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carewyncromwell · 3 years

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*hums the Up is Down theme* All right, let’s get the usual stuff for the POTC AU out of the way super quick so we can just jump right in --

Previous part is here -- full tag is here -- alternate version of picture two with a lame attempt at blood is here -- and characters that aren’t mine are Jules Farrier-Weasley @cursebreakerfarrier; Finn McGarry/Davy Jones @theguythatdraws; Samantha O’Connell @samshogwarts; Arjun Singh and Aishwarya Mehra @hogwarts9; and Ellie Hopper @that-ravenpuff-witch! Hope you enjoy! xoxo

x~x~x~x

The crew member Orion sent delivered his Piece of Eight -- his right earring -- to Jules aboard the Revolution. Both Bill and Jules had been concerned about Orion sending it on ahead rather than bringing it back to them himself; they were even more concerned when the fleet of small ships was led by Jae and the Kumiho, rather than by the Artemis. Jacob and Ashe, however, didn’t seem surprised, even though Jacob’s eyes narrowed slightly and he went oddly quiet when he heard the news. If Bill didn’t know any better, he could’ve sworn he might’ve even seen some guilt in the curly-haired pirate’s face.

Meanwhile Charlie pulled up alongside the Revolution to drop Chia Dalma off safely before the Phoenix rejoined the Blackbird, Naga, and Treasure. Before parting ways, Charlie actually pulled Chia aside.

“So,” he said a bit sheepishly, “guess it’s time, then?”

Chia nodded. She tilted her head slightly to the right in response to how uneasy Charlie looked.

“Something troubles you?” she asked.

“Not trouble, exactly,” said Charlie, offering a smile. “I mean, I’m glad you’ll get to be free. What the Brethren Court did, back then...it was a right rotten thing to do...”

His smile faded. “I guess I just wondered why you called yourself ‘Chia Dalma,’ and not Calypso. I mean -- you are Calypso, right? It’s not like when the spell is broken, you’ll just...disappear, right?”

Chia was taken aback by the concern. Then her pale face softened, betraying genuine fondness.

“You have a noble heart, Charles Weasley,” she said. “I’m afraid that Chia Dalma will cease to be, when the spell is broken. She is human -- I am human...and I no longer will be, when the spell is broken. I will no longer feel things the way I do now, or see things the way I do now...and my perspective once again will be that of an immortal, not a mere human.”

She gave Charlie a reassuring smile.

“But Calypso will not forget what Chia Dalma has seen and learned. Nor will she forget the kindness you showed her.”

The corners of Charlie’s lips turned up too. He brought up a hand and clapped Chia on the shoulder, giving it a squeeze.

“And I won’t forget the sea goddess who was once my friend,” he said with a grin.

Meanwhile, on the HMS Lion, Cutler Beckett had assembled his higher-ranked officers on deck to give them their last set of orders. There would be no quarter during the battle, no prisoners taken -- everyone in the pirates’ fleet and in Shipwreck Cove would be wiped out, without exception or mercy. Carewyn could see how hesitant the other officers were, upon hearing this. Percy, in particular, looked very troubled.

“Lord Beckett -- ” he said before he could stop himself, “d-denial of quarter -- surely that isn’t necessary...we have more than enough room to transport prisoners back to Port Royal -- ”

“The pirates themselves wave a flag that represents no quarter,” said Beckett very smoothly without stopping his stride as he walked past the line of officers. “They have not earned the right to it themselves.”

Percy faltered. “W-well...yes, but...they are pirates, sir. Should we not...show a better example, as King’s Men -- ?”

Beckett came to a sharp stop in front of Percy, looking up at the slightly taller man with a rather beady dark eye.

“Do I sense a lack of conviction, Captain Weasley?” he asked, his voice very soft but very dangerous.

Percy stiffened, his freckled face losing quite a bit of its color. The officers surrounding him looked worried too. Rakepick, who was standing a few feet away from the line of soldiers with her arms crossed, didn’t look worried, but her dark blue eyes did narrow grimly upon Percy and Beckett.

“No, sir!” said the red-haired Captain very quickly.

“Ah, then it’s a conflict of interest, perhaps,” said Beckett, his voice becoming a bit harder as his lips spread into a cold smirk.

He leaned in a bit closer, and whispered something else in Percy’s ear that no one else could hear. It made Percy’s entire frame stiffen, his face blanching in horror as his wide brown eyes flickered over to Carewyn.

“Lord Beckett, Captain Weasley’s loyalty to the English Crown is unflappable,” Carewyn said in a very loud, harsh voice. “As is the loyalty of all of our officers. He meant no disrespect, I assure you.”

Beckett looked at her, his eyebrows raised high over his coldly narrowed eyes. As he strode purposefully over to stand in front of Carewyn, all of the officers tensed up even more anxiously, none more so than Percy. Rakepick had uncrossed her arms and was watching the scene unfold like a hawk.

“I certainly hope that is true,” said Beckett very softly. “Treason is -- as we all know -- a death sentence.”

Carewyn met Beckett’s icy gaze head-on, even as he likewise leaned in, his head once again lingering over her shoulder like it had back in his cabin, so that his breath grazed her face.

“I will not punish your brother for his insubordination, as a favor to you. But I expect proper gratitude on your part. After all, I’m already doing quite a favor for you already, allowing you and him to remain among the ranks.”

Carewyn’s almond-shaped blue eyes narrowed, but she refused to look at him or speak. Beckett’s face grew a bit colder still as he tilted his head enough that his lips were mere inches from her ear.

“Don’t forget, Admiral,” he whispered, and there was an odd satisfaction creeping into the corners of his pitiless voice, “your loyalty is, first and foremost, mine.”

He then moved away, turning his focus back to the rest of the officers with his more usual, detached sort of expression.

“Attack when ready -- no prisoners, no mercy. You’re dismissed.”

The officers all saluted and immediately bustled off to head back to their ships. Carewyn glanced over just in time to see Percy, rather than heading immediately back to his ship, rush up to her. His freckled face was ashen and his eyebrows were knitted tensely over his eyes.

“Carey...Lord Beckett -- ”

“I know,” Carewyn cut him off. She already knew what Beckett must have said to Percy, for the rose-colored lenses to fall from his eyes so quickly.

Percy’s brown eyes widened even more. They darted over to Beckett heading up to the helm and then back to Carewyn, welling up with anxiety.

“He suspected it after you expressed interest in him hiring a woman,” said Carewyn softly. “I reckon him knowing Rakepick first made it easier -- she dressed as a man for a while, when she was in the Navy...”

Percy seemed to be losing more and more of his courage every second. His face suddenly looked so much more boyish as his gaze fell away from Carewyn’s face, staring down at the deck of the ship without seeing it.

“It’s my fault,” he mumbled.

“Don’t say that,” Carewyn cut him off firmly.

Percy closed his eyes and shook his head.

“It’s all my fault,” he repeated, shame and pain pulsing through his face. “I never should’ve trusted him, I never should’ve believed -- I just -- he was so against piracy, and I...after you were taken by Orion Amari -- after you got kidnapped by the crew of the Revenge -- ”

“Percy -- ”

Carewyn brought a hand onto his shoulder, but he cut her off, his soft voice more choked and upset than ever.

“I never should’ve let Bill and Charlie go after you alone -- I should’ve followed them myself in my own ship, if I had to -- ”

“Percy.”

Her hand clutched the top of his shoulder, right beside his neck, so as to force him to look up at her.

“You were only trying to do what was right, as an officer,” said Carewyn, her blue eyes blazing with conviction despite their pain and empathy. “The Navy is your dream, far more than it ever was mine, or Charlie’s, or Bill’s. Don’t hate yourself for trying to do things the right way. ...That’s always been who you are.”

Giving Percy’s shoulder a tight squeeze, she steered him forward enough that she could bring her other arm around him and give him a hug.

“I know what Beckett must’ve threatened you with, Perce, but I want you to forget it,” she said, and her voice betrayed a crack of emotion Percy had never heard before. “Don’t try to protect me or my reputation -- those things won’t matter much longer anyway. Do what you need to, to do what’s right...for yourself and them.”

Them... Percy tensed. He knew who that “them” was, but...the way her voice choked -- was she...trying not to cry?

He looked at his surrogate sibling with dismay, but he couldn’t see her expression.

“Carey -- ”

“Admiral.”

Carewyn pulled away from Percy and looked up.

Rakepick had approached them, her dark blue eyes flickering from Carewyn to back over her shoulder at Beckett, who had seemed to have turned his focus back to the two red-haired officers -- almost as if she was...trying to warn them.

Recovering from this surprise quickly, Carewyn turned to Percy with a harder, more serious look and grabbed his shoulder, giving him a light push backward.

“Go, now,” she said, her voice hardening to try to obscure the pain and tears she was trying to force back.

Percy’s brown eyes rippled with anxiety. He clearly wanted to insist on her explaining, wanted to argue her point -- but he too could sense Beckett’s gaze. So, with a pained expression, he reluctantly straightened up and exchanged a salute with Carewyn, before finally leaving the deck and returning to the jollyboat that would return him to the Clearwater.

Rakepick and Carewyn both watched Percy go.

“You didn’t tell him,” said Rakepick lowly. “No doubt because you don’t want him to try to stop you...”

Carewyn looked at Rakepick, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Didn’t tell him what?”

Rakepick, however, didn’t respond. Her eyes watched the horizon absently, but seemed to almost look beyond it.

Carewyn's eyes flashed with even more distrust as she turned to face the older woman. “Don’t play games with me, Rakepick -- ”

“The time for games is long since through,” said Rakepick sharply, as she turned to looked Carewyn straight on in the face.

What...was that, in her expression? It was certainly harsh and arrogant as ever, and yet...there was something almost sadder there.

“You truly are a guardian, Admiral Weasley,” murmured Rakepick. “Right now, though...it seems to me that it’s you who most needs guarding.”

Carewyn felt a knife in her chest at the thought of Jones and the fate that awaited her. Her blue eyes drifted off to the side and away from Rakepick’s face, hardening further as she tried to obscure her emotions.

“I’m not so much of a coward as to choose my safety over the lives of others’,” she said very harshly, turning her focus to the helm.

She turned her back on Rakepick, her arms looping behind her straightened back in proper Navy posture.

“You should return to your post...before Beckett gives you the side eye too.”

Rakepick didn’t respond, and Carewyn refused to look back as she strode away.

Almost immediately, the strategy Jacob had devised did not go as planned.

The plan had been for Jules to bluff Beckett before releasing Calypso -- but although the Revolution, as flag ship, had pulled into position at the head of the pirates’ charge, Beckett’s (and therefore the Navy’s) flag ship the HMS Lion did not. Instead it hung back, letting individual Man O’ Wars immediately start the charge without it.

In alarm, Jules ordered her crew to hoist the colors and signal to the rest of the Pirate Lords to attack, as the Flying Dutchman sailed out in front as if to meet the Revolution. Charlie and Merula led the charge in the Phoenix and the Blackbird, firing at will against the Man O’ Wars in an attempt to hit their stores of ammunition, even as the Navy’s ships’ superior firepower quickly overwhelmed them, cutting down the smaller ships in the dozens with their cannons.

“Captain!” said Barnaby from his place at the helm. “We just lost three more ships -- oh. Make that four!”

Charlie’s eyes narrowed as he racked his brain.

The Man O’ Wars were too powerful to face head-on -- they just had far too much firepower, compared to their pirates’ fleet --

A mad idea beginning to take root in Charlie’s head, he whirled around toward Samantha O’Connell, who’d been up in the rigging adjusting sails so that the Phoenix could better avoid the Navy’s cannon fire.

“Signal to the Naga! We need to get closer to that Man O’ War at the front!”

Samantha’s mouth dropped open disbelievingly. “Closer? But that’ll only make it easier for them to shoot us down!”

“Not if we divide their attention!” Charlie shot back forcefully.

He ran up to the deck of the ship and leapt onto the railing so he could dangle off the rigging and better talk over the sound of cannon fire.

“We’re going to do what pirates do best,” said the red-haired pirate captain, shooting a huge, blazing grin up at Samantha, “we’re going to sack and commandeer that Man O’ War ourselves!”

With some help from Arjun and Aishwarya running interference, Charlie was able to steer the Phoenix up alongside one of the Navy’s ships, called the Clearwater. As mad as Charlie’s idea was, however, it seemed he hadn’t been completely off-base -- just as Ben Copper himself had proposed earlier, the Navy had indeed not expected the pirates to try sacking and stealing their ship. Unfortunately to get close enough, the Phoenix ended up directly in the path of the Clearwater’s cannons, and as the pirates started to board, cannonballs blasted through the air, smashing the Phoenix to pieces.

“ABANDON SHIP!” roared Charlie. “ALL HANDS TO THE CLEARWATER!”

The pirates all flocked to the rigging and gangplanks to board the Man O’ War, now their only hope at avoiding the ocean waves. Charlie met up with Barnaby on deck, even as its planks was blasted to pieces.

“Is everyone else off?” demanded Charlie.

“Aye, Captain!” said Barnaby.

As splinters of wood and metal shot through the air, Charlie and Barnaby both leapt up into the rigging, preparing to swing across --

Unfortunately, just as they both swung, a cannonball collided squarely with the ringing. In an instant, both men were flung off of the ropes they’d been holding and into the air, falling toward the water with the weight of stones.

Barnaby, in a purely instinctual move, leaned forward in mid-air and, with all of his strength, shoved Charlie forward just enough that he could clear the hurtle between the two ships.

Charlie ended up colliding harshly with the deck of the Clearwater, his leg collapsing out from under him with an unpleasant CRACK.

“ACK!”

With a bellow of pain, the red-haired pirate captain crumpled in on himself, gritting his teeth as he struggled to control his breathing.

“Charlie!”

Samantha chucked a lit grenade right into the side of one of the Navy soldiers’ heads, using the Navy officers’ alarm and the subsequent small explosion as a distraction so she could run over. Bending down, she quickly grabbed hold of his arm to help Charlie to his feet.

“Augh -- “ choked Charlie. “My leg -- I can’t...ack!”

Samantha secured her arm around his waist, using a considerable amount of strength to try to hold him up at her side. “Hold on -- I’ve got you -- ”

Charlie looked up and around, taking in the scene of his men hot in battle with the Navy’s men.

“Barnaby?”

Charlie looked around. His First Mate wasn’t there.

Limping badly on his injured leg, Charlie threw himself across the deck to look over. In the ocean between the two ships was an unsettling set of ripples -- as if a body had collided with the water.

“BARNABY!”

“LOOK OUT!” yelled Samantha.

Charlie would’ve likely thrown himself overboard to try to retrieve his fallen comrade, but he immediately had to yank out his cutlass and defend himself against a Navy soldier who‘d made to attack him. Samantha pulled out her pistols and began shooting, trying to beat the enemy forces back as they descended on the fallen Phoenix’s captain.

Neither Charlie or Samantha saw the second cluster of ripples and bubbles that burbled up from under the surface, nor the gold mermaid tail that briefly flipped up out of the water before disappearing again under the waves.

Nothing turned out as it should. The battle plan Jacob and the pirates had devised hoping to scare the majority of the Man O’ Wars into surrendering was cut off at the legs. If they released Calypso now, there would be no reason for any of the Navy officers to think that her release was a threat pointed squarely at them. Calypso would certainly have no reason to cooperate, even if Chia Dalma had expressed some favoritism toward Orion and Charlie previously. They were still pirates, and Calypso had no reason to help the kind of people who had trapped her for so long just because they released her, especially since the decision was made out of desperation. The only thing guaranteed by Calypso’s release would be that the battle would be harder and would likely put everyone’s lives in even more jeopardy.

Despite this, however, Jules was firm in her conviction. They’d made a promise to release Calypso, and more importantly, it was a decision that was already well overdue. Regardless of whether Calypso decided to help them or not, she didn’t deserve to stay in bondage.

So despite the hesitance on Jacob’s and the majority of her crew’s faces, Jules fetched the tricorn hat full of the seven Pieces of Eight she’d been given by the other Pirate Lords -- Orion’s gold hoop earring, Jae’s copper mun coin, Ellie’s sunflower-engraved pocketwatch, Arjun’s snake-engraved fob seal, Charlie’s “S”-trimmed anchor button, and Merula’s jade ring. Then Jules plopped in the eighth that Samantha had fetched from the inside of the Pirate Codex (a cheap copper brooch shaped like a mermaid and scarred over with greenish-white rust), to represent her as Pirate King, and handed the full hat to Chia Dalma before setting the pieces on fire.

“Calypso,” Jules murmured as gently as she could, “I release you from your human bonds.”

The transformation was terrifying. It was little wonder that the process of turning Calypso into a human was described as her “being bound in her bones,” for when the goddess was set free of her human form, it was like a foreboding, slow-motion explosion. Chia’s eye sockets erupted blueish-white light, while her hair and clothes dissolved away into terrible gusts of wind and crashing sea spray. The low, rumbling, earthquake-esque sound that erupted from her could not be contained by her lips, instead coming from her every pore, as she levitated up off the ground, her flesh and blood limbs dangling uselessly in the face of her supernatural essence breaking free of them. Her flesh seemed to melt away, becoming more liquid and blue and white and incorporeal -- until at last, Chia Dalma’s frame burst open in a violent crash of seawater that for an instant submerged the entire pirate ship.

Jules, Bill, Jacob, and the rest of the crew were suddenly underwater, scrambling to escape so they could breathe. It was only thanks to Ashe that they survived. The merman quickly swam up to the helm and took control of the ship’s steering wheel, chucking it all the way around to tilt the Revolution sharply enough that it forced the ocean wave that had been Calypso back off the side.

Calypso, however, was not just the wave, as the pirates quickly found out. Overhead, there was a horrible rumble of thunder. Within moments, the ocean began to quake under the Revolution and the Flying Dutchman, darkening forebodingly. Somewhere in the distance, Jules could hear a delighted roar, like a triumphant beast’s -- it was Jones, delighted by the liberation of his lover and by the vengeance she would wreck for him.

Rakepick stared up at the darkening sky, her eyes very wide. “This...this storm -- it can’t be -- !”

“Oh, but it is.”

The cursed captain whirled on Rakepick, a smirk curling up into his octopus-stained features and a malevolent gleam in his eye.

“And now,” he said as he unsheathed his sword, “I fear no consequence o’ this!”

Rakepick cried out in agony as Jones plunged his sword right through the upper-right side of her chest. The privateer-turned-pirate-hunter crumpled up on the base of the stairs, her tricorn hat flying off into the wind. She tried to pull the blade out, but she was pinned down to the deck, unable to move as blood spurted out of her chest like a red flower.

“Augh...augh...”

Satisfied that the woman who’d so haughtily lorded over him was going to suffer properly before dying, Jones whirled on the rest of his crew with a victorious gleam in his eye.

“Let’s finish dismantling this ship afore us!” he indicated the Revolution, which was sailing up alongside the Flying Dutchman. “Then we can turn our sights toward different prey!”

Out of the blackening sky, a bolt of lightning crashed down, colliding with the ocean a mere twenty feet from the HMS Lion. The threat of fiery white death terrified Beckett’s men. Carewyn struggled to keep them calm, ordering them to weigh anchor so the HMS Lion could join its brothers in the charge. Beckett, however, contradicted her.

“If we advance, then we’ll merely be sailing right into the pirates’ hands,” he said coolly, as he sipped a cup of tea from the helm. “Our other ships are already dismantling them well enough.”

Carewyn’s blue eyes flashed. In an oddly harsh move, she brought up a hand and slammed it down on the table, making the china tea set rattle precariously and her fellow Navy men flinch.

“Don’t be a fool!” she hissed. “This isn’t some normal storm! Look at the waves you’ve sent our ships into! Look at this lightning -- it’s touching the sea itself! This is not an act of God -- this can only be Calypso!”

The rest of the Navy’s crew tensed up at the name. Beckett looked up from his tea, his dark eyes flickering with some interest for the first time.

“Calypso?” he repeated.

“The Pirate Lords bound her years ago, and now it seems they’ve released her,” said Carewyn fiercely. "We can’t stay still, if we hope to evade the wrath of a sea goddess -- ”

“But you believe she can, in fact, be evaded,” said Beckett mildly, putting down his cup on its saucer with a soft clink. “Good. From what I understand, Calypso doesn’t particularly like pirates much either...so it seems we can have her do some of our workload for us, if we merely steer clear of her destructive path.”

Carewyn’s eyes widened, her pupils narrowing to slits of rage.

“So you sentence your men to death? You choose to abandon our other ships to the mercy of both the pirates and to a vengeful goddess, in the deluded hope that they’ll destroy each other and leave us be -- ?!”

She didn’t even care if her voice was shriller than it should’ve been, thanks to the emotions that rebelled against her chest.

Beckett got to his feet, stepping right into Carewyn’s personal space with a fierce, cold eye.

“Our men know where their loyalty lies -- may you not forget the placement of yours, Admiral!”

Carewyn, however, got right back up in Beckett’s space in return, yanking her pistol out of her belt and pointing it right between his eyes.

All of the soldiers on deck stiffened or let out small, shocked cries. Even Beckett, whose expression did not flinch, raised his eyebrows.

“Just because my soul is no longer mine doesn’t mean that I won’t protect my men, Beckett,” Carewyn spat.

Beckett’s eyebrows furrowed over his eyes, which gleamed with cold, stony, foreboding rage.

“You dare...?” he whispered.

Carewyn’s eyes flared with hatred. “The only leverage you had over me is currently out there, being sent to his death on your orders.”

‘You have nothing left to take from me, Beckett. I’m already enslaved to Jones, and therefore you. I have no future. I can’t do any more good for the others. ...I’m worthless...’

Carewyn returned her pistol to her belt and turned to her men with a gentler, but still very serious look.

“Prepare to abandon ship, Lieutenant.”

The young Lieutenant who’d nearly caught Ben the previous night straightened up sharply. “Sir?”

“I will not have men who were assigned to this mission lay down their lives fighting a sea goddess,” said Carewyn solemnly. “Just as I don’t intend to let the men out there do so. We can’t signal to them to retreat from this far-off, but I won’t endanger your lives while I call them back. Tell the men to abandon ship and head for the Swallow...and then do so yourself.”

Despite the firmness of her voice, she knew the gravity of what she was asking of him.

The boyish, uptight Lieutenant looked from the silently seething Beckett to the grim, pale face of his commanding officer, visibly conflicted. Then, his lower lip trembling, he saluted.

“...Yes, sir,” he said weakly.

The young officer and his compatriots reluctantly followed orders and left the helm, leaving Beckett and Carewyn alone.

“You will regret this most dearly,” Beckett said in a very soft, pitiless voice.

“I only regret that I wasn’t able to do it sooner,” Carewyn shot back icily.

“There will be no safe place to hide from me,” said Beckett. “The entire world will know who and what you are. I will hunt you down with the might of my Company and the English Crown, until you sit under my heel like a dog.”

Carewyn was reminded of how he spoke to Orion, back on that tiny island -- like he was some pathetic, disgusting cockroach.

“I’m not a coward like you, Beckett -- I have no intention of running and hiding.”

‘You won’t need to hunt me down,’ she thought. ‘I already know I'm trapped.’

She turned her back on Beckett and walked away, shooting coldly back over her shoulder,

“Flee with your life while you still can.”

Once Carewyn was sure that her soldiers had all boarded the jollyboats and were on their way toward the HMS Swallow, she immediately made her way down to the lower deck, to where she knew Ben Copper had set up the explosives from the previous night.

The HMS Lion could not use flags to signal the other ships to fall back, from this distance...but the flagship being in distress would be more than enough for them to come back to try to help.

Carewyn approached the highly flammable barrels of black powder, her jaw set in determination despite the fear and paleness of her face. There was only one way she could make it explode on her own -- and so, with a deep breath and a faintly trembling hand, she slowly slid her loaded pistol from her belt and raised it to point at the barrels.

All of a sudden, Carewyn felt someone grab her from behind. She struggled against the grip as the person’s hands seized her arm, trying to pull it back -- “No, please -- please, no -- please -- ”

The voice made Carewyn freeze where she stood.

It was soft, detached, almost airy, and yet so choked and tense...she’d never heard that voice sound that way. Not that voice, at least...only a voice much younger, much less confident --

Carewyn slouched immediately.

“Orion?” she breathed.

The Pirate Lord’s shaking hands still clutched at her arm even after her pistol was no longer raised.

“Please,” he gasped for air, clearly trying to steady his heavy breathing. “Please -- ”

“Orion!”

Carewyn dropped her pistol to the floor with a clatter. She couldn’t pull out of his grip, but she tried to turn around to face him. Only managing to make it half-way, she looked up at him, taking in his parted lips and hollow dark eyes, and reached up to take hold of his face.

“Orion...it’s all right...”

Shakily Orion released her arms. Then, very abruptly, he just as quickly grabbed the back of her head with one hand, cradling it almost desperately.

“Orion, breathe,” Carewyn said desperately as she trailed a hand through his dreadlocks to try to comfort him. “Breathe...I’m here -- I’m here...”

The pirate closed his eyes. His breathing gradually slowed and quieted as he worked to ground himself.

“...Carewyn...” he murmured against her hair at last, still sounding faintly tense, but much more level again.

Carewyn’s chest was so overfull of emotion that her eyes flooded with tears.

“God, Orion!” she swore.

She placed a short, searing kiss against his lips before pulling away to look at him and tearing into him with anxiety,

“What are you doing here!? You’re going to get yourself killed!”

“I could say the same to you,” said Orion, his much more usual, calmer voice low in his throat with disapproval.

Carewyn’s eyes fell down to his shoulder uncomfortably. “I have to signal the rest of the fleet to retreat -- ”

“You needn’t sacrifice yourself for that.”

“I can’t make this signal any other way!”

“Don’t take all of this onto yourself -- ”

“It’s the only way I can help now!” Carewyn burst out. Her own hands were shaking now. “I know what you and Jacob were trying to warn me about, Orion, but it’s no use -- I can’t just stay off the Dutchman! Jones told me that the contract can’t be undone unless I wanted to condemn someone else in my place, and I...I can’t do that, Orion! Even if it means I can never make that world I promised for you -- even if it means I can never get Bill and Charlie and Jules their lives back, or protect Jacob and Ashe from the Navy, or even see you again...”

She fiercely tried to hold back her tears even as they blurred her vision.

“My life isn’t worth protecting, if it means I lose you! I can’t lose you! Without all of you, there’s no point to anything, anything I do!”

Orion’s dark eyes were swirling like miniature galaxies as he adjusted his hand on the back of Carewyn’s head more securely, tilting it up to try to prompt her to look at him before speaking again.

“Carewyn...will you marry me?”

Carewyn looked up at him like she’d just gotten a splash of cold water right to the face.

“What?”

“Will you marry me?” Orion repeated, undaunted.

Carewyn’s mouth hung open in disbelief. Where in the world did this come from?!

“I don’t think now’s the best time!” she said in a weaker, more high-pitched voice than usual.

“Now may be the only time,” said Orion, sounding oddly serious.

Carewyn scanned his face, struggling to understand his thought process.

“Orion...I’ll be part of Jones’s crew -- there can’t be a future for us, even if we -- ”

“On the contrary,” Orion cut her off gently. “We would only have the freedom to be together, this way.”

Carewyn’s eyebrows furrowed. Then, very, very slowly, her blue eyes widened in understanding.

“You’d be a member of our family,” she whispered.

Orion inclined his head in a nod. “I’d take the Cromwell name, rather than give you mine. That would make it so that Jones’s conditions could apply to either of us -- and so, if we wished to be together...the one Jones does not take could volunteer to remain with the other, as part of his crew...or, if not...one of us would be free to leave, with the debt still paid.”

Carewyn stared, hardly believing what she was hearing. She clutched at Orion’s shirt with both hands.

“You...you can’t!” she said desperately. “Jones is still under Beckett’s command -- if you join Jones’s crew, you...you’ll never be free again! I can’t let you enslave yourself to Beckett, not after what he did to you!”

“What he did to me...” murmured Orion.

He cradled Carewyn’s head as he leaned his forehead against hers so that their noses touched.

“Carewyn...what Beckett did to me was make it so that I’m no longer able to live a normal life. What he did to me was make it so that the only life I can lead is that of a pirate -- a creature of few friends, adrift on an unfriendly sea. However much I’ve been able to find independence and camaraderie on the high seas, that doesn’t mean I’ve ever been truly free. For I was never free to stop being a pirate. I was never free to stop running. I was never free...to return to the island where I first met the girl who would flit in and out of my dreams, like a songbird on the wing...see if she was happy...see if...she even still remembered me...”

Carewyn’s eyes widened.

“When I met you, I was an orphan with no name or home to call my own,” murmured Orion. “Although I’ve since crafted a name for myself...thanks to Beckett, I can never have the second. And even if I somehow ever could...that home would not be complete without you.”

His lips spread into a smile as his dark eyes slowly flooded with tears too.

“The freedom I want more than anything,” he said, “is the freedom to stay. Perhaps this choice wasn’t one we ever wanted to make, and perhaps it will be one we’ll have to live with longer than either of us envisioned, but...please...will you let me stay with you?”

Carewyn choked, trying to hold in the storm of emotions beating at the inside of her chest. She covered her face in both hands in a vain attempt to obscure the pain. She could feel Orion’s hand on the back of her head tense slightly, but he made no move to comfort her -- the pirate wasn’t entirely sure how, and he didn’t know if he should, since he knew he’d unloaded a lot onto her.

At last, Carewyn finally tore her hands away and threw her arms around Orion’s neck, burying her tear-stained face into his chest.

“Yes,” she whispered against his neck. “...Yes...”

She placed a feathery kiss to his collarbone.

“...Orion, I’m...I’m so sorry...”

Orion mirrored her, bringing his lips into the crook of her neck.

“Don’t be,” he said seriously, “for I am not.”

Carewyn looked up at him, prepared to speak -- but she stilled when her ear caught the sound of a pistol being cocked.

“GET DOWN!”

In an instant, she’d thrown herself against Orion, knocking him down to the floor just as the bullet whizzed overhead with a loud BANG, just barely missing the barrels of black gunpowder and instead colliding with one of the columns.

Carewyn and Orion both shot up, to find Cutler Beckett standing at the base of the stairs, his stony eyes set ablaze with a kind of hatred Carewyn had never seen.

At the exact same time, the Revolution and the Flying Dutchman were hotly engaged in battle on the rockier, more tempestuous sea. Jules had been firm in not having anyone swing over to the Dutchman until their ship had the upper hand, since she knew her mortal men would be outmatched by men who were already technically dead -- but Jacob, it seemed, had no intention of following her direction. Jones was still aboard the Flying Dutchman, and he had a score to settle with Jones. And so he swung over to the ship of the damned himself to confront its captain.

“Ah, Captain Roberts,” sneered Jones. “Welcome aboard.”

“Where is she!?” he snarled.

Jones’s dark eyes narrowed coldly. “If you mean the Admiral, I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place. Her enlistment isn’t set to begin for another month or so.”

With a roar of fury, Jacob lunged at Jones, hacking at him with his cutlass. The shorter man was very talented with a blade -- it was fortunate, considering he was hotly engaged in battle with someone who couldn’t be killed through ordinary means.

“Don’t know what you’re intending to do, Jacob Roberts!” spat Jones. “The contract is not one I can break either! The Admiral will be in my crew, no matter what she or anyone else thinks of the matter -- ”

Jacob slashed at Jones’s beard, slashing off several tentacles. Jones cried out in pain and frustration and when Jacob tried to attack again, Jones seized his arm in his claw, snapping down on it really hard.

“AUGH!”

Jones lifted the smaller man up off the deck by his arm so that he dangled off his feet.

“She only has her brother to blame for her misfortune,” the captain of the damned said lowly. “Yet she somehow has enough grace to not do so.”

Jacob’s face blanched and his slit-like pupils flared with hatred as he fought against Jones’ grip.

“You -- argh!”

Jones’s claw twisted Jacob’s arm painfully, making him drop his sword.

“Were I not a heartless wretch, I would feel remorse, knowing I have to condemn so decent a person,” said Jones.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, Jones cried out in surprise as a sword was plunged through his back.

It was Bill.

The eldest Weasley knew that the wound wouldn’t really hurt Jones (and he was correct), but it was the proper distraction for Jules to jump in from the other side and bring her sword down on Jones’s claw with enough leverage that he dropped Jacob. The curly-haired pirate captain fell onto the deck, clutching his arm, as Bill yanked his sword back out of Jones’s back.

“That is for Carey,” he snarled at Jones.

Jones whirled on Bill with his own cutlass, hacking away at him. Jules rushed to help Bill, while Ashe ran over to Jacob’s side to help him up.

“Jack, you’re bleeding -- ”

“I’ll be fine,” croaked Jacob as he clutched his wounded arm.

Jones fought both Bill and Jules singlehandedly, his cutlass slashing at Bill as his claw snapped at the air sweeping through Jules’s dark hair.

“Tell me, William and Juliette Weasley,” he crowed, “do you fear death?”

“Do you?”

Jones froze. Everybody else on the deck froze. Then, as if as a unit, they slowly turned, to look at Rakepick standing at the foot of the stairs.

The privateer-turned-pirate-hunter had shed her red jacket, leaving her in her blood-stained, high-necked and long-sleeved white undershirt, and her ginger-red hair had come loose of its bun and flapped in the gusting wind like a flag. In her hand was the throbbing, pulsating heart of Davy Jones.

Both Jacob and Bill lunged forward, but Rakepick moved before either of them could. Her dark blue eyes flaring with pure, undiluted hatred upon Jones, she yanked her loaded pistol out of its holster, thrust Jones’s heart down hard onto the deck, and fired at point-blank range.

BANG.

Jones lurched forward as if he'd been shot in the chest. He choked, his dark eyes going very wide as he struggled to breathe -- then he swayed, suddenly finding himself unable to stand, as his claw shakily clutched the railing of his ship.

Rakepick’s eyes held no compassion whatsoever as she bore down upon the crumpled-up Jones.

“The Chest’ll be doing its work soon enough,” she said very softly. “As it’s said...‘the Dutchman must have a captain.’”

Jacob suddenly felt like his hand was on fire. Ripping off the bandages, he stared in disbelief as the Black Spot Jones had given him so long ago seemed to shrink and disappear, leaving his palm completely unscarred.

For the deal Jacob had made was only in effect as long as both he and Jones lived.

Jones gasped for air as Rakepick seized him by the collar.

“I would ask if you wished to serve under me -- but I don’t want scum like you on my crew. So I’ll instead be kind...and send you to meet your dear Calypso.”

In a heartless move Jacob only knew too well, Rakepick shoved Jones overboard, right off of the Dutchman into the rushing waves.

“No!” hissed Jacob.

Rakepick turned to Jacob, a cold smirk spreading onto her face. “You know what this means, then, Black Jack? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised!”

Out of nowhere, Rakepick lurched forward, clutching at her chest, which pulsated with demented, sickly sea-green light. She shrieked in agonizing, hellish pain as her chest ripped itself apart, her own heart molting out of her skin -- the Dead Man’s Chest appeared out of nowhere in a flare of light at her feet -- and it swallowed up the heart that had ripped itself out of her chest before snapping shut.

“What -- ” gasped Bill, “what is -- ?”

“The one who stabs the Heart,” said Ashe, his face very pale with fury and anxiety, “must replace it with their own.”

“And become the immortal Captain of the Flying Dutchman.”

Rakepick clutched her chest with one hand, her long ginger hair in her face. She breathed heavily as her lips spread little by little into a broad smirk. When she pulled her hand away, the wounds in her chest and in her shoulder had completely sealed up. Even the blood had dissipated.

“Incredible,” she whispered. “I can feel the Dutchman -- the sea -- the creatures of the deep, all responding to my every whim...”

She flung out her arm. In an instant, Jones’s fallen barnacle-encrusted blade soared into her open hand, and she raised her head, her dark blue eyes devoid of human light or mercy upon Bill, Jacob, Jules, and Ashe as her loosely flying ginger hair seemed to smack the air like tentacles.

“Now I finally have the power I need,” she whispered triumphantly, “the power to destroy all of you and Cutler Beckett, in one fell swoop!”

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onebadwinter · 3 years

Text

Magneto Tropes

Taken from here

Adaptation Dye-Job: In the comics, he has been shown to have had white hair for the vast majority of his adult life, presumably as a side-effect of his mutation. In the films, he's introduced with grey hair (though only because, lacking Comic-Book Time, the screenwriters had to make him the realistic age of a Holocaust survivor) and he has dark brown hair as a younger man in the prequels.

Adaptation Name Change: In the comics, his original name was Max Eisenhardt and Erik Lehnsherr was an alias. In the films Erik Lehnsherr is his real name and the alias he uses is Henryk Gurzsky. To be fair though, Max Eisenhardt was not revealed as his true comic book name until the 2008 miniseries X-Men: Magneto Testament, long after the first X-Men movie was released in 2000.

Adaptational Wimp: To varying degrees. Magneto's power set in the comics varies Depending on the Writer, but among his traditional powers are the ability to generate force fields and electromagnetic pulses, a resistance to telepaths and psychic attacks, and he's a genius in multiple scientific fields. In the film his powerset is scaled back to just control over metallic metals (though after Apocalypse's boost, he's capable of doing so on a global scale and maintaining a powerful forcefield), he needs his helmet to block out telepathy, and his scientific knowledge doesn't seem to be as extensive.

Affably Evil: With Xavier. They still play chess games together a good 40 years into their conflict with each other. Hell, if you are on his side, he is rather chatty and friendly to you.

Antagonist in Mourning: In X-Men: The Last Stand, he sincerely grieves over Xavier's death and cuts off his Dragon Pyro's irreverent talk about the deceased abruptly. As in most versions of X-Men, he and Xavier were very close friends who eventually found themselves on separate sides due to their ideological differences.

Anti-Hero:

Anti-Villain: Has an unquestionably sympathetic backstory and very good reason to believe that humans are out to eradicate the mutant race. However, he is a dangerous individual with few limits on his devotion and what must be done to ensure the survival of his kind. Even his best and oldest friend isn't safe from his extreme methods and beliefs.

The Atoner: Ian McKellen invokes this while discussing his character in the "Double Take: Xavier & Magneto" documentary on the X-Men: Days of Future Past Blu-Ray release."The Magneto that you see with me is a man of conscience, and a man with an unhappy life behind him. He's come through a great deal, and isn't taking on single-handedly, or even with the help of his Brotherhood, society as a whole. He's joined up again with his old friend, Professor X, and together, they're going to try to move things forward."

Badass Baritone: Both Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender pull this off.

Badass Cape: Part of his supervillain outfit is his iconic crimson cape.

Played straight in Dark Phoenix, where he makes a point that the Phoenix is dangerous, but his methods involve injuring anyone who gets in his way as he tries to kill Jean.

Subverted in X-Men: First Class and X2: X-Men United, where he seems to join the heroes against a common foe, but is ultimately revealed to have ulterior motives and turns against them in the end.

Badass Longcoat: Magneto typically wears a long black coat in civilian attire, such as his appearance at the mutant hearings in the first film, the attempt to stop Mystique in X-Men: Days of Future Past, and his Roaring Rampage of Revenge in Dark Phoenix.

Berserk Button: Does not like people who 'just follow orders’. This is heavily implied to be because it was the excuse many Nazi officials gave for their actions during the Nuremburg trials.

Big Bad:

Big Bad Ensemble:

Big Brother Instinct: By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, he had already begun to view Charles as a brother figure. When the Blackbird spiraled out of control, Erik used his body to shield Xavier from injury, and he immediately halted his attack on the American and Soviet naval forces when Charles was shot. Even after they become enemies, Erik continously shows both respect and affection for Charles, consitantly referring to him as ‘Old Friend’. He was immensely saddened by his death in X-Men: The Last Stand, and deeply insulted by those who where disrespectful to him. He would also routinely put his own life on the line to help or save Charles, and the two kept very close in their later years, despite often being on opposing sides of the battle field.

Big Good: Old Magneto shares the role with Charles Xavier in X-Men: Days of Future Past, acting as the wise, protective mentor of the future team. This is in sharp contrast with his younger self, whose bigotry almost catapults the world into an even worse timeline than the one they are currently living in.

Byronic Hero: In X-Men: First Class—morally troubled, emotionally damaged, attractive, and very charismatic about his pro-mutant beliefs. Particularly to some of the impressionable younger characters like Mystique.

The Chessmaster: Invoked several times. He is seen playing Chess with Charles Xavier several times throughout the original trilogy, and references Chess during his attack on Alcatraz, to his benefit as Juggernaut was about to pull a Leeroy Jenkins and would have been depowered in the first wave had Erik not stopped him. Erik (stopping Juggernaut): In Chess, the pawns go first. (the defenders reveal their plastic dart guns filled with the cure serum, leading to the first wave of attackers getting depowered) Erik: Hmm, plastic. They've learned. That's why the pawns go first.

Color Motifs: He dresses up in various shades of red and purple.

Combat Tentacles: He can turn metal cables and pipes into such things, the most notable in X-Men: First Class when he uses a cable to snag the telepathy-blocking helmet and pull it off Shaw’s head, enabling Xavier to take control.

Composite Character: Has Juggernaut's helmet in this adaptation. This makes sense, as this Magneto's twisted, Cain and Abel relationship with Charles (Juggernaut's brother in the comics) is played to the hilt.

Cool Helmet: Wears his famous telepathy-blocking helmet. Technology wired into the helmet prevents telepathic intrusion, making Magneto difficult to control or impossible to find via Cerebro.

The Corrupter: Although he convinces Raven to accept her mutant appearance, he also pushes her into committing murder against human enemies and truly becoming Mystique. Charles believes Erik is a large influence for Raven leaving him.

Cultured Badass: He speaks several languages, passionately discusses philosophy, shows considerable knowledge of politics and foreign cultures, and enjoys the occasional game of chess with Xavier.

Curb-Stomp Battle: Dishes these out to Wolverine on a regular basis. Wolverine's metal skeleton makes him nigh-unstoppable against other opponents but is a huge liability going up against Magneto, who either immobilizes him or flings him away (or both) with ease every time they encounter each other as foes. Even when he faces a time-displaced Logan lacking the adamantium in his bones, Erik still dispatches him and nearly drowns him by impaling Wolverine with metal pipes and flinging him into a river.

Dark and Troubled Past: "Holocaust survivor" is about as dark and troubled as it gets.

Dark Messiah: In X-Men: Days of Future Past, his younger self prepares to kill Nixon while declaring mutant supremacy in front of a live broadcast.

Deadpan Snarker: The biggest one in the series, natch. X2: X-Men United is largely his snark-fest at everyone else's expense.

Death Glare: Young Magneto, portrayed by Fassbender, gives a calm murderous look killing the Nazis and Shaw, and also ripping a filling tooth from a banker in X-Men: First Class. Also, a good stare carrying the RFK Stadium towards the White House in X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Demoted to Dragon: He isn't the leader of the supervillain team in X-Men: Apocalypse; this time around, he plays second fiddle to Apocalypse. He becomes The Starscream and pulls a Heel–Face Turn, though.

Determinator: In the '70s, he asks Logan how fighting him for years has worked out for him and Logan responds they're both "survivors" which only serves to motivate Erik to later demonstrate how much more powerful he is than the Wolverine later on when he runs metal pipes through his body and leaves him to drown, muttering contemptuously, "so much for survival."

Disappeared Dad: To Quicksilver. Despite them sharing a few scenes and Quicksilver entering the plot of X-Men: Apocalypse just to find him, Magneto shows no signs of recognizing him.

Dissonant Serenity: He's disturbingly calm, even cheerful, during the scene in the bar in Argentina, just before he murders three ex-Nazi's.

Doesn't Like Guns: His younger self uses guns when he needs to, while the older Magneto sneers at them. This is partly because of his background as a holocaust survivor, and partly because humans rely on guns to fight, and he sees it as a sign of their inferiority. Of course, that's a bit hypocritical when he has the power of magnetism, and those who don't possess such an advantage have to defend themselves somehow.

Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto Us: His motive in almost every movie is to wipe out humanity before they can do the same to mutantkind.

Emotional Powers:

Enemy Mine:

Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Despite all that he's done, his love for his mother is one of his defining characteristics. Unfortunately, it's also the reason why he killed Shaw in cold blood, truly becoming Magneto.

Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He does care deeply for certain characters - in the prequel films most obvously for Charles and Mystique. The memory of the good times he and Charles shared in their youth is enough to make him turn on Apocalypse, while Hank informing him of Mystique's death at Jean's hands sends him on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.

Even Evil Has Standards: Magneto always considered Xavier a friend and never wanted him dead. In X3 when Pyro says he would have done so if Magneto ordered it, Magneto is clearly angered at the idea. Whatever their qualms, neither wanted the other dead.

Evil Former Friend: Naturally while remaining on Friendly Enemy terms with Charles Xavier, the X-Men and Brotherhood are at great conflict in the majority of films regardless.

Evil Genius: With truly amazing schemes. In X-Men: Days of Future Past, he was able to steal a file containing the details of the Sentinels, after reading it over he was somehow able to reprogram them while inserting metal tracks within the bodies.

Extra-ore-dinary: His impressive mutant ability to control metal. Guns are a joke to him and throughout the films he's accomplished feats capable of lifting a submarine from water, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the RFK Stadium, the last without showing any real sign of effort. In X-Men: Apocalypse thanks to Apocalypse's enhancement he's shown ripping practically every metallic structure on the planet apart via control of the world's magnetic field and with Jean, putting the Xavier Institute back together from scratch.

Fantastic Radiation Shielding: His helmet protects him from various mutants' psychic powers.

Faux Affably Evil: If you aren't on his side, he can be downright terrifying and still sound unfailingly polite. When Pyro expresses disappointment that he wasn't the one to kill Professor X, Magneto gives him a rather grandfatherly talking-to...with an unspoken, but very real assurance that the next ill words Pyro speaks of Charles Xavier would be his last.

First-Name Basis: In the films, just like in the comics, he and Charles Xavier always use their first names when speaking to or about each other. Only a handful of others are on a first-name basis with them.

Foil:

Freudian Excuse: A former victim of the Holocaust believing humanity will subjugate mutants the same way.

Friendly Enemy: To Charles Xavier. Their relationship stretches the definition of "friendly" about as far as it will go but it's there. They have the utmost respect for one another and used to be close companions but just about every differing point between them comes from a place of vitriolic and passionate division (to the point both refuse to see a future where the other's point of view can exist, it is a mutually exclusive matter of black-and-white difference in opinion).

The Fundamentalist: Without a doubt believes mutants are the superior species and humans will fight against their extinction.

Gaining the Will to Kill: When he meets Raven in X-Men: Days of Future Past, he appears noticeably distressed before picking up a gun and apologizing then claiming mutants will never be safe with her alive before shooting at her.

Heel–Face Revolving Door: His moral standing across the films has variously been Nominal Hero, Anti-Hero, Anti-Villain, The Atoner, and Well-Intentioned Extremist. Magneto is rarely a straight villain and even more rarely a straight hero, but in the meantime he wavers all the way between the two.

Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: In Dark Phoenix, he starts off as a neutral figure, and then dons his trademark helmet when he becomes an antagonist shortly afterward. He teams up with the X-Men at the beginning of the third act right after his helmet is destroyed in a fight.

Heterosexual Life-Partners:

He Who Fights Monsters:

Hijacked by Ganon: He has a tendency to hijack the plans of the villains of the films in retaliation against them.

Hoist by His Own Petard: Invokes this on so many occasions, such as threatening dozens of policemen with their own guns, using Dark Cerebro to kill all humans after it was just used in an attempt to kill all mutants, as well as killing multiple soldiers by pulling off the pins on their grenades, hurling missiles at ships that just fired them, and using the Sentinels during the DisasterousDemonstration in the past to attack the spectators.

Humans Are Bastards: Believing humans will continue to grow and despise mutants he maintains this belief. Though it doesn't really help his case when he keeps doing actions that make people fear him.

Hypocrite:

Magneto is responsible for the main conflict in X-Men, as he intends to sacrifice Rogue to power a machine capable of turning normal humans into mutants, but is unaware that the artificial mutations are unstable and will kill the affected.

In X-Men: The Last Stand, Magneto builds an army and prepares to attack Alcatraz island, where a cure for mutations is being developed. His efforts lead him to recruit the unstable Phoenix, who goes on a rampage during the film's climax and causes countless deaths.

Magneto shares the antagonistic role with Stryker in X2: X-Men United, but their goals are opposite of each other: the former intends to use the machine called Dark Cerebro to rid the world of normal humans, whereas the latter intends to do the same to the mutants.

Trask, Mystique and a younger version of Magneto are the main villains of X-Men: Days of Future Past. Trask invented the Sentinels, mutant-hunting machines that turned the world into an apocalyptic dystopia. Mystique goes on trying to get revenge on Trask by killing him after seeing the pictures of her deceased fellow mutants. Magneto opposes both Mystique and Trask by promoting his own ideals of supremacy, which only serve to amplify humanity's fear of mutants and push the Sentinel program forward.

In X-Men: First Class upon seeing the mansion Charles grew up in.Erik: Honestly Charles, I don't know how you survived living in such hardship.

In the original X-Men, when Magneto has the X-Men trapped and bound within the Statue of Liberty, he points out a foolish tactical error on Scott's part with withering contempt.Cyclops: Storm, fry him! Magneto: Oh yes, a bolt of lightning into a huge copper conductor. I thought you lived at a school.

He also really enjoys mocking Wolverine in general.Magneto: Why do you always think it's all about you?

In X-Men: First Class, he is originally only able to use his powers when extremely angry. The first two times, it involves maternal separation. However, he can't properly focus it until Charles coaches him to concentrate on happier emotions.

In X-Men: Apocalypse, his power hike into Physical God territory is initially assumed to be Apocalypse enhancing him like the other Horsemen, but Charles contradicts this, contemptuously asserting that all Apocalypse has done is tap into his rage and pain.

X2: X-Men United: He and Mystique team-up with the X-Men to stop a human villain from killing all mutants. Right up until he decides to invert the attack and have all the non-Mutants killed instead.

X-Men: Days of Future Past: He and Xavier unite against the Sentinels that threaten all of mutantkind with extinction. Although he ends up attempting his own plans for mutant superiority and, ironically enough, winds up jeopardizing the plan to save mutantkind.

Dark Phoenix: Magneto initially attempts to kill Jean for killing Mystique, but he and his lieutenants join forces with the X-Men to fight the D'Bari when they come for the Phoenix Force in the climax.

In X-Men: Days of Future Past, while the public and most other characters refer to him and Raven (Mystique) by their mutant code names, Charles and Hank still remain on a first name basis with both of them, and vice versa. This is also presumably true for Alex, who still addresses his former ally as Erik.

X-Men: First Class: He and Charles are juxtaposed in their respective Argentinian bar and Oxford pub scenes. The sober Lehnsherr is all business when he's hunting down Nazis, and he murders three men (including the bartender) in cold blood after taunting his prey. The inebriated Xavier is the life of a party when he and his fellow graduate students celebrate the successful defense of his PhD thesis, and he later tries to flirt with Agent MacTaggert. Producer Bryan Singer gives a very basic summary of their differences in the "Magneto the Survivor" featurette:"Ultimately, they come from different places. Erik Lehnsherr is a victim of the Holocaust, he probably left the war with nothing, and is very much a solitary man, while Xavier had a life of privilege, became a professor at Oxford, was surrounded by peers, has an intimate relationship with Mystique since childhood, so he's quite loved, and therefore quite idealistic, less embittered, and just has a very different view from Lehnsherr."

X-Men: Days of Future Past:

Both past and future Magneto contrast each other in the film. 1973 Magneto continues to move forward with mutant supremacy and attacking Charles and his group, while future Magneto was fighting to protect both mankind and mutants while lamenting his pointless struggles with Charles in their younger years. Past Erik is very much on his own, but his elderly counterpart is a valuable team member.

Past Magneto and Past Xavier were both inactive and isolated in between 1963 and 1973 (the former due to imprisonment, the latter due to depression). Erik shows signs of wanting to repair some of their previous friendship, but a bitter Charles isn't interested for the most part. Magneto tries to kill Mystique while Xavier tries to protect her. Hank remains unwaveringly devoted to Charles, but Erik loses Mystique's loyalty after the murder attempt. In X-Men: First Class, Erik personified "rage" while Charles embodied "serenity," but their roles are reversed in 1973. Xavier is now the one who is full of pain and anger, and therefore has great trouble wielding his telepathy, whereas Magneto is (relatively) calm and controlled, still possessing great mastery over his power despite being deprived of metal for a decade. (We even see Erik adopt a meditation pose in his prison cell, which makes him appear Zen-like.)

Wolverine and the younger Magneto are violent individuals who love Xavier, but whereas Jerk with a Heart of Gold Logan possesses Undying Loyalty towards Charles, Jerk with a Heart of Jerk Erik is quick to betray him, until he finally does the reverse and pulls a Heel–Face Turn in X-Men: Apocalypse.

X-Men: Apocalypse: After he loses his family, he's in so much grief that he's willing to follow Apocalypse, who convinces Erik that he's God, and God has granted Magneto a divine purpose.

The version of Magneto from the second timeline in particular embodies this trope, having changed sides eight separate times over the course of the series.note

Considering that his and Charles' friendship only lasted a couple months, at most, in X-Men: First Class, it was unusually intimate on an emotional level.

Played straight in X-Men: Days of Future Past, with his older self and Professor X (the moment where they're holding hands is the closest that we've seen them since First Class), but averted with their younger selves. In 1973, Charles never once calls him "friend" (although Erik uses the endearment twice), which goes to show how broken their relationship is.

X-Men: Director Bryan Singer explains in the September 2000 issue of SFX:"...the paradox in Magneto's character is that he was the victim and then becomes the aggressor. It's like he's slowly become these people who persecuted him and murdered his family right in front of him. He became embittered. You get angry enough and you start forgetting."

X-Men: First Class: He hates Shaw and wants to kill him, but he eventually embraces Shaw's beliefs about mutant supremacy. It's even spelled out through the villain wearing the same helmet that Magneto is associated with. Justified at the crucial moment because he separates revenge from his ideals, which is why he's able to compliment Shaw's vision while still hating the man to his core. Shaw the man wronged him terribly, but Shaw the visionary is inspirational.

X2: X-Men United: After stopping Stryker's plan to kill all mutants with a fake Cerebro, he decides to reprogram the machine to kill regular humans instead.

X-Men: Days of Future Past: Young Magneto hijacks the Sentinels to attempt killing both Bolivar Trask and President Nixon.

X-Men: First Class features a variation: once Erik kills Shaw, he basically embraces his evil nature and attempts to wipe out the American and Soviet fleets.

Despite claiming to help his fellow mutants, Magneto has no qualms on attacking and even killing other mutants who stand in the way of his anti-human crusade.

Magneto is motivated by his memories of enduring the Holocaust during World War II and believes mutants will be subjected to the same treatment as the Jews in Nazi Germany if they do not fight back. This leads to him falling victim to He Who Fights Monsters, becoming a genocidal racist just as bad as the Nazis.

In X-Men, he is willing to sacrifice Rogue but not himself in the advancement of his cause. Beautifully called out by Wolverine, who tells him: "You're so full of shit. If you were really so righteous, it would be you up in that thing." Erik levitates away without replying, but the expression on his face makes it clear the remark hit home.

At the climax of X-Men: Days of Future Past, his past-self sics a Sentinel on Wolverine and Beast, after a grand speech about how he will protect mutantkind.

In Dark Phoenix he tells Jean about the futility of killing for revenge, and how it never made the pain he felt go away. Then, when he finds out Jean killed Mystique, he almost immediately decides to kill her in revenge - though that could simply be the difference between knowing it intellectually and his emotional reaction.

I-Y

Improvised Weapon: As long as it's metal, Magneto's powers let him use anything as a weapon. He has killed people with such things as a coin and a locket.

I Did What I Had to Do: In X-Men: Days of Future Past, he tells Raven he tried to kill her because he was aware of the impending Sentinel menace and came to the conclusion that the only way to prevent it would be if she was permanently dispatched.

I Hate Past Me: In X-Men: Days of Future Past right before Kitty sends Wolverine back in time, he worries that his and Charles' past-selves won't understand the nightmarish situation in the Bad Future and be able to fix things. Erik: It's not [Wolverine] I'm worried about, it's us. We were young, we didn't know any better.

Ineffectual Loner: Was one in X-Men: First Class until Charles convinced him he could do better with friends of his own, and in the ending he begins building his brotherhood of mutants.

I Was Quite a Looker: He was a classic example of Tall, Dark, and Handsome when he was a young man (and he has aged gracefully over the years).

Jerkass Has a Point: He did make the fair point towards Charles that he grew up with Raven, and shouldn't have entirely claimed responsibility for raising her, which did in part drive her away from him.

Just the Way You Are: In X-Men: First Class, he is able to persuade Raven to his side finding her mutant appearance to be "perfection" in contrast to Charles and Hank, who feel she should look more "normal" to gain acceptance within society.

Karma Houdini:

Kick the Son of a Bitch: Some of his victims include Nazis, Sebastian Shaw and the corrupt, violent slob in charge of his prison cell. He also chained William Stryker back up and left him to die at the end of X2: X-Men United.

Knight Templar: Wants to stop mutant prejudice... by subjugating humans.

Lean and Mean: Magneto seems to have little-to-no fat on his body. It makes sense, given that he's a Holocaust survivor who spent his early life on the road.

Loner-Turned-Friend: In X-Men: First Class when he met Charles Xavier and his group.

Made of Iron: His younger self is quite capable of taking a beating. In X-Men: First Class he gets thrown off a boat by Emma Frost in diamond form and was being thrown across a room by Shaw crashing into mirrors. In X-Men: Days of Future Past, he took head injuries from Beast and nearly drowned before restraining him only needing a head stitching after - a head stitching he performed himself while examining the schematics of the Sentinel's and without even twitching at the pain. His older self also survived a blast from Cyclops in the first film, and in X-Men: Days of Future Past continued to protect the group from the Sentinels with a shard having pierced his abdomen.

Manipulative Bastard: Best demonstrated as he convinces Pyro and in the prequel series, Raven, to defect to his side.

Meaningful Name: Erik means "ruler" and Lehnsherr can be roughly translated as "feudal lord" (lehn = fief, herr = master). Magneto's birth name betrays his ambition to rule over humans.

Mook Horror Show: Several films have him performing one.

Motive Rant: Delivers one to Senator Kelly after capturing him in X-Men.Magneto: Are you a god-fearing man, senator? That's such a strange phrase. I've always thought of God as a teacher, as a bringer of light, wisdom, and understanding; you see, I think what you really are afraid of is me. Me and my kind, the Brotherhood of Mutants. Though it's not so surprising really. Mankind has always feared what it doesn't understand. Well, don't fear God, Senator, and certainly don't fear me. (in an undertone) Not anymore.

My Greatest Failure: The death of Xavier in X-Men: The Last Stand, which he directly caused by awakening Dark Phoenix.Magneto: Charles Xavier did more for mutants than you'll ever know. My single greatest regret is that he had to die for our dream to live.

My God, What Have I Done?: X-Men: The Last Stand features him saying the line, when he finds himself on the other side of the Mutants vs. Humans war he's been pushing for, and Phoenix finally goes crazy and starts killing people.

Nazi Hunter: He spends the first twenty minutes or so of his screentime in X-Men: First Class tracking down and killing Nazis. In fact, his reason for joining the X-Men is so that he can find and kill Sebastian Shaw, the mutant Nazi who killed his mother.

The Needs of the Many: In X-Men: Days of Future Past.Erik: Forgive me Mystique, as long as you're out there we'll never be safe.

Never Be Hurt Again: He is both a Holocaust Survivor and mutant "lab rat" which pushes him towards Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto Us regarding mutant suppression by the humans.

New Era Speech: Gets one in Days of Future Past, delivered on national television before the Presidential cabinet.Magneto: You built these weapons to destroy us. Why? Because you are afraid of our gifts. Because we are different. Humanity has always feared that which is different. Well, I'm here to tell you, to tell the world, you're right to fear us. We are the future. We are the ones who will inherit this earth, and anyone who stands in our way will suffer the same fate as these men you see before you. Today was meant to be a display of your power. Instead I give you a glimpse of the devastation my race can unleash upon yours. Let this be a warning to the world. And to my mutant brothers and sisters out there, I say this; no more hiding, no more suffering. You have lived in the shadows in shame and fear for too long. Come out, join me. Fight together in the brotherhood of our kind. A new tomorrow, that starts today.

Nice Hat: Occasionally wears a fedora while in civilian garb, as shown in X-Men when he attends the hearing on mutants at the beginning of the film and in X-Men: Days of Future Past when he raids the vault for his helmet.

Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!: Attacking Mystique at the Paris Peace Conference bought Bolivar Trask a couple extra days and gets Nixon to fund the Sentinel program, but his betrayal and attack on the White House sets up a situation where a mutant is seen saving Nixon's life on live TV. Mystique performs a Heel–Face Turn, Nixon cancels the Sentinel program, and the Bad Future is averted.

Nightmare Fetishist: Everyone in X-Men: First Class, tells Raven that her true form as Mystique is horrifying, but Eric tells her that she is beautiful as she is, and that taking on a more normal looking appearance is wasteful of her powers, and limits her concentration against unexpected attacks. In X-Men: The Last Stand however, when Mystique shields Magneto from being struck by darts containing the Mutant Cure, he coldly abandons her now that she's human, regretfully telling Pyro that she used to be "so beautiful."

Noble Demon: At his fundamental core, Magneto wishes to protect innocent minorities from genocidal persecution at the hands of murderous racists, no matter what it takes.

Not So Different:

Outliving One's Offspring: His daughter is killed by Polish policemen in one of the most heartbreaking moments of the whole film franchise.

Overarching Villain: Magneto is the central antagonist of the first trilogy. In the prequels, he usurps the role of Big Bad from Shaw and Trask, before pulling a Heel–Face Turn at the very end of X-Men: Apocalypse. However, he comes to oppose the X-Men once again in the following film, only to ultimately join their battle against Vuk during the climax.

Parental Abandonment: His father is nowhere to be seen, and his mother is executed before him by Shaw to try and induce his magnetism powers.

Pet the Dog: He was the first person in Raven's life that complimented and truly admired her natural blue form. Also, upon reveal he compliments Hank, although it isn't met with a kind reaction from Beast, who believed he was being mocked.

Physical God: While always immensely powerful, he becomes this in X-Men: Apocalypse, being on the verge of tearing apart the planet (as one character puts it, "destroying everything built since the Bronze Age") while maintaining an impenetrable forcefield. Moreover, Charles implies that unlike the other Horsemen, Apocalypse didn't actually enhance him, he just tapped into his rage and pain, meaning that he had this potential all along.

Power Floats: Can fly by manipulating the Earth's magnetic field.

Pre-Mortem One-Liner: He delivers one to Sebastion Shaw as Charles holds control of Shaw's body."This is what we're going to do. [holds up the coin] I am going to count to three and I'm going to move the coin. One. [moves the coin towards Shaw's head] Two. Three." [puts the coin through Shaw's head, Charles screams].

Protagonist Journey to Villain: X-Men: First Class revolves around him seeking revenge for the murder of his mother and his increasing acceptance of mutant supremacy.

Red and Black and Evil All Over: His outfits typically have a lot of dark red and dark grey. The dark grey is accentuated in the older Magneto's costumes.

Red Oni, Blue Oni: In X-Men: First Class, he is rather hot-headed while Charles is more level-headed. ''Empire'' magazine even color-coded the front covers of their May 2011 issue accordingly.◊

Roaring Rampage of Revenge:

Rousing Speech: On several occasions he's persuaded mutants to follow his cause and fight along himself. Most notably, when he attacked the white house and on a live broadcast declared mutants come out of hiding because they are more powerful than the humans who would try to eliminate them. This is after he discredited the Sentinel program and held the president cabinet at gun point.

Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: In X-Men: First Class, he is the Manly Man to Charles' Sensitive Guy. They display this dynamic in their personalities (Anti-Hero vs. All-Loving Hero) and physique (Tall, Dark, and Handsome vs. Pretty Boy) as well as their philosophies and methods (Pay Evil unto Evil vs. Wide-Eyed Idealist).

Shut Up, Kirk!: Delivered one to Xavier in X-Men: First Class.Xavier: There are thousands of men on those ships. Good, honest, innocent men! They're just following orders. Erik: I've been at the mercy of men just following orders. Never again.

Slasher Smile: He sports a brief one when he rips iron from a guard's body in X2.

Slave Brand: The tattoo number of a Nazi concentration camp he carries upon his forearm, which he has brought attention towards to serve as a reminder for human cruelty.

At the end of X-Men United, he escapes after attempting to wipe out all non-mutants.

At the end of The Last Stand, he sneaks away when the Dark Phoenix awakens and realizes on his own that the effects of the mutant cure are only temporary.

In Apocalypse, he murders a bunch of policemen and creates a magnetic field that caused a lot of damage across the globe, but is let off the hook because he helped kill En Sabah Nur. However, this could be explained by the fact that he's so powerful at this point that there's way to reasonably contain him.

In Dark Phoenix he instigates a battle against the X-Men in the streets of New York, including his ripping a subway train out the ground and using it as a battering ram against the D'Bari stronghold, all in an attempt to kill Jean, but later fights alongside the X-Men to save her after Charles manages to sway him. By the end of the film he's openly wandering the streets of Paris without any repercussions, and even invites Xavier to come to Genosha with him.

The Nazis at the bar in First Class.

The security guards in Days of Future Past when he reclaims his helmet, done while sharply dressed wearing shades and a fedora.

And in Apocalypse, he does it again to the policemen sent to bring him in after one of them accidentally kills his wife and daughter. With a locket.

In X-Men: First Class, when he confronts the villain Sebastian Shaw at the end: Erik Lehnsherr: If you're in there, I'd like you to know that I agree with every word you said. We are the future. But unfortunately, you killed my mother.

In X2: X-Men United, the first thing he does when he gets inside the second Cerebro? Instructs Jason Stryker to simply reverse the polarity on Professor X's mental attack to target humans instead of mutants rather than free Charles from Jason's mind control.

In X-Men: First Class, he hunts down Shaw and his Nazi underlings to exact revenge for the death of his mother. He succeeds in giving the latter ones horrific deaths, but is effortlessly defeated by Emma Frost when he tries to do the same to the former.

In X-Men: Apocalypse, he uses his family medallion to slaughter the whole Polish police squad that has been sent to arrest him after they killed his daughter and wife by accident. He then goes on to kill his co-workers at the steel plant after one of them denounced him. Apocalypse arrives just as Erik was about to kill them, and sucks them all into the floor.

In Dark Phoenix, after learning that Jean killed Raven in a case of Power Incontinence, he immediately grabs his old helmet and heads to New York to get revenge.

Slowly Slipping Into Evil: In the original trilogy, Magneto starts out as a Well-Intentioned Extremist bent on turning regular humans into mutants. Come X2, he instead wishes to commit genocide against mankind, but still cares about mutant lives. But he is at his worst in The Last Stand, where he recklessly chooses to sacrifice his troops in Alcatraz, comparing them to the pawns in a Chess game.

The Social Darwinist: He believes mutants are the superior species towards humans.

Start of Darkness: X-Men: First Class devotes itself to his gradual transformation into the human-hating supremacist he is today, courtesy of his past as a Holocaust survivor and his affinity with Shaw's ideology.

Stealth Pun: Michael Fassbender kept his natural auburn hair for the role in X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days of Future Past, which makes him... Erik the Red.note

Super Reflexes: In X-Men: First Class, he's fairly confident he can stop a bullet shot point blank from his head. Later, he more or less holds true to his claim by stopping a horde of missiles fired by the US and Russian army within several feet from the air to him, and deflecting bullets while being shot at by Moira MacTaggert.

Sympathetic Murderer: In First Class, his target being Shaw, who killed his mother and tortured him.

Tailor-Made Prison:

Tall, Dark, and Handsome: In his youth, as shown in the First Class trilogy.

Team Dad: In X-Men: First Class he was the more stern and less nurturing parental figure for the proto X-Men, opposite Charles' Team Mom. This is what makes the "Beach Divorce" scene so much more tragic.

Team Member in the Adaptation: He was never a Horsemen in the comics. This version also forms the Brotherhood by taking control of the Hellfire Club after killing Shaw.

That Man Is Dead:Xavier: Erik, don't join them. Magneto: Whatever it is you think you saw in me, I buried it with my family.

Time-Shifted Actor: He has been portrayed by four actors in three note different stages of his life.

Tired of Running: Inspires mutant followers to stop hiding and accept themselves, while turning on the humans who would target them.

Too Happy to Live: His life in Poland in Apocalypse looks too happy to last as he is spotted and unmasked by authorities and both his wife and daughter die tragically.

Took a Level in Badass: In First Class after Charles unlocks his full potential and in Apocalypse when the titular character gives him a boost.

Tragic Keepsake: When he first met Sebastian Shaw, he was asked to move a Nazi Coin in exchange for his mother's life but was unable to do so and she was murdered. He carried the coin for most of his life until he moved it through Shaw's head, killing him.

Tragic Villain: Possibly the archetypal example.Charles: Listen to me very carefully my friend... killing Shaw will not bring you peace.Erik: Peace was never an option.Erik: Is this what you want from me?! Is this what I am?

Tranquil Fury: In X-Men: First Class, his powers are manifested through anger, until Charles helps by telling him "true focus lies somewhere between rage and serenity."

Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Shaw had Erik awaken control of his magnetism by murdering his mother.

Troubled, but Cute: In X-Men: First Class, pre-supervillainy, he is a Nazi-hunting Byronic Hero with an intensely Dark and Troubled Past (involving the Holocaust, loss of his parents, and being a victim of human experimentation) and bucketloads of trauma and cynicism. He also wears a leather jacket on a few occasions.

Villain Has a Point: Magneto believes humans and mutants can never co-exist and fears the crimes of the Holocaust will be repeated against mutants one day. The Bad Future in Days of Future Past shows he's absolutely right; humans have created the Sentinels to hunt down and exterminate mutants, who are being herded into camps to be killed or experimented on en masse. Far before then, however, in First Class the U.S. and Soviet fleets open fire on the assembled mutants at Cuba simply because they are mutants, making no distinction between the ones that just fought to save them and the ones that were trying to kill them. Even when mutants do things right by humans (Mystique saving President Nixon in Days of Future Past), humans still screw them over, as shown in Logan when the mutants are on the verge of extinction again.

Villainous Legacy: He ends up killing Shaw out of revenge, but he fully agrees with Shaw's goal; that is, Mutants needing supremacy over humans to thrive, and carries it over from him.

Visionary Villain: He wants to create a world safe for mutants by any means necessary.

The Unfettered: If it means the safety of mutants he'll kill anyone from the President or even Mystique.

Was It Really Worth It?: His future self ultimately regrets fighting Charles for so long, and wishes he had some of those years back.

We Can Rule Together: An open door he extends to any mutant willing to see things his way, all the way up to and including Professor Xavier himself. Some accept and the ones who don't usually swing to Xavier's point of view.

Well-Intentioned Extremist: He has always been the archetypal example in comics and the films faithfully live up to that. He puts forth a big effort to allow mutants to come out of hiding and gain acceptance of themselves but at the same time opposes humans who would threaten them, believing war is inevitable. His plan in X-Men, is actually rather benevolent and would finally end the division between Mutants and the rest of Mankind, while sacrificing only Rogue to make it work. It's a good plan (though not necessarily one that would work in the long run), it's just a shame his machine doesn't work!

We Used to Be Friends: The whole premise of X-Men: First Class is to show how he and Charles Xavier became friends and then ended up on opposite sides with different ideals.

What the Hell Are You?: In X-Men: First Class, we have the following conversation:Former Nazi Officer: [in German] Who—what are you?Erik: [in English] Let's just say I'm Frankenstein's Monster... and I'm looking for my creator.

What the Hell, Hero?: In X-Men: Days of Future Past, his past self goes into an outburst about how fellow mutants were being killed left and right while Young Charles has been in hiding with Hank. Erik: Angel, Azazel, Emma, Banshee. Mutant brothers and sisters, all dead! Countless others, experimented on! Butchered! Where were you, Charles?! We were supposed to protect them! Where were you when your own people needed you?! Hiding! You and Hank! Pretending to be something you're not! You abandoned us all!

Wicked Cultured: Mags always enjoy a good game of chess with Xavier or listening to classical music.

With Us or Against Us: Concerning the mutants who choose to fight with him or against him, namely the X-men.

Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Each film of the new timeline keeps piling on the trauma that fuels his rage. In First Class he was a Holocaust survivor who had to watch his mother die in front of his eyes, and worse, it was because he couldn't consciously use his powers at the time. In Days of Future Past the Brotherhood were killed and experimented on by Trask Industries. In Apocalypse, after giving living in peace a chance, his wife and daughter are killed after his cover is blown as a mutant. All of this leads to him becoming an extremist willing to kill countless numbers of people. Highlighted in X-Men: First Class and arguably even more so in X-Men: Apocalypse, since he's quite literally out to destroy the world.

Worthy Opponent: He and Xavier have this relationship. Magneto: Charles Xavier did more for mutants than you will ever know. My single greatest regret is that he had to die for our dream to live.

Would Hit a Girl:

Would Hurt a Child: In X-Men: The Last Stand, he orders Juggernaut to kill Leech.

You Are Number 6: In X-Men: First Class, he outs himself as a holocaust survivor to some Nazis he was amicably chatting with (and planning to kill). When they asked for the names of his parents, being from the same town, he answered that they "had no names—they were stolen from them" before showing his own concentration camp number. Violence ensues.

You Are What You Hate: He hates Nazis due to being a survivor of the Holocaust, but ultimately embraces racism against non-mutants, this is highlighted in X-Men: First Class.

You Killed My Father: In X-Men: First Class, when he kills Schmidt/Shaw despite agreeing with his Mutant Supremacist ideals because Schmidt killed his mother in front of him as a child.Magneto: I want you to know I agree with everything you just said. We are the future. But, unfortunately... you killed my mother.

Younger Than They Look: In X-Men: First Class, Erik is around the same age as Charles (late twenties/early thirties), but the former appears considerably older because Michael Fassbender looks older than his actual age (he has a lot of lines on his face) while the baby-faced James McAvoy looks younger despite there being a only two-year age gap between the two actors. This can be Handwaved as Erik ageing prematurely because of the trauma and starvation he experienced during World War II.

Also, an alias Magneto himself used once, during the "Trial of Gambit" debacle. And one a Shiar spy on Earth used. Not so much a Stealth Pun as a Mythology Gag.

As an older man, however, his reflexes have notably slowed, as shown X-Men: Days of Future Past, when it takes him several moments to respond to and restrain a thrashing Logan - long enough for him to gash Kitty - and he doesn't quite catch all of the X-Jet's shrapnel.

At the end of X-Men, Magneto is locked in a cell made entirely of plastic. He got out in X2: X-Men United, thanks to Mystique giving one of his guards an "iron supplement," actually at least half a pound of the stuff, in liquid form. In real life, this would have given him iron poisoning, but he didn't survive long enough to find that out.

Subverted in X-Men: Days of Future Past. The concrete cell under the Pentagon was not built specifically for him, but simply constructed that way because steel was being rationed at the time. It still holds him quite well, though.

X-Men: First Class: The film ends with him outright proclaiming that he prefers his new moniker: Magneto.

X-Men: Apocalypse: Charles pleads with him not to join Apocalypse, but Lehnsherr has already reclaimed his Magneto persona.

Even when he genuinely tries to find peace in X-Men: Apocalypse, his family is killed triggering an epic Rage Against the Heavens moment.

X-Men: He forcibly places Rogue into his machine, knowing full well that it will kill her.

X-Men: First Class:

X-Men: Days of Future Past: He would have murdered Mystique if it weren't for Beast's timely intervention.

Dark Phoenix: He attempts to murder Jean when he learns she killed Mystique. Later on, he finds himself alone against Vuk on the Mutant Containment Unit's train, uses his power to pick up every remaining gun, and empties them all into her at point-blank range. Thanks to Vuk's innate Healing Factor and getting an upgrade from absorbing the Phoenix, she blows this off without a scratch.

He cracks Emma Frost's crystalline neck after she refuses to cooperate.

He nearly strangles Moira to death with her own military dog tags, although Xavier manages to talk him out of it.

#MagnetoInformation

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Text

Chapter Fourteen: Cavalry Battle

Minori took up a position beside Ashido as Bakugo clambered up on top of them, and Kirishima took his place in the front, preparing themselves for the upcoming battle.

Once Midnight urged the students to find their groups within fifteen minutes, Minori couldn't even blink before Ashido pulled her along towards the crowd around Bakugo, everyone begging to be a part of his team. Like everyone else, Minori had been leaning toward stealing Midoriya's points, gaining the support from Kirishima, who arguably had the best rapport with the blonde, and probably the closest thing to a friend he has. Thus, it was easy enough to convince Bakugo to allow her on his team since they had the same goal: the ten million bounty, completing their four-man team.

Midnight declared that the fifteen minutes were up, and in an instant, every single team lunged towards the shy curly-haired male. Currently, there was a cluster of students blocking their way towards Midoriya, but Minori knew that it would hardly be able to hold back the ash-blonde male for much longer. Bakugo was far more analytical and calculating than he looked, but whenever it concerned Midoriya, he always seemed to lose his composure.

Speaking of Midoriya, he was currently propelling himself around the crowd of students going after the bounty on his head with a jet-pack. The whirring of the machine was exceptionally loud, but not loud enough to overshadow Bakugo's war cry.

"Bakugo, don't--" Kirishima cried out in vain. The heated male had already sparked off an explosion that propelled him towards the greenette's direction. Minori paled, hastily creating an air suction around Bakugo's frame and bringing him back safely.

"Come on," Minori huffed, blowing a curly strand of hair away from her eyes. "At least give us a warning before you do something like that!"

Bakugo grimaced, no doubt frustrated by his failed assault. Midoriya's team had Tokoyami on their side, with the head of a blackbird and a Dark Shadow Quirk, he was easily able to defend against others' blows. Bakugo was yelling something about 'who the fuck was that freak' while Kirishima and Mina attempted to chastise him, clearly, their voices falling onto deaf ears.

Distracted by the argument at hand, Minori failed to realize an opposing team had crept up from behind them, and any flight option was revoked. Bakugo's headband was torn away, and Minori simply watched with widened eyes as his expression contorted first into one of surprise, then shifted into sheer, unadulterated anger.

"Class 1-A is too simple-minded." Minori narrowed her eyes at the cerulean blue-eyed male who had just spoken, glancing at the number of headbands he managed to accumulate hanging loosely around his neck.

"What'd you say, bastard? Give that back! I'll kill you!" Bakugo cried out.

The blonde who Minori's team had fallen prey to, some self-absorbed asshole by the looks of it, was looking down at her with a crude smile. Although Bakugo demanded him to return their headband, there was obviously no way in hell that was ever going to happen-- it is a competition. If anything, the sarcastic smirk that spread across the male's face seemed to enjoy watching as her team fell apart.

His pale, blue orbs fell upon Minori making the smile tugging at his lips only grow wider. Minori blinked back in response, her brows furrowed. "Since Midnight said it was the first game, it wouldn't make sense for them to cut a ton of people in the qualifier, right? Assuming they'd keep about forty people for the next stage, we just made sure we stayed within that number as we ran, observing from the back, the Quirks, and personalities of those who would be our rivals. There's no point in being obsessive over winning in the prelims, right?"

"You did this as a class?"

Their rival known as Monoma, from what Minori overheard by his teammate, chuckled in amusement, "Well, it wasn't a consensus, but it was a good idea, right? It's better than going after the temporary 'top' like a horse with a carrot waving in front of its face. Oh," he paused his smooth blonde hair shifting as his blue eyes pierced into Bakugo's crimson ones, "while I'm at it, you're famous, aren't you? As the victim of the sludge incident! Tell me about it sometime-- about how it feels to be attacked by villains once a year." His orbs lazily shifted towards Minori, his condescending tone slicing into her as he taunted her, "and while you're at it, let me know how it is to work with a criminal."

Minori shook with anger, and if looks could kill, Monoma would be buried six feet underground with the ferocity of Minori's glare. She could hear the way Bakugo's teeth ground down against one another. It was clear that the blonde male was trying to rile his opponents up as much as possible, even after securing points.

"New plan, everyone," Minori gritted out, garnering everyone's attention, as her silver-grey orbs never left the back of Monoma. "Let's completely annihilate those guys," she spat.

Chuckling darkly, Bakugo agreed.

"Guys, calm down! If you don't calm down, we won't be able to get the points back!"

"Forward, Kirishima! Right now... I'm totally calm!" Bakugo stated, his aura was utterly different from anything Minori saw so far. She knew it ultimately had to do with the fact that Monoma disrespected his pride, but he also disrespected her. So, without thinking, Minori nodded back in agreement. Completely throwing any logic out the window, she pressed Kirishima to move, wanting to stomp on the cocky brat.

"We're seriously counting on you!" Kirishima yelled at Bakugo as they ran for the taunting male.

"Die!" Bakugo cried out, activating his Quirk to inflict on Monoma, but the brat easily evades the male, slapping his arm away and forcing an all too similar blast at Bakugo. Groaning in aspiration, Bakugo generates a more massive explosion at Monoma, but again, he's able to block by hardening the left side of his body.

Minori gasps in a newfound realization. "Stop! He can copy our Quirk if he touches us!" she warns her teammates.

"Well, even an idiot can figure it out, huh?"

Taking advantage of their slightly emotional state, Monoma managed to put a distance between them. The angry and furious expressions are cut short by realizing that the soil splattered by another student now solidified around Kirishima's feet, entrapping them, as a cluster of enemies now encircled them.

Ashido pounced at the moment to use her Quirk and quickly dissolved the solution by their feet. Completely ensnared by Monoma's words Bakugo blasts forward the condescending ass, but is blocked by his teammate's Quirk, a defensive glass covering them. Slamming into the circled piece of glass, Bakugo yelled at the top of his lungs but showed no sign of backing down until he got his headband back. The shield proved useless over Bakugo's indisputable strength as he grabbed two headbands and threw himself backward, raising his team to second place.

Minori yanks him back as quickly as she could through her air suction. "I told you to say something if you jump!" she exclaimed, breathless at Bakugo's sudden departures, and having to stay on her feet to bring him back to his cavalry, so they wouldn't be disqualified.

Kirishima breaks out into a smile as he states that they will definitely get through to the next round because they now have a couple of headbands.

"Not yet!" Bakugo yells, banging on the spiky red-haired male's head, not satisfied with only two headbands and allowing the snarky blonde to walk away scot-free.

"We're gonna get an indisputable first place! I couldn't brace myself earlier on my own, but we'll get our points back! And then go for the ten million!" Minori grunts in agreement at Bakugo's declaration, a determined resolute dawned across her face to beat the crap out of the little shit. "Casper! Decrease the air resistance around us, so it makes it easier for us to move!" Ignoring the nickname, Minori felt and manipulated the particles surrounding them.

"Racoon eyes! Lay down a weak dissolving solution in the direction we're going!"

"My name is Ashido Mina!"

The battle progressed with Bakugo's team veering for the formidable blonde, head-first. Quickly closing the distance, Bakugo blasts through the air shield that Monoma's teammate created again, and takes the last headband wrapped around his neck.

Minori lets out a sigh of relief, seeing the blonde's blue eyes widened in shock as they left him behind in a pile of dust. Although Class 1-B had a good strategy, they failed to account for the difference of tenacity into consideration.

With only seconds remaining, Team Bakugo appeared through the smoke and joined the fray already brewing between Team Midoriya and Team Todoroki.

Glancing around the battlefield, Minori picks up on the spiked ice wall surrounding them and the two teams facing off. Most importantly, she picks up on Midoriya's quivering lip as he looks down at the headband in his hand. Realizing that it reads seventy points and not the ten million bounty, she goes to express the news to her team, but Bakugo jumped up into the air, abandoning his cavalry for the umpteenth time today. Minori picked up on the increasing venom in his red irises as he closed the gap on his sworn enemy.

"You damn Half-and-Half bastard!" Bakugo damns Todoroki before changing his direction toward the heterochromatic male. But before he can reach the bounty, the buzzer sounds, ending the second round of the sports festival, and Bakugo falls flat onto the ground.

Despite placing second in the event and moving onto the finals, Minori groans, "we were so close," she complains.

"Well, second isn't bad," Kirishima states, offering her a friendly smile.

"Do you really think that's how he feels?" Minori questions the two beside her, watching apathetically at the extremely frustrated ash-blonde throw a tantrum.

Minori bit her plump bottom lip. She understood Bakugo's resentment for not placing first, understandably so since the simple fact being they hadn't gotten to Todoroki's headband in time. But to watch the male entirely fall apart in front of her had her eyes laced over with worry.

Even now, Minori was blown away by the sheer determination Bakugo had shown in order to break free and reclaim their team's headband. To a certain extent, she felt thankful for the male to allow her to fight beside him. Monoma's words rang at the back of her head: "let me know how it is to work with a criminal."

Bobbing her head, Minori bridged the gap between her and the self-loathing blonde crumpled on the ground. Bakugo was raking his fingers through the grass, his shoulders trembling.

Minori raised her hand and smacked the blonde at the back of his head, watching the tufts of hair shake as he hastily turned his head to look up at the unmoving female.

"What the fuck?!"

"Move it, Bakugo, stop wasting our time," she stated, brushing her bangs from her eyes to see the male more clearly. Finding a pair of narrow, crimson orbs staring straight into silver-grey ones.

They continued to eye one another down, and Minori made no move to back down from the male.

"I thought you said you were going to place first?" she asked, her orbs piercing into Bakugo's.

"What?" he croaked, his arms quivering at his sides, probably thinking that she was taunting him for his loss, that she was better than him.

That was far from the truth.

"Get up and place first, we're not going to wait for you all day. Or would you rather Todoroki take your spot?" Minori watched Bakugo's mouth snap shut, his self-pitied frown morphing back into his usual scowl. Taking this as her queue to continue, Minori says, "if you ask me, Todoroki declared war on the wrong person. So are you going to prove them wrong or what?"

Bakugo smirks, his eyes hardening back into their usual sharpness.

"Out of my way, losers!"

Adamant about keeping his promise he mentioned to everyone in the stadium and those at home watching, he got up from the ground with an unwavering resolute.

All the while, Minori watched as Bakugo confidently strode off the field, the corners of her mouth twitching to form a smile.

Maybe it wouldn't be too bad if she lost to someone like him.

Taglist: @sslimkim @x-bakudeku-x @angeldraw @alex-hale666 @iambashfulperson @seokookchan @sir-knight-slytherdor@somanyfandomsidek @namutheestallion @honeybacon @fckngbored @ineedmyownname @avengershavethetardis @myaaa-xoxoxox @httpglxssy @coconutxraikage @mega-bastard @succulent-momma @can-i-just-like-it @soa1eater

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genderless-consul · 4 years

Note

Top 5 glee ships?

Straight to the live wire, huh?

Ok, so:

1): Brittana - The fact that I really struggle to write them doesn’t change the fact that this is the one they got right, and I can still barely believe it to this day. The original joke in Season 1 was so obviously a throwaway lazy gag from a writing staff that consistently wrote women with absolute contempt, but Naya pushing them to take it seriously changed the course of the entire show. Their arc in Season Two is Glee at its absolute best (they even made Gwyneth Paltrow tolerable!), they have some really beautiful moments in Season 3 even if that whole season and Santana’s coming out arc in particular is kind of a disaster, and as much as we love to make fun of Santana’s gay panic in Season 4 (don’t act like it’s not highly relatable) even their break-up is legitimately beautiful - Naya turning Mine into a breakup song with nothing but her voice is the moment that cemented her as the GOAT Glee vocalist in my book (also Hand in My Pocket/I Feel the Earth Move is my second ranked mash-up of all time and I’m so angry the awful Santana/Kurt scene right after overshadowed it). And I have....complicated feelings about A Wedding as an episode (and we’ll get to that) but their part of it is absolutely everything it needed to be. ��I would have suffered it all, just for the tiny chance to be standing up here marrying you.”

2): Faberry - No surprises here, except maybe that it’s not number one (canonicity was the tiebreaker, sadly). My favorite thing about Faberry is that there’s a million ways to ship them and all of them are great - obviously I’m more than onboard for an alt-version of Glee where theirs is the slow burn unlikely love story, but I also really love the tragedy you can read into them just from the canon, especially spinning out from the Quinntana one-night stand: that Quinn probably does have feelings for Rachel but either realizes it too late or just buries it out of self-loathing, and by the time she’s comfortable with herself the chance for storybook romance has already passed her by. Like seriously - if they had made that characterization explicit instead of retreating to the laziness of the Biff/Quick disasters in the anniversary episodes, I would have been just as happy with that as a Faberry endgame, both because the latter was always probably impossible given the centrality of Finchel to the show’s core structure and because Sad Flameout Lesbians deserve representation too, goddammit! And of course they’re a gold mine for fanworks, because there are so many “could have been” moments where their story has the chance the take a different direction, the best being their confrontation in Original Song: “you can’t hate me for helping to send you on your way” is the best use of Glee’s existential sadness since the Pilot. Oh, and their one and only duet is a fucking Red/Blue sequence and also one of the best songs on the entire show - enough said.

3): Finchel - My ultimate hot take, at least as someone from the Faberry side of the fandom, is that Finchel is Good, Actually. Keep in mind, I never watched Glee as it was airing, so I never experienced the frustration of Finchel’s inevitability; I knew from the very beginning that they weren’t going to get their happy ending. And as irritating as some of the on-again/off-again drama could be and as choppy as the pacing was at times, it really was one of the few relationships on Glee to be developed with consistent care and effort. I love that they have a genuine friendship and push each other to be the best versions of themselves (however inelegantly) even when they aren’t together, and the dynamic where the guy is the willing sidekick to the female protagonist and knows what they have might only be temporary was really refreshing to see, especially in a high school show. I’ll always be heartbroken that they couldn’t end it the way they were supposed to even if I wouldn’t have liked it, and they’re the reason the final scene of Season 3 makes me sob every time.

4): Tike - The ultimate “THEY DESERVED BETTER” ship. And yes, I know it’s off-brand for me to put two m/f ships on the list, and yes, I know RBI basically had to make Tartie endgame as a courtesy to Kevin and Jenna for sticking it out until the absolute bitter end, but I’m still mad. Tina was always used as a joke, and Mike was never used at all, but when they were together they got the briefest taste of actual storylines, and they were so. goddamn. cute together. Sing! and L O V E aren’t the first Glee duets that most people think of, but they captured the magic of just being straight up in love with someone better than a lot of the more over-the-top numbers from other characters. And look, I don’t actually need my ships to stay together forever on a high school show (or any show), but given that they had the longest run as a continuous couple on the entire show I will never forgive RBI for using them as the one “no”in A Wedding in a disingenuous attempt to pretend they were at all interested in realism and weren’t just throwing bones to the fanbase. Like, I don’t know how to explain this to you, Ryan Murphy, but it’s not subverting expectations to kick the shit out of Tina one more time because THAT’S LITERALLY ALL YOU’VE EVER DONE WITH HER (Sorry, what was I talking about?)

5): Klaine - my ultimate love/hate ship, and the ultimate victim of Glee being consumed by its own hype machine. The initial arc - the staircase, Teenage Dream, Blackbird - was magical even at its corniest, and beats like the GAP Attack and Blame it on the Alcohol were desperately necessary moments of complication that kept Blaine’s character more interesting than “Kurt’s perfect boyfriend” (also, real quick, fuck Ryan Murphy’s biphobia). But the second Blaine transferred in Season 3 it became clear that they didn’t really have a plan for Klaine in the same way they did for Finchel - Blaine gets a different personality every single season, Kurt gets to a completely different place in his life that makes his inability to move on from Blaine really hard to buy, and Blaine as the New Rachel in 4/5 is every bit as insufferable as that conceit implies. Even with all that, though, they kept winning me back, because Darren can sell the hell out of over the top cheese and Chris Colfer is the world’s greatest exasperated Straight Man (thinking especially of Teenage Dream Reprise and that absolutely batshit Beatles proposal, both of which worked for me way more than they should have). I also weirdly like the messiness of late Season 5 Klaine - the episodes aren’t good, but I appreciate their willingness to confront how much of a terrible idea them living together at that stage of their life actually is, and they even managed to win me over to the idea that they would find a way to make it work anyway. But the Karofsky thing in Season 6 was just one reversal too far, and to get them back together again after that in the most contemptuous, smug, “nothing matters so just give the shippers what they want I guess” insincere way possible (I really hate The Hurt Locker, can you tell?) was the last straw for me, to say nothing of how disrespectful it was to Brittana and Klaine to have one couple’s wedding coopted at the last moment by another so that it was no longer about them as characters but about how much Ryan Murphy has done for The Gays. So yeah, Klaine: My favorite canon ship that I wish didn’t actually end up together, at least not the way they did. But they were at their best when Glee was actually relevant and changed a lot of lives as a result, and that timing alone earns them a Top 5 spot.

#Glee #top 5 anything #long post

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pyrocrowgirl · 4 years

Text

Hello everyone! I just finished Corvie’s full body sprite~!! I put together some information about her, is not much but I’ll be adding more about her in a future :”D

enjoy!!

❀ コービー ❀ アダラ❀ メルロー❀

Name Meaning:

Corvina // Like a raven //

Adara // Fire //

Merlot // Blackbird //

Nicknames: Mainly goes for Corvie, prefers being called that way by everyone.

Zodiac Sign: Taurus

Birthday: April 25th Age: ???

Status: Alive

Dorm: Diasomnia.

Occupation: 2nd year High School Student

Love interest: Since she joined the Diasomnia dorm, she has a small crush on Silver, but never admits it cause she’s way too stubborn. She just wants to get noticed

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PHYSICAL INFORMATION

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Species: Human (design based on a crow)

Gender: Female♀

Height: 5’4” (1,62 cm)

Weight: 49kg (108Ib)

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APPEARANCE

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Eyes: Lime green with a strike of sky blue on the top of the iris.

Hair: Corvie has very long, wavy pink hair that ends in lighter/white tips.

Body shape: small, hourglass shape.

Bust size: B cup

Outfits:

♥ Her outfit consists of the default Diasomnia uniform. Her uniform is completely buttoned up with a ruffled white shirt inside. She wears a green hair pin along with crow feathers, Corvie also wears a pair of gray earrings and a green ring. As pants, she wears a pair of metallic black leggings along with metallic green heeled boots.

Corvie also wears a black special glove on her left hand to contain her dangerous magical forces.

Any scars, birthmarks, ect.: burn scars on her left hand

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CHARACTERISTICS

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Sexual Orientation: bisexual

Hand Orientation: left-handed Personality:

Corvina has a very charismatic and cheery personality. Most of the time she’s humorous and a notorious prankster. Towards people, Corvie is pretty much friendly and goes out of her way to make people feel comfortable around her, always starts the conversation, likes to joke and is very talkative even with people who are not. She likes to get to know all the people around her. With very distant people, she tries to not annoy them and keeps her chill to not make problems.

Corvina is also known for being extremely loyal towards Malleus and the Diasomnia dorm. In the presence of Malleus, she keeps her composure and is strongly respectful of his presence. With the other dorm members (Sebak, Lilia, Silver, etc..) she’s her usual jolly self.

When upset, Corvina shuts herself from any interaction, she hates when people see her in a different light. Unfortunately, for Corvie is pretty much impossible to forgive if someone really close to her betrays or disrespects her in some way. Aside from that, it is very hard to get Corvina mad because of her humorous personality. Another common flaw she has is her concentration, Corvie hardly focus on things and gets easily distracted, which leads to very poor memory.

Magic abilities:

Corvina possesses multiple magical abilities that are related to pyrokinesis. Although she’s able to use other parts of her body to use her powers (right hand, mind, eyes…) most of her powers are compressed into her left hand because of a curse placed by her mother as a child, causing her left hand to destroy everything she touches. Without Corvie’s special glove, she’s able to throw flames, expel extreme heat and other types of fire manipulation.

Since her arrival to the Diasomnia dorm, she has learned more types of magic spells and works very hard to learn how to properly manipulate her fire abilities.

Some of her powers are:

Pyrokinesis: ability to manipulate and control fire. fire throwing: ability to throw fire. She only uses this power through her left hand.

Deviation: the ability to return back attacks to where they came from.

Fireballs: Corvie produces small beams of energy that can grow and be thrown somewhere.

Floating: although is very hard for her to master this power for too long, Corvie likes to use it when she needs to walk long distances.

Hypnosis: ability to generate a trance. Almost never use this power, but would use it in an extreme occasion .

Light darts: minor ability to shoot small energy darts. Corvie likes to use this power a lot most likely to mess with other people.

Hobbies: Has a deep love for baking. Corvina likes to bake cookies and/or other sweets for tea parties and herself. Really enjoys sweets and the nice smell of fresh bakery.

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PERSONAL PREFERENCES

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Favorite colors: magenta, green, black

Favorite foods: Cookies, pudding, sweets in general.

#Corvie #Corvina Merlot #twisted wonderland oc #oc bio #Im so sorry sjjsissiaisa I’m terrible at this

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humankoalaa · 4 years

Text

Black Lightning 3X08

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

krondons eyes are so pretty.

anissas in flannel cause she misses grace. it is law.

lolol gambi told anissa pierce her powers are back then told her she should rest 🤡

and well nissa said exactly what everyone thought.... PLEASE.

everytime they bring up jeff was an olympian a track star at that it kills me 😂 everytime he runs in an episode im like wayment.... sumn don’t add up 😩 IM SORRY.

anissa you bet not go ask jamila 🙄

tobias.... are you flirting with and insulting this woman? 😂

this clown 🤣🤣🤣🤣 he stays with the earth wind and fire jokes.

lynn tawm bout she aint naiive 🤣 GIRL.

lynn.... you’re too smart to be THIS stupid. im tiyerd y’all.

tobias like that little kid at the park you know ain’t shit but you like listen to his bullshit cause he might be woke when really he’s just using you to see just how stupid you are and you’re too stupid to realize it cause well.... math.

“pantene commercial looking ass” 🤣🤣 okay auntie.

jenns wig 😩 i can’t. CANNOT.

jamila ass damn near wet herself when she saw blackbird sis licking her chops and everything 🤣🤣 if she only knew what we know 🙂 you hads dem cakes already sis .... how you don’t know them eyebrows jamila?!! howwww 🥴

jeff and this damn shoulder towel in the kitchen 🤣🤦🏾‍♀️

“what i do now?” 😩😂 jeff is TIYERD y’all.

jenn and all these parties she blames for everything 😂🤦🏾‍♀️

jace need to die.

there go ex trackstar jefferson pierce looking like he just learned to run at breakfast but i digress. and don’t even blame him being up in age. that form y’all 😩 SORRY.

mrs. shepard chilling in the crib growing selling her weed and sis even got a lil gun 😭 a queen i stan.

man ain’t nobody take more L’s and disappointment speeches than Jeff 😩 leave my grandad alone man.

i know dass right pawpaw. LFG!!!!

black lightning got the littist soundtrack ever. black moses is zat funk!

battery ram that! sunny with a chance of meatballs looking mother fu... 😴

yes uncle gambi! so do WE!

nissa looking at the thunder suit like she BETTER look at Grace when she comes back.

“sir... we really doing this?.... lil old lady just wants to stay in her apartment” - EVERYONE and the ASA agent who ain’t tryna get barbecued ❤️

them orders gon get you fried big dawg.

WAIT! thunder said hold my beer came in stomped dat ass. ive missed that lil inhale so much 😭

LMAO timeout! so they just gon disrespect jeff whilst he holding shit down? agent beret said fall back soon as thunder came in 🤣🤣🤣🤣 they got to stop doing jeff dirty on HIS own show 😩🤦🏾‍♀️ that just tickled me to pieces.

awwwww jeff when he sees anissa as thunder 😭 a reunion i stan. their smiles y’all ima cry. ive missed them fighting ALONGSIDE 😩

oh no... no no ... what in the hell i know they got black lightning and thunder... but henderson and friends really bout to rise up against the ASA with shotguns?! like are y’all gonna ask for a timeout to reload while these fools got automatic everything?! a ninja dat goes by painkiller and he got venom and whatever else he got in the usb? you know what... ima leave it alone for the story 🤦🏾‍♀️ i can’t 😂🥴

gambi... you posed to be dead 😩

soon as gambi said “show yourself” i started singing the song from frozen 2. 🎶 SHOW YOURSELF. IM READY TO LEAARRRNNN AAAHHH AAA AAAAHH AAAHHH 🎶 😩

awwww gambi forever winning allllsss the trust.

lynn you can’t be this stupid 😂 tobias is literally not even trying and she’s just like say no more bae i mean friend? ugh just a mess.

im just mad that jenns wig is the way it is 🤦🏾‍♀️ but at least hair makes her feel less like a freak.... if SHE only knew what WE know bout her ex 👀

barron... i mean TC... you wanna come talk to my bank account and all the ATM’s within a 20 mile radius of my crib?

i need TC and gambi to become besties.

ooooooo painkiller and thunder let’s go!

lmao “cute suit” ...THIS painkiller is my favorite version of khalil.

Lmao he sized her up like “shit... this might’ve been a bad idea” she hit his ass so hard that brain chip looked like it shorted out 😩

oh shit i forgot she didn’t use her powers last time they fought... ruh roh. OMG she’s beating his ass 🤣🤣🤣🤣 he sized her up again 😭 shit thunder look like she got stronger 🤤

yeah that chip fried oh shit she beat his ass back to reality and now she knows hes khalil 🤭

no khalil. put the glasses back on and just leave. you don’t wants no smoke 😩 AYYYYYY thunderclap dat ass.

lmao i love how painkiller goes down and agent beret just asks “how” 😩😂 like really dude?! how you don’t know real metas vs makeshift metas only ends well for the real ones?

TC telling gambi move is a whole mood. PLEASE tell me they become pals 😭

it’s starting to look like they bout to get into the outsiders arc. i am spongebob ready! hear me?!

lynn said i need to get the cure and grabbed all the nearest green light 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 mannnnnn why they do my nana like this 😩

ion know who that ASA dude is but he a real one.

she screaming for her bag im 💀💀💀💀 yes cold turkey her ass!

lmao down goes agent beret!

🤣🤣🤣🤣 mrs. sheppard said she gotta check on her plants 💀

another great episode! see y’all next week before the drought 😭

#black lighting spoilers #black lightning #anissa pierce #jennifer pierce #jefferson pierce

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tm0500042 · 4 years

Text

Notes from Collodi’s Pinocchio

I have now finished reading Collodi’s Pinocchio. While reading I made notes of everything I believed to be of note or which may be useful to refer to in the course of my essay:

p.3: The wood itself is alive p.4-5 Geppetto described as “jolly” but “short-tempered”, and gets into a physical altercation p.8 Geppetto shows anger towards P, even before he has come to life p. 10 Geppetto’s aggression towards P gets him sent to prison p. 11 Introduction of the cricket, P tells him to leave p.12 Cricket warns P about running away from home P wants a life “to eat, drink, sleep and amuse myself” P.13 P attacks cricket in anger P.19 Cat is violent towards P, Geppetto again threatens P with violence P. 21 Geppetto feeds P P.22 Geppetto lets P “cry and complain for half a day” as punishment P. 23 Geppetto’s poverty is noted, he makes clothes for P P.24 Sells clothes to help feed P P.25 P says he want to learn at school P.26 Quickly gives into temptation, doesn’t go to school P.27 Sells book Gepetto sacrificed for him, text draws attention to Geppetto’s sacrifice being disrespected P.30 P one of many other living puppets P.31 Fire-eater/circus master sympathises with P once sees he is sad Guilt established within book as common factor for kindness P.33 P offers to sacrifice himself for other puppets P.35 Financial concerns noted P.36 Blackbird appears, acts as voice of conscience P.37 P tempted by financial incentives P.38 Fox and cat act as representatives of glutony P.41 P Pays money to help friends Ghost of cricket appears says “Children who do as they please and want to have their own ways sorry for it sooner or later” P.42 “May heaven preserve” you (implication of religious/Christian element to the story) P.43 P says that “all try to advise boys as if they are their fathers” P.46-47 ethereal blue haired child described P.48 Violent death imagery P.49 Blue haired child identified as “fairy” P.53-54 P told to drink bitter water before he can taste sugar, has sugar first then tries to avoid the water (metaphor for needing to work before getting the rewards in life) P.54 P says that would “rather die than drink that horrid medicine” P.55 “We bad boys fear the medicine more than the sickness” (consequences rather than treatment) P.56 Nose grows upon lying about money P.57 Fairy laughs at his lies P.58 P can’t get through the door because of nose; a comic image P says wants to live with fairy P.60 P remembers but ignores advice P.62 Fox and Cat promise to “show you how to get rich without hard work” P.63 P reflects on “what a fine gentleman” he’ll be once he has money P.64 Parrot mentions importance of earning “money honestly with the labour of your hands or your brains” P.65 Very quick change of scene (court house” Four months go by P taken to prison and everyone released P.67 P refers to fairy as “sister” P.68 P refers to himself as “ungrateful, heartless” P.70 “hunger not a good excuse for taking what is not yours” P.72 P admits he “wanted to be a good for nothing, and a vagabond” P.75 P given freedom in return for telling “truth” P.76-77 Blue haired child dies “of sorrow” P.79 Sees Geppetto at sea by coincidence P.82 P refers to himself as “the worst son” and Geppetto “the best father” P.83 Description of Shark P says “I was not born for work” “Only the aged, and crippled, have a right to be” P.84 P notes he is “not a donkey” P.87 Fairy denies, then reveals identity, to P P.88 “If you deserved it, you could become [a real boy]...by being a good boy”; fairly describes what good boys do P promises to turn over new leaf P.89 P says he doesn’t like work, fairy says people who talk like that “end up in hospital or prison...everybody must work” “Idleness is a disease of which one should be cured immediately in childhood, if not, one never gets over it” Blue fairy says promise of being a real boy “depends on [P] P.90 P goes to school P.91 Wins respect of whole school including master Warned of “bad friends, will make you loose love for books” P.93 Kids ask P “aren’t you ashamed to be so proper and industrious; you make us look so small in the master’s eyes” P.94 P identifies “seven [bad kids], like the seven deadly sins” P is punched, retaliates P.96 Book hits one of bad boys, P waits until police arrived P.97 P taken by police as it was his book P.98 P runs away to sea P.100 P saves mastiff’s life for self-interest “One good deed deserves another” P.106 Pretends not to be P, and responds to description as “slander” Nose shrinks as he confesses his sins P.108 Needs snail to open door, snail moves at sluggish pace P.109 3.5 hours of snail journey! p.110 Abrupt shift- P goes to school for year and becomes top student Fairy promises “tomorrow cease to be a puppet and become a real boy”

P.110 Party planned to celebrate become real boy P.111 “Children make promises very easily, but they are not so ready to keep their promises” P.112 P’s friend Lampwick introduced “laziest and most mischievous boy in the school” P.113 Dreamland introduced, Lampwick tempts P P.114 P resists temptation because of promise P.115 P gives in to more and more temptation P.118 P “sighs” as he realises he will do the wrong thing again P.119 Whispered words warning P of furture P.121 Five months pass in Dreamland

P.122-123 P turning into Donkey, told has donkey fever by a squirrel p.13 “It is writted in the decrees above that lazy children...must end up, sooner or later, becoming little donkeys” P asks why listen to a false friend P describes self as “heartless puppet, with no sense” p.126 P and Lampwick become donkeys, first find funny, then traumativ p.128 Children become donkeys “from endless playing, and lack of studying” Lampwick’s fate is unknown but P has “a hard life full of drudgery” p.129 P eats hey, not so bad but says “how much better it would have been if I’d gone on with my studies” P says “I hope my failure will serve as a lesson to disobedient children who don’t like studying” p.131 P tries to call out to fairy but can only bray p.132 P becomes donkey taken to market p.133 P bought for skins for five crowns New owner tries to drown P p.134 Fourth-wall break (”what do you think?”) becomes puppet again p.135 P says “every mother loves her child...helps him with all his troubles, even when he deserves no help” p.137 Shark described as “Atilla of fish and fishmen” p.138 P sucked in by shark p.141 P finds Geppetto, confesses sins P.142 Geppetto lived in shark for two years P 143 P identifies need to escape immediately P.144 P takes charge and rescues Geppetto P.145 P encourages father to stay brave p.146 Fish helps them p.148 Cow and fox afflicted with afflictions they pretended to have “The devil’s flour is all bran” p.148 Cricket asks P to remember his cruel treatment, and says that “should treat everyone as kindly as possible” p.149 P works for money to rescue Geppetto p.150 Meets Lampwick as a donkey P works for five months and practices reading and writing in the evening

p.151 Geppetto survives through “ingenuity and diligence” Snail tells P that fairy is in hospital P gives all money has to save fairy P.152 P says he would give his clothes Snail now runs Lies “couldn’t find suit that would fit me” but nose does not grow Works harder after sacrifice Wakes up as real boy P.153 Laughs at puppet form

#Narratology

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sinceileftyoublog · 4 years

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Bettye Lavette Interview: The Quiet I Can Be

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Bettye Lavette has had, as she calls it, two careers. The Detroit-raised soul singer-songwriter cut her first record at just sixteen, achieving early success with charting singles and touring with Atlantic Records-signed artists like Otis Redding and members of The Drifters. In the music world, initially, she was never front and center for long periods of time, even giving up recording in the mid-70′s for a six-year run on Broadway to star in Bubbling Brown Sugar. For all intents and purposes, her second career--the one that brought her both critical and commercial success as a solo artist--started in 2005 with the Joe Henry-produced I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise, a collection of songs written by female artists like Lucinda Williams, Roseanne Cash, and Fiona Apple. (The title is taken from Apple’s “Sleep To Dream”, which appeared on the record.) Hell started a still-going series of albums of songs written by others, each based around a cohesive theme, like 2010′s Interpretations, covers of British rock artists like The Beatles, Elton John, and The Who. But it’s been her fruitful collaboration with drummer and producer Steve Jordan and legendary jazz label Verve Records that’s produced perhaps her two best albums yet: 2018′s Things Have Changed and the upcoming Blackbirds (August 28th, Verve).

Things Have Changed was a collection of Bob Dylan songs, many lesser-known, that Lavette made her own, to say the least. It helped somewhat that Lavette didn’t have much of a longstanding relationship with the tracks. “[Interpretations tracks] and Bob Dylan songs were not played on black radio a lot,” Lavette told me over the phone from her home in New Jersey in April. “They’re just songs. If you can sing, you should be able to sing them, whether they’re gospel songs, or blues songs, or British songs, they started out words on a piece of paper,” she said. The songs on Blackbirds, however, span different eras and genres, and they’re predominantly written by women of color, many of whom were and are Lavette’s peers. And her relationship to these tracks is more complex. Unlike many soul singers from her era, Lavette didn’t start out singing in the church but in her parents’ home, opting to perform R&B and country and western songs instead. When it was suggested to her in the 60′s by her manager Jim Lewis that she learn standards, Lavette was at first reluctant, wanting instead to learn tunes that were popular at the time, and then admittedly intimidated by the prospect of singing songs by such powerful voices. “While Dinah [Washington] would wait for you in the alley and kill you, her voice was just magnificent. And Ella Fitzgerald’s voice was like an instrument,” Lavette said. Years later, Lavette has found a way to make old songs sound personal.

Lavette credits Jordan with a lot of why Things Have Changed and Blackbirds sound so good. For one, he’s one of the only black producers she’s ever worked with, and she describes her experience singing old songs with him behind the boards and the drum kit as discovering what it would be like had she had someone like him when she first started her career. “One thing Steve knows about me that maybe others don’t...most musicians don’t know the quiet that I can be,” Lavette said. Indeed, their working relationship allows Lavette’s voice to shine. Lavette picks and sings the songs and sends her vocals to Jordan, who will arrange with her and their keyboard player, around her voice. At that point, Lavette, having established such a sense of trust with Jordan, doesn’t hear the arrangements until it’s time to record. The results on Blackbirds are astounding. She’s gentle, yet forceful on Nancy Wilson’s “Save Your Love for Me” and upfront on “Book of Lies”. The songs you might expect to sound stern or sad, like Nina Simone’s music industry olive branch “I Hold No Grudge” and “Blues for the Weepers”, are funky and upbeat, while ones you might expect to be somber, like “Strange Fruit”, are slinky and anthemic.

As much as the songs on Blackbirds, often by their very inclusion, are reflective of Lavette’s incredible career and her place, she prefers to look forward and often gets frustrated by fans and journalists stuck in the past or the mundane. Fans, especially overseas, want her to play old material without understanding the importance of it. “The thing that annoys me about fans--and that’s in air quotes--is just the love without the knowledge, or not wanting to know about it or where it came from,” Lavette said. Or interviewers who ask questions like, “What’s your favorite color?” For the author and now Blues Hall of Fame inductee, it’s a shame, because she wants to talk. When I told her how much I loved Things Have Changed, Lavette said, “Well why didn’t you call me? I have never been more accessible in my life!” Indeed, Lavette was careful to toe the line between re-imagining old songs and being faithful to their spirit. “I certainly did not want to be disrespectful in any way to these tunes,” she said. “I didn’t want to do the disco version, unless it was adaptable.”

“Adapt” is the key word here, and not just in describing how Lavette fit the songs to her voice and how Jordan and company subsequently arranged and played. Lavette, with every word and tone, applies her experience as a black woman, a singer-songwriter and performer for over half a century, to tunes that themselves offer a narrative history of important American music. It’s worth noting that when we finished talking, she signed off, “And by the way...my favorite color is black.”

Read my interview with Lavette below.

Since I Left You: Blackbirds is different from Things Have Changed, since you’re singing songs that were written and performed by a wide variety of different artists and songwriters. Do you change your approach when you’re tackling songs from different people and eras than from the same person?

Bettye Lavette: No, I treat them all as songs. I don’t care where they came from. I think the most unusual thing I’ve ever done in my life was when I did Bubbling Brown Sugar. That was totally out of my wheelhouse. I hadn’t done a play or anything, so I had to approach the whole thing theatrically. But I still approached the songs the same way vocally. My attitude at this stage, the theater, if the song is, “ahhh,” they want, “AHHH!” [laughs] The endings are a little unnatural. But the scenes may have to be ended that way.

But doing these songs in Blackbirds, these were songs I heard as a very young girl, most of them, and did not think I would ever sing them. For one thing, when I was younger I didn’t like them. But then as I learned to respect who these people were, I thought, “I will never be able to sing like that.” That was before I learned, “Just sing it how you sing it! Maybe it is like that.”

SILY: What music did you like when you were younger? What did you grow up listening to?

BL: I liked The Drifters. I’m so glad that I’ve gotten the chance to work with many of the people I grew up listening to. The first time I went on the road was with Clyde McPhatter and Ben King who were both lead singers for The Drifters. And you talk about a groupie! They couldn’t come out of their dressing rooms without seeing me! [laughs] But I always liked to dance. The difference between blues and rhythm and blues was that you couldn’t dance to blues, you could just cry. With rhythm and blues, you could cry and dance at the same time. My voice fell into that kind of music.

SILY: And you elude to that when you perform “Blues For The Weepers” on this album. In the liner notes, you talk about how you could perform that song in a number of different places--a bar, a lounge, a big stadium--and everybody can feel it.

BL: Well, I’m not sure everybody understands it as well as you seem to. People seem to want you to do either what you did before or exactly what they expect you to do. I have a great many fans in England, and they like these songs I did from the beginning till about 1975. They’ve just really collected that period of black music. They hated my album of Interpretations. It’s in my contract that I have to do [the older] songs. I joke that if they didn’t love me before, I would not do this show for anybody else. This is what I’m trying to grow to be, not what I’m trying to relive. To do a whole show? It sounds like a grown person singing silly songs. [laughs]

SILY: At the same time, when you sing a song like “I Hold No Grudge”, at this point you’ve come to accept and even embrace certain things about being a singer and musician and about the music industry.

BL: I want you to be my spokesperson! That’s exactly how I feel. The songs I sing now have so little to do with love affairs. They have more to do with what you just said: Where I’ve come to be at this point in my life and my career.

SILY: In general, on Blackbirds, it’s striking to me how different the arrangements and instrumentation are between original versions and your versions. How do you go about, from an instrumental and arrangement perspective, whether to remain faithful or stray from the original?

BL: I don’t have anything to do with that. Here’s what I do. At this point, I call Steve Jordan, the Bettye whisperer, because he understands what I’m saying. This is the first time I’ve had a black producer since early on in my career of any kind of note. I did one album with one black producer, but he was a black producer who had been producing Norah Jones. It was completely different. But Steve Jordan played with James Brown and loves Motown. What he does is take how I feel about the song and arrange the music accordingly. I usually get just the keyboard player...when I choose the tunes, I sing them the way I want to sing them, and [Jordan will] write it in the way that I’m singing them, as opposed to making an arrangement and I adapt to the arrangement. I sing the song, and he fashions the arrangement around what he’s heard me sing. He comes over to the house, and we sit on the floor of the living room, and he listens to the recordings that I’ve made with my keyboard player. He brings, usually, the keyboard player, who I hope for the rest of my life who will [play with me]. You know, there aren’t a lot of black musicians, and black musicians my age, that I can get to. Most of my contemporaries are millionaires, and I don’t have their telephone numbers. [laughs]

SILY: To what extent are you involved in the mixing and production decisions? Like on “Book Of Lies”, the arrangement has you start out a capella, but throughout that song, your vocals are really upfront in the mix.

BL: I appreciate that. That is absolutely a compliment from any sound engineer and producer, that he makes it all about me. Especially someone as arrogant as Steve. [laughs] He pays very close attention to the words that I’m saying because I pay very close attention to fashioning them to make you hear them. The Billie Holiday song [“Strange Fruit”], most of the younger singers I’ve heard approach this tune, they have great regards for what it’s about, and great regards for Billie Holiday, and being almost 75, I have great regards for me. I wanted all the lyrics to be distinct. I wanted you to understand what it is that happened. It’s not a song; it’s a protest. It’s a jazzier protest. I’m a rhythm & blues singer. And because Steve was born and raised in Harlem, he hears James Brown singing these songs. And that’s what you need to hear if you’re producing. In a recording, it has to be fashioned around me.

I’ve had some brilliant producers and loved so much of what they’ve done that I’ve felt completely comfortable with fashioning myself around them. But this one and [Things Have Changed] are quite different. The last one was the first time Steve and I had ever worked together. He understood exactly what I was saying so quickly. He read back to me an arrangement exactly as how I sang it. I didn’t want to lend myself to the lavish arrangements they had on originally. I told Steve on the Bob Dylan album, “I don’t want to recognize any of these songs.” He pretty much knows that’s the way I work now. I say, “You know we have to leave this lavishness out. I’m not lavish, I’m pretty basic!” I thought he did such a wonderful job when I went to the studio and heard what they were going to play. Because after he and I work on it, I don’t hear it any more until we get to the studio. There’s not a whole bunch of rehearsing. I do the whole album in 4-5 days.

SILY: It’s interesting that you said you don’t want the songs to be recognizable. That’s the approach Bob Dylan takes when he plays his own songs live!

BL: [laughs] He didn’t recognize any of the songs until they got to the chorus. I took that as a total compliment!

SILY: [Dylan] said that to you?

BL: No, he said it to my manager.

SILY: As much as these are songs on a single playing field, it’s interesting and meaningful that something like “Strange Fruit” and “Blackbird” are two songs that so many people know, whereas something like “One More Song”, which is pretty recent, is a standout among more-known standards. Why did you feel it was important to include that one on the record?

BL: The answer is so simple and ridiculous: Because we just liked it! [laughs] Sharon Robinson, she wrote [Patti LaBelle’s] “New Attitude” and a song for me called “The High Road”. She was Leonard Cohen’s writing partner. When Leonard died, they did a tribute to him in Toronto, and I went and did one of his songs. His family actually requested that I come and sing. That was the first time I ever met Sharon. I had heard “One More Song”, and I told her, “I’m going to do this tune.” Same thing with “I Hold No Grudge”, when I met Angelo Badalamenti. I thought, “I’m going to do this song,” 10 years before I met him.

We submitted [the list of] songs to the company, and they thought [about “One More Song”], “Oh, this is new,” but I said, “We’re gonna do it because we like it!” I think it’s one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard. You could just be playing the music and it would make me cry. I love this song. She is such a fantastic writer. Listen to the lyrics: Have you heard “The High Road”? She wrote the song for [I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise], and I just thought the lyrics were so great. I thought, “Well, she’s black, and she’s a woman. She’s a blackbird, so...” [laughs] She was so flattered when I called her and said I did it. When I sent it to her, she was just so thrilled with it. And Angelo Badamenti, who is now probably 90, when we sent “I Hold No Grudge” to him, he said, “I can see a big grin coming on Nina’s face.”

SILY: Another thing that seemed to be really meaningful is including “Romance In The Dark”, because it’s known for being performed by Dinah Washington [“Drinking Again”] and Nina Simone, who you also cover on this record. It’s almost like the whole record is coming full circle.

BL: I really did. The manager that made this singer you see before you today is named Jim Lewis, and my book [A Woman Like Me] is dedicated to him. When he first met me, he said, “You’re cute, you got a small waist line, but you got nothing to sing. You may not become a star. If you don’t become a star, and you still want to become a singer, you’ve got to learn to sing!” So he brought me all these songs by Dinah Washington. I have worked for 57 years because I learned to tap dance and sing [songs like] “Sweet Georgia Brown”. Those are songs that none of my contemporaries knew because they weren’t fashionable. Jim made me learn these songs that nobody else knew that I didn’t want to learn because I wanted to be a star. I’ve worked everywhere I imagined working. He told me I could do that. But even when I said, “I’m gonna be a star,” he said, “Calm down, honey, you may not be.” He talked to Norman Granz and the Verve label because they helped so many black musicians. Many black musicians played with the Jimmy Lunceford band. [Lewis] was the 6th trombonist. If he weren’t already dead, this would kill him. Verve, and these songs, and a black producer? This would kill him.

SILY: Looking back at it all, it’s got to be pretty unbelievable.

BL: It is unbelievable. I thought I was going to die broke and obscure, but now I’m just gonna die broke. But everybody knows me! [laughs]

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purplesurveys · 4 years

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707

Do you think you're clever? I can be but I wouldn’t say it’s a dominant personality trait. Did you wear socks today? No, I haven’t worn socks since the last day I went to school :/ Can you remember how you celebrated your 10th birthday? I don’t remember how the whole day went but I do have a photo of me on that day. We were in our old house then and I was at the dining area smiling with my cake, surrounded by my mom and sister.

Know any magic tricks? Nah I can’t perform any of them. Do you sleep well most nights? These days I certainly do. They’ve suspended online classes, and acads is really the main thing taking up my time (and head) most days until recently. Without that I’m just sleeping, eating, and having random bursts of productivity everyday.

Are your nails painted? No. Is there somebody you know that you really don't trust? Yeah I have a couple of orgmates that are a little sketchy. I also dunno if I can trust my mom in the bigger scheme of things - we’re just not close like that. Is there music in your head right now? No need to have it playing in my head, I already have a lo-fi livestream playing on YouTube at the moment. When's the last time you baked a cake? Grade 6 when we baked a rainbow cake in home economics. What time was it half an hour ago? 7:26 PM. Did you ever play cowboys and indians when you were growing up? I have no idea what that game is. Probs an American thing? Can anyone confirm? When did it last rain? My dad said it drizzled earlier this afternoon, but I wouldn’t know because I was taking a nap. The last time it rained and I caught it was two nights ago. Would you like to become a dancer? I would love to be able to dance gracefully and call myself a dancer, but I wouldn’t want it to be my Number One Agenda, as in joining contests or have it be my whole career and stuff. It’ll be nice to simply have it as a hobby. What colour is the bathroom of your house painted? The top half of the wall is white, the bottom half consists of light brown tiles. Which country is to the north of your home country? Taiwan. Name one person of the same sex as you you wouldn't mind doing: My girlfriend. Haaaaah you thought. What is the most gory film you've seen? Evil Dead, but I’ve only seen the 2013 reboot. Is there anybody that you know that you just feel really sorry for? Yeah I guess, like my uncle for stubbornly never getting his life back on track. I’ve been done waiting for him to get better. Do you like the Austin Powers films? I’ve never seen any one of them, even the one Beyoncé is in.

Where is the worst place you have ever travelled to? All the places I’ve been to have been wonderful and it wouldn’t feel right to tag one of them as the ‘worst’ because all the trips have been paid for by my parents lmao. But the one trip that didn’t exactly turn out the way we would’ve wanted it to was Caramoan in Camarines Sur. It was raining almost the entire time, so the scenario was either 1) the rain messed with the cable signal and we only had one channel every time we were in the cabin or 2) we had to make do with being rained on whenever we wanted to go out to the beach. It was also in the middle of nowhere, so we didn’t have internet. Ever fallen down a hole? Nope. That’s one of the scenarios I’m particularly afraid of. Do you like to read poetry? No I hate having to. I’ve never understood poems. What's your preferred frozen snack? Other than ice cream? Idk, frozen fries maybe? Those hit differently. Is rap music overrated? I’d say some are, but rap generally has a rich underground culture as well so I wouldn’t say all of it is overrated. Do you work better in a clean or messy environment? That doesn’t matter to me. I care more about how warm/cold it is, because I can’t start working anywhere I find too hot or else I’ll feel too sluggish. Do you know any vegans? Only from the internet. Filipinos are big meat eaters so it’s hard to find resources for if you want to become vegan. There are vegan food stalls but they’re VERY few and far between, and they’re typically situated in hipper, more cosmopolitan parts of the city since veganism isn’t a known concept here. Earphones or headphones? Earphones. Do you like bananas? Eugh no. What's a film you've seen that confused you? Interstellar confuses me to this day. But I loved it a lot and I enjoyed the premise, and that’s what matters to me. Do you ever wear black lipstick? I don’t think I’ve ever worn it before. You can take any illegal drug without any bad consequences, which one? That’s a really dark question but uh... I’d go with meth because idk, Breaking Bad? I certainly wouldn’t want to try heroin though. What is next to your bed? I have a drawer with my clothes and other knickknacks on one side, and a chest with a bunch of memorabilia and old books I’ve had since I was a kid on the other side. Are your fingernails dirty? Nope. What would you change about yourself appearence-wise? I’d straighten my front teeth and make my teeth in general smaller. I’d also have some hair grow on my left eyebrow because I permanently damaged the hair growth there by plucking too much as an anxiety habit. How long do you normally spend in the shower? Depends on how relaxed I need to feel. If I’m showering for school it takes me 4-5 minutes. If it’s been hot all day like in the summer I’d take up to 15. When's the last time somebody called you "baby"? Sometime today, I don’t exactly remember when. Have you ever had to keep something important from your family? Like... my 4-year same-sex relationship? Yup. Don't you think things feel much better after a good cry? The things that made me cry don’t get better or automatically get fixed, but it’s always nice to give myself a break and to let everything out. Do you think the UK should keep its monarchy? I honestly don’t know enough about their system to confidently form an opinion about it. My only contribution to this conversation is that the royal family does interest me and I know more trivia about them than the average person should hahahahaha. True or false: you'd do Mila Kunis. I’d do her character in Friends with Benefits but like I don’t really feel that way for IRL Mila, mostly cos I’d rather do wholesome stuff with her hahaha. Which colour would you rather have your hair: pink, grey or green? Green > grey > pink. Don't you just hate the sound of people eating? NOOOOOOO are you kidding. Mukbang ASMRs are my faveeeeeee. What's your favourite music video? Meh I don’t really watch music videos. Is it your aim to be perfect? About the things I do, yeah. I’m not obsessed about having *everything* be perfect, even stuff I have no control over.. Ever climbed to the top of a mountain? No. That’s on my bucket list though. Have you ever fell for someone believing you could "fix" them? No. That’s never been a reason I’ve had feelings for someone. Someone's paying for a fancy dinner, where do you eat and who do you take? BLACKBIRD. I’ve wanted to try it for a while now but Makati is a bitch to get to + their food would literally take away two weeks’ worth of my allowance. I’d take Gab with me for sure. Can you honestly say you are truly happy with your life? Not right now, but I’m not hopeless about it either. Can you paint well? I can’t paint at all. Describe a picture of yourself that you hate: The candid ones are the ones I end up hating the most. If you could keep any animal as a pet, which would you choose? Just all the dogs would be fine, thanks. Something you did in the past that you're embarrassed about: I was bidding Gab’s dad goodbye because he was leaving to meet up with his friends or something. Anyway my shoes chose to be slippery that day and I completely tripped the whole way walking over to him and I even unconsciously grabbed onto his arm to keep myself from falling flat on my face. I AM WINCING JUST TYPING THIS OUT PLS SEND HELP Would you rather play a good or an evil character in a play? Evil. It’d be easier acting that way. Do you like porridge? It’s alright. I mostly avoid it because it was all I ate for breakfast from when I was 4 up to when I was 10, and I’m so so sick of the taste and texture by now.

Has anybody ever lied to you just to impress you? Idk, probably. Strangest gift you ever received: Don’t think I’ve ever received anything I was genuinely baffled by. But I try not to be like that - all gifts are gifts so I’m always grateful whenever someone gives me one. Do most people annoy you? Nah. But 14 year old Robyn taking surveys would probably say yes just to sound edgy :/ Don't you think you should really be doing something more productive? Idk man we’re in the middle of a global health crisis. I think being productive shouldn’t be a priority for once. Have you ever felt really out of place? Yesssssss this was me when I was trying to apply for AIESEC. The crowd was just too different and I didn’t last long in the application process. What's your favourite shade of blue? Royal and sky blue. Do you have any odd phobias? I used to be afraid of watching advertisements at night, but I think it’s mostly gone now. What's the longest you've gone without sleep? 18-20 hours maybe. I don’t let myself pull all-nighters. When was the last time you just wanted to be left alone? Earlier this noon when I felt disrespected by my dad. Do you believe in karma? Sure. Can you remember a world before iPods? Nope. Google says the first iPod came out in 2001, and I don’t remember being 3 years old or younger. When was the last time it was sunny? This morning. Would you like to be photographed by Terry Richardson? I’ve never heard of him but I checked Google just now and apparently he’s been an asshat to his subjects? So no. Smoke? Yes please I so have been needing one throughout this quarantine. I ran out of puffs for my vape pen which is even worse. Would you rather have a lazy day or a day of being really busy? I’ve had 31+ lazy days now. I wouldn’t mind a busy day. Do you like the way that spoken French sounds? I don’t get to hear it all that much but it was spoken so beautifully in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, so I guess I’m alright with it for the most part. I just don’t like the times it comes from the throat and it sounds a bit like hawking. D: But maybe it’s just a cultural thing - Filipino isn’t throaty at all so when we hear sounds like that we’re just not used to it. What's the best film soundtrack? As stupid as the storylines were, they really made sure the Twilight Saga soundtracks SLAPPED. Bon Iver, St. Vincent, Muse, Death Cab for Cutie, The Black Keys, Florence + The Machine, PARAMORE?????? They weren’t fucking around. Interstellar and Gone with the Wind also had amazing scores. Where did you go on your last date? My informal first date with Gabie was at a museum + this quaint Italian place in Greenbelt that has since closed. My legit first date with her was at a Bonchon LMFAOOOOOOOOOO Do people find you "cute"? Not really... only my girlfriend calls me that. Who does the best remixes? Eh not a fan. What is most of your money spent on? Gas, food, dates.

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howling-harpy · 5 years

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The blackbird song [BoB daemon AU]

Word count: 6425 Rating: T Warnings: Blood and stress Character: Eugene Roe

Summary: In Bastogne, a medic’s bloody work goes on and on. Disclaimer: This is a piece of fiction based on the HBO drama series and the actors’ portrayals in it. This has nothing to do with any real person represented in the series, and means no disrespect.

Even though it was a quiet, windless day, the cold of Bastogne bit right through Eugene’s uniform and right into his bones. He tried to keep himself moving to shake it off and cradled Odilia to his neck under the collar. “Gene. We’ve come too far,” Odilia whispered in his ear. The blackbird was shivering with her feathers puffed, their silky texture brushing against Eugene’s neck. Eugene didn’t answer, just wrapped his arms around himself tighter and covered the bird with his hand.

It was cold and snowing lightly. For a moment is was quiet too, and Eugene saw no one as he walked. Odilia said nothing more as they made their way along what they thought was the line, but soon they came in an abrupt stop before a corpse at Eugene’s feet.

Eugene stared at the man, marble white and stiff and covered in snow, blinked, and then took a better look ahead of him. There were more bodies on the ground, white and blue and veiled in snow, with red blood frozen in icicles around. They were right at the edge of the forest and before the clearing of no-man’s land, and across from there was the German line. Odilia stirred and peeked her head above Eugene’s collar. “Gene. Let’s go back,” she insisted. Eugene covered his daemon with his hand again and turned around. It was an endless walk through the woods and thick fog, or so it felt. There was too much ground to cover and too few men to do it, Eugene could see that and suspected that most people did as well, but no one said anything. Odilia stayed out of sight but kept whispering in Eugene’s ear, and together they took inventory and planned ahead. “We need bandages and morphine. Which takes priority?” Eugene shrugged, half of the gesture being a spontaneous shiver, hoping to get his blood moving. “Neither,” he muttered back to his daemon, “no bandages and there’s nothing to stop the bleeding or cover wounds with, but no morphine and they die from shock before we even get to the bandages.” “Equal, then,” Odilia concluded. “We need scissors.” “Yea, we do.” They arrived into the battalion CP, acquired a roll of bandage and an aid kit from Captain Winters, and depressing news about their situation from General McAuliffe and Captain Nixon. Odilia was burrowed under Eugene’s collar the entire time, and neither spoke about the situation of their thinly stretched line. It wasn’t anything that they didn’t already know, with their dwindling supplies and position right where the enemy knew they were. In the midst of the fog Eugene found Spina, digging a foxhole. His daemon, a brown house cat, was draped over his left shoulder like a scarf, apparently trying to warm her human. “So what’d you get?” Spina asked, his trenching tool on his free shoulder. Eugene went through his bag, taking out the little he had managed to scoundrel for them. “I’ve got this,” he said, the aid kit in hand, “and… I got myself a Kraut bandage.” “What? This is it?” Spina asked in disbelief. His daemon’s tail swished anxiously. “Yeah, that’s all we got.” Their supplies were poor, Eugene knew, but it was no use to complain about it. They made a plan to try to gather more supplies, even though they both knew they had slim chances of acquiring any. Eugene thought about the men and already dreaded the next artillery barrage and what he would be able to do to help anyone wounded. Lieutenant Dike stopped by to chastise them for sharing a foxhole, him and his hare daemon both as lost in the fog and uncaring to linger out in the open as anyone. Turned out that their CO was looking for the First Sergeant, but instead of finding him, Lipton found him. Their CO was on his way back to his foxhole with a mild swear, but for a moment Lipton lingered behind. The warm eyes of his shepherd dog daemon Agnes took in both Eugene and Spina, and before Lipton went after Dike to guide him back behind the line, she gently bumped her snout against Spina’s daemon. Spina smiled, and when Agnes and Lipton disappeared into the fog, his daemon crawled back into his arms. Odilia stayed out of sight inside Eugene’s coat. Men were digging in, and when Eugene walked their line he tried to memorize their places. It was a day so cold that men seemed almost happy to dig only to stay warm, and several daemons used their paws to help, the rest huddling either together or with their human. Gordon couldn’t help Eugene with his supply situation, and in the middle of their conversation an artillery strike came in. A deafening blow after another shook the ground around them, sending men scrambling into their foxholes. Wood was splintered and dirt flew in the air, and through the noise and flying debris Eugene heard the call that sent his heart in overdrive: “Medic!” He couldn’t tell who it was, but off he went. Artillery hammered the ground around, and Eugene ran, low and fast, diving to the ground when a shell hit close, rolling over and jumping up again. Odilia pushed her head above his collar, her small wings struggling to free themselves. Eugene dived into a foxhole, finding Heffron with his gray pigeon daemon tense but calm on his shoulder, and his replacement buddy with a restless otter squirming in his lap. Heffron threw his morphine syrette after Eugene as he jumped out of the hole to continue running towards the screams for medic. That close he could already tell who it was. “Penkala!” he called. Odilia was still partially under his collar, now whispering in his ear. “Sounds urgent but not lethal. Calmly, Gene.” It didn’t turn out to be that bad. Penkala had been hit in the leg, but the bleeding wasn’t heavy, and the wound was quickly treated, while his black dog daemon did her best to keep his human calm. It had been Randleman who had yelled for medic, and his hen had her feathers puffed in cold and worry even though the man himself was calm and watching the line. Odilia dug back under Eugene’s collar. Eugene was busy all day, jogging along the line in the woods, and slowly the day turned dark. Slowly he scratched together supplies that he shared with Spina and dutifully kept himself moving. With the night the sky cleared, and the cold became that much biting, turning his hands first red and then white, and no matter how much he tried not to pay attention to it, hunger gnawed at his belly. One meal a day, that was what they were down to. Eugene didn’t allow himself to think about that long. It was dangerous to move during the nighttime. On one hand, it meant the cover of darkness, but on the other it also meant that any enemy sniper couldn’t see Eugene’s red cross armband. He slinked between the trees, sometimes crawled, and tried to stay alert. “Odilia, do you think…” he muttered, an idea forming. She didn’t reply, but Eugene knew she was listening. “Could you take flight and do a little recon?” “A little,” she agreed, already crawling out of Eugene’s collar. She hopped on his shoulder at first, then spread her black wings and rose on them. She flew up one beat of wings at a time, rising a good few feet above his head, then dived down again and flew around him a bit. Eugene stood still, hunched down behind a tree, and watched Odilia do her round. She flew in a circle, stopping to beat air for a moment every now and then and look around, and then subtly widening her range. Eugene felt the limit approaching the farther she flew and grew restless. He kept a keen eye on the little blue-black Odilia in the dark night far above him and in a feat of childish fear thought she might fly away. The limit neared, and Eugene knew she felt it too. The fear took root. Odilia must have felt it too because she didn’t go further and strain the bond between them, but dropped down, flying straight to Eugene who caught her in his waiting palms, pulling her close to his chest. “The line is quiet,” Odilia whispered, “no enemy movement. Lieutenant Compton is going to be angry when he finds Alley and Liebgott, though.” Eugene nodded, gently helping Odilia back under his jacket. “You see Perconte?” “Oui.” They finally found scissors. Perconte whined at them with a toothbrush in his mouth while Eugene picked through his stuff, and his porcupine daemon raised his spikes to support him, but Eugene had the scissors and was on his way back to his foxhole already before any proper argument could be formed. The dark night was lit up by a flare, but Eugene didn’t let it bother him. He sunk deep into his foxhole, alone with Odilia at last, and started to pray. Odilia nested against his chest under his jacket, a small yet vibrantly alive weight that chased away all traces of lingering fear. There was distant machinegun fire, and Eugene sunk deeper into the ground and covered Odilia with his hands. Odilia puffed her feathers and prayed with him. * Shellings were a daily occurrence, and every time Eugene lay in wait, listening for a voice calling him. Ground shook and trees were cut down, sharp pieces of wood flying everywhere, and Eugene bundled himself up as small as he could, waiting for the call. It was inevitable. So much force was hammering down on their positions, someone would get hurt, someone was always hurt. “Medic!” echoed a raspy, broken cry, and Eugene jumped up and on the move. “Medic!” called the same voice again, now closer. Odilia’s wings brushed against Eugene’s neck. “It’s Perconte calling. It’s either him or Sisk. Hurry up!” It was Sisk, panting and groaning in pain in the bottom of the foxhole, clutching at his knee and staring at his torn up leg, while his little brown pit-bull daemon shivered and whined under his arm, squeezed to his side. Eugene’s hands were frozen but nimble when he took Sisk’s leg in his hold and inspected the wound. “It ain’t that bad,” he declared soon. “Ain’t that bad?!” Sisk managed to pant out, either disbelieving or relieved or both. Eugene started to plug the splinters out, as steady and smooth as he could, trying to shut out Sisk’s yelp of pain. He put sulfa on the wound and then a compression bandage, all in his muscle memory now and requiring barely any thought. He was more worried about how Sisk couldn’t stay in the line, not with his leg like this. “We need a jeep. Perconte, give me a hand,” Eugene said, and the man scrambled to obey. Together Eugene and Perconte carried Sisk, who was fortunately a light man, and the whole time when they hurried to the jeep, fell down once and got up again, Sisk kept his dog daemon tightly squeezed against himself, like she could be left behind. Bastogne might have been a beautiful little town once, but now there was not much left of it. Most buildings were in ruins, there were fires here and there that no one had bothered to put out, rubble on the streets and piles of frosty bodies lining them. The field hospital was barely worthy of the name. It was a makeshift place in the cellar of the town’s church, full of makeshift bed where medicine was practiced with makeshift equipment. Still, Eugene knew to settle: it was warm, there were nurses and it was away from the line, and Sisk would be fine there. It was there where Eugene met her. Or really, them: the two nurses working in tandem with a silent understanding reigning between them. The white, blonde woman and the shorter black woman, with solemn expressions, two pairs of quick hands, and, Eugene was shocked to notice, pure white bird daemons dancing up and down their arms, their pure white wings spread like those of tiny angels. The blonde woman in a blue scarf had a sleek sea bird, as quick as her, and the black woman had a pure white dove, modest yet an image of holiness, and when later the blonde woman, Reneé, gathered up some supplies with her daemon, the daemon flew around her freely like they were beyond any restraints and pain. They spoke some. It felt good to speak French again, even though Eugene’s French was barely French at all, and he had to keep it simple to be understood. Odilia peeked her head from under Eugene’s jacket, but didn’t join in. There was more work to be done. Toye didn’t have boots, that was a mental note Eugene had made, and just when he managed to secure a ride back he went to secure him some. It was a dirty work to loot bodies, but they didn’t need the things they had anymore, they were beyond all mortal needs and comforts, but Easy’s still living men weren’t. Eugene yanked a pair of frozen boots off a dead soldier, crossed himself as he did so, and threw the boots on top of his load. Back in the line in the forest it was quiet for a moment. Eugene brought back valuable supplies and passed them on, and immediately went back to work. There was a patrol of some sort about to take place, and he would have trailed after them, but Martin stopped him and gently told him to stay behind. Combat patrol, he said, and Eugene didn’t belong there. But Eugene knew that he did, even if he wasn’t allowed to say it or press the matter. Instead, he crouched in front of a pine tree and watched Martin and his wolverine take the men and disappear into the endless fog. It was dead quiet for a long time. Odilia struggled free from Eugene’s collar and perched on his shoulder instead. Neither the man nor his daemon spoke, just stared into the endless white that had swallowed a group of their men, and listened, waiting. A combat patrol, not a recon mission. Combat patrol was supposed to make contact, and they would, eventually. The silence was deafening, like underwater, and to calm his nerves Eugene lit a cigarette, but never took his eyes off the place where the men had disappeared to. Soon, he heard gunshots. A machine gun opened fire. The freezing wind carried shouting, hoarse yelling and screaming. More machine gun fire. Eugene could only sit and wait. Then, a man came out strolling from the fog. Unharmed, Lieutenant Peacock snapped that he had to get back to the CP as he passed Eugene. Soon after the rest of the men came running back. Someone got hit, a bullet piercing his side and sending the mand tumbling down on the ground with a breathless gasp, screams of terror from his friends following. Eugene sprang up to help, and so did Odilia from his shoulder. Odilia’s wings carried her towards the man lying on the ground, so fast that she got ahead of Eugene and pulled. Eugene had been pulled before but only in a testing manner, not like this, and the sudden painful tug in his core felt like a betrayal. He knew it was Odilia who had hurt him, and the pain made his feet feel lighter as he sprinted towards the wounded man, half out of dutiful worry of a medic and half out of hope to reach Odilia and make the pain stop so he could pretend it had never happened. Odilia was already on the ground next to the fallen man when Eugene reached them, her black wings spread protectively over his unconscious little terrier daemon. Pressure bandage on the wound, morphine in the neck, and after clinically lifting the unconscious daemon on the man’s chest, off they went. The patrol had taken several casualties, one fatal. The blow it dealt on the company was felt through them all, Eugene included. Two more missing their ranks, and for what? Helplessness and despair rippled through them all, Eugene sensed them in the tired silence at dinner time and in the men’s curled up positions and tried to let it wash over him. He thanked God for Captain Winters and his lioness, who came to greet them and sat with them. Winters’ great lioness’ warm yellow fur was now almost white with snow and her whiskers had frost in them, but still she was an impressive sight, and together she and the Captain held the men together. Briefly Eugene caught Heffron’s eye, the usually so energic boy now dull and grim. The one fatality had been Julian, Eugene recalled, the one with a gentle, playful otter daemon. He and Heffron had been close. Eugene dug out the chocolate bar Reneé had gifted him, tried to banish all the evil of today from his mind, and let himself smell the treat through the wrapping. It was a kindness. He thought about Reneé and her tern who flew freely about the church.

Odilia sat on his shoulder when he did his round that night. As always, he gave his time to those who really needed it, but at the same time he was looking for a few certain men especially. Toye had new boots, but he was still suffering from trench foot, and loyal and stubborn to the point of fault, refused even the possibility of leaving the line to treat it. His wild cat’s thick fur was knotted with snow and frost, but her glare was strong when she nailed her gaze on Odilia. Heffron was nowhere to be found. His foxhole was empty, but that was no surprise now that his buddy was gone. Finally, Eugene found him, mainly on accident and from where he had begun: Spina’s foxhole that he sometimes shared with him. Eugene slid into the foxhole and pulled the tarp back over them. “Hey, Heffron,” he said, softly. Heffron didn’t answer, just shivered. He was curled up with cold and grief and shaking against Spina, who held him against his side in a half embrace. His daemon seemed as listless as he did, and for the first time the pigeon actually seemed as gray and unremarkable as actual pigeons did, drooping on Heffron’s arm. Spina’s cat daemon was bundled in Spina’s lap, her head occasionally pushing against the pigeon. She purred. The atmosphere was heavy. It seemed like the perfect time for some kindness, so Eugene took out the chocolate bar, broke off some and gave it to Heffron, perhaps hoping that something more meaningful than any words would be transferred with the sweet. Heffron took the chocolate and nibbled on it without any appetite. “I promise him, if he got hit,” he said in a raspy, tired voice, “I’d get his stuff and send it to his Ma.” He took a shuddering breath. “Now the fucking Krauts will strip him,” he spat, his voice breaking. Spina squeezed him tighter. “Heffron, it’s okay…” Eugene started to say, but Heffron interrupted him. “It’s not! It’s not okay.” He took another shivering breath too close to a sob, and then got a terrible coughing fit. Spina pulled him closer and under his blanked while his daemon reached over as close as she could without touching Heffron and nuzzled the pigeon. Odilia stayed on Eugene’s shoulder, watching them with her black eyes. Eugene felt something radiating from her, some sort of an emotion that he feared was just his own despair echoed back. He suddenly wished that Odilia was hidden under his collar like she used to, hiding from all eyes and existing just for him, a small comforting weight, like a well-kept secret. He wanted to cup his hands and take Odilia in them, hide her under his jacket and against his chest, warm and safe. Nothing was said, and eventually Heffron, wringed dry by grief and fear like they all were, drifted off against Spina, who even then didn’t stop holding him. Eugene sat awake with Spina for a while. Spina might not have been a Toccoa man but he was a medic, and in Eugene’s mind that won over all other bonds the men had decided to honor among themselves. “Hey, what do you call those people again? Those Cajun healers?” Spina suddenly asked. Eugene had to smile. “Traiteurs,” he replied. “You know, my Grandma was a traiteuse.” “Your grandmother? No shit?” Eugene hummed a sound that was almost a laugh. “She was. Laid her hands on people and cured them. Took away sickness, cancer, you name it.” “Your grandmother did that?! You’re shitting me.” “I remember she used to pray a lot. Talked to God about the pain she pulled out.” “Yeah, I guess she had to pray, eh?” Spina chuckled. Eugene thought about Grandmere and her mysterious and beautiful raven daemon, who rarely spoke but sang beautiful lullabies to Grandmere’s children and then to her grandchildren. He thought about what Grandmere had once said about her raven, told him she was her link between this world and the next, her soul’s eyes, who saw what her human eyes could not. “She was a real witch,” Eugene continued, “the real deal, I swear. People used to come to her with all kinds of troubles, and she would heal them, or give them spells in tiny jars, little pouches or on pieces of paper. I remember helping her around her garden.” Spina blinked. “What, you telling me a ghost story now?” he asked, a careful laugh in his voice. “No, ‘s all true,” Eugene answered. “She had the old magic, real juju. She could tell a woman was pregnant before anyone else knew, and she would know if the baby would be a boy or a girl. She could make driftwood catch fire, and she danced under the moon every solstice.” Spina huffed a disbelieving ghost of a laugh. Eugene glanced at him and saw half a smile and keen, curious eyes. “And you know what else they say about the Cajun wise women? Her daemon was a raven with a soft, smooth voice, and like a true healer, she wasn’t bound to her. Her daemon could soar up high in the sky, or fly far enough to leave her sight, and it didn’t bother them.” “Okay, now I know you’re pulling my leg,” Spina said, shuddering. Eugene just smiled, warm with the memory of home. * The sky cleared enough for an air drop, but despite the supplies the slow, gruesome grind of the stand-off still went on. Eugene knew what it felt like to feel his hands warmed in someone else’s blood. He knew the stiffness of a frozen body, he knew hunger like never before, and he knew the squishing of a pressure bandage against torn flesh and bone. There was so much inside a human body that he had never considered. Skin was thicker than one thought, blood was black when it pumped from an artery, and there was layer after layer of flesh. It was all wet, it was all soft, and pressing into it made the human scream. Back in Bastogne’s church basement, Eugene watched a group of men carry their wounded buddy in, and Reneé and Anna rushing to meet them. Reneé was already shouting instructions, and the rising alarm in her tone made Eugene pay attention. The man was in a really bad condition. He had taken a direct hit in his gut, a large hole was torn across his abdomen, and he was bleeding heavily, already too weak to kick, scream or even whimper. His daemon was a silver squirrel, wrapped around his neck and crying, little black claws pawing at the man’s pale, bloody face. The tern flew in a large arc around Reneé, almost too far for comfort, and soared right down to them. Reneé yelled for Anna, whose pearly white dove was already in the room, ahead of his human. Odilia rose to her wings from Eugene’s shoulder. The bleeding had to be stopped, but there was so much of it. Eugene bit his teeth together and sank his hand into the man’s gut, trying to find the artery, while Reneé and Anna tried to wipe away the blood to see the real damage and get to it. All three birds fluttered about them, all quiet and anxious. The squirrel daemon wept, trying to get her human to hold on, to stay with her. Eugene muttered under his breath, pushing himself. Just a little more, a little harder, just do it. Do it, find it, stop it, goddammit… “Eugene…” Reneé called. Eugene saw that the women’s hands had stopped working and lifted his gaze. The man had gone pliant and his eyes stared up to the ceiling, and when Eugene looked he was just in time to see how the squirrel daemon vanished, her body dissolving into golden dust that fell to the ground, turning gray and disappearing into dirt and dust. Eugene cursed and slammed the rag he had been holding to the floor. Odilia let out a choked breath in the air, too anxious to land. Eugene locked eyes with Reneé, whose gaze was full of the same frustration and grief over their failure as his, her mouth pinched into pale line. Her tern landed on her shoulder, white wings still spread and the top of his black head pushing into Reneé’s neck. Anna let out a sigh, reached her hand out for her dove to hand on, and wandered out of the room, back to their endless work. Endless, that was what it felt like. Reneé gave him chocolate again, a piece of kindness, but Eugene couldn’t taste it. Odilia didn’t return to his shoulder until they were in a jeep, heading back to the line. It was almost Christmas. Nights were darker and longer and felt colder too. Each one seemed to stretch on forever, illuminated only by an occasional flare, and every time Eugene waited to be called. “With all our heart,” Odilia whispered more than a few times, almost as if only to herself, like she didn’t mean for Eugene to hear at all. Her scouting flights were painfully broad and long. He knew what the others said about him: never calls anyone by their nickname, always hides his daemon. A part of him was grateful, because now no one noticed Odilia’s absence. One of the countless mornings dawned with a distant rumbling, by now unmistakable sound of approaching tanks. The ground was starting to shake, the silhouettes of the advancing enemy vehicles slowly becoming visible in the tree line, and men were preparing in their positions. Eugene was sitting in a foxhole, his heart hammering with anxiety, and curled into himself. He was just behind the frontline where he knew he would soon be needed, only he wished he wouldn’t be. Some part of him prayed that he could sink into the ground and be buried there, covered like in his own bed on Sunday mornings and never get up. Lipton jogged past him on his way to the front. “Hey Doc, it’s gonna get busy, pal,” he said in passing, continuing to the line, yelling instructions and encouragements. Eugene watched him and his daemon run, both low and skipping like a pair of rabbits, and a cold dread in Eugene’s mind expected the First Sergeant to be hit and his daemon vanish into a golden cloud. The battle started, certain and merciless as a tide, tank shells landing in their positions and machineguns opening fire. Explosions and gunfire were scarce at first, but by every second became more prominent. Someone yelled for a medic, and for some reason that cry cut through Eugene like the shells and gunfire didn’t: it meant pain, it meant death, and he felt small and powerless to wrestle with them. Odilia beat her wings. “Gene, we must go! We must go and help!” she urgently cried to him. Eugene heard her and felt the same need, but couldn’t bring himself to move. “Gene!” Odilia snapped, insistent, and rose to her wings. “We have to go! We have to!” As if frozen in place, Eugene watched her beat her wings and fly further from him, pulling at their bond so hard he thought he felt it in his spine. Men were yelling somewhere ahead, screaming. Screaming and dying. Spina landed in Eugene’s foxhole, grasped at his shoulders and shook him. “Gene! Let’s go! Come on, let’s go!” Odilia yanked again. Eugene gasped and finally broke into movement. “Go!” he shouted back at Spina, pushing him out of the hole and stumbled right after him, jumping in action. Eugene ran towards the desperate cries for a medic, and Odilia fly ahead of him. He saw a little black flurry as she rushed ahead, ushered by the same terrible duty and need that Eugene felt, but too far ahead. Too far, and further still, going as fast as her little bird wings carried her, she flew too far. Eugene felt tears in his eyes, freezing in the corners of them, and then his heart breaking. After that, he moved purely on instinct and muscle memory while feeling like he had somehow slipped outside of his body and was watching someone else at work. Bandage, plasma bottle and needle, tape. The man up and aboard a jeep. Keep him warm, keep the bottle elevated. Stay with him. Eugene worked and felt nothing, only a deep, dark throbbing loneliness in his chest. Something foreign had taken root in him, and he couldn’t define it, name it, or do anything about it. He wandered through to Bastogne and into that church cellar ever filling up with wounded men and overflowing with the scent of blood, then out and back in the line again. He ran where he was needed and he worked. His body was numb all over, like every muscle had fallen asleep and now his limbs were strangely rubbery and foreign, as if he was put together from spare parts. The feeling didn’t let on. Eugene continued and walked like in fog. He felt odd, and the deep emptiness in his chest felt like something physical had actually broken, like his heart was made of glass and had now shattered, leaving his chest full of shards. Odilia didn’t talk about it even though Eugene knew she must have felt it too. Actually, she didn’t talk much at all anymore, simply existed around Eugene as if she was nothing more than an ordinary pet bird. Eugene missed her, but doubted that even squeezing the daemon against his chest wouldn’t ease the feeling. Odilia must have known it too, because she no longer crawled under Eugene’s collar or even sat on his shoulder, instead choosing to fly around him, sit on the frozen ground somewhere about or even fly up on a tree branch. Christmas came and felt like absolutely nothing. Colonel Sink came to greet them during their meal time, but Eugene couldn’t hear any of his words, let alone laugh along with the others. He couldn’t join in, as if some part of him had become physically unfit for that. He lay his hand on the ground with his palm up, and Odilia flew down from the tree to rest on it. Her little body weighed nothing, and through his mitten Eugene barely felt her at all. Eugene slept alone, huddled in a foxhole under a thin blanket, and the Christmas night claimed him. A pit in a frozen ground during the darkest night was his place, and he wondered if the dawn would clear the fog in his mind. It wasn’t the dawn that came, but a shelling. Eugene was startled awake by the explosion and the shaking ground, followed by cries of anguish from the forest around him. Someone yelled for a medic, but Eugene couldn’t move, not even when he recognized the voice as Captain Winters’. Odilia beat her wings. “We must go now!” she demanded, the first thing she had said in a days. Eugene heard her, but her urging didn’t make him move. The screaming went on. Someone jumped into Eugene’s foxhole and shook him. “Doc! Let’s go!” “It’s okay,” Eugene muttered, barely aware that he was talking. It was Heffron, yelling and shaking him, his pigeon swaying on his shoulder and beating her wings in mirrored distress. “No, it’s not okay! Let’s go!” “They need us!” Odilia said, and then took to her wings. For a second Eugene watched her go, her black body disappearing into the darkness, and then he scrambled up and after her. He didn’t dare to even look at Heffron and see what he thought about his daemon tearing away from him like that. Eugene ran after her, following the cries for medic and groans of pain. When he arrived, he found Lieutenant Welsh on the ground surrounded by Lieutenant Peacock, Captain Nixon and Captain Winters, and Odilia hovering in the air just above the wounded man, quietly assuring him. Eugene froze before the scene without knowing if it was the blood, the groans of pain, or the way everyone was staring at Odilia who had arrived alone. “Roe,” Captain Winters said. “Roe!” Eugene snapped out of it at Winters’ command and lounged forward and into his bloody work. Welsh’s wound was an ugly looking thing, but the shell had missed the artery, and Eugene had a morphine syrette to calm him. He was going to make it, and even through his exhausted haze Eugene thanked God for that. When Lieutenant Welsh was carried away, Eugene hobbled a few steps and collapsed on the ground. Odilia flew to him and landed on the ground next to him, her black feathers puffed against the cold. Captain Winters approached him, calm and determined, his lioness stalking right behind him. He crouched down next to Eugene and grabbed his shoulder. “Eugene. Get yourself in town and get a hot meal.” His voice was steady and calm, but it carried a clear command. The lioness stared with her golden eyes sharp and piercing at both him and Odilia. Eugene couldn’t answer, just hauled himself back on his feet and staggered to the jeep about to transport the Lieutenant back to Bastogne. Odilia followed on her own, but Eugene didn’t look. He didn’t get that hot meal that night. The jeep might have as well been driving straight to hell, because the night sky had cleared and opened way to the Luftwaffe. Previously Bastogne had been like the bellyside of a graveyard, frosty, chilly and full of dead people, but tonight the town was made of blackened rock and fire, filled with the whistling of falling bombs. Maybe out of habit, maybe on instinct Eugene hopped off the jeep and ran towards the church. Fear weighed heavy on his heart, it made it beat like a small bird’s and turned his skin clammy with anxious sweat, but Eugene refused to let it vocalize anything before he knew. He had to know first, he was a medic, and a medic didn’t grieve when there was still work to be done. The church wasn’t there anymore. With shivering legs Eugene wandered to the pile of black rock and smoking wood, barely believing this to be the same building he had been frequenting for the past weeks. It had been a sanctuary of kind and full of life, maybe broken and painful life, but life all the same. Now it had gone silent. In a haze Eugene still searched for the door as if there was anything to be done. He found a collapsed doorway, rubble and stone and wooden pillars blocking it. Odilia flew to it and landed on a pillar, inspecting the insides quickly and then flitting further into the broken and black remains of the building. A new fear seized Eugene as he watched his daemon tread inside, and on instinct he reached for her. “Odilia!” he called, hand reaching but his fingers grasping empty air. “Odilia, please!” The bird disappeared in the darkness, and Eugene cried out like he had when he was a child and she had pulled for the first time. He cried out even though he couldn’t feel that pain anymore, even though she hadn’t talked to him in days, even though he knew crying didn’t help anyone. The blackbird flew out of the darkness then, from pillar and rubble pile to another, and she was carrying something in her beak. “Gene. She is… She’s…” Odilia whispered in a hoarse voice, and Eugen realized that the thing she was carrying was Reneé’s blue scarf.

Eugene reached with both hands into the dark. “Come on,” he cooed, “come back to me.” Odilia sniffled behind the scarf and flew into Eugene’s waiting palms. He closed his hands around both his daemon and the scarf she had salvaged and pulled both to him. He cradled her against his face, covering her small body with his hands and rocking from side to side, desperate to wish the bond between them back to life. Odilia spread her wings and stroked the sides of Eugene’s face. “Don’t ever go away again. Don’t go. Don’t,” Eugene muttered to her. “Don’t rip us apart.” Odilia sighed in deep exhaustion. “We are not apart, Gene. I’m here. I’ll always come back to you.” “Stay,” Eugene insisted. Odilia nuzzled her head against his cheek. “We are always one, no matter the distance. Trust in us.” She hadn’t said anything that Eugene didn’t already know deep in his heart, but it was still hard to hear. He squeezed Odilia tighter, so tight that it probably hurt, and she responded by pressing against him harder and sinking her little talons into his hands. “We’re okay,” Eugene whispered to himself, to her, to them both. “We’re okay.” “Yes, yes we are.” They stayed like that for a long time, until the town went quiet and people started to come out to the streets again. Then Eugene took the blue scarf from Odilia, folded it and put it in his pocket, and cradling Odilia in his hand helped her to sit on his shoulder. Together they went back to the line and their work.

#band of brothers #HBO war #bob daemon au #Roe #mun ficci

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