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tiesthatbind-tf · 4 years ago

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A lad finally gets some of that coveted spotlight!

Benjamin Bane (just Ben or Benji, thanks) may be the youngest of the active Autobot team as their sprightly scout who’s got a chip on his shoulder he wants to hurl into the next Functionist or Decepticon picking on him for his size, and who’s been through quite a bit despite his age, if the burn on his left arm, the slide bite on his right hand and the multitude of old cigarette burns he’s reluctant to explain are anything to go by.

When not on the field, he’s an avid dancer (with a love for ballet, something he could only pursue in secret until recently, and something which forms the core of his offensive style) and a good enough artist that he, alongside Mirage, are the two assigned to decorate armor for the team.

His smiley, chirpy facade hides quite a couple of issues, including PSTD and self-esteem issues, anxiety attacks, and an urge to please those he trusts even if it comes at his detriment.

More to his story below. (TW for child abuse)

Benjamin Bane (Bumblebee) would be hard-pressed to come up with a single good memory concerning his biological family during his childhood, and not for the lack of trying.

Born to an upper middle-class family in New York comprising a bullish, hot-tempered police sergeant father and a housewife mother, he grew up in the shadow of the son his father, who came from a family of law enforcers, wanted him to be in order to carry on the family legacy.

That he was a gentle, bubbly, sensitive child who loved following his mother around in the kitchen and spending his free time drawing did not bode well for the image his father wished to portray, and it didn’t take long for the discipline intended to mold him into a ‘man’ to become horrifically physical when he was barely five.

His mother, already used to his old man’s temper and quick hand, would often step in to take the punishment meant for him whenever he did something undesirable, though she couldn’t save Ben from the man’s wrath completely, and by the time he was nine, he was never seen without a hoodie in school and had perfected every excuse he’d been told to repeat when asked why he could not take it off or why he would come in on some days with a split lip.

He was small for his size, quiet, and took great pains not to be noticed, which had the opposite effect of making him the target of every other larger child looking to blow off steam, and he became good at running.

Really good.

There was no running from home however, home where the walls were insulated so neighbours wouldn’t hear what was happening within, and while some days would be better than others, there wasn’t a moment that he didn’t break into a cold sweat whenever he heard his father’s footsteps approaching his room.

With his mother unable to bear more children due to an illness, his father furiously continued with the campaign (sometimes the carrot was used though mostly it was the stick) to mold him into the son the man wanted, so he could make the cut during the streaming process prior to high school where students would be sorted into their future occupational classes.

What support he might have had from his mother in his young years also evaporated, as she pushed him to be the son his father needed him to be to keep the peace, putting the weight of the household’s sanctity on his slight shoulders.

He was forced into marksmanship lessons (where his first attempt to fire a gun went awry and left him with a deep slide bite wound), multiple self-defence classes to toughen him up (helpful for bullies whenever they didn’t come in packs), and a series of workouts to encourage a growth spurt so he could catch up to other potential cadet candidates.

The little sliver of hope that he would be good enough to make the junior police cadets went up in smoke when he was assigned to the manual class instead, owing to his size and his visceral aversion to handling firearms.

Branded as worthless and only good for paying off the ‘debt’ accumulated from the classes his father had earlier forced him into, Ben entered high school with his self-esteem scrapping at topsoil and digging deeper, and had it not been for a chance encounter with another boy who was evading a group of military-classed students intending to instil a lesson about talking back to those higher in the hierarchy, it might have dug itself into a grave.

The boy, who introduced himself as Guillermo ‘Memo’ Gutierrez after Ben dutifully sent the bullies scattering, was also assigned to the manual class and both of them decided to stick together for safety in numbers.

Ben had ruefully accepted his lot in life after years of being broken and beaten down. Memo, however, had a loving and supportive family; this kept the spark of his defiance to the system alive and he kindled it in Ben’s by giving his friend a safe space to escape to whenever the situation at Ben’s home became too intense.

Among Memo and Memo’s family was the first time where Ben opened up about his interests, could speak freely and found acceptance for what he liked and who he was.

The desire to reclaim the things he loved pushed him to seek out part-time work, which he eventually found after befriending a girl, Charlie Watson, who had helped put an end to the harassment he and Memo endured at school by playing the hierarchy to their favour and wielding her Navy ‘prime-pick’ status.

That she actually wanted nothing to do with the class she was pushed into (Navy) and wished to pursue a career in automotives despite parental objections was something that she and Ben bonded over, and she brought him to the scrapyard her uncle ran where he found work sorting out car parts and helping perform repairs.

He began to pursue art and dance in secret with part of his pay (keeping his sketchbooks and supplies at Memo’s place and taking dance lessons under the guise of after-class study sessions), while saving up the rest and planning for the day he would eventually break free of his father, ‘debt’ or no ‘debt’.

During this time, he subtly packed away important items and was careful not to anger his old man more than his mere presence already did on a good day——something which would become increasingly hard when the Clampdown began.

He would hear his father rant over the dinner table about how ungrateful the protesters who were made up mostly of the Manual Class were, how they weren’t worth the safety net they were demanding for the job they were doing, how they needed to know their place.

He would hear, as time went by, about how his father would beat the ones who were arrested, and more than once, how he would be killed if he, as the man’s son, ever did something as stupid and insolent as that.

He bit his tongue through all this and reluctantly refused Memo’s offer to join a peaceful protest for better wages and workplace compensation.

The protest turned violent after police assaulted those taking part however, and as he watched the news hoping to see if Memo was alright, he saw his friend among those who were tossed into the dreaded black vans to be brought over to stations for interrogation.

His father, fielding a call from a colleague about the batch of protesters being brought in, told them to separate the adults from the teenagers, who would be easier to break, and it was at this point Ben’s spark turned into a bonfire.

As his father got dressed for work, he crept into the man’s study and managed to figure out the combination to the safe where the man’s gun was kept, retrieving it and aiming it at the police sergeant who came in and demanded for him to stand down.

Ben, in turn, demanded for his father to call the station and have Memo released, and when his father laughed at his audacity, mocked the way his hands shook while he was holding the gun and threatened to beat him senseless once this was all over, he shot the man close enough to the head to clip an ear to prove a point, before repeating his demand again.

This time, his father complied and called the station to order for Memo’s release; Ben’s relief however was all the momentary lapse of guard that his father needed to rush in and attempt to wrest the gun back, and in the struggle, he accidentally shot his father in the knee.

Under the hail of threats on how he was going to die once his father got hands on him, Ben flung the gun where the man could not reach, grabbed one of the bags he had secretly packed and ran out of the house to the screams of his mother.

He called Charlie and explained the situation to her, as both of them made their way to the station where his father worked to pick up Memo, who was confused about the state of affairs.

At 18 years, Ben was now a fugitive who could no longer go home; Memo brought him to the manual class district where Ben could hide among allies, and it was here that he spent a few months in hiding, disguised as a manual worker.

However, still fully terrified at the thought of his father eventually hunting him down within the confines of the city, he made plans to leave and head to the West Coast, far away from any chance that he would meet his old man by accident on the streets.

To his surprise, Charlie and Memo elected to join him in the move, and the three of them left together on a Greyhound bus; Him to escape his father, Charlie to escape her future with a military complex which her father died for and Memo to protect his family after he was named a person of interest in the protest.

However, they were forced to stop in Texas when police were inspecting passing buses for runaway Cold Constructs. Here, they met Ian Hart (Ironhide), a rancher secretly helping Cold Constructs escape ownership by crossing over into Mexico to start new lives.

Ian, seeing how they ran from the bus, assumed they were young Cold Constructs and immediately took them in and offered them shelter; when they explained their situation, he kept his offer, letting them stay until they had their plans sorted out and paying them for work done on his ranch in the meantime.

All three of them grew fond of him and spent a month working on his ranch, helping out equally between his longhorn cattle and the Cold Constructs who would come in scared, starving, and seeking refuge from bounty hunters looking to bring them back to the establishments they were assigned to.

Someone however, had gotten wind of Ian’s clandestine operation, and the man was arrested during a midnight raid, though not before he flung Ben, Charlie and Memo into a secret basement with three Cold Constructs who he told them to help cross the border the next day.

They did as they were told, but decided to return to the ranch to figure out how to help Ian, and when they came back there, it was to come face to face with two strangers who were also seeking Ian after seeing him on the news.

These strangers introduced themselves as Omar Parvez (Optimus Prime), Jace Zayden (Jazz) and Preston Wan (Prowl), members of a rebellion that had sprung up in the UK, and upon hearing that they had been with Ian for the past month, requested for their help in tracking the man down to save him from a terrible fate at the hands of government interrogators.

Realising that they were now caught up in something bigger than they ever imagined, Ben nonetheless accepted the request, unwilling to stand back and do nothing while a good man suffered.

Youth, size and a lifetime of abuse would not be an obstacle to him helping someone else, especially with his best friends by his side.

#Maccadam #Humanformers #Bumblebee #Optimus Prime #charlie watson #memo gutierrez #Character Art #tw: abuse #tw: child abuse #tw: gun mention

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chelsfic · 4 years ago

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Leftovers Part 9 - Nandor the Relentless x Reader Fanfic

Previous parts: Masterlist

A/N: Quick note-- most roller derby leagues don’t actually take a break from practicing during the off-season *shrug.* Hey, hey, hey, guys? Let me know what you think! I am an ACTUAL ENERGY VAMPIRE, but I feed off your kind words and support--love you!

Summary: Nandor is on the reader’s shit list, but will they reunite when a minor medical emergency pops up? (yes)

Warnings: Female Reader-insert, Angst, Medical shit (migraines, lasting effects of the vamp attack at the rave), Hypnotism

---

“Guillermooo! I’m ready for my slumber now!” Nandor bellows, standing impatiently by his open coffin and waiting for his familiar to arrive so he can complete his bedtime routine.

Guillermo appears, huffing and puffing, a moment later, “I’m sorry, master! I forgot…”

“Well, that’s unacceptable, Guillermo!,” Nandor whines with a scowl. “You��re my familiar. It’s your job to remember these things. You’d think after five years--”

“Eleven,” Guillermo interjects with a pained smile. “Eleven years, master.”

Nandor looks momentarily shocked before regaining his momentum, “Okay...Eleven years… Fine. You’d think that you would remember to come and help me get ready for bed. It’s not that difficult.”

Guillermo lets the scolding roll off his back. He knows his master is hurting. In truth, Nandor hasn’t wanted Guillermo’s help at bedtime in weeks. It’s only now that his coffin is feeling a little lonely that he’s reverting back to his old ways. Guillermo rushes to untie his master’s cravat and helps him slip off the heavy cape. The vampire looks temporarily mollified.

“Very well,” Nandor sniffs, taking Guillermo’s hand as he steps up into the coffin. “I forgive you.”

“Thank you, master,” Guillermo smiles lightly and moves to take hold of the coffin’s lid. Nandor suddenly reaches up to stop him.

“Guillermo…” he fidgets and avoids eye contact as he asks, “Do you think she’ll be angry with me for much longer?”

Guillermo looks down at his master, feeling contrary ties of loyalty tugging on him as he decides what to say.

In the end he takes pity on Nandor, reaching down to pat his soft hair and murmuring, “I’m sure she’ll forgive you soon, master.”

“Thank you, Guillermo,” Nandor sighs, shutting his eyes and crossing his hands over his chest. “You’re a good familiar.”

He gently closes the lid, feeling a happy swell in his chest despite his concern. It’s been a few days since the orgy and his friend still hasn’t shown any signs of forgiving Nandor. He knows she’s hurt, but Guillermo silently hopes things will smooth over soon. An angsty vampire makes for an unhappy familiar.

---

After Nandor let you out of the basement you ran to the shower, dousing yourself in steaming water to chase the chill out of your body. But no matter how many hot showers or layers of clothing you put on, you can’t ever seem to warm up. At least not on the inside. In the span of just a few days you’ve gone from the heights of happiness to the dumps of misery. The worst part is that you’re not even angry anymore. You’re numb to it. All you want is to fall back into Nandor’s arms and let him make you feel good like no one else has.

But…

It’s not that he slept with who knows how many people at the orgy. It’s not even that he locked you in a basement and forgot about you. It’s that he treated you like a thing. Like his possession, whose feelings and thoughts are insignificant in the face of almost eight hundred years of immortal life. For a little while Nandor made you feel special, and then he’d gone and ruined it.

You don’t even have your usual outlet! Bout season is over and practice won’t start up again for another month. And to make matters even better: all this drama seems to be aggravating your stupid brain because, for the first time in weeks, you’re feeling the dragging ache in your head left by the vampire attack at the rave. It’s been a dull, throbbing pain for a couple days now, but tonight it’s grown into a pulsing, stomach-churning migraine. You lock yourself up in your room with the lights off. The housemates probably assume you’re brooding over Nandor. But mostly...you’re just in pain. And scared.

It’s after midnight and the pain shows no signs of diminishing. You finally drag yourself out of your room, squinting blearily against the blinding glare of the candlelight, and seeking out one of the two licensed drivers in the house.

---

“The closest urgent care is on Richmond, but according to the Google reviews, we’ll have shorter wait times if we drive a bit farther to the one on Victory Boulevard. Of course, it’s entirely up to you but--”

“Colin,” you interrupt, your voice barely above a whisper, “can you please take me to the closest one and maybe try to resist the urge to feed? I already feel like shit.”

Colin pauses, tightening his fingers on the steering wheel and saying, quietly, “I wasn’t...I was just trying to be helpful.”

You immediately feel guilty and then you question if, in fact, he’s still feeding. Being friends with an energy vampire is...draining.

He drives you to the urgent care, walking inside the crowded waiting area with you and taking charge of your intake paperwork. Okay, now you could kiss him, because bureaucracy is like Colin’s native language and you’re pretty sure he uses some of his power to manipulate the staff into getting you seen sooner. In under an hour you’re leaving with a prescription and feeling a little less anxious about the possibility that you might drop dead from an aneurysm.

You’re pulling out of the pharmacy parking lot and back out onto the road when a small, squeaking, flying thing suddenly soars through your open window and erupts in the backseat, transforming into your dark, sullen vampire lover.

You shriek in alarm, looking out the window and noting the lightening sky on the horizon. Your heart jumps up into your throat, “Nandor! What are you doing, it’s almost daybreak!”

Nandor sits forward in his seat and leans in close to you as he speaks, “Guillermo told me you have been to the human medical shamans! What is wrong, my human?”

“It’s...nothing, Nandor. I’ll be fine. I had a bad migraine,” you mumble. You’re too exhausted to be having this conversation.

Nandor continues, unphased, “Then you should have come to me, not fucking Colin Robinson!”

“Why?” you blurt out, suddenly done with avoiding the hurt you’ve been dwelling in for days. “Because you care about me? Or because I’m your property?”

Nandor looks bewildered, “You are my human…”

You shake your head violently, turning away in your seat with an angry growl.

“...And I do care, my love…”

Sighing, you fix your eyes on the metal guardrail at the side of the road as it flashes by. Colin Robinson is sitting rigid in the driver’s seat, beaming as he gulps down the emotions flooding the vehicle. Nandor reaches out to curl his fingers through your hair just as the first rays of sunlight break over the horizon.

“Nandor, the sun!” you cry, all thoughts of your hurt and anger flying from your head. You turn around in your seat to lock eyes with your lover for one meaningful instant before he transforms into his bat form.

You scramble for the purse at your feet, upending it onto the floor before holding it up and frantically gesturing to the flapping little bat in the backseat.

“Get in, baby!” you plead, uncertain of how much communication actually gets through in this form.

You breathe a shaky sigh of relief as Nandor flies into the bag, curling up at the bottom with a frightened squeak.

“Fucking hell,” you mumble. Your heart is racing in your chest. Cautiously, you open the purse to peer inside at the furry, winged creature who is...your boyfriend. You reach in and gingerly stroke your fingers over his little head. The bat’s teeth close on one finger in an affectionate, soft bite. “You’re okay now…”

Colin Robinson pulls up outside the house and turns to you with his eyes blazing, “Well, this has been quite the night!”

---

You carry Bat-Nandor into his room, taking him out of your bag and gently placing him in the fur-lined coffin. Even though you’re expecting it, you can’t help but jump back when he transforms before your eyes. You’re still not used to witnessing actual magic.

He looks up at you with a look that’s all soft, liquid eyes and remorseful submission.

“Will you stay with me?” he asks diffidently, toying with a tuft of rich fur on the coffin lining. “Please?”

You weigh your options. On the one hand you really miss falling asleep in Nandor’s strong arms, with the comforting scent of him wrapped around your body like a blanket. And when you pause for a moment you realize that the ache in your head hasn’t bothered you since he flew into Colin Robinson’s car.

On the other hand…

“Is there anything you want to say to me, first?” you prompt, arching your brow expectantly.

Nandor swallows his pride, thinking back to those horrible days when Guillermo left him for fucking Celeste. He sits up and takes your hand in his as he says, “I’m sorry I treated you like a belonging and not a person. I appreciate you very much. And I--I love you. And also, I’m sorry for forgetting about you and Guillermo in the basement…it probably won’t happen again.”

You let out a laugh, tears stinging your eyes as you reply, “I love you too, Nandor. And...I’m sorry, too. I don’t even care anymore about the stupid orgy anymore. But I should have...tried to understand it more. I think.”

Nandor sits up, grasping your face between his hands and pulling you in closer.

“I wanted you with me at my side, my mortal,” he hisses, dropping little kisses onto your lips. “One day you will be. I’ll make you a vampire and together we will be the life of every vampire orgy. We’ll feast on virgin blood and make love until the end of time.”

Before you can form anything approaching a reaction, he claims your mouth with his, sucking your lower lip and pushing his tongue forward to tangle with yours. You cling to the fur collar of his coat, hanging on for dear life as your knees go weak. Every time you kiss it feels like you’re diving into a hot spring, losing yourself so deliciously to the sensation of his touch.

“You want that don’t you, my mortal?” he pants against your lips, reaching down to casually lift you off your feet and settle you on his lap. “Immortal life? Immortal love?”

He pauses kissing you and you rest your cheek against the top of his head, enjoying the soft brush of his hair against your skin. Do you want that? To be a vampire? To never see the sun again? To drink blood to live? To never say goodbye to this beautiful, idiot man you seem to love?

“Yes, Nandor,” you murmur, pressing your lips into his hair and breathing his scent. “I do.”

He leans his head back and kisses you once more, running his lips over your cheeks, your jaw, the long column of your exposed throat.

“Uhm!” you interrupt, a little panicked. “But not this minute, right? You have to give me some warning…”

Nandor chuckles, smoothing his hands up and down your back in reassurance.

“No, mortal. Dawn isn’t exactly an ideal time to make a new vampire…”

“Oh...okay, good,” you sigh, settling down into his arms once more. “Because I have one condition…”

---

A little while later, you’re sealed up, snug as a bug in Nandor’s coffin, with his arms wrapped around you and your face tucked into the crook of his neck. You press a kiss to his cool skin and his chest rumbles with a satisfied purr. For the first time in hours and hours your skull doesn’t feel like it’s about to crack in two and you ponder the reason for that. Of course, like all vampires, Nandor has the power of hypnosis. Maybe his very presence has a soothing effect? Like he transmits a frequency that cancels out whatever that asshole did to you?

“Nandor?” you whisper, unsure if he’s fallen asleep yet or not.

“Yes, my mortal?” he answers at once, tightening his arms around you.

“When I’m with you my head doesn’t hurt so bad… But, do you think--do you think that vampire did some kind of...lasting damage?” the question has been on the back of your mind ever since the attack but you’ve been too afraid to give a voice to your worry.

A low growl escapes his throat as he replies, “That shit chicken vampire hurt you because he can’t even hypnotize correctly.”

“But...” you pause, steeling yourself. Are you really about to put this level of trust in him? “You can fix it, can’t you?”

Nandor pauses, swallowing down a lump of nerves as he considers. He wants nothing more than to make you feel better. But there was the time he and Laszlo gave Sean the brain scramblies…

But this time would be different. He would be so, so gentle. So careful…

He raises the lid of the coffin, sitting up and pulling you with him. A few candles still flicker from the tables around the room, forgotten in his eagerness to have you in his arms. Nandor’s pale skin glows faintly in the low light, the lines of his body lost in shadows.

“Look into my eyes, little human,” he commands, his voice is deep and drawling.

You obey, looking up at him as your body visibly trembles. You’re frightened.

“Shh,” Nandor hushes, running his hands up your arms and settling them onto your shoulders. “I’m going to take care of you.”

You nod, remembering how fragile and weak he’d felt when you’d carried his bat-form in your hands. You can give him the same trust. You can put yourself in his hands now and know that he won’t hurt you.

His dark eyes burn with intensity as he continues, “You are now under my command…”

---

A/N: I require CAKES AND CREAMS!! Candies and streamers and sticky, sticky toffee! Actually I just need some soft comments because I AGONIZED over this??!?!?!?!

Tags:

@festering-queen @kandomeresbitch @strangestdiary @glitterportrait @scuzmunkie @redwoodshadows @sarasxe @rileyomalley

#nandor the relentless #nandor #nandor x reader #nandor the relentless x reader #nandor the relentless fanfic #nandor the relentless imagine #wwdits fanfic #what we do in the shadows

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yvesdot · 4 years ago

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(image descriptions under readmore.)

ONE CANNOT JUDGE WHAT THE EYE CANNOT SEE ・A ONE AND ONLY UNIVERSE OF KAY RAINIER parallels post.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, THE ONE AND ONLY UNIVERSE OF KAY RAINIER by yves., You Be Love by Avicii, Your Father’s Son by yves., Sleepless by Sarah Vaughn and Leila del Duca, Your Father’s Son, KAY, The Shape of Water dir. Guillermo del Toro, Artful by Ali Smith.

While writing Your Father’s Son, a young!Kay-centric drabble for THE ONE AND ONLY UNIVERSE OF KAY RAINIER (click for more info!), I noticed some themes. I then made the mistake of rereading a specific passage in Frankenstein and connecting it to The Little Prince. And so: this. A collage about seeing, perceiving, looking away, turning a blind eye to, and believing. The Ga(y)ze.

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This post features a collage of text and images. They are as follows:

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley:

Shall I respect man when he condemns me? Let him live with me in the interchange of kindness, and instead of injury I would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance. But that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union.

The text is black on a white background, with the exception of the sentence beginning with “But that cannot be,” which is written in burgundy.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.

Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Part of the Wikiquote entry for The Little Prince, again black text on white background. The first sentence, in French, is bolded to signify that it is the original quote, and the second line appears as a bullet point beneath it as the most common translation.

THE ONE AND ONLY UNIVERSE OF KAY RAINIER by yves.:

“Okay,” Elizabeth says, gazing up at him.

“It’s not—it’s not really important,” he says. It’s immeasurably strange, how she’s looking at him. He shouldn’t be involved in this. This is not his family. But he continues— “The clothes or whatever. I mean, I recognize you. It’s not just about what you wear.”

The text is off-white on a near-black background. From Incident 6: PROMISE I’LL BE KIND.

You Be Love by Avicii:

A still shot from the music video, picturing two female statues looking into each other’s eyes before a kiss. They are surrounded by statue arms which grab at them, but seem unaware.

Your Father’s Son by yves.:

Whatever they are calling her is wrong on the surface but correct much deeper down; Kay is no fool, she knows she is not like them. Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt.

This text is blue-black on a white background.

Sleepless by Sarah Vaughn and Leila del Duca:

The first panels from the first page of the comic, which show first a close-up of a skull’s eye sockets and then a parallel close-up of Cyrenic’s sleepless eyes. Cyrenic has tawny skin and black hair; his eyes are green and framed by dark brows.

Your Father’s Son:

Her reflection digs its nails into the palm of its right hand, which means she’s doing it with her left. It is isn’t is isn’t her.

Formatted the same as the last excerpt from the same work.

THE ONE AND ONLY UNIVERSE OF KAY RAINIER:

But at this point, you’re probably wondering, how does he know? Especially if you are not trans yourself. And that’s a fair question. Atlas is looking at her hair and the way she talks and the way she sits. Subconsciously, he is probably cross-referencing with the trans people he knows, and the cis people he knows, and himself. So he knows that she’s a woman, and he knows he’s right. And he thinks that she knows that he knows, but that’s getting to be too complicated of a thought, so he stops thinking.

Formatted the same as the last excerpt from the same work. From Incident 1: YOU GOT ME ALONE.

The Shape of Water dir. Guillermo del Toro:

A still from the film, featuring the main character, Elisa, a woman with a brown bob in a soft green shirt, wearing an expression of pleading pain. Over the right side of the image a screenshot of the script is overlaid featuring the dialogue for this scene:

“The way he looks at me. He doesn’t know what I lack... Or how I am incomplete. He just sees me for what I am. As I am. And he is happy to see me, every time. Every day.”

Artful by Ali Smith:

To be known so well by someone is an unimaginable gift. But to be imagined so well by someone is even better.

A photo of my copy of the book. The text is lightly circled in pencil.

#writeblr #wtwcommunity #parallels #parallels post #bookblr #the shape of water #'ONE CANNOT JUDGE' etc is from Turn Off The Light by Kim Petras by the way.#the one and only universe of kay rainier #your father's son #excerpts #Oh yes-- right now I am aiming the Kaydrabble at Patreon in the next two months.#txt #important writing updates #parallel post #webweaving

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thecloserkin · 5 years ago

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book review: Marian Veevers, Jane & Dorothy (2018)

Genre: Biography

Is it the main pairing: Yes

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: No

Is it endgame: No

Is it shippable: Yes

Bottom line: Y’all fools: Stanning Lord Byron and his half-sister Augusta whom he didn’t even meet until he was nearly grown, never mind whether he actually knocked her up. Me, an intellectual: William and Dorothy Wordsworth are right there, eloping to the countryside and spending the rest of their days holed up in a picturesque cottage composing poetry.

First let’s have a detour where I yell about Crimson Peak (2015, dir. Guillermo del Toro). A few of the recent asks about incest vs. the patriarchy got me thinking about this line from Jane & Dorothy: “the malevolent power of married women over their spinsters-in-law.” Between the wife and the unmarried sister it’s obvious who has more power and it’s clearly not the spinster sister-in-law—and yet Guillermo del Toro would have us believe that Edith in Crimson Peak is helpless before Lucille’s resistance to giving up the skeleton key (the one that opens every room in the house). Edith is made out to be the victim of Lucille’s bloodthirsty unhinged jealousy, when she’s not only THE WIFE she’s got ALL THE MONEY, she’s literally holding all the cards??? It doesn’t add up. This biography is the antidote to that. It looks at the paucity of options open to your average 19th century girl who just wants a Room of One’s Own to write in, and situates her bid for freedom in the context of having no good options. The trouble with “Crimson Peak” was not that Edith wasn’t relatable or that I didn’t identify with her; when Thomas tears her down in that faux-breakup speech he attacks her on the terrain where she’s most vulnerable, her abilities as a writer. The trouble with Crimson Peak was that this beat would have hit so much harder had it landed on Lucille, a woman who’s WAY more vulnerable than Edith by dint of having (1) no marriage prospects and (2) no inheritance. Without Thomas this bitch has (3) no survival strategy either! Otoh take away Thomas and Edith is still left with her dad’s $$$, Edith still has Alan waiting in the wings to swoop in & save her, in other words Edith will be just fine. No wonder Lucille feels so threatened!! The situations are not even comparable. Here then is Jane & Dorothy which offers two case studies of women whose impulse to write & create was just as strong as Edith’s, but whose plight was much closer to Lucille’s ie. precarious as fuck.

I picked this book up because it’s actually a dual biography of Dorothy Wordsworth and Jane Austen, and I’m a basic bitch and Jane Austen is my eternal favorite. I’m going to focus on the Dorothy chapters but rest assured I read the Jane chapters with equal gusto. Jane Austen (b. 1775) and Dorothy Wordsworth (b. 1771) were both born into the British pseudo-gentry, which means they were too highborn to go and get a paying gig as a governess or companion but not highborn enough to have any independent source of income (neither of them had a dowry settled on them). While the two women never crossed paths, the arcs of their lives run in parallel as they pursue divergent strategies to secure their futures. So the primary imperative here is to avoid a life of domestic drudgery. But the secondary imperative, because these are both perceptive girls with rich inner lives, is this:

For an intelligent woman, confined to a society which denies her higher education and restricts her existence largely to the home, the male companion with whom she shares her life is her chief provider, not only of security and affection, but of intellectual stimulation.

This is a popular romance novel plot, do I want to marry a man who is a bore (possibly also a boor) or do I want to starve hmmmm. The point is that women are frequently starved for both affection and intellectual stimulation, and it’s little wonder Dorothy fell so hard for her brother William when he showered her with both. Dorothy and William were separated as children when, after the death of their mother, she was sent to live with an aunt in West Yorkshire (she was seven, he was eight). Nine years later they reconnected and sparks flew almost immediately. I mean I think their letters speak for themselves:

”the last time we were Together William won my Affection to a Degree which I cannot describe.”

What kind of brother needs to “win” his sister’s affection? Most of them treat sisters like furniture.

”Never have my eyes burst upon a scene of particular loveliness,” he wrote, “but I have wished that you could be transported to the place where I stood to enjoy it.”

standard “everything beautiful either reminds me of you, or makes me want to share it with you” pablum but EXTREMELY effective for all that

but enough he is my brother, why should I describe him? I shall be launching again into panegyric

Dorothy: hahaha but don’t you think my brother was looking mighty fiiiiiine today

”his attentions to me were such as the most insensible of mortals must have been touched with”

”I assure you so eager is my desire to see you that all obstacles vanish. I see you in a moment running or rather flying to my arms.”

That letter is from William, and you have to remember that William was supposed to be a huge dick who routinely ignored his friends’ missives leaving them in suspense whether he was alive or dead and yet he managed a lively & regular correspondence with Dorothy for years before they moved in together. It’s almost like he treated her … special.

”that sympathy which will almost identify us when we have stole to our little cottage”

These kids are already plotting their elopement jfc! Here are some snippets from Dorothy’s diary from much later, after they have in fact achieved The Dream of their own cottage:

”After dinner we made a pillow of my shoulder, I read to him and my Beloved slept.”

”The fire flutters and the watch ticks and I hear nothing save the Breathing of my Beloved and he now and then pushes his book forward and turns over a leaf.” It is a picture of domestic contentment such as Jane Austen draws to portray a genuinely happy marriage.

”After we came in we sat in deep silence at the window — I on a chair and William with his hand on my shoulder. We were deep in Silence and love, a blessed hour.”

This is literally #goals. Veevers points out that “the conflation of marriage with home, spinsterhood with insecurity” meant that “William was promising the kind of permanence and safety which women usually found in marriage.” Dorothy really thought she could Have It All: a home of her own and a rich, stimulating intellectual life shared with the man she loved. And she proceeded to spend the rest of her life making fair copies of his poems. Hell, she pushed him to be a poet in the first place (it was not at all clear initially that this was the best plan for William, who could just have easily have embarked on a career as a political polemicist, but it was Dorothy who pushed him to be a poet, Dorothy who spent the rest of her life copying out his verses in her fairer hand). Early on Dorothy & William befriended the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was so envious of their bond that he complained, “You have all in each other, but I am lonely, and want you!” Can you b e l i e v e Coleridge actually said that. If one of you hoes doesn’t write me the William/Dorothy Historical RPF that’s Coleridge Outsider POV I s2g I will do my damnedest to die of consumption.

Veveers sums it up this way: “It was a relationship few women would be able to have with their husbands, for, at the time, the two sexes were expected to inhabit different mental landscapes.” To put it bluntly women had ovaries instead of brains; they just weren’t interested in the same stuff a man was. Otoh you have William and Dorothy Wordsworth, actual soulmates: the historical consensus is there is “some uncertainty as to whether she would be best described as muse, emotional support, secretary or co-author.” And she didn’t hide it, either. This is where you really see the difference between Dorothy, who is so open, and Austen heroines like Eleanor Dashwood (Sense & Sensibility), Fanny Price (Mansfield Park) or Anne Eliot (Persuasion) who also feel things deeply but had to regulate the bejeezus out of their emotional responses. This is Dorothy:

After any separation her joy at meeting her brother again was uncontrollable. “I believe I screamed,” she admitted on one occasion when there were witnesses.

Uncontrollable screaming in front of witnesses every time she’s reunited with her brother??? WE STAN. This is how low Dorothy’s spirits sink whenever he’s gone:

”I slept in Wm.’s bed, and I slept badly, for my thoughts were full of William.”

adkfjdkfjdkfjdk I just want to add that when William is home the floorboards are so thin that she can hear him pacing in the bedroom above hers, so his insomnia keeps both of them up at night but she doesn’t mind, she can’t sleep until he falls asleep, she would probably give up a kidney or a lung if she thought it would sell 500 more copies for him. I’m torn between GIRL HE AIN’T WORTH IT and stanning her even harder for being so ride or die on any topic that touches her brother (later, when he has kids, she decides William’s kids are smarter and better-looking than everyone else’s kids).

This is the most iconic line in the entire book, from a letter Dorothy writes to an interfering relative who deplores Dorothy’s judgment for throwing in her lot with a penniless failson like William:

”I affirm that I consider the character and virtues of my brother sufficient protection”

The icily scathing tone of the setdown is PERFECTION. But also, this just in your brother abandoned his pregnant Catholic mistress in France. You know this. Yet here you are gallivanting around the countryside in his company. In fact, when he proves too much of a coward to tell your uncle himself about the existence of said pregnant mistress—this is the uncle who funded all of William’s education and reasonably expects some return on it—he delegates Dorothy to break the news. Dorothy also winds up in charge of all correspondence with the poor girl, who writes occasionally asking for a little money or when is William coming back to France to marry me, and it’s Dorothy who has to fob her off. And this whole incident—the revelation of the French mistress, the break with the family, William refusing to take holy orders to become a clergyman—is so pivotal in their relationship! They were close before but this is the irrevocable step when Dorothy decides to join her fate to his. And her motivation could not be clearer:

William’s outspoken affection for her seems to have first aroused a reciprocal love in Dorothy, but it was his fall from grace, his isolation and his need of a friend, which provided the final catalyst that raised her gradually deepening affection into wholehearted, single-minded devotion.

She saw his need and responded almost involuntarily. She is a RESCUER.

Dorothy, was in one way, very fortunate to have fallen in love with her brother. “Rambling around the country on foot” with a slightly disreputable brother might bring down the censure of her more conventional relatives, but it was a good deal safer than rambling about with a man who was not a brother.

This is the kind of behavior that if two unrelated people engaged in it must have resulted in the man being honor-bound to extend an offer of marriage, because a woman has nothing if she doesn’t have her virtue. Two siblings roaming the countryside, picking flowers and wading thru streams and stargazing? My god what PRIME fodder for fake married tropes! Just present yourself at the first inn you come to as a married couple and then guess what? There was only one bed!!!!

at Grasmere “there was an unnatural tale current of Wordsworth … having been intimate with his own sister.”

tell me MOAR omg this is so deliciously Gothic i keep thinking about that line from Wuthering Heights “whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

at Alfoxton, “the master of the house,” it was said, “had no wife with him, but only a woman who passes for his sister.”

PASSES for his sister trololololol like they don’t act the way you’d expect of a brother and sister, like they’re too into each other.

And it was generally accepted that immorality and radical anti-British sentiment went together.

But really William got much more staid and less radical as he got older, and Dorothy was never political because her energies were centered on William William William. On top of which it’s hard to overlook the fact that William would go into Dorothy’s journals and “borrow” her words and publish them verbatim as his own; he felt as entitled to her intellectual labor as her domestic labor, and there is nothing radically egalitarian about that. So I definitely don’t think this is a case where incest is subversive so much as incest illuminating existing hierarchies & oppressions. Veveers writes: “An unmarried woman’s hold on her own time was extremely fragile. She could be made use of in any crisis, transported against her wishes” to fulfill another family members’ needs. Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra evidently shouldered both their weights when it came to this sort of emotional labor: writing letters of thanks & condolence, minding their brothers’ children, calming hypochondriac aunts down, attending births of little nephews & nieces. Cassandra doing all this extra labor gave Jane the space and time to write. Moreover Jane had formed the ambition to write. Dorothy, on the other hand, thought anything worth saying was already being said by William. And she didn’t have her own Cassandra to share the unceasing burden of housework with:

In fact, the domestic labor and childcare that lay ahead of Dorothy were almost indistinguishable from the duties she had escaped at Forncett rectory. But now she was to be living in a home she had chosen, with a man she loved.

Did it matter in the end, Dorothy’s rebellion? If she’d remained a hanger-on in her uncle’s household, living on his charity, her life would not have been outwardly all that different. I have to believe that her choices did matter, of course. It would be easy to sit here and speculate that if Dorothy had not poured all her mental and physical resources into supporting William’s career, she too might have produced another Pride & Prejudice, but naturally we cannot know that. What we know is that Dorothy and William were 100% in love, a fact that anyone with a modicum of reading comprehension can verify by reading their letters. Why is this not more widely discussed? William Wordsworth was not exactly an obscure poet. The explanation, again, comes back to patriarchy:

The idea that Dorothy might have inspired (or felt) desire at Dove Cottage was as abhorrent to mid-20th century academics as it was to gentlemen of the early 19th century … who preferred to think of unmarried women drooping and degenerating after the age of 25, rather than maintaining a subversive and disturbing sexuality.

I wish I could say that William and Dorothy grew old together at Dove Cottage. What actually happened is he got married (she talked him into it—she chose a mutual friend of theirs whom they’d known for ages) and accidentally fell in love with his wife oops. His new wife was neither young nor pretty, in fact she was painfully plain, but that William became genuinely attached to her there can be no doubt. Dorothy continued to live with them and look after their children until her death. So I think we have avoided the worst case scenario, the malevolent-power-of-the-married-woman-ruins-her-spinster-in-law’s-life scenario: This is what happened to Jane Austen when Jane’s father unexpectedly announced his retirement, uprooting Jane and Cassandra from the Steventon rectory where they’d lived all their lives and forcibly removing them to Bath, where Jane was so miserable she did no writing for years. All this upheaval on account of Jane’s brother and his wife wanting the Steventon rectory and its income for their own! The accursed woman was probably measuring the drapes before she’d moved in. Anyway, it is fortunate this open enmity did not characterize Dorothy Wordsworth’s relationship with her sister in law; they were fast friends and they remained friends after the latter’s marriage to William. But instead of William-and-Dorothy forming the nucleus of life at Dove Cottage now it was William-and-Mary, and if this did not sting at least a little Dorothy would not be human. She had been supplanted in William’s heart. I CRY.

Because I’m literal shipper trash I want to end on the bittersweet note of SIBLINGS EXCHANGING RINGS AS A SYMBOL OF COMMITMENT EVEN THO THEY CAN’T LEGALLY GET MARRIED. This is Dorothy’s description of the morning of William and Mary’s wedding, right before they leave the house to attend the ceremony:

”I gave him the wedding ring—with how deep a blessing! I took it from my forefinger where I had worn it the whole of the night before—he slipped it again onto my finger and blessed me fervently.” It might be said that William married her before he married Mary, and that Dorothy was making a promise in that upstairs room try like the one Mary was about to make in church.

it’s been two months since I read this book and i’m STILL SCREECHING byeeeee

#dorothy wordsworth #book review

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emotionsofthesoul · 6 years ago

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Chapter 11 _ La Tormenta

“La tormenta dejara daños irreparables en el corazón…” - La Tormenta by Aventura

It was the first of November. Neither girl could have seen the storm that was about to hit. They had spent the night at the Carvajal loft in midtown. Neither one thinking this would be the day everything would change. They had fallen asleep more in love than ever. They watched scary movies until they both fell asleep holding onto each other. Neither thinking the real nightmare on L St was about to begin.

When the girls awoke both of their phones had over 100 missed calls, voicemails, and texts from their families and people from the media.

Guille’s message to Valentina was brief but protective, “Vale I don’t know what you just got yourself into but please be careful. If you need me to go pick you up call me.”

Guadalupe's on the other hand just said, “Come home NOW. We need to talk.” She had weekends off so she was waiting for her daughter to come home.

“What happened, why is everyone freaking out?” Juliana said running a hand though her hair and looking to Valentina for answers.

“You were right… someone was following us last night… they snapped this picture of us kissing right after we left the restaurant…” Valentina said trying to seem calm for Juliana’s sake but doing a horrible job at it. They had just been outed to the world.

“What are we gonna do?” Juliana said as her eyes filled with tears and what was more than evident, fear.

“Juliana, I need you to breathe. We knew this could happen, I am a public figure. We’re going to be okay.” Valentina tried to reassure Juliana.

“WE did not know this. We… who is we… I had no idea this could even happen!” Juliana said in full panic mode.

“Baby. Juls. Please, calm down. We need to think our next moves through…” Valentina said.

“HOW ARE YOU SO CALM ABOUT THIS! WE JUST GOT OUTED TO THE ENTIRE PLANET! BEFORE THIS NO ONE EVEN KNEW WHO THE HELL I WAS!” Juliana yelled in frustration.

“Mira Juliana… calm down… it’s done, there is nothing we can do to reverse that now. I am willing to fight whoever I need to fight just to be with you. I agree, it’s not the right time and this is not how I wanted this to happen but it did and now we have to face this together. I need you need to hear me out, now. I love you Juliana Valdes. You are the woman that I love. I need you to breathe. Let me fix this. Please.” Valentina said softly.

“Val… what are my parents gonna say?” Juliana said allowing herself to cry into Valentina’s shoulder.

“It’s okay baby. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there okay. Right now I need to make a few phone calls to make sure we can leave safely. Okay. I need you to relax chiquita.” Valentina said rubbing Juliana’s back in circles and running her fingers through her girlfriend’s hair.

After a few phone calls Valentina made arrangements for Guillermo to come get them and take them to her father. Juliana had calmed down enough to get herself together. Valentina said she would later send for Juliana’s car.

“Chiquita, I’m sorry. How can I make this easier for you? How can I help?” Valentina said caressing Juliana’s cheek.

“I’ll be okay Val. Together, you and I are stronger together. We’ll get through this.” Juliana said allowing herself relax into Valentina’s arms trying to believe her own words.

“Esa es mi niña.” Valentina said as her phone began to ring indicating her brother was outside. “Ready? We have to go…”

“No… but I don’t really have an option do I?” Juliana said with a faint smile.

As soon as they stepped in the parking garage Guillermo was waiting for the girls right at the door. There were hundreds of reporters and paparazzi outside the garage ready to invade their personal space.

“Girls, duck down the flashes are about to get crazy. Be prepared.” Guille said looking at his little sister and Juliana through the rearview mirror.

“I’m not ashamed Guille, I’m not gonna duck, let them come at me.” Valentina said holding Juliana protectively.

“Okay but protect Juliana, she’s not ready for this lifestyle.” Guille said realizing this meant more to his sister than he imaged.

Once they reached the exit the lights and voices got more aggressive and loud. Valentina held her head high not backing down to the scandal. She held Juliana close to her covering her face. This was not how she wanted this to happen but she had to protect her girlfriend at all cost against whoever may come for them.

“How mad is he?” Valentina asked her brother referring to their father.

“You’d be surprised… he’s not mad at all. He actually came to your defense this morning in a press conference.” Guille said driving towards the offices.

“What? Dad? What did he say?” Valentina said in complete shock.

“Look for yourself.” Guillermo said handing her his phone.

Leon: Please understand this is a private matter.

Reporter 1: But who is that girl? Is she a gold digger trying to get the family money? Where did she come from?

Leon: How dare you. That girl is one of the most genuine human beings to come into this family. Get that reporter out. I will not allow any of you to attack my daughter or her partner.

Reporter 2: So they’re together?

Leon: That’s for them to figure out and decide. Who are we to choose for them? Who are you to tell them what is wrong and what is right? I find it disgraceful that someone dare follow my child and out her and her friend without their permission. You and I do not have the right to use our power to destroy others. I will stand by my daughter no matter what. She is the strongest young lady I know and she will come out of this stronger than ever before. You have no power over her. She is stronger than even she knows. She is wiser and she knows exactly what she is doing and what she is feeling.

Reporter 3: So you support gay marriage?

Leon: Yes, I do. I never thought my child would be in a same sex relationship but that is no reason to turn my back on her. I love her as she is and I trust her. She has taught me from a very young age that love is love and love conquers anything. No more questions.

When the video was over Valentina had tears streaming down her face. She silently handed the phone back to her brother and cuddled into Juliana who simply held her and allowed her to finally feel the extent of the emotions this situation truly caused.

They drove in silence for the next 5 minutes. Guille repeatedly looked back at the two girls in his backseat being there for each other and making one another calm. Once they arrived to the parking structure he opened the door for the girls. He hugged his baby sister as tight as he could whispering how proud he was of the woman she was becoming and telling her everything would be okay. Then he proceeded to hug Juliana and thank her for taking care of his sister and to not allow the world to come between them if this is something they truly want to fight for.

Once they reached the ground floor the girls headed to the main conference room to meet with Leon, Lucia, and Eva. Valentina held Juliana’s hand proudly all the way to her family. She held her head high and exuded complete confidence. Juliana simply allowed the other girl to lead the way.

“Hasta que llegaste hermanita.” Eva said in a sarcastic tone.

“I’m glad you guys are safe.” Lucia said walking over the girls and embracing the two of them. “Are you guys okay?”

“How are they going to be okay, look at them. They know exactly what they did. I want you out of here now! Get as far away from my sister or else I’ll do it myself!” Eva said trying to contain her anger but allowing the venom to leave her lips regardless.

“She’s not going anywhere and if you so as dare are touch her-” Valentina was saying getting tense and defensive.

Leon cut her off by saying, “Evangelina Carvajal, in this family we protect each other and now the girl holding your sister back is a part of it. So if you want to be cut off from the entire family, keep going, if not I recommend you stop spewing all that venom now. That’s enough!” He said slamming his hand on the table.

“Come here baby.” He said gently to Valentina who ran to him and began to sob.

“Shhh it’s okay. Everything is going to be okay. We’re going to get through this together like we always do.” He said as he rubbed her back.

“I saw what you said this morning. Thank you for not hating me.” Valentina said in a low timid voice.

“Hey, no, baby. I could never hate you for being who you are. I already knew about you two and that didn’t change how I feel about you. If anything it made me love you more. Your mother would be so proud. She always taught you to be you and not who anyone else told you to be. I’m proud of you.” Leon said which only made Valentina more emotional.

Juliana didn’t know what to do and felt completely uncomfortable there and out of place. She was relieved and happy that Valentina’s family took it so well but she was very concerned as to how her parents would react.

She was lost in thought when she finally heard Valentina calling her and now standing right in front of her. “Juls… my dad was asking if you’re okay but I mean clearly you’re not. Come here.” Valentina said pulling Juliana in for a hug.

“Juliana, I know this is all too much to take in right now and it’s definitely not going to get easier anytime soon. So I need to know, do you need me get you extra security? Is it safe to go home? How can I help you?” Leon asked the girl calmly.

“What is with you and this family? How is everyone so calm? I’m freaking out. My parents are going to kill me and disown me. I have to kiss my dreams of studying goodbye. I have to go pack up my things as soon I get home. They will never accept this. I don’t know what we were thinking Valentina… this is just too much…” Juliana said voicing her fear as her voice began to crack.

“Nos pueden dejar solas, please.” Valentina said firmly not looking anywhere but Juliana’s eyes.

Once everyone walked out she hugged her girlfriend. “Let it out Juls. Please, just allow yourself to feel. Allow yourself to cry. You need to get this out, don’t bottle it in. Don’t push me out. Please.” Valentina said also letting down her walls.

They simply held each other and cried for what felt like ages.

“I love you. You need to know that. I do love you. This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever felt in my entire life. I’m just not sure we’re ready for this. I don’t know if I’m ready for this.” Juliana said whispering the last sentence and breaking Valentina’s eye contact.

“Juliana, mirame.” Valentina said lifting Juliana’s chin gently. “This is the most genuine and real thing I’ve ever felt and I don’t want to let it go. I don’t want to let you go. I’m not willing to lose you. I will do whatever you ask me to. I love you and I’m not afraid to say it, to shout it from the rooftops. You told me once, ‘if you’re in, I’m in,’ now I’d like to make you the same offer.” Valentina said sticking out her pinking.

Juliana simply nodded and linked her pinky to Valentina’s.

“Pacto?” Valentina said looking Juliana in her big chocolatey eyes.

“Pacto.” Juliana said.

“Okay, then let’s face this together. All the way through. Together. I mean that, even with your parents.” Valentina said holding Juliana’s face.

“Okay.” Juliana whispered softly.

Valentina captured Juliana’s lips in hers as a way to comfort the girl. They called Leon and Lucia back into the conference room once they were able to compose themselves.

“Esto es lo que vamos hacer, I’m going with Juliana to face her parents. I’ll give them their space to talk after they hear us out and I’m bringing her back with me to the loft because she will be safer with us.” Valentina said thinking everything out.

“Wait, Val. I need to talk with my parents. I can’t just talk and then stay with you. They would never agree to that. They won’t even want you near me. I can’t let you just take me in.” Juliana said trying to get through to Valentina.

“It’s not taking advantage. I think it’s the best plan of action. You’ll be safer from the press with us than at home. I will go with the two of you to speak with your parents. It’s the least I could do.” Leon said agreeing with his daughter.

“I just… I don’t know-” Juliana said when Valentina cut her off.

“Juliana! Dejate querer! I honestly just need you to be safe, I don’t even need to stay there if you don’t want me there but I do need to know that you’re safe and the best place for you is with me and my family.” Valentina said frustrated.

“Well you two are going to have to explain that to my parents because you don’t know El Chino, you can’t tell him anything when he’s pissed.” Juliana responded knowing she couldn’t and honestly didn’t want to win this argument.

#juliantina #juliana valdes #valentina carvajal #Forever #juliantinafics #forever ch11

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phgq · 5 years ago

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SAF 44 heroism deserves retelling: PNP official

#PHnews: SAF 44 heroism deserves retelling: PNP official

MANILA -- The heroism of the 44 members of the elite Special Action Force (SAF) of the Philippine National Police (PNP) is a story that should be retold to the next generations, a ranking police official said Saturday.

“Our SAF 44 heroes did not die in vain. Had it not (been) for them, Marwan would have mobilized more extremists to terrorize the Filipino people. Had it not (been) for them, more innocent civilians would have (been) killed by their bombs,” Lt. Gen. Guillermo Eleazar, PNP deputy chief for operations, said in his speech during the commemoration of the SAF 44's 5th death anniversary at the SAF headquarters in Taguig City.

Eleazar said if not for their sacrifice, the country would have not achieved the peace and order it is experiencing today.

He recounted how the SAF commandos successfully carried out the mission assigned to them, as well as the stories of how the 44 slain commandos stood their ground despite being trapped, outnumbered, and outgunned by enemy forces.

“Once upon a time, a large group of elite police commandos was called upon to perform an impossible task of penetrating an enemy stronghold in a remote area of Mamasapano in Maguindanao to bring justice to the Muslim and Christian civilians who died from the bombs made by an international terrorist, Marwan," Eleazar said.

He said the task made possible by the SAF commandos was difficult as there was only one way in and one way out from a fully-armed community who would not hesitate to kill outsiders who would dare cross their paths.

Eleazar noted that PNP Chief, Gen. Archie Gamboa, has already assured full support not only to the relatives of the 44 fallen police commandos but also to the SAF as an institution through the procurement of modern firearms and other essential equipment.

Gamboa, he said, has also initiated reform programs to ensure the safety of all policemen in the front line and provide them with the necessary equipment to accomplish the missions that would be assigned to them.

“On our part, let us honor and give justice to our SAF 44 heroes by emulating the courage they displayed and the heroism that they showed. Let us honor them with the stories of courage and heroism that we must tell to the generations to come. Let us honor our SAF 44 heroes by being like them,” Eleazar said.

The commemoration of the SAF 44's gallantry came after the Sandiganbayan junked the cases against officials responsible for the mission to neutralize Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan -- former PNP chief Alan Purisima and former SAF director Getulio Napeñas.

Meanwhile, Eleazar welcomed the possible reinvestigation of the case in the Senate and assured that the PNP would coordinate.

"Tayo ay susunod sa anumang pag-uutos ng higher authorities (We will follow whatever is the command of the higher authorities)," he added.

In a separate statement, Gamboa paid tribute to the gallantry and heroism of the SAF 44.

"Their supreme sacrifice will never be forgotten. Today, we honor their heroism and patriotism with deep pride as our inspiration to continue on our sworn duty to protect our people from lawless violence, criminal acts, and illegal drugs that destroy the lives and future of our younger generation," he said.

This proves that the PNP is always ready to serve and protect, enshrined with heroism, Gamboa said, adding that the PNP is one with the slain police commandos' families and loved ones in mourning for their loss.

"Let us all salute them with pride as these 44 SAF commandos could be our modern-day heroes," he said.

On Jan. 25, 2015, 44 SAF members perished as they encountered rebels and private armed groups in Mamasapano, Maguindanao after neutralizing Marwan.

Marwan was tagged as responsible for training Filipinos in urban terrorism and in making improvised explosive devices, which were later used in a series of bomb attacks, especially in Mindanao. (PNA)

***

References:

* Philippine News Agency. "SAF 44 heroism deserves retelling: PNP official." Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1091934 (accessed January 26, 2020 at 12:18AM UTC+14).

* Philippine News Agency. "SAF 44 heroism deserves retelling: PNP official." Archive Today. https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1091934 (archived).

#Philippines #News #Filipino #Pinoy #Tourism #Politics #Culture #Editorial #Environment #Society #History

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newstfionline · 8 years ago

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Saving Lives, 1 Day at a Time, on the Deadly Mediterranean

AP, April 17, 2017

ON THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA--As usual, it started with a call on a satellite phone from Italian rescue officials in Rome. They were relaying a distress call they’d received from a migrant smuggling ship adrift somewhere off the coast of Libya.

On board the Golfo Azurro, Guillermo Canardo was taking notes.

“Two boats,” he said. “One hundred people in each one.”

He paused, then asked the question that needed to be asked: “Are they (the migrants) still moving?”

A fishing trawler-turned-exploration yacht-turned-rescue ship, the 30-year-old Golfo Azurro is now operated by Proactiva Open Arms, a Spanish nonprofit dedicated to rescuing migrants before they are consumed by the unforgiving Mediterranean Sea.

It works the SAR zone--the search-and-rescue zone--which starts 12 nautical miles from the Libyan coast and goes 12 miles deeper into the sea’s unpredictable waters. This is the last, deadliest section of the migrant highway known as “the Libyan route” that slices across the African continent. According to UNHCR, an average of 14 people died in the Mediterranean every day in 2016, the highest number ever recorded.

Canardo, the head of rescue operations on the Golfo Azurro, spoke that April day to Italy’s Maritime Rescue Coordination Center, which passed along the troubled vessels’ coordinates.

Half a dozen rescuers quickly put on wetsuits and loaded sacks of lifejackets onto two orange rubber rescue boats. Fernando Garfella, skipper of the lead rescue boat, confirmed the coordinates and sped toward the target. After 15 minutes, a dot appeared on the horizon.

Most migrants on the Mediterranean are now trying to reach Italy. Those numbers have dramatically increased since the European Union and Turkey signed an agreement last year that allowed Greece to send new asylum-seekers back to Turkey. In exchange, the EU agreed to speed up visas for Turkish citizens and donate 6 billion euros ($6.4 billion) to help support the hundreds of thousands of refugees living on Turkish soil.

Last weekend alone, Italian authorities oversaw the rescues of more than 6,000 migrants at sea on Friday and Saturday, and hundreds more on Sunday--including at least eight bodies.

With the Greek smuggling route largely closed off, the path of least resistance has drifted to Libya--a sprawling, lawless country with a huge coast and competing rebel and government factions. Migrants have flooded into Libya from across Africa, producing a bonanza for smugglers.

The first call for help often comes on a satellite telephone directly from a smuggling boat.

On that April day, rescuers found two jam-packed boats with 152 people--66 in a rubber boat, 86 in a wooden boat--56 nautical miles (103 kilometers) from the Libyan coast.

Fede Gomez, an Argentinean rescuer, told those on the inflatable boat in English to remain calm if they wanted to avoid a tragedy. Boats have capsized previously--leading to dozens of drownings--when desperate migrants jumped into the water trying to be rescued first.

The rubber boat had left Libya thirteen hours earlier, traveling overnight and drifting since its small engine broke down. It was truly a makeshift craft--a rubber floater glued to a wooden base and held together by screws as large as a hand. There was no food or drinkable water left, and nowhere near enough fuel to reach Italian soil.

The migrants were told that Europe was only five hours north of Libya. In fact, the closest point is Lampedusa, a tiny Italian island 160 nautical miles away, a boat journey that takes more than 32 hours in calm waters.

This group was lucky enough to reach an offshore oil well platform, guided by its burning flame, and rescue workers linked up with them near it. Once everyone had been transferred to the Golfo Azurro, a rescuer destroyed one of the smuggling boats’ engines--the other was broken hours ago. That ensures that no “vultures”--the nickname for the local fishermen who scavenge the engines of smugglers’ boats--can sell them back again to more traffickers.

The rescuers’ anger toward the smugglers is palpable, coming out in unprintable torrents.

Hours pass by, more migrants are rescued at sea. Eventually 230 are on aboard, coming from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Niger, Mali, Eritrea, Guinea and Sudan, among other countries.

The boat now heads to Trapani, Sicily. It has to slow down, since it’s Thursday afternoon and passengers can’t be taken off until Saturday morning. If the boat gets into port too early, the rescuers fear the migrants will jump into the water and try to swim to Italy.

Each rescue brings another story, often full of heartbreak but with a common theme--a dream for a better life, an escape from fear or hunger.

Yakubu Yahya, a 17-year-old from Niger, went to Libya searching for his missing parents and was kidnapped in the Libyan city of Sabha while crossing the Saharan Desert. His kidnappers demanded $2,000--an unimaginable figure to him--and he was beaten almost constantly until he managed to escape. Eventually, he found enough work in Libya to scrape together $400--enough to pay a smuggler to get him to the coast and then get onto the smuggler’s boat.

Nuy Hassen, 16, left Eritrea when he was six and spent a decade traveling through Ethiopia, Sudan and the Sahara Desert. Along the way, his friends were killed by smugglers because they got sick and couldn’t keep up. When he finally reached Libya, he was kidnapped and held for 7 months. He’s so traumatized that no one can figure out his full story.

Mohammed Abdullah, a 32-year-old from Equatorial Guinea, explained how smugglers demand payment through some of the world’s best-known money transfer companies, often via Gulf countries. Along the way, nearly everyone the migrants encounter is corrupt--including the Libyan military boat that escorted them for an hour after they left the beach at Zuwara.

He says Libya was simply awful.

“If I had known how it was in Libya, I never would have gone,” he said. “I don’t know how to explain Libya.”

The migrants kept off the Libyan streets as much as they could, afraid of being kidnapped. If they are taken, kidnappers often hang their victims by their feet or fire off guns near their heads as their families are called on the phone, to terrify the families into paying ransoms.

Yet on the Golfo, good moments sometimes break out. Like when Ibo, a 23-year-old Gambian, sings Bob Marley’s “One Love”--and others follow with classical Bangladeshi songs and Shakira’s “Waka, Waka.” At sundown, a whale joins the boat on the starboard side.

On Saturday morning, the Trapani harbor beckons. After paperwork, police inspections and medical check-ups, the 230 migrants are allowed to go ashore in Europe. They thank their rescuers, hug each other to celebrate.

Most, though, don’t understand that this could be just one more step in an impossible dream. Many will be sent to government-run migrant camps. Others, depending on international agreements, will be sent back home.

Looming ahead for many is a frightening question: Do they dare venture again across the Mediterranean?

#Mediterranean migrants #Mediterranean rescue ships

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