#i do not understand whats going on in this newsreel but it's making me laugh. she's new hat goofin i guess

[womansfilm]

Norma Shearer, 1939

[antvnger]

Blood Brothers AU - Scott Discovers Iron Man

((Are you ready for this? Because I hurt myself writing this. The thing about this being Scott's blog is sometimes we're totally on the same page on things and he gives me the okay to do it. Then there are times where I have an idea of how something would go, and he shakes his head and goes "Nuh uh, that's not how this would go down." This was one of those times.)) @stxrksarc

Scott Stark’s mind was still reeling from the events of such a short time ago. He really couldn’t tell you how much time had passed since he saw on the news Tony’s executive decision to shut down the weapons manufacturing division of SI.

Tony was back. Tony was turning things around. Tony looked haunted. Tony looked wounded in a way Scott didn’t - yet - understand.  Tony made it home.

Tony…had yet to reach out.

It took Scott an hour of processing the newsreel footage for the hope that his big brother would come visit him to dawn on him. Another ray of light in a darkness that felt like too much for even Scott’s brand of optimism to fight through.

But days had passed with nothing to show for it. No letters, no calls, no visitors except for a divorce lawyer. Nothing. The only real ray of light he had to hold onto was Cassie’s letters and drawings he received so far and a promise written in crayon that she would come visit him.

Remember that Tony did try more than once to visit and he sent multiple letters, but a horrible CO made sure none of that got to Scott.

Scott worried that his incarceration made Tony decide breaking ties was probably for the best. Couldn’t have an inmate tied with SI, right? Especially if Tony’s hoping to turn the company around and make it clean. But the lack of contact made Scott physically ache. Cassie, Tony, and Rhodey were all he had left. 

He’s trying not to be bitter about it, but it’s really hard to do. All that worrying and panicking and the nightmares and the fear over Tony without so much as a postcard from him.

The first time Scott saw anything about Iron Man, it was the newsreel of Gulmira where he took on the Ten Rings. Scott and many other inmates watched the community TV in awe as the red and gold plated figure took out the bad guys with precision and rescued the village. There was some cheering among the inmates over how cool and badass that was, and Scott had to agree.

But the tech was what he focused on. Man, would he love to get his hands on that tech. Just to see how it all worked because to Scott’s engineering eye, it looked amazing. Beautiful even.

“Hey, Stark,” one of the inmates called out as he gestured to the TV with a nod, “how much is that suit worth ya think?”

Scott laughed and shook his head. “You don’t wanna know, man. You don’t wanna know.”

The intro to the Iron Man was a nice reprieve because it gave Scott something fascinating to focus on, wondering how it worked and what it comprised of and the tech behind it.

He overheard a couple of inmates discussing it who the brain behind the armor was one day during a meal. “You think it’s government shit?”

“Hell no, bro, the government wouldn’t paint it up like a damn corvette if it was. It’d be camo or patriotic or whatever. It’s gotta be a private asset.”

“Yeah? Like whose? Who’d have enough dough for that shit?”

“Stark Industries does.”

“Yeah, but I watched the news with the Stark dude. He looked as surprised as the rest of us. Can’t be theirs. I bet it’s Hammer Industries.”

That was the first and only time to date Scott had actually done a spit take and almost choked to death, and the inmate sitting across from him almost fought him over it.

A day or two later, Peachy and some other guys hurried to find Scott. Apparently, there was another story on the news about Iron Man and how he and an even bigger, uglier Iron Man fought at Stark Industries. The four guys who found him were talking over each other as fast as Scott had heard anybody talk this was before Luis arrived by the way, but they all insisted Scott needed to see this.

The only feed the news could show was from security cameras that SI released for the news to use, which didn’t show all that much. The fact that more was left to the imagination than not only added fuel to the chatter in the break room where everyone was talking about it.

They made sure Scott got a front row seat to watch because apparently Tony was about to give a press conference over the whole deal.

Scott heard bits and pieces about it all from everyone around him. How this armored dude was Tony’s new bodyguard after being kidnapped in a warzone Scott didn't believe that, how there was a coup from inside SI to overthrow the Starks which did not surprise Scott at all. The fact Stane was finally exposed as the snake he was just really made Scott feel validated. How it was also rumored that Rhodes was the real man behind the armor please dear God let it not be Rhodey, Scott thought. That was a lot to worry about.

There was some mumbling through the crowd of reporters as cameras flashed and clicked obnoxiously while Tony approached the podium. “Thank you. Been a while since I was in front of you. I figure I'll,” he waved some note cards and smirked, “stick to the cards this time.”

That earned some laughs and more murmurs before Tony started reading, “There's been speculation that I was involved in the events that occurred on the freeway and the rooftop…” There was? Scott hadn’t heard anybody saying that stuff.

Christine Everhart, Scott gagged when he heard her voice, said, “I'm sorry, Mr. Stark, but do you honestly expect us to believe that was a bodyguard in a suit that conveniently appeared, despite the fact that you--”

Tony interrupted her, “I know that it's confusing. It is one thing to question the official story, and another thing entirely to make wild accusations, or insinuate that I'm a superhero.” Scott raised an eyebrow at that.

Everhart interrupted him in turn, “I never said you were a superhero.”

“Didn't? Well, good, because that would be outlandish and…fantastic.” That made both of Scott’s eyebrows go skyhigh. “I'm just not the hero type. Clearly. With this laundry list of character defects, all the mistakes I've made, largely public…”

Rhodey mumbled something in Tony’s ear, and Tony nodded in agreement. “Yeah, okay. Yeah. The truth is…”

Tony held the notecard in front of him and just stared at it. And Scott knew. He knew. He’d seen that look before, and he knew what it meant. And a part of him was surprised to find himself whispering under his breath, “Please don’t say it please don’t say it please don’t say it.”

“I am Iron Man.”

Both the news crew and all the inmates watching erupted into a cacophony of opinions and questions and exclamations.

All except one.

Scott Stark stared at his big brother’s image on the screen feeling…conflicted. Very conflicted. He wished he could say he felt proud of Tony in that moment, and if anybody asked him, he would say he felt proud then.

Don’t get him wrong. Scott is proud. He’s so very proud of his big brother and all he’s done and accomplished on a personal and professional level. He really couldn’t ask for a better big brother.

But in that moment? Two major emotions warred inside him.

The first was worry. It was Tony who was in that village fighting the Ten Rings. It was Tony getting shot at. It was Tony who put himself in danger to take care of innocent people. Tony climbed out of one warzone to throw himself into another.

And the second emotion? If Scott’s being 100% honest with himself, it was jealousy. Old, familiar jealousy that raised its ugly head for the first time in a long time, and to this day it shames him to recall how jealous he felt.

There were cruel, hateful people in his life who made being the second Stark son a crime, a shame, and he wasn’t worth much of a second glance if one at all, and jealousy was a struggle all his life.

He thought he overcame that a long time ago. He thought he was past all of that nonsense.

But now? He felt like the criminal Stark, the worthless second son who had no chance at all to stand out of the shadow of an armored superhero. 

[thewreckkelly]

ESL: Don’t Just Blame the Owners

Despite being Irish I can still name every player and their position from that game at Wembley on July thirtieth. I was six when it was played.

For nearly six months the Saturday matinees at my local cinema in Dublin included newsreel footage of the Lisbon Lions. I was seven and a fan of the Cisco Kid.

You couldn’t move in the good room of my Uncle’s house the night the Belfast boy destroyed Benfica. I was eight and not that familiar with watching football on TV.

I collected souvenir coins from petrol stations leading up to, throughout and after the World Cup finals in Mexico. I was ten and an outraged defender of the English captain.

‘Revie’s Animals’ found my undying loyalty throughout the seventies with my first live game being at Anfield in 1971. I was eleven and thought Liverpool was an incredible city and Johnny Giles the best player ever.

World performers like Cruyff, Ardiles and Muller intruded into my fandom and opened up a bigger world picture as they performed in the German and Argentinean World Cups.

Spain 1982 provided my first experience of a live stage for world football where Northern Ireland shocked the hosts and Scottish fans became my friends in Malaga.

London 1983 saw my first visit to Highbury and resulted in me becoming a proud season ticket holder.

For the best part of fourteen years I didn’t miss an Arsenal game, (including every final up to and including the 2005 FA Cup), as well as being privileged enough to attend many internationals, World Cups and European Championships.

The 1992 Barcelona, Sampdoria final at Wembley saw me experience in person a sidelined Cruyff steer his total football to the ultimate success, (not that it was that obvious in that particular game).

Euro 96 allowed me to indulge in ten memorable live matches.

There is little doubt that watching Maradona do his thing in Italy and Internationally, rates among the very special experiences of my football love affair.

Sky Sports proved a Godsend when I moved back to Ireland in 1997 and delivered me not just the Gunners experience but also allowed the wannabe coach in me to watch the technical side of the game develop and grow beyond recognition.

Then came Spain and Messi – enough said .....

All of which is a preface to my provenance and how I feel about the current state of football along with the recently abortive attempt by the big clubs of Europe to go their own way in a thing they chose to call; ‘The European Super League’.

First of all, Football doesn’t belong to anyone. Two sweaters and a ball will allow those, who want to, to live the dream for as long and as often as they want. Commercial Professional football is a whole different animal altogether.

I was born a year before Jimmy Hill changed the financial landscape of the sport and grew into the game with enough of a curiosity - from watching him as a staple pundit on TV throughout the seventies - to research and try to understand the significance of his success and how it had affected the game.

When Jean-Marc Bosman went to court and won, it caused me to again reflect long and hard as to what the knock on effect would be.

While I was a subscriber to Sky Sports for many years and tipped my cap to the way they presented the game I was forever aware Rupert Murdoch was not likely to be a fan of football and yet again wondered at where this pursuit of satellite domination would take the sport.

The USA has a had a chequered history with football, where on several occasions the Napoleon's of money tried to buy what they considered a product so it could be customised to suit the taste of viewers and advertisers with an entirely different understanding and approach to televised sport.

These businessmen had developed a successful TV sports model with their own home grown games that was based upon exploiting a herd mentality with inconceivable numbers, promoted ‘innocent’ escapism, nativism and an highly unlikely avenue for anyone to succeed in an American dream.

I remember being somewhat uncomfortable that day in 2015 when it was announced on the news the FBI had arrested several high profile FIFA officials – my discombobulation was not with regard to the corruption charges but rather the sole involvement of an internal American law agency in what was essentially a non-American criminal enterprise – where were Interpol?

Three of the biggest clubs in England are owned by Americans and the ‘Golden Boy’ of a ‘Golden’ generation of English footballers has set his tent up in Florida as the new face of the game stateside.

The financial exploitation of the game is in full swing and being led by US corporate vultures and bankers.

And therein lies the problem.

I believe European football changed when mostly egotistical owners believed it was necessary to adopt a profit and loss ethos over and above the reasonable – as set out by the management of professional sport in the US.

It could be said that this became most visible when merchandising was designed to marry itself to personal identity - a cornucopia of uniforms for the masses to openly display a sense of belonging. And all of a sudden ‘Official’ kits costing a pittance to produce in South East Asia were being hawked to fans at a mark up of ten thousand percent or so.

And the fans bought it.

Ticket prices galloped ahead of inflation by ridiculous percentages. Player wages went through the roof and transfer fees – coupled with agents’ commissions – found, to their collective delight, there was no ceiling.

Satellite companies shut out traditional terrestrial 'free to air' national broadcasters with unacccountable fees for exclusive rights.

Catering prices at stadiums became the stuff of usury practice with cognac shrimp con beurre blanc finding its way on to menus for non- football loving patrons of newly constructed corporate boxes.

Meanwhile the next World Cup is to be hosted in one of the richest non-football playing dictatorships in the world.

And the fans bought it.

Then an announcement out of the blue that the ESL was real!

And the fans didn’t buy it, (for the moment)

However it would appear fans are of a mistaken assumption they get anything in return for the excessive amount of money they pay into professional football - other than the ninety minutes promised, overpriced propaganda ridden tat, satellite service and being told little or nothing constructive by so called experts.

The brief history outlined above would, instead, indicate supporters unwavering attendance and acceptance of financial and other abuses will continue as long as fans demand a fix.

It’s an awful comparison but reality tells me street dealers don’t lower the price of heroin for the good of the addict.

So should we really blame the twelve clubs and their owners for the ESL debacle?

The number of highly paid pundits, managers, players, agents and broadcasters who have stood on a recent soapbox of straw to exclaim their abhorrence of the ESL make me laugh and cry in equal measure.

These are the same people who continue to personally milk the game with their outrageous salaries and fees – in most cases for being very average at what they do and in all cases way beyond anything approaching honest. They are not just hypocritical they are a curse on the game and absolutely guilty of legal daylight robbery.

Yet all the people of ‘standing’ in football have targeted a convenient scapegoat in owners and board members whom they believe are somehow more insidious than they are themselves. All of these horrors are most defiantly not the gatekeepers of football but they do uncaringly exploit the professional game for their own personal benefit – given the actual mediocrity of the majority of these parasites they are not just robbing the fans they’re actually robbing the owners as well.

The sport has reached a point where there are few, if any, innocents involved who are not, at least, partly responsible in the creation of the ESL and no amount of sanctimonious slobbering will convince me otherwise.

And the fans should know that by now.

Maybe not!

So, is there a solution to this problem?

No!

[exchangewritingsandramblings]

The ABCs of Steve and Natasha Rogers-Stark

Happy First Anniversary, Babe. Love, Steve

A is for all my love for you. I know it’s cheesy and you’re probably rolling your eyes by now, but buckle up because it gets worse from here.

Before we started dating, you sort of got on my nerves. I know now that it’s a defense mechanism, your prickly porcupine act, to push people away before they can betray you. You’ve had too many betrayals in life, and I won’t be one. 

Contrary to whatever the tabloids say, we didn’t start dating after the first battle we fought together. At that point, we had at least warmed up to each other more, and I’ll admit, I was crushing pretty hard. I wish I would have gotten the nerve to ask you out earlier, so I could spend more time with you. But after that first battle, we started to text; you provided witty quips while I provided typos courtesy of super-strength, tiny screens, and a complete lack of knowledge of technology in the 21st century. 

I started to fall even harder once you, in all your genius, designed a phone for me, taking into account my previous challenges. I was touched that you would spend time creating something for me, and even more touched that it was to better our middle of the night “I can’t sleep because I’ve seen terrible things” conversations. I was so happy to have someone to talk to who was able to understand the things I’ve seen, but I was worried that you only saw me as a friend, and I didn’t want to overstep. 

Every night we’d text, and I became very glad for the fact that I need less sleep than an unenhanced human because it allowed me to spend more late night hours talking to you. I used to daydream about a time when, if one of us woke from a nightmare, we could hold the other and talk about our fears. It would have beat curling up on the couch cuddling a blanket, for sure. 

Finally, we went on a date. Fortunately, you asked me out while I was still mustering up the courage to do so. I’m sure that if you had waited for me, we would have both been waiting for a few more months. 

Our first date was great. We went to a pizzeria in Brooklyn that I remember from when I was a child, and somehow the place is still operating. Being back there, I felt a little bit less out of my time. Yet I was sitting across from a tech genius, who I knew would drag me kicking and screaming into the 21st century whether I liked it or not. Fortunately, when your crush pilots some crazy armor connected to an AI system, you lose reservations over modern technology.

How did I get so lucky? I’m not sure. All I know is that our first date was a success, then the second, then the third… again, if it wasn’t for you being so direct, we’d probably still be waiting on our first kiss. But at the end of the first date, you pulled me over to you (with a surprising amount of strength, I might add!) and kissed me. I think I saw stars (of the red, white, and blue variety… before you feel the need to say that before me. I know you babe). 

I fell more and more in love with you after each incredible date. Time flew by, and all of a sudden, we had been dating for a month, then two, and eventually six. I knew you were special before we started dating, and each passing day reaffirmed that fact. I knew that one day, I was going to marry you. 

Just as things were going well and we had established a nice pattern of domesticity, we were called into battle again. I heard over the comms as you were shot multiple times, with one shot bringing your armor crashing down. After the battle, I rushed to the hospital to see you. That was one of the scariest experiences of my life, and I fight aliens, monsters, and all sorts of other scum for a living! But you pulled through, because you’re the strongest woman I know, and a few bullet holes weren’t going to stop you.

The day that you were discharged from the hospital, we walked out together into the sunshine. I kissed you, and asked you to move in with me, because if that hospital stay taught me anything, it was that life is too short to be timid, and I didn’t want to lose any time with you. 

You laughed at me, and I was so anxious and confused until you shut my spluttering up with another kiss. “Honeybear,” you said, rolling your eyes, “Of course I want to live together. But you’re moving in with me, not the other way around. I have that whole tower getup, remember?” I remembered that I couldn’t stop laughing, partly from the relief, and partly from your sarcasm. 

Movie nights with you became my favorite way to unwind, a tradition we started after I moved in. You’d put on a movie that you’d claim I was “deprived” for not seeing while I was, in your words, a capsicle, bring out a giant tub of popcorn, and we’d cuddle on the couch and watch the film together. It did certainly beat newsreels. My favorite part, I think, is when you’d fall asleep halfway through the movie on me. I knew how hard it was for you to sleep, and I was honored that you trusted me enough to be able to let your guard down enough to finally go to sleep. By the way, honey, you really do need to sleep more frequently!

Another of my most treasured memories with you was the date when we drove out to a cabin I didn’t know you owned, and laid on the grass under the night sky, fingers intertwined as we saw more stars that I had ever seen in my life. The way that the glow of the moon illuminated your features, and the stars in your eyes… Golly, my heart swelled with love for you. And then, for the first time, we… did things that I’m not going to spell out because you know exactly what they are, and I’m sure you’re going to mock me for the fact that right now, as you’re reading this, I probably have a pink flush up my neck. Just remember that you find it adorable!

Engagement ring shopping was an ominous task for me; you would buy yourself the jewelry you liked, and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to find anything that you didn’t have but would like. Finally, I decided to get something custom made for you. I wanted something with symbolism, so I got you a pattern of stones that looked like your arc reactor. Cheesy, I know, but I’m forever grateful to that thing for keeping shrapnel out of your heart so that I was able to enter. And yes, Natasha, I know you’re rolling your eyes right now. Just roll with it. 

Planning a proposal was no simple feat, either. Nothing I thought of could ever live up to the idea of a perfect proposal that I had in my head. So instead, I took to carrying the ring with me everywhere, knowing that when the perfect moment came, I would be ready. We were standing on the tower roof, looking over the fantastic New York skyline. The lights of the city reflecting off your face reminded me of the date we had under the stars, and I asked you what the building in the distance was, knowing full well that it was related to some scientific pursuit and that would keep you distracted for long enough for me to get onto one knee.

Once you had finished explaining, there was a period of quiet, where you didn’t realize that I wasn’t standing next to you. Finally, it registered with you, and you turned around. I don’t think I ever saw anything so beautiful, and I sketched it as soon as you went to sleep that night. Check the wall of the living room, when you have a chance. Of course you said yes, and you definitely cried (don’t even try to tell me I was seeing things, Stark).

I didn’t think we’d ever be ready with a planned wedding; wedding planning was worse than I expected, filled with a lot of stress that I didn’t know what to do with. Fortunately, you were already well-versed in planning formal events, and you were the real powerhouse behind our wedding. I just stood there and looked pretty. 

When coordinating wedding attire, we decided to wear our suits. How perfect was that to symbolize us, and the pictures of us shoving cake into each other’s mouths while in our superhero costumes were truly the highlight of our wedding album. 

We got married on a Thursday, because that was the one year anniversary of the battle we first fought in together, when we met each other. It was sappy and cliche and perfect, and both of us cried reciting our vows. I have photographic evidence to prove it, Natasha, don’t even try to deny it. 

For our honeymoon, we decided on a tropical getaway to some island that you owned. I really, at that point, should have not been surprised that you owned an island, yet I still was. As we laid under the stars, I thought back to that date, the one I mentioned earlier that makes me blush, when we did… things… for the first time together. And then we did the same, uh… things, again. This was the first time we did that as husband and wife, and as we stood in the sea, your legs wrapped around my waist, your arms around my neck, and the moonlight reflecting off your perfect skin… I think I fell in love all over again. 

I am a very lucky man to be your husband, Natasha, and I’m reminded of that every day, with little things such as the way your nose scrunches up when you’re working on calculations, or the way your tongue pokes out of your mouth when you solder. The way that you aren’t fully alive until you have your morning cup of coffee, and the way that you play with your bots when you don’t know I’m watching. 

There are endless more ways that I am completely in love with you, and every day we share together fills my heart with wonder. When I was thawed from the ice, I thought that any of my chances at love had disappeared with time. I’m so glad to have been so wrong. 

[i-am-a-closet-fanfic-fiend]

This Is Me ~ A Bucky Barnes Oneshot

A/N: Hi my lovelies! I hope you all have a great week and for now enjoy this. It’s been kicking around in my head since I watched the Greatest Showman. I really wish I had the skills to do video edits - those of you who do them seriously amaze me. Because if I did I would probably try to actually make what I describe, but alas, all I’ve got is words. I hope it comes across. 

Summary: Peter shows Bucky a youtube tribute video about him 

Characters: Bucky Barnes, feat. Peter Parker, appearance by Tony Stark 

Rating: T 

Warnings: References to Bucky’s torture and other abuse and physical trauma. Not detailed by present nonetheless. 

Word Count: 1095

Disclaimer: Lyrics to This is Me belong to the Greatest Showman team. I do not own them or the characters. Just my plot bunnies. 

“Hey, Bucky, do you want to see a cool youtube video?”

Peter was sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table looking at his computer.

“Depends on what it is. Because if it’s another compilation of Tony Stark’s best drunken tirades, I’ll pass.”

“No. This one’s about you.”

“About me?” Bucky finished making their sandwiches and sat beside him on the floor. “I don’t give enough interviews to have a best drunken tirade compilation.”

“No, it’s not that. It’s a fanvideo,” Peter explained, turning the screen so Bucky could see it.

“What does that mean?”

“Basically someone thought one particular song reminded them of you and put together a video of clips and pictures to the music.”

Bucky understood the concept, but he was confused as to why somewhat would put in the effort for him.

“So, what song reminds people of me?”

“Do you remember the movie the Greatest Showman? We watched it a couple of weeks ago.”

“Is that the one about the circus?”

“Yeah, exactly,” Peter grinned. “Well someone thought the song This is Me applied to you, and they made this video.”

Bucky held his breath as Peter pressed play.

I am not a stranger to the dark Hide away, they say 'Cause we don't want your broken parts I've learned to be ashamed of all my scars Run away, they say No one'll love you as you are

The first few clips and photos were from his Winter Soldier days. They showed him in the chair being wiped. He cringed at the sight, but he understood why they chose the song.  No one should love him.

But I won't let them break me down to dust I know that there's a place for us For we are glorious

They cut to him in his new uniform. It was a news reel from a few weeks ago. He was on the roof of the building, standing in front of the setting sun. He almost looked… heroic.  

When the sharpest words wanna cut me down I'm gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out I am brave, I am bruised I am who I'm meant to be, this is me Look out 'cause here I come And I'm marching on to the beat I drum I'm not scared to be seen I make no apologies, this is me

This whole section showed the footage from his trial. United States vs. Barnes. They attempted to try him for treason. Tony’s pack of lawyers had argued that he had no control over what he did. Bucky had spent those court days stone faced, awaiting judgment. He stood up, answering the questions they asked of him, letting the world and the court get their first real look at him.

Oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh, oh

Another round of bullets hits my skin Well, fire away 'cause today, I won't let the shame sink in We are bursting through the barricades and Reaching for the sun (we are warriors) Yeah, that's what we've become (yeah, that's what we've become)

When the court had exonerated him, he rejoined the Avengers, doing his best to save the world or whatever part of it he could. The video segued into newsreels of him fighting aliens or crazy villains. It showed him getting civilians to safety, stopping bullets with his vibranium arm. .

I won't let them break me down to dust I know that there's a place for us For we are glorious

When the sharpest words wanna cut me down I'm gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out I am brave, I am bruised I am who I'm meant to be, this is me Look out 'cause here I come And I'm marching on to the beat I drum I'm not scared to be seen I make no apologies, this is me

It cut to him visiting kids in the hospital missing limbs. The first time Pepper had come to ask him to go see them, he had refused outright. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he couldn’t understand why anyone would find comfort in him. But it started with one little girl who had written him several letters, and he finally agreed to see her. And after he saw the joy in her eyes he had visited everyone he could. After the children’s hospitals, it was veterans, and abuse survivors. He made time for anyone who wanted to speak with him.

Oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh, oh This is me

and I know that I deserve your love (Oh-oh-oh-oh) 'cause there's nothing I'm not worthy of (Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh, oh, oh) When the sharpest words wanna cut me down I'm gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out This is brave, this is proof This is who I'm meant to be, this is me

It changed to a split screen of the video clip of him and Steve from the Smithsonian where they were laughing and an almost identical video clip from an interview a few weeks before.

Look out 'cause here I come (look out 'cause here I come) And I'm marching on to the beat I drum (marching on, marching, marching on) I'm not scared to be seen I make no apologies, this is me

When the sharpest words wanna cut me down I'm gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out I'm gonna send a flood Gonna drown them out Oh This is me

The final video clip was from his own set of PSA’s that he had been asked to do.

“Hi, I’m Bucky Barnes. And I’m here to tell you that you’re strong and you can make it through this.”

The final card filled the screen.

Thank you, Sergeant Barnes for your service then and now. You inspire me every day to be me.  

 Bucky discreetly wiped away the tears that had formed from some dust getting into his eyes.

“Did you like it?” Peter asked, as he turned off the autoplay feature.

“I did. Thank you for the video, Peter.”

“You’re welcome.”

He sniffed and offered him a watery smile.

“I think Steve left some apple pie hidden in the fridge. Do you want to share?”

“Absolutely.”  

“I’ll be back in a few.”

He clapped him on the shoulder, squeezing gently to convey what he couldn’t quite bring himself to say.

 While Bucky was in the kitchen Tony strolled into the living room.

“Hey, kid. Did Barnes like the video you made him?”

“I think so.” Peter grinned.

 A/N: So yeah, whenever I hear that song. I think of Bucky and all he’s been through. I hope you enjoyed. xoxo

Naynay

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[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

The Dancing Doctor

Susan Swatland, from her book, Escape from the Moonies Chapter 5

THE CUSTOM-BUILT Mercedes stopped outside the Moonies’ Georgian mansion in Hearst Street, [Berkeley]. Two huge Korean bodyguards climbed out and surveyed the scene. Then satisfied that all was safe, they escorted Dr Mose Durst and his wife Onni up the steps of the mansion. Durst was looking very dapper in an expensive powder-blue suit with matching shoes, but it was his Korean wife who caught the eye. She was wearing a fabulous white fur coat which contrasted with her shoulder-length silky black hair, and as she held up her hands, diamonds and rubies glittered under the lights.

They took off their shoes in the hall and donned golden slippers. As they walked into the lecture room, arm in arm, we all chorused, ‘Oh, Onni and Abba, thank Heavenly Father for your goodness in guiding us.’ Onni is Korean for Elder Sister; and Abba for Father.

They smiled and nodded in the manner of an emperor and empress; and in this company, that’s what they were. Durst was the President of the Unification Church and perhaps a bit more besides. For now that the Reverend Moon had retreated to his Tarrytown mansion in Westchester County, Durst was beginning to emerge as the movement’s new star. The Moonies, under fire from the media, wanted a fresh image and Durst, the amiable professor of English with his jokey Jewish ways, fitted that image rather well. It was Onni who had first seen the possibilities in this mild-mannered man. She charmed him, wooed him, married him and groomed him for power. And according to the Moonies who lived in the Dursts’ Avalon mansion, it was still Onni who controlled him.

Mose (pronounced Mosa) is the son of Russian immigrants and grew up in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the City University of New York and a graduate fellow of Cambridge University. And up until 1972, he was a professor of English at Laney College in Oakland, California ... a lonely, disillusioned man who had just been divorced, retaining custody of his two sons, Tinker and Tim. That was the year when one of his students (a Moonie convert) invited him to dinner at the house of Onni Soo Lim, the supposed founder of the Unification Church on the West Coast. Onni was then at the peak of her beauty, a very exotic lady, and the college professor was seemingly overwhelmed. They were married two months later in a special Korean wedding ceremony performed by Moon. That break in the normal pattern of the Church is an indication of the importance of Onni and also of their plans for Durst. A professor was a considerable catch for the Moonies and his rise was rapid. He became state director of the Moonies in North California and then the Church’s President.

It was an odd boardroom shuffle, because the Moonies already had a president named Neil Salonen who was very close to Moon. So one had to assume that the factions behind Durst were powerful ones indeed.

His plump face, bifocals and easy laugh gave him a fatherly look. He was a sentimental man, easily moved to tears, and much loved by the rank and file members. His college background gave him a certain kinship with many of the new recruits who had come from the campus. And he always seemed that bit more subject to human frailty than the other Moonie leaders. There was, for instance, his habit of raiding the kitchen for cookies in the early hours of the morning, a habit frowned upon in the Church. Any food taken before noon is said to encourage Satan. By some ill chance Durst always seemed to be bumping into somebody else also hunting for cookies in the dark. But there were never angry reproaches, only laughter.

He was fond of singing the songs of the Thirties and he would croon them in the style of a latter-day Bing Crosby. Sometimes on special occasions he would dance while a fiddler played and then he could look very Jewish, very amusing. The Divine Principle preaches the message that the Jews betrayed Jesus and this is why Korea has become the new Holy Land. And Moon has frequently been accused of being anti-semitic. But Durst made no attempt to hide his Jewish background. On the contrary, he sprinkled his conversation with Yiddish. Somebody would be meshuga (crazy), somebody else schlemiel (a jerk) and most of his jokes were Jewish too. He was an easy man to like and the media soon discovered that too. He handled them with a smooth, relaxed, professional expertise that paid dividends.

‘Hey,’ he said to one reporter, ‘we’re just like the rest of the crowd. We don’t eat babies and sleep on nails.’ When asked about the Moonies’ dream of a perfect world, he said, ‘It won’t be all that much different to the one we have now.

‘The sun will still rise in the morning and set in the evening. It will still be a place where the Yankees can win the pennant and Reggie Jackson can hit home runs. But it will be a world of greater tolerance, self-respect and greater spirit of love guiding personal relationships.’ Pressed on the thorny subject of the Moonies’ business empire, he shrugged. ‘If you want to hold up standards, let’s hold them up across the board. There is a church in America that makes approximately a billion dollars a year just through bingo games.’ He didn’t say so, but he meant the Catholics.

Asked why the movement had generated so much hate, he held out his palms. ‘Maybe it’s because we’re the new kids on the block. I really don’t know. You tell me. I just don’t understand it. To know us is to love us.’ He paused, smiled his gentle fatherly smile and said, ‘If we help an old lady across the street, they’ll say she didn’t want to go.’

It was all good stuff and so often reporters who had come with a hatchet job in mind went away wondering whether they had perhaps been wrong after all.

No one was more aware of Durst’s good public image than Onni. ...

But despite the sweetness, despite the sentimentality, the good professor had a very sinister side to his nature. He hadn’t only taught English at college. He had a Ph.D in psychology too and had become an expert in mind control. The indoctrination methods used in the Californian camps of the Moonies are more effective, more far-reaching and consequently more harmful than those used by the cult in any other part of the Western World. Project Volunteer, the smokescreen which led me, and thousands like me, astray was his brainchild.

His personal lifestyle has become almost as extravagant as that of Moon himself. His Avalon estate, known as The Gardens, has seven bedrooms, a four-car garage, sauna, pool, cabana, a superb view over San Francisco bay and the kind of luxurious Oriental furnishings that only the very rich could even dream about. His cars are Lincolns and Mercedes, the carriages of the Moonie upper-echelon.

One of my favourite people, Joe Alexander, once saw Durst with Onni, the Moons and the Salonens in a Las Vegas casino. Joe had a former Moonie named Jeff Scales with him at the time; and Jeff like so many of us had really loved Mose Durst. Now he just stood there unable for a moment to believe the evidence of his own eyes. Joe, an opportunist, asked a girl photographer to take a picture of the group. Unfortunately the girl attempted to get Moon’s permission and was angrily waved away. A few minutes later the Messiah and his party made a hasty exit.

Durst’s small sons from his previous marriage, Tinker and Tim, were staying at Aetna Springs while I was there; and they were two lonely little fellows. Onni considered them so fallen, so Satanic, that she couldn’t bear to touch them. I have always loved children and so I used to spend as much time as I could with them; but this wasn’t encouraged. Being Abba’s sons, they were supposed to be segregated from the rank and file. Tinker, the youngest, had broken his arm and used to spend much of the day playing with the camp dogs. He was always asking for his father, but Durst rarely had the time to make those boyhood wishes come true.

And yet this seemingly kindly man had oceans of time for us his followers. He knew the names and the faces of us all; and on that day at Hearst Street as he walked slowly down the aisle, his head was turning constantly. He looked into my eyes and smiled as he went by. And this was part of his secret. He made each and every one of us feel very special.

We had prepared lots of little delicacies for Onni and Abba, a variety of home-made sweets, biscuits, little cakes and ginseng tea.

Durst, in a mock aside, warned, ‘You mustn’t tempt Onni too much. She’s watching her weight.’ He paused, gave a rueful grin and said, ‘I think I’ll be in trouble when I get home tonight.’

He glanced towards his wife, realised she wasn’t amused and hastily changed the subject.

His talk, like all his talks, was a mixture of everything we had heard before, but laced with Jewish jokes and high good humour. When he’d finished he sang ‘Only For You’ which we knew to be one of his favourite songs. He sang it in the manner of a poor man’s Frank Sinatra; and all the sisters clutched their hearts, sighed and even squealed just like the bobbysoxers we’d seen in the old newsreels. He was so delighted that he thought of doing an encore, then changed his mind and it wasn’t hard to see the reason why.

Onni’s face was set like stone.

Onni Durst – The Dragon Lady

[ruckystarnes]

AUTHOR: RuckyStarnes

WARNINGS:   None

CHARACTERS: Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, OFC - Hazel Hamilton

WORDS: 1,858

A/N: 

Unkept Promises Master List 

Three | Four | Five

Chapter Four

January 1, 1940

Hazel,

Just wanted to let you know that Wisconsin is going well, not like you would care to hear that, but I thought maybe in some sort of marvel that you actually would be bothered by my well-being while I’m away. Schedule is pretty strict, almost grateful that Dad had warned me about it before I signed the papers. I hope Steve isn’t giving you too much trouble, though we both know that is a high hope.

I think you and Steve would like it here in the Midwest. Winter seems to be colder than New York, but the snow is just the same. I do miss all the lights and sounds that a busy city gives us, here it’s dark, but you can see the stars. They almost remind me of the way your eyes would shine when you would laugh at one of my lame jokes. Maybe after the war, I can bring you here, so you and Steve could see this place: hills and forests with very few houses. The nearest towns are about ten miles out, they said it would be almost four hours before you reach them by foot, but I heard they have some nice shops you would like. But I would definitely wouldn’t want to live here forever.

It’s just too quiet. And you’re not here. And Steve.

Bucky

January 17, 1940

Dear James,

I received your letter almost a week ago, and it took until now to read it, the pain too great to bring myself to read it. It hurt to find out that you were leaving, to do the very thing I did that you protested against. I do apologize for leaving that Christmas morning, not giving you the send off that you deserved. I was selfish and hurt, leaving you with Steve, whom I heard later gave you lecture about it. Now, I’m here trying to convince our little ankle biter to stop trying to enlist under false pretenses.

Just Monday, he tried to by being Steve Rogers from West Virginia. This boy is going to be the death of me if he does, by some miracle, get into the army, and I pray each night that he doesn’t. I also send a prayer up that you are protected by God Himself. I don’t care how much moxie you have, James Buchanan, but you get yourself back to Brooklyn; back home to us. To me. 

Please ignore that, I blame it on the fact that I am practically doing your job of keeping Steve out of trouble and mending his wounds from such trouble. He got into a fight the other day because someone talked bad about the war across the ocean. He also has been to the gym, working the bag as he had said before, coming home with bruised knuckles and a black eye. Remind me to slap you along the side of your head when you get back for leaving us. I know Steve misses you, and I only sort of miss you, you fat-head.

I hope training is going swell for you and that you don’t change too much.

Sincerely, Hazel

January 18, 1940

The sound of the door slamming brought Hazel from her nap she had decided to take on the couch. She had just pulled a double at the hospital and she had to go in that night again, not waiting to complain because the money was enough to support both her and Steve, and to keep the rent so they could have a roof over their heads. For years, she had seen Sarah Rogers do just that to support both her son and Hazel herself, something Hazel never had been extremely grateful for until now. Sometimes the matron would work for days on end, coming home for a weekend or even just a day so she could check up on them, another thing Hazel didn’t understand and fully appreciate when she was adolescent.

Shuffled steps let her know it was Steve who had let himself in, making her smile at the fact he had remembered his key, or maybe he had used the hidden on under the brick by the door. Not like she could tell because she wasn’t awake to witness the cursing he would have done. He was trying to be quiet, knowing she needed her rest, but he bumped into something causing him to curse out loud, making her spring up and be right at his side.

“You okay Steve?” she asked softly, her arm going around his torso to support him as she checked him over with pinched brows.

“‘M fine, Hazel,” he replied in almost a low growl, but his face was pale and there were dark circles under his eyes. She didn’t say anything, just ushered him to the couch, making him sit so she could get some coffee for him. Her mouth was set into a thin line as she handed him the white cup, silently waiting for him to talk.

“Really, Haze, I’m okay,” he urged, his voice rough as if he had been at a Dodgers game.

“Where?”

Steve averted his eyes from her, unwilling to look at her. There needn’t any words to tell her where he had be in general, his look was enough to tell her that he had been to yet another enlisting office to see if he could join the fighting cause.

“Steve,” she whispered, “you can be of help here. There’s plenty of jobs that you can do…”

“No, Hazel,” he snapped, looking up at her with ferocity in his blue eyes. “I want to serve. I need to.”

“You don’t have to be your father, Steve,” she replied calmly, kneeling in front of him as her hand rested on his knee. He would never admit it, but the boy desperately wanted to be just like his stranger of a father who was killed in the Great War decades prior.

“This has nothing to do with him,” was his whispered reply, “You don’t understand what is happening over there.”

“Steve, no one can understand what is going on over there. All we know is what the radio tells us, and that’s controlled by Roosevelt and the other agencies. Even France doesn’t know, and I was there for a few months.” Her voice was soft, the voice she reserved for difficult patients that were slipping from this life.

The look soften on his face as his eyes shifted to the pad of paper on the small table next to the couch. She knew he could see the looped letters of Bucky’s name and possibly the whole body of text she had written, but he would never say anything. Not since Christmas when he called her a dumb Dora, which earned a slap across his face that he rightfully deserved in her eyes.

She chewed her lip as she got up and sat next to him on the couch. “I miss him too,” she muttered, her cheeks starting to burn. Their friend had only been gone not even a month yet, and it seemed like they were falling apart at the seams. Steve was constantly at enlisting offices, trying his best at lying to get into the Army, or at the gym trying to improve the little strength he had to stave off bullies or people who pick on him because he was the little guy, or he was at the movies, watching the pre-show newsreels to see how the war was going in Europe. At the same time, Hazel busied herself at the Jewish hospital, picking up whatever shift she could to make ends meet or to keep herself busy so she didn’t have to think about Bucky or Steve.

“He’s smitten with you, you know that?” His voice was barely a whisper, but it felt like he screamed the fact right in her face.

“Never once had he shown me he was interested,” she replied coolly, making it seem like it wasn’t a big deal for her.

“He brought you flowers for your birthday.”

“I hate daisies. You both know that.”

“He carried your books in school.”

“Because he wanted to look unavailable to Esther.”

“He would always buy you the candy you liked at Coney Island.”

“Then take me on the Cyclone so I would throw up. Steve, we can go on and on and on about this. Bucky used me as way out of things with other girls, and half the time I let him because I couldn’t see my best friend being with such able gables and it’s bad enough that when he comes back, more of them are going to want him because he’s in uniform.” She stopped abruptly, her eyes narrowing as she turned towards him. “Is that why you are trying to enlist? To get some broad to look at you the way they look at Bucky?”

“No!” Steve answered quickly, “that’s what most of those Joes want. What is with girls and the sight of uniforms?”

“Don’t look at me,” Hazel stated, her hands in the air, “I don’t fall for the show. It’s what in his head that matters to me.”

“What about Bucky’s head?” Steve pushed.

“Steven,” she replied warily.

“What? You two could round and round on topics that are being argued in Washington and you don’t find his thoughts or ideas something you like.”

“We are usually in opposition of each other.”

“Ma always said that opposites attract. Also said that you and Bucky would tie the knot. Even his ma was in that wager.” Steve looked down at his hands, fingers picking imaginary lint from his pants. “Becca would love you for a sister.”

“How is Becca? And their parents?” she asked softly, anything to get off the subject of her and Bucky being a couple, or even married.

“She’s fine. Misses him just like the rest of us. She misses you too. She was at the gym yesterday asking if I knew when you would be home so you two could go for a soda or something.” He looked up at his friend and smiled softly. “I think being around me hurts her more, since Bucky’s usually right there.”

“I’ll swing by their place tomorrow after work if I have time. I’ll even send her a letter. Now, let’s get you something to eat and some tea. It’s suppose to be windy tonight, and I haven’t been able to get a newspaper to help with the drafts.”

She got up from the couch and walked to the kitchen area, filling the kettle before lighting the flame to heat. Her mind was wandering around what Steve had said, the idea of bother Bucky’s mother and her adoptive one hoped that they would be together. Three years ago, she would have gagged at the idea, even tell the poor women off if they told her such a thing, but now? It stirred something inside her that she couldn’t place. She wish she had Bucky right there then so she could smack his stupid face for making her feel out of sorts.

[abovethesmokestacks]

Goodbye

Title: Goodbye Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader Word count: 1.9k Spoilers: None Warnings: angst, lots of it

I blame this entirely on Katy Perry, because “The One That Got Away” played last night and refused to leave me, so surprise children, it’s feels murder time.

This fic can also be found on AO3. It is not to be reposted anywhere else without my express permission.

Tags at the end.

One year. As the words trip across his plush lips, that’s all you can think about. One year. One year of dance hall dates, of being the girl on Bucky Barnes’s arm, of sweet kisses and a warm hand holding your own. There’s a small part inside of you that refuses to listen to what he’s saying, refuses to acknowledge the bravery of his decision, that screams loud and desperate because he will leave you. He’s ripping himself away from this life, throwing himself into a dangerous game few seem to be surviving.

“Sweetheart? Sweetheart, please, say somethin’.”

Bucky’s cap is tipped just so, jaunty and paints such a handsome picture along with his pressed uniform, but god, his eyes betray him. How many times have the pressing silences between you erupted into arguments just because he couldn’t keep the annoyance out of them? You’d like to think you are an open book, but Bucky Barnes tries so hard to keep part of himself locked away, only to be betrayed by the keyhole into the very room he’s hiding in. You can’t even fault him, you wish you could do the same sometimes.

“W-when?” you finally stutter, unable to face his worry right now, too afraid that the pacing monster inside you will break free if you do.

You know it won’t be good by the slightly pause before he speaks again. It never is, and you steel yourself for the deadly blow.

“I… I leave for England tomorrow.”

One year, and it’ll all be gone tomorrow. You are an open book, and he reads you with a pained expression on his face.

“I didn’t- I got my orders today. Please, doll, it’s not that bad. I won’t- They’re not sendin’ us into battle straight away. You gotta understand, I don’t have a choice.”

“You don’t?” It comes out sharper than you intend, slipping out before you can lock yourself down again. He’s leaving tomorrow, and you won’t allow your parting to be tainted by anger.

“I got drafted,” he confesses, jaw clenching before cupping your cheeks and bringing you in close. “Please, don’t tell Stevie. I told him I volunteered, it’s… I thought it would be easier.”

“Nothing about this is easy, Bucky.” You look over your shoulders, spotting the mop of blond hair a little ways away, where Steve is buying snacks from a vendor. “You should tell him.”

Bucky shakes his head, “I can’t. He’s… Well, you know how he is. Please, darlin’, I just want my last night to be somethin’ I can remember when I’m fighting.”

It is soft and pleading, the request matching the sadness in his eyes. It appeases the mounting hurricane inside, dissipates the raging emotions somewhat, calms the howling into a starved whine that longs to take and give in equal measures. Pressing a kiss to his cheek, you let yourself melt into him. His warmth will soon be gone, and he will need yours where he is going.

Minutes and hours mercilessly tick by, caring none for the desperation you show in giving and taking until your breaths turn ragged and you think a part of you has been burned into Bucky’s heart forever. The silence of the cramped apartment he shares with Steve has saved every litany of praise, every prayer for more, every vow of safe return and every dream of the future. 

“I’ll come home, sweetheart. I’ll come home, and I’ll put the prettiest ring on your finger, and I’ll never leave you again. No, baby, don’t- I swear, God himself can’t make me break this promise. It’ll be us against the world.”

You wake up alone, Bucky’s sheets cold, and you allow yourself to break. His scent still lingers in the pillow case, his touch a ghost trailing over your skin. The room feels too empty, desolate without him in it. His things are still there, but now they seem to belong to someone else, a stranger that never held your heart. Outside, the subdued clattering of dishes signals that Steve has found his way home too, and if it wasn’t for the monster moaning its swan song, you’d feel a little ashamed, because how could Steve not figure out why you’d be in Bucky’s room. He knocks five minutes later and offers breakfast, and you stay quiet until you hear him shuffling away, not leaving until much later when Steve has already left.

For a while it hurts, your friends fawning over you and trying to paint you as the devoted girlfriend who waits while her best guy is somewhere across the ocean fighting for freedom. There is nothing glorious about it. Bile rises in your throat when you go to a movie and it’s prefaced by a short snippet about the war effort, the brave Captain America smiling for the camera. There is nothing glorious about waiting for a sign of life, or a proof of death.

There are signs of life. Bucky sends letters, his hurried scrawl making your heart leap, every declaration of life and love signed with “Us against the world”. There are signs of life, and you cling to them, repeating promises made and vows uttered until you think you can see them on the horizon.

And then the next letter.

“I regret to report that Sergeant James B Barnes of the 107th Infantry Regiment went missing behind enemy lines…”

Something rips from you, the festering worry finally rupturing and you finally allow the scream that has been bottled up for nearly a year to claw its way out of your chest. There is nothing glorious about it, nothing like the starlets of the silver screen would have you believe. It is ugly and visceral and it hurts when you shatter, when every hope and dream of seeing Bucky again is torn from you. 

I swear, God himself can’t make me break this promise.

God, you decide, cares nothing for war. He reaps no profit, doesn’t grant mercy. God, you realize, did not make Bucky break his promise. The devil takes his due.

“A symbol to the nation, a hero to the world…”

You clutch your cane harder, drawing in a shallow breath before stepping onto the escalators. Up until recently, it’s been years, maybe even decades since you let yourself think about him, about them. Everywhere, Steve’s face looks down at you, stoic with his mouth set in a determined line. It’s not him you’re here for, not really.

History has been kind to him, and by association, to Bucky. They found each other in the chaos, fought together and died within a year of each other. Bucky has his place in the exhibit, as he should. You don’t know how they found you, but a year before, a representative from the Smithsonian reached out, saying they had found out you had been Barnes’s girlfriend before the war, and were you perhaps willing to contribute to the part of the exhibition dedicated to Sergeant Barnes?

Time has made you a liar.

It was easy to give a small laugh, to confirm that yes, indeed, you were Sergeant Barnes’s gal before the war, but it was only a year. You barely heard from him after he shipped out. So much time has gone by, you doubt you’d have anything to contribute, whether physical mementos or exciting stories. It was only a year after all, you understand, don’t you.

Your heart clenches when you make your way to the front of the group of people admiring the uniforms. You never got photos of him like this, as a member of the Howling Commandos. His army uniform had been handsome as any, but god, you would have given anything to see him in this, the blue playing off his eyes and the soft brown of his hair. 

“Barnes is the only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country…”

You can’t help the tear that trails down your cheek, the flickering newsreel of Bucky and Steve smiling together too much for you. You shouldn’t have come. You’re almost 90, this is no place for you. Maybe you should have just told them the truth when they called: that every letter Bucky ever sent rests in a box at the back of a closet, that they have been in that box since 1944, that you’ve carefully packed it up and ignored the sting in your heart with every move.

Sniffling, you turn to leave, walking past the glass wall dedicated to Bucky when something pulls your gaze up. Later you will say it was all your imagination, the result of confronting the memories you’ve tried to keep hidden all these decades. But right now, there’s a set of footsteps that calls to something in you, that makes the hairs on your neck stand on end and your heart trill in anticipation. You find a pair of eyes in the crowd, dark under the black peak of a baseball cap, but you know that should he remove it and step into the light, they would be as blue as you remember them. For a second there seems to be a flash of recognition in them, lips parting as if to speak your name.

And then the man passes, and you feel like your breath has been knocked out of you. The air seems stuffier than before, and you hurry to get outside, sitting down on a bench to draw in deep breaths. It’s all a trick, a combination of wishful thinking, low light and seventy years of heartbreak taking you by surprise.

He’s not actually there.

Heavy footsteps search the rows, a bundle of flowers gripped tightly in one hand. Part of him knows what he will find, another one fearful of what he’ll feel. He wanted to find you as soon as he remembered, as soon as he made sense of why his heart sped up at the memory of an older lady locking eyes with him at the museum, but time and haunting ghosts kept him from you.

Finally finding what he’s looking for, he swallows thickly, kneeling on the dewy grass, letting one gloved hand run over the smooth marble.

“Hello, sweetheart. I promised I’d be back, didn’t I?” His voice cracks, eyes blurring as he takes in the condensed story of your life, imagining everything that must fit into the dash between the two dates. “I’m sorry I took so long, that I couldn’t come back sooner. I made you a promise, darlin’, and now I’m too late. I just want you to know I saw you. I saw you and you looked just as pretty as the morning I left. God, I wish I could have come back, that we could have had that life I talked about.”

He clears away the leaves that have fallen, gingerly placing the flowers, rearranging them to his liking. “I kissed you goodbye that morning. Had to tear myself away, but I couldn’t leave without a final kiss. And I don’t know if you remember it, but you kissed me back. It was all I could think about on the way over, the one thing that kept me sane in the trenches, the thought that even in your sleep, you could recognize me, and how I wanted every morning to be like that.”

Wetting his lips, he leans in, pressing a soft kiss to the cold marble, eyes squeezed shut and remembering a tender moment that not even the most brutal torture could pry from him.

“Goodbye, sweetheart.”

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[metawitches]

In this episode, the owls go to war and Meredith becomes a mouse. Queenie brings Burt back into the fold, where he does exactly what Joel has always known he’d do. Joel sends Lyla to safety with Rita, but not before she meets Katherine at Bash’s house. Katherine also stages a meeting with the Phoenixes. Mixed messages and miscommunications abound.

We learn once and for all that Reprisal takes place in an alternate universe, in which many of the male characters fought in the Archipelago War and are still suffering from PTSD. Molly was a field nurse in the war and also saw things that left her traumatized. She’s probably not the only woman on the show who was affected by the War. Virtually every character has been affected by some war, whether it’s the Archipelago War or Burt’s gang wars or the unnamed, continuous wars that constitute domestic violence. Growing up surrounded by the Brawlers or the Ghouls equals growing up on the edge of a battlefield.

Recap

Episode 6 begins with newsreel footage of the Archipelago War, in honor of the anniversary of the bloody Battle of the 37th Island. The Archipelago was a country that was split in two. Some thought it should remain that way, while others thought it should be reunited into one country. Military from all over the world came to fight for the Archipelago, because it was such a beloved place and they cared so deeply about its future. Or so the newsreel announcer assures us. Whether their side won or lost, the soldiers and support staff should be proud of their efforts on behalf of the Archipelago!!

We aren’t told the outcome of the war or which side our country was on. It feels Orwellian, and not terribly different from the small wars the US is almost continuously involved in.

A younger Percy Montgomery plays cards in a VFW Post and tells his companion that the whole Archipelago should have been blown up. Younger Bash, wearing a Brawlers shirt and jacket, enters. Percy tells his companion to pour another round for his big brother.

Bash wants Percy to join the Brawlers with him. Percy doesn’t think he’s the joining type. Besides, they already belong to a family. Bash insists that this is a bigger, better family. He tells Percy to come build a new car or work on his old one. But even if all Percy wants to do is drink himself to death, Bash wants him to do it nearby.

Burt Harlow wakes up in his rural cabin and lights a cigarette. He works on old clocks and tends to his garden. He’s apparently run off and joined the Watchmen, maybe on Europa. As long as I don’t have to watch Tom Mison die another thousand times, I’m okay with that.

His peaceful respite is just about over, though, because Queenie has had enough and is driving her hotrod out to see him. All this time we thought Bash and Joel were his two lieutenants, but as it turns out, the aptly named Queenie is the real power behind the throne. She’s known where he was all along. And she does keep the books- both sets. They say, “Follow the money,” for a reason.

At the cabin, Queenie looks over Burt’s current car. She’s unimpressed with it’s vintage black simplicity. Burt says, “I figured I’d give her a second life.” I could be wrong, but I think it’s the car Katherine was driving the night he tried to kill her. The black would be a form of mourning and respect, since he believes she’s dead. This would make sense to a psychopath- in his mind, she forced him to take action. He didn’t want to kill her. It also befits his status as dignified leader, godfather and perpetual semi-victim who needs revenge.

Queenie tells Burt about Percy and that they’ll do his send off, the Brawler funeral, tomorrow night. Burt is concerned about Bash’s reaction, but Queenie is satisfied that he got his revenge. It’s Joel she’s worried about, with Lyla growing up. Then she notices Burt’s garden and laughs at him. Burt is having an existential crisis over the fact that he can’t even grow cucumbers as well as his no account father.

Queenie tells him that she doesn’t care what he’s been doing for the last 2 years. He’s needed by the family he built. It’s time to come home.

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Doris tries repeatedly to call Ethan. He doesn’t answer and eventually gets rid of the phone in the woods behind the compound.

Not the smartest place to dispose of incriminating evidence.

Doris get frustrated and shows it, a momentary lapse in her composure. Earl asks why Percy called her Katherine. She walks out. Molly decides that it’s time to remove the buckshot Gregory put in his neck at the checkpoint. (I didn’t mention that he got in a shot at Earl because at that point what happened wasn’t clear to me.)

Molly was a field nurse in the Archipelago War on the 37 Island- the bad one. Earl and Cordell have new respect for her. They both fought in the war for two tours, but neither was on the 37th Island.

Once his wounds have been tended to, Earl finds Katherine in the coffee shop/bar. He tells her that the Monster Ring was originally the idea of their commanding officer in the war, Alvin. She’s surprised, because she thought Earl was also Alvin. They chuckle at how little they know about each other.

When they came back from the war, Alvin saw an opportunity and rounded up the team. Bernice was fine with it then, because she liked the extra income. Bernice and Earl had a son named Raymond and when he was 13, Alvin recruited him into the Monster Ring. Alvin took Raymond out on a job and Raymond was killed.

Katherine tells Earl that Percy was her first husband’s brother and how she was betrayed. Earl asks why she’s come back now. She says that her anniversary is coming up.

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Joel brings Lyla to Bash’s house. Bash is listening to a recording of a couple who are discussing running away together. Joel notes that it was strange, the way Percy had the Ghouls mask on his head. He and Bash exchange a knowing look, figuring out what they should have seen before Bash went on a murder spree.

Of course, Bash still had to go on a murder spree, to maintain their cover story.

Lyla tells Bash that when she’s sad, she hugs her stuffed doll, Rufus, until she feels better. Rufus asks what she has to be sad about. She tells him she has plenty.

Good for her. He’s probably not the first and he certainly won’t be the last person to dismiss her feelings and issues as trivial. The things she has to be sad about aren’t too different from his own. She hasn’t seen her mother since she was a baby. She lives in a super misogynist, enclosed cult compound which doubles as a bar and strip club. She’s surrounded by violent, alcoholic, misogynist men and her only female role models are sex workers who don’t particularly care about her.

Her father is teaching her to cope by escaping into a fantasy world, a coping mechanism which she’s smart enough to sense won’t hold up in the real world outside the compound. If she ever escapes. She’s around the Pin-Ups enough to hear them discuss the ways that they are semi-forced to stay. Who knows how many sexual and violent crimes she’s witnessed in her short life. And she has no one else her age to play with. She doesn’t seem to go to school or leave the compound.

In this episode, we’ve been given Meredith, Gertrude and Raymond as examples of what Lyla’s future probably holds. Which should she choose?

So no, Lyla has no problems at all, Bash. And, yes, 10 year old girls do think about all of the things I just listed when they are in abusive environments.

Lyla tells Bash she’ll come back to get Rufus before she goes to bed. Then she asks what happened to make him so sad. He says that there’s trouble between the owls.

Queenie convinces Burt to come back to the Brawlers. The Brawlers prepare Percy’s truck, Thelma, for his send off.

Meredith and Gertrude have a heart to heart about where they stand now that the Brawlers and the Ghouls are going to war. First, Gertrude gives Mer advice on bike repairs. Then she tells Mer that Gary is dead. Mer defends him as a decent guy. Gertrude wants to leave before the war reaches full swing. She remembers how bad it was the last time. Mer wants to wait until she fixes her own bike. She still hopes things won’t get too bad. Gertrude knows better.

Matty is suspicious about the way Percy died. He’s figured out that there’s no way Gary or the Ghouls would have broken the peace and killed Percy that way. Joel tells him not to question the official story and not to go looking for revenge on his own. He orders Matty to protect the river instead of instigating more fights. Joel manhandles Matty, again, in his attempt to get Matty to things his way.

Joel can’t see that the manhandling only makes Matty more resentful. If he wants a different kind of gang, he needs to try treating some of the members differently, starting with Matty, who has enough empathy and intelligence to see things Joel’s way, then to help influence others. But Joel is so controlling that he never wants to explain his reasoning to anyone he views as beneath him.

Burt returns to the compound and grabs a beer. Then he asks to see Bash. He tells Bash that he loved Percy as if he was one of them. Bash reminds him that Percy was one of them. Burt says they’re going to make it right. Bash says he already did. Burt says he needs to make it even righter. The Ghouls will hit back, so he needs to hit back harder, first.

Burt has one move- attack and hit so hard that you annihilate the enemy. No matter how small or large the infraction, that’s his response.

Joel meets Jukes in an isolated spot to discuss options, except there are none and they both know it. They quickly come down to hoping their friendship won’t be ruined by the war and part with the understanding that whatever happens next is just business. If they both come out of it alive, they’ll regroup.

Percy’s send off begins with a trumpet player playing Chicago’s 25 or 6 to 4. As the brawlers and Pin-Ups file out to their places, Burt shakes their hands in greeting. He stops to say hi to the Phoenixes. Matty is in awe. Johnson just looks at Burt with his usual ironically bemused calm. Ethan hangs back a little.

The stripped skeleton of Percy’s beloved truck, Thelma, is set on fire. Burt stands next to it to speak to the Brawlers. He is once again lit only by flames. Joel’s long peace has come to an end.

Burt: “I never cared much for funerals. Something made up by weak men to ease the pain of the lies that they tell themselves, that death has meaning. It does not. Family has meaning. You ever see a pack of wolves? The leader follows from behind. With our family, I’ve never needed to lead or to follow. Because our family has always been one. And when someone threatens the family that we built, we need to protect ourselves, and make them suffer. So make no mistake about it. We are now at war.”

This ritual is for the crowd. Bash is in his room, the prison cell he sentenced himself to after he betrayed Katherine. Katherine is with her new crew. Joel returns midway through it and goes straight home. Meredith sits on the other side of the compound with Tina. She hasn’t seen her father yet and contemplates leaving now, with Gertrude, instead of waiting until Queenie is “done”, as she had planned. Either way, she sees her father as weak, which is extra ironic, given his speech.

When Burt finishes, many of the men yell in agreement. The Phoenixes don’t.

Later, Meredith packs a bag while listening to Gertrude on the phone, telling her that there’s a guy they can buy some scratch from, then use the money from selling that to fund their trip out of town. Meredith packs her gun. Gertrude lost both parents in previous wars and doesn’t want to fight another.

Katherine explains to Earl that she needs to go to the compound tonight while the Brawlers are distracted by Percy’s send off, in order to make sure a seldom used back road still exists. While she’s there, she wants to drop an anniversary gift off with her ex.

Having found the back way open, Katherine makes her way into Bash’s cabin. He’s let his record play to the end and passed out, leaving the needle skipping at the end, which is a terrible, grating crime by itself. Friends don’t let friends scratch their albums and ruin their stereo needles, even when murder is on the table, so Katherine turns off the record player before she points her gun at Bash’s head.

This is undoubtedly the kind of thing that made him fall in love with her.

Bash still has Rufus curled up with him. Lyla shows up to get her toy and asks if Katherine is a friend of Bash’s. She decides they’re all one big happy friend group before trying to pull Rufus out from under her uncle the mass killer. Katherine tries to keep her gun out of sight while helping Lyla with Rufus.

I doubt guns faze Lyla at all.

Lyla notices that Katherine and Bash have matching heart tattoos on their wrists. To distract her, Katherine shows her a small carved bird in her purse and asks for help naming him. Lyla says they should leave the bird as a gift for Bash. Katherine knows that leaving the bird will give away her presence, but she indulges Lyla.

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The next day, Joel brings Lyla to the park gazebo where he met Rita. Lyla tells him that she has an idea for Harold Horpus’ story now. She thinks Harold is like an ant who’s lost their queen. He’s lost his purpose in life and needs to find it again. She explains that she thought of this when she “met the lady with the black heart and the yellow canary”- Uncle Bash’s ghost visitor.

Normally, Joel would be all over a story like this coming from his daughter and have figured out the truth of the situation within the hour. But this time, he’s distracted, trying to get her away from Burt’s war as quickly as possible, so he insists she was dreaming, even when she insists she wasn’t.

Rita arrives to take Lyla home with her. Lyla is mature beyond her years, more worried for her father than herself. He says he’ll be searching for his own “why”. Lyla says she’ll find Harold while they’re separated. Rita tells him to call when he’s done with the Brawlers.

Bash wakes up and sees the yellow canary. Katherine Harlow isn’t above a mixed message or two.

The three River Phoenixes eat in a diner, still thinking about Burt’s speech. Matty is excited that he gets to prove himself in a war with Burt. Johnson wants Matty to stop thinking so loud. Ethan is still in his own world, worrying about his own problems. His own problem turns up in the form of Katherine, who complements their jackets and pretends she doesn’t know any of them.

She scoots into the booth beside Ethan and chats them up for a minute, asking if they’re in a band or some other sort of group. Nobody is very friendly, but Johnson tells her they’re in transportation. Johnson definitely recognizes her after a second and notices how strangely Ethan is reacting, but he doesn’t tip his hand or Katherine’s.

As Katherine is leaving, she pretends to find Ethan’s phone on the floor and gives it back to him. The whole thing was a ruse to give him a new phone so he’d have to take her calls again.

Gertrude picks up Meredith from the phone booth and brings her back to the Ghouls compound. Gertrude is silent the whole ride and as they walk back to a hangout spot, where several young Ghouls are waiting. When Meredith walks in, one of the Ghouls acknowledges that she’s Burt’s daughter. Meredith pulls out her gun and points it at the female Ghoul. They all stand up, one pointing her gun at Meredith.

They are at a standoff, with the Ghouls being dismissive of Meredith, until someone else reaches into their jacket and Meredith shoots the main Ghoul in the head. Another yells to shoot Meredith, but the one with the gun says that Jukes told them to keep her alive. While they hesitate, Meredith shoots everyone but Gertrude.

Gertrude and Meredith have a standoff for a minute, Mer with an empty gun and Gertrude with a crossbow. Gertrude says that she was forced to kidnap Meredith.

Meredith leaves, taking Gertrude’s bike, symbol of her independence.

Commentary

Jukes went straight for someone who he thought would be an innocent, helpless victim and a high value target. He thought kidnapping Meredith would escalate the tension but not the violence. Obviously he underestimated her. Joel understood the way Jukes thinks and was smart to get Lyla out.

This is the first time we’ve seen where the Ghouls live. It looks less fortified and more homey than the Brawlers’ compound, which is probably better for their mental health but makes their chances of surviving Burt’s insanity worse.

In episode 6 we met a few more female gang members, then watched them die at the hands of a lone, white, overly-feminized, oppressed sex worker wielding a gun. Yay for diversity and nontraditional gender presentation. Boo for the other messages this show just sent.

I’m not sure they could have done more to make Meredith physically look like an innocent and pure child who’d been defiled by the evil minorities. While I love some good symbolism, where is the purity symbolism when it comes to Gertrude and Lyla? Or Ethan and Matty? All children are born innocent, not just Meredith.

If there’s a season 2, my number 1 request is for Meredith to stop dressing like an overgrown little girl. Her clothing is beautiful, but it’s meant to put her on a pedestal above the other characters while also still making her look like a hooker. It’s the worst kind of “Lolita” mixed messaging, associated with both the sexualizing of children and infantilizing of grown women.

Earlier in the episode, Meredith and Gertrude spoke on the phone while sitting next to each other. It was only revealed to the audience that they were together at the end of the call. Before they hung up, they were even shown in splitscreen, showing how they were being torn apart while together.

During the call, Gertrude begs Meredith to run away with her now, before things get any worse. Gertrude remembers Bert’s last few wars and has been left bereft by them. She doesn’t want to watch anymore loved ones die. Meredith can’t bring herself to leave yet, saying that her bike isn’t ready. Gertrude’s bike is. She wants them both to leave on her bike, but Meredith won’t budge.

At the end of the episode, after killing several Ghouls, Meredith rides away from the Ghoul’s compound on Gertrude’s bike. Circumstances have forced Meredith to grow up and become ready, like it or not. Gertrude has become ensnared in the war, just as she feared, and she’s watched friends die at the hands of someone she cares about. Like Jukes and Joel, the two are now on opposite sides of a war and their friendship may not survive.

The hot rods represent the heart or soul or best of the person. Did Meredith take Gertrude’s heart for safekeeping or did she take away the best of Gertrude?

We see fire used twice in this episode as part of rituals. Molly uses it medically to sterilize her surgical tweezers so that she can remove the buckshot from Earl’s neck and help him heal. After she’s done, he goes to the bar and tells Katherine about his son, helping to heal that wound as well.

Meanwhile, Percy’s beloved hotrod truck/”beast” Thelma is stripped of all usable parts and then the shell is burned as a symbolic cremation. Burt takes this opportunity to return to his “family” after a two year absence and speak to them as a group. He doesn’t speak about Percy. Even when he talks to Queenie and Bash, he doesn’t say much about Percy. In fact, he refers to Percy, who’s just died in the line of duty, as an outsider to Bash.

Burt tells the assembly they are going to war to avenge the perceived slight, but he doesn’t seem to care much about the affected people. He mainly seems to sense that people are restless, leading to skirmishes, and his solution is to start another bloody war. Keeping everyone else constantly fighting each other helps to maintain his own status, since no one can think straight long enough to plan a coup.

Queenie doesn’t have a 3 River Phoenixes or a 707 tattoo. She is a unique entity in the group. As are all of Burt’s closest allies. He only values conformity in his foot soldiers. But he’s a chaotic, so people tend to make mistakes when he’s around that they wouldn’t normally make.

That’s part of how Burt beats them or keeps them under his control and why he goes straight to war- to keep everyone else off balance, a place where he functions normally, but hardly anyone else does. Katherine learned the technique from Burt and it’s already working- both Bash and Joel are making mistakes.

I think Johnson was over the Brawlers years ago, but is either protecting someone or has nowhere else to go. He certainly sees through the BS that Matty loves so much, but he lets Matty have his fun. Johnson also keeps his mouth shut and lets the chips fall where they may. He seems to have stopped choosing sides and intervening, even when he could. Thus, he doesn’t say anything, even to Matty or Burt, when he recognizes Katherine in the diner. He let’s her give Ethan the phone and continue her battle with whoever she’s come back for.

Queenie, on the other hand, sees much more than she lets on and judiciously interferes behind the scenes much more than we realize, with a well-timed word to the right person. She’s the queen bee, always buzzing around the compound and checking in on people, then leaving them with something to think about.

I don’t think we’re supposed to see Joel and Jukes as lovers, but they do love their secret rendezvous. Some of the friendships in this show are very intense. It can be hard to tell if there are repressed feelings going on.

It’s probably too late now, and maybe it always was, but I wonder what would have happened if Joel had found something else for Burt’s standing army to do to use up testosterone and adrenaline besides fight wars. Personally, I’m fond of supporting the arts beyond burlesque, such as forming rock bands and making public street art. Getting out into nature is also good- let them rebuild the infrastructure of the Archipelago or campgrounds and other infrastructure in National Parks.

Or just encourage these gearheads to restart the races at the racetrack with all of those hotrods. Right now, the gangs’ vehicles serve mainly as an artistic outlet and status symbols. Their value as tools for escape or athleticism could be increased by holding sanctioned public competitions. That’s a business opportunity that’s waiting to be exploited and it doesn’t have to involve much exploitation of women and minorities.

The record Bash listens to in his room is the same radio drama he and Percy listened to at the VFW Post when he recruited Percy into the Brawlers. Bash is feeling some regrets, or at least wondering if he’s always made the best choices.

Katherine’s back way into the compound is both an actual road and a metaphor. The first person Burt asked for when he returned to the compound was Bash. Katherine checked on Bash to make sure killing Percy had the effect she expected it to. By hurting Bash, she’s already hurt Burt and destabilized the entire Brawlers organization. Bash was close to three people: Percy, Katherine and Burt. The night Katherine was left for dead, Bash chose Burt over her. Leaving the canary began the next phase of Katherine’s plan.

Images courtesy of Hulu.

Reprisal S1E6: For Love of the Archipelago Recap-The owls go to war & Meredith becomes a mouse. Queenie brings Burt back into the fold, where he does exactly what Joel has always known he'd do. Joel sends Lyla to Rita. #Reprisal In this episode, the owls go to war and Meredith becomes a mouse. Queenie brings Burt back into the fold, where he does exactly what Joel has always known he'd do.

[hardblazesong]

Noir Nocturne Part 1 Chapter 16 At the Movies (with so much love for the RG)

The rest of the bus trip was uneventful. Claire pointed out a bowling alley, pawn shop, and assorted other establishments for the duration of their journey. They heard the driver shout “This is you lady!” over his shoulder and followed her down the steps and out onto the large forecourt of the most extraordinary building. It was fashioned as a massive Chinese pagoda with enormous columns by the front doors topped with stylized masks of drama and comedy looking out over the entryway.

“Are ye sure this is the place Mistress?” Angus asked, sounding a bit nervous to Claire.

“Yes, it is used to premier motion pictures and all the Hollywood stars come in their finery to see and be seen. I think it is enchanting. Look at the dragon painted over the doorway! Picture Shows don’t look like this at home, I can assure you of that, although there are some lovely theaters. There is an Egyptian themed one as well not too far away. I hope it’s not too dear for a matinee though. Let me check at the box office.”

The men stayed near the curb and watched her walk up to a barely visible lady seated behind a glass window. Claire imagined that they were a tad overwhelmed at the foreignness of the décor. How does one go about explaining cultures so vastly different than one’s own? Frank would have known, but better not to think of him just now.

She found out that it was prohibitively expensive and the show didn’t start for another hour. That would not do. “I beg your pardon, I hope you don’t find this incredibly rude, but is there a smaller Cinema nearby with something that starts earlier?” she asked.

Grauman’s was showing Hell’s Angels with an endless list of prologue items, even for a matinee. She had loved the picture, and thought the men would like all the flying bits eventually, but as it was also about WW1, it felt unkind to expose them to more on that just yet. Besides, they wouldn’t be home in time for dinner, not an impression she wanted to make on their first day.

“Not at all dearie, not at all. The Ritz is right around the corner down that way. They have Lon Chaney’s talkie The Unholy Three starting in about fifteen minutes. You be sure to come back and see us though, only theater in the city with air conditioning!” the lady smiled, having given her sales pitch and pointed in a westerly direction.

Claire went back to the men and apologized for bringing them here first. “I had no idea how much it would cost, it was nearly five dollars, apiece! That’s well out of our budget lads. Come along, she told me where we could go instead.”

“Dinna fash, I didna like the looks of the place anyway.” Angus said, hoping to win a smile but also sincerely uncomfortable with the foreboding exterior.

The Ritz was much more familiar to Claire. The standard marquee and movie posters outside, with a doorman in a bellhop’s uniform at the glass front doors, who directed them to the interior box office. To the left of the entryway was a concessions area. Roasted peanuts, popcorn, Coca Cola, and assorted candies were on display under a row of glass cabinets.

She purchased their tickets and told them to get some snacks at the counter with their change. She didn’t coach them, hoping they were catching on to how the money worked. It was easy enough, pennies and then all fives and tens.  

The theater was beautifully decorated in the art deco style, all swirls, intricate lines and gilt, maroon carpeting woven through with lines of black. It had a balcony that was accessed by an elaborate staircase behind the ticket seller. It was lit by torchier wall lamps every few feet that gave off a warm amber glow.

“I think we should watch from the balcony, that way we hopefully won’t disturb others if you have questions or need to use the restroom.” Claire decided for them after noting the number of people already seated on the main floor.

“What’s a restroom then?” Murtagh puzzled while juggling his concessions in his hands and walking up the stairs beside her. He finally stuck his candy in one pocket and placed a small bag of peanuts in his other one.

Claire tried to control the laugh that was bubbling up, but it was impossible. “Well, it’s a bathroom, a privy, the head, the room where they keep the public toilets. Honestly, you can’t pee on walls or in the streets or yards here. It would be a very bad thing.” She covered her mouth with her hand and bit her lip to get control of herself. The oddest things struck her as amusing about this situation.

She was very excited to watch their reactions to all that they were going to see and hear in the next few hours. Of all the things that she had or would be introducing them to, this was probably her favorite. She had missed the escapism so much during the war and often thought if she had had that few hours at least once or twice a month it might have gone a long way towards making the entire experience more bearable.

They took their seats in the nearly empty balcony, with Jamie on her right and Murtagh on her left. Dougal and Angus sat immediately behind them. Their view of the screen was a good one, as the balcony itself extended to just behind the tenth row of seating below them. The lights flashed and she explained that it meant the entertainment was about to begin, whispering to indicate that is what they should do. She took a handful of popcorn from Jamie’s box, squeezed his arm and said happily “Here we go!”

The first images were of a trailer for All Quiet on the Western Front. All the men gasped simultaneously, looking to her, then back at the screen, then back to her. She felt Murtagh lean as far back in his seat as he possibly could, as if he was trying to escape. Jamie did the complete opposite, leaning forward and looking as if he wanted to reach out and touch the giant faces.

She doubted they were even understanding what they were seeing in the trailer. They were much too enraptured with the moving images and the music and voices. She took several pieces of the popcorn in her hand and placed them gently in Jamie’s gaping open mouth, before turning to Murtagh and placing a gentle hand upon his arm.

“Is it always so very loud Mrs.?” Murtagh said grimacing at her. She nodded and gave him a reassuring smile.

Dougal and Angus must have been struck dumb, for they issued not a sound beyond their initial gasps. The Coming Soon card came up and then a Movietonews newsreel came on regarding the upcoming Los Angeles construction for the 1932 Olympics. This was followed by a British produced newsreel, delayed somewhat, showing the Trooping of the Colors.

There was some grumbling from behind and a mmph from Murtagh at the sight of the troops and the English accented voice over, but they didn’t ask questions, so she thought she would save comments on it until much later.

“Tis a form of magic, it must be.” Dougal whispered in her ear when it was finished. She shushed him, saying that he should just keep watching and try to listen to what was being said.

Next came a cartoon with singing animals, a randy sailor and his lady love. Jamie, who couldn’t follow a tune, appeared quite scandalized by the subject matter of the lyrics and the antics on screen. When Barnacle Bill the Sailor left the lady to her own devices after the suggestion of intimacy, he turned to Claire with eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline, frowning and narrowing his eyes.

“Sassenach! Should ye be seeing this?” was all he managed to sputter out in the face of her complete disregard for what he thought was an improper subject for a lady.

“Hush Jamie, it’s just pictures drawn by artists with people supplying the voices. Children see these all the time.”

“I ken it isna real, but still…Weans see these? Tis outrageous, is what that is.” He huffed, his accent noticeably thicker, indicating his emotional reaction.

“Murtagh and Angus were laughing Jamie, and so was I, if you hadn’t noticed. Perhaps we will have to discuss the mores of the twentieth century later? For now, please try to relax and enjoy the movie that is coming next. It’s a drama, but it takes place in modern day. If you find you don’t like the story being told, study it for what it can teach you about these times. We won’t be able to stay for the second picture they will show after this one. Mrs. Bartlett would not appreciate us being late.”

“Murtagh pass Jamie the peanuts, shelling them will give him something to do with his hands while he calms down” she whispered to him while taking the popcorn box from Jamie and passing it to Dougal.

The four of them had purchased candy but seemed to have forgotten all about it. She demonstrated cracking open the peanuts and popped two in her mouth, preventing her from saying something she might regret to Jamie about taking things too seriously.

“Jamie drink your Cola, you’ll feel better with all that sugar in you” she said grinning a moment later, laying her head on his shoulder when the movie started.

TO BE CONTINUED

[notesonfilm1]

  Gabin as he is in La Marie du Port (right), and the much more youthful portrait the poster advertises (left). The image the poster sells harks back to his thirties films, perhaps hoping to appeal to his pre-war popularity and regain it. But it´s also an image that somewhat contradicts one of the film´s main themes, which is about inter-generational love. The film itself I´ve now seen twice and it gets better each time:

The film is based on the novel by Georges Simenon (see above) and tells the story of Henri Châtelard (Jean Gabin), a well-to-do owner of a restaurant and cinema in Cherbourg, the biggest town in the region, who accompanies his mistress Odile (Blanchette Brunoy) to her father´s funeral in the small village of Port-en-Bessin in Normandy, only to fall in love with her sister, Marie (Nicole Courcel).  There are several obstacles to the union of Châtelard and Marie: Marie is seeing a young local boy Marcel (Claude Romain), crazy in love with her and threatening suicide; she´s Odile´s sister; there´s a considerable difference in age (one of the things the poster for the film is trying to obscure); Marie doesn´t want to be a mistress like her sister, living the good life but shunned by ´respectable’ people — she wants a ring.

At the beginning of the film Henri and Odile are driving to the funeral of Odile´s father. They get a puncture and arrive late. These first few scenes paint a powerful picture of small town life and mentality. The house is so small, mourners and well-wishers remain outside, on the street. Inside, Marie is feeding the family. Odile and Marie have three younger siblings, which now have to be distributed amongst the aunts and uncles to be brought up. We get a sense of a subsistence culture –whether the children can earn their keep is part of the discussion of how and to whom they will be distributed –and that  children will most likely be used as slave labour until they come of age. Odile has escaped this by becoming Châtelard´s mistress. But at a price. She doesn´t really love him, or at least no longer. She´s stuck in Cherbourg where she really want to be in Paris. And she´s being shunned by the village folk she grew up with. Carné well indicates the community´s opprobium towards her by the expression in some of the mourner´s faces as she arrives to her father´s house (below right), something that reminded me of the scene with the nuns at the hospital in Almodóvar´s  Live Flesh (below right) and how a series of expressions can not only evoke character but a whole structure of feeling.

Marie is hard-working, dour, conscientious, honest, and Châtelard is smitten from the first moment he sees her (below left), an image significantly rhymed the first time Marcel sees her with Châtelard: interestingly, one is on the inside looking out, the other outside looking in.

Carné surrounds himself and this production with some of the greatest talents the French cinema of the period had to offer: Jacques Prévert worked on the screenplay (Louis Chavance and Geroges Ribemont-Dessaignes are the writers credited); there is beautiful work by Herni Alekan as cinematographer, the legendary Alexandre Trauner is with Auguste Capelier credited for the production design. And the way Carne orchestrates the various elements they contribute tells you all the story you need to know and more, as you can see in the lovely image below, where Claude, in the image that follows the one above right, sees Châtelard and Marie, clearly in love because, as you can see below, in that busy café, surrounded by people, and with Marcel´s own father propped at the bar anticipating the scene to come, the light seems to envelop them alone, a couple, even if they themselves don´t yet know it.

One of the things that´s striking about the film is the presentation of a freewheeling, guilt-free, pragmatic and easy sex-life to almost all of its characters. Marie and Marcel are the exceptions: she too puritanical and serious, he over-excited and dangerously romantic. But they´re young and they will learn.

The clip above is preceded by a scene in which a party leaves Châtelard´s restaurant because their table has been handed over to the local football team who´ve just won a match. The party leave in a huff except for the young woman who goest to the cinema next door. Châtelard has gone there too to eat his lunch and get some peace and quiet. But before the newsreel is over, they´ve agreed to spend the night together. It´s a scene that luxuriates in the cinema itself,  letting us see it in wide shots, with the projector throwing a beam of light in the darkness, and the screen itself creating a glow in the space. Note the partial lighting of the characters, allowing us to see their expressions but evoking the covert by the surrounding darkness. Note too the adventurous (at sea) playful (the cat), the structured (army manouvres) the explosive (the guns going off), and the brief that´s indicated in the newsreel being shown but that is also commenting on the action we see.

Another scene that I also found unusual in its attitude to sex is the one where Châtelard and Marie, find Odile (Châtelard´s mistress and Marie´s sister) in bed with Marcel (Marie´s boyfriend).  Marie and Châtelard have had a fight, he goes to find Marcel and when he opens the door he sees Odile and Marcel in bed together. Instead of being angry he finds it a joke, laughs, and won´t hold it against them later. It´s a scene unimaginable in American cinema of the period.

What I also found intriguing about the scene is that we´re shown the action through a relay of close-ups that indicate each of the principals´reaction but tellingly we´re never shown a two-shot or a medium shot in which Odile and Marcel are in the frame together, as if the idea really is too incongruous.

When Marie descends the stairs it´s photographed so as to evoke a feeling of hopes plummeting. But it´s not what Châtelard suspects: ‘If you only knew how little I care  about Marcel, even if he is with someone else, and even if it´s with my sister’. When Marie admits that she had really come for him, that she hadn´t wanted to say it but it´s true, the camera pans to a little girl, dressed poorly, with a milk can on one hand and a loaf of bread under her other arm,  behind a barred and locked gate that casts shadows inside (Châtelard here calls his house a cage). On one level the little girl is there as a narrative device to demonstrate the intrusion of the public on a private and sentimental moment. On a more metaphoric level, it´s clearly a commentary on Marie herself. But what exactly? It´s a moment that´s given considerable weight. It comes just after Châtelard says ‘Oh, so it´s for me that you´ve come’, at which point Châtelard looks left, and a pan follows his gaze to show us the little girl. Does that mean that there will be another young woman after Marie? Is it meant to signify a younger Marie. And does it mean that her choosing to go with Châtelard will be a kind of prison? I´m not sure but it´s an image that raises these and more questions and thus lingers in the mind (see above).

Carné is clearly in love with cinema and the cinema setting allows him to express it to us. Gabin is filmed against cannisters in his office, we see the projection system, posters, the cinema itself and clips from several films. The cinema also affords a nice contrast to the life and world Marie comes from.

La Marie du Port has two scenes set in Châtelard´s cinema. The first is the easy pick-up I discussed earlier on. The second takes place amidst a screening of F.W Murnau´s Tabu. Châtelard speaks of getting old, of time passing. Odile is off to Paris. Marcel to the cruise ships to become a lady´s hairdresser. Maybe he too will go away, in that boat he´s been fixing in the village. Besides one isn´t alone when one travels he muses. Marie comments that he doesn´t have to be alone. But he replies that, as she can see in the film,  there are girls in every port, ones that don´t impose conditions: rings, marriage. This is an interesting rhyming scene with the first scene in the cinema: the newsreel, vs Murnau´s romantic and luscious Tabu; they´re alone instead of part of the crowd as in the earlier scene, and more importantly, Marie walks out on him. She´s not that kind of girl. And he will chase after her, offer her the keys to his business, and make jokes about how at the wedding he´ll tell the officals she´s his daughter doing her first communion.

Seeing  La Marie du port again I was struck by how queer it seems to me now and not just becaause Carné was gay and he met his long term partner Roland Lessaffre , the sailor next to Gabin above, on the film : Chatelard, unmarried in his fifties, the open relationship he´s established with Odile, the easy pickups in cinemas, the older/younger pairings and the switch the narrative delivers, the dream of escape to the big city, the dream to be a lady´s hairdresser, the homage to Murnau, the identification with the prostitutes and the lowlife, the handsome sailors, the hypersensitive youth who attempts suicide. It evokes a ´structure of feeling´´or a ´’gay sensibility´of another time without anything being mentioned. I read the book yesterday to see if it was just me projecting: it isn´t. The film follows the book quite closely and is a page turner, more ‘exciting’ than the film, but without the depth or any queer connotations. Claude Viau, Marie´s young lover, takes up less space in the novel whereas Carné gives him a whole set of recurring scenes, his own struggle and dream, plus the way he´s visualised. The other question is, if this is so glaring to me now, why did I not notice it upon first viewing in Bologna where the main topic of conversation seemed to be the discrepancy in ages between Chaterlard/Gabin and Marie/Nicole Courcel, understandable as it´s one of the film´s main themes  (in the novel he´s meant to be 37 to her ‘six months short of 18).

La Marie du port was shown as part of the Gabin mini-retrospective at Bologna and he´s glorious in it, understated but alive at every, and in every film he´s got a moment of expression that brings a character alive. The moment below is characteristic.  The scene is really about Marcel and his father (Julienne Carette, the poacher in Renoir´s Rules of the Game).  Gabin´s just responding. But look at how he responds; his expression evoking a whole lifetime experience of dealing and humouring drunks, completely relaxed and at ease, yet indicating a strength capable of dealing with every situation.: a man who knows how to handle himself.  It´s wonderful.

  As is the film. It´s a great film that hasn´t yet gotten it´s due, possibly because Carné and Gabin, separately and together, have so many other more famous masterpieces in their filmography. Don´t let that deter you.

José Arroyo

        La Marie du Port (Marcel Carné, France, 1950) Gabin as he is in La Marie du Port (right), and the much more youthful portrait the poster advertises (left).

[theawkwardterrier]

In the Bloom of Life

Steggy Positivity Week, day 5 Prompt: Tropes, Kinks or Cliches 

Summary: Five times Steve gave Peggy flowers, and one time she gave one to him.

AO3 link here.

i.

It's not the first time he's seen anything green — he was a Fresh Air Fund kid for a couple of summers, and there's Central Park, of course — but the lawn outside the barracks at Camp Lehigh is the first place where the green doesn't really belong to anyone. There's no groundskeeper, no housewife keeping a careful eye, and Steve doesn’t think anyone would even bother watering this spot, so he doesn't feel bad about absently picking at the grass.

He's not sure the sentry would agree about that, or even about him being outside instead of resting up for his big procedure tomorrow, though, so he makes sure to press into the shadows as a flashlight beam shines around.

“Best be quicker next time,” a voice says by his ear. “You would have been caught if Stokes were actually paying a bit of attention to his job.”

Steve scrambles up. “Agent Carter.” His eyes blur from looking into the light of the window where she's framed, but he salutes quickly at the negative space where he knows she exists. “I was just looking to get some air.”

“Relax, Private.” She sounds vaguely amused. “I'm not looking to write you up. I think you're entitled to a little relaxation.” After a very minor pause, not even long enough for him to think up a response, she adds, “I actually was coming to see if you were prepared for tomorrow.”

Steve shrugs. “No one's given me any real details about what's going to happen, so I don't know how prepared I can be.”

“A fair point.”

How is it that every time she smiles it feels as if he's won something? It even makes him forget the nerves that have suddenly decided to visit him, although he knows he has to take the chance.

“I guess sleep's probably the best way to prepare,” he says reluctantly.

“Oh, I've found stargazing to be a decent diversion to settle the nerves,” but she opens the window wider and holds out a hand to help him in.

He's placed his palm against hers before he realizes that he's still holding a flower, a clover, slightly bedraggled now that it's been picked and handled and pressed between them.

He blurts out a quick apology as soon as he's climbed through, but she just waves him off. “There's plenty of clover out there to go around. And I'm none the worse for having it.” She plucks it from his unresisting palm, twirling the thin stem. “Good night, Private.”

“Steve,” he says quickly. “You can call me Steve. If you want.”

She gifts him with another smile. “Good night then, Steve.” For some reason he expected her to trade places with him and lower herself out the window, but she just uses the door.

It takes him a while to fall asleep, but it's not really about nerves anymore.

ii.

For the first three days, she's furious with him. After a week, it's mostly faded to a vague disappointment that she could have misjudged him so badly. After a month she swears to forget the whole thing and stop replaying the details (how pleased and proud he'd looked, showing off his new shield, and how satisfying the bullets had been when they'd hit it). After two months, Philips casually recommends they go to the cinema on base together and casually glances over as the newsreel shows the first footage of Steve and his troops that she's seen in a long while. As the camera pans over his compass and his embarrassed, open-and-shut face, she wonders if she's misjudged him twice over.

A week after that, she finds out secondhand from a starstruck corporal that the Howling Commandos have been and gone from headquarters back into the field in a little under twenty-four hours. She presses forward for several hours before she realizes that the emotion she's been burying is disappointment.

The girl she’s rooming with is asleep by the time she makes it back that night, so she has to keep the lights very low. Still, even in the dimness, the first thing she sees is a new bouquet on the side table. Clara’s always getting them from different beaux. Peggy goes over to see them, hoping that something beautiful might cheer her up. She leans over, breathing in the scent of orchids and peonies, fingering the pink and white flowers delicately.

She’s about to turn away to prepare for bed when she sees the card on the table. The envelope has her name in a clear, neat hand.

I know I can’t take back the words, but I can apologize for then. I should never have said what I did, and I’m sorry that I made it seem as if I don’t value who you are and what you do. I’m also sorry I didn’t get a chance to deliver these in person, although this note is probably more articulate than I would have been.

All my best,

Steve

He’s included a small sketch: a cartoon of himself, complete with cowlick and broad shoulders tucked shyly inward, handing the bouquet to a pencil version of her. Her cartoon self looks dubious, but has something that might be a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth.

She leans against the table, card still in hand. Perhaps she’s misjudged him again.

iii.

“You think you could walk a little louder?” Morita hisses to Dugan.

The man himself just gestures rudely behind his back, but Falsworth says with an acidic simplicity, “I might point out that your whisper isn’t exactly subtle.”

“Any chance you all could pick up the pace?” Jones adds, and although his tone is perfectly polite and he had nothing to do with the coffee incident of the previous hour, the rest turn and glare at him. At this point, Dernier mutters something about how minimal an amount he’d trade them all for, and although they’re not all honor’s students in French, they get the point and start to glare at him instead.

“Just a little longer, boys, and then we can stop for the day,” Bucky tells them through half-gritted teeth.

“At what point are you going to tell them that you have no idea where we are or when we’ll get to stop?” Peggy says quietly to Steve from where they’re walking at the front of the group.

Steve winces. He’d memorized the map before they left, but that hadn’t meant much considering troop movements, the destruction of war, and the fact that they’re mostly walking through forest without a lot of landmarks in the first place. He’s a city boy, more used to streets and avenues than using the characteristics of trees to navigate. “Next clearing we see,” he says out of the corner of his mouth, “I’m telling them we were aiming for it all along.”

Peggy rolls her eyes and almost laughs, moving a vine out of the way. “Yes, and I’m sure they’ll believe you.” She turns back to check on the sullen group behind them. When she faces forward again, she finds Steve staring at her. Her eyes shift immediately to check their surroundings, keeping her voice calm and quiet and urgent as she asks, “Is something wrong?”

He startles. “What—? No. It’s just...You’ve got something. Here.” He gestures to his own chest, and when Peggy looks down at the corresponding spot on her body, she finds that a weedy, white flower has wormed its way between her layers of clothing.

“It seems these woods have got their hooks in me as well,” she says wryly, and moves to pull it out, but Steve actually stops walking, and puts a hand over hers.

With awkward politeness, he asks “May I?” When she nods, he removes the flower from her clothing, and replaces it in her hair, sliding it gently and carefully so that it is secure behind her ear. “There,” he says softly when he’s finished. “A little beauty’s important in a place like this.”

Everything is momentarily, impossibly still. Then Morita asks behind them, “Cap, why’re you stopping? Are we almost there?”

Steve’s glance around is so frantic that Peggy stifles a laugh. He must have heard anyway, because he throws her a playful glare before pointing at a spot up ahead and mouthing, “I know that crossroads!” Over his shoulder, he tells the boys, “Just another mile and we’ll be at the place.”

They groan, clearly unaware how close they came to being in no place at all. Peggy turns as well and says, “I don’t know about you gentlemen, but I’m going to take the last mile at a jog,” and takes off. She hears Steve snicker behind her, and the rest groan before they pick up their knees and follow.

iv.

Captain America doesn’t spend much time in the Pacific. Even when he’s actually sent there, it isn’t for very long.

“Three camps, two days,” Steve tells her, his voice as quick as their steps along the hallway of SSR headquarters. “Brought back some memories.” His tone indicates that these aren’t entirely of the pleasant variety. Although Peggy assumes that the men would be more receptive to a Captain America who has actually seen combat, she understands why it might make Steve remember less enthusiastic audiences, and just how much more he might have done to bolster their numbers or morale. At least the latter was the only reason he’d agreed to a quick trip away from his missions.

“How did things seem?” Peggy knows that newsreels don’t show the worst of things, and that any reports she’s seen will have cloaked the truth in official language.

Steve shakes his head. “I’m not sure who has it worse. I’m going to talk to Stark about trying to come up with something to ward off the mosquitos.” He spots Howard at that moment, and goes to break off toward him, turning to say goodbye to Peggy.

“You give it to her yet?” Howard calls, and Steve reddens immediately.

“Did you have something for me?” Peggy asks, unsure if Steve’s blush is charming or alarming.

He fumbles in his pocket and takes out a palm-sized wooden box. “I— They had these all around on the islands, and the fellas there said they were okay to eat. I grabbed a handful before I left. Stark dried them for me.”

Peggy opens the box, only partially to disrupt Steve’s babbling. Inside she finds a mass of reddish flowers all curled up, crumbling slightly when she touches them.

“They’re hibiscus. For tea,” Steve says. “I thought they might be nicer than the stuff they give us now.” Sheepishly, he adds, “You always make this once more into the breach face before you start a cup,” and demonstrates with a grimace.

“Carter!” Phillips barks from down the hall, turning away before she can say anything, assuming she’ll follow. She closes the box carefully.

“Thank you,” she says seriously. “This will certainly make things more palatable.” She lays a hand on Steve’s cheek for an incredibly brief instant, then moves to follow Phillips down the hall, only turning once to watch Steve disappearing into Howard’s lab.

She and Phillips are up late that night, looking over maps and memos. She makes a cup of tea around one in the morning. It’s just as lovely as she’d hoped.

v.

Peggy is ready and waiting by seven on the dot. By 7:15 on the dot, Steve has still not arrived.

“Oh, Peg.” Angie hugs her against her side. “If he can’t be bothered to show up on time, he doesn’t deserve to have you waiting.”

Peggy shakes her head. She feels as if all the residents of the Griffith are watching and pitying her. “I’m sure he has a perfectly reasonable explanation, Angie.”

“I’m afraid I agree with Miss Martinelli,” Mrs. Fry calls over. Peggy bites her tongue. “If a young man lacks the courtesy to arrive on time, who knows what other indecorous behavior he might be engaging in?”

Blessedly, Steve walks in before Peggy has to answer. Rain speckles his overcoat. He looks a bit taken aback by the number of women staring (or glaring) at him, but he moves forward with his focus on Peggy.

“I’m sorry I’m late. Buying these took longer than I’d expected.” The bouquet he holds out is lovely, an elaborate arrangement of bright Gerber daisies and wide fragrant lilies, all surrounded by greenery.

Peggy takes it in one arm. “Thank you,” she says, reaching out to touch his shoulder. “But there really wasn’t any need for these.”

“You deserve them,” Steve says quietly, in a voice only she can hear. Then he adds, louder and a bit offended, “This is how things are done, anyway. You bring flowers for a first date. Everyone knows that.”

“Well, your politeness has been noted.” She leans into the flowers appreciatively, showing them briefly to an impressed Angie, before saying, “I’ll go put them in some water upstairs and then we can go.”

“Uh.” Steve looks around again. Most of the girls are at least pretending to be otherwise occupied, but there are certainly quite a few eyes still on him, Mrs. Fry’s the beadiest of all. “You sure I can’t help you get that vase ready?”

“Oh, I can handle that on my own,” Peggy says merrily. “And regardless, the policy here does not allow men above the first floor.”

“You sure you can’t make an exception?” Steve asks as Mrs. Fry bears down on him.

“Oh no,” Peggy calls over her shoulder, already walking toward the stairs. “This is how things are done,” and she buries her grin in the bouquet.

Steve still arrives with gifts, but he is very prompt after that.

vi.

“Miss Carter, please don’t panic.”

Peggy finishes arranging her skirt (perhaps her mother would have been scandalized by a tea-length dress, but Peggy hadn’t considered anything else) and looks up. “Mr. Jarvis, I do find that such a preface only invites further panic.” Considering that her wedding preparations have been relatively panic-free so far, she supposes she’s due, but she was rather hoping to avoid such incidents.

“Oh Edwin, don’t worry her.” Ana walks into the room behind him and places a calm hand on his arm. “Everything is just fine. Captain Rogers and his friends have arrived, and they are all in place in the chapel.”

“What’s the problem, then?” Angie asks, helping Peggy straighten her veil.

Jarvis opens his mouth, but closes it again at a glance from his wife. “It appears that Captain Rogers has left behind his buttonhole, and he seems quite upset about it,” she explains.

Peggy begins to laugh, a long, breathless chuckle. She looks up at the ceiling of the bride’s room. “Considering all we’ve been through, Mr. Jarvis, this is no reason to panic at all.”

However upset Steve had allegedly been about his forgetfulness, Peggy cannot detect a shred of it on his face as she walks down the aisle. He looks, if she does say so herself, rather enchanted.

(Although, if she must say so herself, she is rather enchanted with him as well.)

“I hear you’re having a bit of a problem,” she says quietly as she reaches him.

He looks at her, dazed, as the priest opens his bible. “What?”

“I’ve a gift for you.” Out of the one of pockets she had added to her dress, she takes a small silver penknife. The priest’s eyes widen as she extends the blade, but to his credit, he says nothing. She eyes the measurement carefully, then very deliberately cuts a rose from her bouquet.

“There,” she says, pinning it quickly to Steve’s jacket, ignoring how this all must look to their guests. “Now you look just right.”

“I think we both look pretty perfect,” Steve corrects, tilted fully toward her now, and the priest nods at the two of them, smiles, and begins.

[theyellowsubmarinefanremakeblog]

Part 6

(We switch to an old 1940s newsreel style.)

Reporter: Dateline Waterbloo! Year one of the new Meanie Imperium. Confidence is high as this new and proud nation works long and hard to establish its new government.

(Cut to the Blaumiesen reporter.)

Reporter: I'm here today in the land formally known as Pepperland but now as of recent known as Waterbloo.

(Cut to the fate of Pepperland: The Pepperlanders are sadly frozen in place, and there’s not a flower in sight. Well... there’s a flower, but that’s being eaten by a Stormblueper.)

Reporter: Though it is not easy to establish a government from the ground up, Waterbloo is fortunate to have hard working individuals making their regime stable. And here's one of them now. Bluford, recently appointed Minister of Trade. Tell me, new Minister, what does your new job exactly entail?

Bluford: I have a lot of stuff I can trade. From blue ore to human children’s tears and we're hoping we can trade them to other nations for goods and valuables. 

Reporter: So, you really think other nations will trade goods and valuables just for those?

Bluford: Oh, sure. North Korea would sell thirty percent of its military just for a video recording of human terror. (Stock footage of people running and screaming) Must be pretty rare there.

Reporter: Of course military forces aren't a major concern in Waterbloo, Secretary of Defense Shyaman assures the public that everything is well protected, especially from the horrors of music.

Shyaman: It's true that we're a small nation and are therefore more prone to attack. But we have a good drill sergeant who knows how to keep up the men's morale.

Drill Sergeant: Stand up straight! (punches Stormblueper) Tuck in ya shirt! (punches Hidden Persuader) Stop bein' so tall! 

Apple Bonker: Can’t help it. (PUNCH) Ow.

Drill Sergeant: YOU SAY SOMETHIN’?!

Stormblueper: C-c-c-Course not! ‘M deathly afraid of you!

(The drill sergeant pauses, then punches him in the face.)

Reporter: Looks like a solid team you've got there.

Shyaman: Indeed.

Reporter: However, there've been a few reports that you're a little gun crazy.

Shyaman: WHO SAID THAT?!

(He shoots the cameraman and then a test pattern appears.)

Reporter: But an invasion seems unlikely thanks to good relations kept by the Head of Immigration, Clodwal.

Clodwal: (on the phone) What do you MEAN you don’t agree with me?! DO YOU KNOW WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH?!

(He pounds a Countdown Clown’s nose. There is the distant sound of an explosion, and the phone goes dead.)

Reporter: Every nation needs a treasurer, and Waterbloo has Manikanth, who I understand also designed the flag for Waterbloo. True?

Manikanth: It is. And for a nation like Waterbloo, I figured that we really needed an epic flag. That's why I came up with a musclebound Stormblueper carrying machine guns and stomping on a music note. Because when people look at that, all they can say is "WATERBLOO!".

Reporter: Well, it looks like you fellas don't have a flagpole yet.

Manikanth: Well, we weren't exactly sure how to get their flag down and ours up. So, we're just using Oscar as our flagpole.

(Cut to Oscar the Apple Bonker atop a building and holding the flag, which the Stormbluepers salute.)

Reporter: And there are others looking out for the well-being of Waterbloo. Take Oldwin, for example. He is making sure everyone is in good shape acting as Waterbloo's Surgeon General.

Oldwin: In my short time as Surgeon General here in Waterbloo, I've made two amazing medical discoveries. One: When holding a gun, you will not die.

Reporter: Really? And how does that work exactly?

Oldwin: I'm holding one and I'm not dead. Science proven. Secondly, our research has shown that dieting and exercise does not help build healthy bodies. So, that's why I have encouraged everyone here to start smoking.

(Cut to Blaumiesen smoking and choking. One guy collapses.)

Oldwin: Studies show that smoking does well to strengthen the body and prevent disease.

Reporter: Your studies show that?

Oldwin: Of course. Right here on this chart. (looks at upside down clipboard, turns it over) Heh. What do ya know? (chuckles) I had this bloody thing upside down. Oh. That's hilarious.

Reporter: But not everyone in Waterbloo is questionably insane. Take for example, Sunil, the local shockjock radio propagandist. So, what exactly about the Waterbloo government bothers you so?

Sunil: Well, nothing really. It's just that people agree with angry hosts on the radio, it makes them feel better about themselves. So, in my own way. I'm helping the blue people's morale.

(The reporter looks towards camera and shifts his eyes awkwardly, as if to question how that would work.)

Reporter: Another person keeping up the morale is Livius who is now head officer for science and technology.

Livius: At first we didn't have much in the science department.

(Cut to a pump rocket launching.)

Livius: But, I'm certain we can get things to a more legitimate level.

Reporter: Well, there is someone in this nation that still does well to keep order in hand. This is Mr. Neel. Tell me, Neel, what are you going to do to keep this nation safe?

Mr. Neel: (a Hidden Persuader) Well, it's all about surprise to fool our enemy. We are trying to find those who are best able to blend into their environment. For example, we have discovered that Yahto here has a natural talent for camouflage. Isn't that right, Yahto?

Disembodied voice from the ether: Right!

Reporter: But, do you really think stealth and surprise are going to be enough to keep your enemies on their toes?

Mr. Neel: Oh, of course. It's all about illusion. In fact, I'm not even in front of you.

(Cut to the reporter holding the mic out, with Mr. Neel behind him. The reporter then turns around, startled.)

Reporter: Oh! Very good. Well, we all know what goes on outside the government building. Let's see what goes on inside the government building. (He extends his arm, and there is a WHACK.)

Yahto: OW!

Reporter: This is Secretary of State Max. Tell me, Max, what does a normal day entail for you?

Max: Well, mostly I come up with brilliant ideas and His Blueness then slaps me and claims them as his own.

Reporter: Does that pay well?

Max: Not really. But it sure does hurt a lot.

Reporter: And now for the moment you've all been waiting for! An interview with the man himself! The man who made Waterbloo possible! His Blueness, Chief Cerulio!

Cerulio: GREETINGS!

Reporter: Your Blueness, what are your plans now for this new, glorious nation?

Cerulio: Well, first, we plan on taking over the other Seas. Then, we plan on taking over the entire ocean. And then the world.

Reporter: Ah. And how do you plan on accomplishing this exactly?

Cerulio: I’ll give you a hint. It involves... total o-blue-teration.

Reporter: Well, thank you very much for your time.

Cerulio: Not at all.

Reporter: This has been a special report from Waterbloo.

(Cut to the Waterbloo Flag overlayed with the Glove chasing innocent bystanders, as Cerulio laughs at their misery. A donkey is then overlayed with him with a HEE-HAW. Scene changes to the Beatles and Jeremy, sneaking through Pepperland.)

Ringo: What do we do?

Paul: For now, we coagulate with the crowd.

(Cut to a Stormblueper on patrol. He looks around, as is sensing that something is up.)

George: Cutouts at the ready? Then let’s cut out!

(They sneak through the landscape with cutouts of Pepperlanders to disguise themselves. When the Stormblueper looks at them, they freeze. When he looks away, they continue on. Eventually, they reach the spot where Clef, along with three women, stand frozen. These three girls are the Sonata sisters, Razz, Dazz and Jazz.)

Ringo: He looks like a likely lad to help us.

(They secretly sing a few more bars of “Think for Yourself”, bringing both him and the Sonatas, who are within earshot, out of their immobilized state. He exhales, relieved to be free.)

Jazz: Thank goodness!

Razz: Are you here to liberate us?

Clef: Obviously, but sshhhh!

(They all hide as a Stormblueper passes by.)

Clef: We’d better hide in town.

(Dissolve to the group in Hearttown, Pepperland’s main town. They reach the Sonatas’ home and enter.)

Paul: Groovy place you’ve got.

Dazz: It’ll become even more beautiful once the land is restored.

John: So, what’s your story?

Clef: Well, first things first: The name’s Charlie Elfwood, but you can call me “Clef”.

John: Nice name, that.

(Cut to them having tea. Clef is chatting away.)

Clef: So these blue guys are poking me while I’m frozen and making fun of me, and while I’m trying to ignore them. I’m thinking ‘Well, hey! It could be worse!’ Then one of the tall guys comes along, and I think ‘Oh darn.’ He stops, takes one look at me, and then starts kicking me in the shin. Then all the other blue guys start joining in. So, I’m STUCK there wondering ‘How the heck am I gonna get out of this?’ Well then all of a sudden, that’s when the arrow finally slips outta my hand, and right now it just happens to be aimed right at the tall guy’s-

Jeremy: Ooh!

Clef: Yeah. Anyway, I can help you get those instruments. I know my way around that fort. I once showed my friend the place.

Ringo: Your friend, eh? Can he help out, too?

Clef: Actually, he’s the one that needs help. See, the Meanies got him locked up in there.

Paul: Why?

Clef: Well-uh-He’s... the Chief Meanie’s nephew.

Beatles: His nephew?!

Clef: Yeah.

(The smoke from the incense burning illustrates Clef’s story.)

Clef: We first met when he snuck into town one night. Turns out that he was tired of life in Azulia and wanted something more, so I gave him that. I taught him that life in Pepperland wasn’t as scary as the Meanies made it out to be, and pretty soon, we became the best of friends. But somehow, his uncle found out about it, and he got really mad. That’s what provoked him into taking over.

(The smoke dissipates as Clef finishes his tale.)

Clef: It’s my fault they’re here. And I gotta make up for it. That’s why I wanna join you in saving my friend and Pepperland.

John: Of course you can come! I mean, just because he’s blue, that doesn’t mean he’s a Meanie like the rest of them.

Clef: Great! So it’s settled. We get the instruments and my best friend out of there!

(Everybody nods in agreement.)

Clef: ‘Course, you’re gonna have to disguise yourselves if your gonna impersonate the band.

Ringo: He’s right, you know.

George: If we only had the uniforms.

(Jeremy smiles, then holds out a tailor’s kit.)

Clef: Okay, that’ll do!

[jeroldlockettus]

Not Your Grandmother’s I.M.F.

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, IMF, speaks during the Plenary session of the 2017 IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings on Friday, October 13 in Washington, D.C. Ryan Rayburn/IMF Photo

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Not Your Grandmother’s I.M.F.” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

The International Monetary Fund has long been the “lender of last resort” for economies in crisis. Christine Lagarde, who runs the institution, would like to prevent those crises from ever happening. She tells us her plans.

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post.

*      *      *

As head of an institution with 189 member countries and about $1 trillion at its disposal, Christine Lagarde has a pretty busy schedule. So you can’t be too surprised, or upset, when she shows up a half-hour late for an interview.

Christine LAGARDE: I would like to apologize to you because I know we’ve been delaying and postponing.

LAGARDE: And I offer total apologies. It’s my fault.

Since 2011, Lagarde has been running the International Monetary Fund. It’s been an eventful era, to say the least. The aftermath of a crippling recession; a European debt crisis and a global productivity slowdown; populist uprisings that are based, ostensibly at least, on economic distress. So we were pleased that she agreed to squeeze us in last Thursday for a 45-minute interview.

LAGARDE: Can we say 40 rather than 45?

LAGARDE: Because I’m due to spend time with the World Bank, with their board, and I don’t want to offend them too much.

DUBNER: Eh, they’re not so important. C’mon.

LAGARDE: (Laughs).

DUBNER: Who would you rather spend time talking to: Freakonomics Radio or the World Bank? Let’s be honest here.

LAGARDE: (Laughs)

Today on Freakonomics Radio, we’ll hear how Lagarde treats I.M.F. members who don’t follow the rules:

LAGARDE: We warn the authorities that this is not acceptable and that expedited measures must be taken to keep the bus on the road.

We’ll talk about economic policy making and gender.

LAGARDE: If Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters it would be a different story.

And: it takes a lot to impress, or surprise, Christine Lagarde. But it happens:

LAGARDE: You know what, there is one thing that totally blew my mind.

That’s coming up, right after this:

*      *      *

DUBNER: All right. Let’s begin — if you, would please state your name and what you do.

LAGARDE: Okay. My name is Christine Lagarde and I am currently the managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

DUBNER: Mhmmm Can you describe what you actually do in a given or typical day?

LAGARDE: Okay. I spend about 50 percent of my time at headquarters here in Washington, and 50 percent of my time traveling to member countries. Because the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, has 189 members, that are countries, that occasionally will request my presence and I have to attend those G-20, G-7, and various meetings around the world. So any given day in Washington I would typically get up very early, at about 5:00ish in the morning. I do exercise on a daily basis when I’m in Washington.

DUBNER: What do you do for exercise?

LAGARDE: What do I do? Well, I combine, you know, I’m multitasking, as so many women do. And I read some material that has been given to me the day before and I do stationary bicycle for about 40 minutes and then I do a little bit of other exercises. Details of which I will spare you. I finish with a bit of breathing and a couple of yoga postures that I like particularly. Then after that, shower, breakfast, things like that and I walk to the office when it’s not raining.

My day at the office can be anywhere between typically eight o’clock until about eight o’clock or sometimes a bit later. And I will, you know, allocate my time between meetings with teams or with heads of department or with the board. I do a bit of reading of materials. And I spend quite a bit of time as well on the telephone talking to either ministers of finance from different countries around the world or leaders of countries where we are trying to help and provide services.

DUBNER: You were born in Paris to two professors. Your mother taught French, Latin, and ancient Greek. Your father, English literature. I also understand you were a talented synchronized swimmer and were on the French national team. So how did that person, the daughter of those professors and the synchronized swimmer, turn into the managing director of the International Monetary Fund?

LAGARDE: (Laughs). Well, unfortunately none of my parents is actually here to see it.

DUBNER: Oh, sorry to hear about that.

LAGARDE: I’m sure they’d be both pleased about that. But you know, I owe it to them and to many other people along the way. But it’s certainly the love and confidence that they have given me, as well as the appetite for reading, exploring, being open to other countries and other languages. That was certainly through my father. And that you know, I am where I am — It’s a lot of hard work, a lot of determination, a lot of reading over the course of my life. And certainly the confidence to sometimes take the lead, to sometimes say yes, to sometimes say no, and try to carry the team with you along that I think is predominantly generated by the love that I’ve received.

The I.M.F.’s “founding fathers,” as Lagarde has called them, were the British economist John Maynard Keynes and the American Treasury official Harry Dexter White. They wanted an institution that would promote a stable international monetary system and help create an economic network that would incentivize peace.

LAGARDE: It was just after the Second World War and everybody at the time thought that it would be much better to have a multilateral dialogue rather than go to war.

DUBNER: And this goes back to Bretton Woods, yes?

LAGARDE: Yes, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, 1944.

NEWSREEL: At Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, delegates from 44 Allied and associate countries arrived for the opening of the United Nations Monetary and Financial conference.

LAGARDE: Forty-four countries deciding that talking, sharing, opening up was better than closing down and entering into war.

DUBNER: Now, most people who think about the I.M.F., which is probably not that many people on a daily basis …

LAGARDE: Granted.

DUBNER: … But when we do we usually think about you in moments of fiscal crisis in some country that we probably don’t really know that much about, maybe not even know where it is, but obviously the I.M.F. does a lot more than that. You are the so-called lender of last resort; but also you monitor the economies of nation-states around the world; and you engage in what you call “capacity development.” Can you talk for just a moment about toggling between the crisis management and the kind of growth development that the I.M.F. also does.

LAGARDE: Yeah. So the mission is about improving financial stability and prosperity. As a result of that, we are engaged in three lines of business. The one that you mentioned first – which is the one that we are best known for, because it’s more visible – is the lending of last resort, when those countries cannot finance or refinance themselves on the markets because the situation is very bad. And in that case we lend international community money in consideration for commitment on the part of that country that receives the loan to actually fix its public finances, take some necessary measures to restore its financial stability, and be able to yet again access markets.

So we enter into those agreements on a short-term basis with sometimes difficult measures that have to be taken rapidly, which is often called austerity. But in my view it’s more like discipline that should have been observed in the years before and that we have to help the government in place administer and implement so that the country can again become independent financially and economically.

DUBNER: There is complaining of course, in retrospect, a lot of countries where the I.M.F. intervenes as a lender of last resort , often they end up being resentful of the terms that are imposed on them. As you noted, you know, you’re prescribing medicine that they should have been taking for years and they weren’t and that’s why it’s come to that. Can you talk about that tension of you, as an agency that is the backstop for countries like that, but also trying to build better practices?

LAGARDE: Yes. You know, first observation is that for a program to succeed, so for that discipline to be restored, it takes ownership and support by the authorities. And in many instances where that support is available and the program is endorsed and implemented by the authorities — because it’s theirs and in the interest of their population — it very often works, and it certainly works better in all circumstances.

Second point there is a bit of a pattern, where shortly after the program has been completed and the situation has improved and the growth comes back and the country can go back to markets, there is a time period during which there is resentment against the, sort of, the emergency doctor that came in and said, “You really need to operate here and there and do this and that.” And then it’s followed by a realization that actually that was needed. And that resentment gradually phases out.

I have seen that on the ground in Latin American countries, most of them, not all of them. I’ve seen it more and more in Asia Pacific and hopefully I will see it during my lifetime — hopefully as a managing director, who knows? — with Europe.

DUBNER: But let me ask you this. Sometimes there’s, you know, bad policy or just an unwillingness to take the medicine all along, or bad practices, which may be unintentional. But a lot of the malfeasance is — well, it’s malfeasance. So let’s talk for a moment about bribery and corruption and how much that is a root cause of the problems that you eventually are called in to mop up. So you recently put the annual global cost of bribery at roughly $2 trillion, about two percent of global GDP, and those are just the hard costs, not counting knock-on effects.

But additionally, as we speak, just today, you publicly announced that you’re delaying a $17.5 billion bailout package to Ukraine for failing to fight political corruption. So talk about how much of what you are addressing is kind of after-the-fact disaster created not by people who don’t quite know how to run a central bank or run an economy, and more created by a handful of really bad actors.

LAGARDE: Well, there are — there are unfortunately several instances where, surprise surprise!, we find out that such-and-such loan agreement had not been disclosed or such-and-such operation that should have involved public finance has been operated on the side in a special-purpose vehicle that has remained undisclosed.

When that happens, clearly there has been either deliberate misrepresentation or convenient omittance; in that case we just suspend the program. And we say no more disbursement will be available until these issues have been cleared, until there is complete transparency and until there is a real dialogue and explanation provided to the international community through us.

That happens, and I think that we as an institution committing international money, we have to be extremely firm and uncompromising about it. That’s point number one. Point number two: there are programs, and you’ve just mentioned Ukraine, where one of the key commitments was to set up an institution and to set up a court and to organize a process by which corruption would be identified, would be investigated in accordance with the rule of law and with due process, so that it could be sanctioned eventually if proven and measures been taken.

When we see that these commitments are slow in the making, that there is delay that is affecting the delivery of the commitments, same thing. We warn the authorities that this is not acceptable and that expedited measures must be taken to keep the bus on the road. Absent which disbursements are no longer available. And I’m pleased to see that apparently the president of Ukraine is today taking the steps to keep the bus on the road, and we will be very vigilant.

Now the third point is we have, as an institution, always cared about these corruption issues because they are a cancer that actually cripples economies and discourage people from joining forces, contributing value, and doing the right things. And we think that this is just hurting both the financial stability and the prosperity that are our mission. And we have in particular provided a lot of technical assistance on anti-money laundering and on countering the financing of terrorism. And we have specific services, technical assistance, training made available and a very close collaboration with FATF, which is the international institution in charge of fighting that.

We are going to be stronger and deeper into these issues because I’m personally — and I think the board is now supporting this — very frustrated with the fact that we engage, we enter into dialogue, we commit resources, our people work on the ground, and if it is to discover that there are undisclosed loans, that there is fiddling with the accounts, then it’s really not fair on the international community and not fair for the population and not in compliance with our mission.

The I.M.F. over the decades has plenty of critics, even just among economists. Milton Friedman wanted to abolish it; he argued the I.M.F. had outlived its original mission of supporting the global monetary system. “It became,” he said in 1991, “a relief agency for backward countries, and proceeded to dig deeper into the pockets of its sponsors to finance its new activities.” And that, he said, was the mission of the World Bank, the I.M.F.’s sister institution, which was also founded in 1944 at Bretton Woods.

Here’s what Friedman said: “Now you have two agencies to promote development, both of them, in my opinion doing far more harm than good.” Friedman’s point was that government was, generally, more of an impediment to free markets than a help. But institutions like the I.M.F. and World Bank also create what economists call “moral hazard”: that is, you’re more likely to engage in risky or reckless behavior when you know someone is there to rescue you. Meanwhile, economists on the other end of the spectrum — Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, for instance — they argued that the I.M.F. promoted an agenda that wasn’t interventionist enough. The I.M.F. was criticized for pushing what was called the “Washington Consensus,” a one-size-fits-all reform model promoting free trade and capital flows, deficit reduction, privatization, and the slashing of subsidies.

More recently, the I.M.F.’s most controversial bailout was the Greek tragedy. It began before Christine Lagarde’s arrival but has continued to haunt the agency — and her — with the I.M.F. accused of everything from complacency and poor due diligence to demanding measures of compliance that are hopelessly unrealistic.

So you can see why the I.M.F. might be eager to reposition itself as something more than the “lender of last resort,” which can feel like a lose-lose proposition. Indeed, in a 2014 speech to Latin American leaders, Lagarde declared that this is “not your grandmother’s I.M.F.!” She has stressed the importance of policy issues like climate change, inequality, and helping out the losers in the free-trade game. This means, theoretically, less bailout work and more preventive work — the I.M.F.’s second line of business, which it calls surveillance.

LAGARDE: And countries commit to to each other through us to be audited, if you will, and receive recommendations that they typically should observe if they want to improve their situation. So that’s the surveillance line of business, and we do that with 189 countries. The third line of business is the one that has most recently developed and developed the fastest. And that is what is called “capacity development,” which is a bit of an obscure word, to actually describe the technical assistance or the training that we provide at the request of countries to help them manage their debt, reorganize their exchange-rate mechanisms, restore sanity in their public finance in general, collect taxation better, set up supervisory authorities that can operate on their financial and banking markets. All sorts of things that have to do with or put in place a good macroeconomic framework, have good indicators on their fiscal policy, on their monetary policy, and on the structural reforms that are helpful for them.

And that is something that — it’s a bit of the hidden successful story of the I.M.F. in a way. Because I’ve been doing this job for seven years and I’ve never heard any country complain about that technical assistance or training and they always want or need more. And the beauty of it is that very often it’s financed by the rich countries to the benefit of some of the poorest countries.

Coming up after the break: why women are, at least on one dimension, plainly preferable to men:

LAGARDE: I believe that women tend to be more attentive to multiple consequences and developments surrounding particular issues.

That’s coming up next, on Freakonomics Radio.

*      *      *

We’re speaking today with the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde.

LAGARDE: Okay. d’accord

In 2016, she was appointed to a second five-year term. It got off to a shaky start, with the resolution of a legal issue dating back to her time in French government, during the Sarkozy administration. Lagarde was accused of giving preferential treatment to a politically connected French businessman in a case that ended up leaving taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars. Finally, she went on trial — taking leave from the I.M.F. — and was found negligent by the court. But she wasn’t fined or given jail time. Nor was there any accusation that Lagarde had gained any personal benefit. She went back to work at the I.M.F. with the full support of the board, as well as world leaders. A few months later, her name was even floated as potential prime minister of France after Emmanuel Macron’s election as president.

It is hard to imagine any kind of top-tier short list, anywhere in the world, where Lagarde’s name would not appear. She is considered fiercely intelligent; principled but pragmatic; a serious-minded person with an impish sense of humor and an ability to make firm demands without bullying. This balance has served her institution well; the world has nearly forgotten that the I.M.F.’s previous managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, resigned after being charged with the sexual assault of a housekeeper in a New York City hotel.

When Lagarde replaced him, in 2011, she became the first woman to lead the I.M.F. Before that, she was the French finance minister and, before that, chairperson of what was then the world’s largest law firm, Baker & McKenzie. Lagarde was the first woman in those jobs as well.

DUBNER: I’m guessing it gets tiring being asked questions about being the first something rather than questions about being the something itself. But a question regarding that: how do you believe that economic policymaking over the past century or so might have been different had there been a lot more women involved in posts at that level?

LAGARDE: I happen to think that it would have been a lot different. I said once that if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters, it would be a different story. Because I believe that — and I think it’s, well certainly from my encounters of many women around the world, and I think it’s more and more demonstrated by studies and by and by analytical work — I believe that women tend to be less risk takers, more attentive to multiple consequences and developments surrounding particular issues. I think by nature, they care about the future because I guess they themselves deliver the future by way of giving birth to the next generation.

And I’m not saying that women who have had children are any better than others, but I think it’s probably engraved somehow, and I disagree with those of my French favorite authors, who say that you are not a mother, but you become a mother. So I also believe that diversity brings a critical component to the decision-making process and helps check conventional wisdom. You know, when you have a room full of single gender people, there is an element of group thinking that can be hopefully challenged by having diversity in the room.

So two things: one, I believe that women bring about something in and of themselves that is more precautionary maybe and more thoughtful about the future and more concerned about the next generation and what we leave behind. And I also believe that diversity procures that element of second-guessing, thinking through, debating a bit more, which is propitious to better decision-making.

DUBNER: Those are interesting factors. One that you haven’t even brought up is men are responsible for the vast majority of violence in most societies around the world. And you could argue that’s a proxy for war making. So theoretically if war-making is one of the most economically costly activities we’ve done, presumably there might have been a lot less of that over the past century as well?

LAGARDE: Possibly, although I used I used to think exactly along the lines of what you said. Until eventually I heard and read about those first female terrorists and female-only terrorists, which was a big let down to that to that theory that women are not attracted to violence.

DUBNER: Well, no one said it was exclusively male.

LAGARDE: No. You’re right. You’re right.

DUBNER: I mean even if you look at kings versus queens throughout history, it does seem that we, men, are a little bit more inclined — somewhere between a little and a lot more inclined to violence. That’s all.

LAGARDE: There are quite a few places where actually queens were hardly allowed, except as wife of the king.

DUBNER: Right. Yeah.

LAGARDE: So that would reduce the pool from which you—

DUBNER: And it’s possible that the kind of queens who were allowed may have been necessarily warmongering queens, too.

LAGARDE: Interesting.

DUBNER: Let’s talk for a moment about the relationship between the I.M.F., which is based in D.C., and the U.S. federal government. So a few years ago you complained — or stated, I should say — that the U.S. had not contributed to the IMF’s fund-raising, although that’s since been rectified, I understand.

But additionally the I.M.F.’s positions on trade and climate change, many other issues, are almost diametrically opposed to many of President Trump’s positions. You’ve said, for instance, that — I’ll quote you to yourself — “Restricting trade is a clear case of economic malpractice.” So I’d love you to describe for me the interactions or conversations you’ve had with President Trump or his administration about any of these issues.

LAGARDE: You know, what I say is very strongly based and rooted in analysis of facts, of numbers, of growth, improvement of economic circumstances, productivity, innovation and so on so forth. And we all agree that we want more growth. We all agree that productivity is too low and needs to be improved. We all agree that innovation is necessary. And when you bring that all together and you determine how much trade is or not contributing to that, you very soon realize that trade has actually been a significant factor into innovation, improved productivity, and certainly growth. And that it has combined, managed to increase income in many corners of the world, lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty — I’m sure you’ve heard that a million times — and has reduced basic costs, particularly for low-income consumers. There have been multiple studies on that front.

So all of that are benefits that I don’t think many people would argue are actually costs and downside. It’s good that there are fewer people who are starving. It’s good that we are more productive. It’s good that we are more innovative and it’s good if you can buy a refrigerator or a television set for a much lower price than you had to pay some, I don’t know, 20 years ago, everything being equal.

Having said that and considering that trade is a major contributor to that, we are also saying that trade has to be conducted with two components in mind. One is: is it going to benefit everybody? Or is it only going to benefit 80 percent of the population and hurt, and possibly hurt badly, 20 percent of the population? Or even 10 percent of the population? Or even 5 percent of the population? Because their factory is closing, because the supply chain is reorganized, because innovation is dislocating the way in which business was conducted.

Well, those 5, 10, or 20 percent, they have to be helped. They have to be looked after and they have to be ultimately beneficiary of also that innovation, that productivity, and that increased growth. Probably through different channels than what we have had, with different education, with different adjustment principles, with support, with the ability to be mobile geographically and to move to where possibly business is being generated. Because you have as much destruction of jobs as you have creation of jobs.

The gap between the two is often geography, is often skill set, and is often the ability to actually learn those new things — so that’s number one: we have to pay a much more granular attention to where the benefits fall and where the losses are suffered and focus on where the losses are suffered.

The second point, which is also a must, is that trade has to be conducted in a loyal and fair way and that is the commitment that countries make to the multilateral system. If they start using unfair trade practices — I’m not talking about competition. The market is such that there is competition, but competition has to be fair. And I think that’s also something where we have probably lost a little bit sight of what constitutes fair competition? Is subsidizing electricity, oil, gas and access to finance, is that a fair way to compete or not? Depending on where you are positioned on the ladder of development.

DUBNER: Yeah. but it’s interesting, is it not, that whether the share of people who are disenfranchised, whether it’s 5 percent or 20 percent as you were just ball-parking there, it’s well below the numbers that have turned out to vote against globalization in elections — or least to some degree against globalization, or the form of globalization we’ve ended up with in the U.S. and, of course, in Brexit.

So let me ask: you made the point that U.K. voters chose Brexit over the nearly unanimous recommendations of economic and policy experts. You also argued that Brexit was a really bad idea, and the implication then being that its supporters are uninformed, perhaps willfully so, if all the experts say it’s a bad idea. And yet given the long and very poor record of macroeconomic forecasting, including a lot of very poor predictions from the I.M.F., along with everyone else, does it perhaps make sense for the median worker or the median voter to distrust such predictions, as Brexit supporters seemed to, and look at them instead as less of an empirical forecast and more of a kind of wish-list for the economic and policy elite? “This is the way we think the world should run,” but there doesn’t seem to be necessarily a great track record of A) predictive history or B) managing-the-disenfranchised history. I realize that was more of a screed than a question but I think you detect a question in there. I apologize.

LAGARDE: Well, I’ll try to address your question and then I’ll of course I’ll defend the institution and its forecasting attempts, like everybody else’s attempts, which is: forecasting is not a mathematics science and is more an art than then something else, although there is a huge effort on the part of our teams here to improve and refine. But there are totally unpredictable events and there are things that we simply do not understand, which are related to human nature, with behavior, as the Nobel jury has recently acknowledged by celebrating and acknowledging the contribution of behavioral economists.

But back to your question, which I think is a really interesting one, and where I really want to comment as myself and not as representing the I.M.F. I am not sure that those economic issues actually mattered that much. And I’m not inventing anything or I’m not being particularly innovative because I’ve tried to understand and I’ve read a lot about what was happening in the U.K. or possibly the U.S. votes, but more the U.K. I think what was more at the root of some of the votes was the issue of the foreigners, the immigrants, the guys who are coming from somewhere else who are not “us.” And there were towns where people said, “I want Brexit because I don’t want foreigners and I don’t want those immigrants to actually take over or be here or take services that are available.” So there was certainly that perception that the culture, the language, the history, the roots, that sort of heritage that people care so much about, and we all do, wherever we are and wherever we live or travel, was sort of vanishing because of the coming in of different nationalities, different languages, different religion maybe. And that fear of the other I think had a lot to do with the way in which the vote was taken.

So, yes, the economic circumstances also mattered. But I think it’s a multifaceted explanation. And frankly I do not see a dichotomy or a disconnect between opening borders and letting goods and services and capital move under fair circumstances and and on the level playing field, on the one hand, and being attached and cultivating language, civilization, heritage, history, as is part of our identity.

DUBNER: . I realize we’re just about out of time. This is a short one. What’s something that you believed to be true for a long time until you found out that you were wrong, or if you don’t like that dichotomy of right versus wrong, what’s something significant that you really changed your mind about over time?

LAGARDE: That’s a difficult one.

DUBNER: As it was intended.

LAGARDE: You know what? No, there is one thing that totally blew my mind. No, seriously. And I’ll go back to women and to gender. I could not believe a study that was produced by our department based on the legal systems of about 150 of our member states. A very thorough study of a constitutional and legal system, where the result of it was that 90 percent, nine zero, of those 150 member countries had actually embedded in either their Constitution or their legal system, discrimination against women. And not the teeny-tiny, totally irrelevant, or trivial discrimination, which even as such would be unacceptable, but major discrimination. I just couldn’t believe it.

DUBNER: And you as a lawyer — trained as a lawyer, not as an economist — you’re saying you never would have predicted that, had you not known?

LAGARDE: No, no. I would never have thought that it was actually. If you look at it 140 countries around the world have discrimination against women embedded in either their Constitution or the legal system in a significant way that actually causes women to be either deprived of land, of title, of heritage, of bank account, of being able to collateralize something and be actual economic contributor and satisfied human beings, if they want to contribute economically.

DUBNER: And at what rate are those restrictions being revoked or overturned?

LAGARDE: Laboriously! But I make the point as much and as often as I can. So I’m glad to finish with that.

DUBNER: Yeah. Madame Lagarde , it was an honor to speak with you and I thank you for the time.

LAGARDE: Thank you so much.

Coming up next time on Freakonomics Radio: the story of a market where supply and demand have a really hard time meeting.

Ruthanne LEISHMAN: You can’t buy a kidney. You can’t pay for somebody’s college education to get a kidney.

But there is a way to help find a kidney for people who need one. It’s such a clever solution that its inventor won a Nobel Prize. “Make Me a Match” — that’s next time, on Freakonomics Radio.

CREDITS: FREAKONOMICS RADIO is produced by W-N-Y-C Studios and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Greg Rosalsky. Our staff also includes Alison Hockenberry, Merritt Jacob, Stephanie Tam, Harry Huggins, and Brian Gutierrez; we also had help this week from Dan Dzula. The music you hear throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You should also check out our archive, at Freakonomics.com, where you can stream or download every episode we’ve ever made – or read the transcripts, and find links to the underlying research. You can also find us on Twitter, Facebook, or via email at radio@freakonomics.com.

Here’s where you can learn more about the people and ideas in this episode:

SOURCES

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund

RESOURCES

“Fads and Fashion in Economic Reforms: Washington Consensus or Washington Confusion?” Moises Naim Foreign Policy Magazine (1999)

International Monetary Fund

“’No’ to More Money for the IMF,” Milton Friedman Newsweek, (1983)

EXTRA

Did Lobbying Contribute to the Financial Crisis?

DSK Collateral Damage

The post Not Your Grandmother’s I.M.F. appeared first on Freakonomics.

from Dental Care Tips http://freakonomics.com/podcast/not-grandmothers-m-f/