#is this some kind of Star Wars Asshole rite of passage

[loptrcoptr]

Ok I’m watching these giant snow spider things attack the razorcrest, right, and my mother comes in and watches for a minute. Right as she does, the big momma spider is crashing on top of the ship, right, and you can hear, suddenly, blaster fire.

And my ass is like “hey! Sounds like xwing fire! They’re back!” My mother looks at me and I’m like “they’re like little spaceships”, distractedly, and she just keeps looking at me and I realize, as the xwings do finally make their appearance...

Oh god I know what their guns sound like. Oh god. Oh, that’s sad

[amusewithaview]

like a lazy ocean hugs the shore (darcy x namor)

A/N: this is a remix/redux of far beyond a star/near beyond the moon.  This is for (and because of) @phoenix-173.

Darcy wasn’t really sure how she felt about moving to New York, specifically to Stark Tower.  It wasn’t that she didn’t like cities, she loved them.  It wasn’t even the proximity to Avengers and their related mayhem.  She’d long since grown used to dealing with super-powered beings and their equally super-powered egos.  No, the issue was the proximity to the ocean.

It didn’t make the dreams worse, but it did make them more frequent.

London was bad enough, but she had known London would be nothing more than a pit stop, a temporary stay.  Darcy had hoped thought that Jane’s next posting would be somewhere more like New Mexico.  Landlocked.  She needed the break from the dreams and the never-ending call that echoed through them.  The call that was made of ocean waves and a man’s voice, inextricably linked.

He’d spoken to her in dreams since her sixteenth birthday.  Some kids got cars, Darcy got Namor, the King of Atlantis.

Her mother had sat her down three days prior, all fluttering hands and shifting eyes, unable to even look at her child when she laid out the bad news.  Great-grandma Dorma had been Atlantean royalty, betrothed to marry the prince of the waters.  There had been a civil war, years of fighting, during which she had explored further and further afield until she came upon humans and, like in all the best fairytales, Dorma fell in love.

“I’ve seen this movie,” teenage Darcy had snarked.  “I liked it better with the singing crab.”

Delilah rolled her eyes extravagantly and huffed.  “Honestly, Darcy, life isn’t all about men.  Dorma fell in love with human culture.  She loved our music and our dances, our food and our cities.  She didn’t want to be a queen, she wanted to live.  So she went to a sea witch.”

Darcy mimed a yawn.

Delilah’s eyes flashed.  “Fine,” she said, “be a pest.  The worse you are the easier it’ll be for you to convinced Him to give up on you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The betrothal contract was signed in blood and magic, because of that Dorma couldn’t entirely get rid of it, it had to be fulfilled somehow.  The King of Atlantis is owed a wife.  She took the parts of her that were most strongly tied to that debt and left them in the magic’s keeping.  They can only be claimed by one of her daughters, of daughters’ daughters - and so on.  Your grandmother was already seeing your grandfather when she turned sixteen, she only had the dreams for a few days.  I had them for two years.”

“Dreams?”

Her mother sighed and leaned back in her chair, looking up to stare at the ceiling.  Her fingers set up a restless tapping, accompanied by the tinkle of her bangles shifting on her wrist.  “His name is Namor,” she said after a moment.  “He will tell you... all sorts of things.”  She looked down again at Darcy, lips pursed.  “I don’t know whether it’s better to warn you more or let it ride.  Don’t agree to anything he offers.  He’s tricky.”

“Mom, you can’t be serious,” she said.

“You’ll see,” Delilah said grimly.  She shook her head, looking frustrated with herself, “Grandma explained it better.  I tried.”

You didn’t try very hard, Darcy thought.

That night, she dreamt of drifting, a fathomless amount of time spent hanging in a formless space.  It wasn’t pitch-black, but an ever-shifting cloud of darkness with just enough variation that she could track motion.  Time passed, and eventually she felt something push up against her, closer than whatever force kept her afloat in this void.  It wrapped around her like a blanket and then it made a sound sort of like a contented sigh.

Daughter of Dorma, a voice sighed.  I have been waiting.

It was strange, as the voice spoke it went from a sense to actual words, from meaning she felt to sounds she heard.  The man, the voice sounded male, had a warm tenor, the kind that resonated a little.  It was a smooth, controlled voice, and the way he spoke was very deliberate, as if his words were chosen carefully and for maximum impact.

“My mother’s name is Delilah,” she said after a moment.

“Darcy, daughter of Delilah, daughter of Diana, daughter of Dorma.  You are part of an unbroken chain, a lineage of women who forsook their duty.”

It was just insulting enough to make her grit her teeth.  She bit back her first (colorful) response and instead remained silent, waiting.

He made a a soft sound of interest.  “You are not what I expected from a daughter of Delilah,” he said after a moment.

Darcy smirked at the darkness around her because subverting expectations was her raison d’etre and that little trait had been inherited on both sides.  “So, is this the part where you ask me to marry you and pull a reverse Little Mermaid?” she asked, her tone making it explicitly clear what she thought of that.

“No, this is the part where you wake up.”

He had woken her forty minutes before her alarm was due to go off.  She wasn’t sure if it was deliberate or not, but - “He seems like an asshole,” was the first thing she said to her mother that morning.

Delilah looked relieved.  “Well, if we’re lucky, you’ll only have to deal with him for a few years.  Just... be careful.”

“King, huh?  We elect our officials.”

“And how does that work out for you?”

“You know I’m not legally an adult, right?”

“If you were representative of the adults of humankind, I would consider waging war on the surface for their own good.”

“...go bite a fish.”

“So this ‘prom’ is a celebratory ball?”

“Kind of but not really.”

“A rite of passage?”

“Kind of?”

“Does it involve a feat of bravery?  Test of skills?”

“...eh, close enough.”

“So you have visited the surface!”

“It has been decades, but yes.”

“Do anything interesting?  Meet anyone famous?”

“There was a man, he was called ‘Captain America.’  I believe he achieved some notoriety among your kind.  He was... a friend.”

“Shut up.”

“Excuse me?”

“Shut up, you did not meet Captain America!”

“Met and fought with, on multiple occasions.”

“Wow.  Also, god, you’re old.”

“Who pissed in your Cheerios?”

“...you choose these idioms merely to vex me.”

“Yeah, and you’re dodging the question.”

“I have a counsellor who may be planning a coup.”

“Yikes, that sounds bad.”

“It will be.  For him.”

“He was not worthy of you.”

“Yeah.  I get that.  Still sucks.”

“...if he finds his way to the waters, it will not go well for him.”

“I appreciate the thought but please don’t drown my ex-boyfriend.”

“Hmph.”

“Namor.”

“As a favor to you, he may keep his wretched hide intact.”

“You’re a gentleman and a scholar.”  Darcy made a mental note to avoid complaining about any other romantic entanglements.  For their sake.

“So... I turn eighteen tomorrow.”

“As it is a birthday of some significance to your people, I wish you well.”

“Yeah, thanks.  I was wondering... are you going to go away?”

“Your pardon?”

“You stopped bugging my mom when she turned eighteen, isn’t that the cut-off?  The make-or-break day?”

“You thought-” soft laughter emanated from the darkness and Darcy got the vague sense of being hugged combined with gentle amusement.  “Your mother had proven she was ill-suited for rule within a few months of our introduction.  I continued to speak with her at the behest of my council.  We have been many years without an heir, and at that time we were experiencing a period of unrest.”

“In other words-”

“No, I do not intend to sever our connection."

Her mother relaxed after her birthday.  There was a weight that Darcy hadn’t noticed that seemed to disappear.  She didn’t have the heart to tell her mother that the dreams - that Namor - never went away.  The dreams remained as they always had: inconsistent, coming and going on a schedule she never fully understood.  They were, at the same time, one of the only constants in her life.

“My dad died a week ago.”  There was silence and a vague impression of waiting.  Darcy’s words stuttered as if her breathing was ragged, though she’d long since given up trying to understand how speech worked in this dream space: “I didn’t really know him that well, so it’s not that I’m sad about actually losing someone close to me.  I think - I think I’m sad about losing the idea of him.”

“A loss is a loss, whether you mourn the man or the father he might have been, you still mourn.”

“Yeah, I guess.  Have you...?  Sorry, stupid question, I know you’ve seen war.”

This time the pause was different, almost hesitant, though Darcy was reluctant to use that word to describe any aspect of Namor.  “Your foremother...,” he said after a moment, “when she left for the surface I was... angry.  I knew her as a friend and I...perhaps took her presence for granted.  Once I was over my anger I found I did not miss her, I missed the reassurance she brought.”

“You missed the future queen, not the woman who was supposed to be queen.”

“Yes.”

“Dude, you realize that’s probably part of the reason she left, right?”

“I had, yes.  Do not call me ‘dude.’”

“The salmon was... okay.”

“What else did you try?”

“Tuna and something called ‘white fish.’”

“Your thoughts?”

“It was good.  I’d eat it again.”  He didn’t say anything, but he emanated ‘I told you so’ so strongly that if she could have, she would have kicked him.  “Someday you have to try a burger, fair is fair.”

“We shall see.”

“I’m changing my major again.”  She got an impression of vague curiosity and interest.  “To political science.”  The interest sharpened.  “Don’t get all weird about it, there’re some really good professors here and I want to take advantage.  I’m going to keep the religious studies as a minor.”

“To go with your philosophy minor.”

“...and the culture studies minor.  The system maxes at three.”  There was a strong impression of satisfaction that made Darcy bristle.  “Stop that,” she said.  “I told you not to get all weird about it!  I’m just studying what interests me.”

“What interests you interests me,” he all but purred.  Then, before she could retort, “Will this extend the duration of your studies further?”

“Yeah, another year.  My dad left enough money that I can swing it, barely.”

“If that becomes an issue, know that what treasures I have are at your disposal.  Your education is important.”

“...thanks.  That offer sounds like a fish with a hook in it.”

“Another idiom?  How quaint.”

“You know, I realized, you’re probably my best friend.”

“Good.”

“Really?”

“Yes, this pleases me.”

“Am I your best friend?”

“You are my closest confidant.”

“You’re being cagey.”

“’Friend’ is, perhaps, not the word I would choose, no.”

“What would you-” she woke up scowling.  Cagey bastard.

“It just seems a little... extreme?”

“You would have me be lenient.”

“Well, yes.  It sounds like it was a first offense and the evidence you’ve described is mainly hearsay.  I mean, obviously I don’t know anywhere near as much as you do about the parties involved, but as an impartial-”

“You have made your point.”

“And the guard who oversaw the trade?  What’s going to happen to him?”

“I had not decided, you have thoughts?”

“Do I ever...  Um.  Is this helpful?  You were just venting, I didn’t mean to derail you, I just wanted to be a shoulder.”

“Idioms,” he sighed.  “You have a different perspective.  I may not always agree, but I benefit from your words, if only as another view of the problem.  You have, as you have said, no horse in the race.  It is...refreshing.”

“Aw, now who’s using idioms?”

“It’s been almost a month.”

“I know.”

“It’s - we’ve never gone that long without-”

“I know,” he said tersely.

“Did something... happen?”

“You are too far.”

“I didn’t know that was even possible.”

“Neither did I.”

“...I’ve missed you,” she admitted.

“And I, you,” he said, and she felt warmth blossom from without and within.

“Something has happened.”

“Understatement.”

“What happened, Darcy?”

She gathered herself, anticipating his reaction.  “So,” she started cheerfully, “you remember that internship?”

“Yes.  You are still in the desert,” he said, words clipped.

“I... yeah.  You can tell?”

“Yes.”

“Anyways... I met a god?  His name was Thor.  He fell from the sky and the whole town nearly got destroyed and my boss’s work was stolen and there were government agents everywhere - it was nuts!”

“You were in danger, why?”

“Well, I mean, everyone was in danger, not just me specifically.”

“You did not go on the battlefield?”

“...Technically-”

“How much longer?”

“What?”

“Your internship, its duration and the fulfillment of your degree requirements.  How much longer?”

“The internship runs through the end of May, then I’m all done.”

“And what do you intend to do at that time?”

“I’m not... I might stay on with Jane,” she said in a rush.

“Why?”

“Well... her work is interesting.  I’m - I feel useful here.”  She snorted.  “Plus, it’s not like I’ve gotten any better offers, so-”  Her words cut off there as she felt something.  It was like pressure hitting peak and then suddenly she was being inundated with feelings.

“No better offers?” Namor inquired silkily, but behind his words was a wealth of incredulity and anger and regret and other feelings, less clear, muddied by the overwhelming frustration that was at the forefront.

Darcy was left reeling.  “I-”

“You would be queen,” he said softly but intensely.  The emotions she’d been sensing cut off with all of the suddenness of a switch being flipped.  It was a relief, his words alone were drenched in so much feeling she was dizzy with it.  “You could never be bored, not with all the oceans to explore, all the many peoples you would find, the new things to learn.  You would be eminently useful, as a council member, ruling at my side.  You are the partner I was promised.  This offer has been waiting for you for years, you have not been ready to take it.”

“But that’s - I’m not-”  She felt shaky, jittery, too much going through her mind but too little sticking around long enough to develop into coherent thought.  “Queen and wife,” she said at last, quietly.  “I don’t know - do you even care for me, I mean, in that way?”

There was a crystal clear moment of such perfect shock and disbelief that she started to try and wake herself up to avoid potential embarrassment.  She felt him reach out to her retreating consciousness and grab hold, keeping her cradled in the warm and dark of their private dream space.  Then he opened the floodgates and Darcy could feel every single thing he felt for her: pride so strong it made her blush, fondness saturating every action and word, a strain of tenderness kept well-hidden, though not so well as the desire and abject want that had her shivering in reaction.

“Such confessions as you ask of me are best delivered in person, where more than our minds can meet.  I would have you, as wife and queen, as the daughter of Dorma and a promise fulfilled, but more importantly as your self.  I cherish you, and my only regret in our interactions is that I have not made that more clear.”

He released his hold on her then and let her flee to wakefulness with his words resounding in her mind and heart like a bell struck.  From that moment, everything changed.  From that moment, it wasn’t a question of if, but when.

“Are you scared of the ocean?” Jane asked her once, just after the move to New York.  “You always stare at the water but you never go near it.”

“Not scared, exactly,” Darcy hedged.  “I just have a healthy respect for the water and all its creatures.  It’d be way too easy to get pulled under, and there are all sorts of currents we can’t see.  I’ll steer clear.

It was the middle of the day, but she could have sworn she heard the echo of masculine laughter.

“Remember that conversation, all those months ago, about the ocean and how I don’t mess with it?” Darcy asked, eyes shut as she tried to ignore the sway of the sinking boat beneath her feet.

“Uh-huh,” Jane said.  "I would like to take this moment to say that your concerns about currents was valid and I am now equally concerned.”

“Probably not equally,” she muttered.  “This is such bullshit, though.  I mean, what are the odds that the baddie of the week with a mad-on for Thor would live in a freaking houseboat?”

“Slim to none.”

“But the whole water thing.  God, he’s never going to let me live this down,” Darcy said, now edging up onto a cot as best she could considering her arms were shackled to the wall.  “I’ve been bleeding into the water for at least a minute or two.  Since whenever the water reached us.  Not enough that I’m worried about sharks, but enough.”

“Enough for what?” Jane asked cautiously.

As if on queue, there was a loud crunching noise and then a man burst through one side of the room, bringing with him a deluge of water.

“Hi, honey,” Darcy called with a quavering sort of bravado.  He was here, in the waking world and not in her dream.  The reality of him, the intensity of his presence, the intelligence in his face, the physicality on display, was overwhelming.  “You miss me?”

“You are in danger, again,” he snarled, taking the room in at a glance before stalking over to Darcy and unceremoniously ripping her chains off the wall.  He reached out and gently ran his fingers over her skull, scowling when he reached the bleeding bump on her head, before cupping her cheek.

She shivered under his touch and was momentarily grateful that her pupils were already dilated from the dim interior.  The chill would camouflage any other obvious reactions to his presence.  He was both familiar and un, every part of his person matched up with the voice that had lived in her head for over a decade.  There were new things to catalogue, though: physical tells she hadn’t had access to in the dream space, reactions he could no longer hide.

“I would have waited for you to come to me,” he said.

“I know.”

“But now-”

“I know,” she said.  “And we can talk about it in a minute, but first can you get Janie and me out of here?”

Namor turned to Jane, eyes narrowed.  “This is the scientist.”

“Glare later, help now,” she said firmly, barely restraining the urge to lean against him and borrow some of his equilibrium.

He pursed his lips, frowning and gently guided Darcy along beside him until he reached Jane and could rip her chains off the wall as well.  He removed the manacles at her wrists, tearing the metal away as if it was tissue paper.  Once freed, he wrapped an arm around each woman, Darcy nearly plastered to his side while Jane was held much less close, and pulled them towards the hole he’d made in the hull.

“Deep breath, Janie!” Darcy shouted just before they hit the water.

They reached the beach in mere moments, nowhere near long enough for Darcy, who had never been in the ocean before.  Darcy, who had never even been swimming before.  Darcy, who had not realized that the peaceful drifting she had experienced in the dream space was the barest echo of the true wonder of being cradled and kept by the ocean.

Jane staggered onto the sand and flopped down, gasping for air, while Darcy stood knee-deep in the waves.  Part of her, a large part, wanted to dive back in head first.  The rest of her remembered things like friends, family, responsibilities, and not becoming a statistic.  It helped that Namor’s arm was still wrapped around her waist, supporting her and providing, ironically enough, a grounding presence.  Being in his arms now was strikingly similar to the feel of the dream space, but more immediate, their contact set off sparks enough that she wondered if her hair would stand on end if it was dry.

“So, about that confession-”

He tangled his fingers in her wet hair and tilted her face up to his own, pressing his lips to hers.  It was surprisingly gentle for the moment, sweet and soft and over far too quickly.  Her eyes fluttered open afterwards to find his face inches from hers.

“You are each of the things I wanted and everything I never thought to ask for,” he murmured into the space between them.  “If anything were to happen to you, I would take a consort out of necessity, but the throne I built for you would remain empty till the end of my reign.  I love you, Darcy.”

And everything inside of Darcy said yes.

A second after that, her skin started to glow.  It grew brighter and brighter until she shut her eyes and buried her face against Namor’s chest.  The light was accompanied by a tingling coolness that started at her extremities and coursed to her center before echoing back to the bounds of her skin.  This happened over and over till every part of her seemed to be ringing.  Then it cut off so suddenly and jarringly that she might have fallen without Namor to hold her up.

Darcy blinked, the world seemed slightly... different.  “What the fuck was that?”

“That was a promise fulfilled,” he said, half joyful and half triumphant.

[mkobooks]

The Caine Mutiny - Herman Wouk

 The Caine Mutiny stands out to me as one of those famous titles in pop-culture--of course I’ve heard of it, seen it referenced and spoofed in other media, yet as for its actual substance, I knew relatively little about it. It was an old-timey, Hollywood movie; I didn’t realize it was a book, and, similarly to my last review, the novel didn’t come onto my “to-read” radar until I saw the retrospectives and memorials for its author, Herman Wouk, when he passed away in 2019. Like Roth, he’s Jewish-American and some of his bibliography concerns his relationship to religion, spirituality, and being Jewish in American. The Caine Mutiny is not really one of those books (there’s one prominent Jewish character but he doesn’t appear until the last ~30% of the book, and it’s a very looong book). 

So I didn’t know much of anything about The Caine Mutiny when I picked it off the library shelf other than I suspected I might find it a dull like the last boat-journey-based literary work I read (Rites of Passage by William Golding--I was so dang bored and disappointed, having really enjoyed Lord of the Flies when I read it in school). But, I challenge myself to read quote-unquote literature so I decided to give Caine a shot.

And I’m really glad I did! 

The titular Caine is a minesweeper-destroyer in WWII. It’s crappy and old, refitted from WWI ship and, despite being deployed in the height of the war, it doesn’t see combat. It mostly hangs around various Pacific ports towing other warships and waiting around. We’re brought onboard following Willie Keith, a spoiled rich kid turned ensign who barely makes it through his naval officer crash-course, but just tries to do his best. He feels singled out and unjustly disliked by the Caine’s initial captain--whom he also thinks has done a dismal job at maintaining the ship--and is excited when that captain is replaced by a new one: Captain Queeg.

Queeg is a stickler for the rules, which seems pretty good at first, until it starts to seem like Queeg might be out of his depth (no pun intended). Little episodes stack up from accidentally cutting a tow line (and blaming it, possibly unfairly, on one of the sailors), disproportionately harsh punishments for the entire crew, running away from battles and other ships that may be in need, and finally culminating in a bizarre investigation of the entire ship in search of some missing strawberries.

From here, the narrative shifts its focus from Willie (who goes from really liking Queeg to despising him) to two more senior officers: Maryk, the executive (seems like the first mate to me? I don’t know much about Naval chain of command) and Keefer. They begin to gather evidence to support a claim that Queeg is out of his mind and should be removed via Naval Regulations Section 184, which is essentially the 25th Amendment for a ship. Mind you, this had never been done before in the US Navy and I believe it’s still never been done.

It comes to a head during a typhoon in which Maryk disagrees with Queeg’s strategy for keeping the ship safe against the storm and declares that he’s mutinying and taking over the ship. Keith supports him; Keefer doesn’t. Nonetheless, Queeg steps down and the ship doesn’t sink.

There’s a time jump after this to Maryk’s and Keith’s court-martial trials and the book shifts in genre from a war drama to a legal drama. I have to admit that I didn’t find this as interesting as the descriptions of life aboard the Caine. Wouk managed to make the mind-numbing monotony of a piece-of-junk warship that barely sees any war interesting. Once they’re back in the US awaiting trial, the story gets a bit bogged down by the one plot point I really disliked--the relationship between Keith and his night-club singer girlfriend, May. 

In the end, Greenwald, the (Jewish) lawyer swoops in as a hero, taking the case to defend Maryk despite disagreeing with Maryk’s reasons for the mutiny. He gets an acquittal and, during the celebration, shames Keefer as being the real villain and coward. There’s a sort of extended epilogue in which Keefer becomes the Caine’s captain and he’s just as lousy at it as Queeg was. He steps down and then Keith becomes the Caine’s final captain before the ship is finally decommissioned. 

Throughout the entire story, Keith is smitten with a woman named May even though he knows that his very WASPy/old money parents would never approve of him marrying a working class, Italian-American singer. They date--chastely, which is another part of their relationship that really doesn’t age well--even though he doesn’t take the relationship all that seriously. When he goes on shore leave, they finally sleep together and afterward he basically decides that he knows he can never marry her, even though they don’t officially break up. May’s portrayal as both an independent woman with her music career and someone super needy and traditional is the only part of the story that really feels like it was written 50+ years ago. The narrative puts almost excessive emphasis on the fact that even though she works in a seedy nightclub she’s a “good” girl. Keith is selfish and immature and a mama’s boy and the relationship feels like a “romantic plot tumor” that doesn’t really go anywhere except to make Keith seem like an asshole. I also found May annoying and really didn’t care whether or not they were together in the end.

Overall, this book is a classic and deservedly so. I enjoyed the struggle on the ship and spending time with these characters. I don’t usually like war literature all that much, and was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining it was. It was a different take on a war story than what I’ve read (I feel like I’ve only read Holocaust stories / European theater) and was more of a psychological drama with clashing personalities having to get along on the ship. Keith was a so-so protagonist who fulfilled the “new kid” POV in order to help the reader who may not be familiar with life on a ship. I wish we would have gotten a little more about Keefer especially who seems like a special, snobbish kind of asshole compared to his brother (also called Keefer) who was Keith’s roommate. I wonder what a story from primarily Keefer’s POV would be like and if the moment when Greenwald calls him out would be more impactful. 

Interestingly, from what I’ve read, it seems like the film adaptation is more about Queeg (played by Humphrey Bogart) and makes him into a tragic hero. I definitely plan on watching it when I can.

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk My rating: 4 of 5 stars