#shes like. a wartime nurse?

[tybenadryl]

currently unnamed touhou oc inspired by the jubokko youkai - also trying a new brush

[runnning-outof-time]

Some Calm in the Midst of War | Wartime!Tommy Shelby x Reader

request: yes by @cybubuvubbu

pairing: Wartime!Tommy Shelby x Reader

summary: (Y/N) meets a soldier in a club. Not wanting to let go of this taste of calm amidst all of the chaos, they extend their moment of revelry into something a bit longer.

warnings: language, smoking, talks of war, suggestive situations (pg-13 in nature…I think)

word count: 1721

a/n: so this is what I decided to do in order to get these requests that have been sitting for months out to read. I really focused on just letting all of the inhibitions about it go and writing. Whatever gets put down gets put down, and however it gets put down flies also. I’m sorry if this isn’t what you were hoping for/looking forward to from me, but please know that I’m doing this in hopes that it’ll help me figure out what I want to do next. Ok, I’m sorry for making this so long…enjoy! :)

a/n 2: I just can’t bring myself to write completely nsfw stuff but I wanted to take this request in this direction, so I hope anyone won’t be annoyed at the fact that it’s not explicit smut. This’ll probably be the closest my writing will ever get to it.

I’D LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK! YOUR COMMENTS & REBLOGS HELP ME WRITE!

comment/message me if you want to be tagged!

The unlikely pair met in a club. She was - once - a woman of higher class, and he was a man whose family lived on next to nothing. But now because the war had ripped through both of their lives, they were finding solace in each other.

He couldn't take his eyes off of her all night. She was there with some of the ladies who she worked alongside as a field nurse. He'd come into town with his company, whom he was in command of.

Both looking for some semblance of what their lives used to be; looking for a way to escape the hell they’d been stuck in.

She was the one who approached him. "Saw you staring from across the bar," she started, her confidence earning some whistles from the men who were accompanying the man she was speaking to. One was even quick to leave his stool, offering the space to her. The man was surprised how quickly his men left them alone. "Thought it'd be a crime not to come and talk with you," she brought his attention back to her, her lips curved up into a smile.

He didn't know what to say at first. Prior to this, he wasn't sure if he was even going to take things further than a couple glances in her direction. But now he couldn't take his eyes off of her, and shit... he still didn't know what to say! A laugh filled with disbelief left his lips as he finally tore his eyes from hers.

He took a drag from his cigarette before looking her way again. One thing he wasn't going to do in this situation was fuck this opportunity up.

The two didn't talk much. Sure a brief conversation occurred, but it wasn't long before she was pulling them to the dance floor so they could join in with all of the other carefree couples.

The fact that he wanted to stay after the first song was over shocked her. It was evident though that she was the only reason he wanted to stay.

They exchanged a kiss before even exchanging names.

It wasn't surprising to see how quickly they became engrossed in one another. All they'd known for the last stretch of time was war and the feelings, not to mention sights, of terror that came with it. Neither knew when they'd get another moment like this...so they most certainly weren't going to waste it.

Their connection grew over the next several dances they shared. Soon enough the tender at the bar was yelling last call and they were ordering one last drink together.

Both weren't able to find the groups that they'd arrived with, so they decided to bask in each other's company for as long as they were able.

They finally got to talking, sitting at the bar until the keeper was telling them they needed to leave.

It was during these conversations that they found out just how different of lives they had led prior to this point. Funny how war had the ability to blur the class lines. Neither cared at the moment that the other wouldn’t have even spared a glance prior to now. They simply cared about feeling human again.

She brought him back to the room she'd been given for her brief time of leave from the field hospital. Tensions had risen between them as they walked closely together down the street. There was purpose in their step and things reached a fever point the second they stepped across the threshold into the small room.

The slightest look was shared before their lips met. No words needed to be spoken. What they both wanted was written clear across their faces.

Their walk to the bed looked more like a dance as they blindly fumbled with each others’ clothes. By the time her back hit the mattress, she was left in a blouse and underwear and he his trousers.

Another look was shared as a pause was taken. They were both breathing heavily, but this time he asked: “are you sure?”

She blinked a few times, as if it was her own way of checking that he was indeed real and that this was really happening. She couldn’t remember the last time she was in a position like this. The longer the pause was held, the more it became evident that she would be insane not to let the opportunity pass. “So sure,” she breathed in response, a smile playing on her lips.

His mesmerizing blue eyes turned a shade darker as he heard her response. A grin spread across his lips, and he brought his hand up to take hold of her cheek before she matched her lips to his again.

Their kisses were slower this time around. Both wanted to savor this moment, as they knew it may be the last like it they’d ever get. Inhibitions were thrown out alongside the rest of their garments and nothing more was said as they found a connection with each other.

Sweat stuck to their bodies and he made sure to hold her close, both reeling from the feeling the other was giving them.

They couldn’t remember the last time they felt this good. It was a feeling they never wanted to end.

Leaving was something neither of the two even thought about when they were finished. Their limbs stayed winded together, and they continued to exchange languid kisses as they came down from their highs.

“Shelby,” she breathed, her eyes focusing on the disc that was hanging around his neck. The disc that would be used to identify him if something were to happen in the field of battle.

Its presence made reality return to her mind. A reminder of the war they were still very much engrossed in flooded her thoughts, shrouding the state of bliss that she was previously experiencing.

“Tommy,” his voice brought her out of her thoughts.

“Huh?” she asked, focusing on him again with furrowed brows.

“My name’s Tommy,” he clarified.

“It’s nice to meet you, Tommy,” she said, then giggling as the context of the situation came to mind…usually these sort of introductions were done before she joined a man in bed.

Tommy cracked a grin at her statement, a chuckle leaving his lips before he leaned down to kiss hers, stifling her laughter in the process. “What’s your name?” he asked as they broke apart.

“(Y/N),” she answered, her smile still present.

“It’s nice to meet you, (Y/N),” he used the same greeting as she had, and they both began laughing again.

Their laughter subsided as their eyes met, and the tension they’d been feeling from the moment he spotted her at the club arose again. Nothing more was said as their lips molded together for the umpteenth time that evening.

Tommy was the one to break away, but he didn’t move far. He kissed a line from her lips down to her jaw and settled against the crook of her neck. (Y/N) sighed wantonly at the feeling, her hands tangling in the longer parts of his hair as her heart rate increased.

“Tommy…” his name was uttered in a breathy moan, “Tommy, I don’t…” she couldn’t quite keep her thoughts straight as his lips trailed lower, finding a new home in the valley between her breasts. It was becoming harder to think with each passing second, but she felt she needed to get these thoughts out. “I don’t usually do this—I’m not usually like this.”

He stopped his ministrations and lifted his head to look at her again. She sighed at the loss of feeling. “What do you mean?” he asked, his brows furrowing together in confusion when it took her a few moments to respond.

“I’m not usually this…” she paused, struggling to think of the right word, “…easy,” was what she finally settled on, although it still felt as if there were better words to use.

Tommy’s brows straightened only slightly. “I never thought you were,” he told her honestly.

“Things have been so different with the war and all,” she continued to explain herself even though he didn’t ask her to, “it’s been so long—too long, since I’ve been in a situation like this so forgive me for being unsure of what now needs to be done, but I just…my fear is that I won’t have a chance to experience this again…” she paused, feeling her chest tighten, “things are so uncertain now…”

“Hey…” he cut her off she could continue. She bit on her bottom lip to stop it from quivering, unable to match his gaze for fear of it making her tears fall. “Look at me, love,” he gently coaxed her, his hand cupping her cheek so that he could make their eyes meet. A solemn expression was present on his features as he reached up to brush away a tear with his thumb.

“I’m sorry,” (Y/N) apologized, now feeling pathetic for turning their passionate moment into this.

“Don’t be,” Tommy shook his head, his thumb running gently against her cheekbone. He searched her eyes for a moment before continuing, “no harm will ever come to you,” he told her, “not from me, not from anyone else…not while I’m here,” his words were spoken with the utmost truth, and his eyes never wavered from hers.

(Y/N) wasn’t sure what to say. She’d never had someone profess something like this to her…especially not someone who was a stranger a few hours ago. But in this moment it felt so right, and hearing those words alone gave her some hope that maybe they’d both be okay.

She smiled at him, reaching up to slowly run her hand against his jawline. “You’ll be here?” she asked him, her eyebrows raising slightly.

“Until I can’t be,” he assured her, a smile playing on his lips.

His response made (Y/N)’s smile widen, and nothing more was said as she gently took hold of his chin and brought his lips to hers once more.

Staying true to his word, Tommy stayed with (Y/N) until they both had to ship out to their posts again. Both were equally grateful to enjoy some calm in the midst of war.

Check out THIS ARTICLE that I found about the history of how identification tags were used throughout time — it’s such an intriguing read!

**ALSO - the italized words that Tommy said at the end were taken from the caption on the photo from the request, which were taken from the movie The Edge of Love.

MASTERLIST

Tagged: @mystcldydrms @the-anxious-youth @cloudofdisney @look-at-the-soul @elenavampire21

@mrsalwayswrite @julkaamazing @evita-shelby @theshelbyslimited @peakyswritings

@just-a-blackhole @watercolorskyy @strayrockette @peakyduchesss @alexxavicry

@captivatedbycillianmurphy @yummycastiel @dark-academia-slut @tommystargirl @emotionalcadaver

@stevie75 @lyarr24 @signorellisantichrist @zablife @anotherblinder

@cillmequick @strayrockette @dandelionprints @letal-y-poetica @garrison-girl-08

@insanitybyanothername @depxiety @justrainandcoffee @dragons-are-my-favorite @mrs-bond

@cljordan-imperium @brummiereader @red-riding-wood @everythingelseisextra @little-diable

@thomashelbyswife @shaddixlife @ryecosse @padfootdaredmetoo @novashelby

[motherofdogs1010]

Letters to Juliet & Romeo II (Thomas Shelby x Reader)

Summary: Heartbroken and in the midst of the Great War as a nurse, Y/N L/N writes to a person she never expected to write to before... her brother's friend, Thomas Shelby... But the war's over now and it is time to face the letters...

Warnings: angst, wartime talk, fluff, reunion, pre-Peaky Blinders Tommy, solider!Tommy, nurse!Reader, chubby!reader, age gap (everyone is of age)

Italics: contents of letters

🪖 Dividers by @firefly-graphics 🪖 Banner by @vase-of-lilies

June 1918, 5 Months before Great War Ends 4 Years of Letters

I picture what my life might be like when this war ends, I picture how I will ever continue to go about life after seeing the worst of men...

Y/N read Tommy's newest letter, she could see the dirt on it and the smudged thumbprints he left as he traced it; they were flooded today in the camp ever since they moved further onto the field. It was night now when she got to reading his letter, she wondered too how her life was going to be like when she got home.

I picture you there by my side, I imagine us together... I imagine you in my arms, holding you at night. You are the only one that knows me, the me that this war has crafted and spat out...

Y/N felt tears well up in her eyes as she read his profession, her lip wobbling as she read his letter before the tears soon began to fall down her cheeks as she heard some of her fellow nurses snore away into the night.

If we survive this war, I plan to make you a Shelby, make a honest woman out of you... dedicate my life to the woman who has held me together...

🪖

11 A.M., November 1918, the Great War was declared over... she could remember patching up a badly injured man when the gun fire stopped. She had looked up and saw the confusion on everyone's faces when they realized the total silence around them.

And now, the train she was on that was taking her home stopped, the conductor announcing their stop in Small Heath. She stood, grabbing her suitcase as she was still dressed in her ward uniform since that's what they were told to wear home. She wondered if Tommy had made it home first, she knew there was soldiers on the train, but she prayed he was somewhere.

She had written to her mother, who told her that her brother had arrived home first since he was one of the first to head home and that they would be greeting her.

As she stepped off the train, suitcase heavy as she saw the crowded train station, witnessing the reunions happening and she felt a sadness come over as she began to look around for her family.

"Y/N..."

Her eyes widen as she heard that familiar voice and turned around...

Tommy was dressed in his uniform just like how many others were as him and his brothers stepped off the train, immediately seeing Polly, Ada and Finn waiting for them in the crowd.

"There you boys are", Polly said, embracing them.

Tommy's mind wandered as he hoped Y/N was close by, he needed to see her, hold her just as anyone needed air to breath. He tuned out whatever the others were talking about as he looked around and his heart stopped as he saw her, the glimpse of her face as she was dressed in those damned nursing clothes.

Here she was, the woman he wanted to make his wife...

"Y/N..."

He watched as she froze and began to turn, but he had already begun to move, pushing past people and ignoring the voices of his family as he watched Y/N also drop her suitcase and began to walk towards him.

"Tommy", she said with tears in her eyes as finally, they embraced.

It was a tight embrace, one that felt as if one of them let go, they would never be here again. Tommy buried his face in his neck, his hand accidentally knocking off her cap as he squeezed her, feeling her tears wet a part of his uniform as little sobs escaped her.

He felt whole as if the missing piece he never had was returned to him as he lifted her off the ground for a few minutes as they embraced...

"So that's who the bastard's been writing to", Arthur mused, John chuckled.

"Don't be mad that he had a bird waiting for him", John teased as Polly rolled her eyes.

She watched as her nephew embraced the girl tightly, the two lost in their own world as Polly's eyes widen at who the girl was.

"Blimey, that's B/N's sister", she breathed, Ada squinted and saw it too.

"Looks like we've got a wedding to plan for, huh Polly?" Ada said.

Polly let out a little chuckle and thought that at least something good came out of this war...

TAGLIST

@calmingmelody96 @69your-best-night-mare69

[cuubism]

part two of 'two times hob ran into dream outside their regular meetings and one time dream called on him intentionally'

WWI era, discussions of war, and past loss of children

--

Hob is in a somber mood. Funerals will do that. Hob may never be taken by death himself, but that does not mean he is not touched by it—if anything, death sometimes seems to sting harder for knowing he is fortunate enough to avoid it.

Especially the death of a young person.

He steps out of the church, steps slower and quieter than normal. The heavy church air slips off him like a cloak dropped to the floor, the scent of incense gives way to motor oil, to horses, to nearby bakeries’ yeast and flour. The father of the young man killed—a work associate of Hob’s—hurries off with his wife to a waiting car, hat held low to avoid the show of tears. Hob doesn’t follow, but he’ll drop by later or some time tomorrow, see how they’re doing. Commiserate.

There wasn’t even a body to bury, the boy blown to pieces over in France. Hob can’t imagine it.

He’s making his quiet way down the bustling London street, hands in his pockets, trying to pay attention to everything around him to avoid remembering, when a man strides briskly out of a passing doorway and nearly collides with him.

Hob catches him by the arm to steady him. “Easy there, mate.”

The man whirls to look at him, and Hob finds himself staring into the face of his stranger. He startles back, dropping his arm. 

He’s spent the last two-and-a-half decades wondering if he’d ever see the stranger again, after the way things had fallen apart at their last meeting. Hob doesn’t know if he’s still angry with him, still hurt, if he intended to show up at their next meeting or not—but Hob can’t be unhappy to see him now. He’s never unhappy to see him. And he’d gladly take another look, any look, over never seeing him again. 

“Hob Gadling,” says his stranger, seeming taken aback. But he doesn’t immediately sneer down at Hob or storm off, so Hob will take that as a win. 

“Stranger,” Hob greets. Normally, he can’t resist a smile upon seeing him, but it’s hard to muster one today. Whether because of their fight, or the somber circumstances of Hob’s presence here, is hard to say. “Fate seems to keep throwing us together.”

His stranger frowns, looking up and down at Hob’s all-black attire, his no doubt drawn expression. It is, admittedly, out of character for him—more the stranger’s style than Hob’s own. “You appear troubled.”

Hob grimaces. “Funeral,” he explains. “Young boy killed at the front.”

“Ah.” His stranger’s face tightens. “Yes, there have been many deaths of late.”

Hob finally takes note of where he’d been coming from—the entrance to a hospital. He gestures to the doorway. “You alright?”

“Merely accompanying my sister in her work,” explains his stranger. “She is skillful and resilient, but these times have been trying.”

“She a nurse?” Hob asks. It seems too mundane a profession; any sister of his stranger must share some of his supernatural powers, whatever those are. But perhaps her talents lie in healing? It would explain the hospital.

His stranger’s lips tip up in a wry smile. “Something of the sort.”

Silence stretches between them for a moment. Hob summons his courage, buoying himself on the fact that his stranger hasn’t run off. “If it’s not too presumptuous, could I ask you to join me for tea? I… think I might have some apologizing to do.”

It’s hardly the day for this, but like hell is Hob going to waste the chance.

His stranger deliberates, his light eyes catching the weak London sun as they search Hob’s for… something. 

Then he says, “Very well.

--

The café is light and airy in jarring contrast to the serious mood hanging over London these past many months. Hob has hope, he knows the wartime will pass eventually—hopefully without the utter destruction of all combatants—but sometimes it feels that each war is only worse than the last. More horrific, more vicious—and the steady stream of news in the papers, reminding them all every day, hardly helps. Hob remembers a time when any news beyond the most local of happenings was sparse. He never thought he might think that was better.

They get tea while, hundreds of miles away, countless young boys die in trenches far from home.

Hob kind of wishes he had something stronger than tea.

“You are troubled,” says his stranger, again, the tiniest line creasing his brow. Is he worried about Hob? That would be funny considering how he behaved when Hob merely tried to say they were friends. 

The thought sparks something hopeful inside him, though. Lord knows Hob spends enough time worrying about his stranger, ridiculous though it feels to do so. He worries about him being alone. He worries about him feeling the loneliness Hob himself is sometimes struck by, stuck in time as he is while others age and die. Only it must be magnified a hundredfold for his stranger—Hob, at least, is still human. His stranger is other. Who does he have to keep him company across the centuries?

It's sort of a nice thought, to get a bit of that worry in return.

Hob raises his hands in surrender. “Fear not, dear stranger. I haven’t been disabused of my love of life. It’s just a sad day, is all. We all have them. Reminds us to be grateful for the life we do have, eh?”

His stranger relaxes, slightly, into his chair. “Not all share your outlook.” 

Hob sighs. “Eh, can’t blame ‘em really. It’s not exactly been the best year. People are losing kids, lovers… and for what, more pointless squabbling? Not everyone has several centuries of life experience to put things into perspective, either.”

“I recall you saying to me that you did not think you had changed,” says his stranger, consideration in his tone, and wow, he’s really going to bring that up, huh? Even remembering what Hob had said right after? “But I do believe you’ve become quite wise.”

Hob can’t help but preen internally at the compliment, but he grimaces and says, “Yeah, about that, I’m not so sure it was wisdom on display last time we spoke. I’m sorry for, well, how I approached that.”

“But not for your words?” questions his stranger, seeming more curious than angry. 

Hob’s never been able to lie to him, nor would he want to—his stranger is the only person he knows he doesn’t have to lie to to stay safe. “I don’t believe I spoke falsely, no. But nor was it right of me to— to put you on the spot. To put words in your mouth. For that, I am sorry.”

His stranger studies him. He looks very handsome today, his suit simple and dark but perfectly cut as always, hair a bit longer than last they’d met and ruffled up by his hat. The appreciation is not quite at the forefront of Hob’s mind as it might usually be, given everything going on, but he never fails to notice. Not that noticing will lead to anything—well, not for another two thousand years, at a minimum, given how they’ve gotten along so far.

At last, his stranger says, “I forgive you.”

Hob lets out a long breath, carefully held for years. Now are you going to apologize for storming off instead of talking things out? he thinks drily, but of course he won’t. Hob has long accepted the fact that he cannot expect normal human behavior from his stranger—his friend, he will be so bold as to say in the safety of his own head—who is so very inhuman.

“This funeral,” his stranger continues, changing the topic before Hob can decide whether he wants to continue or close that conversation. His eyes narrow on Hob, considering and… sympathetic? “It has reminded you of your son.” 

Hob leans back in his chair, breath catching raggedly in his chest. He’s been trying so hard not to think it, but of course the thoughts have been there, anyway. 

“You see everything, don’t you?” he observes, and his stranger merely inclines his head. “Even if you don’t speak it. Yes. You’re right. I think of Robyn whenever I see a young man die. I think of him when I see a father standing over the casket of his son who was lost to senseless, stupid violence, yes.”

“It is not a loss… that one gets over,” says his stranger, haltingly. Hob thinks that for all his friend is oblivious about normal human life most of the time, sometimes, sometimes, he understands it better than anyone else. It’s like he draws from a deep well of feeling greater than his body.

Or.

Wait.

The weariness of his shoulders as he says that. The look in his eyes, that banked, ancient loss that ages a man fifty years in a day.

Hob recognizes that look from his own mirror.

“You—” he starts, then forcibly stops himself. Instead he tries to convey, the way his stranger does, through looks, through implication and feelings shared outside of words. Speaking from experience, my dear, sad stranger?

His subtlety is rewarded by the barest tilt of his stranger’s head, the brush of his lashes over his cheeks as he looks down. And, well.

God.

“It’s not,” Hob says. “No.”

His stranger taps the side of his teacup with a slim finger. Thinking. “You are resilient, Hob,” he says at last, “to continue on so boldly after such a thing.” 

“I was brought low by it,” Hob admits, “but loss also puts things into perspective. At one point, I had lost everything—everything, but my own life. Why would I give that last thing up? That, and the opportunity for better, which is ever present.”

“I repeat that you are uniquely resilient,” says his stranger. “I am glad of it.” 

Hob smiles, then, despite the cold loss of the day. “You always ask me if I would give up my immortality. There was only one time when I thought of it.” 

His stranger looks at him sharply, tension creeping into his shoulders, but Hob continues, in the same, soft tone—

“Not because I had grown tired of my own life. No, it was when Robyn was born. I held him and I thought that I would give it to him if I could, to spare him the touch of death, to let him see the long beauty of life that I had seen. Then, again, after he died, I thought, if I had given it to him, I would have saved him. Would that it were possible.” He still thinks it, sometimes, on certain days. “It is what fathers do for their sons, is it not?”

“Some, perhaps,” murmurs his stranger, watching him fixedly. “You did not ask, upon our meeting in 1589.”

Hob rubs at the back of his neck. “Is it a request you would have granted if I had?”

“That is not my request to grant,” says his stranger. Not quite regretfully, but not happily, either. A neutrality born of conflicting feelings rather than indifference.

Whose, then? Hob wonders. So you truly are not the devil, then? You are not Death?

“I do not know if it will help you to know,” continues his stranger, “but I will say that I do not believe it would have been granted. Not for lack of sympathy, however. Not at all.”

Hob offers him a pained smile. “Who am I to understand matters of life and death?” he says. “I wouldn’t claim to. Thank you, though. It is a kindness, I think, to know that it was not in my power to save, or to fail him in that way.”

His stranger nods. 

“I suppose when I think about it,” Hob continues, “immortality that could be so easily passed around may invite more danger than protection.” 

“Indeed. Humans do love to pursue it, for all that it is a foolhardy pursuit.” He tilts his head and looks at Hob slyly. “For most, anyway.”

“You just have to be stupid enough to do it,” Hob says, and his stranger hums with amusement. “And have a chance meeting in a tavern, hm?”

“Chance, yes,” says his stranger. “Speaking of. I’m afraid I must depart. I have elsewhere I must be today.”

“I won’t keep you,” Hob says, though with disappointment. He reminds himself that he was never meant to have this time with his stranger anyway, it’s a gift— a chance.

His stranger’s lips twist, just slightly, as if he himself is not so happy to leave either— and that itself is a gift, too.

“But I would see you in ’89, if you still meant to come,” Hob adds.

“I believe I did,” says his stranger, meeting Hob’s gaze. And what a better parting than their last. “I will meet you then.”

--

As Hob lets him go at the door to the café, his stranger hesitates on the threshold. “I am… glad that I ran into you today, Hob,” he says, the words foreign in how personable they are. The closest, perhaps, that Hob’s stranger has come to speaking to him like a friend. “It is good not to let another seven decades elapse on such terms as we last left them.”

Hob tucks his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels, the warmth he feels at such a small, but meaningful thing breaking out on his face despite his best attempts at moderation. “I feel the same, stranger.”

His stranger hesitates again, deliberating on something. Then he says, “Dream.”

Dream of… what? Hob thinks, perplexed, and his stranger keeps looking at him with that bottomless expression of his. 

Then the order of the conversation hits. “Wait— is that your name?”

His friend—Dream—nods once. “Friends should know how to call each other.” A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Or so I have heard.”

“Well met, then,” Hob says, holding out his hand to shake, a proper grin on his face now, no moderation about it, “Dream.”

Dream takes his hand, squeezes it with that same tiny, almost shy smile on his face; they have never properly touched before, and oh, Hob is grateful for this moment.

“Until we meet next,” Dream says. And between one blink and the next, he’s gone.

[ronsenthal]

Ron Speirs x Nurse Reader

Summary: During wartime some stories were created to scare and keep the soldiers on the line, but some other ones were slowly written to have a happy ending, just like fairy tales.

A/N: This was based on a prompt kindly sent to me by a lovely anon who wanted something with Ron x Nurse Reader and since then I was so OBSESSED with this idea so I had to try something. So dear anon if you are reding this I hope you like it, I had to change it a little bit because I'm truly awful with requests, hope you don't mind. Also this was slighthly based on the Rolling Stones song, because it so Ron coded and apparently I can't write anything not related to music? So here we go!

The first time you saw him was one week after D-Day, everybody was still scared and lost, many people went missing so naturally the first place the men went looking for their friends was the Aid Station. It was completely madness, you couldn’t take a pause to catch your breath even when your feet hurt, even when you couldn’t tell what time it was, when your stomach made loud noises, you pushed through pain, tears and tiredness. 

During one of your shifts you were attending to a private who was hit in the head by shrapnel after a potato masher exploded close to him. He was bleeding heavily since he arrived so you had to change the bandage from time to time. The Aid Station was always a noisy place with some people screaming in agony, others nurses and doctors were giving orders trying to save someone else and a few lucky ones were just chatting to pass the time. But in that afternoon it went quiet as if some spell was cast and suddenly the world was frozen, you could see heads following the footsteps of this soldier who walked in.

He slowly walked in your direction, you couldn’t see his features until he was at the other side of the stretcher of the man you were aiding. At first he didn’t say a word as he was looking at the other soldier, as if studying the damage that was done by the germans. He took a deep breath and finally asked quietly, “Is he gonna make it?” and looked at you with those big dark green eyes to which you couldn’t lie, so you honestly said “I don’t know”, he only shook his head giving you one sad look before turning into his heels and heading out.

You were awfully quiet that evening trying to eat some bread while the other girls were chatting. You tried your best but your long-suffering patient didn’t make it and yet you could only think about those sad green eyes. Some weeks went by, people would come and go but your thoughts would often drift aways to this face you couldn’t even put a name to. 

The second time you saw him was even less fortunate than the first one, this time he came in angrily shouting that he didn’t needed any help and assistance, but anyone would notice that he was limping and there was even blood on his uniform coming from his leg, his hands also were bleeding. 

Poor Jane, your friend was the closest nurse available, you only watched from a distance as she was addressing his wounds. At first he was reluctant but then finally gave in and let the woman quickly put some bandages on it, she only asked a couple of questions, filled a piece of paper and gave it to the man. Just as he went in he was suddenly gone, as he was heading out he saw you and nodded with his head before putting back his cap. 

Dinner was always gossip time and that night you made sure to sit near Jane to get some food but also try to get some information. 

“So who was that guy who came in earlier making a scene?”

“Are you kidding Y/N? That is Lieutenant Speirs, he is the one everybody keeps talking about, he killed 15 german POW or something on D-Day” Linda said, swinging her spoon 

dramatically.

“I heard it was more like 20 guys, he even offered some cigarettes before shooting them” the other nurse called Grace. 

“And do you believe those stories?” you asked them not even daring to take your eyes off your food. This couldn’t be true right? 

“I don’t know Y/N, I heard it from one of my guys the other day, he was telling his friend that they sergeant saw it” Grace told you two before changing the subject to talk about some soldier named Talbert that they both find so cute.

Lieutenant Speirs so that’s him, after that day you were always looking for his name in the morning reports at the Aid Station, you heart almost skipping a beat at the letter S but you never saw his name. You never forgot his name nor his eyes or his dark hair. 

From time to time you would see him with a cigarette on his lips from one side to the other, he was always followed by strange looks and a couple of whispers, his bad reputation was growing as time passed by, some stories were clearly too absurd to be true, others were creepier to say the least.

Third time's the charm right? Bastogne was a real nightmare, you had to move to the front line due to the heavy losses of people who had basic medical training, the supplies were short and the was was getting brutal, specially due to that fucking cold. One night you were trying to get some warm soup in the foxhole you shared with Eugene, you both couldn’t feel your fingertips as if they seemed to be frozen so you decided to try and warm your hands while eating something. 

“Y/L/N” came from a hard and harsh voice from behind, you were caught by surprise as you jumped from the scare “Y/L/N did I get your name right?”

“Yes sir!” you quickly said

“Pleased to meet you, I guess you know who I am. What are you and Roe doing here? It’s not safe enough you should stay aways from the line” he said as you both nodded quickly taking your belongings and starting to move, he kept watching you and offered his hand to pull you from the foxhole to which you said a shy “thank you”, his hands were strong and warm and you had to fight the urge to ask him how he could keep them so warm in the freezing temperature, but you didn’t said a word. 

Holding a gun in his hand he slowly and carefully escorted you through the white snow. Eugene was following you two but suddenly Joe Toye called for his help with something else. Speirs even helped you to settle in the new foxhole, putting some twigs and sticks to reinforce the cover. He then wished you goodnight before disappearing again. The man walked like a shadow between the lines, you took your time to thank the guy from above that he was at your side in this war, you wouldn’t be able to sleep if you thought that he was the enemy.

Just a couple of days later the only thing the men would talk about was how the now Captain Speirs ran through the streets of Foy to link up with I Company after he released Foxhole Dike from his position and how bravely and fearlessly led Easy. The guys were so happy to have a good leader again, you were happier too because it meant now they were saffer.

The fourth time he was shot in his butt during one of your night shifts back at the Aid Station, he was soaking wet, pale and so tired that he didn’t have the energy to be stubborn. You asked what happened and Sergeant Lipton said he was hit while going across the river into the germans territory to get some information on the germans. You promptly gave him some medicine and started to take care of his wound as fast as you could. 

It was strange but you kept your cool and gave your best to stay calm and do your job as if he was just another guy. Except he wasn’t, after the bullet was removed he let out a big sigh of relief and as the medicine was starting to kick in he slowly falled asleep in a feverish state.. You couldn’t help yourself and stare at the man you’ve been thinking about for so long, you stayed by his side trying to quietly read a book but your eyes would move away from it and watch how his eyelashes peacefully rested, how soft his facial expression was and how his now slightly wet hair was falling in his forehead. 

You reached your hand to it with the excuse to feel his temperature, he was burning hot and as you were taking a wet piece of cloth to use it to cool him off a bit he opened those same green eyes you’ve been thinking about.

“Am I gonna make it?” he said with a weak voice and caught your hand in his

“Yes” you said, but this time you were 100% sure and when you realized you were smiling at him, he gave you a cute smile back before closing his eyes and falling asleep again. He was certainly a handsome man but on that night you could swear he looked like one of those princes from fairy tales your mom would tell you at bedtime. You couldn’t help but think how he could be soft and yet so stern, so scary but also so gentle and caring, you felt sympathy for the Devil after all. 

The next day he was feeling so much better and tried to get away as quickly as possible but you preferred to stay cautious and ordered him to stay a bit longer, which he couldn’t refuse and finally gave in. After some minutes of awkward silence he started to small talk asking where you are from, if you had any siblings back home and even if you had a boyfriend. You tried your best to keep talking just to keep him with you a bit longer but your peace was interrupted when a couple of soldiers came by heavily wounded and you were required to take care of them. 

When you finally came back he was gone, he only left a note apologizing for leaving without a proper goodbye but promised he would somehow make it up to you later. 

Of course he did it as soon as you set foot at Berchtersgarden, there the mood was totally different, especially after the german army officially surrendered. He took you out to enjoy some coffee at this beautiful place with an incredible view of the mountains, even through you thought that the view of the captain in front of you was even better.

You were so happy with everything that you couldn’t help but smile from ear to ear and as you reached from his hand across the table, he didn't moved it and intertwined your fingers, then gave you a sincere and beautiful smile, you felt butterflies all over your stomach because you felt more than just sympathy for the Devil.

Taglist: @mads-weasley , @footprintsinthesxnd , @sweetxvanixlla , @xxluckystrike , @malarkgirlypop , @lostloveletters , @next-autopsy , @ewipandora

[ego-meliorem-esse]

I present to you my years long obsession - female America.

This is not a Nyotalia version it's just a concept of "what if everything is the same but Alfred was born a girl". Like i see so much potential! In a world where all the odds are stacked against her, she despite it all gets to where she is today. Making good and bad decisions along the way.

A lil hc/backstory for my main girl:

• Given name (by dad Arthur) is Elizabeth Felicity Kirkland but during the revolution changes her last name to Jones. Her first name change happens in the 1820/1830s when she changes it to Alexandra, also dropping her second name. (I was young when I came across the name and it means "defender/protector of man" and I was /obessed/ so i just stick to it since she is a loser and just thinks it's a cool sounding name)

• She goes by Alex/Al and I think that's neat :)

• My girl is tall. Like 181 cm tall. Sender but with visible muscles. She does want a bigger behind but her Anglo-Saxon genetics say nah.

• As a child she spent more time in England due to her being a girl so I think even if Arthur was absent he didn't allow her to spend much time alone in the colonies. She resents that ofc

• Just like with Alfred, Alex is very fkn close to Matt even if she forgets to call him or check up on him for months at a time. Al: "Hey man I know I just called a while ago but how've you been? Matt: "you called me 5 months ago..."

• Works at NASA as a part time aeronaitical engeneer. Loves physics, hates chemistry (self projection im sorry)

• During the revolution she dressed up as a boy but the people she worked with knew she wasn't one. People went along with it anyway.

• Other than during the American revolution, she dressed in feminine presenting clothes up until the 1930s. After that it was trousers all the way!

• Alex was never a nurse during wartime but definitely did accountaint work in ww1 and later joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) where she stayed until 1943 when she joined her men fighting on the ground ( Conversion to Army status, Women's Army Corps - WAC). That's when she saw actual combat.

• Isn't fond of birds. Canaries are fine. Eagles are unsettling.

• Obsesses over a certan thing/hobby at a time up to a point where she perfects her skill. When she was about 14 (human years) it was the whole freedom and equality of man and all the politics regarding it. In the 1890s her obession was cars and motor vehicles. The 1910s brought a new obsession on womens rights. 1960s was space exploration where she devoted almost all her time researching and working for NASA, disregarding her goverment/state duties as a country. In the 1980s it was the internet. In 1990s she got really interested in the Balkan wars (self insert >:)) for whatever reason. Today her attention is mostly on social media and her attention span ia short af. Still really likes all things tech.

• Hasn't got many properties/real estate. Al does own a penthouse in Seaport, Boston and a late 17th and early 18th century colonial home in Newbury, Boston (that she needs to renovate asap). The only other real state she owns is in California, though modern and recently buit, it's not big nor does she spend much time there.

• Her personality is basicaly Alfred if he grew up as a woman and had to face opression based on sex and inequality that came with it. So still bubbly, extroverted, a social butterfly but also self-serving, idealistic, manipulative sprinkled in with sarcasm, cautiousness and craftiness. Same feckin sense of humour tho.

• In 1783, at the Treaty of Paris in Versailles both her and her father had to sign the document that started her independence (She herself had a human representitive 'cus of her age/sex bla bla but it was mostly formalities). At that signing Arthur gave her a flintlock pistol that he himself used in the 1640s. Not many words were exchanged, he just put it in her hand to keep. She still has it in her attic. Somewhere. She'd find it if she just takes the time to look for it I'm sure.

• In 1889 she straight up did her first war crime/murder of a fellow nation (if you don't count shooting her pops face off at Saratoga in 1777). After an altrication with Antonio that resulted in him insulting and slapping the girl for her audacity and mouthiness, she punched him straight in the jaw. A fight insued where she got ahold of his belt and straight up strangled him. Took her a while to process that and accept it. On the bright side Antonios scilence was heard around the world and while perplexed and insulted, older and influential (mostly male at that point) nations started to feel a glint of respect forming for the young startup.

• Al was given a family pocket watch by her father in the 90s (No more empire for Arthur so he sad :(((((( ) that was suppoaed to go to a firstborn son of a lord as an inheritance symbol. Everyone thought Jack would get it since Matt is techincally not Arthur's son. But even he would be expected to recieve it before Al. Then in an unexpected turn of events, while visiting her grumpy and nostalgeous empire-missing dad, Arthur pulled out the watch while eating stale kebabs in front of the telly and gave it to her casualy without as much as a word (The empire started with her, it shall end with her). She keeps it in her work desk drawer in a wooden box.

• Al and Zee have an interesting relationship. While being different in almost every aspect, there ia a mutual respect for eachother from eachother. While not really being able to see eye to eye, they are sisters in a certain roundabout and very fucked up way. Girls who learned that they are very much judged by their sex despite being daughters of a high ranking British lord. While aware that she will never be Alex/Elizabeth in her fathers eyes, Zee still gets treated as a treasure by her father. Much to Zee's annoyance.

• It's still Matt who's in Alex's shadow. Despite the dificulties she rises above and is the perfect child of an empire. Smart, intelligent, inquisitive, a fast learner and incredibly aware of the political and historical situation at all times. Even despite being a girl and less than a son in the eyes of a 17th/18th century society, she suceeds.

• Arthur wanted a son to come from his colonial endeavours, as all empires/nobility at the time did. And as all other empires at the time had. But ofc karma is a bitch and he's the only empire with an only child being a daughter. Though at first thougrly dissaponted, when he lays his eyes on his daughter for the first time, the only emotion he can feel is /joy/.

• Instead of sowing/knitting Al's education was very much focused on natural sciences, since that is where Arthur quickly realized she exels at. He swapped her Violin and General History of Music lessions with Astrophysics and The History of Astronomy. All in an attempt to stop her from making his ears bleed from the constant prattling about The Four Square Theorem or The Brachistocrone Curve. It only got worse, but his daughter was happy and content.

I have sooooo many more of these jfc i might do more later but for now this is all I can think of.

TLDR: Female America is great and has so much potential as a character hghhhhhhhh

[saintsenara]

if you are still doing ship game, thoughts on jily?

thank you very much, anon - i am always taking questions both on romantic ships and on characters' platonic vibes, the more unhinged the better.

although jily can't really be described in those terms, not least because their narrative purpose in canon is to be little more than blank canvases onto which harry can project as he goes through his series-long character arc, shedding his initial hero worship of james when confronted with the reality of his father's behaviour in order of the phoenix and starting both to fully appreciate lily's centrality to the course his life is taking and to see his dad with nuance as a real and fully-rounded person, flaws and all.

this narrative role means that the glimpses we get of them in canon feel kind of superficial - their bantering during snape's worst memory is basically high-school-teen-movie level, the snapshots of their life under lockdown in deathly hallows lovely and bittersweet but also just colour to a storyline which is already all of those things.

and this is not to say that i find jily uninteresting as a ship - i completely reject the common anti-jily position that they didn't really like each other, that they had nothing in common, or that their backgrounds made them incompatible [i'll expand on this below, but while i do think that their respective blood statuses and the impact of these on their relationship are worth thinking about, i loathe fics which portray james as chafing against his marriage because, as a pureblood, he'd be more comfortable with someone 'of his own kind'. this is bullshit, and there's far, far too much of it in this fandom]. my views on one of james' most frequent non-lily partnerships are well known, and i share the outrage many jily fans have for the way lily in particular is treated in a subfandom increasingly dominated by rigid fanon which prioritises giving depth to male characters [even if those characters are, in essence, oc's] and slash relationships over exploring the canon female characters, partnered or not.

but i do also find that a lot of jily falls into the same trap as much of the hinny i dislike - that is, a tendency to present as a sunshine-and-roses fairytale a relationship which is much more interesting if the things which canon implies [and which can be reasonably inferred outside of canon scenes from a canon coherent engagement with the text] might have introduced an element of dysfunction into james and lily's partnership are taken into account.

the shadow of the war is obviously one of these things. what role lily actually plays in the resistance is something which preoccupies me [she is never mentioned in canon to have taken a combat role - and i find it considerably more plausible that any attempt voldemort made to recruit her was at snape's request and connected to her potions prowess] particularly because, as we see in the way her death is memorialised in deathly hallows, the series regards the defence of the integrity of the nuclear family as a key aim for the good guys. how does she interact with james and his wartime role when she's pregnant, nursing, or in hiding for the vast majority of her time in the order? how does she feel about her husband being a soldier if she's behind the scenes?

indeed, what role james [and sirius] plays in the order is also something i'm obsessed with thinking about - not least because so much of the inherent tragedy of the marauders' storyline is caused by the fact that james and sirius think they're fucking invincible and that their plans to keep the potters safe are foolproof. it's entirely reasonable to read james and sirius as being pretty gung-ho about being paramilitaries - and my headcanon is absolutely that more battled-hardened order members didn't like them very much [moody does not, after all, seem massively fond of sirius] - and lily seems affected by this too [she's not holding her wand either!], and what they thought they were doing as 1981 rolls around is compelling to me.

james and lily's divergent backgrounds is also something i'd like to see explored more in fandom - not, as i've said, in the dull 'james should have married a pureblood' way, but in a way which deals with the fact that their relationship follows wizarding norms. molly weasley can blame the war all she likes, but [although i doubt this was jkr's intention] the evidence of canon is that witches and wizards marry and have children extremely young as a social standard, that couples generally don't live together before marriage, that divorce doesn't seem to be common, and that married women tend not to work. lily - a mother at twenty and, therefore, presumably married at nineteen - is coming of age, then, in a magical world which thinks about gender very differently from the muggle world of the 1970s, and i think that tension is worth exploring.

[similarly, the way in which her marriage is self-protective - lily gains a pureblood name and the social cachet which comes with it at a time when she's in rising danger on account of her birth - is something i think it's worth looking at when considering the pairing.]

there are other flashes of dysfuntion which i adore thinking about in relation to jily - lily's relationship with the other marauders [you can pry the reading that sirius resents her for stealing the love of his life - and i certainly don't mean lupin - away from him from my cold, dead hands]; how much of his misbehaviour at school james conceals from her; the fact that lily becoming more overtly interested in james from her sixth year onward must have a little bit of attempting to make snape jealous mixed into it - and whenever i stumble upon them in fics i say oh ho like horace slughorn and kick my little feet in the air.

i care rather less about 'we're so hot and flawless and not doomed' as a trope.

but i do stan james for beefing with vernon dursley even though lily told him to behave. the man really is just that annoying.

[alolantikibar]

A long way from home... Finally got around to doing a painting of my Pokemon OC, Thistle! More context on this piece under the read more.

Thistle is a researcher of Space-time Distortions and Ultra Wormholes, and has gotten herself eebie deebied on more than one occasion. (Only a couple of those instances were on purpose.) She's also from a long line of Dragon tamers, her grandmother Yarrow being the previous champion of the Kanto region prior to Blue. Thistle, however, did not share her family's affinity for training Dragon types. After years of Yarrow attempting to teach her, Thistle begged her family to let her pursue a career in science instead. They agreed, though they would hold her lineage and grandmother's legacy over her head into adulthood. As an adult, Thistle refused to train any Dragons. She held this conviction firmly up until the time she accidentally ended up sending herself back in time to the wartime period of when AZ was king. Thistle is usually able to figure out a way to get back to her original time period, but it took several years before Thistle managed to leave this time given the war. These were very lonely, difficult years for Thistle until she came upon an injured Gabite.

Thistle nursed the Gabite back to health, and it unfortunately took a liking to her. It seemed to sense that Thistle had some sort of trauma regarding Dragon-types, and was overly affectionate to compensate. It wouldn't leave Thistle alone, and so she begrudgingly accepted it as her Pokemon. The pair ended up forming a strong bond. Gabite eventually evolved into Garchomp, and was instrumental in Thistle being able to protect herself and get back to her correct time period. ANYWAYS LOTTA YAPPING, I have more info about her on her (unfinished) TH page if you want to give it a read. https://toyhou.se/28261387.thistle

[coffeestainedcamera]

Finally got around to catching up on Spy x Fam manga and man. I def didn't expect a parody of "vodka martini" spy fiction in Shonen Jump to begin to be even more aggressive in talking about the horrors of war. But considering that the mag's target audience is kids and teens, it's nice.

And yeah, I'm actually serious about the whole thing. Spoilers for chapter 90 and onwards.

It's already been a series about the aftereffects of war. Like, we've got Yor being an assassin to take care of her younger brother during the war. She prob can't cook bc being an orphan living through war rationing isn't exactly conducive to learning this life skill. Anya was a human experiment and is terrified of abandonment. Bond was an animal experiment and a chapter from his POV shows he's still pretty traumatized. Loid has multiple chapters from his POV about being a kid during wartime and losing his family.

And now, we get an entire arc about the principal and the nice auntie.

Y'know, where he keeps being a history teacher to teach the kids not to repeat the past mistakes, while people keep pushing him to teach physics to enable the war effort. Where he openly says he wishes radios were used for something besides broadcasting propaganda. Where he gets jailed for "discrediting the war effort" (aka demanding to stop using the deaths of undertrained volunteers as propaganda).

And where the nice auntie volunteers because she lost too many people she cares about and can't handle it anymore. Where she sees shooting for insubordination. Where she loses friends on the front lines and almost dies. Where she's nursed back to health by a nice lady, even though she lost a daughter to soldiers like her. Where on her way back, the nice auntie muses about how the stars in the enemy territory are the same as at home. Where she loses more friends on her way back, and finds out the guy she loved is married now.

Like, this is the series very bluntly sitting the kids down for a talk and it's desperately needed. We've got two large-scale wars (and ya, the nationalism leading up to one sent my fam packing) and iirc Japan has a right-winger problem. Over in US, I just had a prestigious consulting firm roll up with a seemingly nice and stable government consulting practice. But the hiring manager wouldn't stfu about how cool auditing the DOD is and the places I'd go, so I noped out. Military anything provokes bad memories for me. Oh, and had to sit through his cringe "wow, you're so good at English" thing, but I digress!

I do hope these kinds of stories enable kids to make similar types of decisions in adulthood. Because ultimately, it's not just the draft and volunteering that contribute to the military-industrial complex. It's also all the arms dealers and auxiliary services. And if able, I think good adults should ensure that trash is deprived of brain power, esp if they're in an in-demand sector.

Bc really, if you're not watching the news, do you at least want to avoid contributing to what's shown on these pages?

[therealslimshakespeare]

I am pumped to read about Gale x nurse!reader. It sounds so good!!

At the risk of sounding dumb, would you ever write a fic about buck x fem!reader in the camps together? Maybe she was part of the crew and was captured too. Suspending the fact that they would not house men and women together, I can just picture Buck and reader trying to take care of eachother in the camp (and maybe she gets sick when it’s really cold?) I can just see caretaker/protective Buck coming out full force.

Sorry if that’s stupid, you had said you welcomed Buck prompts and I could not get this off my mind. I’m excited for your Buck fic and more of Bucky and ACORN. Thanks for your writing!

Darling Anon! Thank you for this ask, it’s delicious and I’ve got myself some thoughts.

First off -I’ve got a million and one different scenarios and AU’s all centering around life in the camp and I doubt many of them will expire any time soon, it’s just full of too many experimental chances to explore characterization more than even in the hustle and bustle of wartime. So, yes I’d totally be down, shhh, doesn’t sound dumb at all.

At first glance to me there’s a couple of intriguing situations to set it up, one being the real life struggle of Flight Nurse Reba Whittle who had to fight for her rights as an officer and a woman to be considered a POW. I believe the knock-out talent that is @blurredcolour may have more info/inspo in this for you if you’d like to (respectfully) yell at her regarding it.

Another take would indeed be the suspension of their keeping the genders separate and here’s where I feel like we could get super interesting: if we went full Integrated Service AU -as has been discussed on here with other anons about an AU where women are as plentiful as the men. Imagine the disdain the Germans actually had for America’s multi racial service members suddenly doubled by the concept of women in the armed forces. Apply their derision and hatred of say: the serving Soviet women. Like, things could get ugly and intense in those camps and Gale Cleven would 100% be on the front lines of ensuring his crews get their rightful treatment. I’m rubbing my grubby little author paws just thinking of the potential.

Thanks for the kind words regarding ACORN -I’m gobsmacked how much y’all are enjoying it, it’s delighting me. Xoxo

Marina 🌹

[cetaitlaverite]

Anything to Anywhere

Masters of the Air - Bucky Egan x OC

masterlist is here <3

09. Sweet Little Thing

It ended up taking longer than a week, as had been the nurse’s prediction, before Stella was allowed to fly again, but at least she was allowed to fly at all. For a while there Stella had thought she might lose her pilot’s licence, had even gone so far as to try to work out what wartime work she might sign up for if she did - could she really stand to be a wireless operator after years of ferrying? - before her commanding officer, Commodore Knightswick, relented and gave her the all clear.

She was in trouble but not anything nearly as severe as she had imagined. Truthfully, while she had veered off course while flying, the AA gunners should never have fired on a friendly, unarmed plane. She was informed that AA gunners at airfields across the country had been informed in no uncertain terms to ensure they were sure it was an enemy aircraft before firing on someone flying alone - Stella was not, as it happened, the first ATA pilot to ever be hit by British flak.

So, back in the changing room hut preparing for her first chit after her accident, Stella was giving herself a pep talk. She hadn’t ever needed one before, was usually so confident in her own abilities that she had no fear, regardless of the state of the plane she was set to be flying, so she was remarkably terrible at it. But her hands were shaking as she pulled on her gloves and she’d had such a sick feeling rolling in her stomach at breakfast that she hadn’t been able to eat, so she thought some words of wisdom from the person she trusted most in the world were due.

That didn’t mean said words of wisdom were altogether very encouraging.

She was still muttering to herself when she emerged from the hut in her flight suit, her gas mask hooked over her shoulder and her aviator hat in her hand. “Just stick to the flight path,” she was telling herself. “No AA guns in the flight path. Just pay attention this time. Can’t afford to be stupid like that again. Stupid mistake.”

John was standing at the foot of the tower with Buck and Curt, watching her as he inadvertently zoned out of the conversation he was engaged in.

He could tell, even from this distance, that she was being hard on herself about her accident. He could also tell that she was nervous. Whatever she was mumbling to herself put a furrow between her eyebrows and a frown on her lips, made her wring her aviator hat in her hands and scuff her feet slightly as she walked towards the jeep waiting to take her wherever she needed to go.

She was impatiently pushing her dark hair out of her face when Curt called out to her.

John knew he must have followed his gaze.

“Finley!” he called, grinning as she looked over.

Stella smiled back at him and offered a wave.

“Get over here!” Curt called when she continued on her way.

Stella laughed a little bit and pointed to the jeep waiting for her. “I’m working!”

“Won’t keep ya long!” Curt insisted in response.

Stella hesitated, glancing between him and the jeep, before sighing and jogging over. When she slowed to a stop in front of them she was only slightly breathless. She offered a shy, sheepish smile to John, pushing a lock of her hair behind her ear, before turning her attention on Curt.

“Where ya headed, Fin?” he asked, adjusting the brim of his crusher cap.

“Tibenham,” Stella replied. “You’re borrowing one of their B-17s on your mission tomorrow. Have you seen a wiry little flight engineer wandering around here yet?”

“Not yet,” Buck informed her. He was shifting the toothpick between his teeth around his mouth, giving her a small, almost conspiratorial, smile.

“Always time,” John added.

Stella exchanged a rueful smile with him. “She’s always running late and only recently on the job. Maybe you can scare her into submission for me when she comes out?”

John grinned. “What d’ya want us to say?”

“Something that’ll make her show up on time next time,” Stella replied. “Just use your big strong major’s voice and make her salute you. Should be enough.”

“Put her on latrine duty,” Curt said.

Stella laughed loudly and abruptly. “No!” she said, still laughing as she gave him a gentle shove. “She’s such a sweet little thing.”

“You’re a sweet little thing,” Curt replied.

Again, she laughed. “If sweet’s what you’re after I don’t know what you’re doing hanging around with me.” Then she shook her head and deliberately spoke over him when he started to say something else. “Thank you for the flowers, by the way. They were very pretty.”

“You’re very pretty.”

“Curt!” Stella reprimanded him, giving him another shove.

“Alright, alright,” he relented, chuckling and taking a stumbling step back. “One day you’ll come around.”

Stella rolled her eyes. “If I thought you were serious I’d resent you, you know.”

Curt simply shrugged. “I’d be serious if I thought you’d let me.”

“Stels don’t like when men find her attractive, Curt,” John cut in, shooting her a grin. “I woulda thought you’d know that by now.”

“I don’t like when the only thing men think of me is that I’m attractive,” Stella corrected, turning to him with raised eyebrows. “I have male friends who find me attractive and I don’t mind. Trying to get me into bed, however, is a different story.”

“Y’know, Fin, I’m not sure if I should be offended that you told him your first name before me,” Curt cut back in with a lazy grin. “Can I call you Stella? That’s your name, huh?”

“I didn’t tell him my name,” Stella replied pleasantly. “He overheard my brother talking to me. But you can call me Stella only if you absolutely have to. Everyone else just calls me Finley.”

“But I’m not everyone else, am I, Stels?” John teased.

Beside him, Buck rolled his eyes, fiddling with the toothpick between his teeth.

Stella opened her mouth to retort but was cut off by a voice from behind her.

“First Officer Finley!”

Stella and John exchanged quiet smiles. “That’ll be your flight engineer,” he said.

“Pretend to be big and scary,” Stella directed him.

John puffed out his chest. “I am big and scary.”

“First Officer Finley!” Stella’s flight engineer, Lucy, exclaimed once more as she sprinted towards her. “First Officer, ma’am, I’m so sorry I’m late!”

Stella turned to her and smiled indulgently. “Be on time next time, okay?” She turned back to John, Buck, and Curt and gestured at her. “This is Flight Engineer Wainscott.”

“Lucy,” Lucy introduced herself with a shy, self-conscious smile, as though she’d only just noticed the three American pilots standing with Stella.

Before John could embark on the performance Stella had requested of him, Stella and Lucy’s jeep driver honked his horn.

Lucy jumped about a foot in the air.

“Well,” Stella declared, stepping away from the group, “time won’t keep. We’re already behind schedule.”

“Have a good flight,” Buck told her, inclining his head in a farewell as Stella made to leave.

“Thanks,” she replied.

“See ya later, Fin,” Curt added.

Stella grinned at him. “See you later.” She didn’t expect anything further from John so she turned to leave, gesturing for Lucy to precede her on their way to the jeep, but he came up behind her and caught her arm before she could go far.

“Fly safe, alright?” he asked, his voice low, his hand gentle in the crook of her elbow. “What happened last time won’t happen again but stay safe. Alright?”

Stella was slow to meet his eyes. Something about the way he was looking so intently down at her felt too intimate. But, after a beat, she dragged her eyes up to his and gave him a nod. “I will. Not just me I have to get home alive this time.”

“And we’ll be needing that B-17 tomorrow,” John added.

Stella managed a smile. “I’ll make sure to steer clear of any and all AA guns where possible. Promise.”

John stared at her hard. He didn’t return her smile. But after a short pause he released her arm and stepped back with a nod. “Alright. See you later.”

“See you later,” she agreed. She spared him one final glance before turning and jogging the rest of the way to the jeep, jumping into the back to join Lucy before the driver hastily sped away.

When Stella and Lucy returned, the B-17 safely ferried and in its bay, they went their separate ways while Stella wrote up her flight report and Lucy went to talk with the mechanics. When Stella emerged from the ATA hut it was almost time for dinner; she could tell without having to check the time because it was louder outside than it usually was, the sounds of chatter leaving a trail of breadcrumbs towards the two mess halls, both officer and enlisted.

Stella didn’t want dinner yet. The nerves which had prevented her from eating breakfast were still lingering in her stomach and she knew it would be a while until the adrenaline from flying calmed down enough to ease that sick feeling. Instead, she retreated to her hut and retrieved one of her books on birdwatching, then settled herself near the edge of the base, close to the trees, and waited for something to look at.

It was mostly magpies around here. She would often wake up to the sound of their chattering outside her hut. Occasionally, and especially in the colder months, she would catch sight of a robin. Sometimes she’d get lucky and see a woodpecker. Often, though, only magpies or crows, drawn by the nearby farm. No hummingbirds, in any case. And certainly no penguins.

She smiled as she recalled one of her very first conversations with John, when he’d asked her about penguins and their lack of flying ability. She often spoke about birds in her first meetings with men to encourage them to put aside any notions of romantic attachment, or else simply to amuse herself; if they were going to force her into conversation she was going to talk about whatever she wanted to talk about. But John hadn’t been deterred. In fact, he hadn’t batted an eye. He’d accepted her bird fact - had remembered it, even - and prompted her to tell him more. She wouldn’t have expected that of him, not as she knew him now. But he was surprising, she’d come to find, in his depth; he presented himself as reckless and carefree and shallow but in reality he cared an awful lot.

At least, Stella was starting to let herself believe that he did.

When she finally left her hiding place and headed to the officers’ mess, her book tucked up beneath her arm, she found it quiet. Jessop and Alice had stayed behind to wait for her, pushing scraps around their plates so that the waiters wouldn’t try to hurry them out, and there were a few American stragglers hanging around. Besides them the space was barren. There were many empty tables separating each small group.

“Where’ve you been?” Jessop asked with mild interest when Stella sat down. He had his glass of water raised to his mouth, addressing her mid-sip.

“Birdwatching,” Alice deduced. She gave Stella a grin as she gestured with her head to the book Stella had laid face down on the table.

“Birdwatching,” Stella confirmed, pouring a glass of water for herself before settling back into her chair.

“Big mission for the Americans tomorrow, I hear,” Jessop spoke into the silence which had fallen. By now, Stella was digging at her food, though she looked up at him when he spoke.

“Really?” she asked once she’d swallowed her mouthful of mashed potato.

“I heard the same,” Alice agreed. “Hush hush as always, naturally, but they’ve been whispering to each other about it almost constantly. Something about Africa, and how they’re not coming back here after. From what I can gather they’re heading the deepest into occupied territory they’ve yet attempted to reach.”

Stella frowned. “Who’s flying?”

“The lot of them,” Jessop said. “It’s a big one, remember? So we’ll have a quiet base for a few days if they really are stopping off in Africa before they head back here.”

A quiet base. A base without all the Americans. The prospect seemed bizarre to Stella now. Before they’d arrived she’d dreaded their invasion, now not having them here would feel lonely. She was often having her day interrupted by various types of American drawl, was often engaging in verbal sparring with John or batting away Curt’s joking attempts at flirting or sharing exasperated looks with Buck at the two of them. It would be so strange to have them gone, even if only for a short while.

“Do we know how dangerous it is?” Stella asked when she emerged from her reverie. Suddenly, she was only picking at her food. Suddenly, she wasn’t very hungry. “I know all combat missions are dangerous, but if they’re sending everyone so deep into Nazi territory I can only imagine it’s bad news.”

Neither Jessop or Alice had enough information on the matter to give her a real answer. All they had to go off of was the bits and pieces of eavesdropped information they’d managed to pick up throughout the day.

The following day, the day of the dreaded mission, the weather was terrible. All ATA chits had been cancelled due to intense cloud cover and heavy rain limiting visibility. So Stella found herself twiddling her thumbs in the officers’ club, one of her books in her lap but her mind elsewhere.

None of the American planes had taken off yet. They kept getting delayed.

It was a moment of impulse which led her to leaving her book with Jessop and leaving the club with no explanation. And it was an impulse she doubted all the way over to the airfield, even when she commandeered a jeep to drive over to the runways where the B-17s were still in their bays, full of airmen who were antsy to take off.

The fog was thick. Even with the fog lights on it was impossible to see barely five feet ahead of her. Stella drove slowly, squinting into the fog, and stopped the jeep early to make sure she didn’t hit anyone. When the first B-17 came into sight, she found the crew lounging on the tarmac beneath its nose.

The next crew in line were sitting beneath their fort’s wing. Stella spied John from as far away as it was possible to see in such thick cloud, lying on the ground with his head propped up against what appeared to be a crate of ammunition. He was reading a book, the title of which she couldn’t make out from this far away, but he couldn’t have been that interested in it, for when Stella began to pick her way over to him he glanced at her almost immediately, as though he’d sensed her presence.

“I hear this is a big one,” she said by way of greeting when he climbed to his feet and met her halfway.

Hooking one his thumbs through his harness, his book still in his other hand, John nodded, glancing past her into the fog momentarily before refocusing his gaze on her. “Yeah,” he said. Then his eyes narrowed. “How’d you know?”

Stella shrugged. “Oh, you know. Careless talk and all that.”

John scoffed but he was smiling slightly. “What are you doing out here?” he asked.

Stella hesitated and found she hated to look at him when he was looking at her so intensely, so she peered past him, just barely making out the next B-17 in the lineup. “Bored,” she said.

“You ain’t flying today?”

“Nope. All ATA chits are cancelled.”

John nodded. Stella could feel him watching her even though she was still squinting into the middle distance.

“Have a nice day off,” he offered after a beat.

Stella hummed. “Have a good mission.”

“Yeah,” John said. He nodded to himself, considering his harness where he was holding onto it. “Yeah, I’ll try.”

Silence fell. Stella got the impression it was time for her to leave. But she didn’t want to leave, and John made no move to encourage her to. So she searched frantically for something to say, then all but blurted, “You’re going to Africa afterwards, I hear.”

If John was surprised that she knew this - which he must have been - he didn’t show it. “To Algeria,” he confirmed. “Warm weather and cold beer. Everything I been missing about home.”

Stella scoffed, finally allowing herself to meet his eyes. “Our beer is cellar temperature. It’s better that way. And warm weather is overrated. You’ll miss our dreary English summertime when you’re sweating so badly you want to claw your own skin off in Algeria.”

John laughed, rolling his eyes. “Yeah, sure, Stels. I bet I’ll miss your shitty English weather and mediocre alcohol like I’d miss a punch in the face right after getting out of a fight.”

Stella grinned. “It’s home,” she said. “It’ll be home for you, too, soon enough, if the war carries on much longer. Then you’ll never want to go back to the States. You’ll be telling your family once you get home that you miss thick fog and drizzle in August and double daylight savings and cellar temperature beer.”

“Nah, I’ll be tellin’ ‘em I miss this chatterbox ATA pilot who don’t ever let me get the last word in and always has to be right,” he fired back.

Stella stared at him for a moment, processing this retort, before a slow grin started to spread across her face. “Was that a compliment?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I said you talk too much and you’re argumentative.”

“But you said you’d miss me.”

“Maybe I would.”

“Maybe you’re too sentimental,” Stella replied, still grinning. “You and I are only recently friends again and you’re saying you’d miss me?”

“You wouldn’t miss me?” he asked, chuckling to himself. “I don’t believe that for a second, Stels. You only spend half your life seeking me out to come talk my ear off about whatever’s on your mind that day.”

“I do that because you let me,” she informed him matter-of-factly. “No one else lets me talk at them for so long without complaining. And no one else listens well enough to reply afterwards, either. You’re useful in that way.”

“Glad to be of service,” John drawled.

Stella laughed. “As it happens, you are good at something. Alert the press. Write home about it immediately.”

A flare went up then, shot from the top of the tower straight into the low clouds.

Stella and John watched it in silence. Suddenly, neither of them were smiling. Suddenly, nothing was funny.

“I suppose that’s your cue,” Stella said when John just kept staring at the empty air where the flare had once been.

John nodded as he turned back to her.

“Send Buck and Curt my well wishes if you see them, would you? I wanted to speak to them as well but it seems I’m being hurried off stage.”

John cracked a tiny smile at this. “Sure I will,” he agreed.

Stella nodded. Her feet were itching to turn and lead her away.

But she hesitated. There was something in the soles of her shoes like concrete or lead, holding her in place.

“Have a good flight,” she offered when it started to become strange that she was still here and yet saying nothing. “I know it won’t be a safe flight but… I don’t know.” She shook her head. She was no good at any of this. “Have fun in Africa, I suppose. Send me a postcard if they have any near where you are.”

John laughed as he peered down at her through the fog. “Yeah,” he replied, “I sure will, Stels. If the Twelfth Air Force happens to have a couple postcards lying around I’ll make sure to bring you one back.”

“Yes,” Stella said. “Do. Something tropical, so I can see what all the fuss is about.”

“We’re resuming operations,” announced a man in a jeep as he drove past. He spied Stella and the brakes screamed as he stopped abruptly. “Ma’am, I need you off the runway immediately.” He inclined his head in greeting to John. “Major Egan, sir.”

“I’m leaving,” Stella informed him.

At the same time, John brushed the driver aside. “She’s fine. She’s headed out.”

The driver nodded, his eyes on Stella unconvinced, but nonetheless he sped off into the fog again and left Stella and John staring at each other, lost for how to say goodbye except to nod at each other and hope it wouldn’t be a lifetime before they saw each other again.

[motherofdogs1010]

Letters to Juliet & Romeo I (Thomas Shelby x Reader)

Summary: Heartbroken and in the midst of the Great War as a nurse, Y/N L/N writes to a person she never expected to write to before... her brother's friend, Thomas Shelby... But the war's over now and it is time to face the letters...

Warnings: wartime angst, talks of wartime violence, pre-Peaky Blinder Tommy, soldier Tommy

Italics: content of the letters

A/N: Inspired by the movie 'Letters to Juliet', also there is no real timeline of when Tommy goes into the tunnels in France

January 1916, 2 Years into the Great War (WW1)

"L/N, you got a letter."

Looking up from the book she was reading, Y/N set it to the side as one of the soldiers came in, handing her a envelope that was a little dirty, had seen a little wear and tear but she recognized the hand writing on it.

She recognized his handwriting after months of writing to Tommy, Y/N remembered the first time she had written Tommy; it came after months of not hearing from her brother when he had left to France with the rest of the men in Small Heath. Y/N had made the decision to join in as a nurse with the Red Cross and maybe it was foolish, but she remembered the night before leaving on the train, when her nursing uniform was on her bed as the nerves were coursing through her that she grabbed a piece a paper and began to write.

Dear Thomas that letter began, she poured out everything about how Small Heath was, how she had signed up as a nurse and how she prayed she wouldn't find any of them in the camp hospital she was going to be. She had written how she barely had made the qualifications of being a nurse for the Red Cross with her just having turned 25 and such.

"Who keeps writing you, F/N?" one of her fellow nurses teased.

"Don't you know that's her boyfriend?" another responded.

"He's not my boyfriend", she denied, feeling a heat go through her.

"Sure he isn't."

The letters have begun as something innocent when Tommy had responded back to her first letter, she could sense the shock in his letter about her writing him but as the letters progressed, so did their relationship through their letters.

Opening the newest letter, Y/N felt a sense of anxiety in her as she remembered having had the courage to send Tommy a picture of her in her uniform; she remembered taking the picture once her training had been done, having donned the periwinkle, long-sleeve floor-length dress with the white apron that wrapped around her and went down to the ground. She had to tightly wrapped her back back into the white cap like habit.

A big red cross over the chest of her apron, she had sent the photo off with her letter and prayed that he didn't dislike it.

Reading the letter, she traced over his handwriting, feeling where he pressed hard on the paper as he wrote as she read how he found her to be beautiful in her photo.

You look even more beautiful than when I last saw you...

It made her heart clench as she saw how he wrote how he hid the photo in his service jacket from the others, that he didn't want them to see the lovely girl that kept writing him letters because he felt possessive over this same piece of heaven that was keeping him sane.

Y/N could picture Tommy in the trenches, covered in grime and dirt as he had to listen to the horrors of the wartime. She read how he longed for the war to be over, how he was fortunate enough to be with people that he knew, but he was terrified.

They're sending me to the underground soon. They want me and the others to be sappers, dig in the tunnels under No Man's Land

Y/N felt her heart drop at the prospect of Tommy going into the tunnels, having to dig with shovels under the handles broke and he would be forced to dig with his hands. She had seen some soldiers came in, having treated their hands for digging under the trenches and dealing with the explosives.

My only comfort is you, being able to bring the picture you sent me down in the ground where death might be waiting for me... the only thing that has gotten me through this damned war is you...

"Ladies, we got mass casualties coming in!" their head nurse shouted into the tent. "Look alive, ladies!"

Y/N tucked the newest letter into her pillowcase, knowing she was once again about to face the horrors of the war as she reminisced on Tommy's smile, she knew he smiled a lot.

But now, she had a feeling he didn't smile as much.

Dear Thomas,

I'm sure you're curious as to why you received a letter from B/N's litter sister. Frankly, I'm a little shocked I'm writing to you, I've not heard from my brother no matter the amount of letters I've sent.

That was how the first letter started, Tommy sometimes would re-read the letter when he couldn't sleep amongst the noises of screaming soldiers and anxiety.

"Shelby, ya girl's sent another letter", one of his fellow soldiers said as he held out a envelope.

Tommy grabbed the envelope, none of his brothers were around as he opened the letter; he remembers the shy smiles Y/N would send him when he would see her as she visited her brother, the little nose wrinkle she got when she would laugh a loud, deep belly laugh (one that he knew others called unladylike, but that he remembered fondly).

He felt the smooth texture of a photo in the letter, pulling the picture to his eyes and he felt a sense of... love come over him as he saw the picture of her in her nursing ward uniform. A small smile on her full lips, the roundness of her cheeks that only made her look younger, he could see in her eyes the nerves of everything. The cap hid her hair from view and he wondered if she had cut it short like other nurses were forced to do because of sanitation and he was curious if she still smiled.

He hoped she did because the only time he smiled was when he got her letters...

[foundress0fnothing]

Chapter 3 of my acotar gift exchange for @whyisaravenlike-awritingdesk is here!! It’s an epistolary chapter, and I hope you like it!

Read on AO3, but enjoy an excerpt and the historical notes below the cut!

December 1916

Sweetheart,

I know you said not to write, but I’ve only been back at the front for a week and I’ve already forgotten what exercises I’m meant to do for my arm, and none of the nurses here seem to understand quite like you. So you see, Nes—there was nothing I could do but write and beg you for a reminder at your earliest convenience.

Waiting patiently,

Your Favourite Patient

P.S. Happy Christmas, Nes.

Continue reading on AO3!

------------------------------------------------------------------

A few notes on the historical elements of this chapter:

Soldiers during WWI often had very active correspondence, and Nesta and Cassian’s exchange of letters is based on that phenomenon. At some points during the war, up to 12 million letters a week were delivered to soldiers at the front.

The poet Robert Graves (after whom Cassian’s wartime events are slightly modeled) served as part of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, which is why I’ve placed him in that battalion.

Feyre could have potentially joined Queen Mary’s Army Auxiliary Corps, which was founded in 1917 to use women to fill support roles in the war so that more more men could be freed to go to the front, but for the purposes of this story, she does not.

The Battle of Passchendaele (also called the Third Battle of Ypres) lasted from July to November 1917. It was a devastating and controversial battle on both sides, with somewhere between 200,000–400,000 casualties for both the Allied and the German forces.

Soldiers during WWI read and wrote a great deal of poetry, which is why I’ve made Rhys a poetry lover. There was a push in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for the primacy of English literature, and Georgian poetry was hugely influential in this push. Georgian poetry was romantic and sentimental, often glorying in the hedonistic pleasures of English country life, and collections of Georgian poetry were published and widely circulated, even at the front, in 1912, 1915, 1917, 1919, and 1922. Poetry that emerged from the soldier poets (Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, etc.) was quite different and much bleaker.

In July of 1917, Lt. Siegfried Sassoon published “Finished with the War: A Soldier’s Declaration,” in which he protested the war and critiqued the leaders who shifted the war from one of “defence and liberation” to one of “aggression and conquest.” Sassoon was not court-martialed for doing so but was instead characterised as unfit for service and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital for shell shock.

Ethel M. Dell’s The Hundredth Chance was published in 1917, and the lines Cassian quotes are taken directly from the novel.

Vera Brittain (after whom Nesta’s character is loosely modeled) read English Literature before the war but switched to History when she returned to her studies in 1919.

The Battle of the Lys (also known as the Fourth Battle of Ypres) took place in April of 1918. Each side suffered about 80,000 casualties that month.

Cassain’s declaration in his final letter is a mix of his words to Nesta in ACOWAR and lines from Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth.

[eclecticmuses]

After Heartbreak

Author: @eclecticmuses​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Rating: Explicit Chapters: 15 Relationships/Characters: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz’s Mother, Jemma’s Parents, Milton, Other Original Characters Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Romance and Angst, Childhood Sweethearts, Second Chances, Class Differences, Angst With A Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content Summary: February, 1945. Jemma Simmons is working as a nurse at a Red Cross convalescent hospital in the south of England caring for wounded soldiers when she runs into a ghost from her past: Leo Fitz, her childhood sweetheart, who was cruelly ripped away from her by her disapproving parents several years prior. Can they rekindle their friendship and find something new? Or will Jemma’s responsibilities and family ruin their chance at love once and for all?

Excerpt from Chapter 2:

Jemma woke up the next morning with a pit of dread already formed in her stomach. Maybe it was the dreams she’d had, formless like fog and already slipping away from her mind, or perhaps it was because she knew she would inevitably see Fitz when she arrived at the hospital for work.

She sighed into the dim light of her room. Perhaps it was both.

But there was nothing else for it. She had to get up and get on with it, because that’s what everyone did in wartime. There could be no shirking of duty because she was afraid or uncomfortable. People depended on her to do her part.

Jemma pushed aside her blankets and got out of bed, wiggling her toes against the floorboards as she stretched. Time to start her morning routine again.

Read the rest on AO3!

[maxwell-grant]

So, having pulpified the World's Finest, will you be moving on to the third member of the DC Trinity? And are you averse to continuing in this vein with the rest of the Big 7?

Anon asked: What reinventing Wonder Woman as a pulp hero? Would she be the ultimate challenge or significantly easy?

Don't think I'd have as much to say about the others and then I'd just be making up new characters which is, what I'm already doing with these anyway. Maybe I will at some point if prompted,but anyhow, I knew I was gonna have to get around to Wonder Woman, so let's do it, and let's make it 3 like the other two:

Wonder Woman is considerably more difficult than the other two because with Batman and Superman you have reasonably charted road maps connecting them to pulp characters they're already created from, where as Wonder Woman's roots are older, far more rooted in myth and fairytale and fantasy, which risks muddling up the concept as to how "pulp" this pulp hero Wonder Woman can be (and I already do that a lot). Picking facets of Wonder Woman's basic traits to compare and reinterpret is gonna be a little harder than it was for the other two. There's not really much to go off by looking for Amazonian characters, since the Amazons tended to be written as very basic villains in fiction before Wonder Woman, and subverting that was part of the point of Wonder Woman in the first place. And if we try to find female protagonists in the pipeline of American pulp fiction as a reference point, we're gonna come up painfully short. As I've argued before when asked about female pulp characters, you really gotta know where to look, so we're gonna have to expand our options considerably to make this

One place we can start is by going for the biggest thing upfront Wonder Woman has in common with several of the more popular pulp heroes: A general involvement with a World War, and let's go with World War 1 since that's the one that actually figured the most in the creation of pulp heroes at the time, not contemporary pastiches. Unsurprisingly, there were many, many folk tales, legends and myths being passed around in the fields and elsewhere during WW1, some of them older legends resurfaced, and others were entirely made up. The Chimera Brigade uses this as a central plot points and in particular this has also helped that series add an odd authenticity to it's pulp characters, and maybe this is something that could work at first for an pulp hero take on Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman as The Proto-Superhero Folk Angel of Wartime, the living myth of dreamland that coalesces into human form to save us from the sins of our fathers and rulers. Easy to dismiss as a faceless hallucination up until the moment she saves a village by wrestling a tank into scrap metal.

(Wonder Woman art by Paul Sizer)

A Wonder Woman who first became active circa the 1910s, during the same time period as dime novel detectives like Nick Carter, emerging master villains, and odd proto-superheroes like The Nyctalope and Sar Dubnotal, which she has more in common with. She's entering a turbulent world for the first time and the problems she needs to address seem beyond the scope of any man or woman, and maybe part of the story could be about her having to figure out exactly that. Maybe she's not ready for the world, or the world isn't ready for her, but here she is, and with the world bombing itself into nothingness she's running out of time.

Sometimes a lot of what differentiates pulp heroes from superheroes comes down merely to perspective, of who gets to tell the story about the extraordinary figure and what setting or context surrounds them, so we're going here with what is sort of a more straightforward take on Wonder Woman, but warped and told from the varied perspectives around her. Soldiers on the battlefield being saved by her, nurses in battalions reporting a mysterious young miracle worker by the name of Diana Prince and patients breathlessly talking about the glittering angel that saved them, detectives trying to crack the case of the latest ghost story or potential master villain, master villains sensing that this apparition can rock the foundation of the world as they know it or even be something they can exploit. This is a Diana who you could place having a complicated rivalry with Irma Vep of Les Vampires, or even at the crosshairs of Fantomas, the evil of man's world personified.

The next alternative is to turn sights on the more sci-fi end of these and align a story centered around Themyscira and Wonder Woman's mission with a pulp sci-fi utopian vein, and the main inspirations that come to mind here would be the more political and social-minded strands of utopian pulp sci-fi, like "The Sultana's Dream" which reads very much like an earlier take on Themyscira, or Bogdanov's The Red Star, which is about the protagonist's journey to a communist utopia on Mars where blood is shared among it's inhabitants, to learn from their example as well as impart his own, modeled after Bogdanov's own beliefs as well as his career as a physician who would go on to establish Russian's first blood-transfusion institute, and I bring this up as a parallel to Marston's own background with the invention of the polygraph and the influence it had on the character.

Wonder Woman as The Sci-Fi Utopian Manifesto Agent, the ambassador of a revolutionary way of living, who's here to show us how to follow it forward through science, diplomacy, and political and social liberation, whether it's Star Trek day-to-day adventures or an in-depth political exploration of Paradise Island as a concept with real, significant political power to it. And yes, I will have to point out how a lot of these sci-fi utopian tales also can read a lot like pro-colonial tracts about how great it is to have primitives drafted into a superior culture the author agrees with, and yes, that is also a thing Wonder Woman courts having in common with, it is inescapable given the character was designed with the fundamental goal of transforming the world according to the creator's viewpoint and perspective.

I bring this up not to pass judgement, but because Wonder Woman was a character built on radical and controversial and yes, even uncomfortable ideas, and so were these stories I'm using as a reference here. These are, by design, political fantasies and manifestos using the pulp medium to get away with unconventional ideas and stories, starting a discussion or even controversy is their point. Wonder Woman was a character designed to trojan horse radicalism into the funny books, so the idea here is to simply ditch the trojan horse and see where it goes. Not to reiterate Marston's viewpoints or politics, if anything this is where you're supposed to fill in with different ones to try something new, but fundamentally this is a Wonder Woman who has to be About Something and who puts Paradise Island front and center, and with it, the suggestion of a world that can be arranged differently, and perhaps in better, ways than ours.

It portrays Ladyland—a utopian (or, perhaps, dystopian for some) state with mirrored gender hierarchies: the country is ruled exclusively by women who fend off men preoccupied with predatory attitudes, repel enemy strikes, and eradicate crime. Ladyland has enacted general education for women, alternative environmental management, and the use of eco transport.

The visionary story published over a hundred years ago in the English-language women’s journal The Indian Ladies’ Magazine, the first of its kind in British India, has long become a classic of feminist literature in South Asia, anticipating not only the women’s liberation movement but also the environmental agenda which is generally considered compulsory today.

(Images counter-clockwise: cutout art representing Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's "The Sultana's Dream" drawn by Chitra Ganesh, "Wonder Woman: Historia" by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Phil Jimenez, and a cover for Alexander Bogdanov's "Red Star")

One notable early example of Indian science fiction is Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s “Sultana’s Dream” (1905). Set in a future, women–dominated utopia called “Ladyland,” Sultana’s Dream is about the conflict between the women of Ladyland, who are the scientists of the country, and the men, who rebel against the women and form an army but are defeated by the science of the women and forced to retreat into purdah. A similar utopian sentiment appears in Tekumalla Raja Gopala Rao’s Vihanga Yanam (1910), in which the Indian woman Padmavati designs and creates a technologically–advanced submarine, not unlike Captain Nemo’s Nautilus, and travels to the bottom of the sea. She gathers an enormous amount of wealth from shipwrecks and uses this money to transform Indian into a techno–utopia - Women in Pre–1947 Chinese and Indian Horror Fiction and Film, by Jess Nevins

Red Star follows the journey of Leonid, a Bolshevik revolutionary who is offered the chance to go to Mars and, once there, encounters a utopian socialist society explicitly posited as the immediate, achievable future of humankind on Earth. (Bogdanov's) description of Martian society is at once located in humanity’s present and future—it is in the present day, but the Martians represent humanity’s immediate developmental end goal. Blood transfusion as a technique was one that Bogdanov not only described, but intended to implement among his own society, specifically with the intention of bringing about the socialist utopia described in his novel - Economic Circulations: Blood-Based Systems of Value in Alexander Bogdanov’s Red Star, by Virginia L.Conn

And the final one we're going with is taking a step back from the character's intent and history to laser focus on Diana as a character. Specifically, a public domain Wonder Woman, shut off from the rest of the DCU and the Justice League, and perhaps even shut off from Themyscira. Maybe for this one we can run with an angle more akin to takes where she's exiled, or something akin to the original backstory for America Chavez, who was explicitly designed to be Marvel's modern riff on Wonder Woman, where the utopian homeland was there and it matters but it's something she can't go back to, and can only carry with her as part of her dual heritage. The intent here is to push Diana closer to the knight-errant archetypes you see in pulp fiction, the cowboys and youxia / wuxia folk heroes and sword-and-sorcery wanderers striding their path across the world wherever it will take them (by no means am I suggesting sword-and-sorcery as an influence past this specific aspect, get rid of that stupid fucking sword by all means). Stripped of the superhero signifiers and context, even if still fundamentally one.

(Top images left-to-right: Do Ha-Na and Chu Mae-ok from The Uncanny Counter, America Chavez by Jung-Geun Yoon, Wonder Woman (1987) #75)

(Bottom images left-to-right: Heo Im from Live Up To Your Name, Chu Liuxiang, Wonder Woman by Mike Becker)

Wonder Woman as the Fantasy Knight-Errant Liberator. Like the pacifist take on the swordsman bandit seen in Chu Liuxiang, who only ever fights with a steel fan to block and parry attacks, robs from the rich to help the poor and solves mysteries with a cool head and a large network of friends and allies. Something like Heo Im from Live Up To Your Name, the superhumanly-skilled Joseon acupuncturist who is thrown across space and time into modern times to experience not just personal growth, but the thorough understanding of medicine necessary for him to literally write the book on it, who makes for a deeply compelling and versatile blend of cool, funny, kind and tragic as a protagonist. Or something like the Counters from The Uncanny Counter, who operate as superpowered agents of heaven in stopping and exorcising evil spirits who latch onto wicked and vulnerable humans and patching the wounds left by both, dealing with financial and social crimes and protecting victims of economic exploitation and injustice as much as they have grueling fistfights with possessed telekinetic serial killers, even to save them from themselves. Maybe some design cues from the Counters' striped hoodies or America Chavez, the dimension-hopping, star-spangled gay jock powerhouse who can go anywhere and do anything (and who suffers from the exact same problems as WW does in that they can't stop fiddling with her backstory and piling baggage that's actively detrimental to the character).

You take Diana, the teacher, redeemer and diplomat whose core strength is the concept of truth and her ability to see and expose it, who's out to dismantle all systems of violence and actively pursues social justice and forward-minded activism, who goes out looking for new experiences to better learn and understand the world around her and treats a minimum-wage gig serving tacos with unwavering and unselfconscious dedication and commitment that she uses to tackle a mythological and epic playing field.

Someone who faces forces of allegorical monstrosity and mythological metaphor and embodiments of bigotry. Someone who interfaces with politicians one hour and tends to soup kitchens in the next, who opens shelters and goes palling around with the Holiday Girls, someone who rides around on invisible jets and swims with sharks and turns enemies into friends. Someone who knows for a fact that a better way of living is possible because it's where she comes from. Take these ingredients and play around with them, modernize them, because Wonder Woman must be facing towards the future, and the intent to fashion a kinder, more loving, better one.

And hey, not only does she already have the perfect tool for the job in the lasso, but she's even got a distinct ride and animal companion to go around righting wrongs with and striding into the sunset with.

(Left-to-right: Justice Riders Wonder Woman by JH Williams, Jumpa art by Yasmín Flores Montañes)

[anarchywoofwoof]

thought and recomendations on simone weil?

honestly, Simone Weil is one of those figures from history who is pretty fascinating to dive into regardless of your beliefs. a philosopher, activist, and writer, she's kind of all over the place from a philosophical perspective, but not in a bad way.

Albert Camus actually once called Simone Weil “the only great spirit of our times." Charles de Gaulle thought she was bat shit insane - allegedly saying “mais…elle est folle” - and he may have been right because she literally requested to be parachuted into wartime France as part of a squad of frontline nurses to help the Resistance.

Weil's background is pretty eclectic. she grew up in a wealthy family but had a real passion for working-class rights. she even took time off from teaching philosophy to work in factories. mega-based ultra-super proletarian praxis.

she was originally a pacifist, but actually later fought in the spanish civil war. she was raised agnostic but later in life went on to embrace a sort of "Christian mysticism" as some refer to it today. although, in my opinion, that sounds a bit further removed from the Leftist zeitgeist than Simone Weil actually was.

some of her works that are worth checking out:

"gravity and grace": this is probably the most abstract work on the list, but in a good way. Weil talks about grace and how we need to recognize our own weaknesses to understand it. it's got short, bite-sized sections that make it a bit easier to digest, and i suggest reading it in pieces.

"the need for roots [pdf]": here she dives into the problems of modern culture and our lack of connection to community. this is probably my personal favorite of Weil's work that i've read start to finish. she hones in on the idea of "rootedness" and how capitalism and globalization can strain our social bonds. it's somewhat fresh take on why community and belonging matter and how we can work on preserving them. it's not about going back to the old days but finding ways to keep our connections alive and meaningful.

"the iliad, or the poem of force": in this one, she analyzes Homer's "The Iliad," showing how it illustrates the nature of power and violence. it's a pretty engaging read that offers a bit of unique perspective on a cornerstone piece of literature.

my own personal view is that i find Weil's work to be really thought-provoking and it generally does a good job of integrating different ideologies like Neoplatonism, Anarchism, and non-problematic Christian/Catholic elements. some people think that her writings can be a bit intense and confusing at times but i think that's what makes her so intriguing to explore. the answers aren't laid out as clearly and there's some piecing together that you have to do in order to understand her world view.

if you've already explored those and you're looking for more, philosophize this has four episodes on her and a reading list:

Episode #172 - Attention

Episode #173 - The Need For Roots

Episode #174 - The Mathematician

Episode #175 - Vessels of God