#and then stars with the galaxy wide war of sailors | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mariahthelioness29 · 4 years

Text

Remember the time

Pairing: SamBucky! X Black! reader

WC: 7.3K (EYE... idk why they keep getting longer)

A look into y/n’s relationship with Sam and Bucky years after Send the Addy.

Send the Addy was part of @blackmissfrizzle and her Frizzle’s 2K Follower Celebration & Bad Bitch Challenge. I had the song Send the Addy by Flo Milli.

Warning: Angst, fight, violence, minor character deaths, SMUT, light D/s dynamics, threesome, sir and daddy naming, shower sex, rough sex, rimming, oral (male and female receiving), fingering, masturbation (male), fingering, cum eating.

@sambuckyslayallday @blackmissfrizzle @xbuchananbarnes @avintagekiss24 @helahades @sapphirescrolls @rasberrylemon @saltball @honestlyfrance @black-mcu-imagines @blacklavenderjade @saintsebastian-stan @deansblackbeauty @marvelmaree @honeychicanawrites @siancore

“y/n,what's your status”, Bucky asks in his coms.

You heard Bucky’s call but you decided to ignore it.

“Hang on”, you gruffed him through the coms.

You have to save the Ihumann all in chains by the Kree.

You are appalled that slavery is a reality, still.

Only this time is among aliens.

You are gathering information on the Kree and Skrull cold war for Sam and Danvers.

You jumped down from a level to the other and appeared in front of the Kree soldiers.

“ Hey, sailors”, You salute the Kree soldiers before frying them with energy coming out of you. They drop calcined.

The poor Ihumann are shaking like leaves. One of them grabbed a kid for dear life.

You assume the kid is theirs.

“ I am here to help”, you signed to them in their language.

They nod like bobble heads, still terrified.

“Here”, you signed

You hand them some guns and retractable Wakandan spears.

“ Walk behind me and when I say attack, you do as I say”. You signed to them.

“You walked fast with them and you signaled them to hide.

Some hide behind columns with you and the others blend in with the wall.

Everything was going great, according to plan.

Until other Kree Soldiers noticed you and the Ihumann.

You make them rush to the spacejet.

You press a button to open the spacejet from behind

You gave them all the space suits buttons you had including your own and only a young Ihumann stayed with you.

“ I’ll fight with you”, he signals.

Hissing and groans in pains, screams in agony , the Ihumman slashed through the Kree Soldiers.

You electro shock them until one the Kree soldier you did not see, impaled the Ihumman from his back.

You hear a strangled scream, that is deafening.

You all wince and turn around. You see blue blood pouring, hands over their mouth, eyes wide in shock and a spear through him. They drop to their knees and they look at you.

“NOOOOOOOOOO !!!!!”, you screamed.

Being distraught, the Kree soldiers took advantage and put a stabilizer on you.

A silent scream escapes your throat, the stabilizer bites in your skin, rendering you powerless.

The Kree soldiers put you in chains and make you walk with them.

You are going to another section of the massive compound floating along the sky.

"Huh? , a Terran, Quu, told me they are exquisite, I will find out with this one". He tugs at your chain.

" Save a spot for me, I am trying to find out too". The other soldier says.

You feel a presence.

You see a black shadow.

You hear shots and you flinch. You hear the men trapping you, dropped like a potato sack.

You are relieved to see Bucky but suddenly you are not.

You realize why the man is feared and why the name Winter Soldier exists.

If looks can kill, you would’ve been 10 feet underground.

“ Buck, I can explain”. You say all breathy. He walks to you. He gets you out the chains. He barely acknowledges you, hands you a glass like chip, takes you by the forearm, puts the space suit button on you and taps on it. You are surrounded by the space suit.

Through nooks and crannies, you reach the underground, shooting some soldiers down the way. You manage to escape, through a narrow exit near the underground motors of the compound.

You float to the spaceship and enter it. You click on the button and the space suits disappear.

He makes you sit and he takes the aid kit, injecting a little local anesthetic.

He cuts around the stabilizer and then takes it out with some tweezers. It is hard work cause the stabilizer has some hooks in it.

He takes the bloody stabilizer out of your neck, dropping, stomping it on the floor. He puts some nanobites to close the injury and some alcohol.

You hiss at the feeling of the alcohol and the nanobites.

Bucky’s jaw is square with anger.

He looks at you with the corner of his eyes.

He sees the Ihummann in the spacejet.

“ Translate for me, you are safe and welcome” ,he orders you in a robotic tone.

You sign what he says. They smile at you and they all say thank you to you.

Relieve is all over their faces. Some of them sigh, others with tears of happiness.

“ They say thank you”, you whisper to him.

He smiles at them but you know it is a smile that does not reach his eyes.

He bows to them with his fist on his chest.

A sign of “your welcome”, a reverence you taught him.

They all do the same to him back.

He goes to the cockpit of the spaceship and you beside him.

“ Bucky”, you try to talk to him.

“ Not now, y/n”, he gruffs.

You know, you are for one hell of a talk with him and Sam, when you’re back on Earth.

It took you three weeks to get back on Earth.

It was the route where Kree least looked for you.

Sam and Danvers are aware of what you did, but they cannot help with resources for now.

You stop in several planets, from negotiating some of your arsenal, curing aliens, selling some Earth trinkets, cage fighting, even some stripping. you and Bucky did on Traia to have food, oxygen, water, special water for the Ihumman and a place to rest. You were a success on Traia, they never saw Terrans before. So much, you and Bucky needed to fight the bar patron to let you out.

Bucky only said good night and talked to you the necessary.

You slept with your backs against each other.

He is still mad at you.

You arrived at the headquarters.

Bucky's hair was to his ears. His beard was full.

Your hair looks tired and ran through. You all stink.

The Ihumann stayed in the jet. They need to stay since Earth’s oxygen is nauseating to them, but you promised them you will find a way they can have a shower too since Earth's water makes them ill. They have to talk in signs all the time cause their voice is too high for human ears.

Once you shower, you put on some comfortable clothes.

You go to your office. You dread in your spirit, the debriefing and the report you have to do.

“ ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKIN’ MIND!!!!”,Sam screeched, entering your office with Bucky.

“BOY, DON’T YOU YELL AT ME, I’M NOT FIVE”, you yell back at him.

“This the welcome I get, you two ganging up on me”, you huff.

“ I am not the one, who went head on to Kree soldiers, put Ihumann in the jet, got captured by the Kree, Bucky reminds you.

“We had to do everything to stay afloat for three weeks alone in space or did you forget Traia”. Bucky reminds you again.

“You jeopardize this whole mission, are you aware of that”, Bucky seethes.

“ Oh!, you act surprised with your hand on your chest. “Ladies and Gents, Non-binary peeps, he speaks”, extending your arms to the side.

“Yes, I did and I’ll do it again, I will not be impartial, waiting for instructions while beings are put in chains, used as live-experiments, to appease some bullshit power”. You demanded.

“ You sidetracked this mission and brought Ihumann to earth, what are we going to do with them,the air makes them nauseous, they do not even drink the same water as us, it makes them ill!,Sam speaks with disbelief, pointing to the spacejet.

“ I will find a solution, I am the doctor here, don’t you worry ‘bout it”, You answer him.

Sam huffs in disbelief with his hand on his hip. Bucky just sits on the chair, rubbing his temples.

You throw the chips on the table . The one that Bucky gave you ,two chips extras. They were not even aware of the other two.

Their eyes are wide. They look at the two extra chips and then each other.

“Here is your mission”. You say to them.

“I AM NOT STUPID, YOU TWO ALWAYS CUT MY WINGS IN MISSIONS” your voice hoarse with anger.

They both look at each other.

“ That’s not true!”, Sam rushes out.

“ Oh no ,it isn’t?, I've always had to ask Hill and Danvers, because you never want me to do outside work.”

“ All the schedules for the mission, I am the one that receives a little thing and some bullshit paperwork”.

“ I do it, 'cause I want you safe”, Bucky says trying to calm down.

" I don't want another kidnapping and you receiving the full force of a dying star on you”, Sam say pointing at you and getting closer to you.

"I know what I got myself into, when I decided that this is what I'm going to do for a living and I survived, I am here".

“We need to help the Ihumann, there are the ones suffering the most”, you plead to Sam.

“ We are trying to find a solution for that cold war, this can affect earth, our galaxy and you bringing Ihumann will jeopardize that. This will make us look biased! .” Sam defends.

“ Oh, I read the debriefing documents, the idea is that the Kree colonize Koraa and let them have their way and pretend we do not see it”, You answer with venom.

“ That looks like the most wise decision, for now, y/n, let them believe they have a little power and when they least expect, we come in”, Bucky defends.

“ Do you both realize that by doing that it is the ⅗ compromise all over again ?” You look at them with disdain.

“ y/n, Buck and Danvers are right”, Sam touches your arm up and down, but you retreat your arm from him.

“ Have you lost your sense of self!”, You look at Sam up and down.

“ Black people, Native Americans, we are the products of that atrocity to this day.

You, Danvers, and him think that is the best solution for the Ihumann”, you ask in disbelief.

“ Y’all disgust me, get the fuck outta my office, the door is right there”. You say to them with a tear in your eye.

They both look at you, with pleading eyes.

NOW!!, you shout at them.

Bucky stands from the chair, eyes down. Sam eyes down too and they leave.

You drop on your chair, your head down, you let the tears win.

You sob loud, letting the three weeks of stress get out of your system.

You cry for the young Ihumann that you saw dying, fighting for freedom, defending his folk. You will mourn for him according to their tradition. You take deep breaths, you dry your eyes, after some time.

Your ears still hurt from the strangled scream of the Ihumman.

Feeling a little bit better, you walk out of your office to the main kitchen. You take raw fish and poultry, portion them in Ziploc bags. You take more fish and poultry out of the freezer, defrost and portion them in Ziploc bags and put it all in a big shopping bag.

You enter the front doors and you give the Ihummann the portions.

“We can help you with the oxygen machine and water customization”, three young Ihumann women sign to you.

“We have enough oxygen, for a couple of days, in the space suit, we can do something that can filter the oxygen here and the water, my name is Kala”. She signs.

“I’m y/n, nice to meet you Kala, we start tomorrow, at dawn, it is not much, I’m sorry”. You signed pointing at the food.

" and I am sorry for losing one of you", you signed, regret all over your face.

“It’s okay, this will really do, my name is Jouuma”, she signed to you.

"Moab, he died a hero, it hurts but it was not in vain, He would've been happy seeing we are free.",Joumma signed to you. You come close to her and extend your arm to hug her. You hugged each other and you distanced from each other

You put your hand in your chest and sigh in reliefs. They smile

They nod and yawn. “Get some sleep”. You signed.

“ It’s okay, again thank you for saving us, my name is Ula, goodnight”. One of them signed.

“Goodnight”, you signed to them, with a smile while exiting the spacejet.

You go back to your office. You take the mattress out of the sofabed.

“Thank Jesus, I bought this”.

You tiptoe to your shared bedroom with Sam and Bucky. They look asleep. You take some heavy blankets and then to the kitchen for some ice cream and chocolates.

You were watching some series, but you felt your eyes closing, you were full of chocolates and ice cream and you fell asleep on the sofabed

Sam and Bucky come to your office later in the night. They open the door and tip toe in.

They are both restless, you are not there. The bed feels cold, without you.

“Do you think she will get mad when she wakes up on the bed instead ?”, Sam asks.

Bucky shrugs.

“I just want us to sleep comfortably, I miss her and my bed”, Bucky says voice full tiredness and he yawns.

They see you deep in sleep. A pint of ice cream and chocolate wrappings inside the pint on the floor next to the sofa bed. The T.V projector on.

They see your alarm set at the crack of dawn and some calculations on the desk.

Sam, moves the curtains and sees the spacejet.

“She is going to work with them in the morning”, Sam states to Bucky.

Bucky nodded with his lips pursed.

Sam and Bucky’s eyes are puffy from crying.

Bucky carries you out of the office bridal style.

Sam puts the mattress back in the sofa, turns T.V off and takes out the pint of ice cream with him to the kitchen.

He goes to the spacejet to talk with Ihumann, with a translator.

In your bedroom, Bucky puts you in the middle of the bed. He sets the alarm the same time you had the alarm in the office.

He caresses your face with a delicacy to not wake you up. He ghosts his lips over your hairline and breathes you in. He realizes there, that you are not the same wide eyed sugar baby at the start of your relationship with them. It cost him to shake that state.

They were your providers, you called for them when you were in trouble, but you grew out of that.

You are now Dr. y/n. y/l/n, pioneering space anthropologist, alien anatomist and alien rights advocate and scientist.

He sighs and tangles his leg on top of yours, facing you and goes to sleep.

Sam enters the bedroom

He sees the beautiful sight of you and Bucky breathing deep asleep.

He realizes, it is true what you said earlier. He has lost his way. In his way to mitigate the scandal that was the world knowing their relationship with you, he began to be more complacent to the point, he is not the same Sam Wilson.

You are showing him that when you cannot compromise, you won't. You are trying to prevent a system of discrimination. All of the things, he should be doing.

He goes to the other side of the bed next to you, facing your back, he sleeps the closest he can to you, breathing you in and ghosting his lips over your shoulder.

You woke up and groaned at the sound of the alarm beeping for the third time. You feel two weights next to you. Bucky was cocooned next to you with his leg tangled in yours. Sam was on his back but he has your arm extended on his chest.

You detangle yourself from them and get out the bed. You see them stir a little in their sleep, their faces screwed up. “Hmm, even in their sleep , they can feel whenever I go”, you thought. You shake your head. You love them so much but you cannot let them stagnate you because they want to protect you. You know they mean well, but you are your own person, you have to be.

You take a shower, put on some comfortable blue overalls and a blue shirt with some blue working boots and you go to the spacejet with the Ihumann. Blue is the mourning color of the Ihumann.

Kala, Jouuma and Ula are up in their spacesuits.

“Morning”, you sign

They salute, signing morning. “You are wearing blue”, Ula noticed.

“I am in mourning for Moab, I will shop, some blue clothes for you later”, you told them.

“Thank you but we do not want to become burdensome to you and your “husbands” ”, Joumma tells you through signs.

You point at them, then do waves on your face , put the number three with your fingers and a circle with your hands, you wiggle your finger and then throw your hand behind your back hard.

That means:

“You deserve mourning for Moab, it is not a burden”, you assure them.

“ How do you know I have “husbands”?”, you signed.

“ Yesterday night, a man of your color introduced himself as “Sam”, your husband and said the other man with the metal arm “Bucky” was your husband too, that you are working hard to give us a space, he translated with a virtual translator. If we need anything, press this for any emergency, they will come cause you need sleep”, Ula signed and pointed to the emergency tablet.

“He said, he will try his best on the council to give us our land back”, Jouuma signed.

You sighed. You are happy that the Sam you know is still there. You know, he does not make empty promises.

They are in awe seeing the dawn and the birds fly.

They are smiling at each other and at the sky. You know that feeling. Whenever you are in space, you are like them, excited from everything around you.

With that all of you go to the basement of the compound

Later that day, you brought all of regular clothes and blue clothes for them and cut holes in the pants so that their tails were free. You wore blue and did intermediate fasting with them for three days in honor of Moab

You were working day and night for a week straight. Kala, Jouuma and Ula were the test subject for the chambers and they gave some recommendations.

You enlisted the help of Shuri, Tony, Bruce and Helen to make the lowest part of the basement of the compound suitable for them. The basement was big enough for some chambers and a couple of showers with special ionized water for them. Your other work was deciphering the encryption on the chips with Carol.

It was mostly a reading and staying quiet affair. There was still a little animosity between you and Carol, since you did not agree on the conditions for the end of the cold war.

You have given her the cold treatment. She has apologized already but you were not going to let her off the hook that easy.

“y/n”, Carol says your name soft.

You turn to her.

“I am so sorry, for not seeing the Ihumann how the conditions of armistice can affect the Ihumann, I was shortsighted and I brought Wilson and Barnes to my lack of vision, It was completely insensitive of me not thinking not seeing this from your point of view. I understand if you do not accept my apology. Regardless, I will work on seeing things from different points of views and that these solutions actually help the people that needed the most. I hope de-encrypting this can give us the upper hand so that we can help the Ihummann, Carol apologize.

you chuckle.

“That was nice”

“Hmm, how does those words taste coming out of your mouth”, you tease Carol smirking,

She rolls her eyes, “like the worst kind of vinegar, It feels horrible when I fuck up, horrible but they are necessary”, She admits.

“I hope we can find something with the program we installed”, You go and lay your head on her shoulder.

She sighs and nods, looking at the chips with connected to the projector,

“When are you going to resolve your differences with Wilson and Barnes?” Carol asked.

“I have never seen two men so lovesick and sad. It is like a Skrull tragedy”, Carol expressed.

“Maybe tonight, but I will have a party with the Ihummann to celebrate in the basement, you are invited too”. You hand her a face mask with a filter and a pair of headphones.

She is surprised with the mask and headphones on her hand. “The party is in the basement”, you say walking out.

The basement is nice, It is their environment, they even manage to start growing some of their vegetables. Ula had some seeds in her pocket.

You are there with your oxygen filtering mask and some headphones to hear the music to your frequency, courtesy of Tony and Shuri. They designed a surround system that was on the frequency of sound apt for them but not deafening for the rest tower.

You were showing different music of “Terra”(Earth), you were showing them Afrobeats, now they are listening to Beyonce's ``Already. The video was there on the projector and they were imitating the dance steps, step by step perfectly. The Ihumann have amazing photographic reflexes. They understand the lyrics, they love the rhythm. There is a translator embedded in the projector. If you take your headphones off, you are sure you will be deaf. They have the volume so high. That’s why you talk in signs. Human voice or humanoid voice and its frequency is too low for them and their voice is too loud for your ears.

They ask you if the blue men in the video are alien, they have blue skin. You signed to them they are human but painted blue. They all signed oh..

You signed that you will show them another genre and another artist from you were a little bit younger. You play Send the Addy and 19 by Flo Milli. “It is called Rap/ Hip-Hop and this one of my favorite artists, Flo Milli”.

They start jumping to the song and then imitating how you dance.

You start dancing just like how you remember doing the way you used to. Going all down and starting twerking to the floor and they all do the same. You laugh seeing them twerk

You remember that night in the hotel years ago.

How lively and also kind of naïve you were.

How dependent you used to be of Sammy and Buck. You miss that girl from time to time.

Before trending on twitter as #blackmonicalewinsky, before going with the Guardians to escape all that scandal, change your identity, become a pioneer in a career made by Jane Foster and Carol Danvers, going to missions on different planets, before being an avenger, before escaping from space pirates and rather jump on a dying star than to be theirs, Carol finding you passed out floating in space and getting your powers.

Carol arrived at the celebration and you know she likes Classic Rock.

You signed to them that the type of music they are going to listen to is Rock and the band is Gun n Roses, that they are classic and renowned here on Terra. They all have wide eyes and they mouth Oh..

After a while of rock music videos, they were listening and watching Michael Jackson’s Remember the time. You told them that Michael was one of the best artists to ever grace Terra. He made moonwalking famous and he is a staple of Terran music.

They all watch your signing intently to remember what you said, like good kids in school.

They were like little kids in a movie theater. You look at them screaming scared when Michael appeared from the dust in the video.

“Those sweet memories

Will always be dear to me

And girl no matter what was said

I will never forget what we had

Now baby” Michael was singing.

Your mind went to all the amazing times, Sammy, Buck and you had. All the times when you felt on top of the world. The song is one of Sam and Buck’s favorites. You need to make amends with each other. You want to but you just haven’t got the time. You are scared your fights were never this long. It has been a month. You are in that weird grey zone. Not that mad at each other but there is still not a proper closure to this.

At the end they were imitating the dance moves in the dance break of the video, perfectly just like the dancers in the video. It was outstanding, seeing Jouuma imitate Michael Jackson so good like she was some live extension of him.

“Michael would’ve been proud; aliens listening to his music and enjoying it”, you thought.

“ I am going to get ‘em and resolve our differences”, you say to Carol.

“ Go, get’em, tiger, You will be wobbling to the office tomorrow, I just know”, Carol snickered, you shove her. She laughs and you shake your head and stifle a laugh.

Talos was with Sam and Bucky and some of the Ihummann with their oxygen filter mask.

Sam and Bucky were smoking.

Sam was smoking a Cuban cigar, Bucky a plain Marlboro.

They were all concentrating on a game of poker.

It was ridiculous how many times they have lost to the Nuk, Cab and Ilu,the Ihumann playing poker with them.

You smell tobacco and you roll your eyes. You hate tobacco, but your heart softens. They only do that when they are too stressed.

You saw them playing. You went to the table. You sat on Sam’s lap, you kissed him on the corner of his lips. You did the same to Bucky, you sat on his lap, you kiss the corner of his lips. You get up and walk , then you turn around your head, looking at them with desire and continue walking, swaying your hips.

All the Ihumann, Talos, the other Skrulls, look at Bucky and Sam.

They start either signing whistling sounds or whistling to Sam and Bucky.

Sam feels his cheeks heat up, Bucky actually gets red in the face.

“I see you will get lucky tonight,boys, I don’t know much about Earth women, but that is a woman after something, Talos said to them, wiggling his eyebrows.

“You know that is the first sign of loving, we have received in a month”, Bucky tells the group.

“What the hell are you here for, GO!!!, to where she is, Nuk, the Ihumann signed to them.

Bucky and Sam understood with the translator. He and Sam get up from the table and walk to their room so fast, one probably could see the dust in shape in their form, just like the cartoons.

You took all your clothes. You went straight to the shower.

The water was relaxing and giving you courage.

You hear their footsteps in the room and you smile.

You are vibrating with anticipation just like that one time in the hotel or your first time together.

They hear the shower. They take their clothes in a frenzy. In a second,they are only in their boxes.

They enter the bathroom. They see you through the glass and their mouths water.

“May we join, ma’am ?”Bucky asks all breathy, eyes darkening, taking you in.

“You may”, you whisper to them, sliding the glass barrier.

Sam and he take off their boxers and step into the shower, enter in and slide the door close.

You feel the air change when they step up.

The way they are surrounding you.

Bucky goes behind you and Sam in front.

Your lips are quivering, feeling Sam and Bucky this close.

He cups your face in his hands, rubbing his thumbs on your cheeks.

He ghosts his lips on top of yours and kisses you unhurried.

He increased the pace of the kiss. He sweeps his tongue on your lip. Your lips part giving him access. You are making out with him, massaging each other’s tongues.

You are falling in that feeling of surrendering to them.

Bucky hugs you from behind then he starts massaging your breast. The water, the contrast of metal and flesh. You throw your head on his shoulder. Your breathing is getting ragged.

Bucky is hissing in your ear. The rubbing of your ass against his dick was making him dizzy.

Sam brings you close to him again, to kiss you with all the passion he has.

Bucky entered his finger in you. You gasp into the kiss and Sam starts to suckle on your neck. You are so soaked, and warm on his fingers. “ Fuck it, I can’t wait, I going to take you here ”, Bucky rushes out

Sam stops the water.

He makes you find support by putting your hands on the tiles, caging Sam in.

He brings your ass to him and he lines up with your entrance.

He thrusts into you in one go, groaning “Goddamn”.

You cry out “Daddy, fuck!”.

Sam drops on his knees in between your legs, flicking his tongue on your clit.

You go cross-eyed. “Sir, fuck, that’s so good”, you whine

After a while, he starts flicking his tongue on Bucky’s balls and Bucky stutters his movement moaning.

“FUCK!!, you two are going to be the death of me”, Bucky rushes out in between groans and moans.

You can only moan and bring your ass back to him.

“Daddy, you feel so good”, you shrill.

“Fuck, baby, bring that ass to me, sweetheart keep doing that”, he moans.

Sam keeps flicking his tongue, humming, moaning against Bucky’s perineum.

He is jerking himself hard, he stops when he feels he is too close. He walks on his knees a little so that he can stand up from Bucky legs. He just looks at sight of you and Bucky ravishing each other.

“Yes, yes, fuck yes”, you babble.

You feel yourself tightening around him.

“Daddy, please, I…”, you scream

“I am close too, honey”, Bucky breathes out. He is going in and out unrelentingly. You come with a strangled high pitched moan. Your whole body shakes with release.

“Baby, I love you so much, baby, y/n”, he groans, picking his pace up to a new speed.

Damn!!, you cry out at him going faster.

You feel his dick twitch

After a few thrusts, you feel the warmth of his cum inside you and him groaning your name.

“Wow”, he breathes out. You catch your breaths.

You hum in response, you feel light and relaxed.

He pulls out, turns you to face him and kisses you. You both smile into your kiss.

You hug each other tight.

He runs his hands up and down your back to your ass.

You breathe him in. You missed this and both of them so much.

You both approach Sam.

Bucky grabs Sam’s head, kisses him hard, they hug each other, grope each other, rub against each other.

They are making out. All tongue, moaning and humming. Bucky kisses his neck and sucks on it to leave a mark. Sam moans and hiss.

“That was so hot, baby boy”, Sam tells Bucky out of breath.

“It was so good, you under me and our baby girl fucking herself on me”, Bucky responds out of breath. They both look at you.

Your mouth waters and your pussy throbs, watching them.

“How about we take this to the bed ?”, Sam asks, his voice raspy, deep.

You look at him. He is rock hard. You bite your lip and you nod.

“Yes, sir”, you answer him.

You exit the shower.

You all take your towels and dry in a rush, leaving the towels there on the counter.

In the bedroom, you kiss Sam, all tongue, your hand on his ass, his hands on your ass.

You are both touching and groping each other.

You kiss his neck then his chest, leaving a trail of kisses until you drop to your knees.

Bucky was enjoying the show, laying on the bed. One hand behind his head and the other jerking himself off slow.

“What do you want, pretty baby ? Sam looks down at you, grabbing his dick.

“ Use my mouth, sir”, you look at him with doe eyes.

He taps his dick on your lips.

“Open up”, he says. You open your mouth wide.

He goes slowly into your mouth, “Fuuuck”, he rasped.

Then he pulls slow, “Goddamn”, he rasped.

You choke on his dick over and over again.You bobbed your head up and down, gagging

You jerk the part you can’t reach.

He groans “Shiiiit”,feeling the back of your throat.

“That’s it, honey, deep just like that, you are so good with that mouth, Bucky encourages while stroking himself.

You take Sam out your mouth and lick his head full of pre cum with kitten licks.

“Ahh,baby” he rushes out.

He fucks your mouth without mercy.

He stops.

He sits on the edge of bed, he wiggles his finger to come to him. “Crawl to me, like the good girl you are”, he demands. “Yes sir”, you answer, crawling to him.

You reach to him and he grabs the back of your neck. Driving your head up and down the way he saw fit. He threw his head back, lips parted, eyes to the ceiling, he was breathing heavy, moaning, hissing, groaning.

Bucky crawled next to Sam and kiss him.

He whispers to his ear: “She sucking your dick good, sweetheart?, I know she is good at that, that mouth of hers does wonders. You keep sucking him, taking a breather here and there and going back to business.

You hear what Bucky says and Sam moaning, your pussy feels wetter.

Bucky grabs your head, making your head go up and down to his pace, while kissing Sam’s neck .

Sam nods fast, moaning.

Bucky pulls your head off Sam's dick.

“Baby girl, come up, put that ass on daddy’s face”, Bucky rasped.

You put your ass on his face and you're facing his dick, you stroke it and he hisses.

“Fuck you’re dripping wet, you like sucking dick that much, pretty girl?” Bucky asks you then lick your slick.

You mewl; “Yes, Daddy”

“Come here, Sammy, give our girl what she needs”, Bucky tells Sam.

Sam crawls to where you are.

He is on his knees, legs a little wide, each on each side of Bucky’s head.

You are your hands and knees and Bucky is under you.

Sam lines up with your entrance and thrust in.

“Sir!!!”,you scream

He rams into you, he spanks your ass cheek.

You jolt and whine; Sir, that feels so good, spank me, please”.

He spanks you hard, you feel your ass tingling and burning. You hiss.

Sam fucks into you, groaning, moaning, breathing heavy.

He grips your hips hard and thrust into you fast, while bringing your ass to him.

You let out high pitch moans and groans.

“That’s it baby, I wanna hear you, I’ve missed those sounds”, He says driving into you with force.

Bucky is under seeing the connection between Sam and you.

He scoots a little and he is under your clit.

He licks fast on your clit, humming, while jerking himself off.

His licks, the vibration of his hum, Sam unforgiving pace.

It is too much.

“Sir, daddy, I’m…”, you cannot not even finish your sentence.

Sam levels a brutal slap to your ass.

“You are going to take what we give, baby”, Sam grits out, still fucking you non stop.

You mewl: “yes, sir”.

You feel him so deep, you close your eyes.

You scream: “Fuck, sir, Fuck”.

He yanks you by the hair. You hiss.

“Who am I, naughty girl ?”, He grits out,

His bottom lip between his teeth, He is going somehow deeper.

“YOU’RE MY SIR !!'', you scream so hard, the Ihumann would finally hear a human voice for the first time in their life.

Bucky still licking you, Sam yanking your hair and his pace.

“GOD!!, you scream, you feel your insides tighten hard and clear liquid comes out.

You come gushing out.

Sam pulls out and he wets his fingers with your juices.

“Fucking sweet”, he states and hums at the taste. He stares at how you squirt and Bucky laps it all up.

Bucky catches it with his mouth. He jerks himself faster. He comes with a moaned version of y/n , Sammy.

You grab the sheets hard. Your comfort is Bucky warm abs against your face. Your face has Bucky cum.

Sam thrust in hard again.

“Baby, squeeze me like that, it’s so fucking goood”, Sam rushes out of breath.

He is going at it, fast, demanding.

You mewl, moan and groan. Your eyes closed and lips parted.

He keeps the pace and cries out “SHIT!!!, He groans: “Oh, my God”.

His eyes close, breathing ragged, he comes with a long, loud moan.

He empties inside you.

Sam pulls out, taking deep breaths. He lays on his side of the bed.

You catch your breath, resting your head on Bucky’s abs. your ass is still up.

Your pussy pushes all the cum out and Bucky laps it all up.

“Ahh fuuckk”, you sigh, you are so sensitive, feeling Bucky's tongue slowly eating you out.

“You taste so good together”, Bucky says savoring you and Sam.

You scoop Bucky’s cum and lap it all up.

You stand up from him and go to your spot in the bed. The middle.

Bucky goes to your right and puts his head on your shoulder.

Sam puts his head on your other shoulder too.

There is a comfortable silence.

You all look at the ceiling in a sort of trance.

Your bodies are still vibrating from the pleasure.

You remember this feeling. You felt like this, when you were together for the first time.

You smile and start singing:

Do you remember when we fell in love?

We were young and innocent then

Do you remember how it all began?

It just seemed like heaven, so why did it end?

Sam followed with:

“Do you remember, back in the fall?

We'd be together all day long

Do you remember us holding hands?

In each other's eyes, we'd stare

Tell me”

You sign all together:

Do you remember the time?

When we fell in love

Do you remember the time?

When we first met, girl

Do you remember the time?

(Oh, I)

When we fell in love

Do you remember the time?

Sam continue singing:

Do you remember how we used to talk?

You know, we'd stay on the phone at night till dawn

Do you remember all the things we said?

Like, "I love you so, I'll never let you go

Bucky sings, horrible out of key;

Do you remember, back in the spring?

Every morning, birds would sing

Do you remember those special times?

They'll just go on and on

In the back of my mind

You laugh after that.

“What made you remember “remember the time”?”, Bucky asks you

“ We were having the party in the basement, the Ihumann were watching the video and dancing to that, when I went looking out for you’, you answer to him. ‘It is amazing how they catch on moves so damn fast, they dance the same as the video dancers, like outstanding and it is a little bit eerie like Jouuma was like a reincarnation of Michael.” You add on.

“Okay, space nerd”, Sam teases you. Bucky chuckles at that.

You glare at them

They face you. Sam faces you with his weight on his elbow so that he can see your profile. Bucky does the same.

“I am sorry, y/n”, Sam starts.

“You were right, I was losing my sense self, we need to help the most vulnerable,

We will find another solution for the Kree and the Skrulls and the Ihummann.

You show me what I should be doing. When you can’t compromise, don't.

I am sorry for holding you back. I just want to be your protector, just like I was once ,but I know things are different now. It just cost me. You have been through a lot and I wanted to save you from all that and I couldn’t. I will change. I will ask you what you need instead of assuming, I am sorry, baby ”, he states and he chokes a little sob on the last part.

“Aww, Sammy, you and Buck are the people that make me feel safe and loved. It's just that I’m not in college anymore. A lot happened and I’m not the same person but I love you and how you two always are there despite our differences ” you say while sitting up against the headboard.

You let him put his head on your chest.

“ I am sorry, I sidetrack the mission but it is just that when I see something go south, I can’t ignore it”, I am sorry I kicked you out of my office like that. I will try my best not to lose my temper like that again”, you apologize to them.

“You are right, y/n, It is a horrible plan, we need to have some alternative and I know it is in those chips. I am sorry for being an ass to you in space and I am sorry for making you feel bad to save the Ihumman, like Sammy said we want to protect you and we feel we have fail at that, when everyone were against you for this relationship, the scandal, the kidnapping, you getting your powers but you are right you are different but at the same baby we fell in love with and I love you and I promise not to be overbearing”, Bucky apologizes. He puts his head on your chest too.

“You were right in saving them, I was so far removed, that was me and Steve in the 40s.

If he didn’t disobey orders to save me constantly, I wouldn't be here”, Bucky states

You kiss his head.

" Buck, it's so good that you think that way, I am thankful for you and Sammy, you two did what you can, you received a lot of backlash too . You are enough more than enough ",you say to him, rubbing his back.

“You still owe me a fucking car, asshole, you rip my fucking steering wheel”, Sam tease Bucky with faux offence.

Bucky sighed “I am sorry, Sammy for damaging your car and rip the steering wheel”, Bucky apologizes

You all laugh.

“What are we going to do if we do not find anything on those chips”, You worry.

“Hey baby you are one of the most brilliant minds there is out there , you will figure it out and we will be right here by your side”, Sam reassures you and Bucky nods in agreement.

“Let that grey matter of yours, rest a minute, honey pie”, Bucky said to you while bopping your nose.

“You are right and I love you so much”, you answer.

“We love you so much, pretty baby, Sam answered you and kissed your cheek”.

You all went to the bathroom and shower for real this time. They were kisses here and there.

You brush your teeth.

Sam grabs the cocoa butter and he moisturizes you and Bucky then moisturizes Sam.

Bucky wraps the night scarf around your head for your hair with a good knot

. Sam changed the covers and put the dirty covers in the dirty clothes basket.

You change into your PJS. You wore a silk camisole. Bucky some loose shorts, no underwear and no shirt. Sam wore some sweatpants and no shirt.

You kissed each other goodnight and slept tangled with each other.

#sambucky #send the addy #remember the time #blackmissfrizzle challenge

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violethowler · 4 years

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The Things That Matter

I’ve talked a lot over the last two months or so about the many different ways that the characters, story, and themes of the Kingdom Hearts series align with the framework of the Heroine’s Journey. For the final chapter in this series of essays, I’d like to talk about what it means for this series to follow this narrative formula. Because the fact that Kingdom Hearts fits into this storytelling pattern is critically important now more than ever.

The three most recent series I know of that aligned with the Heroine’s Journey framework all ended up missing the landing in various ways. Two of the three - Voltron: Legendary Defender and the Star Wars sequel trilogy - abandoned the formula in their final installments, while the third one - the Frozen movies - managed to fit into the formula almost completely, but suffered in the second movie from a lack of clarity as to which of the two leads is the main protagonist and which is the Animus. Two of these were under the Disney umbrella, and all three have had evidence found that executive meddling or other behind-the-scenes conflicts over story direction played a role in how the final installments ended.

As I mentioned in my essay “Into the Unknown,” when a story deviates from the structure it appears to be following, it produces a visceral sense of wrongness in the audience. In stories which up toward the end aligned with the Heroine’s Journey, that effect is amplified. The framework of the Heroine’s Journey was designed to uplift the experiences of identities outside of what society considers the default option in storytelling. The lived experiences of those identities are mirrored in the narrative’s themes. So when a story set up around calling out prejudices and double standards about those identities that are ingrained into the audience’s culture deviates from that formula, the result inevitably ends up reinforcing those biases instead, on top of the brokenness of the narrative in general.

In terms of how this applies to Kingdom Hearts, Sora and Riku’s individual character arcs have been noted by many LGBTQ+ fans to have notable parallels with elements of their own lived experiences:

Riku’s arc of learning to accept his darkness as something natural that’s a part of him and which he can express in a positive way mirrors how many LGBTQ+ people grow up with the idea that same-sex attraction is “sinful” and “unnatural” and have to unlearn that mindset in order to realize that there’s nothing wrong with them. Likewise, Mickey’s line in Re:COM about how spending time with Riku has positively changed his opinion about Darkness can be read as an analogy for straight people who are initially unsure of or hostile to LGBTQ+ identities changing their minds with education and first-hand interaction to become staunch allies. Esmeralda’s talk with Riku about how “There are just some things we need to keep separate from the world at large, at least until we have time to figure them out”[1], while on one level is referencing Riku’s Darkness and his inner turmoil relating to Ansem, can also describe the common LGBTQ+ experience of being in the closet and hiding that part of yourself from the people around you[2].

As for Sora, in Kingdom Hearts III he responds to Davy Jones’ comments in The Caribbean about the romantic relationship between Will and Elizabeth by saying that “I still have a lot to learn about love[3],” indicating he lacks understanding of his own feelings in the area of romance. This is supported by the official Kingdom Hearts Character Files book published by Square in February 2020. Short stories in this book featuring Sora’s POV depict him as actively confused about what romantic love is[4], and struggling to define the nature of his relationship with Riku[5][6]. This can be a common experience for LGBTQ+ youth growing up surrounded by media that only ever depicts romantic relationships as one boy, one girl. Many people who grew up like this—myself included—have had similar experiences of struggling to understand our own feelings about someone of the same gender because for our entire lives up to that point we had little or no exposure to the idea that being romantically interested in someone of the same gender as you was an option.

Sora and Riku are each written in ways that speak to common LGBTQ+ experiences, and the fact that so many things—the canon parallels to Disney romances, the match with how love interests are portrayed in the Heroine’s Journey, the fact that one of the series’ Lead Event Planners Michio Matsuura was described by the Co-Director Tai Yasue to be “head over heels for the bond between Riku and Sora’s hearts[7]”, in connection with his enjoyment of “pure love dramas[7]”—are all pointing to the conclusion that these similarities did not happen by accident, but by design.

It makes so much sense for Heroine’s Journey narratives to be used to tell LGBTQ+ stories because there are so many ways that homophobia and transphobia overlap with and are rooted in the very same gender and cultural norms that the framework challenges. Many countries have come a long way towards public acceptance of LGBTQ+ identities, but in terms of the stories that we tell, mainstream fiction is still skewed in favor of stories with protagonists who are straight and cisgender. Storylines with straight romance are treated as a society-wide default, while creators in countries like the U.S. who want to include even the smallest background references to LGBTQ+ relationships have had to fight and push back against corporate pressure to remove them.

This is especially true for media aimed at children and teenagers, as the fact that being openly LGBTQ+ is still widely considered problematic in many countries is frequently used by entertainment executives in ostensibly more progressive countries as an excuse for censoring LGBTQ+ storylines and characters. Multiple creators working on animated shows for Disney and/or its competitors have spoken out in recent weeks about the resistance they faced to including LGBTQ+ relationships[8][9][10] and how they were told that openly acknowledging characters as non-straight was too controversial or “inappropriate for the channel"[9].

As a consequence of this environment, creators wishing to depict non-heterosexual relationships have had to resort to creative methods of getting the implications past the censors in a way that LGBTQ+ audiences would recognize while still maintaining plausible deniability so that the executives could make money off the story in anti-LGBTQ+ markets. The downside to this is that because these efforts are more subtle, most straight audiences will either not notice the implications, or else dismiss them as an accident. Some will go as far as coming up with alternate explanations to justify why any potential LGBTQ+ subtext about a character or relationship could not possibly have been put there by the creator intentionally.

This extends not only to audiences, but also to people who interact with these stories in a professional capacity, such as translating and marketing a story’s international release. Animated shows that feature same-gender relationships have had international dubs change the gender of one character in the pairing to make it straight, for instance. Or there's the infamous example of how the English dub for Sailor Moon in the 1990s changed two girls from lovers to cousins in order to provide an explanation for their closeness that didn't involve acknowledging that the characters were not straight. In terms of the Kingdom Hearts series, the English localization has routinely downplayed LGBTQ+ subtext in the series while in some cases adding romantic undertones to interactions between a male and female character that did not exist in the original Japanese script. Kingdom Hearts III was one of the most egregious examples of this:

Hercules’ recollection of how he dove into the River Styx to save Megara’s soul in KH2 is thematically connected to Riku sacrificing himself for Sora at the Keyblade Graveyard through the phrase taisetsu na hito (literal meaning: “precious person”) when Hercules is talking to Sora in Olympus and when Mickey is talking to Riku in the Realm of Darkness at the beginning of the game. The English version translates this as “person I love most” for Hercules, while changing it to “what matters” for Riku and Mickey to call back to his meeting with Terra in Birth by Sleep, which the scene includes a flashback to. While Mickey and Riku’s original meaning can still be deduced from the conversation around it, especially with Mickey saying "sometimes you care about someone so much," changing the line for the sake of a callback downplays the evolution of Riku’s goals from protecting “things that matter” to protecting “the *person* who matters”.

Donald and Goofy’s teasing Sora in the scene at Galaxy Toys where Sora comments on how much he or Riku resemble Yozora is framed in the English version as “Riku would be a great action figure because he’s cool, unlike Sora.” However the original Japanese indicates that the teasing is centered around the fact that Sora said a character who looks like Riku was good-looking.

When Kairi offers Sora a paopu fruit, she says in the original Japanese that it’s simply a good luck charm so that they don’t get separated, while in the English localization, she says “I want to be a part of your life no matter what, that’s all.” While “that’s all” still fits with how the parallels to Winnie the Pooh indicate her connection with Sora has weakened and she wants to maintain it, the first part of the English line calls back to the legend of the fruit introduced in KH1, which was openly referred to as romantic by Selphie in the original and localized versions of the first game. As a result, this adds romantic implications that contrast with Sora’s unreceptive body language and facial expressions[11] as he reacts to the initial offering of the paopu fruit.

In the original Japanese, Riku’s words to Sora before his sacrifice at the Keyblade Graveyard translate to “I believe in you. You won’t give up.” The English localization changed it to “You don’t believe that. I know you don’t.” Not only does it remove a callback to the original game, but this phrasing dowplays Riku’s faith in Sora and ignores Sora’s very clear feelings of inadequacy.

During the scene where Sora and Kairi are floating through the dark tunnel toward the Keyblade Graveyard, Sora’s line in English, “I feel strong with you,” was originally an acknowledgement of Kairi’s strength that called back to how he wouldn’t let her come along on the return trip to Hollow Bastion in the first game because he thought she’d “kind of be in [his] way”[12]. Removing this callback takes the focus away from Kairi’s growth and brushes aside one of the ways the game shows that Sora’s view of her has changed over the course of the series.

Some fans defend changes such as these insisting that the development team had to have approved of them. However Testuya Nomura himself feels strongly enough about the subject: he stated in a 2018 interview several months before KH3's release that “an incorrect or defective translation risks compromising the comprehension of the whole story,” referring especially to the Kingdom Hearts series[13], and the English localization of Re:Mind—which was much more accurately translated than the base game—directly references the original meaning of Kairi’s words during the paopu scene in one of the DLC’s Kingstagram posts. This all indicates that changes such as these that remove important connections or change the meaning of the conversation are ones that the development team very much do not approve of.

LGBTQ+ fans of Kingdom Hearts who recognize their own experiences reflected in Sora's and Riku’s journeys know that Disney has not had a good track record when it comes to depicting LGBTQ+ characters in properties they are affiliated with. The most we ever get in their movies are background moments or nameless characters that are only there in one scene that easily can be cut out for distribution in countries with heavy anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. And that’s if the character’s orientation is even mentioned out loud in the film at all instead of simply being confirmed by interviews before or after release but never acknowledged on-screen. Television has fared better, but until recent years we never had any main characters who were confirmed in-show to be anything but straight. But things are slowly starting to improve. Within the last few years shows like "Andi Mack" and "The Owl House" have depicted major characters as openly interested in others of the same gender[14], and Pixar recently released a short as part of their Sparknotes program called “Out”, which openly centers on a man worrying about telling his parents he’s gay.

This is why it is so important that the Heroine’s Journey of Kingdom Hearts follow through to a structurally appropriate conclusion, with the development team being given the freedom to tell their story in full without restriction or censorship. Deviating from the formula this late in the series would represent a continuation of the recent trend of Heroine’s Journey narratives being structurally broken by inference from forces other than the main creative team. But if the Kingdom Hearts story is able to complete it’s Heroine’s Journey without executives or localization teams getting in the way of the intended story, then the LGBTQ+ themes already present in Sora and Riku’s journey will break so many barriers,challenge people’s expectations of what is possible, and convey powerful messages of self-discovery and acceptance—just like the framework was designed to.

Sources

[1] Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance; Square Enix; 2012.

[2] Tumblr post by @blowingoffsteam2; December 3, 2019. https://blowingoffsteam2.tumblr.com/post/189461796759/blowingoffsteam2-dont-mind-me-over-here-just

[3] Kingdom Hearts III; Square Enix; 2019.

[4] Translation of KH Character Files Beast’s Castle story by @lilyginnyblackv2; February 3, 2020. https://lilyginnyblackv2.tumblr.com/post/611420864489062401/character-files-beasts-castle-story-english

[5] Translation of KH Character Files Arendelle story by @lilyginnyblackv2; March 3, 2020. https://lilyginnyblackv2.tumblr.com/post/611490139845345280/character-files-arendelle-story-english

[6] Translation of KH Character Files Arendelle story by @notaseednotyet; March 1, 2020. https://twitter.com/notaseednotyet/status/1233993459670765569

[7] “Message from the KINGDOM” Updates!; April 11, 2012. https://www.khinsider.com/news/-Message-from-the-KINGDOM-Updates-2427

[8] “”Steven Universe” and “She-Ra” creators on Representation”; Paper Magazine; August 5, 2020. https://www.papermag.com/rebecca-sugar-noelle-stevenson-2646446747.html

[9] Twitter thread by Gravity Falls creator Alex Hirsch; August 9, 2020. https://twitter.com/_AlexHirsch/status/1292328558921003009

[10] Twitter thread by Owl House creator Dana Terrace; August 9, 2020. https://twitter.com/DanaTerrace/status/1292321440029478917

[11] Frame by frame analysis of Sora and Kairi’s body language during the KH3 paopu scene by @notaseednotyet; September 14, 2019. https://twitter.com/notaseednotyet/status/1172774158167506944

[12] Kingdom Hearts; Square Enix; 2002.

[13] “Nomura stresses the importance of direct translations on story comprehension, and talks about world development as well as the Gummi Ship;” August 27, 2018. https://www.kh13.com/news/nomura-stresses-the-importance-of-direct-translations-on-story-comprehension-and-talks-about-world-development-as-well-as-the-gummi-ship/ [14] Disney’s The Owl House Now Has a Confirmed Bisexual Character; August 9, 2020. https://io9.gizmodo.com/disneys-animated-series-the-owl-house-now-has-a-confirm-1844665583

#kingdom hearts and the heroine's journey #kingdom hearts meta

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deceptigoons-attack · 4 years

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The Lady of Shalott

Part II No time hath she to sport and play: A charmed web she weaves alway. A curse is on her, if she stay Her weaving, either night or day, To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be; Therefore she weaveth steadily, Therefore no other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott. She lives with little joy or fear. Over the water, running near, The sheepbell tinkles in her ear. Before her hangs a mirror clear, Reflecting tower'd Camelot. And as the mazy web she whirls, She sees the surly village churls, And the red cloaks of market girls Pass onward from Shalott. Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, An abbot on an ambling pad, Sometimes a curly shepherd lad, Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad, Goes by to tower'd Camelot: And sometimes thro' the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two: She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott. But in her web she still delights To weave the mirror's magic sights, For often thro' the silent nights A funeral, with plumes and lights And music, came from Camelot: Or when the moon was overhead Came two young lovers lately wed; 'I am half sick of shadows,' said The Lady of Shalott. Part III A bow-shot from her bower-eaves, He rode between the barley-sheaves, The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves, And flam'd upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot. A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd To a lady in his shield, That sparkled on the yellow field, Beside remote Shalott. The gemmy bridle glitter'd free, Like to some branch of stars we see Hung in the golden Galaxy. The bridle bells rang merrily As he rode down from Camelot: And from his blazon'd baldric slung A mighty silver bugle hung, And as he rode his armour rung, Beside remote Shalott. All in the blue unclouded weather Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather, The helmet and the helmet-feather Burn'd like one burning flame together, As he rode down from Camelot. As often thro' the purple night, Below the starry clusters bright, Some bearded meteor, trailing light, Moves over green Shalott. His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd; On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode; From underneath his helmet flow'd His coal-black curls as on he rode, As he rode down from Camelot. From the bank and from the river He flash'd into the crystal mirror, 'Tirra lirra, tirra lirra:' Sang Sir Lancelot. She left the web, she left the loom She made three paces thro' the room She saw the water-flower bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look'd down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; 'The curse is come upon me,' cried The Lady of Shalott. Part IV In the stormy east-wind straining, The pale yellow woods were waning, The broad stream in his banks complaining, Heavily the low sky raining Over tower'd Camelot; Outside the isle a shallow boat Beneath a willow lay afloat, Below the carven stern she wrote, The Lady of Shalott. A cloudwhite crown of pearl she dight, All raimented in snowy white That loosely flew (her zone in sight Clasp'd with one blinding diamond bright) Her wide eyes fix'd on Camelot, Though the squally east-wind keenly Blew, with folded arms serenely By the water stood the queenly Lady of Shalott. With a steady stony glance— Like some bold seer in a trance, Beholding all his own mischance, Mute, with a glassy countenance— She look'd down to Camelot. It was the closing of the day: She loos'd the chain, and down she lay; The broad stream bore her far away, The Lady of Shalott. As when to sailors while they roam, By creeks and outfalls far from home, Rising and dropping with the foam, From dying swans wild warblings come, Blown shoreward; so to Camelot Still as the boathead wound along The willowy hills and fields among, They heard her chanting her deathsong, The Lady of Shalott. A longdrawn carol, mournful, holy, She chanted loudly, chanted lowly, Till her eyes were darken'd wholly, And her smooth face sharpen'd slowly, Turn'd to tower'd Camelot: For ere she reach'd upon the tide The first house by the water-side, Singing in her song she died, The Lady of Shalott. Under tower and balcony, By garden wall and gallery, A pale, pale corpse she floated by, Deadcold, between the houses high, Dead into tower'd Camelot. Knight and burgher, lord and dame, To the planked wharfage came: Below the stern they read her name, The Lady of Shalott. They cross'd themselves, their stars they blest, Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest. There lay a parchment on her breast, That puzzled more than all the rest, The wellfed wits at Camelot. 'The web was woven curiously, The charm is broken utterly, Draw near and fear not,—this is I, The Lady of Shalott.'

(Alfred, Lord Tennyson)

#poetry #alfred lord tennyson

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boyofshallot · 4 years

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the lady of shalott- alfred tennyson

Willows whiten, aspens shiver. The sunbeam showers break and quiver In the stream that runneth ever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot. Four gray walls, and four gray towers Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott.

Underneath the bearded barley, The reaper, reaping late and early, Hears her ever chanting cheerly, Like an angel, singing clearly, O'er the stream of Camelot. Piling the sheaves in furrows airy, Beneath the moon, the reaper weary Listening whispers, ' 'Tis the fairy, Lady of Shalott.'

The little isle is all inrail'd With a rose-fence, and overtrail'd With roses: by the marge unhail'd The shallop flitteth silken sail'd, Skimming down to Camelot. A pearl garland winds her head: She leaneth on a velvet bed, Full royally apparelled, The Lady of Shalott.

She lives with little joy or fear. Over the water, running near, The sheepbell tinkles in her ear. Before her hangs a mirror clear, Reflecting tower'd Camelot. And as the mazy web she whirls, She sees the surly village churls, And the red cloaks of market girls Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, An abbot on an ambling pad, Sometimes a curly shepherd lad, Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad, Goes by to tower'd Camelot: And sometimes thro' the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two: She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights To weave the mirror's magic sights, For often thro' the silent nights A funeral, with plumes and lights And music, came from Camelot: Or when the moon was overhead Came two young lovers lately wed; 'I am half sick of shadows,' said The Lady of Shalott.

Part III A bow-shot from her bower-eaves, He rode between the barley-sheaves, The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves, And flam'd upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot. A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd To a lady in his shield, That sparkled on the yellow field, Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free, Like to some branch of stars we see Hung in the golden Galaxy. The bridle bells rang merrily As he rode down from Camelot: And from his blazon'd baldric slung A mighty silver bugle hung, And as he rode his armour rung, Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather, The helmet and the helmet-feather Burn'd like one burning flame together, As he rode down from Camelot. As often thro' the purple night, Below the starry clusters bright, Some bearded meteor, trailing light, Moves over green Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd; On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode; From underneath his helmet flow'd His coal-black curls as on he rode, As he rode down from Camelot. From the bank and from the river He flash'd into the crystal mirror, 'Tirra lirra, tirra lirra:' Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom She made three paces thro' the room She saw the water-flower bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look'd down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; 'The curse is come upon me,' cried The Lady of Shalott.

Part IV In the stormy east-wind straining, The pale yellow woods were waning, The broad stream in his banks complaining, Heavily the low sky raining Over tower'd Camelot; Outside the isle a shallow boat Beneath a willow lay afloat, Below the carven stern she wrote, The Lady of Shalott.

A cloudwhite crown of pearl she dight, All raimented in snowy white That loosely flew (her zone in sight Clasp'd with one blinding diamond bright) Her wide eyes fix'd on Camelot, Though the squally east-wind keenly Blew, with folded arms serenely By the water stood the queenly Lady of Shalott.

With a steady stony glance— Like some bold seer in a trance, Beholding all his own mischance, Mute, with a glassy countenance— She look'd down to Camelot. It was the closing of the day: She loos'd the chain, and down she lay; The broad stream bore her far away, The Lady of Shalott.

As when to sailors while they roam, By creeks and outfalls far from home, Rising and dropping with the foam, From dying swans wild warblings come, Blown shoreward; so to Camelot Still as the boathead wound along The willowy hills and fields among, They heard her chanting her deathsong, The Lady of Shalott.

A longdrawn carol, mournful, holy, She chanted loudly, chanted lowly, Till her eyes were darken'd wholly, And her smooth face sharpen'd slowly, Turn'd to tower'd Camelot: For ere she reach'd upon the tide The first house by the water-side, Singing in her song she died, The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony, By garden wall and gallery, A pale, pale corpse she floated by, Deadcold, between the houses high, Dead into tower'd Camelot. Knight and burgher, lord and dame, To the planked wharfage came: Below the stern they read her name, The Lady of Shalott.

They cross'd themselves, their stars they blest, Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest. There lay a parchment on her breast, That puzzled more than all the rest, The wellfed wits at Camelot. 'The web was woven curiously, The charm is broken utterly, Draw near and fear not,—this is I, The Lady of Shalott.'

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tahlialynne · 4 years

Text

The Lady of Shalott

Part I On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky; And thro' the field the road runs by To many-tower'd Camelot; The yellow-leaved waterlily The green-sheathed daffodilly Tremble in the water chilly Round about Shalott. Willows whiten, aspens shiver. The sunbeam showers break and quiver In the stream that runneth ever By the island in the river Flowing down to Camelot. Four gray walls, and four gray towers Overlook a space of flowers, And the silent isle imbowers The Lady of Shalott. Underneath the bearded barley, The reaper, reaping late and early, Hears her ever chanting cheerly, Like an angel, singing clearly, O'er the stream of Camelot. Piling the sheaves in furrows airy, Beneath the moon, the reaper weary Listening whispers, ' 'Tis the fairy, Lady of Shalott.' The little isle is all inrail'd With a rose-fence, and overtrail'd With roses: by the marge unhail'd The shallop flitteth silken sail'd, Skimming down to Camelot. A pearl garland winds her head: She leaneth on a velvet bed, Full royally apparelled, The Lady of Shalott. Part II No time hath she to sport and play: A charmed web she weaves alway. A curse is on her, if she stay Her weaving, either night or day, To look down to Camelot. She knows not what the curse may be; Therefore she weaveth steadily, Therefore no other care hath she, The Lady of Shalott. She lives with little joy or fear. Over the water, running near, The sheepbell tinkles in her ear. Before her hangs a mirror clear, Reflecting tower'd Camelot. And as the mazy web she whirls, She sees the surly village churls, And the red cloaks of market girls Pass onward from Shalott. Sometimes a troop of damsels glad, An abbot on an ambling pad, Sometimes a curly shepherd lad, Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad, Goes by to tower'd Camelot: And sometimes thro' the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two: She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott. But in her web she still delights To weave the mirror's magic sights, For often thro' the silent nights A funeral, with plumes and lights And music, came from Camelot: Or when the moon was overhead Came two young lovers lately wed; 'I am half sick of shadows,' said The Lady of Shalott. Part III A bow-shot from her bower-eaves, He rode between the barley-sheaves, The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves, And flam'd upon the brazen greaves Of bold Sir Lancelot. A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd To a lady in his shield, That sparkled on the yellow field, Beside remote Shalott. The gemmy bridle glitter'd free, Like to some branch of stars we see Hung in the golden Galaxy. The bridle bells rang merrily As he rode down from Camelot: And from his blazon'd baldric slung A mighty silver bugle hung, And as he rode his armour rung, Beside remote Shalott. All in the blue unclouded weather Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather, The helmet and the helmet-feather Burn'd like one burning flame together, As he rode down from Camelot. As often thro' the purple night, Below the starry clusters bright, Some bearded meteor, trailing light, Moves over green Shalott. His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd; On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode; From underneath his helmet flow'd His coal-black curls as on he rode, As he rode down from Camelot. From the bank and from the river He flash'd into the crystal mirror, 'Tirra lirra, tirra lirra:' Sang Sir Lancelot. She left the web, she left the loom She made three paces thro' the room She saw the water-flower bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look'd down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack'd from side to side; 'The curse is come upon me,' cried The Lady of Shalott. Part IV In the stormy east-wind straining, The pale yellow woods were waning, The broad stream in his banks complaining, Heavily the low sky raining Over tower'd Camelot; Outside the isle a shallow boat Beneath a willow lay afloat, Below the carven stern she wrote, The Lady of Shalott. A cloudwhite crown of pearl she dight, All raimented in snowy white That loosely flew (her zone in sight Clasp'd with one blinding diamond bright) Her wide eyes fix'd on Camelot, Though the squally east-wind keenly Blew, with folded arms serenely By the water stood the queenly Lady of Shalott. With a steady stony glance— Like some bold seer in a trance, Beholding all his own mischance, Mute, with a glassy countenance— She look'd down to Camelot. It was the closing of the day: She loos'd the chain, and down she lay; The broad stream bore her far away, The Lady of Shalott. As when to sailors while they roam, By creeks and outfalls far from home, Rising and dropping with the foam, From dying swans wild warblings come, Blown shoreward; so to Camelot Still as the boathead wound along The willowy hills and fields among, They heard her chanting her deathsong, The Lady of Shalott. A longdrawn carol, mournful, holy, She chanted loudly, chanted lowly, Till her eyes were darken'd wholly, And her smooth face sharpen'd slowly, Turn'd to tower'd Camelot: For ere she reach'd upon the tide The first house by the water-side, Singing in her song she died, The Lady of Shalott. Under tower and balcony, By garden wall and gallery, A pale, pale corpse she floated by, Deadcold, between the houses high, Dead into tower'd Camelot. Knight and burgher, lord and dame, To the planked wharfage came: Below the stern they read her name, The Lady of Shalott. They cross'd themselves, their stars they blest, Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest. There lay a parchment on her breast, That puzzled more than all the rest, The wellfed wits at Camelot. 'The web was woven curiously, The charm is broken utterly, Draw near and fear not,—this is I, The Lady of Shalott.'

#poem #poetry #poet #poems #the lady of shalott #lord Alfred tennyson #tennyson

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awayohumanchild · 6 years

Note

Any headcanons about queen/republic/galaxy sabe that never made it in? I love her id read a book just about facts of her. Or if you don’t wanna spoil, handmaidens? Love those ladies

Aww, thanks so much!!! I seriously have so, so SO much fun writing Queen/Republic/Galaxy Sabé and handmaidens and am always kind of deliriously happy/disbelieving that other people seem to like them too, haha!

As for headcanons? Um, so, I totally know how my Sabéseries ends and have a variety of post-series headcanons. Only I can’t share any of them now for obvious reasons. And I have surprisingly few headcanons about past/current Sabé and the handmaidens. Most of what I know is already in the story or I attempted to imply in the story. But now I think of it, I suppose I do have a few?

So, uh, here are some random Queen/Republic/GalaxySabéand handmaiden headcanons, some of which I have already attempted to hint at, some of which have never come up. You can take them or leave them, obviously, especially if they contradict what you think!! But if you’re interested in some of MY thoughts about them….

So, in no particular order:

Sabé always wears a dress. Like, if she is picking out herown clothes, she is picking a dress. Attending a fancy gala? Dress. Making a presentationin class? Dress. Helping someone give birth? Dress. Grocery shopping? Dress. Cleaningthe house? Dress. Chasing a bad guy through the city? Dress. Weaponspractice/the gym? Dress. Why? No idea. Some unholy combination of Wicaté’sinfluence and her mother’s dance costumes, probably.

Also, her hair is always up. Bun, braid, bun-braid combo,weird star wars hair-do whatever. If she is not sleeping or lazing around, herhair is up. Again, not sure why, it justis. Well, at least, it was, until her hair abruptly got shorter.

Versé and Cordé met during the occupation. There is a wholehalf started fic somewhere on my laptop about them meeting and becoming friends.When the occupation is ended, they meet a handmaiden (probably Rabé but maybenot) and are in AWE. Cordé decides then and there she is becoming a handmaiden.Versé had decided days ago that she was spending the rest of her life inCordé’s orbit, and so, that was that.

Sabé and Eirtaé are best friends. I don’t think Sabé orEirtaé would ever flat out say that or even necessarily think that in thoseterms, but they are closest to each other even if they don’t always see eachother that often. Sabé, though, is Padmé’s best friend.

In the non-AU world of my world, when Sabé died, Padmé distancedherself from all of the handmaidens. The day she left office was the last dayshe purposefully saw any of them. Whenever they did run into each other, it waspolite and excruciating for all involved.

Sabé is a crazy good liar. Even though she is inwardlypanicking and thinking that her grin looks horrifyingly fake and her babbleterrifyingly unconvincing, her grin looks 100% real and her babble comes acrossas very genuine. She sells it through body language, tone of voice and willpower alone.

During Republic, Dormé was just as jealous of Sabé as Sabéwas of her.

Dormé also did not make the cut for the original 13handmaidens in Queen, something her grandmother still attempts to shame her forto this very (in-story) day.

Dormé and Typho are very slowly and very reluctantly fallingin love.

Saché and Rabé were actually really good business partnerswhen they owned the flower shop together. They both knew when it was time forSaché to leave but, even though Rabé knows she does a great job on her own, shefirmly believes the shop was better with Saché’s influence. Saché thinks Rabéis out of her mind.

Sabé is the smallest of the handmaidens. I know KeiraKnightley is tall, but Queen/Republic/Galaxy Sabé did not grow so much an inchafter Queen. She’s still a fairly tiny little thing.

Yané teaches actual classes at the university in Theed. IfNaboo had the equivalent of rate my professor, half of the reviews would besaying she was the best professor in the galaxy while half would be saying shewas the worst. Regardless of what side of the fence they fall on, they allagree there are more explosions in her classroom than any other, that she isthrilled to answer any and all questions, even to the point of abandoning hersyllabus in order to pursue a random tangent that somehow came up duringlecture and that she is not boring. Ralston’s (Her research partner’s) classes are largely considered to beabout as interesting as watching paint dry.

Eirtaé hated being an only child with a passion. She has acool relationship with her parents, who she is half convinced married more forpolitical and economical convenience than any sort of actual affection for oneanother. She is determined that Reneé will grow up very, very differently thanshe did.

Sabé think she swears like a sailor but, even though sheknows a wide variety of very expressive swears, she doesn’t actually break themout as often as she thinks she does.

I’m fairly certain Sabé has never had a boyfriend. Like, Icould be wrong. But I feel like she hasn’t. I think she was very busy witheverything else in her life and there was a very tiny box in her head labelled‘Obi-Wan’ and she just—never got around to having one. This is the headcanon I’m least certain of,though.

In the entirety of Naboo history, there has only been onehandmaiden who ever betrayed her monarch, even after the Queen and handmaidens in question retired.Her betrayal? Agreeing to be interviewed for a tell-all book about the Queenshe served. In the decade that followed, somehow, her entire life fellapart—lost her job, falsely accused of corporate espionage which ruined herreputation, house burned down in mysterious fire etc etc. She spent the rest ofher life yelling at whoever would listen that her fellow former handmaidenssabotaged her, which, of course, was total nonsense—they were upstandingcitizens and there was no proof whatsoever to back up her absurd claims. (–theremay or may not be a bunch of bizarre excerpts from a handmaiden history bookscattered across various word docs on my laptop).

And that’s basically all I got for you. LIke I said, take it or leave it! :) Or take the ones you like and leave the ones you don’t. Most of these probably will never be outright confirmed in Galaxy, so…? Believe what you like? :) Anyway, thanks for asking! It was surprisingly fun writing this all out! :)

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studyingsummacumlaude-blog · 6 years

Quote

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

---The Lady of Shalott, painting by John William Waterhouse

A.K.A The explanation of my profile picture.

#poetry #classic poetry #victorian poetry #english poetry #alfred lord tennyson #victorian era #the lady of shalott

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vintagegeekculture · 7 years

Text

Dead Fandoms, Part 3

Read Part One of Dead Fandoms here.

Read Part Two of Dead Fandoms here.

Before we continue, I want to add the usual caveat that I actually don’t want to be right about these fandoms being dead. I like enthusiasm and energy and it’s a shame to see it vanish.

Mists of Avalon

Remember that period of time of about 15 years, where absolutely everybody read this book and was obsessed with it? It could not have been bigger, and the fandom was Anne Rice huge, overlapping for several years with USENET and the early World Wide Web…but it’s since petered out.

Mists of Avalon’s popularity may be due to the most excellent case of hitting a demographic sweet spot ever. The book was a feminist retelling of the Arthurian Mythos where Morgan Le Fay is the main character, a pagan from matriarchal goddess religions who is fighting against encroaching Christianity and patriarchal forms of society coming in with it. Also, it made Lancelot bisexual and his conflict is how torn he is about his attraction to both Arthur and Guinevere.

Remember, this novel came out in 1983 – talk about being ahead of your time! If it came out today, the reaction from a certain corner would be something like “it is with a heavy heart that I inform you that tumblr is at it again.”

Man, demographically speaking, that’s called “nailing it.” It used to be one of the favorite books of the kind of person who’s bookshelf is dominated by fantasy novels about outspoken, fiery-tongued redheaded women, who dream of someday moving to Scotland, who love Enya music and Kate Bush, who sell homemade needlepoint stuff on etsy, who consider their religious beliefs neo-pagan or wicca, and who have like 15 cats, three of which are named Isis, Hypatia, and Morrigan.

This type of person is still with us, so why did this novel fade in popularity? There’s actually a single hideous reason: after her death around 2001, facts came out that Marion Zimmer Bradley abused her daughters sexually. Even when she was alive, she was known for defending and enabling a known child abuser, her husband, Walter Breen. To say people see your work differently after something like this is an understatement – especially if your identity is built around being a progressive and feminist author.

Robotech

I try to break up my sections on dead fandoms into three parts: first, I explain the property, then explain why it found a devoted audience, and finally, I explain why that fan devotion and community went away. Well, in the case of Robotech, I can do all three with a single sentence: it was the first boy pilot/giant robot Japanimation series that shot for an older, teenage audience to be widely released in the West. Robotech found an audience when it was the only true anime to be widely available, and lost it when became just another import anime show. In the days of Crunchyroll, it’s really hard to explain what made Robotech so special, because it means describing a different world.

Try to imagine what it was like in 1986 for Japanime fans: there were barely any video imports, and if you wanted a series, you usually had to trade tapes at your local basement club (they were so precious they couldn’t even be sold, only traded). If you were lucky, you were given a script to translate what you were watching. Robotech though, was on every day, usually after school. You want an action figure? Well, you could buy a Robotech Valkyrie or a Minmei figure at your local corner FAO Schwartz.

However, the very strategy that led to it getting syndicated is the very reason it was later vilified by the purists who emerged when anime became a widespread cultural force: strictly speaking, there actually is no show called “Robotech.” Since Japanese shows tend to be short run, say, 50-60 episodes, it fell well under the 80-100 episode mark needed for syndication in the US. The producer of Harmony Gold, Carl Macek, had a solution: he’d cut three unrelated but similar looking series together into one, called “Robotech.” The shows looked very similar, had similar love triangles, used similar tropes, and even had little references to each other, so the fit was natural. It led to Robotech becoming a weekday afternoon staple with a strong fandom who called themselves “Protoculture Addicts.” There were conventions entirely devoted to Robotech. The supposed shower scene where Minmei was bare-breasted was the barely whispered stuff of pervert legend in pre-internet days. And the tie in novels, written with the entirely western/Harmony Gold conception of the series and which continued the story, were actually surprisingly readable.

The final nail in the coffin of Robotech fandom was the rise of Sailor Moon, Toonami, Dragonball, and yes, Pokemon (like MC Hammer’s role in popularizing hip hop, Pokemon is often written out of its role in creating an audience for the next wave of cartoon imports out of insecurity). Anime popularity in the West can be defined as not a continuing unbroken chain like scifi book fandom is, but as an unrelated series of waves, like multiple ancient ruins buried on top of each other (Robotech was the vanguard of the third wave, as Anime historians reckon); Robotech’s wave was subsumed by the next, which had different priorities and different “core texts.” Pikachu did what the Zentraedi and Invid couldn’t do: they destroyed the SDF-1.

Legion of Super-Heroes

Legion of Superheroes was comic set in the distant future that combined superheroes with space opera, with a visual aesthetic that can best be described as “Star Trek: the Motion Picture, if it was set in a disco.”

I’ve heard wrestling described as “a soap opera for men.” If that’s the case, then Legion of Super-Heroes was a soap opera for nerds. The book is about attractive 20-somethings who seem to hook up all the time. As a result, it had a large female fanbase, which, I cannot stress enough, is incredibly unusual for this era in comics history. And if you have female fans, you get a lot of shipping and slashfic, and lots of speculation over which of the boy characters in the series is gay. The fanon answer is Element Lad, because he wore magenta-pink and never had a girlfriend. (Can’t argue with bulletproof logic like that.) In other words, it was a 1970s-80s fandom that felt much more “modern” than the more right-brained, bloodless, often anal scifi fandoms that existed around the same time, where letters pages were just nitpicking science errors by model train and elevator enthusiasts.

Legion Headquarters seemed to be a rabbit fuck den built around a supercomputer and Danger Room. Cosmic Boy dressed like Tim Curry in Rocky Horror. There’s one member, Duo Damsel, who can turn into two people, a power that, in the words of Legion writer Jim Shooter, was “useful for weird sex...and not much else.”

LSH was popular because the fans were insanely horny. This is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the thirstiest fandom of all time. You might think I’m overselling this, but I really think that’s an under-analyzed part of how some kinds of fiction build a devoted fanbase.

For example, a big reason for the success of Mass Effect is that everyone has a favorite girl or boy, and you have the option to romance them. Likewise, everyone who was a fan of Legion remembers having a crush. Sardonic Ultra Boy for some reason was a favorite among gay male nerds (aka the Robert Conrad Effect). Tall, blonde, amazonian telepath Saturn Girl, maybe the first female team leader in comics history, is for the guys with backbone who prefer Veronica over Betty. Shrinking Violet was a cute Audrey Hepburn type. And don’t forget Shadow Lass, who was a blue skinned alien babe with pointed ears and is heavily implied to have an accent (she was Aayla Secura before Aayla Secura was Aayla Secura). Light Lass was commonly believed to be “coded lesbian” because of a short haircut and her relationships with men didn’t work out. The point is, it’s one thing to read about the adventures of a superteam, and it implies a totally different level of mental and emotional involvement to read the adventures of your imaginary girlfriend/boyfriend.

Now, I should point out that of all the fandoms I’ve examined here, LSH was maybe the smallest. Legion was never a top seller, but it was a favorite of the most devoted of fans who kept it alive all through the seventies and eighties with an energy and intensity disproportionate to their actual numbers. My gosh, were LSH fans devoted! Interlac and Legion Outpost were two Legion fanzines that are some of the most famous fanzines in comics history.

If nerd culture fandoms were drugs, Star Wars would be alcohol, Doctor Who would be weed, but Legion of Super-Heroes would be injecting heroin directly into your eyeballs. Maybe it is because the Legionnaires were nerdy, too: they played Dungeons and Dragons in their off time (an escape, no doubt, from their humdrum, mundane lives as galaxy-rescuing superheroes). There were sometimes call outs to Monty Python. Basically, the whole thing had a feel like the dorkily earnest skits or filk-singing at a con. Legion felt like it’s own fan series, guest starring Patton Oswalt and Felicia Day.

It helped that the boundary between fandom and professional was incredibly porous. For instance, pro-artist Dave Cockrum did covers for Legion fanzines. Former Legion APA members Todd and Mary Biernbaum got a chance to actually write Legion, where, with the gusto of former slashfic writers given the keys to canon, their major contribution was a subplot that explicitly made Element Lad gay. Mike Grell, a professional artist who got paid to work on the series, did vaguely porno-ish fan art. Again, it’s hard to tell where the pros started and the fandom ended; the inmates were running the asylum.

Mostly, Legion earned this devotion because it could reward it in a way no other comic could. Because Legion was not a wide market comic but was bought by a core audience, after a point, there were no self-contained one-and-done Legion stories. In fact, there weren’t even really arcs as we know it, which is why Legion always has problems getting reprinted in trade form. Legion was plotted like a daytime soap opera: there were always five different stories going on in every issue, and a comic involved cutting between them. Sure, like daytime soap operas, there’s never a beginning, just endless middles, so it was totally impossible for a newbie to jump on board...but soap operas know what they are doing: long term storytelling rewards a long term reader.

This brings me to today, where Legion is no longer being published by DC. There is no discussion about a movie or TV revival. This is amazing. Comics are a world where the tiniest nerd groups get pandered to: Micronauts, Weirdworld, Seeker 3000, and Rom have had revival series, for pete’s sake. It’s incredible there’s no discussion of a film or TV treatment, either; friggin Cyborg from New Teen Titans is getting a solo movie.

Why did Legion stop being such a big deal? Where did the fandom that supported it dissolve to? One word: X-Men. Legion was incredibly ahead of its time. In the 60s and 70s, there were barely any “fan” comics, since superhero comics were like animation is today: mostly aimed at kids, with a minority of discerning adult/teen fans, and it was success among kids, not fans, that led to something being a top seller (hence, “fan favorites” in the 1970s, as surprising as it is to us today, often did not get a lot of work, like Don MacGregor or Barry Smith). But as newsstands started to push comics out, the fan audience started to get bigger and more important…everyone else started to catch up to the things that made Legion unique: most comics started to have attractive people who paired up into couples and/or love triangles, and featured extremely byzantine long term storytelling. If Legion of Super-Heroes is going to be remembered for anything, it’s for being the smaller scale “John the Baptist” to the phenomenon of X-Men, the ultimate “fan” comic.

The other thing that killed Legion, apart from Marvel’s Merry Mutants, that is, was the r-word: reboots. A reboot only works for some properties, but not others. You reboot something when you want to find something for a mass audience to respond to, like with Zorro, Batman, or Godzilla.

Legion, though, was not a comic for everybody, it was a fanboy/girl comic beloved by a niche who read it for continuing stories and minutiae (and to jack off, and in some cases, jill off). Rebooting a comic like that is a bad idea. You do not reboot something where the main way you engage with the property, the greatest strength, is the accumulated lore and history. Rebooting a property like that means losing the reason people like it, and unless it’s something with a wide audience, you only lose fans and won’t get anything in return for it. So for something like Legion (small fandom obsessed with long form plots and details, but unlike Trek, no name recognition) a reboot is the ultimate Achilles heel that shatters everything, a self-destruct button they kept hitting over and over and over until there was nothing at all left.

E. E. Smith’s Lensman Novels

The Lensman series is like Gil Evans’s jazz: it’s your grandparents’ favorite thing that you’ve never heard of.

I mean, have you ever wondered exactly what scifi fandom talked about before the rise of the major core texts and cultural objects (Star Trek, Asimov, etc)? Well, it was this. Lensmen was the subject of fanfiction mailed in manilla envelopes during the 30s, 40s, and 50s (some of which are still around). If you’re from Boston, you might recognize that the two biggest and oldest scifi cons there going back to the 1940s, Boskone (Boscon, get it?) and Arisia, are references to the Lensman series. This series not only created space opera as we know it, but contributed two of the biggest visuals in scifi, the interstellar police drawn from different alien species, and space marines in power armor.

My favorite sign of how big this series was and how fans responded to it, was a great wedding held at Worldcon that duplicated Kimball Kinnison and Clarissa’s wedding on Klovia. This is adorable:

The basic story is pure good vs. evil: galactic civilization faces a crime and piracy wave of unprecedented proportions from technologically advanced pirates (the memory of Prohibition, where criminals had superior firearms and faster cars than the cops, was strong by the mid-1930s). A young officer, Kimball Kinnison (who speaks in a Stan Lee esque style of dialogue known as “mid-century American wiseass”), graduates the academy and is granted a Lens, an object from an ancient mystery civilization, who’s true purpose is unknown.

Lensman Kinnison discovers that the “crime wave” is actually a hostile invasion and assault by a totally alien culture that is based on hierarchy, intolerant of failure, and at the highest level, is ruled by horrifying nightmare things that breathe freezing poison gases. Along the way, he picks up allies, like van Buskirk, a variant human space marine from a heavy gravity planet who can do a standing jump of 20 feet in full space armor, Worsel, a telepathic dragon warrior scientist with the technical improvisation skills of MacGyver (who reads like the most sadistically minmaxed munchkinized RPG character of all time), and Nandreck, a psychologist from a Pluto-like planet of selfish cowards.

The scale of the conflict starts small, just skirmishes with pirates, but explodes to near apocalyptic dimensions. This series has space battles with millions of starships emerging from hyperspacial tubes to attack the ultragood Arisians, homeworld of the first intelligent race in the cosmos. By the end of the fourth book, there are mind battles where the reflected and parried mental beams leave hundreds of innocent bystanders dead. In the meantime we get evil Black Lensmen, the Hell Hole in Space, and superweapons like the Negasphere and the Sunbeam, where an entire solar system was turned into a vacuum tube.

It’s not hard to understand why Lensmen faded in importance. While the alien Lensmen had lively psychologies, Lensman Kimball Kinnison was not an interesting person, and that’s a problem when scifi starts to become more about characterization. The Lensman books, with their love of police and their sexism (it is an explicit plot point that the Lens is incompatible with female minds – in canon there are no female Lensmen) led to it being judged harshly by the New Wave writers of the 1960s, who viewed it all as borderline fascist military-scifi establishment hokum, and the reputation of the series never recovered from the spirit of that decade.

Prisoner of Zenda

Prisoner of Zenda is a novel about a roguish con-man who visits a postage-stamp, charmingly picturesque Central European kingdom with storybook castles, where he finds he looks just like the local king and is forced to pose as him in palace intrigues. It’s a swashbuckling story about mistaken identity, swordfighting, and intrigue, one part swashbuckler and one part dark political thriller.

The popularity of this book predates organized fandom as we know it, so I wonder if “fandom” is even the right word to use. All the same, it inspired fanatical dedication from readers. There was such a popular hunger for it that an entire library could be filled with nothing but rip-offs of Prisoner of Zenda. If you have a favorite writer who was active between 1900-1950, I guarantee he probably wrote at least one Prisoner of Zenda rip-off (which is nearly always the least-read book in his oeuvre). The only novel in the 20th Century that inspired more imitators was Sherlock Holmes. Robert Heinlein and Edmond “Planet Smasher” Hamilton wrote scifi updates of Prisoner of Zenda. Doctor Who lifted the plot wholesale for the Tom Baker era episode, “Androids of Tara,” Futurama did this exact plot too, and even Marvel Comics has its own copy of Ruritania, Doctor Doom’s Kingdom of Latveria. Even as late as the 1980s, every kids’ cartoon did a “Prisoner of Zenda” episode, one of the stock plots alongside “everyone gets hit by a shrink ray” and the Christmas Carol episode.

Prisoner of Zenda imitators were so numerous, that they even have their own Library of Congress sub-heading, of “Ruritanian Romance.”

One major reason that Prisoner of Zenda fandom died off is that, between World War I and World War II, there was a brutal lack of sympathy for anything that seemed slightly German, and it seems the incredibly Central European Prisoner of Zenda was a casualty of this. Far and away, the largest immigrant group in the United States through the entire 19th Century were Germans, who were more numerous than Irish or Italians. There were entire cities in the Midwest that were two-thirds German-born or German-descent, who met in Biergartens and German community centers that now no longer exist.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a lot about how the German-American world he grew up in vanished because of the prejudice of the World Wars, and that disappearance was so extensive that it was retroactive, like someone did a DC comic-style continuity reboot where it all never happened: Germans, despite being the largest immigrant group in US history, are left out of the immigrant story. The “Little Bohemias” and “Little Berlins” that were once everywhere no longer exist. There is no holiday dedicated to people of German ancestry in the US, the way the Irish have St. Patrick’s Day or Italians have Columbus Day (there is Von Steuben’s Day, dedicated to a general who fought with George Washington, but it’s a strictly Midwest thing most people outside the region have never heard of, like Sweetest Day). If you’re reading this and you’re an academic, and you’re not sure what to do your dissertation on, try writing about the German-American immigrant world of the 19th and 20th Centuries, because it’s a criminally under-researched topic.

A. Merritt

Pop quiz: who was the most popular and influential fantasy author during the 1930s and 40s?

If you answered Tolkien or Robert E. Howard, you’re wrong - it was actually Abraham Merritt. He was the most popular writer of his age of the kind of fiction he did, and he’s since been mostly forgotten. Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons, has said that A. Merritt was his favorite fantasy and horror novelist.

Why did A. Merritt and his fandom go away, when at one point, he was THE fantasy author? Well, obviously one big answer was the 1960s counterculture, which brought different writers like Tolkien and Lovecraft to the forefront (by modern standards Lovecraft isn’t a fantasy author, but he was produced by the same early century genre-fluid effluvium that produced Merritt and the rest). The other answer is that A. Merritt was so totally a product of the weird occult speculation of his age that it’s hard to even imagine him clicking with audiences in other eras. His work is based on fringe weirdness that appealed to early 20th Century spiritualism and made sense at the time: reincarnation, racial memory, an obsession with lost race stories and the stone age, and weirdness like the 1920s belief that the Polar Arctic is the ancestral home of the Caucasian race. In other words, it’s impossible to explain Merritt without a ton of sentences that start with “well, people in the 1920s thought that...” That’s not a good sign when it comes to his universality.

That’s it for now. Do you have any suggestions on a dead fandom, or do you keep one of these “dead” fandoms alive in your heart?

#fandom history #lensman #robotech #prisoner of zenda #mists of avalon

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artemispears · 3 years

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On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye,

That clothe the wold and meet the sky;

And thro' the field the road runs by

To many-tower'd Camelot;

The yellow-leaved waterlily

The green-sheathed daffodilly

Tremble in the water chilly

Round about Shalott.

Willows whiten, aspens shiver.

The sunbeam showers break and quiver

In the stream that runneth ever

By the island in the river

Flowing down to Camelot.

Four gray walls, and four gray towers

Overlook a space of flowers,

And the silent isle imbowers

The Lady of Shalott.

Underneath the bearded barley,

The reaper, reaping late and early,

Hears her ever chanting cheerly,

Like an angel, singing clearly,

O'er the stream of Camelot.

Piling the sheaves in furrows airy,

Beneath the moon, the reaper weary

Listening whispers, ' 'Tis the fairy,

Lady of Shalott.'

The little isle is all inrail'd

With a rose-fence, and overtrail'd

With roses: by the marge unhail'd

The shallop flitteth silken sail'd,

Skimming down to Camelot.

A pearl garland winds her head:

She leaneth on a velvet bed,

Full royally apparelled,

The Lady of Shalott.

No time hath she to sport and play:

A charmed web she weaves alway.

A curse is on her, if she stay

Her weaving, either night or day,

To look down to Camelot.

She knows not what the curse may be;

Therefore she weaveth steadily,

Therefore no other care hath she,

The Lady of Shalott.

She lives with little joy or fear.

Over the water, running near,

The sheepbell tinkles in her ear.

Before her hangs a mirror clear,

Reflecting tower'd Camelot.

And as the mazy web she whirls,

She sees the surly village churls,

And the red cloaks of market girls

Pass onward from Shalott.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,

An abbot on an ambling pad,

Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,

Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,

Goes by to tower'd Camelot:

And sometimes thro' the mirror blue

The knights come riding two and two:

She hath no loyal knight and true,

The Lady of Shalott.

But in her web she still delights

To weave the mirror's magic sights,

For often thro' the silent nights

A funeral, with plumes and lights

And music, came from Camelot:

Or when the moon was overhead

Came two young lovers lately wed;

'I am half sick of shadows,' said

The Lady of Shalott.

A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,

He rode between the barley-sheaves,

The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,

And flam'd upon the brazen greaves

Of bold Sir Lancelot.

A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd

To a lady in his shield,

That sparkled on the yellow field,

Beside remote Shalott.

The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,

Like to some branch of stars we see

Hung in the golden Galaxy.

The bridle bells rang merrily

As he rode down from Camelot:

And from his blazon'd baldric slung

A mighty silver bugle hung,

And as he rode his armour rung,

Beside remote Shalott.

All in the blue unclouded weather

Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,

The helmet and the helmet-feather

Burn'd like one burning flame together,

As he rode down from Camelot.

As often thro' the purple night,

Below the starry clusters bright,

Some bearded meteor, trailing light,

Moves over green Shalott.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;

On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;

From underneath his helmet flow'd

His coal-black curls as on he rode,

As he rode down from Camelot.

From the bank and from the river

He flash'd into the crystal mirror,

'Tirra lirra, tirra lirra:'

Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web, she left the loom

She made three paces thro' the room

She saw the water-flower bloom,

She saw the helmet and the plume,

She look'd down to Camelot.

Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirror crack'd from side to side;

'The curse is come upon me,' cried

The Lady of Shalott.

In the stormy east-wind straining,

The pale yellow woods were waning,

The broad stream in his banks complaining,

Heavily the low sky raining

Over tower'd Camelot;

Outside the isle a shallow boat

Beneath a willow lay afloat,

Below the carven stern she wrote,

The Lady of Shalott.

A cloudwhite crown of pearl she dight,

All raimented in snowy white

That loosely flew (her zone in sight

Clasp'd with one blinding diamond bright)

Her wide eyes fix'd on Camelot,

Though the squally east-wind keenly

Blew, with folded arms serenely

By the water stood the queenly

Lady of Shalott.

With a steady stony glance—

Like some bold seer in a trance,

Beholding all his own mischance,

Mute, with a glassy countenance—

She look'd down to Camelot.

It was the closing of the day:

She loos'd the chain, and down she lay;

The broad stream bore her far away,

The Lady of Shalott.

As when to sailors while they roam,

By creeks and outfalls far from home,

Rising and dropping with the foam,

From dying swans wild warblings come,

Blown shoreward; so to Camelot

Still as the boathead wound along

The willowy hills and fields among,

They heard her chanting her deathsong,

The Lady of Shalott.

A longdrawn carol, mournful, holy,

She chanted loudly, chanted lowly,

Till her eyes were darken'd wholly,

And her smooth face sharpen'd slowly,

Turn'd to tower'd Camelot:

For ere she reach'd upon the tide

The first house by the water-side,

Singing in her song she died,

The Lady of Shalott.

Under tower and balcony,

By garden wall and gallery,

A pale, pale corpse she floated by,

Deadcold, between the houses high,

Dead into tower'd Camelot.

Knight and burgher, lord and dame,

To the planked wharfage came:

Below the stern they read her name,

The Lady of Shalott.

They cross'd themselves, their stars they blest,

Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire, and guest.

There lay a parchment on her breast,

That puzzled more than all the rest,

The wellfed wits at Camelot.

'The web was woven curiously,

The charm is broken utterly,

Draw near and fear not,—this is I,

The Lady of Shalott.'

— Alfred Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott (1832)

#alfred tennyson #english classics #literature #romanticism #victorian #the lady of shalott

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brigdh · 6 years

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A lot of reading reviews

I was unexpectedly busy for most of April, so this is several weeks' worth of reading – though weeks where I didn't have much time for reading for fun, alas. Enjoy an overabundance of reviews? What did you just finish? A Short History of Drunkenness: How, Why, Where, and When Humankind Has Gotten Merry from the Stone Age to the Present by Mark Forsyth. A shallow but funny history of humanity's relationship with booze. Brief chapters cover pretty much every historical era you'd expect: Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Greeks, the Romans, the Bible, Ancient China, Vikings, the Medieval Middle East, Medieval England, the Aztecs, colonial Australia, the Wild West, Russia, American Prohibition, and London's Gin Craze of the 1700s. That's quite the list for a book of less than three hundred pages, and indeed Forsyth is clearly focused on being amusing and easy to read more than he is on deep historical investigations – which isn't really a critique, as long as "silly and quick" is what you're looking for. (I am a bit skeptical of some of his claims, but he has footnotes to back him up; I suspect it's a case of Forsyth taking the most extreme possible side in genuine historical debates.) It's a nice collection of "hey, did-you-know" trivia, but I doubt anyone will come away with more insight on the history of alcohol than they started with. I read this as an ARC via NetGalley. Caliban's War by James S.A. Corey. The sequel to Leviathan Wakes, which I had mixed feelings about. Well, goddamn! Corey has levelled up their writing beyond my highest expectations, particularly in regards to characterization. This time around we have four PoVs. There's Holden again, who remains somewhat action-hero-y but has become far more sympathetic (possibly because he actually has idiosyncratic attributes now; I'm particularly fond of his deep attachment to a fancy coffee-maker). We're introduced to Bobbie Draper, a highly-trained marine from the Martian military and the only surviving witness of the opening salvo of the Martian-Earth war, which might actually have been an accident caused by an alien attack; she prefers battle to politics, and struggles with the question of who she should be loyal to when no one believes her or cares about the whole alien thing. Next is Chrisjen Avasarala, a tiny gray-haired grandmother with a meaningless-sounding title ("assistant to the undersecretary of executive administration") who is actually the power behind the throne of the UN, now Earth's ruling body; she smiles and snacks on pistachios in public and curses like a sailor in private, fiercely determined to ride over any opposition she encounters. And finally there's Prax – Praxidike Meng – a botanist and single father of a four-year-old daughter, more comfortable with plants or scientific reports than being social or having emotions, and completely over-his-head incompetent with the politics and violence he soon finds himself thrown into. The plot sets off when that four-year-old disappears in the conflict of war. A great many people have disappeared or died, and more than that are starving, displaced, rioting, or soon to be all of the above, so Prax is unable to get the authorities to care about one lost little girl. That is until he accidentally encounters Holden et al, and finds the team he needs to solve what increasingly becomes a deep, wide-spread mystery. Meanwhile, Avasarala and Bobbie are trying to convince the militaries of Earth and Mars to back down and focus on the real problem: possible aliens from who-knows-where, capable of doing who-knows-what. Unsurprisingly, these plots eventually intersect for a dramatic climax. I really appreciate how Corey doesn't focus on the action to the detriment of meaning. Yes, there's lots of space battles and killer aliens, but there's thoughtful insight on war and human nature too: “So you’re in an entrenched position with a huge threat coming down onto you, right?” Avasarala said, sitting down on the edge of Soren’s desk. “Say you’re on a moon and some third party has thrown a comet at you. Massive threat, you understand?” Bobbie looked at her, confused for a moment, and then, with a shrug, played along. “All right,” the marine said. “So why do you choose that moment to pick a fight with your neighbors? Are you just frightened and lashing out? Are you thinking that the other bastards are responsible for the rock? Are you just that stupid?” “We’re talking about Venus and the fighting in the Jovian system,” Bobbie said. “It’s a pretty fucking thin metaphor, yes,” Avasarala said. “So why are you doing it?” Bobbie leaned back in her chair, plastic creaking under her. The big woman’s eyes narrowed. She opened her mouth once, closed it, frowned, and began again. “I’m consolidating power,” Bobbie said. “If I use my resources stopping the comet, then as soon as that threat’s gone, I lose. The other guy catches me with my pants down. Bang. If I kick his ass first, then when it’s over, I win.” “But if you cooperate—” “Then you have to trust the other guy,” Bobbie said, shaking her head. “There’s a million tons of ice coming that’s going to kill you both. Why the hell wouldn’t you trust the other guy?” “Depends. Is he an Earther?” Bobbie said. “We’ve got two major military forces in the system, plus whatever the Belters can gin up. That’s three sides with a lot of history. When whatever’s going to happen on Venus actually happens, someone wants to already have all the cards.” “And if both sides—Earth and Mars—are making that same calculation, we’re going to spend all our energy getting ready for the war after next.” “Yep,” Bobbie said. “And yes, that’s how we all lose together.” Caliban's War is a incredible page-turner of a book, with wonderfully engaging characters, detailed worldbuilding, and enough substance to give the action weight. Plus, how can you not like a book where the bad guy turns out to be the military-industrial complex? Also there is a hell of a cliffhanger ending to this book. I'm really glad I didn't have to wait a year for the sequel to be published. Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey. The sequel to Caliban's War, part 3 of The Expanse series. The plot is becoming hard to talk about without spoiling the previous books, so if you don't want to know what happened, stop reading here. The inexplicable alien presence (is it a virus? An AI? something else?) first encountered in the first book of the series has constructed a giant ring far out on the edges of the solar system. Earth, Mars, and the Outer Planet Alliance (OPA, a loose conglomerate of the various colonies on other planets, moons, and asteroids) have each sent ships to study it, but the only thing anyone can tell is that it seems to be a gate to somewhere else. Until, of course, plot events send several ships accidentally through it and into a truly alien, nicely creepy other-place, where even the laws of physics are mutable and prone to abruptly changing. Meanwhile, Holden is visited by Miller, who died in the first book and whose appearance/personality/knowledge the alien presence seems to have co-opted as a face for itself. Unfortunately trying to communicate across the barriers of species and millions of lightyears is just as difficult as it sounds, and what Miller manages to say comes across as garbled nonsense, often intelligible only after whatever he was warning about has already happened. The climax of the book goes small-scale, with two sides battling for control of a single spaceship, crawling through tunnels and fighting hand-to-hand. It's a striking change from the previous books that ended in giant confrontations with hundreds of ships while being just as exciting. Once again we have a new set of PoVs (except for Holden, who continues on), and though I desperately missed Avasarala, Bobbie, and Prax, I have to admit these new guys were pretty fun too. First off is Clarissa Mao, the sister of Julie Mao (now dead from the alien zombie virus) and daughter of Jules-Pierre Mao (now imprisoned for life for war crimes, due to turning the alien virus into a bioweapon and trying to sell it to the highest bidder). Her once-powerful and crazy-wealthy family is disgraced and scattered, and Clarissa blames James Holden personally. She's determined to get revenge – not just to kill him, but to ruin him and his reputation, and make all the galaxy doubt his previous actions – and she doesn't care how many other people have to die to make that happen. To get to Holden, she disguises herself as a nobody, an electrochemical technician on a minor spaceship, and finds herself spending every day dealing with people and problems that were once far beneath her notice. There's also Bull – Carlos Baca – head of security for the main spaceship of the OPA navy. Although Bull is far more experienced and sensible than either the captain or XO, he finds himself relegated to third in command because he grew up on Earth rather than in the Asteroid Belt, and Earthers are visibly distinct from Belters; it's a bit like getting demoted because you're the 'wrong' race, and it would look politically bad for you to be in charge. After an accident halfway through the book, Bull becomes paraplegic. I thought the handling of his disability was mostly well-done, and seeing a big, physically-imposing guy deal with being unable to use strength to enforce his will was an interesting twist. Finally we have my favorite character of this book: Annushka Volovodov, or Pastor Anna. She's a tiny, non-drinking, politically-unconnected, small-town Methodist preacher, determinedly pacifistic and married to a woman. She ends up heading to the Ring when Earth decides to send a team of artists, poets, philosophers, and religious leaders along with the scientists and military, mainly to show off that it can afford to do so, though theoretically to interpret the meaning of an alien presence. I can't imagine a character less likely to end up as the star of a space-opera thriller than a lesbian pastor who just wants everybody to stop fighting, you guys, seriously, why don't we talk about forgiveness and maybe organize a Sunday service with grape juice and a sermon about coming together?, and yet it works incredibly, unexpectedly well. I love Anna so much, and continue to be deeply impressed at the diversity of personalities Corey has written after a first book that was fairly disappointing in that regard. They even seem to be particularly good at writing women who are very different from one another but are all well-rounded, believable, and fascinating, and I would never have seen that coming. The world-building continues to be really well-done. I particularly enjoyed the many scenes set on the Behemoth, an enormous spaceship originally built to be a colony ship for Mormons but retrofitted due to necessity into a warship. The murals of Jesus and angels providing a backdrop for war counsels and weapons storage are maybe a too-obvious irony, but one that never failed to make me laugh. I didn't love Abaddon's Gate quite as much Caliban's War, mostly because the characters here were very good but just not as spectacularly wonderful as before. But that's a relatively minor criticism, and overall I admire Corey's focus on petty, recognizable human squabbling even in the face of worldchanging developments. I'm looking forward to the next book already. Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg. What is this? Well, a damn hard book to review, to start. On one level we have what is presented as the 'recently discovered autobiography' of Jack Sheppard, real-life petty thief and escapee from jail in early 1700s London. Sheppard lived fast and died young, then proceeded to become an enormously famous figure in English folklore, probably most recognizable today as the inspiration for "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" in The Threepenny Opera. But Confessions of the Fox is in fact a novel, and though it otherwise mostly stays close to the facts and dates (as we know them) of Jack's life, here Jack is a transman, his girlfriend Bess is the daughter of a South Asian man who was press-ganged by the East India Company before escaping into an independant communal society hidden away in the fens of East Anglia, and his best friend Aurie is a black gay man. Just to be clear, I am all for this presentation of a multiracial queer history. A second level of story is presented through footnotes, much like House of Leaves (though infinitely less confusing than that book, since we only have two levels of story here rather than the four or five in House of Leaves). This narrator is Dr R. Voth, a professor of English literature who is editing Jack's "autobiography" for publication and who is a transman himself. Voth alternates between telling mundane stories of his life – his ex, his job troubles, his attempts to ask out a neighbor – and citing genuine academic sources to provide context for Jack's story. Voth is fictional but his sources are not, which makes for an unsettling mixture of truth and imagination; I think I would have assumed the academic footnotes were also fictional if I hadn't happened to recognize several early ones. I've read Gretchen Gerzina's Black London: Life Before Emancipation and Walter Johnson's Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market, among others, and seeing them mentioned by a fictional character was like water to the face, confusing my assumption of what was real and what wasn't. As the story goes on, "P-Quad Publishers and Pharmaceuticals" in association with "Militia.edu" attempts to take control of Jack's autobiography and Voth's work on it, leading both levels of Confessions of the Fox to become critiques of the commodification of the body and its experiences, capitalism in general, the history of the discovery and modern patenting of synthetic testosterone, and how historical biographies enter (or, more often, don't enter) the archive. Which leaves us in an odd place. If you didn't instantly recognize what I meant by The Archive in that previous line, if you're one of the vast majority of humans on Earth who haven't read Appadurai's "Commodities and the Politics of Value", then I'm not sure this book is interested in talking to you. Certainly if Rosenberg ever bothered to explain any of these concepts in an introductory way I missed it. On the other hand, if you, like me, are an overeducated liberal who can nod pretentiously at sentences like "A commodity is an entity without qualities", then I'm not sure Confessions of the Fox has anything new to say to you. It restates various queer, postcolonial, and Marxist theories without adding anything to them or combining them in interesting ways. Like, sure, we all agree with Foucault that prisons form the model for surveillance and discipline by the wider society, but so what? Dosomething with that idea, expand upon it, challenge it, or else there's no reason to read Rosenberg's book if you've already read Foucault's. So then who is Confessions of the Fox for? I have genuinely no idea. The love story between Jack and Bess or the adventure of Jack's exploits should have been enough to carry their half of the story. I love me a good historical thriller of criminals and the whores they adore. But we didn't really get that here; we see Jack and Bess's first meeting and first night spent together, but then we jump ahead to them as an already established relationship without seeing how they grow together and build trust and affection. Similarly, we never see Jack learn to pick pockets or burglar houses; he's just an innocent apprentice and then suddenly a famously skilled thief. He meets Aurie once and then we're told they're brothers-in-arms without ever seeing their friendship. Etc. In addition to all this, it's hard to love characters who are more living examples of theories than they are three-dimensional people, particularly when they keep bursting into dialogue like this example: Bess stood, speaking to the entire room. “Plague’s an excuse they’re using to police us further!” She looked out. Most continued to quaff and quarrel amongst themselves. “All of you! They’re panicking the people delib’rately. It’s a securitizational furor they’re raising to put more centinels on the streets. Can’t you see that?” It's not even that I disagree with the concept of "security theater", but it's not good fiction to have your characters straight-up define it, and then POINTING OUT IN A FOOTNOTE THAT THE 1720-ISH DATE WOULD MAKE HER THE FIRST TO DO SO IS EVEN WORSE, OH MY GOD, DON'T PRAISE YOUR OWN FICTIONAL CHARACTERS FOR THE MODERN LANGUAGE YOU GAVE THEM. Ahhh, I don't know. I agree with all of Confessions of the Fox's politics, I want to support histories (fictional or not) with more accurate, multiracial, and queer portrayals of the past, and I've certainly read far, far worse books, but in the end I just didn't much enjoy this. The worst I can say is that it's unengaging; I found my attention constantly drifting whenever I tried to read, and even put it down for a few weeks before finally coming back to finish it. But no matter what its good intentions, that doesn't make for a book I'd recommend. In the end Confessions of the Fox has a fantastic concept, but unfortunately doesn't pull off the execution. I read this as an ARC via NetGalley. What are you currently reading? The Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh. sholio is going to be hosting a tumblr book club, if anyone else wants to read along!

[DW link for easier commenting]

#books #book reviews #james s.a. corey #jordy rosenberg #mark forsyth #long post

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lightdancer1 · 3 years

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Same Prompt Party March-Like a Lion

Hino Rei had never been a normal child, not by anyone’s standards. From the beginning she had looked into fire and seen things. She had seen her mother leaving when she was a very young child, too young to understand the tears or the allegations said against her. She had seen other things, a girl with long pigtails and blonde hair around whom a high doom was built. She had seen the fate that awaited them all, transformed into the immortal avatars of a war against the Great Enemy in the stars. It was a bitter life that Tsukino Usagi had brought them in a way, but it was not the worst of all lives.

She knew that because it had given her a love she’d never anticipated. For all that she had memories, vague and ill-formed, of a relationship with Jadeite in the past, she had clearer ones of Mars and Venus, the cruel and stern warlord of the Senshi and her swaggering moods turning into a surprisingly tender and caring lover in her arms. Mars and Venus were full-grown women of ageless face and longevity that was…..long, if ill-determined in length. Hino Rei was still a girl of sixteen, or she had been.

She was a girl of sixteen, with a long life ahead of her, a very long life if she counted what she became when she took the henshin and spoke those words. Her life had changed from them, she had gone from being Hino Rei, Senator’s daughter, granddaughter of the Miko of one of the most crucial Shinto shrines where the Kami and mortals met in the liminal spaces of the world, to becoming the Senshi of Mars, an immortal being only human by analogy and aspects of appearance.

From seeing the future in fires, she had become an avatar of fire, wielding power named after the planet of War. And that too was subject to misunderstandings. Real war was a thing of chaos that required deep planning, the ability to know in a matter of hours what would need to be done two weeks from where it was done, and the will and the driving force to bring it to pass. She had been named after the God of War, as a Senshi, but people thought of the wrong God. It was not Ares, as the Greeks would have had it, from whom Mars’s Senshi drew their nature. It was Athena, Goddess of Strategy and the cold intellectual sides of war.

And that brought her here. The Outer Senshi had gone to face the new threat that had come here, after all the drama with the Starlights. The real threat, come round at last, revealing herself with the brutal murder of their princess. Uranus had been grief stricken at that sight and had promised Star Fighter that the Outers, the true foe revealed, would offer them vengeance. And then they hadn’t come back.

Now the figure that stood before her and Mina with a detached face and a sword in her hand had strange jewels in a necklace. One had gilded elements but otherwise had a color not unlike that of a kalamata olive (and the implications there made Rei feel nauseous and Mars enraged). There were others, deep violet, bright straw, aqua-green. The being that stood before them looked to her now, with seeming interest and distaste.

“This is not your time to die, Mars.”

Venus looked to her likewise with desperation. Not Aino Minako briefly flashing into Venus’s eyes, the stern and cruel and even vengeful Sailor V, the general who’d ruled by terror in the old days and yet had power in this one to do that if she willed it.

“Mars, please,” she said, and the soft aura of begging briefly brought her short.

The other one just smiled, coldly.

“Ah, I see what this is. I hope the two of you have had the chances to speak of it. When the other ones died….”

And her eyes tracked something that neither of them could quite see.

“They died with their names on their lips. The aqua-haired one died trying to touch the hand of the golden-haired one, crying her real name.”

And then the golden-armored demon’s face was carved in an imitation of grief that was the more horrid for clearly lacking an understanding of the emotion in any truthful sense.

“Haruka, no!”

Venus’s eyes whipped back to her.

“When they die and I gain their Star-Seeds I gain all kinds of knowledge, including that they did not know they had. You thought Uranus weak, once. Her last couple of thoughts were ‘Venus was right’ and then ‘Michiru’. And that aqua-haired one had only one name in her mind, the one I just spoke. I wonder what I’ll see from yours, Guardian Venus?”

The creature laughed, then, and raised her blade.

Mars and Rei were two different people. One lonely and haunted by the future, the other immortal, a living storm of fire who summoned cleansing fires to banish evil and the dark forces that lurked on worlds and within the stars themselves. Galaxia was not precisely a dark force but the evil within her was crueler than Beryl or even Pharaoh 90. Both were united in one thing. They would not see Venus die in front of them, even if the monster had killed others more powerful than the two of them together in raw power.

“You won’t kill her,” she growled, and there was a lioness’s roar in the words.

Galaxia looked at her with disdain. “I have waged war across the Galaxy, child, Worlds break before me. As with the children of Kinmoku, so with the children of Earth. They all died in my opening strike and only you, the Senshi, remain. And one by one I shall hunt you down and slay you all. It is the way of things. The unworthy die, and I, alone, and worthy, live beneath the weight of the infinite stars.”

Galaxia’s smile took a nastier edge, to a point that Rei would have not been surprised to see those teeth become fangs even though technically they had not.

“You have the signs of a seer, girl. All of you see death at the hands of a terrible swift sword. My sword. So then shall it be.”

“No,” growled Mars again, the lioness’s roar more audible. This was the vision she’d seen in the flames, and it was the point where she vowed not to go gently into that good night, and to rage against the dying of the light. The only thing that mattered was to give Mina a chance to flee. Mina was the true general, the true daughter of war. She could not be more than a delay on the terrible visions of a dark and cruel force manipulating this golden angel of light into serving as its own proxy.

That did not matter.

Fires erupted around her, giving her body an eerie glow. Mars and Hino as one, their souls combined, and for a moment, just a moment, she was Eternal Sailor Mars not just in name but in fact.

“You will not touch her,” she snarled, and then fires erupted outward, slamming with bolts of energy into Galaxia’s armor and she summoned her mandala, which grasped the golden witch’s gauntlets and dragged the blades downward.

The creature smiled, then, stark and cold and cruel, and as she snapped her way clean through the fires as if they were nothing she froze when a blow of stupendous strength launched by Mars struck her chin with an uppercut enhanced by her henshin to make it count more solidly. Part of her hoped that Mako would have approved.

And the monster reeled for a moment, staggered.

She turned to Venus, her eyes gleaming with the hallowed fires within her.

“Run, Venus. I love y-“

Motion, gold glinting illuminated by her fires and a wrenching pain, only for her to summon her flames to strike back along the blade, the purity and the purification lancing against the Chaos-threaded nature of the power within the blade, the corrupted desire for domination and proving greatness against others.

Galaxia groaned for a moment in genuine agony and then she stepped back, as Mars gave her an insolent smile.

Even as she began to fade, she told her “I told you would not touch her.”

Galaxia’s eyes were troubled, as if some deep secret were unveiled and then there was a blissful quietness…..before she awoke in a strange place within the walls of reality and without. Her chest hurt, but here she was. And with her, Hotaru , Mamoru (and her eyes suddenly went very wide as she realized the real truth lurking behind that ‘went to America’ line, and what Usagi must have repressed all along), Haruka, and Michiru. And beyond them all, meditating in quietness, Kakyuu.

Mars sighed then, sinking to her knees. The lioness had roared….and she did not know if it would be enough.

----------

Not long after but far too long for all of them, after the horrors of resurrection in the flesh as a soulless thing and her star-seed watching in horror as the thing that had been her in the flesh had turned on Usagi and at the way that Serenity uncaged dispelled them all with eyes of stark ice as Usagi collapsed and Serenity rose then, and fought the epic duel with Galaxia and then somehow, impossibly, defeated those forces, she was alive again.

Gloriously, blissfully alive.

Her hand held Aino’s, and they were Hino and Aino. Aino’s eyes met hers and there were all those layers and quiet griefs.

“I’m sorry,” Mina began, but she put her finger to her lips.

“No. None of us but Usagi could have done that. All that matters to me is that you got to live, to give that warning.”

Aino’s smile was sad and her hands reached out to caress Rei’s left cheek and her right shoulder.

“My lioness,” she said, acknowledging what she had seen in the desperation of Mars and the way that the Senshi and the human had merged to try to save her.

Those words, the knowledge of what was in them, and the little looks in her eyes led Rei to do a most un-Rei thing and to briefly break, holding her, as both of them let the tears fall that they had not let fall at first when they were resurrected and gloriously, blissfully alive.

It was a warm afternoon in March, both their hands clasped when the tears fell, their bodies close together. The wind, Haruka’s sphere, reached out to ruffle their hair as it did all the Senshi, the wind reminding them that they had been through things together and the old schisms healed in a change between visions of a future that neither wished to think about more.

“In like a lamb, out like a lion,” Mina mused. Normally Rei would have rolled her eyes and corrected Mina’s misspoken use of phrasing, but here there was nothing that meant more than both of them being alive and the feeling of Mina’s body next to hers. They lay on the grass in the park on a blanket together. The long strife was over, and only when the cold came and the hours of destiny called would things change.

Rei let herself smile. The lioness had roared, in the end, and the one she’d wished to save had been safe. Her eyes closed, and she fell into a sleep of warm dreams and the understanding that was there was there, the words unspoken right now, for the actions that had been there had spoken still more loudly.

#minarei #galaxia #sailor stars arc #same prompt party 2021 #hino rei #sailor mars

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the-goblin-queen · 4 years

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The Lady of Shalott - Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1832)

#alfred lord tennyson #the lady of shalott #1832 #poetry #Arthurian #camelot #lancelot #weaver

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poetry-suggestions · 7 years

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The Lady of Shalott

Sorry I keep disappearing for long stretches of time. I haven’t really felt up to posting much but I’m going to try to get better with that.

I just wanted to make a short post about one of my favorite poems “The Lady of Shalott” by Lord Alfred Tennyson. I think it’s super beautiful and wanted to share it with you all. Apologies, it is rather long so I’ll put it under a Read More tab if you’re interested.

#The Lady of Shalott #Lord Alfred Tennyson #poetry #poetry-suggestions

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hermionously-blog · 7 years

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Changing Fate: a Hamilton Retelling, Chapter 2

Chapter 1

Chapter 2: You’re reading it :)

Conversation buzzed around them, as men in velvet and silk coats talked quietly about business and horse-racing, and women in satin dressed with long, large skirts chatted merrily about local gossip. Mulligan threw dinner parties often, and they were always well-attended with the local gentry who loved nothing more than an evening of light conversation and pleasantries. Today, though, and for the last few weeks—though Alexander didn’t know it, being a newcomer—the atmosphere had been different, like the cheerful exchange of formalities and the discussion of who was marrying who was a veneer over the quieter conversations that had begun taking place in the corners of the rooms and in the shadows of doorways. These conversations always seemed to lag as strangers passed by, and then start as soon as they were out of earshot. So Alexander did not hear any.

If he had, he would have been disturbed. Revolution is usually bad for business.

“Ah, monsieur. So pleased to meet you,” a voice purred behind Alexander, and he turned, wineglass in hand, from the conversation he’d been having with Hercules to greet the owner of the voice. It was a tall, lanky man, dressed fancily, almost foppishly, and with an easy smile.

“I don’t believe I yet have the pleasure of knowing your name, sir,” Alexander said smoothly.

Hercules grinned as he introduced them. “Lafayette, this is my new business partner, Aexander Hamilton. He’s from the Caribbean up here on business. Alex, this is my half-brother, Lafs. He moved to France with my mother a few years back when she found out that America didn’t have as many dress shops as she’d hoped. He’s back here on vacation. And still refusing to drop the accent, I guess.”

“Vhat Ahck-zent?” Lafayette asked, eyes wide in puzzlement.

“Lafs, that’s not even a French accent,” Hercules chuckled.

Alexander chuckled, too. “I didn’t know you had a brother, Hercules,” he said.

“Then you’re in for another surprise,” a young man with curly hair and freckles said as he joined them. “My name’s John Laurens, and I’m also Herc’s brother. Laf’s, too, for that matter.” He shook hands with Alex.

Alex withdrew his hand quickly, and after a brief smile and greeting he turned to ask Lafayette how the weather was in France.

It absolutely would not do to fall in love---no, not love, don’t be ridiculous, Alexander, you’ve never fallen in love at first sight before and you’re not going to start now---would not do to be attracted to his new business partner’s brother. That would just be messy, like Laurens hair which was pulled back in a low ponytail from his face, which was a very good one, all warm eyes and dimples and freckles covering smiling cheeks---

“So Alex, how’s the weather down in the Caribbean?” Lafayette asked, interrupting Alexander’s thoughts.

“Oh, it’s nice in my opinion, but I am admittedly rather biased since I did grow up there. And, never having been off of the islands before, I don’t have much idea how it compares to the weather in the rest of the world,” Alex answered with a laugh.

“I hear there are a lot of hurricanes, you ever get any?” Hercules asked.

“A few, yes.”

“They ever do any damage?”

Conscious of Lauren’s soft brown eyes on him, and Hercules’s gaze fixed on him as he waited for an answer to his conversational, innocently posed question, and Lafayette looking steadily at him from behind his raised wineglass, Alexander thought it rather funny how often he seemed to be having to change the topic tonight.

Outside, under the light of a streetlamp, Maria Reynolds adjusted her hair. It was getting dark quickly, and soon the dinner party that Peggy had said Hamilton would be at would be letting out.

She stepped out of the light and looked up at the sky, just a quick glance, then stopped and stared. It was one of those nights when the stars seem to clutter the sky, more numerous than the glints of moonlight on the waves in the harbor. There was no breeze, and the street was almost silent except for the muffled sounds of merriment inside the nearby building, which, under the cloudless night sky, seemed to take on a dreamlike quality, as if the world was just muffled sounds drifting on the wind to where she stood, still and small and quiet, looking up at the incomprehensible vastness of galaxies farther away than the human mind could reach, shining down on the tiny city where humans lived and died and fought wars and fell in love in less time than it takes the light of the nearest star to shine down from where it lies.

Then the door of Mulligan’s house opened, and a figure stood silhouetted against the sudden wash of light and noise for a moment, then closed the door and hurried down the steps.

Maria hurried forward, figuring that the first guest to depart from the party would be the trader from the Caribbean, since Peggy had said Mulligan rarely invited business partners to dinner and would likely ask the trader to leave early so he could relax with his brothers and friends.

“May I help you?” the man said with a friendly smile, as she walked up to him.

She didn’t recognize him as one of the men who had flirted with her before, and every man in town had flirted with her before, often to her annoyance. It must be the newcomer, Hamilton.

“Oh, if you could. My friend was supposed to pick me up here in her carriage ages ago, but she must have forgotten, and now I have no way at all to get home, and my home is absolutely on the other side of town!” Maria said, eyes pleading.

“You could borrow my horse, if you like. I don’t live far, and I don’t mind walking. Then you can give me your address and I’ll pick the horse up tomorrow, or you can bring it here tomorrow and Hercules will stable it until I come get it,” he said helpfully.

“But I’d be so scared to ride home after dark all alone. It’s not safe anymore with all those nasty English soldiers lurking about. Just the other day one tied a bottle to my little dog’s tail and chased her down the street, laughing! I had to rescue the poor dear, she was so scared.”

“Given what they do to humans, I’m not surprised,” the man said angrily, then looked at Maria. “Alright. I’ll take you home on my horse.”

He led her over to one of the tethered horses, and she swung onto the saddle behind him and clasped her arms around his waist for balance. This was going well.

As they set off down the street, the horses hooves striking a sharp staccato on the cobblestone that set a dog nearby barking in the cool night air, she smiled.

“Oh, but I haven’t even been introduced, have we?” she said. “My name is Maria Reynolds.”

“Mine is John Laurens. Maria’s a lovely name,” he replied, eyes on the road as the horse trotted along, turning a street corner.

It wasn’t Hamilton. Damn.

Still, she could salvage the situation. After all, this man was presumably wealthy and well-connected, too.

“Thank you,” she said, and reached up and softly touched his arm, brushing his coat sleeve with her fingertips. He didn’t respond, so she leaned the side of her head against his shoulder and sighed, a wistful and carefully-practiced sound.

“I love the nighttime, don’t you?” she asked, her voice soft and barely audible over the striking of the horse’s hooves and the wingbeats of birds that flew away disturbed as the stillness of the night was broken by their journey. “It’s so peaceful. It reminds me of when I was a girl, and would sleep outdoors with my cousins sometimes on fresh spring nights, and listen to the crickets chirping. It was so lovely. Of course, I never hear the crickets these days…” she trailed off, and waited for the expected question.

“Why not?” Laurens asked.

“Oh, it’s….it’s too loud in my house. My husband, he….he shouts a lot, and gets so angry, and doesn’t leave me alone until I’m too tired from having insults heard at me to stay awake and listen to the crickets, like I used to.”

“He sounds like a jerk. You should shoot him, and claim you thought he was an intruder,” came the reply.

She blinked in surprise, but quickly recovered. “But then I’d be all alone, with no one to protect me. And,” she continued, her breath barely a whisper as she played her winning hand, “no one to love me.”

She slid her hand up and brushed his cheek, with its light coating of peach fuzz, then traced her fingers along his curly hair…

And he laughed.

“Are you flirting with me?” he asked, his voice incredulous.

Damn the little bastard. He wasn’t even the right guy, and now he was asking her if she was flirting. That wasn’t how this was supposed to work. She could still save the situation, but she was tired, and a bit annoyed that her acting wasn’t having more of an affect, so she just replied, “Well I was trying to,” irritated.

She could hear the smile in his voice as he answered. “It was a great try, don’t worry. I’m just not interested. But I’m flattered by the attempt.”

“Don’t be. I was just trying to recruit you to join the revolution.”

“……See, I think you’re joking, but honestly I’ve been thinking about that for a while now.

She straightened up. Perhaps tonight wasn’t lost.

Thomas Jefferson walked down the street, watching the sunrise and whistling a hornpipe he’d learned asea from his years as a sailor. He walked jauntily, hands in pockets, his steps long and loping and his hair bouncing. He was feeling good today. Gregarious and sociable. He’d woken up early after a good night’s sleep, his landlady’s breakfast hadn’t been burnt and was surprisingly edible, and the cat that slept outside on the steps of his landlady’s house had actually let Jefferson pet him for a few seconds before hissing and stalking away.

Perhaps, given that was the first time he’d pet it, he shouldn’t have tried to scratch its tummy. Oh, well.

He walked along, passing a freckled man and a strikingly beautiful woman walking the other way, energetically discussing what sounded like plans for a revolution. He whistled. The woman glared, but the man grinned at him and waved.

Huh. Okay.

He smiled and chuckled to himself. The fresh glow of the morning sun, a breeze in the air, birds in the sky, talk on the streets of revolution—what could be better?

He wanted to find a friend to talk about revolution with, too. It was a good day for making friends. He waved to a passing woman, who pointedly ignored him. He doffed an imaginary cap and walked on.

A few blocks down the street, a man was kneeling, vigorously scrubbing cobblestones with a bucket of soapy water and a sponge. Jefferson stood by him and watched benevolently for a few minutes.

Finally, the man looked up at Jefferson, passing the back of his hand over his forehead and accidentally leaving a dirty streak. He looked annoyed. “You’re in my light.”

“Exactly how the English stand in the glow of their gold and prevent even the distant light of it from reaching the poor, downtrodden masses of America,” Jefferson rejoined.

The man looked puzzled.

Jefferson grinned. “My name is Thomas Jefferson.”

The man scrubbed a cobblestone and ignored him.

“No, really, the honor’s all mine,” Jefferson said.

The man scrubbed another.

“I know, I know, you feel you need to continue to work lest you fall behind and not get paid and starve or whatever. But fear not! A new dawn is breaking!”

“It broke twenty minutes ago, and you’re standing in its light,” the man muttered. Jefferson ignored the remark.

“A new day is starting,” Jefferson continued. “A day when the rich shall fall, and the poor shall rise. A day of brotherhood for all men—well, most, at least—when the lowest-born son of a farmer shall dare to face the sons of kings and proclaim that he is their equal. A day when the peasant shall snatch power from the emperor, shall dare to say “I shall decide my life. No emperor, or monarch, neither a rich man nor a warrior, can decide my destiny. Only I, and I alone, will control my fate.” A day when the land will flow with plenty, for at last the harvest will be shared. A day when peace and wealth shall rain down from the heavens, and all men will partake in the bounty. But this day,” he said, and crouched down to stare directly into the man’s eyes. “This day shall not come if its bringers are too busty cleaning cobblestones to herald the dawn.”

Slowly, the man set down his sponge. He looked Jefferson straight in the face.

“You’re a bloody idiot. And get out of my light,” the man said.

Jefferson stood up and stalked away.

James Madison picked up his sponge, swirled it in the soapy water in the bucket, and scrubbed another cobblestone.

#hamilton fanfic #my writing #alexander hamilton #lafayette #jefferson #mulligan #eliza #angelica #peggy #laurens #maria reynolds #madison #king george #au #alternate universe #fiction

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