#Intentional or not its interesting how Louis heavy this one is

[fluideli123]

The Depths Of Our Heart Have Blackened the Sun (WIP)

So, when OFMD first came out, I read a fanfic where Alma and Louis board Edward's ship and thought it was an amazing concept that I wanted to try and develop in multiple directions!

The Main Idea of the story:

Blackbeard comes across Alma and Louis by accident, in a strange change of events Blackbeard takes it upon himself to care for Stede’s children and get them back to their home land. On the venture there Edward learns about Stede through their eyes and Alma catches on to Edward’s pain in ways Blackbeard never expected. The crew watches as the children lighten up the ship and Edward’s suffering, even for just a little while. 

But I'm also going to dig much deeper into the concepts, explorations, and perceptions of characters. So, if you don't want to read that skip this part and read below the cut!

Character Dynamics:

Alma & Louis: Alma is quite an outstanding, headstrong, brave character who is the complete opposite of her timid, shy, caring brother. In this story, I wanted to dive into their childhood, how Alma and Louis become the siblings they are now, how they view each other, their family, and, most importantly, pirates. On top of this, I wanted to show the hobbies, interests, and special skills they possess, not only Stede's kids but Mary's too.

Alma, Louis & Edward: Most people know the intention of most fics is the dynamic between Stede's Broken Hearted Man:tm: and his kids, but I wanted to dive deeper than just the kids getting to know Edward and Edward getting to know the kids. In fact, I wanted to show Edward's past pirating rules through them, his childhood, what made him carefree and childish, and what made the kids strong, fearless, and so on. They are reflections of Stede just as they are of Mary and now everyone else on board. There is nothing like seeing the world through two different eyes when the world has been shattered to pieces.

Alma & Jim: Two stubborn hotheads who don't back down to care for those they love? The fact they mirror each other in many ways and possess aspects that cause hidden characteristics in the other to stand out? The SHEER CHAOS? HOW CAN I NOT EXPLORE ONE OF MY FAVORITE DYNAMICS EVER MAN?! Also, the inside jokes could rule all the seas man, all of them!

Louis & Izzy Hands: Now, this one may or may not take a lot of people by surprise, but I have never thought that this dynamic couldn't be seen through because it SO can. Externally they are complete opposites; izzy hands is selfish, immature, a dick, and the definition of toxic masculinity. Louis on the other hand is overly worried about others, observant, fragile, and just a young boy who hasn't been tainted by the world the same way izzy has been. There is so much under the surface however that make these two one of my favorite dynamic to explore in this concept.

It's been quite a while since I wrote this (since it's been a year AND WE STILL DON'T HAVE A SECOND SEASON) but my love for the characters and ideas still burn strong! So, if you ever want to send in asks concerning this story, go on ahead! I'm more than excited to discuss and answer questions in regards to it!

Thunder rumbled and roared from the harsh, heavy, hoary sky, flashes of lightning illuminating the intimidating clouds, leaving an electrical sensation in its wake with each strike across the sky and towards the sea. The ocean rolled dangerously in response, leaving The Revenge creaking and groaning as each wave repeatedly pounded against the ship's sides. Rain smacked down like bullets on its deck as its new crew tried to save the sails and masts from the merciless, chilled winds, changing course to sail at an angle, causing the waves to attack the strongest areas of the vessel. 

Throughout the chaos, a single silhouette stood, tied to the base of the mast, dagger dug within the tough Brazilian wood, holding onto the weapon with an iron grip. Long hair snaps with the wind as the kohl painting his face smears, dripping and trailing across his face in a newly deranged style, falling away with sharp breaths of air. Blackbeard stands clenching his teeth, staring forward with unnerving malice at the storm as Izzy continuously barks their Captain's orders over the booming culmination of noises on the main deck in front of him. 

It was satisfying and utterly irritating how the storm reflected Blackbeard's fervor. Numbingly cold, bone-rattling, and absolutely, catastrophically, furious.

The storm had snuck up on them, nearly causing the ship to take on water before Blackbeard appeared from his chambers to save this god-forsaken ship from sinking before Izzy could make his way into the Captain's quarters to screech at him for allowing them all to die. All because he was too busy locking himself away to use his 'excellent' sailor skills to predict this stupid fucking squall.

Blackbeard ran on rage and the downpour only fed into his quickly dwindling supply. He was angry, so fucking angry, and with every bolt of light that lit up the sky like an explosion, Blackbeard felt his chest take on every beating the world gave to fill the aching emptiness that settled there. 

He was a dangerous, heartless monster and the sea knew it. 

An exhausted voice in the back of his mind hoped the rope and dagger tying him to safety would snap so he wouldn't have to depend on this burning, heated, thrashing feeling any longer. The idea of drowning was almost pleasant; he would never stand a chance against the waves in this storm.

"Captain! I can't see the weak point!" Fang shouts from behind him, holding onto the steering wheel for dear life. Blackbeard's head snaps around, trying to peer through his hair for the calmest part of the storm they'd seen only moments ago. All he's met with is a roar of thunder and dark, inky water rolling towards them. 

"Fuck! There!" Jim responds, limbs intertwined within the netting at the bow, a hand barely able to keep their hat on as they point toward the ship's left, obscured by the mast Blackbeard had attached himself to. 

They start to turn towards the calm of the storm as swiftly as possible, tipping to the right at the sudden turn, the sea's tormenting only aiding its motion, though dangerously. 

Izzy slides with the last few objects that hadn't been consumed by the ocean, hitting the taffrail with a pained groan as he ties himself to the rails. Frenchie and Ivan had secured themselves on the Quarter Deck directly behind Fang. Frenchie practically hyperventilates himself to death as he trips, trying to stand on the soaked, tilting deck as Ivan tries to keep Fang from fucking up the steering so they don't flip over.

Blackbeard feels his wrist and muscles burn as he pulls himself toward the mast by his dagger against the wind and a tidbit of gravity. "Hold!" 

Fear and tension mix with the crackling of the skylight as Fang and Ivan groan and clamor to get hold of the situation as they start entering dangerous territory. Jim hides their face in their arms and hat, protecting their face from another fierce splash of water onto the forecastle deck. Izzy bellows at Ivan and Fang to get their asses in gear as Frenchie squeezes his eyes shut and screams bloody murder in nearly incomprehensible English about magic and sea witches. 

"Hold!" 

Izzy scurries away from the edge of the railing, Jim starts swearing in Spanish, and the panicked shouting from behind drowns together.

Blackbeard turns his gaze to the ocean they were slowly tilting away from, cold and remorseless, ready to engulf everyone on board with a single lashing wave. His hold on the dagger falters as he continues to stare, the whisper in the back of his head growing louder. The storm wouldn't make him feel irate forever; the anger would dip away; he couldn't chase those feelings locked deep down in his gut when they reached safety. 

A spine-chilling wind whistles against the vessel, a dark promise only solidified by the salty water sending another threatening spout that washes away half the kohl left on the right of Edward's face. Leaving him spitting the water that had made its way into his mouth, turning a sneer towards the murky waters.

Edward shifts his gaze towards the mast, to the only other scar in the wood, smaller than the one Edward's dagger would leave behind, yet not as deep. 

"Did I do it right? He missed all the important bits."

Edward rips his gaze away as lightning strikes. Waves swell as he clutches the dagger tight, quickly grasping the rope tied around his waist, breath hitching, ignoring the screaming of his arms at their use.

With a last knee-weakening rock, the ship rights itself as the waters soften and settle, the pitter-patter of rain turning into droplets, the wind no longer infused with electricity. They're in the calm of the storm. 

Relief floods through the air. 

They wouldn't die today. 

Blackbeard rips his dagger from the mast with three sharp, wrangling tugs, sheathing his weapon and looking towards the worst of the squall they had just escaped. Most of his kohl is gone, barely staining odd bits and parts of his skin, entirely doused in sea and sky water. 

The emptiness creeps around his heart like a familiar sickness as he watches his merciless death and surge of zeal pass. Hopelessness stings his eyes before he gently closes them. He clenches his jaw. 

No one would notice the warm tears that blend perfectly into the storm's residue like a disguise. 

He was so tired. So fucking tired. 

The cheers of ease from his crew are short-lived by a snarl from Izzy, followed by quick steps towards the first mate. 

When would this end?  

The sound of Izzy wincing in pain. Ivan shouts for someone to help him bring his first mate to the infirmary. Unsteady steps.

When would it fucking end? 

A door closes. 

The subtle clap of thunder and glint of lightning echo the throb of Edward Teach's heart as the overfamiliar deep-seated pain returns to coat the emptiness in a virulent shell casing. 

He silently wishes he let go instead. He wishes he could feel anything other than this.

The sea knew its Kraken well. But it also knew Edward Teach. 

The storm responds with a gust of icy wind, chilling his tears, whipping them away.

-

"We've spotted a small passenger vessel approaching, Captain. It seems to have been set off course by the storm we passed a few days ago." 

Blackbeard mindlessly watches his crew from the rails of the quarter-deck, holding his second bottle of brandy that morning as Izzy stands tall and attentive beside him despite his nasty bruised ribs and side. He was still healing, but he never outwardly showed any pain he might be experiencing, being idiotically stubborn about being bedridden as always. 

"Are we low on anything?"

"No, Captain."

"Board the ship, loot it for any valuables to trade-off once we reach land."

"Will you be joining us this time around?" 

Blackbeard downs his alcohol, marveling at the burn as he shifts to walk down the steps, shooting Izzy a threatening expression the moment the drink settles in his stomach. He doesn't answer his first mate's question.

A pair of eyes burn into the back of his head as he descends, the sensation leaving his stomach churning. He doesn't acknowledge any of it as his heavy steps send a warning everyone knows by heart, a familiar thrum. Don't bother the Captain unless absolutely necessary.

It was only a portion of the wordless tunes the crew had learned to listen for and follow, a dance everyone had to learn to survive Blackbeard's ever-shifting melody, his state of mind. The crew responded with distance and sure footsteps with every thundering bellow of his boots. A crescendo of broken glass bottles and furniture, the ostinato of their Captain's unbridled rage to be swiftly answered with shared looks, a sign to speak to the man only after an hour and a half of eerie silence. The Revenge was a stage, and the Captain's Chambers was the backroom. Whatever happened behind the curtains, no one dared to acknowledge past the cues and resounding echoes of whatever had turned the ship dim and mourning. 

However, whatever happened at night when everyone settled to sleep was a different world altogether. A time when the show didn't exist, and with each hushed conversation, the crew would utter a discussion formed on how to escape, to shut the performance down, and theories about what happened behind closed doors. 

The Revenge was a hell of a place to be for the three weeks following Edward's sudden change of heart, and it showed. 

The burning sensation of Izzy Hand's gaze as Blackbeard makes his way through the doors to the hallway eases. The moment Edward is free from prying eyes, he presses his back to the door, letting out a shaky sigh, trying to hold himself together with pins and needles. 

He gulps down the remaining brandy in his grasp to help dull the erratic, nauseating emotions clawing at his insides as he makes his way to his quarters. He sets the empty bottle down when he closes the door and reaches the desk in the middle of the room, grabbing for the others littering the window stools as he passes them. He pops the cork off and doesn't hesitate to take another swing as he all but carelessly throws himself across the length of the bed, eyes easily finding the lighthouse painting he couldn't toss away with the rest of Stede's things. 

His heart clenches painfully at the memories attached to its existence, from the plan to become a lighthouse to fool the Spanish to the late heart-felt, soul-wrenching breakdowns Edward has experienced more than once following Stede's absence. The ones that left him conversing with the lighthouse as if it was the only company he'd ever had. The only thing that has seen and heard everything Edward has ever uttered in this room. Aware of the depths in which the pain rooted itself into his being. The only object that would listen without him needing to fear the possibility of being pitied or hated.

Edward Teach may not know who he is without the Kraken, Blackbeard, or Ed, but if anything were to grasp an idea of who that person would be, it would be that stupid fucking painting. He's laid himself bare and shielded himself in front of it more times than he can count. 

Would it be silly if he'd somehow become attached to the one thing that embodied everything that boils his blood, tortures his heart, and frees him all at once? 

The Kraken would say that attachment led to heartbreak, the one thing he desperately wanted to escape from. So why would he stoop so low as to keep this useless object around? It wasn't anything to him. It wouldn't fuel his path of destruction or aid him in his quest to show the world how monstrous he truly was. It wouldn't make those around him tremble at his mere name or make the blood staining his hands taste any sweeter.

Blackbeard would say that he didn't deserve the reminders, that warm longing that slithered its way between his ribs at the thought of the Gentleman Pirate's shenanigans, the odd way he did things. The way his eyes widened, looking at Blackbeard with the kind of awe that festered without fear, unlike anything he's ever encountered before. The way the Gentleman Pirate's words were the only weapon that cut people down ten sizes and set fires. 

And Ed? Ed would say nothing else mattered when Stede's kind smiles shone brighter than the sun. When his tongue dripped of golden honey and white clovers with every sickeningly sweet phrase, he'd utter about the places within Ed that no one else bothered to set tender eyes upon. If he could keep Stede's soft, caring, and clumsy fingers caressing his heart to settle the most vulnerable parts of him securely in his palms, then there would be nothing to think through for the rest of his life.

Edward guessed the question didn't matter in the end, he was torn apart from the very seams in three separate directions, and not one of them could give him the answers he yearned for. 

He takes a sip from his drink, eyes never leaving the lighthouse. 

"I hate you," Edward whispers. "But I hate you less than him. Consider that the closest thing you'll ever get to a compliment from me." 

The image leans back and forth with the rock of the waves. 

The man looks out the window, barely acknowledging the glint of the sun's rays across the ocean's surface. "I do hate him, right?" 

The picture's silence is all he needs. 

Edward downs the rest of the bottle.

-

Blank

-

The muffled sound of terror-stricken screams fills the pauses between each boom of the canons and faint splashes of bodies hitting the water. The raid had been going on for a while now, long enough to leave Edward's inebriated mind to wander through memory lane like it wasn't one of the worst parts of his mind to stroll through. 

He'd already done the usual emotion-infused ramble towards the lighthouse and nearly killed himself with his own dagger while sloppily performing tricks with it. He is playing a pitiful excuse of Russian roulette with himself to scratch at the growing itch to feel nothing. So, what's adding walks down memory lane to his routine? Surely it only got worse from here. Why prolong the inevitable? 

A single stifled gunshot finds its way past the walls of The Revenge, and a memory spills into his consciousness like black ink. 

Blackbeard snaps his head back, eyes easily finding the young man holding the gun that had just saved his ass. Israel steps beside him, shoving the crumpled body to the side with a sharp kick, shooting Blackbeard with a dark, cautionary look.

"Watch your ass, Captain, or we won't be coming out of this one alive."

Blackbeard grins something wicked. "Come on, Israel, look who you're talking to." 

"Precisely why I have to remind you." 

The pirate Captain barks out a laugh that sends a chill through the air, stilling a few of the poor souls who'd crossed paths with him on their venture across the seas, leaving his crew to deal a fatal blow at their short bout of fear. Bodies fall to the floor coldly, staining the deck red.

Blackbeard clasps a large hand on his crewman's shoulder, the glint in his eyes morphing into something vile. "I need to get below deck, watch my ass for me then, mate." He tosses the crewman a grin as he turns, cleanly slicing at a man's arm, the appendage falling to the ground with a sickening thump. The man's scream of pain never comes as a bullet between his eyes swiftly ends his pathetic life. 

Blackbeard cackles.

Israel does exactly as he was told.

The Pirate Captain sidesteps when someone chances a slash at him. Israel quickly blocks the recovery attack, giving Blackbeard enough time to rip out his gun and blast the motherfucker in the torso, sending him flying back and crashing into another fellow. 

Death trails heavily behind them like a warning. Lifeless eyes stare after leather boots caked in crimson, a flintlock's echoing boom and a foil sword's piercing whistle. The two fought together perfectly, covering each other's blind spots and filling the spaces where the others' skills faltered. 

Destruction had met calamity, and it was anything but sweet. The taste of iron and sweat hung too heavy on the men's tongues to imitate anything but irreconcilable power, piquant and tangy. 

The two made it below deck to the galley with a few enraged stragglers betting their chance at surviving. Israel fended them off as his Captain searched the room only to deflect a killing blow to the head by a cunning foe; grabbing a pan at his side, Blackbeard smashes the assailant's face with a hideous crunch. With a glance around to ensure there was no one else Israel couldn't deal with, Blackbeard rummaged through the room for only a few moments before seeing it. 

What followed next was a burst of flame and heavy smoke filling the dreary sky as the ship slowly sank the remaining men that hadn't been kept as hostages. Blackbeard's crew watched from the safety of their vessel, the blaze warming the quickly chilling night, the frantic yelling barely recognizable over the sounds of the fire. 

And there, watching the aftermath of their handiwork as the helmsman steers the crew away and out towards the endless sea, Israel stands at Blackbeard's side. 

With the smell of burning flesh in the air and the itchy, sticky feeling of dried blood on his leather and skin, the Captain realized how easy his crewman fell into the role. His ability to match Blackbeard to a T, to follow through with unwavering fidelity and obedience, the voice who always stood on Blackbeard's side when no one else would and without hesitance.

It was the night Blackbeard made Israel Hands his first mate.

"Above all else is loyalty to your Captain, Israel," he'd stated, leaning against the rails, smoking as his newly appointed first-mate watched him in earnest. "Remember that." 

"Of course, Blackbeard."

The door slams open with a violent bang. 

"Stop the raid!" 

Blackbeard unsheathes his gun on instinct, pointing it towards the person with the balls to burst into his quarters and demand anything from him. He shoves away the insecurities bubbling in his chest. Having been found vulnerable and unguarded, the tear stains standing out from the kohl smearing his face, burning as an unwanted reminder at the pairs of eyes suddenly in his presence.

"It was in Blackbeard's authority to loot and raid that vessel. Get back on deck!" Izzy barks, sneering at Jim as he steps towards them only to have a dagger swiftly placed at his throat, blood trickling down his neck. 

"Don't," Jim growls at the first-mate, turning their gaze back to Blackbeard. "Call off the fucking raid now! There are children on that ship-" 

"Jimenez-" Izzy bites out in warning, but Blackbeard's already lowering his gun and rushing past them both, shoving Izzy to the side as he dashes up to the deck, Jim hot on his heels. 

His mind fills with curses as fierce anger licks at his insides, igniting the embers in his chest, fueling his urgency without the help of his unsteady steps as the alcohol makes the world tilt. 

He doesn't acknowledge the pain in his shoulder as he harshly stumbles into the door frame as he passes through it, too occupied by the sight of the two children sitting on his vessel in front of Fang and Ivan, shielding the kids from the passenger ship.

Eerily familiar shouting and shattering bottles mesh with the battle's unfiltered outcries and impacts. 

"Worthless goddamn woman!"

His hands tremor with the sudden adrenaline of the faint memory, breath catching in his throat. It doesn't last long when a piercing wail buried underneath the bluster snaps the recollection away as fast as it had appeared.

Blackbeard calls for the raid to stop immediately. Ordering his men back onto the ship, trying his best to cover their asses alongside some of his crew as guards appear from the upper deck of the other vessel, raining down bullets on the pirates trying to leave at their Captain's orders. When Blackbeard's informed that everyone's on board, including his injured men, he shoots the remaining guard's up-top himself. He may be drunk off his ass, but he still knew how to use a gun, unlike Calico Jack. The motherfucker. 

With no one else to worry about, Blackbeard orders Fang to get them as far away from the ship as possible, eyes quickly scanning the crowded deck for a particular person.

The Kraken makes his way towards Izzy, grabbing him by the shirt and shoving him into the nearest mast with a snarl that matches the magma warming his insides, lava leaking from his mouth, searing the man in his clutches from the white-hot fury churning in his belly. "What the fuck were you thinking?! You know the rules when looting vessels! And don't feed me that shit about you just following my fucking orders! You've done everything but listen to me ever since we set foot on this ship!" He unsheathes his dagger and stabs it into the mast at the side of his first mate's head as he turns dark, steely eyes to pick out Jim in the mess of his crew, "And you, don't you ever fucking barge in like that again, or I'll grind your fucking bones to a pulp!" 

Jim doesn't even bat an eye at his threat, and it only fans his rage as he turns back to Izzy. "Give me one good reason I shouldn't tie you up and leave you on the doorstep of the fucking English!" 

"Blackbeard-" 

The Kraken tugs the dagger out to ram it harder into the mast nearer to Izzy's neck and roars, "Tell me, dog!"

When the shorter man only sputters nonsense, the Kraken shoves his first mate to the side, forcing him to the ground, standing above him. 

His breath reeks of booze as his hands tremble. The kohl still marks traces of weakness down his cheeks as his messy hair falls across his tense shoulders and face, framing fierce eyes that bore into Izzy with an intensity that would have anyone else shit themselves. But not Izzy, never Izzy. His first mate never backed away when he was violent. It used to be a comforting quality, but now it just made him want to rip the man apart. 

Izzy growls, scowling, "You're not yourself!" The smears on his face sting at the statement, leaving the Kraken suddenly overly aware of the eyes watching them, the tension settling thick in the air. "It's my job to make you, you again!" 

"Oh, by disobeying and betraying me every chance you fucking get?!"

"I'm doing this for you!" 

"Fuck off!" Blackbeard snaps and quickly unsheathes his gun, cocking it at Izzy, who lets out a sputtering breath at the weapon. Edward's eyes start to sting, the anger in his chest wavering as shame, self-loathing, and insecurity mix into a concoction of nerves. "I said give me a reason!" 

"The English are still after both of us! If you toss me to the sharks, there's no way for me to help you with them! Even if you can deal with them alone, there's no telling what would happen! You need me," Izzy boldly states, "You fucking need me, Captain." 

The Kraken bares his teeth at his near smugness and pushes a leather boot to his first mate's neck, choking him. "One more mess up, and I'll kill you my fucking self. Do you understand?" 

A pained groan escapes Izzy's lips. 

"Do you understand?!" 

"Yes, Blackbeard." 

The Captain removes his foot, and Izzy moves to his side, coughing as he holds his throat, face red. Blackbeard glares at the rest of his crew. "Back to work!" 

No one needs to be told twice as the deck busies itself with ship maintenance, fixing what had been damaged in the semi-failed looting. 

Blackbeard peers over at the children taken aboard and out of the skirmish. He glances down at the gun in his hand, noting how hard he's shaking, thinking better about approaching them. He was drunk and had just reamed his first mate a new one in front of the entire crew, minus those in the infirmary. Now wasn't the time to be dealing with children. Instead, he motions Jim over from where they were staring him down from across the deck and charges them with the responsibility of watching over the kids.

Neither of them says anything as Blackbeard retreats back below deck, not gracing Izzy so much as a glance as he passes by him as the shorter man holds his wounds that had undoubtedly been worsened in their little confrontation. 

The Kraken couldn't care less about his state. The bastard didn't deserve his concern.

"Izzy?" Blackbeard repeats, a small ghost of a smile forming on his lips, raising a brow at his first mate.

Leaning against the mast of the quarter-deck, Israel glances at Blackbeard, narrowing his eyes, instantly defensive. "What?"

"Nothing, I just didn't know you had a nickname, mate." Blackbeard crosses his arms, peering down at the shorter man, amused by the roll of his eyes. Always so easily ruffled, no wonder people loved to talk shit about him behind his back. "You told the boys you prefer it over your actual name. Why didn't you tell me?" 

"It isn't important," Israel firmly reasons. Blackbeard takes note of the suppressed connotations hidden in his words. "It doesn't change anything about my role as your first mate." 

Blackbeard leans against the mast beside Israel. The man looks up at him, brows furrowing. "I don't know about that, Israel," Blackbeard states, shifting to look up at the evening sky. Israel watches him, studying his amused expression. "Calling you Izzy isn't taking away from your role as my first mate either. If everyone's calling you Izzy, isn't it really fucking weird that I don't? You're my first mate and frankly the only first mate I'd trust with my life and with my name."

"Your name?" Israel repeats, taken aback.

"Yeah, my name," Blackbeard confirms, face contorting into its natural cold, stoic state. "You know what happens to those who call me by my real name. You were there for most of the executions, which should tell you how much I trust you, Israel. You've proven yourself to me on more than one occasion." Blackbeard turns his gaze to Isreal, "So, let's make a deal."

"I'm listening," Israel states.

"If I get to call you Iz, then you can call me Edward," Blackbeard proposes.

"Deal."

"You've always been a reasonable man, Iz." He claps Izzy on the shoulder as selfish glee leaks into Izzy's expression.

"I learned from the best, Edward."

Blackbeard chuckles. Izzy's lips nearly twitch into a smile.

-

A gentle, caring hand wipes a tear from her cheek, barely brushing the bruise already forming there. "Alma, look at me." 

The girl forces herself to do as she's told, turning her gaze toward her mother, who kneels down in the grass. Alma bites down on her bottom lip, trying her hardest to keep the lump in her throat down. Her hair waves ever so slightly in the warm summer wind. The shadows of leaves dance across them.

"Do you know the difference between someone stupid and someone brave?" Alma shrugs her shoulders, shifting her gaze to stare at her mother's cravat, fiddling with the black cloth. Mary settles her hands on her daughter's forearms, eyes scanning her expression. 

"An idiot doesn't care about who gets hurt. They don't think about anyone else but themselves. And, to be honest, they don't think about the consequences of their actions either. But someone brave?" Mary shifts, holding her daughter's hands securely in her grasp, leaving the cravat to fall from Alma's fingers as her mother tries to catch her gaze. "She does what she knows is the right thing to do. Not just for herself but for everyone she cares about, those who matter. She doesn't back down even when it's scary, even if she's made a mistake. She follows through, faces it head-on, and isn't afraid of admitting that she did something wrong, that she's scared." 

Alma meets her mother's determined, understanding eyes, unspilled tears blurring her vision.

"You're brave, Alma. Never allow anyone to tell you any different."

Louis's hands are clammy as he grips her hand and arm, clinging to her tightly as he hides his face, hiccuping between each sob. Alma holds her brother as close as possible, watching as the man with the black face paint stomps away. 

"Alma, what do we do?" Louis asks in a small, unsteady voice. He peeks up at her, rubbing his cheek on her arm, staining her with warm tears. 

Alma turns her gaze away from the pirates to glance at her brother, uncertainty making her eyebrows pinch together, trembling lips pressing into a thin line. "I don't know."

"I want to go back home, Alma," Louis pleads, tugging at her.

"I know," She states, eyes catching sight of someone walking towards them. She impulsively tugs Louis behind her, glaring up at the person as she stands tall in front of her cowering brother. 

The pirate wearing a hat narrows their eyes at her. "Follow me." 

Louis releases a terrified gasp at the words, digging his fingers into Alma's dress and pulling the two away from the person watching them like a hawk. "They're going to kill us!" Louis weeps frantically, starting to hyperventilate at the alarming situation they both found themselves in. "Alma, we can't go down there, please, we can't- Alma, I'm scared."

Alma pales and stares up with wide eyes at the person, suddenly hit with the same realization. 

They were going to die, weren't they? They had just been hiding in a room what felt like seconds ago before being spotted by two leather-clad men. The same men forced them to board the ship while protecting them from most of the sights and sounds of whatever was happening before being called away, leaving them alone hesitantly. Alone to be approached by this person who was surely about to take them downstairs and end their lives. Because these were pirates. The real pirates their father had read to them. The pirates that left Louis waking up in the middle of the night crying after Alma had indulged Stede's endless stories of fearsome outlaws in lawless seas. 

They were about to die by real, true pirates, and there was nothing Alma could do to stop it.

"You're not going to die."

The words cause Alma and Louis' tear-stained faces to blink up at the pirate, not quite understanding. 

"I said, you're not going to die." The words are less harsh, softening around the edges, though barely.

"T-Then where," Alma swallows down her stutter, "Where are we going then?"

The pirate crouches, looking the two children in the eyes as Louis steps back in fright. "My room, if you can call it that," The pirate half mutters to themself.

The children share a look, brows knitting.

The person raises a brow almost light-heartedly. "Would you rather stay out here and fry yourself in the sun and piss everyone off when you get in their way instead?" 

The words leave Alma studying the pirate, face scrunching up in consideration. 

They seemed odd, like how the men who brought them aboard were strange. The one with the white hair and beard had tried to calm them, and the one in the striped shirt and dreadlocks had physically shielded them more than once following every big boom. The pirate standing in front of her now seemed desperately trying to look approachable despite appearing unsure, annoyed, awkward, and determined. 

All three might have acted the way they did to build a false sense of safety, so this stranger could lure them downstairs to kill them, but that didn't feel like an accurate assessment. 

So, that really only left one other possibility. These were perhaps somewhat friendly pirates, and if that was the case, following this pirate might be the best thing for her and Louis. They had, after all, pointed out what would happen if they stayed here.

Alma swiftly thinks through their options. 

"Alright, we'll follow you."

The stranger nods their head and stands back up, walking towards a flight of stairs. It takes a moment of quick explanation for Louis to not panic and instead cling to Alma, following after the person, shoes clicking against the floor, watching each leather-wearing pirate walking past in fear and suspicion. 

When the three step down further into the boat, Alma experiences the same feeling most characters in her favorite books do. She recognizes the uneasiness in her shoulders as she scans the nearly bare hall. As Alma studies a broken cabinet lying against a wall and a covered mirror, something drops in her stomach. She even experiences the tug in her chest when she notices the shadows that dull the warm sunlight that creeps in from the wooden floorboards and windows. 

It looks like a place a monster would hide, the kind that was once an ordinary person cursed to hurt others. Like La Belle et La Bête by Beaumont, a vampire or a werewolf, maybe even a vengeful ghost who fractures or hides things around them to feel better about what's happened. 

Alma quietly wonders if that's what these pirates were, cursed seamen wondering the tombs of a life they once belonged to and longed for. She can't help but find comfort in the thought of all this being one of the stories she'd sneak into her bag and read when no one was looking. Even the ones Alma would read under the tree near the creek a little ways away from her home, the little spot when she didn't want anyone around, especially her brother. 

She loves him dearly, but Alma always wished he wasn't with her all the time, wanting to do and be a part of everything she did. But, ironically, she didn't want Louis to be anywhere else but with her right now. She wasn't sure she could stay brave without him here to become a living, breathing reminder of what brave big sisters did; protect their little brothers. 

They eventually reach a room deeper in the ship, and the pirate ushers them inside, instructing them to sit down on a nook. Louis holds Alma's hand tightly, squeezing it as he leans his head against her shoulder. His wide, teary eyes follow the stranger's every move, flinching as the person squats in front of them.

"Are you guy's hurt at all?" The pirate asks, shifting their hat back to better look at the kid's physical state.

Alma shakes her head, "No." 

The stranger acknowledges this and stands back up, gracefully taking a seat on the bed across from them, crossing their legs and slouching. Uncomfortable, tense silence fills the space between them, only interrupted by Louis' sniffles and horse coughs from wailing loud enough that even the man in the face paint could hear him over the fighting when he emerged.

Alma's brows knit in thought as a question comes to mind. She glances at the pirate chewing at their bottom lip, looking somewhere to their left, uneasy and restless. This stranger might be the best and only person Alma can voice her question to, considering they haven't done anything terrible yet.

Uncertainty eats at her as she tries to frame her question. Stealing her expression and squeezing Louis' hand, she repeats her mother's words in her head. 

You are brave, you are brave, you are brave…

"The man-" The stranger looks at her, "-with the black face paint and the one he was yelling at. Who are they?" 

The pirate huffs, lazily shrugging their shoulder, answering the girl’s question. “The whiny guy practically trying to get himself stepped on was Izzy, Blackbeard’s—or the Kraken’s, fuck knows what he’s calling himself now—first mate.”

Alma sits up at the familiar name, "Blackbeard's on this ship?" 

"Yeah, he's the Captain," They nonchalantly gesture to their face in a fluid motion, "Black face paint guy." 

Alma blinks, suddenly overcome with curiosity. 

She knew about Blackbeard, especially since her father had read stories about the Pirate Captain to her months ago before he'd abandoned her and their family. But, even when Stede returned, he'd spoken about his adventures with Blackbeard. 

Alma hadn't necessarily believed him at the time, more because he'd decided to come back as if nothing had happened and less so that he may be making up the tale. Her father was always a bad liar regarding things he was passionate about, making it easy to pick up if his stories were false. 

But, even if her father might not have lied about his pirate life, there was no way her father could have gone on an adventure with the man she'd just witnessed minutes ago. Stede ran away from geese like her grandfather had told on countless occasions and became increasingly disturbed when confronted with the idea of violence. 

A nervous, eccentric man like her father couldn't breathe in the same room as the Blackbeard she'd seen without most likely fainting. She was certain.

"Wow," Alma breathes, staring off into the distance. "My father was more courageous than I thought." The stranger raises a brow, and Alma clarifies. "My father told us he had met Blackbeard on a Spanish ship, the two of them going on adventures together." 

The pirate's eyes widen, multiple emotions playing out across their face all at once, eyes glancing between the two children, realization quickly dawning on them.

"What were your names again?" 

"Alma and Louis Bonnet."

"Mierda…"

Alma's face scrunches up. "Did you know my father?" 

"Know your father?!" The stranger exclaims, standing up sharply, causing Louis to press himself closer to Alma, flinching. "He was my Captain por el amor de dios! And he just flat-out disappeared! Are you saying he's alive? Is he coming?" The pirate waves their hands wildly. "Wait, no, don't answer that question. We can't get caught talking about him." They quickly make their way over to the kids, leaning in close, causing Louis to hide his face, a frightened squeak leaving him. Alma just stares, completely lost. "Never talk about him, especially in front of Dickbag Captain. He'll toss you off the ship quicker than you can blink. ¿Comprendido?" 

The two kids share a look.

"Jesucristo," They rub a hand across their face, "Do you understand, numbnuts?" 

"Why doesn't Blackbeard like our father-" Alma's question is drowned out by a series of loud shushes, a hand slapping over her mouth. 

"What did I just say?!" 

Alma grumbles, her irritated comment muffled against the person's hand.

Louis looks between the two a little ways away, having quickly scooted away from the pirate when they quieted Alma, turning pleading eyes towards his sister. "Alma! You're going to make the pirates mad! Stop it!" 

The girl pry's the hand off her mouth, "Well, it's not my fault! It was just a question!"

"A question that'll get you killed, now zip it, or I'll zip it for you!" The pirate warns, matching the glare Alma turns their way.

"Make me banana breath!" 

"Alma!" 

"Banana breath?!" 

"Hey, Jim, are you in there?" The three turn their eyes towards the door as a rhythmic knock follows. "I don't want to get threatened to death again, so, if you can, let me know when to come in." 

The stranger rolls their eyes, walking over to the door and swinging it open to show a man standing on the other side, his eyes glancing between the three of them and the floor, head bowed. 

"What?" The pirate asks, harsh and direct. 

"Ivan and Fang sent me," The man looks around at the floor, never looking the pirate in the eye for long. "They wanted to know if the children were alright. Since you know," He vaguely waves his hand. 

"They're fine, though I think Señorita bocaza here will get herself killed before the night's end."

Alma puffs, glaring daggers at the back of the pirate's head. The man at the door snickers as the pirate whips their head around and shakes their head mockingly, sticking their tongue out at Alma. Louis looks like he's about to cry again as he shakes his sister's shoulder, silently pleading for her to stop. 

"You never told us your name," Alma points out, ignoring her brother again. 

The pirate opens their mouth to respond in annoyance when the man in the doorway interrupts. Pointing to himself and then the stranger with a smile. "I'm Frenchie. This is Jim." 

"Alma and Louis Bonnet," She responds, gesturing between her and her brother. 

Frenchie's eyebrows raise as his mouth goes slack, "I'm sorry, did you say, Bonnet?"

"Does no one here know how to shut up?!" Jim shouts, throwing their arms up, exasperated. 

"It's polite to introduce yourself," Alma argues.

"We're on a ship! This isn't some fancy little tea party, so can you all just stop risking everyone's lives for a second!"

"Uh," Frenchie glances between Jim and the children, face pulling into a worried expression, "If you're his kids, what do we do about that little problem, then? I'm not sure we have any more things on board he can break." 

"Easy," Jim responds through gritted teeth, "Don't. Say. Anything. About it."

"And if he finds out anyway?" Frenchie asks, fiddling with the sleeve of his shirt. 

"Well, they're not my kids, so…." 

"Hey!"

Jim waves Alma off, "I'm half-joking; I'll just go through with my original plan." That catches the little girl's attention, and Jim instantly shuts her down. "And no, I am not telling you about it." They push Frenchie into the hall. "Now, it's the grownup's time to talk. If you come out of this room at any point, I will hunt you down and stab you, got it?" 

"Uh-huh, sure you will," Alma groans as the door slams shut. 

A muffled shout answers her through the door, "Don't make me regret keeping your asses safe!"

There's a short pause before Louis speaks up from the nook, knees to his chest, half of his face hidden in his arms. "You're really brash, you know that?" 

Alma turns to her brother, the joy from the interaction slipping at her brother's frightened voice, her smile faltering. "Yeah, well, at least we know more than before."

"Oh, do we really? I learned that pirates are just as scary as I thought and that you're the worst sister ever!" Louis cries, chin trembling as he curls into himself, hiding the rest of his head in his arms. 

Alma's shoulders drop, guilt turning in her tummy as she watches Louis start to shake again. She slowly makes her way over, taking a seat next to him, letting him shuffle away from her as she crosses her legs. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be…brash, as you put it. I mean it."

Louis sniffs, using his sleeve to wipe at his face. "I know. It's just what you do." Alma lowers her head, playing with the ends of her hair. "You did the same thing when our cousin visited last fall when you got in trouble for throwing mud at her face." Louis glances at Alma with a shy expression. "It was kinda funny." 

Alma smiles, "Yeah. Just not something you'd appreciate, right?" 

Louis lets out a wet sigh. "I just don't know how you do it, Alma. Aren't you afraid that you'll just make people angry? Or that you'll be hurt if you keep talking and acting all tough? Those people could have killed you right now because you wouldn't stop being nosy!" 

"But, they didn't, did they?" 

"That's not the point!"

"Then what's the point?"

"Aren't you scared of what could happen? Don't you ever think things through?" Louis stresses.

"I think things through," Alma states, "And I just know that the worst possible thing I could ever think up is what won't happen. Remember what Doug taught us? Always remember the most realistic outcome when thinking of the worst possible scenario. If Jim and Frenchie wanted to kill us, they wouldn't have been kind enough to ask if we were okay and introduce themselves. Even though Jim didn't particularly like talking to us, they still answered some of our questions." 

"And what were those?" 

"Blackbeard is on this ship, and if what father said was true, they used to be friends. Jim and Frenchie knew our father. And there's also a rule about not speaking about him in front of Blackbeard." Alma turns a contemplating look to Louis. "The ship must have been looting ours, and that's why they attacked us, which was by accident. Or at least, I'm guessing, based on what Blackbeard said while scolding his first mate."

Louis nods, rubbing his arms. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense."

Alma shifts closer to Louis and wraps her arms around him, squeezing him in the hopes of comforting him, squashing every ounce of fear that plagued her little brother. "We're going to be alright."

Louis leans heavily into her sister's embrace, a warm, wet smile appearing, closing his eyes at her reassuring words and confidence.

"I trust you."

-

"Don't make me regret keeping your asses safe!" Jim shouts at the door with a huff, fixing their hat as they turn back to face an amused-looking Frenchie. They curl their lip, "What?" 

"I didn't peg you as an 'I'm actually not that bad with kids' type," Frenchie comments, cocking his head to the side. 

Jim crosses their arms, rolling their eyes. "I'm not good with kids either. They're loud, obnoxious, stupid little attention seekers, and I want nothing to do with them. If I didn't want Captain Dickbag on my ass, I wouldn't have come within fifty feet of them." 

"That's not what it looked like," Frenchie remarks, smile growing. 

"Shut up and get your eyes checked," Jim grumbles non-threateningly, grabbing Frenchie's sleeve, pulling him further into the hall until the door leading to their room is farther away but not out of sight. Their eyes check their surroundings briefly before settling back on Frenchie. "Now start talking."

"Well, there isn't much to talk about, really." Frenchie fidgets with his green scarf. "Captain has locked himself up again, and everyone is busy with the ship and tending to the rest of the Kraken's crew." 

"And Izzy?"

"Forced back into the infirmary," Frenchie answers, frowning. "You were serious, weren't you? You're thinking about going through with your original plan." 

"With these kids on board, I might not have a choice," Jim admits. "He's lost it. He fucking marooned our crew! He isn't getting out of this unscathed!" 

"Yeah, but it's Blackbeard, not only that but now the Kraken. You're going to get ripped to shreds."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Well, unless you've spoken with a very powerful sorcerer and don't get turned into a snail, I think going up against the best, scariest sea captain alive isn't the best move." 

"Mira, tonto, he's already left our crew to die. What's to stop him from killing us all because he wants to?" Jim pointedly gestures towards their room, venom dripping with each hushed word. "These kids are now onboard a floating fucking prison, and I will not stand here waiting for the off chance we can escape!" 

Frenchie raises his hands, backing a step away from Jim. "Nope, you're right, totally." 

Jim huffs, muttering something under their breath before slipping their thumb through the holder around their hips. "Look, I'm not stupid; I know what I'm doing. Just make sure to stay out of his fucking radar unless absolutely necessary, got it?" 

"Uh-huh, got it."

"Great, glad we're on the same page."

"Right, like we ever were."

-

His shoulder is sore from running into a doorway from his rage-infused drunken stupor, having given up massaging it. Trying to use the slight pain to ground him and make the nausea in his gut settle. 

Edward is peering through the only window he dares to unveil, holding his legs to his chest, cheek pressed to his knees, eyes glazed over. He half-mindedly watches the ocean sloshing against the ship and witnesses the first seconds of dawn, painting the sky in a deep amethyst purple. There are specks of glistening white stars standing against the slowly retreating night, clouds mixing between dark navy and lavender blues that caress the gentle sky. He can feel the ship rock underneath him and the red robe wrapping him in familiar smooth velvet, pooling around him. 

It's been hours since he was last on deck, the door locked shut, barricaded with the piano he hadn't tossed off the ship's edge. He didn't want another repeat of one of the crew members barging in, not when he felt raw. 

Izzy had been right, the English was sooner or later going to become a pest, and it was better to keep Izzy close, under wraps, so to speak. His first mate had pledged himself to the king and fought for an agreement to save Blackbeard from biting the bullet, leaving the English now pissed off with their broken allegiance. They were in danger of getting their asses blown to hell worse than before, and if the Kraken had gone through with his warning of tossing Izzy to the English, God knew what would happen. Izzy might drag Edward down with him given a chance or lose Izzy's usefulness when push came to shove. 

Nothing with his first mate was as 'simple' as it used to be. Nothing snapped into place anymore; they didn't click. Everything they had at the beginning of their partnership has dissolved and left nothing but a frustrating thorn in his side.

The only thing he had to fall back on was his old life, the predictable, legend-infused pirating he can never seem to escape from for too long. He has been met with defiance whenever he's ever tried to be anything other than a bloodthirsty, born-of-the-devil monster. It's a lesson he's learned early in life, but somehow he'd forgotten all about it. 

God decided Edward wouldn't be a man surrounded by anything soft and beautiful. He was meant to be a poor, worthless little boy who grew into the role of a monster with age, and she wasn't about to flip the script now. There is nothing for Edward here. The Kraken is everything he's meant to be. So why try anymore? What's the point?

Edward closes his eyes.

He was tired, and it wasn't just emotionally and mentally this time. His eyes ached, and his bones felt like anchors, leaving him unable to move from his seated position deep down in his ever-restless mind despite the faint ache in his shoulder and the oncoming protest of his knee. 

His mind kept consuming question after question, thought after thought, never leaving a second of peace for Edward to sleep longer than a few short hours. Yet again, it's hard to sleep when every dream is accompanied by soft, gentle smiles and sweetness so thick it always leaves Edward sick to his stomach.

Despite Edward's best efforts, he can't escape Stede, even when unconscious. He has recurring dreams, ones where the smell of salty seas is thick, and Edward can hear Stede's voice reading to him over the gentle whistle of the wind. Sometimes the scent changes into scented candles, and the feeling of the wind turns soft and cozy like thick blankets pressing against his body and the warmth of Stede's own at his side. 

The dreams reflect a memory that makes his heart swell, squeeze, and weep each time he remembers it. Most people think Edward—much like every other pirate—can't read, and they wouldn't be entirely wrong. Stede had never assumed; he always seemed to excel in curiosity but never made blatant assumptions regarding Edward. 

So the night they'd been talking about his ship's library, the topic of conversation had elegantly changed over to Stede's favorite books. His preferences, how he'd read to his children every chance he got, and how much his daughter enjoyed the adventure stories he'd read. Most were stories about pirates because it was Stede, and Stede had latched onto piracy with every inch of his being. Inserting it into his daily life with his children to share his interests with them, set an example to follow so that they'd share what they loved with him, too, or something along those lines since it usually never went as planned, or so Stede explained.

Then Stede had asked if Edward had any favorite books, and if he didn't, what would have been a book he had always wanted to read. 

If it were any other person, Edward would have answered with the usual fib that he couldn't read at all, that he'd never been taught, too poor to get a decent education. But it'd been Stede, and he never judged Edward. Yes, Stede was an insane idiot who was a total dork, but Stede never once pushed Edward or asked anything from him that wasn't Stede's weird way of making Edward happy, comfortable, or reassured. At least, before the English, so he told him the blatant truth.

He had taught himself how to read in his youth with a sheer 'fuck you' mindset when someone had told him he wasn't smart enough or capable before Izzy came around and taught him everything else he hadn't learned by himself. Blackbeard could read, and it came to his advantage when everyone around him believed he couldn't understand a scrap of it. Carelessly leaving out documents and not sparing him a glance when he inspected pieces of paper, studying his enemies, gaining information. 

That, however, didn't dissuade the second truth of the matter. Blackbeard was 'word blind,' or as Stede had helpfully given on the academic term, Dyslexic. Edward had only ever known the phrase 'word blind' because his mother's boss had some kid who couldn't read or write like everyone else. His mother had explained it had something to do with the eyes since it was a visual deficit. The eyes couldn't see words right, messing up what they saw to the point that some people can't read, even when taught by the best schools. 

Stede had given him one of his many warm smiles when he caught on, politely dismantling the false explanation for the disability. Explaining how it had more to do with the brain and how it interprets language. 

That night Edward learned what it felt like to have a deeper perception of himself, even if it was just a portion of who he was. The feeling of understanding settled snugly into his chest every time Stede brought up a struggle he'd experienced before, a characteristic he knew all too well or an ability he always prided himself on that was somehow linked to this learning disability. It was one of the conversations Edward kept close to his heart, the same part he'd placed in Stede's hands when the man told him he wore fine things well. 

It made the empty, throbbing void where his heart used to be, ache worse every time he woke up from those dreams. That made Edward hide his face in his hands, eyes stinging with the lump in his throat from every replay of the same moment. The same feeling of consideration that struck him in the chest made every kiss to dream Stede's shoulder tender, a thousand 'thank yous' hidden in every single one of them. 

It was one of the reasons he had to get rid of Stede's books. When he first returned to the ship, Edward had spent hours looking through Stede's library when he had the energy to do something more than lay in his own pit of despair. Damaging the pages with sticky marmalade fingers and thick tears before eventually giving up on trying and crying into the unfortunate pages he'd stop at to weep into like the pathetic heartbroken piece of shit he is. 

He couldn't stand to look at them once he realized people like him didn't get libraries on ships. Not because he couldn't make it happen—he could—but because the Kraken didn't have any need for books and useless decorations. They reeked of Stede, and even that was enough reason to throw them out to end up at the bottom of the ocean, where everything that held Edward's fragile sensibilities is buried more and more every day. 

Edward opens his eyes to shift his head to gaze at the empty shelves hidden in the pitch-black darkness that engulfed the cabin early in the morning. They looked as hollow and lifeless as Edward feels most days when even misery takes its leave to join anger somewhere far away from him. Leaving him with nothing but the echoing emptiness.

Everything was so fucking depressing, and Edward didn't have the energy to give a rat's ass anymore. The itch in the back of his mind makes itself known with the sudden longing to be at the bottom of the sea with Stede's things. 

The sensation doesn't last long as his mind turns to the likelihood of the ship they'd nearly attacked being left at the bottom of the ocean with a sudden shock of dread. They hadn't done enough damage with their cannons to sink a ship, but God herself knew that that doesn't mean shit when you have Izzy Hands as your first mate. 

Blackbeard rubs at his face, somehow reaching a new level of exhaustion. He would have to demand his first mate to tell him what damage he'd caused. Also, Blackbeard had to figure out what to do with the children on his ship. 

The simplistic answer would be to drop them off somewhere safe as quickly as possible, but Edward isn't about to drop two fucking minors off anywhere. He'd have to talk with them about where their destination would have been or have someone else find out for him. But then again, after the shit Izzy pulled, he doesn't want anyone else to be given a chance to fuck things up around here.

Blackbeard groans as he shifts, flinching from the ache in his knee as he unfolds it, painfully stretching out the stupid fucking thing across the bed. Ignoring the chill that runs up his spine, forming goosebumps across his skin from the brisk morning air cooling his quarters. 

Continuing to massage his knee, Blackbeard picks his clothes off of the floor near the broken dresser the lighthouse painting is settled on. Pulling on his pants, he fastened his brace, lifting his leg off the bed to move his knee around, grimacing with a sudden surge of pain from the movement. 

"Fuck," he mutters to himself as he lets his leg drop sharply, going back to massaging it through the leather instead, hoping it's not going to be one of those days where it bugs him unless he boils some water and warms the son of a bitch with a rag. 

It takes some time until it doesn't bug him as much anymore. Eventually, he can stand up and shuffle slightly towards Stede's secret closet, delicately folding up the red robe and storing it away, unable to look at anything directly as he shuts the hidden wardrobe behind him. He continues getting dressed, seating himself back on the bed when he's fully clothed, using the light of the only open window and the reflection of his dagger to apply kohl to his face and the growing beard before clipping on his single dangling earpiece. 

With all the parts in place, Blackbeard lifts his dagger and stares into his reflection one last time, eyes cold and threatening, darkened by the black kohl staining his features. He slowly utters the phrase under his breath that rips Edward away from him.

"I am the Kraken, the killer in the flesh, a monstrous legend bound by nothing but rage and hatred..."

Sheathing his dagger, he stands, head held high as he makes his way out of his chambers, removing the piano and setting it in front of Stede's other closet carelessly. There's no sound besides the skeleton crew above deck as Blackbeard makes it towards the infirmary first.

The Captain keeps his eyes forward, actively avoiding the few broken and untouched decor pieces. The sight of the fractured paintings, maps, and the weapons and tools fastened to the walls all make his fingers twitch. The Kraken wants to rip each one with his bare hands. Feel how the metal bends in his fists, hear the crunch of wood, the tearing of canvases and frames. He doesn't indulge the urge; instead, he forces his attention on the few injured men occupying the beds as he walks into the ship's infirmary, making sure his steps barely stir the room's occupants from their slumber. 

Blackbeard finds his first mate easily, dozing in the bed farthest from everyone else despite the room's size. He looms over Izzy like a shadow, mildly reminded of the day he severed the man's toe and fed it to him. Though he was much more dressed now than before with only his vest gone and his shirt unbuttoned to not constrict his healing ribs. 

The Kraken pinches his first mate's forearm with a twist of skin, pleased when Izzy jolts awake, harsh words muffled by the gloved hand that swiftly finds its way over his mouth to ensure he doesn't wake the others. The remarks quickly die on the man's tongue when his eyes meet the Kraken's gaze, watching him with uncertainty as his Captain leans in close. 

"You will answer every single one of my questions," The Kraken whispers into Izzy's ear, words thick with a warning. "Or I'll feed you more than your toes, got it?" The Kraken can feel how Izzy's throat bobs as he swallows, head nodding in understanding. "Good," The Kraken removes his hand from his first mate's mouth and pulls away from Izzy's immediate space. "Now, how much damage did you cause to the ship you attacked yesterday? Did you damage it enough to sink it?"

"No, Captain," Izzy whispers, shaking his head, "I merely ordered warning shots and ensured the crew disposed of the guards. Word has spread that we've been looting vessels left and right, and ships are starting to become infested with guards, making it harder to ensure that our remaining crew is kept alive." 

The Kraken narrows his eyes, ignoring Izzy's observations, "Are you certain there's no way that ship could have sunk?" 

"I'm certain, Captain."

"Good," Blackbeard half-heartedly mutters, moving to leave.

"It was never my intention to disobey you, Captain," Izzy states quickly, sitting up. Blackbeard pauses, head turned away from his first mate. 

"You know I would never ignore your mandates without good reason, Blackbeard. Bonnet ruined you, turned you into something you're not," Izzy starts, exasperated. Blackbeard clenches his fists and jaw, body tensing as he snaps back to face his first mate with a burst of rage. Izzy simply never fucking gives up, does he? Edward is tired of hearing this spill, of this fucking excuse. "I have always done everything you have ever asked of me and more. He left, but I have never abandoned you!"

"Israel!" The Kraken barks, watching the flash of distress that swiftly appears across Izzy's face with satisfaction.

"It's my job to make sure you are content!"

"When have you ever made sure I was content?!"

"If that means disobeying," Izzy raises his voice, ignoring Blackbeard, "Or bending your commands to ensure that you remain yourself, remain my Captain, then I will! Even if that means protecting you from Stede's brats before they can destroy you too!"

Edward freezes, the air suddenly knocked out of his lungs, mind silent, body stiff. For a moment, all he can do is stare through his first mate, the world slowing down as the words ring in his mind like a piercing echo. All traces of his hungover state seem to evaporate with it.

Denial is the first emotion to arrive at the ludicrous mention of Stede's children on board The Revenge. Stede was never shy about speaking of the family he left behind when it was simply him and Edward. He knew of Mary's hatred for the sea and her disdain at Stede's idea of living out on the waters as a family. If these were the same children raised under her, then there was no way they'd be here at sea. Who was with them, if not Mary? Would the woman Stede described even allow her children near a boat, let alone on one? 

Uneasiness accompanies the thought of Stede having been on that ship. Was Stede the one who was watching over the children? Why was he there with them? Did Izzy know he was there too? 

Had Stede been killed by his first mate in a supposed declaration of 'protecting' Blackbeard?  

Multiple emotions come to life at the question: worry, hope, confusion, countless amalgamations of feelings he doesn't have the time to unpack as they eventually rapidly tunnel into that all too familiar searing outrage. 

The Kraken takes Izzy's shirt with a tight fist, tossing him onto the floor carelessly, thoughtlessly, ravishing in the pained gasps, wheezes, and groans, the tremor that ignites Izzy's body in near-visible pain. The others in the infirmary do nothing but add to the satisfaction feeding the sea monster's wrath. Their bodies tense in fear from their beds at the chill that freezes the room with each thump of the Kraken's steps towards Izzy Hands. 

"Don't fucking mess with me, Israel!" The Captain yells, the words booming, sharp enough to slice Izzy three feet shorter. "The next words out of you better be a god damn explanation, or your spleen and kidney will go nicely with your fucking rations!" 

Izzy meets the Kraken's gaze without issue, "I was following your orders when Fang and Ivan reported spotting children aboard. I had been ready to cease the raid, as always, until I caught sight of their faces, and I knew I had to keep them away from you! I ordered the attack to continue, but Jim intervened before I could follow through. I would never harm those children, Blackbeard, but I had to protect you from them!" 

Edward sucks in a sharp breath, knees starting to tremble as a lump forms at the back of his throat. The Kraken wants to tear Izzy apart limb by limb without mercy. Watch him squirm, cry out, bleed. 

It must show on his face because Izzy's frozen in place, staring as if holding his breath. An unsettling calm settles over the Captain as something cruel slithers its way up Edward's spine and fixes itself tightly around his heart.

The Kraken sneers.  

"You're worthless, Israel Hands. Not a spec of value in you."

Izzy's expression cracks. Edward's heart suffocates. 

The Kraken looks away from the pathetic man and steps around him to the door, looking towards one of his injured crew members, pausing at the entrance. 

"You," The Kraken barks at the bearded man, "Once you've recovered, you'll be filling Israel's place as my first mate, understood?" 

"Understood, Captain!" The man repeats, voice deep, expression composed, sitting as straight as he can.

Blackbeard knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he had been on the boat the night the Spanish nearly killed Stede. He wielded an ax, checking the surroundings behind him as he spoke to the Gentleman Pirate. 

The Kraken turns back to Izzy, watching the turmoil unfold across his face. Drinking in how his eyes turn desperately to him, stuttering out words that the Kraken didn't care enough to listen to as he shoots a glare that he hopes stops the man's heart for good before leaving Israel Hands lying on the floor, stripped of his name, title, and power. 

Edward doesn't leave the cruel clutches of the Kraken's grasp until he's standing in the Captain's Quarters, knees hitting the ground, shoulders heaving with each stifled sob.

-

"You'd think getting kidnapped would be a lot more eventful," Alma states, spread out across the floor, staring up at the ceiling. "Maybe we are being tortured to death, but with bordeom." Jim rolls their eyes as Alma turns her head to face the pirate, lips pressed together tightly, nose scrunched up, “I’ve seen it done before! Charles at the all boys school has nearly repelled every other kid his age from hanging out with him because of his long explanations on different types of fungi.”

“Kid, don’t you have better things to do than talk my ear off?” Jim grumbles, sharpening their dagger with frustration. 

“No, I just thought irritating you to death would be better than doing literally anything else,” Alma responds sarcastically, crossing her arms and looking back at the ceiling with a condescending shake of her head. 

“Oh, you’re a little fucking shit.”

Alma doesn’t respond, trying to stifle a grin at Jim’s comment. Louis’ snores and the echo of footsteps around the boat are the only sounds filling the early morning between the pirate and girl. 

It’s only been a day since they were taken, but Alma’s found out that despite how dark and depressing the ship is, speaking with Jim was always entertaining. They always acted so tough, mysterious, and annoyed by everything that it made poking and prodding at them unexpected fun. 

“I’m sure you’re used to it by now, you sailed with my Dad after all,” Alma comments. Jim shoots Alma a glare as the girl let’s out an exaggerated sigh. “‘Don’t talk about Stede aboard The Revenge or someone might hear you and tell Blackbeard and then he’ll get really mad,’ I know, I know.” Alma turns to face Jim, settling on her side with an annoyed huff, resting her cheek on her fist. “He talked a lot, right? And he had this weird habit of moving his mouth while saying or reacting to something? Did he ever kinda shut down while he was here?” 

Jim blinks, brows knitted as their eyes shift over Alma’s guarded gaze. Something unspoken passes through the silence and Jim’s resolve crumbles ever so slightly within their expression. They rub their eyes and grunt out a string of spanish mutters, sheathing their dagger before laying down on their bed, a leg freely swinging back and forth at the side of the bed in uncertainty. “Okay, Señorita bocaza, you can only talk about your father in this room and I’ll answer what I’ll answer and that is going to be it unless said otherwise, got it?” 

Alma grins triumphantly, “Okay!” She shifts closer, staring up at Jim expectantly. “Okay, so how was he as a Captain? Were all his stories true about the islands? The ships he’s been on? Did he really get into a sword fight with Blackbeard’s right hand man?” 

Jim shakes their head, almost seemily regretting their decision already, “He was a terrible Captain. I don’t know which ones he’s told you about but we’ve been to a handful of places and ships, most of the time he was getting himself killed on them in one way or another. And yeah he did, probably the only time his idiocy was somewhat impressive.” 

“He was still annoying, right? The talking, the weird mouth habit?” 

“Dios Mio, yes.” 

“Yeah, that sounds about right,” Alma states in a contemplative tone, staring at the floor, drawing imaginary shapes into the wood with a frown. Jim glances at her expression before turning to look at the wall. 

“He wasn’t always an idiot, though.” 

Alma swiftly looks back up at Jim, raising a brow with a tilt of her head, opening her mouth to nudge Jim to continue as a harsh knock on the door stops her. Jim and Alma turn their gaze to the door, the pirate instantly standing, smoothly coming to stand in front of Alma and Louis, a hand resting on their freshly sharpened dagger. Alma’s eyes are glued to the door as her breathing picks up, a feeling in her tummy causing her to feel like there was suddenly something to be afraid of. 

That something was wrong. 

The white bearded man that had ushered her onto the ship comes bursting in, eyes wide, glancing around the room before landing on the two kids with a kind of half-hearted relief. “The boss wants to talk to the kids.”

“What about?” Jim prods, narrowing their eyes, hand resting at their hip instead of directly over their dagger. 

“He’s found out they’re Stede’s,” The guy explains. Jim and Alma share a glance with a shared thought, did he hear about it from us? “I don’t know what  happened but I think Izzy must have figured it out and told him because he’s no longer first mate.” 

Jim’s expression flashes through different kinds of shock, hand falling to their side. “Dick face demoted him?”

“Yeah, and it’s not pretty, Izzy’s scary quiet and Blackbeard’s locked himself up again for a few hours now. He’s only recently ordered me to send the kids into his quarters.” 

“Drunk?” 

“Not black out but a little tipsy.” 

“On a blind rage?” 

“Nothing was broken when I was called in.” 

Jim doesn’t look at Alma but she knows exactly what Jim’s worrying about. They have this subtle tell when something’s bothering them, they’ll clench their jaw and lean to the side while going from direct eye contact to a repeated ‘glance and look away’ or indirect eye contact. They did it everytime Alma tried to ask Jim questions about themself. 

[ahouseoflies]

The Best Films of 2020

I can’t tell you anything novel or insightful about this year that has been stolen from our lives. I watched zero of these films in a theater, and I watched most of them half-asleep in moments that I stole from my children. Don’t worry, there are some jokes below.

GARBAGE

93. Capone (Josh Trank)- What is the point of this dinner theater trash? It takes place in the last year of Capone's life, when he was released from prison due to failing health and suffered a stroke in his Florida home. So it covers...none of the things that make Al Capone interesting? It's not historically accurate, which I have no problem with, but if you steer away from accuracy, then do something daring and exciting. Don't give me endless scenes of "Phonse"--as if the movie is running from the very person it's about--drawing bags of money that promise intrigue, then deliver nothing in return.

That being said, best "titular character shits himself" scene since The Judge.

92. Ammonite (Francis Lee)- I would say that this is the Antz to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's A Bug's Life, but it's actually more like the Cars 3 to Portrait of a Lady on Fire's Toy Story 1.

91. Ava (Tate Taylor)- Despite the mystery and inscrutability that usually surround assassins, what if we made a hitman movie but cared a lot about her personal life? Except neither the assassin stuff nor the family stuff is interesting?

90. Wonder Woman 1984 (Patty Jenkins)- What a miscalculation of what audiences loved about the first and wanted from the sequel. WW84 is silly and weightless in all of the ways that the first was elegant and confident. If the return of Pine is just a sort of phantom representation of Diana's desires, then why can he fly a real plane? If he is taking over another man's soul, then, uh, what ends up happening to that guy? For that matter, why is it not 1984 enough for Ronald Reagan to be president, but it is 1984 enough for the president to have so many Ronald Reagan signifiers that it's confusing? Why not just make a decision?

On paper, the me-first values of the '80s lend themselves to the monkey's paw wish logic of this plot. You could actually do something with the Star Wars program or the oil crisis. But not if the setting is played for only laughs and the screenplay explains only what it feels like.

89. Babyteeth (Shannon Murphy)- In this type of movie, there has to be a period of the Ben Mendelsohn character looking around befuddled about the new arrangement and going, "What's this now--he's going to be...living with us? The guy who tried to steal our medication? This is crazy!" But that's usually ten minutes, and in this movie it's an hour. I was so worn out by the end.

88. You Should Have Left (David Koepp)- David Koepp wrote Jurassic Park, so he's never going to hell, but how dare he start caring about his own mystery at the hour mark. There's a forty-five minute version of this movie that could get an extra star from me, and there's a three-hour version of Amanda Seyfried walking around in athleisure that would get four stars from me. What we actually get? No thanks.

87. Black Is King (Beyonce, et al.)- End your association with The Lion King, Bey. It has resulted in zero bops.

  ADMIRABLE FAILURES

86. Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (Cathy Yan)- There's nothing too dysfunctional in the storytelling or performances, but Birds of Prey also doesn't do a single thing well. I would prefer something alive and wild, even if it were flawed, to whatever tame belt-level formula this is.

85. The Turning (Floria Sigismondi)- This update of The Turn of the Screw pumps the age of Miles up to high school, which creates some horny creepiness that I liked. But the age of the character also prevents the ending of the novel from happening in favor of a truly terrible shrug. I began to think that all of the patience that the film showed earlier was just hesitance for its own awful ending.

I watched The Turning as a Mackenzie Davis Movie Star heat check, and while I'm not sure she has the magnetism I was looking for, she does have a great teacher voice, chastening but maternal.

84. Bloodshot (David Wilson)- A whole lot of Vin Diesel saying he's going to get revenge and kill a bunch of dudes; not a whole lot of Vin Diesel actually getting revenge and killing a bunch of dudes.

83. Downhill (Nat Faxon and Jim Rash)- I was an English major in college, which means I ended up locking myself into literary theories that, halfway through the writing of an essay, I realized were flawed. But rather than throw out the work that I had already proposed, I would just keep going and see if I could will the idea to success.

So let's say you have a theory that you can take Force Majeure by Ruben Ostlund, one of the best films of its year, and remake it so that its statement about familial anxiety could apply to Americans of the same age and class too...if it hadn't already. And maybe in the first paragraph you mess up by casting Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, people we are conditioned to laugh at, when maybe this isn't that kind of comedy at all. Well, don't throw it away. You can quote more--fill up the pages that way--take an exact shot or scene from the original. Does that help? Maybe you can make the writing more vigorous and distinctive by adding a character. Is that going to make this baby stand out? Maybe you could make it more personal by adding a conclusion that is slightly more clever than the rest of the paper?

Or perhaps this is one you're just not going to get an A on.

82. Hillbilly Elegy (Ron Howard)- I watched this melodrama at my mother's encouragement, and, though I have been trying to pin down her taste for decades, I think her idea of a successful film just boils down to "a lot of stuff happens." So in that way, Ron Howard's loss is my gain, I guess.

There is no such thing as a "neutral Terminator."

81. Relic (Natalie Erika James)- The star of the film is Vanessa Cerne's set decoration, but the inert music and slow pace cancel out a house that seems neglected slowly over decades.

80. Buffaloed (Tanya Wexler)- Despite a breathless pace, Buffaloed can't quite congeal. In trying to split the difference between local color hijinks and Moneyballed treatise on debt collection, it doesn't commit enough to either one.

Especially since Zoey Deutch produced this one in addition to starring, I'm getting kind of worried about boo's taste. Lot of Two If by Seas; not enough While You Were Sleepings.

79. Like a Boss (Miguel Arteta)- I chuckled a few times at a game supporting cast that is doing heavy lifting. But Like a Boss is contrived from the premise itself--Yeah, what if people in their thirties fell out of friendship? Do y'all need a creative consultant?--to the escalation of most scenes--Why did they have to hide on the roof? Why do they have to jump into the pool?

The movie is lean, but that brevity hurts just as much as it helps. The screenplay knows which scenes are crucial to the development of the friendship, but all of those feel perfunctory, in a different gear from the setpieces.  

To pile on a bit: Studio comedies are so bare bones now that they look like Lifetime movies. Arteta brought Chuck & Buck to Sundance twenty years ago, and, shot on Mini-DV for $250,000, it was seen as a DIY call-to-bootstraps. I guarantee that has more setups and locations and shooting days than this.

78. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (David Dobkin)- Add Dan Stevens to the list of supporting players who have bodied Will Ferrell in his own movie--one that he cared enough to write himself.  

Like Downhill, Ferrell's other 2020 release, this isn't exactly bad. It's just workmanlike and, aside from the joke about Demi Lovato's "uninformed" ghost, frustratingly conventional.

77. The Traitor (Marco Bellochio)- Played with weary commitment by Pierfrancesco Favino, Tomasso Buscetta is "credited" as the first informant of La Cosa Nostra. And that sounds like an interesting subject for a "based on a true story" crime epic, right? Especially when you find out that Buscetta became a rat out of principle: He believed that the mafia to which he had pledged his life had lost its code to the point that it was a different organization altogether.  

At no point does Buscetta waver or even seem to struggle with his decision though, so what we get is less conflicted than that description might suggest. None of these Italian mob movies glorify the lifestyle, so I wasn't expecting that. But if the crime doesn't seem enticing, and snitching on the crime seems like forlorn duty, and everything is pitched with such underhanded matter-of-factness that you can't even be sure when Buscetta has flipped, then what are we left with? It was interesting seeing how Italian courts work, I guess?

76. Kajillionaire (Miranda July)- This is another movie so intent on building atmosphere and lore that it takes too long to declare what it is. When the protagonist hits a breaking point and has to act, she has only a third of a film to grow. So whispery too.

Gina Rodriguez is the one to inject life into it. As soon as her motormouth winds up, the film slips into a different gear. The atmosphere and lore that I mentioned reeks of artifice, but her character is believably specific. Beneath a basic exterior is someone who is authentically caring but still morally compromised, beholden to the world that the other characters are suspicious of.

75. Scoob! (Tony Cervone)- The first half is sometimes clever, but it hammers home the importance of friendship while separating the friends.

The second half has some positive messaging, but your kids' movie might have a problem with scale if it involves Alexander the Great unlocking the gates of the Underworld.

My daughter loved it.

74. The Lovebirds (Michael Showalter)- If I start talking too much about this perfectly fine movie, I end up in that unfair stance of reviewing the movie I wanted, not what is actually there.* As a fan of hang-out comedies, I kind of resent that any comedy being made now has to be rolled into something more "exciting," whether it's a wrongfully accused or mistaken identity thriller or some other genre. Such is the post-Game Night world. There's a purposefully anti-climactic note that I wish The Lovebirds had ended on, but of course we have another stretch of hiding behind boats and shooting guns. Nanjiani and Rae are really charming leads though.

*- As a New Orleanian, I was totally distracted by the fake aspects of the setting too. "Oh, they walked to Jefferson from downtown? Really?" You probably won't be bothered by the locations.

73. Sonic the Hedgehog (Jeff Fowler)- In some ways the storytelling is ambitious. (I'm speaking for only myself, but I'm fine with "He's a hedgehog, and he's really fast" instead of the owl mother, teleportation backstory. Not everything has to be Tolkien.) But that ambition doesn't match the lack of ambition in the comedy, which depends upon really hackneyed setups and structures. Guiding Jim Carrey to full alrighty-then mode was the best choice anyone made.

72. Malcolm & Marie (Sam Levinson)- The stars move through these long scenes with agility and charisma, but the degree of difficulty is just too high for this movie to reach what it's going for.

Levinson is trying to capture an epic fight between a couple, and he can harness the theatrical intensity of such a thing, but he sacrifices almost all of the nuance. In real life, these knock-down-drag-outs can be circular and indirect and sad in a way that this couple's manipulation rarely is. If that emotional truth is all this movie is trying to achieve, I feel okay about being harsh in my judgment of how well it does that.

71. Beanpole (Kantemir Balagov)- Elusive in how it refuses to declare itself, forthright in how punishing it is. The whole thing might be worth it for a late dinner scene, but I'm getting a bit old to put myself through this kind of misery.

70. The Burnt Orange Heresy (Giuseppe Capotondi)- Silly in good ways until it's silly in bad ways. Elizabeth Debicki remains 6'3".

69. Everybody’s Everything (Sebastian Jones and Ramez Silyan)- As a person who listened to Lil Peep's music, I can confidently say that this documentary is overstating his greatness. His death was a significant loss, as the interview subjects will all acknowledge, but the documentary is more useful as a portrait of a certain unfocused, rapacious segment of a generation that is high and online at all times.

68. The Witches (Robert Zemeckis)- Robert Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, and Guillermo Del Toro are the credited screenwriters, and in a fascinating way, you can see the imprint of each figure on the final product. Adapting a very European story to the old wives' tales of the American South is an interesting choice. Like the Nicolas Roeg try at this material, Zemeckis is not afraid to veer into the terrifying, and Octavia Spencer's pseudo witch doctor character only sells the supernatural. From a storytelling standpoint though, it seems as if the obstacles are overcome too easily, as if there's a whole leg of the film that has been excised. The framing device and the careful myth-making of the flashback make promises that the hotel half of the film, including the abrupt ending, can't live up to.

If nothing else, Anne Hathaway is a real contender for Most On-One Performance of the year.

67. Irresistible (Jon Stewart)- Despite a sort of imaginative ending, Jon Stewart's screenplay feels more like the declarative screenplay that would get you hired for a good movie, not a good screenplay itself. It's provocative enough, but it's clumsy in some basic ways and never evades the easy joke.

For example, the Topher Grace character is introduced as a sort of assistant, then is re-introduced an hour later as a polling expert, then is shown coaching the candidate on presentation a few scenes later. At some point, Stewart combined characters into one role, but nothing got smoothed out.

ENDEARING CURIOSITIES WITH BIG FLAWS

66. Yes, God, Yes (Karen Maine)- Most people who are Catholic, including me, are conflicted about it. Most people who make movies about being Catholic hate it and have an axe to grind. This film is capable of such knowing wit and nuance when it comes to the lived-in details of attending a high school retreat, but it's more concerned with taking aim at hypocrisy in the broad way that we've seen a million times. By the end, the film is surprisingly all-or-nothing when Christian teenagers actually contain multitudes.

Part of the problem is that Karen Maine's screenplay doesn't know how naive to make the Alice character. Sometimes she's reasonably naive for a high school senior in 2001; sometimes she's comically naive so that the plot can work; and sometimes she's stupid, which isn't the same as naive.

65. Bad Boys for Life (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah)- This might be the first buddy cop movie in which the vets make peace with the tech-comm youngs who use new techniques. If that's the only novelty on display here--and it is--then maybe that's enough. I laughed maybe once. Not that the mistaken identity subplot of Bad Boys 1 is genius or anything, but this entry felt like it needed just one more layer to keep it from feeling as basic as it does. Speaking of layers though, it's almost impossible to watch any Will Smith movie now without viewing it through the meta-narrative of "What is Will Smith actually saying about his own status at this point in his career?" He's serving it up to us.

I derived an inordinate amount of pleasure from seeing the old school Simpson/Bruckheimer logo.

64. The Gentlemen (Guy Ritchie)- Look, I'm not going to be too negative on a movie whose crime slang is so byzantine that it has to be explained with subtitles. That's just me. I'm a simple man. But I can tell you that I tuned out pretty hard after seven or eight double-crosses.

The bloom is off the rose a bit for Ritchie, but he can still nail a music cue. I've been waiting for someone to hit "That's Entertainment" the way he does on the end credits.

63. Bad Hair (Justin Simien)- In Bad Hair, an African-American woman is told by her boss at a music video channel in 1989 that straightening her hair is the way to get ahead; however, her weave ends up having a murderous mind of its own. Compared to that charged, witty logline, the execution of the plot itself feels like a laborious, foregone conclusion. I'm glad that Simien, a genuinely talented writer, is making movies again though. Drop the skin-care routine, Van Der Beek!

62. Greyhound (Aaron Schneider)- "If this is the type of role that Tom Hanks writes for himself, then he understands his status as America's dad--'wise as the serpent, harmless as the dove'--even better than I thought." "America's Dad! Aye aye, sir!" "At least half of the dialogue is there for texture and authenticity, not there to be understood by the audience." "Fifty percent, Captain!" "The environment looks as fake as possible, but I eventually came around to the idea that the movie is completely devoid of subtext." "No subtext to be found, sir!"

  61. Mank (David Fincher)- About ten years ago, the Creative Screenwriting podcast spent an hour or so with James Vanderbilt, the writer of Zodiac and nothing else that comes close, as he relayed the creative paces that David Fincher pushed him through. Hundreds of drafts and years of collaborative work eventuated in the blueprint for Fincher's most exacting, personal film, which he didn't get a writing credit on only because he didn't seek one.

Something tells me that Fincher didn't ask for rewrites from his dead father. No matter what visuals and performances the director can coax from the script--and, to be clear, these are the worst visuals and performances of his career--they are limited by the muddy lightweight pages. There are plenty of pleasures, like the slippery election night montage or the shakily platonic relationship between Mank and Marion. But Fincher hadn't made a film in six years, and he came back serving someone else's master.

60. Tesla (Michael Almereyda)- "You live inside your head." "Doesn't everybody?"

As usual, Almereyda's deconstructions are invigorating. (No other moment can match the first time Eve Hewson's Anne fact-checks something with her anachronistic laptop.) But they don't add up to anything satisfying because Tesla himself is such an opaque figure. Driven by the whims of his curiosity without a clear finish line, the character gives Hawke something enigmatic to play as he reaches deep into a baritone. But he's too inward to lend himself to drama. Tesla feels of a piece with Almereyda's The Experimenter, and that's the one I would recommend.

59. Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)- I can't oversell how delicately beautiful this film is visually. There's a scene in which Vitalina lugs a lantern into a church, but we get several seconds of total darkness before that one light source carves through it and takes over part of the frame. Each composition is as intricate as it is overpowering, achieving a balance between stark and mannered.

That being said, most of the film is people entering or exiting doors. I felt very little of the haunting loss that I think I was supposed to.

58. The Rhythm Section (Reed Morano)- Call it the Timothy Hutton in The General's Daughter Corollary: If a name-actor isn't in the movie much but gets third billing, then, despite whom he sends the protagonist to kill, he is the Actual Bad Guy.  

Even if the movie serves up a lot of cliche, the action and sound design are visceral. I would like to see more from Morano.

57. Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen)- Well-made and heartfelt even if it goes step-for-step where you think it will.

Here's what I want to know though: In the academy training sequence, the police cadets have to subdue a "berserker"; that is, a wildman who swings at their riot gear with a sledgehammer. Then they get him under control, and he shakes their hands, like, "Good angle you took on me there, mate." Who is that guy and where is his movie? Is this full-time work? Is he a police officer or an independent contractor? What would happen if this exercise didn't go exactly as planned?

56. Wolfwalkers (Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart)- The visuals have an unfinished quality that reminded me of The Tale of Princess Kaguya--the center of a flame is undrawn white, and fog is just negative space. There's an underlying symmetry to the film, and its color palette changes with mood.

Narratively, it's pro forma and drawn-out. Was Riley in Inside Out the last animated protagonist to get two parents? My daughter stuck with it, but she needed a lot of context for the religious atmosphere of 17th century Ireland.

55. What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (Rob Garver)- The film does little more than one might expect; it's limited in the way that any visual medium is when trying to sum up a woman of letters. But as far as education for Kael's partnership with Warren Beatty or the idea of The New Yorker paying her for only six months out of the year, it was useful for me.  

Although Garver isn't afraid to point to the work that made Kael divisive, it would have been nice to have one or two interview subjects who questioned her greatness, rather than the crew of Paulettes who, even when they do say something like, "Sometimes I radically disagreed with her," do it without being able to point to any specifics.

54. Beastie Boys Story (Spike Jonze)- As far as this Spike Jonze completist is concerned, this is more of a Powerpoint presentation than a movie, Beastie Boys Story still warmed my heart, making me want to fire up Paul's Boutique again and take more pictures of my buddies.

53. Tenet (Christopher Nolan)- Cool and cold, tantalizing and frustrating, loud and indistinct, Tenet comes close to Nolan self-parody, right down to the brutalist architecture and multiple characters styled like him. The setpieces grabbed me, I'll admit.

Nolan's previous film, which is maybe his best, was "about" a lot and just happened to play with time; Tenet is only about playing with time.

PRETTY GOOD MOVIES

52. Shithouse (Cooper Raiff)- "Death is ass."

There's such a thing as too naturalistic. If I wanted to hear how college freshmen really talked, I would hang out with college freshmen. But you have to take the good verisimilitude with the bad, and good verisimilitude is the mother's Pod Save America t-shirt.

There are some poignant moments (and a gonzo performance from Logan Miller) in this auspicious debut from Cooper Raiff, the writer/director/editor/star. But the second party sequence kills some of the momentum, and at a crucial point, the characters spell out some motivation that should have stayed implied.

51. Totally Under Control (Alex Gibney, Ophelia Harutyunyan, Suzanne Hillinger)- As dense and informative as any other Gibney documentary with the added flex of making it during the pandemic it is investigating.

But yeah, why am I watching this right now? I don't need more reasons to be angry with Trump, whom this film calmly eviscerates. The directors analyze Trump's narcissism first through his contradictions of medical expertise in order to protect the economy that could win him re-election. Then it takes aim at his hiring based on loyalty instead of experience. But you already knew that, which is the problem with the film, at least for now.

50. Happiest Season (Clea Duvall)- I was in the perfect mood to watch something this frothy and bouncy. Every secondary character receives a moment in the sun, and Daniel Levy gets a speech that kind of saves the film at a tipping point.

I must say though: I wanted to punch Harper in her stupid face. She is a terrible romantic partner, abandoning or betraying Abby throughout the film and dissembling her entire identity to everyone else in a way that seems absurd for a grown woman in 2020. Run away, Kristen. Perhaps with Aubrey Plaza, whom you have more chemistry with. But there I go shipping and aligning myself with characters, which only proves that this is an effective romantic comedy.

49. The Way Back (Gavin O’Connor)- Patient but misshapen, The Way Back does just enough to overcome the cliches that are sort of unavoidable considering the genre. (I can't get enough of the parent character who, for no good reason, doesn't take his son's success seriously. "Scholarship? What he's gotta do is put his nose in them books! That's why I don't go to his games. [continues moving boxes while not looking at the other character] Now if you'll excuse me while I wait four scenes before showing up at a game to prove that I'm proud of him after all...")

What the movie gets really right or really wrong in the details about coaching and addiction is a total crap-shoot. But maybe I've said too much already.

48. The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu)- Porumboiu is a real artist who seems to be interpreting how much surveillance we're willing to acknowledge and accept, but I won't pretend to have understood much of the plot, the chapters or which are told out of order. Sometimes the structure works--the beguiling, contextless "high-class hooker" sequence--but I often wondered if the film was impenetrable in the way that Porumboiu wanted it to be or impenetrable in the way he didn't.

To tell you the truth, the experience kind of depressed me because I know that, in my younger days, this film is the type of thing that I would re-watch, possibly with the chronology righted, knowing that it is worth understanding fully. But I have two small children, and I'm exhausted all the time, and I kind of thought I should get some credit for still trying to catch up with Romanian crime movies in the first place.

47. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (Jason Woliner)- I laughed too much to get overly critical, but the film is so episodic and contrived that it's kind of exhausting by the end--even though it's achieving most of its goals. Maybe Borat hasn't changed, but the way our citizens own their ugliness has.

46. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)- Despite how little happens in the first forty minutes, First Cow is a thoughtful capitalism parable. Even though it takes about forty minutes to get going, the friendship between Cookie and King-Lu is natural and incisive. Like Reichardt's other work, the film's modest premise unfolds quite gracefully, except for in the first forty minutes, which are uneventful.

45. Les Miserables (Ladj Ly)- I loved parts of the film--the disorienting, claustrophobic opening or the quick look at the police officers' home lives, for example. But I'm not sure that it does anything very well. The needle the film tries to thread between realism and theater didn't gel for me. The ending, which is ambiguous in all of the wrong ways, chooses the theatrical. (If I'm being honest, my expectations were built up by Les Miserables' Jury Prize at Cannes, and it's a bit superficial to be in that company.)

If nothing else, it's always helpful to see how another country's worst case scenario in law enforcement would look pretty good over here.

44. Bad Education (Cory Finley)- The film feels too locked-down and small at the beginning, so intent on developing the protagonist neutrally that even the audience isn't aware of his secrets. So when he faces consequences for those secrets, there's a disconnect. Part of tragedy is seeing the doom coming, right?

When it opens up, however, it's empathetic and subtle, full of a dry irony that Finley is already specializing in after only one other feature. Geraldine Viswanathan and Allison Janney get across a lot of interiority that is not on the page.

43. The Trip to Greece (Michael Winterbottom)- By the fourth installment, you know whether you're on board with the franchise. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" to Coogan and Brydon's bickering and impressions as they're served exotic food in picturesque settings, then this one won't sway you. If you're asking "Is this all there is?" about life, like they are, then I don't need to convince you.  

I will say that The Trip to Spain seemed like an enervated inflection point, at which the squad could have packed it in. The Trip to Greece proves that they probably need to keep doing this until one of them dies, which has been the subtext all along.

42. Feels Good Man (Arthur Jones)- This documentary centers on innocent artist Matt Furie's helplessness as his Pepe the Frog character gets hijacked by the alt-right. It gets the hard things right. It's able to, quite comprehensively, trace a connection from 4Chan's use of Pepe the Frog to Donald Trump's near-assuming of Pepe's ironic deniability. Director Arthur Jones seems to understand the machinations of the alt-right, and he articulates them chillingly.

The easy thing, making us connect to Furie, is less successful. The film spends way too much time setting up his story, and it makes him look naive as it pits him against Alex Jones in the final third. Still, the film is a quick ninety-two minutes, and the highs are pretty high.

41. The Old Guard (Gina Prince-Bythewood)- Some of the world-building and backstory are handled quite elegantly. The relationships actually do feel centuries old through specific details, and the immortal conceit comes together for an innovative final action sequence.

Visually and musically though, the film feels flat in a way that Prince-Bythewood's other films do not. I blame Netflix specs. KiKi Layne, who tanked If Beale Street Could Talk for me, nearly ruins this too with the child-actory way that she stresses one word per line. Especially in relief with one of our more effortless actresses, Layne is distracting.

40. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin)- Whenever Sacha Baron Cohen's Abbie Hoffman opens his mouth, the other defendants brace themselves for his dismissive vulgarity. Even when it's going to hurt him, he can't help but shoot off at the mouth. Of course, he reveals his passionate and intelligent depths as the trial goes on. The character is the one that Sorkin's screenplay seems the most endeared to: In the same way that Hoffman can't help but be Hoffman, Sorkin can't help but be Sorkin. Maybe we don't need a speech there; maybe we don't have to stretch past two hours; maybe a bon mot diffuses the tension. But we know exactly what to expect by now. The film is relevant, astute, witty, benevolent, and, of course, in love with itself. There are a handful of scenes here that are perfect, so I feel bad for qualifying so much.

A smaller point: Daniel Pemberton has done great work in the past (Motherless Brooklyn, King Arthur, The Man from U.N.C.L.E.), but the first sequence is especially marred by his sterile soft-rock approach.

  GOOD MOVIES

39. Time (Garrett Bradley)- The key to Time is that it provides very little context. Why the patriarch of this family is serving sixty years in prison is sort of besides the point philosophically. His wife and sons have to move on without him, and the tragedy baked into that fact eclipses any notion of what he "deserved." Feeling the weight of time as we switch back and forth between a kid talking about his first day of kindergarten and that same kid graduating from dentistry school is all the context we need. Time's presentation can be quite sumptuous: The drone shot of Angola makes its buildings look like crosses. Or is it X's?

At the same time, I need some context. When director Garrett Bradley withholds the reason Robert's in prison, and when she really withholds that Fox took a plea and served twelve years, you start to see the strings a bit. You could argue that knowing so little about why, all of a sudden, Robert can be on parole puts you into the same confused shoes as the family, but it feels manipulative to me. The film is preaching to the choir as far as criminal justice goes, which is fine, but I want it to have the confidence to tell its story above board.

38. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Turner Ross and Bill Ross IV)- I have a barfly friend whom I see maybe once a year. When we first set up a time to meet, I kind of dread it and wonder what we'll have to talk about. Once we do get together, we trip on each other's words a bit, fumbling around with the rhythm of conversation that we mastered decades ago. He makes some kind of joke that could have been appropriate then but isn't now.

By the end of the day, hours later, we're hugging and maybe crying as we promise each other that we won't wait as long next time.

That's the exact same journey that I went on with this film.

37. Underwater (William Eubank)- Underwater is a story that you've seen before, but it's told with great confidence and economy. I looked up at twelve minutes and couldn't believe the whole table had been set. Kristen plays Ripley and projects a smart, benevolent poise.

36. The Lodge (Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala)- I prefer the grounded, manicured first half to the more fantastic second half. The craziness of the latter is only possible through the hard work of the former though. As with Fiala and Franz's previous feature, the visual rhymes and motifs get incorporated into the soup so carefully that you don't realize it until they overwhelm you in their bleak glory.

Small note: Alicia Silverstone, the male lead's first wife, and Riley Keough, his new partner, look sort of similar. I always think that's a nice note: "I could see how he would go for her."

35. Miss Americana (Lana Wilson)- I liked it when I saw it as a portrait of a person whose life is largely decided for her but is trying to carve out personal spaces within that hamster wheel. I loved it when I realized that describes most successful people in their twenties.

34. Sound of Metal (Darius Marder)- Riz Ahmed is showing up on all of the best performances of the year lists, but Sound of Metal isn't in anyone's top ten films of the year. That's about right. Ahmed's is a quiet, stubborn performance that I wish was in service of more than the straight line that we've seen before.

In two big scenes, there's this trick that Ahmed does, a piecing together of consequences with his eyes, as if he's moving through a flow chart in real time. In both cases, the character seems locked out and a little slower than he should be, which is, of course, why he's facing the consequences in the first place. To be charitable to a film that was a bit of a grind, it did make me notice a thing a guy did with his eyes.

33. Pieces of a Woman (Kornel Mundruczo)- Usually when I leave acting showcases like this, I imagine the film without the Oscar-baiting speeches, but this is a movie that specializes in speeches. Pieces of a Woman is being judged, deservedly so, by the harrowing twenty-minute take that opens the film, which is as indulgent as it is necessary. But if the unbroken take provides the "what," then the speeches provide the "why."

This is a film about reclaiming one's body when it rebels against you and when other people seek ownership of it. Without the Ellen Burstyn "lift your head" speech or the Vanessa Kirby show-stopper in the courtroom, I'm not sure any of that comes across.

I do think the film lets us off the hook a bit with the LaBoeuf character, in the sense that it gives us reasons to dislike him when it would be more compelling if he had done nothing wrong. Does his half-remembering of the White Stripes count as a speech?

32. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (George C. Wolfe)- This is such a play, not only in the locked-down location but also through nearly every storytelling convention: "Where are the two most interesting characters? Oh, running late? They'll enter separately in animated fashion?" But, to use the type of phrase that the characters might, "Don't hate the player; hate the game."

Perhaps the most theatrical note in this treatise on the commodification of expression is the way that, two or three times, the proceedings stop in their tracks for the piece to declare loudly what it's about. In one of those clear-outs, Boseman, who looks distractingly sick, delivers an unforgettable monologue that transports the audience into his character's fragile, haunted mind. He and Viola Davis are so good that the film sort of buckles under their weight, unsure of how to transition out of those spotlight moments and pretend that the story can start back up. Whatever they're doing is more interesting than what's being achieved overall.

31. Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg)- It's definitely the film that Vinterberg wanted to make, but despite what I think is a quietly shattering performance from Mikkelsen, Another Round moves in a bit too much of a straight line to grab me fully. The joyous final minutes hint at where it could have gone, as do pockets of Vinterberg's filmography, which seems newly tethered to realism in a way that I don't like. The best sequences are the wildest ones, like the uproarious trip to the grocery store for fresh cod, so I don't know why so much of it takes place in tiny hallways at magic hour. I give the inevitable American remake* permission to use these notes.

*- Just spitballing here. Martin: Will Ferrell, Nikolaj (Nick): Ben Stiller, Tommy: Owen Wilson, Peter: Craig Robinson

30. The Invisible Man (Leigh Whannell)- Exactly what I wanted. Exactly what I needed.

I think a less conclusive finale would have been better, but what a model of high-concept escalation. This is the movie people convinced me Whannell's Upgrade was.

29. On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola)- Slight until the Mexican sojourn, which expands the scope and makes the film even more psychosexual than before. At times it feels as if Coppola is actively simplifying, rather than diving into the race and privilege questions that the Murray character all but demands.

As for Murray, is the film 50% worse without him? 70%? I don't know if you can run in supporting categories if you're the whole reason the film exists.

28. Mangrove (Steve McQueen)- The first part of the film seemed repetitive and broad to me. But once it settled in as a courtroom drama, the characterization became more shaded, and the filmmaking itself seemed more fluid. I ended up being quite outraged and inspired.

27. Shirley (Josephine Decker)- Josephine Decker emerges as a real stylist here, changing her foggy, impressionistic approach not one bit with a little more budget. Period piece and established actors be damned--this is still as much of a reeling fever dream as Madeline's Madeline. Both pieces are a bit too repetitive and nasty for my taste, but I respect the technique.

Here's my mandatory "Elisabeth Moss is the best" paragraph. While watching her performance as Shirley Jackson, I thought about her most famous role as Peggy on Mad Men, whose inertia and need to prove herself tied her into confidence knots. Shirley is almost the opposite: paralyzed by her worldview, certain of her talent, rejecting any empathy. If Moss can inhabit both characters so convincingly, she can do anything.

26. An American Pickle (Brandon Trost)- An American Pickle is the rare comedy that could actually use five or ten extra minutes, but it's a surprisingly heartfelt and wholesome stretch for Rogen, who is earnest in the lead roles.

25. The King of Staten Island (Judd Apatow)- At two hours and fifteen minutes, The King of Staten Island is probably the first Judd Apatow film that feels like the exact right length. For example, the baggy date scene between a gracious Bill Burr and a faux-dowdy Marisa Tomei is essential, the sort of widening of perspective that something like Trainwreck was missing.

It's Pete Davidson's movie, however, and though he has never been my cup of tea, I think he's actually quite powerful in his quiet moments. The movie probes some rare territory--a mentally ill man's suspicion that he is unlovable, a family's strategic myth-making out of respect for the dead. And when Davidson shows up at the firehouse an hour and fifteen minutes in, it feels as if we've built to a last resort.

24. Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis)- The tricky part of this film is communicating Hunter's despair, letting her isolation mount, but still keeping her opaque. It takes a lot of visual discipline to do that, and Claudio Mirabella-Davis is up to the task. This ends up being a much more sympathetic, expressive movie than the plot description might suggest.

(In the tie dispute, Hunter and Richie are both wrong. That type of silk--I couldn't tell how pebbled it was, but it's probably a barathea weave-- shouldn't be ironed directly, but it doesn't have to be steamed. On a low setting, you could iron the back of the tie and be fine.)

23. The Vast of Night (Andrew Patterson)- I wanted a bit more "there" there; The film goes exactly where I thought it would, and there isn't enough humor for my taste. (The predictability might be a feature, not a bug, since the film is positioned as an episode of a well-worn Twilight Zone-esque show.)

But from a directorial standpoint, this is quite a promising debut. Patterson knows when to lock down or use silence--he even cuts to black to force us to listen more closely to a monologue. But he also knows when to fill the silence. There's a minute or so when Everett is spooling tape, and he and Fay make small talk about their hopes for the future, developing the characters' personalities in what could have been just mechanics. It's also a refreshingly earnest film. No one is winking at the '50s setting.

I'm tempted to write, "If Andrew Patterson can make this with $1 million, just imagine what he can do with $30 million." But maybe people like Shane Carruth have taught us that Patterson is better off pinching pennies in Texas and following his own muse.

22. Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello)- At first this film, adapted from a picaresque novel by Jack London, seemed as if it was hitting the marks of the genre. "He's going from job to job and meeting dudes who are shaping his worldview now." But the film, shot in lustrous Super 16, won me over as it owned the trappings of this type of story, forming a character who is a product of his environment even as he transcends it. By the end, I really felt the weight of time.

You want to talk about something that works better in novels than films though? When a passionate, independent protagonist insists that a woman is the love of his life, despite the fact that she's whatever Italians call a wet blanket. She's rich, but Martin doesn't care about her money. He hates her family and friends, and she refuses to accept him or his life pursuits. She's pretty but not even as pretty as the waitress they discuss. Tell me what I'm missing here. There's archetype, and there's incoherence.

21. Bacurau (Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles)- Certain images from this adventurous film will stick with me, but I got worn out after the hard reset halfway through. As entranced as I was by the mystery of the first half, I think this blood-soaked ensemble is better at asking questions than it is at answering them.

20. Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh)- The initial appeal of this movie might be "Look at these wonderful actresses in their seventies getting a movie all to themselves." And the film is an interesting portrait of ladies taking stock of relationships that have spanned decades. But Soderbergh and Eisenberg handle the twentysomething Lucas Hedges character with the same openness and empathy. His early reasoning for going on the trip is that he wants to learn from older women, and Hedges nails the puppy-dog quality of a young man who would believe that. Especially in the scenes of aspirational romance, he's sweet and earnest as he brushes his hair out of his face.

Streep plays Alice Hughes, a serious author of literary fiction, and she crosses paths with Kelvin Kranz, a grinder of airport thrillers. In all of the right ways, Let Them All Talk toes the line between those two stances as an entertaining, jaunty experiment that also shoulders subtextual weight. If nothing else, it's easy to see why a cruise ship's counterfeit opulence, its straight lines at a lean, would be visually engaging to Soderbergh. You can't have a return to form if your form is constantly evolving.

19. Dick Johnson Is Dead (Kirsten Johnson)- Understandably, I don't find the subject as interesting as his own daughter does, and large swaths of this film are unsure of what they're trying to say. But that's sort of the point, and the active wrestling that the film engages in with death ultimately pays off in a transcendent moment. The jaw-dropping ending is something that only non-fiction film can achieve, and Johnson's whole career is about the search for that sort of serendipity.

18. Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee)- Delroy Lindo is a live-wire, but his character is the only one of the principals who is examined with the psychological depth I was hoping for. The first half, with all of its present-tense flourishes, promises more than the gunfights of the second half can deliver. When the film is cooking though, it's chock full of surprises, provocations, and pride.

17. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittmann)- Very quickly, Eliza Hittmann has established herself as an astute, empathetic director with an eye for discovering new talent. I hope that she gets to make fifty more movies in which she objectively follows laconic young people. But I wanted to like this one more than I did. The approach is so neutral that it's almost flat to me, lacking the arc and catharsis of her previous film, Beach Rats. I still appreciate her restraint though.

GREAT MOVIES

16. Young Ahmed (Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne)- I don't think the Dardennes have made a bad movie yet, and I'm glad they turned away from the slight genre dipping of The Unknown Girl, the closest to bad that they got. Young Ahmed is a lean, daring return to form.

Instead of following an average person, as they normally do, the Dardenne Brothers follow an extremist, and the objectivity that usually generates pathos now serves to present ambiguity. Ahmed says that he is changing, that he regrets his actions, but we never know how much of his stance is a put-on. I found myself wanting him to reform, more involved than I usually am in these slices of life. Part of it is that Idir Ben Addi looks like such a normal, young kid, and the Ahmed character has most of the qualities that we say we want in young people: principles, commitment, self-worth, reflection. So it's that much more destructive when those qualities are used against him and against his fellow man.

15. World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime (Don Hertzfeldt)- My dad, a man whom I love but will never understand, has dismissed modern music before by claiming that there are only so many combinations of chords. To him, it's almost impossible to do something new. Of course, this is the type of thing that an uncreative person would say--a person not only incapable of hearing the chords that combine notes but also unwilling to hear the space between the notes. (And obviously, that's the take of a person who doesn't understand that, originality be damned, some people just have to create.)

  Anyway, that attitude creeps into my own thinking more than I would like, but then I watch something as wholly original as World of Tomorrow Episode Three. The series has always been a way to pile sci-fi ideas on top of each other to prove the essential truths of being and loving. And this one, even though it achieves less of a sense of yearning than its predecessor, offers even more devices to chew on. Take, for example, the idea that Emily sends her message from the future, so David's primitive technology can barely handle it. In order to move forward with its sophistication, he has to delete any extraneous skills for the sake of computer memory. So out of trust for this person who loves him, he has to weigh whether his own breathing or walking can be uninstalled as a sacrifice for her. I thought that we might have been done describing love, but there it is, a new metaphor. Mixing futurism with stick figures to get at the most pure drive possible gave us something new. It's called art, Dad.

14. On the Record (Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering)- We don't call subjects of documentaries "stars" for obvious reasons, but Drew Dixon kind of is one. Her honesty and wisdom tell a complete story of the #MeToo movement. Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering take their time developing her background at first, not because we need to "gain sympathy" or "establish credibility" for a victim of sexual abuse, but because showing her talent and enthusiasm for hip-hop A&R makes it that much more tragic when her passion is extinguished. Hell, I just like the woman, so spending a half-hour on her rise was pleasurable in and of itself.

  This is a gut-wrenching, fearless entry in what is becoming Dick and Ziering's raison d'etre, but its greatest quality is Dixon's composed reflection. She helped to establish a pattern of Russell Simmons's behavior, but she explains what happened to her in ways I had never heard before.

13. David Byrne’s American Utopia (Spike Lee)- I'm often impressed by the achievements that puzzle me: How did they pull that off? But I know exactly how David Byrne pulled off the impish but direct precision of American Utopia: a lot of hard work.

I can't blame Spike Lee for stealing a page from Demme's Stop Making Sense: He denies us a close-up of any audience members until two-thirds of the way through, when we get someone in absolute rapture.

12. One Night in Miami... (Regina King)- We've all cringed when a person of color is put into the position of speaking on behalf of his or her entire race. But the characters in One Night in Miami... live in that condition all the time and are constantly negotiating it. As Black public figures in 1964, they know that the consequences of their actions are different, bigger, than everyone else's. The charged conversations between Malcolm X and Sam Cooke are not about whether they can live normal lives. They're way past that. The stakes are closer to Sam Cooke arguing that his life's purpose aligns with the protection and elevation of African-Americans while Malcolm X argues that those pursuits should be the same thing. Late in the movie, Cassius Clay leaves the other men, a private conversation, to talk to reporters, a public conversation. But the film argues that everything these men do is always already public. They're the most powerful African-Americans in the country, but their lives are not their own. Or not only their own.

It's true that the first act has the clunkiness and artifice of a TV movie, but once the film settles into the motel room location and lets the characters feed off one another, it's gripping. It's kind of unfair for a movie to get this many scenes of Leslie Odom Jr. singing, but I'll take it.

11. Saint Frances (Alex Thompson)- Rilke wrote, "Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." The characters' behavior in Saint Frances--all of these fully formed characters' behavior--made me think of that quotation. When they lash out at one another, even at their nastiest, the viewer has a window into how they're expressing pain they can't verbalize. The film is uneven in its subtlety, but it's a real showcase for screenwriter and star Kelly O'Sullivan, who is unflinching and dynamic in one of the best performances of the year. Somebody give her some of the attention we gave to Zach Braff for God's sake.

10. Boys State (Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine)- This documentary is kind of a miracle from a logistical standpoint. From casting interviews beforehand, lots of editing afterwards, or sly note-taking once the conference began, McBaine and Moss happened to select the four principals who mattered the most at the convention, then found them in rooms full of dudes wearing the same tucked-in t-shirt. By the way, all of the action took place over the course of one week, and by definition, the important events are carved in half.

To call Boys State a microcosm of American politics is incorrect. These guys are forming platforms and voting in elections. What they're doing is American politics, so when they make the same compromises and mistakes that active politicians do, it produces dread and disappointment. So many of the boys are mimicking the political theater that they see on TV, and that sweaty sort of performance is going to make a Billy Mitchell out of this kid Ben Feinstein, and we'll be forced to reckon with how much we allow him to evolve as a person. This film is so precise, but what it proves is undeniably messy. Luckily, some of these seventeen-year-olds usher in hope for us all.

If nothing else, the film reveals the level to which we're all speaking in code.

9. The Nest (Sean Durkin)- In the first ten minutes or so of The Nest, the only real happy minutes, father and son are playing soccer in their quaint backyard, and the father cheats to score on a children's net before sliding on the grass to rub in his victory. An hour later, the son kicks the ball around by himself near a regulation goal on the family's massive property. The contrast is stark and obvious, as is the symbolism of the dead horse, but that doesn't mean it's not visually powerful or resonant.

Like Sean Durkin's earlier film, Martha Marcy May Marlene, the whole of The Nest is told with detail of novelistic scope and an elevation of the moment. A snippet of radio that mentions Ronald Reagan sets the time period, rather than a dateline. One kid saying "Thanks, Dad" and another kid saying, "Thanks, Rory" establishes a stepchild more elegantly than any other exposition might.

But this is also a movie that does not hide what it means. Characters usually say exactly what is on their minds, and motivations are always clear. For example, Allison smokes like a chimney, so her daughter's way of acting out is leaving butts on the window sill for her mother to find. (And mother and daughter both definitely "act out" their feelings.) On the other hand, Ben, Rory's biological son, is the character least like him, so these relationships aren't too directly parallel. Regardless, Durkin uses these trajectories to cast a pall of familial doom.

8. Sorry We Missed You (Sean Durkin)- Another precisely calibrated empathy machine from Ken Loach. The overwhelmed matriarch, Abby, is a caretaker, and she has to break up a Saturday dinner to rescue one of her clients, who wet herself because no one came to help her to the bathroom. The lady is embarrassed, and Abby calms her down by saying, "You mean more to me than you know." We know enough about Abby's circumstances to realize that it's sort of a lie, but it's a beautiful lie, told by a person who cares deeply but is not cared for.

Loach's central point is that the health of a family, something we think of as immutable and timeless, is directly dependent upon the modern industry that we use to destroy ourselves. He doesn't have to be "proven" relevant, and he didn't plan for Covid-19 to point to the fragility of the gig economy, but when you're right, you're right.

7. Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen)- swear to you I thought: "This is an impeccable depiction of a great house party. The only thing it's missing is the volatile dude who scares away all the girls." And then the volatile dude who scares away all the girls shows up.

In a year short on magic, there are two or three transcendent moments, but none of them can equal the whole crowd singing along to "Silly Games" way after the song has ended. Nothing else crystallizes the film's note of celebration: of music, of community, of safe spaces, of Black skin. I remember moments like that at house parties, and like all celebrations, they eventually make me sad.

6. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (Nicole Newnham and James Lebrecht)- I held off on this movie because I thought that I knew what it was. The setup was what I expected: A summer camp for the disabled in the late '60s takes on the spirit of the time and becomes a haven for people who have not felt agency, self-worth, or community anywhere else. But that's the right-place-right-time start of a story that takes these figures into the '80s as they fight for their rights.

If you're anything like my dumb ass, you know about 504 accommodations from the line on a college syllabus that promises equal treatment. If 2020 has taught us anything though, it's that rights are seized, not given, and this is the inspiring story of people who unified to demand what they deserved. Judy Heumann is a civil rights giant, but I'm ashamed to say I didn't know who she was before this film. If it were just a history lesson that wasn't taught in school, Crip Camp would still be valuable, but it's way more than that.

5. Palm Springs (Max Barbakow)- When explaining what is happening to them, Andy Samberg's Nyles twirls his hand at Cristin Milioti's Sara and says, "It's one of those infinite time-loop scenarios." Yeah, one of those. Armed with only a handful of fictional examples, she and the audience know exactly what he means, and the continually inventive screenplay by Andy Siara doesn't have to do any more explaining. In record time, the film accelerates into its premise, involves her, and sets up the conflict while avoiding the claustrophobia of even Groundhog Day. That economy is the strength that allows it to be as funny as it is. By being thrifty with the setup, the savings can go to, say, the couple crashing a plane into a fiery heap with no consequences.

In some accidental ways, this is, of course, a quarantine romance as well. Nyles and Sara frustratingly navigate the tedious wedding as if they are play-acting--which they sort of are--then they push through that sameness to grow for each other, realizing that dependency is not weakness. The best relationships are doing the same thing right now.

  Although pointedly superficial--part of the point of why the couple is such a match--and secular--I think the notion of an afterlife would come up at least once--Palm Springs earns the sincerity that it gets around to. And for a movie ironic enough to have a character beg to be impaled so that he doesn't have to sit in traffic, that's no small feat.

  4. The Assistant (Kitty Green)- A wonder of Bressonian objectivity and rich observation, The Assistant is the rare film that deals exclusively with emotional depth while not once explaining any emotions. One at a time, the scrape of the Kleenex box might not be so grating, the long hallway trek to the delivery guy might not be so tiring, but this movie gets at the details of how a job can destroy you in ways that add up until you can't even explain them.

3. Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell)- In her most incendiary and modern role, Carey Mulligan plays Cassie, which is short for Cassandra, that figure doomed to tell truths that no one else believes. The web-belted boogeyman who ruined her life is Al, short for Alexander, another Greek who is known for his conquests. The revenge story being told here--funny in its darkest moments, dark in its funniest moments--is tight on its surface levels, but it feels as if it's telling a story more archetypal and expansive than that too.

  An exciting feature debut for its writer-director Emerald Fennell, the film goes wherever it dares. Its hero has a clear purpose, and it's not surprising that the script is willing to extinguish her anger halfway through. What is surprising is the way it renews and muddies her purpose as she comes into contact with half-a-dozen brilliant one- or two-scene performances. (Do you think Alfred Molina can pull off a lawyer who hates himself so much that he can't sleep? You would be right.)

Promising Young Woman delivers as an interrogation of double standards and rape culture, but in quiet ways it's also about our outsized trust in professionals and the notion that some trauma cannot be overcome.

INSTANT CLASSICS

2. Soul (Pete Docter)- When Pete Docter's Up came out, it represented a sort of coronation for Pixar: This was the one that adults could like unabashedly. The one with wordless sequences and dead children and Ed Asner in the lead. But watching it again this week with my daughter, I was surprised by how high-concept and cloying it could be. We choose not to remember the middle part with the goofy dog stuff.

Soul is what Up was supposed to be: honest, mature, stirring. And I don't mean to imply that a family film shouldn't make any concessions to children. But Soul, down to the title, never compromises its own ambition. Besides Coco, it's probably the most credible character study that Pixar has ever made, with all of Joe's growth earned the hard way. Besides Inside Out, it's probably the wittiest comedy that Pixar has ever made, bursting with unforced energy.

There's a twitter fascination going around about Dez, the pigeon-figured barber character whose scene has people gushing, "Crush my windpipe, king" or whatever. Maybe that's what twitter does now, but no one fantasized about any characters in Up. And I count that as progress.

1. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman)- After hearing that our name-shifting protagonist moonlights as an artist, a no-nonsense David Thewlis offers, "I hope you're not an abstract artist." He prefers "paintings that look like photographs" over non-representational mumbo-jumbo. And as Jessie Buckley squirms to try to think of a polite way to talk back, you can tell that Charlie Kaufman has been in the crosshairs of this same conversation. This morose, scary, inscrutable, expressionist rumination is not what the Netflix description says it is at all, and it's going to bother nice people looking for a fun night in. Thank God.

The story goes that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, when constructing Raiders of the Lost Ark, sought to craft a movie that was "only the good parts" with little of the clunky setup that distracted from action. What we have here is a Charlie Kaufman movie with only the Charlie Kaufman moments, less interested than ever before at holding one's hand. The biting humor is here, sometimes aimed at philistines like the David Thewlis character above, sometimes at the niceties that we insist upon. The lonely horror of everyday life is here, in the form of missed calls from oneself or the interruption of an inner monologue. Of course, communicating the overwhelming crush of time, both unknowable and familiar, is the raison d'etre.

A new pet motif seems to be the way that we don't even own our own knowledge. The Young Woman recites "Bonedog" by Eva H.D., which she claims/thinks she wrote, only to find Jake's book open to that page, next to a Pauline Kael book that contains a Woman Under the Influence review that she seems to have internalized later. When Jake muses about Wordsworth's "Lucy Poems," it starts as a way to pass the time, then it becomes a way to lord his education over her, then it becomes a compliment because the subject resembles her, then it becomes a way to let her know that, in the grand scheme of things, she isn't that special at all. This film jerks the viewer through a similar wintry cycle and leaves him with his own thoughts. It's not a pretty picture, but it doesn't look like anything else.

[twofoolsiknow]

His Grace of Avon Buys a Soul

A gentleman was strolling down a side street in Paris, on his way back from the house of one Madame de Verchoureux. He walked mincingly, for the red heels of his shoes were very high. A long purple cloak, rose-lined, hung from his shoulders and was allowed to fall carelessly back from his dress, revealing a fullskirted coat of purple satin, heavily laced with gold; a waistcoat of flowered silk; faultless small clothes; and a lavish sprinkling of jewels on his cravat and breast. A three-cornered hat, point-edged, was set upon his powdered wig, and in his hand he carried a long beribboned cane. It was a little enough protection against footpads, and although a light dress sword hung at the gentleman’s side its hilt was lost in the folds of his cloak, not quickly to be found. At this late hour, and in this deserted street, it was the height of foolhardiness to walk unattended and flaunting jewels, but the gentleman seemed unaware of his recklessness. He proceeded languidly on his way, glancing neither to left nor to right, apparently heedless of possible danger.

But as he walked down the street, idly twirling his cane, a body hurled itself upon him, shot like a cannon-ball from a dark alley that yawned to the right of the magnificent gentleman. The figure clutched at that elegant cloak, cried out in a startled voice, and tried to regain his balance.

His Grace of Avon swirled about, gripping his assailant’s wrists and bearing them downwards with a merciless strength belied by his foppish appearance. His victim gave a whimper of pain and sank quivering to his knees.

“M’sieur! Ah, let me go! I did not mean—I did not know—I would not—Ah, m’sieur, let me go!”

His Grace bent over the boy, standing a little to one side so that the light of an adjacent street lamp fell on that white agonized countenance. Great violetblue eyes gazed wildly up at him, terror in their depths.

“Surely you are a little young for this game?” drawled the Duke. “Or did you think to take me unawares?”

The boy flushed, and his eyes grew dark with indignation.

“I did not seek to rob you! Indeed, indeed I did not! I—I was running away!   I—oh, m’sieur, let me go!”

“In good time, my child. From what were you running, may I ask? From another victim?”

“No! Oh, please let me go! You—you do not understand ! He will have started in pursuit! Ah, please, please, milor’!”

The Duke’s curious, heavy-lidded eyes never wavered from the boy’s face. They had widened suddenly, and become intent.

“And who, child, is ‘he’?”

“My—my brother. Oh, please——”

Round the corner of the alley came a man, full-tilt. At sight of Avon he checked. The boy shuddered, and now clung to Avon’s arm.

“Ah!” exploded the new-comer. “Now, by God, if the whelp has sought to rob you, milor’ he shall pay for it! You scoundrel! Ungrateful brat! You shall be sorry, I promise you! Milor’, a thousand apologies! The lad is my young brother. I was beating him for his laziness when he slipped from me——”

The Duke raised a scented handkerchief to his thin nostrils. “Keep your distance, fellow,” he said haughtily. “Doubtless beating is good for the young.”

The boy shrank closer to him. He made no attempt to escape, but his hands twitched convulsively. Once again the Duke’s strange eyes ran over him, resting for a moment on the copper-red curls that were cut short and ruffled into wild disorder.

“As I remarked, beating is good for the young. Your brother, you said?” He glanced now at the swarthy, coarse-featured young man.

“Yes, noble sir, my brother. I have cared for him since our parents died, and he repays me with ingratitude. He is a curse, noble sir, a curse!”

The Duke seemed to reflect.

“How old is he, fellow?” “He is nineteen, milor’.”

The Duke surveyed the boy.

“Nineteen. Is he not a little small for his age?”

“Why, milor’, if—if he is it is no fault of mine! I—I have fed him well. I pray you, do not heed what he says! He is a viper, a wild-cat, a veritable curse!”

“I will relieve you of the curse,” said his Grace calmly. The man stared, uncomprehending.

“Milor’——?”

“I suppose he is for sale?”

A cold hand stole into the Duke’s, and clutched it.

“Sale, milor’? You——”

“I believe I will buy him to be my page. What is his worth? A louis? Or are curses worthless? An interesting problem.”

The man’s eyes gleamed suddenly with avaricious cunning.

“He is a good boy, noble sir. He can work. Indeed, he is worth much to me. And I have an affection for him. I——”

“I will give you a guinea for your curse.”

“Ah, but no, milor’! He is worth more! Much, much more!”

“Then keep him,” said Avon, and moved on.

The boy ran to him, clinging to his arm.

“Milor’, take me! Oh please take me! I will work well for you! I swear it! Oh, I beg of you, take me!”

His Grace paused.

“I wonder if I am a fool?” he said in English. He drew the diamond pin from his cravat, and held it so that it winked and sparkled in the light of the lamp. “Well, fellow? Will this suffice?”

The man gazed at the jewel as though he could hardly believe his eyes. He rubbed them, and drew nearer, staring.

“For this,” Avon said, “I purchase your brother, body and soul. Well?”

“Give it me!” whispered the man, and stretched out his hand. “The boy is yours, milor’.”

Avon tossed the pin to him. “I believe I requested you to keep your distance,” he said. “You offend my nostrils. Child, follow me.”

On he went, down the street, with the boy at a respectful distance behind him.

from These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer

[poc-movie-supremacy]

Blackbird: Heaven is in your arms

Yes, this is part of the blackbird universe, but for now, it’s almost a standalone. Blackbird’s original intent was arrowverse characters coming home from war, so that’s why there’s a westallen one. I was planning on doing one for cynco and kanvers + kate and mary, but I’m not sure anymore. 

Anyways, summary: The house is lonely without him. Iris at home waiting for Barry to come home from war. 

----

Iris hates quiet. It reminds her of loneliness which is what she is and she wants nothing more than to forget that. Every night she places a record in the record machine. Last night it was “Cheek to cheek” by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. She cooks a meal for herself, usually something small, she lost her appetite a long time ago. Iris eats in the bay window watching the stars, sometimes the people outside if something interesting is happening. She wants to join them but it’s hard. 

Iris wonders if Barry sees the same stars she does. She wonders if he misses her like she misses him. 

After her dinner is half eaten, she turns off the record and goes to bed. At first she tried sleeping in their bed, but it was too big, too empty. That bed was meant for two people, not one. Iris sleeps on the couch instead. She wraps up her hair, changes into her pajamas and brushes her teeth. Turning off all lights except the lamp next to the couch, she gets the box and settles on the couch. The box is filled with all the letters Barry has sent her while he’s deployed. She always reads them before she goes to sleep. It always soothes her to, if not hear his voice, read his words. Sometimes they even chase away the nightmares. 

Every single morning she wakes up with a crick in her neck. It’s better than waking up to an empty bed. She undoes the wrap, changes into her work clothes, a pair of red heels, black pencil skirt, blouse, and blazer and puts her hair up into a fancy braid that her mom loves. Aretha Franklin fills the apartment as Iris gets ready for work. The coffee pot chimes done just as she finishes putting on her makeup, so Iris pours herself a cup and grabs a chocolate muffin to eat in the bay window. She watches the people head off to work as she tries to think of anything but where Barry is. The minute she starts on that train, she’ll fall into a black hole of unwanted messy thoughts. 

After finishing breakfast, she joins the crowds heading to their nine-to-five. Linda give her a smile when she opens the door to the Citizen. Her intern, Allegra, informs her of the interviews Mason wants her to do. Iris wants to choke him. 

“Heavy workload?” Linda asks her during lunch. 

“Sometimes I wonder if being a cop would be easier.” Iris complains. 

“What do you have to do?” Linda wondered. She, Allegra, Kamilla, and Iris were sitting together eating lunch in the park next to the CCPN building. They befriended each other through work and have stuck by each other since then. Iris wondered what she’d do without them. 

“I already finished editing my articles, now I just need to complete my politics article, and the one on the string of murders down on sixth street.”

Linda wrinkled her nose in disgust. “How’s the coppers handling it?” 

“Baffled. I think they’re starting to get worried. I’m hoping my article will bring this to public attention and help the situation.” Iris said. 

“That’s the hope.” Linda agreed. 

After work, she goes home and takes a long bath. This time, Tina Turner is playing in the apartment. The same routine plays out again. No mail has been delivered, so she has nothing new to read from Barry. She hopes he’ll come home soon as she drifts off to sleep. 

The rest of the weeks are the same. In these two weeks, she got one new letter from him. He says things are lightening up, and there might be good news in the future. He writes of the new people he’s met across the seas, the places he’s seen, and how much he misses. Apparently she’s been somewhat of a character to the soldiers. Iris West, possible goddess, and Barry’s long suffering wife. They want to meet her. Iris wonders what things he told them. She hope it’s all good things. She hopes his wandering mind stays on his shoulders so he doesn’t... nevermind. 

On Wednesday, she wakes up and gets ready for work. Her brother reminds her that their parents wanted to see them on Friday, so she better not forget to come. She went to work as usual, but had to go see Wally before going home. She was tempted to stay with him in an effort to avoid going back to her empty house, but he practically pushed her out of his house. Iris could’ve sworn she saw him smiling. 

The walk to their apartment was quiet. At least there wasn’t anyone on the street to distract her. She tried to come up with a reason for her brother’s sudden happiness. Barry’s homecoming came to mind, but that wasn’t for weeks so it was brushed aside. 

Music was the first thing that struck Iris as odd when she opened the door to the apartment. It was the little ditty Barry wrote her for their engagement. He dabbled in music a little before he was drafted. It’s why they own so many instruments. A guitar, a piano, a violin, they’ve all suffered from disuse now.  Arts, when concerning music, was never Iris’s forte. 

As she stepped further into the apartment, cooked food could be smelled. She placed a hand on the taser in her purse just in case it was an intruder and walked softly further into the place. 

A skinny man was hunched over the piano, fingers flying over the keys. He was in a formal army outfit sans the hat. 

“Barry.”

Fingers stilled on the keys. 

Slowly he turned around a tired, yet happy smile dancing across his face, lighting up his features. She dropped her purse, almost setting off the taser and started bawling.  He quickly raced to her side before she fell to the ground. Easily, he lifted her up and twirled around crying himself. Her legs wrapped around his waist. His hug almost crushed her. She never wanted him to let go. 

“Shh baby, Iris, baby. I’m okay. I’m alright I’m home.” Iris sobbed into his shoulder. He held her tightly, not caring one bit that his suit was getting dirty with her tears. For once, she felt safe. There was nothing better than being held by Barry Allen. 

“I missed you, so damn much. The house-” 

“I’m not leaving, not again.” He didn’t. Apparently this was his last deployment. Hearing that made Iris cry harder, but this time they were happy tears. He cradled her face in his hand gently wiping away her tears. His eyes swept over face. It had been so long since he last saw her, he wanted to re-memorize every last feature. Her golden brown eyes, her curly black hair, her tear drop face. He kissed her all over, eyes, cheeks, lips. 

That was what finally calmed her tears. Giggling she asked, “You missed this?”

“I miss a lot of things.” He kissed the shell of her ear and along her jaw. “I missed your smile, and your voice. I missed your thoughts, and you kisses. I missed falling asleep next to you, dancing with you... Kara’s a good dancer, but she’s not you.”

“Well then,” Iris shimmied out of his arms, and grabbed his hand. She placed a record on the record player, The Temptations, “My Girl” and extended her other hand. “Can I have this dance?”

“Always.” He kissed her knuckles before pulling them into waltzing formation. Left hand in her right, right hand on her butt, so close together the holy spirit got squished. They’re married anyways. 

He quietly sang along to the song as they danced. Iris pressed her cheek to his chest in an attempt to get as close as possible to him. Maybe she was being insane, but after months without him close, she never wanted to let go. After a few dances, they meandered to the kitchen to eat. 

Barry sat down at the head of the table with Iris in his lap. She made up one big plate for the two of them. As they ate, they swapped stories about their time away from each other. He told her stories of the Diggles, Jesse Wells, Cynthia Reynolds, Kara Zor-el. Friends he made like Alex Danvers, Mary Hamilton, Beth Chapel and Yolanda Montez. In return she updated him on how his parents, her parents and Wally were doing. She told tales of her and her journalism adventures with Linda, Allegra, and Kamilla. 

“Look like you’ve been having fun here.” Barry grossed. 

“Not as much fun as I’ll have with you here with me. I missed you baby.” Iris says. Barry kissed the top of Iris’s forehead. 

“I’m going to see if Bridge will let me take the day off. We could go on a date!” Iris left his lap much to his sadness. “Hunn, let me get some wine and ice cream. The good wine.”

Barry’s eyes widened in surprise. “Fancy.”

“Well it’s a special day,” Iris returned to his lap with a small tub of ice cream, two spoons, and two glasses of wine. “Happy homecoming.”

“Happy homecoming.”

After dinner, Barry did the dishes while Iris cleaned up the living room. When he was done, Barry rushed up to her picking her up and twirling her around. He carried her up to their bedroom and dumped her on the bed. Iris thanked her lucky stars that he didn’t comment on its near sterile-ness. 

“I love you.” Barry stares at her below him. Her hair is splayed out on the pillow, her face is stretched out in a smile. Iris reaches up to pull him towards her. She peppers kisses on his face before leaving. 

“I’m just going to get changed.” He watches her put on one of his old shirts and a pair of underwear. Slowly, he gets up from the bed to get ready for sleep himself. Their movements are a little robust, getting used to sharing this room again, but it’ll be ok. 

In bed, she wraps herself around him, finding comfort in his hold. Softly, she traced some of his scars and tattoos with her finger. He turned off the lights, and for once, she knew she wouldn’t need his letters to chase away the nightmares.

[nomanwalksalone]

ALTERNATIVE STYLE ICON: RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN IN WALLENBERG: A HERO’S STORY

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

The writer George Santayana famously wrote that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Ironically many who repeat his quote forget who first uttered it.

I had long meant to write about Richard Chamberlain in this role. I once referred to him as “the fey king of the miniseries” and I don’t regret it: foppish, almost milquetoast in fare as varied as a two-part TV version of The Bourne Identity (with Jaclyn Smith, natch), Shogun, and as a leading candidate for an honorary Seinfeld puffy shirt: Not only did he play the Count of Monte Cristo in a 1975 TV movie, but a bunch of what Elaine Benes would have called chandelier-swinging characters in other Dumas adaptations, including Aramis in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers and Louis XIV and his twin in The Man in the Iron Mask. Postmodern swashbuckler author Arturo Perez-Reverte even described a character in one of his own novels as looking “like Richard Chamberlain in The Thorn Birds, only more manly.” That same Thorn Birds role, Father Ralph de Bricassart, also inspired a certain Rhunette Ferguson to give her son, a future New York Jets player, perhaps my favorite name ever: D’Brickashaw.

Dubbing Chamberlain an Alternative Style Icon for his role as Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg is low-hanging fruit. For years this TV special dwelt at the bottom of my Netflix queue for that express purpose. Former Savile Row tailors Manning & Manning won an Emmy award for the outfits they made for him; decades later Bryan Manning had some very interesting things to say to the inimitable Simon Crompton of Permanent Style about the 1930s and 1940s cutting styles he had to adopt for Chamberlain’s outfits for the movie. Chamberlain’s costumes are appropriately dashing, from the full diplomatic gala white tie ensemble worn while conspiring with the Papal Nuncio of Budapest to a tan double-breasted suit with horizontal peaked lapels that is, quite simply, magnificent. Zagreb, one of the most beautiful cities in eastern Europe, admirably filled in for 1940s Budapest and Stockholm in the making of this production. I’m fairly certain that I’ve stayed at the Zagreb hotel on whose esplanade Chamberlain wore that suit, in an early expository scene where the American and Swedish governments encourage Wallenberg to take a position with the Swedish legation in Budapest.  I’ve been told Zagreb’s one of two cities in Europe where the street lamps in certain neighborhoods are still gaslit. Gaslighting happens to have been one of the reasons that I finally wrote about this icon.

Of course there’s plenty to mock in the conventions of this telefilm, even beyond Chamberlain’s indisputable 1970s and 1980s stock hero status: its heavy-handed setup and plotting, making Wallenberg out to be a one-man anti-Nazi force from his time at home in Sweden (wearing a U. Michigan sweatshirt to indicate that he had studied in the US - did college sweatshirts even exist back then?). Miniseries meant melodrama and its archetypal characters: an adorable child whom Wallenberg saves from the death camps only to die of illness; a shoehorned-in love interest in the form of a kindhearted baroness who lobbies her suspicious husband to relax the Hungarian government's strictures on Jews; a fiery Hungarian resistance fighter who provides the unofficial, combative counterpoint to Wallenberg’s diplomatic, humanitarian efforts through official channels. And, of course, Wallenberg’s kidnapping by the Soviets at the fall of Budapest meant his story was perfectly framed for 1985, when we still couldn’t trust those Russians. (In fact, to this day no one knows what they did with him.)

A few appropriately haunting and powerful moments do ring true, including Wallenberg’s cordial verbal fencing matches over contraband Scotch and cigarettes with Adolf Eichmann. Whether those meetings really took place in that form or not, their film versions appropriately capture the realities of how we are forced to engage with evil. Rarely are we simply battling an easily identifiable other, weapon to weapon. Instead, we encounter evil in the everyday – in fact, it seeks us out, finds shared ground, converses with us over pleasantries and hospitality even as we recognize its intentions. It identifies with us, we identify with it. Even as you know it is evil.

Eichmann had made it his avowed duty to kill the Jews of Europe. Wallenberg’s mission, as an emissary of an officially neutral power, was to help save as many as he could. And he did, through famously fearless, reckless endeavors including the distribution of thousands of official-looking Swedish passes to the Jews of Budapest, the creation of vast cultural centers and warehouses in the Swedish mission buildings in which these new countrymen could work under the aegis of their adoptive country, and savvy diplomatic maneuvering with the Hungarian and German authorities and military. He went as far as to climb on top of a train bound for Auschwitz and distribute passes to as many deportees as he could while soldiers fired shots at him. Looking back, historians suggest they were firing over his head to warn him as they could easily have dropped him at that range, but it’s not likely Wallenberg knew that at the time.

At that time diplomats of neutral powers could make fortunes more safely as armchair heroes: playboy Porfirio Rubirosa reportedly did so in Paris selling visas to the Dominican Republic to French Jews during World War II. In that respect, perhaps, both he and Wallenberg were heroes… of different sorts.

Wallenberg did not do it for money. The Wallenbergs were Swedish aristocracy (with, the film takes pains to remind us, an ounce of Jewish blood) with considerable means – hence the finely tailored wardrobe for Chamberlain. Thus, an easy cynical response to this essay could be that a rich aristocrat with diplomatic immunity risked nothing swanning around the salons of Budapest, just like the fictional gentleman spies we read about and watch on screen.

That response is wrong. Heroism is not just born of opportunity. It is recognizing when a choice confronts you and taking the difficult, unpopular and dangerous one in order to do what is right. Fictional heroes like Bond or Steed rarely suffer meaningful personal loss and rarely confront the reality of evil. Evil is your friend with many positive qualities, maybe more intelligent or cultured or better dressed than you, the one you looked up to, who gradually reveals the awful things he or she believes and has done. Evil is those complicit in carrying out those things by their inaction, their credulity, or their cooperation, not at the point of a gun but of a paycheck. Evil is legal, logically explained, repeated and reported until its baseless reasoning becomes fact and the foundation for more lies, more evil. Evil can so easily become the system.

Hindsight is a handicap, for it doesn’t usually permit us to see that there were no times without ambiguity in battles between good and evil and no certainty that good triumphs. We have the privilege of retrospect to acknowledge the dashing diplomat in Savile Row suits was a hero for saving innocents from deportation and death as part of the most ghastly genocide in history. We learned what genocide is, and had to invent the word to describe it. Because at that time the people singled out for persecution and death were unpopular, historically, socially and legally marginalized, supposedly easily identifiable and classifiable. A group that societies had made it easy - through regulation, ghettoization, oppression and antagonism – to hate, and whole false narratives drawn up to explain why that group hated and wanted to destroy us even more than we them.

One of A Hero’s Story’s most timely and inspiring lines is Wallenberg’s reply to the Hungarian ruler’s query why the King of Sweden cared so much about the Jews of another country, when he was a Christian. Wallenberg reminded the prime minister that the King’s “concerns transcend religion or national borders.” That concern is humanity, our lowest common denominator, our shared recognition of our capacity for suffering. That concern drove a man to acts of incredible selflessness, a generous mercy that seems to have cost him his liberty and his life. There is no romance to Raoul Wallenberg’s fate. It is worth remembering that he probably saw little romance in the actions he took in Budapest.

Now is no less an unromantic time, no less a time when others – so many different others –are easily denigrated, feared, distrusted, brutalized. Otherization, both of many within our borders and pressing against them, has returned, as has fascism, with apologists blandly elegant or brutally populist, like some inauspicious comet in our skies. Now, again, is a time for heroes – men and women who recognize how difficult and dangerous it is to do what is right. That struggle is far from those of Chamberlain’s habitual roles swashbuckling against a monolithic, universally despicable, evil. Evil is among us, habituating us, desensitizing us, gaslighting us. Far from frills and fanfare, celebration, or certainty of triumph, can we place ourselves in Wallenberg’s Budapester shoes and do what is right?

Quality content, like quality clothing, ages well. This post first appeared on the No Man blog in February 2017.

[thedistantstorm]

An End to Opulence

The Shadow of the Earth | Emperor Calus | The Vanguard | The Last City | Character Death

And thus the Shadow of the Earth was slain by Suraya Hawthorne.

-/

There were ashes in his mouth.

There was no way around it, with much of the City on fire. No matter. He had never been much of a solar Guardian, but any kind of energy churned up enough would burn. He could still hear their screams, even now.

He loved it.

It was as delicious as he'd been told it would be, shrill and unfiltered. A treat for his refined palate.

Eventually, all things had to come to a close. He checked his gun. His cloak, violet and gold, billowed behind him with a tarnished shimmer. Looked up, at the great plumes of smoke that rose from the remains of the Tower.

The end-times were upon them.

Besides, he was no Guardian. Not any longer. Regardless of the soft, tragic insisting of his Ghost, who hovered at his shoulder. He would be one of the last, but he too would be purged.

The line between Light and Dark is so very thin...

No. Uldren was dead. Again. And again. Over and over and over. He had died over and over, until his Light had been gone for good. Enough, he told himself. It was time to grow fat from strength, to bathe this planet in the splendor only he could provide.

The Shadow of the Earth had a job to do.

The Emperor had shared his plans. Told his Shadow of the future they would create, before the end. In turn, the Shadow of the Earth shared them with his Ghost, who did not believe in in the Emperor's designs. The Shadow did not share them any more.

It isn't right, he'd said. I don't want to lose you, he'd pleaded.

But they will all lose, eventually. Not even the glorious Emperor in all his splendor can stop Death from coming. This is about feasting upon what remains, living in rapture, engorging upon pleasure right until those final moments.

Ghost does not speak anymore. Not even in those electrical whimpers. Not unless he knew of what the Shadow was about to do.

Here and now, there was no way he couldn't.

The Earth... and its Vanguard... and its people had been given a choice. They would not release themselves of their worldly attachments. That is why a shadow was cast, why he must cull them. 

Very few understand. Those who do fight eagerly, growing fat from the enrichment provided. Those who do not are met with violent mercy. Above all, Emperor Calus inspires his Shadows to be benevolent.

There are no second chances in the end-times. Those who choose to repent, to abandon their tethers to the mundane only under the threat of death will never know the euphoria, the rapture of this enlightenment. That is why they don't deserve it. There is no room here for the unworthy.

The pleading of the Ghost annoyed him immensely. No longer can they communicate through thought, for the Shadow will not have the Traveler's spawn undermine him.

"Be silent," He barked. The Shadow's gaze must be strong, for the Ghost had flinched back, expecting to be swatted. His shell, once bright and polished, is chipped. The once Chosen tsksed. "It wouldn't have hurt if I had struck you."

In reply, the Ghost trembled, shrinking back further. It does not say as much, but this had hurt. It hurts actively. Darkness: his partner emitted it like a muffling blanket, a defense the small bot had no chance of defeating. It penetrated their bond like a pinprick - harmless, at first. But now it feels like the Traveler's Light being ripped from his core to linger. He does it, he will continue to do it. He knows, somewhere in his miniscule circuits that the goodness that once was his partner - that made him the brightest Light in all the universe is still deep down in there somewhere.

It had to be.

He still called upon the void, was able to summon his spear of lightning. Even if he chose to do so rarely now. It had to count for something.

Right?

They ascended the South Elevator, and when it inevitably froze half way up, the Shadow's eyes glowed blue, sending them on their way with an arc pulse. Reassuring, though the Ghost could not voice it aloud from where he hovered quietly in his Guardian's blind spot.

They were all but waiting on the lookout together, the platform above Shaxx's Crucible station, looking out at the world below. Ruined, all of it. By his hand. A testament to the Emperor's lavish designs.

Ikora noticed him first, the void already summoned to her hand with hardly a second glance. She does not speak, but the words blaze in her eyes. How could you, they say. Traitor. Monster!

Shadow. 

Zavala did not move, remained still, his hands fisted atop the railing. Perhaps the gasp of from Ikora's parted lips reached his ears. Perhaps ages of battle left him wise enough to know his fate.

"If it will stop all this, I will die gladly."

A Thorn, black as night, as dark as the death of worlds was pointed at his back.

"You'll be the first," the Shadow said, almost delighted. "You won't be the last."

The scribes had written of acts to come. In many there were errors, discrepancies, waiting to be rewritten. They foretold of Zavala accepting his fate, and yet they assumed Ikora would turn sand to diamonds and alter worlds.

And yet it is Ikora who whimpered when the gun is pointed at her vest, stopping a charging Zavala - willing to die but not accepting of death - from his assault.

Delicious. Calus would find the story decadent, interesting. The plot twists had always been his favorite, after all.

"Ah, ah. Don't make me deviate," He threatened, almost playful. His gaze swung to Ikora, to her eyes of swirling gold with pupils constricted in panic. "She's terrified of dying. Death is coming for us all, you know. You had a choice," He shrugs, almost grandly. "You chose not to rise to the occasion and look where it led."

"This is madness!" Zavala snarled, through gritted teeth. "Genocide! These are the people you swore to protect, and you're having them slaughtered in droves.

The Thorn pointed at Ikora tilted to the side as its wielder considered, but does not waver in its aim. "But I am protecting them. I'm saving them from their earthly afflictions. If they won't embody the rapture, embrace their enlightenment, they will only know fear and hate. I'm erasing that from them. It is the least I can do."

"You're insane."

The words barely sound like the strongest Warlock, but it had been Ikora speaking all the same. He doesn't think about it, whipped out a second cannon and let its shot bite into her shoulder. She grunted, staggered, but did not fall.

Instead, her eyes darkened monumentally, and though her blood dripped slowly on deckplates she did not make any attempt to stifle the bleeding. She looked hateful. Powerless.

As they all would be, in the end. 

The Commander, on the other hand… he would still have to die first. Ikora would die wallowing in her futility, more so watching events unfold, but Zavala was unyielding. He would never let go of his ideals, not even in those last seconds when Death's maw closed around his throat.

Thorn's sight returned to Zavala, aimed at his chest. No amount of armor would shield him from the Shadow's deadly intent.

"Would you like to say your goodbyes? I had given you a day, but clearly you didn't take me seriously." The Shadow laughed, a menacing thing. "I am, after all, benevolent."

Zavala would not speak a word. His eyes were reduced to narrowed slits of hard, angry blue.

"You don't have to do this," A tiny voice intervened. Trembled, his entire body shook with fear of retaliation, but he proceeded. "You don't need to kill them."

"Be silent!" The Shadow boomed. "You do not understand."

"I understand this is wrong." He hovered into his partner's periphery. "You have to know this is wrong."

"How many times do I have to tell you?" The once-Hunter growled, "You do not listen!"

A shiver and shake of his cones leaves him almost wilted and yet his voice comes out resigned, angry. "These are your mentors and you want to kill them. It's wrong. You're wrong," He accused, directly. "It's you who doesn't listen to me, Guardian."

A black-gloved hand stashes his second canon and plucks the Ghost from mid-air. He throws the tiny robot with inhuman strength, letting him bounce and skid across the deckplates, cast aside. "Don't call me that! I'm not a Guardian!"

"No," Came a curt voice behind him. "You aren't."

"You shouldn't be here," The Shadow gritted. "It isn't your time yet."

"I think that's for me to decide." Hawthorne leaned heavy on her left hip, falcon perched on her right shoulder. Her eyes looked like polished stone. "Put your gun down."

"It's his time," The Shadow informed her. "Then hers," He nodded to Ikora. "You'll be… later."

"Enough. Stop with the crazy talk. The Cabal Emperor is insane. You used to tell me that!"

"I was wrong. He is… more."

"He is wrong, and right now, so are you."

"Stop arguing." He trained the sights of his secondary on her, a threat. Louis chirped shrilly in reply, his wings beating as he hovered ever higher, ready to defend her.

When the Shadow's back turned once more, Thorn straightening, this supposedly fated moment upon them, the falcon swooped down like a compact missile.

The shot sounded in a different direction.

A flash of green - the muzzle flash - erupted like a verdant sun. A sharp sound, shrieking. Pained. Another flash - white - followed.

In a single moment, time stopped and restarted. Hawthorne staggered backwards, clutching her chest, taking a knee. Several feet away, the discarded Ghost blinked to awareness, unbelieving of what it was seeing.

There was nothing left. No feathers, not a drop of blood. Thorn was all-consuming. 

"He would have taken that bullet no matter what," The Shadow scoffed, when one of the Vanguard parted their lips, meaning to comment in the following silence. "Better to extinguish him up front than allow him to interfere with my justice."

"This isn't justice," Hawthorne said, shaky, almost. She shifted, moving closer.

"Whatever you're thinking, don't. I'll kill you too." He returned his focus to Zavala, who looked even more furious than before. 

"You just-" The Ghost clicked, hovering warily from its place on the ground in a state of shock. It had seen the flashes, felt it in its innermost places. "I don't believe it," He wailed softly. "It's gone. All of it - it's-"

Are you alright?

He stilled. It sounded quiet almost like it came from… but it was all wrong. That isn't how- "You just..." He looked at her. She appeared more wary than surprised. As if... I-I'm sorry.

Me too.

Hawthorne returned to her feet, gun in hand. "This is your last warning," She said, tone like ice. "I don't want to do this, but I will if I have to."

"Cute, Hawthorne, but-"

"I'm not kidding." Her eyes narrow.

Ghost feels it. He feels it like the sun after a rain, like a campfire in the wilderness. It feels like coming home. And yet it hurt, worse than anything he'd ever known, to realize the truth. "Guardian," He warbled.

"I told you-"

"I know," Hawthorne said, hushed. She blinked and tears fell from her eyes. "I know."

She drew a weapon that glinted white. The Shadow turned then, shaking his head. The antithesis of Thorn was trained on him. "That will never stack up."

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"Your Ghost." Her eyes glowed, like dull embers. It was the only warning he got.

"Wh-"

Another flash. Orange and yellow, like the sunset, the twilight sky.

She lowered the gun, body ignited in flame.

It hurt her too, Ghost realized without actually knowing anything. He hovered to her tentatively. Their gazes met.

The Shadow gasped, the single shot enough to kill, but not instantly.

"I wish he could have kept you."

The tears steamed and evaporated as they leaked from her eyes, burning her cheeks. She took a knee beside him. His body jerked, his organs recoiling in shock, shouting down. He looked at her, words trying to find their way from his mouth.

With a sad keen, the Ghost touched his once-partner's forehead, burrowed itself against his cheek. "I'm sorry I failed you." The Shadow tried to bring his hands up. Whether to harm the tiny bot or to console him, they would never know. Death did not wait. In the City below, their attackers drew back. 

“Where did you get that gun?”

“He left it with me, a long while back.” Hawthorne sighed, sounding as though she had never been more exhausted. “Wasn’t particularly thrilled about having a hand cannon, but I suppose it did the trick.”

"The Psions were likely aware of his-" The Shadow's Ghost paused, "You know. I think he’d allowed them to link with him, to see his thoughts. They're withdrawing now. Without him, they don't stand a chance."

"Ghost." Ikora's eyes glimmered, both pained and relieved. Her own still did not make any move to heal her. "Is he-?"

Zavala watched as Hawthorne closed the fallen Guardian's unseeing eyes, removing the gun from his waist, ignoring the blackened husk that was Thorn. "His connection to the Light was severed," Ghost confirmed. "When he-"

Ophiuchus emerged immediately in motes of Light. "I told you," He soothed, immediately, healing her.

A gun was handed to the Warlock, grip first. She saw the familiar symbol, the worn etching. "This is-"

"Yours, now." Hawthorne holstered Lumina somewhere on her back, beneath her poncho. No one asked her where she had gotten it, more concerned with the gun in her proffered hand. “Take it.”

She did. They did not speak on what it meant. In many ways, they did not have to.

The City burned for days and days, but its people persisted. Leaders rose to the occasion. Humanity came together, as it had time and time again, to push back the Darkness. And when the remains of the Shadows rallied, seeing retribution for their fallen leader, a Light was cast upon them.

-/

Years Earlier:

“And thus the Shadow of the Earth was slain by Suraya Hawthorne.” The scribe flinched, not expecting the Emperor to be directly behind them. “Interesting, I suppose,” He blanches, “But you’ve forgotten one key element.”

“Yes, your Greatness?”

“My Shadow will not be like any you’ve seen before. They are not yet perfect, but they will be made so by my designs.” He gripped the scribe’s head with a giant palm, squeezing to prove his point. The Psion died without so much as a sound, but all the others heard his anguish telepathically. 

“And when they are, only one as perfect as I will be able to cull them.” He looked around the room at the group of them. Clapped his hands and immediately his cup was full of wine once more. Jubilantly, he bellowed, “Surely one of you must be capable of writing something a bit more imaginative!”

[ladygloucester]

Redheaded Scots and Red Velvet Dresses

Hi!

I’ve been kinda stuck with my main work, so I thought of untucking a bit with some good old fashion smut. Hope you enjoy it!!

“I already told you, I’m not going to that stupid party, Geillis. I’m on call tomorrow and have zero interest in going to the hospital with two hours of sleep in my back.”

Claire dropped on the couch crossing her arms and staring blankly at the tv. Her blonde roommate looked at her with a crooked smile and arching an eyebrow.

“You’re telling me you rather binge watch that silly medieval tv show for the thousandth time than coming to a party? Seriously?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you. And it’s not medieval. It’s XVIII century.”

“Whatever.”

A tense silence settled between them, Geillis’ deep green eyes piercing Claire’s. Then, her stance changed and smiled again.

Then I’m calling cave on you,” she sentenced mimicking her posture.

Her roommate’s eyes darted to hers, in complete and utter astonishment.

“Really? You’re calling cave for me to go to a party?“ Geillis nodded and Claire dropped her arms, defeated. The first time they had met, Claire had been doing speleology in a marine cave. She had broken her leg and unable to call for help or swim the distance between the cave and the shore, she had given up and waited for someone, anyone, to have the same silly idea she had had, emerge from the water and find her. Two days and almost completely dehydrated, Geillis had found her on the sand, helped her to the shore and taken to the hospital. Since that day, besides becoming best friends, Geillis had used the cave whenever she wanted to get her way. She knew how and when to call it: that trip to Paris she didn’t want to do alone, not after Dougal had dumped her for the thousandth time; that time she went skydiving and realized she was to scared to go by herself; and the best time, that Saturday she made Claire go with her to an illegal body painting contest in Edinburgh that almost got them both in jail. Fun times.

“You’re incredible. Fine. I’ll go. But don’t think for a second I’m having any fun or staying a minute over 1 am.”

She stood up and lightly pushed Geillis on her way to her bedroom. Since she had begun her internship at the hospital, clothes had become a frivolous concept she had no time to pay attention to. Not that she didn’t appreciate a nice Balenciaga. But spending days in a row with her blue scrubs played down the importance of going to work with a pretty outfit…. that would most certainly covered in blood, puke or any other disgustingly non washable substance that had already ruined two pairs of designer heels and at least three painfully beautiful jeans. So sneakers, cheap jeans and a t-shirt was almost her daily uniform, so finding something to wear to a party started to prove itself a dull task.

While she was going through her drawers, Geillis appeared carrying two black dress bags with a name she didn’t recognize.

“Louis de la Tour? I don’t think I…”

“This is what you’re wearing tonight. I haven’t told you because I wanted you to come because you liked my company. But since you hate me guts and care naught for me, I’m telling you already. It’s a costume party.” And before Claire could protest, she kept talking. “A XVIII century costume party.”

A smile spread on Claire’s face as she took one of the bag and opened it. Inside there was a stunning red dress with a more than generous neckline and an amazing volume skirt. She stared at the fabric, caressing it, and looked back at Geillis.

“In the other bag there’s the rest of the things you’ll need for the dress. A corset, undergarments… You know better than I do.“

“Geillis, I…”

“Just shut up and try not to look to pretty. Dougal’s coming too and I don’t want him staring like a fool at your lovely bosom.”

Claire grimaced and shook her head, reassuring her.

“I’ll have a turtleneck close by for emergencies.”

The cab driver that picked them up was flabbergasted when they got in and tried to fit with their dresses into the back of the car. In a chaos of silk, petticoats and lace, Claire and Geillis managed to seat without wrinkling the skirts too much, and arrived at their destination fifteen minutes later.

As they traveled, Claire stared at the city, disappearing progressively, skyscrapers and office buildings leaving room for wide grass fields, sparkling under the red sunset. She had no idea where they were going, but her doubts came clear when they finally parked in the front garden of a, of course, XVIII century manor.

As they stepped out of the taxi, she soaked in the beauty of the large, slender, white marble pillars flanking the marvellous entrance hall. The stairs leading io it were covered by a deep red velvet carpet, and several guests were already making good use of it. It really felt like a journey through time, and the feeling became more powerful when both women entered the mansion. Men wearing powdered wigs, dress coats in the most assorted colors and pants that ended on the knee, only to give way to sleek white stockings held in place by colorful garters.

Being raised by an archaeologist, Claire was especially fond of every single thing that estimated her historical instincts. Intently, she noticed every detail of the hall while Geillis pulled her arm trying to make her move faster. The moulding that dressed the upper walls, the heavy curtains covering the wide French windows, the fluffiness of the Persian carpets under her feet.

Geillis clicked her tongue and pulled from her harder, almost making her trip and letting lose a few curls of Claire’s precarious bun.

“Jesus H. Roosevel Christ, Geillis!” She hissed recomposing herself and catching up with her pace. “You almost dislocate my shoulder, why are you in such a hurry?”

“I’m not in a hurry. I just don’t want to be seen staring at the walls as if I just left the village on a stagecoach.”

The sun was already setting when they entered what it appeared to be the ballroom, and the chandeliers had been lit, dozens of candles illuminating the richness of the chamber and playfully creating whimsical shadows on the walls. The floors were covered in mahogany wood, making her heels tap with a joyful sound. Geilis left her impatiently and wandered around the room, a moment Claire took advantage of to appreciate the exuberance of her outfit. Matching her eyes, her friend had chosen a emerald green low-cut dress, lavishly ornate with lace and totally flattering. The contrast with her creamy skin made the perfect combination, and Claire knew then why she had put so much effort in looking that stunning.

Her walkabout came to its end when a tall, older man emerged from the crowd. His hair was extremely short, but you could tell by the strands of grey that showed here and there that he had seen easily over four decades. Geillis was, just as Claire, in her early twenties, and even though she had always understood the appeal of an attractive forty-something, there was something in Dougal that made Claire distrustful. Probably was the way he looked at her whenever they met, as if he was about to jump her and forget about his actual date.

Not a compelling quality in a boyfriend, for sure.

With that in mind, Claire decided to distance herself from the couple before he insisted in greeting her. Slowly, that was the only way she could move in that amazing but consistently uncomfortable dress, she took two steps backwards and began to turn around, when suddenly a solid whirlwind of tartan, red curls and white linen crashed against her, making her lose her balance. But before she could regain it, two strong hands grabbed her waist and steadied her.

When their eyes met, the man who had collided with her froze his hands in place, even though their service was no longer required. Two piercing blue eyes, the same color as a summery sky reflected on a stream, stared into hers. A few coppery curls had fallen over them and she felt, for a second, a stinging need to weave them away. Claire stood there, trapped in time as if clocks had all dropped their hands and seconds ceased to exist. But they really hadn’t.

“But… what are you doing there? Come!” A high-pitched, almost annoying feminine voice came from a few feet away, tearing them both out from the enchantment. His hands painfully left her back and a slight blush covered his cheeks, as he passed his fingers through his curls to set them back again.

“Sorry, mistress. Didna mean to…” A deep, rich voice reached her even in the growing racket that had begun as guests entered the ballroom.

“Don’t worry, I was… Just walking backwards, actually. Probably not the best way to walk in a crowd.”

He smiled politely and nodded, before lingering just a second more than necessary and going in his way to the origin of the disturbance. Claire nodded back, flushed and feeling her heart pounding against her corset. Over six feet tall, the owner of those flashing red curls was wearing what she interpreted as a traditional Scot outfit. Kilt and everything. The tartan fell all the way to his knees, reached by two sturdy but apparently well-made leather boots. A white linen shirt, crossed by the plaid fabric that covered his shoulder kept in place by a silver brooch, completed the look. She strained her eyes to try and decipher the pattern of his kilt as he was leaving, the exact same moment he chose to look over his shoulder and catch her redhanded. She quickly took her gaze away, but not before she could sense the shadow of a smile in his full lips.

Nice. Caught squinting at a guy’s ass. Way to go, Beauchamp, clearly this can only get better.

Trying to calm down and enjoy the party, she turned the opposite way and visited the bar, that consisted of a splendid cedar table with a server on the other side of it.

“Whisky. Neat, please.”

She gulped the first glass and got herself served with another before roaming the room. Geillis and Dougal had already disappeared.

At least someone is having a party.

Without her roommate around, she realized she knew no one at that place. But it didn’t actually matter. The lushness of her low V-cut dress and the brightness of the red fabric began to catch the eye of several men and in no time, she found herself surrounded by smiles, knowing winks and a lot of flattering words. Fortunately she had brought a fan, dazzlingly decorated, to cover in part her charms and shoo away the nuisances.

Even though it was a XVIII century costume party, clearly the DJ had nothing in common with Mozart or Bach. Rock began to reverberate in the design speakers that were camouflaged around the place, and the guests had no trouble dancing around in their best galas. It was awkward to feel like you had traveled over two hundred years back in time with that soundtrack. But after many requests, Claire finally gave up, left her empty glass —how many times have they refilled it?—and threw herself into the music.

It didn’t take much for her to lose track of time. Dancing became very welcomed distraction she hadn’t had since she began her surgery internship at the hospital. Lots of concentration, late hours and even longer ones studying were pretty much what her days were made of. She didn’t realize how right was Geillis, and how much she needed to go out and remember what it was to have a night like that. The heat, the music, the people… it was exhilarating, and she yielded to all of it.

But then, the crowd opened slightly and her eyes traveled through the corridor amongst them. Leaned against one of the tables, with a glass of whisky in one hand and his legs crossed at the ankles, two exquisitely blue eyes under a mass of red curls stared at her, completely fixated. Claire felt her chest and cheeks flushing while she looked back at him still dancing. He took a sip of the glass, and quickly, almost inadvertently, he licked his lips, as if to rescue a castaway drop of liquor.

Claire had an internal debate. Why didn’t he come along? Why was he looking at her like that, as if this was some kind of private show? Because if that Scot was able to do something, was to make her feel as if they were alone in a room full of people. She was arguing against herself when her own curls, tucked up in a bun, began to fall over her shoulders. Absentmindedly, she took the hair slide that had kept them (as best as it could) in place and let them spread around her face and neck.

Ok, so he has a thing for curly girls…

She couldn’t help a flirty smile when his eyes grew wider, or as wide as those two feline eyes could, and his lips slightly parted at the sight of Claire’s hair running wild. Apparently that was all he was waiting, because a second later he was crossing the room in confident strides until he was standing in front of her, in a turbulent sea of people dancing. Even though she wasn’t small, he towered over her at a close distance.

“Where did you leave your date?” Claire couldn’t help to tease. He answered with a crooked smile.

“Ye mean Laoghaire? It wad’a been a date if I had any interest in her. My sister set me up, she has very… clear ideas. Not that I share most of thaim”.

“So you left the poor girl, is it?”

“Poor…” He repeated astonishedly. “If ye kent Laooghaire ye wouldna call her poor. Trust me.“

Claire chuckled and realized he was standing still.

“You don’t dance?”

“Not really my strong suit…“

“Then you shouldn’t be in the middle of the dance floor…” She teased again, looking at him from under her eyelashes. He arched an eyebrow and began to move, slowly and in a very contained manner that, probably without him knowing, made him even sexier.

“If that’s what it takes to speak to ye…”

The conversation was severely reduced, and the heat pulsating throughout the room made his curls stuck with sweat to his forehead and temples. The distance between them was merely inches, even though they weren’t touching. Whenever he spoke to her, he would come closer to her ear. The proximity of his body began to raise her temperature, and the feeling of his hot breath against the skin of her neck, brushing his hair against her cheek, was starting to drive her mind into more than friendly thoughts of dancing companionship. Unable to break eye contact from those charged pools of turmaline, she felt like the prey hypnotized by the predator.

And yet, instead of doing any obvious advances, he would make her laugh until her ribs hurt and she had tears in the corner of her eyes, while shielding her from other people pushing her and careless elbows. Without touching her, his arms would create a safety bubble inhabited only by the two of them.

“Care for another drink?“ She nodded smiling and he parted ways in the search of a nice scotch whisky.

While Claire was waiting for his return, Geillis approached her with Dougal on her arm. She could instantly feel his eyes on her breasts, slightly bright because of the sweat. Geillis elbowed him on the side and he diverted his gaze with a grunt.

“Dougal, always a pleasure,” she snorted and arched an eyebrow.

“Don’t mind him. You having fun?” Geillis asked as she started to dance to the rhythm of a new song.

“Sure. Better than I expected, I confessed.” Claire smiled and directed her eyes to the large Scot ordering drinks at the end of the ballroom. Geillis followed her gaze and let out a astound chuckle.

“Really? Do you know him?”

“Yeah…” She answered puzzled. “Do you?”

“Actually…”

“Good evening…” An unexpected low voice came across to her. Claire turned around and was met by a two dark eyes, squinting because of a polite smile. Dressed as a English military of the XVIII century, this man was clearly older than her. Something in his gaze made her instantly uncomfortable, even though his demeanor couldn’t be more respectful. She made a graceful bow and smiled back.

“Good evening indeed.”

He closed the distance between them, narrowing the space between their bodies and his mouth and her ear. She shivered, but not the same way she had before.

“I see you have a particular good eye for Scots. But, here’s the thing. That great, redheaded one you’ve been talking to… Let’s say he’s not free to roam around the likes of you. He has… other tastes, if you know what I mean.”

As well-mannered as he was, Claire felt disgusted by the way he was talking to her. He didn’t even shout, near as he was. He faced her again, slowly, deliberately, and slightly drop his eyelids staring at her chest. He made a disapproving noise with his mouth and shook his head, crooking a smile.

“Too cheap, I’m afraid. Easy as a…”

Claire didn’t see it coming and certainly neither did the English man. The fist that collided brutally against his jaw tore him away a few steps, but he didn’t fall to the ground; instead, he clashed into the crowd and the people around supported him, caught by surprise. She followed the fist to the arm, then to the shoulder, only to discover the owner was said great, redheaded Scot. He had let his hand fall to his side and was shaking it. But what Claire didn’t expect was the utter look of disgust and hatred he was directing at the mant.

When he managed to regain balance, he touched his chin, checking it was still in place, and smile viciously at the Scot. Then he looked back at Claire.

“I told you. His tastes are different.“

Dougal, who had been staring at the whole scene without batting an eyelash, jumped to get ahold of the angrier and angrier redheaded man, who was already trying to get free to, probably, launch another punch into that odious face.

“Dinna, lash, juist let it go,“ Dougal hissed. He grabbed him until the man in the redcoat left the ballroom, and then he released him.

The younger man shook his head, his curls flying around, and snorted before turning away and disappearing into the crowd. Claire looked at Dougal, raising an eyebrow in a questioning way, and he shrugged.

“He’s my sister’s son.”

Claire blinked twice, completely caught off guard and looked at Geillis, who was already tidying up Dougal’s costume. She shook her head slightly, not knowing what else to say, and Claire took off the same way the nephew had. That hand was probably broken and if not, it was going to be painful as hell either way. Following his steps, a large door opened before her, leading to the back garden. The air was chilly, and goosebumps flooded her exposed skin. She took advantage of the height of the stairs to locate him. Not that he could pass unnoticed. Tall and bright as he was, it took her just a few seconds to find him pacing in a secluded part of the garden.

Training overtook her and she walked determined towards him. He acknowledge her looking at her sideways, but didn’t stop. He was muttering something she couldn’t understand, until she realized it was gaelic. Claire grabbed his arm and tried to stop him, but he got loose and kept pacing.

“I can’t understand a single word you say, but if that hand…”

“What did he tell ye?” He asked dryly. Claire’s brow furrowed and shook her head.

“Nonsense, he just…”

“What.”

“Ok, ok… Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, what’s the fuss? He just told me you…” She realized she didn’t know how to put it with words. She sighed, looking at his large height and prayed he didn’t have any more punches in him. “He just told me you’re gay… But that’s ok! Don’t feel bad about it or anything…“

Blood left his face and Claire felt the night had become even colder.

“So that’s what he’s speeting noo, is it?”

“I don’t understand…”

“He’s the one that chased after me. He… I rejected him and he… since that day… He tells every woman he sees me with ‘I have other tastes’. That’s what he tald ye, aye?” Claire nodded intimidated by the situation. “I kent. Bastard… One day there’ll be no one close eneugh to save his sorry arse,“ he hissed under his breath, shaking his hand.

Claire saw the bloodied knuckles and grabbed both his arms, forcing him to face her and stop toting.

“Let me check that hand, it’s…”

“It’s ok, I’ve seen warse.“

“I don’t doubt it,” she tried to light it up a notch. “But I’m a doctor. Well, a doctor in training, at least. Let me see it.”

He stared at her for a second, sighed deeply and sat on a nearby pedestal missing its statue. He gave up and allowed her to examine his hand. Only palpating it and by the way he was clenching his jaw, probably he had at least two knuckles broken. For a second Claire tried to imagine the strength he had applied to that punch, and realized the other side of the fight was probably on his way to the ER with a broken jaw.

“Two knuckles are broken, probably more. You shouldn’t have given him the satisfaction.” She added while taking out a white handkerchief of one of the hidden pockets of her dress, making him smile while she tucked it around his hand.

“That dress is full of… surprises,“ he mustered. For the first time in the whole night, his willpower faltered him and Claire caught him staring at her breasts, ample and pulsating with every gasp of air. It was only a second, but she noticed and when he looked back in her eyes, he was blushing like a teenager. “i… I’m… I just… It’s… I mean, it’s distracting, you ken… Blessed Michael defend us! Ye have no idea the effort I’ve put tonight to keep my eyes above your neck,” he defended himself.

Claire erupted in laughter and he looked at her slightly offended.

“You shouldna wear things like that, they’re… Well, it’s hard to think nearby,” he kept trying to build his case.

She couldn’t stop laughing, so she didn’t noticed him standing up only an inch from her body. When she realized the proximity, she tried to take a step backwards, but his hand on the small of her back stopped her from succeeding. She didn’t pull away again, just staring into each others eyes, in the silence of the night as her laughter faded. His other hand traveled from his lap to her temple, pushing a way a rebellious curl behind her ear. He then lowered his fingertips, soft and light as a dove’s wing, on the side of her neck, painfully slowly.

Claire felt her pulse racing and she closed her eyes, panting. There was something extremely erotic in the way he had been treating her all night. That distance between them, almost non existent but always enough for her to reject him had she wanted to. The brush of his hair on her cheek when he talked to her ear, making her tremble under the heat of his breath. Each movement was deliberate and calculated and yet, seemed completely effortless.

His fingertips slowed down when they reached her shoulder, passed over her collarbone and set course to souther terrains. They slowed enough for her to retreat. The pressure of his hand on her back was almost formal, and she knew she could release herself from that embrace any time she wanted to. But damn if she did. Then, that same hand pulled her closer, erasing the distance between them. His fingers landed on one breast, caressing it so delicately she couldn’t help a moan escaping her lips. She rested her forehead against his chin, feeling the golden stubble against her skin, but apparently, all the willpower he had used to keep his eyes away from her charms had finally run out. Grabbing her hair, he pulled her face up to his and his mouth crashed against hers.

His lips were demanding. Having been restrained for so long, when they found hers they devour them without mercy. His teeth sank into the softness of her lower lip, making her closed eyes roll backwards in pleasure. His tongue followed through, first caressing it then exploring her mouth, playing inside of her, making her knees tremble. He turned around with her and lifted her by the waist in a swift movement, almost completely effortless, to settle her on top of the pedestal he had been sitting on a few seconds earlier.

Her hands began to unbutton the shirt to gain access to his chest, and conquered every bit of skin and soft fuzz on it. Without leaving his mouth, his own hands traveled up to the front of her dress and untied the laces that held it in place, uncovering the white corset underneath it and cursing under his breath when confronted with  more obstacles.

“A Dhia…”

Claire couldn’t help a smile as he looked disturbed by the amount of effort it was going to take to finally uncover her breasts, but that Scot was nothing if not thorough, and when he finally untied his new archenemy, she shivered as the cold wind hardened her nipples. He took a second to admire her roundness and perfection, before lowering his mouth and paying them the attention they deserved.

Her head fall backwards in pleasure as his lips captured one nipple, playing with his tongue against the sensitive flesh. Her hands grabbed his curls and pressed him closer to her. First one, then the other, the redheaded man suckled and teased her breasts, licking their curves and giving her goosebumps in every inch of skin attended.

His mouth set course upwards, kissing his way up to her neck and back to her mouth. Claire finally separated her legs, allowing him into that closer place where each part of their bodies were in contact with the other. Even under the folds of wrinkled fabric, she could feel his desire, at least, matching hers, intoxicatingly brushing against her inner core.

Finally surrendering to being unable to think cohesively, she abandoned herself to her instincts, to the soft firmness of his mouth ravishing hers, to the urge of his hands discovering every piece of exposed skin and claiming it for his own. The roughness of his linen shirt against her bosom made her feel as she would combust herself if she didn’t find release soon. So in a bolder move that she expected, Claire surrounded his hips with her thighs, pushing him unimaginably closer to her. He moaned into her mouth and she moaned back in return, unable to wait any longer for the contact to be full and ultimate.

She lifted her skirt and went on to do the same with his kilt, without any opposition, while his hands lowered her dressed from her shoulders, baring new territory for him to enthrall with his kisses and the teasing of his teeth. Her hands finally found him as he gasped for air, settling his forehead on her shoulder. His length filled her hand, pulsating, while she directed it straight inside of her. The same surprise she had gotten when she found no underwear under his tartan was equal to his when he realized she was following the XVIII customs in full detail.

He accepted the invitation extended by her adventurous hand and teased her entrance before thrusting in one move and stopping inside of her to allow her to adjust to him. Claire could feel his hands around her waist, and his breath panting against the skin of her neck. Slowly, he set a pace guided by the rhythm her hands began to mark on his hips, but unable to stay under such restrain any longer, he pulled her hips closer to his, eliciting a cry from her and covering her mouth with his own to keep her silent.

His thrusts pounded against her flesh, making it swollen and so sensitive she felt every nerve of her body concentrated in that tiny amount of space. His cock filled her emptiness as no one ever had, pulsating inside of her and reaching further and further along. The grip of his hands on her hips nailed her to the stone she was sitting upon, angling them perfectly for him to tease her most receptive spot whenever he pushed inside of her. But when one of his hands released her grasp and found its way to that sweet place between her legs, Claire knew release was about to wash all over her.

Their eyes met, as if somehow their bodies were in outright synchronization, as if they knew what their masters didn’t, and he increased the pace while caressing her to oblivion. The orgasm came like a wave in a sunny beach day, warm, full, unexpectedly enticing. He followed through seconds later, feeling her clutching around him and driving him into utter pleasure in her arms.

For a minute, they stayed embraced, panting into each other’s skin. Her head resting on his chest, his chin on top of it. When they finally parted, their anatomies already missing what was being stolen from them, they looked at each other with different eyes. He helped her with the laces, trying to recompose her dress as best as they could, then she helped him tucking his shirt inside of his kilt and placing the plaid fabric over his shoulders.

In them most gentlemanly way, he offered his hand to help her off the stone base and she gracefully accepted it with a smile. Then, as if hit by realization at the same time, the looks on their faces switched content and satisfaction to shyness and sudden regret.

“I can’t believe…“

“I should hae asked…“ They spoke at the same time, went silent and laughed more relaxed. He arched an eyebrow with a crooked smile, took a step backwards and bowed.

She asked to her movement with a balletic bow of her own, and this time she was the first to offer her hand out.

“Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp.“

“James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser. Your servant, madame.”

[chromemuffin]

Shoukoku no Altair Liveblogging (Chapter 12)

Yeah, this took a while to get through for some reason.

It’s already the third volume! And yet Mahmut’s journey is just barely getting started...

Anyway, a lovely cover as always. The style is a little different here, definitely going for a much harsher look, though still elegant. (but how the hell do you draw such intricate patterns without getting dizzy). I like the crescent moons on his belt the most. Also, that’s an interesting sword. Can’t really tell if it’s his usual curved one. It doesn’t look like a straight blade though.

Aaanyways, looks like it’s back to the Balt-Rhein people. I am considerably less interested in them than others in the cast, but ok.

Chapter 12: The City by the Lighthouse

Ah yes, Louis. I haven’t really missed you. Interesting um, port town? Maybe. It’s well defended. Though there are some nasty whirlpool things in the upper right, and a little sea monster at the bottom.

OH, I see. The whole thing is supposed to look like a chess board, with the city surrounded. Haha that’s why the wall around the town looked a little weird.

Nice perspective here, it makes the ships look very tiny next to the imposing wall/barrier like structure with the heavy chains half submerged. Which makes sense, in context of the ocean, though we can’t see much of the water.

Helloooo Mahmut. Looking a lot better compared to last chapter. He has a much lighter expression here as he muses about the origin of the pyramis charm.

And once again, I like how the random townspeople all look different from each other. This time, the townspeople are clearly dressed differently from the other towns we’ve seen. Which makes sense, considering its real life counterpart.

rawr

It’s cute. In a weird way.

New character! I guess he’s a jewel merchant or something?

I wouldn’t really call this advice, but a little heads-up. That came a little too late. But, you live and you learn.

I wonder if Mahmut ever gets to travel without everyone finding out who he is the first day he steps into town. He’s not very good at staying low-profile (though a giant bird following him around doesn’t really help matters...).

When does Mahmut not get caught up in some kind of trouble? Helpful guy is not actually being very helpful.

It’s all part of the learning experience, I guess.

It’s clearly intentional, but I am nonetheless continually amazed by how tiny Mahmut looks next to, well, almost everyone he meets.

but lol “I see you are quite devoted to your worship. I have indeed heard of how faith in the water spirit is a national characteristic of Turkiye.”

The pyramis really is a clever way to contact fellow spies. But judging by this guy’s tone of voice and the cult people from the last chapter, I’m not sure it will hold up for that much longer.

He recovers his composure very quickly, for how easily he gets surprised in the first place, and I appreciate that.

Ohoho that play is going to haunt him for the rest of his life, probably. But lol at the intimidating “The Phoenician Magistros Constantinos wants to see you.” And then we get this smiley guy.

My thoughts exactly.

BUT AT LEAST WE GET FURNITURE I CAN MAKE SENSE OF. Kinda hard to see, but the little feast laid out is neat. Though those cups with tentacles hanging out are a little...

I’m dying.

Welp, that’s the ancient world for you. Poor Mahmut, getting interrogated.

It sort of doubles as a really weird table decoration, so...

Ah, but we get back to business in the next panel. Apparently the Balt-Rhein peoples are in the area.

DON’T JINX YOURSELF DUDE. Look at what you did. The city’s probably going to get attacked now.

Oh, but you are sort of hoping the Empire attacks...? Interesting.

And an interesting stance here. “With power comes responsibility” I suppose. So what is the Empire currently doing to those it has taken over? You’d think that any empire’s methods of expanding/gaining control over other lands would be quite similar no matter the times, but this guy implies that the Balt-Rhein Empire isn’t doing right by its own people not to mention trying to conquer its neighbors.

Interesting.

I was going to skip this panel, but Mahmut’s tiny mouth, lack of face, and the fact that Iskander is a ball with a vague beak-like dot on him is too good to pass up.

Is this Mr. Glorious Hair whose actual name escapes me at the moment.

Also, I love how everyone saunters while walking down a random street in town late at night with almost no one to see them.

Y’know, maybe you’d be more welcome if you stopped trying to invade your neighbors. Just a suggestion.

Once again loving the designs of the background and secondary characters. I guess this is a gathering of officials in the city? In any case, Apollo is the only one pleased by this turn of events.

Iskander does in fact sleep with him. :3 which is why he takes him up to the rooftop with him alll those chapters back when Shara was staying over his place. Iskander is also getting more and more poofy and round like a turkey or something lol.

Aww not a morning person, I see. I also wonder what he’s wearing? I think that shirt is just the one he wears normally under the red vest....thing (it’s not a vest but I don’t know what it’s called). The little buttons and bindings are a cute touch. (I do think we’ve seen him wear this to sleep before, I just forgot which chapter...)

lol why is Mahmut needed to sit in on the debate. In fact, his position and status is sort of in limbo now. Everyone is used to calling him Mahmut Pasha though.

I don’t really have anything to add to this conversation other than that both sides have realistic arguments.

I’m glad the Empire has at least one weakness, naval warfare, I hope this stays true for a while. It’s gotta have something it’s not good at.

OH NO, watch out Mahmut! They’re gonna come for you now. He was just minding his own business, listening, getting slightly concerned, and now he got dragged into the argument as proof that the Empire can be defeated.

Which, if you think about it, was actually quite important in the grand scheme of things. It seemed like a tiny event and Mahmut himself seems startled/shocked that they’re blowing the event way out of proportion. Except, it probably wasn’t as insignificant as he (or I) was thinking.

Hisar was an important town, and several of the Empire’s people weaseled their way in and made the locals help them take over. But Mahmut, through some quick-thinking, actually managed to thwart it. Considering the Empire’s military might, I can see how this guy would use it as evidence that they aren’t as omnipotent as they seem.

lol he was not anticipating this.

Ooh, and now he gets to tell his side of the story! I like how he tries so hard to clear misconceptions up every time people blow the events out of proportion, though.

I also like how he can sometimes be a great orator, even during some odd moments (like when he was going to sacrifice himself because he felt guilty for getting Suleyman hurt), and other times he wavers a bit like here. You can tell by his speech bubbles that he’s not 100% confident here. It’s awkward for him, since people keep building him up to be this amazing hero in stories.

Tough spot here.

On one hand, he’s urging them not to start a WAR on the basis of false information and misconception. On the other hand, lol, he’s basically urging them to give into the Empire because it’s hopeless to win against them.

These boatsssss. (or ships). Very nice details. So pretty. But menacing.

lol no one is infallible. 

NO THAT IS A VERY BAD IDEA.

Are there like. No military leaders in this place or. This guy is a tradesman, so him supporting a compromise that doesn’t end in war and all that messy business entails is sort of understandable. I forget how these debates and assemblies worked in that area of the world back then so.

lol be a little more self-aware, kid.

OH. That’s not your real hair.

yippee?

Probably not, but. The alternative wasn’t too good either.

I’m rooting for you guys, but the issue is that Phoenica probably hasn’t waged war against anyone for quite some time. The Empire certainly has been militaristic for a while now, while Phoenica seems to have become a place of mainly trade and commerce. That could be an issue.

He’s not going anywhere, but yeah, it would be wise to get out of there while you can.

Determined Mahmut makes his (re)appearance.!

And that’s a wrap! Sorry this took so long to get out. This was a fairly long chapter, and I’ve been really busy lately.

← back・onward →

[autodidact-adventures]

World War I (Part 20): The Cult of the Offensive

In the years before WW1, the “cult of the offensive” took hold in France.  By 1914, any officer who rejected it would face suspicion, and be professionally sidetracked.

Henri Bergson was a philosopher, and in 1927 he would be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.  In the prewar years, he was championing the idea that élan vital (“life force”) had a mystic power that, if harnessed, would enable France to defeat Germany even though they were militarily weaker.

Ferdinand Foch was a strategist and military theorist.  In 1908, he became director of the War College in Paris.  In his books and lectures, he declared that “the will to conquer is the first condition of victory.”

Louis Loyzeau de Grandmaison (1861-1915) was studying there at that time, and he quickly became a follower of these ideas.  And within a few years, his belief in l'offensive à l'outrance had grown far beyond what Foch had taught.  France's officer corps were tired of being told that the best their country could hope for was to defend itself against Germany's far stronger army.  They embraced Grandmaison's doctrine, eager to hear that generals should conquer, not merely defend.

In January 1911, Grandmaison was a Lieutenant Colonel in the army headquarters' Operations Bureau.  That year, he gave two lectures on the cult of the offensive, where he was scornful of France's military doctrine in the Franco-Prussian War, and laid out a new approach.  These lectures would be incredibly influential, especially to the generals listening in the audience.  France must practise aggression without restraint, he said – with no limits, nothing held back.

The first major consequences of this doctrine came in July.  General Victor Michel had recently been appointed Commander in Chief of the army, and now he put his ideas for war with Germany in front of the Supreme War Councils.  His plans were not based on the cult on the offensive, but on an idea he called “offensive-in-defense”.  If war erupted, France's armies should be arranged along the eastern border, at various distances from it.  They would wait for Germany to attack (Michel also predicted Germany's invasion of Belgium), and this would allow them to find out where the enemy was, and how he was moving.  Then they could decide when & how best to move against them.  Also, it could encourage the Germans to commit (maybe even overcommit) themselves, wearing themselves down on the offensive while France's options stayed open.

But those who believed in the cult of the offensive opposed it strongly. Grandmaison had said that “for the attack only two things are necessary.  To know where the enemy is and to decide what to do. What the enemy intends to do is of no consequence.”  Of course this was utter nonsense, but Michel was forced to resign.

The Minister of War Adolphe Messimy offered the position to Joseph Gallieni, who was widely respected.  Gallieni had opposed Michel's plans, but more because he was concerned about Michel's personal capabilities as commander; he also disagreed with Michel's intentions to use reserve troops as front-line troops (the French preferred not to do this, but Germany did and with great success).

Gallieni declined the position.  Messimy asked him to take a few days to reconsider, but he ended up getting the same answer again.  Gallieni explained that he was too old (62yrs), his health wasn't good, and he was within 2yrs of retirement.  He didn't have enough experience in commanding large armies.  And he believed it was wrong to take the position of someone whom he'd caused to be dismissed by failing to support him.

Messimy asked him to suggest someone else, and Gallieni replied with the name of Paul-Marie Pau.  Pau was a respected senior officer who had fought in the Franco-Prussian War, and lost an arm there.  But he was a Catholic, so he wasn't politically acceptable – at the time, it was suspected that Catholics were wanting to restore the monarchy. Ferdinand Foch faced the same obstacle, as he'd been educated by Jesuit priests, and his brother was one.

Gallieni's second suggestion was Joseph Joffre, and he was the one chosen.  Joffre was a solid supporter of the republic, but had no political beliefs beyond that.  He enthusiastically embraced Grandmaison's doctrine, but wasn't interested in ideology in general.  He also had little experience – he'd never attended any of the higher staff schools; he had never tried to school himself in higher strategy; and he had limited experience in commanding large armies.  Many people were surprised by his appointment, but Gallieni knew Joffre well, and had good reasons for suggesting him.

Gallieni's family was originally Italian, coming from Corsica.  He graduated from the St. Cyr military academy the same day France declared war on Germany (for the Franco-Prussian War, in 1870).  He was commissioned into the marine infantry, and during the war he became a POW.  After the war ended, he had assignments all around the world – in West Africa, the Caribbean and Tonkin (Vietnam).  By the time he was 40yrs old, he had been made the Governor of French Sudan.

In 1896, he became Governor-General and Commander in Chief of the new French colony of Madagascar.  He would serve in those positions for nine years.  He put down a rebellion, and then introduced a new administration that would make Madagascar peaceful and prosperous.  One of the things Madagascar needed was a system of fortifications for its new naval base.  In 1896, an army engineer called Joseph Joffre joined Gallieni's staff and took charge of construction.  He was 3yrs younger than Gallieni.

Joffre came from south France, was the eldest of 11 children, and his father was a village barrel-maker.  He won a scholarship to the École Polytechnique in Paris.  While he was studying there, the Germans besieged the city as part of the Franco-Prussian War, and he took part in its defence.  After graduating, he wanted to get a civilian job but failed to do so, so he took an army commission instead.

He married young, but his wife died, and after that he volunteered for overseas assignments.  In 1885, he was chief engineer in Hanoi (capital of modern Vietnam).  In 1893, he was part of an expedition to Timbuktu (a city in Mali) and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.  Joffre was recalled to France in 1900, and so was Gallieni 5yrs later.  By 1911, the two men were among the army's highest-ranking generals.

After Joffre was promoted to Commander in Chief of the army, he upgraded its training and equipment.  He also fixed the promotion system, making sure that it was based on ability and performance, rather than political connections and ideology.  He took the job only on condition that he was allowed to appoint Noël de Castelnau, a Catholic, as his Chief of Staff.

However, he was happy to leave the Operations Bureau (where strategy was done) to Grandmaison and his followers.  These men neglected artillery, especially heavy artillery.  For them, it was bayonets that were the most important weapon, not big guns.

In May 1913, the Operations Bureau issued two sets of new field regulations – one for corps and armies, the other for divisions and smaller, and both based on the offensive doctrine.  “Battles are beyond everything else struggles of morale,” they declared.  “Defeat is inevitable as soon as the hope of conquering ceases to exist.  Success comes not to he who has suffered the least but to he whose will is firmest and morale strongest.”

They also wrote up Plan 17, which threw out Michel's approach.  It decided how armies would be deployed in wartime, and Joffre approved it.  Plan 17 ignored any possibility of a German invasion of western Belgium.  It was more flexible than the Schlieffen Plan, leaving options open of when & where to attack.  But it would be attack, not defense – the plan was firm on that.

Foch was given command of a division in 1911, and in 1912 of a corps.  However, because of the religion issue, he wasn't given command of an army when WW1 began.  Grandmaison was promoted to Brigadier General, and would be killed in 1915.

But those who didn't support the cult of the offensive didn't do well.  Henri Philippe Pétain, an assistant professor of infantry tactics at the École de Guerre, was one of these men.  He often warned of how vulnerable humans were against modern artillery, and this went against French military doctrine.  So in July 1914, he was 58yrs and still only a Colonel, and expecting to be retired soon.  He was the commander of a regiment of the Fifth Army.

Gallieni, meanwhile, had sunk into obscurity.  Before WW1 began, he had realized that Michel was right in that Germany would likely invade France through Belgium.  He tried to explain this to Joffre and the Operations Bureau, but they didn't listen to him.  Joffre relieved him of responsibility for anything, so he left for his country home, expecting to retire soon.  His wife died in July.

On July 31st, Messimy told him that if they mobilized, he would become Joffre's principal deputy, and successor if the need arose.  He was duly given this position, but no staff, duties, information about what was happening, or access to Joffre.  Joffre saw him as a rival, and didn't want to give him any opportunities to be seen or heard.  So Gallieni followed the war's initial movements on his own, worrying.

As the threat to Paris increased, members of the government began to complain about the retreat and talk about replacing Joffre.  Gallieni (whom they would gladly have given supreme command to) was the one who urged patience.

[jo-shaneparis18]

Île de la Cité & Paris Saint Germain

29/04/2018: It all started well though not as planned. The intention was that the boys go alone and queue up at the catacombs an hour before they opened, at ten. Shane ended up joining them but a late start meant that we arrived a half an hour after it opened and the queue was rather long. The catacombs are located within Square de l'Abbé Migne, a oval park surrounded by road and a few kilometres away from the apartment. By the time they got on the end of the queue they were almost back at the front door, so a wait was ahead. Little did they know how long.

As daunting as the queue was, the catacombs weren't that big so they were thinking that it may move quickly. That was not the case. The staff controlled the numbers entering and with skip the line tours at the front door as well, after forty-five minutes and some comment that the internet said queuing was between three and five hours with no guarantee of entry, they pulled the pin. The one hour walk to get there was just exercise.

We waited at the Catacombs for nearly an hour and moved ten metres. A croissant and coffee from Paul's for breakfast

To not make the morning wasted, directions were set on Thomas' phone for Notre Dame. They headed then into Café Oz looking for bacon and eggs but only had a coffee due to $30 burgers being on offer. Upon leaving, the rain had started and walking down Avenue Denfert-Rochereau, it became heavier. They then questioned about how determined those still in the line would be now. Drowned rats. With a few short deviations it was forty minutes of walking straight to get there, jackets zippered to keep out the cold.

Cecilia and Jo had a slower start to the day. There was a restaurant down from our apartment called Angelina Tea House. It had a huge reputation for its hot chocolate which is said to be the best in Paris. Queues form outside the Tea House as customers wait their turn to sit. The Tea House was founded in 1903 by the Austrian confectioner, Antoine Rumpelmayer. He named the Tea House in honour of his daughter-in-law. Angelina Tea Rooms have been a favourite meeting place of Parisian gourmet fans for over a century with many famous people eating there.  The famous include Coco Chanel, Proust and many of Paris's greatest couturiers. The list of famous names will grow today as Cecilia and Jo will add their name to the list. It's two signature dishes are hot chocolate "L'Africain" and their signature pastry, Mont Blanc, the secret recipe is still closely guarded 100 years on. The ladies headed to the Tea House at ten and got straight in. The decor was amazing. It was like stepping back in time to an elite café of the roaring 20’s. There was a great variety to choose from on the menu and they decided to go all out and enjoy the experience to the fullest, so ordered the "Le Brunch" set meal deal for 39.50 Euros plus an extra 12 Euros for a glass of champagne. The menu was as follows;

Tea, Coffee or Angelina's Hot Chocolate. The girls chose the hot chocolate. The next choice on the set menu was freshly pressed fruit juice or healthy pure juice cocktail.  They chose fresh orange juice. Next on the menu was mini viennoiseries, croissant, chocolate filled pastries, raisin pastries, bread roll butter jam honey and chest nut cream. This was followed by Eggs Benedict with hollandaise sauce, avocado, smoked salmon or bacon or Crossaint Angelina cheese or ham or smoked salmon with scrambled eggs, the girls chose the Eggs Benedict. This was followed by a choice of fruit salad, crunchy muesli or caramelised brioche. They chose the brioche. Most of the food and drinks came out all at once including the champagne. The verdict: The hot chocolate was to die for. The food abundant and delicious and way too much. The experience and cost absolutely worth it.

Bacon and Eggs

The women were only half way through their gastronomic marathon when Tom phoned to tell of the change of plans, that catacombs were cancelled and that they were heading to Notre Dame if we wanted to meet them. That was the original agreement but not so soon. Tom was instructed to phone again when they were almost at Notre Dame to give the girls fair warning and enough time to walk to the Cathedral to meet them. After joining the queue at the cathedral, Tom rang again and told them what was going on. This did not please as they would have to be late. Anyway, the rain was heavy and the line long. But it was moving so Beau, Tom and Shane joined the end and put up with the Gypsies trying to sell umbrellas to everyone. As Beau commented, they were trying to sell umbrellas to people with umbrellas.

Large crowd waiting to get in

As we approached the front door the bells rang, obviously signifying mass about to start. When inside it was packed as the centre section was full of worshipers and as such the public were confined to the peripherals. Very dark and very loud. The place was still interesting, maybe more so due to the added atmosphere of the mass but shuffling around for half an hour was enough. Tom and Beau were keen to climb the bell tower but they had to book a time, join the queue inside again, pay at the kiosk inside and then join the queue up the side street that would get them to the top. Nah, give it a miss. It was at this time that we found Jo and Cecilia who didn't want to join the queue. (Cecilia didn’t want to go in on her own). So off to Saint-Chappelle we all went.

Queuing to pray

Not wanting to go inside, Cecilia perched herself at Le Soleil D'Or Brasserie nearby and had a coffee with the plan to look around the nearby shops for souvenirs for her grand kids while the rest of us queued. It wasn't too long before we were through the scanners, inside the courthouse precinct, buying tickets and entering Saint-Chappelle.

Saint Chapelle from inside the court precinct

Built in seven years during the twelfth century, the marvel of Gothic architecture was commissioned by religious unrealist, King Saint Louis IX to house his relics of the passion, supposed objects that he was convinced were authentic. Ripped off by Baldwin II of Constantinople and King of the Byzantines, he purchased a large number of alleged relics that had been kept at Constantinople, including Jesus’ crown of thorns and a piece of the cross that Jesus was crucified on. Wonder what condition it was in even when he bought it. A piece of wood twelve hundred years old at the time. Anyway, he built Saint-Chappelle at a bargain price, less than half that spent on the relics. We are however, all wealthier for it with the magnificent cathedral resulting from his actions.

At first, we entered the lower section which was quite claustrophobic. Although ornate, the vaulted, fabric clad ceiling was quite low giving a closed in feeling. Very impressive though. The next and by far the best was yet to come. We climbed an extremely tight spiral staircase to the next level and were amazed by the tall leadlight windows that took up well over half of the building. Videos showed the glass had only recently been refurbished to remove the grime and pollution which coated it from many years of exposure to the elements. The process looked pain staking and must have cost a fortune. After the windows were reinstalled a glass protective layer was put on the outside to provide better protection.

Bottom bit

Top bit

Exiting through a side courtyard that for some reason was full of armed police officers (probably because of being law courts and police headquarters), we moved along the footpath a short distance, entering the second door facing Boulevarde du Palais, to the Conciergerie, the impressive Gothic palace built around the beginning of the fourteenth century only to be converted to a prison many years later. The Conciergerie had a couple of remnants linked to periods of history. The lower section was built around the same time as Saint-Chapelle and consisted of Salle des Gens d'Armes (hall of the soldiers) and Salle des Gardes, built during the reign of Philip the Fair, a kitchen built by John the Good and one other. The upper section or Revolutionary Rooms, was reconstructed much later and utilised as a torture chamber and place of terror during the revolution. The most notable prisoner was Marie-Antoinette who spent her last days there before heading off to the guillotine.

Being deprived of a few Euro each to get in, we were immediately confronted by an artistic trough full of flowing water. The contraption was designed by artist Stéphane Thidet and entered the Salle des Gens d'Armes via a cascade, wound in and out of the Gothic columns before rejoining the Seine between the two towers, Argent and Caesar, a little further down.

The Seine entering Salle des Gens d’Armes again

 Architectural or artistic?

Water level 1910

Climbing a few steps to la Rue de Paris (bearing the executioner's nickname, Monsieur de Paris), we entered the Revolutionary Rooms which once housed the main institution for exceptional justice. The Revolutionary Tribunal. From there the rooms held displays and relics of the period with information boards explaining the First Republic, the period leading up to it and the Conciergerie's role in all of the action. Towards the end of the tour we entered the room that once held Marie-Antoinette, now a chapel.

Off to a bloody end

Where her cell used to be

Upon exiting the building, we sought out Cecilia where we left her, still indulging in a café and some sort of soup or stew (and a bag full of goodies for the kids). By now it was three o'clock and time to head back, for Shane and Thomas had a football game to attend. Taking the opportunity to return via the beautiful Place Dauphine, which unlike last time displayed blossoms on the trees, we strolled back across Pont Neuf, past the Louvre and through Place du Carrousel where we encountered an unusual character who sought attention from both passers-by and the local pigeon population by dropping wheat on the ground from his bulging pockets. One weird one there.  

Pigeon Man

After pigeon man, the Africans and the gypsies were avoided, we wound up back at the apartment to get ready to go out again, where ever that may be.

Not so squeezy. A tight trip in the elevator

Shane and Thomas left for the football a couple of hours before kick-off and arrived fifteen minutes later, greeted by barriers and security that wouldn't let them within cooee of the stadium without their ticket. Once they manoeuvered that hurdle, they walked through heavy rain to the entrance to scan their ticket. Immediately upon entering they were requested to put their arms out so they could be frisked. It was an infringement but okay considering the security issues within Europe recently. All said and done Shane waited patiently at the merchandise tent (with Tom watching), eventually picking up a cap and scarf, before both headed up the stairs to the concourse for a beer, watching the rain fall on all who were yet to gain admission.

Getting ready for the match

After another beer and some indecision about where the access stairs were, they headed up for their first glimpse of Parc des Princes, the home ground of the Ligue 1 leaders Paris Saint-Germain. They were playing middle of the table side, Guingamp.

They were both seated well and truly up the top, in the nose bleed section only a row or two from the back. Although the grand stand roof was in the way there was still a good view of the video screen on the other side of the stadium and the pitch. With half an hour to go before kick-off the place was buzzing, particularly the home crowd behind the goals, waving flags and making a hell of a racket.

Home crowd

A couple of milestones could have been achieved tonight, PSG were well ahead of their Ligue 1 opponents and already had the title sown up. A win would have given them a season of home victories, not achieved in Ligue 1 since the seventies. Uruguayan striker Edinson Cavani also had a chance to better Swede, Zlatan Ibrahimovic's 113 Ligue 1 goals for his club. He was equal before the match.

Guingamp came out strong early with PSG not seeming interested, their attack was ineffective and their defence left wanting. As such the visitors dominated the park and were one up at half time. After the break Guingamp went another up before Cavani broke Ibrahimovic's record with a seventy-fifth-minute dodgy penalty followed by a header to equal it up a few minutes later. Paris ended up getting away with an underwhelming draw.

All square

Whilst they were engrossed in all of the action, Beau, Cecilia and Jo decided to go for a walk to Place De la Concorde to view the Eiffel Tower lit up at night and possibly go on the large enclosed Ferris Wheel for a bird’s eye view of the city. When they got to the area the Eiffel Tower was clouded in fog and rain. This also made the ride in the Ferris Wheel for a view of the city a bit useless so they done an about face with the intention of returning home.

Too wet for the Ferris Wheel

That was until they happened across a bar done up in bright orange red and black looking very 70’s. They called in for a night cap. Service was almost non-existent. With one drink down it was a short stroll to the next bar for another drink, and then another (party animals, one at each venue). They then window shopped all the way back to the apartment, the ritzy upmarket part of Paris, the first arrondissement, Rue Rivoli. Clothing is over the top in price.

Contemplating tomorrow

After the football had finished, we walked out of the stadium and back towards where the taxi had dropped us off before the start, turned left and looked for a taxi. It wasn't long before Tom said we were walking the wrong way as we intended to walk towards the apartment so if there wasn't one within an hour we would be almost home. We turned around and headed back in some general direction. We had earlier walked past a small restaurant but had kept going. This time though the rain was coming down fairly hard so we headed in for a feed and a beer with the theory being that the rain may lighten off and the crowds diminish. Due to the circumstances Shane thought it was the best pizza that he had ever tasted, accompanied by being entertained with a dude on the footpath making money from football fans paying him for valet parking. They would turn up at the restaurant, give him their keys and a few minutes later turn up with their vehicle. He was busy for ages and drenched. By the time that we had finished our feed the crowd had gone, the voiturier was almost finished but the rain was still falling. We hit the footpath looking for a cab. At Tom's mention of the word "taxi", the voiturier had in no time given a whistle and a passing taxi had pulled up across the road. Next thing we knew we were heading back to the apartment and out of the wet.

The trip back

A great day today, tomorrow the opera house and visit Jim Morrison.

[nomanwalksalone]

ALTERNATIVE STYLE ICON: RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN IN WALLENBERG: A HERO’S STORY

by Réginald-Jérôme de Mans

The writer George Santayana famously wrote that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Ironically many who repeat his quote forget who first uttered it.

I had long meant to write about Richard Chamberlain in this role. I once referred to him as “the fey king of the miniseries” and I don’t regret it: foppish, almost milquetoast in fare as varied as a two-part TV version of The Bourne Identity (with Jaclyn Smith, natch), Shogun, and as a leading candidate for an honorary Seinfeld puffy shirt: Not only did he play the Count of Monte Cristo in a 1975 TV movie, but a bunch of what Elaine Benes would have called chandelier-swinging characters in other Dumas adaptations, including Aramis in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers and Louis XIV and his twin in The Man in the Iron Mask. Postmodern swashbuckler author Arturo Perez-Reverte even described a character in one of his own novels as looking “like Richard Chamberlain in The Thorn Birds, only more manly.” That same Thorn Birds role, Father Ralph de Bricassart, also inspired a certain Rhunette Ferguson to give her son, a future New York Jets player, perhaps my favorite name ever: D’Brickashaw.

Dubbing Chamberlain an Alternative Style Icon for his role as Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg is low-hanging fruit. For years this TV special dwelt at the bottom of my Netflix queue for that express purpose. Former Savile Row tailors Manning & Manning won an Emmy award for the outfits they made for him; decades later Bryan Manning had some very interesting things to say to the inimitable Simon Crompton of Permanent Style about the 1930s and 1940s cutting styles he had to adopt for Chamberlain’s outfits for the movie. Chamberlain’s costumes are appropriately dashing, from the full diplomatic gala white tie ensemble worn while conspiring with the Papal Nuncio of Budapest to a tan double-breasted suit with horizontal peaked lapels that is, quite simply, magnificent.

Zagreb, one of the most beautiful cities in eastern Europe, admirably filled in for 1940s Budapest and Stockholm in the making of this production. I’m fairly certain that I’ve stayed at the Zagreb hotel on whose esplanade Chamberlain wore that suit, in an early expository scene where the American and Swedish governments encourage Wallenberg to take a position with the Swedish legation in Budapest.  I’ve been told Zagreb’s one of two cities in Europe where the street lamps in certain neighborhoods are still gaslit. Gaslighting happens to have been one of the reasons that I finally wrote about this icon. Of course there’s plenty to mock in the conventions of this telefilm, even beyond Chamberlain’s indisputable 1970s and 1980s stock hero status: its heavy-handed setup and plotting, making Wallenberg out to be a one-man anti-Nazi force from his time at home in Sweden (wearing a U. Michigan sweatshirt to indicate that he had studied in the US - did college sweatshirts even exist back then?). Miniseries meant melodrama and its archetypal characters: an adorable child whom Wallenberg saves from the death camps only to die of illness; a shoehorned-in love interest in the form of a kindhearted baroness who lobbies her suspicious husband to relax the Hungarian government’s strictures on Jews; a fiery Hungarian resistance fighter who provides the unofficial, combative counterpoint to Wallenberg’s diplomatic, humanitarian efforts through official channels. And, of course, Wallenberg’s kidnapping by the Soviets at the fall of Budapest meant his story was perfectly framed for 1985, when we still couldn’t trust those Russians. (In fact, to this day no one knows what they did with him.)

A few appropriately haunting and powerful moments do ring true, including Wallenberg’s cordial verbal fencing matches over contraband Scotch and cigarettes with Adolf Eichmann. Whether those meetings really took place in that form or not, their film versions appropriately capture the realities of how we are forced to engage with evil. Rarely are we simply battling an easily identifiable other, weapon to weapon. Instead, we encounter evil in the everyday – in fact, it seeks us out, finds shared ground, converses with us over pleasantries and hospitality even as we recognize its intentions. It identifies with us, we identify with it. Even as you know it is evil.

Eichmann had made it his avowed duty to kill the Jews of Europe. Wallenberg’s mission, as an emissary of an officially neutral power, was to help save as many as he could. And he did, through famously fearless, reckless endeavors including the distribution of thousands of official-looking Swedish passes to the Jews of Budapest, the creation of vast cultural centers and warehouses in the Swedish mission buildings in which these new countrymen could work under the aegis of their adoptive country, and savvy diplomatic maneuvering with the Hungarian and German authorities and military. He went as far as to climb on top of a train bound for Auschwitz and distribute passes to as many deportees as he could while soldiers fired shots at him. Looking back, historians suggest they were firing over his head to warn him as they could easily have dropped him at that range, but it’s not likely Wallenberg knew that at the time.

At that time diplomats of neutral powers could make fortunes more safely as armchair heroes: playboy Porfirio Rubirosa reportedly did so in Paris selling visas to the Dominican Republic to French Jews during World War II. In that respect, perhaps, both he and Wallenberg were heroes… of different sorts.

Wallenberg did not do it for money. The Wallenbergs were Swedish aristocracy (with, the film takes pains to remind us, an ounce of Jewish blood) with considerable means – hence the finely tailored wardrobe for Chamberlain. Thus, an easy cynical response to this essay could be that a rich aristocrat with diplomatic immunity risked nothing swanning around the salons of Budapest, just like the fictional gentleman spies we read about and watch on screen.

That response is wrong. Heroism is not just born of opportunity. It is recognizing when a choice confronts you and taking the difficult, unpopular and dangerous one in order to do what is right. Fictional heroes like Bond or Steed rarely suffer meaningful personal loss and rarely confront the reality of evil. Evil is your friend with many positive qualities, maybe more intelligent or cultured or better dressed than you, the one you looked up to, who gradually reveals the awful things he or she believes and has done. Evil is those complicit in carrying out those things by their inaction, their credulity, or their cooperation, not at the point of a gun but of a paycheck. Evil is legal, logically explained, repeated and reported until its baseless reasoning becomes fact and the foundation for more lies, more evil. Evil can so easily become the system.

Hindsight is a handicap, for it doesn’t usually permit us to see that there were no times without ambiguity in battles between good and evil and no certainty that good triumphs. We have the privilege of retrospect to acknowledge the dashing diplomat in Savile Row suits was a hero for saving innocents from deportation and death as part of the most ghastly genocide in history. We learned what genocide is, and had to invent the word to describe it. Because at that time the people singled out for persecution and death were unpopular, historically, socially and legally marginalized, supposedly easily identifiable and classifiable. A group that societies had made it easy - through regulation, ghettoization, oppression and antagonism – to hate, and whole false narratives drawn up to explain why that group hated and wanted to destroy us even more than we them.

One of A Hero’s Story’s most timely and inspiring lines is Wallenberg’s reply to the Hungarian ruler’s query why the King of Sweden cared so much about the Jews of another country, when he was a Christian. Wallenberg reminded the prime minister that the King’s “concerns transcend religion or national borders.” That concern is humanity, our lowest common denominator, our shared recognition of our capacity for suffering. That concern drove a man to acts of incredible selflessness, a generous mercy that seems to have cost him his liberty and his life. There is no romance to Raoul Wallenberg’s fate. It is worth remembering that he probably saw little romance in the actions he took in Budapest.

Now is no less an unromantic time, no less a time when others – so many different others –are easily denigrated, feared, distrusted, brutalized. Otherization, both of many within our borders and pressing against them, has returned, as has fascism, with apologists blandly elegant or brutally populist, like some inauspicious comet in our skies. Now, again, is a time for heroes – men and women who recognize how difficult and dangerous it is to do what is right. That struggle is far from those of Chamberlain’s habitual roles swashbuckling against a monolithic, universally despicable, evil. Evil is among us, habituating us, desensitizing us, gaslighting us. Far from frills and fanfare, celebration, or certainty of triumph, can we place ourselves in Wallenberg’s Budapester shoes and do what is right?

Quality content, like quality clothing, ages well. This article first appeared on the No Man blog in February 2017.

[thedistantstorm]

The Lion’s Heart 08

A shield, she realizes. The Traveler has gifted me a shield. I am a Defender: the last, lonely sentinel.

The tale of a different kind of Guardian: one who does not want the accolade of saving the world, who does not understand why she would be chosen to wield the Light remaining in the Shard. Once a reckless, dazzling Striker, the Traveler’s chosen is reborn a silent Sentinel. This is Kira’s story; About bringing people together, reclaiming their city, and overcoming the darkness despite it all.

Titans | Vanguard Mentors | Heavy Angst | PTSD | Descriptions of Light | Loss of Light | Canon-typical Violence | Heroes of Necessity | Canon Compliant | The Red War

Previous Parts: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07

He ducks slightly, using the side of his jaw to push back the flap of the large, sunbleached tent.

“Whoa,” Hawthorne responds, startled by the intrusion. “Uh, hey there, what’re you doing?”

“Move back the blankets,” He instructs instead, tipping his head toward the cot. Her cot, not that she has time to use it.

In the relative dimness of the tent, the fractal patterns of light shushing and pulsing under the Commander’s skin emit a soft glow, cool on the cheeks of the Guardian limp in his arms, stringy copper-brown hair pressed against his armor.

“Right after you tell me what you’re doing,” Hawthorne quips back, though her voice lowers to half its previous volume.

Zavala’s nostrils flare, as if that’s obvious. In a way it is, but she does deserve an explanation, if he is to be honest with himself. “People barge into my tent at all hours of the day and night,” He offers by way of explanation. “I don’t sleep.”

“Neither do I,” Comes the grumpy reply, but Hawthorne pulls back the blankets anyway. She's less likely to be interrupted and she knows it; His logic is sound. Kira's pauldrons and chest plate are barely leather armor, but once he lowers her legs onto the bed he props her against him to undo the fraying ties. She lolls, unconscious.

“She needs better armor,” Zavala remarks quietly, as one of the clasps that secures her pauldron breaks off in lieu of unbuckling.

“You should have seen what she was wearing when I found her,” Hawthorne comments as strides over to them, deftly untying a boot, removing the Guardian’s left one first before moving to the right. She sees Zavala flinch from the corner of her eye and shifts her attention back to Kira. Her greaves are barely leather reinforced with rope. “But yeah,” Suraya agrees, in a far more docile tone, “I’ll see what we can turn up.”

It doesn’t take long for them to divest her of her rag-tag armor, leaving her in a rumpled tunic and trousers. Zavala pulls the blankets up to her chin, smoothing a stray lock of hair from her forehead before looking back at Hawthorne. Her brow is still furrowed. The Commander looks around cautiously, as if he’s just realized what he’s done.

“I didn’t mean to commandeer your tent,” He murmurs, almost sheepishly.

The Farm Overseer shrugs and lights a propane burner, the kettle above it already filled with water. “Just like you didn’t mean to commandeer my Farm,” She muses in a sarcastic whisper, rolling her eyes. The comment itself lacks any real bite.

“You offered it up, if I recall,” The Commander answers, playing along.

“Technically she did,” Hawthorne shrugs, looking to Kira.

The water begins to steam on its way to a boil. At rest, with her eyes closed, it’s easy to see the dark circles around her eyes, the haunted purplish tint to her eyelids. The Commander doesn't speak, so it seems she'll have to interrogate it out of him. “Want to tell me how this happened?”

Zavala lets out a haggard, not very Zavala-like sigh. “It’s a long story.”

“I’m sure you can summarize,” She answers, motioning for him to drop into one of the two camp chairs beside her little table. He hesitates as she says, “But we don’t have a war-council meeting until tomorrow morning, and as was previously discussed, neither of us tend to sleep.”

“Really, Hawthorne, it’s-”

She pours the boiling water into a pot that she plunks between them, producing two well-worn, clean teacups. “Tea’s already brewing. May as well start talking.”

-/

He isn’t quite sure how they got onto the subject, but it’s after the tea started being cut with whiskey, in the hours where twilight and midnight meet. He isn’t inebriated, he has too much control for that and the timing for being drunk could not be worse, but the words are loose on his tongue, looser than they should be.

“We thought she was dead,” He realizes he’s saying, bowed over the rickety table, careful not to rest his full weight on the thing. “We left her up on the Command Ship, the Almighty... I was in the Plaza when it happened, and-”

Hawthorne splashes more alcohol into his mug, then tops it off with lukewarm tea. If he notices that she’s not pouring more booze into her own cup, he doesn’t say so.

“Amanda-” He grimaces as he takes another sip. She douses out the imbalance by pouring him more tea. “Holliday felt responsible for it all, but I was the one who sent her there,” He turns, watching Kira breathe, her fingertips twitching and clenching as she dreams, “I condemned her to death and yet, here she is.”

Hawthorne’s dark eyes flit between morose, ethereal blue and the sleeping warrior. Her dreams aren’t pleasant, she can tell by the way Kira’s Ghost tos and fros, occasionally humming something that calms his partner with a synthetic drone. Guardian-Ghost dynamics are interesting. She can liken them enough to her relationship with Louis. She gets the idea.

“You may not like me very much,” Zavala says after a nearly comfortable silence, and Hawthorne’s eyes dart back to him. Maybe she’s had a heavier hand with that bottle than she thought, “But I’d do anything to protect us. All of us. And the Guardians? Regard your soldiers as your children,” He breathes, “And they will follow you into the deepest valleys.”

“You know,” She muses, switching their mugs and taking a sip. Yeah, that’s strong, she thinks. Bet the big guy doesn’t drink as nearly much as his soldiers do. “You regard your soldiers as your children, but did you ever think they might do the same to you?”

“It is a possibility I’ve entertained,” He admits tiredly. “You’re right,” He continues, and she leans forward intently, wondering if maybe giving him a little liquor wasn't the worst idea she's had. “She’s young. Practically a child, in the body of an adult.”

“Mature enough,” Hawthorne concedes. “She has a good head on her shoulders.”

“Perhaps, but this... She was ashamed to show me her abilities, Suraya.” His face is pinched, head shaking in disbelief, a fist banging quietly against the table as the words flow, “Afraid to show me that when the Shard asked for her intent and the Light gave it form that she chose to protect. She thought I’d be furious with her for being imbibed with the same type of abilities that had been taken from me,” His eyes lock onto Hawthorne’s, her dark gaze serious and alert. “She didn’t take anything from me.”

“I know,” Suraya agrees. “And she definitely didn’t take into account how proud you’d be,” She says, smirking playfully.

Fleetingly, he wonders when he became so incredibly transparent. “The things the girl could do with her fists,” Zavala says eventually, leaning back, eyes glossy as his mind’s eye calls upon a memory. “It was magnificent. Even as a fledgling Guardian she was refreshingly bright. But this? This growth - that shield. Hawthorne. It’s extraordinary.”

“Our Guardian is that,” Hawthorne admits with a gentle push of her mug up and over the table.

Zavala clinks his chipped cup against hers and drains it. Hawthorne pours him the rest of the tea. “I am proud of her,” He agrees, after a minute silence. “Honored, that she’s chosen to emulate me.”

“There are certainly worse role models for her to have,” The frontierswoman comments. The Commander glares at her. “What? It’s true. I’m glad she wants to be you when she grows up. You’re not so bad.”

“That’s the liquor talking,” He muses, sardonic.

“Nah,” An indulgent smile blooms across her usually severe features. “I’ve been giving you double what I’ve had myself. Honest to a fault,” She jerks a thumb at her chest. “'S what landed me out here.”

“I just don’t know how much more she can take,” Zavala mentions, after a few seconds of watching his newfound comrade’s features. “We’re expecting a lot from her-” He tilts his head to the side as Hawthorne inhales sharply to interject, “Like you’d said,” He rather pointedly admits to keep her silent. “But we need her.”

“But she isn't - she cannot be a means to an end.”

“No,” Zavala agrees.

“So that means we give her time to figure things out,” Hawthorne reasons. “I’m not so keen on sending her to drag back that Hunter Vanguard of yours from Nessus, anyway.”

The Commander huffs. “He isn’t that bad.”

“I’ll be the judge of that, thank you.” She narrows her eyes and he straightens in his seat, matching her scrutinous gaze. “If Kira doesn’t want to fight,” She begins, serious. “If she can’t fight. If, Light forbid, she dies for good,” Zavala tenses but maintains eye contact all the same. The moment is tense. “I’m still going to fight. I was born Lightless. I’ll die Lightless. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing myself and the rest of the survivors can do. This battle doesn’t depend on her alone. It could, if she chooses that role. I’m not discounting that. But it isn’t the only way. It’s not going to stop us from doing everything we can to help figure this out. It doesn’t mean we’re doomed without her.”

“I know. But it will be perilous.”

“It’s already perilous. Do you know how many times I’ve been shot at this week?”

“About as many times as I.”

She smirks. “You’re probably right. Which is saying something, because you’re a bigger target.”

[krokodile]

movies watched in 2017:

the neon demon - a rewatch, and i loved being able to not have to try and figure out the story and just enjoy the movie with all its glorious beauty.  it’s throwback horror done flawlessly, while still being totally unique and impressively creative. 

roman - i love angela bettis as an actress, but less so as a director.  still, i don’t think this is meant to be the next great american classic (...wait, is lucky mckee actually canadian?)  i think it’s more of an experiment, and a successful one.  it held my interest and kept me guessing, and that’s enough.  editing could’ve cleaned up some things with picture and sound but maybe the roughness was intentional.

into the forest - such garbage.  emotionally manipulative dreck.  and make sure you shoehorn your anti-abortion message in there somewhere.  i always thought evan rachel wood would grow up to be a great actress, but whatever potential she had I’ve never seen fulfilled. 

arrival - remember how they remade the day the earth stood still a while back and it was utterly moronic?  THIS IS THE MOVIE THEY SHOULD HAVE MADE.  the sheer beauty of amy adams interacting with the creatures left tears in my eyes many times, and despite being equally heavy with the message, it left plenty of time and space for interesting, well-drawn characters.  throw in some fucking impressive storytelling and amy adams being her usual luminous self and there’s just nothing to not love in here.

the girl on the train - disappointing.  maybe my hopes were too high after seeing how great the gone girl adaptation was, but this story just didn’t work as well in a visual medium.  emily blunt tried her hardest, but this was the weakest performance i’ve seen from her to date.  

the 9th life of louis drax - i hated every single character so much, i couldn’t get invested in the story.  and even if i had, the resolution was glaringly obvious from the first voiceover.  oliver platt was the only tolerable performance. 

get out - i was expecting to like this movie, but i wasn’t prepared for HOW MUCH i liked it.  the 99% on rotten tomatoes made me expect a “message” film, and the more critics love those the more boring i tend to find them, but i was still pretty optimistic.  holy shit though, best movie i’ve seen in a LONG time.  people have already talked about what’s so great about it, far more eloquently than i could, but it’s pretty close to perfect.  and the performances are going to go down as some of the most immediately remembered and recognized in the horror genre.  a lot of the film’s success comes from daniel kaluuya’s utterly brilliant performance - he’s the easiest horror protagonist to love and root for since sharni vinson in you’re next. 

we’re the millers - not really my taste in comedy, but i got a few laughs out of it.

nocturnal animals - i hate that i didn’t like this movie, because i so wanted to.  and the frustrating thing is, i can pinpoint exactly what went wrong for me.  the screenplay is fantastic; it looks gorgeous (i love how the “book” segments actually LOOK just ever so slightly fake); amy adams knocks it out of the park and the supporting cast is terrific.  my problem is jake gyllenhaal.  and i don’t think he’s a bad actor; i like him just fine.  but he was a terrible fit for this role.  (and tbh i didn’t need the flashbacks to his and amy adams’s relationship.  the movie would’ve worked just as well without them and they derailed the narrative quite a bit.)  all his screaming and crying and raging just seemed incredibly calculated, and i don’t think it was intentional.  he was just out of his depth here.  i’m also not sure why the opening sequence went as long as it did.  and no i’m not whining that i had to look at naked obese ladies.  but it just felt like someone trying to be david lynch and came off very pretentious student film.  i also think it could’ve been half the length and still accomplished what it set out to do.  but really i can let go of everything but jake gyllenhaal’s performance. 

i know there’s been some controversy about the violence against women portrayed in this film, but i’ve noticed that people by and large have no problem with extreme violence against women being portrayed as long as there’s no nudity; the fact that we saw their bodies nude (and that tableau was absolutely beautiful, by the way; that got the most genuine emotional reaction from me out of the entire film.  so softly devastating; especially since isla fisher and ellie bamber had used their few minutes onscreen to get me to completely fall in love with them) is what people find horrific and unacceptable.  the sexual violence, nearly all of which took place offscreen, was not used for shock value or as a cheap device to give a picture “depth” or “tragedy.”  i can only assume i’m not the only audience member whose guts just ripped in half in sorrow seeing mother and child laid out like that.  i actually think it was one of the best done moments in the film.  i understand not wanting to see that, but to call it unnecessary or exploitative seems to me like the point has been greatly missed.  (it also involves totally not understanding the film’s structure and jake gyllenhaal’s character but i won’t go into that.)

i am not a serial killer - pretty good little movie.  i usually hate it when things go supernatural, but this was one of the rare occasions where the movie was no worse for it.  mostly some parts lagged for me; otherwise no complaints.

psycho - a partial rewatch since jenna was watching it.  still a terrific movie.  and it was fun picking out all the little things bates motel has referenced over the years. 

[doomonfilm]

Thoughts : Watchmen [HBO, Episodes 1-3] (2019)

These days, I tend to stick to movies, as the depth allowed by a TV series draws me in so deep that my tunnel vision locks me into obsessive fandom status.  Needless to say, HBO is running a masterclass in how to develop a TV series, meaning that I find myself attracted to (and often obsessed) with their original programming.  When word hit that they were developing a series for Watchmen, my interest was piqued, as a casual movie experience with the property turned into its own deep obsession with the original graphic novel, and subsequent Before Watchmen series.  As October came to a close, the Watchmen series premiered, and in my initial opinion, it feels like HBO has another classic in the making on their hands.

THE STORY THUS FAR

Episode 01 : It’s Summer And We’re Running Out Of Ice Tulsa, Oklahoma finds itself policed by masked cops, and during a routine stop, a suspected member of the supposed white supremacist group known as the Seventh Kalvary shoots an officer.  Police Chief Judd Crawford (Don Johnson), after conferring with a Detective known as Looking Glass (Tim Blake Nelson), decides to do a deep investigation into the Seventh Kalvary, including using a handful of masked vigilantes : Sister Night (Regina King), a former cop named Angela Abar, and Red Scare (Andrew Howard).  After obtaining a tip that the group is stationed at a cattle ranch on the edge of Tulsa, the group attempts to ambush the collective, only to find themselves under heavy fire.  All members of the Seventh Kalvary on site are killed or commit suicide, and the police find a bag of lithium watch batteries, though they are unsure of their purpose.  Later that night, after a dinner with Angela and their collective families, Chief Crawford is ambushed while on his way to visit the officer in hospital.  Angela eventually receives an ominous call to come to a specific location, unmasked, where she finds Chief Crawford hung by the neck, and an old man she encountered earlier (Louis Gossett Jr.) at the base of the tree.  Meanwhile, a strange man (Jeremy Irons), accompanied by his servants Mr. Phillips (Tom Mislon) and Ms. Crookshanks (Christie Amery), spends his days in a castle on a manor, reliving an unclear past and attempting to produce a play he has titled The Watchmaker’s Son.

Episode 02 : Martial Feats Of Comanche Horsemanship The old man that Angela encountered, named Will (Gossett Jr.), takes responsibility for the death of Chief Crawford.  Angela, wary of this information, decides to stow Will away at her unopened bakery in hopes of discovering the truth behind Crawford’s death.  In the midst of interrogating Will, Angela is called to the site of Chief Crawford’s  hanging, where she appears as Sister Night to help Red Scare and Looking Glass bring Chief Crawford’s body down.  After a moment of reflection on the White Night (the event that led to Tulsa’s police force being masked) and her adoption of her slain partner’s kids, Red Scare rallies the force to head to Nixonville, home of the poor white community of Tulsa, for revenge and retribution.  Angela, however, is focused on her mystery, and after some individual detective work, she determines that Will is not only a direct survivor of the 1921 Tulsa Riots, but her grandfather.  Frustrated with her findings, she decides to arrest Will, but is thwarted by a mysterious, giant magnet that appears from the sky, taking Will away.  Meanwhile, the strange man has Mr. Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks perform his play, and in the process, Mr. Phillips is burned to death, only to reveal that multiple copies of Mr. Phillips and Ms. Crookshanks reside on the manor.

Episode 03 : She Was Killed By Space Junk Special Agent Laurie Blake (Jean Smart), after a successful sting operation to capture rogue vigilante Mister Shadow (Lee Tergesen), is assigned to the Chief Crawford case in Tulsa.  With Agent Petey (Dustin Ingram) in tow, the team heads to Tulsa to unravel the mysteries surrounding Chief Crawford’s death, and determine both who is responsible for the act and involved in the bigger conspiracy.  Special Agent Blake learns from Looking Glass that Chief Crawford is being buried without a toxicology report, so she attends the funeral to make her presence known to the Tulsa police force.  During the ceremony, a member of the Seventh Calvary infiltrates with a suicide vest in hopes of taking Senator Joe Keane (James Wolk) hostage, but his attempt is stopped by a bullet to the head courtesy of Special Agent Blake.  This shot to the head sets the suicide vest in motion, but Angela heroically drags the assailant’s body to Chief Crawford’s open grave, then dumps Chief Crawford’s casket on top of it, saving a handful of lives in the process, but destroying any further investigation of the body that Special Agent Blake had planned.  After confronting Angela during her investigation of the tomb, Special Agent Blake finds herself on a phone call that delivers messages to Dr. Manhattan, who is still residing on Mars.  After the call, Special Agent Blake looks to the sky, where to her shock, Angela’s van is dropped from the sky (sans Will).  Meanwhile, the older gentlemen is found to be taking part in mysterious experiments on the manor, much to the chagrin of the Games Warden.  After receiving a letter containing a thinly-veiled threat, the man responds, and in turn, reveals himself to be the presumed-dead Adrian Veidt.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

The Peteypedia : A weekly collection of documents relevant to the world of Watchmen, similar to the opening and closing inclusions in the original comic issues and graphic novel.

The Official Watchmen Podcast : Host Craig Mazin and showrunner Damon Lindelof discuss the HBO Watchmen series.  A new podcast episode will be released after episodes six and nine.

THOUGHTS ON THE SHOW

Three episodes may be a bit early to heap praise on something, but I am willing to go all in on the fact that this show will more than likely be an amazing journey.  Many of the elements that have seemed to cause such a polarizing divide among fan and critical communities, specifically the aspect of race in the world of 2019 Watchmen, and the connection to the graphic novel rather than the film, are elements that hit the hardest for me, and in a wholly positive way.

In the way that identity ruled the original graphic novel, race seems to be the hard to face issue that we are locked into for the HBO series.  Episodes one and two directly referenced points in African-American history that are massively painful but nearly erased from the greater American history in the form of the 1921 Tulsa Race Riots and the treatment of African-American soldiers in World War I, and both of these real world, pre-Watchmen graphic novel events inform the world that we are now presented with.  According to the aforementioned Peteypedia, direct descendants of American atrocities have been awarded in the form of tax exemption known as Redfordations (a play on reparations), which has drastically changed the economic outlook of Tulsa.  The police force, which seems to be populated by mostly minorities, is part of Senator Joe Keane’s experiment in protecting police by allowing them to wear masks, which further blurs the line between cop and criminal, as well as skewing our perception of cop and citizen relations.

On the flip side, the already muddied waters of Rorschach as an ‘anti-hero’ have been further disturbed via the Seventh Kalvary.  The way that Rorschach’s Journal has turned into a version of the Turner Diaries in this universe, as much as I loved that problematic character, is a stroke of genius.  Despite Alan Moore’s original intentions to display Rorschach as a modern-day Batman, creating his own code of ethics to justify his violent actions, he became a huge fan favorite (exponentially more so after the release of the Zack Snyder film).  Using him as the inspiration for the supposed foes in the world of the show holds the mirror up to his original nature, and how time can amplify actions without the help of having the subject to clarify them, leading to a skewed (or sometimes painfully on the nose) elevated icon status.

Speaking of our masked vigilantes and ‘heroes’, we’ve been given them in three distinct levels, to this point.  We have references and allusions to a certain group of heroes and vigilantes we are already familiar with : Hooded Justice is the focus of American Hero Story, the show within the HBO show created to give that world background on the Minutemen, and Dr. Manhattan has been shown as still residing on Mars.  As for characters we are familiar with, Andrian Veidt was finally identified formally in the third episode, and Laurie Blake (the former Silk Spectre II) has arrived in the form of a special agent.  We also have been introduced to a world of new characters : 

Sister Night, now going by her true name Angela Abar, is a former Tulsa cop, and one of the few survivors of the White Night, where the Seventh Kalvary killed most of the Tulsa police force.  She is the main character, and the one through whom the majority of the story is being told.

Looking Glass is chief inspector on the Tulsa police force, and he operates The Pod, a psychoanalytic interrogation device used by the Tulsa police to uncover plots and schemes connected to the Seventh Kalvary.

Red Scare and Pirate Jenny are two more members of the Tulsa police force that take the form of masked vigilantes.  We do not know much about either one of these characters, as of yet.

After two episodes of dancing around things, Jeremy Irons was finally revealed to be Adrian Veidt, and even donned the infamous Ozymandias costume at the end of episode three.  Little is known at this time in regards to the details of his story line, but there does seem to be an obsession with the origin of Dr. Manhattan, as well as some sort of captivity he is in that is unclear as of this time.

The references to the graphic novel are deep, vast and numerous... Nixon and Redford stand at supposed opposite ends of the political scale, the world is still dealing with the fallout of Veidt’s squid attack, technology has been stilted in some areas (such as computers and the internet) and advanced in others (such as electric cars being the standard), the United States now includes Vietnam (leading to a very cool redesign of the American flag), and the way that Tulsa police operate is completely unique in regards to their masks and their needing permission for weapons release.  Speaking of weapons, it appears that the Tulsa police are using Night Owl-based technology... possibly due to the terms of his captivity in prison?

THE QUESTIONS

There are SO MANY questions that this particular show is bringing to the table... here are a few thoughts I have in regards to my speculation and inference of the show : 

- What’s the story with Chief Crawford?  He is the one member of the Tulsa force who doesn’t wear a mask, he has a Ku Klux Klan hood in his closet, and on the night of his death, he dressed in a traditional police uniform in regards to his title and rank.  What is he hiding, and what was his death supposed to kick into action?

- What’s the story with Will?  If he’s Angela’s grandfather, who are Angela’s parents?  Who are these ‘friends in high places’ he speaks of, and how does he know so much already?  What abilities does he actually have, as he has so far managed to possibly hang a man, escaped handcuffs and pull an egg out of boiling hot water barehanded?

- What’s the story with Adrian Veidt?  Who are these clones, or whatever the beings are, that serve him?  What is he trying to build?  Where is he, where tomatoes grown on trees, and buffalo roam in large herds?  What is the significance of his play, The Watchmaker’s Son?  If he is being held captive, who is his captor, and what’s the significance of the Black Freighter flag at the edge of his boundary?

- What are the Seventh Kalvary up to?  It’s clear that they are not responsible for the death of Chief Crawford directly, but there is also clearly a connection between these two parties based on Crawford frying the escape plane, as well as the murky circumstances surrounding his suicide.  What’s the significance of the watch batteries?  What was taking Senator Keane hostage supposed to accomplish?

- What’s the story with Chief Crawford?  Is he the one who spared Angela her life during the White Night?  Was he playing multiple sides in the days leading up to his death?  

- When will Dr. Manhattan show up?  After a casual mention of an Intrinsic Field Generator being developed in Russia during episode three, is there a plan to possibly create another version of Dr. Manhattan?  Is Adrian Veidt, via his play The Watchmaker’s Son, also trying to create another Dr. Manhattan?

At this point, I believe it is best to allow another few episodes to pass, at which time I will make another Watchmen-related entry.  Hopefully, some of our questions will be answered, we will be able to go into more depth in regards to a handful of characters, maybe we can point out some easter eggs, and I can give my thoughts on the performances thus far.  That being said, Watchmen has managed to threaten The Sopranos for the top spot on my favorite show list, and there is still SOOOO much more to explore. 

[lilmissmousey]

Betrothed (chapter 1)

The air was heavy and oppressive with the mist that covered the river Styx; the black gondola cutting through the glass-still water like a knife. The ripples bobbed to the shore and disappeared quickly, the water returning to its still state. Not much moved here, even the insects refused to venture this far. That was the way of things here. Quiet, dark, and obedient.

The boatman who carried the souls of those who had died to this dark place had finally delivered his last two, and was ready to report back to his master. Tying off his vessel, the black shrouded man followed the worn path, descending even deeper into the darkness. He was a large and powerful man, but even he knew better than to trifle with his master. The being that ruled the underworld was unpredeictable and volatile; being stoic one moment and explosive the next. The boatman had long since bore the brunt of his masters temper, and knew his triggers well enough. So when he entered the master’s chamber, he was surprised to see him looking with quiet, intense interest into the looking bowl.

The master didn’t even seem to notice him, until his baritone voice called him, “Nappa, come here.”

Nappa swallowed; it made him nervous to hear his birth name used. He ducked his head and came to stand beside the ruler of the underworld, “Master?” He asked.

The smaller man didn’t bother looking at him, black eyes still staring intently into the glowing bowl of water, “What do you see?”

Nappa peered over his masters shoulder armor into the ripples. There was a woman. She was beautiful, almost obscenely so. Even other deities Nappa had come across couldn’t compare. Her long hair was an unusual shade of aqua, and her large eyes matched the blue of her loosely curled locks. The curves on her body would make any woman’s teeth clench with envy; the black off the shoulder blouse and red pencil skirt clinging to her. She was standing before a large crowd of people, pointing at figures on a wall. This woman was holding everyone’s attention; surely she was a ruler in her own right.

“Do you see her?” His master asked.

“Yes, my King.”

“What do you think?”

Nappa swallowed. What did he think? He thought it would be nice to bend the woman over, but knew to say such a thing about a female his ruler was looking at was not the smartest idea. He went with a smarter response, “She is attractive. Why do you ask sir?”

“…I want her.”

Nappa bowed slightly, “Any female would be happy to have you; but, she’s a human. Don’t you think that-”

The ruler, though smaller than the boatman grabbed him by the front of his robes, dragging his face down close to his, “I said, I want her. Send Raditz to retrieve her for me.”

Nappa felt the sweat bead on his forehead, “Y-yes sir.”

“Good.” The boatman was released abruptly, causing him to fall backwards a few steps, “Leave me now. Fetch him. Tell him to bring her to me immediately.”

“Y-yes sir.” Nappa bowed far more times than necessary and walked quickly towards the cave opening, leaving his master to watch his back as he retreaded towards his boat.

Left in silence once again, Vegeta, lord of the Underworld looked back at the woman in the looking bowl. and smirked. She had concluded speaking to riotous applause, and her picture with a name had appeared on the wall behind her.

Bulma Briefs.

-

It had taken Bulma some time to leave the theater, each and every member of the scientific community wanting to shake her hand on the way out; a few even offering her marriage proposals. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy the attention, but it was tiring and irksome. Not to mention she’d already used up an entire bottle of hand sanitizer and smelled like a doctors office.

She walked down the hall towards the parking garage, her black and red Louis Vuitton heels clacking loudly on the tiled floor. Her presentation had gone as well as could be expected; her theory on the mechanics of possible time travel was as of now undisputed and revolutionary. She’d been quick to patent it and was happy she did. No doubt that by tomorrow the three rival companies to Capsule Corp. would be challenging her with authenticity claims. She was ready for them. It was often challenging being the female head of a large science firm, but Bulma was cut throat and not afraid to play dirty.

The electronic doors to the garage slid open, and Bulma reached into her purse to retrieve her keys-

There was a heavily muscled man leaning against her red sports car.

She froze, keys in hand. The feeling of being torn between fear and ogling him openly waging war against one another.

His black hair was long and wild, hanging down his back almost to his knees. Large arms were crossed against his broad expanse of chest dressed in a plain white t shirt and the thighs straining against his jeans looked like they could crush watermelons. The man raised his raybans at her and smiled, “Hey! This is a gorgeous car! I wanted to see who owned it!”

Bulma hesitated, he looked friendly enough, “Oh, thanks. Um, it’s a Porsche.”

“I knew that!” He laughed, “I love sports cars. I figured the person owning it was one of those old farts at the conference today. I didn’t expect it to be a hot babe like you.”

Smiling in spite of herself, Bulma twirled the keys around her fingers, “PFT. Those crinkly old scrotums wouldn’t even know what to do with this baby.”

The man snorted, grinning, “Pretty girl, I like you! What’s your name?”

“Bulma, what’s yours?”

“Raditz,” The large man grinned, flashing his teeth, “I don’t mean to sound forward, but want to give me a ride? This thing looks fast and we can go grab something to eat? Lets leave these old farts in our dust.”

“Sure!” Bulma chirped, rushing forward. It wasn’t often a younger, handsome man like this paid her attention. It was usually someone much older…with a lot less hair. As she came nearer to him though, a sudden feeling of dread washed over her, an indescribable heaviness that caused her to stop a few paces in front of him.

Raditz blinked, pushing his sunglasses on top of his head, “You okay? What’s the matter?”

This man… he was, just off somehow? Bulma couldn’t place her finger on what exactly was bothering her. Raditz spoke like she would expect a man his age to talk, and looked normal; handsome even. Bulma was usually pretty good at picking out dirtbags because she’d dated several. So, what was it?

Raditz’s thick eyebrows knitted together, concerned, “Aw hey, I’m really sorry. I came off too strong didn’t I? Geeze, I must look like such a jerk. I have my own car… if you’d be more comfortable I could drive myself? I meant lunch to be my treat.”

Bulma wanted to feel comfortable, she really did. So she plastered on her best fake smile and said, “Yeah, let’s do that.”

The long-haired man in front of her grinned, “Aw hey that’s great! Thank you for not shooting me down! I’ll just go get my car, I parked one level up-”

The feeling itching at the back of her brain erupted, and Bulma once again felt her heart sink, “How did you get in here?”

Raditz blinked, all innocence and confusion, “What do you mean? I drove in.”

“No,” Bulma said firmly, “You need a special key card to get in here. It was only given to the people attending the conference. I didn’t see you while I was presenting, you’re hard to miss. You aren’t supposed to be here-”

A large hand covered her mouth from behind, and Raditz’s once kind voice now whispered menacingly in her ear, “Listen, you’re coming with me. If you don’t listen, I’m gonna break your pretty, little neck. I’ll get a load of shit for it, but it might just be worth it.”

Heart pounding furiously in her chest Bulma attempted to struggle and break free, but Raditz’s arms were like steel. What had she gotten into? How had he gotten behind her when he was right in front of her face only seconds ago? Why had no one come into the parking garage? The questions whirling in her head were making her feel panicked. She’d taken self defense courses a few years ago, but all of those memories went flying out the window.

In spite of how tightly he was holding onto her, Raditz wasn’t actually hurting her. He chuckled, “Pretty girl, you’re in for a rude awakening.” His large hand moved from her mouth to cover her eyes, and suddenly Bulma slipped into unconsciousness.

~

Hi there my lovelies! I couldn’t hold in my excitement anymore! I adore all of you to bits and pieces, so I’m releasing chapter one here first before it goes on ff.net!!

I’d love to give extreme thanks and gratitude to @dragondancer28 and @itsmandymo for their support on this fic. Guys, you are the best!!

I hope you all like my newest story!

XOXO

[pageturner92]

Hello!

And a particular hello to all of you Disney bookworms because today I bring you a tag worthy of Disney awesomeness. It is the Disney Princess Sidekicks Book Tag and it was created by the lovely Mandy over at Book Princess Reviews.

I can guarantee that this will be a lot of book Disney fun so let’s get started…

Mushu from Mulan/ Olaf and Sven from Frozen.  The comic relief – Name your favourite hilarious character, or your favourite comedy/funny book.

For this one, I have to go for my favourite funny character and I can’t think of any other but Magnus Bane from the Shadowhunter Chronicles. His wit and humour are never forced and I love that he has a lot to say about everything that is happening. The fact that Cassandra Clare has him in every current Shadowhunter series is probably one of the reasons why I’m still reading and loving them.

The Seven Dwarfs from Snow White.  Favourite Group Ensemble.

With this type of question, I can never decide between Kaz, Inej, Nina…. in Six of Crows and Cinder, Iko, Kai, Cress…. in The Lunar Chronicles. I love all of these characters, and the dynamic in each gang is amazing!

Pascal from Tangled. The loyal cheerleader chameleon (not a Frog, Flynn Rider): Name a book that started out one way but changed for you.

If you’ve seen me talk about this book before, then you know that it is one book that seriously failed to impress me. At the beginning, it was slow but I liked where it was going. However, the more I read, the less I was interested in the characters or their demon fighting ring. It was not worth my time at all.

  Meeko from Pocahontas Pocahontas’ sly and sneaky racoon friend – Name a plot twist that you did not see coming

I think I’m cheating a little with this answer because it’s not exactly a plot twist but a few little events near the end of the book that I didn’t expect to happen. I’m not going to say what they are, but suffice to say you might constantly think “why did SJ Maas do that?”

Rajah from Aladdin/ Flounder from The Little Mermaid.  Gentle with their princess but protective with everyone else – Name your favourite best friend in a novel. 

I knew I’d eventually use a Harry Potter book or character in one of these answers and although both Ron and Hermione are part of that trio, for me it is Hermione all the way.  I like how she pushes past her original opinions of both Ron and Harry to become the loyal and protective best friend that they both needed. Not forgetting to mention that she is simply a great character with honourable intentions.

    Louis from The Princess and the Frog/ Sebastian from The Little Mermaid/ Cogsworth, Lumière, Mrs Potts & Chip from Beauty and the Beast The musical bunch – Name a novel where music played a big part or made you want to sing its praises. 

In this respect, I am singing Gemina’s praises because oh my wow, this book was one crazy, adventurous ride and I loved it. This was one of my favourite books of last year and that’s saying something considering I was not a fan of Illuminae.

Maximus from Tangled. The obstacle in Flynn Rider’s way – Name a character that faces a lot of obstacles.

I know this is a really obvious answer, but Harry Potter is the only character I can think of.

Hamish, Hubert, and Harris from Brave Favourite family dynamics in a novel

At the minute I am torn between Starr’s family in The Hate U Give, and the Blackthorns in The Dark Artifices. Both sets of family dynamics are amazing and bring some lightness to the darker events of each novel.

Ray from The Princess and the Frog / Flora, Fauna and Merryweather from Sleeping Beauty The advice givers – the book that most impacted your life

When I finally picked up this classic, I knew it was a book that would leave its mark, and it certainly has done. I think about it a lot, especially at the moment when I see a lot of hatred and divisions in society. I wish there were more characters like Atticus Finch who want to teach honesty, respect, and acceptance because in this day and age we need them.

Hei Hei from Moana. Name a character that steals the show.

AIDAN from Illuminae and Gemina.

Gus and Jaq from Cinderella. Opposites attract – name your favourite or worst opposite attracts pairing.

I don’t think they are complete opposites but the only pairing I can think of at the moment (without repeating myself) is Detective Jane Rizzoli and Special Agent Gabriel Dean from the Rizzoli and Isles books by Tess Gerritsen. I wish they had gotten together in the show because I love their interactions in the books and their dynamic creates a bit of lightness in amongst all the heavy crimes.

Mima @ Signs of YA

Hannah @ Courage and Kindness

I don’t know who else I want to tag, so if you think you would enjoy this Disney/Book crossover tag, feel free to join in on the fun! The more people to share the magic of both Disney and Books, the better!!

Thanks for reading and have a good day! xx

Disney Princess Sidekicks Book Tag Hello! And a particular hello to all of you Disney bookworms because today I bring you a tag worthy of Disney awesomeness.