you?”

“Agent Jareau.”

“Where’s Emily?” he asked. “She wanted leads on where Askari might be.”

“Have you got a lead? Where is he?” JJ asked.

“We can’t find him.”

“You can’t…” JJ closed her eyes in frustration. Henry was gone and now Emily too!

“WHERE is Emily?” Clyde asked again.

“Weren’t you on a call with her?” JJ asked.

“Yes – an hour ago! She was supposed to wait for me to get back to her.”

JJ’s eyes fell on a scribbled note next to the tablet. It simply read ‘Call Hotch’ in Emily’s unmistakeably scruffy capitals.

*

Emily groaned, a frightful buzz cutting through her ears, muting all other sounds. Her head felt… like a grenade had gone off inside her skull, leaving just a shattered mess of matter over the walls. One hand reached unsteadily to the back of her head and it came away wet. There were patterns in the kitchen lino, she noted, her face pressed against the flooring and her fingers absently traced the spongy ridges as her brain tried to furnish her with where she was; who she was and what she was doing here. Wherever here was – she couldn’t quite remember.

A boot to her belly broke her train of thought, making her grunt and cough at the impact. That boot planted itself in her shoulder and flipped her onto her back, before nestling painfully at the front of her throat.

Askari looked down at the woman on the ground and he pressed his boot harder onto her neck. “Who are you?” he demanded.

“Alleanet…ealayk.” She gasped in Arabic.

“You think that’s funny?” he spat. “You want me to fuck myself? What if I fuck you instead?”

“Do it.” Emily gasped. “But you’re too much of a coward aren’t you?”

“You whore.” He hissed.

“Where’s the boy?” her hands gripped the toecap of Askari’s boot as he pressed down with even more weight. She was blacking out, she knew it…

*

JJ ran back to the SUV, dialling Hotch as she went.

“JJ?” he gasped, seeing her number flash on his cell.

“Emily’s gone!” she yelled. “She left a note to call you.”

Hotch frowned – it was close to 2am and he took a look at his phone, the message flashing. “I have a text from her.” He said, opening the message. “God – she found him.”

“Where?!” JJ nearly screamed.

“They went back to your house.”

*

There was a hand on her shoulder, pushing her, rocking her, and fuck the motion made her head scream in agony. She shrugged the hand way and heard a whimper. She groaned and tried to figure out if it was her whimpering or…someone else. A child.

Emily’s eyes snapped open and she reached for a gun that wasn’t there. When her eyes regained focus, she saw Henry cowering away from her, his little body shivering and wedged in the corner of…Shit. If this was JJ’s basement, she needed to have serious words with Will about decorating this place!

“Henry?” she called softly.

Henry shrank deeper against the wall as the strange woman crawled closer to him.

“Hey…I won’t hurt you.” She winced at the pain in her head again. “I’m a friend of your mommy and daddy. I work with your mommy. My name’s Emily.”

Henry stared suspiciously at her.

“I’ve been… away since you were a little guy… but I’m back now. Are you afraid, huh?”

Henry nodded.

“Me too, buddy.” She sighed.

“I don’t like the basement.” Henry whispered. “It has big scary spiders and is too dark. Daddy said he was gunna put a light down here so’s it wouldn’t be scary.”

Emily chuckled. “Yeah. How about you and me tell your daddy to get some carpet and paint down here as well, huh? Maybe… a couch and playstation?”

"Wii." he said.

“I guess I’m too old to know what that is.” Emily winked, close enough now to rub his knee. She watched him relax a little into her touch. She opened her arms for him. “Want a hug, big guy?”

Henry nodded, little clean streaks on his cheeks where his tears cleaned the grime of the past few days. Emily wrapped him in her arms and kissed his forehead. “Is that better?” she whispered, feeling him nod against her chest. “You’ll be safe with me Henry. I’m gonna protect you until mommy gets here, okay?”

“’kay.” He whispered. He reached up to her ear, touching the blood there and said “You got a boo boo.”

Emily nodded. “Yeah I do. I might need a doc when we get out of here.”

Their moment was interrupted when the door swung open and Askari marched towards them. Henry squeaked in fear and scampered back to his corner.

“Phone.” Askari demanded.

“What?”

“Give. Me. Your. Phone.” He grabbed at her hair to emphasise his point, aggravating her head wound. Emily fought not to cry out and scare Henry. She fumbled in her pocket and threw the phone on the ground. “Call Jareau.” He ordered.

“That’s mommy.” Henry breathed, hope cresting in his chest.

Emily glared at Askari.

“Call her or I’ll kill the boy.” He whispered into her ear, his fist winding more tightly in her hair.

“Don’t hurt her!” Henry called.

Askari laughed at him.

Suddenly Henry charged out from his corner and was trying to tug Askari’s hand from Emily’s hair. Askari whipped his free hand across Henry’s cheek and chuckled as the little boy fell back, stunned and whimpering again.

“Bastard!” Emily hissed.

“CALL JAREAU!” Askari screamed.

Emily nodded and did just that. “Fine. Just leave the boy alone.”

“Video call.” He demanded.

Emily sighed, remembering the fate of Janine. “I’ll do it, but… you can’t let the boy see.”

“It’ll make a man out of him.” Askari sneered.

“Is that what happened to you, hmm? You saw violence as a child? You suffered it? Abuse? Rape? You want that for him?”

“Fucking bitch whore!” he snarled, grabbing the phone and dragging Emily across the basement, further away from Henry, by her hair.

“Jesus!” Emily gasped, feeling like she was being scalped.

After only a single ring, JJ answered, her face pale and her eyes wide. “EM?! God Em – we’re –“

“Henry’s okay.” She gasped, interrupting JJ, not wanting her to inadvertently alert Askari that she was coming.

Askari grabbed the phone. “Want to hear your friend scream, Agent Jareau?”

[fromthespiderverse]

Big Brother

A/N: We have never written babies before, this is likely not proper baby behavior.

Emily had been Walker's everything.

Growing up an only child for the longest time, he had at first though not liked her, this new baby, coming into the household and stealing his limelight.

His parents had paid tons of attention to him before Emily, but then she had seemed to be the only thing they could focus on.

He'd been upset, obviously, started acting out to get any source of attention from them. Did anything he could think of to get their eyes off that, in his personal mind, stupid, baby.

And then she's started walking.

A baby walking was trouble with a capital T. They figured out they were at the right height to grab things, and grab things they did.

Walker hadn't cared at for the most part, unless she's grabbed his things, then he'd pitch a fit, which often made her cry, and lead to him getting scolded for getting mad at her because she was just a baby and he was suppose to cater to her till she was old enough to understand.

He'd hated it.

He hated her.

---

She enjoyed teetering about near the stairs, especially when no one was there to stop her.

Well Walker was there, laying on the floor nearby, scribbling away on paper with his coloring pencils and not paying attention to her.

He's not sure when the feeling suddenly hits him, to turn his head towards the stairs and look at her.

She was toddling around too close, being a stupid baby. But then she fell. Not the first time, but this time it was so much more dangerous.

Any one with half a brain could see the outcome coming from a mile away.

The sound of their son's loud screaming as he fell down the stairs is like an alarm.

---

"Peter!"

Really it'd been stupid, what he did.

But in the moment, seeing Emily start to fall down the stairs herself, Walker had found that he didn't really hate her enough to watch her possibly get hurt.

So he'd done what a big brother is always suppose to do, protect their younger sibling.

Maybe not one of his better choice when it came to his own safety though.

But Emily's alright, unaware baby that she is, squealing on his chest like their tumble down had been a game, safe and sound. She decides to tug on his hair considering he can't get away from her like he would normally be able to, as their parents rush down the stairs towards them.

Walker had earned some bumps and bruises, the worse injuries only being a broken arm and a sprained wrist. He could've landed a lot worse to be fair.

It's not fun only having the use of one arm for a while, but Walker gets over it. It didn't really matter in the long run.

Emily tugs on his hand, trying to pull it into her mouth.

"I still think you're pretty stupid," Walker tells her as she manages to get his knuckles in her mouth. "And gross."

Stupid and gross, but also rather alright. For a baby.

[beware-of-you-98]

the team: (is hungry)

emily: (holds wallet in the air) guys don’t worry! dinner’s on me tonight!

derek: wait is that— (feels around pockets) did you take my wallet?????

emily:

emily: dinner’s on derek tonight

[whateverthedragonswant]

Big Sky 3x02: The Woods Are Lovely, Dark and Deep

Again, sorry about the messed up layout below. I was mistaken last night, I only got as far as the second episode, so I have 3x03-3x07 still to look at.

Title: lines from the infamous Robert Frost poem (x)

Writers: Kyle Long & Christine Roum

Director: Kelli Williams

In recap: Cassie seeing the ranch for sale, blackmailing Tonya, Tonya accepting her offer; Beau at movie night mentioning Emily’s on a camping trip with her stepdad to Cassie and Jenny, then switches to a scene of Avery and Emily laughing at the campfire while Beau’s voiceover is when he tells Jenny he’d like to punch Avery; Emily declining Beau’s calls & Beau’s reaction; Mark (backpacker) going up to Deadman’s Drop (which it literally is for Mark and that coyote), running into Walt, Walt pursuing Mark who then falls off the cliff while his water bottle rolls around on the cliff; Cassie talking to Sunny about the missing backpacker & giving her the flier; Denise mentioning to Cassie about the 20 year old case & her personal connection to it; Sunny looking for Walt & finding him

Relevant Lines: “You have your place. You know our deal. You stay there and everything’s peachy keen.” - Arlen family connection?

Sequence: when Cassie says she’ll go hiking herself, Denise tells her she shouldn’t (after Cassie assumed Denise would join her but the latter bows out with a claim of sciatica, which then she has no problem going in 3x04) & should call Jenny or “Beau-Beau” which Cassie agrees is a good idea, then we see Beau’s name on the sheriff’s door, then Beau eating a sandwich Poppernak has brought him, showing that Beau is who Cassie chose to call (which he then later confirms to Jenny)

Interaction scene: Beau assigns Jenny to Tonya’s case and mentions he’s going to help Cassie on something she called him about which earns him "the squint"

Coaching scene: Beau tells Jenny she needs to try a sandwich he’s eating & Poppernak says it’s from the Blue Fox diner and that he’s a sort of tester for the menu; Jenny is in disbelief, reminds them that it’s Tonya’s place, stating that Tonya and Donno are criminals when they keep complimenting the food and Donno’s skills; Beau says no, that he heard they went legit so until there’s proof of otherwise, they’re going to keep enjoying the food; Jenny talks about Tonya’s cartel history while Tonya appears behind her, Jenny says she’s going to get proof and lock Tonya up and turns around to see Tonya who seems amused, asking for help in a squatter situation; Beau tells Jenny to help Tonya with the law is the law and "We don’t get to choose who we help” which angers Jenny after he indicates she should take Poppernak with her & hurries into his office

Relevant Lines: Sunny: “What’s this podcast for, exactly?” Emily: “Just sort of my life, I guess.” Sunny: “All 15 years of it?” Emily: “Sixteen.” Sunny: “So, yesterday you said it was about secrets and relationships. What’s it about today?” Emily: “Still finding my subject. Maybe things I’m afraid of?” (the horror element/genre has kicked in from 3x01 - we also see a nastier and more fear-inducing side to Sunny this episode, while she’s on Emily’s phone as the subject that we can see)

Relevant Lines: Sunny: “But never get in between a mama bear and a cub. That’s trouble with a capital T.” (not only is Sunny protective of Walt, but Beau is just as protective of Emily)

Framing: when Emily and Sunny talk about her mom and podcasts, Avery is in the back talking to Paige and the other female campers

Noteworthy things: Luke is a jerk to Paige in front of everyone & Cormac gives her a bandana to clean the water up with and Paige smiles at him which makes Luke even more jealous “Yeah, she’s fine there, Tex”, Cormac says he’s just trying to be helpful and Luke says he can see that, Paige rushes over to intervene as Emily films them (not so discreetly) and Avery watches until Sunny intervenes; Tonya offers to give Jenny the number of an auto repair shop & Jenny retorts with that at least her ride wasn’t bought with blood money, this whole interaction makes it very clear that neither woman like each other & there’s more animosity between them than there currently is between Cassie and Tonya; Emily, Avery, and other two campers are recalling the lyrics to Alanis Morisette’s “You Oughta Know” (x) and laughing before Sunny asks Buck if he’s seen the lovebirds aka Luke and Paige and this scene leads into Emily being suspicious and Avery acting suspiciously - noteworthy because this song is infamously known about being a sort of letter to Alanis’ ex who has moved on after he broke it off with her (x), especially those particular lyrics "It's not fair, to deny me, Of the cross I bear that you gave to me"; Luke and Paige break up & things get heated, it’s shown they are on the Bleeding Heart trail

Parallels: Luke and Paige’s situation with Paul and Camille’s though the contrast is the intentions

Interaction: Beau meets Cassie on the hiking trail, complaining about the hike; Cassie tells him about the footprints & Beau finds the water bottle; Beau asks where Sunny’s camp is and Cassie calls it for what it is: spying on Emily (this is also paralleled with how Beau and Jenny work cases together; with either lead, they make a good team when it comes to solving cases)

Interaction: Beau meets Sunny and Buck; Sunny invites them to eat which Beau agrees to (what is it about Beau and food? I feel like there's something more than just an attempt at an SPN easter egg) but Cassie declines; Cassie and Cormac check each other out which Beau clocks but Cassie goes back to the case; Emily sees Beau and he sheepishly greets her back; Emily shows Beau around her tent; Avery joins the conversation where it’s made clear that Beau had no idea about her podcast (though Avery does), it's obvious that Beau definitely doesn’t like Avery, and Emily knows that; Cassie goes to grab Beau so they can leave, Avery greets Cassie which she returns civilly but not friendly, Emily smiles at her and waves, Cassie smiles back, Beau talks to Emily for a second and hugs her, says goodbye, and he & Cassie leave

Sequence: Beau, Emily, Avery, and Cassie scene followed by Luke and Paige scene

Relevant Lines: Luke: “Hoping your cowboy lover would follow you out here?” Paige: “I only flirt with Cormac to mess with you.”; Luke: “Okay, so we’re back to what a screw up I am now?” (I have my suspicions but no matter what, these lines are important)

Framing: Beau and Jenny walk into the sheriff’s station together, both are in lighter-themed clothing

Buzz words: Forever, Under, Void, Hazard, Destroy, Midnight, Once, Risk, Guilt, Hunt (in Paige’s journal where she talks about how she had a mentally absent mom and no dad growing up, how disappointed she is with Luke, and what she wants for her life)

Relevant lines: Sunny: “For those who want to help, grab a partner and fan out” - when she says this, the camera focuses on Cormac who seems unsure of something (which considering later episodes, this seems very on point for him - he is very grey in this area though the more and more weird things get, the more and more he does want to figure it out)

Framing: Jenny and Beau walk into the waiting area together; their clothes have a similar color theme thread

Framing: Beau and Jenny on the couch facing Cassie sitting on the table across; Jenny is clearly comfortable from the position she’s sitting in (after she moves into it), relaxed into the couch, and her shoes are off; Beau is not as relaxed as she is, he's sitting on the edge of the couch, leaning forward slightly (his elbows on his thighs) and with glass in his hands (aka he's not comfortable)

Relevant lines: Cassie: “Sounds like you two had a day.” Jenny: “Yeah. Getting to be a thing.” (this last line is said as Jenny relaxes back into the couch, looking over at Beau, who is busy sipping his drink while looking at Cassie and and then away; not to mention, Beau and Cassie sip their drinks at the same time while Jenny doesn't, instead she moves back into the couch and says her line -> blocking of a scene and certain takes chosen to air by the show/editors means everything)

Sequence: Beau checks out Deputy Weaver’s credentials & Paul leaves with her, Beau sends Poppernak to follow them then Cassie is comparing the water bottle Beau found to Mark’s social media photos & confirms it’s Mark’s water bottle

Interaction: Beau and Jenny arrive at Cassie’s ranch for a housewarming; Beau gives Cassie bread so she’ll never go hungry & salt so she’ll always be protected (obvious SPN easter egg but also related to a certain theme we seem to see emerging for Beau and Cassie, I'll discuss in another post) which Cassie figures out is from demons; Jenny gives Cassie tequila so she always has a little fun; Cassie thanks them both (Beau is giving Cassie these certain items with the theme of care attached, not that he doesn't think Cassie can't handle herself but he cares; Jenny is giving Cassie this certain item with the theme of fun attached because most likely she knows Cassie can obviously take care of herself & wants to give her some fun instead)

Props: gifts (bread, salt, tequila)

Interaction: Beau, Jenny, and Cassie open the tequila bottle and toast (they make sure to show the box that says “Glass” on it that’s clearly open which means Cassie found it to get the glasses they’re using out (& links back to the movie night convo about Beau's lack of glassware & using Cassie's ranch for movie nights - which to me indicates that they're wanting the audience to keep this in mind here & along with the blocking, framing, performances...this scene has an undercurrent, subtle but not that subtle, especially when they throw Jenny's reactions into the mix); Jenny asks about the backpacker case, Cassie tells them that the water bottle she & Beau found was confirmed to belong to Mark, she also mentions the Bleeding Heart Killer case but seems unsure (there's something with this killer case/trail btw, Bleeding Hearts & a girl's heart was cut out that Denise has a connection to, just saying), while Beau processes that info Jenny says she remembers that case & she was going off to college at the time (she now has a connection to the case too); Beau is in disbelief & mentions that Emily is camping in those woods, Cassie tries to assure him that if she thought he should worry she would’ve said something; Beau decides to check in with Emily via text, Beau assures Cassie that he’s not spying on her and Cassie waves it away & then Jenny tries to deter Beau by telling him that he doesn’t want to scare Emily, Beau assures her he’s only checking in with her 

Interaction: Beau’s text comes back undelivered, he thinks for a minute and says Emily must not have service; Cassie watches him then looks to Jenny who gives her a look back; Beau gives Cassie a thin smile as he looks down, clearly worried

Theme playing out in episode (secrets, lies & relationships): Sunny lies to Buck about where she was the night before

Theme playing out in episode (things are not as they seem): Luke and Paige are hiding out at Sunny’s campsite until things blow over and they can go back for the money; Tonya's squatter turns out to be a witness in hiding; a drunk thrown into the cell turns out to be someone sent to kill Paul; Paul had evidence which turns out to be Camille (and her testimony) who was not missing but hiding out & Paul always wanted to do the right thing but in a way that kept them both safe (which Beau funnily enough is the one to uncover this); Deputy Weaver is legit but she's corrupt; Weaver is taking Paul to the airport but in actuality takes him back to his ranch; Poppernak follows them in his mom's minivan instead of a cop car so he won't get made; Beau sends Paul with Weaver but has Poppernak tail them; Sunny and Buck's relationship might not be all it seems to be; while it's clear Jenny is into Beau, he may not return those feelings

To me, this was one of the best episodes yet of the season. Lots starting to be uncovered here and while 3x01 was the main setup, this also helped to give that foundation a little more cement so to speak.

Btw, I'm ngl, I'm looking at this partially through a 9-1-1 writer lens. Very different shows, networks, writers, cast, etc. but I'm trying to connect the dots with what we're being shown. So my notes tend to break it all down in a similar way to how I break down 9-1-1 episodes. I'm still trying to get a good read on these writers, which is difficult without me having seen Season 2 (I know, I will watch it as soon as I get more time, I promise), the new format they went with this season (which is sort of similar to 9-1-1 though I'd argue that before season 5, 9-1-1 handled the ensemble cast's stories better), and with the introduction of Beau, a new side character who is being given a massive spotlight and his story is being brought into the forefront (nothing wrong with that in theory though the execution of it leaves a lot to be desired *cough* Cassie, the main, being relegated to the background in favor of Beau/Jenny scenes *cough cough*). So, it's a little bit more difficult for me to try to suss out their style, and figure out which writers are on the money (and who to pay more attention to) and who might be a little more off course (but still in the same arena; and maybe we take those with a grain of salt so to speak). But I'm going to keep trying my best.

[fatehbaz]

The sea, as “a space unexplored […] offers a fleeting experience of an absolutely unknowable realm” [...]. It is, therefore, unsurprising that an important subcategory of the Weird focuses on oceans. [...] The Oceanic Old Weird is suffused with fear and loathing of the unknowable sea, which is imagined as a force of malevolent antagonism directed at ships and sailors, or as embodying the natural immanence of death and entropy. While Jolene Mathieson has previously discussed “hypermateriality” and “wet ontology” in the Oceanic Weird through a new materialist lens, alleging that the genre troubles the limits of “earlier modes of oceanic thought within the natural and social sciences,” we [...] instead [...] analyse the ways in which the genre’s aesthetics and themes mediate the violence, epistemes, and socio-ecological relations corresponding to the eco-racial regimes of capitalism and colonialism [...].

The Oceanic Weird emerged within a larger tradition of ecophobic tales at the turn of the twentieth century in a world still dominated by European colonialism, but increasingly reshaped by emergent US imperialism. [...]

[W]e elaborate on two tropes that flourished in an era when European and American powers competed for dominance in the Caribbean: monstrous octopi, which would metamorphose into the Lovecraftian anthropoid tentacular figure, and the Caribbean-centred myth of the Sargasso Sea as a “Weed World” [...].

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In legends of the weed-clogged Sargasso Sea, “ships became becalmed and trapped by the weed” in an area of the North Atlantic that would later be nicknamed the Bermuda triangle [...]. Several late nineteenth-century American and British writers “used the Sargasso as a setting for societies of people trapped there for generations” [...]. At the dawn of the twentieth century, one of the most influential authors of Sargasso tales, English author William Hope Hodgson, describes it as a place of absolute loneliness, an “interminable waste of weed -- a treacherous, silent vastitude of slime and hideousness” (p. 4) that eclipses humanity and enlightened rationality. Hodgson’s “From the Tideless Sea” (1906) depicts monsters of the deep lurking beneath this stagnant surface: “some dread Thing hidden within the weed” devours almost all of the crew [...].” In his subsequently published Sargasso-themed horror novel, The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” (1907), the tentacled creature is joined “by giant crabs, octopodes, and tentacled devil-fish, [..] giant fungi [..] trees that howl [and] […] weed men” [...].

As Emily Alder observes, these “[a]nimal monsters” are so unsettling because they “reveal the limits to scientific mastery over the natural world” (Alder 2017, p. 1084). “They violate,” she continues, “existing norms and knowledge systems; they flourish in environments in which humans are unfit and cannot dominate” and disturb “a colonialist centrism structuring relationships between humans and the more-than-human world” (ibid.). The Atlantic Ocean and its Weird creatures mark the limits of capitalism’s attempts to control the submarine world.

The Old Oceanic Weird imagines the Sargasso as a depository of a secreted, miserable history which invokes the temporality of the longue durée -- whether deep time provoking terror because it is seemingly beyond human conceptualization, or the catastrophic history of the four hundred preceding years of capitalist modernity. UK naval officer Frank H. Shaw’s “Held by the Sargasso Sea” (1908), which offers a paradigmatic condensation of imperialist tropes associated with the sea. mobilises both temporalities [...].

Shaw’s invocation of C*lumbus situates the Weird within a colonialist tradition that imagines the Caribbean both as site of triumphal European conquest and of fearfully insurgent natural alterity that might thwart or exceed European power and epistemes. At the same time, the passage offers a prescient, if unwitting, registration of capitalism’s transformation of the ocean into trash-heap and dumping-ground, full of derelict ships, but also the detritus of the Atlantic mercantile economy, trapped within a vortex that anticipates today’s garbage patch within the North Atlantic Gyre. The rampant seaweed reconfigures the ecophobic trope of monstrous tropical fecundity to imagine the loathsome vegetation as clogging and obstructing the technics and vehicles of maritime capitalism, thus resisting the rigid abstraction of nature.

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It is within Lovecraft’s sea horror that tentacular monsters and abyssal terrors achieve their most potent distillation, developed and refined throughout the Cthulhu mythos and its related tales of ancient underwater beings [...]. Critics have often noted that the horrors of the two world wars are central to the Old Weird, particularly in stories such as “Dagon” and “The Temple.” However, they have been less attentive to the geopolitical environmental unconscious of Lovecraftian eco-racial-phobia, which registers, even if often in displaced form, the emergence of the US as the new global hegemon in the world-ecology. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the US aggressively expanded into the Caribbean and Latin America, establishing the ecological regime of the “American Sugar Kingdom,” increasing its control over commercial sea lanes, and justifying “dollar diplomacy” through patriarchal-racist ideology. [...]

Furthermore, during the early twentieth century, tentacled figures were explicitly used to refer to Standard Oil. [...] More broadly, tentacled creatures were employed to critique new forms of imperialism. [...]

Within the more radical politics of the New Oceanic Weird, ecological crisis is often explicitly thematised, no longer mediating the imminent transition to a new oil-fuelled regime but rather the epochal exhaustion of the neoliberal ecological regime. As a mode that estranges “our sense of reality” (Noys and Murphy 2016, p. 117), the New Weird is particularly suited to addressing the changing realities of a warming planet. The uncanny totality of climate change is aptly captured in Gerry Canavan and Andrew Hageman’s concept of “global weirding,” understood as “a cognitive frame” aimed at refocussing “our attention on the localities within the totality of the global.” As they write, it “was intended to show us is that we are now living in postnormal times: we can no longer depend on the climatological patterns that up till now have more or less reliably structured our behaviors” [...].

Given the crucial role of the oceans in regulating the climate, it is no surprise that the Oceanic Weird should experience a revival in this context. [...]

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[T]he utopian trace in Indiana’s novel lies in its intimation that prospects for radical transformation lie in finding alternative, non-capitalist, ways of viewing the marine world, in restoring the numinosity of the oceans and revaluing all forms of life.

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Sharae Deckard and Kerstin Oloff. ‘“The One Who Comes from the Sea”: Marine Crisis and the New Oceanic Weird in Rita Indiana’s La mucama de Omicunle (2015).’ MDPI Humanities. August 2020.

[perenial]

at risk of asking a dumb question.. how did you know you were nb/you wanted to go by they/them? i ask as someone trying to figure it out

this isn’t a dumb question - the opposite, really, since this is the entire point of my thesis (that everyone is sick of hearing about). there really isn’t a lot of research in social sciences about non-binary identity, and what does exist is either going through peer review right now and isn’t accessible, or takes a v strong biomedical approach that totally ignores the social dimension of identity work. but that’s not exactly what ur asking so i’ll save that for my phd proposal lmao

the main Thing for me was always feeling discomfort with my birth name. from a v v young age i’d hear it and be like......is that supposed to be me? am i supposed to connect that collection of syllables to [gestures vaguely at all of this]? it just didn’t click with me. my birth name isn’t overtly feminine or anything but it’s definitely a ‘female’ name, so i guess i kind of hitched all my gender-y baggage to that horse and went okay well that’s clearly not right

i discovered the term non-binary on tumblr in about 2012? 2013? i was definitely questioning my gender by 2013, because i’d just had my first girlfriend and i felt incredibly uncomfortable when she called us lesbians. let me be super clear about this: it wasn’t internalised lesobophobia that caused the discomfort, it was the fundamental incompatibility of a gendered label having anything to do with me. 

(sidenote: there’s actually a really interesting argument by monique wittig discussed by judith butler in gender trouble that explores the idea that man/woman are inherently heterosexualised roles and therefore being a non-hetero woman/lesbian....isn’t exactly the same as being a capital-w Woman? it’s a complex theory that some lesbians/wlw have taken as an empowering concept while others feel like wittig leans into t/e/r/f or political lesbian territory. ANYWAY baby gene didn’t know this discourse existed and thought lesbian = woman so that’s what i’m getting at)

after breaking up with my girlfriend i v briefly toyed with the idea that i might be a trans guy, and while that felt slightly more correct than being a cis woman, it still didn’t sit right with me? so i cycled through a few different things, most significantly genderfluid, until one day when i was about 14/15 where i just went u know what? fuck it. i’m non-binary. u can try and define whatever the fuck is going on here but good fucking luck. 

that was around the same time i started using they/them pronouns, first online and then slowly more irl as i went to uni/talked to new people. i tried he/him and ze/zir for a while but like id-ing as a trans guy/genderfluid, it just didn’t feel right. it was a lot of trial and error, plenty of late nights staring at the ceiling practicing introducing myself, so much reading about trans identity - and somehow i ended up here, literally being non-binary as a career.

my main advice to u is to have fun with it. gender can feel really serious at times, especially when there’s so much emphasis on physical transition, but i promise it’s okay - good, even - to just fuck around while u find something that works, and for all its faults tumblr is actually a great place to do just that. u want to use neopronouns for a week? go for it! u want to change ur name every second month? sure! u don’t want people to see or perceive ur gender? bitch me too the fuck

and it’s alright if nothing fits right away, or ever! like, show me a permanent state of self. there isn’t one. we’re all just meaty sacks on a slowly dying planet; who gives a shit if the person u were calling greg last week is emily now. humans change - it’s what we do best. resisting that urge to change is how we get tony abbott eating a whole raw onion on national tv. 

i want to leave u with this quote from gender trouble, which is a fantastic book if u can muddle through all the unnecessarily complicated academic language:

If the body is not a “being,” but a variable boundary, a surface whose permeability is politically regulated, a signifying practice within a cultural field of gender hierarchy and compulsory heterosexuality, then what language is left for understanding this corporeal enactment, gender, that constitutes its “interior” signification on its surface? Sartre would perhaps have called this act “a style of being,” Foucault, “a stylistics of existence.” And in my earlier reading of Beauvoir, I suggest that gendered bodies are so many “styles of the flesh.” These styles all never fully self-styled, for styles have a history, and those histories condition and limit the possibilities. Consider gender, for instance, as a corporeal style, an “act,” as it were, which is both intentional and performative, where “performative” suggests a dramatic and contingent construction of meaning.

(and because i’ve been referencing things all day and can’t break the habit now - emphasis mine, Butler 1999 (2nd ed.), pg. 177)

happy gendering!

[belorage]

Wes for the full clear on the OC asks? 😘😘😘

— OC QUESTIONS

BASICS

What’s their full name? Wesley Daniel Brooks

What does their name mean? Why were they named that? Wesley means “western meadow,” Daniel means “God is my judge,” and Brooks means “stream.” You can find my real world reasoning for choosing his name here. As for the canon reasoning, Wesley is a family name on his father’s side and Daniel is a good Christian name. 

Do they have any nicknames? Lots. Wes is the big one (Hwes if you’re Hurk Jr.), Rook, Dep (Deputy if you're as extra as John Seed), Bright Eyes (Raf only), Sundance (Nick only), Darling (Lyra, when she’s being cheeky), and probably a handful more that I’m forgetting.

How old are they? 28, almost 29 as of the start of FC5.

When’s their birthday? November 11, 1989

What’s their zodiac sign/element/birthstone/etc.? Do they believe that holds any significance? Scorpio sun, Aries moon, Aquarius rising. Year of the snake. Birthstones are topaz and citrine. He isn’t aware enough of any of this to believe in it.

What’s their species/subspecies? Do they have any special/magical abilities? He is a natural disaster in human form. His special ability is that he somehow manages to survive that for as long as he does.

What “class” do they belong to (for fantasy characters)? If none, what weapon do they favor? A revolver (Steel & Ivory), a sawed-off shotgun (Sin Eater), or basic hand-to-hand. Close combat is preferable to range. He also uses homemade C4 in his tireless crusade against cult infrastructure.

APPEARANCE

What do they look like? He’s 6′3″, has brown-ish hair (specifically, a warm golden bronze color) and hazel eyes with long eyelashes. Fit, moderate-to-lean build. Sharp features, angular jaw, a pronounced Cupid’s bow. He has the facial hair of a man who has forgotten to shave for two weeks, because he is—you guessed it—a man who has forgotten to shave for two weeks.

Do they have a face claim? Tomas Skoloudik

What’s their style like? Clothes, hair, makeup? Casual clothing—flannels (often tied around the waist), t-shirts, henleys, jeans, boots, jewelry (gold, leather), leather jacket, cargo jacket. His hair is messy and soft, just like he is, because he doesn’t overload it with hair products unlike some people. He’s got an ouroboros tattooed around the lower part of his right forearm and (universe-dependent) John and Lyra’s names on the inside of his wrists.

How do they carry themselves? What’s their default expression? He attempts to project swagger and indifference, but to anyone who knows him and is paying attention, he’s an open book. In a comfortable environment, he’s loose and casual. His default expression is fixated if he has something to occupy his mind and distant if he doesn’t.

Do they have any physical ailments or disabilities? No, but he’s got bruises and flesh wounds aplenty! He’s got bite marks and scratches galore! You want knife-slashing scars? He’s got twenty. But who cares? No big deal. Wes wants mooooore! 🎵

PERSONALITY

What’s their alignment? Chaotic Good/Chaotic Neutral

Which one of the 16 Personality Types do they fit into? ISFP

What are their hobbies and interests? Do they have any particular “favorites” (food, books, and so on)? I answered for his favorite films and TV here, and his favorite book is Watership Down. He likes the Beatles and bar snacks and black coffee. His favorite cultists are Lyra, John, and Shaggy—please don’t judge him.

What are they bad at? Dancing!

What kind of things do they dislike/hate? Hates being controlled, dislikes very sweet things.

Do they have any vices/addictions/mental illnesses? Impulsiveness, reactive behaviors. He smokes and drinks, although neither of those are done with a shocking amount of excess. Previously, harder drugs. 

What are their goals and motivations? Freedom and acceptance.

What are their manners like? Any habits? He’s not a jerk; he has passable manners when the situation calls for them, but Emily Post would like him not. His habits are covered in much more detail here, but the big one is that he tends to busy his hands and/or mouth with things wherever possible.

What are they most afraid of? Rejection, abandonment, enclosed spaces, death (specifically, the possibility of an afterlife). 

BACKGROUND

Where were they born? What was their childhood like? Born in Hope County. He was an only child and his home life was suspect, but made moderately more bearable by his best friend. Once he realized trying to please his father was a losing battle, he said hell yeah to a downward spiral of rebelliousness and troublemaking.

What’s their family like? His dad was a jerk of the sort that would never be satisfied. Big on toxic masculinity, short on acceptance. His mother loved him, but she fell in line more often than not.

What factions or organizations are they a part of? What ranks and titles do they hold? Hope County Sheriff’s Office (probationary sheriff’s deputy), Hope County Resistance (figurehead, pot stirrer, problem magnet). 

How do they fit into their “story”? Barely. Next question. I hate to use this word yet again, but it’s the only one that fits: his story is mostly about acceptance—self, fate, fault, sorrow, joy—because as much as he desired acceptance from others, he denied a lot of it for himself.

Where do they currently live? What’s their place like? He grew up in the Silver Lake trailer park, way up on the northeastern end of Holland Valley, near the Whitetails. For the duration of the game timeline, I picture him spending more time crashing where he can—with the Ryes, in the woods, wherever—but his own place would be sparse and fairly untidy, with clothes tossed everywhere. 

How do they eventually die? Wesley intends to live forever. How dare you insinuate—

RELATIONSHIPS

Do they have any friends? Would they consider anyone to be their best friend? Within the timeline of the game, he has quite a few. Raf is his best friend (and has been since they were kids), but Nick (and Kim) are both up there. He has a soft spot for Mary May; that seems to be reciprocal. He appreciates Grace because she doesn’t ask unnecessary questions. Sharky and Hurk offer unconditional friendship, which he appreciates and sorely needs. Adelaide is the vodka aunt who thirsts after his ex. She tries to rile him up sometimes (in a myriad of ways), but he likes her. And if you account for other universes, his friend count goes way up thanks to the various and sundry brat squad kids.

What’s their friend group like? What role do they play in it? When he was younger, he was the introvert-adopted-by-an-extrovert. He was a bit too withdrawn to have friends outside of that, though he wasn’t unfriendly. For a bulk of the current timeline, his friend group is “ragtag misfits” status and he basically gets ping-ponged between them as they try—with varying amounts of success—to fight a cult.  

What’s their love life like? (See also: ship question meme.) Do they have any kids? Depends on the universe. In canon, it’s messy but becomes significantly healthier later on. His previous relationship was promising and likely would have been ideal, except that they were young and unable (or unready) to deal with the realities of their situation. In AU, he is enemies-with-benefits but also grossly in love with the Judge of Eden’s Gate and her husband (who was a fun surprise, but it’s fine, because Wes got Lyra back by giving her a gracious two-for-one deal on children)!

Who do they look up to? Who do they trust? Whitehorse is something of a father figure, though Wes would never say that out loud. For the record, neither would Whitehorse (at least not directly to Wes)—mostly for Wes’s benefit. He trusts Raf, Pastor Jerome, and the rest of his friends listed above.

Who do they hate? Do they have any enemies? Joseph, because Joseph is daddy issues incarnate. Jacob, because Jacob understands Wes well enough to yank him around like a dog on a leash. By the time the Collapse hits, everyone is his enemy to some extent (as evidenced by the adorable horns and pointy tails drawn all over his wanted posters). Notable exceptions are John, Sharky, Hurk, and Whitehorse; however, all but the first are functionally unknown to him.

Do they have any pets? Just Boomer, who is the best emotional support animal a disaster could ask for.

Are they good with kids? Animals? He’s naturally good with both children and animals, but he lacks practical experience, especially with the former (shout-out to the Ryes for finally adding that to his resume).

FUN FACTS

Which tropes do they fit? Which archetypes? Tropewise, he’s Troubled, but Cute and I can’t refute it; apart from the high school thing, it’s a full BINGO clear. He’s also Bruiser with a Soft Center, Inferiority Superiority Complex, Cosmic Plaything, Desperately Craves Affection, Hero with Bad Publicity, I Am Not My Father, and almost certainly a whole host of shameful others that I don’t dare brave the rest of TVTropes to find. Of the twelve classic archetypes, he’s some combination of The Hero and The Outlaw. Otherwise: fallen angel, antihero, byronic hero, prodigal son. 

Do they play any instruments? Sports? He can play guitar, but only at an intermediate level. He’s not big on sports, but he can ice skate and he likes to swim.

What are some items they always carry? Steel & Ivory and a lighter; later, Sin Eater. In New Dawn he carries John’s watch.

Do they collect anything? Bad decisions. Minicultists, apparently. Nothing in particular.

What position do they sleep in? His default position when he’s alone and in a comfortable place is on his belly. There are exceptions listed in greater detail here.

Which emoji would they use the most? Honestly, he’s not really the type to use emojis, but he will send his love interest pictures of things he likes or finds pretty with no context. Otherwise, his texts tend to be short, to-the-point, and lacking in punctuation or capitalization. Believe it or not, he’d much rather communicate in person. My most frequently used emojis for him are 🍰 and 🐍. (Awww, cake and snake... They rhyme. How precious!)

What languages do they speak? English. He knows a limited amount of Spanish, but he’s better at understanding it than he is at speaking it.

What’s their favorite expletive? Damn or fuck.

What’s their favorite candle scent? Pine.

What songs remind you of them? I have a playlist for him here, but it—much like him—is a bit of a mess. I also have a playlist based on his own taste in music here.

Which animal would you say represents them? Snakes, stags, swans, scorpions.

What stereotypical high school clique would they fit into? Loners or troublemakers, probably. Stoners on a technicality—he doesn’t fit the stereotype, but he does have a history. He has some of the soul of an art kid but, tragically, none of the talent.

What would their favorite ride at an amusement park be? At a real amusement park, probably the roller coasters. At something more lowkey like a carnival, he’d like the classic, aesthetically pleasing rides like the Ferris wheel or the carousel.

Do they believe in aliens? Ghosts? Reincarnation or something else? He’s not an “I Want to Believe” sort of guy, but he still can’t explain the Larry Parker debacle. He tries very hard not to believe (or at least not to think about) any sort of afterlife, because he fears it.

Do they follow any religions/gods? Do they celebrate holidays? His family was Catholic, but he endeavors not to be. He likely wouldn’t celebrate holidays as a bachelor overmuch, but he would take part in holiday activities with others.

Which Deadly Sin do they most correspond to? Which Heavenly Virtue? Pride and Fortitude.

If you had to choose one tarot card to represent them, which would it be? The Tower, The Devil, The Wheel of Fortune.

[anneshirleycuffbert]

Anne’s letter to Gilbert - #3

[for an index to the first two shirbert letters and awae shorts, click here!]

Dearest Gilbert,

Thank you for the chamomile tea. It could not have come at a more perfect time.

Half the girls have caught colds and I am afraid I will be next to fall victim to their sickness, seeing as Diana has contracted it. Nevertheless, I swore to love her as long as the sun and moon shall endure. When I was an orphan staying at the Hammond’s–who had three sets of twins! three!– I nursed them all back to good health when they had croup. A cold is nothing compared to what the Hammond children went through that bitter February, so I’m positively certain we shall all be well in no time.

I believe taking care of someone because of and despite their illness is one of the most beautiful and valiant things a person can do in their lifetime. I suppose that is what began to soften my heart to you that day I came by to drop off your books whilst your father was ill. From the short time I talked to him, I felt that he was kindred. May I ask, do you miss your father terribly?

Marilla and Matthew do their best to hide their aging and all that entails from me, but I know better. They are not getting any younger and I dread the day that will inevitably come when I will not see Matthew feeding the goats or Marilla making her famous plum puffs. When my imagination conjures up the image of an empty Green Gables, I must stop myself then and there lest I plunge into the deepest depths of despair and never escape the nightmare. I’ve never told this to anyone, not even Diana. How my greatest fear is not being able to pursue my passions, which are too numerous to count if I tried, but of losing my dear Matthew and lovely Marilla. I was afraid that no one would understand, but I think you do.

I haven’t made my mind up yet which is worse, for a person to never know love or for them to have known it and lost it. But when I am at risk of letting these pesky thoughts run my heart to the ground, I think on the happy things. Matthew polishing his most unusual radish and Marilla and I buying material for my dress. I think of the day you and I marched to the town hall and protested for the right for freedom of speech alongside our classmates. I think of you, Gilbert Blythe, and how you love me despite my many faults and flaws. I’m still pinching myself.

Bash was most elated to see me when I visited, and Delly has much grown since the last I saw her that you’ll have trouble deciding whether to laugh or cry the day you return. Although she is still a baby, I see dear Mary more and more in her. She possesses an unusual resolute wisdom and I patiently await the day when I can converse with her and unlock all that lies in her imagination and mind. And Elijah– oh, he adores his baby sister. He takes her for morning strolls around the farm so that Bash can sleep in after long days of working. Miss Hazel, Elijah, Delly and I walked all the way to where the stream meets the Lake of Shining Waters and found Miss Stacey fishing with some of her students and Rachel Lynde, of all people! Miss Stacey sends her warmest regards and a reminder to keep the promise you made to her.

Jerry certainly made a point to tease me about you. I asked him about the post script he wrote to you, but he infuriatingly would not reveal its contents, saying that I must learn to accept that I cannot always get what I want and I should thank him for teaching me this lesson. The nerve! I didn’t thank him, of course, but I will keep his words in mind and practice them by refraining from asking you to divulge the information I desire. To answer your question, Jerry had made it a habit to spell my name without an E and one day I was made to believe he did it for the purpose of annoying me, rather than simply being ignorant to the proper spelling–which I may have been able to tolerate–so I might have snapped at him. Okay, I did snap at him but he only found it hilarious. Now he overcompensates with a capital E.

As for your request to visit me at Queen’s and escort me to Avonlea, you have my enthusiastic approval. Please be advised that Mrs Blackmore has strict visiting hours for suitors, who may only visit between the hours of 2:00-4:00pm on Saturdays, in the parlor. (But I wouldn’t be too worried because Mrs Blackmore has already taken a liking to you, and I suspect it’s because chamomile tea is her favorite.) The girls and I have become much acquainted with the parlor, for many students at Queen’s have developed a taste for the Avonlea scholars. Mrs Blackmore, it turns out, has quite a number of redeeming qualities under her intimidating exterior. She has a no-visiting policy for suitors during exam season and when there is sickness in the house. One of the benefits of having half of my housemates ill near exam season, is that we finally have a respite from the boys who’ve made it a habit to visit.

I do feel sorry for Moody and Ruby, who I never knew until recent how devoted they are to each other. Ruby, one of the fortunate spared from sickness, was caught trying to sneak out of the house after hours. We all presume it was to meet Moody under a nearby willow tree, but Mrs Blackmore has no solid evidence and therefore no collateral to prohibit him from visiting again once we’ve all recovered from our colds. I think Mrs Blackmore does not really want to expel Moody Spurgeon from the house, because when he visits he usually plays us a few songs on his banjo and Mistress Mang–our term of endearment for her–dearly loves music.

How are you and Benjamin Frederick Wright getting along? I am intrigued to meet him. Dr Emily Oak, as well, for as you said, she is a kindred spirit. I figure she must be if she’s worked her way, beating all, to become a doctor working at an acclaimed university.

I joined the Poetry Reading Club and the Writing Club and found many kindred people there. Yesterday I was asked by one of my professors to consider joining Theatre and another to think on applying to be one of the editors for the Queen’s Verdict, the college’s newsletter. I’m still thinking on it, seeing as I’m already in two extra-curriculars. And, as you very well know, the last time I was involved with a school newspaper, there were many negative consequences. I don’t think I could bear to disgrace myself in Charlottetown.

I hope you aren’t holing yourself in your books and studies for too long, Gil. It’s important to take time to be at leisure and refresh your soul. Promise me that you’ll take a walk, talk to your classmates, and try something new. Maybe explore the city with your dear roommate. I heard they have a camera at U of T, so if you ever get the chance, have a photograph of yourself taken! In regards to your all-inclusive apology, it is wholeheartedly accepted. The slate has been wiped clean.

As I write this letter, I am sitting under one of my favourite trees in all of Charlottetown. I will introduce you to her when you visit me. Oh, how I wish tomorrow would come sooner than later because then I would be one day closer to seeing you again. But I must admit, I do appreciate our correspondence via letter, as it helps me filter my words and choose them carefully. I’m afraid of how I might act and what I might say when we are reunited, given my horrible habit of callously spewing out the words I think in the moment I conceive them. I miss you terribly and I do not trust myself to act proper when I see you in person. But Mrs Blackmore is determined to make a lady out of me yet, so only time may tell.

Take care of yourself, Gilbert. I love you. Come home someday.

Anne

P.S. word of the day: Retrouvailles - the joy of reuniting with someone after a long separation. (A bosom friend who is studying French is just as handy as any foreign vocabulary dictionary)

P.P.S. Oh, darling Gil, do you not know? In order for a duel to be classified as such, there needs to be a prize. I propose the loser gives the winner a kiss. And as Rachel Lynde says, pride comes before the fall—so pucker up, Slateface. I hereby engage in this long-distance duel.

———————————————————————

lolol I know I said I wouldn’t be posting during exams, but writing this was like a mini-break from studying so I hope you enjoy! I’d love to know what your favorite part of the letter is!

This is Letter #3! for an index to the first two shirbert letters and awae shorts, click here!

[ingek73]

The Simon CASE: Throw Your Brother Under The Bus!

By Kristine Welby June 16, 2020 19 Comments

The Simon Case

Pool/Samir Hussein

The Simon CASE: Simon Says…Throw Your Brother Under The Bus!

“When Someone betrays you, it is a reflection of their character not yours.”

Last summer as Harry and Meghan were being slammed by the press literally for every breath they took, came word that they had flown to France on a private jet. They were dubbed hypocrites for taking a private jet after talking about the environment. Harry never told anyone not to fly, and Meghan never spoke about the environment. But they were both excoriated in the press and on social media. Of course, no fake outrage would be complete without fake pundits on various talk shows lambasting Harry and Meghan for the destruction of the environment.

When it was revealed that Sir Elton John had paid for the flight and paid to offset the carbon footprint, the conversation switched to “debunking the myth” of carbon offsets. Harry and Meghan were declared eco-hypocrites, despite the fact that William, in his efforts to outdo Harry, has spoken of the environment as much as Harry, and had even flown by private jet to Davos climate change forum. His attendance seemed nothing but grandstanding, since all he did was interview Sir David Attenborough. An interview which could have been done remotely, since environmental degradation is such a concern for him. This might sound trivial, but underscores the fundamental unfairness of the media’s attitude towards Harry. There is no shortage of perceived “hypocrisy” if one is determined to find it. But I guess it depends on where said hypocrisy needs to be found.

There was also the fact that William and his family had only just returned from their vacation on an exclusive private island, accessible only by private jet. And if that were not enough, we had the Queen’s favorite son flying hither and yon in private jets, in the midst of renewed outcry about his connection to convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew’s alleged sexual abuse of a trafficked minor. No private jet outrage there. Instead, when they were not attempting to equate Prince Andrew’s amoral actions to Harry and Meghan flying by private jet, they were ignoring Prince Andrew in favor of berating Harry and Meghan.

Then, just as it seemed the squall was reduced to a drizzle, along came pictures of the Cambridge clan boarding a commercial flight to Balmoral. £73 flight they declared, with pictures of the Cambridge family cosplaying ‘regular’ folks, with father and children carrying their own bags. It was a double whammy! William and Kate were not only heralded as frugal but of course environmentally conscious for flying commercial. That of course ignores the fact that Meghan and Harry’s personal travel is always privately funded and Sir Elton had paid for their trip; you can’t get more frugal than free.

Rebecca English tweet

“Stunt, stunt, stunt,” cried the people. “Obvious,” said the blue check.

William and Kate flight stunt

And it was, but wait there’s more. In the fanfare of the tabloids erecting a statue in honor of William the conqueror of duffel bags, came word from a real reporter with the Scotsman – There were two empty jets. The now defunct airline, Flybe had flown two empty planes, 500 hundred miles so they would be sure to have a commercial jet befitting the man waiting for his father and grandmother to pass…on the scepter. If Harry and Meghan’s small private jet was going to destroy the planet, then two empty commercial jets should spell the end of our galaxy. Harry clarified that flying private was for security reasons, which also apply to the rest of the royal family. Remember, this was not long after two men went to prison for plotting to kill Harry, because according to them, he was a “race traitor”, not to talk about the threats to his wife.

Of course, the people who seem to embrace their role as mouthpiece for KP, came out. Fully recovered from directing their fake outrage at Harry and Meghan taking a private jet, they were ready to switch to fake outrage in defense of William and his obvious stunt.

Emily Andrews and Chris Ship flight pr stunt

As with the jet stunt, we saw the denials for what they were, “fake”.

And then nearly a year later, this happened. An article about Simon Case of Kensington Palace who is now off to support the non-elected ruler of Britain – Dominic Cummings.

The Spectator’s tweet of the article about his departure proudly proclaimed:

“Boris’s new man in No. 10 was behind Will and Kate’s budget flight to Balmoral – when Harry and Meghan were criticised for flying by private jet says Camilla Tominey”

Simon behind Will and Kate’s budget flight

What the tweet should have said was: “It was a stunt.”

And a poorly thought out and executed stunt. By any objective measure, it was a failure. People immediately knew it was a stunt, and treated it with the ridicule it deserved. It did not affect change, except with the people desperate for any excuse to think William and Kate worthy of their privileged position. For those of us who think privilege should be earned not gifted, we saw William as a backstabbing, entitled, duplicitous craven bully. In the middle of a propaganda campaign against his brother and (post-partum) sister-in-law, William decided (or agreed) that it would be an excellent idea to do that, to attempt to embiggen himself.

If, as KP’s press minions originally claimed, the flight had been arranged months in advance, why did Flybe have to scramble( moving empty jets hundreds of miles) at the last minute to position a Flybe-branded plane on a route that was operated by their codeshare partner Loganair (eastern airways) in order to “maximize press coverage for the airline”? Was there a prior expectation that their royal passengers will be pictured on the flight and hence the need to “maximize press coverage”? Had the flights been arranged far in advance as the press mouthpieces insisted it was, the airline could have positioned the planes without costing themselves money by way of 2 EMPTY flights. And why is Camilla Tominey now making special mention of Case’s role in that fiasco? Was he in his role, KP’s reservation specialist? If not normally, why did he take interest in that particular flight?

We do know that the flights arrangements were made on the eve of their departure per the Scotsman. A flight that was obviously positioned to portray William and Kate as “better” and more “responsible” than Harry and Meghan. And why are we now receiving confirmation of what we suspected from the beginning? Is it a coincidence, that revised versions of old rumors (tights-gate, private jet, KP leak) are being trotted out now? Revisions we suspect are closer to, (but still not) the truth. All these revisions still manage to position William and Kate as the victims. Apparently, Kate was justified in claiming to have a temper tantrum because the bride got the final say for her own wedding party; or that the backstabbing of Harry and Meghan via media propaganda was engineered by someone else and William and Kate merely went along? I don’t know why they think either proposition makes them look good.

If Simon Case was the ‘mastermind’ behind the media war waged by the future-future King against his brother and sister-in-law, then Mr. Case is an unfeeling, amoral manipulator. After all it was under his watch that the (pregnant) Duchess of Sussex was subjected to a coordinated campaign of harassment by the British Media. It was under his watch, that Tim Shipman of the times wrote in his famous article, excerpts below.

“This sense of embattlement has been entrenched by William’s decision to reach out to senior figures in the media as he prepares for kingship and by the apparent decision of those same newspapers to side with the palace over Meghan and Harry by peddling the most negative coverage of the duchess’s relationship with her father, Thomas Markle. “Harry sees that as part of the headwinds against him,” a friend said.”

It is Case who was credited with encouraging William to attempt to sideline Harry and his popular wife, which led to rumors of exiling them to Africa.

“…the Duke of Cambridge has been encouraged by his private secretary, Simon Case, who says he believed that a period of separation between the two brothers would help them to define themselves better and also improve relations between them.”

“In some ways it would suit William to get his brother out of the country for a few years and Meghan as far away as possible,” said one friend of the brothers.

Sending the couple to Canada was “mooted, then booted” given that Meghan spent seven years living there and for some it was “too close to the US” and the inevitable tabloid magazine coverage that would ensue. Making Harry governor-general of Australia was discussed and dismissed. The problems were obvious. “The trouble is that you effectively set them up as king and queen of a whole separate country,” according to one source. “And 24-hour media means that Australia is not as far away as it used to be.”

Here we are today, Harry and Meghan have stepped down as working royals, and moved to the United States of America, home to the media capital of the world. The public knew the economy plane trip was a stunt. We knew the leaks were coming from inside the Palace. No one but trolls believed the tights (or is it skirt length?) story. William will be remembered as a twat who on a state visit told the world that the media was hyping up COVID-19, even though at the time, hundreds were dying daily. Yet the apparent architect of the clusterf*ck, Simon Case, is credited with turning William into a statesman(yes) and it was his “success” at KP that lead Britain’s bumbling prime minister to invite him back to No. 10 Downing St.

As it were, the latest Spectator article only seeks to confirm what every rational and logically thinking person suspected was a calculated move by William’s court to hurt is brother. One has to wonder when all these facts became known to Camilla Tominey. Also is she the only reporter who is privy to these facts? Why were some in the royal rota adamant that flight arrangements were made far in advance? Did they question the seeming improbable coincidence(ahem) of the Cambridges and their brood being pictured boarding a domestic flight, whose exact price(£73) they seemed to know even after the fact? Or were they just willing to give William & Kate the benefit of the doubt, which they never extend to Harry and Meghan? So many questions still to be answered. If I were a betting woman, I will bet my last penny that there are more Cases to be unveiled. Stay tuned.

[queenofbaws]

UD: Who ya gonna call? - 8

Chapter: 8/? Chapter title: Seeing things Fic rating: T - Language, blood, general spookiness, cigarettes??? Summary: Sam isn’t getting paid nearly enough for this shit. Or at all, for that matter. (Reminder: This can be found on AO3, if you prefer!) Previous | Next ---

“Not to be too forward or anything, but are you…Sammy, you feelin’ this?”

Hoo boy. Smooth as silk. She rolled her eyes at Josh, looking up at him dully. “What is it that I’m supposed to be feeling, exactly?”

There was no embarrassment, no shame, in his expression as he met her flat stare. Honestly, she was coming to wonder whether he was immune to that shit altogether—it always seemed to roll off of him like water from a duck.

Fucking psych majors.

“This,” he reiterated, one hand gesturing back and forth between the two of them. “This scorching sexual tension we’ve been trying to ignore for the past month or so.”

“Oh, is that what that is?” Sam tsk’ed softly and shook her head. “Well that’s a relief. All this time, I’d been thinking maybe it was the beginning of food poisoning.”

And still, no shame! No, at that, Josh actually laughed. Oh, he was really turning out to be trouble. Capital-T Trouble.

“She does jokes, too! Be still my heart.” He clapped a hand over his chest for emphasis. “Has anyone ever suggested to you, Samantha, that you may very well be the whole package?”

“Just in general? Or in terms of a ghost hunting cohost?” She felt her lips quirk upward, and aw shit. Aw damn. Crap. She was falling for it. She felt herself falling for it.

“Let’s say the former.”

“Oh, then all the time.”

“Modest, too! A truly modern woman in all respects. How about the latter?”

“Mhm.”

That seemed to give him pause…but even so, his grin never flickered. “Wha—wait, who?”

Pretending to check her phone, Sam shrugged noncommittally. “You, for one. Just now, actually.”

“Keep pulling shit like that, and I’m gonna fall in love with you,” he warned, assuming a jokingly grave expression. “And consider that for a sec, okay? ‘Ghosts’ isn’t a great answer to give people when they ask you the big ‘So how did you two meet’ question at dinner parties.” He bent down to the cooler, rummaging around before finding what he was looking for; glass bottles clinked and clanked, and when he stood again, it was with enough for all four of them. “Don’t get me wrong—it’s a perfectly acceptable answer in the social circles my family runs in, but I have this nagging suspicion that maybe, just maybe, the Giddings clan might raise their eyebrows. Take one of these, wouldya?”

“I like how seriously you’re taking this hypothetical.” Sam grabbed two of the bottles, shooting a tight smile at one of the other partygoers before skirting out of the way, hustling out of the overcrowded kitchen with Josh hot on her heels.

The party had been his idea in the first place—Lord knew she hadn’t recognized any of the names he’d rattled off, much less any of the faces around them now—but to be fair, most things they ended up doing as a group were Josh’s idea. He was the idea guy in the same way Chris was the joke guy, or Ash was the planner, or she, herself, was the voice of reason. It was just how things had shaken out. Funny how that shit happened, huh?

So that was what had brought them back to the townhouses, surrounded by other students blowing off post-midterm steam and pre-Thanksgiving break (read: family time) panic, the music too loud, nothing but streaks of grease left in the pizza boxes on the stove, the booze plentiful but lukewarm. Every time they popped inside for drinks, Sam nervously took to checking faces from the corner of her eye, wondering what she’d say if they bumped into Emily or Jessica, or worse, both.

“Hypothetical? What’s hypothetical here? We’re young, we’re hot, we’ve got this fantastic banter thing going on…”

“Oh please. What banter?”

“‘What banter?’” He teased, pitching his voice up into a piss-poor imitation of her own. “As if you don’t know…”

“Can’t say I do.”

“Uh huh. Okay, Sammy.” She watched him flick a casual wave to someone she didn’t recognize, then his gaze was back on her. “Gotta hand it to you, though—when you joined up, I knew the whole All-American girl-next-door thing was gonna do wonders for the show, but this will-we-won’t-we shtick?” He raised his free hand to his mouth, loudly kissing the tips of his fingers like a chef might. “Bee-you-tiful. Couldn’t have planned it better myself.”

At that, she had to roll her eyes. “There’s no will-we-won’t-we shtick.” She raised her eyebrows in a silent dare…then stopped. Oh shit. Fuck! This was the banter he was talking about, wasn’t it? Goddammit.

Her realization wasn’t lost on him; Josh snickered, leaning his shoulder against the jamb of the sliding glass door, angling himself more fully towards her. “Methinks the lady doth protest too much…”

“Yeah? Well methinks the gentleman doth think too highly of himself.”

“Ow? Ow. This is how you treat your onscreen love interest? Remind me to never let you sign up for any community theater productions—Juliet’s not supposed to call Romeo a fuckboy. Not to his face, anyway.”

“To be fair, I’m pretttty sure I didn’t call you a fuckboy.”

“To be fair, I’m pretttty sure you implied it.”

Sam couldn’t hold back anymore. She snorted a laugh, doing her best to ignore the self-satisfied look it put on Josh’s face.

He was right…that was the worst part. He was right.

True enough, she hadn’t been totally privy to their old numbers—which was really just a nice way of saying she didn’t give a shit—but according to a mystified Chris, their little ghost hunting venture had seen serious improvement since she’d joined. Maybe they had just needed some new blood, an interviewer who didn’t talk with Josh’s low, ominous tones, or a feminine face that didn’t stare into space with dark-rimmed raccoon eyes as often as Ash did…then again, she’d broken the number one rule of the internet and checked the comments once…or twice…

So she knew that Josh had a point. Ghosts were fun and all, but ghosts being tracked down by charming, funny, attractive friends with (an admittedly considerable amount of) chemistry? Apparently that was the secret ingredient. Now, they still hadn’t reached viral status, and honestly Sam doubted they ever would, but…

But, but, but.

If she was silent for too long, he’d start gloating, and she couldn’t have that. “Y’know, if that’s all this is about, you really don’t need me.”

“Hmm?”

“If you’re saying that like, sexual tension is what the CREEPs need to be the next big thing, I’m sort of irrelevant.”

Josh gave her a look that she had long-since become acquainted with: He suspected she had something locked and loaded and ready to go. Something good. “Oh?”

“Mhm, you guys don’t need me for that.”

“Do we not?”

“Nah…you already have Chris and Ash.”

His face fell then, something in his eyes going flat as old soda. “Sam,” he said slowly, almost plaintively. “I need you to just…look at them…” He turned her around, guiding her until she was directly in view of the other two, both of whom were still obliviously going about their conversation at the flimsy table on the deck outside, far from the rest of the party, lit only by the shoddy string of lights hanging between the gutters and a nearby tree. There was a foreign weight on her shoulder, and when she turned, she could see in her periphery that Josh had set his chin on it from behind. “Look at them,” he said again, waving a hand just as Chris leaned a bit too far back in his chair.

Sam could see what was about to happen in her mind’s eye, but there was no stopping it. The event had already been set into motion.

“Now, you explain to me what it is about those dweebs that somehow reads ‘sexual tension’ to you.”

“I—”

Bang!

Even through the sliding door, the sound was…jarring. They watched Ashley try and help Chris up from the ground. It wasn’t exactly an easy rescue, by the looks of it. Whatever answer she’d been planning flew out the window as she watched them scramble. “Well. Uh…hmm.”

“Yeah.”

“When you put it that way…”

“Uh huh.”

“I guess it’s a slightly more persuasive argument than I originally gave it credit for.”

“You don’t say.”

She laughed to herself, trying to crane her neck in such a way that she could meet Josh’s gaze. “So maybe you have a point. Maybe we should keep—” In much the same way he had, she gestured between the two of them, “—this up.”

“Makes for good tv. You just gotta promise you’re not gonna fall in love with me. This is a business arrangement, after all.”

“Yeah. Don’t worry. That’s not gonna be a problem.”

He groaned loudly, acting as though she’d asked him to do something unspeakable. “That’s exactly what people say before they fall madly in love, Sammy! You’re tempting the fates! Dangerous. Very dangerous!”

Sam rolled her eyes, maneuvering the sliding door with the hand not holding their drinks. “I’ll take my chances…” she said in a chipper singsong.

Outside, the night sky was dimly lit with the threat of snow, the air not quite cold enough to make that threat believable. Chris had gotten himself back into his chair, it seemed, and Ashley’s expression was still one of tired acceptance as they paused mid-conversation, turning to welcome them back.

“What, you guys get lost or something?” Chris took one of the bottles Sam held out, cracking it open with one practiced twist. “Fall into a wormhole along the way?”

“Actually yeah, it was super weird…” Sam slid into her seat again, setting the other bottle (and her phone) onto the table. “It took us to this dimension where—and follow me on this one, I know it’s gonna sound farfetched—your dumbass forgot how gravity works, and you took a real tumble.”

He blinked, then groaned when realization hit, averting his gaze as he tipped the bottle to his mouth. When Ashley giggled, his eyes slid to hers, betrayal at once obvious and wordless. She just laughed harder.

“Uh oh, someone’s got your number, Cochise.” A screech as Josh pulled his chair back from the table, shoving one of the bottles across the glass to Ashley. “Someone remind me what we were talking about? Something about uh…” he patted one side of his jacket, then the other, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and tapping one out, “…the history of…something or another?”

Sam watched with silent, palpable interest as Ashley held her hand out in a clear ‘gimme’ gesture, only for Chris to reach over and lower her hand with his own. She saw Ash scrunch her face in irritation, but looked away just in time to catch Chris’s eyes, fixing him with a knowing sort of half-smirk. There was some kind of joke there, something about how her own personal game of ‘Guess the Major’ was a hundred times easier if you broke out a pack of smokes…eh, she wasn’t the joke guy, though, so she let it pass.

Josh lit his cigarette, face squinched with something like amusement as he looked between the three of them. “Can’t tell you guys how absolutely tickled I am that now there are three of you mooks around to do the…” he gestured broadly, “…secret nonverbal conversation crap. Seriously. Love it. Love it! Can’t get enough.”

“Psychologist’s dream, huh?” Sam joked.

“What is it with you and my people, Sammy? Let’s get to the root of those feelings.”

“Yeah, no thanks. I’ll pass.”

Ashley cleared her throat after having a sip of her drink. “Please, God, no. We were talking about—” Though the yard of the townhouse was almost perfectly silent, there was a moment where the gauzy, distant quality of the music and voices intensified from indoors, growing louder and clearer before fading out again. Her eyes shot up over Josh’s shoulder at the sound of a crisp click from the direction of the sliding door, and Sam saw her expression change. “—Conrad.”

“Uh…that’s definitely not what we were talking about. Trust me, I’d remember if we—” Chris’s snickering trailed off a second later. His glasses gleamed for a moment, the string of overhead lights catching on the lenses. “Well, well, well! Look what the cat coughed up.”

Even before he turned around, Josh was rolling his eyes, plastering on a performative scowl. “Bishop,” he drawled, speaking loudly and clearly enough to be heard all the way across the yard. “You better have my fifty bucks, you sunovabitch.”

“You’re not getting jackshit from me, man, I dunno how many times I have to tell you that.” The grass, dead and brown, crunched tellingly, tattling the newcomer’s exact position as he made his way to their table. “I’d rather upend my wallet into my aunt’s koi pond than have to lie awake at night thinking about you spending my money.” He dropped himself into the only open chair left, filling the space between Chris and Josh.

Ah. So this was the illustrious Conrad. He was about what she’d expected, honestly. Sam guessed he could be called handsome…in the way frat boys could be handsome, at least, with bright eyes and a smarmy grin, his well-kept hair hinting that, were he to let it get any longer, it would curl. From her position, she could just barely see that, yup, uh huh, oh yeah…he was wearing shorts even though it was only about forty-some degrees out.

One of those guys.

He stretched out in his seat, positively radiating the impenetrable confidence of someone who believed themselves the most interesting person in the room. It almost gave off heat. “‘Sup, creepazoids? Guess they just invite anyone to these shindigs nowadays.” There was a moment where he stopped, posture shifting minutely, and Sam realized he was only then noticing her. “New girl!” Conrad gave her a friendly nod and a gentlemanly tip of his bottle. “Hey, level with me—“ he set his arms onto the table, slouching over them and narrowing his eyes, “—how much did these dweebs have to pay you to get you to join the Scooby Doo act? I hope to Christ they’re at least offering you dental benefits.”

She clucked her tongue, shoulders popping up into a shrug. “Well, it’s funny you’d ask…I haven’t been paid anything yet…but I was promised, oh what was it…fifty dollars?” Sam looked to Josh as though asking for confirmation. He snickered, ashing his cigarette with a proud little flourish; she turned back to Conrad, smiling sweetly. “They keep telling me it’ll be any day now, though, so fingers crossed.”

“Oh Jesus,” Conrad groaned, sliding a hand down the side of his face. “Glad you’ve found another one of your kind.” Seemingly pleased with his entrance, he finally acknowledged the other two, grinning fetchingly across the table. “Ash.”

“Hi Connie,” she sighed, sounding more exasperated than downright putout. It was the tone of the girl who always found herself stuck sitting next to the class clown, no matter how many times she got up and changed her seat. Considering there were now three clowns crowded around the table, Sam thought it fit a smidge too well.

“Chris.”

In a mocking mimicry of how Ashley had said it, Chris parroted, “Hi Connie.”

“Dude. C’mon.”

“What? Suddenly I’m not on nickname terms? Rude, bro, très rude.”

Conrad shook his head and spread his hands like he was about to give a lecture. “How’d you feel if I started going around calling you Cochise?”

There was a beat…and then Chris grimaced. “Eugh. Okay. Point taken. Comment retracted.”

“Uh huh.”

Scooting closer to Josh, Sam lowered her voice to ask, “Is, uh, this how it always goes?”

“You got no fuckin’ idea.” He let out a loud breath, pivoting towards Conrad again. “Y’know, I don’t remember inviting you to sit with us.”

He feigned a hurt frown even as he glanced down, plucking at his shirt from under the unzipped flaps of his jacket. “Shit, is it Wednesday already? And look at me, not wearing pink. My b, man, super gauche of me, I know.”

“Ohoho! Can’t pay his debts, but he can crack wise! Is that what they teach you at the country club?”

Sam looked away from the guys, letting their bickering turn to gibberish in her ears.

Ashley caught her eyes, the corners of her mouth tucking inwards. “Constant,” she said, doing nothing to lower or mask her voice, instead taking a drink and allowing her attention to drift towards Conrad and Josh. Their obliviousness didn’t seem to surprise her. “It’s like they rehearse it. Sometimes I think they really do.”

With a couple tiny hops, Sam moved her chair closer to Ash’s, dragging her phone with her a moment later. “So are they like, actually friends, or…?”

Chris laughed into his bottle, joining them by moving his chair as well. Unbeknownst to the other two, they’d subtly formed their own group on that side of the table; it couldn’t have been more obvious if they’d drawn a literal line across the table, and still, they were so caught up in their back-and-forth that they went perfectly unaware. “Unfortunately for everyone involved, yeah, they’re definitely buds. Two chaotic neutral dumbasses.”

“Unfortunately,” Ashley repeated with a curt nod.

Sam waved towards them. “Then why…?”

“My theory? It’s some kind of like, elaborate mating ritual. They need to just make out and get it over with, already. Move past the tension.”

“Their kids would be so ugly.” Setting his bottle onto the table, Chris leaned towards her. “Nah, it’s just this stupid game they play when other people are watching. You get used to it.”

Of course.

She could tell he wanted her to ask, wanted her to frown, wanted her to beg for clarification…and since she knew resisting was futile, Sam folded her arms and held back a laugh. “Okay, okay, I’ll bite. What game would this be, exactly?”

As she watched, Chris pantomimed reaching up and pulling something down from over his head, cupping his left hand in front of his face as though covering a cough. He clicked his tongue twice, and then, in a ridiculously muffled impression of a sporting event announcer (or a pilot trying to talk to their passengers…Sam really couldn’t tell which), he crooned out, “Laaadies and gentlemen! It’s time for another round of America’s faaavorite pastime…Rich! Kids! Fiiiiighting!”

Laughing, Sam dropped her chin into her hands. “Hey, do me a favor? Say something like ‘Please keep your hands and feet inside the ride at all times.’”

He ignored her. “In this corner…he likes piña coladas and getting caught in the rain! His daddy’s an investment banker accused of insider trading, his mama’s a real estate phenom with no fewer than four—count ‘em, four—billboards in town…ladies, grab your Plan B, because he’s the one in the Hawaiian shirt and cargo shorts...Conraaaaad Bishop!” Chris turned away from his imaginary mic long enough to cheer before going right back.

There was a hand on her knee, and when Sam turned, she saw Ashley shaking her head. “Don’t laugh. It only encourages him.”

It didn’t seem like Chris needed encouragement, in all honesty.

“And in this corner…the man of a thousand impressions that all sort of sound the same! He’s heir apparent to Hollywood’s bloodiest horror empire! The Prince of Panic, the Prodigal Son of Spookiness, the smooth-talking serial bullshit artist…you know him, you love him, you really wish he’d stop talking about NBC’s Hannibal and the shit he learned in Intro Psych…Joshuaaaaa Washington!”

At the sound of his name, Josh finally looked over to them, confusion crossing his features when he realized how far away they’d all crept. “This a mutiny?”

“We were just trying to get a better view of the pissing match.” Sam smirked, pulling her legs up onto the chair to make herself more comfortable.

“Wanted to get out of the Splash Zone, more like…” Chuckling, Chris nudged Ashley with his elbow, waggling his eyebrows in an attempt to get her to laugh with him. She just shot him a long-suffering grimace and sighed through her nose.

“It occurs to me…” There was a soft but familiar sound from under the table, and Sam spotted Conrad bouncing his leg energetically, “This really isn’t the kinda first impression I wanted to make on the new girl, creep squad. I’m getting the vibe that you’re trying to make me look like a tool.”

Ashley muttered something so quietly that Sam only barely heard it: “You think we’re trying?”

She had to chomp down on the inside of her cheek o stop herself from laughing out loud; Ashley’s eyes zipped to hers, and they shared a secretive grin. “You don’t have to worry about that. I’ve already heard all about you.” Sam let her voice trail off ominously, quirking a brow. Then she smiled, twiddling her fingers. “I’m Sam, just FYI. New Girl’s only my stage name.”

“Oh shit, you’re quick!” Smirking, he leered at Josh, “Watch out, buddy-boy, this one’s gonna sniff through your bullshit in about point-five seconds. Gonna run you out of town. Good luck with that.”

“Eat me, dude.”

“Appreciate the offer, but you’re so not my type.”

“Not to be ‘that guy,’” Ashley began, raising her voice to be heard over them. “But we were kinda talking about important stuff before you came sauntering over—”

One side of his mouth pulled tighter, his lopsided smirk boasting a very endearing, very dangerous, dimple. “Sauntering? Not strutting?”

She flapped her hand like a sock puppet, the gesture getting him to stop talking, though doing nothing to staunch his chuckling. “So if we could get back to that, well that would just be great.”

Conrad nodded sagely, swirling the contents of his bottle. Sam saw his face change, becoming saccharine, innocent. She preemptively prepared herself for—what else—something stupid. “Important stuff, you said?”

“Yeah.”

“Like…super important stuff?”

“Extremely.”

“Business-type stuff, I’d imagine?”

“Yes, Conrad, business-type stuff.”

“Sooo…ghosts.” He glanced up from the table, spurred on by Ashley’s silence. “Ah. Well hey! It’s your lucky day, creepy crawlies! Because that’s exactly why I’m here! See, I spotted you guys out here, just absolutely haunting this yard like a bunch of socially stunted gargoyles, and as soon as I saw you, I thought to myself ‘What luck!’ It’s serendipitous, really, shit like this doesn’t line up every da—”

Josh went limp in his seat, head lolling so far back on his shoulders that he nearly took on the appearance of a contortionist. Or a pretzel. “Oh my God, get on with it!”

“So here’s the thing…” Conrad leaned into the center of their little group, tipping his beer towards Josh in a way that somehow managed to feel both conspiratorial and mocking. “Mom’s got this sick property a couple counties over. Can’t move it.” He let that tidbit dangle, eyebrows slanting upwards. When no one immediately took his bait, he raised the bottle to his mouth, murmuring, “Ask me why,” before taking a drink that looked way too casual to actually be casual.

Still, no one said anything.

Sam glanced to the others and had to laugh when she saw them all wearing the same suspicious expression. She got the feeling that this wasn’t the first (or second…or tenth…) time they’d had this kind of conversation.

She dropped her hands onto her lap, shaking her head as she turned to Conrad. “Fine,” she sighed, “Why can’t she sell it?”

The rest of them groaned in eerie unison. Now, she never would’ve said it to their faces, but in that moment they had managed to sound spookier than anything they’d ever uploaded to YouTube.

“Uh huh. Shut it. You guys are gonna be singing my praises to the very heavens themselves when you hear this shit.” He hunkered down again, dimples deepening with each word. “Get this…the land used to be a fucking gallows in the old days, right? Where people were executed and shit…”

“And now it’s a house,” Ashley said flatly with her hand against her cheek. “Really.”

“Really. You know how it goes, the place got razed, they started putting in all these huge-ass houses for the rich SOBs who didn’t care about the loss of human life, blah blah blah…” Conrad flapped his fingers dismissively. “But no, see, according to Mom’s people, back in like, the 60’s, a new family moved in, went to renovate the basement, and they found this bricked-over room down in the old wine cellar—”

Ashley rolled her eyes so hard it was audible. “Let me guess. And then they found a body. Totally mummified. Probably because there wasn’t any airflow through the bricks.”

He stopped abruptly, mouth open in a comical shape that couldn’t quite decide whether it was a grin or a grimace. “I—shit, what? You’ve already heard about—”

“You’re describing The Cask of Amontillado, oh my God.”

The dimples disappeared. “No I’m not! This is real!”

Across from him, Josh let out of a bark of laughter so intense that Sam was worried he might’ve dislodged one of his lungs. “Christ, man, are you fucking—”

“This place has had like twenty different owners in the past fifty years! No one wants to be there because weird shit keeps happening!” All at once the charming salesman was gone, replaced by a petulant kid; his and Josh’s relationship made sudden, perfect sense. Conrad turned back to Sam, probably because she was the only one of the four who wasn’t actively laughing in his face. Yet. “It’s totally legit! The stories, I mean. Not the like…” he wiggled his fingers and widened his eyes, scoffing as he said, “…ghoulies coming out to play hopscotch with the kids or whatever.”

“There’s no way that’s a real story.” It was the most Sam had heard Ashley say to anyone who wasn’t one of their ragtag team. Again, she had that same feeling—these guys had had this conversation before. A few times. “People don’t just find mummies in their basements.”

“Sure they do!”

“Connie.”

“There’s a reason people hate basements and attics, Ash, and that reason is sometimes you find bodies in them.”

There were not words enough in the English language to describe Ashley’s sigh.

“Here’s what I’m saying.” Conrad certainly wasn’t the storyteller Josh was, but as he mounted his second approach, it was very clear how deadly he would be as a pitchman.

God help them all the day he and Josh decided to put their differences aside and team up to use their powers for evil.

“I can get you the keys to a purportedly crazy-haunted mansion. That no one can sell. That’s been through a stupid number of owners. Where there’s at least a legend of a crawlspace mummy. And, as long as you don’t go listing off the address or straightup name-drop my mom’s agency, I can guaran-goddamn-fucking-tee you get all the time, space, and B-roll you could ever ask for.” Wisely, he’d positioned himself more towards Josh as he began listing shit off on his fingers. “You want full access? All floors? Done. You want to scope the property itself? Poke through the dirt for…I don’t know, bone shards or whatever? Done. You want to do an overnight without worrying about the cops getting called? Done. All of this…” he spread his arms out wide, a magnanimous king to his supplicants, “I will give to you. Free of charge.”

Sam didn’t need to look at the others to know they weren’t terribly impressed—she, herself, could hear something in his voice she didn’t totally like. Something bright but sticky, waving just over their heads like an anglerfish’s lure. His self-assured grin did not help matters.

Josh took a long, thoughtful pull off his cigarette, keeping his eyes on Conrad even as he turned his head to exhale. “But…” he said after a beat, ever the businessman.

“But nothing. I’m simply extending an offer to you, my friends, to help in your burgeoning paranormal busin—”

“But…” Josh said again.

And then they were in an old-timey standoff: Conrad leaning forward expectantly, Josh leaning back patiently, both with their eyebrows raised and mouths set in neutral slashes. One of Josh’s feet tapped in time with the muted beat of the music coming from inside; Conrad’s fingers drummed against the neck of his beer bottle. No one would’ve been shocked if, in that moment, a tumbleweed blew across their table.

The cheap plastic of Chris’s chair squeaked when he bent himself towards Ash, whispering “Rich! Kids! Fighting!” loudly enough for Sam to hear…at least until Ashley pressed a finger to his mouth to shut him up.

It was hard to say what did it, but the staring contest broke. Conrad let out a defeated groan, head rolling down onto his chest for a moment. “But…” he ceded, lifting his head in time to watch Josh take another drag, that time through a pointed smirk, “I have two itty bitty conditions.”

“Shock of shocks.” Josh chuckled. His eyes flicked to Sam’s. “Rule numero uno when it comes to dealing with the Conman, over here? Check that fine print right upfront.” He twiddled his fingers to urge him on. “Out with it, ya goddamn goon…”

He didn’t lodge any protest, instead sticking his index finger up. “One. I need your assistance spooking a certain someone. At a later date, of course. No rush on that one.”

Josh’s shoulders rose and fell once.

Conrad put up a second finger. “Two.” His eyes narrowed. “I want in.”

“No.”

“I—”

“No.”

He sat straighter in his seat, bringing his arms up in something that pretended to be defeat, “Fine! Cool! If you don’t want this sick, creepy-ass mansion full of dusty old paintings and moldy bed sheets…just…chock-full of bad juju and opportunities to get clicks, then by all means…”

Josh watched him silently. Then, heaving a sigh, he stamped his cigarette out on the table’s ashtray. “Team meeting. Plug your ears and hum or something, Connie.”

“Oh, of course, of course! I know how it goes…”

With the exception of Conrad, they all turned around in their seats (after a moment of confusion on Sam’s part—for the first time ever, it occurred to her that she was an actual part of the team, not just the newbie looking in from the outside). Chris took it upon himself to hop out of his chair, half-bending, half-squatting on the lawn to turn their impromptu meeting into a huddle.

“So?” Josh asked.

Ashley was the first to speak up. “We do need more locations…and I mean…” She bit down on her lower lip, shaking her head in resignation; she didn’t look particularly happy to say whatever it was. “If you still wanna do the Canada thing—”

“I do.”

Sam frowned, hissing “What Canada thing?” to Chris, who merely waved her off.

“—then this could be a good lead-up to it. An old mansion with a past?” Ashley shrugged, “It’s gonna be a lot of research, I’m sure, because Conrad never knows what he’s talking about—”

There was a not-so-distant “Hey!” followed by Josh loudly stating, “I don’t hear you humming, Bishop!”

“—and I’m positive I’ll actually have to write some kind of narrative line for us to follow, which also sucks, but…I dunno.” Shrugging, she looked to the rest of them. “I said my piece, what do you guys think?”

She leaned in closer to them, raising her voice just slightly. “What Canada thing?”

“It’s not important,” Josh said, waving her off in much the same way Chris had.

Great. She turned to Ashley, eyes plaintive. “Canada thing?”

Above them, one, two, three of the lights strung up popped and went out, showering the whole table with warm shards of glass.

“Fuck!”

“Holy shit!”

The five of them shielded their eyes, looking up to the string of lights, brushing the pieces of glass out of their hair, and just generally freaking out.

“Jesus please-us,” Ashley muttered, tentatively brushing her fingers through her hair. “What was that?” And then, answering her own question, she mumbled, “Must be too cold out here or something…sheesh!”

As though in response, there was another pop! They all jumped again, but it hadn’t been one of the bulbs right over them, so the only thing that followed was the delicate tinkling of glass hitting the hard ground.

Conrad pointed upwards while he had their attention, assuming a blank expression (though there was an obvious shit-eating grin glimmering in those big, blue eyes of his). “Hey, I dunno about you guys, but that sure feels like paranormal activity to me!”

“Shut up, man.”

“The spirits have spoken! They want you to take me up on this sweet, sweet offer…”

They turned back into their huddle, still occasionally picking tiny pieces of glass from themselves.

“If his idea of ‘getting in on this’ is interviews,” Chris began, clearly still shaken, if the way his eyes kept flicking upwards was anything to go by, “And you know it is, then we’re gonna have to blur his face and mod his voice so no one places the house. You get that, right? If he’s really worried about people putting two and two together and figuring out his mom’s the one selling it, then that’s just how it’s gonna have to be.” He looked to the three of them and rolled his eyes when they seemed unmoved. “That’s so much work! For me! Personally! Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“Couldn’t we just give him a fake name or something? The fuck do we care if it fucks with Mommy’s sales commission? If he signs the waivers and shit…”

Oh it was weird realizing her opinion mattered here. Sam crossed her arms and leaned in closer to the others. “I’d like to point out that you guys have no problem waltzing through places where people have been murdered, but when it comes to spending time with other living human beings, you need to weigh the pros and cons.”

“Think you meant the ‘pros and Con…rads.’”

“No I didn’t, Chris, and you know I didn’t.”

Josh let out another grumble before kneading at one of his temples. “Mk. Final verdicts, go.”

“I say yes,” Ashley said. “But he needs to get me all the info he has like…ASAP.”

“I also say yes.” Sam turned her eyes towards the stars, doing very little to hide her laughter. The situation was so dumb. Just like all situations she seemed to find herself getting into when the CREEPs were involved. “I also also want to go on the record as saying you guys are idiots and this so did not require a meeting…”

Chris released an unnecessarily mournful breath. “If I don’t have to blur him, then sure. Fine. Whatever. Why not. But I’m absolutely not rigging him with any blood packs, so—”

“All right, all right…” Swiveling around in his seat again, Josh looked to Conrad, keeping his face as expressionless as he could, as though reminding him who held the cards. “We have stipulations.”

“I’m sure you do. You always do.”

They held each other’s gaze for another second and then Josh reached over the table, holding his fist out. “This better be good as shit, Connie.”

Grinning that exuberantly boyish grin again, Conrad knocked his knuckles against Josh’s. “Have I ever let you down before, J-man? Please. I’ll have my people call your people and we can get this all squared away! Trust me…you’re gonna love this.”

[holy-ghost-fire]

“I said E-m-i-l-y, why why, tell me Emily You got me wrapped around your finger like a chain around a d-o-g I said E-m-i-l-y, why why, tell me Emily Women like you are trouble with a capital T”

[beware-of-you-98]

Ice Cream (BAU Family Fluff Fic)

BAU fam getting ice cream on a road trip featuring Hotch being a disgruntled dad, Emily being a rebellious little shit, Derek being an annoying big brother, Spencer just existing (seriously, all he wants is a Dilly Bar for god sake!!), Penelope egging them on, JJ being a sweet baby angel and Rossi being the only sane one in this entire fic

ao3 link

Aaron Hotchner loosely grips the wheel of the SUV, briefly looking in his rear view mirror to check on the rest of the team and ensure they're ready for the nearly two hour drive back to the jet (and to make sure they're buckled because, well, it's the dad in him that wants to check.)

Derek sits directly behind him, buckled up and lounging back comfortably in his seat. His earbuds are in, and no doubt his music is on full blast to drown out the rest of the team crammed into the van.

Penelope sits in behind the passenger's seat on her iPad, a set of thick, chunky headphones plugged into the device. She's buckled, immersed in whatever game she must be playing.

Directly behind her in the very back is JJ, who has her chin resting on her palm as she looks out the window even if the van isn't in motion yet.

Buckled.

Spencer sits in the middle at the very back, his long legs stretched out between Derek and Penelope. He has a thick, worn book in his hand, his finger gliding quickly down the pages as he takes in the words. ("Yes, he really can read that fast," Hotch often has to tell skeptics. "Yes, he can really process all that information. No, he's not a robot.") By the speed the young profiler is reading, Hotch knows that he'll be done with that book by the time they make it to the jet.

Buckled.

Sitting just behind Derek is Emily. She leans her head against a pillow she must have somehow smuggled in the back (Hotch also thinks it's entirely possible JJ gave her travel pillow to Emily, but none of that really matters.) The brunette is struggling to keep her eyes open, will probably be out as soon as the van is in motion.

Not buckled.

"Emily, put your seatbelt on," Hotch reminds her patiently.

Emily grumbles, grouchily reaching behind her. "You put your seatbelt on," she mutters, laying her head back down on the pillow.

Hotch let's the comment slide because he hears the click of her belt buckle.

He turns to briefly check on Rossi, whose sitting beside him in the passenger's seat. He's designated himself as the  map reader, the large square piece of paper folded out on his lap. (Hotch doesn't really think they need a map because they have a GPS right there but whatever. He'll let Dave do what the hell he wants.)

"Everyone ready to go?"

A chorus of "yes" and affirmative hums (and a disgruntled grumble from Emily) is all the motivation Hotch needs to start up the van and head out for the long trip they have to make back to the jet.

The highway is lit up harshly under the bright, unforgiving Arizona sunlight, heatwaves practically radiating from the asphalt. The air conditioning is on full blast in the van, providing semblance of relief from the harsh  and unforgiving heat. The van is sandwiched between the desert landscapes, long, green cacti and orange canyons towering like giants in the sand. Despite the time of day, the flat roads are virtually clear, sparse amount of other vehicles littering the highway.

Spencer looks up from his book after forty-seven minutes of straight reading, using his finger to mark his place. He brings up his other hand, uses the back of it to wipe his eyes as he yawns. He stiffly stretches his limbs, blinking hard as he stares out the bright windshield.

He focuses his attention up ahead on a blue highway guide sign, eyes scanning through the fast food and gas station logos without much thought. His eyes light up, though, when he spots a white square, signature red lip shaped logo stamped in the middle. "Hotch, there's a Dairy Queen at the exit coming up in the next five miles!"

"I saw that," Hotch says with a nod, using a tone much like he would with Jack when his son would bring him something the boy deemed really interesting. It's a tone that suggests the unit chief is listening, but has other things preoccupied on his mind. Probably getting the team to the jet on time.

But Arizona is hot. Unbearably hot. Like, if Spencer didn't consider himself a very logical man of science, he would swear his skin would melt off his bones hot. Even with the air conditioning on full blast, the sun's rays are completely and totally unforgiving and heat up the inside of the van like it's a god damned toaster oven.

A frozen treat from Dairy Queen, honestly, a Dilly Bar, sounded so perfect right now.

Spencer's mouth waters at the thought. "Can we get ice cream?"

"Reid, we're on a schedule," Hotch reminds the young profiler patiently. "We have to be on the jet to go home in a little over an hour and we're making great time."

Spencer can't help but pout a little. "But, Hotch, it's Dairy Queen!"

Derek pops out one of his earbuds. "Did somebody say Dairy Queen? Are we getting ice cream?"

With extreme patience, Hotch replies. "No, Derek, we're not getting ice cream."

"Ice cream?" JJ perks up from the back, lifting her head off her hand.

"I wan' a Blizzard," Emily mumbles with a start, sitting up in her seat and rubbing her eyes with both of her hands.

Hotch sighs, looking at Rossi. "Dave, tell them we can't get ice cream."

Rossi stares down at the map in his hands, flipping it over to read the facts printed on the back about the desert dwelling horned toad. (It shoots blood from its eyes. Gross.) "Why not?"

Hotch scowls, feeling betrayed that the senior profiler wasn't on his side. "Because we have to get to the jet!"

"Actually, if we take a quick five minute ice cream break, get back on the highway and maintain the speed you're going, we would make it back to the jet with ten minutes to spare," Spencer calculates, leaning around to look at the speedometer.

Emily reaches over and ruffles his hair with a sleepy grin. "And that's why we keep you around, wonder boy!"

Penelope slips her headset from her head and hangs it around the back of her neck. "What's going on?"

"Dad's getting us ice cream," Emily fills her in.

"I'm not getting you ice cream!" Hotch declines, sounding a bit more firm. He shoots Emily a glare from the rear view mirror.

She sticks her tongue out at him childishly in response.

Penelope pouts at Hotch's answer. "Why not?"

"Because I said so!"

"Mom, dad won't get us ice cream!" Emily whines in a pathetic tone.

Rossi looks up from his map in surprise when he realizes he is in fact "mom" in this situation. Glancing at the "kids" in the back of the van, he turns to Hotch with a shrug. "You're on your own for this one, Aaron."

"Gee, thanks, Dave," Hotch scowls.

"Wait, now I'm confused," Penelope starts up. "Are we getting ice cream or not?"

"We're not getting ice cream!" Hotch says in a louder tone, trying his best to put on his "chief voice", the one that let's everyone know that what he says goes.

"I just wanted a Dilly Bar," Spencer quietly says, pouting as if Hotch just killed his puppy or something equally as serious occurred.

"A chocolate milkshake sounds so good right now," Derek agrees with a hum. "Come on, Hotch. It's hot as hell out. You're telling me you don't want any ice cream?"

"No."

"I say we take a vote," Emily pipes up rebelliously.

"Emily, no," Hotch says firmly.

Emily ignores him, because of fucking course she does. Pain in the ass. "All in favor of ice cream, say I!"

"Emily Elizabeth Prentiss! Do you realize you are way too old to pull this childish sh—"

"I!" Emily cries out over Hotch's scolding.

"I!" Derek says just as boldly.

"I!" Penelope and Spencer say in softer voices.

JJ stays silent, but shyly raises her hand up in the air.

"Majority rules. We get ice cream," Emily says with a smug smirk.

Rossi raises his hand and draws an invisible checkmark in the air.

Hotch huffs in annoyance.

Unbelievable.

"Unless one of you is bleeding out, we're not stopping," he declares firmly. "And that's not an invitation for you to start, Emily!" he adds, glancing back in the rear view mirror.

Emily frowns, throwing her arms across her chest. "I wasn't even going to do anything!"

"Ooo, princess is in trouble. Princess is in trouble," Derek smirks in a sing song voice.

"Oh, go eat a dick, Derek Morgan!" Emily snaps at him.

His eyes shine gleefully. "Was your nap cut a little too short there, sunshine?"

Emily and Derek continue to bicker, their voices slowly being drowned out by Spencer and Penelope slowly chanting "Dairy Queen! Dairy Queen! Dairy Queen!"

The van screeches to a halt in the middle of the highway.

Emily lurches forward, busting her head off of Derek's seat with an angry cry, Spencer and Penelope nearly choke against their seatbelts, and Derek stumbles, reaching his hands out on the window to steady himself.

JJ has the foresight to brace herself with her palms against the back of Penelope's seat. She leans over Spencer, checking Emily's forehead with a concerned frown.

Emily's breath hitches as her soft fingers brush against her forehead, forgetting for a split second what just happened. JJ's fingers brush against the upper corner of her head, causing her to wince. Ow.

"What the fuck, Hotch?" she starts to demand, holding a hand to her forehead. She closes her mouth immediately, only getting out "Wha-" before she's silenced by Hotch swiveling around in his seat.

The unit chief shoots them a steely glare that even has Derek squirming uncomfortably in his seat.

"All of you, knock it off!" he snaps.

"I didn't do anything," JJ says quietly, eyes wide and innocent.

Hotch ignores her.

"Now, all of you, listen to me!" he continues on in his most stern "dad voice". "We are not stopping for ice cream! If I hear another word about it, we're turning this van around!"

"You made me bust my head!" Emily points out defiantly, pointing to the bruise already starting to form on her head.

"My neck hurts from the seatbelt," Penelope adds with a scowl, rubbing the side of her neck slowly.

"I didn't even do anything!" JJ cries out a bit louder. "Why am I getting yelled at?"

"I'm not sure about the legality of this situation," Spencer points out, rubbing his own neck. "We could be pulled over for being stopped on a highway."

"Enough!" Hotch's voice booms.

The van falls silent again.

"We're not getting ice cream, and that's final!"

They get their ice cream.

Derek happily sips on his chocolate shake, staring in content out the window of the van. Penelope is enjoying her vanilla cone covered in rainbow sprinkles, iPad slotted in the space behind Rossi's seat. In the very back, Emily eats a spoonful of Reese's Blizzard with a satisfied look on her face. JJ quietly but happily eats her own Butterfinger Blizzard. Spencer takes a bite of his Dilly Bar with a satisfying crunch, eyes glowing in delight.

(No one comments when, five minutes later, JJ is eating a Reese's Blizzard and Emily is now enjoying the Butterfinger's Blizzard.)

Hotch bites off the remaining portion of his Buster Bar, cleaning off the wooden stick between his teeth before he throws the trash in a designated garbage bag (thanks, DQ) situated between Rossi and himself. He leans back in his seat with a content sigh, pressing his foot down on the gas. The sun is starting to set and the sky is painted in beautiful colors. 

Most importantly, though, the car is finally fucking silent and he can finally focus on getting them all back to the jet in one piece.

He turns to Rossi, frowning when the older man just smirks back at him. "What?"

"Aren't you glad that the kids got their ice cream?" Rossi asks with another smirk, eyes gleaming in amusement.

Hotch scowls, both hands wrapping around the wheel. "Shut up and drink your Orange Julius, Dave."

[bigyack-com]

The Meaning of Morgan Stanley’s Move Onto Main Street

A Wells Fargo settlement with the S.E.C. over abusive sales practices could be announced as soon as today, our colleague Emily Flitter reports. (Want this in your inbox each day? Sign up here.)

Masters of the universe pitch mom-and-pop investors

The most obvious conclusion to draw from Morgan Stanley’s $13 billion purchase of E-Trade yesterday is that it blurs the boundaries between Wall Street and Main Street, with an investment banking stalwart paying a big premium for a discount retail broker. Morgan Stanley’s traditional rival, Goldman Sachs, has made similar moves via its Marcus retail unit and credit-card partnership with Apple.The chattering class:• Eric Hagemann of Pzena Capital Management emailed our colleague Kate Kelly: “If they’re able to take out costs, then from a purely financial perspective buying E-Trade isn’t drastically worse than buying back their own stock, which is their main alternative use of capital.”• Roger Altman of Evercore told CNBC: “Morgan Stanley has been leading the transformation from the wholesale side to the retail side, and this takes them further in that regard.”• But Mike Mayo, a banking analyst at Wells Fargo, told Bloomberg, “After seeing so many of these marriages go afoul, we have more of a skeptical hat on.”Who’s next? The deal is expected to stoke the urge to merge among other asset managers. After all, when commissions fall to zero, the only obvious ways to eke out a profit are via scale or cross-selling customers with a suite of fee-charging services.• Interactive Brokers’ C.E.O., Tom Peterffy, told MarketWatch that his company held merger talks with E-Trade in November, suggesting that his brokerage could be up for sale.• Wall Street players may also consider buying younger upstarts like Robinhood, the online brokerage that made its name with zero-commission trading, or Wealthfront and Betterment.What about the regulators? Morgan Stanley’s takeover of E-Trade isn’t final until the Fed gives its blessing. The bank is betting that the Fed under the Trump administration is friendlier to post-crisis mergers than it was during the Obama years, when then-Fed governor Daniel Tarullo said in 2012 that there should be a “strong but not irrebuttable presumption of denial” for takeovers by big banks. Our colleague Jeanna Smialek caught up with Mr. Tarullo, now at Harvard, who he said his thinking remained the same. She sent us this snippet:Mr. Tarullo said regulators needed to take into account the managerial capabilities of both firms, antitrust concerns and financial stability considerations. When it comes to stability, it matters both whether the merged company is more likely to run into trouble and whether such a stumble would cause broader problems because of the bank’s increased size.“I’m sure people will make the argument that this is actually financial stability enhancing for Morgan Stanley,” he said, but it’s also a “big addition” to the banks’ balance sheet. So the challenge is combining both the arguable increase in resilience and any added systemwide costs of failure.

The rise of conservative influence within Facebook

Critics of the social network say that the company has repeatedly made decisions that appease Republicans. Craig Timberg of the WaPo attributes that in part to Facebook senior executives with ties to conservatives who have the ear of company leaders like Mark Zuckerberg.Those executives include Joel Kaplan, the head of Facebook’s Washington office; Kevin Martin, the Republican former chairman of the F.C.C. who is Mr. Kaplan’s deputy; and Katie Harbath, the company’s head of elections public policy.“The Republicans in the D.C. office see themselves as a bulwark against the liberals in California,” Alex Stamos, Facebook’s former chief security officer, told the WaPo.

How Milken became a player in the Peloton-Flywheel fight

The fitness company Peloton recently settled a lawsuit in which it accused a rival, Flywheel, of trying to copy its at-home biking technology. Vice combed through court filings — including “improperly redacted documents,” a phrase that sends reporters’ hearts racing — that reveal various alleged attempts by Flywheel to obtain Peloton’s trade secrets. Improbably, the recently pardoned former financier Michael Milken makes an appearance in the saga:Peloton began the patent lawsuit process by claiming Flywheel had specifically sent one of its major investors, twice-pardoned “junk bond king” Michael Milken, to obtain proprietary information from Foley under false pretenses. Milken met Foley at a J.P. Morgan investors summit in February 2017, three months before the FLY Anywhere was announced.“Milken held himself out to Foley as an interested, potential investor in Peloton and pushed for information on topics including Peloton’s future business plans and strategy, and how or whether Peloton could protect its intellectual property and exclude others from the at-home cycling business,” the complaint alleged. “At no time before, during or after the meeting did Milken disclose that he had any financial interest whatsoever in Flywheel.”

What are you waiting for?

A new report from PitchBook runs the numbers on the bumper year in private capital fund-raising in 2019, with a record $888 billion committed to managers in private equity, venture capital, infrastructure, real estate and funds raised solely to buy stakes in other funds.One number caught our eye. Just over $100 billion in capital remains unspent in funds that are six years or older. Typically, funds have five years to deploy the funds committed by investors, or lose the ability to spend it (and burn bridges when the time comes to raise a new fund), unless they work out alternative arrangements. That’s quite an overhang, and it only grows as investors pledge hundreds of billions to new funds each year.

Weekend reading

• “Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction” by David Enrich. Out this week, the book by our colleague makes for uncomfortable reading in Frankfurt, Washington and beyond — read an excerpt and the NYT’s review.• “Whistleblower: My Journey to Silicon Valley and Fight for Justice at Uber” by Susan Fowler. Also out this week, by another colleague, this book is a “powerful illustration of the obstacles our society continues to throw up in the paths of ambitious young women,” according to the review. And read her op-ed about the blog post that started it all.• Warren Buffett’s annual shareholder letter. It’s always worth reading the folksy wisdom on investing, politics and more from the “Oracle of Omaha,” which comes out on Saturday.

Revolving door

HSBC has reportedly identified Jean Pierre Mustier, the C.E.O. of the Italian bank UniCredit, as the lead external choice to become its next chief. He’d be up against Noel Quinn, HSBC’s current interim C.E.O.Volkswagen’s C.F.O., Frank Witter, plans to step down at the end of June 2021 for unspecified personal reasons.Alexander Klabin, a founder of the $6.9 billion hedge fund Senator Investment Group, is leaving the firm. His co-founder, Douglas Silverman, is staying on.

The speed read

Deals• T-Mobile and Sprint agreed to tweak their proposed merger, giving T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telekom, slightly more control of the combined group. (Reuters)• The Japanese owner of 7-Eleven is reportedly in talks to buy Marathon Petroleum’s Speedway gas-station chain for about $22 billion. (FT)• Two big corporate software makers, Kronos and Ultimate Software, plan to merge, creating a new business valued at $22 billion — a popular number, it seems. (WSJ)• The Deal Makers of the Week Award goes to Davis Polk & Wardwell, the law firm that advised on the E-Trade and Victoria’s Secret deals, as well as transactions involving Dell and Dean Foods. (@lizrhoffman)Politics and policy• Advisers to Mike Bloomberg said that he had prepped for Wednesday’s Democratic debate, but that they were aghast at how poorly he performed. (NYT)• Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, said Republicans were being hypocritical on the federal deficit. (WaPo)• President Trump’s annoyance with a South Korean trade agreement clouded his review of the Oscar-winning movie “Parasite.” (Time)Tech• New Mexico’s attorney general sued Google, accusing the tech giant of using its educational products to spy on children and their families. (NYT)• About 300 Oracle employees staged a virtual walkout yesterday to protest a fund-raiser that their C.E.O., Larry Ellison, held for President Trump. (Protocol)• How Amazon is trying to avoid disruptions from the coronavirus outbreak. (NYT)• The House subcommittee on economic and consumer policy requested documents from Amazon’s Ring home-security division about its security practices and work with law enforcement. (Nextgov)Best of the rest• Why the stock market has shrugged off the coronavirus outbreak. (Upshot)• Inside the Washington bureaucratic battle over whether to let Americans infected with the coronavirus fly home from Japan. (WaPo)• California is back in a drought. (WaPo)We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to business@nytimes.com. Read the full article

[grandpaswagger]

A Brief History of President Theodore Roosevelt - A Story Lived

On February 3, 1880, Theodore Roosevelt reported in his diary:

Snowing heavily, but I drove over in my sleigh to Chestnut Hill, the horse plunging to his belly in the great drifts, and the wind cutting my face like a knife. My sweet life was just as lovable and pretty as ever; it seems hardly possible that I can kiss her and hold her in my arms; she is so pure and so innocent, and so very, very pretty. I have never done anything to deserve such good fortune.

Diary Entry, February 3, 1880.

Theodore Roosevelt Papers: Series 8: Personal Diaries, 1878-1884; Vol. 3, 1880, Jan. 1-Dec. 31, 1880

Theodore Roosevelt Papers. Manuscript Division

Nearly ten months after making this declaration of his enchantment with the young Alice Lee of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, Theodore Roosevelt married his “sweet life.”

Four years later, during the young man’s third term as an independent-minded reformer in the New York State Assembly, tragedy occurred: on February 14, 1884, Roosevelt’s young wife died after giving birth to the couple’s first child. Only a few hours earlier, his mother, Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, had died in the same house. After the double funeral and the christening of his new baby daughter, Alice, on February 17, 1884, the bereaved husband wrote:

For joy or for sorrow my life has now been lived out.

For the two years following his wife’s death, Roosevelt sought consolation in writing, hunting, fishing, and working on his ranch in the Dakota Territory. In spite of his intense grief, Roosevelt found a renewed interest in life. In fact, all the activities and accomplishments for which he is remembered occurred after this time of great sorrow. The Today in History collection includes more than thirty features mentioning Roosevelt in connection with historical events of the years 1890-1916.

Theodore Roosevelt in 1885. George Grantham Bain, photographer, 1885. Presidents of the United States: Selected Images from the Collections of the Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division

In 1886, Roosevelt returned to New York. On December 2, 1886, in London, he married Edith Kermit Carow, a friend from earliest childhood. Of his second wife, Roosevelt said, “She is not only cultured, but scholarly.” The Roosevelts had a close and happy family life. Alice became the eldest sister of four boys and a girl: Theodore Jr., Kermit, Ethel, Archibald, and Quentin. The family’s large home at Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, on Long Island, was always full of books, pets, and rambunctious activity.

Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, - Edith

Three-quarters Length Portrait… ca. 1900-1910. First Ladies of the United States: Selected Images from the Collections of the Library of Congress. Prints & Photographs Division

In 1886, Roosevelt returned to New York. On December 2, 1886, in London, he married Edith Kermit Carow, a friend from earliest childhood. Of his second wife, Roosevelt said, “She is not only cultured, but scholarly.” The Roosevelts had a close and happy family life. Alice became the eldest sister of four boys and a girl: Theodore Jr., Kermit, Ethel, Archibald, and Quentin. The family’s large home at Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, on Long Island, was always full of books, pets, and rambunctious activity.

Edith Roosevelt presided over this lively household with quiet grace and humor. Her husband continued to write and publish histories and biographies and to pursue a career of public service.

A progressive Republican, Roosevelt soon enhanced his reputation as a corruption-fighting reformer at the national level as a member of the nation’s Civil Service Commission (1889-95) and then as president of the New York City Police Board (1895-97). In 1897 he was appointed assistant secretary of the navy by President William McKinley. In the Spanish-American War (1898), a cause for which he had argued strongly, Roosevelt left his official position to lead the volunteer cavalry known as the Rough Riders, whose bravery captured the popular imagination and made “Roosevelt a war hero.” Roosevelt believed that such triumphs strengthened both national and individual character, warning that “[i]f . . . `we lose the virile, manly qualities, and sink into a nation of mere hucksters . . . subordinating everything to mere ease of life, then we shall indeed reach a condition worse than that of the ancient civilizations in the years of their decay.”

Roosevelt’s new popularity enabled him to win the governorship of New York, where he quickly established himself as an independent and iconoclastic reformer in tension with his own party. New York’s traditional Republican “bosses” were more than happy to relieve themselves of his presence by engineering his nomination as vice president in 1900, whereupon he campaigned to a landslide victory with President William McKinley.

McKinley was shot by an assassin on September 6, 1901, and when he died eight days later, Theodore Roosevelt became the twenty-sixth president of the United States. Given his reputation as a reformist leader ready to overturn established ways with flamboyant zest and energy, some were appalled at this turn of history. “Now look,” exclaimed McKinley’s political mastermind, Mark Hanna, who had opposed Roosevelt’s nomination, “that damned cowboy is president of the United States!”

Roosevelt and his lively family took up residence in the White House, which became a center of the capital’s social and intellectual life, as well as a playground for the six Roosevelt children and their menagerie of pets External — including Alice’s pet snake, Emily Spinach. Alice herself, who had inherited her father’s fearlessly irreverent spirit and had a somewhat troubled relationship with her stepmother, was the first presidential child to capture the public imagination in her own right, often through rebellious behavior that dismayed her parents and kept her name in the newspapers in an age when no proper lady’s name was supposed to be there. “I can either run the country or attend to Alice,” Roosevelt sighed, “but I cannot possibly do both.”

As president (1901-9), Roosevelt exercised a forthright vision of American leadership in international affairs and an expansive, reform-oriented activism in domestic policy that made his the first truly modern presidency. In foreign affairs, he sought to exercise the maxim “speak softly and carry a big stick”: in other words, use diplomacy but be prepared to use force effectively, and never let other powers doubt it.

Accordingly, he built the U.S. Navy to unprecedented levels, and then sent it around the world for all to see. He expanded the Monroe Doctrine to include the “Roosevelt Corollary”: that the United States was properly the policeman of the Western Hemisphere, intervening wherever it thought necessary to protect its own national interests. He initiated the building of the Panama Canal. And “speaking softly,” he mediated the negotiations that ended the Russo-Japanese War, an achievement that won him the Nobel Peace Prize External On the domestic front, Roosevelt sought to regulate business and industry for the public good, including “trust-busting” business structures that he deemed monopolistic. He used his first Annual Message External to explain how such a sweeping federal role could be reconciled with the nation’s founding principles:

When the Constitution was adopted at the end of the eighteenth century, no human wisdom could foretell the sweeping changes, alike in industrial and political conditions, which were to take place at the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time it was accepted as a matter of course that the several states were the proper authorities to regulate, so far as was necessary, the comparatively insignificant and strictly localized corporate bodies of the day. The conditions are now wholly different and wholly different action is called for.

A lifelong hunter and outdoors enthusiast–a story about his willingness to spare a bear’s life led to the invention of the “Teddy” bear—President Roosevelt” also distinguished himself for the definitive leadership he gave to the nation’s conservation movement. “The wise use of all of our natural resources, which are our national resources as well, is the great material question of today,” he declared. Among his other practical initiatives was a greatly expanded national forest system. Yet he also believed in preserving wild places undisturbed, supporting the creation of new national parks such as Yosemite and establishing fifty-three federal wildlife sanctuaries by executive order and numerous national monuments by presidential proclamation.

President Roosevelt’s exuberant interests extended to the transformation of the Library of Congress into “the Nation’s Library” under the effective leadership of his friend “Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress..”

According to Paul T. Heffron, former specialist in twentieth-century political history in the Library’s Manuscript Division: One of the first tasks which confronted the new President was the compilation of his “Annual Message to Congress.” Scarcely a month after assuming office, he invited Mr. Putnam to forward suggestions on the Library of Congress for possible inclusion in the message. The Librarian promptly responded with a draft of his ideas on what aspect of the Library the President might stress…

The keynote of Mr. Putnam’s memorandum to the President was the national character of the Library of Congress and its obligation to set standards and provide leadership for the public library system of the United States…In essence, the President incorporated the librarian’s theme in the message.

Paul T. Heffron, Introduction in the Index to the Theodore Roosevelt Papers,” 1969. As a historian and avid reader, Roosevelt availed himself of the collections of the Library through inquiries to Putnam. The following passage gives a sense of “Roosevelt’s intellectual curiosity” and seemingly boundless energy:

My dear Mr. Putnam: As I lead, to put it mildly, a sedentary life for the moment I would greatly like some books that would appeal to my queer taste. I do not suppose there are any histories or any articles upon the early Mediterranean races. That man Lindsay who wrote about prehistoric Greece has not put out a second volume, has he? Has a second volume of Oman’s Art of War appeared? If so, send me either or both; if not, then a good translation of Niebuhr and Momsen [sic], or the best modern history of Mesopotamia. Is there a good history of Poland?

Letter of President Theodore Roosevelt to Herbert Putnam, October 6, 1902.

Theodore Roosevelt Papers: Series 2: Letterpress Copybooks, 1897-1916;

Vol. 36, 1902, July 29-Oct. 25, 1902

Theodore Roosevelt Papers. Manuscript Division

It was President Roosevelt who initiated the transfer of presidential papers from the State Department to the Library’s Manuscript Division, where they became available for scholarly research. During his last years, he began the transfer of his own papers to the Manuscript Division as well. Although Roosevelt tried and failed to win a third term by running in 1912 against his successor, William Howard Taft, on the Progressive (“Bull Moose”) ticket, thus splitting the Republican vote and ensuring victory for Democrat Woodrow Wilson, he was a man of enormous accomplishment in nearly all areas of his life.

He would very likely have won the presidency once more, as a Republican in 1920, had he not died suddenly of a blood clot in his sleep on January 6, 1919. In spite of his early sorrow, he was able to say during his last years: No man has had a happier life than I have led: a happier life in every way. Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, Nassau County, NY. Jack F. Boucher, photographer, 1964. Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey. Prints & Photographs Division

I thank you for taking interest in the stories you read here.

Best of Wishes,

William

To who it concerns, I in not way have written this story. This story comes off of The Library of Congress website, where I freguent often. If there are any copyrights or trademarks that you might find, are those of there respectful owners. Thank you.

Learn More

Select items from the Manuscript Division’s Theodore Roosevelt Papers are now available online. Use the online finding aid to learn more about the contents of this extensive collection. Theodore Roosevelt was one of the first presidents to be filmed. Explore the collection Theodore Roosevelt: His Life and Times on Film; and search on Theodore Roosevelt across all Motion Pictures collections to see Thomas Edison’s films of “The Rough Riders” and other clips that include him.

Roosevelt’s close relationship with his children is suggested by an illustrated letter of July 11, 1890, written to his three-year-old son Theodore Jr., featured in the exhibition American Treasures of the Library of Congress.

Read other letters written by the namesake of the “Teddy bear” to his children in a 1919 published collection, Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children.

Explore Roosevelt’s formative role in the conservation and preservation of America’s natural environment in the collection,

The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920, or by browsing under Roosevelt’s name in Printed Ephemera: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera.

Listen to Roosevelt’s sister Corinne Roosevelt Robinson speak in a 1920 recording from the collection American Leaders Speak:

Recordings from World War I.

Search on Sagamore in the collection Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey and the Gottscho-Schleisner Collection to find photographs and other documentation of;

Roosevelt’s and his family’s home at Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, Long Island, N.Y.

( http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/tr11c.html#obj1 )

One of the American Treasures of the Library of Congress   is the manuscript draft of the poem “With the Tide,” composed by Edith Roosevelt’s cousin, writer Edith Wharton, on January 6 and 7, 1919, after hearing of the death of this beloved president.

Search Today in History on Theodore Roosevelt to learn more about historic events in which the twenty-sixth president played a role.

Search on Theodore Roosevelt across all collections to find many more resources documenting the life and influence of Theodore Roosevelt.

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What do you believe in?

— “Joy,” The Body’s Question (2002)

  There are ways of naming the wound.

— “History,” Duende (2007)

  … What Would your life say if it could talk?

— “No-Fly Zone,” Life on Mars (2011)

  We wept to be reminded of such color.

— “An Old Story,” Wade in the Water (2018)

¤

TRACY K. SMITH has often spoken about her affinity with Emily Dickinson’s poem “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” Dickinson’s poem doesn’t bemoan obscurity and insignificance; it celebrates them. It also castigates those who feel otherwise:

How dreary — to be — Somebody! How public — like a Frog — To tell one’s name — the livelong June — To an admiring Bog!

You can hear echoes of Dickinson’s discomfort with such a “dreary,” “public” “Somebody” in the replies that Smith gives to questions like, “So how does one become the poet laureate?” This question begins a profile of Smith in Roll Call, and the profile responds by quoting Smith: “That’s something I really don’t know the answer to […] I’ve just been doing what I do and got the phone call one day.”

Smith has been in dialogue with Dickinson’s poem since long before such queries were put to her. Her poems often interrogate what it means to be an “I,” and, by extension, what kind of an “I” makes a good poet. Smith’s “I” is fluid. It believes in its expansiveness, but it’s also profoundly humble, cognizant of the fact that there is nothing smaller than one individual’s life, or even than the species as a whole. At the same time, Smith’s sense of the smallness of the “I” doesn’t yield dismissiveness. In “The Nobodies” (a clear allusion to Dickinson’s poem) in Duende, Smith imagines “the first man” as composed of, in part, “divine shit”: the word “divine” is as intentional as “shit,” a tension that will later take on the scale of the cosmos throughout Life on Mars.

When the Times Higher Education asked Smith the “impossible question” (Smith’s words) of what the most “evocative” or “powerful line of poetry” is, Smith offered D. H. Lawrence’s “Song of a Man Who Has Come Through.” The poem segues from the negation “Not I, not I” into a demanding conceptualization of an “I”: one partially earthbound and partially comprised of wind; one at once Aeolian, Promethean, and Sisyphean; “a winged gift” who “yields” to other forces; receptive to both wonder and fear; as “keen and hard” as the “sheer tip of a wedge” and yet “sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate.” Smith told the Times Higher Education that she thought this kind of “I” best suits the “sense of wish, threat and courage that sits at the heart of the creative process,” which she finds well portrayed by the last five lines of Lawrence’s poem:

What is the knocking? What is the knocking at the door in the night? It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels. Admit them, admit them.

Every poet has more than three “strange angels” — and by angels I mean something like obsessions, following Smith’s lead — knocking at the threshold of the house of their work. This is a brief history of four that Smith engages in her poems, including in her new collection, Wade in the Water, in which that house, as she writes in “Ash,” is a “[s]trange house we must keep and fill.”

   1. Authority

Smith’s speakers don’t have the faux authority of a croaking “Somebody.” She’s seldom content to even rest with her own versions of authority, which range from the “soft truth” of The Body’s Question to the “epic” swagger of Duende and the negotiations of vastly different scales of space in Life on Mars. But one thing has tended to remain consistent, and it’s “majusculation”: the capitalization of the first letter in every line of a poem, from the noun “majuscule.” I learned this word from Lucie Brock-Broido, who was also Smith’s teacher, and the first time I heard her talk about it, I thought it was spelled majesculate. Majusculation can give a poem majesty; the poem seems to stand upright, with all of its oblique and elliptical utterances yoked to the vertebrae of its left margin. Smith has been a majusculator through all four of her collections.

Smith’s reimaginings of authority are fundamentally intertwined with concerns about race, as well as about gender, sexuality, and socioeconomic class, all of which she has explicitly addressed. She has given us a small Black girl as a poem’s authoritative center (reminiscent of Lucille Clifton’s “the earth is a living thing”); she has made the voices of victims of hate crimes echo from America’s most iconic monuments. Which is why I struggled somewhat with Smith’s remark, in an interview with The Adroit Journal, that it wasn’t until she wrote her memoir Ordinary Light (2015) that she realized “how much [she] needed to talk about race.” It’d been my sense that, implicitly and explicitly, she’d been talking about race for years.

But there is something new in Wade in the Water. For example, in some of its moments Smith’s majusculation falls apart in a newly spectacular manner. It happens often in “I Will Tell You the Truth About This, I Will Tell You All About It,” a poem composed of text from two Civil War–era sources: letters written by Black soldiers and their family members, and petitions by Black veterans and their families to gain access to their own pensions. This poem shares a spirit with “History” from Duende, in which Smith admits that “there are victims” that can be found within her poem’s body and describes her poem as “the army / left behind.” The same could be said of the speakers of Wade in the Water. But in Wade in the Water, although much of the volume remains majusculated, the army rearranges the poems’ spinal columns in a way that Duende didn’t fully permit.

Smith’s syntactical innovations make the army even more palpable and ferocious. It reminds me of how the theorist Michel Foucault, in the astonishing essay “The Lives of Infamous Men,” describes archival records that bear the trace of the “jostling violence” of encounters between people and the systems of power they live in. He describes the “intensity that sparks through” such archives as capable of jolting their readers, as far off in time and space as they may be. An example by way of Smith:

Mr abarham lincon I wont to knw sir if you please whether I can have my son relest from the arme   he is all the subport I have now   his father is Dead

“[M]y head,” reports this first speaker, “is blossaming.” The poem ends with its many speakers introducing themselves to us in phrases that trail off, ending with em dashes, like so: “I am on the rise of 80 years of age — ” And what are those em dashes? Arms? Spears? The trailing echoes of their voices?

That the authority of this army of living ghosts is strong enough to disrupt the firm spine of majusculation makes the army seem capable of innervating everyone else in the collection. They send jolts through the way she imagines the divine in “Hill Country,” the way she continues to figure the world as a young girl at the most chilling moments, and the way she returns to the figure of her own daughter, who is newly insistent on her own authority: “‘I want that,’ she says, / Punctuating just what she said she wanted.” Their authority gives perfectly ordinary people the power to arrest the world, as in “Charity,” in which a woman captures the speaker’s rapt attention simply by carrying heavy bags, or in “Beatific,” in which a man garners the awe of everyone stuck in traffic around him simply by crossing a street very slowly.

Smith writes in “Dusk” that in Wade in the Water, she is speaking as someone for whom something “woke to war” as her daughter’s “shoulders,” which are “[s]till so naïve as to stand squared, erect, / Impervious,” begin to confront the “darkening dusk.” Even D. H. Lawrence’s speaker fears that the knocking at his door is coming from “somebody [who] wants to do us harm,” and Smith is speaking with those who have even better reasons to be terrified. Those reasons are why the word “Man” causes entire ecosystems to “[t]remble” in the poem “Deadly.” They’re the voices in “The United States Welcomes You,” who ask questions that are far from welcoming; they’re the agony that shimmers to the surface in “Declaration,” Smith’s erasure of the Declaration of Independence. They’re the “men” in “The World Is Your Beautiful Younger Sister” who gaze on the world’s “astonishing new breasts,” and those in “A Man’s World,” who “will surely take it out when you’re alone” and “swear he’s never shown it / To anyone else before.” The way Smith reimagines authority in Wade in the Water is in the service of one ferocious goal: that someday, in the face of these foes, we will be able to say that “our singing,” in the words of “An Old Story,” has “[b]rought on a different manner of weather.”

  2. Education

There’s a poem in Life on Mars called “Everything That Ever Was,” in which Smith describes “a little tickle of knowledge” deep within the soil on which her speaker sits. I thought of it when I came across this line from Wade in the Water: “I suspect that Earth may be a place of education.” This line appears in “Watershed,” a found poem drawn from narratives describing near-death experiences and an article about the DuPont corporation, responsible for vast amounts of ecological devastation. The word watershed means a bit of land that channels waters into disparate rivers; it’s also the metaphorical equivalent of such a geographical feature, a turning point. The idea that “Earth may be a place of education” is a crucial maxim for Smith across her career, and Wade in the Water is no exception. It finds Smith still convinced in the importance and inevitability of learning. But it also finds Smith at a turning point: one in which her speakers believe it imperative to enter into those underground waters, even though this labor will never promise security, and even though those waters are likely saturated with poisons.

Yet many of the experiences Smith’s speakers have with this “place of education” are, importantly, not portrayed as disasters. Consider “Urban Youth,” which draws attention to the United States’s hatred for Black youth and families (often invoked through racist dog-whistle words like “Urban”) while giving us a scene of a young child simply — and blissfully — learning to ride a bike. More broadly, Smith’s speakers often find themselves misunderstanding their surroundings, which is rendered simply as part of the daily work of existence rather than as a catastrophe. In “The Angels,” for example, her speaker sees “dead // Does, lions in crouch” instead of boulders and “an owl” instead of a pipe. What else has she misrecognized, she wonders. Has she (like D. H. Lawrence’s speaker before her initially did) missed “[s]ightings, flashes, hints” of angels? In this Smith’s speakers are sometimes reminiscent of the flies in her poem “New Road Station,” which watch the world “with their million eyes” as “[h]istory spits Go, go, go, lurching at the horizon / Hammering at the driver’s headrest with her fist.” Lurching, hammering: There’s no point in the future at which Smith imagines that this daily process of learning will end.

Although Smith conveys such daily learning as expected, she doesn’t hesitate to draw attention to how deadly and painful the lessons learned from those encounters can often be. In fact, her stance toward the inevitability of learning often makes the volume’s interest in the world’s more agonizing lessons all the more bracing. It goes back to the way Smith’s “I” is both expansive and small: although her speakers frequently learn via misunderstanding, they also have the capacity for great and keen insight. Although her speakers know that the Earth has a great deal to teach them, as she writes in the poem “Annunciation,” they also know that sometimes, they can “hop[e] only to be ground to dust / By something large and strange and cruel.”

“By something large and strange and cruel.” Notice the way unadorned, single-syllable words are here strung together paratactically, with a mere additive conjunction. The line sounds matter-of-fact as a result; it describes the mercilessness of the world with a set jaw. A similar grimness emerges in poems like “The Greatest Personal Privation,” in which Smith transforms phrases from a slave owner’s letter into a poem voiced by the slaves. The poem’s thesis is blunt: “The whole country / Will not come back // From the sale of parent / And child.” When the poem then repeats its haunting refrain — “Many, many, very many times” — it suggests the perpetual nature of its tale. In moments like this, Smith’s straightforwardness translates into a sense that from all of this learning comes an ever-increasing amount of work to do. As Smith asks in “Realm of Shades”: “What was our work?”

This call to labor is a permutation of the more playful versions of learning that readers who are most familiar with, for example, The Body’s Question might expect. In her first collection, Smith often explores how much Earth has to teach us from the vantage point of a child, like the one in “Five Dreams of Offspring” who is “[o]utside of words” and “thinks you and she / Are birds,” a gentle rhyme that underscores the dreamy rhythm of the volume’s many such moments. The world’s shadows are also present, but they’re less ominous than Wade in the Water’s “darkening dusk.” In “Drought,” Smith’s speaker can feel her own shadow when it “rose and entered me, / And on the third day, it began to speak, / Naming me.” This shadow may turn out to be frightful; maybe it already is. But it’s also a “[s]oft, whispering, steady thing,” to borrow a phrase from “Night Letters.” It’s not that it’ll never be this way again (see again “Urban Youth”), but it never again feels quite this central.

Where The Body’s Question watches “[t]he shapes of words enter and play / At making sense” (“Betty Blue”), Duende finds them “[w]hittled and stretched into meaning. / And meaning here is: line” (“History”). The voices of Duende see a more violent edge to the process of education, and the act of learning reaches toward Wade in the Water’s set jaw. In “September,” Smith summarizes this transition: “Knowledge is regret […] We ride the season, married to the world.” In an autumnal month reminiscent of Keats’s interest in the “ripeness” of “the soft-dying day,” Smith’s speaker pronounces her resolute vows to a painful planet.

Then, “[t]he decade changed.” “We learned new words for things,” remarks the speaker of “My God, It’s Full of Stars” in Life on Mars, because we have been “to the edge of all there is” and found it “[s]o brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.” Shadow expands into dark matter. Life on Mars’s speakers are full of uncertainty, as seen in the many poems that try to figure out the best metaphor for the universe, or in the volume’s preponderance of questions, like, “Who understands the world, and when / Will he make it make sense? Or she?” Those inquiries come from the title poem, which juxtaposes the speaker with those who respond to their uncertainties by trying to transform the universe into a more legible space. But even “they” end up foiled. They insist that “[n]othing / Eludes them,” but, eventually, “the nothing that is // Something creeps toward them, wanting / To be felt.” And, yes, “they feel it.” If we ever rest in certainty, the implication goes, the labor of learning would stop. And the flies can never stop watching. There will always be work to do.

  3. Need

Each of Smith’s books vibrates with it. In The Body’s Question, which insists that “[w]e want so much” (“A Hunger So Honed”), Smith often explores need through touch and argues that it’s the very substance of a person. One poem gives us a “Self-Portrait as the Letter Y,” and the choice of the letter “Y” is telling; in another poem, “Prayer,” we learn that “Y” stands for “Yearning,” as well as a number of other words that are yearning’s kin, like “Yesterday,” “not Yet,” “Youth,” “Yours,” and even “Yogurt,” tied to “the mornings / You feed me.” Together, the poems say: a self is comprised of need.

If yearning is the connective tissue of The Body’s Question, it’s everything to Duende. It’s almost impossible to turn a page without running into the word “want” or one of its synonyms. Almost every speaker remarks directly about what they do or don’t want; some of them can merely echo “I want, I want” (“One Man at a Time”). Even the trees speak with “lust” (“Flores Woman”). I love the sequence of lines in “History” that dissects the desires of a poem itself, personified so it “doesn’t give a shit” and can “wander / Into a department store,” “pop pills,” have the stereo “blaring.” The bottom line: As a line says in “I Don’t Miss It,” “It’s impossible not to want.” Duende goes so far as to suggest that people require yearning to live, and that our life’s work is to sustain desire.

The cartography of desire shuffles in Life on Mars to accommodate the space of the cosmos. Often this volume imagines a world in which desire has become obsolete, as in the aptly titled “The Museum of Obsolescence”:

So much we once coveted. So much That would have saved us, but lived,

Instead, its own quick span, returning To uselessness with the mute acquiescence

Of shed skin.

If Duende thinks, “It’s impossible not to want,” Life on Mars imagines what happens if that impossibility should come to pass. And sometimes, that seems less like an impossible imagined future and more miserably true. Yet Life on Mars ultimately agrees with Duende about the impossibility of existence without desire, both because Smith renders its imagined absence in palpably sensory rhetoric and because in order to convey the grief of its possible absence, desire’s presence has to be taken seriously. We are governed, as Smith reminds us in “Willed in Autumn,” by whatever “tune” our “heart ticks out.”

Wade in the Water at first seems less invested in yearning than her earlier books, particularly when read alongside the overwhelming and palpable needs in Duende. Yet the book begins with a poem titled “Garden of Eden,” which, in turn, begins with “profound longing”:

What a profound longing I feel, just this very instant, For the Garden of Eden On Montague Street Where I seldom shopped, Usually only after therapy, Elbow sore at the crook From a handbasket filled To capacity.

At first, “longing” feels like the set-up for a joke, and, in a way, it is: the lofty, “profound” idea of desiring the Biblical Garden of Eden subverted into desire for a store. I heard Smith read from Wade in the Water at Emory University a few months before the book’s release, and she read this turn with humor; when she got to “[u]sually only after therapy,” many of us laughed in recognition.

But while Smith is playfully making earthly the Garden of Eden (as she does elsewhere with other divine tropes), the chuckle in the lines doesn’t erase the profundity of their desire, since we often do keenly desire that which is mundane. The etymology of “profound,” after all, doesn’t imply transcendence, but that which has “great downward or inward extent.” So when we see her brimming handbasket, we see that it’s filled, yes, with food from a market, but its contents don’t seem all that distant from the lusty apple in Eden, or from the many other drool-worthy fruits in lyric history: Keats’s, Christina Rossetti’s, Dickinson’s, Robert Frost’s, Wallace Stevens’s, William Carlos Williams’s, Clifton’s, Seamus Heaney’s (another one of Smith’s teachers) …

… The glossy pastries! Pomegranate, persimmon, quince! Once, a bag of black beluga Lentils spilt a trail behind me While I labored to find A tea they refused to carry. It was Brooklyn. My thirties. Everyone I knew was living The same desolate luxury, Each ashamed of the same things: Innocence and privacy.

What Milton calls “Man’s first disobedience” isn’t too removed from the more ordinary pleasures, especially when those pleasures are, in fact, extraordinary. Even in this moment of “desolate luxury,” the speaker hasn’t even been able to get all that she wants. When I was at my most broke, I was afraid of non-Spartan purchases not only for their individual cost, but because I feared they’d open doors of desire within me, as though once I’d tasted pomegranates and persimmons (which were Persephone’s fruits, too), I’d become some less fantastic version of Rossetti’s “sweet-tooth Laura,” who, with “no coin,” “no copper,” and “no silver,” is willing to trade the “golden curl” of hair on her head to have the pleasure of having “suck’d and suck’d and suck’d the more.” The “bank-balance math” of desire, to return to “The Garden of Eden,” is no dim flicker: it’s as fierce as “the known sun setting / On the dawning century.”

  4. Love

While we often try to distinguish between forms of love, Smith’s work tends to trouble those distinctions. Her poems quickly slide from dreaming of a past lover to gazing affectionately at a child; eros can intrude swiftly into what initially seemed closer to a much more casual affinity. And because Smith never forces these slippages into easy resolution, well before she came to link “love” with “trouble” explicitly in Wade in the Water (more on that later), love has always meant a kind of trouble.

Even as early as The Body’s Question, love dwells in paradox. In “Credulity,” she describes it as a personified force that can be studied and cajoled; in “Escape Fantasy,” she contends that it can only be accessed through mendacity. Here is a mind grappling with how to access and inhabit a concept of great significance, like a strange new syntax. In fact, one thing about love is certain to this speaker: it is a discourse, since — as Smith writes in “Wintering,” a poem that shares its title with an earlier poem by Sylvia Plath — to love is to “speak another language.”

Paradox and love remain intertwined in Duende. It insists that wanting to love is “The Opposite of War,” and yet its take on love is decidedly battle-weary, as in “Letter to a Photojournalist Going-In”:

… Who can say the word love

When everything — everything — pushes back with the promise To grind itself to dust?

Many of the speakers of Duende grapple with the challenge of renouncing love while insisting that it is, in fact, crucial: “a momentary lapse of treason” (“Poem in Which Nobody Says ‘I Told You So’”). A number of them are thinking about the dissolution of a romantic relationship. Others revel in sex without love, although their constant use of the word “love” tells us that it remains important to them, too. And some, like the speakers of the devastating “Into the Moonless Night” (a poem in the form of a drama, largely voiced by women kidnapped as teenagers by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda), find themselves — from within the deepest traumas — asking why they continue to yet “love life.”

As is the case with desire, Life on Mars imagines a world in which love has ceased to be, although, again as with desire, its absence is a presence. The title poem wonders if dark matter attaches us to one another in love’s absence; “Love” appears alongside “Illness” (a choice that indicates that Life on Mars, too, is battle-weary) as exhibits in “The Museum of Obsolescence.” Love’s absence and its relation to violence become ghostly in “They May Love All That He Has Chosen and Hate All That He Has Rejected.” Here, the speaker Smith imagines as Brisenia Flores uses “Love” to sign off her postcard to her murderer, and the one she imagines as Johanna Justin-Jinich writes to her murderer that without her body, which she’d once imagined as “a container for love,” she feels a “kind of ecstasy.” Is this because she’s now free of her body — or because she’s free of love?

In her interview with The Adroit Journal, in addition to remarking on Wade in the Water’s interest in race, Smith also describes it as interested in love. Of note here is that very confluence between the two. One of the main love poems in Wade in the Water is “Unrest in Baton Rouge,” which is a response to an iconic 2016 photograph. You know it: it shows a Black woman named Ieshia Evans, who’s in Baton Rouge protesting Alton Sterling’s murder. Evans, wearing a gray and black dress that flutters in the breeze, stands in front of two police officers in riot gear, arms outstretched.

At first blush, “Unrest in Baton Rouge” may give the impression that it believes love might unite all humans, even “the men in black armor” with Evans:

Even the men in black armor, the ones Jangling handcuffs and keys, what else

Are they so buffered against, if not love’s blade Sizing up the heart’s familiar meat?

We watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat. Love: the heart sliced open, gutted, clean.

Love: naked almost in the everlasting street, Skirt lifted by a different kind of breeze.

But Smith is too skeptical about such simplistic visions of unity. (In fact, “History” in Duende even takes aim at the pronoun “we,” declaring that although “[t]here is a We in this poem / To which everyone belongs,” the pronoun is “a huckster” who “will draw you in” until it has “swallowed Us and Them,” and, at some point in the future, “You.”) It’s not that Smith resists all collectivity. Wade in the Water’s “Eternity” contends that “all of us must be / Buried deep within each other,” and “Political Poem” imagines a brief “instant of common understanding” between two mowers. Even in “Unrest in Baton Rouge,” the first-person plural is in full force, although it carefully excludes those who do not “watch and grieve.” Rather, Smith’s idea of collectivity is always nuanced with ample internal distinctions. And collectivities formed by love? Well, for Smith, love never does a singular thing. Remember how Smith writes in her first book that to love is to “speak another language”? The sentiment returns in “Unrest in Baton Rouge,” but in the later poem she wonders aloud whether some don’t practice it: “Is it strange to say love is a language / Few practice, but all, or near all speak?”

Wade in the Water’s title poem is dedicated to the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters. It begins with one of the Ring Shouters greeting the speaker with the phrase “I love you.” As if to return to The Body’s Question’s debate regarding credulity and mendacity, the speaker admits, “I believed her.” But no comfort accompanies that belief. Instead, “a terrible new ache / Rolled over in my chest.” The poem goes on to repeat “I love you” so many times that her speaker comes to hear it “in every / Handclap, every stomp.” Soon there is nothing in this site — the unmarked location of slave auctions — that does not seem to say the phrase, even the “rusted iron / Chains.” I love you ushers the poem into its exhausted, overwhelmed end, in which the speaker gasps apostrophes to a terrifying scene, its imagined victims, and a divine:

… I love you, The angles of it scraping at Each throat, shouldering past The swirling dust motes In those beams of light That whatever we now knew We could let ourselves feel, knew To climb. O Woods — O Dogs — O Tree — O Gun — O Girl, run — O Miraculous Many Gone — O Lord — O Lord — O Lord — Is this love the trouble you promised?

Smith recently delivered the 2018 commencement address at my alma mater, Wellesley College, and the subject she chose was love. The speech is available online. She spoke about love’s many forms; she read “Wade in the Water.” She spoke of love, contra “tolerance,” as a civic force. “Love,” she said, “is world-creating,” and “[r]enewal often arises only after a purposeful troubling.” It is 2018, and we exist, as Smith writes in “Ghazal,” under a sky that “is a dry pitiless white.” It is 2018, and “[t]he days,” as Smith writes in “Driving to Ottawa,” “[a]re bright but cold.” It is 2018, and the haunting question is, “How much more will we bury / In the earth?” There’s no easy response to this query. Rather, for Smith, the response is “this love,” this “trouble,” this blade, the heart’s meat; a stark and searing belief that, as the poem “Unwritten” instructs us, “for our own good we have to answer / For all that has happened. Please. All.”

¤

Sumita Chakraborty is Visiting Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, as well as a Lecturer in English and Creative Writing, at Emory University. She is also poetry editor of AGNI and art editor of At Length.

The post The Trouble You Promised: Reading Tracy K. Smith appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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[holy-ghost-fire]

I was tagged by @littlebluebarista

Rules: write the first 10 songs that come up on shuffle with no skipping and quote your favorite lyric, then tag 10 people!

All My Ex’s Live in Texas - George Strait 

But it brings to mind another time where I wore my welcome thin By transcendental meditation I go there each night But I always come back to myself long before daylight

Pasadena - Young Mister 

Can we buy a little place in Pasadena? Some space to pass the time What’s it gonna take my ballerina I’ll be yours if you’ll be mine

Riot In The Streets - Pokey LaFarge

Our past won’t go away It haunts us to present day There’s so much left to learn As the bullets fly and the buildings burn

Shaky Hands - The Vegabonds

I really wanna be on your side Later will you stand on mine?

Moving - John Fullbright

There’s a man in the alley just singing the blues Telling everybody that they’re born to lose Well one day he’ll wake up and see the sun See that everyday we’re breathing is a day we’ve won

My Heart Has a History - Paul Brandt

I got a feelin' you're the one But my heart keeps tryin' to turn and run The problem is this happens every time

Let The Cards Fall - Blitzen Trapper

And I know what I know And I do just how I do So let the cards fall how they will And may the prayers be answered through and through

Emily - Andrew Combs

I said E-M-I-L-Y, why, why, tell me Emily Yeah women like you are trouble with a capital T

Love Vigilantes - New Order

I want to see my family My wife and child waiting for me I've got to go home I've been so alone, you see

Watching From Great Heights - Sundara Karma

We'll be watching from great heights And we'll observe the things they hide Fight the fear we keep inside The more we seek the higher we'll climb

I’m tagging @tayaquain @birdofthunder @katydaisies @john-paul-jonesing-for-liberty @breathingidahoair @greater-than-the-sword @understandingchaoss and anyone else who wants to!