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my-current-obsession · 3 months

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Devastated to report that Margaret's marriage event in RF4 is just okay. :/

Considering the time and effort it took to get here I feel like it should be better. It's not bad really, but after seeing so many other marriage events I am forced to admit it's nowhere near the best.

What pains me most is that ignorance is truly bliss. I was INCREDIBLY lucky on my recent run of the game to get all her events in just over a year, so of course I married her without hesitation. But it's not half as satisfying as it would have been if I could have done so on my first playthrough when I wanted to, before coming to know and love another girl.

Below is a long, rambling account of the romantic nightmare that was my first playthrough of Rune Factory 4 (as Lest), and how my second run brought me closure... but also regret.

Margaret was my favorite on my first blind run of the game and I even got a bit lucky with the town events to have a truly organic feeling start with her - got "Thoughts Lost in the Lake" as one of my earliest events, so we basically upgraded from acquaintances to true friends around friendship level 3-4, which felt right. Then I got her mini-event as soon as she hit level 7 and confessed right after, and she accepted me immediately (which I know from my Frey playthrough is not guaranteed. I got rejected so many times at first...).

And then... I beat the game. In-game months passed. I loved Margaret. I went on SO MANY dates with Margaret, and we were an absolute power couple in any dungeon. But I wasn't getting lucky with the town events and her other events never seemed to show up. Pretty sure I was loyal to her for over a year before I finally gave up and started looking for love elsewhere. I wanted desperately to marry Margaret, but more than that I wanted to marry SOMEONE, and clearly she wasn't happening anytime soon.

I went into Rune Prana with one girlfriend. I beat Rune Prana with 4, the other two soon to follow. I had ultimately decided to seek out as much content as possible, though that wasn't my initial intention.

I had wanted one girlfriend who I'd stay loyal to. When that failed, I set my sights initially on just one other girl - my number two pick - and thought I'd try my luck with her. Tragically for me, Clorica was horrifically dense. Day after day, for WEEKS she responded to my love confession with the most platonic of "I love you too"s. I could only take so many oblivious rejections before my spirit broke.

That was when I started confessing to Xiao Pai. To be honest, at the beginning of the game I hadn't been very interested in her at all. Her anime intro of SITTING on the camera did her no favors, IMO. But the more I got to know her, the more I liked her. She's clumsy and somewhat airheaded, but very kind to everyone and always wanting to help WITHOUT trying to insert herself in their business (I had come to realize that Margaret was... a bit of a busybody). And despite her constant screw-ups, she never gives up and strives to do her best and improve at everything, which I found admirable.

And so, nearly two years into the game (not counting the timeskip, so technically three), she had risen from 5th place to 3rd in my heart. And while I alternated confessing to her and Clorica, she was the one who accepted first after only a few tries (whereas I'd been confessing unsuccessfully to Clorica for AT LEAST a full month). Dating Xiao Pai brought out a new side of her that I hadn't seen before - she's very open and physical with her affection, which I loved.

She has multiple dialogues that imply hugging/cuddling with Lest gives him or her or both energy, like charging a battery. It's an adorable comparison.

I had liked her before, but as days passed and we went on a few dates I began to realize just HOW MUCH I liked her. Maybe even more than I liked Margaret. While they're both incredibly kind, I could find Margaret occasionally overbearing and nosy, while Xiao Pai tried to offer kindness and help when it seemed appropriate and didn't go around looking to solve peoples' problems. Margaret was incredibly shy and flustered on dates, WANTING to have physical contact but unable to go for it. That was cute at first, but the longer the relationship went on the more it felt out of place. Surely she'd get more comfortable and open eventually? Xiao Pai was confident and comfortable enough to initiate physical contact often, right from the beginning. Basically, Margaret has a very sweet and shy "just started dating" vibe, which is fine at first but eventually feels lackluster, whereas the vibe with Xiao was very easy and casual. They got along well, they communicated well, they were playful and flirty with each other.

At this point, even though my bias had started to shift and I probably would have happily married either girl (though Margaret still had multiple events to go and Xiao needed one of two), I made a mistake. I got the mini event where Dolce has Lest try on clothes she made and he brings up the other girls, which makes her jealous. Since this was my first run and I had barely encountered any mini-events at this point and didn't yet understand their purpose (almost all of them are pretty romantic and serve to indicate that your FP level is high enough to confess), I was pretty confused. Between this event and some of her generic dialogue lately, which had just happened to be more romantic/flirty, I honestly thought the game had glitched somehow and she was somehow my girlfriend too.

I deliberated on what to do before deciding I'd try to confess. I half expected her to truly be glitched and respond with something along the lines of "yeah I love you, too". But if that wasn't the case, I was confident she'd reject me. With only one girlfriend, I couldn't get Clorica or Xiao to accept me until they hit level 9. She had only recently hit level 7 and I had TWO girlfriends, so I was sure it would be fine.

It wasn't. Against all odds, my first (and basically unintended) confession to Dolce was successful. And so I decided... that might as well happen. This was the point I went all in on seeing all the content I could. Due to my frustration with being unable to marry Margaret, I had started looking stuff up by now, and I knew that Dolce's marriage event WOULD pop up (seeing as her one required event is guaranteed in Special), given a few dates and level 10 affection. I also had the one event for the other girls done, too, so technically I could currently theoretically marry any girl EXCEPT my two favorites.

I alternated dates with my girlfriends and renewed my daily confessions to Clorica, who continued to be oblivious. I started gifting Forte and Amber, to make them more amenable to future confessions.

And then, just before I would've asked Dolce on her 3rd date (which would have also brought her close to level 10), Xiao's second event happened. I wasn't sure how the game would handle TWO marriage events being ready simultaneously considering they're given priority, so I backed off from Dolce. I was much more keen to see Xiao's first, anyway.

And it was honestly spectacular. In hindsight, having seen all but 2 marriage events now (Leon and Forte), I can say it had EVERYTHING I want in a marriage event - we learned more about Xiao as a character, her relationship with Lest was relevant and important to the event, but there was also ANOTHER plot/conflict that was at least partially separate so it wasn't just relationship drama.

Xiao's relationship with her parents is... complicated, but lovely. Despite how unfair it is that Lin Fa lucks out and succeeds in life despite her total airheadedness, while Xiao tries so hard yet constantly fails, she loves her mother and looks up to her. And I'm not a fan of the "misunderstand/miscommunication" trope, but it was basically WEAPONIZED by Xiao's dad here to test her resolve. Xiao needed to be more determined than EVER here, to love Lest enough that she couldn't give him up to the other thing she loves most - her mother.

Xiao's proposal and Lest's response to it... their mutual love and understanding as they embraced... and then the wedding itself were all just SO good. This event had thoroughly cemented her in my heart as my favorite girl. I desperately wanted to carry on the save where I married her.

But I didn't. I had resolved to see Content, so I forced myself to reject her, which was INCREDIBLY painful, and moved on. I told myself that I could always go back to her and propose myself once I'd seen everything.

Everything after that in my first run... didn't really matter. Yes, I finally added Clorica to my harem. I saw Dolce's marriage event. Didn't really care for it. Started dating Amber. Clorica's marriage event was really good but Lest frustrated me by forcing me to pick stupid options. If he MUST be oblivious to her problems even when I'm not, just use text boxes instead of making ME pick the wrong choices!

I added Forte to my list of girlfriends, completing the set. However, my motivation was running dry FAST - it had been several in-game months since I'd beaten Rune Prana. There was virtually nothing left to do in game. Nowhere to explore, no new farming to be done; only upgrading the late-game seeds. I STILL couldn't marry Margaret.

I managed to power through for a few more weeks and got Amber's marriage event. It was honestly really compelling and helped me see a more mature side of her. Too bad she immediately reverts to her usual too-childish self afterwards.

I had been playing the game for nearly four in-game years at this point, and still wasn't married. I COULD have been married a year ago if I hadn't rejected Xiao. I wanted to marry and have a kid, but what would I do to pass the time every day? There was nothing to do anymore beyond getting gold crowns for shipping items, which. No thank you.

In the end, I gave up. I had six girlfriends and yet my first run ended bitter and alone. I left the game untouched for several ACTUAL months. And when I came back, I had a plan.

First, a fresh start - wipe my save data and start a HARD playthrough to slow my progress a little, hopefully allowing more time for a relationship to happen before the end.

Second, I put some hard rules in place - I want a lover that feels organic to my run. I made up a spreadsheet in Excel for this. I was tracking more than JUST town events - I also accounted for mini events, and the random, just for fun compatibility checker, which I took each girl to see SIX times since there were SIX girls. All those things were worth a certain amount of points, and a girl needed to hit a certain threshold (unique to each of them, since they have varying numbers of prereqs & mini events) before I was allowed to confess. I will allow a maximum of TWO girlfriends - save the rest for a future run. Confess to at least one of them BEFORE beating act 2. I'm also more likely to be able to actually marry someone with some game left this way.

(For the record, I also started a new Frey run with these same rules. While my first Frey run wasn't AS bad as my Lest run, it was also dragged out and poisoned by content seeking. So they BOTH got a do-over.)

I won't lie, I went into this hoping the RNG would bless me with Xiao. While I still had a soft spot for Margaret as my "original" love interest, Xiao had long since eclipsed her as my favorite and I wanted to recapture the magic of dating her and actually get to marry her this time.

Instead, the RNG blessed me with... Margaret. Without any save-scumming to change the town events on my part, I got ALL FOUR of her events and her mini event in a little over a year - late Spring of year 2 (technically 3). In that time, I also saw the one event all the other girls required and one of Xiao's, but ultimately my two allowed girlfriends of the run were Amber and Margaret, due to them first hitting the aforementioned point threshold.

I was a tad disappointed to not have Xiao in this run, but when Margaret's fourth event popped up I was THRILLED. Literally jumped around my room in joy. After the hell she put me through in my first run back when I WANTED to marry her, this felt like a miracle. Or perhaps a heartfelt apology.

And so it was that after 5 and a half-ish years in-game across two playthroughs, and over two years in reality, I finally got to see her marriage event and pop the question.

And it was fine. Not bad. Not great. Just... fine. It TECHNICALLY hit all the checks for a "good" marriage event I mentioned earlier - though I'd argue that Marget's hangup about being an elf who will lose any human she loves one day is pretty clear prior to this event explicitly spelling it out. Basically, we don't learn anything entirely new so much as get a bit more detail on something already implied. I'll admit I really liked the very end of it, with her finally making a bold move and heavily implying Lest should propose soon. After everything they've been through, and the event basically being ABOUT her having to let herself fully love a human despite her fears, that felt really good.

I'm absolutely going forward with this save, so I've come full circle. I'm going to marry Margaret and finally see what this game has to offer post-marriage, with the original girl of my dreams. Even if she's NOT the girl of my dreams anymore. At this point I couldn't marry Xiao even if I wanted to, since I'm still missing an event for her and who knows how long it would take to show up.

It's a bittersweet feeling. I still like Margaret, she's probably my 3rd favorite girl now after Xiao and Clorica, and I certainly feel a sense of resolution having FINALLY married her. But I miss Xiao. I should have married her when I had the chance.

#rune factory #rf4 #it's entirely possible no one bothers to read this monstrosity. but i needed to get the epic saga of that playthrough out there #something i thought of only after posting but decided needed to be added here:#there was a layer of irony for me during xiao's marriage event because in reality the exact OPPOSITE thing had happened #i was really into lin fa when i first started. she's gorgeous. but over time her forgetfulness and absurd luck rubbed me the wrong way #it may not bother xiao (that she shows anyway) but it bothered ME that she tries SO HARD only to fail constantly #meanwhile her mom is over there floating through life screwing everything up yet somehow getting it right anyway #literally the more i got to know xiao the more i liked her and the LESS i liked lin fa #so the repeated comparison between mother and daughter where she almost always lost was. ironic shall we say.#even if no one in the game likes you more than your mom I like you more than your mom xiao #and importantly - so does lest!

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arcplaysgames · 1 year

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Ah, so Persona goes for the great white nothingness sort of afterlife rather than the deep dark void afterlife.

Margaret arrives to tell Reverie to stop being a lazy piece of shit and to listen to his friends to remember how to fight. It's basically Reverie Vs The Nyx Egg all over again. I wonder if he has a sense of deja vu here...

Mmhm, eyes getting itchy.

CRITICAL HIT. Oh my god Chie's VA is so fucking good. I'm clearing my throat.

OOP THAT'S IT I'M FUCKED. I'm crying. His voice is so fucking soft and entreating, I'm a goner. Between Kanji and Chie, I was def crying.

BRUH I didn't expect NAOTO to get me.

.... ADACHI?!

YOU KNOW WHAT ADACHI

YOU CAN HAVE THAT ONE, I WILL ALLOW IT. You're great, Adachi, it's been an honor, man.

OH NOOOOOOOOO don't do me like this

Anyway this bit is great. Nothing will hit like Shinjiro's unsubtitled call to action in P3P Reverie's ear but this is good shit regardless.

And lemme guess, they are the Universe Arcana.

That circle sword is cool as hell.

OKAY SO SIDEBAR

This fucking battle needs some fucking Hopes And Dreams-level shit. I'm sorry but to put on my FULLY NEGATIVE HAT FOR A SEC, this entire sequence would land 10000% better if the music was good. But I literally didn't even notice the music the entire time? I think it's on a very very long loop so there's some fun brassy horns but you gotta wait like two minutes for them to come in.

I've talked shit about the music in P4G before because truly P3P's OST fucked, but also THIS SEQUENCE SUFFERS A LOT FOR HAVING MEDIOCRE MUSIC.

I hope someone eventually mods it to have a fucking banger or two.

This part is pretty fucking great. Big fan.

Yaaaaaaaay.

I guess what I'm curious about is was this boss in the original version..... but wait, yeah, she has to be to explain everything.

Now that I've seen the whole sequence, I'm gonna be a negative nancy for a moment.

This whole ending is, uh, weird? It feels weird. Like, I almost think I prefer the ending with Ameno-Sagiri to this one because it felt more impactful after fighting Adachi. It feels like the game keeps answering the same questions over and over since then. I appreciate getting a final answer on why the three folks had Persona/TV powers, but also... It feels like....

The gas attendant did it! Gasp!

Also, like with Marie, there was this inorganic element to her whole plotline. But in the end, I kind of liked that!

But with Izanami, it feels tacked on in the same way but without the justification. The answer to the mystery is very "oh." Rather than "OOOOOOH" which we all know Persona can do.

Also, the entire plotline with Izanami literally only makes sense if you listened to Edogawa's lecture some 40 hours ago! And it's NEVER hinted anywhere else!

I think that's what I'm chafing against. Having the history explained in a lecture is totally fine. but when I got that lecture, I was like "ha i bet this is important!" and then I completely forgot that lecture because no one fucking brings it up again!

I am frustrated because I feel like this game does know what the fuck foreshadowing and story structure are, but it totally dropped the ball. It's to a point I wonder if like... something was lost in translation? Is something missing here?

Eh. JUST ANOTHER REASON PERSONA 3 PORTABLE IS BETTER.

Lets tackle the ending.

#p4 #persona liveblog

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thecrownnet · 3 years

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Congratulations to Adriano Goldman , ASC, BSC, ABC, Director Of Photography, for his Creative Arts Emmy win OUTSTANDING CINEMATOGRAPHY FOR A SINGLE-CAMERA SERIES (ONE HOUR) for season 4 episode 3 ‘Fairytale’ on September 11, 2021. Here are his insights on filming the episode with director Benjamin Caron.

‘The Crown’ Used Lighting and Composition to Trap Its Characters Inside a ‘Fairytale’

Director Benjamin Caron and cinematographer Adriano Goldman discuss how they destroyed Diana and Charles’ marriage before it even began.

Behind the Scenes of “The Crown” Season 4, Episode 3 Photo: Netflix

Over “The Crown’s” four seasons, the halls of Buckingham Palace have become familiar visual signifiers for both the grandeur and the pressure placed upon the royal family. But in the third episode of this most recent season, “Fairytale,” cinematographer Adriano Goldman and director Benjamin Caron stretched the limits of the show’s visual language to create — and then to destroy — Princess Diana’s (Emma Corrin) fairytale fantasies.

Much of the episode is given over to Diana slowly realizing that, like many princesses stuck in a castle before her, she has fallen into a trap. But Goldman and Caron opened up the ways they shoot their Buckingham Palace sets to show how the demands of the Crown consume everyone on the eve of the fateful marriage.

They force the jaws of the trap open wide with a pre-credits sequence of Diana’s night out with her friends after Charles (Josh O’Connor) proposes to her. The scene is a departure in every sense, not just to the swank ’80s members’ club that Diana frequents.

“You try to deliver something that is more romantic, a little bit more colorful, fun to start,” Goldman said of the sequence in an interview with IndieWire. “We wanted to not change the style too much, but there should be a transition from a very colorful pre-title sequence, a very interesting and more romantic beginning.”

That romance is on full display, most noticeably in the brighter, guadier colors of the club and much warmer tones of Diana’s Earl’s Court flat. But Goldman’s camera also interposes itself almost as a fourth (slightly intoxicated) friend, swinging around inside the girls’ cab to get a look at both Diana and Buckingham Palace, or flinging itself down onto the bed with the girls at the end of the night. The look of the sequence stands in contrast to the stately shots and slow tracks which are the show’s normal rhythm for everyone in the royal family. Well, for everyone in the royal family except maybe Princess Margaret (Helena Bonham-Carter), who gets to dance by a pool every now and again.

“We really considered how we could reverse [that fairytale opening] and be very present with her, and [how we could] make her feel young, actually. Part of this is she’s a young girl going into the palace,” Caron said.

Caron and Goldman gave the audience several visual signifiers that are easy to clock in this sequence, as well as Diana’s goodbyes to her friends that follows: the gold and neon hues of the night out, the warm, eye-level close-ups of Diana dancing in the club, and a signature spiral staircase Diana descends to begin her life as a princess.

Over the course of the episode, these colors will fade. The close-ups inch slightly above Diana’s eyeline, so that it feels like the camera, along with the rest of the Royals, is looking down on her. And when a spiral staircase reappears, it will lead to Diana’s lowest point.

“The Crown” Season 4, Ep. 3 “The Fairytale” Screenshot

With Diana ushered inside Buckingham Palace to shield her from the press in the run-up to her and Charles’ wedding, Caron and Goldman emphasized how small and vulnerable Diana looks inside the palace walls. The opening of “Fairytale” had a long shot of the club, and Diana fit snugly within it. Once inside Buckingham Palace, the negative space often overwhelms Diana, and the camera backs away to show just how alone she truly is, perhaps best exemplified in the scene of her grandmother (Georgie Glen) physically tying her up while instructing her in how to speak like a royal.

Caron and Goldman deliberately call back to the romance of the opening to twist the knife, having Diana dance ballet inside the palace and then try to break out of the regimented structure of it as the pressure on her mounts. “I remember sort of holding the frame and I remember the camera operator was trying to follow us, but [I said no,] just hold the frame static and let her move in and around it,” Caron said. “So it really felt like someone trying to break out [of] somewhere.”

But of course, the camera never does let her leave the frame. Unlike the quick, fun cuts of Diana dancing in the club, there is no pressure release here. There is nowhere for Diana to go.

“The Crown” Season 4, Ep. 3 “The Fairytale” Screenshot

Caron wanted to use visual features that would feel right at home in a Disney princess story to their most punishing effect and perhaps the most powerful one of these motifs reoccurs when “The Crown” has Diana descend another spiral staircase. “[Ben] was very specific about this spiral because she’s going down on a spiral emotionally,” Goldman said of the shot that leads Diana down to the kitchen, a moment of late night desperation that kicks off her eating disorder. “He didn’t want to follow her on the steps, like on a steadicam. He wanted [the camera to be] facing down and going down with her to the very bottom of her feelings and her emotions.”

Caron described it as going to the “bottom of a well,” once Diana enters the kitchens and becomes enveloped in darkness — except for the fluorescent blues of the refrigerator lights, which makes the space feel like a morgue. This strong use of color, like all the changes in the episode, is grounded in the reality of whatever space Diana finds herself in. But the emotion and, indeed, the foreshadowing that Caron and Goldman are able to imbue those spaces with give Diana’s spiral real visual potency and a visceral sadness.

“The Crown” Season 4, Ep. 3 “The Fairytale” Screenshot

What is so thrilling about “Fairytale” is that it spares no one. Two striking scenes toward the end of the episode don’t have Diana in them at all, and yet push the series’ visual language to show how the palace and this marriage will swallow the characters who have been there all along.

In the first of these, Margaret tries to persuade Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (Marion Bailey), and Philip (Tobias Menzies) to call off the wedding. Caron wanted the scene to have a “conspiratorial, almost a Jacobian feel” to highlight the cold, businesslike calculations these four people are making for the happiness of two others.

“I remember saying to Adriano,’no no no, let’s go darker,” Caron said of this sequence and the next one. Goldman also recalled the desire to push the scene even further visually, lighting characters at harsh, dynamic angles or in almost complete shadow, so that the scene would feel spiritually closer to “The Godfather” than to the show’s usual style. The comparison is apt, given the mahogany browns and greens of the sitting room and the firelight that Goldman and Caron used to emphasize shadows falling into the crags on the characters’ faces. Vito Corleone could easily be sitting in a corner of one of those frames.

“The Crown” Season 4, Ep. 3 “The Fairytale” Screenshot

The next scene — when Elizabeth goes to find Charles and offer him a final few words on his marriage — Caron and Goldman viewed as a way to visually crystalize their relationship and how it is marred by their obligations to the monarchy. “Wouldn’t it be painful if you had Charles looking out the window and he felt the reflections of the fireworks and the noise and the celebrations outside?” Caron said about how he started conceiving of the blocking and framing of the exchange between mother and son. Each cinematic choice builds from a sense of what would be more painful, what would put more strain on the relationship.

“The Crown” Season 4, Ep. 3 “The Fairytale” Screenshot

The filmmakers created this visual strain between Queen and Crown Prince not just by keeping them at opposite sides in the composition, but by keeping one of the pair always just out of focus in the shots with the two of them — they can’t even occupy the same level of detail in the frame. Color plays a role, too, with bright blues and reds from the fireworks, reflections of the Union Jack, always being part of the light through which the audience sees the resigned sadness on Colman’s face and the abject misery on O’Connor’s. Goldman said this is the scene where he realizes he will never escape the system of the monarchy. “He realizes it’s too late. It’s a trap. He’s been trapped.”

“It always comes back to the Crown,” Caron said, and it is really from the perspective of the Crown itself that we watch the characters prepare to head to church on the day of the wedding. When the audience finally sees Diana in her dress, she faces away from the camera and moves into that oppressive cavernous space which has put so much pressure on her throughout the episode. It’s a slow, almost funereal march toward the fate the audience already knows awaits her. Charles, on the other hand, gets the close-up this time. But the camera, with equal grimness, tracks slightly down and in, so that his face begins to loom over the frame, making him look monstrous.

“The Crown” Season 4, Ep. 3 “The Fairytale” Screenshot

Of course by now, the visual choices that Caron and Goldman made for “Fairytale” have taught the viewer that there is another monster, a much more powerful one, looming over the episode’s final frame: The Crown is the monster that always gets you in the end.

#emma corrin #josh o'connor #princess diana #the crown netflix #the crown #emmy awards 2021 #cinematography #adriano goldman #the crown season 4 #thecrownnet

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mooncustafer · 3 years

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Recover, Regroup, Roadtrip

Agent Dale Cooper disappeared in March 1989. The case is still open. Agent Dale Cooper disappeared in October 2016. The case is still open.

for @laughingpinecone /

/ @countdowntotwinpeaks‘ WONDERFULXSTRANGE 2021

“Diane, I am uncertain of the date and time, or indeed if such concepts have any meaning in this place. Nor do I have my recorder, but I find verbalizing my thoughts helps me to resist the confusion and lethargy. As for addressing my words to you, even though you’ll never hear them— well, old habits die hard.”

It pleased Wally Brando on a profound level to discover that a few pay-phones remained in Philadelphia, that reaching out was not yet the prerogative only of those who could afford a landline or a mobile. He could also have checked his email on a terminal at one of the city’s Public Libraries, and indeed, made a note to do so within the day so that he might catch up on the news of parents and former school friends. The pay phone was also blessed with both the yellow and the white pages, and the number he sought appeared under “F.” Getting transferred to Dr. Albert Rosenfield was a more complex quest, but he was persistent as well as polite, and after a few minutes he was able to speak to Dr. Rosenfield’s voice mail, if not the man himself.

He introduced himself with salutations, and was about the explain the nature of his request when a beep signalled that the allotted time had run out.

“To listen to your message, press one. To re-record your message, press two,” said the voice of the machine.

Silently cursing his volubility, Wally pressed two. This time he simplified the introduction, and asked if Dr. Rosenfield would be good enough to meet him that evening at the Morimoto Japanese restaurant not far from the FBI offices, to discuss a matter of deep concern connected, he believed, with the little town of Twin Peaks. When the beep came this time, he listened to his message and then, satisfied, hung up. The restaurant he’d named was slightly above his means, but he was meeting a friend of his godfather, and wanted to do justice to the occasion, even if the reason for it was one of peculiar anxiety to himself.

“Diane, I have tried so many times to escape— on the last attempt I really did get out into the world, but my plans, I fear, had dire repercussions for you, and to no end— my course still led me back to the Black Lodge. Some flaw in my own nature keeps trapping me in this loop; perhaps it’s what they sometimes call Saṃsāra.”

It was Agent Tammy Preston’s custom, when scraping the internet for information relevant to one or more recent cases, to check her email inbox every seven minutes— to do so every five minutes would disrupt the flow of her work, but ten-minute gaps might let something important go unanswered for too long. Just now the inbox was due another glance, and switching tabs she saw that two minutes earlier Director Bryson had replied to Tammy’s email of that morning with an invitation to come by her desk at her earliest possible convenience.

Tammy locked her screen, paused ‘Soft Fuzzy Man’ on her playlist and removed her headphones. Picking up the folder marked Missing Persons, 1989– Palmer, she slipped back into her pumps and made for Bryson’s office. The door was open but Tammy stopped at the threshold and rapped on the wall.

“Come in,” said Director Bryson, looking up from a folder. Bossa nova music played softly in the background as Tammy entered and pulled up a chair. It sometimes puzzled Tammy that apart from herself and Director Gordon Cole, no one in this particular division of the FBI seemed to have any interest in music recorded after 1979. (The first few times she’d heard ‘Du Hast’ pounding through the walls of Cole’s office, she’d wondered if this taste for metal was the result, or perhaps the cause, of his hearing loss; but after he’d joked to an unamused Agent Rosenfield about how these were difficult times and difficult times called for Dave Brubeck, she’d looked up the reference in case it was a coded message, and then the next day had overheard Gordon whistling ‘Mister Sandman,’ a song she knew primarily from an internet meme, at which point she concluded that the ear wants what it wants, regardless of demographic.)

“You told me you’d found some serious inconsistencies in the records surrounding Twin Peaks and the Palmer case?”

Tammy nodded, hesitated:

“I believe there may be inconsistencies as well in my own perceptions of the case.”

“Well now, that I find a little harder to believe.” Bryson smiled, but then her voice grew serious: “I’ve looked over the notes you made, and it confirms my own doubts about events.”

“Worse yet— the fact that I truly left the Lodge and then returned to it, will enable the beings that inhabit this place to take another twenty-five year turn in my likeness, unleashing even more evil on the world. The only thing stalling them is the doppelgänger I had MIKE make for the Jones family, but I don’t know if he’s still under the White Lodge’s protection.”

After all these months it still surprised Harry Truman there was so little physical pain, and so much boredom, to dying. Oh there’d been pain at the beginning, when he’d started treatment and had had to stop drinking; the memory of detoxing still made him shudder. But now he only felt a tiredness too huge for sleep to make any dent in it; and since he couldn’t sleep all the time, there were a great many hours during which all he could do was lie in the hospice bed or sit in one of the hospice chairs, and think.

At this point dying didn’t even sound so bad— it wasn’t like the past three decades had been all that great. He imagined going to sleep, just filling up a big bowl of silence and darkness and sinking into it, and then he felt bad for thinking that because Frank had already lost enough people without Harry lighting out too. Anyways, with the things he’d seen over the years he’d be a damn fool to think there was anything peaceful about death and whatever came after. So he’d lie awake trying to find some other topic to ponder, and that’s generally when the boredom set in.

Right now, courtesy of the nap he’d had in the afternoon after today’s treatment had left him especially exhausted, he was lying awake in the wee small hours. 3:52 am, said the clock on his bedside table beside the stack of paperbacks Frank had brought him on his visits— Harry wasn’t afraid of e-readers the way Lucy was of cellular phones, but he found the smell of paper comforting. It reminded him of the Bookhouse. The hospice tended to smell of disinfectants and sweat and soup. The food actually wasn’t as bad as the food at the hospital in Twin Peaks used to be, not that any food could be as bad as the hospital food in Twin Peaks used to be, but it made no difference to Harry, whose appetite had been gone for months. Frank always brought a slice of Norma’s pie too, carefully sealed in an old cookie tin to keep it fresh, but Harry could never manage more than a couple of bites, and they didn’t always stay down.

Being awake in the middle of the night in a hospice wasn’t as bad as being awake in the middle of the night when you were alone at home— the occasional voices or footsteps from the corridors beyond were reminders that whatever might be happening to Harry, life went on for the staff; and the lights from the city outside showed that life went on for others outside the hospice walls. When he’d first arrived, those city lights had made it hard to sleep, but now they substituted for the starry sky above Twin Peaks. There were fewer birds to watch in the city, though sparrows, pigeons or a starling sometimes lit on the ledge outside his window and peered in at him, or maybe at their own reflections. The frequent rain pattering against the glass— well, that sounded the same here as it did in a cabin.

Frank had called to tell him about Margaret Lanterman. Harry sometimes wondered if he should have stayed in Twin Peaks and died in his own home like her, instead of lingering in this hospice like the doomed heroine of some nineteenth-century novel. Or like Annie Blackburn. Or Audrey Horne.

The rain was spattering now against Harry’s window, bending the light from the Japanese stone lantern in the pocket-sized garden below. Harry couldn’t remember what the hospice building looked like from the outside, but he guessed it was similar in style to the mid-century one next door where the day-patients came for their treatments. A flash silhouetted the roofline; five seconds later came the thunder-crack. Harry settled back and closed his eyes.

Sleep pulled him into dreams of an espresso machine, like the one in the coffee place down in the lobby next to the gift shop for visitors. This machine filled a whole room, metal pipes feeding back on themselves like some kind of espressouroboros, neither steam nor coffee escaping from the grotesque contraption. Agent Cooper stood wearily before it with two empty coffee-cups. Harry was just wondering who the second cup was for, when Coop looked up and met his eyes:

“What year is this?!”

Harry sat up in bed, listened intently for two full minutes, but he didn’t hear Coop’s voice again. He sighed. Sometimes the mind pulls imaginary sounds out of the background noise. False pattern recognition or something— Coop would have known a word for it. Harry had little hope left they’d ever find Cooper, or if they did, that he’d still be the man he’d known. Yet he’d carried on, more (he told himself) out of habit than any real hope. He’d kept in touch with Agent Rosenfield, even when it meant letting him know about the cancer— not that Albert would blab the secret to anyone in Twin Peaks.

“Hello?”

“Good, you’re still alive.” Albert’s personality hadn’t mellowed with the years, exactly, but familiarity had worn the edges off his jibes.

“Shut up, Albert. So what have you found?” Albert’s calls generally came every three months, but never at nine in the morning, and he’d last spoken to Harry only two weeks back. Something important must have happened.

“Actually, Sheriff Truman, I’m the one coming to you for information.”

“If you hadn’t noticed, it’s not easy to do investigations from a hospital bed. What can I tell you that you can’t get from other sources?”

“I need you to summarize the Laura Palmer case back in 1989, and the actions of Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks at that time.”

“Albert, is this one of your damn cognitive tests? You already know—”

“We’re both too tired to argue, just humor me.”

“How detailed do you want?”

“An outline will suffice.”

Harry took a deep breath and briefly listed the finding of Laura’s body, and the living but dazed and injured Ronnette, and the arrival of Agent Dale Cooper to lead the investigation. He skimmed over the crimes of Jacques Reneault and some of the other peripheral drama that had occurred in the town around that time, noted that Leland Palmer had murdered his own daughter, albeit while not fully himself, and was beginning to recount Cooper’s temporary suspension and Windom Earle’s campaign of terror, when Albert interrupted:

“You’ve still got the unofficial version, then.”

“Unofficial?”

“According to FBI records and your colleagues at the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Office, Laura Palmer is an unsolved missing-person case.”

Harry began to feel sick.

“Goddammit, Albert, you did the autopsy. I punched you and you fell across her body. You found a broken poker chip in her stomach—” Albert broke in:

“I hadn’t disclosed that detail to anybody I’ve questioned about this.” His voice was a little shaky. “Listen, Harry,” he continued. “Last Friday I was contacted by a young man wearing motorcycle leathers and talking like Jack Kerouac on quaaludes.”

“Wally.”

“Naturally I supposed him to be from your iodine-deficient neck of the woods even before he introduced himself as your godson and the offspring of those lieutenants of yours. He told me he’d come because he wasn’t sure where else to turn. Apparently he keeps in touch with his parents as he rides across the continent, but in their most recent conversation he’d noticed their memories of certain events had become confused. I was about to tell him I wasn’t the least bit surprised, when he added that he’d checked with other townsfolk, including your brother, and they all seemed to have had the same— how’d he put it? ‘The walls of their memory painted over like a childhood bedroom converted to a study.’”

”That sounds like Wally, all right.”

”Eventually he got round to explaining why he’d come to me. The message that had prompted him to call home was from Lucy; she said she’d shot a suspect who was attacking your brother Frank. She’d also mentioned some FBI agents arriving a few minutes later.”

Harry swallowed. He tried to imagine Lucy shooting anyone:

“Frank never said anything about this.”

“And when Wally called home, Andy and Lucy not only denied it had happened, they had no idea what he was talking about, not that I’d guess that to be an unusual state of affairs. Anyway, after I sent your godson away, I began to have contradictory memories myself of what Cooper had told me about the case. I remembered the poker chip after waking in the middle of the night from the worst dreams I’d had since medical school. I’ve been telling myself it was a false memory, maybe a composite of all the young female murder victims I’ve had to examine in my career, but I told myself I’d make one more phone call, just to check. And now you confirm it. Also, in my recall you knocked me across Leo Johnson’s body. Thanks for the correction. Are you still there?”

“Yes,” Harry answered, glad he was already sitting on his bed.

“Now that that’s established,” said Albert’s voice on the other end of the phone: “here’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: when do you remember Agent Cooper disappearing?”

“March 1989.” Harry tried to keep his voice steady, as though he was giving evidence in court. He briefly explained about the Black Lodge and Coop’s reappearance and unsettling behaviour and how he’d checked himself out of the hospital and was never heard from again. There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “Are you still there, Albert?”

“According to FBI records and, up until two days ago, my own memories: Coop disappeared this past October while driving to Odessa, Texas for a case. The last record of him was a credit-card charge at a motel just outside the city.”

“What was he investigating in Odessa?”

“Missing person. I’ve tried looking into that case, but it seems to be a dead end, especially since Coop never seems to have arrived at the diner where the man he was looking for had allegedly been running drugs.”

“Sounds like the kind of establishment where nobody’d admit anything. Maybe Coop did get to the diner.”

“Gee, you’ve cracked it Sheriff, we would never have thought of that. The diner was old-school, but not so old-school they didn’t have a security camera trained on the front counter. We went over three days worth of footage. I admit we can’t be sure he didn’t slip in through the back for some reason; but you knew Coop— can you honestly picture him entering a diner and not ordering a coffee?”

“Not the Coop I knew, but— I already told you he was acting pretty erratically just before he took off.”

Harry heard Albert sigh.

“I’ve been checking with a few of my colleagues who were involved in the original Palmer investigation. I think Gordon knows something, but being Gordon he’s saying nothing, and as loudly as possible. Denise— Director Bryson, now— remembers the unofficial version, and according to her so does Agent Preston— oh right, you never met Agent Tammy Preston, the poker-faced glamazon computer hacker— I’m not sure she was even born yet in 1989, but she was on a case in Twin Peaks in October 2016, and during the course of the subsequent paperwork, she started noticing a lot of records and statements didn’t match up, and then she realized her own memories didn’t match up. Which brings up another problem with trying to reason this out by conventional methods: something in that Salem’s Pacific-Northwest Lot of yours is rewriting memories, documents, maybe the facts themselves. But so far it’s predominantly affected the people who were on the spot this past October.” Albert’s voice rasped a little from the long phone call, and he paused to clear his throat. “Unfortunately, that also means the people most likely to remember the original version of events are people who weren’t in the Sheriff’s Office during the incident that seems to have triggered the change. At the risk of sounding like one of those bullshit shows on the History Channel, we may never know exactly what happened that night.”

“Wait, what even was the case that brought you all back in 2016?”

“That’s the problem— I’m one of the people who was there, and I only have vague and disconnected memories of a British man with a gardening glove, the chorus of Guys and Dolls, Agent Cooper leaving the room with Diane, his secretary who quit the FBI decades ago, and Gordon, and only Gordon coming back.” Albert paused again. “It goes against my personal feelings and medical opinions, but would you be willing to let me visit you in person? I’ve some vacation time and enough frequent-flyer miles that the trip will probably cost less than the long-distance charges if we continue this conversation.”

Harry opened the drawer of his bedside table and took out the key to Coop’s old hotel room:

“Yeah, come by.”

“Diane, I am currently alone. I realize that statement implies that I’m not always alone here, and indeed I sometimes have a companion, who I still think of as Laura Palmer, though I don’t know if that’s her identity anymore; I’d hoped, after my last attempt, that Laura would no longer be in this place at all. She comes and goes, or perhaps we both come and go and our orbits occasionally intersect. I’ve tried to find some pattern to it, but with no reliable way to measure time, I’ve had little success.

The last time we met she told me about a room she hadn’t seen before, all white walls, in which a dark-haired woman was contemplating a mirror with a puzzled look. I can’t help but feel this parallels my own situation.”

“Frank sent me this last month. But when I thanked him the next time he called, he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.” Albert hesitated before taking the room key:

“Great Northern Hotel,” he read, turning it over. “Twin Peaks. Isn’t the front desk going to want this back?”

“Unless I miss my guess, it’s from 1989 when Coop was staying there.”

Albert’s ears stuck out more noticeably, or perhaps it was his face that was thinner. He’d spent the first part of his visit scrutinizing Harry and questioning him about his case and what the doctors were doing for it, until Harry told him to quit it or he’d run out of time to discuss Coop’s disappearance before visiting hours ended, and anyway weren’t Albert’s patients usually dead to begin with?

The trouble with the subsequent discussion was that it went in a circle— the people who’d been present for the 2016 Unknown Event had uncertain memories of what had actually happened; and the people who clearly recalled the 1989 Palmer case as a murder hadn’t been present for the Unknown Event. The one thing that seemed likely was that there was some connection between the 1989 case and the 2016 case, particularly since both had been followed by the unsolved disappearance of one Agent Dale Cooper.

“I hate to say it, Albert, but I’ve given up hope on ever finding Coop.”

“What’s hope got to do with it?” Albert asked. His tone was not sarcastic.

“Diane, I’ve decided that, if only to keep my mind occupied, I will go looking for the white room and the woman with the mirror. I’d feel happier if I had a ball of twine or some breadcrumbs to leave as a trail back to the waiting room, but I’m coming to terms with the idea that’s there’s no advantage to remaining or returning here— it’s not as if I need food or drink in this place, and I cannot be any more lost than I already am.

So far, I believe I’ve walked down five identical red-curtained hallways, and turned left five times. It therefore seems likely that I’m following a counterclockwise, roughly spiral path, although I’m uncertain if I’m proceeding inwards or outwards.”

“If this search is going to require juggling two sets of memories, then I’d better come along so you don’t get brainwashed again.”

“Sheriff Truman, if you haven’t noticed by now, you’re in a cancer hospice.”

“I just finished a round of treatments, I’ve got a couple of weeks free.” Albert snorted and Harry added: “You can monitor my health while we’re on the road.”

“I’m already thinking of your health. You’re immunocompromised, travel is too risky.”

“We’re crossing a few state lines, not going to the other side of the world.”

Albert pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Fine. I’m driving. Which also means I get to choose the music.”

In fact, they went most of the way by plane, after Albert weighed the odds and decided five hours in a tube of recycled air would still be easier on Harry than a two-day road trip. Some of the passengers threw suspicious looks at Harry’s N95 mask, but they’d cleared it in advance with the airline, and Harry had briefly removed it when he went through TSA, and Albert was prepared to flash his FBI badge, but the flight crew were understanding.

They picked up a car at Midland International. Someone, presumably an employee of the car-rental company, had left a bundle of tourist-attraction pamphlets on the front passenger seat.

“According to these, Odessa has replicas of the Globe Theatre and Stonehenge,” Harry observed once he’d got himself settled.

“Why?” Albert asked.

“Got me there. The pamphlets don’t explain the motivation.”

Albert reached up and pulled down the car’s sunshade on Harry’s side, though the Sheriff insisted his cowboy hat was protection enough for his pale scalp:

“We’re not in the northwest where it rains every fifteen minutes,” he muttered, “and I’ve been looking up the side effects of your meds— you sunburn easily now.” Albert’s driving skirted the city, and they did not pass the Globe or Stonehenge.

The Pearblossom Motel, last recorded location of Agent Cooper, proved to be closed down. They’d noticed the papered-over windows as they pulled up, the sign unlit, not even to say NO VACANCY, but Albert got out to knock anyway. Harry watched him from the car; eventually he clambered out and slowly walked over to join him.

Albert was peering through a spot where the paper had torn away behind the window-glass. He stepped aside for Harry, and the sheriff took a look into the motel’s dim interior. He saw an ordinary, rather old-fashioned registration office, wood-grain panelling on the walls along with a few faded posters for local attractions. Rows of keys still hung on a board behind the desk, and a daily calendar read October 15, presumably the date the motel had closed, or the approximate date— Harry could imagine a concierge might not bother to keep tearing off the pages if they knew it was their last week on the job.

“I now realize that despite everything, I’ve still been harbouring hopes of finding my way back to the waiting room, hence my continual choosing of left-hand turns, as if attempting to mathematically navigate a maze. I must make a true leap of faith if intuition is to guide me, so I’ve closed my eyes and spun around several times in this corridor, first clockwise and then counterclockwise.

Now that I no longer can tell which direction I’ve come from… Diane, can you hear that? Of course you can’t, I don’t really have my tape recorder. I’m going to fall silent and listen for a bit.”

There seemed little else of interest at the motel (Harry, feeling a bit silly, had even tried the Great Northern’s room key on all the doors), so they turned back towards Odessa to look for the diner Cooper had been investigating. The motel was only a mile behind when they saw, ahead of them, a tall woman walking along the highway, her fire-engine-red hair, black t-shirt and pencil skirt out of place in a locale that was rural to the point of emptiness. Albert swore under his breath.

“This can’t be a coincidence,” he told Harry. “Roll down your window, I’m pulling over.” But the woman only threw a glance at the car as it slowed, flipped them the bird, and kept walking, though she stepped gingerly and Harry noticed she was barefoot on the asphalt. Albert leant across him and stuck his head out the window:

“Diane!”

“Fuck off, guys. I’m not Diane, and whoever she is I bet she’d tell you the same.” Harry gently pushed Albert back and leant out the window himself:

“Sorry, ma’am, mistaken identity. Are you all right though? I see you’ve mislaid your shoes.”

“Looks like somebody ran off with them,” the woman answered, her tone mocking despite the tired set of her shoulders. “I haven’t been up to anything illegal, officer. Just a bit of fooling around.”

“We can give you a ride into town,” Harry offered. “If it helps, you’ll be alone in the back seat— means you can get the drop on us if you start to feel nervous.”

The woman narrowed her eyes at the offer, then abruptly barked out a laugh and opened the back door of the car, took a seat and folded her long legs in after her. “Only because I need a lift,” she insisted, rubbing her bare feet. “I knew office romances were a bad idea, but he didn’t have to be a dick about it. Nothing to do now but go home and drown my sorrows in Hallowe’en candy.”

“You’ve still got candy left over from Hallowe’en?” In the mirror above the dashboard, Harry saw Albert raise an eyebrow and the woman in the back seat frowned, insulted:

“No! I may not have a maternal bone in my body, but I’m not going to give the trick-or-treaters candy that’s a year old.”

“Ma’am,” Harry asked, thinking about the calendar back in the Pearblossom Motel office, “what date d’you think it is?”

“Mid-October,” she began. Harry saw her reach into her purse with her black-and-white nails and pull out a mobile phone. Her eyes widened at the date: “No, it’s March. The fuck?—” She ran a hand through her scarlet hair. Harry wondered if it was dyed or a wig. Perhaps she was bald too. “Must be losing it. I was so sure it was October. And it’s not like I’ve could’ve been wandering around this desert for five months.” She tapped her phone screen. “5,230 messages?!” She looked frightened now, raising her head to meet their gaze in the mirror. “Where the hell have I been? And you guys— you’re feds, aren’t you?”

“No,” Harry began.

“I am,” said Albert. “He’s not.”

“Well, can you tell me what’s going on? Or is it classified? God, it’s not aliens, is it? I always assumed alien conspiracies were bullshit to cover up real conspiracies.”

“It’s probably not aliens,” Harry answered, unable to keep doubt from his voice as he remembered Major Briggs, “but I afraid it’s not going to sound any less weird.”

“To start with, we’re in the area investigating a colleague who disappeared in October,” began Albert, “and then you turn up, apparently amnesiac since that date.”

“And with my messages unchecked since then.”

“Yes, but there’s another detail— you look exactly like a former colleague of mine who was close to our missing man. That’s why I called you Diane when I slowed down.”

“I need a smoke.”

“No.”

“Albert,” Harry interrupted, “I’ve already got cancer, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“Do you want me to answer that in detail?”

“No I don’t.” Harry turned to look over his shoulder at the woman in the back: “Just roll down your window first.”

“We’ll pull over and she can step away from the car,” said Albert.

He stopped on a shoulder, and their passenger got out and lit a cigarette. Examining the packet, she called to them:

“Three left. That’s fewer than I remember having on me in October, but not by much.” Albert, meanwhile, had pulled a shopping bag from the back seat:

“You should eat something,” he said to Harry, producing a sealed cup of applesauce and a box of plastic spoons. Between rounds of treatment, Harry’s nausea receded, but his appetite was still pretty weak. “There’s saltine crackers, too.” Harry chuckled in spite of himself as he tore the foil off the applesauce:

“This all makes me feel like I’m home from school with the ‘flu.”

“You’ll have to watch Roadrunner cartoons on your own phone, I’m not paying for the data,” Albert snapped.

“I’m surprised we even get reception out here.” The red-haired woman had strolled back to the car with her cigarette, though she took care to stay downwind from Harry’s rolled-down window. “Guys, is it just me or is this highway really deserted— like, Rod-Serling-voiceover deserted?”

“We were just thinking Roadrunner cartoons.”

“Can’t be, there’s no weird rocks.” She flicked ash onto the pavement, “Though it does feel like if someone painted a tunnel entrance on a wall around here, you might be able to drive into it. If you weren’t a coyote.” She took another drag and glanced at the power lines humming above their heads. “Maybe it’s the hum from those wires that’s giving us brain cancer— oh sorry, dude.” She broke off and looked at Harry in apology.

“It’s all right, ma’am,” he said when he’d finished swallowing his mouthful of applesauce. “I’ve got leukaemia, not brain cancer. And the sound from those lines is unpleasant. Like the whine of mosquitoes in the woods.” As he spoke the hum intensified, becoming a loud crackle. Albert glanced up as a shadow fell over the three travellers and their car.

In the sky a dark, nebulous shape twisted, circled, formed a comma or an apostrophe, and dove towards them.

The first few grackles, out of thousands, came down on the roof and hood of the car. Harry could see one pecking at the windscreen and glaring at him with hard yellow eyes. He suddenly remembered Coop had been afraid of birds; until now, he’d never been able to imagine why. He turned and pushed open the back door as the woman dove inside the vehicle. Around them, the flock blotted out the landscape.

“Hope they don’t scratch up the finish,” Albert shouted over the sound of wing-beats, “or I’m not getting my deposit back.”

“Is this nesting season? I mean, are the grackles round here normally this—”

“Oh fuck, one got in!” came a yell from the back seat. Eardrums ringing, Harry turned to see a small black shape ricocheting around the car’s interior as the woman flailed her long, bare arms. The grackle made for the gap between Albert’s seat and headrest.

And got stuck, its beak not quite touching the back of Albert’s neck.

Harry reached for the little feathered body, thinking of how to pin the wings against the bird’s sides to avoid injury to it or the surrounding humans, but the moment his fingers touched it, it crumbled. At the same time the din outside the car ceased.

“That— that’s not natural.” Their passenger was covering her mouth with her hand. Even Albert looked shocked. Harry stared at the palmful of ash that was all that was left of the grackle.

“Let me get a sample bag,” Albert muttered. He pulled out a small clear plastic bag, and held it out while Harry poured the remains in. Then he handed him a packet of wet wipes. “You all right, Diane?” The woman in the back seat did not correct him on the name this time.

“Couple of scratches,” she said, examining her right arm. Albert passed her a mini first-aid kit. Got to give him his dues, he prepares for everything, thought Harry, adjusting the brim of his cowboy hat.

“Y’know,” he said, “This could be a good sign. In that it’s any kind of sign. There’s nothing worse than working in the dark, waiting for some hint you’re getting warmer or colder— that’s the kind of thing makes you wonder if the thing you’re looking for is even out there at all. But this—”

“Someone tipped their hand, you mean, when they tried throwing a Hitchcock movie in our faces,” Albert cut in. “But what exactly did we do to worry them?” His glance, and Harry’s, moved to the dashboard mirror’s reflection of their passenger.

“You think the birds were after me, or wanted to break up our merry band?” She raised an eyebrow. “Trouble is I know a token effort when I see one.”

“Or a warning.”

“We found the Pearblossom Motel;” Harry thought he saw the woman flinch at the name. “And then left it, to head for Odessa.”

“Are you suggesting we drive around in circles and see if they attack again?” Albert muttered.

“I think that’d be a little unfair to our passenger.” Harry turned to her: “Ma’am, I believe Albert when he says he knows you; but I also believe you when you say you don’t remember him. We can drop you anywhere you like— your call.”

“Give me a few minutes, fellas. Given all the weird shit I’ve just been through, I’ve got to think about whether I’m safer away from you two, or sticking close by. Plus I’ve got messages to check.” She took her phone out again. Without taking his eyes off the road, Albert pulled his own phone from his suit jacket, passing it to Harry:

“You’d better check mine. Maybe Tammy’s got some news—she’s been looking up everyone connected with events in Twin Peaks, but not living in the area. She even emailed some couple in Japan, though I’m still not sure what they’ve got to do with this.”

Harry peered at Albert’s phone screen, occasionally commenting if something looked to be of interest:

“Gordon’s sent a grudging OK, tells you to be careful. Also tells you to look after me. I’d always imagined he’d type in uppercase— didn’t realize it was him at first. Hm. Do you know a coroner?”

“I know lots of coroners, we get together for an annual poker tournament and lucky draw. And when I say draw…”

“Do you know a Dr. Talbot in Buckhorn?” Harry interrupted. “Autopsied a headless body last September that turned out to be Major— wait, he— is this one of those revised timeline things?”

“Not exactly.” Albert brought Harry up to date as best he could on Major Briggs’ disappearance and decades-later reappearance. “I certainly remember meeting Constance,” he added, after a pause, and cleared his throat again. “According to Tammy, I made a favourable impression on her, which is… unusual among my acquaintances, even those who share my profession. So what does she have to say?”

“Something about a wedding ring and Schrödinger’s Cat?” Harry looked at the message again. “She says Tammy spoke to her, and was going to contact you too… a gold ring they found on Briggs… sorry, in Briggs… keeps disappearing from her office’s records and the FBI’s evidence files, then coming back again?”

Albert frowned in thought as he drove: “Does it have anything engraved on it?” Harry tapped a message on the phone screen, CC-ing Constance and Tammy.

Outside the car, suburbs, or at least car dealerships and big-box stores, were beginning to sprout up along the highway.

Albert’s phone pinged and Harry read the message from Constance:

“Yes, scribbled it down last time I could find the record. This ring any (wedding) bells? TO DOUGIE, WITH LOVE, JANEY-E”

“Janey-E,” said Diane from the back seat, and Harry heard her drop her phone. Turning around he saw her wringing her hands, the nails now robin’s-egg blue. “Albert,” she gasped, “Oh, Albert, I was almost lost again.”

“I believe the change in method may have led to a breakthrough: I haven’t found any rooms leading off of the corridor I’m following, but the decor has gradually changed from black-and-white flooring and red curtains, to dark brown linoleum flooring and institutional green walls hung with large relief maps of different parts of the world. The maps appear to have been manufactured some time between 1954 and 1965, as they show North and South Vietnam as separate nations. I’m just passing the continent of Antarctica, now, and… oh. I think there might be…

Diane, I found the white room, and when I call it that, I’m not simply echoing Laura’s name for it. It was like a cross between a sanatorium and a snow cave, if a snow cave had furniture. There was a bed with white blankets and a white metal frame like a hospital bed. Audrey was sitting on one end of it, wrapped in a white bathrobe and looking at a round mirror that stood on a little white table. She turned as I entered, and her face was older, drawn and, for a moment, frightened. Then she looked at me again and relaxed, saying ‘Oh, it’s really you.’ I fear she must have met one of my nastier doppelgängers at some point.”

At Diane’s request, they stopped to eat at a fast-food chain before approaching the diner Coop had been investigating in at least one timeline.

“I’m hungry, but I’d be too nervous to eat at the place where Dale might have… well, if they’re a front for something, then the food’s either spectacular or terrible, and I’m not feeling lucky right now. I want to be someplace as bland and mundane as possible for a while, so I can regroup.”

“Well this place has a twenty-minute limit.” Albert jerked his thumb at the sign.

“That’ll do.” Diane curled up beside Harry in the booth as Albert went up to the counter to place their orders. She still wore her pencil skirt, but on on of their stops she’d purchased tennis shoes and a couple of fresh t-shirts— the one she was wearing at the moment read NOT TODAY in flowery letters. “Now he’s got two of us to worry about,” she said under her breath. Harry decided to reply:

“Someone needs to worry about him.” Diane nodded, and Harry offered his hand: “Sorry, we never did the proper introductions did we? Harry S. Truman.”

“I know.” Her expression relaxed slightly. “I see why he likes you.”

“Not sure Albert likes anybody, exactly—”

“That’s not who I was talking about.”

Albert returned with a eye-searingly-orange plastic tray:

“Mushroom burger, cheeseburger, buttered biscuit for you, Harry, because they can’t just serve toast like a real restaurant and those things they claim are bagels are made out of lies.”

“Don’t worry Albert, I’ll survive a biscuit.” Harry picked up one half of the baked item and took a bite. It wasn’t too bad, actually.

“Diane, the ring that jogged your memory—”

“My half-sister and her husband. Don’t ask me how they’d be mixed up in this though, Janey-E’s aggressively normal.”

“And her husband?”

“Never actually met him. Janey-E and I don’t talk much,” she explained. “But from her comments he’s… passively normal. Works for an insurance company, drinks too much sometimes, the whole man-in-the-gray-flannel-suit thing.”

“I’ve been talking with Audrey, or the version of her that existed in the white room. You’ll notice I use the past tense. Still sitting on the bed, she raised a finger and pointed to the mirror in front of her, saying:

‘The other me— she ran away from home, like she thought Laura had done. I’m amazed she survived her first year in the big city, but look:’

Diane, I saw Audrey searching records online, tailing suspects, testifying in civil and sometimes criminal courts. It’s a life that can make a cynic of the kindest soul, but there are situations the police don’t or can’t investigate, and those were— are, I suppose— Audrey’s bread and butter, in that mirror world. And they seem to pay well enough she can afford to do some pro bono cases.

‘I wish I were out there,’ she said, and the mirror clouded and shifted. She patted the bedspread, and I sat down beside her. ‘You know how,’ she began, ‘when you’re a kid, and you’re reading your favourite book, and a little after the halfway point, you start to think ‘I’m getting near the end of the book?’ And really, you’re not— there are pages and pages left of scenes and pictures. You’re always surprised just how much more there is. But it’s not enough to shake the feeling it’s putting off the inevitable. Dawdling before bedtime.’ She stood up suddenly, bent and kissed me on the brow. ‘Say hello to the other me, if you ever run into her.’ And then she was gone, Diane. Not in flame or fadeout, just gone.”

I look up, and Laura is beside me.

The diner, when they found it, was not what Harry’d pictured. Instead of a lonely Edward Hopper tableau, or a grimy spoon where toughs whispered to each other along the lunch counter and cast knowing glances in the direction of the men’s room, “Wispy Dreams Cafe” was a blandly cheerful donut shop, the logo rather obviously altered from that of a national chain.

“Looks like they’re under new management.” Diane observed as they got out of the car. “Or else they got tired of paying for the franchise?” The three of them made their way across the parking lot the cafe shared with the landscaping company next door. Inside, the sound of chattering customers and a hum from the coffee machine both soothed and overwhelmed. Harry steadied himself against a gleaming, cream-colored formica counter. The woman on the other side— not a fresh-faced high-school senior or a kindly-faced matron, just a woman with her hair in a ponytail and circles under her eyes, doing her best to smile— threw him a glance and Harry nodded.

“I’m ok. Albert, Diane, what do you two want?”

A couple of minutes later, they sat by the window, feigning interest in their donuts and coffee.

“Well, we’re living the cop cliché,” whispered Albert. “So, what do you think? Soulless suburban hangout, or den of villainy?”

Harry gingerly sipped the brew in his cardboard cup and eyed the other customers. You couldn’t say the place wasn’t busy; the woman at the counter had already served a family of four in the time it had taken Harry, Albert and Diane to seat themselves with their coffees, and another customer had just come in the door.

“That counter’s been installed recently. Deep-fat fryer’s been replaced too.”

“And they don’t know how to use it yet. You could wax skis with these donuts. That’s hardly a crime, though.” Diane looked around at the blue and yellow walls painted with large trompe l’oeil sprinkles. “Doesn’t seem to be anything else funny about the place— I hate to say it but this place might be legit.”

Harry watched the new customer lean in to the counter. Harry couldn’t quite make out what he was saying— presumably the man was placing his order, but it seemed to be taking a while and there was something tense in the woman’s expression. Beside him he heard Diane swear under her breath, and faster than he could turn his head, his peripheral vision took in that she was getting up. She strode towards the counter and Harry had a glimpse of the angry red scratch on her arm as he struggled to his feet.

Diane was leaning on the counter now, trying to insert herself between the customer and the worker.

“What did you just say to her?” she was asking.

“Look, I come in here all the time, we joke around. What makes you think it’s your fucking business?”

“What seems to be the trouble?” Harry loomed up behind the customer— he might have only half his usual strength but he was still a good six inches taller than the other man. Behind him, he guessed, Albert was approaching. Harry knew the agent was unwilling to use physical force and not exactly skilled at defusing situations through diplomacy, so he turned his gaze on the customer with all the quiet confidence he’d used as Sheriff. In his ear Diane hissed:

“It’s nothing to do with the case, this asshole’s just creeping on the staff.” She must’ve locked eyes with the man too, for he was staring at her now, his bland pink features shifting expression from anger to terrified fascination.

Rather an unimpressive face, thought Harry, and then, what’s Diane doing? He turned to look at her sharp, smiling profile, and saw a tear slide from her eye.

“No,” she said loudly and abruptly, and blinked hard. “Do you want us to escort him out?” she asked the woman behind the counter; but the man was already out the door and running for his car.

“Diane,” Harry whispered.

“Diane,” whispered Albert. Diane was passing one hand across her eyes.

“I could have fried him. Just now. Something wanted me to; but I just wanted him to back off.” She beamed at them as Albert held out an arm for her to steady herself. “I think I’m back to normal. Well, normal for me.”

“Are we the only two left here now?”

“I’m not even here anymore.”

“I don’t know how to get back to the waiting room.”

“It doesn’t matter, the coffee’s cold.”

Somehow, the white room has become even more featureless, despite that being both a logical and a grammatical impossibility. Only the bed, the table and Audrey’s mirror remain. A moment in the glass catches my eye, and I look to see— oh Diane, I’m so glad you escaped! I see you travelling with Albert, and… oh, Harry…

…the cafe’s fluorescent lights flickered as the background hum, noticeable since their arrival, now rose to an ear-splitting volume then died away just as suddenly. As the three of them looked on, an old-fashioned hospital bed, its steel frame painted white, materialized between the counter and the booths, replacing two unoccupied tables. At one end of it sat Agent Dale Cooper, fully dressed in his suit and tie, a look on his face of mild surprise that turned to the familiar joy as his gaze met theirs. Coop had grown older like the rest of them, sharper angles in his face, but he looked hale and well, and his eyes did not have the cruel gleam that chilled Harry’s memories of their last meeting.

“Harry,” he said, as though a quarter-century hadn’t passed. In response Harry silently doffed his cowboy hat, revealing his pallor, his naked scalp. Coop’s smiled wavered a little. “I’m sorry I was gone so long,” he whispered, and rose from the white bed. In the background, the cafe staff and patrons continued to chat and serve and drink and eat coffee and donuts as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on right in front of them. Albert made a hesitant noise in his throat and Coop raised his hand in that just a moment gesture he always used to make, and in that moment Harry knew his friend really was back from wherever he’d been all those years.

“Apologies for being brusque,” Coop said, “but there’s a family in Las Vegas who I’ve reason to believe are in danger right now—”

“Janey-E?” Diane asked.

“Right on the button. For personal reasons which I’ll explain later, I can’t get in touch with them myself. The Mitchell brothers might be able to help, but I don’t know how much they’ll be able to recall of our last meeting.”

“Tammy and Constance are already on it.”

“Good,” Coop looked relieved, and Harry stepped forward, shaking a little in spite of himself, and as if the motion had at last given him permission, Coop sailed forward and embraced him— very gently, as if he feared Harry might break. He’s gauging by touch how much weight I’ve lost, thought Harry, but it’s all right. He’d forgotten how warm Coop was. He became aware of Albert and Diane joining in, arms circling his shoulders and Coop’s. If I died right here and now, it’d be all right.

But this embrace was not an epitaph, or an epilogue. Outside, somewhere else in the city, was an imitation of an ancient stone monument; and a copy of an old theatre where real audiences watched real actors. Somewhere the forces that had sent the dark cloud of grackles prepared another attack, and somewhere Tammy Preston was moving to protect Janey-E and Dougie Jones. Elsewhere Audrey Horne walked the mean streets and was not herself mean. This was an interlude, but let them have it for a while.

A couple of patrons turned their heads to smile at the reunion going in their midst.

#wonderfulxstrange #@laughingpineapple #twin peaks #@laughingpinecone

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weemsbotts · 3 years

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Fallen And Not Forgotten: Andrew Leitch’s Short & Fascinating Life in Dumfries

By: Lisa Timmerman, Executive Director

On 10/05/1776, George Washington wrote to Samuel Washington describing the Battle of Harlem Heights and writing, “In this Ingagement poor Majr Leitch of Weedon’s Regiment received three Wounds through his Side, of which he died…” Dying so early in the Revolutionary War and away from home certainly meant hardships for his family. Due to his active political career and wealth, we can trace him and his family through different newspapers, court records, and letters/petitions to see how his family fought to honor his legacy and service.

On 03/04/1775, Andrew Leitch purchased “all those 2 lotts or 2 acres of land situate lying & being in the said county of Pr. Wm. & joing the N.E. end of the town of Dumfries beginning for 1 acre & the said land on the main street & on the town line opposite to the corner of Mr. Wm Graysons lotts extending…the other lott or 1 acre is to join the said town on the level opposite to lotts of Mr. Thomas Chapman.” Moving from Maryland to Virginia the previous year, Leitch did not hesitate to establish his mercantile business and political interests. While in Dumfries, Andrew and his wife Margaretta Augustina Brice Leitch visited and dined with George Washington and established a strong enough connection for the later orphaned Leitch children to appeal directly for Washington’s help.

While Leitch’s social affairs seemed solid, his indentured servants were actively fleeing from him. Leitch tried to control his labor force by placing the following runaway advertisement in the Virginia Gazette in 04/1775 for the stout William Pearce and strong Ralph Emmanuel, “2 convict servant men just imported from London in the Justitiae Capt. Kidd lying at Leedstown”. His luck at keeping his convict labor force fared no better later in 1774 as he placed another runaway ad for Joseph Fischer, a tailor with a “dark visage – down look”, tailer William Booth with a “wooden leg which he endeavors to hide with his trousers” and indentured tailor Patrick Creamer.

In 1774, Leitch joined the Prince William County Committee of Correspondence. Washington recorded lodging with Leitch with evening entertainment at the Graham’s as Washington reviewed the Independent Company in Dumfries. By 02/1776, Leitch was commissioned a captain in the 3rd Virginia Regiment and led the Prince William Battalion, later receiving a promotion to Major in the 1st Virginia Regiment. Major Leitch actively fought in the Battle of Harlem Heights (09/16/1776), at the head of the attacking column, and suffered three musket ball wounds in his abdomen. Although Washington and other officers seemed hopeful for his recovery, he died on 09/28/1776. Sidenote: To read more about the actual battle, check out the Emerging Revolutionary War Era blog here.

(Source: Shannon, Joseph, Noel Francis Parrish, and W.C. Rogers & Co. Map of the upper part of the Island of Manhattan above Eighty-Sixth Street arranged to illustrate the Battle of Harlem Heights. [New York?: s.n, 1776] Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/88694229/)

Further devastation to the family occurred when Margaretta died in 1781. Now orphaned, Sarah Leitch appealed on “behalf of herself and her Infant brother James Frisby Leitch” directly to George Washington in 01/1791:

“That their said father being a Merchant and possessing but a small Capital was in a great degree dependent on his personal exertions for the support of himself and his family, but actuated by Zeal in the cause of this Country entered into the Army of these States, and in the year 1776 Sacrificed his Life in executing the orders of his General—Your Petitioners on this Subject can only relate the information they have received from others, but, for the truth of these facts they are told, they may appeal with confidence to the knowledge of the Commander in Chief.

Your Petitioners further shew that the additional Misfortune of losing their Mother soon afterwards left them altogether dependent upon the bounty of friends, and while they contemplate these Melancholy Events they cannot but hope they shall receive from the Humanity and generosity of this Government the same compassion that they are informed others have experienced in similar circumstances—They humbly intreat therefore that the half pay of the Commission possessed by their said Father, may be extended to your Petitioners commencing from the date of his Death, or for such other provision as you may think most proper.”

Leitch’s inventory from 1777 indicated his “small Capital” included a book collection, mahogany desk and bookcase, and the following enslaved persons: Dinah, Harry, Hagar and her child estimating their “price” from 30 to 120 pounds. Although Secretary of War Henry Knox was in favor of granting the petition and the House of Representatives approved the petition in 02/1791, it is unclear whether anyone implemented it. On 06/30/1834, Congress resolved, “to the legal representatives of the late Margaret Leitch, widow of the late Major Andrew Leitch, a major in the army of the revolution . . . the seven years’ half pay” noting women and children received this entitlement from the Congressional resolution of 08/24/1780. This continued in the records into the 1840s as the family continued to affirm Leitch’s sacrifice in the Revolutionary War. Upon Sarah’s death in 1842, her children appealed to the courts and received “…from the Register of the land office, warrant or warrants due for the service of Andrew Leitch as Major in the Rev. war.”

Although Leitch was only active in Dumfries for a short time, his business as a merchant and enthuasiasm as a patriot directly impacted Prince William County. While he died early in the Revolutionary War, his family fought for decades for the recognition and rights based on his ultimate sacrifice. One lingering thought: Were Leitch’s tailors truly convicts and did the man with the wooden leg successfully hide it in his trousers?

Note: The Weems-Botts Museum is kicking back into high gear as we rush into September! From a featured guest speaker discussing Hessians in Dumfries to scheduled tours, we are excited to engage our community with both f2f and virtual programming! Check out our seasonal programs and tour availability on our website here.

(Sources: HDVI Archival Files; Orrison, Robert. “He Stood the Field with Great Bravery”: The Story of Major Andrew Leitch, Part 1 & 2, Emerging Revolutionary War Era Blog; “From George Washington to Samuel Washington, 5 October 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-06-02-0371. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 6, 13 August 1776 – 20 October 1776, ed. Philander D. Chase and Frank E. Grizzard, Jr. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994, pp. 486–488.];“[March 1775],” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/01-03-02-0005-0005. [Original source: The Diaries of George Washington, vol. 3, 1 January 1771–5 November 1781, ed. Donald Jackson. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978, pp. 311–317.] “To George Washington from Sarah Leitch, 25 January 1791,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-07-02-0156. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Presidential Series, vol. 7, 1 December 1790 – 21 March 1791, ed. Jack D. Warren, Jr. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998, pp. 282–283.])

#revolutionarywar #localhistory #georgewashington #colonialhistory #community #enslaved #indentured servitude #geneology #archives

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mediaeval-muse · 3 years

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Book Review

These Violent Delights. By Chloe Gong. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2020.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Genre: historical fiction

Part of a Series? Yes, These Violent Delights #1

Summary: The year is 1926, and Shanghai hums to the tune of debauchery. A blood feud between two gangs runs the streets red, leaving the city helpless in the grip of chaos. At the heart of it all is eighteen-year-old Juliette Cai, a former flapper who has returned to assume her role as the proud heir of the Scarlet Gang—a network of criminals far above the law. Their only rivals in power are the White Flowers, who have fought the Scarlets for generations. And behind every move is their heir, Roma Montagov, Juliette’s first love…and first betrayal. But when gangsters on both sides show signs of instability culminating in clawing their own throats out, the people start to whisper. Of a contagion, a madness. Of a monster in the shadows. As the deaths stack up, Juliette and Roma must set their guns—and grudges—aside and work together, for if they can’t stop this mayhem, then there will be no city left for either to rule. Perfect for fans of The Last Magician and Descendant of the Crane, this heart-stopping debut is an imaginative Romeo and Juliet retelling set in 1920s Shanghai, with rival gangs and a monster in the depths of the Huangpu River.

***Full review under the cut.***

Content/Trigger Warnings: violence, blood, gore

Overview: I love the premise of this book. A Romeo and Juliet retelling? Set in 1920s Shanghai? Sign me up! There was so much to love about These Violent Delights: the setting, the characters, the prose, the complexity of the social and political situation... so why didn’t I rate this book higher? Well, despite all the things I loved, I didn’t love the pacing and the plot. In my opinion, Gong had the tendency to kill a lot of suspense and over-explain things, which not only made the main plot feel slow, but I felt like I was being told a lot of things about characters instead of shown. Thus, it was hard for me personally to absorb the significance of things and become emotionally invested. Overall, though, These Violent Delights is an ambitious book, and I look forward to reading the sequel.

Writing: From the first page of the prologue, I was hooked on Gong’s way of describing the look and feel of Shanghai. I love the way she describes settings, using vivid imagery and almost poetic phrases to evoke feelings of seediness and poverty. Gong ensures that her prose doesn’t get too purple, however, so I think she overall strikes a nice balance between being literary and being accessible.

I do, however, think that Gong had the tendency to tell rather than show when it came to descriptions of the characters’ backstories, motivations, or other things, such as the bloodfeud between the gangs. We are told, for example, that there is a bloodfeud, and we get scenes where gang members bristle at the sight of one another, but we don’t really have any scenes where the bloodfeud serves as a major antagonist or threatens characters in a real, tangible way. Juliette’s and Roma’s pasts also don’t feel very laden with pathos, and I got the impression that we were supposed to feel sympathetic without really seeing how their pasts continue to affect them in the present. For example, we’re told that Roma’s mother was killed by Scarlets, but Roma barely ever thinks about her, doesn’t have any longing for her, etc. Perhaps some flashbacks would have helped make these pasts feel more impactful, or maybe a change in the way characters think and act, but as it stands, I didn’t feel like much of the violence was really “present,” so to speak, because everyone who dies isn’t really given a real presence in the novel.

I also think Gong had the tendency to interrupt the flow of her story by inserting unneeded descriptions or background information at inopportune moments. For example, when Roma and Juliette are running from the scene of a crime at one point, they agree to meet up at a restaurant nearby, and Gong proceeds to give us a paragraph on what that restaurant is like. It has no real significance to the action - the characters don’t really spend a lot of time there, and it never comes up again. As a result, we get some descriptive or expositional passages in the middle of a scene, which I think really slows down the book’s pace and removes a sense of urgency. In other words, form didn’t match function in places where it really mattered.

Lastly, I think Gong over-wrote some of her passages to the extent that the reader was being told things that could have been inferred. We would read, for example, passages where Gong would tell us why a character was speaking quietly or why a character was acting in a certain way, and some of those things would be obvious from context. I think Gong could have benefitted from pulling back a little bit and letting readers piece together some things on their own.

Plot: This book mainly follows Roma and Juliette, to heirs to Shanghai’s two most notorious gangs, as they track down a monster which has been causing a mysterious madness to sweep across the city. In my opinion, this madness/monster plot was a little weak - not only did I feel like the mystery itself wasn’t very clever, but I didn’t get the sense that the madness was truly a threat. As I mentioned above, violence doesn’t really have a tangible impact on our named characters - the gangs aren’t shown to suffer much from the impact on their operations (Juliette doesn’t have to make do with less income, for example, and she doesn’t seem all that connected to the common resident of Shanghai to be altruistic) and even if we just accept that Roma and Juliette want to solve the mystery to prove something to their fathers, I didn’t feel like I cared enough about their statuses in the gang to want them to succeed or fail. To solve this problem, I think I would have liked to see more stakes; if they fail, would the gangs be entrusted to more violent people who would do more harm than good? If they fail, would they be chased out of town or sent away? Something a bit more urgent, I think, to show us that. Granted, wanting to impress their fathers is a good motivation, but I wanted more urgency.

Characters: Juliette, our primary heroine, is perhaps the most well-developed character in this book. She’s the heir to the most powerful gang in Shanghai, but despite the nominal security of her title, she has to prove herself worthy because A.) she’s a woman, and B.) she spent a lot of time in America, which makes her too Western for her people’s standards, yet too Chinese for the Europeans living in the city. She’s also hot-blooded and impulsive, which gets her into some trouble (a flaw that I think Gong wrote well, as it felt like Juliette was being ruthless out of some sense of insecurity). I really enjoyed her as a character, and I think Gong wrote her well.

Roma, our primary hero and Juliette’s love interest, is somewhat less interesting. He has some qualities that seem good on paper: he’s an expert with a firearm and isn’t enthusiastic about violence. He also cares deeply for his sister and has a complicated relationship with his father. However, he didn’t have the same level of complexity as Juliette. He didn’t have any convictions about why he and his gang deserved to be in Shanghai, nor did his family’s history with the Bolsheviks seem to influence the way he responded to the communist uprising. I wanted a little more from him, and I wanted to be shown why Juliette was in love with him (other than their history and, supposedly, Roma’s ability to “really see” her).

Supporting characters were hit or miss. I really liked Rosalind and Kathleen, and I loved the dynamics they brought to the story. As sisters and cousins to Juliette, they have a complicated relationship with the Scarlet Gang - they’re family, but not family enough to have true power or protection. I liked that the sisters responded differently to this situation; Kathleen seems more desperate to do whatever Juliette asks, while Rosalind feels that people like her have to deal with all the fallout of the Cai’s actions. Benedikt and Marshall, Roma’s companions, also had a nice dynamic; Marshall is somewhat outgoing while Benedikt was reserved, and the two brought out new behaviors in the other that made me think they have a budding m/m romance. However, I didn’t really understand their motivations enough to feel invested in their stories. They felt more like sidekicks than characters in their own right - they wandered around Shanghai doing errands for their gang, but didn’t really seem integral in ways other than that.

Antagonists were somewhat bland, in my opinion. Tyler, a hot-headed Cai who wants to be the heir instead of Juliette, weaves in and out at convenient moments, inserting tension at random moments that didn’t seem to build on one another. I would have liked a more sustained storyline where he is constantly interfering and competing with Juliette, perhaps to raise the stakes. For example, if he had also been working to track down the monster, and the two had had more confrontations about their progress along the way, Juliette’s success might be a little more urgent. Dmitri, another hot-headed wannabe heir on the White Flower side, is barely present and doesn’t feel like a threat. I would have liked to see the same thing be done with him: have him investigating the mystery, but in a way that opposes how Roma does things (perhaps a way that exacerbates the blood feud). Even the people directly involved with the monster plot seemed to be stock characters, and I wasn’t entirely convinced that they were formidable opponents for our protagonists.

Romance: For a Romeo and Juliet retelling, I was surprised that the romance (or the relationship, at the very least) wasn’t more of a focus in this book. I guess if the book hadn’t been marketed that way, my thoughts might be different, but then again, many of the names are deliberately crafted to resemble the names in Shakespeare’s play. Even so, I think I liked that the romance didn’t take center stage all the time, as it allowed Gong to give us a retelling that wasn’t just the same plot points as the original play.

However, I definitely would have liked more tension or angst in the scenes when Roma and Juliette were together. We’re told (rather than shown) that the two have a complicated history, but when they’re working together, there’s no real chemistry that convinced me that the two still had feelings for one another. Juliette tells us in her POV that Roma sees her and understands her, but other than that, I didn’t get the sense that there was any passion or emotional intimacy between the two - just history. I would have liked to see more conflicted emotions in the places when Juliette or Roma are forced to interact so that there is a stronger buildup to the more intense emotions later in the book. But as it stands, the revival of their romantic feelings felt rather sudden, and I didn’t quite understand why the two were in love.

Themes: One major thing that I think Gong did really well was convey her passion about the state of Shanghai during the time period, especially when talking about politics and colonialism. Gong would have her characters meditate on the conflict between nationalists and communists, as well as the presence of Westerners and other foreigners who don’t bother to respect or engage with Chinese culture (or language). For example, Juliette often remarked upon how she felt like a stranger in her own country, and a lot of the ways she had to navigate racism and sexism reflected that. In my opinion, these themes brought out the best in Gong’s writing, as I could tell that she was invested in them and had a lot to say.

TL;DR: These Violent Delights has an intriguing premise and a well-developed heroine, and Gong is at her best when writing about these things while pushing back against colonialism in 20th century Shanghai. However, I ultimately didn’t feel like I could get emotionally invested in the gang dynamics, the romance, or the mystery itself, mainly because of the writing style and the lack of explicit stakes.

#book reviews

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wherewindysurgeswend · 3 years

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deep heart’s core: chapter nine

chapter 1

chapter 2

chapter 3

chapter 4

chapter 5

chapter 6

chapter 7

chapter 8

taglist (please dm, send an ask or leave a comment if you’d like to be added or removed): @rememberedkisses @veiliza

It was raining by the time the train pulled into the station in London. Anna laughed a little to herself. She had been told it rained a lot in England, but she hadn’t it expected it to be raining when she arrived. Smiling weakly at Mr. Welch, she picked up her suitcase, put on her hat, and stepped off the train. She scanned the crowd, looking for a sign with her name: her boss had said he was sending a car for her. The station was filled with people holding hand-lettered signs bearing the names of the people they were there to pick up, but as far as she could tell, none of them read “Anna Byrne.” She wondered if they hadn’t gotten her birth name instead, but there was no “Rachel Byrne” either.

There was, however, a woman in a tweed suit holding a sign that read “Anne Burke.” With a sigh, Anna walked up to the woman. “Are you from the Montreal Daily News?” she asked. The woman nodded. “Are you Miss Burke?” she asked sharply.

“Yes. Well, no. I’m Anna Byrne, but I think you’ve got my name wrong.” The woman shook her head. “No, I’m here for Miss Anne Burke. If you aren’t her, you’d best move on.”

“No, you see, there is no Anne Burke. I’m Anna Byrne, and I’m the reporter covering the Thornbury case. Isn’t that who you’re here to pick up?” The woman looked exasperated.

“I don’t know what Anne Burke does, I only know I’m here to pick her up.” Anna sighed. Arguing with this woman was like arguing with a brick wall. At this point it would be easier to just take a taxi. She apologized to the woman and headed for the exit.

Stepping off the train in Paris, Kathleen smiled to herself as she saw her parents exchange a tender glance. She had heard the story dozens of times, about how they had spent their honeymoon in France – a belated honeymoon, a few years after their marriage, because Europe had been war-torn when they had met in the autumn of 1915, and just as bad when they married a year later. Joseph and Florence had spent most of April, 1921 in Paris, leaving four-year-old Kathleen with her grandmother. Kathleen couldn’t really remember, of course, but she had been told that the trip was only supposed to last three weeks, but the boat had been delayed and they had had to stay for four. It was one of those stories that the Lynches liked to bring up at dinner parties, along with the time Kathleen had been sent home from school for arguing with her English teacher and the time Mary had tried to run away from home at age six.

The Lynches walked into the hotel lobby and Joseph headed for the check-in desk. Florence was close behind him, but Kathleen stayed behind to keep an eye on the younger children. Paul and Mary seemed to be having some kind of argument. James was staring at the chandelier in the hotel lobby as if in a trance. No wonder, Kathleen realized. He had never seen anything quite like it. Pulling her brother by the hand to get him out of the other guests’ way, she took him back to where their other siblings were.

The first few days of the Lynches’ vacation were fairly uneventful. They visited some tourist attractions, ate at some sidewalk cafés, and slept in hotel beds that were just a little too firm. But on the day, Kathleen arrived in the hotel lobby and was told that someone had called the hotel for her and requested that she call back as soon as possible.

Almost immediately after the number had been dialed, Kathleen heard a panicked Margaret Kittredge on the other end of the line, speaking far too quickly for Kathleen to understand her. After being asked repeatedly to slow down, Margaret was finally able to explain what the fuss was: “Grandmother’s here.”

After a pause that was far too long for Kathleen’s taste, Margaret asked, “How quickly can you get over here?” Kathleen looked at her watch.

“Half an hour if I walk. I’d take a cab or the metro but I don’t have any French cash.”

“I’ll pay for the cab. I’ll be waiting for you outside the hotel. And be sure to dress nicely. Grandmother can be quite… judgemental.”

When Kathleen’s cab pulled up in front of the hotel, Margaret was standing outside, looking more nervous than Kathleen had ever seen her. She was pacing back and forth and kept reaching up to run her finger through her hair, realizing that she couldn’t do that without ruining her perfect finger waves, and lowering her hand again. Kathleen watched her run up to another cab and attempt to pay the driver before realizing that the passenger was a stranger. She suspected Margaret had done this multiple times before, so she stuck her head out the window and called out to her.

In the elevator on the way to Mrs. Kittredge’s room, Margaret and Larry, who had been waiting inside the lobby, smoking cigarette after cigarette to calm his nerves, tried to give Kathleen as much advice as they possibly could on what to say to their grandmother. “Make sure your handshake is firm,” said Larry.

“But not too firm,” Margaret added, “or she’ll say you aren’t ladylike.”

“Be respectful.”

“But don’t be weak.” “Smile.”

“But don’t grin.”

“Look her in the eye.”

“But don’t stare.”

“Be serious.”

“But don’t be sullen.”

“Be –” but Kathleen never found out what Larry was going to tell her, because the elevator doors opened.

Margaret Sterling Kittredge was nothing if not impressive. At age seventy-five, she still had perfect eyesight and wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing glasses. Her spine was still straight as an arrow. Like her sons and grandchildren, she was on the tall side, and rather thin. She had the Kittredge eyes, but they weren’t dreamy like Margaret’s, mirthful like Larry’s or frank like Margaret’s father’s. They were cold and steely and her gaze was sharp and level. Her silver hair was arranged in a pompadour – the style had gone out of fashion some thirty years ago, but Mrs. Kittredge wore it with such dignity that it didn’t matter. She wore a dark red velvet gown and an impressive diamond brooch and, seated on a chintz armchair with her hands folded in her lap and her legs daintily crossed at the ankle, she looked to Kathleen like a queen surveying her kingdom.

“So,” said Mrs. Kittredge, “this is the Lynch girl.” It wasn’t a question; it was a declaration. Kathleen felt certain that even if she hadn’t been the Lynch girl, she still would have agreed with Mrs. Kittredge, because contradicting her was out of the question. “Come here,” said Mrs. Kittredge imperiously. Kathleen obeyed. “What was your first name, again?” she asked, not unkindly but not exactly kindly, either. “Kathleen.”

“Now, Kathleen, you understand why it is of utmost importance that you be discreet about this whole… situation.” Kathleen nodded.

“Of course. I had no intention of spreading this around, Mrs. Kittredge. You can count on my discretion.”

“I’m sure I can. But you understand why I had to come here anyway, don’t you? We can’t have it known that my late son had an illegitimate child – a child born during his marriage to my daughter-in-law, no less.” Kathleen hesitated.

“What – what would the consequences be?”

“Oh, you know. The Kittredges are an old family, Kathleen. Our social standing is precarious, but if we lose it, we lose everything. So it falls to me to make sure we don’t lose it.”

“Mrs. Kittredge, there’s something I have to tell you.” Mrs. Kittredge stared at Kathleen.

“I’m afraid… I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding.” Kathleen glanced at Larry and Margaret, both of whom seemed to have guessed what she was about to say. Larry looked incredulous but not necessarily unhappy, but if looks could kill, the one Margaret was giving Kathleen could have decimated an army. Nevertheless, Kathleen didn’t back down. “Mrs Kittredge, I’m not your granddaughter. It was all a prank that Larry helped me pull on your son. I hope you’ll accept my apology, because I truly didn’t intend for it to get this out of control. But your son wired you before we could tell him it wasn’t true and, well, here we are. And I hope you won’t blame Larry, because it was all my idea.”

The silence that followed probably lasted only a few seconds, but it felt like hours. Finally, Mrs. Kittredge opened her mouth, and Kathleen steeled herself for what she assumed would be a lecture. But instead, Mrs. Kittredge did the unexpected: she laughed. Margaret was the first to speak. “Grandmother,” she said incredulously, “do you really think this is funny? You came all the way across the Atlantic for nothing!”

“Peggy, when you get to be as old as I am, you’ll understand the value of a good joke. And besides, Montreal is unbelievably dull these days. Nothing to do but attend parties held by women I’ve never liked. I might as well be in Paris.”

“But… you hate jokes. I’ve never seen you laugh in my life.”

“There’s always a first time.” she turned to Kathleen.

“I like you,” she said decisively. Kathleen stared at her. After a pause, Mrs. Kittredge continued.

“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders. It’s not many girls who would go along with something like this to help their friends. You’ll go far, Kathleen Lynch.”

After the required pleasantries, Kathleen started to leave the hotel room, but Mrs. Kittredge called her back. “Would you do an old woman a favour?” she asked. Kathleen was startled by the request. “Of course,” she replied.

“Would you come to dinner with us tonight? I’m afraid my relatives are dreadfully dull at times. I could use the company.” Kathleen, not knowing what else to do, accepted the invitation and headed back to her hotel.

#the long awaited mrs. kittredge!#shes here!#deep heart's core #writeblr #my writing

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stahlop · 4 years

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Happy Anniversary Must Love Dogs!

Today is the one-year anniversary of my first fic ever! Must Love Dogs was the story of how my husband I met with Emma and Killian as yours truly and my husband. And not only is today the anniversary of that fic, but it’s the 15th anniversary of our first date (hence why I posted it today originally). So here it is again in all it’s glory. I hope you enjoy it again or for the first time.

Thank you @profdanglaisstuff for your beta skills and the artwork for this piece. You have been amazing!

Summary: Emma is done with online dating, so she decides to get a dog instead. Could a new pet dating site lead to true love?

Chapters 2 3 4 5

Also on A03

“I’m done with online dating!” Emma huffed into the phone as she flopped backward onto her bed.

“I swear Mary Margaret, I’m done. There are no good guys to find from dating online. It would be easier to find a guy in a bar like the good old days.” Emma threw her arm over her eyes to block out the light in her room.

“Oh come on, Emma,” Mary Margaret, Emma’s best friend, began, “They haven’t been all bad.”

“Have you lost your memory, Mary Margaret?” Emma asked incredulously. “Do you not remember my descriptions of all the extremely bad dates I’ve been on over the past two years since I started online dating?” Emma set her phone on her bed, pressed the speaker button, and started combing her fingers through her long, blonde hair to put up into a messy bun.

“First there was the guy who only gave one word responses to every question I asked.” She huffed while unzipping her boots and throwing them into her closet from her bed.

“Then there was August who invited me to see his band, then got totally wasted before he was even off stage and hit on every other girl in the bar while he was talking to me.” Off came her socks thrown viciously into the hamper.

“Then that Walsh guy who was totally pretentious about having seen ‘The Vagina Monologues’ but really just wanted to say the word vagina over and over again.’ She wrestled her legs out of the jeans she had been wearing on her date tonight and grabbed her sweats that were haphazardly hanging off the side of her bed. She breathed a sigh of relief to be in much more comfortable clothes.

“This last date couldn’t have been worse than those, Emma.” Mary Margaret said incredulously.

“This guy, Neal, started off well,” Emma said, her voice getting a little muffled as she struggled to get her tight, ribbed shirt off and put on a Boston University sweatshirt instead, “He’s a dental assistant, so that seemed promising. At least it was until he let me know how helpful that was when he got into a fight at a concert last month and had to have his teeth that were knocked out fixed.” Emma angrily stalked into the kitchen and started rummaging through her bottom cabinet for her saucepan.

“Oh, gees!” Mary Margaret complained. “I mean, that doesn’t seem that bad. At least he got his teeth fixed.” she continued trying to make the best out of the situation.

“Oh, it gets worse!” Emma said, grabbing the chocolate discs from inside the freezer and emptying them onto a cutting board sitting on her kitchen counter. She opened the refrigerator and grabbed the milk and poured about a cupful into the saucepan and turned the burner on low heat. “He proceeded to get into details about this fight and how it ended with him getting kicked in the balls and how painful that is.” She now grabbed a knife from the knife block and started vigorously chopping up the chocolate.

“Well…” Mary Margaret started but Emma was too worked up now to let her interrupt.

“So, I made the quip about how childbirth was supposed to be more painful, and he replied with ‘That’s just something women say to get attention!’” she huffed and almost sliced her finger with force she was now cutting the chocolate.

“Oh, Emma,” Mary Margaret started again.

“I literally just gaped at him, pulled out a $20 for my meal and drink, and left. And he had the audacity to yell after ‘Can I call you?’” And at that Emma practically threw the knife into the sink.

Emma took several deep breaths awaiting Mary Margaret’s response. It took a few seconds and Emma began to think that they had maybe disconnected. She glanced at the milk on the stove and noticed the small bubbles starting to break the surface and quickly picked up the cutting board and swept the chopped chocolate into the hot milk. Just as she grabbed the wooden spoon from the drawer below to start stirring the chocolate into the milk, Mary Margaret started speaking again.

“Emma, I know you hate it when I wax poetic on love, but you really shouldn’t give up on finding it. I still feel like online dating could work if you find the right guy. I know you have walls from your childhood, but - they may keep out pain; but they also keep out love.” Mary Margaret knew Emma had doubts, but she really didn’t want her friend to give up because of a few bad dates.

Emma was now pouring the hot chocolate into her swan mug and gave a heavy sigh. “Don’t you think all these horrible dates are a sign that I’m just not meant to be with someone? I know you and David found each other on TrueLove.com, but not everyone is you.” Emma placed the saucepan into the sink and quickly ran some water into it. She opened the refrigerator and grabbed the whipped cream and sprayed it onto her hot chocolate. She replaced it back in the fridge then grabbed the cinnamon on the counter and sprinkled some over the whipped cream.

“You do realize David and I didn’t actually meet online. He was on a date with another girl and I was drunk at the bar and I accidentally swiped his credit card thinking it was mine.” Mary Margaret reminded her.

Emma chuckled, her first true expression of happiness this whole disaster of a night, “Yes, but he met her through TrueLove.com, so it’s still because of that dating site that you two met. Just think, if you hadn’t have swiped his card he might have ended up married to that Kathryn chick.”

“God forbid!” Mary Margaret gasped. “Besides, she ended up with Freddie the gym teacher at my school.” Mary Margaret taught fifth grade at the local elementary school. “Turns out after David ditched her to figure out where his credit card had gone, she ran into him at the bar. Apparently, she and Freddie had been high school sweethearts and her father didn’t like him so he sent her to a college out of state to separate them. It was fate that I happened to take David’s card, or she may have never found Freddie again.” Emma sighed and rolled her eyes at the way Mary Margaret sounded so hopeful telling this story. She was always giving hope speeches about finding love.

“Look,” Emma started while blowing on her hot chocolate to cool it down, “I think I just need a break from online dating. It’s exhausting trying to find a good guy on there. I just needed to vent about the awful date. It’s so much easier on Tinder when I know the guy is a creep I get to arrest.”

“Emma,” Mary Margaret said sternly, “your Tinder dates aren’t dates. That’s you pretending it’s a date to arrest them for skipping bail. It’s not even funny to joke about that.”

Emma had now plopped herself down on her couch and turned the television on to Animal Planet. Pitbulls and Parolees, one of her favorite shows, was on.

“Maybe I should get a dog.” Emma said suddenly. “At least that way I’ll have someone to come home to everyday and someone who loves me unconditionally.”

“I can see I’ve lost you on the dating conversation.” Mary Margaret huffed. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, sweetie.’

“Ok, Mary Margaret, talk to you tomorrow.” Emma said distracted by the pitbulls on the television screen. She definitely thought a trip to the local dog shelter might be exactly what she needed.

EKEKEK

Emma didn’t get to the shelter the next day; a skip she’d been tracking for a few weeks suddenly came back into town and she collared him exiting a grocery store of all places, but the day after she definitely made time to go the shelter where Mary Margaret’s husband, David, worked.

“Emma,” David began, “are you sure you understand all that’s involved in caring for a dog?” He looked at her with concern. Emma was notorious for barely taking care of herself, let alone another living creature.

“I think this is what I need, David.” Emma began. “I would rather be caring for someone that needs me than go out looking for someone who just wants to get into my pants. I think this would be good for me.” She finished. David nodded and brought her into the back where the animals were kept.

Emma had been imagining that it would be an almost dungeon-like place with sad looking animals in cages. She was pleasantly surprised to find only a few cages, but mainly large rooms with several happy looking dogs and cats running around playfully. There was even an outdoor area where the dogs could play with volunteers from the shelter.

“Most people just like to look around, see what kind of dog jumps out at them, literally and figuratively. You can take any dogs that you like out to the play area to really get a feel for their energy level.” David said

Emma strolled through the room. Each room window had a paper taped to it that said “Hi! My name is…” with the name of the dog, plus their age, what type of dog they were and any pertinent information a pet owner might need. Emma knew she needed a smaller to medium-sized dog as she lived in an apartment, and she did not want a puppy that she would have to housetrain.

She walked up and down one set of rooms and saw a medium-sized black and white dog looking slightly forlorn. Two other dogs were wrenching a rope chew toy back and forth between them. The dog was laying on a large dog pillow, completely oblivious to what it’s roommates were doing. Emma stopped in front of the window and the dog briefly looked up. Something about it just spoke to her.

“I’d like to take that one outside.” Emma said to David who was a little further back.

“Really?” he asked, “That one has been known to be a little prickly. Doesn’t seem to like people very much.” He said as he got out his keys from his pocket. Emma laughed at the comment, as people tended to say the same thing about her.

“Sounds like the perfect match.”

“She’s some sort of Boston terrier/pit mix from what we can tell.” David said as he grabbed a harness off the wall to put on the dog. “You can have genetic testing done on a dog to find out exactly what the breed background is, just like with people, but unless they have some disease that is breed specific, it’s not really worth it.” He finished fitting the harness on the dog and handed the leash to Emma. “You can take her out to the back playground for about 15 minutes to get a feel for her.”

The dog was ecstatic to be outside. She ran around the fence perimeter about three times before she came over to Emma and gave her a good sniff. Her tail immediately started wagging.

“Smell something you like, huh?” Emma said to the dog. The dog gave her hand a tentative lick. Emma reached over and slowly started scratching behind the dog’s ears. Immediately, one of the back legs came up and started thumping out of the dog’s control.

“Oh, you like that a lot, don’t you pretty girl?” The dog chuffed at her but did not move away.

They continued to bond for the rest of the allotted time, the dog running around, but always coming back to Emma for a scratch or to be petted. David watched from the window. He was surprised at how well this dog liked Emma. She usually acted aloof to any person who tried to play with her. David had never seen her so… overjoyed. And Emma seemed to really be bonding with her too. David had never seen Emma so affectionate with someone before. They really seemed to be the perfect match.

Emma arranged to pick her up the next day. It was only after the dog was put back in the room that Emma noticed the name on the dog’s paper, Aphrodite.

EKEKEK

“So, Emma,” Mary Margaret said through speakerphone as Emma was putting away dishes.

“Uh, oh,” Emma said. She could already tell that Mary Margaret had something up her sleeve from the tone in her voice. It had been two months since she had adopted Aphrodite, or Ditie, as she was prone to calling her (with an occasional Diters when she was being a really good girl), and Mary Margaret had seemed to accept that a dog was all she needed in her life and she did not need a man. “This sounds like what you usually say to me when you’re trying to set me up. You’re not trying to set me up are you?”

Mary Margaret gave a little cluck. “No.” She said almost a little too quickly. “It’s just….” she paused to get the right wording out. “Well, I was reading this article today about online dating,” Emma huffed through the phone, “and I read that there are all these new niche dating sites that are up and coming.”

“What does that mean, Mary Margaret?” Emma asked exasperated that this is where the conversation had gone.

“Well, have you ever considered a pet dating site?” Mary Margaret asked almost meekly.

Emma glanced over her countertop to see Ditie snoozing away in her dog bed, a new one she had bought for her when she had taken her home the day after their initial meeting. Emma smiled contently.

“What is that? Like an online dating site for my dog? She’s been fixed, Mary Margaret, she doesn’t need any other life partners other than me.” Emma walked back over to the dishwasher and grabbed the silverware basket to put away.

“No!” Mary Margaret said over the clinking of the forks, knives, and spoons, “It’s a site for people with pets to meet other people with pets. Niche sites are for people with specific interests. I thought it wouldn’t be bad to possibly meet someone else who also had a dog. Then maybe you could find a boyfriend and Ditie could also have a playmate.” Emma huffed again. Ditie also huffed in her sleep.

“I don’t need to find a man just to socialize my dog, Mary Margaret.”

“I know that, I just thought it might be something to look into. I’m texting you a site I found. Just take a look. Gotta go, bye!” Mary Margaret said brightly, then hung up before Emma could argue any further.

She continued to put away her dishes while Ditie snoozed when a ping came from her phone. It was the text from Mary Margaret as promised.

“Really?” Emma whined when she saw the name of the site, Mustlovedogs.com. She put her phone back down to finish her dishes. She still had some research to do for a skip she knew was still in town and she was hoping to nab the next day. She sat down at her desk, opened her laptop and started researching the leads she had about her skip.

“Ok, the skip has been sighted in these areas recently. He also has an ex who lives not too far from here that might be helpful. It looks like she has a dog, I wonder if she had it when they met. Dammit! Stop thinking about dogs, Emma. Ok, I could scope out the ex’s apartment and see what she’s up to. Maybe she’ll be out walking her dog and I could have Ditie with me and then it would seem natural. Two people with dogs meeting is natural. Dammit! Stop thinking about meeting people with dogs, Emma!” She pushed the laptop away in frustration. She checked the time and saw she’d only been working for about 15 minutes before her mind wandered to that damn website.

“Dammit!” she huffed while pulling her laptop back closer to her and reopening it and entering the website Mary Margaret had sent her.

The website was full of bright pictures of couples with their dogs in various states of happiness: walking in the park, playing fetch, all sleeping in the same bed. Emma rolled her eyes at the obvious happily ever after vibe that was happening on the site. She decided to put in some basic information in the “what she was looking for” section on the website just to see what it would come up with. According to the site, she didn’t need to have a membership to look, just to contact any potential matches she might get. Once she put the information in, she realized just how new the website actually was. On the last site she’d been on she had usually matched to about 30-40 different guys with similar interests. Here she was only matched with eight.

She started scanning through the profiles that had been selected for her. The main format was the same as any other dating site, just a blurb about yourself, your interests and hobbies, but it also had a profile section for your dog.

“That’s cute.” She said out loud, while scanning the first profile. Nothing in particular stood out to her that made her want to contact the guy though.

All the guys seemed standard website dating fare, except that they had dogs, which made them slightly better than most guys Emma supposed. Dogs were excellent judges of character, so she assumed that all these guys were better than the average single guy just for the fact that they had dogs. But no one was really standing out.

It was 11:00 when she got to the eighth and final profile. So far Mary Margaret’s website had been a bust, and she was getting tired. She’d read this last profile, one Killian Jones, and head to … holy mother, he was good looking! Dark brown hair and piercing blue eyes, a bit of scruff on his chin. He was leaning, almost nonchalantly, against a boat mast with just the hint of a smile on the corners of his lips. It could look arrogant, but on him it looked almost boyish, even though he was definitely all man. There was no way his profile could match his gorgeousness.

Killian Jones - 34, graphic designer

Originally from London, I moved to the US to go to college (Go Terriers!). I was primarily interested in pursuing an English degree, but even with my superfluous vocabulary, found it utterly pedantic, and not wanting to complete the British stereotype of a stodgy, British, English professor, decided to go into the exciting world of graphic design instead. I currently am the head graphic designer for Boston Tea Party Boat Tours. The sea is my mistress, which essentially means I love to go sailing. I spent many years as a child learning to sail and find it very soothing. A great stress reliever. And, while an affection for sailing the open waters would be nice, is not a deal breaker when it comes to a woman I am wooing. I also enjoy many land activities, including geocaching and drinking rum (I’ve been told I have all the makings of a pirate). Hopefully, being a possible pirate does not put you off of reading the rest of my profile. At least give my dog a chance if my profile scared you a little.

Jolly - 2, Boston Terrier/Pit Mix

Hi! I’m Jolly, short for Jolly Roger, even though I’m a girl. My dad has a thing for Peter Pan and since he didn’t like Wendy or Tiger Lily for a dog, Jolly it is. And I am a jolly dog, so aptly named. I love going out sailing with my dad because I have a cool blue life vest that I get to wear. I also love walking on the beach and rolling in the sand and getting myself so sandy that my dad has to vacuum out his car more than is necessary. I also love going for drives (I call shotgun!) and just going to any place that allows dogs. I’d love for my dad to find me another dog to play with and for him to have another human to play with.

Emma gave out a slight laugh, because of course it was written perfectly. The profile was definitely different from the usual profiles she was used to reading. She also liked that he’d written Jolly’s profile as it were from her perspective, something none of the other men had done on their profiles (and the fact that Jolly was the same mixed breed as Ditie). He just sounded so personable, and someone Emma would actually hang out with … or even date.

She looked at the time on her laptop and say that it was just after 11 PM. She had a really good feeling about this guy. One she’d never had with any of her other online dates. She did a quick online search of him and found him on the website for Tea Party Boat Tours as his place of employment. She didn’t find much else, which, in her profession, she always found was a good thing.

“Ok, Emma, you can do this.” she said trying to pep herself up to writing a profile with half as much personality as his.

Emma Swan, 28, Bail Bonds Person

I moved around a lot when I was a kid so I’m from nowhere in particular. I finally decided to put down some roots in Boston around five years ago. As it states above, I am a Bail Bonds Person, which I’ve been doing for the past eight years. I am currently pursuing a criminal justice degree at BU and studying for the Police Academy exam. I am a master of the law so please don’t respond to this profile if you are a felon, have even been a felon, or plan on being a felon. I like taking runs near the water and so does my dog, but I also love just chilling out at home, ordering out, and streaming old 80’s and 90’s movies (Goonies and Hook being two of my favorites).

Aphrodite, 1, Boston Terrier/Pit Mix

My mommy has only been my mommy for about two months, but she has been the best mommy ever! She gives me lots of treats and takes me on lots of walks! I especially love going to dog parks, especially ones that have water. Baths and swimming are my favorite! I don’t get to go swimming much though, as mommy doesn’t know anyone with a pool. But my favorite dog park has a little swimming area for dogs like me. I know my mommy thinks I’m all she needs, but I think human companionship with someone else who also has a dog companion for me would be good.

Emma looked it over. She didn’t want to come off sounding desperate, but she also wanted to match the same playful tone Killian had written his (and Jolly’s) profile with. She just needed pictures of herself and Ditie to add to her profile.

Opening her pictures folder, Emma quickly scrolled through until she found the picture she wanted to use. It was the day she brought Ditie home. David had taken it before she left the shelter. Emma had a big wide smile, her long, blonde hair tied into a loose braid hanging over her shoulder. Ditie was licking her cheek and David managed to snap the picture before she scrunched her face because of Ditie’s tongue practically in her mouth.

Emma uploaded the photo of her and Ditie, and uploaded the whole profile onto the website. Now, to get Mr. Killian Jones to notice it. She had noticed that there was the option of a virtual kiss, kind of like a nudge or poke on some of the other sites she had been on. So she clicked on the virtual kiss option on his website. She let out a big breath of air that she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding.

Checking the time again, it was now close to midnight, Emma decided there was nothing else she could do tonight. She closed the laptop and went to get ready for bed.

Tag List: (Let me know if you want to be added or removed)

@profdanglaisstuff @thisonesatellite @mariakov81 @hollyethecurious @winterbaby89 @jennjenn615 @kmomof4 @superchocovian @lfh1226-linda @ilovemesomekillianjones

#must love dogs #anniversary #cs au #cs au ff #captain swan #profdanglaisstuff #cs online dating #cs pet dating

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qqueenofhades · 4 years

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hi hilary! ik you watched the crown on netflix a while ago and was wondering if you kept up with it/ if you’ve seen the new season?? i watched a bit of it recently and i love the new cast! i’m not a huge fan of the monarchy, but it’s just,, such a good show!

Aha, yes, I will (rather shamefully) admit that I have watched all the seasons of The Crown to date (and will watch the new one when it comes out in November). I also spent a lot (a lot) of time thirsting over Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret in the earlier seasons, because I am gay and predictable in that way. So yes.

Obviously, I have deeply mixed feelings on the show because it often functions as a glorified propaganda vehicle for British imperialism. I mean, they do make some attempt to tackle complex storylines and to bring out elements of British society in the 20th century, all of which is interesting. But even then, they end up on the side of essentially vindicating the monarchy and the choices made to preserve it, and while I realise these are fictionalised depictions of the royals, a lot of people don't take it that way and since it's viewed as essentially accurate or historical, that lends an air of legitimacy to its interpretations. What has often struck me is how SO dislikable these people are (especially Philip, good lord) and while I appreciate that it doesn't cover that up, it also invites us to ignore that and sympathise with them anyway. The moment in season 3 where the entire emotional climax of the Aberfan tragedy was whether the Queen could cry a single genuine tear in public was hmm... bad. Also, with everything going on with the Harry and Meghan Exit From the Firm, and the way truly staggering levels of classism, racism, and old-guard (and not in the fun way) levels of imperial aristocratic snobbishness have been on full display... Yikes TM. Do we really NEED another admiring and essentially deferential defence of this institution?

That said, that is my griping and obvious problem with it, but as a show, it is certainly bingeable and has a great budget and excellent acting. The idea of getting some kind of look at what goes on "inside the palace" is intriguing, even if it's just Peter Morgan's interpretation of such. It often leaves me vaguely pitying these people more than anything, which is probably not its effect on another viewer, but hey, it is super popular and critically acclaimed, so there you go?

#anonymous #ask #the crown critical #ah this show #it is certainly fascinating #if not always exactly how it intends to be

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captcas · 4 years

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Life is Short

LIFE IS SHORT by capthamm

Emma Swan and Killian Jones make the most of how short life truly is. **Inspired by the song Cecily Smith (Acoustic) by Will Connelly**

**WARNING: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH**

read on ao3 / 2378 words

”I’m just headed for a walk and probably a slushie.”

As she got herself ready, Emma decided that she’d rather get a disapproving look for buying another slushie than have to explain to Mary Margaret that she’s going on a date. She turns her head, avoiding said look, as she walks out the door.

Emma doesn’t go on dates but a drunken download of tinder and 3 right swipes later (Storybrooke’s bachelor scene leaving much to be desired), she finds herself walking towards the harbor. The closer she gets the more she realizes maybe telling MM that she was meeting up with a stranger wouldn't have been the worst idea.

Storybrooke is small and she reasons to herself that, if something nefarious did happen, they’d find her eventually.

Killian doesn’t seem to have a nefarious bone in his body… at least through tinder messaging. What the fuck have you gotten yourself into, Emma?

She walks up to the water’s edge, finding peace in the solid ground beneath her feet. While she’ll admit the view is nothing to scoff at, Emma doesn’t particularly see the draw to spending an entire day aboard a rickety boat or getting soaking wet at the beach. If it’s someone’s thing, more power to them, but she prefers solid, dry land.

She’s lost in her thoughts when she hears someone walk up behind. She turns to meet him and is pleasantly surprised at how accurate his profile picture is— let's just say Leroy wasn't 6’2” and blonde. Emma’s about to comment on his honesty when he puts out his hand expectantly, “Killian Jones and I hope you like sailing because I may or may not have bribed my brother to allow the use of our co-owned vessel for tonight’s date.”

He smiles so brightly and confidently that she can't help but get wrapped up in his warmth, and he’s so perfectly British that even Emma can’t resist swooning a bit. All of these things would’ve been great to comment on, but before she can form a coherent thought she hears herself say, “I hate sailing.”

Somehow his smile gets wider. “Well lucky for you you’re with Killian Jones. I’ve never met a lass I couldn’t win over with a taste of the sea.” He must sense Emma’s hesitation and continue, “Life is not the things that we do, but who we’re doing them with.”

The quote catches Emma off guard— poetic and eloquent in an overall casual conversation. Although, she’s pretty sure he could make the phonebook sound poetic with his accent. She nods slightly and gives him a soft smile before he leads her towards the ship with a wave of his hand.

It turns out sailing takes a lot more effort than Emma thought. She’s currently just enjoying a glass of wine on the faux leather bench behind the captain’s wheel, but Killian has been running rampant as he steers them out of the comfort of the harbor. She tried to tell him they could just stay docked, but he insisted on the view from the horizon line. While Emma is amused by his childlike wonder, she figures nothing will come of the night if he has to be this attentive to the ship the entire time. It’s that mindset which has her sink down in her seat and close her eyes. The steady rhythm of his breath and the slight rock of the waves could lull her to sleep in no time.

She wakes up to his fingers threading between hers and has to stifle the gasp which fills her throat. Her gut instinct is to clock him for being so forward, but when she turns to face him, his face is radiating joy and she can’t find it within herself. They spend the rest of the night like that, chastely intertwined while he details countless stories told by the constellations. “Upon seeing Andromeda bound to the rock, Perseus falls in love with her. Perseus kills the monster and they are married for many years. It is said that Perseus is Hercules’ grandfather. Now they are up there side-by-side with Cepheus and Cassiopeia as a reward from Athena for Perseus’ bravery.”

Emma hums contently and without thought before realizing her head has found a resting spot on Killian’s shoulder. Besides the odd question here and there, Emma has been more than happy just listening to him talk, but at the sound of her hum she feels him tense beneath her. “Am I boring you, love?”

She can’t help but chuckle to herself before somehow finding it in herself to be blatantly honest, “This is the best time that I’ve ever had.”

Even in the dark she can see the slight blush on his ears and the smile that forms. He gazed at her intently for a moment before standing up.

The sudden lack of his touch is startling.

“I suppose I should get us home, Swan.” She wants to argue that they aren’t children but when she checks her watch she realizes it’s almost midnight. It’s not like she’s going to turn into a pumpkin, but MM thought she was just going for a slushie and is probably pacing a hole into the floor.

Emma nods reluctantly and Killian smiles at her, softer this time, but the sparkle still present in his eyes. “Lucky for you, I own this beautiful vessel and we can take her out whenever you’d like.”

She wishes she could say she was shocked at her answer, “I'd like that.”

At the beginning of the night had you told Emma Swan that she’d be willingly agreeing to a second date on the water, she would’ve assumed you were from some alternate universe. As they say goodnight and he kisses her softly on the cheek, Emma is all too aware of the magnitude of the evening.

Her world has been changed forever by one Killian Jones.

. . .

The rest of their 57 years together are split almost evenly between time on land and time aboard that ship.

When Emma asked the kids for help with their dad’s final voyage, she expected a crowd— grandkids and spouses alike— so when they showed up alone with a picnic blanket and a star map, just like “old times”, she couldn’t help but let out another round of tears.

Now as she walks the rusting ramp, Percy helping her and Cassie jogging ahead to get started undocking, she swears she can still hear him laughing. It’s as though the fibers of the sails kept each moment spent beneath them tucked safely away and she can’t imagine a better place for him to rest.

Cassie expertly navigates to the exact spot Killian anchored them in that first night so long ago. They’ve sailed here many times, so it’s no wonder it’s second nature for her. After making sure the ship was sturdy, Percy and Cassie head below deck leaving Emma alone with her memories.

That first date was on a night not unlike the one she’s wrapped in now, but everything else has changed monumentally— very little of the lost girl who boarded that ship remains. She found herself in Killian Jones. His cheery disposition and outlook on the “adventure” that is life pushed Emma out of comfort zones she didn’t even realize she was living in.

The sound of her tear hitting the ceramic vase is what brings her back to the reality of the moment. She’s unsurprised to find her tear a bittersweet one, Killian always assuring her there was no use in spending what little time we have on this planet in despair.

“Oh, how much I miss you, Killian Jones.” She whispers softly to herself as she finds her footing and heads to the railing of the boat. She slowly uncaps the urn and carefully empties the contents into the sea her husband loved so deeply. She clutches the necklace he directed Percy to have made, telling their son that his love of the sea was only matched by his love of their mother. It’s a long chain, and etched into the pendent somehow made of his ashes is a quote from the night they met: Life is not the things that we do, but who we’re doing them with.

She kisses the necklace softly before looking to the stars, Perseus and Cassiopeia shining bright as ever, “Killian Jones, how fortunate am I to have done life with you.”

. . .

“It doesn’t matter why I need her, I just do.” He levels with Liam, slightly rolling onto his toes to meet his brother’s height.

“Not good enough. You never insist on taking the ship so there has to be a reason.” Liam steps back a tad before crossing his arms.

Killian is not getting away with this one.

“I have a date.” Liam’s eyebrows skyrocket into the curls covering his forehead. Killian practically winces waiting for the slew of questions which will no doubt follow, but finds his fear unfounded.

Liam simply nods before turning away, “Fair enough. She’s all yours.” Killian is left alone in their living room completely dumbfounded but also entirely grateful. Liam is fully aware that he hasn’t taken anyone out on the ship since Milah’s passing and his brother’s lack of probing tells Killian the gravity of the action is not lost on Liam.

He never doubted his brother would let him take their ship, but it would be like Liam to rent it out or take Belle out for a last minute excursion without so much as a second thought at Killian prior request.

Any other night, he wouldn’t have minded, but tonight feels important.

He’s only chatted with Emma for a week or two through Tinder— Ruby assuring him he needed to get laid before setting up his entire account for him. The pair hit it off almost immediately, but he could tell she was skittish so Killian let her lead despite his immediate fascination with the woman beyond her good looks.

His outlook on life shifted dramatically after losing his Milah. Many men would have spiraled into a deep depression and the bottom of several liquor bottles— Killian would be lying if he said he didn’t try that route at first— but one day it hit him that he’d been given (albeit in the worst way possible) a brilliant life lesson. Life is short. And that’s the first time everything changed for Killian Jones.

As he walks up to the dock and spots her long blonde hair, his feelings are startlingly similar to that night— the one where his life changed for the better. He takes a deep breath, shaking out any final nerves, and repeats his mantra to himself: life is short.

Typically his date falling asleep before they’ve even reached their anchor point would be discouraging, but to Killian he can’t help but find pride in the comfort Emma feels in his presence. He reasons with himself that surely she would’ve been consistently on high alert had he flown any red flags.

It’s that self talk that gives him the courage to sit beside her.

Bloody hell, is he glad he did.

They spend the night detailing myths of the cosmos and time scurries away from them. He feels every minuscule movement she makes as they lean against one another and Killian is a goner by the time they get to the Big Dipper. Not only is Emma Swan the most stunning woman he’s ever seen— thank god her profile was of the honest sort— but she’s also bloody brilliant. He revels in every syllable she says, each moment tattooing a little more of her into his heart.

He’s worried he’s fallen too deep too fast, when she agrees to a second date— on the water no less— and all nerves dissipate immediately.

Before he knows it, Perseus comes along and makes him a father— Cassie following closely behind. Of course there were more dates, a wedding, two houses, and some fights in between, but when he thinks of the compression of time between their first date and the birth of their son, he can’t help but be flabbergasted. Time slowed eventually, retirement and being a grandparent bringing a new sense of purpose to their shared life.

But life is short.

The cancer comes a lot like his love for her did— at full speed and in full force— and it’s course seemed to speed up time once more. Killian knew his time was nearing the end, but couldn’t find it in himself to be sad.

Why waste what little time we have in life in despair? (Emma swears he said that to her one day, but he’s pretty sure she taught him that.)

It’s a chilly May afternoon when he asks Percy to join him for lunch. His son has grown into a fine young man, a father himself three times over, and he couldn’t be more proud. While he’s also proud of Cassie, Killian knows Percy will do what needs to be done with little rebuttal of “don’t talk like that” and “you’re going to make it”. Cassie feels with her heart and soul, but Percy has always been rational and dutiful. He knows Percy will have the necklace made and he’s positive it will be more beautiful than even Killian could dream up.

Killian is slightly surprised when Percy goes to protest Killian’s reference to his own impending doom, but one tweak of his eyebrow and his son clamps his mouth shut. Percy listens carefully for the rest of the meal, taking notes and assuring Killian he’ll do what needs to be done.

Killian has no doubt.

When the day comes, Emma doesn’t leave his side— he never doubted that she would. She hadn’t for 57 years so why start now? He gets to say goodbyes, which is more than most and he goes out looking into his wife’s eyes— strong, ready, and full of love.

Killian couldn’t have pictured a life half as wonderful as the one he got to lead, and he attributes every ounce of that fate to the woman who he got to do it with.

Life is not the things that we do, it’s who we’re doing them with. - Michael Mitnick “Cecily Smith”

#captain swan #cs ff #killian jones #emma swan #cs ff au #capthamm #one shots #cecily smith

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takadasaiko · 4 years

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In Defense of Howard Stark

The Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn’t have a shortage of layered, fascinating characters. It’s always easy to hyper focused on the ones we love most, and that’s the excuse I roll with for why it’s taken me so long to find my fascination with Howard Stark. Up until the last few months I looked at him through the lense of who he was to other characters. He was Tony’s father, Steve’s friend, and co-founder of SHIELD with Peggy Carter. He filled roles, but I didn’t look closer for a long time. I didn’t have any reason to.

Then came the Great MCU Rewatch that happened post-Endgame. It wasn’t until I had Dominic Cooper’s Howard stacked back-to-back with John Slattery’s Howard that I started to dig into him. We meet a young man in Captain America: The First Avenger, the Peggy Carter short, and two seasons of the Agent Carter series on ABC. He’s brilliant and goofy, rarely serious unless he’s discussing his work. It’s a stark contrast with the older Howard we meet through John Slattery’s version. Either there was a catastrophic miscommunication between the writers, the directors, and the actors on who Howard Stark was supposed to be, or something caused that shift. The moment I settled on the latter, Howard went from a supporting character whose only use was to help round out others around him to a truly interesting, layered and even broken man. I became fascinated with piecing together that journey. I needed to know what took this man

to a man that his own son described as cold and distant.

I had been using Howard to help deepen my understanding of others, and in the same way, taking a look at those that he keeps close to him and how he treats them helps to shed light on who he is.

Who Howard Surrounds Himself With

Howard wasn’t raised with the same economic and social privilege that he was able to provide to his son in later years. In S1 of Agent Carter he tells Peggy that he was raised on the Lower East Side to a father that sold fruit and a mother that was a seamstress in a factory, going on to tell her how he’d learned to lie to break through the ceiling society had placed for someone like him.

Yet as of S2 of Agent Carter Howard was in high demand at a club that wouldn’t have let him within a hundred feet of if he hadn’t made the fortune that he did with Stark Industries. With that background matched with the contacts he would have made after Stark Industries took off, I think it’s safe to say that Howard knew people from every walk of life.

There were the less savory types:

Joe Manfredi and Howard grew up together and the mobster had no trouble reaching out to Howard years later for help when his kinda crazy girlfriend Whitney Frost went over the edge and into territory even he was uncomfortable with.

And while we may not know how he met Obadiah Stane, the other man wormed his way so deeply into Howard’s life and career that he was poised to manipulate his son after his death.

We don’t know a lot about those other than the fact that Howard wasn’t opposed to shady characters.

There’s something interesting in the more positive friendships that he keeps though.

Edwin Jarvis is a fascinating character. Howard’s butler is that and more. We see him stick with Howard through thick and thin. Through countless girlfriends that he was the bearer of bad news to

through disagreements, and he was with the Stark family long enough that Tony was influenced by him enough that he based his AI system off of him. Jarvis himself tells Peggy the story of how he met and came to work for Howard Stark in S1 of Agent Carter, shedding light on yet another layer of the complicated man:

Jarvis met his wife Ana during the war. She was Hungarian. Moreover, she was Hungarian-Jew in the middle of Europe overrun by nazis. Jarvis fell hard, but the general that he worked for wouldn’t help, even though he could have done so easily. So Jarvis forged his signature. He was found out and would have been tried for treason, but Howard - who had had business dealings with the general - stepped in and used his influence to save not only Edwin, but Ana as well.

There was no indication that Howard expected anything in return, but Jarvis remained loyal and steady.

And then there’s Peggy.

I could go on for days about Howard and Peggy’s friendship. I love it dearly, and feel that we need more friendships like it on television.

He flirts with her, he teases her, but in the end he respects no one quite like he does Margaret Carter.

Howard is a self-admitted liar. He felt that he had to become one in order to break free from the ceiling that society put over him in his youth. He doesn’t trust easily and, even when he does, he still hides behind a quirky, playboy mask meant to obscure anything of any real depth under frivolous layers. To get to the level of success he found himself in at such a young age he had to build up an imperviousness to others’ opinions of him. He flaunts in most cases, but, for better or worse, he does care about how Peggy views him.

She’s the one he turns to to clear his name at the beginning of the first season of Agent Carter and the only one that can talk him out of the mire of his own deepest regrets at the end of the same season.

The funny thing is that, for all his determination that he doesn’t really care how people see him, Howard seems to keep people closest to him that will keep him in check. Jarvis and Peggy, especially. They don’t pull punches and they call him on his shit.

If it’s a conscious choice or even a subconscious one, Howard surrounds himself with people that will hold him accountable. I’d put good money on the fact that Maria did too.

The Way He Treats Others

One of our earlier introductions to Howard is in Iron Man 2 where Tony tells Fury that his father had been cold and distant. He never told Tony that he liked him, much less that he loved him.

Fury indicated that he knew a very different man, and through Dominic’s Howard we (the audience) meet a very different man as well, which leads me to think that Howard struggles with expressing real, honest feelings rather than actually having them. It makes sense, given his explanation at two different points in the first season of Agent Carter that, to break through the barriers society had tried to force on him, he’d learned to hide behind lies and an indifference to what others thought about him. We see that that often leads him to come across as shallow and arrogant. He doesn’t, and seems not to even know how to express those truer feelings except in very rare circumstances, but we see glimpses in the way he treats people.

Edwin and Ana Jarvis are a fantastic example, as mentioned earlier. Here were people that he didn’t really know, people that he owed nothing to, yet he went out of his way to protect them. He used a favour that he could have hoarded away for more selfish purposes and gave it to them to save their lives. In return he was given loyalty, but there was no expectation on that.

Howard holds true to his playboy persona as well as, if not perhaps better than his son would in later years, but despite the flirtation (which he always manages to work into their conversations), Howard shows time and again the respect that he holds for Peggy Carter. While she’s fighting for her colleagues’ respect in the post-war SSR, she’s the one Howard reaches out to to clear his name. She’s the one that he trusts to protect him when his life is on the line. And when she needs help, it’s hers for the taking. A flight that the Army won’t take because it’s too dangerous? All Peggy had to do was ask. Twice when she needed a place to stay, he offered his own home(s) to her, and in S2 he dove straight in to help her on her case without any hesitation.

In S2 of the Agent Carter series we meet Jason Wilkes, a brilliant scientist who works for a company that becomes the center of the season’s investigation. The rarity of being a black man in his position is used against him when his company sets him up as a scapegoat. Not only is Howard eager to help him, work with him to clear his name, and reinstate his corporeal form (long story, but if you haven’t seen the Agent Carter series I highly recommend it!), but he sets him up in Stark Industries after all is said and done to help him run the Malibu labs on a new pet project.

For all of his faults and complications, Howard has a trend of helping to support and even protect those that the society of his time is set against. A Jewish woman and her fiancé facing the nazis, a brilliant female agent fighting enemies as well as men around her that have faith in her failure, and a talented black scientist whose company has used and thrown away when convenient. We see the kindness in his actions, in the respect that he gives others that society would prefer not to be bothered with.

So how did he miss the mark so badly with his own son? He gave him things, opened doors for Tony that he’d had to force open himself, but (at least according to Tony) he missed expressing any sort of affection for him. Personally, in light of the other relationships that we actually get to see as they’re taking place, I’m inclined to think that he didn’t know how to express his love in a way that an already struggling child could understand. He tinkered on cars with him and he built an organization that would keep the world (and his family) safe. Perhaps to Howard, more importantly, he kept his distance, thus allowing his son the chance to grow into his own man. Someone not quite like him.

The thing is, even if it went against everything he wanted, there was no getting around that. Just as I imagine that Howard inherited a few more traits from his own father than he would have ever admitted to, Tony inherited some from him. Both the good and the bad.

Howard’s Personality Traits

Marvel is a parallel haven. In many ways the universe that they’ve created feels like one long, fantastical TV show with 3+ hour episodes. One of the perks of that is the multiple nods they’ve made and parallels they’ve drawn. It’s through those parallels that I found between Howard and Tony that sunk me deeper and deeper into exploring Howard’s personality. Robert said it best:

(gif made by and borrowed from @erikisright)

Much in the same way that we meet Tony in Iron Man 1, the Howard of Captain America: The First Avenger and the Agent Carter short and series secures himself behind a mask of indifference to public opinion. He has a good time and doesn’t give a damn who knows it. When focused on work, he’s focused

but as soon as the war’s over he’s living the life of the playboy millionaire. He spends his time gallivanting around as much as inventing. He flaunts it. His money, his success. It’s the mask he hides behind to protect himself from the world, and the one that he feels like he has to hide behind. Afterall…

There’s no question that Howard has his fair share of less-than-desirable traits, but as we’ve discussed, he has some good ones as well. One that I found surprising, personally, is that he takes responsibility. Maybe not in his personal life (sorry, Jarvis, but it’s on you to handle Howard’s breakups apparently), but in his work. If he feels that he’s fallen short, he owns it, repeatedly to the point of putting his own life in danger.

In the first season finale for Agent Carter, after spending eight episodes on the run to clear his name, he waltzes himself into the SSR to give the full story and offer himself up as bait. It’s his fault, he tells them, despite not designing the invention stolen to cause harm, it’s still his, and he’ll own up to his responsibility there, both at the time and the damage it had caused during the war. In S2, after an invention fails, he offers himself up to go in and switch it on manually (putting himself at exceptional risk) because he ‘designed it poorly’. He doesn’t get the chance to do it, but he’s ready and willing to.

On the flip side (and also a trait that took me by surprise) he gives credit where it’s due.

Despite having to lie and possibly claw his way to the top, he’s consistently willing to both offer a hand to those that he can as well as make sure that he’s acknowledging their contribution, despite the fact that he believes that many successful scientists steal other people’s work for themselves.

Tony must have come by his tendencies to fixate by way of his father. Much like his son, Howard shows time and time again that he leans into his obsessive personality. It ranges from a hyper-focus on work to coffee to a good time by any means he can find it, and even to the guilt that we see him holding onto in those few private, honest moments we catch a glimpse of.

We see it in the way that he held onto the guilt over what happened to the Russian soldiers at Finow when his Midnight Oil was misused and ended up killing hundreds of Allied soldiers. He did everything he could to set the situation as right as it could be set - he faced down the general that had stolen the oil only to get his ass handed to him, forced the general to step down, ended a seven-figure contract with the Army, and created a vault to better protect designs and inventions that could hurt innocent people - yet we see how it still weighs on him years later.

I think it’s the guilt at never being able to find Steve that eventually shifts him from Dominic’s Howard to John’s. That lively, goofy man is broken year after year by the failure of not being able to find or save a man that he holds up on a pedestal. He fixates on it to the point that his own son feels that he cared more about Captain America than him. Really, there’s so much in this theory that I’ve had battering around my head for the last couple of months or so that it deserves its own post. I’ll put it on the writing docket.

All in all, Howard Stark is an easy character to overlook or to flatten out with partial information. The Agent Carter series does wonders to add depth to him by giving us time to get to know him. Time that we don’t get through newsreels and the off story that Tony tells.

Part of an interesting character is their layers, both the good and the bad. Much like Tony, I feel that the more I learn about Howard Stark, the more I come to realize that he was a man trying his best. Sure, maybe his best didn’t match up in a lot of ways, but I think there’s something to be said for each generation of Starks doing just a little bit better than the one that came before them in whatever way that they can.

#Howard Stark #MCU characters #character analysis #character breakdown #Tony Stark #Peggy Carter #Edwin Jarvis #Ana Jarvis #marvel's agent carter #captain America: the first avenger

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theculturedmarxist · 4 years

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If someone were to tell you that major and influential business sectors like the fossil fuel and health insurance industries simply don’t exist, or imply that major corporations like ExxonMobil and Cigna don’t try to manipulate public opinion and advance a political agenda in order to protect and maximize their profits, you might find it hard to contain your laughter.

But looking at corporate media’s coverage of corporate media, one gets the sense that anyone who dares to suggest that media corporations like Comcast-owned MSNBC, AT&T-owned CNN or News Corp–owned Fox News have their own commercial interests—which incentivize them to push pro-corporate politics—are kooky “conspiracy theorists.”

That’s really strange. After all, there are plenty of reports from corporate media discussing how major oil and health insurance companies spend fortunes to propagandize Americans into believing that a single-payer healthcare system would be disastrous, or that the climate crisis really isn’t that serious, despite all evidence to the contrary (FAIR.org, 1/24/20, 1/31/20). There are whistleblowers like former Cigna PR executive Wendell Potter who revealed how he, along with other paid corporate propagandists, cultivated “contacts and relationships among journalists and other media gatekeepers,” and learned from the tobacco industry’s “groundbreaking work in stealth PR” in order to develop talking points and advance a political agenda to protect industry profits.

So why exactly should we trust for-profit media outlets to be impartial and have their news coverage untainted by their own business interests?

Throughout the 2020 election cycle, FAIR (7/17/19, 8/21/19, 1/30/20, 4/7/20) has documented how corporate media have been trying to play kingmaker by aggressively pushing centrist and right-wing Democratic presidential candidates like Joe Biden onto the electorate, while assailing progressives like Bernie Sanders as “unelectable.” Now that Sanders has dropped out of the race, it’s worth examining the role propagandistic and hostile media coverage played throughout the primary in determining the outcome.

Analyzing the paradoxical phenomenon of the sizable “Socialists for Biden” voting bloc, FAIR’s founder Jeff Cohen (Common Dreams, 3/16/20) noted that although continuous exit polls confirm that most voters agree with Sanders ideologically, many nevertheless voted for Biden, because they perceived him to be a more “electable” candidate against Donald Trump.

Although several people have debunked the myth of “low” youth voter turnout in this election cycle (FAIR.org, 2/26/20; Films for Action, 3/5/20; Atlantic, 3/17/20), it’s true that older voters turned out in massive numbers to support Biden. On Twitter (3/14/20), journalist Malaika Jabali attributed the “generational divide” in voting behavior to an “information divide,” and argued that many older voters don’t suffer from a lack of information, so much as too much information from different sources compared to younger voters.

That influential media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times and Washington Post continue to exercise a formidable class-control function on behalf of their owners and advertisers seems to be borne out by data confirming Jabali’s analysis.

Pew Research (12/10/18) found that although social media has become a more popular source for news, television still retains supremacy, with 49% of US adults receiving news most often from TV. Whereas young adults aged 18 to 29 receive 36% of their news from social media and 16% from TV, older voters aged 50–64 receive 65% of their news from TV and only 14% from social media, and voters older than 65 receive a whopping 81% of their news from TV and a mere 8% from social media.

Pew (9/26/19) also documented a striking partisan divide on Americans’ trust in the media, with 69% of Democrats having a “great” or “fair” amount of trust in the media, compared to only 15% of Republicans.

Other media studies of cable news like CNN and MSNBC confirmed their pivotal role as an anti-Sanders attack machine (FAIR.org, 1/30/20). According to the Norman Lear Center (5/19), self-identified liberals watch MSNBC at three times the rate of moderates and ten times the rate of conservative viewers. Branko Marcetic (In These Times, 11/13/19) documented that MSNBC’s August–September 2019 coverage of the Democratic primary not only emphasized electability over policy issues, but also talked about Biden three times as often as Sanders, who had fewer negative mentions (11%) compared to Sanders (21%). Another survey by In These Times (3/9/20) of CNN’s coverage of the 24 hours after Sanders and Biden’s massive wins in Nevada and South Carolina found that Sanders received three times more negative coverage than Biden, despite winning by similar margins.

Given Sanders’ massive advantages over Biden when it came to campaign staff and volunteers, organizational and online presence, ad buys as well as money in Super Tuesday states, it’s clear that the media blitz following Biden’s South Carolina win played a decisive role in propelling him to victory in states he didn’t even campaign in (New York Times, 2/26/20).

Yet, in what is truly a collective galaxy-brain level take, corporate media appeared to deny their own existence and how the profit motive compromised their coverage throughout the primary.

Whenever corporate media discuss themselves, they frequently use scare quotes around the term “corporate media” (e.g., Washington Post, 10/24/19; Politico, 8/13/19), as if the term is referring to a nonexistent entity or a figment of their audience’s imagination. This is in stark contrast to their alarmist attitude towards foreign state media outlets like RT and Xinhua, which are frequently referred to as “propaganda” and “state media”—no quotation marks required (New York Times, 3/8/17, 2/18/20).

Yet when they weren’t suggesting they were imaginary, corporate media were also fully capable on occasion of discussing their enormous impact on the race. Vanity Fair’s “Joe Biden, Revenant, Was an Irresistible Media Story—and It Helped Win Him Super Tuesday” (3/5/20) described how Biden campaign aides were gloating to CNN about riding their “earned-media tsunami” to victory in Super Tuesday—referring to coverage that wasn’t paid for following Biden’s South Carolina win—and estimated to be worth at least $72 million during those crucial days.

Despite noting that Sanders actually had more free coverage ($156 million) during this time period from the same “‘corporate media’” which had “written him off” earlier, Vanity Fair argued that media narratives trump any other factor (including money), with Sanders’ narrative being largely negative in contrast to Biden’s:

In recent days Biden has basked in mostly positive coverage, with TV pundits citing his South Carolina victory in arriving at a consensus narrative: Biden, despite poor showings in all of the early-primary states, is the comeback candidate peaking at the perfect moment…. Following Biden’s Saturday blowout, the media narrative shifted from Sanders being the momentum candidate to questions about whether his campaign was constrained by a ceiling due to his poor South Carolina performance, particularly with black voters, the most consistent Democratic voting bloc.

Corporate media frequently noted how Sanders has been their most frequent critic when he was on the campaign trail, and even when they grudgingly admitted its validity at times, they treated Sanders’ media criticism as an ideological perspective on the media, rather an uncontroversial description. Politico (8/13/19) wrote that “Sanders has long accused the ‘corporate media’ of putting the interests of the elite above those of the majority of Americans.” Vanity Fair (2/18/20) wrote: “Sanders has long contended that the agenda of ‘corporate media’ doesn’t necessarily reflect the people’s needs, and his 2020 campaign has doubled as a rolling media criticism shop.” The New York Times (3/5/20) also gaslit readers by attributing critique of the “‘corporate media,’” and MSNBC’s hosts for pushing an “‘establishment’” perspective, merely to Sanders and the “activist left,” as if their critique were only a sectarian complaint.

The Washington Post’s media critic Erik Wemple (10/24/19) mocked Sanders’ critique of the “‘corporate media,’” implying that Sanders hasn’t “done enough research” to “tease out tendencies,” despite writing that “attacking the ‘corporate media’ is good politics for Sanders, and his critiques sometimes land with heft and reason.” Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan (2/12/20) glancingly acknowledged media hostility towards Sanders when she observed that Sanders kept dissing “what he calls the corporate media,” and that his “ardent followers bond with him and with one another by despising the mainstream media, often enough with good reason”—yet she failed to explain this hostility in structural terms regarding media ownership and commercial interests. In the Post’s “Bernie Sanders’s Bogus Media Beef,” Aaron Blake (8/14/19) cited executive editor Marty Baron dismissing Sanders’ claims as a “conspiracy theory,” while the Post’s Paul Waldman (8/14/19) dismissed Sanders’ media criticism as “something in common with pretty much every candidate,” and breathtakingly asserted that “ideological bias is usually the least important.”

Waldman’s assessment isn’t shared by FAIR (Extra!, 10/89), or by Politico’s founding editor John Harris (11/7/19), who admitted that “the pervasive force shaping coverage of Washington and elections is what might be thought of as centrist bias, flowing from reporters and sources alike.”

Another approach to dismissing structural media criticism has been to portray Sanders and Trump’s media criticisms as equally wacky conspiracy theories (FAIR.org, 1/24/20). CNN’s Chris Cillizza (8/13/19) asserted that Sanders’ critique of the Jeff Bezos–owned Washington Post’s coverage is “absolutely no different than what Trump does.” Politico’s John Harris (2/13/20) bemoaned the “dilution of mainstream media’s institutional power” and pined for the days where editors at “major news institutions possessed enormous power” to “summon sustained national attention on subjects they deemed important” with their story selection and framing, while denouncing Sanders for following the “Trump precedent” in “taking flight from public accountability.”

When corporate media didn’t dismiss their bias against him, they sunnily described how Sanders didn’t seem to need fairer coverage from corporate media—and cable news in particular—because nonprofit media outlets, with considerably less resources and reach, are increasingly picking up the slack. Citing the “formidable” influence of “alternative media,” the Los Angeles Times (12/12/19) argued that “coverage in what Sanders likes to disparage as the ‘corporate media’ may matter less to him than to any of his rivals because of the benefit he derives from a surging alternative media ecosystem.” The New Republic (2/12/20, 2/28/20) acknowledged MSNBC’s hostile posture towards Sanders, yet also failed to explain that bias in terms of corporate interests, while arguing that Sanders’ campaign strategy of relying on an alternative media infrastructure to run “against the ‘corporate media’” and “withstand attacks from mainstream networks” has “worked wonders.”

Strikingly, in all these reports, corporate media either misrepresented Sanders’ proposed solutions to corporate media bias or omitted them altogether. Vermont journalist Paul Heintz (Washington Post, 2/26/19), for example, chided Sanders for not understanding what a “free press” does, and claimed that Sanders’ remedy for corporate media is merely “uncritical, stenographic coverage of his agenda.”

In fact, Sanders’ op-ed in the Columbia Journalism Review (8/26/19) echoed many of FAIR’s criticisms of corporate media and proposed solutions:

Today, after decades of consolidation and deregulation, just a small handful of companies control almost everything you watch, read and download. Given that reality, we should not want even more of the free press to be put under the control of a handful of corporations and “benevolent” billionaires who can use their media empires to punish their critics and shield themselves from scrutiny….

In my administration, we are going to institute an immediate moratorium on approving mergers of major media corporations until we can better understand the true effect these transactions have on our democracy…. We must also explore new ways to empower media organizations to collectively bargain with these tech monopolies, and we should consider taxing targeted ads and using the revenue to fund nonprofit civic-minded media.

Setting aside the interlocking commercial interests mass media corporations share with other industries and advertisers funding their coverage (FAIR.org, 8/1/17), just as one can expect the healthcare and fossil fuel industries to launch propaganda campaigns to protect their profits (Intercept, 11/20/18; Guardian, 10/23/19), one can reliably predict these same media corporations to oppose any political agenda that harms their own profitability. Given Sanders’ opposition to future mergers and corporate consolidation of mass media giants, proposals to wield antitrust legislation against Google and Facebook, and levying new taxes to fund nonprofit media outlets, is it any surprise that for-profit news sources opposed his candidacy (Politico, 8/28/19)?

Perhaps future media criticism might sound less “conspiratorial” if we simply referred to outlets like MSNBC as “Comcast,” CNN as “AT&T” and the Washington Post as “Jeff Bezos” instead. When one understands corporate media as an industry in themselves, decisions to have a centrist bias to maximize profits by appealing to liberals and conservatives alike, or creating “information silos” to sell the news as a commodity to target demographics, make a lot more sense. And when we understand the news industry as a top-down institution, beholden to stockholders like all other corporations, we can stop blaming journalists for bad coverage, and start blaming executives like Les Moonves and Tony Maddox for doing things like gifting billions of dollars in free coverage for Trump (FAIR.org, 3/31/20, 4/13/20).

Then maybe claiming that corporate media outlets like MSNBC and CNN are hostile to left-wing political agendas will be considered just as obvious as saying that ExxonMobil and Cigna are opposed to climate action and universal healthcare.

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seriouslyhooked · 4 years

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Lost Souls and Reveries (Part 22)

24 part AU written for @cssns. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6,Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19, Part 20, Part 21. Story available on AO3 Here and FF Here. Banner created by the amazingly talented @shipsxahoy!!

Killian Jones is a wolf shifter without roots, without plans, and without a pack. He’s a rogue, someone humans should avoid and shifters should be wary of given his lineage. But one night years back set him on a path he didn’t realize he was taking, a path leading to a future he is destined for. That future is tied up in one woman – a human named Emma Nolan. Together Emma and Killian will find not only answers, but a love that’s truly fated. But will love be enough to set them free, or will past demons win out in the end? (Answer: love always wins – I am writing this so despite some tiny pockets of angst it’s basically a fluff-filled insta-love fest). Rated M.

A/N: Hey everyone! I know it has been such a long time since I updated this fic, which is crazy because the chapters are taking place one right after another still, but this fall has been filled with travel and very little free time for me. I didn’t get a chance to write, and though I wanted to get the story out there and share the ideas I’ve had all this time, I wanted to give myself the space to do this story justice. It’s been an ambitious AU for me, there’s a lot of moving parts and way more reveals than I ever do, making it a really big undertaking. But all of your support along the way and your continued interest has helped keep me motivated even in the time I couldn’t work on this. As such, I really hope you will all enjoy this chapter, and I thank you all for reading!

She is never leaving my sight again, Killian thought to himself as he held Emma to his side, keeping ever vigilant about their surroundings out here in the woods.

The two of them had stolen their temporary moment alone after the encounter with the bear, but both of them knew that quiet couldn’t really last forever. Nevertheless, the wish to run away with Emma and barricade her from anything that might harm her was strong in Killian. He resisted, knowing that leaving would not only put everyone else at risk, but that it would make his Emma deeply unhappy, but in the privacy of his own mind, he allowed those thoughts to wander. At the end of the day, his priority was Emma and the baby that she was carrying now, and there was just no changing that.

As if she could hear his mind’s rampant musings, Emma’s hand came to cover his arm, a silent show that she was here and that she was readily accepting his need to protect her. She looked up to him, and though he was certain he hadn’t pushed the worried internal dialogue her way through their mental link, he could see that she knew anyway. He couldn’t hide the hurt and the harried frenzy that nearly losing her had conjured up. It still lingered here with him, as it would until all of this was over and done.

We’ll get through this, she pushed to him quietly, and in response Killian quietly brought her hand to his lips, pressing a delicate kiss atop her smooth and creamy skin before leading it to rest above his heart. The smile she graced him with at the reassuring motion filled him with renewed hope, but yet again their quiet shows of intimacy were short lived.

“I still don’t get it,” a voice interjected, pulling Emma and Killian from their semi-private moment. “He comes to town, tries to kill us all, claims Anna, barrels into the magic force field, and now… nothing.”

Tink’s words, lobbed at the bear that had at first seemed like nothing more than a foe, prompted all of them to look in the beast’s direction. The grizzly was ferocious and imposing still, with eyes a tempered red color, but they lacked the vibrancy of before. Now, instead of glowing a sickening scarlet, they were more molten, a deep burgundy where they were once so bright. The mellowing out of the color signaled to Killian that the bear had calmed somehow, not breaking from its fever, but tamping it down. That didn’t mean he trusted this unknown shifter though, and until they were certain he posed no threat to Emma, that bear was getting nowhere near his woman again.

“Could we maybe keep our less helpful thoughts to ourselves for the time being?” Emma countered, and though the words were sharp, it was understandable why she said them. For as much as the bear was an enigma to them, he was just as much of a puzzle to Anna, if not more so. Emma’s friend was still somewhat dazed from it all, and currently Elsa and Liam were standing with her, the former trying to comfort her sister, and the latter keeping his reflexes sharp in case the lass made a break for the bear.

“Sorry, it’s just…” Tink trailed off, unsure of how to phrase this precarious situation.

“It’s just bat shit crazy is what it is,” Ruby exclaimed.

“And about to get crazier,” Emma’s Uncle Lance noted, commenting on the impending hubbub that was coming down the road right now.

The Nolan’s were all together in their car, not having had the chance to run as Liam, Killian, and Graham had. They’d also had to wait until they were given some sort of all clear. The situation was now somewhat contained, but before that there was too much risk in having Neal, Mary Margaret, or Ruth out here. Killian had never seen Emma’s father in action, but he knew the man had been trained his whole life to be a hunter. David Nolan would have all the necessary skills to have been a part of this fight, but as it turned out, the fight came down almost entirely to the instincts of Emma and her wolf.

“Emma!”

The car was still in motion, braking on the loose, dirt path, but it did nothing to stop Mary Margaret from jumping out and running to her daughter. Killian moved back ever so slightly, knowing what would come next, but he stayed as close as possible to the massive hug Emma’s mother bestowed on her. Tears of relief streamed down the older woman’s face, but she didn’t break down, even in her moment of vulnerability. She may have been human, but Emma’s mother was strong, and fiercely protective of the children she loved so dearly.

“I told you I’d be okay,” Emma whispered, attempting to share a smile with her Mum, and the words felt like a punch to his gut. He closed his eyes briefly, seeing again the image of Emma trapped beneath the snarling bear, but he shook it away, willing himself to be strong for his mate. Reliving that terrible moment did nothing but make him weaker and more worried.

Emma’s father, brother, and grandmother all surrounded her as well, hugging Emma close before turning their attention to the others. Mary Margaret immediately moved to Gwen, trying to take strength from a woman who had answered in their hour of need, and David clearly felt the support of his lifelong friend and capable shifter Lance, but soon the greetings and reunions were tossed aside, and all attention turned to the problem at hand. It was interrogation en masse, and the questions tossed out were free game for all of them and in dire need of answer.

“Is everyone all right?”

“Everyone’s in one piece,” Graham said, having taken account of the whole group’s status as soon as the bear was contained. No one had withstood anything that amplified shifter healing wouldn’t clear up by the end of the day. All in all, they’d been incredibly lucky.

“Any injuries?”

“Just to my pride. Damn bear got the better of me at one point, and I can’t say I’m too thrilled with that,” Granny quipped, prompting the ghost of a smile to tug at Killian’s lips. In another moment he’d laugh at the old wolf and her totally serious resentment at having been bested, but things being as they were, he couldn’t quite get to the level of comfort needed for a good dose of fun. “But other than that, we’re all fine.”

“Barely,” Emma’s aunt coughed out and Killian watched as Emma’s head snapped to her. A quiet contest of wills elapsed between them. Clearly her aunt wanted to disclose how close things had really come, but Emma wanted to spare her parents the pain of what could have been. It wasn’t clear who would prove victorious, but then Mary Margaret caught the exchange and there was no avoiding the conversation.

“What happened?” Her tone held the firm but alarmed kind of shrillness only a mother could produce.

“Uh, it might be totally out of the realm of normal, but it’s also kind of straight forward,” Tink hedged, shrugging a shoulder as she proceeded to give the barest of highlights, thus helping Emma keep things under wraps. “A giant, angry, magically roided up grizzly shifter came to town, we lured it out here, we got it in the magical crystal thing, and now here we are.”

“Is that all?” David asked, having caught on to his wife’s increased agitation. “Emma?”

Emma’s muscles tightened significantly as the conversation went on, her stance looking more and more like she might just shift and run away from all of this. But instead, she looked to Killian, asking him only with her expression if he’d have her back. Of course he would, and he sealed that silent oath with a kiss to her temple. She leaned into the action for only the briefest of moments before taking a deep breath and coming clean.

The look of anguish on her parents’ faces was likely punishment enough for Emma, who had already felt some guilt about the danger she’d put herself in. Neal, for his part, looked awed at her bravery, and at one point he even interrupted with a word of praise, before a look from his mother quickly cut that thinking off. When Emma was done, it was clear that her mother especially was both wracked with worry and terribly angry. Her emotions were big and jumbled and messy, but though she probably deserved to get them out, Killian felt it was time to step in.

“Obviously there’s a lot to unpack there, but the big thing is Emma is safe now and there will never be another similar instance again.” He looked to Emma, who nodded readily. “And right now we don’t have the luxury of examining this all again. Gold has essentially declared war on us with this attack, and we can’t assume that’ll be the end of it.”

“So we’re certain now that it’s him?” Ruth asked. She was struggling to keep up given how much had been happening and that was understandable. Between Gold and Emma’s great uncle George’s appearance, there were so many unknowns hanging about right now, certainly more than could ever be easily understood.

“There’s too much magic involved for it to be anyone else,” Ruby replied. “But we were hoping you might confirm. The enchantment on the collar is still pulsing even now. It should look similar to the charms you witnessed.”

Ruth followed Ruby towards the choker, which had still yet to be touched by anyone but Emma. Without any discussion about the chance of her being jinxed somehow by the object, Ruth reached out to examine it. She nodded as soon as her skin made contact with the magic itself.

“This is definitely Gold’s work. It looks and feels the same. It’s reptilian almost, if that makes sense.”

“It doesn’t, but not much does anymore,” Liam remarked, and again Killian wished he was in the place to laugh. God knew they all needed it, but with so much still unknown every bit of their energy needed to be tied up in solving this life threatening puzzle.

Ruth continued to examine the artifact, her eyes taking in the material that appeared to be leather bound together by some kind of silver or platinum. It was a strange combination, but there was something in Ruth’s eyes that spoke to familiarity. Killian didn’t know if it was just her identifying the magic or what, but the hairs on the back of his neck went up just before she turned the leather over, a shocked look rushing across her face as she dropped the object back to the ground.

“Grandma?” Emma asked, having picked up on the same nervous energy that Killian did even before it truly managed to manifest. They both moved towards Ruth, searching for answers, but she appeared speechless as she looked back at them.

“Mom?” David asked, moving towards her quickly, trying to see if she was all right before sparing a glance at the cursed collar. Instantly his face portrayed the same shock, and then he let loose a very rare curse. “Son of a bitch.”

“Language,” Mary Margaret and Emma’s Aunt Gwen both said absently, but it was obviously instinct and driven by no sort of real intention. Within seconds Emma’s mother was at David’s side and held his hand in hers once more. “David, what is it?”

“That sigil.”

Killian turned his focus to the emblem on the leather collar. It was all hard lines and angles, and though it was a random association, Killian thought of how it looked so unlike most shifter symbols. It was clearly old, dating back far before the flags and figures of most great houses, but it sliced through the collar with an authority and a bluntness that looked like many knives hard at work.

“You know it?” Emma asked, prompting her father out of the angry and confused mood he was now grappling with,

“It’s the Nolan crest,” her Dad said. “And not only that, it’s my Uncle’s work. See here,” he motioned at the ridges and how the slices were jagged but perfectly symmetrical. “Nolans for centuries used branding techniques to establish our crest, but my Uncle said it left the smell of smoke. He wanted something cleaner and so he studied the old ways. All this was done with one knife in one stroke.”

“But with magic anything can be recreated, can’t it? It could be a set-up, something to throw us off the trail,” Anna said. Yet even as the words left her lips, she was still trying to figure it all out for herself. “Still, the magic is so obviously Gold’s. No one else can recreate that, why bother with any attempted distraction?”

“It’s not a diversion. It’s a claim. Gold made his with his magic and my brother made his with this,” Ruth said, her words finally reappearing though her eyes were still somewhat glazed over by ghosts from her past. “God, I wished I’d never see this symbol again, never mind the man who made it. To think he’s working with Gold. This is a nightmare.”

“I just don’t get it. Why are they both doing this? What’s the end game?” Graham asked.

“My Uncle’s will be as it always was – to eradicate shifters.”

“Even family?” Killian asked and David nodded.

“But what about Gold?” Elsa asked. “He’s got no ties to any of us but Ruth. Surely she can’t mean that much to him. She’s been awake five years, and he could have found her in any of that time.”

“Look, I don’t know the guy, but from everything you guys have found out, does it really seem like he needs a reason?” Tink asked. “The man is clearly more than a few marbles shy of a whole set.”

“He’ll have a reason,” Ruth responded. “But Elsa’s right, it can’t be me. Most likely it’s you all.” She gestured at Ruby, Elsa, Anna, and Emma.

“All of us?” Emma asked. “I mean I get them, they’re witches, but I’m -,”

“The Nolan heir and a hybrid shifter. Not to mention you’re mated to the true alpha of one of the strongest packs in America. Elsa, Anna, and Ruby have tremendous power, to be sure, and having joined together in one place, they’d be a natural threat to a power-hungry beast like Gold. But you’re truly unique, Emma, something that can’t be recreated, and to Gold that’s worth more than anything.”

“Clearly he’s willing to die over it,” Liam said shaking his head as his eyes met Killian’s. “And he will. Soon as we can find that fu-,” A shove from Elsa reminded Liam of the smaller ears in the group now and he cleared his throat before finding another word that didn’t fit nearly as well. “foe?”

“Not terrible. Not a great save, but not awful,” Neal joked, earning a smile from the adults who were still all in awe that this young boy was managing to swim in the deep end of all of this shifter drama.

“Where’s Lance?” Emma’s father asked, drawing attention to the fact that his old friend was missing from this conversation. Killian hadn’t even noticed, a testament to the extreme stealth of mountain lion shifters.

“He picked up a scent earlier but with the bear and all there was no time. We had to get to you all as fast as we could,” Gwen explained. “He’s circling back to track it now.”

“Another shifter?”

“No. I mean I don’t know. I didn’t even smell anything, but he said there was something…”

At that moment, the low rumble of a wild cat running came through the underbrush and then Lance appeared at the tree line in his shifter form. In the blink of an eye he transformed to human again. This was pretty normal for all of them, as even Emma and her friends had more exposure to shifting this summer, but for Neal it was a shock and that manifested when the boy gasped aloud. One look spared in the boy’s direction showed he was nothing but excited. No fear, no dismay. Just the giddy look of childlike wonder that a kid might have in the face of a perfect Christmas or a trip to Disney World.

“You didn’t recognize it because it’s a scent from before we ever met,” Lance said emerging from the woods. “It’s feint, but it’s citrus rinds and tea leaves.”

“George,” David and Ruth said at the same time, both resigned but obviously perplexed.

“Lance?” Gwen asked, putting her hand to his arm in question, echoing everyone else’s confusion.

“Hunters bathe in salted citrus waters with tea leaves before an attack. It largely suppresses human scent and keeps them nearly untraceable, blending in with forest smells better than any other combination. I only know about it at all because it’s what David always smelled like growing up.”

“He’s here?” Emma’s father asked, skipping over the tea bath tidbit.

“If he isn’t then he was. Trail leads to the clinic. It’s strong there but no sign of him. SUV tire tracks in the dirt. Recently left.”

“Was the SUV big enough to hold him?” Anna asked, motioning towards the bear, her face angrier than Killian had ever seen it.

“Would have been a cramped cage,” Lance admitted, making the air around Anna practically crackle with her resentment of David’s Uncle. A breeze floated in the glen around them, and in it there was a glinting of light that spoke to something more than wind. It was Anna’s palpable energy, and though she did her best to conceal it, the storm inside her mind and heart was starting to brew in the world around them. “But there’s more. The clinic has been marked, and the animals inside are feeling very on edge. You’re gonna want to get over there before some humans do.”

“Wait but hold on, how is this even possible?” Emma asked, stalling everyone in their tracks before they sped off to the clinic. “How would your Uncle have had time to get here after messing with Neal? The bear attacked maybe thirty minutes after you left. And I’m sorry, I don’t care how skilled a hunter he is. You’re telling me he brought a giant grizzly in a huge SUV into the city Boston? Doesn’t that seem like a really dumb idea?”

“Emma’s right, the timeline is all off,” Killian affirmed, and it seemed to dawn on the others how accurate that was.

“I showed Neal a picture once we got back to the house, and he confirmed it was definitely George who approached him.”

“But what if it wasn’t?” Ruby asked, turning her inquiry to Emma’s brother. “Neal, was there anything strange about the man who approached you?”

“You mean other than the fact that he cornered me and said all that cryptic stuff about my being a hunter and his family?” Ruby nodded. “Uh, I don’t know he spoke kind of fast. Like a little faster than was easy to follow. Made the already crazy stuff he said even more confusing. It also felt like he was kind of talking to himself, answering his own questions when I didn’t really feel like he’d asked anything. And he kept flicking his wrist as he talked and then balling it up. His face got mad when he did that but only for a second.”

“That doesn’t sound like George,” Ruth said critically. “He’s a methodical man. His whole life has been about control and perfection. He speaks so well, he’s a vocal coach’s dream. Same with his movements.”

“Hunters don’t fidget,” David said, sounding like he was repeating words he was oft told in his past life as opposed to making any sort of additional commentary.

“Could a human smell a hunter, even though shifters mostly can’t?” Neal asked and Emma’s father responded.

“Yes but it would be almost unnoticeable. Why do you ask?”

“Well I didn’t really think much of it but I smelled something awful in the air when he came up to me. I thought it was just one of those city pockets you know? Where the air is just dirty and you kinda have to walk through it.”

“Could be,” Ruby said, “But sulfuric smells can be a side effect of dark magic. Ruth, what was Gold like when you interacted with him all those years ago? Do you remember?”

“Well he was much more unbalanced than George, that’s for sure. Gold used to talk in riddles anytime I met with him and always so fast you barely knew what he was saying. Now that you mention it the wrist thing sounds like something too. He used to kind of flick his up like this,” Ruth said, displaying a gesture that was almost caricature of what a person with magic might do.

“So the body language and the other clues hint that Neal was actually dealing with Gold and not George, and if that’s the case he must have used a glamour spell,” Elsa acknowledged. “Unless there’s another way?”

“No, for him to look like George it would have to be a glamour, it would explain the smell, but it would also take a lot of magical energy. He should be really weak after expending himself like that. I mean between that and the magic that’s been spent on trapping this bear… he shouldn’t even be alive.”

“’Should’ doesn’t really seem like a word that fits in our world at the moment,” Granny sassed and they all agreed. There was no reason to assume Gold was anything but fully healthy right now, no doubt through some sinister means.

“I think realistically we need to split this up. George has apparently left this mess for me at the clinic. We should start there,” Emma’s father said, nodding to Lance and his mother who both silently accepted their new assigned posts.

“Usually I’d say I’m all we need over at team ‘scent tracker,’ but with everything that’s happened today and all the breaches…”

“You need help,” Graham said, filling in for Tink without hesitation. “I’d go, but we need to keep up the appearance of normalcy for the rest of the town, and after this bear warning people are going to have questions.”

“I’ll go with Tink,” Granny offered, surprising most of them before letting out a disgruntled huff and straightening her shoulders. “Oh please, I’m old, I’m not dead. Heck the kids would say I’ve got ‘mad skills’ when it comes to tracking.”

“Any kids who would have said that are probably in their mid-thirties by now,” Killian whispered, and despite everything Emma squawked out something close to a laugh. She then sent him a sharp but loving look, telling him that now was not the time but that she did find him funny.

“As much as we have to find George, we need to track Gold just as badly,” Elsa proclaimed. “I still don’t sense him as being the biggest threat, but he’s in this too and if we’re ever going to get an idea of what the end game is, we need to know everything we can.”

“So that leaves what?” Ruby asked. “Bear watch? Liam and Killian can handle that.”

“What about us?” Emma asked, motioning towards her brother and her mother.

“We need to put some of that natural organizing to good use,” Ruth said adamantly. “Mary Margaret, you more than anyone could try and map this out. Getting everything we know in one place could help make everything more clear.”

“Plus no one is better at wrangling multiple groups,” Gwen added, waving her walkie talkie in the air before nodding towards Graham. “You’ve got a direct line to all of us, and the patience and know-how to get everything you need.”

“Well when you put it like that,” Emma’s mother said, clearly pleased with her role. “So what are we waiting for? This war ain’t gonna win itself.”

And since that was true, they all moved off to their designated jobs, though Killian kept track of Emma constantly. Luckily her mother decided to set up their brainstorming outside here in the glen, so as much as Killian was on bear watch, he was also looking out for his mate. Killian would not let anything happen to Emma and their family, so right now it was his mission to use all of his years of experience as a shifter to aid in their protection. In the long span of his life where he sought to avenge his mother, and then in the years spent tracking and avoiding any signs of Liam and his pack, he had become a well-honed machine. His skills allowed him to feel ready for whatever may come, and he trusted that his love of Emma and his want to protect both her physical being and her heart would make anything possible. Whatever foe may present themselves, he would handle them, because there was no other option as far as he or his wolf were concerned.

That readiness and familiarity with trouble, however, did not apply to everyone, and there was one person amongst them who more than anyone must be flummoxed and uneasy given all the tumult. Killian looked even now at young Neal and he felt for the boy. He was putting on a brave face, but there was still concern that made its way to the surface now and then. Emma’s brother hid it well from his overbearing and constantly watchful mother, but when Mary Margaret moved away to talk with Gwen on the walkie talkie about everything going on at the clinic, Killian saw a chance to try and do some good.

“You holding up all right, lad?”

Killian posed the question like it could in any way be straight forward to this young boy. Emma’s brother had woken up this morning a gifted but largely ordinary child. He was brilliant to be sure, but he had no real notion of what any of this meant. Human science alone couldn’t prepare him for this, not when the books they taught in schools mentioned nothing of this whole different part of the world. It must be a great shock to him, yet here Neal stood, ready for action and above the fray of questions most people, no matter what age, would grapple with when a situation like this arose.

“It makes sense in a way,” Neal admitted, shrugging his shoulder. “Not the whole my great uncle is working with a warlock thing. That’s just crazy.”

“Aye it is. But the shifting, and your wolf, they’re not as surprising to you?”

“I had dreams, back when everyone thought I was going to die.” Neal shrugged at the memory of those times, because his childhood illness was just a part of his life. It was a painful chapter of the Nolan family story, but Neal looked to be all the stronger for it now. “They were pretty all over the place. I was sleeping all the time and I was in and out, but there was a woman towards the end, that I remember. She was nice, with a smile like my mom. I knew I could trust her, and the next thing I knew she turned into a wolf and I did too. It was weird, but it felt right, you know?”

Killian gulped, knowing that the woman Neal spoke of was his mother. He debated telling the boy the full truth, but given everything that he was saddled with now, it didn’t seem wise. There would be time, hopefully, when all of this had been resolved and he and Emma could have a full discussion with Neal about all they’d learned. They’d tell him of Emma’s own dreams, of the process Elsa’s magic had undertaken to save them both, and how Killian’s mother found a way even beyond the grave to watch over him and the family he would one day love. But for now, the best course of action was bolstering Neal’s faith and telling him this would all work out okay.

“It must be strange, to learn of what you are later like this. I know for Emma it was a unique process. It can be overwhelming. But it’s also…” he searched for the right words.

“Uh, totally cool?” Neal filled in, looking genuinely enthusiastic. “I mean I can turn into a wolf. That’s pretty bad ass.”

Killian and Neal’s heads both whipped towards the direction of Mary Margaret, but despite her motherly senses, she seemed to have missed her son’s bit of cursing. That was likely for the best.

“It’s an amazing gift to be sure. I know I’d never feel truly whole without my wolf. I’m glad you and Emma will have that now too.”

“Yeah. I just wish I didn’t have to wait. I mean five more years? That feels like forever.”

Killian smiled and he knew that for Neal it must seem like just that. As a kid, years felt like they’d never pass, and time would never move in the direction that you wanted it. It took the benefit of hindsight to see that everything comes exactly when it should, and as a new shifter, Neal would be in much better shape if he had a few years of understanding who he was before moving into that phase of his life.

“When things calm down, we should talk. You’ll have questions, and while your father is well versed in much of the shifter world, he might not have all the answers.”

“Did your Dad have them?” Neal asked, not out of any malice, but because he just genuinely didn’t know the history of Killian and his family.

“No, but I was lucky to have an elder brother.”

“And now I will too,” Neal said, like Killian’s new status in the family was a long time given. Killian smiled at that, nodding.

“Aye. That you will. Whatever you need, Neal, I’ll be here to help. So will Emma, and Liam, and all of us.”

“Like a real pack,” Neal said and Killian thought about it a moment before nodding. After all, what else could they be called at this point? There were so many of them, shifter, witch, and otherwise, tied together through love, through family ties and friendship. If that wasn’t a pack as it was intended to be then Killian didn’t know what it was.

Feeling secure in the fact that Neal was okay, Killian planned to switch his attention back to the others and their deliberations, but the bear suddenly let forth a harsh huff of air, propelling the front of his body up into the air, before stomping its thick paws into the earth below. Killian went on alert, preparing to get to Emma if the grizzly should break free, but then he gathered that the others were talking about the bear and the bear was somehow communicating, though perhaps not very effectively.

“It’s the weirdest thing,” Neal said, shaking his head as he watched the captive beast.

“Seeing a mammoth grizzly in a magic cage? Yeah, weird is one way of putting it.”

“It’s not that. It’s the smell around him. It’s sterile and sharp. I swear it smells like when I was in the hospital. Like an IV but not quite.”

Sniffing the air, Killian could at first only sense the overwhelming stench of a shifter sickness and Gold’s magic, but there, underneath those notes, there was something he belatedly recognized as medical. Now that Neal said it, he wondered how he, or any of the other shifters had missed it all this time.

“I’ve got news for you, lad: those supposed genius tendencies of yours are not purely human. You’re gonna be a hell of a shifter.”

Neal grinned at that, and after Killian urged him to tell the others, a whole new door of inquiry opened. Everyone came back from their separate corners of Storybrooke, seeking to put a new piece of the puzzle in place.

“Magic and medicine? But that’s crazy. Can it even be done?” Tink asked.

“I think we’re looking at the proof,” Elsa hedged, gesturing at the bear.

“Did anyone get a bite of his neck?” Emma asked and the others who had been there in the thick of the fight shook their head. “He’s got two puncture marks there, I saw a flash of them when I took the collar off, but I just assumed…”

“Let’s all just make a plan to stop doing that for the time being,” Graham said and they heartily agreed, for surely assuming anything was getting them nowhere. They had to start from scratch and do as Neal had done, study the problem just with the facts and clues before them.

“Are the marks identical, Emma?” Neal asked and after a moment of reflection Emma nodded.

“Yeah, they looked pretty similar. I only caught a quick glimpse though.”

“Can you get him closer to us?” Neal asked and Mary Margaret shook her head.

“Neal, no -,”

“He doesn’t need to leave the enclosure, Mom. I just need to see his neck. Emma said there’s two punctures. That’s rare in medical treatment of any kind, human or animal. There’s usually only one puncture site. Whenever I needed more than one medicine they stuck me in different places or they’re infused through one site, resulting in only one puncture. Two identical pierces is almost unheard of. In fact, the only researchers I know that have regularly and successfully used two study genetically based nervous system manipulation.”

“Uh, can you repeat that in English?” Liam replied and Killian related to his brother’s sentiment. This was elevated stuff well beyond the experience set of any of the adults here, save for maybe Emma and David who had a veterinary background, and Neal was a teenager. How did he know about this?

“Basically treatment to regrow and stabilize a broken nervous system. Yes, it’s super complicated and obscure, and before you ask, I just spent the summer rooming with a medical prodigy who is headed to Columbia pre-med at 14. You pick up stuff when all your friend talks about is cutting edge science stuff.”

“That’s brilliant, Neal, but what makes you think that this has anything to do with that?”

“Well the dual needle there wasn’t just used for fun, it was necessary to yield any positive results. The doctors were trying to infuse damaged nervous systems with a lining that would revamp nerves and allow for an artificial system reboot. They needed two different solutions to do that, and they needed to mix at the same rate through the body while not being combined outside of the system itself. They said that allowing the chemical interaction to happen inside the body actually improved the lasting effects of the treatment.”

“So that begs the question, how do we get closer to him?”

Granny’s query prompted all of them to look to Anna automatically, but that only prompted Elsa to get defensive.

“No! No way! Absolutely not! You are not going in there.”

“Elsa we need to know,” Anna replied, her tone even, not matching the loudness or the fear of her sister. “And it’s like I keep telling you. He won’t hurt me.”

“Maybe we can just ask him to come closer?” Emma added, clearly not wanting her friend anywhere near that bear without the barrier still between them.

“But what if one of the solutions Neal is talking about isn’t just science?” Ruby replied, her brow furrowed together. “If it’s magical then we need a witch to gauge that and that would be damn near impossible with Elsa and Anna’s enchantment as strong as it is.”

“We’re not doing this,” Elsa said, her anguish clear, but the fight in her starting to fail somewhat.

“What other choice do we have, Elsa? We’re in danger and more than that we’re blind. We need answers. We need them to stay safe, and we need them to heal him. He has to be okay, Elsa. He just has to be.”

The connection Anna felt to this bear was strong already though she’d never even seen his human form. Killian understood that, and though it must feel impossible to accept that Anna might be in any kind of danger, Elsa did too. All she needed to do was think about when it was Liam. When the two of them first met, Liam was still unstable and unwell, perhaps to a different degree, but Elsa stood by him. She was devoted right from the start, and she did everything she could to heal his brother and to stop his pain. Anna wanted to do the same thing, and now Elsa had to support her, fear and all.

You will not hurt her, do you hear me?

The mental push came from Emma and was aimed at the bear, but Killian still heard it. Her eyes were wary, set on the grizzly as her face gave nothing but seriousness away. The bear snorted but gave a sharp nod, unwilling or unable to reply with coherent thoughts, but showing with animal action that he was not in an aggressive place.

“Okay, Anna. You can go in there, but only for a minute. You find out what we need to know and then you get back out here. Are we clear?” Emma asked and Anna nodded. Without any more deliberation she moved to the edge of the crystal enclosure and then she stepped in.

Not knowing how things would go made the moment of Anna’s examination emotionally fraught, but beyond that this was a moment that both Emma’s friend and this unknown shifter must be craving on a cellular level. They were fated mates, destined to be together and yet unable to have more than a brief interaction. They couldn’t even speak to each other, and the fact that this was all happening while he was a bear must make things even more confusing. Yet none of that translated. Instead, Anna approached with cautious determination, stopping just before the bear and pausing only for a moment before she raised her hand to the bear’s face. Her hand made contact and everyone held their breath until the bear made a low, but welcoming growl.

“Hi,” Anna murmured after a moment, her voice raspier than usual. “This isn’t how I thought something like this would happen. I had all these ideas about who you’d be and how we’d meet and this is just… well, different.”

The bear closed its eyes for a moment exhaling what could only be called a grizzly form of a sigh, and then nuzzled more so into Anna’s touch. A sign of agreement and docility that was so alien a concept with a shifter this sick.

“Anna.” Elsa’s calling out to her sister reminded Anna of her mission and she straightened her stance and nodded.

“Right. I have to fix this. I have to help you. And I don’t know if you heard what we were saying but -,”

The bear didn’t even need to hear the rest of her request, instead shifting so Anna could be up close and personal with his neck and the site of the punctures Emma had seen. Anna let out a sound of sadness at seeing where the bear had been injured.

“What do you see?” Neal asked.

“Two puncture marks, just like Emma said. And they’re really big and thick. I can see why you thought someone bit him. He’s started to heal over it but there’s scarring and…” she raised her hand over the wound but trailed off from speaking to them.

“And what?” Ruby asked.

“You were right Ruby, I can feel the magic. Some sort of potion of something. But there’s something else here. Some residue of something else.”

“We need to see that!” Neal said, his desire to figure out this puzzling situation clear as day. “We can test his fur or maybe get some blood work, but it would be better if we had the actual solution itself.”

With just the barest flutter of her fingers Anna used her magic to extract the droplets of whatever liquid coated the bear’s fur. It was entrancing to see, and the little bits of whatever injection was used hung suspended in the air. It was a small amount, but small was better than nothing at all. “I need something to put this in.”

A vile was produced from Mary Margaret’s bag, and no one bothered to ask why she had it. No doubt some sort of ‘always be prepared mentality’ and Emma brought it to the edge of the barrier with Killian right behind her. But while they expected Anna to come right away, she was stalled, wanting, no doubt, to stay close to her mate.

“I know how hard this must be, Anna, but the sooner we figure out what this is the sooner you can heal him.”

“I’m going to fix this,” Anna said, for the bear’s benefit and not for any of theirs. “We’re gonna find out what this is and I swear I will fix it.”

At the mention of her leaving, the bear’s eyes went dark, looking more onyx than any shade of red. It reminded Killian of his father and of Liam and it all clicked. This was some sort of manufactured alpha sickness. It had to be. But just as soon as that darkness came, the bear shook its head and pushed it back again, its irises back to a deep burgundy color. The bear hoisted its body up and then stomped its two front feet to the ground but made no more sounds. It was a dismissal of Anna, and a nonverbal warning that she had to go now before he lost control. Anna seemed to understand and she moved quickly towards the barrier and back outside with all of them. With shaky hands she used her magic to put the droplets in the vial and then sealed it before handing it to Neal.

“You want me to look at it?” Neal asked, his eyes growing wide.

“Yes, Neal, I do. You were right about the injections, and if we didn’t have that we’d pretty much have nothing to go on,” Anna said. “You are brilliant, and you are my brother, in every way that matters. Right?”

“Right,” Neal agreed without hesitation.

“I know it’s asking a lot, and I know you might not be able to handle everything alone, but I just need you to try. Anything you learn is helpful. Anything. I can do the magical stuff, but I don’t know anything about medicine.”

“I’m gonna need help,” Neal said looking to Emma and Emma nodded.

“And you’ve got it. You’ve got me and Dad. I don’t know much about double injections or genome treatments, but I’ll do whatever I can. We’ve got equipment at the clinic. We can run some tests and see what compounds we’re working with and -,”

Killian was about to speak up and say that Emma needed to think about this before making any bold decisions. She’d been through the ringer today, and this testing would no doubt be an involved process. It worried Killian that Emma would continue exerting so much energy when she’d had such a close call earlier, but surprisingly it was Neal who vocalized that worry first.

“That’s exactly what we’re gonna do, Emma. But I think Dad and I have got this for now. You should rest up. You’ve had a way longer day than the rest of us.”

“But I can help too,” Emma reasoned.

“And you will. But maybe tomorrow, all right? This is gonna take a while. We won’t find any answers right away anyway. You know that.”

Killian waited eagerly, hoping that Emma would reach that conclusion on her own as well, and he felt himself relax when she agreed. It was such a relief to know that Emma wouldn’t be over extending herself into the wee hours of the morning. The day was already fading away, with the sun dipping low in the trees, and Killian knew that what his mate needed was food, rest, and time away from the insanity of their world right now.

The others all agreed with Neal’s take, and with a new plan in motion people started to split up, headed for their evenings in different ways. The Nolans headed to the clinic to grab start testing things both at the lab and then back home, while Ruby, Anna, and Elsa agreed that they should try and process the magical concoction that Anna had sensed in the bear and in the collar. Ruby would do so with her family’s archives back at Graham’s, but where Elsa tried to offer a similar scenario for her and Anna, Anna was uninterested.

“I’m not leaving him,” Anna said sternly, looking back to the bear with a fierceness of conviction that had no chance of being swayed. Knowing this instinctively, Elsa let out a small sigh but nodded.

“Okay, so we stay.”

“You two mind?” Liam asked, and Killian smirked at his brother’s question. Even if he did mind it wouldn’t matter much. Liam would just camp out here with his mate and her sister. But there was no need, not when he had somewhere else he and Emma could go.

“Knock yourselves out,” he quipped, gesturing to the doorway. “We’ll just pack a bag and be out of your hair.”

“We’re not staying?” Emma asked, looking surprised, but also a bit relieved if the flash in her eyes was anything to go off of.

“I have a better idea, love. That is, if you trust me.”

“Always,” Emma said, and though he stole a fleeting kiss from her lips, it was but a mere morsel to tide him over until real privacy could be procured.

True to their word, they took only a few minutes to pack what they needed, and then they were off. They could have walked to their destination, or shifted and run over, but with George still on the loose and Gold MIA Killian wanted the opportunity at a faster getaway if need be. The drive was rather short, even with a stop at the town diner to grab some dinner, and the most notable change was that they went from the deep woods where their cabin was further towards the coast just at the edge of town. Eventually the paved Storybrooke road turned to one of pebbles and dirt, and Emma looked both amused and confused at why they would be going this way. Her eyes soon shifted though to mere enjoyment, as she took in the picturesque surroundings of this coastal lane, surrounded by greenery and bushes that held large summer flowers in shades of pinks and blues and whites.

“They’ll be paving this soon,” Killian announced and Emma’s brow furrowed as she looked from their surroundings back towards him once more.

“How do you know that? No one even lives here.”

“Ah, perhaps not yet, but the house has been recently purchased and a move in is likely inevitable.”

“Well the new owners have done a ton of work. This was all overgrown before. Has been since I was a kid. I always loved this house though.” Emma made the comments just before they pulled around the bend, and when she saw the house in question her jaw dropped and her shock was palpable in the car. “Oh my God! Look at that. It’s… well it’s…”

“Do you like it?” Killian asked and Emma nodded immediately though her brow furrowed with confusion.

“I do, it’s gorgeous, but I don’t understand. When you said there was somewhere else we could go I assumed you meant my place above the clinic.”

“We could have gone there, but tell me you wouldn’t have then been tempted to burn the candle all night searching for answers.” Emma couldn’t say that truthfully so she opted not to respond, giving Killian the space to pull her closer as he confessed his intentions. “When we were in the woods before I told you that someday would be here sooner than you think. This house was meant to be your wedding present, but I think, all things considered, we should cherish every moment that we have.”

“I thought you were talking about the baby” Emma whispered, her eyes misting over with happy tears as he stole a kiss from her lips with soft but sure affection. His hand came over her stomach automatically at the mention of their pup and when his lips pulled away from hers, he couldn’t help his genuine smile.

“I was, my love. Our family is on the path to exactly what we’re wanting. But as much as I cherish our cabin in the woods, this,” he waved his arms at the house before them. “This is the home you and our little ones deserve.”

With Emma still stunned into near silence, Killian produced the keys to the house from his pocket, having grabbed them from the cabin discretely enough to escape Emma’s notice. On the keychain there was also a token charm that had caught his fancy while in town. It had a swirling design that looked like the fur of a wolf when examined up close, or the sea in the midst of great uncertainty. In the foreground of the metalwork, there was an anchor, and for whatever reason, he found he liked that symbolism and that it made him think of his mate and the life that they were building together. In every way, Emma was his anchor, an anchor to goodness and love and hope, all things he now could no longer live without and that he wished to carry with him always.

“Killian.”

His name was all that Emma could seem to say in this moment, and her fingertips came to cover her mouth as she shook her head in awe. For a split second he wasn’t totally sure if he had made the right call. Buying one of her favorite houses in town might seem like a great idea, but perhaps Emma wanted to be more involved herself in the process of finding their forever home. There was so much that had to be selected and chosen to bring the house into this century and up to a livable code, while still maintaining the quintessential charm of the coastal Maine mansion. But when Emma’s green eyes welled with happy tears and her cheeks flushed that familiar shade of pink, he knew he’d made no wrong moves. Emma was happy with this, and that was all that he had ever wanted.

“Now I should warn you, love, not everything is finished. I gave them a timeline of the end of the summer, knowing that I wanted it done by our wedding night. But it’s structurally sound, and the upstairs is all furnished. Well at least it’s supposed to be and I -,”

Emma laughed at his sudden feeling of remorse, and then she pulled him in for a kiss so fast that he lost all sense of himself before his worry could actually begin to take hold. All there was in this moment was Emma and her happiness. Out here, away from everyone else, Killian allowed his overprotective need to kick in, and with a quick maneuver, he had Emma backed against the front door, knowing he had boxed her in, but never going so far as to hurt her. If anything, it just turned his mate on, and she arched even closer, taking as much from this kiss as he did, until they finally broke apart.

“You bought us a house,” Emma whispered.

“Aye, love,” he said, cupping her cheek after brushing some of her hair back from her beautiful face. “I bought us a house.”

“How do you always manage this?” She asked, and Killian didn’t know what exactly she meant by ‘this’ but he awaited her assessment whatever it may be. “Every time things go sideways, there you are, making things better. This is perfect, in every way. There’s only one thing I wish was different.”

“What is it love?”

“I wish I was already your wife. I wish we didn’t have to wait anymore.”

Hearing that amplified Killian’s own want for the same exact thing, but despite the fact that they had tonight ‘off’ so to speak, a wedding, a real wedding, worthy of his mate and all her hopes and dreams, just couldn’t be done. As such, he had to improvise.

“Do you, Emma Nolan, choose me, Killian Jones for this day and all your days? In sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, in this life and any more we may be blessed enough to see?”

“I do,” Emma said, with tears glistening in her eyes as she smiled, looking at him with all the love in the world. “And do you, Killian Jones, choose me back? Will you promise to love me, to cherish me, and to honor me in every way I plan to do for you, for this day and for always, no matter what may come?”

“I do,” he replied and Emma let out a soft laugh, a tantalizing sound that caught on the wind before fading away as their lips came together to seal their vows to each other.

They were now, in their hearts, man and wife, mate and mate, and though it might not be ‘official,’ Killian knew in that moment that he and Emma had bound themselves together in a new and enduring way. And so, even though things might not be going exactly according to plan, Killian delighted in the moment when he swung his love up in his arms and whisked into the house of their future and showing her the place that would be the site of their hopefully impending happily ever after.

Post-Note: So there we have it! I know this chapter has taken so long to come about, but with so many elements that I had wanted to incorporate, I knew I needed time to not only write, but to read through what I’ve already written. This whole George and Gold fiasco will soon be coming to a head, BUT please be informed it might not all be in this particular story... For those of you who have been begging me for a story that includes CS but is mostly told from the POVs of others, you will be *eventually * getting your wish. Elaborating more would be spoiling what is yet to come, so I’ll leave it there, but suffice it to say I am really excited for this next cool idea when it does come to pass. aAs always I appreciate you guys reading this, and I hope you all enjoyed and have a wonderful rest of your week!!

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takamakisu · 5 years

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『♥🖤Akira X Ann: Why I Support It.🖤♥』

In honor of the upcoming ShuAnn week, I have decided to contribute by writing a long post about why I love these dorks so much. I haven't seen a meta for them yet, so I figured I'd try my hand at it. (Which will be updated and expanded as I find more content) Without further ado, let us begin! Tagging the wonderful @shuann-week for this one.

1. The first encounter.

In media, the first interaction that two characters have with one another, regardless of relationship; lays the groundwork for said relationship and therefore is absolutely vital. When Akira first meets Ann, he's casually texting away on his phone and not really paying attention to much, but when she walks by he looks up. Already his curiosity is piqued, as is the player's; and then when she removes her hood, even then we don't get to see her face. But we DO see Akira's reaction, and he seems absolutely dumbstruck.

This is when things get interesting. Ann takes a few moments and sort of surveys her surroundings, and then she senses Akira's eyes and turns to him. And he doesn't look away, or get flustered; Akira keeps looking at her with that flabbergasted expression. He doesn't even blink. He is so taken aback by her he can't even greet her, and Ann just smiles at him and looks away- but even then, he doesn't break his gaze, and he never does until she actually leaves: Ann leaves him absolutely spellbound. And the music that plays during this encounter is exclusive to this encounter and this encounter alone. It never plays before this scene, nor does it ever play again after. There are heavy romantic undertones in this encounter, from the body language to the background music, and only Ann receives this treatment. It screams "attraction at first sight", and now with the groundwork laid, the relationship can begin to blossom.

This is very important. Even before we get to see Ann's face, we already know from Akira's viewpoint that she must be pretty, at least in his eyes. And when we finally do get to see her face, she is indeed beautiful.

2. Her closeness to him.

First off, she's with you from essentially the beginning of the game, so you get a lot of time to get to know her and become closer to her. Ann is the third member to join your party and the first female member and therefore the first available romance option as well! (That's pretty big.) She's also your classmate, so you get to see her literally every day and there's a sense of familiarity that is built on from the beginning.

Ann was the first to see Akira for who he truly was, and she looked past the rumors of him and got to know him for herself. Because she understands being an outsider and being mistreated, there's a level of understanding Ann has with you that the other girls simply do not. That's not to say they're bad, but Ann just connects better with the protagonist on that level. Let it also be remembered that before she met Akira, and by association the rest of the Phantom Thieves; Ann didn't have any friends, besides Shiho. Due to being a foreigner (and a very pretty one, at that) and the rumors surrounding her with Kamoshida, no one talks to her. While having a two-parent household, they are rarely home; and so Ann's lonely as well as bullied. Akira saving her from Kamoshida and then giving his genuine friendship then allows her to open up and be vulnerable to other people and that's very healthy.

Another interesting interaction is during the Kamoshida arc, Makoto will ask you in essence what's the relationship between you and Ann, if there's something between you. If you say "there's nothing", her reply is "Didn't seem that way yesterday" and if you tell her you're classmates she'll say "But do friends get that close?"

3. How she falls for him.

For these reasons, I support these two. Lemme know in the comments what won you over to this pairing and any other moments that get your heart warm and fuzzy!

In addition, Ann gets an on-screen kiss with the protagonist; a luxury only two other Persona girls have received (from 3-5, Maki kisses Naoya in P1): Margaret and Marie from Persona 4. The fact that Ann gets an explicit kiss (and possibly an implicit one as well because in Rank 9 her reaction to Joker hugging her hints he MIGHT have kissed her too) screams that while she's not 'canon' (nobody is) it sure does seem Atlus is sneakily pushing her towards Joker. They even match costumes in the dancing games! Oh yes, and Ann doesn't go home on Valentine's Day + Sojiro literally just "ayyyy" when she walks in- XD

Her Confidant has the protagonist and Ann getting closer as friends and also helping Shiho recover and you get to be a part of a few of Ann's interpersonal relationships. Shiho, as stated before, was Ann's closest and only friend before she met the player; and so earning her trust and helping her heal is significant. Suzui also hints to the player Ann seems to be attracted to them, talking about how her best friend talks highly of you and then the blonde gets flustered.

Her confession shot me through the heart. With Ann you don't have to increase your Knowledge or your Guts; just Kindness. To her, it doesn't matter if you get the best grades in the class or how brave you are, she just wants a friend who'll be there for her when she needs them, and that's what Ann falls for in the protagonist: his genuineness and his willingness to stick by her side. She falls in love with you for who you are and it feels the most natural and realistic. Something that's also very interesting about Ann's rank 9 event in Japanese is instead of saying “I guess we’re more than friends now...” she actually says, “I just realized it,” referring to her feelings for him (when she said “I love you”) in the original dialogue. And this is so so important. This hints at a love that developed slowly over a friendship and Ann wasn't even really aware it was there at first, until the only friend she'd had moved away and she felt alone and abandoned again. Akira being her pillar in that moment was the paradigm shift from platonic feelings to romantic ones and that is absolutely beautiful. But she ALREADY loved him, did you catch it? She just realized and became aware of it in that situation. Ann's been in love with the protagonist for who knows how long before she even confesses. And at the end of her confidant she calls you her light.. that just speaks volumes to me. The protagonist basically saved her, and because of that she wants to become stronger and encourage other people as well. It's beautiful.

5. Other characters reactions to them.

There's a specific scene where the protagonist is in the bathhouse with Ryuji and Yusuke, and Ryuji will ask you what you think of Ann. If you admit you think she's pretty, he gets extremely excited ("Ooh, you straight up said it!")

Another very interesting thing that's different in the original language is when Akira gets home from interrogation. In English, Ann just chirps "Hey there!" No big deal, right? But in Japanese, she says, “okaeri”, which means “welcome home”. This greeting is said amongst family or couples in Japan, hinting a deeper level of closeness than the translation.

(It's also something of note that when Ann got locked out of her room in Hawaii she went to Akira's room first. )

Additionally, after the school festival; Ann will talk to you about how she thinks about your future together! And if you tell her in another instance that you'd like to get married, she gets extremely excited whereas some of the other romance options become all flustered and blushy; a cute and interesting contrast.

A Mementos conversation also has Ann absentmindedly talking about how coffee goes well with sweets, to which Ryuji immediately replies 'Joker always smells like coffee, doesn't he?'

Now, I may be looking too deeply into this, but this could possibly be Ryuji "hint hint-ing" he thinks Akira and Ann are a good pair for each other. Ryuji also flat out refuses to date Ann during a scene in the gym when she offers to let him take her out. I don't know about you, but if I had a crush on somebody and they offered to let me go out with them, I don't think I'd turn it down as quickly and explicitly as Ryuji did (He tells her 'hell no, quit acting like you're some sexy anime character'). Personally I think Ryuji supports Ann with Akira and so he tries to gently nudge her over like "Okay, this guy? He's a good fit for you." Sakamoto's a great friend for Ann but I personally believe he's better as just that: a friend.

4. Their personalities blend well.

Ann's bubbly personality contrasts wonderfully with the protagonist's more introverted, reserved side. They're sort of like Robin and Starfire, just to less extremes. Ann is very pleasant and tender and she's got a big heart and it shows; consistently. She's a great friend to Ryuji and Shiho and big sister to Futaba, while at the same time tolerating nonsense from absolutely no one, regardless of status. I now want to cast attention to Meyer-Brigg's personality types. These are headcanons, but after analyzing Akira and Ann's characters Joker seems to be an ISTJ, while Panther is an ENFP. These are abbreviations for Introversion, Sensing, Thinking, Judging (ISTJ) and Extroversion, Intuition, Feeling, Percieving (ENFP) respectfully. Ann, at her core; is the heart of the Phantom Thieves honestly. She is very sensitive to others' emotions and feelings, and very emotionally intelligent. Being an extrovert, Ann also needs interaction and validation from other people: it energizes her and fufills her. And, in return she's a caregiver; Ann wants to support others and help them become stronger. She's a wonderful sister figure and just a comforter in general, and very amiable and chirpy. Contrast that with Akira, who makes decisions based on facts and logic rather than feelings and intuition (although in the Metaverse he seems to throw caution to the wind, quite frankly) and analyzes situations from a logical rather than emotional angle; (and there are exceptions to this like helping the woman Shido was assaulting and chasing Ann down to talk to her) and they seem on completely opposite ends of the spectrum. However, their differing personalities balance one another. While Akira keeps Ann grounded logically, she keeps him grounded emotionally and the bounce off is extremely healthy.

In Yusuke's Confidant, saying Ann is the definition of beauty nets the most points.

Atlus seems to like putting these two together as well, from giving them matching songs and outfits in the dancing games to putting them together in advertisements. It's pretty cute and though it's subtle, it's a nice little nod.

#✨; otp; you are my light (akirann)#shuann week

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