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cutesilyo · 3 years

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no place in the world (like manila) — an amephil fanfic

A few months after the outbreak of the Philippine-American War, Alfred falls in love with and is betrayed by a bright-eyed teenager with the prettiest smile on this side of the Orient in a single night.

This is not a love story.

Also available on AO3.

—

"Sir, I don't think it's safe for you to leave the camp," Major-General MacArthur warned. "I don't know how, but the revolutionaries know your face. They could attack you!"

"Pshaw," Alfred snorted. "I'm a nation. What could they do that could take me down, huh?"

MacArthur's mustache bristled in displeasure. "Be that as it may sir, might I remind you that you only arrived in Manila a week ago? Knowing you, you'd just get lost and I'd have to put together a whole squad of troops just to hunt you down. You could get captured, Alfred. I don't know how to tell you just how badly that would bring down morale."

Alfred just wagged his fingers, a bright grin on his face. "Look, if I get captured, I'd bust out of whatever crappy holding place they'd put me in without barely breaking a sweat! And knowing our soldiers, that's just the stuff that would make a great story to tell at dinnertime. How's that for morale?"

The way that MacArthur simply stared at him blankly told Alfred that this was not a convincing argument.

"I hate it when you do that," he groaned, slumping back on his seat. The leather was hot with the heat of the tropical sun and it stuck uncomfortably to his skin. Oh, how badly he wanted to just finally get up and leave. "I'm just saying, I can't stay inside here forever just waiting for you to dictate our next move."

"It's part of our strategy—"

"And it's boring. I'm bored, Major-General. I might as well look around." Alfred's eyes glinted dangerously. "Besides, you'll capture the whole nation for me soon enough, won't you? No harm in wanting to see what we're winning once this war is over."

The silence lasted for a few seconds before the major-general sighed in defeat.

—

Private Patton R. Wilkes was assigned to “accompany” Alfred while he roamed around Manila, but he knew that MacArthur just wanted someone to make sure he would actually return to camp instead of getting lost or, God forbid, taking the next ship back to America. Though the both of them were dressed in civilian clothing, the private carried himself with a strict stiffness that just screamed hardened military man. If Alfred wanted any chance of escape, it looked like the private would be hard to shake off.

Alfred tried to stay optimistic about the trip anyway. He hadn't paid much attention to the city while he was on the way to the American camp, but he certainly expected it to have an air of exoticness. He was a bit disappointed not to see anything like the palaces of Japan or the distinctly oriental architecture of China. Instead, he found street signs written in Spanish, the excited chatter of fast-talking brown-skinned people, and the cacophony of guitars, church bells, and the sound of horse-drawn carriages trotting along the stoned roads. Walking around Manila was like looking at a funhouse mirror version of Mexico: more or less the same, but with just enough differences to make his head spin.

"Uh, you alright there, sir?" Patton asked.

"Was just thinking about a bad memory, is all," Alfred grimaced. He's sure that Alejandro would have his head once he returned to the continent. He's been pissing off a lot of Spanish-speaking nations recently, that's for sure. "Come to think of it, the Philippine Islands must have its own personification too, right?"

The private's face darkened. "He's a force to reckon with, sire. Haven't seen no hide nor hair of him myself, but some guys in the other squadron barely survived after fighting with the kid."

"A kid?" Alfred furrowed his eyebrows. He didn't know there were still nations out there who were that young. Then again, he was only a teenager himself, and he was even younger when he fought against Arthur as well. "I don't know how I feel about fighting a kid. Couldn't I just give him a lollipop or something and this could all just work itself out?"

He meant it as a joke, but Patton seemed to take it seriously and started furiously shaking his head. "Don't think you could even try negotiating with him sir, the kid's a savage. Hacked and slashed his way through the guys with some kind of golden knife, they said. We're lucky our medics are so darned fast, otherwise, we would've been down almost a dozen men from him alone."

Something in Alfred's resolve hardened at the thought of losing his soldiers to someone so brutal. He clapped the other man on the shoulder and said, "Don't you worry, Pat. We'll end this soon, and when we win, we'll make sure that nobody from these islands ever lays a hand on any of our own."

That seemed to comfort Patton somewhat, though he was still shaking with anger. "I'll give them a good walloping right by your side, sire."

"Now that's the kind of patriotic determination I wanna see!" Alfred crowed. He then immediately scrambled for his wallet and hurriedly gave the private a wad of bills. Some onlookers openly gawked at seeing the number of dollar bills in his hand. "Tell you what, why don't you buy some booze, head back to camp, and inspire your fellow soldiers, eh? God knows we need some fun around here."

"Um," Patton blinked, caught off-guard. "I don't know if Major-General MacArthur—"

"Tell Major-General MacArthur that I'm just trying to boost morale," Alfred winked. "Also, tell him I'll back by next morning!"

He didn't get to hear Patton's response as he took off running wildly in the opposite direction. He barely registered running past the stores, wet market, and the cathedral; he just wanted to be alone and independent, exploring this new land to his heart's content. The buildings were shorter and the roads were narrower here than in his own country, but Alfred was just so glad to finally be in a place filled with people just like he was used to.

Alfred collapsed on his knees, winded. When he looked up, he was surprised to see that he had apparently made it to one of Manila's many ports. Past the numerous small fishing boats and trading boats, he could see that the sun was already beginning to set. The sky was painted in a pretty combination of pinks and oranges in contrast to the ocean's blue, the stars already starting to twinkle faintly into appearance one by one. The rhythmic lapping of the waves against the rocks seemed louder than everything else around him — a stark reminder that no matter where he went, there was always something bigger to discover.

He stood there for a moment, mesmerized when a loud grunt startled him out of his stupor.

He turned to find some kind of bull staring at him with its beady eyes, its long horns curving towards the back instead of to the front. It was pulling a wagon full of leafy vegetables that Alfred couldn't recognize, and the old man riding it looked startled to come across a foreigner.

"Hijo, padaan naman po," he said, with a strained smile.

"Oh, sorry, I don't know what you mean," Alfred tried, but the man just continued smiling at him. He was starting to think that maybe abandoning Patton, who wasn't fluent but at the very least conversational in Tagalog, was a bad idea.

Luckily, someone came to his rescue. A teenager with bright eyes approached him, an amused twitch of the lips on his sharp face. He was dressed simply: unlike the suit and tie ensemble of the richer Filipinos he'd come across or the pale blue uniform of the Philippine Army, he wore a thin white top and trousers cut just above his ankles. The scabbard on his hip would have been concerning if Alfred didn't know just how many Filipinos carried knives in their daily lives. All in all, he looked just like any other street vendor, but the red handkerchief tied around his neck was vibrant enough to make him stand out. "You are American, yes?"

"Ah yeah," Alfred flushed, a bit flustered. The way the stranger leaned in was a little too close for comfort, but he looked harmless and at least he spoke English. "Can you help me? I think that man is talking to me, but I can't understand what he's saying."

The teenager grabbed his arm to pull him to the side. The old man tipped his straw hat in thanks, and the teenager smiled, saying: "Pasensya na po, lolo! Hindi kasi taga-rito."

The two of them watched the wagon pass them by. They stood there in silence for a moment, and then Alfred blurted out, "I didn't know I was in the way, I swear."

"You did seem quite distracted." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other boy laugh. The both of them turned to each other at the same time, a small smile on each other's faces. "Not that I blame you. I am sure you have sunsets in America, but it is different here than in other countries. I think the colors are more vibrant, do you agree?"

"Certainly takes my breath away," he admitted. "I do have to ask, how come you speak English so well? I've only been in Manila for a few days but I don't think I've met another Filipino that's as good as you are."

The teenager only laughed again and held on to Alfred's arm tighter. As he looked up at him, his eyes and grin were equally bright with mirth; and despite himself, Alfred was a bit charmed. "Us Filipinos are not as stupid as you think, señorito. Now, you say you are a stranger to Manila, yes? Come with me, and let me show you around my city."

—

They ended up hailing a tranvia, a carriage made to carry a whole group of people instead of just a pair. Alfred found it small and quaint, making an internal note to build tram lines in the city once he was able. Yet the energy that the teenager had with him was larger than life. He had apparently noticed the other passengers giving Alfred a suspicious side-eye, and immediately launched into a round of jokes to dispel the tension. Though he barely understood the jokes due to them being told in a mix of Spanish and Tagalog, the way that the whole tranvia burst into loud laughter was enough to assure him that his companion was quite the comedic performer.

When they got off, the driver even thanked them for the entertainment and told them not to pay the fare anymore. Alfred let out an excited whoo! as the teenager did an exaggerated bow.

As the carriage rode off, Alfred turned to his new friend and exclaimed, "Wow! The way you handled that was amazing! I mean, I've been through worse than an awkward train ride, but you definitely saved my ass back there."

The teenager blushed slightly. "Think nothing of it. I would rather see my companions happy and comfortable in my care than anything else."

"Still, that thing you did was certainly a swell sight." Alfred breathed in the cold evening air and let it out with a contented sigh. He looked straight into the other boy's eyes as he said, "And it's really nice that you're going through all the trouble to be with me tonight too! Like, we don't even know each other's names but you just whisked me away like some kind of fairytale hero! That was really awesome of you, I have to say."

"You are a man of sweet words," the teenager said, with a smile that looked almost bittersweet. Then, as if he had completely forgotten about his melancholy, he grabbed Alfred's arm again and dragged him towards the next street corner. "But let us not waste time talking! Most of these shops close soon, and I would hate for us to miss them!"

Helpless, Alfred let himself be strung along.

Sadly, most of the shops they went past had already closed for the day. Still, the teenager cheerily talked his ear off about what wares they sold and the local gossip about the people who ran those stores — like Pepito, owner of the clay pottery store, who had apparently given away all his lotto winnings to the next city's blacksmith. The one time that they had actually been able to buy something was when they came across a small, brightly-colored cart that apparently sold the Filipino version of ice cream. Both the vendor — Mang Tomas, as he was introduced — and the teenager had chuckled when he brought out a wallet full of dollars, so the teenager had to reach into his own pocket to pay with a few coins. As they walked past yet another cathedral, Alfred caught his friend singing the hymns under his breath. When they reached the plaza, the teenager then asked the lady standing nearby — Aling Nena, he was told — to give him a jasmine garland, the scent of the white flowers so powerful that it immediately made Alfred sneeze on his friend's face when he put them around his neck. Yet instead of getting mad like he expected, the teenager had only laughed and told him he looked handsome.

No matter where they went or who they talked to, his friend always seemed to know everyone's names. Alfred had no idea how he had the time to possibly get so familiar with all the people around him, but he certainly understood the sentiment; he loved talking with all the Americans that he came across with too. Personally getting to know the people who made his nation always made him feel more connected with them in a way that war and politics never could.

And if the Philippine Islands was truly to be his someday, Alfred knew he wanted to treat them similarly. More than anything or anyone else though, nobody in the archipelago had intrigued him most than the young man beside him whose smile was brighter than any star.

Yet all his experience in small talk failed him tonight, and not for lack of trying. Every time he asked questions about his friend, he was always diverted away from the topic.

Which part of the city are you from? was met with a vague Do you ask the flower which vine it came from? You are better off simply enjoying the whole garden.

Where is your family? had been completely ignored as his friend said You must be hungry, yes? I know a place with the best empanadas this side of Binondo.

What is your name? earned him a cheeky wink and a teasing If your mind still ventures to inane questions like that, then I am not doing very well in completely impressing you.

How old are you? made the teenager burst out into loud, hearty laughter that lasted for more than a minute. Alfred didn't even bother to try asking anything else after that, choosing to focus on his empanadas and arroz a la valenciana for the rest of the meal.

Later, when they were served a bottle of gin to share along with a bowl of peanuts, his friend had the grace to apologize for his behavior.

"I truly am sorry," he said, but the playful grin on his face made it difficult to take his apology seriously. "I simply do not think that you knowing more about me is more important than us having a good time together."

"How am I supposed to find you again if I don't know who you are, huh?" Alfred couldn't stop himself from whining. He ignored the glass in front of him, taking a swig straight from the bottle and letting the alcohol burn down his throat. His friend watched him in bemusement. "This has been the best night of my life in a long time. And if this is the last time we see each other, I don't think I'm going to forgive myself if I don't push you into giving me a hint."

This time, it was his friend's turn to take a drink: he filled his glass half-full and downed it all in one go. "You are certainly bold, señorito, I will give you that. A good friend of mine warned me about how loud and annoying Americans were, but it seems he neglected to tell me about how forward you all were as well."

Alfred resisted the urge to roll his eyes; of course, he would get deflected yet again. "Alright, I'll bite. Tell me more about your friend."

The teenager looked surprised. "You wish to know more about a man that insulted you?"

"If this is the closest I get to you telling me more about yourself, I'll take it," he shrugged. "Besides, I'd love to know how this friend of yours thinks. Americans are the greatest people in the world! He must be stupid if he doesn't know that."

The other boy laughed. "Of course you would say that, you biased brute. And I will have you know that my friend was quite smart, actually. One of the smartest men I have ever known."

Alfred felt like he wouldn't like the answer, but he asked anyway: "Was?"

All traces of laughter from his friend's face faded away into a hollow smile. "Killed by firing squad a few years ago."

Silently, Alfred poured gin into both of their glasses. They drank in solemn solidarity.

"My sincere condolences," said Alfred, and he meant it: he had lost too many friends himself over the centuries. "And I'm sorry I called him stupid."

His friend waved it off. "No worries. Pepe was incredibly intelligent, but he definitely had his fair share of stupid moments — you wouldn't believe how many times that man fell in love over the course of his short lifetime. Still, I miss him terribly and I wish he was still around. God only knows what he would have thought about everything happening at present."

"Oh, I know the feeling." Despite him dying decades prior, Alfred still longed for George Washington's steadfast guidance sometimes. He reached, a bit messily, for another drink. "It's uncanny, yeah? Some people just have this weird ability to analyze the present and predict the future. I certainly don't know how they do anything like it, really. I kind of just talk big and hope for the best."

"Funny that you talk about the future," the teenager chuckled. "Somehow, my friend even managed to predict that you would come here, Alfred. I did not believe him at the time, of course, but here you are."

"Here I am," Alfred repeated faintly. "Hold on, how did you know my—"

"Why were you all alone in my city, señorito?" His friend interrupted, looking up at him through his eyelashes. He leaned closer, close enough for the skin of their arms to touch, and Alfred suddenly forgot about all his worries. "I was very surprised to see you on your own, looking every bit like a lost little lamb. You are very lucky that I found you."

"Lucky indeed," he murmured, adjusting the collar of his shirt. It felt like the temperature in the room had risen by a dozen degrees. "Just wanted to explore, is all. MacArthur told me we had to stay low for a few more weeks, I got bored, and he let me out."

Those bright eyes were practically glittering as the teenager looked up at him, his fingers slowly tracing up his arm. "And you were alone? I always thought American soldiers traveled in pairs, but perhaps I was mistaken."

"No! No, you're right, you're definitely right," Alfred stammered out. He was sure his face was completely red by now. "I was with Private Wilkes earlier, but we, ah, got separated. He must be on the way back to Bulacan by now."

"How unfortunate," the other practically purred, clearly delighted. "Say, tell me, how did this Wilkes look like? Because I am sure that he does not look as handsome as you do."

That damned smile, now coy instead of kind and sweet, was tantalizingly close. If only he had the courage to lean down—

Alfred, trying desperately to distract himself, grabbed the bottle again and took a long swig.

There were about a million promises that threatened to spill from Alfred's lips, each one more outrageous than the other: Come with me. Stay with me. I'll keep you safe. I'll love you. Yet at the moment, he found himself tongue-tied. He didn't know if it was the alcohol or the atmosphere or the way the young boy across the table had so effortlessly allured him, but he felt like he was about to go insane. He barely registered the both of them standing up to leave, didn't question why they didn't need to pay at the restaurant, paid no heed to what his friend had whispered to the men standing guard by the door. His mind was in a muddy haze, and all he could focus on was the fact that his friend was holding his hand as he was led into the dark streets.

Dimly, Alfred thought that however striking he looked by the setting sun, he looked much more ethereal bathed in moonlight.

He must have said this aloud because the teenager laughed.

"You are a man of sweet words," he said, and there's that oddly bittersweet smile again. "And I wish we could have met in better circumstances."

"What's wrong with the way we met today? I had fun," Alfred argued. He swayed slightly on his feet, and his friend held on to him to keep him from falling. "Didn't you have fun?"

"You forget we are at war, señorito. And you forget that you are seeking to control me and my people, not find a lover." Despite the harsh words, the way his friend said this was soft and sad. Almost like he was somehow hurt. "It does not matter what we feel today if we are bound to fight each other tomorrow. Should you not know this by now?"

They walked together in silence, each supporting the other. Slowly, Alfred's alcohol-induced dizziness began to subside. It was replaced by a growing emptiness in his chest — and a heavy, heavy realization.

"You knew I was America this entire time." When his friend deigned to respond, he continued. "Then, why...?"

At this, the teenager laughed — broken and wistful and desperate, all at once. "I do not know myself. I was ready to attack you, but for some reason, the look in your eyes as you watched the sunset stopped me. I thought, if you could look at my country with such amazement, then you could see that this war is unnecessary. That if you could know my land and my people the way I knew them, full of vibrancy and color and light, then you could realize that they did not deserve to die.

"Yet as the night went on I began to realize my efforts were fruitless. It was not them you were looking at anymore, but me." Here, his friend faced him; Alfred barely catching a glimpse of his wet eyes before the teenager looked away. "Believe me, I would love to spend another night like this with you. But you have your responsibilities and so do I."

"Fruitless," Alfred repeated hollowly. The cold night wind was in stark contrast to the hot rage he felt bubbling inside him. He forcefully wrenched himself away from his friend, yelling: "You made me tell you classified information!"

In seconds, he watched the teenager's face go from shock to hurt to an angry glare.

"Do you not understand how badly I need to win this war? My people did not give their lives to free me from Spain just so you could swoop in and take over! So forgive me, señorito," his friend spat mockingly, "for trying to find whatever advantages my poor nation can get against such an imperialistic nation like you!"

"And do you not understand what we're trying to do here?" Alfred shouted. "We are fighting this war to save you! Don't you see that your country is a mess? That you're underdeveloped, uneducated, and unfit for self-rule? I was the hero who helped save your people from Spain, jackass, and—"

"—and you promised to give us independence, and yet all your countrymen seem to do is kill." The teenager finished, both his eyes and the hilt of his knife glinting golden under the moonlight. "Is that what freedom means to you, America? I beg to differ."

As Alfred stepped away from him in furious, furious betrayal, all he could think about was that the other boy looked so small.

"I thought of you as my friend," he said.

"And I thought of you as my liberator," the teenager said coolly. "I see we were both wrong."

A harsh whinny interrupted them both. Alfred turned to find Patton riding a chestnut brown horse, his face red from exhaustion but seemingly unharmed. The private stopped in front of him, dismounting without grace on the pavement. His face was red from exhaustion and his clothes looked considerably ruffled, but otherwise, he looked unharmed.

"It ain't my position to say this sire, but don't you dare ever try to run away from me like that again," Patton panted, giving a quick side-eye to the other teenager before dismissing him. "We best hurry now, because those two won't be happy about their stolen horse."

Just as he was about to ask who those two were, a pair of Filipinos with muskets turned the corner and ran towards them. He vaguely recognized them as the same two men who were standing guard at the restaurant. They shouted loudly, a mix of Tagalog and Spanish expletives that Alfred could barely recognize, and a phrase distinct enough that he felt like it was something significant: amang bayan.

Patton evidently recognized the words. He looked at him in a wide-eyed panic, saying, "Sire, we need to leave—"

And as quick as lightning, Patton fell to the ground with a sickening crack. Caught completely off-guard and his arms restrained, he was helpless against the teenager who had a knife at his throat: a knife that, as Alfred began to realize with a horrified lurch of his stomach, was engraved with golden flowers and the insignia of an eight-rayed sun.

"You must be Private Wilkes," the Philippines smiled. "I do hope you are enjoying my country."

"Get off him or else!" Alfred screamed, the combined events of the night making him feel like he was about to reach his breaking point. He reached for the pistol he kept hidden on his belt and took aim, hoping to God that the other nation wouldn't force him to shoot. Even after everything, he didn't feel like he had the nerve to hurt Philippines after the hours they spent together; maybe some other day, but not tonight.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the two men had caught up to them. They angled their muskets at him from a distance. The horse, which Alfred had been planning to use for escape, had already taken off running in the commotion.

Patton stared up at him with fear in his eyes, a bleeding gash on his forehead, and Alfred's hands began to shake.

Above all else, Philippines was still smiling: eyes bright, amused twitch of the lips on his sharp face. Slowly, he stood to approach him.

Like a switch had been flicked, his features turned soft and kind again — more like the boy that Alfred had met earlier, the boy who had dragged him around the streets of Manila with lighthearted laughter, the boy whose smile was brighter than any star. All Alfred could do was stand there, mesmerized once again, as his hand was gently pried away from the gun.

"Alfred," Philippines said this quietly, almost like he was invoking a prayer. He motioned the men to stand down. "I do not wish to fight."

"I don't want to either," Alfred admitted. Maybe there was hope... "C'mon, we can talk this through, right? Look, we haven't had a battle in months. It should be really easy to negotiate, yeah? I'll set up a meeting with your generals and mine, we'll have a civil discussion with no weapons allowed, and we'll reach a compromise."

The other nation was leaning in, and this time, Alfred took his chance. He held Philippines' cheek in his hands and they kissed, soft and quick and chaste.

"Of course," Alfred said, as he pulled away. "I would need your complete surrender—"

He was swiftly kneed in the stomach, disarmed, and shot.

"Alfred, I do not wish to fight," Philippines said, as he watched Alfred collapse to the ground. "But I have to. I hope you understand."

He vaguely registered Patton reaching out to him as his eyes closed and the blood pooled around him, but all he could focus on was watching the other nation walk away into the darkness.

—

When Alfred came to, he was already back at camp. Without thinking, he immediately trudged to the general's war office.

"Good morning, Major-General MacArthur," he smiled, bright and cheery. "Gather the troops. I want to destroy Manila immediately."

—

Notes:

This is set in October 1899, during those months when there were no battles or skirmishes between the two armies. On the first day of November, the Americans launched a major attack on the Filipinos. This attack happened in San Fabian, Pangasinan, not in Manila, but let's forget about that.

Major-General MacArthur is, of course, Arthur MacArthur Jr., who was a major military figure during the Philippine-American War. I also claim artistic license in hinting that the American camp was in Bulacan because it probably wasn't.

Alfred's comments about Manila looking like Mexico are based on a comment by former president Manuel L. Quezon when he visited Mexico back in 1937: "Everything was the same." He meant that very, very affectionately.

Here's a nifty map of modern Manila. Alfred and Patton start out in Quiapo, which is basically the heart of downtown Manila. Alfred runs all the way to Muelle del Rey, which, coincidentally, happens to be the same place where the Jones Bridge stands today. Alfred and Phili take the tranvia to Binondo, Manila's business district and home to the world's oldest Chinatown.

The names of the store owners and vendors that Phili talks about are references to assorted media in Philippine pop culture. Pepito is a reference to Pepito Manaloto, a long-time comedy show about a man who won the lotto. Mang Tomas (Mang being an informal way to refer to a male adult older than you) is the name of a popular brand of gravy. Aling Nena (Aling being an informal way to refer to a female adult older than you) is a reference to the song Tindahan ni Aling Nena, about a boy who falls in love with a storeowner's daughter.

The garland of white jasmines that Phili puts around Alfred's neck are supposed to be sampaguitas, our national flower. They're usually sold near churches and are given as a sign of respect.

I have no idea if there are actually empanadas and valenciana sold somewhere in Binondo, but let's jot that down to artistic license. But these are very much Filipino foods that were adapted from Spanish foods, which is why Phili brings it up when Alfred asks about his family.

The old friend that Phili keeps talking about is Jose Rizal, our national hero. He is primarily known for being a great writer, whose novels inspired the Philippine War for Independence, and for being killed for it. He is also known for being having a long list of lovers, many of them not even Filipino. Lesser known is the fact that he visited America, hated it, went on a train ride with an American, and hated it. He wrote a whole diary entry about how much he didn't like America and Americans. He had also predicted that out of all the world powers, it would be America who would probably take an interest in conquering the Philippines when Spain was out of the picture. Go figure. Rizal was also affectionately known by his nickname, Pepe.

I imagine Phili to be particularly proficient in arnis, which is also known as kali or eskrima. It's a kind of Filipino martial art, most easily recognizable as that one martial art where everyone is dual-wielding a pair of sticks. The sticks are actually for training. Traditionally, arnis is fought by dual-wielding knives or swords, and it's meant to be quick and efficient in defending, attacking, disarming, and killing. Phili's fictional ornately designed knife is inspired by this very real ornately designed knife. The detail of the eight-rayed sun is a reference to the eight-rayed sun in the Philippine flag.

Lastly (phew!), some Tagalog to English translations!

Hijo, padaan naman po - Young boy, kindly let me pass Pasensya na po, lolo! Hindi kasi taga-rito - Sorry, grandfather*! He's not from around here. Lolo literally means grandfather but is a general way to refer to any elderly man regardless of any actual blood relation. Amang bayan - Fatherland

#hws #hws america #hws philippines #usph #amephil #hetalia philippines #hetalia america #aph philippines #aph america #historical hetalia #mine

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collectionofsinglefathers · 3 years

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I have a feeling she might be playing it up for effect, but the way Sharon talks about Bucky also plays into the whole thing of Captain America being used as a propaganda tool by the US government within the MCU. Bucky too would’ve been a part of that.

In the original Winter Soldier comic line, there’s a great moment where Steve talks about the darker side of Bucky in the reality of WWII and fighting HYDRA:

“Which is the real secret of what Bucky was. The official story said he was a symbol to counter the rise of Hitler youth... and there was some truth to that. But like all things in war, there was a darker truth underneath. Bucky did the things I couldn’t. I was the icon. I wore the flag... But while I gave speeches to troops in the trenches... he was doing what he’d been trained to do... and he was highly trained.”

For anyone who might not be as familiar with Bucky in the comics, and I’m not an expert or anything, like I’ve said I only really know the original Winter Soldier line when it comes to Bucky, Steve and Bucky weren’t childhood best friends like they are in the MCU. Bucky was a kid he got paired up with after getting the serum. I don’t remember exactly, it’s been a LONG time since I’ve read the original WS line. But I know he was a kid, and he was used as this icon to basically try and boost American patriotism in young kids during the time period, when in reality he was doing a lot of the more messed up stuff that Steve couldn’t do because of the nature of Captain America and the icon that he was. Bucky was “just a sidekick”, so it was easier to sweep the stuff he was trained to do under the rug. They used him as propaganda the same way Steve was used

And there’s evidence of it in the MCU as well. In the Winter Soldier, when Steve goes to the Captain America exhibit in the Smithsonian, there’s a big memorial display for Bucky, with everyone still believing him to be dead, and the whole thing is practically a constructed narrative made by the people who made the memorial, and not all from the real facts. Here’s a pretty clear picture of the memorial, and I’ll also write out what it says down below:

“Born in 1916, Barnes was born the oldest child of four. An excellent athlete who also excelled in the classroom, Barnes enlisted in the Army shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After winter training at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, Barnes and the rest of the 107th shipped out to the Italian Front. Captured by HYDRA troops later that fall, Barnes endured long periods of isolation, depravation, and torture. But his will was strong. In an ironic twist of fate, his prison camp was liberated by none other than his childhood friend, Steve Rogers, now Captain America.

Reunited, Barnes and Rogers led Captain America’s newly formed unit, the Howling Commandos. Barnes’ marksmanship was invaluable as Rogers and his team destroyed HYDRA bases and disrupted Nazi troop movements throughout the European Theater.”

First of all, there’s a giant contradiction within the text itself (although that’s probably just more of a continuity error or typo and not a propaganda thing). The main text says Bucky was born in 1916, but then down at the bottom, it says 1917 - 1944. (The MCU has also never been super clear on in he fell into the ravine in 44 or 45, but that’s not super relevant.)

It states that he enlisted, and it’s a big fan favorite headcanon that Bucky was drafted, and I actually believe this headcanon to be true. One, because in Sebastian’s performance in Cap 1, nothing about it says to me “Bucky totally wants to do this”. Two, it’s actually supported by historical fact. In WWII, there was a specific system to how soldiers’ ID numbers worked. A newer (and awesome) mutual of mine @maxwyl told me that Bucky’s full ID number is 32557038. According to this Wikipedia article, the first two numbers, 32, signify that he was drafted in the Delaware, New Jersey, and New York area, and seeing as he’s from Brooklyn, it lines up.

Third, the way it mentions how Steve liberated the HYDRA prison camp makes it sound like it was fate, like Steve was just on another mission and Bucky just happened to be there. It completely leaves out the fact that Steve hadn’t been on any sanctioned missions, and I’m fact went against orders and took action into his own hands because he heard that Bucky, his best friend, was being presumed dead along with the rest of the captured 107th.

And also, just the way it says that his “will was strong” through being tortured by HYDRA feels so much like a cliched “they couldn’t break him” type of thing, when in reality he was barely conscious when Steve found him and was probably only able to keep up with Steve during their escape due to adrenaline and just wanting to make sure his best friend survived.

I went off on a tangent there. But anyway, while what Sharon says to Bucky is a clear indicator of that kind of public image being put out of Bucky, I think it’s more her playing it up, mostly due to her proximity to Peggy and her seeming to be a hero to Sharon from the way she talked about her in Civil War.

#bucky barnes #sharon carter #steve rogers #mcu #tfatws #the falcon and the winter soldier #spoilers #spoilers cw #mcu spoilers #tfatws spoilers #the falcon and the winter soldier spoilers #long post #long post cw

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kinetic-elaboration · 3 years

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September 17: 3x07 Day of the Dove

I am incredibly discombobulated today—usual weekend nocturnal shenanigans I guess! Anyway it’s somehow midnight. Gonna try to write up these note on the Classic episode The Day of the Dove in as efficient a manner as possible.

Hmm, a planet with wavy pink Fraggle plants. I like it already.

But where is Spock? Very suspicious.

I really appreciate Kirk giving a little speech to set up the overall question/issue for us. (I know he does this all the time with the Captain’s logs but this is out loud and so… more obviously expository.)

Oh no, it’s our old friends…the Klingons.

I will admit that this ONE TIME, the Klingon is being reasonable. Like, it is reasonable to think that Kirk and the Enterprise attacked his ship, given that his hip WAS attacked, and who else would it be?

Three years of peace between the Klingons and the Federation? That is inclusive of the show so all this tension must technically be “peace” and also implies there was something more like a direct war going on, like, right before Kirk got the captaincy.

Zoolander voice: What is this, a colony of the INVISIBLE?

“We have no devil. But we understand the habits of yours.”

No takers? No takers on the torture? No volunteers to be mercilessly tortured by the Klingons?

Star Trek Beyond could have had Kirk and Chekov bond over being brothers! I mean, to other people.

They’ll kill 100 hostages at the first sign of treachery. He does know there are only 400-some people on the ship right? Maybe you should pace yourself, Kang.

Kirk’s so badass he needs MULTIPLE guns trained on him just to use the phone.

Oh-ho secret message to Spock. Which version of the iPhone will be capable of doing THAT?

The Klingons are “suspended in transit” is an awfully nice way of saying they’re just dematerialized atoms in space. Philosophy major and/or Bones nightmare fuel.

How did Kang not see this coming, by the way? Like, he just says “I’m taking your ship now, me and my 6 men versus your 400-some men, and I’ll do this by simply declaring it to be so. Now let’s beam up to your ship, where I’ll be greatly outnumbered, and there are armed security guards all around me.” Guess he’s been reading The Secret!

WIFE AND SCIENCE OFFICER

Aka the most important part of this whole episode.

Kirk’s face is very ?????? You can have both????

It’s legitimately not even important for her to be the science officer tbqh. Like that is so gratuitous. That’s just in there to drive me insane.

"We're prisoners, somehow, after I demanded to come on the ship, assuming they'd just give it to me without any kind of fight. How DID this happen?”

Federation death camps lol—someone’s been watching Fox News.

I do kind of wonder… is this an actual rumor that goes around the Klingon homeworld or is it something that the alien entity put in her head specifically to make her angrier right now? I mean it really could be either.

I also appreciate this episode for being pretty much the only one to actually attempt to give the Klingons a reason for being as they are. The Romulans… maybe aren’t well-described, but they do have a sort of regalness to them, appropriate for being related to Vulcans, and you can kind of imagine that they are the way they are because they’re Vulcans without the intense self-control. Plus they’re literally only in 2 TOS eps and in the second, the Federation are the aggressors. But the Klingons show up a half-dozen times only to be depicted each time as just like Cartoonishly Bad, aggressive, violent, and selfish for basically no reason. And I mean, some people really are!! But TOS has so much nuance in other places, that it always seemed a little disappointing to me that the Klingons are really just like ‘well we’re just bad and we hate everyone and we really like killing I guess.” At least in this ep there’s a little more added to that: that there is poverty on their world, that they feel aggrieved, that they feel unprotected, that taking and conquering is how they look after themselves…

I think that’s later in the episode though.

He’s detaining them in the LOUNGE lol. With their favorite dishes available to them to eat. Absolutely barbarous conditions.

I can’t believe Chekov is hanging in the elevator with the cool kids. Like, one of these things really isn’t like the others.

Kang is officially sure of himself for someone currently imprisoned in the lounge, that most fearsome of Federation death camps.

Hmm, could the glittery light alien have taken over??

You know what, that's a lot of tasks for Johnson to do all by himself: search the whole ship, fix the engines, and free 400 people.

Sulu would love this: everyone gets a sword!!

“Bridge. I gotta show this to Sulu immediately.”

Klingons have maintained a dueling tradition. That’s interesting. Finally some characterization going on.

Spock is really living up to his logical nature today. Everyone else has gone off the emotional deep end and he’s like “have you considered this completely rational explanation that accounts for the actual, observed facts??”

Whoops Chekov is actually an only child. Scratch that previous Beyond headcanon. (Interesting that his dead brother does really resemble Sam though—killed on a research colony??)

Love that Sulu knows that about him though.

Oh, that’s a pretty schematic picture of the Enterprise. I want that on a t-shirt.

Lol the pan out to the armory, now filled with… swords!!

Do ALL of these men have a fetish for swords? Sulu and fencing, Spock displaying swords in his quarters, and Kirk in his San Francisco apartment, and Scotty salivating over this Scottish blade.

“Klingon units.”

Finally Sulu gets his sword! It’s what he deserves.

Love that the shiny light alien also has a fetish for swords.

Oh no, it’s our old adversary, an alien life force.

What is the alien’s purpose? Um, I’m pretty sure its purpose is to start shit.

“An appropriate choice of terms, Captain.” I don’t even remember what this is referring to but I think it’s pretty clear that Spock is enjoying himself during a crisis again.

Bones, being so dramatic. Were there atrocities? He’s talking about the Klingons as if they were literally hacking off limbs—it’s a few stab wounds here and there, chill.

Oooh, time to behave like military men—strong words. (But I thought it wasn’t the military?? @ S**** P****) (This might not even be my best argument, given the context of this episode, but I’m sticking with it.)

This is like a giant game of capture the flag.

AU that’s just about the Enterprise crew playing capture the flag with the Klingons.

Sulu in the background standing guard with his sword

Damn, turning on Spock with the slurs now!!

Spock was absolutely ready to kill him. Like he would 100% have taken him out with a blow to the head. And he’d been doing such a good job of not feeling the alien’s effects so far! Admittedly, that was a strong provocation though.

Honestly, I really like this scene. It’s uncomfortable and tense and you can really see how the alien is bringing out the worst possible influences of their respective races. And I liked how Spock was definitely full on pre-Reform Vulcan for a minute there. It was a more effective portrayal of what that might have looked like than All Our Yesterdays tbqh.

A result of… stress?

Kirk got himself out of it first. He’s so strong. He knows himself so well, he cannot be outsmarted by any alien.

“We’ve been taught to think in terms other than war.”

“The alien brings out the worst of us—patriotic drumbeating…even race hatred.”

He’s so sad; he can’t imagine thinking like that about Spock :(

Sulu in a Jeffries tube! A man of many talents. It’s okay bb, take credit for turning on the lights.

The alien must have been getting bored. The Klingons must have been doing too well, and the playing field needs to be leveled for maximum shit-stirring.

“Let’s find that alien.” That’s how I ALWAYS feel.

Oh, Kang, you’re so close—“What power supports our battle but thwarts our victory.” So, so close to getting it.

ALIEN DETECTED.

Spock takes his sword, of course.

“Jim.” Obligatory Jim moments hit differently when they’re not so obligatory.

“Jim—stop hitting my protégé. And put that sword down.”

Kirk looks so sad, picking Chekov up to carry him bridal style.

Also in addition to ‘race hatred’ I think we need to add ‘rape-y tendances’ to the bad stuff that the alien is inspiring here.

“A brief surge of racial bigotry. Most distasteful.” Spock winning for understatement of the year.

They're assuming the alien is trying to test out their relative powers but I think it just wants entertainment. I mean, doesn’t it look like a naughty little thing?

Mara’s outfit is… little shorts? Interesting. Usually not my style but she makes it work.

Spock doesn’t even look at Johnson as he falls lol. Another one bites the dust.

“It exists on the hate of others.”

What does this remind me of? Oh, the Vast of Night and the whole “aliens made us do every bad thing ever” conspiracy theory. At least this one makes more sense, in part because it is not quite so overwhelmingly broad!

All hostile attitudes must be eliminated, he says, and there's Mara right behind Kirk giving him a death stare lol.

Kang is so obviously posing. Google Earth, always taking pictures.

Only a few minutes before drifting forever in space becomes inevitable? Good thing Kirk works well under pressure.

“Well… do whatever you can, Scotty. You know the drill.” Doesn’t even bother giving real directions anymore. We’ve been in this scenario before.

“So we drift in space, with only hatred and bloodshed aboard.”

And the 392 people below just get to…live in Enterprise prison, I guess.

Star date: Armageddon. So dramatic!

I’m not even making that up; that’s an actual quote. Can you imagine being an Admiral listening to this?

“Stop the war now.” An actual line, really aired on television.

Spock wants to threaten the wife lol. That's the old pre-Reform Vulcan seeping through. Surak who?

Damn, Kang is cold. “Eh, she gets the concept of being killed in battle.” They’re gonna need marriage counseling after this.

“There is another way. Mutual trust and help.” Yes that’s my hero!!

“No one can guarantee the actions of another.” Can’t remember the context of this entirely anymore, but great line.

The entity is loving this—multi-person choreographed sword fight!!

"Those who hate and fight must stop themselves. otherwise it is not stopped.” Another baller line. Spock has a lot of deep thoughts today. And so does Kirk. And Kang.

Kirk tries to reason with the alien. Nice try.

“Shoo. Shoo, alien. Off the ship, go away.”

Omg that last moment—Kang slapping Kirk’s back way too hard, Spock’s completely ridiculous wide-eyed expression when he does, like some sort of combo of amusement and confusion, and then Sulu just passing on by in the background….

Then the alien just yeets itself into space. And that’s the end!

Always feels weird when there’s no wrap up on the bridge.

Also, what are they going to do with the Klingons? They have no ship. They really did come out of this a lot worse than Kirk and co. No ship, huge casualties—and no one to blame even, but the alien.

I feel like the alien messed up a little in killing so many Klingons. Like, it could have accomplished its purpose, angering the Klingons and turning them on Kirk, by attacking the ship a little less violently—you know they’d react to 5 deaths pretty much the same as 400, and then there would be many more people to fight forever and produce that sweet sweet anger!

Maybe the alien’s powers aren’t strong enough to influence 800 people though. Also it wants equal forces and 800 people wouldn’t fit on the Enterprise, one assumes. So it still makes sense.

That was, of course, an excellent episode. 100% agree with is classic status, even though the main things I remembered going in were the wife + science officer bit, and everyone laughing at the end in a really forced, fake way, in order to make the alien go away.

I thought the Klingons were a lot better/more interesting today than usual. First, I think Kang is a better character, or a better actor maybe, than the others; he has a certain way about him that is… more watchable, more sympathetic. And he’s always saying these really dramatic things that make it seem likely he writes patriotic Klingon war poetry in his off time. Also, including his wife made them seem more… not human obviously, but normal. Not just cardboard cut-out villains. And of course the actual lightly specific motivations I earlier mentioned helped too.

Also, the plotting was very good: it built up slowly but surely over time, so at first the alien’s influence wasn’t that obvious, and then it became more so, and then it became horrifically obvious and extreme. And then you had to re-evaluate earlier moments: was that the alien changing facts in their heads, or a real part of the animosity between humans and Klingons? And it wasn’t always clear, which I appreciated. The tension when the people were at their worst wasn’t overdone, like in that moment with Scotty, Spock, and Kirk—or even in Chekov’s assault on Mara, tbh. The various strategies of the different sides were very entertaining too; there was never a dull moment, and they fit in a lot of straight-up actions and twists into 50 minutes.

The possible threat was truly terrifying, also: stuck in a space ship, forever, unable to die, feeling the worst possible emotions all the time, besieged, angered, despairing, fighting a war that can’t be won, being injured and suffering only to recover and fight again, and it never stops… A perfect nightmare mixture of insanity and violence and pain. And the alien, in encouraging hatred and anger, doesn’t discriminate between sides: they turn on each other just as much as on the Klingons, breeding paranoia and infighting. For eternity.

The episode also felt much more strongly anti-war than I remember tbh. Like it was not subtle. Kirk literally says “stop the war” in so many words. He has a part in his speech where he talks about the possibility of other aliens out there, encouraging other wars. And while I do think “maybe the aliens are making us do it” is a cop out explanation, or would be if it were real, the scenario gave the show a lot of room to say, like, pretty ballsy things: to include “patriotic drum beating” along with “race hatred” in a list of corrupting feelings they were experiencing; to show how the same instincts that lead to warring also lead to sexual assault and the aforementioned ‘race hatred;” to reveal the true horror of an endless war by making the participants unkillable and sticking them in a singular space ship in the middle of nowhere; to imply that the combatants of war gain nothing from it, but outside or third-party entities will pull strings of their own design to profit from the conflict as long as possible; even to make an impassioned plea to camera to stop the endlessness of the conflict. Like I can’t even totally unpack this but it is a lot!

Finally, it was also a great Kirk episode, which of course is my most important factor. He’s smart; he’s strong; he’s so sure of himself and his values that he cannot be manipulated to mindless hatred, he represents the values of the Federation, and the show itself; he treats even his enemies with basic respect and humanity; and ultimately, he saves the day.

Okay I was not efficient in writing this up at all! It is very late!!

#the year 2021 #2021: star trek #2021: fandom thoughts #star trek tos

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fanfics-andstuff · 3 years

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Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf

1755-01-11: Olivia and Alexander Hamilton’s Birth - Olivia and Alexander were born in Charlestown, St. Kitts, and Nevis.

1765-01-16: Hamilton’s Father Left - James Hamilton, Olivia and Alexander Hamilton's father, and a Scottish Laird, left Hamilton and his family, most likely due to the fact, Olivia, Alexander, and James Jr. were his illegitimate children. It was a relief for the children because he would always beat up James Jr. and Olivia, trying to protect their youngest sibling.

1766-02-17: Hamilton’s Mother Dies - Rachel Faucette Buck, Hamilton's mother, died on February 19, 1768. Cause of death: Yellow Fever. After her death, Alexander and Olivia moved to live with their cousin for a year. Before she died, she gave Olivia the Hamilton ring (gold ring, amethyst pearl-shaped center, and small emerald cut emeralds) that was said to be passed down from generation to generation and a navy blue and dark purple diary, she gave Alexander her necklace from George (5 sapphire petals, a red ruby center, and a thin gold chain).

1766-02-20: Hamiltons In Court - John Lavien (Rachel’s husband) arrived wanting a divorce decree. He wanted the court to reward the entire estate to his son, Peter because the twins were illegitimate. Alexander and Olivia had their uncle, James Lytton, sign a false birth year for court documents that had them add two years their senior. The only thing they got was books taken from Peter, thanks to their uncle.

1767-02-17: Hamilton’s Cousin Committed Suicide and James Jr. Left to Become a Carpenter- Peter Lytton committed suicide over the death of his wife. Alexander and Olivia are now, with no money and family, or destitute orphans. James Jr had to leave the twins behind to become an apprentice of a carpenter.

1771-01-16: Alexander In Charge Of A Trading Charter - Since girls couldn’t work, Alexander had to. Turns out, that Alexander had the perfect “age” for jobs.

1772-08-31: Hurricane Maria Hits - Hurricane Maria hit St. Croix, where Alexander was working and Olivia was nearby to look out for her younger brother.

1772-09-06: Alexander Writes About Hurricane Maria - Alexander wrote to his father describing the storm and gained the attention of the island’s elite. He “wrote his way out”.

1772-12-01: Olivia Receives a Letter That Alexander Died - Somewhere between these months, Olivia gets a letter that the ship Alexander was on sunk and there were no survivors. She was then sold to a family in Setauket, Long Island as a slave, where she meets Benjamin Tallmadge, Anna Smith, Abraham Woodhull, and Caleb Brewster.

1776-09-15: Olivia Gets Freed - Thankfully Olivia was considered white, so she was taught how to improve her grammar, writing, healing, cooking, etc. She still had her Nevis accent, but Olivia could play it off by saying Spanish was her native language. Speaking of languages, Olivia was fluent in French, Latin, Greek, Italian, Danish, and Hebrew. 4 or so years later, Olivia was a free woman.

1777-04-27: Olivia Reunites With Alexander - Olivia gets assigned as a spy for the continental army. The rest of the army gets word that she had the same last name as Alexander’s. After being reintroduced to each other, Olivia forces Alexander to take more care of himself (eating, sleeping).

1777-09-11: Olivia gets shot in the side during the Battle of Brandywine.

1777-10-18: Olivia And Alexander Presumed Dead - Both Hamilton twins jumped in the Schuylkill River and swam deeper, hoping the British Cavalry presumed them dead. They were washed down miles going with the current of the river. Alexander carried her unconscious body to the Patriot camp. Hercules Mulligan found the twins and helped them get to their destination quicker.

1777-10-19: Washington Finds Out The Twins Are His - Olivia woke first and told Washington to read her diary for answers because she was too tired. He found out about Olivia’s life story and found out Olivia Rachel and Alexander James Hamilton were his biological children. Washington then found out about the Hamilton family ring and Rachel’s flower necklace. Olivia and Washington swore to never tell this to Alexander and to any human being (not a certain diary written in code that no one, but Olivia and Alexander can understand).

1777-10-20: Olivia sneaks off to the Battle of Paoli, instead of resting.

1777-10-21: The Locket - Washington gave Olivia a gold locket engraved with ‘Together In Mount Vernon, Virginia’ complete with a gold chain. Inside was a portrait of the Hamilsiblings (Alex, Olivia, Ben, and Laf) on the right and a portrait of the Washington couple on the left.

1778-05-25: Olivia Comes Back - After disguising herself as a black-haired, Dutch woman, named Denise Melody, she returned to Washington about the British army. Olivia resigned as a spy because she didn’t want to come back to England ever again. But mostly, she was afraid that King George III would force her to marry him.

1778-05-26: Olivia Becomes The First Woman General - After listening from every soldier in the Continental Army, General George Washington makes Olivia a General. The only difference is that she would be traveling with the main camp because she doesn't have enough experience to lead her own army. She helped train the under-trained soldiers, sewed clothes for those who were practically naked, negotiated with wealthy families to give the army food, helped with the battle plans because of her knowledge as a spy, and her overall kindness and empathy to everyone helped her rise to the top to not only the soldiers but to the rest of the people in the Colonies.

1778-06-28: The Battle of Monmouth - Olivia saves Benjamin Tallmadge from William Bradford when Charles Lee ordered him to. The rest of the army arrives behind Washington. Olivia participates in the Battle of Monmouth.

1778-09-15: Olivia And Lafayette’s Relationship - In Olivia’s diary, she didn’t specify the date because she wrote “I believe it is the 15th of September 1778”. In the entry, she wrote about her and Lafayette’s relationship began as platonic but over time, it became romantic.

1778-11-01: Olivia Joins The Culper Ring - After begging and pleading to her father and Commander in Chief, Olivia joins the Culper Spy Ring with the rest of the members: Benjamin Tallmadge, Caleb Brewster, Anna Strong, Abigail, Abraham Woodhull, and Robert Townsend. Olivia gets a golden band from Apollo that helps disguise her appearance with the use of the mist, she gives the other rings to the other members. They created a cover that the golden rings were from their deceased family member. In reality, they used it to signal the others when they need help or have information about the British.

1778-12-15: Olivia As a Maid - Olivia disguises herself as a beaten and branded girl as a Caribbean slave, even though she was white by the Continental Army to John André's home to spy on him. She later resigns from her post before her next battle.

1779-07-16: Stony Point - Olivia helps capture Stony Point, New York with the army.

1779-11-17: Olivia And John Get Married - To keep the relationship between John and Alexander less suspicious, Olivia proposed a marriage proposal to John’s father; Henry, who knew about their secret relationship, agreed. Even though both adults were married, they had no love for the other than familial love. They agreed that their marriage was only public and behind closed doors, they would seek out their paramour (John-Alexander and Olivia-Lafayette).

1780-06-17: Olivia’s Quadruplets - 9 months later, Olivia gave birth to 4 children: Rachel Olivia, Alexander John, George Benjamin, and Elizabeth Gilberta Laurens from oldest to youngest. The godparents of each child were Olivia-Martha Washington, Alexander-George Washington, George-Benjamin Tallmadge, and Elizabeth-Lafayette. Because of this, Olivia took a break from the army for a while.

1780-09-23: Caleb Brewster and Olivia Find Out Arnold's A Traitor - After talking with Anna Strong, Brewster and Olivia ride full speed towards West Point, NY to deliver the message to George Washington. Ben and Olivia tried to shoot Arnold, but due to their closeness, they couldn't.

1780-10-02: John André Hanged - André was born a child of Athena and knew about the Greek Gods. He knew that Olivia was spying on him, but didn't comment on it until they were in private before his execution. The Fates had cut his string in front of him when Olivia posed as a maid and had demigod dreams of his death. John knew that Olivia was a legacy of Apollo and Athena, he didn't want to hurt his family.

1780-12-14: Alexander and Eliza Get Married - Eliza accepted John’s relationship with her husband as long as Alexander doesn’t cheat on her with other women.

1780-12-15: Olivia Boards L'Hermione - Olivia joins Lafayette to bring down turncoat Benedict Arnold. They join 1, 200 troops and sail south to Virginia.

1781-05-20: Abraham Boards L'Hermione - Abraham gets captured by the French and gave information to Lafayette, but before anything else happens, the ship gets attacked by cannons. When Brewster and Olivia identify Abraham as a spy for the Culper Ring named Samuel Culper Sr, they sail to Yorktown, Virginia.

1781-09-28: The Battle Of Yorktown - Olivia gets shot 3 times during the battle but recovered soon after. Lafayette soon bid Olivia farewell to sail back to France. Olivia gives him her very long lock of braided hair inside a portrait locket necklace of her for him to remember her by. He also gives her a braided lock of his hair and a portrait locket of himself.

1782-01-22: Olivia Becomes An Aunt - Phillip Hamilton was born.

1782-08-27: John Laurens Dies - Olivia, Alexander, Hercules, and Lafayette get letters from Henry Laurens that John died in South Carolina. In her letter, Olivia receives her husband’s wedding ring. Heartbroken, Olivia vows to never marry again.

1782-09-01: Olivia And Alexander Return To New York - Olivia gets a house in Harlem near her brother and his family. She led a quiet life with her children, unlike Alexander, for a while.

1783-01-01: Olivia Bids Angelica Farewell - Over the course of the years, Olivia and Angelica became best friends. She hated the fact that Angelica and her family would go back to the same country they fought for years.

1783-06-20: Pennsylvania Mutiny - Olivia watches the 10 leaders of the Pennsylvania Mutiny be gunned down by their own men beside Alexander and Ben.

1783-09-03: The End Of The Revolution - The Treaty of Paris was finally signed which negotiated between America and Great Britain, ended the revolution, and recognized America as an independent.

1787-10-?: Alexander Asks Olivia To Co-Write The Federalist Papers - Sometime before the writing of the Federalist Papers, Alexander asks Olivia to co-write it with John Jay, James Madison, and himself. Olivia politely declined because she believed that the three men could do it without her.

1787-05-25: The Twins Go To The Constitutional Convention - Olivia Hamilton Laurens and Alexander Hamilton were one-half of the New York delegates. The former was the only woman to go to the Constitutional Convention. Though the twins did little in writing the Constitution, they signed the paper anyway.

1789-02-04: Olivia Becomes The First Woman Vice President - Olivia ran for President all in good fun. The results were unanimous because she was one of the contributing factors that helped America become independent, only second to George Washington, and became the Vice President of the United States.

1790-03-22: Olivia Meets Thomas Jefferson - When Jefferson and Olivia met, let’s just say that they will forever be enemies. This is partly the reason why Alexander and Jefferson were also enemies.

1790-06-20: Olivia Refuses To Go To The Jefferson Dinner - Olivia doesn’t go to the dinner with Jefferson, Madison, Alexander, and a few others saying she had other things to do. But she doesn’t go because she didn’t want to be caught in the middle of a verbal fight between Alexander and Jefferson, again.

1791-07-05: Olivia Finds Out About Alexander’s Affair - Alexander needed to speak to someone about his affair with Maria Reynolds, so he went to Olivia (naturally). Olivia slaps him and tells him about his promise to Eliza when he married her. She tells him if her husband finds out and tells/writes you to give him money to keep the affair a secret, he himself would pay entirely.

1792-?-?: Olivia Receives Word About Lafayette’s Capture - Historians would never know the date when Olivia gets a letter that Lafayette fled from France and in prison because she only wrote the year and stopped writing in her diary for the rest of that year. They figured that she was extremely heartbroken to write.

1793-02-25: Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf - Olivia was poisoned by a loyalist named Micheal Key. Thankfully the poison was expired and went on to sit in Mount Vernon for hours talking about the establishment of the first U.S. bank. But due to Olivia’s frail and weak body for not eating and sleeping at the correct times, she became gravely ill. She sent her four children to Setauket with Abraham Woodhull. the week before. The four mentioned people came to her room in Mount Vernon. minutes before Olivia died. She gave Washington the locket he gave her all those years ago, gave Benjamin her sun hair comb he gave her when the war was over and her golden spy ring, gave Eliza her and John’s wedding rings and gave Alexander the Hamilton family ring and her diary (she instructed him to only read the entry about their true heritage when he is on his deathbed). She then instructed Ben to give Lafayette, her one true love, to give the gift he gave her when they started their relationship, a sapphire bracelet when he visits America once more. Olivia told the three to forgive her for leaving too early, she remembered the time she gave Washington piano lessons (which failed), the time where she forced Alexander to eat and sleep more regularly, and the time where she helped Eliza with her pregnancy with Phillip and her other children. She sang, “Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf,” which she does when she tries to reassure those around her. Olivia’s last words were, “I’ll see all of you on the other side, John, my love, I’m coming.” She was buried in Trinity Church Cemetery with a large monument. When the States learned of her death, the nation stopped working for days. Everyone who knew her (which was a lot) attended the funeral ceremony. Washington placed a bronze statue of Olivia depicting her holding a gun in her right hand and her diary in her left hand with the four rings on her fingers to show that women too, can be powerful.

1793-02-26: Micheal Key Hanged - Because he assassinated the Vice President, Micheal John Key was hanged the next day at noon.

1867-01-11: Olivia On Currency - In memory of Olivia, they put her face on the $20 on her birthday. However, in 1928, she was briefly replaced by Andrew Jackson but quickly regained her place after much controversy.

1999-12-15: Olivia Becomes Lyria - Olivia Rachel Hamilton Laurens, rebirthed to Lyria Eclair Graham de Vanily, the most powerful demigoddess of her century.

#oliviarachelhamilton #Olivia Hamilton #Alexander Hamilton #turn amc #turn: washington's spies #I finally figured out how to do the read more link

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luci-cunt · 4 years

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hola my dear unholy defiler!! for the fanfic title thing: “old heartbreaks and new tattoos” (bc i’m incapable of choosing titles without stealing lyrics, oops :/ )

Bonjour my fondly defiled god! FANTASTIC fic title i love you

k so this one HAS to have just a lliiiiiitttttllleee biiiitttt of angst but I’m still sticking with AFtG and Andreil cuz, y’all I’m a slut for it leave me alone XDD (you can request other pairings if you want tho XD I’m just uncreative XDD)

let’s seee.... we’ll start with a scene set--

So, you’ve got Neil-- 18, living with his dad, who in this timeline killed his mom and Neil never got out. Neil’s stuck, no way of getting out, BUT opportunity strikes in the form of a war

YES you read that right it’s 1940 babeeeyyyy

Neil sneaks out, signs up--almost gets turned down cuz he’s hella tiny but manages to convince the recruiter to let him anyways for the sake of “patriotism”

Neil’s plan is to serve for a while in France, out of the way of his father and get his feet under him before deserting and booking it to like, idk, somewhere else in Europe.

Meanwhile: Andrew is being tossed around foster care, on a random turn of luck he bumps into Aaron who’s oddly literally identical. He finds out they’re brothers/ the whole Tilda situation/ blah blah, but before he has the chance to move in or anything the draft hits and Aaron’s the one hit with it.

He’s supposed to get shipped out to France, but he’s still all hoped up on drugs and Andrew has seen his fair share of returning “war heros” and he realizes Aaron going to France is a death sentince

So he goes for him.

He takes Aaron’s name/ identity Mulan style and goes as Aaron Minyard into the war

(back at home Aaron only realizes what’s happened AFTER Andrew’s gone and by this point he can’t do shit so he has to go into hiding)

And--big shocker--Neil and Andrew are deployed to the same front

Neil’s been there for a bit longer by the time Andrew shows up, but Andrew clocks his intentions to desert REAL QUICK

instead of outing him tho--he asks to come with

He doesn’t give a single fuck about the war, he just wanted to keep Aaron out of trouble

Neil doesn’t trust him, but Andrew says if Neil leaves him behind he’ll just tell the commander what happened and Neil can’t have that so fuckin fine I guess this bitch is coming

They realize they can’t leave just yet when they come under mortar fire that pins them down for a week straight.

(ayeee bonding week~ what’s better to bond over than the constant fear of death ~~~~~~~~)

They bond with some cigarettes andrew brought, and Neil takes one and says he’ll only light it when they’re free of the warfront and he can properly enjoy it.

Then the mortar fire lets up and they’re charging out of their trench for the enemy and everything’s a rush

Neil manages to lose Andrew and he flips his lid

Turns out Andrew’s fine--or--kinda. he got hit with a stray grenade and his leg’s almost totally fucked.

Neil gets him to safety (back to the abandoned trench they were in before) patches him up as best he can, leaves him with a gun, and tells him not to move while he goes to get help

Bs happens, Neil gets help, Andrew ends up fine but now he’s gotta get carted away on medical leave.

Turns out tho his leg is fucked, so he gets honorably discharged and sent “home”

He trades identies back with Aaron, makes a big deal of the long lost twin Andrew Minyard coming home after seeing a picture of his brother getting honored in the paper and waits.

He’s worried about Neil, and even MORE worried when, not a month later, he gets a guy on his front step telling Aaron that Nathaniel Wesninski was captured and taken as a prisoner of war. The camp he was at was bombed--there were no survivors, and he left this for you.

it’s the cigarette, taped to a ragged looking postcard with a cheesy picture of Palm Springs on it. The post card is blank.

Well fuck.

Andrew is fucked, he locks himself in his room for the day, drinks himself dumb and doesn’t talk for three days.

At the end of the third he leaves the house, and when he comes back he’s got a new tattoo--it’s simple, just a black-and-white, unlit cigarette right over the pulse point on his neck.

He doesn’t explain it, doesn’t say anything, but he goes on the back porch and stares at the cigarette that came with the postcard, and, after a moment, lights up.

Three weeks later things aren’t doing well but he’s managing.

He’s leaving the gym one day, reeking and tired, when he spots someone leaning against his car.

The man grins up at him, and says “can I bum a cigarette?”

!!! this got alsdkdjf;laksdj a little involved XDD sorry I got into it XD

send me a fic title and I’ll say how I’d write it out!

#!!!!#thank you for the ask!!!#<33333 #I hope you liked it!!#fic #andreil #luci writes

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officialyourdailyinspiration · 3 years

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Devotional Hours Within the Bible

by J. R. Miller

Devotional for February 10th

The Fall of Jericho | Joshua 6

The city of Jericho was at the entrance to the promised land. The people had now crossed the river - but Jericho stood as a great iron gate into the promised land, and the gate was shut. They could not safely go round the city and leave the hostile stronghold behind them. It was necessary, therefore, that Jericho should be captured before they could advance.

This is a parable of many situations in life. Each man's own natural heart is a Jericho - which is the key to all his life and to his destiny. Nothing can be done in the conquest of the man - until his heart has surrendered. So long as Satan holds the key - none can reach any part of the man's being. Hence God asks always first for the citadel of our life. "Give Me your heart!" is His call. When He has this, all the life is open to Him.

It was a strange military procession which marched around Jericho one morning. We can imagine the people of the city looking at it from the walls with wonder. They could not understand the movement. Probably they laughed at the unusual procession - a few soldiers, then some priests with rams' horns, then more priests carrying a chest on their shoulders, then a few more soldiers. This marching column made no attack on the city, did not try to batter down the walls, only walked around it - and then returned to their camp. It really was not a military procession at all. Yet there was tremendous power in it.

But what was the use of calling out the men to make this daily march about the walls of Jericho? Since God was to give the city into their hands without any fighting on their part, why should they be called to do anything at all? For one thing, by doing the seemingly useless thing they were commanded to do, they showed that they believed in God. If they had not marched around the city - the walls never would have fallen, and they would not have taken Jericho at all. The Lord's part waited for the people's.

While all blessings come from God, we have something to do before they can be given to us. God gives us harvests - but we must till the soil, and sow the seed. God has given us salvation - but we must have faith in His promise and must show our faith by rising up and beginning to follow Christ. He will give us victory over temptation - but we must put on our armor and go against temptation, as if the victory altogether depended upon ourselves. Every promise of God has its condition, which requires us to exercise faith.

The march about the city was in silence. That was about the hardest part of the command to obey - to keep perfectly quiet all the time as they marched about the walls. There was to be no conversation on the way, no noises or shouting, until the work was finished. There are several suggestions here. We should not do our exulting when we are only halfway through with our battle, still less when we are only beginning it. We would better save our breath for struggle, until the work is finished.

Some people talk so much at their tasks - that they cannot do them well. Some people boast too soon, when the victory is not yet assured. Then there is, in general, much value in training one's self to keep quiet. Words are good in their place, if they are fit words, right words - but there are times when eloquent silence is infinitely better than the most eloquent speech .

The command to march silently also required self-control. The men must have wanted to talk a great many times as they went on - but their lips were sealed and they suppressed the words they were inclined to utter, and controlled their speech. We ought to have our speech so thoroughly under control - that we shall never say anything rashly. Then we shall be able to check the angry word that flies to the door of our lips so quickly, when we are hurt in some way by another. We never can estimate the great value of any self-discipline, which results in perfect self - mastery. It is for lack of self-control that many of our battles are lost and many defeats are suffered. He who can rule his own spirit - is greater than he who captures a city.

There was a meaning also in the trumpets which the priests carried. The blowing of these trumpets may fitly represent the utterance of the gospel message as the Church of Christ goes forth to conquer the citadels of sin. This spiritual army carries no weapons of earthly warfare. "Put up your sword," was the Master's command to those who were fighting with the sword. His marching-order is: "Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation." Not by the thunder of cannon and the rattle of musketry, will He have us subdue the fortresses of sin - but by the trumpet-blasts of the gospel of peace. The means ordained may seem inadequate to the end to be accomplished - but it is not by might nor by power - but by the Spirit of God, that the work is to be done.

There is something else to be noticed here. Close behind the priests blowing the trumpets, came the ark of God. This was the symbol of God's presence, the real power by which the overthrow of the walls of Jericho was accomplished. God's hand did it. We have the same secret of power in all preaching of the gospel. When Jesus commanded His disciples to go out and win the world for Him, His promise was: "Lo, I am with you always." We need not fear to go against the strongest powers of sin. We have only to utter our message, and the power of God will break down the walls.

For six days this procession moved in silence about the city, going round the wall once and then returning to their camp. These daily marches put the faith and patience of the soldiers and priests to the test. There seemed no possible good in such idle circling around the city. There were no indications, either, of any results, as day after day passed. The fortified walls frowned down upon them no less defiantly than at the beginning. There were no suggestions of surrender from within, indications that the courage of the garrison was wavering or weakening. Some of the brave men in the lines must have longed to make an assault on the walls. They wanted to be doing something soldierly. It was hard to restrain their enthusiastic patriotism. This marching around the city seemed like child's play. Yet day after day they had just the same seemingly useless thing to do. At length, however, patience had its reward.

In all our Christian life we need to practice this lesson. There is a great deal of dull monotony in all duty. It is the same routine over and over again, not for days only, or weeks, or years - but for a lifetime. Then there are many good works which it requires a long time to complete. That is the way character is built. It is not the growth of a night. It is not the result of a decision, a choice, a determination. We cannot merely will ourselves into a beautiful manhood - we can only grow into it, slowly, patiently.

A genial author has given us a new beatitude, "Blessed be drudgery," telling us that we get all the finest things in our character and life out of the dull routine of the drudgery we too often despise. At first there is no apparent impression made, no visible result achieved, and it seems vain to try any longer. But perseverance wins at length. Had the people of Israel wearied of the monotonous and unavailing march about Jericho, and at the close of the fifth or the sixth day given up - all would have been lost. The Divine command, was that the city should be compassed about seven days, and anything short of that would not have received the promise, for it would have shown a failure of faith. Success depended upon continuance to the very end.

So it is in all Christian life and work. We must persevere unto the end. We must carry our work through to the close-if we would succeed in it. Many things fail in our hands because we tire and give up too soon. "He who endures to the end - the same shall be saved." Spurts amount to but little; it is the steady stroke and the long pull that at length come in ahead. The strongest wall yields to the pounding that never intermits.

The silence was broken at length - on the seventh day. Of course, it was not the shouting that knocked the walls down. Joshua says plainly: "The Lord has given you the city!" The shouting was part of the obedience of faith on the people's part, just as the marching round the city was. If they had not shouted the wall would not have fallen. They obeyed God, and He did as He had promised to do. Before the walls fell, these Israelites shouted in rejoicing over a victory that God was going to give them.

The story of the saving of Rahab is very interesting. It is a story of faith. The spies had told her of the promise of God to the Israelites - that the country of Canaan would be given to them. Rahab believed what they told her, and showed kindness to the spies; indeed, saved their lives. Then she asked a pledge from them that they would show kindness to her when they came to capture the city. The men promised. She was to fasten in the window of her house on the wall - the scarlet cord by which she had let them down that they might escape. They would know her house by this sign and would spare her and her family. The men kept their promise, and Rahab was spared. We find her name in the first chapter of the Gospel by Matthew in the genealogy of Jesus. Thus faith was highly honored. Its splendor shines down through all these long centuries. Faith is always blessed and always honored.

We may get a lesson from the devotement of the spoils of Jericho. Nothing was to be touched, everything belonged to God. It is a great sin to take what has been devoted to the Lord, and apply it to our own use. An eagle swooped down upon an altar and carried off a piece of flesh, flying with it to her nest. But a coal from the altar had clung to the flesh, and this coal set fire to the nest, consuming it. So was it when one took of the spoil of Jericho, which had been devoted to God. A curse clung to the stolen treasure, and it destroyed him who took it. So it is always when we appropriate to ourselves what should be given to God - we get a curse with it!

#Devotional Hours Within the Bible #J.R. Miller #Joshua 6 #The Fall of Jericho #February 10 #2021

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histoireettralala · 4 years

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Joachim Murat: his youth in Quercy.

His steps often joined those of Napoleon. Born 250 years ago in Labastide, Marshal of France, the king of Naples remained, all his life, attached to his native land. His native village now bears his name: Labastide-Murat.

Published on August 29, 17 at 16:05, in ActuLot

Joachim Murat en uniforme de sous-lieutenant au 12e Régiment de Chasseurs en 1792 (Age 25), by Jean-Baptiste Paulin Guérin, 1835

His name will later be inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile. On April 5, 1791, three young people from Quercy (Murat, Bessieres and Ambert), appointed by the Lot Directory to be part of the King's constitutional guard, whose creation has just been voted by the Legislative Assembly, take the road to Paris. Coming from a family of small social status, Murat will reach the highest military glory thanks to the Republican wars and the prestigious imperial epic.

He was born on a causse with unexplored abysses

Joachim Murat was born on March 25, 1767, at La Bastide-Fortunière, a village in the Causse de Gramat. This physical environment has a certain connection with the future King of Naples' life and character. “La Bastide, a small village on the high plateau, looks like a fortress commanding the country. This majestic appearance amidst the drought, the almost desolation of the limestone soil which unexplored abysses hollow out in some places is the very image of Murat's life, a life full of contrasts where the good and the worst intertwine, where the peak honors and glory are next to disasters, mentions Marcel Dupont in his work on Murat. The sometimes violent wind is still a striking image of the marshal's mind, always filled with clouds and where hopes, vast projects, fury and annihilation collide day and night. Here is summarized in a few strokes, the prodigious and fatal destiny of this horseman who would have no equal to descend like a windstorm on the enemy troops.

His mother Jeanne's favorite child

Yet he seemed destined for a peaceful existence. Murat comes from a family that has lived in the town for more than three centuries. They are hard-working peasants, exploiting poor soil in harsh winters. How could a king arise from this modest environment more conducive to the development of country virtues than to warlike exploits?

This required the ardor of his youth, which will never leave him, but also the revolutionary upheaval. His father exploited the lands of "a few enlightened minds" in the village. Not being the owner, he is the manager, receiving earnings proportional to the crops. These are certainly satisfactory because the couple have a large house in the center of the town. This is the mother’s domain. The ground floor has been converted into an inn and the floor is divided between the family apartment and a few rooms for passing guests. This energetic woman who runs the inn is a caring mother. The good Jeanne Loubières, whom he will adore all his life, in fact, makes of the youngest of her eleven children, her favorite. By her constant presence, her desire to provide Joachim with an education, that goes beyond that of his environment, she will shape this son to the point that he will never forget his childhood.

With his curly hair and cheerful face, he's a rowdy kid, sometimes a brawler, as it should be to be respected in this country where endurance is proof of character. His time at La Bastide-Fortunière school made a good impression on his teachers: he is an average student but whose qualities of camaraderie and friendliness are recognized. His loving mother, who has deep religious feelings, thinks that the day will come when young Joachim will enter the Orders and may be parish priest of La Bastide.

His great pleasure is to lead alone the horses to the village trough. At the age when a horse seems formidable to a child, Joachim, who has an unusual vigor, already knows how to subdue them.

An amazing ability to lead

These predispositions did not arouse any suspicion among his parents who obtained a scholarship to send him, at 10 years old, to the Saint-Michel college in Cahors. He will stay there for 8 years. It is there that he will have as a comrade Jean Bessières from Prayssac, a future Marshal of the Empire. An unwavering friendship is born between these two men who would become close to the emperor.

Far from La Bastide, the young Murat discovers unknown horizons which open up new appetites for him. His intelligence is real. But as soon as he crosses the threshold of the class, he takes a singular ascendancy on his comrades, even develops an astonishing capacity to lead. How to blame him? If he goes too far for his age, he knows how to repent, implore and become very sweet again.

His whole life, he will use these weapons. Many contemporaries believe that he is completely sincere. Going from anger to tenderness, from elation to dejection, he is already and will remain, impulsive, even excessive in everything. Not without kindness and generosity.

At 20, he joins the cavalry

At the age of eighteen, he joins the Lazarists' seminar in Toulouse. But wearing the cassock does not make the seminarian. And this handsome young man of 1.85 meters, with a pleasant smile, already leads, outside the establishment, a private life the "good fathers" ignore. Here comes an important moment in Murat's life: his military engagement. It is allowed to think, with Jean Tulard, that after a quarrel, our too fiery seminarian was excluded from the University and dreading his father, takes advantage of the passage of the Cavalry of the Ardennes regiment to sign up for, he says "a life that does not displease him". In fact, the new Chasseur is "thrilled". He quickly stood out for his ability to train the most reticent horses and quickly became sergeant*.

For the simple rider, the days are repetitive and gruelling. After an early awakening (at six o'clock), you must groom sick animals, currycomb and brush them before preparing fodder, water and oats. It is only after this daily work, at ten o'clock that a soup is distributed. Then the upkeep chores of the stables. Strict rules still from the Ancien Régime! Because already Parisian ideas are swarming in the garrisons.

Giving free rein to his temperament, his need to be a leader, Murat, who places a lot of hope in the new ideas, takes the lead of the discontented men of the Regiment. This behavior is little appreciated by his leaders: he is put on permanent leave and expelled from the army. Humiliated, he decides to go back to the Lot. We are in 1789.

Delivery Clerk in Saint-Céré

Very badly received by his father who cuts him off, he returns to Saint-Céré where he is hired as a delivery clerk. For a few months, he was enraged, champing at the bit with impatience, convinced that his place is not here. The villages are buzzing. He became aware of the real state of France, of the mounting demands of the campaigns. Murat takes advantage of this return to his native land to attend and participate in public meetings of local clubs.

The past winter has been harsh and long. The harvest was poor. Lack of food and unemployment strike everywhere. Castles see their dovecote burned down. " Here will be hanged the first inhabitant who will pay the rent to the lord," says a poster from a Cahors merchant. It’s the revolt. Louis XVI summons the Etats Généraux on May 1, 1789 in Versailles. In 1790, for the Fête de la Fédération on July 14, each department must appoint two to three delegates. You can imagine that Murat is volunteering! The sympathetic, sweet talking but proud young man speaks. And it is in Lotois dialect that he expresses himself in cafes, wishing to reach the greatest number. The Revolution is born: Joachim Murat, who is part of the Third Estate by his origins, tries to change public opinion according to events. Every Sunday, he goes to Cahors: he listens, he harangues the crowd. He is on the Montfaucon list and is chosen to represent the Lot department.

The republican patriot leaves for Paris

Murat, 23, can go and explore the capital. It’s the consecration.

A new man is born. After a secular mass celebrated by former Bishop Talleyrand, speeches on the Champ de Mars ignite the crowds. One hundred thousand Parisians came to celebrate the first anniversary of the Capture of the Bastille. A year later, returning to the army, he is appointed to the King's Constitutional Guard, to protect but also to monitor Louis XVI. Indignant, the protester manifests a flawless patriotic commitment, calling himself a "pronounced republican", facing "this hideout of royalists who gravitate around the king". But the wind turns, Robespierre falls. His revolutionary passion almost interrupted his meteoric career. Bitter and worried, he is put on leave and returns for some time to Quercy, "wanting to become a simple plowman again".

Aide de camp

Skeptical about his future, then dejected, Murat quickly reacts, helped by the deputy for Gourdon, Jean-Baptiste Cavaignac, who encourages him to return to Paris. It is on the night of 12 to 13 Vendémiaire (October 5, 1795) that Murat is put in contact with the First Consul who needs him. He orders him to save the Convention threatened by the royalist riot. Forty cannons are placed by Squadron Leader Murat around the Tuileries Castle. Three hundred royalists will be killed. The government of the Republic is saved again. As Tulard points out: "From now on the star of Murat will merge with that of Bonaparte". No more depression, finally power and glory.

Promoted Bonaparte's aide-de-camp, he leaves for the Italian Campaign, direction Marengo. There, "his clothes will be riddled with bullets", but they will know victory.

He becomes Napoleon I's brother-in-law

In 1800, he marries Caroline, the First Consul's youngest sister, becoming the brother-in-law of the future Napoleon I. This marriage will give Murat an outstanding position among the marshals of the Empire. Quickly, he is invited to move to the Château des Tuileries and becomes part of the close entourage of the new master of France.

The rouser of men from the imperial epic will remain kind to his family at La Bastide. Coming from a small inn in Quercy to fly with his squadrons across Europe and into Egypt, Murat seems like a legendary character. Chateaubriand will devote long passages to him in the "Mémoires d'Outre Tombe". He will be admired by Stendhal, Dumas and Balzac. Three words characterize the King of Naples: ardor, ambition and panache. If he remains the most magnificent rouser of men the imperial epic will produce, he will invest much into the Lot whose deputy he will become in 1803.

And he will show kindness for his whole family. Especially for his mother, for whom he will show a deep attachment: he sends her rosaries blessed by the Pope.

The portrait he has done of Jeanne in 1792 will never leave him. It will be with him, in his homes, in his tent during his campaigns and in Naples, in his palace. He will build a castle for his "La Bastide family" in his native village, modeled on the Palais de l'Elysée, where he had resided as governor of Paris.

The King of Naples dies executed on October 13, 1815.

By André Décup

[Translation is mine.

Note: I translated by ‘sergeant’ the grade of Maréchal des Logis, which is its equivalent in the cavalry (and nowadays in the Gendarmerie).

There is no right translation for “entraîneur d’hommes”, I hope “rouser” doesn’t seem too weird in English.]

#napoleonic #joachim murat #newsletters articles #2017 #anyway i love him

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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years

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La Grande Illusion: the collapse of the old order of European civilisation

Jean Renoir’s monumental 1937 cinematic masterpiece La Grand Illusion has always been a favourite of mine ever since my grandfather - a highly decorated military veteran himself - first brought the classic war film to my attention over a family Christmas.

It’s easy to gush about Renoir’s World War One classic. It won at the Venice Film Festival upon release and was the first foreign language film to be nominated for an Oscar - despite the novelty of seeing and hearing the British, French and German officers speaking their own native tongues. The critical reception and accolades aside, La Grand Illusion is simply an extraordinarily well-made film that makes a serious commentary on the condition of Europe and examines common values and decency under the stress of war - the ability in all of us to act with respect and warmth towards those with whom we share bonds stronger and deeper than national boundaries and political divisions.

The “grand illusion” of Jean Renoir’s great French film referred originally to the British author Norman Angell’s belief that the supposed financial advantage of war is a falsehood. For Renoir - himself a veteran of the World War One trenches - this illusion evolves into something more complex and various, and so does its tragic and ironic grandeur.

There are only two references to the title but both are pertinent. Once when a French soldier exclaims ‘what an illusion,’ when a comrade says that the war will be over before they have time to escape from military prison, and again when he describes the end of all wars as an illusion.

The legendary Eric Von Stroheim is Captain Von Rauffenstein, an aristocrat and German PoW camp commander in the first world war, ramrod-straight in a uniform with white gloves that conceal horrendous burns from when he was shot down in combat. He pursues an elaborately civilised policy of martial respect for his distinguished prisoner Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) - a suave French aristocrat in his own right. But Rauffenstein is archly disdainful of Boeldieu’s more plebeian comrades Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio) and the boisterous working class Maréchal, played with luminous masculinity by Jean Gabin.

What the Frenchman knows and the German won’t admit is that the new world belongs to commoners. It changed hands when the gentlemen of Europe declared war. And the “grand illusion” of Renoir’s title is the notion that the upper classes somehow stand above war. The German cannot believe that his prisoners, whom he treats almost as guests, would try to escape. After all, they have given their word not to.

"Neither you nor I can stop the march of time,” the captured French aristocrat Capt. de Boieldieu tells the German prison camp commandant, Von Rauffenstein. A little later, distracting the guards during an escape of others from the high-security German fortress, the Frenchman forces the German to shoot him, reluctantly, and they have a final deathbed exchange. `” didn’t know a bullet in the stomach hurt so much,” he tells the German. “I aimed at your legs,” says the German, near tears. And a little later he says: "For a commoner, dying in a war is a tragedy. But for you and I - it’s a good way out.”

For me one the things that hit me is how much the film underlies the separation of classes, which is the second major concern of the film. Indeed, the characters provide a microcosm of the European class system in the early twentieth century. It is interesting to note that not everyone in the film is limited by the barriers of his mother tongue. The two aristocratic officers, von Rauffenstein and de Boeldieu, as well as the scholar, Demolder, can speak or understand several languages other than their own. The Jewish officer, Rosenthal, who has relatives on both sides of the front, can speak German. With the possible exception of Rosenthal, however, the linguistic skills of these characters are ineffectual instruments of human understanding. The reasons are various and have mostly to do with class.

Demolder, the Greek professor, is the object of much ridicule. To the aristocrats he is never more than a subject of minor amusement. They ignore him, for instance, when he gawks like an undergraduate art history student at the Medieval fortress of Wintersborn, where they are being held prisoner. Even the middle class Marechal parodies him at one point, exclaiming that the castle is ``Fourteenth century,” to which Boeldieu replies wittily, “Pure Gothic.” Ironically, the scene was actually shot in a chateau built by Wilhelm II.

Demolder’s books, in which no one else is the least bit interested, disturb Boeldieu’s cards. Boeldieu remarks “coldly” that Demolder’s dictionaries are going to be in his way. Demolder is in the process of translating Pindar, whom he considers “the greatest of the Greek poets.” We are left in no doubt, however, that the undertaking will not be as momentous as Demolder would like to think. Rauffenstein’s contemptuous comment upon learning of Demolder’s activity is: “Poor old Pindar!”

Boeldieu says that Demolder has “the soul of a bird.” Although Demolder has a sentimental worship of books (he is incensed when the Russians set their books on fire) and studies a foreign language, his interests are ineffectual. The student of a “dead language,” he offers no help in bridging the language barrier between the French and Germans.

The aristocrats, Boeldieu and Rauffenstein, might effect such a bridge between the nationalities, but they are prevented from doing so by the duties and isolation of their class. They are separated from their fellow officers as much as anything by language.

Boeldieu, for instance, is isolated by a certain class dialect as well as what one might call his ideolect. Throughout the film, he speaks in a witty, formal, epigrammatic style typical of the aristocracy. At Hallbach, noticing the young German soldiers drilling while the prisoners of war prepare their play, he comments: “On one side, children playing at soldiers. On the other, soldiers playing at children.” The conversation at Wintersborn is distinguished by his witty banter with Rauffenstein. When the latter has finished showing his new prisoners around the fortress, Boeldieu remarks: “It was very pleasant of you, sir, to have shown us around your estate.” The other French officers cannot or are not allowed thus to “pull off” their attempts at wit. Marechal’s amusing joke about Maxim’s does not go over with Rauffenstein.

Boeldieu’s formal style leaves his fellows cool to him and indeed suspicious of his motives. Marechal himself, who must “explain” Boeldieu to the others, notes at one point that “he’s a good bloke, but you can’t let yourself go with him, you can’t feel free…. A different sort of education…. If ever you [Rosenthal] and I found ourselves in a bad spot, we’d just be a couple of poor down-and-outs, but him, he’d always be Monsieur de Boeldieu.”

Later in the film, when the bourgeois Marechal, aware of Boeldieu’s impending sacrifice, attempts a deeper level of friendliness, Boeldieu puts him off: “I’m not doing anything for you personally. That excuses us from the danger of getting emotional.” When Marechal questions Boeldieu’s continued use of the formal “vous” after eighteen months together, Boeldieu responds: “I say vous to my mother and my wife.”

Rauffenstein is similarly isolated from his fellow officers by class and language. His preferred languages seem to be French and English, and when he does speak German his voice takes on an unaccustomed and alien rasp. His junior officers are also of the middle class, and they consider him something of a lunatic for what is to them eccentric behavior. Rauffenstein’s careful cultivation of the geranium, “the only flower in the castle,” is ridiculed by his martinet of a junior officer, a former headmaster who claims to “know how to keep that gang of devils [the prisoners] in their place.” Interestingly, in the moving scene of Boeldieu’s death, Rauffenstein sacrifices this last “flower of the aristocracy.”

Boeldieu and Rauffenstein, isolated from their fellow officers, have the most in common with each other, but ultimately they are separated by something else they have in common: their patriotic duties as aristocratic career officers. Rauffenstein seems to regret this more than Boeldieu and is keener to maintain their priviledged intimacy. To effect this intimacy he makes continual use of the English language.

A language common to the aristocracy of Europe, English allows Rauffenstein to distinguish himself and Boeldieu from the others, in effect to talk over their heads. It becomes their special language. In the early banquet scene, Rauffenstein, recognizing Boeldieu’s name, presumes his knowledge of English. Sesonske has pointed out that “Rauffenstein switches from French to English without question or explanation, knowing that a `de Boeldieu’ will of course understand,” whereas “Marechal is surprised to find his German neighbor speaking French and seeks an explanation.”

In a later scene at Wintersborn, Rauffenstein shows off his twenty-five Maxim machine-guns to Boeldieu and the others. Marechal attempts to imitate Boeldieu’s witty style: “Why, of course, sir. Personally, I prefer the restaurant…” The response of the two aristocrats to this infringement on their stylistic territory is interesting. Boeldieu, at whose expense the joke is made, accepts it with a benign resignation, as a master does a pupil’s imitations: “Touché.”

Rauffenstein, on the other hand, will not condescend to the humor of an inferior. He shifts immediately to English, talking as he knows over the heads of the others: “I used to know a pretty girl at Maxim’s… back in 1913. Her name was Fifi.” Boeldieu responds also in English: “So did I.”

Rauffenstein’s aristocratic snub recalls, as he likes to do, a nostalgic time before the war when aristocratic career officers did not have to accept middle class “officers” such as Marechal and Rosenthal as in any sense their equals.

Both Rauffenstein and Boeldieu know, however, that the old European aristocrats, along with the peculiar form of international understanding they possessed, are a dying breed, cut off from their own lower classes and no longer in control of events. In a private conversation in Rauffenstein’s quarters, again punctuated with English phrases, they discuss this situation candidly.

Rauffenstein admits his distaste for his present position as commandant. “I was a fighting man and, now, I am a bureaucrat, a policeman. It is the only way left for me to try and serve my country.” When Boeldieu asks him why he made an exception in inviting him to his quarters, Rauffenstein responds disdainfully: “You call Marechal and Rosenthal… officers?” Whatever else the war brings, “it will be the end of the Rauffensteins and the Boeldieus.”

To Rauffenstein, such middle class soldiers are “the charming legacy of the French Revolution.” Boeldieu comments that “perhaps there is no more need for us.” Rauffenstein immediately asks: “And don’t you find that is a pity?” Boeldieu responds, less certainly: “Perhaps.” Boeldieu’s scepticism suggests that if there is to be a solution to the problem of lack of international understanding, it will not come from an international aristocracy with an exclusive language.

Indeed, this point is dramatised in the final exchange of English between the two men. When Boeldieu devises a plan of escape for Marechal and Rosenthal, he reserves for himself the role of creating a diversion. While all the prisoners except Marechal and Rosenthal assemble for a general roll call, Boeldieu climbs the watch-tower and plays the tune, “Petit Navire,” on a flute (an instrument he claimed earlier to have hated). He distracts the Germans long enough for his middle class comrades to effect their escape. When Rauffenstein learns of Boeldieu’s dangerous escapade, he makes a final personal appeal to Boeldieu to surrender. Interestingly, the appeal is in English, unintelligible to his own men and the various prisoners.

Rauffenstein in English: Boeldieu, have you really gone insane? Boeldieu in English: I’m perfectly sane. Rauffenstein in English: Boeldieu, you understand that if you do not obey at once and come down, I shall have to shoot…. I dread to do that. I beg you… man to man, come back. Boeldieu in English: It’s damn nice of you, Rauffenstein, but it’s impossible.

At this point, Rauffenstein is forced to shoot Boeldieu, and only afterward learns that Marechal and Rosenthal have escaped. To himself in English (in a language he can now use only with himself) he mutters, “so that is why,” and suddenly shifting to a harsh German, orders the dogs called out to search for the escapees. In the end, the mutual intelligibility of the aristocrats is overcome by their intense sense of divergent duties. As Boeldieu comments on his deathbed when Rauffenstein begs his forgiveness, “I would have done the same thing. French or German… duty is duty.” However moving the scenes with the two aristocrats may be, thay cannot offer a solution to the problem of human understanding that the film poses. They represent rather a dead end.

If there is to be such a solution, Renoir seems to tell us, it must come from the middle class, from the Marechals and Rosenthals and Elsas of Europe. Accordingly, these characters dominate the film’s final scenes.

La Grand Illusion’s most basic contributions to cinema include a series of well-followed tropes used in later prison escape films. Hiding their escape hole under floorboards beneath a bunk, the men tie a rope to a single mole digging the passage deeper. Air flows to him through a tube of cans, and a string attaches to a warning tin that he pulls to sound his readiness for relief. The excess earth is stored in small bags and emptied from under their pants during their faux gardening activities. Later escape-centric films such as Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption (1994), John Sturges’ The Great Escape (1963), and Le Trou (1960) by Jacques Becker (himself the assistant director on Grand Illusion) replicate aspects of the escape procedure established in Renoir’s film.

In originating tropes of a war or escape movie it was careful to avoid cliches of its own. La Grand Illusion features no “war is Hell” scenes of grisly trench warfare that convey the chaotic bloody truth of battle. Neither melodrama nor jingoism have roles in Renoir’s narrative. He even carefully resists all clichés about patriotism, as well as clichés regarding his own pacifist aims. Avoiding strong subjective illustrations, Renoir’s film remains politically impartial, even while he makes humanist indictments and remains a jealous disciple of his homeland.

It’s not then a movie about a prison escape. It dwells on the conflicts among men. The prison camps show the entire national community in a bubble. Ideas such as nationalism, class, and race create the conflict between the prisoners; however, at the same time, they bring people together.

It’s also a meditation on the collapse of the old order of European civilisation. Perhaps that was always a sentimental upper class illusion, the notion that gentlemen on both sides of the lines subscribed to the same honourable code of behaviour. Whatever it was, it died in the trenches of World War One. The idea that wars can be fought according to gentlemanly rules is an illusion – like the belief that the 1914-1918 conflict was the war to end all wars. As Plato said at the beginning of the birth pangs of European civlisation, ‘only the dead have seen the end of war’.

#la grande illusion #film #cinema #french #jean renoir #renoir #art #aesthetics #war #world war one #europe

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archive-archives · 4 years

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Warner Archive October 2020 Releases

Coming soon to an online retailer near you!

NEW 2020 1080p master! DROP DEAD GORGEOUS (1999) Run Time 98:00 Subtitles English SDH Audio Specs DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 - English Aspect Ratio 1.85:1, 16x9 Widescreen Product Color COLOR Disc Configuration BD 50 Includes Original Theatrical Trailer (HD)

The Sarah Rose American Teen Princess Pageant is a beauty contest to die for! And that’s exactly what the contestants in Mount Rose, Minnesota, are doing. Ever since the vivacious-but-vicious former beauty queen Gladys Leeman (Kirstie Alley, TV’s Cheers) started pushing her charm-challenged daughter, Rebecca (Denise Richards, The World Is Not Enough), to win at all costs, the competition has been dropping like flies. Between exploding tractors and deadly hunting accidents, it’s a wonder the top challenger, poor Amber (Kirsten Dunst, Spider-Man), has the courage to keep her tap shoes on. But after Amber’s mother (Ellen Barkin, TV’s Animal Kingdom) is injured in a suspicious trailer-park-beauty-shop bombing, Amber is determined to fight to the finish – and the battle between the good and the bad is about to get ugly! Experience plenty of mom, apple pie and all-American mayhem, plus a hit-packed soundtrack, in this breakthrough comedy that is “clever, fearless and loaded with wicked lines and touches” (Los Angeles Times).

NEW 2020 1080p masters! SPACE GHOST & DINO BOY: THE COMPLETE SERIES Run Time 420:00 Subtitles English Audio Specs MONO - English Aspect Ratio 1.33:1, 4x3 Full Frame Product Color COLOR Disc Configuration BD 50 (2) Special Feature: Documentary "Alex Toth: The Artist's Artist: The Journey of a Master Cartoonist" (SD)

Showcasing the episodes in the three-segment form as they originally aired, these stellar retro hits soar through space and time to deliver justice! First, intergalactic policeman Space Ghost navigates the cosmos in his tricked-out spaceship The Phantom Cruiser, battling villains like Brak and Zorak with his legendary suit and powerful wristbands. Then, Dino Boy teams with caveman Ugh and dinosaur Bronty to go primeval on the ancient menaces of their primitive home. And finally, Space Ghost flies again with more extraterrestrial adventures and thrilling takedowns. This dynamite compilation also features the dynamic six-part Space Ghost episode The Council of Doom. It’s cosmic entertainment for all!

NEW 2020 1080p master from 4K scan of best surviving nitrate elements! SERGEANT YORK (1941) Run Time 134:00 Subtitles English SDH Audio Specs DTS HD-Master Audio 2.0 - English, MONO - English Aspect Ratio 1.37:1, 4x3 Full Frame Product Color BLACK & WHITE Disc Configuration BD 50 Special Features: Commentary by Film Historian Jeanine Basinger; Making of Featurette "Sergeant York: Of God and Country"; Classic Cartoon "Porky's Preview"; Vintage Short "Lions for Sale"; Theatrical re-issue trailer (HD).

Torn between religious pacifism and patriotism, Alvin York of Tennessee went on to become World War I's most acclaimed hero. As the simple backwoods farm boy who captured 132 German soldiers during the Battle of Argonne, Gary Cooper (handpicked by York) also won acclaim and his first Best Actor Academy Award®. Released in 1941 when the United States was on the brink of another war, this stirring adventure inspired thousands of enlisting men. Nominated for a total of 11 Oscars® including Best Picture, a winner for Best Film Editing and movingly directed by Howard Hawks, it tells of a religious man's moral crisis, heroics and subsequent return to the rural life he loved while refusing to capitalize on the adulation heaped upon him. An ode to patriotism and the human spirit, Sergeant York endures as one of Hollywood's finest hours.

NEW 2020 1080p master! REVERSAL OF FORTUNE (1990) Run Time 112:00 Subtitles English SDH Audio Specs STEREO - English, DTS HD-Master Audio 2.0 - English Aspect Ratio 1.85:1, 16x9 Widescreen Product Color COLOR Disc Configuration BD 50 Includes Original Theatrical Trailer (HD) and feature commentary by Director Barbet Schroeder and Screenwriter Nicholas Kazan

Did European aristocrat Claus von Bulow (Jeremy Irons) try to murder his wife, Sunny (Glenn Close), at their luxurious Newport mansion in 1980? Tabloids of the day had their opinions. “You have one thing in your favor,” defense attorney Alan Dershowitz (Ron Silver) told von Bulow. “Everybody hates you.” Written for the screen by Nicholas Kazan (Fallen, At Close Range), directed by Barbet Schroeder (Single White Female) and based on Dershowitz’s book, Reversal of Fortune is the acclaimed filmization of events that had all of America talking. For his precise portrait of icy brittleness, Irons won the Best Actor Academy Award®* as well as the Los Angeles and National Society of Film Critics Awards. Think you know the truth? Until you watch…you have no idea.

NEW 2020 1080p master! SUNRISE AT CAMPOBELLO (1960) Run Time 143:00 Subtitles English SDH Audio Specs MONO - English, DTS HD-Master Audio 2.0 - English Aspect Ratio 1.85:1, 16x9 Widescreen Product Color COLOR Disc Configuration BD 50 Includes Original Theatrical Trailer (HD)

He led America’s battles against the Depression and the Axis powers – and won. But first Franklin Delano Roosevelt fought a personal battle against polio that would either destroy him – or arm him for greatness. This powerful film of Dore Schary’s long-running play is an intimate, admiring profile in courage. Ralph Bellamy reprises his dynamic Tony®-winning stage portrayal of the future President, and Greer Garson is his devoted, warbly-voiced wife, Eleanor. Both were uncannily true in their roles, and acclaim followed: Garson earned Golden Globe® and National Board of Review Best Actress awards, as well as one of the movie’s four Oscar® nominations. With exteriors filmed at Campobello and Hyde Park and interiors staged on uncanny duplications of the real-life Roosevelt homes, Sunrise at Campobello shines eloquently and movingly.

NEW 2020 1080p master! THE OPPOSITE SEX (1956) Run Time 116:00 Subtitles English SDH Audio Specs DTS HD-Master Audio 2.0 - English, STEREO - English Aspect Ratio 2.35:1, 16x9 Letterbox Product Color COLOR Disc Configuration BD 50 Includes Original Theatrical Trailer (HD)

“I’ve waited a whole year to grow claws like these. Jungle Red!” One of film’s greatest lines belongs to a wronged wife who wins back her man with the aid of an aggressive shade of nail polish. First a hit play, then an all-star 1939 (and later, 2008) movie, The Women resurfaces here as the musical The Opposite Sex, complete with an all-star cast, lines dipped in acid wit, big production numbers and fabulous ‘50s couture in scintillating CinemaScope®. June Allyson portrays the betrayed woman. Joan Collins is the siren who steals her husband. And Dolores Gray, Ann Sheridan, Ann Miller, Agnes Moorehead, Charlotte Greenwood and Joan Blondell are assorted gal pals (true-blue and envy-green) who convince their demure friend to paint her claws – then use them.

NEW 2020 1080p master from 4K scan from best surviving preservation elements! WATERLOO BRIDGE (1940) Run Time 109:00 Subtitles English SDH Audio Specs DTS HD-Master Audio 2.0 - English, MONO - English Aspect Ratio 1.37:1, 4x3 Full Frame Product Color BLACK & WHITE Disc Configuration BD 50 Includes Theatrical Trailer (HD) and Screen Director’s Playhouse Radio Program with Norma Shearer and Mervyn LeRoy (audio only).

Myra and Roy meet and fall in love on Waterloo Bridge during an air raid. Their love will be one of the war’s unspoken casualties. Heartbroken after Roy is reportedly killed in action, Myra turns to prostitution to make her way. The report, however, is false. Roy later returns from a POW camp, eager to begin life anew with his beloved. But Myra’s shattered spirit may no longer hold any room for happiness. Vivien Leigh plays Myra, at once winning and breaking viewers’ hearts in this exquisite melodrama. In a compassionate performance that was his all-time favorite, Robert Taylor is gallant Roy. Under Mervyn LeRoy’s astute direction, they make Waterloo Bridge a meeting place for lovers.

BLACK LIGHTNING: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON (2018-19) Run Time 674:00 Subtitles English SDH Audio Specs DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 - English Aspect Ratio ORIGINAL ASPECT RATIO - 1.78:1, 16x9 Full Frame Product Color COLOR Disc Configuration BD 50 (3)

Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams) is a man of many faces. A former Olympic athlete, respected educator and father of two, he’s also Black Lightning, superpowered protector of Freeland. But Jefferson is not alone. His oldest daughter, Anissa (Nafessa Williams), is a med student, part-time teacher and social activist. She is also the Super Hero known as Thunder, possessing invulnerability and super strength for as long as she can hold her breath. Jefferson’s youngest daughter, Jennifer (China Anne McClain), is a fiery teen who inherited her father’s athletic gifts but not his desire to be an athlete. Jennifer also inherited his powers. Her body generates pure electrical energy, and she possesses the potential to be more powerful than Anissa or Jefferson. Lynn (Christine Adams), Jefferson’s ex-wife, is fast becoming an expert in metahuman medicine. Together, the Pierce family fights the gang known as the One Hundred for the soul of Freeland.

BLACK LIGHTNING: THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON (2019-20) Run Time 673:00 Subtitles English SDH Audio Specs DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 - English Aspect Ratio ORIGINAL ASPECT RATIO - 1.78:1, 16x9 Full Frame Product Color COLOR Disc Configuration BD 50 (3)

Jefferson Pierce (Cress Williams), respected educator and father of two, is also Black Lightning, superpowered protector of Freeland. And he doesn’t fight alone. He is joined by his superpowered daughters, Anissa (Nafessa Williams), aka Thunder, and Jennifer (China Anne McClain), aka Lightning, as well as his ex-wife, metahuman expert Lynn (Christine Adams). Together, the Pierce family combats the ills eroding their city, including a menacing gang that calls itself The 100 and infamous gangster Tobias Whale (Marvin Jones III). Worse, Freeland has been plagued by government-sponsored experiments and drug trafficking, creating metahumans and addicts while making Freeland the target of a dangerous foreign power, Markovia. Fortunately, the family still has allies in their fight: former covert superspy Peter Gambi (James Remar) and Jefferson’s neighbor, the scrupulously honest deputy police chief Bill Henderson (Damon Gupton).

New to DVD

THE PLOT AGAINST AMERICA (2020) Subtitles English SDH Sound Quality DOLBY DIGITAL SURROUND 5.1 - English Aspect Ratio ORIGINAL ASPECT RATIO - 2.0:1, 16x9 Letterbox Product Color COLOR Disc Configuration DVD9

The HBO® series The Plot Against America, created by The Wire’s David Simon and Ed Burns and based on Philip Roth’s acclaimed novel, brilliantly imagines an alternate American history during World War II. Told through the eyes of the Levins, a working-class Jewish family in Newark, New Jersey, the six-part limited series charts the political rise of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, a xenophobic populist who captures the presidency in 1940 and turns the nation toward fascism. Caught in the upheaval, the Levins learn that the violence threatening the lives of ordinary Americans is never more than a moment’s political provocation away. Winona Ryder, Anthony Boyle, Zoe Kazan, Morgan Spector, Michael Kostroff, David Krumholtz, Azhy Robertson, Caleb Malis, Jacob Laval and John Turturro star in this powerful tale of intolerance and totalitarianism.

HEAD OF THE CLASS: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON (1987-88) Run Time 587:00 Sound Quality MONO - English, DOLBY DIGITAL - English Aspect Ratio 4x3 Full Frame, ORIGINAL ASPECT RATIO - 1.33:1 Product Color COLOR Disc Configuration DVD9

Howard Hesseman (WKRP in Cincinnati) returns as good-natured substitute teacher Charlie Moore for the sophomore season of this fan-favorite sitcom. Charlie is assigned to the Individualized Honors Program, a very different kind of class. The IHP students are so gifted that their teachers are expected to be glorified babysitters, but the unconventional Charlie upsets the applecart by deciding to actually teach! He guides his charges – classic nerd Arvid (Dan Frischman), overachiever Maria (Leslie Bega), debate dynamo Darlene (Robin Givens), Indian immigrant Jawaharlal (Jory Husain), child prodigy Janice (Tannis Vallely), too-cool-for-school Eric (Brian Robbins), chemistry whiz Dennis (Dan Schneider), academic Renaissance woman Sarah (Kimberly Russell), ultraserious Alan (Tony O’Dell) and ethereal bibliophile Simone (Khrystyne Haje) – through academic challenges and real-life problems alike.

#Warner archive #Warner archive collection #new to bluray #new to dvd

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scripttorture · 4 years

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Hi, how are you? I hope you're having a great day. If it's not too much to ask, I read the articles you linked about child soldiers, and they were very helpful, but not exactly what I'm looking for.. Do you happen to have links of first account stories or diaries of child soldiers? Two lead characters in my wip have been child soldiers in multiple wars in their country. (The setting is light fantasy, think non-European medieval times) (Child soldiers ask/1)

(Childsoldiers ask/2) Theyserved their country, and outside of war time, they received militaryeducation but were under significantly less pressure and stress, sowhile they never felt patriotic toward their country, they didn’tfind a reason to leave yet. That is until they turned 15-16 and wereforced to fight in the front field, where they saw the brutality oftheir own country by themselves, they tried to escape right then andthere, – (Child soldiers ask/3)–but were Captured by the enemy and spent a few weeks doing forcedlabor in an enclosed camp, before they were sold into slavery andbecame house slaves for a nobleman of their country’s enemies. Theymake friends with a slave there, who with a story of his own, hastried multiple times to escape but was always captured, punished(whipped), and forced to work right away. (Child soldiers ask/4)Theyfinally escape when the nobleman’s child bride kills him on the veryfirst night and joins them in a long escape out of the country,before they were rescued by the other slave’s friends. The storydoesn’t go too far in terms of time span, they don’t finish a year inslavery and then after that they help out (but don’t participate inbattle) in another war, before the story ends, maybe another 6months. (Child soldiers ask/6)Sowhile I have the elements of their rehabilitation into the peacefulcivilian life completed, I’d like more in-depth information about howthey would personally feel in that situation. The girl feels a lot ofshame for leaving her country, but has no wishes to return until theyfix the system, while the boy absolutely hates it and – (Childsoldiers ask/7)–onlyfeels resentment for it because of the abuse he suffered, but that’sonly after they learn what normal children their age should be doingand how they’re treated. Symptoms of anxiety and PTSD are prominentin their lives, but should I add more? And would the abuse the boysuffered from be counted as torture? I know this is long so thanks inadvance for your patience :) (Child soldiers ask/8)

I don’t think you will find the kind of in-depth first hand accounts you’re looking for without paying for them. That said there are books by former child soldiers that might fit.

I’m not aware of any diaries, most of these books were written years or decades after the fighting stopped. On a basic level I’m not sure many children that young keep a regular diary and many adult diarists have found it impossible to keep one going through a war.

This is a research book based on interviews with child soldiers that I’m ordering (M Wessel’s Child Soldiers: From Violence to Protection). This one is a first hand account, I Beah A Long Way Gone. There’s also E Jal’s War Child: A Child Soldier’s Story. Girl Soldier co authored by G Akallo and F J H McDonnell might also be useful, it draws heavily on Akallo’s experience as a child soldier. Child Soldier by C Keitetsi may also be useful.

I have not read any of these first hand accounts. I find it… telling that all of the detailed first hand accounts I can find in English are by Africans. The difficulty finding accounts from European and Asian child soldiers may reflect a bias in the publishing industry, or simply one in the search engine I’m using.

Searching for the Khmer Rogue, recent conflicts in the Balkans and memoirs from Poland during world war two will probably all bring up more memoirs from child soldiers. However those available for free may be shorter and vaguer, while more detailed memoirs may be untranslated.

You can also find accounts by using Amnesty International’s search function. There are 171 results relating to child soldiers. I have not read all of them and Amnesty’s interviews tend to be on the short side but these do contain useful first hand accounts.

In terms of whether the characters ‘count’ as survivors- I think it’s important to remember that we’re talking about a purely legal distinction and I think you could argue the case either way.

The UN declaration against torture says that to be torture something must cause severe pain or suffering. But it explicitly says that need not be physical. Something that is intended to cause mental distress (desecration of corpses or religious sites, forcing Hindus to eat beef or Muslims to eat pork, etc) can be defined as torture.

I think that the systematic exploitation and bullying of a child by armed forces could count under modern law.

However there’s no indication in this that these soldiers have been ordered to bully this child or that they’re doing it for one of the four very well defined motivations the UN declaration outlines.

But the argument about whether it meets the strict legal definition seems like a distraction from the real question here which seems to be: ‘how traumatising is this scenario? Is the symptom level appropriate?’

I think it could be however it’s unclear to me whether the characters are both suffering from PTSD and anxiety or whether one has PTSD and the other anxiety.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to give all the survivors in your story the same symptoms. There is variety in survivors in real life. If you’re writing multiple survivors in the same story then it’s important to try and reflect that variety.

Two symptoms seems like a perfectly reasonable level for the girl to me. It could also work for the boy. But personally if I was writing this scenario and trying to put forward the idea that the boy has lived through more I would give him more symptoms as well. If you are trying to establish something as ‘worse’ in the narrative then you should be prepared to back that up with consequences for the characters.

The slave character, who has been tortured and forced to work for a relatively long time, should definitely have more then two symptoms. I think something more in the range of 3-5 would be appropriate.

I get the impression from the other asks you’ve sent that you tend to consistently underestimate symptoms.

Try not to look at symptoms as flaws or limiting factors on your characters. They are not things that you have to struggle to reduce.

Try instead to think of them as opportunities for you, the author.

Disability and mental illness should not be an insurmountable barrier to the plot. Because it is not an insurmountable barrier in most people’s lives.

These things do create difficulties and problems, often problems that are socially constructed. But people who live with disabilities and mental illness find ways around these problems every day. This necessary creative thinking is an addition to any story.

If your character is in a wheelchair and the important plot device is up a flight of stairs then that shouldn’t mean the character can’t succeed. Instead it means they need a different, less obvious, way to get what they need.

And the solution you choose tells readers more about the character. They might build a device that lets them glide right to the top or plant explosives around the foundations and bring the tower down or hire someone to carry them up. Each of those solutions tells you something about the character as a person.

Symptoms are like that. They are narrative opportunities.

Think about why you’ve chosen PTSD and anxiety. Think about which character they work best with. Think about what those symptoms add.

And consider the other common symptoms and the common memory problems your characters could have. Use them to create varied survivors with different responses.

I worry any time I see an author say their character ‘only feels’ a particular emotion. Because this is never true for people. And while authors often mean ‘this character feels that particular emotion a lot’ sometimes they mean it literally.

A well-written character is not one emotional note, whether they’re a survivor or not.

Resentment towards the adults who exploited and hurt him isn’t unreasonable. Shame about the atrocities she was forced to participated in isn’t unusual.

Think about how to build on these starting points.

If the girl feels ashamed about what she did how does she feel about the people she left behind? Does she think they’re immoral or does she feel sympathy for them and the way they’ve been manipulated?

Does the boy primarily resent the people or what happened to him? Does he associate everyone from his country with what he endured? If so does he view the country that enslaved him differently? Does he see the girl he’s escape with as an exception or does his view of his country effect how he sees her?

Even if these emotions are experienced more often these characters should feel more then one thing. Think about what might prompt other feelings.

If the girl is trapped in a depressive spiral what could pull her out of it for a while? Anger or defensiveness on behalf of her friend? An odd incident that prompts a laugh? Awe or pride at the realisation of how much she’s already done? Because by escaping an active army and enslavement in a foreign country she has already achieved much more then most.

Similarly what could puncture the boy’s rage? What would shock him? What would make him cry?

Is he holding on to anger because he’s afraid of what he might be or feel without it?

A lot of this boils down to standard writing advice for any character: they should feel like complete people.

That doesn’t mean they can’t be flawed, or wrong or missing something important in their lives. It means that they need to feel ‘real’; as if they have dreams and fears and personalities that are possible.

Writing survivors is more complicated but that doesn’t mean the usual approaches to character creation don’t apply. Personal history or traumatic events shouldn’t replace a character’s personality, wants or worries.

And that can be hard to write. Because you’ve got to do all the same work you would for a non-traumatised character, then add another layer of work on top of that.

In fact it’s more then that, because you have to merge all these things and make it look seamless, effortless for the reader.

I emphasised a lot of the planning and thinking part of character creation here. And that is important.

But if you’re struggling with your confidence or character creation generally there is no substitute for practice.

Give yourself permission to experiment, to learn, to get things wrong. This is part of everyone’s writing process.

So yes, think, plan, search for opportunities with things like symptoms. But also practice. Write short scenes or stories. Write multiple versions of the same scene. Try out writing the same character with different symptoms to figure out which you like best.

I hope that helps. :)

Availableon Wordpress.

Disclaimer

#park-chimchim #writing advice #tw torture #tw child abuse #tw child soldiers #tw slavery #writing victims #writing survivors #mental health #rehabilitating child soldiers #child soldiers #survivor accounts #diverse responses are not only realistic #they make a fictional world seem more real

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somedayonbroadway · 5 years

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Avengers au? 👀

Avengers AU

Okay, so this one is complicated 😂. Me and my friend @bexlynne never fully figured out which characters should go where and debated for a long time about who should be Cap. It was between Davey and Spot. I think we decided Davey.

So here’s a little snippet of the list right now with the characters we know for sure (also note that I have a lot of different Avengers AU ideas and all of the characters are switched around plenty).

Characters

Jack Kelly- Iron Man

David Jacobs- Capitan America

Racetrack Higgins- Black Widow

Hot Shot- Hawkeye

Spot Conlon- The Hulk

Katherine Plumber- Pepper Potts

Les Jacobs- Bucky

Crutchie Morris- Rhodey

Smalls- Spiderman

Romeo- Ned

Morris- Thor

Oscar- Loki

Snyder- Thanos

Mike- Quicksilver

Ike- Scarlett Witch

Medda- Nick Fury

Albert- Starlord

Elmer- Groot

Riddle- Doctor Strange

Specs- Vision

This is what I have 😂. I know there’s a lot left out. I’m gonna give you the basics of the original gang-

Jack Kelly

Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.

He is a cocky, sarcastic, brilliant man who was orphaned at fifteen while studying at MIT and left a fortune by his father

He’s a womanizer when he younger.

He takes over his father’s company, continuing to design weapons and armors and make more money.

One day, while travelling to advertise his creations, he gets caught in a booby trap and is captured by enemy forces. He is severely injured and wakes up to find himself strapped to a car battery. The other man who had been taken hostage, a physicist, explains that the battery is the only thing keeping the shrapnel in his chest from reaching his heart.

Jack manages to escape, only because the physicist gives up his own life to protect him.

Jack is only twenty one when this happens.

Jack blames himself for the other man’s death.

All in all, Jack slowly becomes mentally unstable and more and more depressed after this incident.

Jack’s assistant, Katherine Plumber, a woman he’s always been infatuated with but never acted on, does her best to take care of him and help him with whatever he needs.

Jack does his best to push her away.

It doesn’t work.

Jack is in pain a lot as he makes himself a battery to keep the shrapnel away from his heart, knowing he can’t remove it without getting himself killed

He creates the iron man suit when someone threatens him and his company and him personally and tries to tell the media that Iron Man is his personal body guard, only for him to have a meeting with the press and come clean, blatantly stating, “I am Iron Man” to the public.

Jack never had a great relationship with his father, James Kelly (who he is in fact named after) and finds that his father was obsessed with this hero who died years ago called Capitan America

Jack spends his whole life trying to live up to this legend of a man as a child and it eventually becomes the real strain on Jack’s relationship with his dad.

When Jack first finds out his parents are dead, he tried like hell to find their murderer who shot them in their own car after running them off the road.

Eventually he gives up, believe it to be a random murder

When A Miss Medda Larkin approaches him about something called the “Avenger’s initiative” he turns it down immediately.

Once he gets dragged into it, as he likes to think (forces his way back in, is how it actually works) and he meets the rest of the team, he ends up forming a sort of makeshift family with them and does his best to make sure he is the one in the most danger at all times, wanting to spare the rest of their lives

He loves his team, even if he won’t say it.

David Jacobs

Was born prematurely and grew up small. He was malnourished and scrawny and short than everyone around him.

His little brother Les grew to be taller than him and stronger than him and David feels inferior to him, even though he loves his little brother like nothing else

David’s dream has always been to fight for his country.

Les gets to. David, no matter how many fake names he uses and how many tests he tries to pass, does not.

During examination that David is sure he’s going to be arrested at, he is approached by a scientist who asks him odd questions but eventually tells him that he’s going to go to war to defend his country. And David is ecstatic.

Though Davey is not the strongest, he proves to be the smartest and bravest and most worthy soldier at training camp. The reason he’s there is so that the scientist that approached him before can conduct an experiment on him and make him into a super soldier

Davey agrees

David is made into a super soldier, but instead of becoming an actual soldier becomes more of an add for patriotism.

Until one day he hears about a group of soldiers that are captures not far from the camp he’s set to entertain at.

Les is one of the captured soldiers

David goes against his orders and tracks down the hostages, freeing them all and finding his little brother strapped down to a table like some kind of experiment

Les is confused when he sees that his brother is actually taller and stronger than him.

They only barely manage to back it out of the collapsing building alive.

After this, Davey does get to fight against Nazi forces. He fights against several attacks with his brother as his right hand man and a woman named Peggy who he’s falling in love with

One of the missions that Davey is sent on with Les gets them into a moving train, which Les is shot in just before he falls out of the car down a cliff. He is reported dead.

David blames himself for this

Another attack ends with David in a plane, trying to save an entire city of people by diving down into the ocean. He talks to Peggy as he goes under, promising her a dance as neither of them have ever had the opportunity to slow dance with someone before.

He wakes up 70 years later

David is practically dragged into the Avengers.

He never truly gets used to the 21st century.

He and Jack do not get off to a great start

David is physically only three or four years older than Jack but Jack still calls him “old man”

David grows very close to the team he is given.

He’d protect them all with his life.

Racetrack Higgins

Antonio Higgins was orphaned in Russia when he was three years old.

He was found by an organization that took him and claimed him as their own.

Growing up, he was brainwashed and heavily trained in combat and in interrogation techniques.

Antonio Higgins was named after he was found. He doesn’t know his birth name.

Antonio was raised to be one of the most lethal Russian spies in history. He was basically psychologically programmed with false memories to ensure his loyalty to the organization

Race was brainwashed to believe he’d been a ballerina

Antonio is sent to the US to break into Kelly Industries and basically frame Jack for starting a terrorist attack.

Antonio is met with Iron Man instead.

Iron Man never gets a good look at him, but ultimately Antonio gets injured and runs. He lays low for a couple days only to be met with an ex-criminal now working for an organization called SHEILD. Who eventually becomes Race’s only friend and convinces Race to leave the people that raised him behind him.

After only a few months away from that, Antonio is recaptured and brainwashed all over again.

He’s sent to the US again only to be met with his only friend who held him break free of the control that this organization had over his mind and Antonio eventually is recruited by SHEILD as one of their best informants and combat specialists

Once Antonio becomes apart of the Avengers, Jack, who met him as a geeky assistant to Katherine a few months ago while undercover, calls him Race because he’s so quick

Race becomes close with the entire team, almost more so than the others as he’d grown up with no one to rely on but himself. Race is younger than Jack when he meets him. It amazed them all how much he’s been through.

Yes Race and Davey go through all the events of winter soldier and yes they are still like brothers when it’s all over, but Race discovers that it’s okay to have feelings for a man (even if that man isn’t David)

The first time Race can ever recall crying is after the events of Infinity War

Hot Shot

Luca Romano began as a normal kid.

He is orphaned when he was young, much like Race, only he has a brother.

His brother and him run away and join the circus where they are taken under the wing of a swordsman

Luca learns a lot about acrobatics and pickpocketing tricks.

This swordman eventually teaches Luca how to shoot a bow and arrow. This becomes Luca favorite trick and a talent he practices at for years to perfect.

He never misses.

A couple years after meeting this swordsman, Luca figures out that this man is a wanted criminal who he tried to turn over to the police

The man turned on him immediately and tries to kill him.

Eventually, the swordsman gets away and Luca’s brother follows him, stating that he’d rather have a warm bed and hot meal than the morals that Luca did

So Luca is on his own.

He stays at the circus and is known as Hawkeye, the world’s greatest marksman

Luca only ever wanted to help people. However, after a misunderstanding, he is perceived as a criminal and runs to not be taken into police custody

He’s seen hovering over a man who’d been stabbed and was bleeding out on the ground. He’d only been trying to help

SHEILD had an agent out at the time, watching the crime and going in to stop it. That’s when they found him. They brought him in. Luca thinks they’re arresting him. But they’re recruiting him.

They train him. Since he’s young, they basically help raise him. (He’s in his mid teens when they find him)

Eventually he’s sent out to find a spy that had broken into Kelly Industries. He’s told to eliminate him. And at this point, they’d taught him that sometimes bad people needed to be taken care of.

So he had every intention in doing it.

Until he met Antonio

Antonio reminded him of himself. Alone. Lied to. Nowhere to go. So he tried to help him. And they got close until Antonio was taken away

Luca makes it his goal to find Antonio (who is younger than him and reminds him of his little brother)

It takes about a year for that to happen

Once Hawkeye becomes an Avenger, Jack gives him the nickname “Hot Shot”

Hot Shot basically ends up being one of the most responsible avengers. He ends up having a family that only Race knows about and basically adopts Race as a little brother and teaches him the difference between good and bad

I love the Hawkeye/Blackwidow relationship

Spot Conlon

Sean Conlon is a brilliant scientist

During an experiment with a gamma bomb, he sees a teenager accidentally driving onto the range and rushed to save him by shoving him into a trench, but takes the gamma hit himself

He wakes up without a scratch

But that night, after one too many reporters manages to piss him off, he transforms into a big green monster, unable to control himself and destroying his own home.

Sean grew up an orphan. Passed from foster home to foster home. He grew up with issues already. Anger management issues, being one of them.

He’s horrified at the thought of hurting someone but has always been unable to control his fits of rage.

He tries to let his boss’s company take him in, expecting them to kill him if they can’t reverse whatever was done to him

After hundreds of tests and more torture than anything else, Sean tries to off himself, only to transform and have “the other guy” spit the bullet out of his throat.

Rather than try to continue fighting this curse he’s been given, he breaks out of the facility he’s locked in and focuses strongly on helping others rather than hurting them.

He travels all over the world and puts his scientific knowledge to use as he tries to cure diseases in other countries.

Sean avoids any relationship he can, not wanting to get close to people that he could potentially cause harm to

That’s why, when years later he finds himself being followed, he tries to scare the person off

Only to find a young man who escaped his every attempt at losing him

Though, he does manage to scare Race by pretending to get ready to transform. Race pretends not to be phased, even though he jumped

He gets dragged into the avengers and starts to fall for Race who is even more emotionless than he is.

Or at least, pretends to be

Lemme know what other characters you wanna hear about! What scenes or storylines you wanna hear about or see!

I do have other Avengers/Superhero AUs

Such as-

Jack as Thor and Race as Loki

The Spiderman AU where Race is Spiderman and Jack is Tony Stark

Another Spiderman AU where Jack is Aunt May and Race is Spiderman and Crutchie is Ned

Lemme know if you wanna hear about any of those!

For more AUs, check out my list and send me an ask 👇 lemme know if there’s any AUs I left out of my list!

Thanks for reading!

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scotianostra · 4 years

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On February 24th 1303 we saw The Battle of Roslin.

This is one of the largest battles within Scotland during the First Scottish War of Independence, and has been largely glossed over in our history books.

As the English army advanced through Scotland in another retaliatory campaign for the Guardians earlier expulsion of Edward I’s sheriffs and bailiffs, they initially met little opposition. The accounts talk of the army being divided up into three divisions, which approached Roslin mid February and made camp.

IIt was while in their respective camps that the English divisions were surprised by an attack led by mounted Scottish knights, led by John "The Red" Comyn and Simon "The Patriot" Fraser and some sources suggest William Wallace although we don't know this for sure. The Scots had ridden overnight from Biggar and attacked the occupants of the first camp, the survivors of this assault then warning the occupants of the second camp. The men in the second camp collected their arms and defended themselves against the Scots who had moved on from their first target. There was vicious hand to hand combat, in which the English almost succeeded in gaining the upper hand. However, rallied by their leaders the Scots renewed their assault and took the camp. No sooner had this combat ended than the third English division appeared, presumably better prepared for action than either of the first two. Again with the encouragement of their leaders the Scots re-entered the fray and to the astonishment of all won their third victory, though not before putting the survivors of the first two battles to the sword and taking their horses.

While the defeated army was acting on behalf of the English king, it is also likely to have contained many Scots loyal to Edward. The English army, in line with normal practice of the time, appears to have been split into three ‘battles’, or divisions, while on the march, each commanded by Sir John Segrave, the First Lieutenant of Scotland for Edward I, Ralph Manton, the Cofferer (Treasurer) of Edward I, and the third under either Sir William Latimer or Sir Robert Neville. There is unfortunately no information on the reasons behind the army being split in this way. Fordun, who was writing in the 15th century, states that it was simply due to the lack of suitable camping ground to accommodate the entire army, whereas others, such as Buchanan, writing in the 17th century, think it was a tactical disposition. The fact that medieval armies did generally fight in three divisions does suggest that there is more to the decision than the availability of camping space, as does the fact that the army is reported to have arrived in Roslin already divided into three. Scots:

There is very little specific information available on the Scots army, save that the force were mounted, which allowed them to carry out the surprise attack, and that they were under the command of John Comyn and Simon Fraser.

The earliest accounts seem to offer unrealistically high numbers, especially for the English army. This inflation is likely to be nothing more than pro-Scottish propaganda geared toward glorifying the scale of the victory, but I myself am not too convinced about this, for reasons I will come to after going through the numbers. According to Scotland's Sovereignty asserted by Thomas Craig the English consisted of 30,000 men split into the three ‘battles’ which consisted of three brigades of knights and at least 10,000 mercenary soldiers. Now Craig's account wasn't written until 1695, a time when Scotland was still an Independent country with a great pride in it's past victories, that's not to say it should be dismissed, again I will come to that. Here is a brief description of the battle by the Scottish Chronicler John of Fordun, who lived between 1360 and c. 1384

. ...there never was so desperate a struggle, or one in which the stoutness of knightly prowess shone forth so brightly. The commander and leader in this struggle was John Comyn, the son... But John Comyn, then guardian of Scotland, and Simon Fraser with their followers, day and night, did their best to harass and to annoy, by their general prowess, the aforesaid kings officers and bailiffs... But the aforesaid John Comyn and Simon, with their abettors, hearing of their arrival, and wishing to steal a march rather than have one stolen upon them, came briskly through from Biggar to Rosslyn, in one night, with some chosen men, who chose rather death before unworthy subjection to the English nation; and all of a sudden they fearlessly fell upon the enemy.

Forduns account also embellishes the story with the tale of a love affair, I have posted about this before, in my own mind it is a good yarn, but medieval battles were not fought over the love of a woman, this is not Braveheart we are describing here!

The Scots are said to have numbered anywhere between 8 and 10 thousand, again all these numbers are from historians telling the story between the 17th and 18th centuries, so we have no real way of knowing for sure how accurate they are.

As to the dead, well I have used Wikipedia in the past and they had numbers on their page, these now seem to have been removed for some reason, in fact the whole post there is quite pathetic, all it says under casualties and losses is that "At least 16 knights captured" on the English side, nothing on the Scots losses. All of the historical sources state that the Scottish army slaughtered many of the English force; however, no specific numbers are quoted, though Sir Thomas Gray says in the Scalacronica, a Northumbrian chronicle of the era states that Ralph Manton was slain, apparently by Sir Simon Fraser, and Sir Robert Neville is also thought to have been killed during the second Scottish attack. Given the information available from the sources and the surviving place-name evidence, it does appear the casualties on the day may have been extremely high, I am from the area and there are some great place names said to have sprung up from the battle, Shin Banes Field; The Hewan and Killburne, Killbrne ( A burn being a small stream) is said to have been discoloured with blood for three days afterwards.

I have to try and bring this long post to an end by explaining why history seems to have so few real facts about, what was a massive victory for the Scots. Well from an English point of view it was a humiliating defeat, so they are not going to write about it in any real depth, it is also said that this was a secret or a punitive expedition, this would suggest their numbers were nowhere near the 30,000 quoted in places.

On the reasons the Scots history books have little about Roslin, between Fordun in the 14th century until Craig in 1695 there is nothing I can find, well that comes down to history being written by the victors. Yes the Scots won a famous victory, but who was at the head of this victory? Well the subject of a post exactly two weeks ago, John Comyn III of Badenoch, nicknamed the Red, sworn enemy of Robert the Bruce and murdered by Bruce. The Scottish King may very well have suppressed stories of John Comyn's prowess as a warrior at a time he would have been only interested in his own achievements, even after his death in The Brus by John Barbour written around 1375 there is no mention of Roslin, The Brus was written for King Robert II to honour his namesake,Barbour was paid a pension for life for this, he wasn't going to boast about Comyn's exploits in it was he!

Pictures are of the Battle of Roslin Memorial, taken by myself in February 2016.

#Scotland #scottish #Scottish Battle #midlothian #History

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mexcine · 4 years

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Mein Leben für Irland [My Life For Ireland] (1941) review: Mein Leben für Irland is a "Nazi propaganda film," but a very curious one. It's "soft" propaganda, with no Nazi ideology, no German characters, and a foreign, period setting: the main thrust of the film is anti-British, but even the visible villainy of the English is quite mild. The exciting climax of the film pits Irish freedom fighters against the British military occupiers of their land, mitigating the reluctance a rational person might otherwise have for cheering the protagonists of a Nazi-made movie.

The film begins in 1903: a British sheriff and the police evicting Irish farmers are attacked by O'Brien and a group of armed rebels. The sheriff is killed but O'Brien and his friends are captured and sentenced to hang. O'Brien is permitted to marry his pregnant fiancee Maeve before he dies. 18 years later, Maeve's son Michael is a student at the British-run St. Edward's College school (filmed at an actual boys' school in Maulbronn, Germany, with the students as extras). He makes friends with new student Patrick O'Connor. Most of the faculty are British, but caretaker Duffy is Irish: he walks with a limp, the result of a wound he suffered while in the British Army in India. His commanding officer--whose neglect caused Duffy's injury--was Sir George Beverley, now a member of the British administration in Ireland. Beverley's nephew Henry is a student at St. Edward's (and spies on his classmates for his uncle).

Michael takes several of his school friends to meet his mother; Patrick develops a crush on Maeve. One night Patrick sneaks into town to spy on her, and sees a man in her bedroom. He thinks it's her lover, but it's actually injured fugitive Irish rebel leader Devoy. Patrick reveals his disillusionment to Henry, who's acting as a spy for his uncle; this results in the arrest of Maeve (although Devoy escapes). To make up for his error, Patrick goes to work for Devoy, pretending to be an informer to earn the trust of the British. Michael and the other patriotic Irish students torture Patrick to make him confess, but the teen refuses, per Devoy's instructions.

On graduation day at St. Edward's, the Irish rise in revolt. The boys (after burning the British flag and their schoolbooks--an ironic echo of real-life Nazi book-burning) raid the school's armory for weapons and join the street fighting. Devoy is mortally wounded and can't clear Patrick's name. However, Patrick leads a group of men into British headquarters through a secret passage, rescuing Maeve and other imprisoned rebels. Sir George is shot to death by Duffy. Patrick is mortally wounded but dies happy since Maeve and Michael know he wasn't a traitor.

The curious thing about Mein Leben für Irland is how tame it is, particularly with regard to the British. The film begins in 1903 as a British sheriff (complete with suit, bowler hat, and round face, perhaps a stand-in for Winston Churchill) and his men burst into a farmhouse (it says "Dublin" on-screen but the farmhouse is in a very rural area), ordering the family inside to vacate immediately. When the farmer objects, he's seized by two policemen; a young boy intervenes and is roughly tossed aside, hitting his head. This suggests the film is going to contain a lot of British atrocities, but in fact there is almost nothing overt after this. The British have a general attitude of superiority, consider the Irish "uncivilised," and so on, but the depiction of acts of brutality (they shoot a dog, but off-screen) is at a minimum.

During the trial of the rebels in the 1903 section, the Irish prisoners mention "thousands have died from starvation...you let them starve! That's murder!" As they're sentenced to hang, the defendants proclaim the trial "unjust" and "abominable," since they had no chance to defend themselves. However, from the British point of view the trial was correctly handled and the Irish were guilty of murdering the sheriff, so the impression is of a miscarriage of justice rather than outright brutality. Later in the film, Maeve is arrested for harbouring the fugitive DeVoy (some bloody bandages prove her guilt): as noted above, her dog is shot when it attacks the policemen, and Maeve is refused permission to change her clothes in privacy, but neither she nor her housekeeper (caught while trying to burn the bandages) is physically assaulted in any way. Later, a British official makes an oblique comment that prisoners are often "convinced" to talk, but we see no evidence of torture or mistreatment.

Oddly enough, the only torture shown in the film is done by the Irish schoolboys, who tie up Patrick and repeatedly submerge him in the school's swimming pool in an effort to make him talk!

It's been noted elsewhere that Mein Leben für Irland has an odd premise for a Nazi propaganda film: it shows Ireland occupied, exploited and oppressed by the British, with apparently no awareness on the part of its makers that one could easily mentally swap "British" for "Nazis," and "Irish" for "French" (or Dutch, or Belgians, or Polish, or...etc.). Was this irony truly unconscious? Were the filmmakers so lacking in self-awareness, or could they have been so confident that viewers would say "forcibly occupying a country is bad, but...it's OK when we do it"? [As "Hitler's Irish Films" notes, the Nazis recognised that Mein leben für Irland was satisfactory programming for German cinemas, but unsuitable for export to occupied countries.]* *["Hitler's Irish Movies," a 2007 documentary made for Irish television, contains considerable information about Mein Leben für Irland and Der Fuchs von Glenarvon and is well worth seeking out.]

The final 15 minutes of the film depicts the Irish uprising (an explosion ironically interrupts the singing of "God Save the King" at the St. Edwards' graduation ceremony), and is virtually non-stop action of street fighting in Dublin. The British soldiers use a tank (captured by the Irish and turned on its owners), an armoured car, machine guns, etc., against the Irish patriots behind their hastily-constructed barricades. The Irish students--with Duffy's pleased consent--plunder the school's armory (apparently marksmanship is a popular course), handing over scores of rifles and plentiful ammunition to the rebels. The battle scenes are quite well done, effectively shot and edited.

Although the film is specifically set in 1921 (i.e., 18 years after the 1903 sequences), the “uprising” in Mein Leben für Irland seems to have been inspired by the actual 1916 revolt against the British, which did involve lots of actual combat in Dublin.

The personalities involved in Mein Leben für Irland include some interesting characters. Director Max Kimmich was the brother-in-law of Josef Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister and thus in charge of the German film industry. Kimmich directed both of the Nazi "Irish" films, Der Fuchs von Glenarvon and Mein Leben für Irland, but had an otherwise rather undistinguished career and did not direct any films after 1943.

Actor-director Paul Wegener has an enduring place in film history for his silent film work, notably his "Golem" movies. Wegener's role as Sir George Beverley is curiously under-stated in Mein Leben für Irland: by default he's the "main" villain but he has relatively little screen time and does nothing especially heinous. After the war, Wegener was not ostracised for his participation in the Nazi film industry: he was actually anti-Nazi and apparently secretly worked against the regime, and was able to claim he was coerced into appearing in films like Mein Leben für Irland.

Not so lucky in the short run was Jack Trevor, who has a one-scene role as the officer in charge of the military trial in the 1903 section of the film. A British veteran of World War I, Trevor became an actor after the war and relocated to Germany. He worked in a number of German films, including another notorious propaganda picture, Ohm Krüger (which was far more virulent in its anti-British sentiments), and participated in Nazi radio broadcasts. Trevor was sentenced to prison in England after the war for his propaganda activities, but the sentence was reversed when he successfully argued that his wartime work was done under duress.

Mein Leben für Irland is less outré than one might expect and thus has relatively little "camp" value: it's a largely inoffensive period melodrama. Had this film not been made under the Nazi regime, it would be even more forgotten than it is now. Propaganda can be overt or subtle, but Mein Leben für Irland is so subtle that the propaganda message is practically nonexistent: its ideological content can be summed up as "imperialism is bad, the British are imperialists, hence the British are bad," and "people want to be free and will fight for freedom." The Nazis would have cause to regret promoting the latter sentiment.

#Mein leben für Irland #propaganda film #World War Two film #German cinema #Ireland on film

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fakeyellow · 5 years

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The conclusion of the Revolutionary War love story between Kamilah and Agent 355, spy for the patriotic cause.

Summary: While infiltrating a British camp, Kamilah meets an unknown woman at gunpoint. Three years later, in the midst of the Revolutionary War, Kamilah crosses paths with Genevieve Allen, youngest daughter of the prominent Loyalist family and the belle of Philadelphian society. Part 1. Part 2.

September 20, 1980

They lay in bed, their legs coiled around each other, and Kamilah’s wandering hands stopped to gently stroke around the outline of a puckered scar on Genevieve’s waist.

“I was grazed by a bullet in New York,” Genevieve answered Kamilah’s unspoken question, her eyes fluttering closed at the sensation.

While Genevieve had told her about her time in New York over the past months, she’d refrained from telling her everything. Kamilah didn’t begrudge her this; she knew there was more than just Genevieve’s life on the line and Kamilah was content with simply having the woman to herself during these few, stolen moments of time.

Or at least, that was what she told herself whenever fear gripped her heart. It seemed that even after 1800 years on this Earth, Kamilah was no less susceptible to the fear of losing someone dear to her.

Although she tried to set her fear aside and focus solely on the warm woman in her arms, Kamilah couldn’t keep from voicing one last warning.

“Peggy’s been suspicious of you lately,” she said and Genevieve shifted to look up at her with her piercing emerald eyes before slowly nodding in acceptance. Kamilah had also kept some things to herself but there lay an unspoken understanding between the two that their secrets were kept from each other not out of malice but affection.

There would be a time in the future when they weren’t caught in the midst of a bloody war that Kamilah would reveal all of herself to Genevieve. But currently, she had no intention of adding to Genevieve’s troubles, not when the woman had been filled with even more tension than normal tonight, perhaps due to Kamilah’s impending departure.

Kamilah let out a sigh; no matter how long she lived, war seemed to be an innate, inseparable part of human nature. While she had reveled in the bloodshed and gore of battle as much as the most bloodthirsty of men, Kamilah now longed for a period of true peace. Not a momentary lull between wars, but true, lasting peace.

“Tell me your favourite place you traveled to,” Genevieve whispered softly, curling deeper into Kamilah’s embrace. Kamilah stared down at the chestnut head, feeling a sudden swell of affection and a small, wistful smile crossed her face.

She knew better than to indulge herself in sentimental fantasies. But in this precious moment where they were the only people who existed in the world, Kamilah let herself dream about that beautiful, peaceful future where they were unburdened and free to simply love each other to their hearts’ content.

Stroking Genevieve’s head, Kamilah began to murmur, “One day I’ll take you to my hometown in Egypt, where the sun soaks into your skin and the warmth never leaves you…”

—-

It was only when she felt Genevieve’s heart slow down in sleep that Kamilah carefully unwrapped herself and rose from the bed. At the thought of the week they’d spend apart as Kamilah returned to New York to deliver a report on her findings, she bent to give Genevieve’s sleeping face one last kiss.

A hand wrapped around Kamilah’s arm as she made to leave and Kamilah stared into the luminous, emerald eyes she had come to adore. Even in the darkness, a thousand different shades of green seemed to shine in her eyes.

“I love you,” Genevieve uttered and an impossibly pleasing, gentle warmth filled Kamilah’s heart.

“Be safe,” Kamilah whispered tenderly and she finally forced herself to leave, trying to ignore the ominous feeling that had suddenly come over her.

—-

September 26, 1780

Gaius had been pleased with her findings and while she’d finishing reporting everything she’d learned on her first day in New York, it had taken several days to be brought up to speed on everything that had happened since her dispatch to Philadelphia.

But Kamilah longed to return to Genevieve, to reunite with the woman who’d slowly captured her heart. She pretended to be normal, unaffected self even as she felt a restlessness consume her; while Gaius had never stopped her from having other lovers (in fact, he enjoyed whenever she told him of her pursuits; so confident was he in her affection for him that he took pride in how many people she beguiled), Kamilah felt a strange desire to keep Genevieve to herself.

The dimple that appeared whenever she smiled, the hitch in her voice whenever Kamilah nipped at that sensitive spot between her neck and shoulder, the uncontained, mischievous light in her eyes when they were forced to listen to yet another one of Miss Penn’s disastrous attempts to woo Benjamin Chew…

Kamilah didn’t want to share a single thing.

“-Anyway, there’s no more need for you to continue your facade in Philadelphia. It’s clear that the fate of this war will be decided in New York,” Gaius remarked offhandedly and Kamilah snapped to attention; she was currently in a meeting room with Gaius and Adrian was standing stiffly behind them, like a guard dog waiting to be called to attention.

“There are many prominent Loyalists in Philadelphia who have come to trust me. I would not be so quick to dismiss their usefulness,” Kamilah interjected carefully so as not to seem too eager.

“My queen, I’ve never known you to be so enamoured by espionage. Have a few months in Philadelphia already quelled your bloodthirst?” Gaius asked amusedly.

“I’ve found spying has its own pleasures,” Kamilah responded with a playful smirk and while Gaius seemed unconvinced, his focus was redirected as a messenger made his way into the room.

“From General Washington, sir.”

Gaius began to read the newly delivered letter and Kamilah continued, “There is still valuable information I can extract in Philadelphia.”

Gaius suddenly barked in laughter and at her questioning glance, he handed her the letter. She quickly scanned over the scrawled words and felt her eyes widen in surprise.

“General Benedict Arnold’s treasonous plot to hand West Point over to the British has been exposed thanks to his co-conspirator’s capture!” Gaius laughed uproariously, “What a fool to get caught. Arnold’s escaped but he won’t be able to do anything now.”

Kamilah felt a surge of pride; she knew without a doubt that this had been Genevieve’s work. She scanned the letter again but it was infuriatingly curt; General Washington hadn’t felt the need to explain how he’d come to learn of the plot (his relationship with Gaius was strained at best). Yet despite her pride, there was a dark worry that slowly crept over her and she felt the need to make sure Genevieve was safe.

“Now there is truly no need for you to return to Philadelphia,” Gaius declared and finally, Kamilah admitted,

“There was… another spy in Philadelphia. She was of great help to me and it’d be a shame to lose her talent.”

Gaius stared at her piercingly before stating in a dangerously calm voice, “My queen, you never fail to surprise me. How… tenderhearted of you.”

Kamilah glared at him, refusing to take his bait, and Gaius finally waved a hand in dismissal.

“You can return to Philadelphia to settle your affairs but you cannot Turn this girl.”

Gaius continued, ignoring Kamilah’s bristle of anger.

“I’d heard about Washington having one of his spies in Philadelphia and naturally, I was too curious to let it be. Her name is Genevieve Allen, isn’t it?”

Kamilah froze at the sound of her name on his lips but Gaius took it as confirmation.

“Unfortunately, she’s far too prominent a figure. Her family is too well known. It’d be much too risky to Turn her.”

Kamilah retorted, “Marcel.”

“Yes, well, we left France not soon after his Turning. I have no intention of leaving America.”

Kamilah opened her mouth to issue a rebuttal but Gaius stopped her.

“My queen,” he said firmly in a voice that left no room for argument, “I will hear of this no longer. I will allow you to return to Philadelphia one last time but you cannot Turn this girl. Adrian will follow you to make sure.”

Like a well-trained dog, Adrian quickly stepped towards her and Kamilah nearly wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all. But she restrained herself, a tight set to her jaw as she finally capitulated.

“Of course, my king.”

The words were sour in her mouth as she left the room, Adrian trailing dutifully behind her.

“Keep up,” Kamilah snarled, “I won’t slow down for you if you fall behind.”

The pup tensed at her aggressive tone but he nodded and Kamilah promptly began on her way to Philadelphia.

—-

September 27, 1780

It was evening when they finally arrived in Philadelphia (they’d kept to the forests to avoid the sun) but Kamilah paid the time no attention before bursting into Genevieve’s house. Her room was empty, the bed unrumpled and the air stale as if no one had graced the room with their presence for some time.

Fear gripped her heart but Kamilah forced it down, storming into Genevieve’s father’s study downstairs. The man, already dressed in his nightwear, sputtered in alarm at their sudden appearance.

“Mrs. Walton,” he exclaimed indignantly, “Wh-”

“Your daughter,” Kamilah talked over him, “Where is she?”

His eyes immediately shuttered closed and he stiffly remarked, “She’s off to London to visit her sister.”

Kamilah grabbed him at his lapels, easily lifting his substantial body into the air and Adrian jerked in surprise.

“I’m not a very patient woman Mr. Allen,” Kamilah said quietly, no hint of exertion on her beautiful and cold face, “Where is Genevieve.”

It may have been due to Kamilah’s manhandling of him or perhaps his knowledge of Kamilah’s friendship with Genevieve over the past months, but the fight seemed to leave the man in one swift movement.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, “She hugged me goodnight four days ago and I thought nothing of it until I couldn’t find her the next day. And then yesterday, British soldiers came knocking on my door, asking for her.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them that I’d sent her off to London to stay with her sister. I may be a Loyalist but I am a father first and foremost, and those soldiers weren’t interested in her for any good reason,” he answered fiercely before the momentary flare of passion sputtered out.

“Do, do you know why they’re looking for her?” He asked concernedly and when Kamilah didn’t look like she would respond, he voiced a more fervent plea, “Please, she’s my youngest daughter.”

And seeing his earnest eyes, eyes that Kamilah suddenly realised he had passed onto his daughter, she felt herself falter, dropping her grip on him.

“... I’ll make sure no harm comes to her,” Kamilah finally offered with a confidence that she didn’t feel but Genevieve’s dad nodded solemnly, sinking into his chair with a deep relief.

“Thank you.”

Kamilah could no longer stand to be in this house and without another word, she brusquely left, only barely registering Adrian’s brief words of reassurance to the concerned father before he reappeared at her side.

There was one other person Kamilah needed to interrogate and she did her best to suppress the dread and doubt that threatened to consume her. Genevieve was fine. She was smart and clever and resourceful, and as a spy, she must have had some contingency plans.

Kamilah cursed that she had never thought to tell Genevieve of some of her own safehouses. How could she have been so naive?

In a short amount of time, Kamilah was at the doorstep of the Shippen residence and once again, Kamilah forced her way into the house with no care as to the time.

She found Peggy Shippen, sitting at her vanity, with an emotion on her face that wasn’t really surprise but rather wariness, as if she’d been waiting for someone.

“Mrs. Walton?” Peggy asked steadily.

“What did you do?” Kamilah darkly questioned and Peggy’s eyes sharpened in understanding.

The woman let out a sharp chuckle, “Of course. She was working with you, wasn’t she? I knew that bitch couldn’t be trusted.”

Immediately, Kamilah crossed the distance between them and held a dagger to Peggy’s throat, “What did you do. I’d be very careful what your next words are.”

Fear finally entered Peggy’s eyes and she began to stutter, “She was the only one Andre told about his plans to go to New York. When he was captured, I knew it was her fault so I told Benedict before he fled.”

Kamilah remained silent but the blade pressed deeper into the woman’s flesh, causing bright, scarlet pinpricks of blood to appear.

“Please, that’s all I know. I-I don’t know where she is or what they plan to do to her,” Peggy pled, her voice shrill and shaking as she tried desperately to keep her neck still, even though the blade pressed ever deeper.

“Enough,” Adrian interjected, the first word he’d spoken to Kamilah directly since their departure from New York. His eyes were a deep crimson, still unable to fully restrain himself at the sight of the spilled blood, but he managed to push Kamilah’s dagger holding hand away. Peggy gasped, slumping over as her hands frantically pressed a fabric against her bleeding neck.

Kamilah stared mutely at the two of them before she whirled away, disappearing into the dark recesses of the night.

—-

October 3, 1980

Kamilah had left behind a devastating trail of bodies and blood in her relentless search for Genevieve, Adrian a silent bystander, but finally, finally, one of her victims had had information on a recently captured female spy But rather than relief, Kamilah felt her heart swell with a visceral, all-consuming fear.

For the woman had been put on the HMS Jersey, the infamous British prison ship.

While Kamilah wanted to hope for the best, she had lived too long for that. War made monsters of men and she knew there was no limit to what they would do to someone they’d discovered to be a spy, no matter if she was a woman, or perhaps even because she was a woman.

No. Kamilah forced herself out of the dark descent her thoughts had been spiraling into. No. Genevieve was clever. Perhaps the British had mistaken another woman for Genevieve. Perhaps Genevieve had been able to escape and the soldier hadn’t yet been informed of it before Kamilah had caught him…

By the time they made their way to the bay where the ship was anchoured, Kamilah was far too agitated, far too desperate to think of an actual plan. Genevieve was the only coherent thought on her mind when Kamilah burst onto the ship, her daggers flying in impossibly fast silver arcs as she laid waste to the British soldiers guarding the prisoners.

Showers of blood erupted from them, the wooden planks becoming slick with their life essence, but Kamilah ignored it all as she waded through the sea of bodies with a single-minded determination. Her eyes were a blazing scarlet but she ignored the temptation of the blood even as she heard Adrian succumb to his thirst, focusing instead on that single beacon of smell, the smell she knew so intimately.

She followed it to a room in the back of the ship and the door offered no resistance as Kamilah forced it open. The room was dark and the only thing Kamilah could hear was the loud pounding of her heart, somehow synchronised with the droplets of blood dripping off her. The sound seemed to echo in her ears until her eyes fell upon a small lump in the corner of the room and Kamilah forgot how to breathe.

“Genevieve,” Kamilah breathed and broken out of her momentary stupor, she rushed towards the body, frantically turning it over. A battered face greeted her and pure agony consumed Kamilah as she clutched Genevieve’s cold, unresponsive body to her chest, hot tears running down her cheeks.

Too late.

She’d been… too late.

—-

Kamilah rose from the ground, covered in dirt, and stepped back from the freshly made grave.

The grief had long since gone while she’d been digging the ground up, replaced by a cold numbness that had slowly grown into an unquenchable rage.

Genevieve Allen: a brave, courageous woman who had fought so secretly but ferociously, risking her life so that her country might win its independence. A woman who had given her life in service of the country she had believed so strongly in.

And yet that very country would not know her, would not thank her for her service. She was just another woman who would be lost to the passing of time, unnoticed and unacknowledged in favour of lesser men, deprived of her rightful place in history.

Her fists clenched at her side and Kamilah turned away from the unremarkable grave where one of the most remarkable women she’d met now lay in. Adrian fell into step beside her; he’d been tactful enough to remain silent during it all, but he spoke now.

“I’m sorry.”

She looked at him for the first time, seeing the sincere sorrow on his face, and she wordlessly nodded in acknowledgment.

“What do we do now?”

When Kamilah finally found her voice, it was strong and resolute.

“We have a war to win.”

—-

A/N: This story has a special place in my heart although it may not be the most popular story I’ve written or the most historically accurate. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have.

In Kamilah’s anger in the last scene, she’s not only thinking about Genevieve. She’s also thinking about the female Renaissance painter she’d loved, the painter who’d been so talented but was forgotten. She’s had enough of women being forgotten and underplayed in history.

While she’s still fresh with grief over Genevieve’s death, I thought the best way Kamilah could honor Genevieve’s memory was to finish the war Genevieve fought so passionately for.

Research dump/explanations: Genevieve was tense on her last night with Kamilah because she’d finally gotten John Andre to tell her his plans. While the specifics of Agent 355’s involvement in the revelation of Arnold’s treachery is unknown, I made it so that Genevieve found out where Andre was planning to go with the papers detailing their treasonous plot. So she’s why they were able to catch Andre and find out about Arnold’s betrayal.

While John Andre was hung on October 2, 1780 in New York, Benedict Arnold was able to escape capture. Peggy initially feigned ignorance but when they found a letter between Arnold and her, she was exiled from Philadelphia (Let’s say that Kamilah was the one who found the evidence). Eventually, the couple and their children moved to Britain. (Historians agree that Peggy played a large role in convincing Arnold to join the British)

The HMS Jersey was an infamous British prison ship and several prisoners who were able to escape described the inhumane conditions of their experience.

Agent 355 is known to have died after having helped expose Arnold’s treasonous intentions. Some historians say that she died on the HMS Jersey (and also gave birth to Robert Townsend’s illegitimate son on the ship), while others argue that women weren’t imprisoned on the ship and that she was probably Anna Strong, a woman who was allowed to visit her husband, a prisoner on the ship.

#bloodbound #playchoices #kamilah sayeed #kamilah x mc #adrian raines #My writing #agent 355

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