#Have I even posted about William on this account before???? probably not

[rosewaterconley]

I solved a mystery that only I care about lol

ok so I have no clue what I'm doing and social media terrifies me. I will probably never touch this account again. why did I have to follow 3 algorithm-selected accounts to get into this website? I can actually name 3 people I'd want to follow on here and it's none of the people your fucking robot told me to follow. but hey, I feel like I have to post it here rather than my blogspot since nobody in the world actually uses blogspot and I want people to see this!

so anyway, there's this band out of the city of Milwaukee called Hero of a Hundred Fights. they dropped a couple CDs in the early 2000s and seem to have broken up, though all their members have been in bands since. that'll be important a little later. for now, Hero of a Hundred Fights are important to me on 2 levels:

I'm a Wisconsinite who has a tiny bit of an obsession with local history and art and really fuck with their weird mathy little corner of the 2000s hardcore scene

I'm a Faction Paradox fan and their 2001 EP The Remote, The Cold contains numerous references to the series! if you've heard of this EP before, it was probably in the context of some "music that references Faction Paradox" list or another

about #2... see, everyone already knows that track 2 is called Faction Paradox and track 3 is called The Celestis. we've all long since put together that the title is a reference to Lawrence Miles' Interference. but what about the lyrics? unfortunately, we don't know. they're not online, and the vocals are good, mind, but rather incoherent.

well, we didn't know. until I ordered a CD copy for like $8 lol. that's all it took! so here you go, the lyrics booklet plus some of the other artwork featured on the CD. artist Nick Slough did a great job on this art and it's a shame only the cover is widely available online (though that's hardly a problem unique to the physical version of this one album). turns out, this is some kinda concept album based on the Miles novel Interference. cool! really love the lyrics on Rope especially. "I need your blood to get this vessel running" and "my life was in your hands, I cut them off and now they're mine" are both raw as hell.

the cover art is pretty interesting. this album was recorded in 2000, released in 2001. the entire creative process occurred before the first standalone Faction Paradox release, The Book of the War. this means the album is entirely Doctor Who-based, not based on the FP series itself. it also means, if we assume the humanoid characters on the art are supposed to be the Remote, that this is the first-ever professional art depicting them!

disclaimer: the booklet lyrics don't 100% match up with what's said in the songs! it's mostly accurate but unfortunately there are some sections missing, some repeated bits that are only written once et al. that's all par for the course but I figured I'd mention it - especially in the case anybody wants to use this to transcribe the lyrics on Genius or some other site like that.

and while we're here, Hero 100 member William Zientara has been in a billion different bands, and I think he's probably the most responsible for the Doctor Who theme on this album. See, he was also in a short-lived band called Managara - named after a Doctor Who tie-in novel so obscure even I, owner of a complete set of Virgin New Adventures who spends my work breaks combing through digital copies of old fanzines, have only ever heard it discussed a handful of times. one of their songs is called Happiness Patrol. more recently, in 2021, he was in the band Fuiguirnet, who have a song called What Grows From the Seeds of Doom! which means Zientara has been randomly tossing Doctor Who references into songs from at least three different bands for twenty years!

so uhh without any further rambling here's the lyrics and art:

[dani-ya-dig]

OKAY I FINALLY HAVE TIME SO ITS TIME FOR DANI TO FINALLY RANT ABOUT THE SAM AUDIO!!!

Written as I’m listening to the audio again so I don’t forgor.

I think it’s been out long enough to avoid spoiler but I’m gonna put the cut just because this post is probably gonna be really long.

The beginning of this audio scares the shit out of me not matter how many times I listen to, like he is fucking ZOOMING. At least this time he has a reason to be zipping all over the place. Unlike in his “talking about the future” audio where that motherfucker used vamp speed up the stairs for no goddamn reason

Also I appreciate the fact that Darlin ran into Sam, fully shifted. They hit him first and only then were like “oh yeah I’m a giant wolf rn”.

CHRIST DARLIN! THE MAN JUST SHOWED UP LET HIM BREATHE BEFORE YOU JUMP HIM

Ugh love me a Sam reverse comfort audio. This is DELICIOUS

Circling back to Sam’s tendency to bury his emotions in the moment, and only allowing himself to feel them when he is in a safe space (cough cough Darlin)

“I guess that says a lot about what family is to me” STOPPPPPPP

“Apparently I’ve got a knack for landing myself in shit. And then sticking around long enough to get convinced it’s all I deserve” IM ACTUALLY FUCKING CRYING I HATE IT HERE. HE IS ME FR.

“I. Am not. A Solaire” DAMN RIGHT SAMMY! GET HIS ASS!

Sam kind danced around this part but I noticed it immediately. The way he kind of paused when he talked about William putting giving him a house as a form of trying to make himself more favorable to Sam. Sam worded it as him favoring stability and needing that. But also like… one thing that Sam talks about repeatedly in his playlist is how important the idea of home is to him. And William gives him a house… an attempt at giving him a home, so that the “home” is inherently tied to him in Sam’s mind.

I know it was well intentioned on William’s part but god it feels fucking grimy nonetheless

Sam might not think that William is and evil mustache twirling villain, but I do /j

Real footage of William Solaire rn

“I’m a healer. Not was. Am.” YES THE FUCK YOU ARE SAM!

No because actually Sam is so right. He IS still good. He CAN still help. I’m not 100% on the lord of vampire or how difficult it would be for a vampire of Sam’s age to externalize magic. But it’s pretty damn impressive that he can do what he can do even after his core was entirely replaced. He must have been a STRONG like super strong freelancer for that much of his powers to remain after his turning. But it’s also not just healing magic he can still manage even though that definitely would have been his specialty and the type of magic he studied the most. The other types of magic we have heard of him doing are also cleaning magic and earth elemental magic (WHICH YO???). Like that’s impressive imo.

Also we have all talked about Sam joining Shaw Security on night shift at this point. BUT!!! After Sam talked about how he wanted to be a healer still but only wasn’t because that wasn’t what the house needed from him. I hope that he gets hired on as Shaw Security’s professional healer <33

I don’t know how viable that would be. But I think it could work. I don’t imagine he would be patching up multiple huge injuries everyday so it could 100% work!! GUYS I SWEAR PLEA–

(Erik if you’re spying through your secret tumblr account give me what I want)

Sam will never have to go to another summit again 🤞

NO ONE WILL PUT THAT MAN IN A SUIT AGAIN!! HE IS FREE!

Sam and Darlin are so in love with each other. They deserve to be happy, just for a little bit. I need a moving audio with them. Them just packing up their shit <33

Okay did I love this video. Yes! It was Sam, so like that’s bound to happen with me lmao. But also like it was just nice. I enjoyed it. I hope Sam gets to find more of who he is outside of the house.

But also because my hyperfixated menace ass can’t keep my nose out of spoiler I KNOW THAT SAM BITES DARLIN IN THE BA AND I JUST COSSBDKDBX

Look I get why it happened logistically. It’s been a long time coming, and now that Sam’s out of the house of Solaire, they aren’t going to be facilitating his need for blood bags anymore. So he is gonna need to feed on something. It makes sense.

But I wish that decision like that regarding trauma Sam has around his turning would stop being made in the aftermath of very emotional moments. Like when he decided he was ready to go further with Darlin, I wish it would have come from a place of “Ive worked through everything that happened to me, and I love you, so I really want to take this next step” instead of “I’ve seen so many people die, and I have been reminded how fragile life is, and I am terrified of the thought of not getting to do this”.

Idk maybe it’s just me, but things like that don’t feel like decisions that should be made when you feel like life is crumbling down around you??

Also it brings up the logistical issue of, Erik didn’t explain that to the non-patreon listeners. So like… if it gets brought up in future audios a lot of people are probably gonna be a little confused, since I only know because I snoop through Sam spoilers.

Eh. But all in all, live laugh love Sam Collins and stay livin la vida loca I guess

[codelyokooutofcontext]

Today marks the one year anniversary of this blog's first post!

One year ago today, I acted on a whim and made a new blog to post moments from this show that, without context, look absolutely insane. I thought it was funny, my friends thought it was funny, but I didn't really have any big plans. I thought "I'll keep this around for a little bit and then probably drop it". Like I usually do with most projects of this nature.

If you'd told me I'd still be here a year later, I wouldn't have believed you. I especially wouldn't have believed you if you told me how many followers this account would amass in that time period. Honestly even being here now and seeing all of it, it's still a little hard to believe.

Thank you all for supporting this ridiculous little blog. It means a lot.

And after all this time, perhaps it's time for a proper introduction.

Hi, I'm YoshiStack! I've been utterly obsessed with this show since I was 4 years old and I've been involved in the fandom in some capacity since I was 13. Given that I'm about to turn 24 here in a little over a month, you could say I've been here for awhile!

Aside from this blog and the other few video edits I've done, my main contribution to fannish materials is fanfiction! I mostly write gen work about the friendship between the characters, as that's always been one of my favorite parts about the show and characters. You can find my CL work (and other oddities too if you're feeling adventurous) on Ao3 also under the name YoshiStack.

I'm also on YouTube! Right now I'm wrapping up a playthrough of the original Super Mario RPG before the remake releases and in the middle of a playthrough of a childhood game of mine, Thrillville: Off The Rails. I'm still a novice when it comes to recording stuff, but I'm having a lot of fun doing it and it'd mean the world to me if you checked it out.

(And as an aside: if you have audio or video editing you need done, hit me up either on here or the email I have listed on youtube! We'll see if we can work something out!)

Zero obligation to check out either of those ventures, but it'd mean a lot to me if you did!

Now here's some answers to some basic questions for CL and this blog that you may or may not have wondered about:

Favorite Character: Definitely Aelita! I love her arc! Her development from this character the others feel very protective over to ultimate sass master is so fun to watch

Favorite Episode: Oh that's so hard. But If I had to pick just a few...[REDACTED UNTIL POLLS CONCLUDE]

Spoilsport. Favorite season then?: Oh this one is easy! Season 2 for sure! It does a great job introducing all the new elements you need to know about in the beginning of it (Franz Hopper, William, Sector 5, etc) and has well done pay off at the end. And the stuff in the middle is just downright fun! A well executed season all around

Favorite Sector: Prooooobably forest? Something about all the trees is fun to me. Honestly I like most of the sector though. Minus desert. Too much desert in S1

Favorite Monster: I used to be all about the Bloks, but after running this blog for a year now I've gained an appreciation for the comedy that the Tarantulas often pull off. From well timed devirtualizations to killing one of its buddies with their own lasers, they're unintentionally really funny!

Favorite XANA Attack: I unironically love the food monster. Also the rat army. It's absolutely horrifying but pulled off so well

Favorite relationship: Ulrich and Aelita all the way man. Platonically I mean, their friendship is so underrated in the show itself but the few times they get to interact they're just gold (I am Jerlita trash too if you want to know more in that kind of relationship sense)

How do you pick out of context moments?: Honestly most of the time I just pick a random few episodes and skim through until I find something. Sometimes I'll have a particular moment in mind, but sometimes the funniest clips come from me just mindlessly looking through some episodes

Will you ever do Evolution out of context?: I considered using a clip from it for April Fools Day but I got lazy and never got around to it lol. Aside from that idea though, I don't know Evolution well enough to pulls clips from it, and I'm just not super interested in doing so at the moment. If anyone else reading this though has a burning desire though then you absolutely have my blessing (not that you need it obviously)

What do you think about the idea of the show possibly getting a continuation?: So I’ve always been pretty set in my thought that the show doesn’t really need a continuation. While more backstory on Project Carthage would be cool, it never really mattered to the Lyoko Warriors in the end, and the idea of bringing XANA back after they fought so hard to bring it down always felt cheap to me. They had their fight, they won, let them move on in peace.

That being said, the idea of the brains largely responsible for the original show having a genuine interest in continuing does have me at least a little intrigued. It’s way too soon to say whether or not anything will come from that interest of course—TV is a complicated thing and interest from creators alone isn’t enough to make it happen. But if nothing else, it’s nice to know that even all these years later, there’s still interest in the show and these characters from them.

How long will this blog be around?: Honestly I have no idea! I never thought I'd make it this far! I have no plans on stopping any time soon at least—there's tons of episodes I haven't even touched for out of context moments, so I'm not running out of material any time soon!

For now I’m just going to letting things run their course naturally and enjoy the ride.

That’s all I can think of to put here, but my askbox is always open for more questions!

Thank you all once again for your support for this year. I hope you'll join me going into our next one and beyond.

Here's to another year out of context!

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

FYI: Funding of the duo while royals

The financial year for the Sovereign Grant is 1 April to 31 March. The Sovereign Grant is funded from the income, after operating expenditure*, from Crown Estates (all of the income is given to the government, and the government then allocates a percentage, about 25%, to the sovereign to spend on funding the official work of the monarchy). The duo announced their engagement in November and got married in May. So, for 4 months, the monarchy was saddled with funding TBW from a budget that had not allocated any funds for her. However, her demands, via hapless, for bodyguards and transport (she was already living free from paying rent on a Crown Estate long before the engagement) preceded the engagement, and once she got the ring on her finger, she expected to have free rein to spend and spend (even once they could accommodate her with funds from the Sovereign Grant, the SG did not expand so every penny she spent took money 'away' from other working royals). This is where the ridiculous story about 'no money for her' comes from.

Charles did have income from the Duchy of Cornwall. I am not sure what the dates for the financial year are, but it would probably be a similar story other than that this income was considerable and Charles could allocate the funds as he wished among himself, his wife, and his sons. I suspect that it is these funds that the duo thought they should have unbridled access to, and when Charles tried to put the brakes on, offence was taken. They must now be filled with bitter resentment that all that income goes to William. Charles knew this would happen one day and the duo would become an Edward and Sophie (but with a much less grand home). The duo probably thought short term and wanted to loot as much as they could while they could.

They ran off to Canada in about November, did some brief appearances in January and then effectively were gone. But the SG funded them until 31 March. They effectively were given a generous 4-month paid holiday. As for Charles funding them from the Duchy of Cornwall, they were not entitled to any funding after Megxit was officially announced, but they got full funding from Charles up until then, when they were on 'paid leave' living for free in Canada with bodyguards paid for by the British public ... It also seems that Charles dipped into his personal wealth and gave them a large sum at the time of Megxit as well, sort of as a farewell gift:

"them "a substantial sum" to support their transition to financial independence.

Duchy of Cornwall accounts show that the couple - along with Prince William and Catherine - received £4.5m between April and June 2020.

"That funding [then] ceased," according to a spokesman.

From NuttyFlavor Blog

[russilton]

I always wanted to see more Val & George their dynamic is so interesting to meee . We need more of them

YEAHHHH fuck I ADORE Val and George and their fans are usually very polarised groups so you don’t tend to see much talk about them- but they are deep and compelling to ME and that alone means I will ramble about them for hours.

I mean George has been with Mercedes as long as Valtteri- that’s not hyperbole, George was in the garage on the night of AD 2016 (there is a reason he doesnt like Nico and if y’all keep saying he should use Nico as a mentor im going to start slapping heads), and was signed as merc’s official junior in 2017 at the same time as Val became Merc’s second driver- while George’s first few years were obviously split between his junior catagory work and becoming more and more integrated into mercs testing structure and engineering meetings- he was there, the whole time, to witness Val doing what he dreamed of some day, and it gave him some small chance follow an older drivers lead in settling into such an imposing team.

In every way Val was George’s unintentional role model, Williams to Merc - but you would struggle to hear him admit it because they spent 2021 practically at each others throats for the seat george would kill for and Val wasn’t even sure he wanted anymore… but George is still the same guy who would make posts on Instagram just to congratulate Val on getting re-signed. Yes Lewis was who George idolised, but Val was within reach, and they acted like siblings. Siblings in the true, struggle to get along but would kill for each other way that strict parenting cultures.

Imola is a prime example to me, it’s why so many people think they hate each other- fair enough but what I see instead is proof of that bond in its most strained state- George made a move that was risky and needed the other driver not to react the way Val did- he TRUSTED Val not to do that to him- but George didn’t account for the rain and the added difficulty and that’s what made them collide. I genuinely think that’s why George is so much angrier than normal- to him its not JUST him being taken out of a chance to show up Val (though it is also that, George isn’t a saint and all drivers are ego monsters), it was that Val reacted in a way he hadn’t accounted for and George felt betrayed and stupid for it. That’s why he slaps at Val after let’s remember, checking valtteri was okay. He checks on Val and when he gets the okay confirmation, the anger bubbles over and he slaps out like a child.

It’s petty, childish and dumb, but that’s what siblings are. They squabbled, George mouthed off, got a smack from his psuedo parent, and went to apologise- which Val promptly left on read and ignored and they went back to working.

The fight for the merc seat had them praying for each others downfall that year, but by the next, they were finding each other in drivers parades to chat, repairing that conversational lapse, and staring after Lewis together. Val had the unique experience of being teammates with The Lewis Hamilton and George clearly looked to him slightly on how to do this right, how to be a good teammate. Off track they were better to each other (it probably helped Val that George got humbled a couple times and reined himself in) and on track… I’ve talked about this before but George used to drive against Val differently to anyone other than maybe max but for whole different reasons- with Val it was about beating someone he could tease, but having the trust that Val would pull it off if he failed even after imola. I STILL think about Georges failed overtake in Singapore 22 when he breaks late and misses the corner trying to overtake val, and val just swerves round him. It was such a dumbass move! But thats George and Val!

On track George is desperate to be a little better, to show hes just as good as him, and off track he still seeks him out as a friend. George wants to beat val because he does at his core admire him- and thats why I fucking love them.

[totowlff]

chapter thirty-three — take my breath

➝ is there a better birthday present than love?

➝ word count: 5,6k

➝ warnings: smut

➝ author’s notes: it took longer than it should have, but i think there's nothing more appropriate than posting the chapter about liesl's birthday on her birthday. enjoy!

FEBRUARY, 2017

Sitting in the Mercedes C-Class parked in the driveway, Elisabeth was silent, her head resting on the steering wheel. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and did her best to hold back the tears that felt inevitable. 

That day had been shit.

Pre-season had been a real headache. Preparations for the launch of the W08, the car of that season, were in full swing, she hadn't had a day off. To top it all off, the hasty negotiations with Valtteri to take over for Nico, who had decided to retire suddenly, without even letting Toto or Niki know, had taken up her limited time and patience, as Williams were not feeling overly charitable with Mercedes trying to recruit one of their contracted drivers.

They only managed to confirm the Finn just over a month before pre-season testing began. It took a few hours of talking with Sir Frank Williams and his daughter, Claire, for the team to release Valtteri. Elisabeth was sure that the affection they had for Toto, from when he was still an investor in the team, played a big role in the success of the negotiation.

However, solving that problem only brought on more. With a new set of regulations or that year, less than a fifth of the car was the same as the previous year. This meant hours of reviewing accounting, vendor budgets, employee rosters, and wind tunnel hours. By the end of each day, Elisabeth felt completely drained, with only enough strength to crawl into bed and sleep.

That Saturday was no different.

Elisabeth had woken up early, gotten ready, had a cup of espresso, and gone to the factory. As much as she wanted Toto's company, she didn't want to wake him. He was working just as much as she was — probably more. Rare were the nights when he didn't spend a few more hours at his home office, or even at the factory, holding meetings with sponsors. That had been the case from the night before. He’d been up late, talking with Petronas' Malaysia-based technical directors about the new fluids being developed for that year.

She had a busy morning, occupied almost entirely with a meeting to present the logistical plan designed for the season. During the afternoon, Elisabeth spoke with the marketing team about the strategies for the W08 launch. She’d also given a factory tour to Mark McLaughlin, one of Qualcomm's directors. After saying goodbye to the American and returning to her office, Elisabeth found a plate with a small chocolate cupcake, as well as a card that read “Happy Birthday, Elisabeth”, along with a picture of her holding one of the giant silver stars that the team used in celebrations.

It was her birthday.

She’d forgotten her own birthday.

— Fuck — she muttered, lifting her head from the steering wheel. Thinking about the messages she’d gotten earlier and ignored - from her parents, Lukas, and Claire, Elisabeth felt her heart tighten inside her chest. She always spent her birthday with her family in Vienna, having dinner at an Italian restaurant, reminiscing about their time in Modena. But that year, she had been too busy to even think about celebrating one more trip around the sun.

She picked up her cell phone that was lying on top of the passenger seat next to her purse, she stared at the lock screen. It was a picture of Toto, Ben, and Rosi, smiling for the camera as they posed in front of Ben’s birthday cake. Staring into Toto’s face, Elisabeth couldn't help but feel a twinge in her chest. Despite numerous congratulatory messages, there was nothing from him. The only time they had spoken that day, on the phone, was during lunch, when he told her that he would not be going to the factory in the afternoon.

“Did he forget it too?”, she wondered, uncertain. Of all of Toto’s strengths, memory was not one of them, after all. He tended to forget simple things, like dinners and meetings. She was always the one to remind him of those things. Him forgetting her birthday would not be out of the norm, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

In fact, knowing that her birthday was just another day on Toto's calendar made her heart ache even more.

Resigned, Elisabeth took the bag that was on the seat next to her and got out of the car, walking slowly towards the entrance hall, distracted by the notification that had just arrived on her phone. Typing a quick response to a question from Alison, from the Human Resources team, she walked into the living room, pausing to download an attachment from the message.

Until she heard someone clear their throat.

Lifting her head, Elisabeth found Toto standing there, holding a bouquet of lilies and white roses, an anxious smile on her lips. Her eyes flickering between the flowers and his face, she was visibly confused.

— What is this?

He looked at the bouquet, then at her.

— They're flowers, Liesl.

— Why?

Toto blinked.

— Today is your birthday. Or… did I get the date wrong?

Elisabeth gave a shy little smile.

— No, it's today.

— Oh, good — he smiled, approaching her — So, today is your birthday. And a special day like this deserves celebration.

Toto handed the flowers to her, and she felt her eyes fill with tears as she looked at them, noticing that there was a card placed between the roses and the lilies.

— Do you want to see the card? 

— Yes — she whispered.

Removing the envelope nestled in the middle of the bouquet, Toto opened it and withdrew a small note, written in his elegant handwriting.

— Read it to me — he asked.

Elisabeth cleared her throat to read. 

— “You know I don't like birthdays. I believe you deserve to be celebrated everyday. But if there's ever an ideal time to show you how much I appreciate you, it's today. Happy birthday, Liesl. I love you. From... your Toto”.

His name came out as a whisper from her lips, which were trembling, tears streaming down her cheeks. Elisabeth often felt unworthy of Toto's love. She saw herself as a difficult person with a lot of complexities. Sometimes, she even felt like she was broken in some way. However, that side of her had never scared him. After all, as Toto himself said, he was also broken, in a way. Even with that negative assessment, Elisabeth had been the one to fix him. He was determined to be the one to fix her, too.

Kissing her forehead, Toto smiled.

— You like it?

— I love it, honey — she replied, wrapping her free arm in a tight hug, her face buried in his chest. Inhaling his scent, Elisabeth felt her body relax. She was home.

A few seconds later, Toto lightly squeezed her waist, as a signal for her to lift her head.

— It's not just that, Liesl.

— What do you mean?

— I prepared the bathtub for you to take a relaxing bath. I put those bath salts you like in the water, the lemongrass-scented ones. Well, that's what I think you like, since every time I get in the tub with you, your skin smells like lemongrass.

Elisabeth smiled.

— Yes, it's lemongrass. But, you know you didn't have to do all of this, right?

— I didn't have to, but I wanted to. Especially after a busy day like today. As soon as you’re done with your bath, we're going to eat the pizzas I ordered from Gino's.

Her eyes sparkled. She loved the pizza from Gino's, a small restaurant in the center of Oxford. They were the closest thing to what she ate as a kid in Modena.

— Americana and Margherita? — Elisabeth asked, feeling her stomach rumble just thinking about the slices full of cheese and spicy salami.

— Of course, as usual. Now go upstairs and relax. I'll call you when they arrive, okay?

She nodded, before receiving a peck and having the flowers removed from her hands., Elisabeth went upstairs to the second floor, going quietly to their room. As she entered the bathroom, she smelled a distinct scent of vanilla in the air. It was soft and sweet, almost cozy. When she got to the bathroom, she discovered the source of the smell — a scented candle that was lit on top of the counter. Staring at the flame for a few seconds, Elisabeth smiled.

“He thought of everything”, she thought, as she undressed and tied up her hair so it wouldn't get wet.

As soon as she sat in the bathtub, with its warm, lemongrass-scented water, Elisabeth felt her body relax. The bathroom was silent, almost as if it were enveloped in a bubble of serenity and peace. It had been a long time since the last time she had felt like this.

Elisabeth's life after joining the Mercedes operation had become complete chaos. Her time was filled with trips, races and engagements. It was a hard, inconsistent and particularly tiring routine, which not only affected her, but also her relationships with friends and family.

But it was during moments like this that she was grateful to have Toto to share the madness with. He was more than just a boyfriend or sexual partner, he was her best friend. The two of them understood, supported, and cared for each other. Each was the other's home, as Toto liked to say. She was sure of it every time she laid down in bed with him, snuggled in his arms, sleeping to the quiet beat of his heart.

With her eyes still closed, Elisabeth heard footsteps coming from the bedroom to the bathroom. She had no idea how long she had been there, but she could stay there for the rest of her life, that bathtub was so good.

— Liesl?

She opened her eyes and looked to the side to find Toto standing beside her, a smile on his lips.

— Yes?

— Is everything okay?

— Yeah, everything is great.

He crouched down beside her, leaning on the edge of the tub.

— Is your bath okay? Would you like anything? 

— I'd love for you to come in with me — she whispered, a small smile on her face. Toto returned the smile, bringing a hand to her cheek and stroking the damp skin.

— I'd like that too, baby, but that would mean letting the pizza get cold downstairs, and if I know you, you wouldn't eat it cold.

— Oh, is dinner here?

— Yes, it’s downstairs, waiting for us. Are you coming?

— Of course — she replied, leaning on the edge of the tub to lift herself out of the water. As soon as Elisabeth stepped onto the rug, Toto handed her a towel to dry off, before leaving the bathroom and asking her what she wanted to wear. A few minutes later, the two of them went downstairs together, hand in hand, with her wearing one of his old T-shirts and baggy pajama pants, towards the kitchen, where the table was meticulously prepared, with the flowers Toto had given her decorating the environment.

Between laughs, sips of wine and stories of other disastrous birthday parties, the two ate a few slices of pizza apiece. However, Elisabeth couldn't help noticing that Toto looked a little uneasy, especially when the two of them were silent. “He's hiding something”, she thought, as he got up to take the dishes to the sink.

With everything organized and the two of them in the living room drinking what was left of the wine in the bottle, she stared at Toto for a few seconds.

— Are you okay, my love?

— Yes, I’m perfect. Why the question?

— You seem… Uneasy. Like you’re anxious.

He looked at her for a few seconds before smiling.

— I'm thinking about your present.

Elisabeth pressed her lips together, serious.

— My present? Toto, you know that…

— I don't need to give you anything, I know — he cut her off — But I want to, Liesl.

— Torger — she muttered seriously.

— Come with me, baby — Toto whispered, getting up from the sofa and placing his glass of wine on the coffee table. Placing her own glass next to his, Elisabeth felt his hand wrap around hers, leading her through the house.

  She just didn't know what to expect from Toto, especially on an occasion when she knew it was no use telling him he didn't need to give her a gift. The team principal always made a point of spoiling her with something of exorbitant value, but that would barely tickle his bank account.

“You deserve the whole world, Liesl”, he always told her, as soon as she asserted that she didn't deserve to be spoiled like that. And Elisabeth knew that Toto would be able to deliver it into her hand if she wanted to. All she had to do was ask.

He led her up the stairs to their bedroom, holding her fingers gently. With her heart racing, she felt the anxiety rising within her. The two entered the suite in silence, hand in hand. Leading her towards the bed, he looked down at her with a smirk.

— Baby, can you sit on the bed for me?

She let go of Toto's hand and walked over to the mattress, settling down on it. However, instead of approaching her, he went to the mirrored closet doors and slid them open, entering the cubicle. In the silence of the room, Elisabeth felt her pulse roaring louder and louder in her ears, tension building in her muscles.

“What the hell is he up to?”, she wondered.

A few moments later, he emerged again with a small white bag in his hand. Slowly approaching her, Toto reached out, handing the package to her. As she looked at it more closely, she noticed that there was a letter ‘F’ printed on the surface, as well as the words ‘Fleur du Mal’. “What kind of store is that?”, Elisabeth wondered, staring at the bag in silence.

— What is it? — she asked, looking up at him.

— Open it — Toto just said.

Tearing off the seal, Elisabeth opened the bag and reached inside, pulling out a long piece of black satin, with something embroidered on it. Running her thumb over the fabric, she looked up.

— A piece of cloth?

Toto smiled.

— Not just any piece of cloth.

— No?

— It's a blindfold.

Elisabeth felt a lurch in her stomach.

— When I was looking for your gift, I happened to come across an article that I thought was interesting…

— An article?

— Yeah. About female pleasure.

She raised an eyebrow, feeling her heart beat harder in her chest.

— Female pleasure — Elisabeth repeated.

— Yes — he continued, taking the blindfold from her hands — I've read that many men don't know when a woman has an orgasm. That they don't know exactly what their partners like in bed. In general, there’s a… gap.

— But you’ve made me come before… so many times  — she replied softly, trying not to blush. 

A smug smile appeared on his face.

— Yes. And I know exactly when you're having an orgasm, so I don't think I'm part of that statistic. But, reading that article, I felt like… I could learn more.

She blinked.

— So I started researching more about how to improve, how to make our intimacy even more — he paused, winding the silken sash around his hand — pleasurable.

— Why? — Elisabeth asked quietly.

He smiled.

— Because your pleasure gives me pleasure, Liesl. In fact, making you come is more pleasurable to me than anything else. Watching you orgasm and knowing I'm the one who made you feel that way is… Wonderful. Hearing the sounds you make, feeling your muscles tense under my hands, the taste of your come… That turns me on more than anything. And I wanted to make it even better for you. And I found that one way to do that is by using… different things.

— You mean… toys? — she asked directly.

— Not necessarily — Toto replied, removing the cloth that had wrapped around his hand — There are many possibilities we can explore aside from that. Although, the idea of watching you squirm in pleasure while I use one on you seems tempting.

Heat rose in Elisabeth's cheeks.

— The point is, your birthday present isn't a thing, or an object. It's an experience. Something good, relaxing — he approached, bringing one of his hands to her cheek — In fact, you're already living that experience. I prepared the environment, bought the flowers, organized dinner and the bath, everything for you to feel like you deserve.

— Like I deserve...

— Good. Relaxed. Happy — he replied in a low voice, his thumb brushing her skin, his eyes locked with hers. She felt like she was being hypnotized — Now I want to make you feel even better. But, I need you to want it.

— Want…

— Do you want it, Elisabeth?

— Want what? — she asked, as if she had just woken up from a trance. Toto leaned in front of her, resting his hands on the mattress beside her thighs. He wasn't even touching her, but it felt like his fingers were burning her skin, the tingling in her belly almost unbearable.

— Do you want your gift?

— My gift?

— Do you want to have the most pleasurable night of your life, Elisabeth?

She swallowed hard.

The offer was tempting.

With the words stuck in her throat, Elisabeth just nodded her head. A shadow of a smile appeared on Toto's face.

— Words, baby. I want to hear from you.

— Yes — she whispered — I do.

A smile crept onto his face as his brown eyes seemed to darken further. Taking one of her hands, Toto lifted his torso and, pulling gently, he got Elisabeth back to her feet, not without difficulty, as her legs felt like they were made of jelly. When she managed to regain her balance, she looked at him, who was watching her curiously.

— For starters, I need you to take off your clothes.

Automatically, she brought her hands up to the shirt she was wearing, pulling it over her head carelessly. Then, she slid her pajama bottoms down her legs. With her clothes  thrown into a corner, Elisabeth put her arms at her sides, the cold air making her skin prickle. Then, she looked up at Toto, who was staring at her with a smile at the corner of his mouth.

— I meant.. all of your clothes, Liesl — he said, his voice low.

Glancing down, she found his finger gliding gently across the elastic of the panties she was wearing. They were just basic white panties, far from the sexiest pair she owned. But Toto didn't care. He had never cared about what she was wearing when they were going to have sex, whether or not she was wearing luxurious lingerie or comfortable cotton panties, as long as when she took them off, her pussy was there, wet and ready for him to do whatever he desired. 

— Take it off for me — Elisabeth whispered.

Toto tilted his head, looking at her.

— I'd love to, Liesl, but tonight I'm in control — he said, in a serious tone — And you are the one taking your panties off.

She pressed her lips together, trying to ignore the heat coursing through her skin.

— As you wish, Mr. Wolff.

Sliding the panties down her legs, Elisabeth stifled a gasp as cool air made contact with the wetness between her thighs. After kicking the garment to the corner along with the T-shirt and pants, she found herself naked in front of Toto. His eyes roamed over her skin with curiosity, which made her desire grow.

However, that wasn’t the only thing exciting her. The stark contrast between the two of them made Elisabeth's anticipation ever more present. He was still fully dressed while she was completely naked. It was a clear game of power and control, and it was all new to her. After all, Toto had never been the dominating type, and she wasn’t very good at being submissive — she just didn’t have the personality for it.

At that moment, naked and at Toto’s disposal to do whatever he wanted with her body, she didn't feel vulnerable or fragile, as Elisabeth thought she would if she was ever in this situation. To her surprise, she felt confident. Powerful. Beautiful.

— Lie on your back for me — Toto finally said, after a few seconds of silence. She obeyed almost immediately, facing the bed. Then Elisabeth felt him approach — Close your eyes, Liesl.

Again she obeyed, feeling the silk of the black cloth he held in his hand slide across her face, stopping right in front of her eyelids, completely obscuring her vision.

— Are you comfortable, Liesl?

— Yes — she replied in a low voice. After answering, she felt Toto's hands land on her waist, their heat causing a wave of excitement to run over Elisabeth's skin. He gently rotated her back to her starting position.

— See anything, baby? — she heard Toto ask from somewhere in front of her.

— No.

— Are you sure?

— Absolutely, Toto.

— Good — he said. She could practically hear his smile in his voice — Now, I'm going to help you to bed, okay?

Elisabeth nodded and felt Toto take her hands and gently push her back, making her take a step, then another, until she was resting the backs of her thighs against the mattress. Elisabeth first sat on the bed, feeling the fabric of the comforter that covered the bed against her skin, the softness of it taking her by surprise. She had never realized how soft the texture was.

After hearing Toto direct her to move further back so that she would be in the middle of the bed, she laid down on the mattress with a sigh, her heart pounding in her chest. Without being able to see anything, every other one of her senses were in overdrive to compensate. Elisabeth could smell the aroma of the vanilla scented candle that had escaped from the bathroom present in the air, and she could hear the sound of Toto's footsteps as he walked around the bed. Imagining him pacing back and forth, scrutinizing her like a feast served just for him made her squeeze her tights together.

— Is there a problem, Elisabeth? — he asked somewhere at her feet, in a serious tone.

— No — she replied.

One of his hands landed on her ankle, fingers gliding lightly over her skin. Elisabeth swallowed hard, her lips pursed and heat coursing through her body in waves. She just couldn't understand how that simple touch had so much power over her.

— None at all?

— No, none.

— You're wondering what I'm doing, aren't you? — he murmured, pulling his fingers away — Imagining what I'm planning to do with you tonight.

Elisabeth didn't answer, too focused on the tingling growing between her legs. Until she felt the bed sink in on her right side, as if he were settling down with her on the mattress, one of his hands resting on her belly, just above her navel.

— Tell me what you're imagining, Liesl — Toto whispered, his thumb tracing lazy circles on her skin — I want to hear what you're thinking.

— I'm not… thinking about…

— You are, I can tell by the way your cheeks are red. Come on, tell me. Or I'm going to have to leave you like this for the rest of the night.

— You wouldn't do that — Elisabeth said. She couldn’t help but sound a little indignant.

— Don't doubt me, Miss Lauda — he murmured — I'm capable of a lot, especially when it comes to you.

— Oh, yes? What exactly are you capable of?

Toto laughed, pulling his hand away from her body.

— My love, I'm the one asking the questions here. And, you didn't answer the question I asked earlier.

She pressed her lips together, a little annoyed.

— I was thinking about you walking around the bed, looking at me like a feast.

— So you see yourself as a feast, Elisabeth?

— You see me as a feast, Torger — she shot back, making him laugh again.

— Is this your way of telling me to eat you?

Elisabeth didn't answer, too distracted by the image of his face between her legs causing a new wave of heat to run through her skin. And she was sure her own body had betrayed her when she felt a warm breath against her ear.

— Tell me what you want me to do, baby — Toto whispered, his hand caressing her belly again — Tell me what's on your mind.

— I'm thinking about the first time we had sex, in Sochi — Elisabeth said softly — I'm thinking about the way you touched me, asking what I liked. I'm thinking about how you slid your lips down my body, kissing my skin, until you reached my…

In the middle of her explanation, a groan escaped her lips. The hand that was on her stomach slid down as she spoke, his middle finger finding her clit and drawing small circles, slowly. If that was already pleasurable under normal circumstances, now, deprived of her sight, it was much better. 

— You can go on, I'm listening.

— I…I can't — she stammered lightly before letting out a high, high-pitched moan.

— Care for me to stop so you can talk? — Toto asked, his finger stopping to move between her legs.

— No, no, please continue — Elisabeth whimpered, her hips moving in search of more friction. However, he did exactly the opposite of what she had asked.

— I want to hear from you. Finish your thought first, then I'll continue.

Elisabeth let out a frustrated grunt, one hand groping blindly down his arm, trying to get him to move, to no avail.

— Toto...

— Tell me what you were thinking — he said, his tone more like an order than a request. Completely vulnerable in that bed, Elisabeth didn't dare disobey him.

— I was thinking about your mouth on my pussy, sucking and licking me with such passion I felt like I'd just died and gone to heaven. No man had ever fucked me the way you fucked me that night and every other night since. I love your mouth, your tongue and the way you combine every element. 

— Do you want me to use my mouth, then?

Elisabeth just nodded, a whimpering sound escaping her lips. Removing his hand from her pussy, Toto got up from the bed without saying a word. 

— Toto? Are you there?!

Silence. Her heart was pounding in her chest, the adrenaline of pleasure and the anxiety of being possibly alone and completely vulnerable had her reaching for her satin blindfold.

— Don't even think about taking your blindfold off, Elisabeth — Toto said from somewhere at the foot of the bed.

— But…

— I'm here — he said, resting his hands on her ankles, slowly pulling them apart — And I'm not going anywhere.

She felt the mattress sink between her legs, as if Toto was settling into that space. His hands repositioned her feet so they were planted on the bed and her knees bent. Elisabeth was completely exposed to him, anticipation making something in her belly tingle.

— You know, Liesl — he began, a finger idly running down her thigh — I've imagined that night in Sochi many times. I always thought about what it would be like when I finally had you all to myself. I imagined thousands of scenarios. I imagined from the most romantic scenes to the dirtiest. I imagined everything from a simple goodnight kiss after dinner to pulling you into the tire room at the Nurburgring and letting you angry-fuck me for taking you on that lap. In the end, you chose the exact scenario that I had never thought of.

— In a hotel? — she whispered.

— No. With you taking the initiative — Toto replied, planting a kiss on the side of her knee. “He's between my legs”, Elisabeth thought — You always seemed so shy, so delicate. I thought it was going to be up to me to take the first step. And then you showed up in my room, you took off your dress, and I knew you were mine. Finally mine.

His lips slowly slid over her skin, placing kisses along the way to the spot between her legs. When he was getting to where she most wanted him to touch her, Toto stopped and walked back the same way. He was teasing her.

— I didn't even know where to start when I put you in my bed. I wanted to do it all at once. I wanted to feel your taste, your heat, your touch, but I knew that, more important than me at that moment, it was you — he murmured, giving attention to the other leg — So, I decided to start by touching you, getting to know you, finding out what turned you on. Seeing you come for the first time is my favorite memory.

Hearing him say those things while touching her gently made her feel like she was melting under his fingers. 

— Please — she whimpered softly.

— What do you want?

— Please, I need you.

— What do you want me to do for you?

— Anything, just make me come, please.

Elisabeth heard a low, almost devilish giggle.

— As you wish, baby — he replied, taking one long lick to spread her wetness across her pussy, a loud moan escaping her lips as her hands gripped the bed’s comforter. His ministrations were slow and patient, as if he wanted to understand what each movement, each rhythm, each direction provoked in her body and face. It was the kind of delicious torture only he knew how to do, the way it left her legs shaking and her heart racing.

Alternating between soft touches with her tongue and vigorous sucks, Elisabeth began to feel a familiar sensation in her belly, as if it were a balloon being inflated little by little. And she knew that the moment it popped, it would be something breathtaking.

— Toto — she whimpered as she felt him descend, his tongue playing at her entrance, teasing her.

— Want my fingers to help you, baby? — he murmured against her body, the vibration of his voice making her gasp.

— Yes — Elisabeth choked out.

She was so wet that Toto’s fingers slipped inside of her easily, bending to find the right spot inside her. The spot he knew would make her back arch and the dirtiest words leave her lips.

— Fuck — she moaned, bringing a hand to his head, fingers clenching in his hair — This, yes!

The balloon continued to inflate in her abdomen, her hips moving erratically against Toto's face, trying to seek out more friction. Combined with his fingers and tongue, Elisabeth felt every second closer to orgasm.

— Yes, yes, yes, this, yes — she murmured, her breathing labored and the muscles in her body completely tense. She was almost there — Don't stop, please, please, please...

Then, the balloon popped.

Elisabeth let out a moan so loud the neighbors would probably have heard it, her body shaking with the waves of pleasure that ran through her skin. Orgasms in general were great, but Toto's were completely different. There was an extra ingredient in the mix that made them more ravishing.

It was his sweetness, his affection, his dedication to her that made her believe that, contrary to what she thought, she did deserve to be loved the way he loved her. And feeling that love in the small gestures, in the way Toto took care of her and made a point of making her feel good, made her feel filled with something she had never felt before meeting him.

Happiness.

She was still recovering when she felt Toto's lips move up her body, placing kisses on her sensitive skin, until they reached her mouth. Savoring her own pleasure on his tongue, Elisabeth brought her hands to the back of his neck, caressing it. Then he pulled away and, with one hand, removed the blindfold that covered her eyes.

After a few seconds of trying to get used to the brightness of the room, Elisabeth found Toto staring at her with a look of concern.

— Are you okay?

— I'm fine — she replied, her fingers stroking the back of his head — Why?

— You're crying.

Elisabeth blinked, feeling her eyes wet. She hadn't felt the tears run down her skin, perhaps because of the blindfold. But, now that he had spoken, she realized that, in fact, she was crying. But inside her, there was no hint of sadness or anguish.

— I'm fine — Elisabeth repeated, more to herself than Toto.

— Did I hurt you? — he asked softly, almost as if he was feeling guilty for making her orgasm.

— No, no, you didn't hurt me — she said, watching his expression. At that moment, looking at his face brought a new wave of emotion, her eyes filling with more tears. Elisabeth only felt love. Pure, raw and simple.

— Then why are you crying?

— Because I love you — she whispered.

Toto raised an eyebrow.

— You’re crying because you love me?

— I'm crying because you showed me what happiness is. You showed me what it's like to be truly happy. You made me blossom when I thought I was just a barren stump, Torger. And I love you for it.

He smiled, leaning his forehead against hers.

— I love you too, Elisabeth. More than I can put on words.

After a few seconds of silence, Elisabeth brought her hand to his face.

— Can you lay down with me? — she whispered — I wanna feel you close to me.

— Of course, baby — Toto answered, settling down next to her on the bed, placing a kiss on her forehead. Wrapped in her embrace, Toto’s arms resting on her waist, Elisabeth felt completely safe.

She was at home.

[yr-obedt-cicero]

Laurens's papers

Recently @46ten's posts got me hooked on the question surrounding what happened to Laurens's papers after his death, and who took hold of them. And you should check them out because they mention things I won't here, I've reblogged a few before posting this for reference. Anna (@my-deer-history) also made a valid point here, if you're interested. But here I will be diving into different subjects;

Additionally, JCH mentions that the Oct 1780 letter and the Apr 1779 letter are “the only one which has met our inquiries.” [x] Then are there are mentions of Elizabeth handing out the copies of the Oct 1780 to her biographers that she hired;

I see a common false assumption that Hamilton's family had them, but there only seems to have been two in their hold (Or at least that they published and didn't destroy). We know John C. “partly” published the April 1779 letter in Volume 1 of Life of Alexander Hamilton—I say partly because he cut out a large amount of paragraphs, he included everything from “Cold in my professions, warm in my friendships...” to “There is a total stagnation of news here...” but swiftly cuts out all the other paragraphs until “Fleury shall be taken care of. All the family send their love.”, but published the postscript. And does the same in The Works of Alexander Hamilton. He also had the physical original letter since there is a note and some censors on the letter presumably in one of the Hamilton boys handwriting.

But other than that, the only other Hamilton+Laurens letter that appears in John's work is the 11 October 1780 letter about Arnold and Andre. And many copies of the letter were made; “This letter was sent as an enclosure by H to Elizabeth Schuyler on October 11, 1780. The original letter sent to Laurens was probably intercepted, for there is a copy with three minor notations by Sir Henry Clinton in the William L. Clements Library of the University of Michigan. This letter, with relatively unimportant deletions, was printed in the New York Evening Post, July 23, 1802.” [x]

But [Elizabeth Hamilton] determined not to be outdone in this respect, and has submitted to me various manuscripts in the handwriting of her husband. The first is a letter addressed by him to Col. Laurens, then in France, giving a very particular account of the treason of Arnold, the capture, trial and execution of André, and of various personal interviews with him prior to his execution.

Source — Letters of George W. Strong, by George Washington Strong · 1922

With a little bit of digging, I found an interesting story about William Gilmore Simms. He was an American writer and politician from the South who was a “staunch defender” of slavery (Ironic considering who he wrote about). And also a poet, novelist, and historian. He also wrote The Army Correspondence of Colonel John Laurens. As ardent a southerner as he was, Simms's engagement with history was never cynical or narrowly utilitarian. He thought of his historical scholarship as a genuine effort to understand the past and to propagate that understanding to others. His passion for history was obviously linked to his identity as a South Carolinian. He certainly believed that to be of value, history should be written to inform and instruct the present, but all who seriously study the past believe so.

Apparently it is unknown just when and how Simms acquired the Laurens papers, but on the 11th February, 1845, Simms expressed an interest in producing; “a series of papers made up of brief biographies of distinguished men of the Revolution in the South, interspersed with their original Letters” [x] Simms planned to write about both Henry Laurens and John Laurens, but also other influential figures like, John Rutledge, Horatio Gates, William Heath, Arthur Lee, and Patrick Henry. To which he then proposed a series.

Moving on, Simms began his research for a volume on John Laurens soon after the exchange of these letters, and that research continued into 1846. On the 21st of December, he wrote to editor and critic, Rufus W. Griswold, asking about an article touching upon John Laurens which had appeared in the 2nd of December, 1784, issue of the Independent Chronicle of Boston. But after this, there was no more mentions of the papers or series, and it appears Simms began to work on other projects. Nonetheless, Simms never abandoned the idea of writing about Laurens or the other figures with his manuscript collection.

Which actually leads to an interesting story of where Laurens's papers could have been completely lost to history due to a fire;

The Civil War and its aftermath would do much to determine the fate of Simms's collection of John Laurens papers. In his 31 May 1862 letter to William J. Rivers, Simms expressed his anxiety that the war would threaten his plantation with its large library and manuscript collection. “I wish to save my library,” he told Rivers, “but my first regard is for these valuable old documents,” a collection of “very rich” material. Simms had good reason to be anxious. In October of the previous year Union forces began their conquest of the South Carolina coast, and Simms feared that if Charleston should fall, his property, a mere 70 miles inland, would soon afterward be exposed. He therefore implored Rivers, a professor of Greek literature at South Carolina College in Columbia, to receive his Revolutionary War manuscripts and be “the custodian of these treasures.” Simms told Rivers that, “I had proposed Lives of Henry and John Laurens,” with “selections from their correspondence & a running commentary.” Noting further that he had “made notes of them, & examined them carefully” but had nonetheless, “made few draughts upon their contents,” Simms suggested Rivers could assist him in preparing them for publication.

Source — Reading William Gilmore Simms; Essays of Introduction to the Author's Canon, 2017

Simms had reason to be nervous about losing his library and manuscripts at this time because on the 29th of March, 1862, only two months before writing to Rivers, his house had caught fire. Although fortunately, it was put out successfully and there weren't endangering damages. Simms had only recently added a separate wing to the house to serve as his library. Probably completed no more than a month before the fire, which may have very well saved the manuscripts found in The Army Correspondence of Colonel John Laurens from destruction. Simms did confirm when writing to close friend William P. Miles afterwards that; “I have saved all my MS.S and nearly all my library. The wing was saved.” [x]

Later in 1864, at Woodlands, Simms was preparing to evacuate, packing up his manuscript collection and other selected items for shipment to Columbia, as threats of the Union Army coming had reached. While he had hoped to save his entire library, the manuscripts were his highest priority. Because the Union army appeared in Barnwell District, Simms was unable to return to Woodlands. In Columbia, he and his family were not present at Woodlands when it was burned down from Sherman's army. The library was entirely destroyed but at least the manuscripts had been saved.

After the war, Simms resumed his efforts to publish the Laurens papers. He spent the summer of 1866 in New York City trying to establish new and reestablish old connections with publishers and friends, disrupted as they had been by the Civil War. This included seeking a publisher for the Laurens papers as well as other pieces he had written or planned to write. With the help of Duyckinck, an agreement was reached with The Bradford Club (Founded in 1859 by John B. Moreau in New York City, The Bradford Club, named after William Bradford the first printer in the colony of New York, met periodically and published volumes on topics related to American history) to publish a portion of Laurens's papers.

These volumes were printed in a limited quantity and distributed to the club's members and subscribers. It published seven volumes from 1859-1867, before the club dissolved. Although there was a non-numbered volume by Duyckinck titled Memorial for John Allen and was published by the club in 1864. It was probably his previous connection that accounts for Duyckinck's apparent ease in arranging for The Bradford Club to publish Simms's The Army Correspondence of Colonel John Laurens which was the seventh and last volume published. Furthermore it was, in Simms's words, a “plan proposed by�� Duyckinck which determined the form the volume would take.

In New York with the Laurens papers at hand, Simms began work immediately after the agreement had been reached. He asked Duyckinck for materials which would assist him in preparing a memoir of Laurens, that he planned to publish before the selection of letters to were included in the volume. Specifically, he requested a copy of the volume of D. Appleton and Company's The New American Cyclopedia, which Duyckinck had co-edited and also contained biographical sketches of Henry and John Laurens, both authored previously by Simms. Other references to other sources can be found in the “Memoir” included in The Army Correspondence of Colonel John Laurens.

On 28 September 1866 Simms wrote to Duyckinck; “I have prepared in a rough penciled draft, the memoir of Laurens,” and would begin revising and copying the next day. [x]

The contents he outlined in this letter would be the final contents of the volume. In addition to the Memoir is an 1824 letter from John Church Hamilton, an historian and the fourth son of Alexander Hamilton, which described Laurens's military and diplomatic career. Simms then also placed a poem, Lines on the Death of Colonel Laurens by Philip Freneau, whom Simms described as; “the poet par excellence of the American Revolution.”

Although the Memoir does not offer the same as a comprehensive biography of Laurens would, it does provide sufficient context for the letters which follow it. Those letters, what Simms called “Laurens' camp letters,” span the period from 13 August 1777 to 18 October 1778, and are all addressed to his father. While Simms did possess other of Laurens's letters - some of which he does quote in the Memoir - he never directly addressed his decision to set these particular letters apart in the finished volume. It is speculated that perhaps he thought that because these letters were addressed to Laurens's father during the period he served as president of the Continental Congress, and they were written by the son from roughly the time he began his service with Washington to before he transferred to South Carolina; Simms believed they comprised a set with a loose but coherent narrative. This was, after all, the period during which Laurens first experienced the war and began to demonstrate those qualities which would merit his posthumous fame.

Following the Civil War, Simms had realized that his personal finances were in a dire condition—With a house to rebuild, and a family to care for he was eager to establish sources of income wherever they could be found. While still in New York during the summer of 1866, Simms sold some of his Washington papers for $250 to an unknown buyer. Then in May of 1867 - after having finished editing The Army Correspondence of Colonel John Laurens, but not yet seeing the printed volume - he became desperate, and was beginning to consider selling the Laurens papers. With assistance coming again from Duyckinck, as well as John Jacob Bockee, the papers were sold - probably sometime before July of 1867 - for $1,500 to the Long Island Historical Society. Which in 1985, changed its name to the Brooklyn Historical Society. Those papers were transcribed and microfilmed and sold some time in the 1960s, and today Simms's collection of Laurens papers is located at The South Caroliniana Library of the University of South Carolina in Columbia.

Something I came across when digging through the manuscripts of Hamilton's and Laurens's letters was that on the back of Hamilton's letter to Laurens, 30 June 1780, there is a note on the back that reads; "Letters from diverse persons to J.L. antecedent & subsequent to his appointment as Special Minister, &c."

Source Library of Congress, Digital Collections. Image 35 of Alexander Hamilton Papers: General Correspondence, 1734-1804; 1780

Meaning someone was filtering through Laurens's letters, but I'm not sure who. As all previously presented, Laurens's papers were placed in many hands. It looks nothing like Simms's, as seen below with the first inage—nor, Evert A. Duyckinck's the second image.

But George L. Duyckinck's is seemingly of closer resemblance;

I also don't think Simms had any of the Hamilton+Laurens letters, as the Memoir only really contains letters from Laurens to his father. But that's not to say Simms never had these letters, rather he just focused on them. It could have been part of his collection but he didn't publish them, although I'm more inclined to believe these were part of the Coffin's sale. Moving on, according to Founders and other websites, Laurens's papers are scattered between several societies and libraries throughout the country, most in South Carolina, some in Massachusetts, etc.

[heyitschartic]

Some other thoughts on hypothetical social media presences:

- If he had to, Brian would probably run a very eclectic but well organized, entirely unsuspecting blog that consisted mostly of reblogged martial arts instructionals and art he liked. He would not do things with it often, and would completely stop posting after Levi. If you ever asked him if he’d used tumblr, he’d probably be extremely sheepish about it.

- By virtue of her power, Aisha would be able to maintain an online presence as a cape with relatively little heat coming down on her. Initially terse and of poor quality, she rapidly improves and begins presenting complex, witty, almost Hunter S. Thompsonesque profiles and descriptions of cape life and other villains. After adopting the Heartbroken, they get even better, integrating her intelligence and style with a better knowledge of the literary canon. Unfortunately for Anglos, it would also contain excessive references and passages in Quebecois.

- This is tangential, but I must presume for the sake of the meme that Heartbreaker is from La Salle.

- Rachel would have a single, extremely cracked phone for two reasons: to call the Undersiders, and to follow dog-based gimmick accounts.

- Somehow, Lily actually ended up a fan of Bonesaw’s account before it was revealed that it wasn’t actually fiction. It haunts her to this day.

- Sabah would have had a kink sideblog. I just know it. I know she is would have. Furthermore, she would swear off tumblr after the porn ban in protest.

- I know in my heart of hearts that Armsmaster is a redditor. He just slightly changed the type of redditor he is over the course of the serial.

God, these are all such 100% on point. To throw in a few of my own:

Shatterbird runs an absolutely brutal Goodreads that is nothing but essay long reviews of her thoughts on the book she was reading that week, interspersed with philosophical theories and fucked up anecdotes of her time in the nine. Somehow never gets deleted.

Numberman spends hours on Wallstreet Bets gaming the Stockmarket to make sure people lose money. He even got himself to be made the mascot of the reddit.

William Manton posts on facebook

Feel like there's a really good chance Lisa would be on twitter. Seems like it would be the perfect type of mean girl environment for her to thrive in. She runs some twenty thousand follower account that is nothing but dropping horrible secrets about other capes that post bad takes.

Almost no capes actually use PHO. That's the sort of environment that attracts only geeks and losers who spend all day arguing about Who Would Win fights, which is why Victoria Dallon is on there.

Also thank you for that Aisha S. Thompson idea. There's a non-zero chance I might try writing that wormfic someday.

[clavissionary-position]

Ikemen Villians Suitor Personalities Based On Their Silhouettes (speculation) (joke post)

❣❣❣ Please don't take this post seriously. AT ALL. I expect to be 400% wrong on all accounts. In fact I hope I'm 400% wrong just so I can have a laugh XD

❣❣❣❣ The silhouette file names have character names attached (got em on the official site). I don't know if they're official names or placeholders meant to throw off nosy people like me, so take them with a grain of salt?

❣❣❣❣❣ Also if their personalities and names have already been divulged, super-ignore this post. I'm writing this as of 11.03. You saw nothing here. I'm just a weird person prone to simple errors.

---

William. The villain-by-circumstance type. Started off as a hero before he became disillusioned. He's a bit of a hard-ass and the kind of man who will see his villainy through to the very end, even if it comes at a huge personal cost (and it already has). His first impression is that he's cold and uncaring, but he's also the same guy constantly saving your constantly-getting-kidnapped ass. Self-taught cook because he's had to feed himself all these years and doesn't trust other people not to poison him. Sleeps naked.

---

Liam. Fun, spunky, spontaneous. The life of the villain party. His jokes are the funniest, and often needed to offset how dark the storylines may get. He jokes about how he's William's "after-image" or "echo" on account of how his name is literally just the last half of William's :') It's hard to hate this guy even though he does some pretty fucked-up stuff if you stop and think about it. Or he's this game's haughty tsundere, idk.

---

Harrison. Playboy. Is constantly making "jokes" about bedding you. Turns out they really are only half-jokes, because he's very concerned about how much you let your guard down around the other guys. Does not want to admit to himself that this constant form of teasing, something that he considers a blip in his evil grand schemes, means anything more than what it is. Does not want to admit to himself that any room that you're not in feels emptier for it.

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Alphonse. Kuudere. Elegant but deadly. Aloof but surprisingly warm. He's so quiet that half the time you're not even aware he's in the room before he says something sobering and logical to get the discussion back on track. He wants absolutely nothing to do with you. In fact, it irritates him that all the other guys give you so much attention. What's so special about you, he wonders. His stare is chilling and direct and uncomfortable. He will definitely use his coat to shield you at some point, whether it is from the elements or blood spray or the shock of a group of pigeons taking sudden flight. You've basically won the game if you can get him to smile.

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Elbert. The wild-card. His fighting prowess is second-to-none. Flagging him for possible yandere. Flagging him for possible tsundere. His, uh, silhouette, makes me think of someone who's quiet and a bit of a loner. Maybe someone who doesn't want you to get too close to him lest you be tainted with the same evil that has corrupted him, forsooth? Or he's got bad ideas for days and a smile like a shark. I can't put my finger on this guy.

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Roger. Big tol daddy. Reliable to a fault. Definitely gives me villain-by-circumstance vibes, as much as a silhouette with no other information can. If he wants the first thing you notice about him to be his gun, then his primary goal is for you to understand that he's not here to fuck around. He's got a serious personality and he's probably seen some shit. Definitely has/had a little sister. So while he's not above torturing you, he'll always stop short. Alternatively he's super easy-going to distract from the fact that he's doing some really evil stuff when you're not looking.

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Victor. Yandere? A man with a dark memory for every year he spent growing out his hair? A smile that is at once devastating as it is... also devastating? Beautiful and dangerously charming in a way that makes you wonder if you're about to be kissed or about to be killed. There are sensual pros and rational cons to being locked in a room with him. His vulnerable side may be painfully precious. It would be hilarious if he was one of the younger characters, but I'm betting he's in the senpai series.

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Ellis. This dude doesn't sleep and he lives off sugar and whatever else he can pawn off strangers. Half the time he just zombies onto the scene to make a passing comment that makes zero sense before grabbing your hand and taking you off on some equally nonsensical misadventure. That is all just an act, however, because he knows people will drop their guard around him and divulge critical information if they believe him to be a fool. Even then, all his "nonsense" has its own deeper meaning as well.

---

Jude. He's got the "daddy" trenchcoat, which I can only take to mean that he is a "daddy" type. I feel like he and Roger either super get-along or hate each other's guts. This guy's just everywhere. Positively everywhere, lounging like he owns the place. He's constantly offering to make you his partner so you can rule together as an evil power couple. May hide an earth-shattering secret.

Like I said, I fully expect to be suuuuper off on these guesses XD

[420thewritersroom]

Team Fortress 2: The World (W.I.P & Preview)

Team Fortress 2 is a game and setting that is wholly unique to me.

When it comes to other games, even those with wacky comedic elements, they at least try to ground themselves in some realm of reality that is established in their setting. Yet, Team Fortress 2 is the one and only game that I know that says, to your face, "fuck reality" and does whatever it wants. And it works. This post sums it up perfectly, but TF2 is the one game where even the GAME MECHANICS are taken into account by the fandom. In what game has the Respawn mechanic ever been considered? There are countless SFMs, fanfics, and drawings that take the Mercs' ability to return from death more seriously than Valve updating their game in the current age.

But if there's one thing I haven't seen done in the fandom, it's fully establishing the setting and expanding on the canon of Team Fortress 2. Now, yes, there are canonical reasons for why the Mercs are shedding blood in the game, and there is a, albeit incomplete, main story comic that further expands upon it. But I haven't seen anyone further examine the lore and try to build upon it. Which, if there are some people who have placed their own personal headcanons about the world of TF2, please send them my way. I'd love to read or hear them (I haven't been in the fandom for a long ass time, so I'm sure I missed a post or two elaborating upon the canon of TF2).

Below the READ MORE will be long lines of text as we go over the origins that lead us to the start of the Mann Wars, What the big corps are & their place in the canon, going over the key players of TF2, the events of Mann VS Machine, and where the Mercs are at now.

In The Beginning, Mann Waged War: The Origins of the Gravel Wars.

Now, while there is a whole comic that goes over the origins of the Gravel Wars and the events that would lead us to MVM, we're going to break this apart, piece by piece.

Zepheniah Mann

The sequence of events would begin with one man, Zepheniah Mann. There's very little detail about Zepheniah, but we know a few things about Zeph. Zepheniah was the original owner of the Mann Co company and sold munitions as far back as 1822. He wasn't alone in running this business as he also has a brother by the name of Silas Mann who assisted with making keys and name tags. At some point, he was associated with Barnabus Hale, Saxton Hale's grandfather (we'll get to the Hale family in a minute), and eventually married a woman by the name of Bette. We don't know much about his wife. The only bit of information we know about Bette is that her maiden name was once Bette née Darling and is the daughter of a man by the name of William Darling esquire.

But from the way Zepheniah spoke of her during the LITERAL BIRTH OF HIS THREE SONS, he was more annoyed and unbothered when she passed after childbirth. He also was just as uncaring about his infant sons as the midwife/nurse that attended Bette expressed confused correction as though Zeph should KNOW that he was expecting 3 sons.

To add to this, Zeph examined his own children as if he were picking livestock from a farm, determining their worth before making the go-ahead to raise them. And the second he saw his third son, who would eventually be known as Gray Mann, he immediately wanted him dead when it was discovered that he not only was the rut of the "litter" but was capable of full speech.

So based on this alone, we can ascertain that Zeph was a complete dick for no reason. We're not given a background check on his personal history, such as how Mann Co. came to be, who was the wife he married, and what could've caused him to be so heartless that he didn't bat an eye when his wife died and became a father. But this is where we can probably fill in some blanks to potentially explain some this.

I'm thinking that perhaps his marriage to Bette was purely professional. Maybe she had money due to her own personal wealth, or she was the daughter to a man with a successful company, and this caught Zeph's eye to marry her so that his affluence would leech off her earnings. And if we're going to bounce off of this theory, then that could explain why Zeph never cared for Bette. He got her riches and had her give birth to his future children, so her usefulness was spent aside from raising his children. The only person Zepheniah had an alright relationship with was Elizabeth, his maidservant. In his Will and the Loose Canon, he calls Elizabeth his "dearest maidservant." And nobody uses such a term, dearest, lightly. Zepheniah valued her very much, their relationship possibly being one of great trust as colleagues, friends, found family, or even lovers. Keep Elizabeth in mind because we'll be coming back to her soon.

Now, considering that Team Fortress 2 is a dark comedy and goes balls to the wall with its humor, I could be looking too deep into this. It could be that Zeph's indifference is played up for laughs. But that's what we're here for, overanalyzing a war dress-up game.

And this is where we'll have to end this section with Zepheniah Mann. Once again, not much we can go off on with Zepheniah other than he's an asshole. His sons, though!

RED VS BLU

From the get-go, these twin brothers HATE each other. In the same comic where we glean a bit of information about their father, Zepheniah Mann, we see both Redmond & Blutarch stink eyeing each other immediately after being conceived. Like their father, we don't know much about what went on before the main events of TF2, but we do know that ever since then, the brothers never got along. But they did love their father. Which I find very interesting.

Once again, Zeph shows utter disinterest in his sons, most likely only seeing them as a means to prolong the family business and nothing else. He quite literally, after assessing them like cattle, says how "They'll do." So, I can imagine how much of a "loving" father Zeph may have been. At best, if we want to throw this man a bone, he was the toughest loving father there could ever be. Or, at worst, he was neglectful and only cared about his sons when it came to teaching them the family business, putting high expectations on both of them.

And considering that children (and people in general) are naturally inclined to be loved, the twins most likely did everything in their power to appeal to their emotionally detached father. This could explain why the Mann brothers were always at each other's neck, wanting to outdo the other in hopes of gaining their father's attention.

In the Catch-Up comic, Saxton Hale describes the brothers as idiots, and he's not too far off with that statement. The Mann brothers convinced their aged father to buy most of all of New Mexico. But what was it that pushed them to make such a move? I neglected to mention this, but the Mann family originally resided in England, and with all their wealth, why move to the U.S.? From the Blood Brothers comic, Redmond confirms that they believe "whoever owns those pits (of gravel) would be a god." That gravel would be able to power steam engines. We're not told WHO or WHERE they got this idea from, but we can assume this is what urged them to convince their father to move to the States and buy up land in New Mexico. Something Zepheniah would never forgive them for doing.

Before we continue, I want to analyze what we know about the brothers individually. Despite Valve favoring the RED team when it comes to backstory, Blutarch is the one that gets the most screen time and info about him. In my opinion, Blutarch is perhaps the more ambitious brother if we're speaking purely of the twins that Zeph chose to not attempt infanticide on.

In Loose Canon, the one who not only approached the Engineers' grandfather, Radigan Conagher, but the Engineer himself (Dell Conagher), is not Redmond, but Blutarch. Blutarch is also the one who initially compiled a group of mercenaries to take the shared gravel-filled land by force from his brother. Blutarch is also the one who proposed a truce so that they could do some old man yaoi mpreg crimes against nature. Hell, the motherfucker even knew where Radigan's blueprints to his life-extender machine were buried (in his grave, mind you). This has me believing that Blutarch was perhaps the second smartest brother of the bunch (Gray Mann being THE smartest of the triplets).

As for Redmond, we don't know what original ideas he came up with to combat his brother. So far, everything that Redmond achieved was because, one, his brother thought it up first, and two, someone else TOLD him about what his brother was planning to do. The only time we see Redmond make any propositions about anything is when he conjures the silly idea to convert gravel into coal and to call his men up to send his brother to hell.

With this in mind, I can imagine if Zepheniah gave a single damn about his kids, Blutarch was perhaps his "preferred" child. At least Blutarch had some minor promise of running his company and preserving the family image. And don't get it twisted, Blutarch is just as much an idiot as Redmond, it was BOTH brothers who convinced their father to purchase land in New Mexico under the impression that the gravel there could be used as a power source. But at least he's ambitious enough to think up wild ideas and find someone to make it a reality.

But despite this, because of the L Zeph took for even listening to his sons, when he was dead & dying, he created a Will. Within this death testimony, he split his profits and heritage among three people. Firstly, his company, Mann Co., would go to his trusted aide, Barnabus Hale. Secondly, his maidservant, Elizabeth, was to inherit all of Zepheniah's wealth that wasn't squandered thanks to his sons' misgivings. But for his sons, they will have to live off the purchased land they convinced their father to buy. Not only that, they would be forced to share the land evenly. Now, reading the Will Zeph left behind, he's exceptionally harsh to his sons, understandably so. And you would think that with such jarring words, this would be their wake-up call to perhaps better themselves and work together. Or, better yet, solemnly accept the reality they're in and grudgingly co-exist across the street from each other in the barren wasteland they now possess.

But, no, the Mann brothers decide this would be a perfect opportunity to fight over useless land. This is where I feel like the brothers are blaming the other for what transpired with their father and family fortune. Once again, both Mann brothers loved their father dearly, perhaps even fighting for Zeph to even acknowledge them in an ok light. So I can imagine their shock and heartbreak when the final words from their father, in his own Will, is how much he despised BOTH Redmond & Blutarch. In Loose Canon, they looked more annoyingly shocked about having to share the purchased land, but who knows what their faces were when the Will was being read in its entirety.

Thus, I believe the war started due to the brothers dealing with the emotional trauma that their father left behind. Neither brother has the guts or brain power to admit that both of them were at fault when it came to the mishandling of their family fortune, nor do they have the capability to accept that their father was an absolute ass. So, they blame the other brother, believing that the land rightfully belongs to them, learning nothing from their own personal experience that their low intelligence and hatred for the other is what got them into this situation to begin with.

With the Gravel Wars finally commencing, Blutarch hires 9 mercenaries to attempt to take his brother's land by force. But, Redmond would get the same idea. Thus, RED VS BLU would become a staple rivalry until the current time in the TF2 universe. As most may remember and know, Blutarch hired famous individuals in history, such as Abe Lincoln, Billy the Kid, Nikola Tesla, John Henry, Davy Crockett, Sigmund Freud, Stonewall Jackson, Alfred Nobel, and Fu Manchu.

I'm NOT going to bother with overanalyzing these characters, considering that most of these characters simply shouldn't exist during the time of the Gravel Wars (1850), and they're clearly placed there for comedic factors. On top of that, we know next to nothing about these mercs (save for Abe Lincoln). If I were to throw myself a bone here, I theorized that the moment they realized that they were fighting a pointless war, the men simply left. I cannot imagine a famous inventor, a president, an infamous outlaw, a general officer, a frontiersman, a chemist, a neurologist, an American folk hero, and a racist stereotype spending more than a year fighting for land that produces nothing in return for 2 idiot men; even if there was money involved.

However, before we get further into the Gravel Wars, there is one person we have to talk about before delving into the situation between BLU VS RED.

Elizabeth, Helen, and TF Industries

It's important to understand where the Administrator and TF Industries come into play when it comes to the lore of TF2. Unfortunately, because the TF2 comics for the main line story haven't been updated since 2017 and the details of TF2 are spotty and vague, there are going to be some questions that we will have to speculate and answer ourselves. To help with this, I highly recommend watching SkyminSlash & Casperr, both of whom did outstanding jobs analyzing what we know about the Administrator and making this section a whole lot easier to write down. I'm also going to drop these two videos from Mister Dispenser & Richter Overtime as they not only go into a bit about the Administrator but also put down possible endings to the mainline TF2 comic (which we'll get into later).

When it came to the Administrator and writing this section, it practically made me go insane. I had a difficult time writing up a coherent theory that sounded right to me and plausible enough that it could be possible. However, I believe we can condense this down to three questions that we have to ask to further understand the possible motives behind the Administrator.

Who is the Administrator?

What is it she craved that she would become indebted to someone for it?

Who is she indebted to?

To start us off, who is the Administrator? Well, based on canon, the earliest we know of the Administrator is that she was a young girl...At some point...Yeah, in terms of personal history BEFORE she became the woman we know today, it's still a massive question mark on who she is. We know that the Administrator is named Helen; she smokes a lot, is a master manipulator, has a loyal assistant named Miss Pauling, watches the TF crew from various monitors, and has a hand in the Gravel War. We are aware that way back when she was placed in an old debt that she'd been trying to settle for all her life. From her wording, it sounds like whomever she was indebted to gave her something she greatly desired since she says this:

And this is where we gotta go into the whole Elizabeth and Helen situation, as many noticed a pattern between the two women. The trademark look of the Administrator is that she's elderly, most likely in her 60s-80s, wears purple, has a smoking habit, constant resting bitch face, and has a white streak of hair. These are the core traits of the Administrator we all know and love.

However, two other women in the comics share a striking similar semblance to the Administrator we know today. The maidservant I mentioned a while ago is shown a few times, mainly relating to the Will that Zepheniah left behind, giving the maidservant, Elizabeth, all of his wealth. There was also another woman by the name of Elizabeth who approached Radigan about making life extender machines for Redmond and showing the precious metal, Australium, to him. Now, initially, back in the Loose Canon comic, this other woman who spoke with Radigan wasn't named. It wasn't until 2014 with the Catch-Up comic that Valve confirmed that this other woman who looked similar to Elizabeth AND Helen also shared the same name as Elizabeth.

Both women have been around in different periods of time, the maidservant being around since 1850 (at the earliest) and the other Elizabeth approaching Radigan since 1890. And it is to be assumed that both Elizabeths are the Administrator, Helen. Now, some theories speculate that perhaps the Elizabeths in the comics could be relatives/ancestors of the Helen we see today. And these speculations can have some merit to them, but I prefer seeing the connection between the Elizabeths' and Helen as being one person instead of a family lineage.

I further believe that the Elizabeth's and Helen are the same person because in the comics, between some banter with Saxton Hale & Charles Darling, he expresses how Helen has been alive for well over 150 years (this slightly contradicts with Gray Mann & Miss Pauling rushing to find the 1850 census records, but give me a second, lemme cook). However, this doesn't really tell us much about the Administrator. So she lived for a very long time, most likely through Australium, but what is it about her that she would put herself in such a debt that she has to prolong her life?

Casperr made the suggestion that Helen may be a blood member of the Mann family. Originally, I didn't vibe with this, but there was one thing that kept nagging at me that I started to entertain this theory: the census record. Census records survey the population of a country to determine its population along with details such as an individual's age and current job description. This is often used to plan or adjust healthcare, employment, and education. But it's also used by those who wish to trace back their family lineage. When you look up census records, you will find either websites providing free information about such information or the records being used by genealogists & family history researchers.

When we focus on Miss Pauling and the merc during Unhappy Returns, she specifically asks for "genealogy records." And we know these are the census records that Gray Mann was looking for because when Gray Mann was asking for the records, the mayor of Teufort stated that Miss Pauling was also looking for records that date back to 1850. But why 1850? We do know that Elizabeth gained Zepheniah's wealth and "miracle gravel" once he died, but why look into the possible circumstances of her birth?

This is where I drop the possible theory of Helen/Elizabeth being a Mann daughter.

It will go without saying that Helen/Elizabeth was NOT born exactly in 1822. If we take the 150-year statement Charles Darling informed us of, 150 years from 1972 takes us back to 1822, the exact date the Mann triplets were born. When we look at the family photo where Elizabeth/Helen sat with the Mann family and Barnabus Hale, she already looked exceptionally old. Old enough to consider the Mann brothers her own children or grandchildren since the brothers were 28 when the Will was read to them. Now, considering that Helen/Elizabeth is always shown smoking, perhaps this may have aged her physically as smoking constantly can make someone appear older than they should be. However, to further pin that Elizabeth/Helen was NOT born in 1822, in the same comic, Blood Brothers, the nurse who aided Bette quite literally states that Zepheniah was father to triplets; Redmond, Blutarch, and Gray Mann.

So if Elizabeth/Helen is a possible blood relative to Zepheniah, then he must've had her much earlier in his life. In Blood Brothers, when we first see a alive and young Zeph, we can possibly estimate that he's probably 30-40 years old. So he probably had her a decade or more before the Mann brothers. Now, whether or not Bette would still be considered her mother can be up for speculation. She could be Bette's first child or Zepheniah could've boinked some random woman.

Perhaps Elizabeth/Helen was Bette's first child, but because she was a girl, and considering the era at that time, Zepheniah did not see Elizabeth/Helen as a viable choice to run his company because he wanted a boy. Or perhaps Elizabeth's mother was someone Zeph coupled with before settling on Bette Darling. Whether or not he loved this woman can also be up for debate since we don't know what he was like outside of being a grouch. He could've loved her or only saw her as a means to "put off steam." But when he discovered Elizabeth/Helen was his daughter, he may have offered to ward her, not officially adopting her into his family despite being related to her. That could explain why she's called his maidservant, just so that he could further muddy the familial ties she has with the Mann family.

Remember that question I posed earlier about why Helen & Gray Mann wanted to look for the census records that date back to 1850? I believe that the Administrator changed her name sometime in 1850 once she inherited the "miracle gravel" from Zepheniah and eventually branched away from Redmond & Blutarch.

So we answered the first question about WHO the Administrator is, a possible member of the Mann family. Then what was it that she craved that she was indebted to someone to have it? Now, this was the issue I had when writing this up. Because we have no hints or clues to point to that could tell us any alternative motives the Administrator may have. Initially, I figured that perhaps she may have craved power & wealth. Which, with the theory of her being a potential Mann child, wouldn't be too far-fetched.

Perhaps due to the social climate at the time, Zepheniah denied Helen/Elizabeth the inheritance of his affluence. Helen/Elizabeth could've felt bitter about being left out of the family fortune and even being demoted to being the "maidservant" of the Mann family. On top of that, when the Mann triplets (Redmond, Blutarch, and Gray Mann) were born, she may have started to truly fear her position in the Mann family. Now that Zeph had 3 (technically 2) "reliable" boys in the family, he had someone he could pass the company off should he desire to keep Man Co. traditionally run by a member of the Mann family. Even worse, 2 of the brothers are incompetent, and the other one was taken by eagles.

Furthermore, the only thing Elizabeth has going for her is that Zepheniah has a lot of respect for Elizabeth. But she still worries about her future with the Mann family. What happens when Zepheniah dies? He could easily give his estate and riches to his sons, and considering that she's a maidservant to not just Zeph but the Mann family as a whole, she could be spending the rest of her life under the servitude of her brain-dead (half) brothers. And even IF she decided to leave, that would mean leaving the safety net of wealth that the Mann family provided her.

Leaving means she has to build up her lifestyle, something that would've been difficult for her to do depending on how good and how willing she was to perform certain labors (she was a maidservant, so her skills were most likely cleaning, shopping, cooking, and potentially caring for the Mann children). And not everyone has Mann Co. money; she would be leaving a comfortable life if she wanted to attempt to make it on her own with the limited possibilities women had at that time.

As I said, I initially figured that this would've been a good enough theory to run on…But then I thought of another possibility that made more sense in my mind. Mortality.

It's a common theme in the TF2 universe of characters defying their temporality and trying to prolong their own lives. We see this with the Mann brothers, the mainline TF2 comics, Merasmus, Medic's medigun, and many other examples of characters who prolonged their lives to avoid dying. So it wouldn't be too far off the table to think that Helen/Elizabeth simply wanted to live. Perhaps someone close to her got horribly sick, and it scarred the Administrator. Maybe she was terminally ill herself and wanted a way to cure herself. Maybe sickness had nothing to do with her motives; Helen/Elizabeth could've seen how easily life could be snuffed out, and she didn't desire to die. This could be watching a loved one die horribly or peacefully, watching them or herself grow old, or hating her own mortality. Furthermore, as we established, Helen/Elizabeth is often shown smoking; she could've started seeing the ramifications of her chain-smoking when she discovered that she was aging faster (visually) and developing lung cancer.

Either of these two speculations could be valid reasons for why the Administrator would put herself in a lifelong debt in exchange for the above-mentioned.

So, the Administrator may have craved power, wealth, longevity, or a combination of the three; then who is she indebted to, and what is she supposed to pay back?

Now, this is where things get a bit crazy. Based on what we know in canon, there's really no one we can point to that can be a possible candidate to serve as the Administrator's creditor. One could possibly turn to Merasmus since he's a wizard and might have the ability to grant or provide her the means to gain what she desired. However, Merasmus is quite literally a Saturday morning cartoon villain and an incompetent wizard who poses no possible threat to the Administrator that she HAS to pay him back anything. To make my point, more often than not, Merasmus is the one seeking out the TF2 crew for help because he got HIMSELF in debt with the mafia, and he's commonly harassed by the RED Soldier. The same man who tapped cardboard to himself to sneak into a robot base.

We can also rule out the Mann brothers, Redmond & Blutarch, because it's highly apparent that she's manipulating them to achieve whatever hidden goal she has going on. And it's been proven time and time again that the brother's agenda is the Gravel war, woefully ignorant to whatever the Administrator is doing. Gray Mann, we can DEFINITELY rule out because he's actively going against her and made no hints that she owed him anything.

Zepheniah Mann could be a possible contestant since he did have Elizabeth/Helen swear to protect his "miracle gravel" and to keep it away from Gray Mann. I also find it interesting that near the end of his written Will, Zepheniah expresses how he does not wish to die and that "God and His angels will have to drag me screaming to Heaven. I do not want to die." If we were to use Zepheniah Mann as the potential creditor, perhaps Helen/Elizabeth would be trying to resurrect her (possible) father after he granted her his remaining estate and riches. However, there is a problem with this theory.

Firstly, Zepheniah technically resolved his own issue by cursing himself to death. We see this firsthand in his testament AND during the month of October when we play on Harvest, and his ghost gives the Mercs a visiting scare. Now, one could argue that perhaps being dead for so long gives him limitations, such as eating, drinking, and other human senses that one would miss. But basic Ghost 101 would remind you that spectral entities are known for possessing people for personal gain. While we don't see Zepheniah perform this ever in the TF2 universe, I'll be damned if it hasn't occurred to the old bastard to try that trick out once in a while. If Zeph ever wanted to re-experience being human, he could just haunt a person for however long before finally being exorcised or leaving on his own free will.

Secondly, what reason would the Administrator have to indebt herself to Zepheniah? Based on the speculations we made earlier, Zeph coldly demoted her from the family to become a maidservant, blocking Helen/Elizabeth from his wealth. If it wasn't for the misgiving of his sons, who knows if Helen/Elizabeth would've gotten his affluence. And the Administrator doesn't give the air as someone who would do anything out of the kindness of her black coffee heart. Even though Zeph considered Elizabeth as his "dear maidservant" and trusted her dearly, that doesn't mean that Helen/Elizabeth shared the same sentiment. In the Loose Canon comic, we see that on the day that they were going to bury Zepheniah, Helen/Elizabeth is shown smoking and not giving a single fuck during the funeral. She could've still harbored some bitterness toward Zepheniah, and she could've just taken the money she got and not feel any obligation to "repay" Zeph for anything.

On top of that, let's say we shove the whole "wanting riches & power" aspect of the Administrator aside, then how the fuck does "paying Zeph back" help with the possibility that the Administrator wants to avoid death? Sure, she was given his stash of miracle gravel (Australium), but Zeph himself didn't grant her this nigh immortality; the mineral does. She can let the bastard rot in his grave and scavenge all of Australia to get what she wants. Matter of fact, she did EXACTLY that in the same Loose Canon comic when she spoke with Radigan Conagher. And it's not like Zepheniah had any secret powers that we know of-he was just a man who sold munitions to the highest buyer.

And lastly, Zeph isn't a threat worthy of a final comic reveal. I'm certain that there's probably someone out there who can prove me wrong on this, and all power to them, but for me, there's very little about Zepheniah Mann where he's a valid contender to be the creditor to the Administrator's debt. When we look at the last comic, Blood in the Water, we see the Administrator in a state of desperation when she's told that all the Australium is gone. And in that desperation (and acceptance), she opts to use up the last of the Australium to settle this debt within an hour. Those last panels in the second-to-last comic would have us believe that whomever she's indebted to is so intimidating that the Administrator would use up the last of her life and finally end this 150-year-long debt "once and for all." You don't typically see that language used if the threat isn't something substantial. Hell, there was that one document where the Administrator was speaking with the UNITED STATES SENATORS and exposed her secret plan to these men. And it scared them so badly that one of them remarked about having to see their family.

To further add to this, the reason why I believe this creditor is such a massive threat is due to the experience Miss Pauling had when she was dead. As some may remember in the Blood in the Water comic, we start off with Miss Pauling in a deserted, dream-like reality, and she enters a door that leads to the Administrator monitoring herself. After a brief conversation, Miss Pauling is shown practically begging Helen to come forward about her massive plan that she's been working on for years. When Miss Pauling asks what is it that the Administrator wants, we get this iconic panel as the Administrator responds:

Now, I know that many would say that this doesn't prove anything about who her creditor may be because this was just a death-induced dream…Or was it? We know that Heaven and Hell exist, then a Purgatory, an in-between realm, should be a possibility, yes? When we see Miss Pauling in this mysterious place, we see vultures surrounding her body. This is typical behavior of vultures since they are carrion birds. However, when we see vultures surround a character, especially one who isn't dead, it's to signify that the character is close to death. One example I can think of is during The Lion King when Simba is discovered by Timon & Pumba. While the little lion appeared dead, we learn quickly that he was close to death. And, mind you, vultures ONLY eat carrion, creatures that have died, not close to death. In Miss Pauling's case, since the RED Medic was in the process of resuscitating her, the vultures could only surround her since she was going to survive anyway. But, all-in-all, the vultures being in this deserted land could be a hint that Miss Pauling was in Purgatory.

Another case of this possibly being the land between life & death, Heaven & Hell, is the location. Now, when trying to get a tangible idea of how others picture Purgatory, I couldn't get a direct answer since many of the sources I skimmed through kept going into the religious symbolism of Purgatory. However, thanks to Dante's Divine Comedy, it's often described as a mountain or a "rocky hill with separate openings into its hollow center." In other pictures (with a quick Google search, mind you), Purgatory is a mountainous region with a sandy beach at the very bottom, surrounded by water. The mountain is often depicted as having a trail that leads up before it becomes a multi-layered platform like a stacked cake.

When we re-examine where Miss Pauling was located there are no mountains or hills, but we do see a rocky formation nearby. Also, Miss Pauling is placed in a desert area, and many would say that being stranded in the desert is a sentence that only leads to death if not appropriately prepared to face the harsh elements. But one thing that does fit the description of Purgatory is the door that Miss Pauling sees upon waking up in this other realm. A "separate opening," if you will. During my research, I also want to add this little tib-bit. So, the first layer of Purgatory is Ante-Purgatory, which has two terraces that make it up. The first being the ex-communicate, in the context of Dante's Divine Comedy, are individuals who were exiled from the church. However, the second terrace I found interesting. The second terrace are the Late-Repentant. These individuals are described as people who were too consumed by "worldly affairs" to repent for their sins, or they didn't receive their final rites before dying. And wouldn't you agree that both Miss Pauling and the Administrator had "worldly affairs" that they desperately wanted to attend to before dying?

Finally, to cement my point that Miss Pauling AND the Administrator were in a Purgatory-like realm, we see that Miss Pauling awakens from her death sleep thanks to the RED Medic. Shenanigans ensue, and she gets a call from the BLU Engineer. They talk for a moment, but we learn that the Administrator is dead. Fast forward after the TF Crew takes care of business at Gray Mann's island, the BLU Engineer greets the Administrator after tinkering with her Life-Extender machine. It is then that we learn that the Administrator was dead for FOUR HOURS. This means that Miss Pauling having that death "dream," coming back to life, the TF2 finding and killing the TFC Mercs, Scout dying then coming back to life, Medic dying and coming back to life, and all the other shenanigans during Blood in the Water happened within 4 hours or maybe a little before that time limit.

Also, if you just simply read the comic, it pretty much spells it out to you that Miss Pauling and the Administrator might be in a Purgatory-Hell-like realm, so…All that speculation was kinda of for nothing.

REGARDLESS! I believe that the Administrator stating that she needs blood and doesn't have enough of it relates to the debt that she's in. If the Administrator requires blood to fulfill her debt, then her creditor must be exceptionally sinister to ask this of the Administrator. And Zepheniah Mann just doesn't cut it as someone who would ask that of the Administrator. So, if not him, then who?

With all of this in mind, one would probably still point a finger at Merasmus. The guy often keeps terrorizing the Mercs, and he does perform rituals of various types. In the Blood Money update comic, he does mention that he obtained the "blood of virgins" by using his own blood, and in Gargoyles and Gravel, the RED Spy details that Merasmus does use blood in his schemes. And while all this would make sense, the TF2 crew are ALWAYS fighting that old man every Halloween. So much so that he's not even a threat to them anymore, as they are just as quick to dismiss him. Hell, in the same comic (Gargoyles and Gravel), the Mercs nearly left Merasmus to his fate if it wasn't for the RED Heavy stepping in because he didn't want to play bootleg D&D. On top of this, despite appearing every Halloween, Miss Pauling, and possibly even the Administrator, didn't even know the guy existed until Gargoyles and Gravel. Which is surprising to me since he comes around EVERY HALLOWEEN. And a person can't be a threat to ya if you don't even acknowledge their existence.

Now, this isn't me saying that it's IMPOSSIBLE for Merasmus to be the reason the Administrator is in debt. Merasmus is 6,000 years old, so it's not implausible for him and Helen/Elizabeth to have met, and the guy knows magic, so if it's riches or immortality she wants, he can provide it. I would probably say that he's the "safest" option. But, with Merasmus' slight incompetence as a wizard and the fact that the Administrator hasn't communicated or even acknowledged the wizard, I'm just gonna put this option in a corner by itself.

But that leaves us stuck with no options. Once again, the Mann brothers are a no-go since the Administrator isn't intimidated by any of them. Zepheniah Mann doesn't qualify due to the above-mentioned. Then, what about Saxton Hale? Well, that's also not an option either. One, it's often shown as a pompous idiot who doesn't give heads or tails about anything but fighting and drinking. He doesn't even respect the Administrator because he has a dedicated barren room with Miss Pauling's name on it. And when informed about the Administrator by Charles Darling, he looks genuinely perplexed when he tells Hale how she lived for 150 years and was planning something big. And I'm not going to bother with his ancestors because Helen/Elizabeth clearly see Australians as, in her words in the Loose Canon comic, "lager-pickled brain."

And at this point, there's really no one else we can look to. There's no one else above the Administrator herself that can pose a possible threat to her in any way. However, I do have a suggestion that might work. I would like to introduce the Unknown Individual. The first time we are even informed that this person exists is when you combine the torn pictures of the Mann family photo. On the left side, we see Redmond Mann, Blutarch Mann, Zepheniah Mann, Elizabeth/Helen, and Barnabus Hale. On the right, we see Silas by his lonesome at a fireplace. When you try to combine the photos, we can see that there's a missing link as a mysterious individual is shown that bridges the photos; preventing it from being 100% complete. All we can ascertain about this individual is that they're wearing some sort of coat. The wiki claims that there might be something being held by the Unknown Individual, but I've analyzed this picture for a while, and I just can't see it. Maybe it's the stylized art, or I'm just dumb.

This is another unfortunate case where we don't know who this person is and what stake they have in the TF2 story as a whole. But, I will bet my ass that this person had something to do with the final comic, and we would've finally gotten confirmation on who they were. We got the same treatment with Gray Mann when they finally revealed the final lines in Zepheniah's Will and showed us the birth certificate, so something similar could've been done for the UI (Unknown Individual). However, because Valve didn't develop this mysterious individual, they are a blank slate for us to do whatever we please. So, who is this Unknown Individual? An eldritch entity, of course.

Now, I'm going to build off this theory from Richter Overtime's video and the possibility that a cosmic entity has the Administrator indebted to it. To give some context, Richter Overtime made a video going over what happened to the final TF2 comic. He briefly goes over the real-life explanations on why we never received the final comic (Because Valve essentially), but he also showcased an anonymous user on 4chan who posted on TF2's V board who "claimed" to have "read the script" for the final comic. Before I continue, let me be the first to say that I am more than skeptical about this individual who supposedly read the script for the final TF2 comic. There's nothing that this anon provides that proves that they have any relation to the game, not even giving us a "I'm a friend to the son of an uncle who works at Valve who also happened to work on the comics for TF2." Now, understandably, if this IS a Valve employee who worked on the comic, revealing company information such as the final comic could be detrimental to their job, so they would want to put as little of themselves out there as possible. HOWEVER, as it stands, we have no concrete credentials that can prove this guy's telling the truth. Also, two, even if this was a "leaked script," I highly doubt it, and, to give it the benefit of the doubt, it's probably a rough draft. But it being a draft doesn't say that it's a finished project. Look no further than GTA 6, a game that was leaked a few years ago, and everybody with no good sense judged the game, even though the game wasn't even in a stage where it was even PLAYABLE.

With that out of the way, let me continue my point. So, in Richter's video, this anonymous person claims that the person whom the Administrator was indebted to was a "cosmic entity or messenger" posing as Abraham Lincoln. And, in my opinion, I vibe with this. Considering that God & Heaven, Satan & Hell, ghosts and aliens exist in this world, I don't think it's too far off to include eldritch horrors in the TF2 universe. I mean, we do have the Bombinomicon, a book that's supposed to be a reference to the Lovecraftian Necronomicon. To add to this, I remember seeing comments on Richter's video that don't like the possible idea of a cosmic entity being the reason why the Administrator is in debt. Here are a few examples that I found in the comment section:

Which, I can understand why most would feel that way. Since TF2 had its world expanded upon, there's been no hint that a higher being is closely watching the Mercs and the TF2 universe as a whole, so throwing in a G-Man-esque character into the mix might seem unoriginal and tacky. However, I don't mind this possible theory; lemme explain why.

Firstly, Valve tends to leave in some of their stories an omnipresent individual who oversees the main protagonist. We all know of the G-Man, an enigmatic and mysterious entity who both helps and hinders the Half-Life characters as they push their own questionable goals. But I think there's a lesser-known "G-Man" type character that some overlook in the Valve games, the Rat Man.

For those who don't remember, back in the first Portal game, there were secret dens that could be found with writings and dioramas on the walls, similar to the rambles and scribbles of a supposed madman. These hidden spaces belonged to an unseeable figure named Doug Rattmann, commonly known as the Rat Man. These images that the Rat Man leaves behind help Chell, and in turn, the player, with piecing together that GLaDOS could not be trusted and figure out what happened in Aperture Science. Now, if your memory is jogged, you might be thinking:

"Well, Rat Man isn't really a G-Man-esque entity. There's a whole comic explaining his whole deal and why he bothers to help Chell in the first place."

In which, you are correct. However, counter-point! Notice I said 'omnipresent.' The word means something that is widely or constantly encountered. Or, when speaking of a godly figure, present everywhere at the same time. Now, the latter wouldn't apply to the Rat Man, but you could agree that he (the Rat Man's Dens) is widely encountered if you know where to look for his dens. The Rat Man may not be an otherworldly entity, but his presence is still felt once you're aware of his existence. The same could be said about the G-Man. I detour this section to say that Valve has a track record of including an always-watching entity in some of their games that provide aid or woes to their main protagonist. That's why I don't mind the idea of a potential "G-Man-esque" character being a possibility in TF2.

Now, the unfortunate thing is that there are not a lot of omnipresent individuals in the TF2 universe. The only definite person who would fit that role is the Administrator, but we're here to explain who's the person SHE'S indebted to. Unless there's some debt that she owes to herself, we can't really count her in this instance. But in terms of omnipresence, the Administrator is the only one who is persistently present in & out of gameplay that assists and hinders the players (reminds us what time the match ends, informs us if someone took our intelligence, and in the Meet the Spy animation, she quite literally informs BLU team that the RED Spy was in the base; hindering the Spy but assisting the BLU team).

And that's why I opted to pick the UI (Unknown Individual) as the omnipresent individual who oversees the TF2 universe. Once again, because the UI hasn't been established at all in the TF2 universe (there is literally one long sentence dedicated to them), so we're free to throw random bullshit at the wall and claim that it sticks. So, if the UI is the creditor to the Administrator and responsible for her blood debt, then who are they? Since we're categorizing them as a Lovecraftian eldritch being, the joys about this is that I don't have to go into a long-winded rant about them :D. Besides, the fun about the Lovecraftian horrors is that they are not explainable by human comprehension, which I think fits the Administrator heavily since we still, to this day, in canon, don't know what her whole deal is.

However, it wouldn't be fun if we just left it as that. I do have an idea I want to present to explain who or what this entity is. The Unknown Individual, in my book, is a Nyarlathotep-type creature, an entity that thrives on chaos & cruelty and is highly deceptive and manipulative. Nyarlathotep-based on the tib-bit of information I scrounge for this-is a highly active Lovecraftian horror who is more "down to earth" than most cosmic entities in that genre. Nyarlathotep takes the guise of humans instead of maintaining an unfathomable shape, they actually communicate through humanoid means, and they even maintain multiple cults, some of them not even being their own cults, and are instead the religious sects of other Outer Gods & Great Old Ones. As stated before, unlike other Lovecraftian creatures, Nyarlathotep prefers causing madness than death & destruction. Then again, in the same breath, based on various wikis I found, they say that Nyarlathotep has the possible intent to destroy the human race and the earth as well, so take that as you will.

Also, a thing I found interesting was the inspiration that brought about Nyarlathotep. Based on his name, it clearly has Egyptian origins, but what I thought was more fascinating was that Nyarlathotep was conceived due to a dream Lovecraft had. There are many interpretations of this dream, but William Murry, as far back as 1991 and as early as 2006, speculated that Nyarlathotep may have been inspired by Nikola Tesla, who was known to have well-attended lectures that involved extraordinary electrical experiments and was surprisingly seen as a sinister figure by some at the time. And guess who plays the Engineer when Blutarch initially hires 9 mercenaries to forcibly take land from his brother…Take that as you will.

So, we determined WHO the Administrator is, WHAT her cravings possibly were, and WHO her debtor is. So, what's the TLDR version of all of this?

Well, in order, Helen, previously known as Elizabeth, was the true first child of Zepheniah Mann. I'm still going to keep who her mother is ambiguous. As for her craving, Helen wanted to live; the why I also want to leave a pseudo-ambiguous, but I would believe it might be related to what happened to her mother or due to an existential crisis. Helen communes with Nyarlathotep by either seeking them out or the reverse, and they both strike a deal. Nyarlathotep is willing to provide her the immortality she craves as long as she can provide blood in return every year or decade that she lives. A life for a life type of deal. In agreeing with this, Nyarlathotep causes coincidences to happen, such as Zepheniah Mann dying from every illness possible and Zeph giving his entire estate to Helen, along with his "miracle gravel." Nyarlathotep doesn't magically give Helen what she wants but provides her the tools to get what she desires. However, the problem presents itself when it comes to obtaining blood. Helen can't just go on a mindless killing spree, and perhaps taking another life is a daunting task. Canonically, we have never seen the Administrator lift a finger against anyone save for a glass window. And each year/decade she doesn't spill any blood, the more her blood debt increases.

However, she knows two idiots who are willingly sending men to their graves due to a petty feud. Thus, the Administrator decides that, with the newfound affluence she acquired, she would fund Redmond & Blutarch to continue paying Mercenaries to die for their silly land disputes as a secret "interested third party." However, Nyarlathotep, while impressed that she would go this route, opts to not accept these offerings because the Administrator isn't the one doing the killing, even though she's funding the men to perform such deeds. She needs to be the one to pull the trigger, to swing the axe, to light the dynamite fuse. Helen needs blood on HER hands. However, to give credit where credit is due, Nyarlathotep was willing to put her in a "payment plan" to help her make up for the loss of blood she didn't provide. But this arrangement is intended to put her deeper into this blood debt. The Administrator is aware of this, but the hanging threat that this all-powerful entity will snatch away the gifts that they provided hangs over her like a loosely strung-up piano. If she doesn't make the "payments," she loses everything. And every time she thinks she's over it, she's done, she will accept the darkness that awaits her; Helen's fear of the unknown, of absolution, of the monitored office that she has to face every time she temporarily dies; it brings her back into the vicious cycle once again.

By 1890 and some decades before, Helen established TF Industries, a company "devoted to the highest level of craftsmanship and personal security" and "providing the latest in military technology, selling all manner of deadly, cutting-edge devices to prospective buyers." However, this is a pseudo front to bring lambs to the slaughter. In selling deadly weapons & devices, Helen hopes this will cause enough bloodshed to be spilled so that she can repay her debt. And, in hiring individuals to TF Industries and, in turn, sending them to RED or BLU, two companies she would end up buying, she hopes the unsafe work environments will also contribute to fulfilling her debt.

And this is where we will leave the Administrator's portion of this analysis for now since the further down the lore and worldbuilding of TF2 we go, the more we can expand upon her and her involvement with the Gravel Wars. But before we move on to the Gravel Wars itself, there's one final thing we gotta talk about.

[archduchessofnowhere]

“He won't get me”: some of the rejected suitors of Archduchess Elisabeth Marie

I am in a good mood so I decided to finish up this post that I had on my drafts since months ago, when I read the memoirs of Archduchess Erzsi's English governess. While I thought the memoirs itself were kinda dull I did find very interesting tidbits of information. Today I'll talk about two of her (alleged) suitors.

Erzsi, being the granddaughter of the Emperor and the only child of the late Crown Prince was considered a candidate for many princes, like her cousin Albert, future king of the Belgians. Other one was Prince Eitel Friedrich of Prussia, the second son of Emperor Wilhelm II.

After the review there was a grand gala dinner at the Hofburg, and I went with the Archduchess to watch the Royalties from the musicians' gallery over the banqueting hall. The table was gorgeous with gold plate, and I find I wrote my mother, in an account of the banquet : “Our dear Emperor has a splendid appetite. The German Emperor, who sees everything, noticed our Archduchess up in the gallery and asked who she was. Upon being told, he asked our Emperor that she might come down after dinner and be presented. She is certainly growing remarkably pretty.”

Evidently Emperor Wilhelm II. found her so, as later he sent his second son to visit the Austrian Court with the intention of making a matrimonial alliance between him and the Archduchess. But he counted without the Archduchess, for when she saw the youth, she exclaimed : “Marry that boy! Never!” and forthwith retired to bed, from whence she refused to emerge until His Imperial Highness had shaken the dust of the Austrian Court from his Royal shoes, and taken his departure.

The girl seemed to had a flavor for drama. The governess doesn't talk about this potential marriage again, but I was a still curious so I made a quick search to see if I could dig something more about the subject and I stumbled with this news article from 4 June 1890 published in The Toronto Daily Mail:

THE AUSTRIAN CROWN.

London Truth says:—The information given in a St. Petersburg paper about the possibility of the German Emperor's second son, Prince Eitel, being raised to the imperial throne of Austria is not wholly unfounded. But the condition would be marriage with the Archduchess Eizabeth. She is his senior, but the difference is not great enough to be disparity when both reach years of discretion (...) Both the Emperor and Empress of Austria hate to the degree of loathing the Archduchess Stephanie, who is as good (or bad) as excluded from their presence. “No more unnappy couple exist,” says to me a circus friend of the Empress, from whom she hides no grief. But their misery would be far deeper if he Archduchess Stephanie were to shine forth again as coming Empress through a marriage with the feeble-brained heir-presumptive to the throne. Such a marriage would probably secure the succession to a child of Stephanie. Were Elizabeth declared heiress, as Maria Theresa was, with the support of William II., with the understanding that she was to marry his son, and were, by this arrangement, the sons of the Archduke Charles Louis to be cut out, Francis Joseph and the Empress Elizabeth would die happy.

First of all, the age gap between Eitel and Erzsi was... two months. In his favor. So already we can tell this article doesn't have the best sources. However it also tells us that at least the rumor of this union existed even years before the governess started working at court.

While there was speculation about the succesion after Rudolf's death, and his daughter's name came forward, there never seemed to have been a serious effort of naming her heiress (there was however an attempt to remarry Stephanie to archduke Franz Ferdinand... actual crackshipping); Franz Josef, always the traditionalist, preferred to name as heir the nephew he barely standed that to bend the succesion laws in favor of the girl that was his favorite grandchild. So this engagement seems to be more wishful thinking for people that hoped for the unification of Germany and Austria rather than a serious plan; perhaps Wilhelm did thought his son had a chance with the archduchess, but I doubt that Franz Josef would've liked to give his empire to the Germans in a silver plate. In any case, Erzsi's reaction to the prince ended this project before it even begun.

The other potential bridegroom only gets marginally mentioned in a letter from the governess to a friend of hers. The Governess doesn't date this letter but given the context it is from early May of 1898:

The Archduchess wishes me to assure you she is not fianceed with the King of Spain. Her expression is: “He won't get me;” and I don't think he will.

He didn't got her.

Again a very quick search made me came across with several news articles published in January/February 1898 that announced the engagement of the fifteen-years-old Erzsi with the twelve-years-old King Alfonso XIII of Spain. And again, this really seem to be nothing but rumors. I know nothing about Alfonso but I doubt there was any serious attempt to get him a bride while he was still a literal child; by the time he had reached majority, Erzsi was already married.

And that is all I have for today on this subject; If anyone has any information (specially if it's from better sources that memoirs published almost two decades after the events happened and gossipy news articles) about this potential unions please tell me!

[moboxcritique]

I'm the anon who talked about mobox's roleplay groups in June and also the anon who talked about the character design problems for animation more recently. I was already on Tumblr before but I remade my account and I'd figured I'd come back here to discuss publicly on this blog (I'm tired of hiding out of fear of getting harassed for the things i did in the past. I assure you, I'm currently moving pass this and I am getting help and treatment). I also plan to keep my account for future asks on my work or other stuff. Mobox does seem to have a strange Fetish with abuse and rape. Usually people who have these types of "kinks" are known to have had traumatic experiences in the past related to it and use it as a way of coping. Not the healthiest way, especially when you expose it to minors.

I also remember this ask that popped before the controversy, which I thought was interesting to mention :

...Where an anonymous pointed out how mobox's au didn't make any sense, especially in the timeline and the way mobox shipped characters. Of course, Mobox responded in his usual way.

He doesn't even need to get off the internet at this point, he needs severe help from professionals.

Oh my goodness, hi! Your art style is so nice!

Anyway, remember that wiki page that I talked about here? I have a feeling that the page was made by someone close to Mobox, since it talked about him being abused as a kid or something, which, now that I look at it, makes the thing with him having a r*pe/abuse kink make even more sense (And the cover up with Stolen Innocence).

He's obviously exposing it to minors. An example being one of his friends (Polly) is literally 15 years old and apparently Mob and him ship Pau with one of his OCs now (and Stan with another one of his OCs as well). A few of his fans have even admitted they couldn't watch Open Mind because they were also minors (One admitted they were 16), and minors still follow his content anyway and think it's ok to do the things he does.

Here's the English translation for that ask, by the way:

The Anon: mobox, I feel you're ruining your au. First about Ennard and Eleanor, then the timeline is not understandable because of a post you did about Renata this year and what you've said about Renata and William before. And now Cassidy is probably the new guard when we don't know much about her.

Mobox: ooLOL

in case they are all ideas, I can not believe that just by saying "I have the need" for you it is "I WILL DO IT"

As I mentioned, we still don't know, I only make plans, besides, it is clearly an Au, the ideas will like it and others will not, but that is already one's decision.

(For context with Eleanor and Cassidy, (NOT Cassidy in the Cassianverse), Eleanor (A character from the Fnaf book "To Be Beautiful") was planned to be Ennard's toxic ex partner, while Cassidy was Jessika and Gron's daughter

This is Cassidy in Affinity:

But yeah, you're right. He didn't seem to take critique too well, which is funny because he stalks our blog even though he absolutely hates it

The thing is, Mobox claims that he's going to therapy, but from all that we've seen, it hasn't helped at all. Mobox hasn't changed himself at all, not even now. He still does the same stuff that he's done before.

[scotianostra]

Thomas Blacklock the Scottish poet was born November 10th, 1721.

Yesterday I told you about the deaf artist, Walter Geikle, who against the odds made a success of hi life, today, on a similar vein, it is The Blind Poet Thomas Blacklock.

Blacklock was a Scottish poet and scholar. His father was a bricklayer, and his mother was the daughter of Mr Richard Rae, a cattle dealer, For bricklayer I would probably guess he was more of a stonemason, given the era he was brought up im, but let’s not quibble about the dad, it’s the son we’re here to talk about.

He lost his sight as a result of smallpox when he was just six months old. At the age of 12, he began writing poetry, and due to the influence of some of his friends, he soon gained some reputation in Scotland and abroad as a blind poet with some promise.

By 1759 he had completed his theological studies, and he was licensed as a preacher in Dumfries, where he acquired a considerable reputation as a pulpit orator. He was appointed minister of Kirkcudbright, but was objected to by the parishioners on account of his blindness, and gave up the presentation on receiving an annuity. He later moved to Edinburgh, where he became a tutor, and in 1767 he was made a D.D. (Doctor of Divinity) from Marischal College in Aberdeen.

Blacklock's poems are mostly forgotten today, and his primary claim to fame is saving the life of poet Robert Burns by persuading him not to go to the West Indies, but to stay and publish his poems instead. The ship that Burns was supposed to travel with sank on its subsequent voyage with all lives lost, so yes he most certainly did save our Bard’s life!

According to Corey Andrews in The Genius of Scotland: The Cultural Production of Robert Burns, 1785-1834, "[Burns wrote, in an autobiographical letter to John Moore,] that 'a letter from Dr. Blacklock overthrew all my schemes by rousing by poetic ambition.' He confesses that 'the Doctor belonged to a set a Critics for whose applause I had not even dared to hope'."

Thomas seems to have been a very well liked man, according to Chambers' Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen, "It has been said of Dr Blacklock that 'he never lost a friend, nor made a foe;' and perhaps no literary man ever passed through life so perfectly free from envious feeling, and so entirely respected and beloved.

 His conversation was lively and entertaining; his wit was acknowledged, but it had no tinge of malice; his temper was gentle, his feelings warm—intense; his whole character was one to which may be applied the epithet amiable, without any qualification."

I enjoy finding connections between our past “celebs”, like the one with Blaclock and Burns, but oor Blind Port also ties in with the subject of a post at the tail end of last month, James Boswell.

Blacklock visited Boswell for breakfast in August, 1773, during Samuel Johnson's stay in Edinburgh, shortly before Johnson and Boswell set out on their tour of Scotland. According to Boswell, in Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, Sir William Forbes "brought with him Dr Blacklock, whom he introduced to Dr Johnson, who received him with a most humane complacency: “Dear Dr Blacklock, I am glad to see you!” Blacklock seemed to be much surprised when Dr Johnson said it was easier to him to write poetry than to compose his Dictionary. [...] Dr Blacklock spoke of scepticism in morals and religion with apparent uneasiness, as if he wished for more certainty."

The building in which he lived (at the corner Chapel Street and West Nicholson) now contains several pubs including The Peartree and The Blind Poet (the walls of which are decorated with a number of Blacklock’s poems). The Peartree has one of the best beer gardens in Edinburgh. 

Thomas Blacklock died at his home, and was buried just round the corner from his house in the churchyard of St Cuthbert’s Chapel of Ease, now called Buccleuch Parish Church it is the oldest ecclesiastical building on the south side of Edinburgh.

[lledron]

Louis James Moriarty / Albert James Moriarty , Part 2

Part 1, here: https://lledron.tumblr.com/post/718787539505430528/louis-james-moriarty-x-albert-james-moriarty

What pets do they have? Albert wanted to keep Charles, so he shares custody with Mycroft. "Who's cute and beautiful?" said Albert, petting the pigeon and handing it pieces of freshly baked bread. "Albert, you're making her too fat…" said Louis, taking the pieces of bread away from the poor bird. "He's just hungry. "He has to maintain a healthy life in order to fly and do…whatever it is that pigeons do…Promise me that you will feed him conscientiously and that you will talk to Director Holmes about a good feeding plan" said Louis. "I promise," said Albert. His fingers were trembling. He desperately wanted a drink, but this was his third day without touching alcohol. He could have. He could.

Wedding (Including a Modern AU Who's proposing? Well, technically they were married, Albert thought. They lived in the same house, shared a Netflix account and paid for it jointly. But legally they were brothers, even if they hadn't seen these people in years. Louis was on her chest, stroking her nipple. And before his other head thought he'd better go for a second round, Albert spoke up: "Will you marry me?" The blond raised his head, looking beautiful and confused. "Are you kidding?" he inquired. "No" she explained and pulled out the ring, hidden behind the headboard of the bed. "Louis James Moriarty, will you marry me?" he said and held up the simple gold ring.No blood covered diamonds for them. "Yes," Louis replied, smiling. "But what are we going to do if…?" "Don't worry about that, I already have a plan" Albert said and wrapped him in a hug. The world could burn for all he cared.

Who really enjoyed the planning? They both did! "Louis, why don't you sit Sherlock and Will at the, you know, married table?" "They're newlyweds. We have a list, Albert, your list…" "You know Moneypenny and Bond tried that once and it didn't work, right? Why do you want to put them together at the singles table?" "All right, you win, we'll send out an invitation with a plus one." "Confirmation from the bodyguards came in as well. If they see that hideous thing* or my parents they have orders to call the police."

Would your wedding be small or grand? It would be intimate, because I think in this AU Albert was still working for the Queen of England's secret service. Arrangements of roses, lilies and daffodils. Albert and Louis would have fits in case something goes wrong during the wedding. If Albert's parents walk in, if the judge decides not to marry them… Fortunately, all went well, but Moran stopped a crazy ex of Louis' who had bypassed security and was going to say "I object because they are brothers, he introduced him to me as his older brother and told me not to worry". Helena, William and Sherlock's daughter, was the flower girl and Fred was the ring bearer.

Which guest was happier to see them get married? William cried tears of joy as his brothers kissed in front of the judge. Sherlock hugged him from behind and held out a handkerchief. *Albert calls his brother "the thing".

¿Qué mascotas tienen? Albert quería quedarse con Charles, así que comparte la custodia con Mycroft. "¿Quién es lindo y hermoso?", dijo Albert, acariciando a la paloma y dándole trozos de pan recién horneado. "Albert, la estás engordando demasiado…" dijo Louis, quitándole los trozos de pan a la pobre ave. "Sólo tiene hambre. "Tiene que mantener una vida sana para poder volar y hacer… lo que sea que hagan las palomas… Prométeme que lo alimentarás a conciencia y que hablarás con el director Holmes sobre un buen plan de alimentación" dijo Louis. "Lo prometo", dijo Albert. Le temblaban los dedos. Deseaba desesperadamente un trago, pero era su tercer día sin tocar el alcohol. Podría haberlo hecho. Podría.

Boda (incluye un AU moderno) ¿Quién se declara? Bueno, técnicamente estaban casados, pensó Albert. Vivían en la misma casa, compartían una cuenta de Netflix y la pagaban conjuntamente. Pero legalmente eran hermanos, aunque llevaran años sin verse. Louis estaba sobre su pecho, acariciándole el pezón. Y antes de que su otra cabeza pensara que era mejor ir a por una segunda ronda, Albert habló: "¿Quieres casarte conmigo?" El rubio levantó la cabeza, hermoso y confuso. "¿Estás de broma?", inquirió. "No", explicó y sacó el anillo, oculto tras el cabecero de la cama. "Louis James Moriarty, ¿quieres casarte conmigo?" dijo y levantó el sencillo anillo de oro.Nada de diamantes cubiertos de sangre para ellos. "Sí", respondió Louis, sonriendo. "¿Pero qué vamos a hacer si…?". "No te preocupes por eso, ya tengo un plan" dijo Albert y lo envolvió en un abrazo. Por él, el mundo podía arder.

¿A quién le gustaba planear? A los dos. "Louis, ¿por qué no sientas a Sherlock y Will en la, ya sabes, mesa de los casados?". "Son recién casados. Tenemos una lista, Albert, tu lista…" "Sabes que Moneypenny y Bond lo intentaron una vez y no funcionó, ¿verdad? ¿Por qué quieres ponerlos juntos en la mesa de solteros?" "De acuerdo, tú ganas, enviaremos una invitación con un acompañante." "También llegó la confirmación de los guardaespaldas. Si ven esa cosa horrible* o a mis padres tienen órdenes de llamar a la policía."

¿Su boda sería pequeña o grandiosa? Sería íntima, porque creo que en esta UA Albert aún trabajaba para el servicio secreto de la Reina de Inglaterra. Arreglos de rosas, lirios y narcisos. Albert y Louis tendrían ajustes en caso de que algo saliera mal durante la boda. Si los padres de Albert entran, si el juez decide no casarlos… Afortunadamente, todo salió bien, pero Moran detuvo a una ex loca de Louis que se había saltado la seguridad e iba a decir "me opongo porque son hermanos, me lo presentó como su hermano mayor y me dijo que no me preocupara". Helena, la hija de William y Sherlock, fue la niña de las flores y Fred el portador de los anillos.

¿Qué invitado se alegró más de que se casaran? William lloró de alegría cuando sus hermanos se besaron delante del juez. Sherlock le abrazó por detrás.

[sunnydaleherald]

The Sunnydale Herald newsletter, Tuesday, January 24

Xander: But while we hang here doing nothing, there's a human werewolf walking around out there, probably making fun of us. Willow: The way werewolves always do. Oz: But there's really no way to tell who it is. Xander: Oh, sure there is. Giles knows stuff, and I'm practically an expert on the subject. Willow: On account of once you were a hyena? Xander: I know what it's like to crave the taste of freshly killed meat, to be taken over by those uncontrollable urges. Buffy: You said you didn't remember anything about that. Xander: I said I didn't remember anything about that. Look, the point is, is I have an affinity with this thing. I can get inside of its head. I'm a big, bad wolf. I'm on the prowl. I'm sniffing, I'm snarling, I'm a slobbering predator, I'm... Wait a second! It's right in front of us. (Oz's eye go wide with the fear of being recognized) It's obvious who I am. I'm Larry! (Oz breathes a sigh of relief) The guy's practically got wolf-boy stamped on his forehead. You got the dog bite, you got the aggression, not to mention the excessive back hair.

~~Buffy Episode #27: "Phases" ~~

The Sunnydale Herald is looking for at least one new editor! Contributing to the Herald is a great way to get your Buffy on! Find out more here. If you saw the phrase "HTML template" in our previous calls for editors and that was what made you decide that Herald duties aren't for you, you may be glad to hear that we've set up an alternative posting process!

[Drabbles & Short Fiction]

Other Version (Buffy, T, The Case Files of Young Kindaichi xover) by madimpossibledreamer

Renewal (Buffy/Spike, Angel/Cordelia, unrated) by Priceless

Out of the Woods (Buffy/Spike, T) by honeygirl51885

[Chaptered Fiction]

Break Even Ch. 1-15/15 (COMPLETE) (Buffy/Spike, G) by violettathepiratequeen

Who Shat on the Floor at My Sister's Wedding? Chapter 11 (Buffy/Spike, G) by thoughtsofahouseplant

Bound Chapter 36: Sins of Omission (Buffy/Spike, M) by spnae

Seph, Chapter 9 (Buffy/Spike, M) by

Mirror, Mirror, Chapter 5 (Buffy/Spike, E) by scratchmeout

Après (Buffy/Spike, E) by Ninereeds Chapter 25-26

Shell, Chapter 4 (Buffy/Spike, M) by TwilightChild

The Odd Couple, Chapters 1-15 (Buffy/Spike, E) by honeygirl51885

Redefine the Words, Chapter 1 (Buffy/Spike, T) by violettathepiratequeen

A Certain Mystical Nexus Ch. 7 (Xander, Natalie French, E) by Sithicus

[Images, Audio & Video]

Artwork:Spike by frolis-maneuver

[Reviews & Recaps]

Video: ROCK BOTTOM? - Buffy the Vampire Slayer Reaction - 6x10 - Wrecked by TheLexiCrowd

[Fandom Discussions]

Buffy pulled from Heaven… by testtheworld1

season 4: leaving the major emotional conflicts unresolved. by all-seeing-ifer

for the Ship Ask game: Faith - Wesley OR Faith - Willow OR your choice of Faith by faith-thee-slayer

Faith x Willow for the ship game! by faith-thee-slayer

Look - I’ve said this before: Metaphors can have multiple meanings or representations by girl4music

It’s just that Spike as a human was a romantic. by testtheworld1

I love Dawn too! by nevergonnabemuchmorethanweather

I never picked up on the wesley/william and then cordelia/drusilla similarities but YEAH by transangelus

talk about Faith and Angel? by faith-thee-slayer

Go Ask Malice by stellernorth

xander and my fist on his face by juniperhillpatient

for the ship game, willow/tara by juniperhillpatient

Can you give me some buffy fanfic recs? by disco-tea

Spuffy style Reading Challenge - #18: Pick Your Poison Reading Challenge by mcgnagallsarmy

the absurdity of Giles pretending to have liked the Bay City Rollers by earhartsease

I thoroughly enjoy the Domestic!Spike angle some fics have. by emeryya

Fuffy by juniperhillpatient

Worst Thing Each Character Has Done by AsterialPuppet

The age of the chosen ones by ThickPeanut136

British people: who would you say had the best fake British accent? by FrenchBlondie22

S4 E22 Restless - Is Dawn buying ice cream? by Physmo55

I hate that the writers included this line. by Opening_Knowledge868

The most agonizing scene in the whole series that did not include a death by GoblinQueenForever

Buffy fight sequences in S5 by Breadfan4

Gem of Amara and Bangel by MaterialGorlx

Me watching Restless... by Medium_Cancel_235

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[whatdoesshedotothem]

Tuesday 14 August 1832

5 ¾

12 5

only little round bits as for some weeks past  my bowels always in this way now fine morning F66° at 5 ¾ - reading Smiths’ flora – James Greenwood brought a couple of brace of moorgame by 6 ½ - out at 7 20 – in y walk – breakfast with my father at 8 ½ in ½ hour – then came to my room and reading French vocabulary and read from p. 466 to 532 end of Turners’ sacred history – then (about 11) called downstairs – a dozen large willow stakes come from William Keighley – in my walk – Charles and his son James Howarth made rustic seat (long chair) in my walk bottom of Calf Croft – Pickles and his men came at 1 ½ - William Greenwood had been working in the walk all the day – they began trenching the arbutus walk, and Pickles weared – Charles H- went to shew me where the old road used to go close under upper brea – put down some willow stakes along the slope from the Lower to the upper wood belonging Wellroyde – home at 6 ¾ - dinner at 7 – feeling my bowels much out of order sent prescription § to Suter at 8 along with the 2 brace moorgame to the ‘Honourable Lady Stuart Whitehall London carriage paid 14 August A Lister – By the Hope’ – wrote the above of today –

§ [?] [?] [?] [?] [?][?] [?] [?] [?] ii pro Dos. H.S.B. Saturday 29 April 1826 for M- active [?] pills for her -

SH:7/ML/E/15/0106

Letter this evening from IN- Guernsey dated Friday 27th ultimo! begging me to write to her post restante at Caen - delighted with Guernsey - beautiful island 2 days enough for seeing the whole of it - on inquiring for Mrs Barlow was told ‘she had been in France some years’ - says her sister resides in Guernsey - so that Mrs B- is most probably still in Italy? very particular about their passports in France on account of the fears of the French government of the duchesse de Berri - admires the back of the isle of Wright, but thinks the island had been too much extolled as I quite agree - mentions how useful my directions were - knows not what they should have done without them ‘You will be surprised to hear that I went to the top of the Black Gang chine which in my opinion is far worse than Mt. Vesuvius and inferiorly more fatiguing’ - then Vesuvius is not much – read over the courier – above ½ hour in the little room and came upstairs at 10 ¼ - very fine day – F69 ½° at 10 p.m. – Just before getting into bed took 2 of the pills (vid. bottom of last page) -