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meowmeowmeowmeow4x · 27 days

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Dark Blue Moon and the Suffering Sun Chapter 4

Damian's face twisted in disgust at the offending object.

Phantom's quirked in confusion. He nudged the massive striped bass towards the smaller siren. "What's wrong?"

"I am a vegetarian." Damian huffed. "And it's raw."

"Oh. Uh, whoops." Phantom shrugged. "I don't know how to break it to you, dude, but, like... There's not much better to eat out there."

Damian glared at him. "I would rather starve."

Perhaps he was being too stubborn. With a buffoon of a companion such as this, the situation was better treated as a survival scenario than a mere mission. Damian was no fool. Vegetarianism was a luxury afforded to those with the food abundance to choose.

That, and it had been a solid sixteen hours since his last meal. His tail felt sore and aching in a way he hadn't felt in years. His stomach growled and groaned, demanding something to fill it.

The last time he felt a hunger like this was when he was still in the League, when they sent him out on weeks long missions where he starved under moonlight and ate birds and rats to survive.

"Come on, Damian, you need to eat something." Phantom cajoled, as if his puppy-eyed look could ever match that of Richard's. "And the seaweed's not gonna sustain you. Believe me I tried."

"Are sirens obligate carnivores?"

"No, but-"

"Then tell me why I cannot sustain myself off of kelp and seaweed?"

"Dude, those things have literally no calories in them."

A valid point, but just because he was right did not mean Damian had to cede the point so easily. "Is the siren species so primitive as to not have cultivated plants in order to sustain their population?"

"I literally don't know how to answer that dude. Do I look like an ambassador or something to you?"

Damian frowned.

"Look, it's getting late and we'll need all the rest we can get. I promise it doesn't taste that bad. We'll try and work something out tomorrow, how's that?"

Damian sighed. "Very well, but only because I very my life, thank you very much."

"Thank god for that..."

Damian unwrapped himself from his tail, and approached the poor fish. "I am terribly sorry, fish. I will not let your sacrifice be in vain." He muttered.

He looked up to find Phantom with a small knife, cutting up the fish into messy fillets, like this was the first time he'd done so. Peculiar. Surely he had lived off fish his entire life, and had deboned many before this moment.

"Just so you don't get poked in the mouth by a bone or two. Those things suck."

Phantom offered a strip of meat. Shutting his eyes, Damian took the food, and shoved it into his mouth, chewing minimally before swallowing.

The taste was... acceptable.

More than acceptable. perhaps.

It would be a shame to let the fish's death go to waste.

...

Damian sank his teeth into the side of the fish, eyes almost rolling into the back of his head from the taste.

Some time later...

Danny floats back into the cave, a handful of kelp bundled up in his arms. "Hey Damian, look I know this situation sucks for you, like in every way, so I went out and got some greens for you, just so it's not all meat and- Wait, Damian?"

The boy in question slept fastly, his fins gently drifting back in forth in the small currents caused by Danny's entrance. His head was slumped against the bass he'd brought in earlier, little strips of fish still stuck in his teeth.

Now that he wasn't making faces and being angry at Danny, he was honestly pretty cute.

Danny wiped some of the bits of meat off Damian's cheek, careful not to scratch his soft scales with a misplaced claw. Despite being so small, Damian managed to chew through a sizable portion of the fish that was easily half his size or more.

Setting the child's body to the side, and draping a small blanket over him, Danny set to finishing off the rest.

He hoped everyone back home wouldn't worry too much. If the GiW boats didn't clear out by tomorrow, then they were in for a big problem. He and Tucker were working on making waterproof earpieces, but they weren't ready yet, and his waterproof phone had been left in his room when he'd rushed out to get Damian back. That meant no communication with Amity Island whatsoever. No way to get in contact with Bruce Wayne, and no way for his friends to know he and Damian were ok.

He was really in over his head, wasn't he?

The morning came with a very loud wake up call.

"YO BABYPOP!"

Danny jolted awake and bumped his head into the nearest desk overhead. "Who's attacking us?!"

Beside him, Damian jerked himself into a defensive stance (or as close to one as he could manage.)

The curtains of the cave were pushed open, allowing streams of sunlight to stream in and blind the boy with its glare. Peeking into the cave was the head of one Ember McClain, a vicious grin plastering her face.

"You never told me you got a kid!"

Damian chirped indignantly.

Danny sputtered. "Whawhwh Wh Wait a second!"

Ember pulled out of the cave, and squealed. "Yo Kitty! Dipstick's got himself a kid!"

A woosh of water rushed past, and Kitty's neon green and teal scales showed themselves. "Omg! Phantom aren't you like fifteen? What the heck?!"

Danny blushed deeply teal. "He's not mine I swear!"

Ember pushed Kitty out of the way. "Oh my gosh he's so tiny. Who's the lucky woman?? Or man??? Phantom what have you been getting up to without us?!"

Damian hissed at him from behind Danny's shoulder (when did he get there?) "Begone, harpies! And cease your accusations! I would sooner perish than be related in any way to this incompetent fool."

Ember trilled in adoration. "He's so freaking adorable. Where did you get him, Babypop? An orphanage??"

Danny would've done a spittake, if he was above water. "W-what?! Dude, literally where would even find an orphanage around here?"

"Did his parents dump you on him like Johnny was?"

"Uh I'm not even gonna question that."

Ember clasped her hands to her mouth in scandalous shock. "No way, did you finally turn to the dark side and kidnap him?"

Damian piped up again, gripping on Danny's shoulders with his unsheathed claws and rising higher. "Nonsense, I claim no familial relationship with this person, not by blood, law, or emotion. He is as close to me as any stranger would."

"Ouch Damian. I literally saved your life."

Ember and Kitty chortled and shorted. They clutched their bellies and lead against the walls of the cave. "It's just... PFPFTT Phantom you total scoundrel, ahah!"

"Yeah yeah, look I gotta get this kid back to his dad on Amity, and quick. He's probably losing his mind over there."

Kitty gasped. "So you did turn him."

Danny shushed them. "Don't scream it out for the whole ocean to hear!"

He rushed out the entrance of the cave and shooed them in, covering the doorway up as they entered.

"Look I'd really, really rather you guys keep this on the down low. This is kind of a huge deal right now." Danny said.

He turned to Damian, still perched on his shoulder, his little tail brushing against Danny's ghostly white sail. "Is it ok if I tell them?"

"if it will convince them to vacate the premises."

"If you have to know, Damian's the son of some ultra rich guy. Skulker got him for whatever reason, and I was forced to turn him."

"Dude, Skulker went for a literal child?!" Ember clenched her first, likely hiding her extending claws. Right, Skulker was a bit of a touchy subject for her. "Of his own kind, no less?!"

"That's fucking low, girl."

"And now the GiW are going crazy too. Probalby got a huge donation or whatever. We're just waiting untli they go away so I can get Damian back to his dad, without any dissections. That also means none of you guys should be going near the place either."

"Pfft, too late for that."

Danny froze. "Who did they get?"

"Relaaxx, Dipstick. I was just preparing another concert, only for like fifty boats to show up out of fuckin' nowhere. Luckily I heard them before they saw me, but come on! I was miles from Amity at that point!"

"Miles?" Damian whispered.

Danny felt the same way too. They were only increasing their patrols now, shit.

"It's bad enough that the rest of the Pod are freaking migrating. We haven't migrated in years!"

"Yeah, actually, Phantom you wanna join us? I know you have this whole, err, thing, with Amity Island, but we hardly see you. And Johnny's been itching for a rematch."

Danny looked over his shoulder, to where Damian was lost in thought. This might have been the first them he'd seen the kid not glaring.

"Thanks for the offer, but I need to get Damian home. It's my fault he's like this, and he's got a whole family out there waiting for him."

"Don't you too?"

Danny swallowed a thick of water. He did have a family, a family that was probably going crazy. But at least part of that family, and his friends, knew he could take care of himself, knew that he was a siren, knew that the water was his element. Damian's family didn't have that luxury.

"We'll figure it out."

The girls shared a look, and shrugged. "The offer still stands, Babypop. Oh, and i'll be sure to fuckin' dice Skulker next time i see him, lying, cheatin' bastard.

For a moment, the boys watched the two siren teens' trailing tails, before they turned a corner and disappeared.

"Gotham."

"What was that?" Danny asked.

"If Amity Island is inaccessible to us, then we have to go to Gotham."

"Isn't Gotham-"

"On the East Coast? Yes, it is. It's our only option."

"That's thousands of miles, and you can't even walk!"

"Would you rather we stay here, waiting for the GiW to approach us and kill us both?"

Danny clenched his jaw. Damian was right, wasn't he.

"The only way to reunite me with Father is to go to Gotham. They will not be expecting us there."

"How can you be so sure?"

Damian dislodged himself from Danny's shoulder and floated in front of him. "Because they are unaware of the sirens' power of transformation, am I correct?"

"Good point, but wait, how did you know that?"

"I did some cursory research before coming here. The prevailing theories put forth by the supposed 'experts' on the matter asserted that sirens eat their human victims, with no mentions of turning. They have no reason to believe I am not dead., and no reason to suspect any siren activity in Gotham."

"And you're ok with that. Thousands of miles of swimming in the endless ocean full of things wanting to eat you?"

"Are you not?"

"Ok ok, calm down." Danny had to chuckle though. Rich as this kid may be, he was definitely not spoilt enough to sit still and wait for his dad to save him.

"And the fastest way to get to Gotham is via the Panama Canal." Damian puffed his chest out in what was probably pride. Danny stared at him, dumbfounded.

"You're kidding, right?"

"Have I ever jested to you before?"

"No seriously. The Panama Canal. You realise that place is monitored up and down, right? Literally the moment we get spotted, the locks are gonna, you know, lock down, and then we'll be stranded and sitting ducks to be chopped up by the GiW."

"That will not be an issue. You possess the power of camouflage, do you not? And again, they will not be expecting us in Panama, so they will have no reason to bring any sonars there."

Danny wanted to bang his head against the wall. This idea sounded so stupid, but not stupid enough that it was unfeasable.

"In addition, you said it yourself. Your negligence resulted in my permanent loss of humanity, so it is your responsibility to do whatever you can do right your wrong."

Shit. Came with being the son of a businessman, didn't it? This kid was guilttripping the hell out of him and Danny could honestly not say he didn't deserve it.

"Fiiiine. We're going to Panama."

"Excellent." Damian grinned. "Let us leave immediately."

Danny could only pray that none of the 50 things that could go wrong, did go wrong, but when was his luck ever that good?

No, instead, Danny strapped in whatever supplies he had laying around in the cave. To Panama we go...

#dpxdc #danny phantom #danny fenton #damian wayne #merman #merboy #dcxdp #angst #vegetarianism #damian vs fish #the fish wins #ember mcclain #mer!danny #mer danny #mer!damian #mer damian #mermaid au

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jeannereames · 3 months

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Based on the tactics vs strategy component of your most recent ask (on how ATG should or should not be depicted on TV)—do you think, if he hadn’t died so soon and lived a little longer, he might’ve been able to improve his strategic mindset? I think that’s how Philip became good at it, right? After experiencing some failures. I think perhaps that’s one of the tragedies of Philip not being around longer—he might’ve been able to show his son how to handle mistakes and move on from them.

Oh, I think Alexander was definitely improving as a strategist. He was never bad, he just wasn’t Philip… who was exceptional. But Philip had to learn very early, just to survive. I doubt the man had much of a childhood.

A quick review of Philip’s early life, for those reading who may not already know. We think he may have been sent to the Illyrian court of Bardylis at some point in his childhood; for how long is unclear. (If I ever get around to a Philip novel, that’s where I’m starting it, too.) Then he must have come home, only to be sent down to Thebes as a hostage when he was in his early teens. He returned to Macedonia once Perdikkas was no longer a minor himself and could kill his erstwhile regent. Some years later, Perdikkas made him archon of a canton (maybe Amphaxitis?), probably when he was c.18-20 years of age, where he had his own little militia to train. Perdikkas was dead on a battlefield, fighting Illyria, before Philip was 24.

So, he came to the throne a bit later than Alexander but suffered a MUCH more uncertain childhood. It makes Alexander’s look like the “poor little rich boy,” tbh. This is why I respect Philip so much. No, I don’t think he was “greater than Alexander” (as per Richard Gabriel), but I do think he earned his place as, per Diodoros, “the greatest of the kings of Europe.”

I will also add that I suspect Philip benefited a lot from his mother Eurydike’s advice, as did his brother Perdikkas. There was a woman to be in awe of! I also think it’s why Philip was so damn determined to see that Alexander got a “proper” education. Yes, it owed the influence of Thebes’ upper-crust circles…but also residue from his own “school of hard knocks” upbringing.

It also explains why he was a master chess player. He’d had to be, just to stay alive.

Alexander learned quickly, but he didn’t have to exercise it quite as young; Daddy was there to take care of things. Mostly masterfully (outside his private life). Then Philip got himself killed, and Alexander was on his own at just 20. No surprise if he made mistakes, but being king already, they were on full display for posterity in a way Philip’s weren’t. (In fact, we know almost nothing of Philip’s childhood, as evinced by the brevity of my summary above.)

To my mind, one of the tragedies for both men was Philip’s sudden death. While it’s possible they might have clashed even more as Alexander aged, their friction may also have eased. Alexander was right on the cusp of that age when teenaged boys transform back into somewhat sane human beings. Ha. My own seemed to change virtually overnight between about 22 and 23. Philip had been dead two years by then, and Alexander invaded Persia at 22.

Many years ago, I wrote an alternate history short story for Gene Borza’s birthday, wherein Philip died at Chaironeia, and Alexander was taken captive, then had to escape and re-do everything Daddy had done. It was fun to imagine what might have happened, in part to underscore how singular/important Chaironeia was for not only Philip, but Alexander too.

Yet an equally interesting “What if?” would be that Philip wasn’t assassinated in 336 and did invade Persia that autumn. But let’s say he didn’t survive “Granikos” or “Issos” (or whatever those would have been for him*), while Alexander did. What might that have looked like, giving Alexander another 2-3 years under Philip, only becoming king himself around the same age his father had? (23-24?)

I love alternate history scenarios when well-done. (Maybe why I’m a big fan of Melissa Scott’s A Choice of Destinies.)

So in short, yes, I agree that it was a tragedy that Philip didn’t live at least a few years more. And somebody needs to write that alternate history. Then send me the link. Ha.

——

* I think, if it HAD been Philip at the head of the army, Darius would have taken him much more seriously, probably moving up the timeframe of a serious clash (such as Issos). I suspect Philip, like Alexander, would plan to take the Asia Minor coast the same way, to cut off the navy. Darius might have come after him with a bigger army somewhere in Asia Minor. But I also think Asia Minor would have gone over to Philip more easily, as he was proven material and that area had already rebelled against Artaxerxes only about a decade or so prior.

#asks #Philip of Macedon #Philip II of Macedon #Alexander the Great #Alexander as strategist #Philip of Macedon as strategist #alternate history #Alexander vs Philip #classics #tagamemnon #ancient macedonia #ancient greece

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amsterdam-is-the-new-venice · 2 years

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Reflection on the Secret History’s finale

Last night, I was staring at the ceiling when a scene of the Secret History hit me. Towards the end, Richard sees on the TV one of the policemen that worked on Bunny’s case doing an add to attract interest regarding smoking and lung cancer. I think this scene was not casual at all. It’s a metaphor for what happens in the epilogue.

All characters smoked many cigarettes through out the novel and then they suffered a lot at the end. The smoking habit rapresent all the values and the bad habits they pick during their college years and the lung cancer is their final unhappiness. They are the cuase of their own demise.

Francis got so used to money and to luxuries. He despised so much being poor that he prefered to marry a woman he did not love, than coming out to his family.

Camilla is anchored to the past: to her love for Henry and to her grandma. Her grandma rapresent old values and old money: the anachronistic life style of their college years.

Charles is being destoyed by the vice he acquired at Hampden: alcoholism. He still plays the piano, as to revive the piturscque evenings at Francis’ mansion and the woman he runs away with can be a replacement for his sister.

Richard cannot find happiness, because he has been corrupted by Julian’s ideals. He breaks up with Sophie because she’s lower than his pretentious standard. He cannot want any woman other than Camilla, because he thinks that being with her would make him feel like when he was at Hampden.

Henry is the one who organizes the bacchanal in order to see god and who plans the murder. After all that, he kills himself because his ideals have fallen with Julian’s disapproval.

In the end, a life full of vices, illusions and pitoresque images (smoking can be considered aesthetic) leads to complete unhappiness.

Let me know what you think! If you agree or if I am just overthinking this.

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bucketsofmonsters · 5 months

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To Kill the King - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4

find the full book here

If Everand had to hear one more story he swore to the heavens his knight wouldn’t live to see another morning. Not that that would be any great loss. Mornings on the road were as close to hell as Everand could imagine. Animals had run away with most of their food while Leo was meant to be keeping watch, keeping warm was near impossible, and he was only half sure that they hadn’t gotten lost. His travelling partner wasn’t helping matters.

“Are you listening Everand?” Leo called from atop his horse.

“Yes sir, of course sir.” He was going to strangle him. Everand didn’t even attempt to feign a smile, but of course the knight didn’t turn to look. He rode quietly, trailing behind and barely even trying to focus on what was being said to him.

Leo cleared his throat after Everand’s reassurance. “As I was saying, I have a good feeling about this one. When the world closes a door it opens a window and this is our window. Who needed that door anyways when this window is clearly superior?”

“I would have liked to have the door.” Everand grumbled, pulling back on Lilypad’s reins to ensure he wouldn’t have to ride side by side with Leo. She slowed in perfect synchronization with his request and he gave her a soft pat.

“What was that lad?”

“Nothing sir, nothing at all.”

“Yes, right. Well, I’ve heard wonderful things about King Richard, better things than I ever heard about that bastard Edgar anyways. So even if this whole banishing situation was something that transpired because of someone, well even then, it isn’t really a negative. In fact, if anything, we should be crediting the party that created this opportunity.”

Everand could not have this conversation again. At this point even the horses must have it memorized. Diverting it hadn’t worked, his new tactic was to try and get him to skip chunks of this discussion so it could be over sooner. “I’ve even heard they have a princess they want to marry off, isn’t that right sir?”

“We’re heading to a better kingdom, one where I can command the respect that I deserve! A kingdom that will properly utilize all of my strengths, one that will allow me to reach new heights. The king even has a daughter. I’ve heard he’s having trouble marrying her off. They say she is as beautiful as… as the springtime, as the moon. There’s rumors that she’s cursed but if she’s as beautiful as they say, perhaps a noble knight could find a way to break it. Things are turning around for me now, Everand, I can feel it.”

So that hadn’t worked. The squire cursed under his breath. He’d have to try a new tactic the next time around. He made a noise that he hoped would be interpreted as vague agreement and returned to ignoring the man.

As much as Leo had been trying to convince him otherwise with his little speech, they were both in a waking nightmare and it was aggressively Leo’s fault. But of course Everand got pulled into it, that’s how it always worked. Leo did whatever he wanted and Everand suffered the consequences. It had never happened to quite this extent before, but he was anything but surprised. He probably should have guessed that this was where they were headed years ago. Not this new kingdom to which they were travelling blindly, but this level of disaster.

Leo was probably still talking. He never really stopped, but Everand never found it hard to ignore. Especially out riding like this. Even when he tried to focus it was hard to not get wrapped up in the other noises, the wind blowing through the grass, the buzzing of insects around them, the stamping of the horses’ hooves. Lilypad always stepped more carefully. Her hooves sounded softer and they had more intention behind them. Destrier, on the other hand, was always as loud in his steps as was possible. Not that it was his fault, Leo wouldn’t stop enforcing that behavior in the poor creature. The sounds of the world were far more interesting and pressing than whatever made-up adventure Leo was trying to convince Everand that he went on that Everand had somehow mysteriously missed.

Everand pulled back on the reins for half a heartbeat, sensing that something had changed. He quickly ushered Lilypad to start again, not wanting him to appear suspicious in case something malicious was watching. And then, all at once, Everand realized that the ambiance of the path around him had shifted. The squire put all of his focus into trying to discern the source of the shift in noise. As they continued onwards, it became increasingly evident that they were approaching a town. He allowed himself to untense and felt a wave of relief run through him. Not only would he soon be free of all the alone time he was getting with Leo, but they would also be able to resupply. He could survive on shortened rations, but the horses wouldn’t understand why they were being fed significantly less and he’d rather not put them through that.

There were a few more minutes of listening to the bustle of civilization getting closer before Leo broke Everand’s concentration by shouting “Stop!” at the top of his lungs whilst yanking on Destrier’s reins. Everand brought Lilypad to a halt, waiting to see what invaluable advice the knight had to share this time.

“Do you see that, my lad? Over that next hill? I believe it’s the town surrounding our new king’s distinguished home.”

“I think you might be right. Good eye, sir.”

They rode right by the town, barely a breath from the nearest structure. Everand trusted Lilypad to follow in Destrier’s footsteps, staring for longer than he should have at the buildings as they passed. He didn’t particularly want to go there, he had no great love for civilization in any form. However, it was certainly better than the towering silhouette of stone walls that they were riding towards. They had no plan to get in, no plan if they got turned away, and Everand had no plan for what he was going to do whether or not they were let into the castle. He’d figure it out when they got there. God, he sounded like Leo.

He was jolted back to reality as he realized that they were at the gates of the castle. Leo was already talking to one of the guards stationed at the doors. Everand hoped he hadn’t missed anything too vital and did his best to appear squirely.

“We seek an audience with the king.”

The guard seemed very confused which wasn’t a great sign. “Who are you two?”

“I am Sir Leo and this is my squire.”

“So you’re a knight of where exactly?”

Uh oh.

“Well, of here hopefully.”

Everand appreciated the apparent attempt to confuse the guard into letting them see the most important man in the kingdom. Somehow, this did not seem to convince him. Everand figured he’d give it a shot. “Hello, sir, we’ve been sent by King Edgar to serve King Richard, as a sign of peace between the two lands. Sir Leo here was one of his finest knights.”

He prayed that it didn’t contradict anything Leo had already said. It wasn’t the cleanest lie but it was certainly better than whatever his knight was attempting to peddle. The man seemed to be considering it when the guard on the other side of the door decided to join in on the conversation. “I’ve heard tales of Sir Leo, are you really he?”

Leo’s face lit up. “Aye, I am. See, everything is in order.”

The guard they’d been speaking to seemed unsure. “Do you swear it is you, Sir Leo?”

“I do, on my mother’s grave.”

“Well, this is on your head, not mine. You shall have your meeting.”

#to kill the king #indie author #queer literature #queer fantasy #self publishing #lgbt fiction #I don't believe it comes up during the sample chapters I'll be posting but Everand is a trans man #you'll get 4 sample chapters :)

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messedupfan · 1 year

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The Multiverse

Summary: A mission to travel through the Multiverse.

A/N: I hope y'all are enjoying this series! Let me know your thoughts!

Masterlist | All Chapters | All Stories Taglist

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stepping off of the plate you look to Vision and ask him if the two of you landed close. You are standing in front of what looks to be an abandoned building. Why would a Nexus Being live here? The advanced synthezoid scans the area and nods to confirm.

“They’re hiding inside of there,” he points to the old and seemingly rundown building. The two of you take cautious steps toward the structure but don’t make it close enough before falling into the ground. You are startled as you ride a slide to an unknown location, not sure if what you’ll find when you land will be pleasant or not. Luckily, you land on a mountain of soft cushions.

“It works!” A young kid cheers from the otherside of the room. You stand up and look at him with confusion. There was no way that he was the Nexus that the two of you were sent here to grab. “No one ever comes this far! I’ve never been able to test it myself, since it recognizes me. But wow! I cannot believe it works!”

You look to Vision to confirm that this was the person that the two of you were sent to find but he is preoccupied with something else. “Reality warping,” he says in a low volume. “It feels so familiar,” he takes several steps towards the little boy.

“Excuse me,” the boy says. Seemingly frightened by the robot standing so close to him.

“Franklin Richards, stop the cartoons,” your partner demands. “Show us the real you.”

The boy pretends to not know what he is talking about but Vision is in no mood to play such games. Without physically touching him, Vision lifts the little boy in the air by his throat with a force so strong it disrupts his reality warping abilities. The space that was empty was then filled with steaming lava, then it was turned into an empty amusement park, and finally a high tech laboratory. The boy was now the man that the two of you were sent for. Vision drops him to the ground, coughing and weak.

This still couldn’t be the one, but it was. What had happened to him? Why couldn’t he have fought off Vision's abilities. You kneel down and conjure a healing glass of water for the man. He refuses, “That only makes it worse now.”

“What do you mean?” You ask curiously.

“I didn’t abide by the limitations of my abilities,” he coughs. “I played with fate too much and now I’m banished here, all alone, sick, and any attempt to heal myself… it won’t kill me but it will make the suffering worse.” At his explanation you disenchant the water and offer it to him again. He accepts the glass. You look up at Vision who was already setting the next location. Franklin was going to be no use to the cause. You wish that there was something that you could do to help the poor man but he doesn’t look like he wants any.

“Sorry for bothering you,” you say as you stand up.

Moving onto the next universe, you and Vision land in the alley and walk onto a busy sidewalk. Everyone is in a hurry to get somewhere and they rudely bump into you and the synthezoid as the two of you figure out where you’re supposed to go.

“Couldn’t you have programmed these things to be exact on the location?” You grumble after the fifth person has shoved you aside. “Jean and Raven landed in my backyard, why couldn’t we have been that close?”

Vision looks at the device with concern because the two of you should have landed close by the home of the Nexus that the two of you are searching for. Not in a busy street in front of businesses and apartment buildings. Using his x-ray vision, Vision scans you then he scans the buildings searching for similar energy.

When he finds it, he is astonished to find that the Nexus can't be more than a few months old. Which meant the adult Nexus that the two of you were searching for had perished. There was no telling how or when. Other than to infer that they were lucky enough to have sent their powers to their successor.“We have to move on,” Vision says as he puts the settings in. “She could be here, we must go before she senses us.”

You hop onto the platform without questioning him and the two of you are sent to the next location. This time, you land in a backyard. One that mirrors the one you have. Exactly. If you looked at your backyard through a mirror and stepped in, this is what it would look like. You were starting to feel dizzy. You would collapse if it weren't for the tall boy that walked out of the back door of the house.

“Can I help you?” He is irritated. “Look, if you think you can lock up my mother after she tried to warn you, you have another thing coming!” He does a couple hand motions that conjure up magic shields.

“Refresh our memory, what did your mother warn us about?” You calmly say with your hands up in surrender.

The boy shakes his head, “I know what you're trying to do! You're trying to make me hear how crazy she sounds. But I won't! Okay? I'm not you!” The way he practically spits at you tells you that the two of you have a history in this universe. “I won't give up on her like you did!” He motions to blast you with his magic.

“Woah, woah, hold on!” You shout. “I believe you! I believe her!” Your pleas don't stop the boy but you're able to dodge the deadly energy he sends your way.

Vision is annoyed by the boys’ dramatics. “Are you William—”

“Don't pretend like you don't know who I am!” The boy shouts before Vision could finish his name. This time he aims his powers towards Vision. The synthezoid isn't happy to be blocking the hit and he looks at you with a glare.

Not sure what he expects you to do, so you look back at the boy and clear your throat as you stand taller. “We aren't who you think we are. And we're here to discuss the multiverse with you. Please, hear us out. We need your help.”

The crazed look in the boy's eyes tells you that there might not be anything to convince him that you're telling the truth. “No,” he whispers bitterly. “No! You think I'm going to let you in? You think you're going to convince me to trust you? No! I won't put my mother in danger like that! Now go! Get out of here and stay away! We don't need you! The day you left was the best day of our lives!” He looks at you with daggers of hatred in his eyes. “Why couldn't you have just stayed gone?”

You step forward to say something but Vision stops you. “Another lost cause,” he says, “We better get going.”

“No, I think I can—”

“It's no use, Y/n. Even if you convince him to come with us, he's not going to want to fight against the Scarlet Witch,” Vision elaborates.

“How are you so sure?” you challenge.

“Billy, who's there?” A new voice, that sends shivers down your spine, calls the boy from the house. The answer to your confusion stands on the back porch of the house.

“It’s nobody, mom. Go back inside please,” the boy — Billy — keeps a guarded stance towards you as he speaks softly to his mother. Wanda.

“That's them!” Wanda says as she races down to you and Vision. She is much older than the Wanda you’re married to and she is very thin. An unhealthy amount, as if she hardly ate if at all. But the resemblance is still uncanny. You looked to the boy to see that he wasn’t doing well for himself either. You begin to wonder if this is what the people just look like in this universe or if these two need a lot more help than just each other. You felt bad for the two of them as you realize the house was a lot more rundown than you initially thought. The longer you paide attention the more things began to deteriorate. You wanted to help them get out of here, it looked like they really needed it.

“Mom, no! It's a trap!” Billy tries to catch her but she shoos him away. He shakes his head and prepares to hit either of you with a powerful blast if he needs to.

“You came for my boy, yes?” She asks in a thick Sokovian accent. She must not have felt the need to lose the accent in this universe which you’re happy about for her. You missed her accent, and though there is a hint of it here and there with your Wanda, it’s not nearly as strong. And she would mention to you about feeling a loss of her former identity, of where she came from. But she never made much of an effort to find it again because it didn’t feel right to the person she has grown to be. “He’s like you. He is powerful. You need him, yes?” She directs her questions to you.

“Yes, we could use someone like him on our side,” you confirm.

“My apologies to your team. I need him more than you do. But you will defeat her without him. I know this,” she says and she puts her hands on your face. “You will be the one to stop her because you have to stop her,” Wanda tells you and you nod. An eerie feeling makes your skin crawl at her words but you try not to let the effect last. To please her, you promise that you will stop the Scarlet Witch and she steps away. Vision sets the machine to go to move on and you join him on the platform getting one last look at the family you haven't had the chance to create yet. You hope that when you do, you'll appreciate it more than this version of you apparently has.

Landing in front of a building of the fourth and final Nexus on your list, you start to feel the effects of the trip. “Hold on,” you stumble away from Vision to vomit in the bushes in front of you. “Strange,” you move your tongue around in your mouth. “I don’t taste a thing.” You look to the synthezoid who is preoccupied with looking over his notes. “I know this is a different universe but, no taste? I had no idea that could be taken from us. Well, from me, I have no idea if you even have taste since your uh… a robot.”

When you turn to look at Vision, you are met with his unimpressed glare and you straighten up with an apologetic grimace. “You weren’t created here so that's a strange thing for you. But to anyone from here, flavor is weird,” Vision explains. “Are you okay to go inside now? Or would you rather lose to the witch because you couldn’t get over that you lost the ability to taste your own vomit?”

“Sorry, yeah, uh, lets go.” You gesture for him to lead the way. He slaps your chest with a piece of paper that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere grumbling to you that you have to stick to this script from now on. Not in the mood to put up much of a fight about it, you read it over as the two of you walk inside of the building. Before getting to your destination, the two of you are instantly stopped by the receptionist.

“We have an appointment with Ms. Romanova,” Vision informs the woman at the front desk as he manipulates the computer to add your names to the system. “We’re under Vision and Y/n Y/l/n.”

The woman narrows her eyes at the both of you before she types something into the computer to confirm. “She’s in an important meeting. It’s going to be a while. The two of you can wait in her office on the top floor.”

The two of you take a seat before the desk as you wait for the Nexus to come through. Which surprisingly isn't a long wait at all. Natalia Romanova struts through the door in a dark pantsuit and short blonde hair. The Natasha Romanoff you knew had long fiery red hair and if she wasn’t in her uniform, she was in active wear. Unless she was on a mission where she had to dress up to catch the eye of her target. And she had dropped the original version of her name a long time ago. “What did I say about messing with my system? I don’t care how important–” She tosses a tablet onto her desk and narrows her eyes. “I take that back. I don't believe I've ever told the two of you anything.” She stands at the front of the desk and leans against the edge of the glass with her arms crossed. “Who are you really? And what do you want?”

“I’m Y/n Y/l/n, and I'm here to ask if you have been having any nightmares,” you go by the script that Vision curated.

Natalia's eyebrows move as she purses her lips. “I run the most successful business in this city. Of course I have nightmares. What's it to you?”

You look at Vision before you clear your throat and conjure an image of the Scarlet Witch, “Does this woman ever appear in them?”

She barely looks at the magical holograph before she shakes her head with a smirk. “Come on, what is this? Did Hill order the two of you as some sort of magic act to distract me? I mean, I know how much she cares about my birthday but this is a little much.”

“Please Ms. Romanova, it will help us to explain our presence if you answer our question. Has this woman appeared in your nightmares before?” Vision cuts in with a serious tone that makes Natalia lose the humor from her features. She sighs and shakes her head.

“No, I don’t dream about my friend in a weird costume,” she answers with an annoyed expression. “Stop with the slow introduction and cut to the chase already. Why do you look similar to my friends but it’s clear that you’re not them? Why do you care if I have strange dreams? Why are you people here?”

“You’re right, let’s,” you ignore Vision’s glare as you sit up to go off script. “We came here from different universes. We are trying to put together a team to save every universe from a threat and we could use someone with your abilities,” you explain.

“No can do,” she says as she pushes off of the desk and walks around the piece of furniture. “For one, I don’t believe any of that. And two,” she holds up a pistol that she had stashed in her desk, “you have five seconds to leave here alive.” The small weapon makes you and Vision laugh and you turn it into a water gun with a wink. “Cute,” she says and the bright green toy glows in her hand before she shoots your arm. The acid seeps through your sleeve and burns your skin, you don’t let it show to save face. “Now go, before I give you a hell of an audition for your team,” she says sarcastically.

“Now hold on,” Vision starts as you continue to pretend that the acid isn’t hurting at all but you want to scream. You haven’t felt pain like this in years. “We can prove it to you–”

“Oh,” she begins chuckling cynically. “It’s not a matter of believing you,” she smirks as her clothing starts to burn away being replaced by a deep red material. “It’s about stopping you.” When her clothing is transformed into an outfit you’ve only ever seen in your dreams before you stop breathing. Her smile stretches further like a cheshire cat and her eyes glow red. Her short blonde hair grows out red and her face morphs into Wanda’s – no, the Scarlet Witch. A dark red crown materializes and frames her face. You begin to feel conflicted. Not certain whether to run or to try to reason with her or try to fight her. Right here. Right now.

“What have I told you two – What is happening?” The real Natalia stops at the entrance of the office. You jump from your seat as the Scarlet Witch fires a ball of energy in her direction and block it with an energy shield of your own. You turn to Vision who is floating in the air firing a beam from the stone in his forehead.

“Get her out of here!” he shouts as he swerves from a blast. You nod once as you grab Natalia and teleport her out of the building.

“We need your help fighting that woman in your office. Your best chance is to come with us,” you rush out as soon as you land in a safe space a few blocks away.

“Are you crazy? Leave!? I have to get back there! You have to help me fight her here!” Natalia pushes your hands off of her.

“No! You’re not listening! We can’t defeat her on our own! We came here to ask for your help, we have a plan.” You demand that she listens to you but she won’t.

Vision bursts out of the top of the building in the distance, as does the Scarlet Witch. She lifts two nearby buildings from the ground intending to sandwich Vision between them but you open a portal to save him. He flies through it and falls in front of you. “We have our work cut out for us,” he says. “Ms. Romanova, we need to get you out of here now.”

“No,” she snaps, “I’m not running away this time. I’m staying and I’m fighting. Besides, if I fail, I’ll just wake up.” She rips her business suit off, revealing her sleek suit of armor.

“Ms. Romanov, I’m afraid this isn’t a dream. If you lose to her, it won't be the end of just you. That will be the end of everyone and everything,” Vision explains urgently.

“It’s a good thing I’m not alone then, right?” She looks between you and Vision but neither of you are certain you can stay to fight. Maybe the three of you had a chance to get rid of her now. Maybe there was a team here that could show up and help with the fight. However, the option to stay seemed to be too much of a risk and you want to grab the woman and take her with you regardless of her protests. Before you can make a decision, one of those buildings land right on top of Natalia. You and Vision decide to save the fight for another day and jump to three different universes before heading back to the one they had set up base.

By the time the two of you find the universe on the map, the numbers and zone are in red. You sigh as you excuse yourself to your room. You stare at the ceiling as you process the last trip. Process being face to face with her. You were starting to doubt your involvement in this mission. Maybe you should go back and hope they can take it from here. You couldn't even hit her with anything. You reacted too slowly. Your head wasn't in the game. Not with her looking exactly like the woman you love.

Not only was it bad that you didn't put up much of a fight against her. Now she knows too much information about the plan. That could cut the time to prepare dramatically. She could be here within days when they were hoping for at least a couple months to get ready. If you were to leave after having failed at bringing anyone else to the team, what kind of person would that make you? Besides, if she won here it was only a matter of time that she'd find you right after.

No, that's not how you were going to go out. If you were going to lose this battle, it was going to be with your team.

Once you were done with your pity party, you got out of the dorm room and headed back to the war room. On the way there you spotted an annoyed redhead and a man that seemed to be bothering her with many people carrying bags as they walked out the entrance. You step closer to see what was happening.

“I’m just reminding you, that you have options, honey. I'm not going to stay, if what Raven said was true I think you guys have it handled. But once it's over, call me. You're too pretty to die alone,” Scott says and he caresses Jean's cheek with the back of his hand.

“Huh, I take it that we weren't friends in this universe either,” you say as you stand close to Jean. Scott's mouth quivers and his eyebrows raise as he stumbles on his words. Shocked to see your face once again. “It's okay, I'm not back from the dead,” you put your arm around Jean and dip your fingers in the front pocket of your pants. “Or am I?” You lean forward, “Boo!” Scott stumbles back and says one more goodbye to Jean before running out of the building.

The two of you share a laugh. “I still don't believe that I chose him over you in your universe,” Jean says.

You shrug, “I couldn't believe it for years either.” There's a quiet moment between the two of you when you stop laughing and gaze into each other's eyes. She was brought back to the last night that she had with Y/n. The two of them had just worked through an argument and Y/n caught her as she was going to pass them. Jean was laughing as she was in their arms. Their face was about as close to hers as yours is right now. Y/n told her that they loved her and that they couldn't believe how lucky they were to have a life with her. Lost in that memory, Jean starts to lean in but you step back and remove your arm from her shoulders. “Come on, Vision and I had quite an experience on our trip and we have a lot to catch everyone up on,” you say, pretending that you didn't notice her trying to kiss you. “Were you and Simon able to recruit anyone?” Jean shakes her head, both to tell you no and to break herself out of her head.

Walking into the meeting room you are met with a very happy Wanda. She tries to greet you with a quick kiss on the lips but you turn and her lips land on your cheek. She doesn't allow the move to phase her as she lets you know that she and Carol had a lot of fun on their mission. “And we got a guy,” she says. “Thor was very willing to come with us!”

“Oh, that's great! Where is he?” You say as you look around the room.

“Carol is showing him to his room,” she shrugs.

“Maximoff!” Raven storms through the room. “You left Hank behind?”

Wanda pretends to take a second to think, “I don't know who that is.” Carol walks into the room with the God of Thunder towering behind her. “Danvers, do you know about this Hank business?” She air quotes his name and Carol makes a confused expression.

“No, that name doesn't ring a bell. Was he on the list?” She says just as confused with a godly man towering behind her.

“He was your chaperone!” Raven snaps.

“Well we didn't need one of those, so we didn't have one,” Carol retorts. Raven rolls her eyes and grabs Carol by the wrist.

“You’re coming with me to pick him up,” Raven pulls the other woman out of the room angrily.

You shake your head at Wanda and ask how long the poor scientist lasted. “Second location, he kept going on and on about this and that. We couldn't hear it anymore, honestly, I think we did everyone here a favor.” You force a laugh as you avoid eye contact with your wife and comment on how adorable she is when she's happy. Wanda's grin wavers as she begins to worry.

“But seriously, no more pranks. We barely had time for them before but now we're really going to have to buckle down,” you tell her. “Every second counts now.”

Your tone brings Wanda's mood down even further, “What are you talking about?”

“We,” you look over at your mission partner and notice that he is tinkering with his arm and sigh, “I think we might be in way over our heads. ”

The Training

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words-after-midnight · 21 days

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I have a question which might sound quite idiotic but: has the poem "You Are Jeff" by Richard Siken been an influence on your story? Perhaps I am totally wrong but the theme of obsessive devotion to the point where one almost loses their sense of self from the poem reminded me a lot of the few things I have just seen from you.

Not an idiotic question at all. I actually had a similar thought when I read it - years after the draft of the story was completed. My Jeff, therefore, wasn't inspired by the poem, but he could have been. The first twin at the beginning of the poem could even be describing him (emphasis mine):

Both motorbikes are shiny red and both boys

have perfect teeth, dark hair, soft hands. The one in front will want to

take you apart, and slowly. His deft and stubby fingers searching every

shank and lock for weaknesses. You could love this boy with all your heart.

(Except my Jeff is a curly blonde and would be highly offended if his fingers were described as "stubby.")

I was also blown away in the section where Siken refers to "you" as "Jefferson," because that's also my Jeff's full name, and not the substantially more common Jeffrey.

So not an inspiration, but an incredibly cool coincidence. I do love the common theme. Certainly Gabriel - who had a poor and unstable sense of self to begin with - lost his sense of self in his toxic and misguided devotion to Jeff, and spends a large chunk of the story trying to build an identity for himself that doesn't revolve around his perceived role in Jeff's life. I think the real tragedy of the story is not so much in the fact that Jeff never loved Gabriel (he did, in part, "invent the monsters under the bed," but because Gabriel's emotions were a favorite game to him for a time, rather than out of any desire of his own for closeness), but the fact that Gabriel suffered and sacrificed so much for someone he never really knew or loved beyond his own misguided ideas of who Jeff was or should be.

Side note: The concept of the "monsters under the bed" is actually present and recurring in the story, funnily enough, only it has a very different meaning.

Thank you for giving me an excuse to revisit this poem!

#ask #libaw #writeblr #richard siken #poetry

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une-sanz-pluis · 6 months

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So, I was checking something in Mortimer's biography of Henry IV and I realised how much he was repeatedly emphasising that Henry V (Hal) was a shitty son* and yet I started wondering why shouldn't Hal be a shitty son? Particularly when Mortimer gives us no indication of Henry ever caring about his son, even when it would be really easy to do so?

Firstly, Henry was, well, the parent and Hal was the child in this scenario. He was Hal's father and while he shared and delegated responsibility for Hal's upbringing**, it was his responsibility to raise Hal. Their relationship was Henry's responsibility. Hal was only 26 when his father died, meaning that for the vast majority of their relationship, Hal was a child or adolescent for whom Henry was ultimately responsible. The responsibility for his behaviour and his relationship with his father was ultimately Henry's. He was the adult and the parent.

And frankly, my reaction to any narrative along the lines of "this poor, noble parent suffers the tribulations of their ungrateful, indisputably shitty child" is to wonder what is going on beyond that simple narrative that absolves the parent of responsibility while treating them as the victim and not even giving the child's perspective on their parent. And that's the basic narrative Mortimer provides for Henry and Hal. Henry is a noble parent suffering the tribulations of a shitty kid who has no interiority beyond being a shitty kid.

Secondly, Mortimer never tells us how Henry felt about Hal. Which is weird because his stated intent of the biography is to tell the story of Henry's life and reign through Henry's eyes, so surely Henry had opinions on his son beyond "woe is me, my shitty son is shitty"? Mortimer doesn't even give us a reason to presume Henry ever had a good relationship with his son, starting from the time his son was a newborn.

The discussion of Hal's birth focuses on Henry hunting, playing dice, enjoying the Forest of Dean and other manly pursuits with his mates while waiting for his wife to give birth. Hal is then born. Then we're told how the dastardly Richard II has summoned a parliament, forcibly tearing Henry away from his wife's churching and, more importantly I guess, the three days' of celebratory jousting and feasting.

While Mortimer bizarrely makes a session of parliament a personal slight against the new father, he doesn't even suggest Henry felt anything at all about becoming a father for the very first time, let alone delve into the pain of having to leave his wife and his eight-day-old son. There are some suggestions that Hal was a small, sickly baby which could have been invoked to heighten Henry's pain (though I'm pretty sure he could have excused himself from parliament) as he left his newly delivered wife and days-old son to attend this parliamentary session evilly summoned by Richard. And, to be sure, we could even deepen the angst by invoking the fact that Henry's mother had died in childbirth to imagine he was anxious about leaving Mary. But no, Mortimer does not want his readers to imagine Mary as anything but a prop for Henry's virtue and the recipient of his noble seed love and does not want his readers to concern themselves with a newborn. Mortimer, instead, highlights all the partying and manly leisure activities Henry was missing out on because of Dastardly Richard.

In 1415, Mortimer discusses Hal's rivalry with his brother, Thomas:

By 1398 Thomas had been singled out as his father’s favourite son, his name appearing high on the list of recipients of Henry IV’s New Year presents (while Prince Henry’s name does not appear at all). It is possible that their rivalry developed at this time, and perhaps was even caused by their father’s favouritism.

...way to make Henry look like a terrible parent. Assuming this is January 1398, the boys would have been 11 and 10 - i.e. they were literal children while their father was blatantly playing favourites. If Mortimer meant January 1399, they would have been 12 and 11 and Henry was in exile, with Thomas, so perhaps this wasn't favouritism at all.

Mortimer, ultimately, seems to treat Hal as though he was an adult from a young age. That Henry was not responsible for raising him. That the long-debunked Ariès view of childhood was the correct. Yes, a boy at age 11 or 12 was probably considered more mature in the Middle Ages than he would be today but that he still wouldn't be considered that much more mature, let alone a fully fledged adult. We know this because, well, we can look at how Hal, after Richard II's deposition, was given only nominal commands and remained under the governorship of actual adults like Thomas Percy, Earl of Worcester who was Hal's senior by over forty years.

Thirdly, Mortimer doesn't even give any indication that Henry really cares about his son, even when the son is in danger. The closest he comes is saying "added to these problems, he was risking the king killing his eldest son" in a lengthy paragraph about how courageous and brave Henry was to return to England to challenge Richard for his inheritance. Don't believe me? Here:

Few writers who have described the events of 1399 mention the key attribute which was all-important to the success of Henry’s expedition, namely his personal courage. [...] The sheer audacity of Henry returning to England at this point is impressive, and it impressed contemporaries too. That he did so in the wake of Mortimer, risking not just his life but the danger of being labelled a traitor, is particularly striking. Yes, he had seen the crowds lining the streets as he left London to go into exile. Yes, he probably had assurances from the earls of Westmorland and Northumberland that they would support him. But he had no guarantee that those crowds would risk their lives for him now. Nor could he be certain that the earls of Westmorland and Northumberland would raise an army larger than that of the duke of York, the guardian of the realm. And what if Richard returned from Ireland? No Englishman had marched against the king on English soil and won a full-scale battle for more than 130 years. Henry could not even be sure that he could disembark in safety. The first town he came to after landing—Kingston upon Hull—refused him admittance. Added to these problems, he was risking the king killing his eldest son, Henry. He might have been taking action to put an end to Richard’s systematic destruction of him, his family and his estate, but action in itself increased his vulnerability.

Now, we can debate a few things about the idea that Hal had been endangered by his father's return:

Was Hal actually a hostage?

Was Hal actually in danger from Richard II?

Was Hal actually in danger from others, i.e. Richard's favourites?

Anne Curry argues he wasn't a hostage. There's no evidence of Hal residing in Richard's household and evidence that suggests he was being provided for outside of the household structure. Nor was he taken to Ireland necessarily as a hostage, since he was the right age to be blooded in warfare. The other questions are harder to answer without resorting to speculation but Richard generally appears to have treated his enemies' sons well so Hal was probably not in danger from Richard, though the Epiphany Rising allegedly contained a plot to kill all four of Henry's sons so possibly some of Richard's favourites may have wanted to use Hal against Henry. While nothing did happen to Hal, we can't assume that Henry had foreknowledge of this or that was never any risk at all to Hal. Events moved too quickly for Richard and his favourites to mount any effective resistance to Henry but not necessarily due to any great plan on Henry's behalf.

At any rate, Mortimer does not want to us to believe that there was no risk to Hal or that Henry knew there was no risk. Instead, he presents it as an afterthought or add-on to the much greater personal risk Henry was taking. Without wishing to downplay the risk to Henry, it's worth remembering that Hal was with Richard and his favourites in Ireland while Henry was at liberty. If things had gone badly for Henry, Henry could have retreated to a stronghold or fled England. Hal did not have these options. He was in Richard's company, surrounded by Richard's favourites, in Ireland and a child. There was little chance he could've escaped.

IMO, I think it's likely that Henry felt confident that Richard wouldn't harm his son and would protect his son from those who might harm him for Richard's benefit. But it's a choice he made, one that doesn't exactly make him Father of the Year. He was willing to bank on Richard's good-will towards his son. And we might, too, consider the damage it would have done to Hal's relationship with his father. Regardless of whether Richard would have used him against his father or not, Hal was old enough to realise the danger Henry had put in him by returning and young enough to take it to heart.

Of course, we can also ask harder questions, aiming to absolve Henry of all responsibility for the danger Hal was placed in. After all, Richard "forced" Henry to rebel against him and Richard was a "threat" that had to be dealt with. But these questions are more about demonising Richard to make Henry's behaviour completely noble.

But the fact is that Henry did make a decision - a very big decision, he could've just stayed in exile and eaten his food - that put his preteen son's life in potential danger, that may have made his preteen son believe his life was not important to his father. And Mortimer is pretending it's proof of how courageous Henry was to return to Richard. It's hardly a heroic look.

Fourthly, Mortimer doesn't even take the easy options to portray Henry as a concerned father. He mentions Hal's wounding at Shrewsbury briefly, even noting that it was "so grave it was unlikely he would live" but buries all under a triumphalist spiel about how brave Henry had been and how the battle proved God approved of everything Henry had done to get the throne. I'm not going to post this quote because it's several paragraphs long.

Let's break down this view of Shrewsbury. It wasn't viewed by contemporaries as proving Henry's right to the throne. It was a close battle with a high number of casualties on both sides. It's believed to be the most deadly battle fought on English soil after the Battle of Towton and a battle in which Henry's life came under direct threat. Nor did he deliver the decisive blow; the rebel army fell apart after the discovery of Hotspur's death. No one knows who killed Hotspur - the battle was so inglorious that one of the chief commanders could die without anyone knowing how it had been done. The fact that Henry's son and heir was gravely injured and left disfigured would also disprove of this "glorious victory, ordained by God" view and is probably why the injury appears to have been hushed up. Nor did this victory lead to any lasting peace for Henry - it was his last pitched battle but he continued to face rebellions, including the rebellion led by Archbishop Scrope that would be ruinous to his reputation. So, while Henry may have seen it as a sign from God of his extraordinary manliness and righteousness as Mortimer supposes it was, it likely wasn't a view shared by many of his contemporaries.

But it would so easy to talk about Hal's wound in order to present Henry as a concerned father. The impetus to summon John Bradmore to treat Hal may have come from Henry and though it appears Henry wasn't the doting father remaining anxiously by his possibly-dying son's bedside, we could easily depict him as being torn away by his duty but still anxiously keeping tabs on Hal and sending a stream of doctors, priests and surgeons to tend to Hal, no expense spared.

But I suppose that would detract from depicting Shrewsbury as a sign of Henry's rule and murder of Richard II was ordained by God.

Fifthly, I know that Mortimer thinks Hal was a shitty son and that's because Mortimer thinks he was a shitty person. I know that Mortimer thinks Hal became a shitty person because in 1415 he claims (in a scenario he made up and for which there is no evidence) Hal was psychologically disturbed at a young age when Richard II decided not to honour Edward III's edict that named John of Gaunt (and thus Henry and Hal) as his successors. Having be raised to be king since his birth (again, a scenario Mortimer made up and for which there is no evidence), Richard's takes-backsies basically made Hal insecure, cold-hearted and basically a shitty person (yet another scenario Mortimer made up and for which there is no evidence).

We don't have any reliable evidence of Richard ever naming an heir. One chronicle account claimed Richard named the Mortimers as his heirs in parliament in 1385/86 but there is no record of this in parliamentary records. Bagot claimed, in an incendiary testimony, that Richard was talking of abdicating and leaving the throne to Edward of York, Earl of Rutland - but the corroborating evidence Ian Mortimer cites is his own over-interpretation of nothing-burgers*** and his belief that Richard created an entail that gave Edmund of Langley, Duke of York the throne but Henry IV destroyed it once he came to the throne. OK, possible, but you get how that's not evidence? And it seems weird that if Richard named York as his heir that no one ever mentioned it. Not one of York's descendents in rebellion against the Lancastrians and claiming a superior claim to the throne. Not one of the chroniclers talking about how Richard's untrustworthiness and betrayal of the concepts of good rule.

We have no evidence that Hal was raised to be king. We have no evidence Henry was raised to be king. I think it's likely Gaunt thought it'd be nice if they could get it - or at least get the honour and goodies of being named heir until Richard II produced his own heir - but it was hardly a sound idea to raise a child as a future king of England when the current king could one day produce an heir himself It's not like they had anyway of telling that Richard was rubbish and would never have a child in 1367 or 1377 or 1387 or even 1397. And if Edward III was acting within his rights to set up the succession the way he liked, we must extend the same courtesy to Richard. It was Richard's right, as king, to order the succession the way he liked - not Gaunt and Henry's. And it was Gaunt and Henry who, in Mortimer's scenario, made the choice raise Hal with the expectation he'd be king. It's their parenting (and grandparenting) that's at fault here, again, not Hal and not Richard.

Finally, if we're to go looking for evidence of psychological trauma that shaped Hal's personalty, there's a lot of things that actually happened, that we have evidence of, that we can turn to.

Like when Henry returned despite the "risk" it posed to Hal. Like the Epiphany Rising where Hal and his brothers were intended to be killed. Like the years spent reacting to rebellions and wars during his adolescence. Like receiving a wound "so grave it was unlikely he would live", going through an operation performed without any reliable anaesthetic and painkillers and being left permanently disfigured and possibly with neurological issues and/or chronic pain.

The problem with that is a lot of that can be attributed Henry's actions and choices. It diminishes Henry's alleged greatness. How can the Battle of Shrewsbury be a glorious win for Henry's greatness if it nearly killed his son and traumatised him? No, Henry was the greatest so clearly everything wrong with Hal is Dastardly Richard's fault.

Sixthly, while Hal is the most prominent of Henry's children to be subject of this treatment, it's also true for all of Henry's children. Their most important quality is their quantity and their paternity, which testifies to Henry's virility - especially in regards to the effeminate and childless king Richard. Taken on their own, what matters to Mortimer is not what happens to them but how to make Henry the most sympathetic, the most heroic, the most put-upon and the most important figure at all times.

Witness his discussion of Mary de Bohun's death, where in the middle of a paragraph about Henry's grief at her death, he remembers Mary and Henry had six children for a brief moment:

But Philippa, in being born, had joined her siblings in motherlessness. Henry knew all about that; he and his sisters had been in the same position twenty-five years earlier.

He can't even spend more than a sentence on how six young children felt about losing their mother before reintroducing Henry's perspective and sublimating their grief into a wider reminder about how Henry actually is suffering the most out of everyone. His young children might be grieving their mother but Henry is motherless and wifeless. He is the most tragic figure here!

Also, Henry was only 17 months old when his mother died. It undoubtedly had a large, likely distressing impact on his life. But he wouldn't have remembered what the experience of losing his mother was like. He wouldn't have even remembered her. Henry's sense of motherlessness would have been vastly different from his older children and only really comparable to the girls who were young enough that they wouldn't remember her once they were older.

Here's the longest reference to Philippa (emphasis mine, showing the references to Philippa):

As the members of parliament returned to their homes to oversee the harvest, Henry set about preparing to accompany his daughter, Philippa, to Lynn, from where she would sail to Denmark. Although she should have been there two months earlier, he did not rush. However, it is very interesting that he did not sail to King’s Lynn; he went by road. Had his legs been as sore as they were in April, when the short trip from Windsor to Staines was beyond him, he would not have been able to undertake such a journey. As it was, he not only undertook it, he rode or was carried at nearly the same speed as he had travelled when fully fit. Yet something was profoundly wrong with Henry. On the way to King’s Lynn he made a sudden trip to Walsingham, where there were two holy wells capable of effecting miraculous cures. Very shortly afterwards, having said goodbye to his daughter for the last time, he swiftly travelled to Bardney Abbey, near Lincoln, where he locked himself away in the abbey library.

No opportunity is taken to consider how Henry might have felt upon seeing his youngest daughter leave England at 12 years of age, knowing that it could be (and was) the last time he would ever saw her. But rather than acknowledging any kind of emotion Henry might have felt, Mortimer focuses instead on Henry's health. What's more memorable: saying goodbye to your youngest daughter, never to see her again, or how your legs hurt?

I've already talked a bit about how Mortimer treats the death of Henry's daughter Blanche here but it's truly amazing how he treats it as a terrible thing that happened to Henry and Henry alone. The tragedy of Blanche's short-lived life, the demonstrable grief her husband and father-in-law suffered with her death is not important. Henry's pain is. After all, Blanche might be dead but Henry is dying and grieving.

All up, it seems like Mortimer's Henry doesn't even think about Hal or his other children, let alone act as a good father to them. Mortimer provides no reason why Hal should be a good son to Henry beyond going on and on about how wonderful, courageous, brave and manly Henry was ("the ultimate thoroughbred warrior", an actual quote from the book, with original emphasis). Yet the narrative continually shows a distinct lack of interest in Henry as being engaged with his children.

It is more concerned with Henry missing out on partying than leaving his newborn son, it is more concerned with the threat to Henry's own life than the danger his actions have put his sons in (after all, he took Thomas with him when he returned to England), it is more concerned with how Shrewsbury proved how he was a truly righteous dude for deposing and murdering the dastardly Richard II than the fact that his son had received a wound so serious it was "unlikely" he'd survive. It is more concerned with making even more references to his poor health than the daughter he'll never see again or mourning the death of his seventeen-year-old daughter. His three other sons barely get a look in apart from assurances that Thomas was Henry's favourite.

I know the evidence is generally lacking to show us positive father moments between Henry and any of his children but given how much Mortimer over-interprets, speculates and turns to inventing things, it'd be easy for him to similarly over-interpret or speculate to show Henry as a concerned father. Mixed pride and sorrow as his daughters leave England, never to return. Unselfish devastation at Blanche's death. Fear for Hal's life after the Battle of Shrewsbury, desperation to find some way to save him. Yet such attempts would require Mortimer's focus to drift away from Henry, to stop seeing everyone else as NPCs whose lives revolve around Henry and see them as real people.

If we pretend that Henry treated Hal like shit because he was always a shitty person, we run into problems. The first is that in Mortimer's retelling of events is that Hal was not even a teenager when this began. The second is that it's not just Hal, it's all of Henry's children who are secondary to Henry. Who cares about Philippa when Henry's legs are giving him problems? Who cares about a seventeen year old girl dying when ~Henry~ is also dying?

This, ultimately, is not to say that Henry and Hal must have had a good relationship or that Hal was the entirely innocent victim of Henry's neglect or that Henry was a terrible father who never loved his son or that Hal couldn't be a shitty son at times. It's to point out that there's a fallacy present in Mortimer's version of events. Henry doesn't or isn't allowed to care about any of his children because Mortimer doesn't think them worthy of Henry. Henry can only be a shitty dad in this equation. No matter how Mortimer tries to tell us how sad he was when Blanche died, we're still left with the idea that Henry's approaching death is of more concern and a larger tragedy than Blanche's actual death.

* Often with bullshit examples. No, it is not a sign of Henry V's disregard that he didn't choose to be buried at the feet of Henry IV's tomb. It's weird you would think it would be normal for an adult king to choose to be buried at the feet of their father's tomb. It doesn't seem that common a choice at all.

** I am not saying that Henry personally was responsible for the daily care of his children but was responsible for overseeing who did. He would have shared that responsibility with his wife, Mary de Bohun, until her death, and with Hal's surviving grandparents, most notably John of Gaunt. With them, Henry would have been responsible for appointing the nurses, governesses, tutors etc.who cared for his children on a daily basis and raised them, as well as determining in whose households his children would be fostered. We also have documented evidence of Henry purchasing educational books for his children, which suggests he had some personal interest in the upbringing of his children, as does his decision to take his second-eldest, Thomas, with him into exile.

*** For instance, like noting Richard treated Edmund of Langley, Duke of York with more precedence than Henry when Henry was also a royal duke, which is proof York was the heir, not Henry. Important context is missing: Edmund of Langley was considerably older than Henry and also a son of Edward III, while Henry was only Edward III's grandson. It seems York was not given precedence over John of Gaunt, who was his elder and a duke, as well, and if York was the heir, we'd expect him to be given precedence over everyone but the king and queen. Additionally, Henry only became a duke in Richard II's duketti bonanza. The duketti were not seen by contemporaries as the equivalent to the royal dukes of Lancaster, York and Gloucester.

#henry iv #henry v #blog #father and son

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thethirdromana · 1 year

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The Beetle characters based on how likely they would be to eat a worm

It's the sequel to Dracula characters based on how likely they would be to eat a worm that literally no one asked for.

The Beetle What do racist depictions of Egyptian deities/monsters eat anyway?! This is 100% a question that Richard Marsh did not consider, along with the many, many other things that he did not consider in this novel. Real beetles, though, eat worms among many other things, so I'm going to say that this one is a yes.

Sydney Atherton Because violence begets violence, I want Sydney Atherton to have to eat many worms. I want him to be force-fed them by the ghosts of murdered cats who, meowing and wailing, haunt his every waking hour and most of his sleeping ones. But we can't always get what we want, and if there's one thing that history teaches us, it's that privileged Englishmen of the 1890s very seldom got their just deserts. Sydney Atherton would not eat a worm.

Paul Lessingham It's funny how Paul, written by nearly anyone else, would be a sympathetic character - a social reformer trying to use his status to make life better for those worse off than him, while struggling with the impact of a long-ago trauma. But he's written by Richard Marsh, with his borderline fascistic view of strength and weakness, so here we are.

Anyway, Paul might have been hypnotised into eating a worm at some point, but that would be a weird thing even for the Beetle to do, so I think Paul's diet has been and will remain worm-free.

Marjorie Lindon Marjorie really diminishes as the novel goes on, doesn't she? By the end she's become the damsel in the tower; the woman who got tied to the train tracks. She exists to be white and in need of rescue. She's a plot device, and she would not eat a worm because plot devices don't eat. I only dimly remember the hints of Marjorie as a person who we got in earlier chapters, putting up a creditable fight against her overbearing father. The Marjorie that she could have been would eat a worm just to spite her dad, and good for her.

Augustus Champnell Who the fuck knows. Quick, people who have just spent several weeks reading a novel in which Augustus Champnell is one of the main characters: close your eyes and name any single trait that he has. I've got "upper-class" and "detective" and literally nothing else, how about you? Sure, he'd eat a worm, why not. It's not as if Richard Marsh has given me anything else to go on.

Percy Woodville Percy did get a character trait, and his character trait is "victim of bullying by Sydney Atherton". Sydney has definitely forced Percy to eat a worm at some point, whether in the playground as children or in the lab for some kind of experiment. Maybe more than one. Why do you still spend time with this guy, Percy? Why did you agree to be best man at his wedding? He's not your friend.

Dora Grayling For a character we don't really see all that much of, Dora Grayling is the most confirmed freak in the whole novel. She looks at Sydney Atherton and thinks, "I'd tap that." And then she flirts with him over the seductive concept of mass murder in the Amazon rainforest. There's no way of knowing what Dora might do, aided by her vast heiress fortune. She'd eat a worm, and she'd like it.

Robert Holt Poor, long-suffering, starved Robert Holt. Let him eat something.

#the beetle weekly

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intheshadowofwar · 10 months

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30 June 2023

This Earth

Lille 30 June 2023

In July 1916, as the meatgrinder of the Somme wound on, the British high command looked for methods to divert German troops from that sector of the front. At this stage, the area near Armentières was already soaked in the blood of the BEF - the catastrophic attack at Aubers Ridge on the 9th of May 1915 comes to mind. Now there would be a new attack by Richard Haking’s IX Corps, pushing against the German positions at the town of Fromelles. Two divisions would be involved; the British 61st Division and the newly arrived Australian 5th Division.

Haking’s planning was rushed, and intelligence was poor. Generally, one wants to attack when one outnumbers the enemy by about three to one - at Fromelles, the Australians and British attacked an enemy that outnumbered them two to one. The ground had not been reconnitorered, and the attack required men to advance on a narrow front into German pillboxes and breastworks that covered just about every inch of the flat ground of advance.

The result was an unmitigated military disaster and the elimination of the 5th Division as an effective military unit for a very long time afterwards. The AIF suffered over five thousand casualties and two thousand dead - it remains the bloodiest day in Australian military history.

We departed Ypres early this morning and crossed the border into France, arriving at Le Trou Aid Post near Aubers Ridge around 9am. Most of the graves here are British troops killed either in late 1914 or in the disaster of 9th May 1915, but there are scattered names from later battles, including Australians killed at Fromelles. There is one French soldier mixed in with the British, easily identifiable by the French cross headstone, and in the corner what we believed was an unnamed French civilian. Like Essex Farm, Le Trou was an obvious place for a cemetery, being the place where the wounded were carried to be processed or - more often than not - to die.

A little way down the road from Le Trou was VC Corner. This is one of two wholly Australian cemeteries on the Western Front - the other is somewhere in Flanders - and one of the most stark and brutal of the CWGC’s sites. When the dead were exhumed after the war, not a single man could be identified - their bones had become entangled together, with only the shrapnel of their uniforms to tell that they were Australians. It was decided that it would be too much to have a cemetery filled entirely with headstones reading ‘Known Unto God’ - it would be an obscenity - so the men were reburied in two mass graves, covered by flat stone crosses and squares of roses. The names of the missing of Fromelles were engraved at the back of the cemetery, behind the Cross of Sacrifice. There are 410 men here, of 1299 missing altogether.

It was here that I finally got that opportunity to read Wilfred Owen’s Anthem for Doomed Youth that I’d been angling for. I think my professor was a little hesitant to let me, but afterwards he agreed that this was the best place to read it.

Between VC Corner and the modern Digger Memorial is what was No Man’s Land, and few poorer places for a general advance I have ever seen. It is a perfect killing ground - especially in 1916, when the concept of the creeping barrage and combined arms were in their infancy. Many of the bunkers are still there, albeit mostly decrepit - some enterprising farmers preserved trenches and fortifications after the war, knowing they could make a quick franc off of British tourists in the area. The Digger Memorial is a recent installation, erected during the centenary - it depicts an Australian soldier carrying a wounded comrade, and it faces back towards Australian lines. It’s a poignant piece, but it’s a bit of an example of selective memory. In some parts of the line, the Germans allowed this, but in others they used wounded men as bait to draw others into their fire. It all depended on who was in charge and the character of the unit, and I’d be dishonest if I said the Allies never did it too, but the memorial is a conscious choice to focus on remembering compassion rather than killing. This is a good thing, but it’s always good to have a pesky historian around to remind you that war is fundamentally a violent affair.

We proceeded from there into Fromelles itself, although we went to the museum just outside the town rather than the town itself (not that Fromelles is particularly large.) The museum is recent, for a reason we’re about to get into, and it’s a fairly small and simple affair. It resembles a lot of French museums I’ve seen - the French love their mannequins, even if some look a little disconcerting. It’s a good primer to the battle, so if you’ve never visited the site I’d recommend it. It ends with the story of the recovery of the dead - not in the early 1920s, but in the early 21st century.

I have met Lambis Englezos, and I want you to understand that I mean this in the most affectionate way possible. Like most people who make history, he’s absolutely insane. In the 2000s, Lambis carried out extensive research and posited that a mass grave existed at Pheasant Wood near Fromelles. He worked this out through a number of primary sources - perhaps most notably, looking at the old German light railway lines behind their front, and aerial photographs from the summer of 1916. His ideas weren’t taken entirely seriously by historians, and there was a hesitancy to dig. It’s hard to blame them - here was this oddball, who didn’t even have a degree never mind a doctorate, proposing to dig up a wood in France to find bodies the Australian government had given up on in 1924. Lambis persisted - in 2007, the government commissioned a geological survey that found out that he could well be right, and in 2008 he was allowed to dig. His team found 250 bodies, mostly Australian but a few British, and for the first time in fifty years, the CWGC was tasked with building them a cemetery.

Pheasant Wood Cemetery is the result, and it’s one of the most poignant cemeteries on the Western Front. All other cemeteries record on their epitaphs the words of a lost generation; here, the worlds are ours. There remain the exaltations of sacrifice and giving one’s life for another - and there’s nothing wrong with that, I must add - but among them are reminders of communities, memorials to parents and siblings long past, even nods to how commemoration has evolved since 1918. Wilfred Owen is quoted - even if, thanks to the guidelines of the CWGC, it’s not one of his more condemnatory verses - as is Eric Bogle. Yet for all of this, there’s a sense of disconnection. There’s comfort in calling these deaths sacrifice, in saying they laid their life down for mates or country or king - but from my historian’s perspective, I think this battle was a total waste of human life, not so much a sacrifice but an act of murder by incompetence. Of course, the CWGC would never let you say that on an epitaph, but I think some people found their own ways to get past the censors. One particularly stark one was that of Private J. R. Smith, 31st Battalion. His grave has no cross, just a stark white space between the date of his death and his epitaph.

‘This Earth, his final peace.’

Sometimes the most simple language is the best.

We left Fromelles for Neuve-Chapelle. Neuve-Chapelle was attacked in March 1915 by Canadian, British and Indian troops - it is here that the latter are commemorated. Hindus and Sikhs are cremated after death, and as a result you will not find many in a CWGC cemetery. Instead, their names are listed here - nearly 5000 died on the Western Front. (All in all, at least 74,000 Indians died during ther Great War.) The First World War sits awkwardly in Indian history - the British Indian Army was entirely voluntary, and Indians went to fight because they fought war an honourable, or because they genuinely believed in the cause and were loyal to the Empire, or because it was simply a job and a roof over one’s head. Many supported the war because they believed Indian participation would coax the British into allowing them greater independence, perhaps as a dominion - a lawyer named Mohandas Gandhi being one of them. Instead, they were rewarded with great repression after the war, including the inexcusable and hideous massacre at Amritsar. The combination of the failure of Britain to adequately acknowledge the Indian participation in the war, and the piles and piles of dead bodies at the Jallianwala Bagh (and other places) put paid forever to the idea of peaceful Indian independence within the British Empire. The seeds of the Indian Independence Movement - and Partition - were planted in this war.

Nearby is the memorial and cemetery of the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps, or CEP. The CEP had a bad war - it was absolutely smashed at the Battle of the Lys in April 1918, with a third of its force killed, wounded or (overwhelmingly) taken prisoner by the Germans. This is not to say that the Portuguese were not brave nor good soldiers - the Peninuslar War a hundred years earlier is testiment that they were - but they were not at all prepared for the Western Front, to say nothing of the hurricane bombardments and stormtrooper attacks of the German Spring Offensive. We didn’t go into the cemetery, but it felt remiss not to mention it.

We entered Lille, and that ended the day. I had an early lunch - the first McDonalds I’ve had in what feels like ages, to be completely honest - and settled in to write this. Now, France is currently participating in it’s favourite pasttime, that being rioting, but I feel fairly comfortable and safe where I am, so don’t worry too much about me - and tomorrow we’ll be fairly rural, heading down to the Arras sector of the line.

#first world war #western front #lille

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nostalgia-tblr · 8 months

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last book, current book, next book

tagged by @grassangel

Last Book: Death and the Virgin: Elizabeth, Dudley and the Mysterious Fate of Amy Robsart, by a Tory MP (I DIDN'T KNOW). This one was okay overall but I was confused about who the target audience was supposed to be, and part of that is that most of the book isn't actually about Amy Robsart (RIP) so if she's what you picked it up for you'll have to get through a lot of stuff you already know about the Elizabeth/Leicester pairing, and it seemingly dimisses the murder idea about halfway through (she doesn't die until about page 150 or something) only to suddenly decide "well actually" in the final chapter which is too little too late for me - if I pick up a book that promises SCANDAL and MURDER then I want that to be more prominent. (I suppose this book suffers from what plagues many of those Liz/Rob OTP novels, which is that their SCANDALOUS behaviour mostly just isn't by modern standards. OH MY GOD HE TOUCHED HER HAND?! IN FRONT OF THE SPANISH AMBASSADOR?!?! *FAINTS*)

So I wouldn't really recommend that one, and not just because it was written by a Tory MP (don't worry my copy was secondhand).

Current Book(s): Current paper book is Isabella and the Strange Death of Edward II by Paul Doherty, which is full of exciting plot twists that I discussed recently, and the bit I am up to is after Hugh de Spense's been horribly killed but before Edward dies (this is not a spoiler because a) it's in the title of the book and b) this all happened in the 14th century of course he's dead by now), and currently Queen Isabella's shacked up with Roger Mortimer and ruling via her son (which is one of my favourite scheming queen tropes, yay!!) and Edward's in a castle, possibly in poor conditions, and yeah I assume he's about to get murdered and then we'll probably spend a chapter or two discussing whether or not this was Isabella's fault. OH NO, WHO HATH WROUGHT THIS TRAGIC TURN OF EVENTS?

Current Kindle book (main one, as I dip in and out of things a bit) is something about the six wives of Henry VIII by Antonia 'I'm Very Posh BTW' Fraser. Quite enjoying this one despite knowing what's going to happen to all of them. I'm only up to Anne Boleyn though and she's not even queen yet, we're still in The Interminable Divorce Proceedings which I feel is often the hardest part for a writer dealing with The Wives because it involves not much actually happening for ages and everyone gets increasingly depressed about Katherine of Aragon and then as soon as you're past THAT it's time to get depressed about Anne Boleyn. Anyway at the moment it's very awkward because Henry keeps frothing about Leviticus and how he is CURSED BY GOD because sure he has one legitimate child but she's THE WRONG SEX and this sort of thing is the reason Henry is always the least sympathetic character in any fictional version, even when they do a Bitch Anne Boleyn (oh, how edgy!). So there's a good chance I won't get to the end of this one because it's a big book with a complete shit as the 'protagonist' (it's non-fiction but u kno wot I mean) BUT in terms of the writing I'm enjoying it and it's a nice mix of Facts and Commentary so if you want a long book on this topic you could do a lot worse.

Next book(s): for paper book I plan on reading something fairly thin (because ow hand) which has maybe a 90% of being about a dead queen of England, and the next Kindle choice is further away (maybe) and will possibly depend on which Richard III biography is next to get a deep discount on Amazon.

I tag everyone, because why not?

#books and reading #history fandom #i am kind of stuck reading about kings etc because i don't feel up to anything else but at least a lot of it's entertaingly gossipy #occasionally i am forced to deal with something i actually give a fuck about like the peasant's revolt but that's usually fairly brief #like i don't really care too much if the duke of whever-the-fuckington gets stabbed in the eyes by the earl of cuntsdown #which makes up for the occasional chapter spent going “YOU LEAVE WAT TYLER ALONE YOU FUCKING PARASITE”#(obvious exception is that my Ironic Richard III Stanning has - of course! - long passed the point where Bosworth is An Proper Tragedy)

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meowmeowmeowmeow4x · 20 days

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Dark Blue Moon and the Suffering Sun Chapter 10

MASTERPOST

I hope you enjoy reading <3 comment and reblog, it relaly helps!

Underneath the hot summer sun, Damian lay fat on Danny’s belly as the older boy lazily drifted underneath the water’s surface. Well, drifting was a strong word, as Damian estimated they were still going at about 20 miles an hour, but considering Danny’s top speed, it probably was like a peaceful drift.

The ocean water was crystal clear, all the way down to the shallow floor beneath them, as patterns shifted and ebbed with the movement of the waves. It was very much welcome change from the dark ravine they’d just evacuated.

They swam close enough to the surface that Damian could occasionally peek his eyes over the water. It was probably the first time he’d touched air since he woke up a changed being. It felt hot, quite hot in fact. Damian looked up to the sun, before quickly ducking back down as the harsh glare blinded his sensitive eyes.

“You’ll get used to it.” Danny had said. Damian resigned himself to idly batting away at the surface, watching the streaks and waves created by the speed of his hands pushing the water apart.

It was amusing. The peace helped to keep certain thoughts out of his mind for a little. But Damian was nothing if not decisive, and he would put the concerns that nipped at his fins to rest.

“I take back what I said. Earlier.” Damian muttered.

“Sorry, what?”

“About you being a poor excuse for a hero. All I have done is antagonize and belittle you, and yet you still choose to burden yourself with me.”

“Damian I feel like we’ve been over this.”

Damian crossed his arms. “No, that was for leading you into danger.”

“Well your forgiveness coupon extends to past grievances too this time.” Danny said, a ghost of a smirk gracing his translucent skin.

“You have shown a great heroic spirit. When I came to Amity Island, the reports of your character were confusing, and contradictory. Now that I have seen your actions with my own eyes, I can see the truth…”

“Aw, Damian…” Good grief, he was about to start getting mushy again. Damian had to stop this.

“You are just as much an obnoxious goody two shoes as my eldest brother.”

“You know? I’ll take it, backhanded compliment or no.”

Damian slapped his tailfin on Danny’s stomach. The older boy only laughed, that same obnoxiously contagious mirth that only Richard could produce. Damian lowered his head into his crossed arms, disguising any peeking grin with a pout.

Knock, knock, knock.

Bruce Wayne had made a note to visit Fentonworks sometime during their visit, but circumstances have moved that trip up his timeline. He took in the maddening contraption that was this building. There was no building code in the world that would allow this thing to stand. Above the brick and mortar, winding metal pipes lead into what appeared to be a huge radio tower complete with observation deck. Bruce could practically feel the stress those pipes had to take. It was so top heavy it was a miracle a stiff breeze hadn’t knocked the entire house down. He would definitely not want to be the poor sap who had to enforce building codes round here. Considering the Fenton’s penchant for shooting first, it would not be surprising if they had shot at them, likely yelling accusations of “collusion with the sirens!”

However, these people were his best lead, and he needed to follow it. For Damian’s sake, and for his.

The door swung open, revealing Maddeline Fenton in her signature jumpsuit, the hood pulled down and hair slightly disheveled. From the search, or out of worry for her wayward son?

It had been a good twenty-four hours since Damian had been dragged into the water by an unknown party. The moment Bruce noticed the beeping alerting that Damian’s tracker was going critical, he went into Batman mode right then and there, rushing to the scene of the crime. However, what he found instead was fourteen-year-old Daniel Fenton standing over the peer, a haunted look on his face.

Bruce had asked him if he was ok, before local authorities separated then and corralled them away from the scene, setting up tape and warning signs. Bruce verbally wrestled with them, demanding to let him see if his son was alright. However, as far as they knew, he was just a normal man, in no way equipped to dive into the depths and fist fight sea monsters.

It was at times like this that he cursed the need for secrecy.

Bruce didn’t see Daniel Fenton again. When he asked around, nobody had either.

Barred from joining the search physically, Bruce was given free access to the security footage in the area, searching in conjunction with other investigators, as per his insistence. While he recovered barely anything useful for Damian, it did show Daniel’s last appearance being around ten minutes after Bruce had found him. Daniel had slipped out of the crowd, last seen heading toward the cliff-face on the far side of town. Bruce sent off the info to the police and GiW as soon as he found out.

That lead him here. To console, but also to interrogate.

“Oh, Mr Wayne! We weren’t expecting you.”

She led Bruce into the living room, seemingly a very normal and domestic place, but a closer look revealed dozens of spare parts scattered around tables and desks and shoved to the side to make room for more unfinished inventions. The living room was adjacent to the kitchen, and Bruce could almost swear he saw glowing blue slime dripping out of it.

“Jack! We have a guest!” Maddeline called out, before inviting Bruce to sit down with some tea. “I’m terribly sorry, we weren’t expecting visitors. And I’m so sorry about your son. That close to shore, our preliminary bouy should’ve been able to detect the attack. We’re not sure what happened…” she trailed off.

All these facts Bruce knew well. He had been briefed on them in the early hours of the search, while there was still much hope to be hand.

“Actually, Dr Fenton, I was visiting to give my condolences about your own son. I know with all the talk about such a high-profile case, it’s easy for other cases to be swept under the rug, but that would be unfair for you.”

Madeline’s face warped not into sadness, or depression, but confusion. “Excuse me? Danny’s been staying at Tucker’s house at the weekend.”

Bruce opened his mouth to interrupt, but Madeline beat him to the punch. “Sorry, please give me a moment.”

She rushed over to an old landline hanging by the wall next to a pair of precariously placed prototypes for some kind of futuristic gun. Rapidly punching in what he recognized was the Foley house’s number, Madeline yanked the phone out of its receiver.

“Angela? Angela, is Danny there, I need to speak to him… What?!” Madeline’s face twisted into shock. Her left hand cradelling the landline, her right hand stroking her hair repteadly. “Danny told me he’d be staying at your house. Yes, yes. Please do so. Thank you Angela. I’ll call Pamela now.”

She hung up. Another rapidly inputted number later, and a second call went through. “Pamela, I’ve been told that Danny’s been staying with Sam. Is he there? I urgently need to speak to him.”

This time, the response was very audible. Bruce could hear a raised, ranting voice, a far cry from the sickly sweet dulcet tones ‘Brucie’ Wayne had been subjected to the night before. “Pamela I need you to listen to me. Danny told me that he’d be staying with Angela. Angela told me that Tucker told her that they’d be in your house. And now you’re saying Sam’s taken them all to a camping trip on the mountain? Yes… yes. I know.”

Just at that moment, Jack Fenton, barreled into the room, emerging from a set of stairs leading into the kitchen, a tray of chocolate fudge cookies steaming in his gloved hands.

“Brucie Wayne!” The man put down the tray of cookies and rushed over to Bruce, where Bruce’s hands were almost crushed by the vigorous handshake the man gave him.

“Listen, Brucie,” Jack Fenton’s voice lowered. “I really wanted to say we’re sorry abou-“

Before Jack could finish what he was saying, Madeline grabbed him by the collar. “We have to go, Jack! To the SAV!”

Bruce stood up. “I’m coming with you.”

That might have been a mistake. Jack Fenton grabbed his hand again with that bone crushing grip and pulled him outside. Madeline pressed a button on a remote, revealing a garage housing the scientific marvel and engineering horror of the Fentons’ hand-crafted and customised tank of a… duck boat.

The exterior was sleek white with silver lines, with reinforced tires on the bottom and a hull wide enough to float on water. The top sported a radar dish, and Bruce identified several seams all across the boat, likely where some of the numerous weapons the Fentons made were hiding.

Of course, Bruce had seen this thing in action before, and the only thing worse than Jack’s sailing was his driving.

“Come on Brucie, we can talk more on the way!”

Meanwhile, in the middle of the ocean…

“It is pitiful how much Richard adores that, that Jaws film.” Damian’s disgust is palpable in his low glare, a disgust mirrored by Danny’s own gag.

“Dude, no way. I hate that fuckin’ movie so goddamn much. Imagine making a movie where tiny puppies start mauling people to death for no reason!”

Damian nodded, sagely. “It is anti-shark propaganda in the finest, and its disavowal by its direct is incredibly telling.”

“I think the Dolphin Mafia were behind it.” Damian considered this thought. How he would love for that to be true, so he could sink his teeth into some dolphin flesh in revenge for what they did to him and to shark reputations worldwide. “Like dude! Sharks are the cuddliest fish on the planet! They don’t even fight sirens, let alone humans. Pretty sure sea urchins cause more injuries. Hell I think the siren attack numbers are about to overshoot them.”

“If the Dolphin Mafia do exist, I will make it my mission to hunt them down, and devour them all.” Damian said with fatal finality.

A beat passed. Danny blinked. “Dude, aren’t you a vegetarian?”

“… Perhaps.”

“Isn’t it like, a moral thing for you? Don’t tell me the siren instincts are messing up your brain chemistry. I literally wouldn’t know how to explain that to Bruce and I’m already fearing for my life.”

“I am of my right mind. It is just that I intend to slay them regardless, so why let their flesh go to waste?”

“You know stuff doesn’t go to waste in the ocean? Like, if you don’t eat it, there’s a million other tiny organisms waiting in line for you. That’s how the freaking ecosystem works.”

Damian considered these words. While yes, it was a relief that killing the Dolphin Mafia (if they did exist) would not necessitate their consumption to prevent wastage, it was oh so tempting to dominate them in the traditional fashion of supreme ocean animals…

“It is worth considering. I will ponder my decision at a later date.”

“I’ll pretend that isn’t utterly scary.”

Damian’s thoughts turned to another pod of dolphins… “That being said, I should like to relieve Skulker of his hunting dolphins.”

“You mean hunting… doglphins?” Danny said with another infuriating grin. Damian went to bad it away, only to get stopped by the older boy holding him back with a finger.

“Let me finish my point! If you intend to continue making inane puns, this journey will be difficult.”

Danny laughed.

“I am serious!”

Danny laughed again, provoking Damian to launch himself at the older boy’s face with a snarl. The boys tumbled and tussled through the water as they play fought…

Bruce was beginning to get nauseous.

His pleas for safer driving went largely ignored. “Sorry Bruce it’s an emergency!” Which left him to helplessly cling to his seat for dear life as Jack pulled sharp turns at top speed, and barrelled through barricades.

The SAV’s alarm sirens (how ironic) blared at full volume as Madeline’s voice blasted through a megaphone. “This is a siren emergency! Please be on the lookout for Sam Manson, Tucker Foley and our baby sweetkins Danny Fenton! HOLD ON TIGHT BABY BOY, WE’RE COMING FOR YOU!”

Scanning the streets for the teens while praying for God for safety from a civilian’s driving was not on his agenda today.

“You doing ok back there, Mr Wayne?” Madeline asked. Bruce grimly nodded.

Jack Fenton swerved through a roundabout, heading for the mountain.

If Bruce’s intuition on teenagers was worth anything (and it had to be worth anything, considering the years he spent wrangling some of the craftiest, most rebellious teenagers on the planet), those kids were definitely hiding something. He just had to find out…

#dpxdc #danny fenton #merman #damian wayne #dcxdp #merboy #mermaid au #less angst #fluff #jaws is propaganda #jack fenton #bruce wayne #maddie fenton

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ebitchwriting · 1 year

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Music Taste The RE Characters Give Me The Vibes Of Part Three:

Piers Nivans: Oh serious boy Piers. I'll be honest, he was quite hard to pin down, but I also like to think when he's off-duty and just hanging out with his teammates and captain at a bar, or a movie theatre for the newest b-rated horror flick, or the one time they all decided to go to a medieval larp, he's a much less rough and gruff, but actually joking, light. Still serious, but anyone can see the tension melting away. For this reason, I actually think his music taste is greatly influenced by his friends. A strange mix of Queen, ABBA, I DON'T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME, Ricky Martin, Toto, and quite a few famous pop songs like A Thousand Miles, I'm Not Gonna Write You A Love Song, etc. He's always willing to listen to whatever his friends want to listen to, and whatever they suddenly become obsessed with.

Jake Muller/Wesker: Jakov(I refuse to believe his name is Jacob) grew up poor in Edonia, a country constantly suffering from either war from impending invasion, civil war, or biological warfare because of greedy pharmaceutical comoanies wanting to test out new viruses. So, I don't think he really got to listen to a whole lot of music growing up. The radios, when the radio towers worked, played typically folk Edonian music, rock&roll Edonian music, or pop Edonian music. Which, since what little we've seen of Edonia, I would imagine Edonian music sounding very similar to Serbian music.

Richard Simmons: If you've seen Netflix's Tau, then Simmons gives me the exact same vibes as Alex(and not just in terms of music). He listens to classical music only when he wants to calm down and distract himself from murdering someone over something as trivial as a fingerprint on a glass. Maybe jazz if thr mood strikes him. He also likes the music he thinks Ada likes purely because it's Ada Wong, and he longs to possess her like she's a trinket.

Carla Radames: Who knows what she genuinely liked before she was transformed and gaslighted into "becoming" Ada Wong? After that, well she liked what Richard believed Ada liked(which again who fucking knows if that is the case or not). Which, in Simmons' mind and the confirmation bias he came to when he and Ada had meetings, I think he would see Ada as a classic jazz fan. Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, and Ela Fitzgerald are the artists he would mainly play for Ada, and therefore would make Carla listen to.

Helena Harper: Helena has always been known as a spitfire that didn't care much for what other people thought and always did what she thought was right unless forced otherwise. She strikes me as someone who's about counterculture, and for that reason, she seems like she would listen to heavy metal and nu-metal bands like Disturbed, Korn, Papa Roach, and Gracchus, as well as particular singers like Rob Zombie and Maynard Keenan. It's just what she likes, and she doesn't give a damn if people think she's trying to be edgy or cool.

Ingrid Hannigan: I can see Ingrid being a fan of Kate Bush, Daniela Andrade, Marika Hackman, and Lola Blanc. Not much of a dancer or a singer unless if she's intentionally trying to be goofy or romantic with a romantic partner, with a young niece or nephew, or drunk with Leon.

Ashley Graham: Ashley seems like she would be into indie pop music, like Florence + The Machine, Lana Del Ray, Of Monsters and Men, and I'm not sure if she counts as indie pop or not but putting Billie Eilish on the list too. I can see that Ashley would be the type to dance along with her songs, but it would generally be slower dancing, more swaying as she's insecure about her dancing skills and whether or not anyone can see her. She's also shy about showing her music to anyone. She hates being judged.

#resident evil #resident evil headcanons #piers nivans #jake muller #jake wesker #richard simmons #carla radames #helena harper #ashley graham #finally feel better after recovering from wisdom tooth surgery

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thedrixie · 11 months

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I made a creepypasta AU.

It is simply called Blood on the Ground

Blood on the Ground is a creepypasta au that is mainly focused on the slender family. In this Au, most of the slender siblings are not related at all and only knew each other due to the town they passed away in. With each death, a new branch of the slender family is almost always opened. A slender is born from a weary soul whose life was taken away under tragic circumstances. Each death lands in a different category, which determines the victim's slender color.

For example: Murder or homicide is red.

This Au takes place the very quiet and lovely town of River Brookes that resides in a valley where both sunny days and rainy days are treated the same. Like a gift. The town is surrounded by lush woods and plenty of wildlife. Rare plants also grow on the edges of town and nature is treated with respect. In this town, everybody knows everyone and everyone is treated with kindness and respect. Travelers are welcomed in but are often shooed out if they break the town's peace. Sometimes visitors get paranoid at how kind and sweet the town is, often thinking it's a trap to lure people in for some cult reason (which it's not, they are really just kind people). And when some of these visitors let the Paranoia get to them, it often leads to tragedy, which takes us to our first victim in this AU.

Lucy Calprium: Lucy is the second oldest sibling in the Calprium line, right after his brother Richard (who is this universe's slenderman and Lucy is this universe's version of my own creepypasta character, Surgical). Lucy was a hard working doctor that used basically every penny he earned for charity or used it to help the very old hospital he worked in despite being brought up in a very wealthy home. By the time Lucy had turned 11, he knew he wanted to be a doctor as he believed he had was it took to make a mark in the town of River Brookes. He used every ounce of free time he could and studied as many times of medicine and medical practices as he could in order to prepare himself for the doctor role he wished to fulfill. Doing so caused him to have an excelled knowledge of medicine and helped him get his medical license quicker. He was professional in almost every form of medical field. He later got a job as one of the head doctors in the New Hope Hospital. He cared so much for his patients and always put them first. He would adapt treatments as best as he could in order to keep patients calm. He would often talk them threw it whenever he could and did everything to show that they were going to be ok. Sometimes he even forgot to eat when treating patients. When he had been in the profession for several years, he started to notice how out of date the equipment was and that there was a need for repair but the hospital didn't have the funds for it as there was hardly any staff there as not a lot of people had the intelligence to become a doctor and several more were blocked with the problem of being far too sensitive when it came to seeing how the body worked, deeming them unsuitable for the medical field. So he held fundraisers and used his own money to update the hospital. He was beloved and was seen as an honest and trustworthy man. However, someone had a strong belief that deep down, he was poisoning people and killing them. That someone was the grandchild of one of Dr. Calpriums elderly patients. Lucy knew he could save the poor Mrs Eldwood, no matter how hard he tried and no matter how much he wanted to help her live on. She had just turned 109 the previous summer and was suffering from serious health issues. Mrs Eldwood made Lucy promise that once she started to go that he would not try to save her. He reluctantly agreed despite it being heavy on his heart. He knew it was best as despite how much he fought to keep patients alive, he didn't want her suffering anymore. Eventually, she passed away mid conversation with Lucy after she told him she was feeling so tired. He knew it was time and held her hand as he told her his goodbyes. Mrs Eldwoods grandson came hours after her passing and believed Lucy was to blame. After a bit of stalking, the grandson caught Lucy working in a lab and was mixing up some sort of solution. At the time, Lucy was also holding a fundraiser for a new children's hospital to be built as he found New Hope wasn't suitable or safe to house the few ill children that were there. The grandson believed Lucy was holding a type of poison he was injecting into his patients that caused them to perish under his care. Unfortunately, that was far from the truth. After about a year or two of work, the new children's hospital was built. A few towns folk helped Lucy install the new equipment and get everything set up inside. Soon everyone left as the job had been done, leaving Lucy alone inside. The grandson took the chance and caused the building to catch on fire, making sure Lucy got trapped inside. Despite his efforts of fighting, Lucy was crushed under the debris of the hospital in the entrance way. His two siblings Richard and Sunday unfortunately only made it in time to see him reach out for help before the hospital's roof collapsed. It was later discovered that the grandson was the one to cause the fire. The grandson held up a sample of the fluid he caught Lucy mixing and exclaimed that he put an end to Lucy's reign of terror and that he could now no longer poison any more patients. Infuriated, one of the other doctors that had been working with Lucy revealed that the strange fluid wasn't poison at all, but was a medication that Lucy had made that was helping people who had been trapped under falling rocks or under a vehicle to calm down and put them in a state where their breathing was drastically slowed down so it was easier to get them out, turning the grandson into a paranoid monster.

.......

Shall I tell more?

#creepypasta au #horror #oc #creepypasta

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adultswim2021 · 1 year

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Xavier: Renegade Angel #5: “Pet Siouxicide” | December 3, 2007 - 12:00AM | S01E05

This is a strong contender for best episode of season one. I actually remember sitting with my best friend/roommate and watching this, doing just the most MASSIVE laughs. We were probably all like “DAMN! That was a good one!”. It was 2007, We all talked like that… give me a freaking break!

In this episode, Xavier happens upon a pet shop owner who is in crisis. His shop is going under, despite his best efforts to make weird animals using genetic engineering. They all have funny, funny names, but it seems like stealing somehow to just list them here. I’ll highlight the last one: “a bag of pur”, which is just a brown lunch sack that has purring noises coming out of it. Very memorable, used the phrase on many a cat. Most of them got the reference.

This one is largely a parody of the Richard Pryor motion picture (in theaters now) The Toy, a movie that I’ve avoided because whenever I caught some on TV it always seemed, uh, a little too weird, if you know what I mean. Hey, that’s okay… coolsville, daddy-o. This episode has Xavier helping the the pet store man get out of his pet debt by offering himself as an expensive pet to a rich boy who gets everything he wants. Xavier flips the tables on him and causes him to become enlightened. The boy no longer believes that “pain is a myth invented by poor people who don’t want to work”. He now wants to “buy up all the suffering in the world and drown it like a kitten”.

This includes a memorable presentation about Emodynamics, a concept where the amount of joy you feel will directly cause that proportionate amount of pain elsewhere. “Joy can not be created or destroyed”. Very funny, slightly gruesome visuals in this. When they cut to the “deformed” cow and it just has like corny-ass clown shit on its face, mama mia, you know I gotta love it. These guys are like, so good at the precise amount of gruesome a comedy show should be. Like, just enough to be truly potent. They are scientists as much as they are craftsmen.

Xavier is such a lively, dense show that you forget sometimes that certain bits came from certain episodes. This one is sort of like that because it moves into a new story where the rich boy wants to make his father see the error of his ways by injecting him with indian blood extracted from an ancient indian burial ground, which will cause him to identify with the plight of the noble native American (just like Tom Loughlin before him). This causes the dad to greedily open an Indian casino.

Famous commercial reference: Xavier and the rich boy’s father re-enact some of the classic “I learned it from watching you!” PSA. Please! View it if you have not!

Eventually there is a show-down between blood indians and blood cowboys (from an ancient cowboy burial ground). I don’t really feel like elaborating on this plot point, sometimes this show can really disorient you. There was a line I’m forgetting that explains the insane logic of getting to this point. The cowboys are Muslim because their blood got tainted by oil reserves beneath the burial ground. Insanely funny and dicey joke. Watch this on HBOMax before they find out about it. Extremely funny episode.

EPHEMERA CORNER

youtube

#adult swim #adultswim2021 #xavier: renegade angel

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whatdoesshedotothem · 2 years

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Saturday 30 July 1836

7 40

12 1/2

no kiss much rain in the night and raining till 8 or after but fine now and F58° at 8 ½ - in the new cellar and with Wood till breakfast at 9 ¼ had Turner just before and paid his 2 little bills - out again about 10 ¼ with Wood and Jack righting up and then setting end stone into the hill and thus finishing out the lowmost line of rock - Matthew and Sam Booth and Richard and Benjamin at manure spreading till near 11 - then at the West-tower cellar stuff taking out and barrowing to below the cow house against the lime tree - John brought the lead cistern about 12 - came in at 12 ½ - with A- till 1 ¾ - Robert Schofield and Joseph Sharpe spreading manure yesterday and this morning? all of it well done today - from 1 50 to after 5 wrote a ½ sheet full and 1p. and 1 end of envelope to Lady Stuart de R- and 3pp. and under the seal of ½ sheet to Lady Stuart - wrote with rapidity and ease (smallish and closeish) and never wrote better letter to the former? very much obliged for the

SH:7/ML/E/19/0084

the trouble she had taken about my courier - prince Galitzins’ note very satisfactory - and of the 3 Italians 1 German and price G-‘s Swiss, I inclined to the latter -‘I want a man who will be useful and not too difficult to manage - more or less difficult all these people are, till they clearly understood who is to be master - may I ask you to do me a very great favour? I sigh over asking you to take so much trouble - but I hope that you yourself may have an interest in it, and that you and dear Louisa may somehow benefit - will you look at the man? and if you would take him, supposing you in want of such a servant, I am sure I should - and then he had best write and let me know what wages he asks, and if it will suit him to be engaged from the 1st of November’ - would not take the courier that was with Mrs. Frankland Lewis’ after what Lady Gordon says of him ‘tho’ perhaps it is possible that Lady Gordon might have been better served had she held the reins of government a little tighter?’ mention having had a proper sort of letter from a German of the name of Fischer now with the duchess of St. Albans - will be at liberty in 6 weeks - his letter franked by the duke of Bucclugh [Buccleuch] with whom he had travelled twice - perhaps he may be too great a man - mentioned to me by the Dover Wright’s hotel commissionaire Mr. Birmingham - ‘alas! the want of a courier is not all - I am looking out for a Mrs. Barker - a widow, Mrs. Fowles, 10 Princes street Cavendish square, professes to know everything - asks 40 guineas a year, and lived last with a Mrs. Pulteney of 30 Grosvenor Place, and Northwood Park Hants - If your admirable Mrs. Barker would see her, she would do me a great service, and I should be satisfied whether it was worthwhile to inquire Mrs. Fowles’s character or not - I am sure I have written you a very tiresome letter - my aunt seems to rally again - Poor dear Lady Stuart! I trust she does not suffer a tenth part as much - I long to see all in order, and shall be thankful to be able to arrange some plan for the winter - could you take rest, and could Louisa withstand the admiration and gaieties of London for one Semestre divided as you please between Rome and Naples? - you would be pleased with Rotterdam, and comfortable at the Hotel des Pays Bas, and might see all that is worth seeing of Holland, and the Rhine Scenery, without being bankrupt in time or money - your Scotch travellers will be delighted with your tour - But I own the charm of ‘something more uncommon’ will Louis Philippe reign 5 years longer? is it possible that we may see a deputation from Paris offer the crown to the duke of Bordeaux at Gratz? would there be anything more extraordinary in this than the glories of the trois jours? Adieu, dear Lady Stuart, and believe me always very truly yours A. Lister’ - wrote on one of the ends ‘Perhaps you will be so good as allow Mrs. Barker to let Mrs. Fowles know at what hour she had best call to be looked at and questioned as to her abilities in cookery and confectionery - the Swiss lived with a Mrs. Letita Stuart who travelled about to see her royal friends at 17 courts - lady S- de R- did not mean to draw any parallel between us - I answered - ‘I do not aspire to parallelism - Immured amid the old walls, and hid amid the high hills and dark shades of Shibden, the sun of royalty can hardly shine on me’ - my letter to lady S- the same in substance - selfish to grieve she had returned to her beautiful Lodge - or should have asked to look at the Swiss and to have advised me about Mrs. Fowles - my aunt better - persuaded the dampness of our atmosphere not good for her - she would go abroad again but impossible to move her - think I shall not be kept here much beyond Xmas - no objection to engage a courier from the 1st of November - shall be delighted to see Lady S- count upon see Vere in passing - Mr. Husband came about 5 ½ about the HIpperholme quarry - told him to see Mrs. Wadsworth’s steward Mr. Matthew Naylor, and ask him if he thought I might venture to being getting the stone - Booth says Richard and Benjamin not fit for getting stone - B- and Mr. Husband to manage the business between them - out till 6 ½ - then sealed and put into the bag my letter to ‘The lady Stuart de Rothesay’ and to ‘the honourable Lady Stuart’ undercover to Lord Stuart de R- 4 Carlton house terrace and wrote also and sent letter (note) to Mrs. Fowles to say I had received her letter last night and written to a friend in London respecting her before determining to apply to Mrs. Pulteney - to ‘Mrs. Fowles 10 Princes street Cavendish square London post paid’ dinner at 7 5 - coffee - A- and I out (in the walk) from 8 40 for 40 minutes - then A- did her French - 20 minutes with my aunt till 10 5 - then read the paper and (upstairs) wrote all but the 1st 7 lines of today till 11 35 - some heavyish showers during the morning and till about 2 - afterwards fine - F48° now at 11 35 pm

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