#nor can he even travel that well because of property laws | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

azenkii · 4 years

Text

A Long List of Trash Fire Lord Zuko Headcanons

...that i couldn't get out of my head:

(warning: SUPER LONG POST i havent figured out how to trim posts yet)

he's the one who unchains azula despite iroh's protests. she doesn't even try to fight him, just cries into his shoulder and keeps mumbling about how father's going to be so disappointed in her. he takes her to her rooms and has her drink a sleeping draught, then stations the best guards he has left outside her chambers.

his first council meeting takes place literally a day after sozin's comet. he hobbles into the council chamber shirtless with his entire torso covered in bandages and every council member just looks at him like '...what'

he does NOT sleep for like,,a week after sozin's comet and then another two weeks after his coronation. katara, aang and suki try to persuade him to sleep and he doesn't listen. eventually sokka, toph and mai team up to literally drag his ass to bed and tell him he's not allowed to get up until he sleeps (does mai pin him to the bed with her knives? yes. is it kinky or sexual in any way? definitely not.)

he drinks So. Much. Tea. at this point it's practically tasteless to him but he drinks it anyway because he just needs something to do and tea is something familiar. he keeps iroh on his toes because he's constantly asking for new tea blends, uncle, i think i actually tasted the last one,

he flat-out refuses to grow his hair for at least a year after ozai's defeat. the second it starts getting close to his chin he shears it off himself, with his knife, and his stylist has a heart attack every single time

when he's tired he'll occasionally jump up when one of his guards moves. it stops after a bit, but for the first month and a half or so he's really twitchy. when sokka asks, the only explanation he can come up with is that he's not used to having people stand behind him silently and not want to kill him, much less want to protect him (sokka immediately takes him out for a shopping trip and makes a point of walking behind him the entire time, but only on zuko's right side, where he can clearly see it if sokka moves towards him)

when the healer declares azula mentally unstable and in need of an institution, he shuts himself in his office for the rest of the night. no one's allowed in, not even iroh. he finally emerges in the morning, eyes red from crying and sleep deprivation, and tells the librarian that he'd like a list of the best mental institutions in the country, please, the best in the world if you can get them

he loves theatre (is this even a headcanon?). unfortunately it practically died out in the fire nation along with the rest of the creative arts, leaving nothing but small troupes like the ember island players. one of zuko's personal goals (meaning things he wants to accomplish that aren't as important as restoring his country) is to bring back theatre; he finally manages to do it after about eight months or so of being fire lord, along with other arts like dancing, music and sculpture

he establishes a national day of mourning, on the first day of autumn every year, to commemorate the genocide of the air nomads. from 100AG onwards, every calendar printed in the fire nation has it marked. at first it was called the day of repentance, but aang persuaded him to have it changed (by arguing that he didn't want guilt to be a literal staple of fire nation culture)

he introduces literally So Many educational reforms, plus a mandatory class that teaches students about the cultures of the other nations (air nomads included) and how some of their traditions overlap

he turns down the offer of having a statue put up of him in the capital. toph ignores him and does it anyway.

he visits azula regularly, makes sure she's (relatively) comfortable and well-fed, and sometimes just sits down outside her door and tells her about everything that's going on right now ('some of the far colonies have developed their own standardised writing, azula, you wouldn't believe it, and i've asked the fire sages to come visit more often—but you never liked them, did you? oh, well; i'll make sure none of them go into your chambers by mistake')

(he doesn't know it, but when he does this azula sits by the door and listens. she wonders what kind of writing the colonists have developed, and whether or not the fire sages have taken on some new recruits.)

he hates being above anyone else. never sits in the throne if he can help it, nor does he sit on the dais in the council room. when he talks to people shorter than him, he finds himself stooping a little bit to talk to them on their level (the exception to this rule is sokka, who he mocks for being shorter all the way up until sokka grows taller than him, the bastard)

the first time he visits the earth kingdom, the earth king's ministers call a toast. he ends up being the only one who has to sit out, because he's too young to drink by earth kingdom law

once his servants figure out he won't kill them for talking to him, they start becoming a lot more bold, telling him off when he doesn't take care of himself. at one point, they force him to let them take care of him so much that he literally just bolts into the gardens and hides there until the staff rope in mai and ty lee

when he needs to escape, he does one of two things: (a) he dresses up as the blue spirit and does some parkour until he calms down, or (b) he goes to work at the jasmine dragon. (b) happens less often bc the jasmine dragon's in ba sing se, but there's been a few memorable incidents when an earth kingdom diplomat walks in and yells, 'LEE?!' when they see the fire lord

the first court artist who draws him also happens to be the one who drew azulon and ozai. he draws zuko without his scar. zuko takes one look at it and tells him, very calmly, that he'd like him to leave, please.

zuko burns the portrait. he doesn't fire the court artist, but he never calls on him again unless he has to. a second court artist is called, and can't help but be a bit confused when the fire lord tells him to be sure to include the scar

he forgets the crown. a lot. sometimes he walks into council meetings in his sleepwear with his hair tied up in a messy ponytail and a bunch of scrolls tucked under his arm. none of his councilmen have the guts (or the heart) to tell him that this is not, in fact, formal council wear

he goes to feed the turtleducks when he's stressed. he thinks he's being subtle. he's not. the entire palace knows, and they consciously give him space when they see him in the turtleduck garden

most of his staff are older than him, so they look at him and see this teeny tiny fire lord who is So Small and who Must Be Protected. the day after zuko's coronation, the head chef holds a meeting where they commence Operation Do-Not-Let-That-Boy-Turn-Out-Like-His-Father (subsection He's-The-Only-Good-Thing-We-Have)

one night he wakes up to find suki sitting in his room, decked out in full kyoshi warrior garb and makeup, and just about screams blue murder. suki tells him there are suspicions of an assassin in the palace, and would you please stop yelling it's very distracting, we won't be able to hear anyone coming over that racket

zuko gets very, very paranoid of random spirits after that. yeah, suki looks like a possibly malevolent spirit when she's wearing her makeup, what about it? (when he tells sokka he's highkey terrified of spirit shenanigans, sokka just looks at him and says, 'man, the stories i could tell...', and THAT'S when zuko remembers sokka spent like six months more than he did travelling with the avatar)

on his first visit to the southern water tribe, he removes his boots and leg guards, rolls up his pants and kneels barefoot in the snow. even though chief hakoda immediately starts trying to pull him up, he's stubborn as hell and stays kneeling for the entirety of his very long, very sincere apology-on-behalf-of-the-fire-nation speech. he nearly loses his toes to frostbite after that, and both sokka and katara never stop giving him shit for it

the first time he grows a 'beard' is completely accidental. he's stressed over some trade miscommunications with chief hakoda, hasn't slept in a few days...and then when sokka arrives as water tribe ambassador to help smooth things over, he takes one look at zuko and says 'man, facial hair does not suit you'

zuko: facial what now

he checks a mirror to find that he's got stubble covering his chin, dark enough that it almost looks intentional, and holy gods how the fuck did he not notice this before

'UNCLE WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME' 'i assumed you were doing it on purpose' 'WHEN HAVE I EVER DONE ANYTHING ON PURPOSE'

he shaves it all off immediately, of course, which prompts a lot of teasing and rib-poking from sokka until zuko finally snaps that he's scared it'll make him look like his father. sokka stops after that.

(the day after sokka leaves, zuko finds that a mysterious someone has scribbled all over ozai's royal portrait, giving him a frankly ridiculous beard and moustache that literally CANNOT be grown in real life. oddly enough, he can't bring himself to care about the defamation of royal property. he's too busy laughing.)

his paths cross with toph and sokka more than any of the others, because sokka is ambassador and toph is technically still a beifong. most of the time, at formal functions, he ends up sequestered in the corner with toph and a hoard of snacks, and they talk and swear much more than they usually do (zuko's ministers once heard him when he was drunk with toph, and the servants swear the older ministers' ears started bleeding)

he restores fire nation cultural festivals, and in doing so subjects himself to learning a lot of complicated dances

during one memorable week, he wrote so many letters and drafted so much legislation that he ran out of paper. he had to go visit the nearest school and ask for some

he keeps up with his firebending and sword training even though it's hard to fit into his schedule. his ministers refrain from reminding him that he has guards to protect him now; it's still hard for zuko to trust his safety with anyone but himself (team avatar is the exception).

he started sleepwalking about two months into his reign. no one knew why. one time, he nearly sleepwalked right off the edge of a balcony, and one of his guards had to grab him by the back of his robes.

the sleepwalking stopped after around a month and never happened again. at this point it's practically palace legend.

after freeing the war prisoners, he went around collecting every single earthbender-proof wooden cell he could find in the capital and surrounding areas. when he'd gotten most of them, he gathered them into a huge pile in the city square and set fire to them with his own hands.

unfortunately he couldn't do that with the waterbender metal cells but he did get toph to come in and bend them all into pretty shapes (well, toph thought they were pretty shapes. everyone else thinks they're meaningless squiggles)

he learned how to write with both hands at the same time out of sheer necessity (he refused scribes until it became clear that he'd be putting some people out of a job; that was when he started letting scribes write very, very minor things, but all important documents/drafts/letters are still written by him)

he once put the wet end of an ink brush in his mouth instead of the wooden end by mistake. didn't even realise until he bit down to keep it in place and ink went oozing everywhere

when his guards rushed in to find him coughing and spluttering black liquid all over his desk they thought he'd been poisoned but no he's just stupid

on his 17th birthday, his first one after being crowned, he got tackled by team avatar in the middle of the ballroom and ended up at the bottom of a cuddlepile for like ten minutes

this cuddlepile happened at an event that was very much public and very much formal. it was a scandal for weeks

just. fire lord zuko, guys. so much potential

#holy cow this ended up so much longer than i intended #atla #avatar #zuko #firelord zuko #headcanons

7K notes · View notes

mightbewriting · 3 years

Text

m o o n

on today’s wheel of doom installment: theo nott x sirius black / potions accident. this was...a tough one lol. please enjoy the ensuring chaos (and liberal interpretation of a ‘potions accident’) below.

Time travel is fun. Generally speaking. From a totally academic and definitely-not-at-all illegal viewpoint. It does tend to be finicky though, but I am nothing if not adept at unfinicking the finicky. Though that particular accolade has only been bestowed upon me as it relates to fussy babies. I like to think of it as a transferrable skill. Surely there exists something of a transitive property between babies and time travel. If anyone can figure it out, my money is on myself.

That’s just good self marketing right there. A young man, fresh out of Hogwarts with a few too many war crimes peripherally present on my resume, selling myself as palatable (and imminently hirable) is basically a full time job in and of itself. I figure if I solve (or break) a couple laws of the universe, maybe give good old Gamp a run for his money, I’ll have a shot at something of a future functioning in a wizarding world that isn’t looking too fondly on my family name at present.

Am I getting enough sleep? No, definitely not.

Have I eaten anything remotely resembling a vegetable in the last week? Can’t say for certain unless we’re counting tea leaves.

Have I sat down in the last twelve hours? I’m embarrassed to admit I don’t think I have.

Am I very, very tired and in need of a break? I mean. Yes. But there are discoveries to be made. Futures (mine, and others) to secure.

I may feel fit to fall over any second, but I’ve been trying to perfect a potion meant to stabilize some of the flittering-fluttering-time-slipping nonsense that keeps happening every time I try for anything longer than a minute or two forward or back in time.

Realistically, do I have any idea how time travel works? Can’t say that I do. But sometimes I make it happen. And when I do, I have a tendency to not have any control over the process. Then get slingshot back to the present. The fact that I can time travel is resume-worthy stuff, right there. Currently, just trying to figure out how I’m doing it.

The not sleeping, not eating, not resting combo, in retrospect, is likely to blame for the way my entire lab goes up in a bright magenta plume of opaque, glittering smoke the second I opt for an experimental anti-clockwise stir in my cauldron.

I cough, eyes screwed shut. Pretty sure there’s glitter forcibly integrating itself with my cornea. I make a mental note to try and figure out why glitter has even made an appearance when I was most certainly engaged in very serious potion brewing and not arts and crafts time. Sometimes I think magic is playing a trick on me. An ironic entity fucking around just for the fun of it. Which honestly, can’t say I blame it.

“You okay down there?”

It takes a second for me to realize there’s a voice talking to me. That it’s talking from somewhere above me. That it’s backdropped to some major drumbeats. That it feels like I’m sitting on cold, hard asphalt.

I finally force my eyes open, glitter abrasions forgotten, expelling the remaining wisps of a cough from my lungs and I find myself looking up into the face of a criminal.

Well, a very young criminal. But one I definitely recognize.

I guess that means I’ve managed time travel again. No idea how. The traveling in space bit is new. Because this isn’t Nott manor, that’s for sure. Feels more likely I’m somewhere in the middle of London.

I blink up at Sirius Black, distinctly neither dead nor screaming at me from a wanted poster, as he takes a long drag from the cigarette pinched between his thumb and forefinger. He drops the remainder to the ground and stomps it out with his heavy black boot.

“Good fucking thing I had this alley under a concealment charm so I could smoke in peace. That was some entrance.”

I realize I haven’t said a thing, still staring up at a very young, very fit Sirius Black. An adult, but not incarcerated. That puts me in a very tender timeline somewhere between 1978 and 1981 most likely. Those wanted posters were a crime; this man is fit.

“Right. Sorry about that,” I say, accepting the hand he offers to help me stand. “Just an little potion experiment gone wrong.” I glance at the door to the building beside us, from which music pours into the alley. Loud and alluring.

When I look back at Sirius, he’s watching me with an intense, dark gaze, painted a deep purple by the neon lights to a tattoo parlor opposite us. Typically, it’s the kind of look I very much like getting, especially from someone with the audacity to pull off a leather jacket that tight around his biceps.

Sirius seems to consider what he says next, working the stubble over his jaw before finally speaking. “Whatever you’ve got going on, I’m just here for a good time.” His head shifts almost imperceptibly at the door behind him.

In an instant, I understand the invitation for what it is. I smell the smoke of his cigarette, the whiff of alcohol permeating the alleyway, the exhaustion-tinged edges to Sirius’s tough exterior. Exhaustion I know in my own way, too. He’s a man on the brink of war and this is an escape.

I smile. “Same,” I say, reaching out to pull the door open, flooding us with music. I could use an escape too.

My lightweight wool trousers and crisp oxford are wildly out of place amid a see of cotton tees, leather in every sartorial configuration imaginable, studs, chains, and the sweltering ebb and flow of bodies pressed together in a sea called rhythm.

Sirius doesn’t seem to mind. At least, judging by the way he hooks his fingers through my belt loops and pulls us flush together, I certainly get the sense he doesn’t.

Is this what fun feels like? I think I’ve forgotten. I’m reintroduced, sharply and wonderfully, pressed to a man’s chest, breathing in his sweat-soaked cologne, and nursing a rapidly growing erection against his hipbone.

His hands grip my hips; mine pull at the low bun knotted at the base of his neck. I haven’t had a drop to drink and I am definitely drunk on the unspoken promises in Sirius’s stare as we sway, clinging to each other in a mass of writhing bodies, blanketed in a musical tempo mirrored in my blood.

I let him pull me to the edge of the crowd. I slip with him into a dim corridor. I assist, eagerly, with locking the door to the tiny toilet behind me. And I gasp, loudly, when Sirius pins me to the door, rough stubble a sandpaper against by throat as he sucks my pulse point.

I surrender to a tide that allows me to let go. I never know how much time I have, wherever I end up. And this is the most fun I’ve had in longer than I care to admit, probably longer than I can remember. Genius is unrelenting, or something like that.

I’m no genius when Sirius gets my trousers open and wraps his hand around my cock; I’m nothing but a whimpering mess. I reach out and find his shoulders, feeling like I’m not doing enough, and demand a kiss from him. It’s incoherent and messy, paced to the slow up and down of his hand on me.

When he pulls out his own cock, lines it up with mine, and spits into his hand before wrapping it around the both of us, any attempts I’d had at participating take a back seat to blinding pleasure. I’m lost to the thump of music beyond the dark toilet we’ve sequestered ourselves in, to the slick sounds of our cocks in his hand, to the way pleasure shoots like magma through my veins.

I probably would have sunk to the filthy, grime-encrusted floor if not for the way Sirius’s body pins me to the door, how he’s started sucking bruises into my neck again. In inhale another huge pull of his cologne, now edged with the stench of sex mixed with sweat.

It sends me over, clutching his supper leather lapels and groaning into his dark hair. I see glitter right before I slam by eyes shut: magenta, opaque.

When I blink again, I’m in my lab. Almost certainly back in my own time. My clothes are perfectly righted, cock right where it belongs inside my trousers.

But there’s a thumping in my veins, familiar and foreign.

#wheel of doom

15 notes · View notes

eclecticstarlightconnoisseur · 4 years

Text

Paying It Forward

Good Evening all,

Ok, I know I haven’t posted the next chapter of Edinburgh to Boston. I am sorry about that. But it has been a pretty bad, horrible, no good end of the year for me. Hubby got sick again and I had to rush him to hospital. He needed heavy duty antibiotics. He is now ok, but still very debilitated after his illness. Me? I have been taking care of him, going to work, and my characters have decided not to play nice with me. Hubs said I painted myself into a corner. Not exactly, I just haven’t figured out how to get them to do what I want them to do. And I am tired. Which is partially how this fic came about.

I decided that I would start to read MOBY for two reasons. One, it has been some time since I read it and I am hoping that Bees will be out this year and I wanted to refresh my memory of what happened previously. Two, I was hoping it would help my writer’s block. It did but in an unexpected way. After getting to a certain point in the story, I went to sleep and dreamt the story you are about to read. It played in my head over and over, like it had to some out. So I wrote it and here it is.

Now that I said MOBY: SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! If you haven’t read MOBY and don’t want to find out what’s going to happen, PLEASE DON’T READ THIS. The story actually draws on ABOSAA, ECHO, MOBY, and a tiny bit from the TV program.

As always I am indebted to @scubalass for her most excellent work as my beta. Also she contributed to the story which made it so much better. I’ll tell you at the end. I am also grateful to @gotham-ruaidh who told me it was different and good. And that I should go with it. The other important thing you need to know is it is written like one of Claire’s voice-over monologues. I know that people hate the monologues, but that’s how it was and I kept to it.

So I give you Paying It Forward. I hope you like it.

The detritus of the woodland floor muffled the sounds of the Army advancing. Moldy leaves crackled and fragrant pine needles from fir trees helped to disguise their steps. But, it is not in the make-up of the military to travel quietly especially in the 18th century. Horses neighed and harness jingled. Goats bleated. Shot pouches and cartridge-boxes buckled to belts rattled and clinked Wagons creaked under their heavy loads. Carriages groaned pulling the weighty cannon along. And, of course, there was Rollo, half-wolf, half-dog. The mongrel barked madly harassing man and beast alike as he weaved among them. The voice of my nephew, Ian Murray, called to the animal, “ Thig an seo cù .” Yipping with glee at the sound of his master’s voice, he raced to Ian’s side. The sounds of infantry on the move certainly broke the peace of the coppice.

Our journey became hampered by the dense forest we traveled through. It was thick with trees, bushes, and bramble impeding the progress of the Continental Army as they marched toward Monmouth. Once there we were to muster with General George Washington and the other battalions.

Commanding this regiment is the newly ordained General James Fraser, my husband to whom I serve as company surgeon. I do admit it was quite a shock to first see him dressed in the full military regalia of a Continental Officer. I began to tremble becoming a quivering mess when I first took him in wearing an officer’s dark blue and buff.

“Why does it always have to be you? Haven’t you, haven’t we given enough? Isn't it time for you to put down your sword and pistol?” I shuddered as I recalled the failed attempt by Charles Stewart to regain the Scottish crown which resulted in our twenty-year separation. The skirmish at Alamance that resulted in Murtagh’s death and the hanging of our son-in-law Roger which almost cost his life. The battle of Saratoga where I amputated one of Jamie’s fingers. Now, we were being pulled into another conflict. Was it too much to want to return to our simple life on the Ridge I wondered? But Jamie, my Jamie, is a highlander born and bred. A decent man, with strong principles and morals. He is a man of honor and that is not a small thing to be. I watched him as he sat at the head of the column, sitting straight and tall in his saddle like the true highland warrior he is. The breadth of his powerful back and shoulders would leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was born to lead, to command, to this moment in history. And command he would, braving the responsibility of leading his battalion to fight against the oppression of the British king.

Jamie knew the meaning of suffering, cruelty, and loss at the hands of the English. The loss of his home, his country, his own personal freedom came at their hands. And the loss of his family. He had quite the history with the Redcoats. Arrested for obstruction, escaping, then being recaptured. He ran afoul of a sadistic dragoon captain who had him flogged most cruelly one hundred lashes upon one hundred lashes. He escaped again and lived as an outlaw on the run instead of facing the gallows for a murder he did not commit.

Then there was Culloden. Where he, or should I say we lost everything. I was pregnant with our second child; our first child, a daughter, was stillborn. On the eve of battle, Jamie forced me to return to my own time for the safety of myself and our child. Jamie believed it would be his destiny to die in battle. Instead, he lived. Again he went into hiding for seven years living in a cave in Lallybroch. The Redcoats continued to harass his family, stealing what they wanted from the estate. They arrested Ian, Jamie’s brother-in-law as the Redcoats believed he knew of Jamie’s whereabouts. And there was the Highland Clearances which destroyed homes, Scottish culture, language, and their way of life.

Jamie was not driven to this war because of a need for revenge because of his losses, but rather he felt he was honor-bound as a father to take up his sword to protect those he loved. Even if those he loved lived centuries after him.

“Ye said that this was meant tae be Brianna’s home, her country, aye? Then I must do what I can for our daughter and her bairns. ‘Tis my duty as sire and grandsire to see that they will live free, Sassenach.”

And he would do what he must for Brianna, Jem, wee Mandy, and Roger. No matter the cost to himself.

My mind completely focused on Jamie and our immediate future prevented me from noticing a tall man thin as a rail standing in the middle of the road blocking our progress. Immediately, Jamie’s second in command rode up next to his commander.

The man did not budge an inch. He was rather rough looking. Wearing a knitted cap on his head, his long greasy hair protruded out. A grizzled beard covered his face. His clothes were quite worn having been patched many times. He wore no shoes. In all, he looked quite primitive.

Suddenly, he moved with a decided determination; a man on a mission. The man strode up to Jamie assuming correctly that he was the man in charge.

A strong downward breeze announced his presence. Most likely the man had not bathed in months if not years. The odor was enough to make your eyes water.

The old man came forward eyeing Jamie like an entomologist studying a new species of bug. Relaxing he gave a tug on his cap and briefly bobbed his head.

“Ye in charge here?” the old coot demanded.

‘Aye, I am. General James Fraser at yer service sir. Might I enquire to whom I am speaking?”

“Mortimer Hepplewhite the owner of this here land yer trespassing on. And I want tae know when ye will be gone.”

“Mr. Hepplewhite, we shall be off yer land as soon as may be. We need to travel off the main road for now as there have been sightings of English troops nearby.”

“Well, all yer clanging and stomping about is disturbing the peace of me home.”

Jamie turned around to look at the property. It had not been cleared for planting nor were there any animals grazing. All that stood in the distance was a ramshackle cabin with a lopsided chimney discharging an inordinate amount of smoke.

“I dinna see any crops, or animals grazing, or people that we might be disturbing, sir.”

“Not disturbing he says! Why I’ll have ye know me Arabella is in a right fit. She doesn’t care much for strangers.”

The recluse, a long-limb man, raised a heretofore unnoticed ball of fur and thrust it under Jamie’s nose. He focused on it intently causing his eyes to almost cross. It hissed, spit, and yowled with great ferocity.

It seemed that Arabella was a cantankerous cat. And was as ill-kempt as its master with matted fur and bald in spots. One fang hung outside its mouth and on closer inspection seemed to be missing an eye.

Mortimer drew the beast close to his chest whispering sweet words of comfort while tenderly stroking its scraggly fur. The cat settled in his arms and even began to purr.

Jamie called to his Lieutenant and leaned over to whisper in his ear. He nodded and rode off to follow his orders.

I sat on my horse watching this spectacle play out. Without warning, I felt the sudden loss of my cat and worried about his well-being. Adso was part house cat and part feral cat. However, he was my cat. He loved to jump onto my lap to snuggle and drift off to sleep. Or lie on the windowsill basking in a sunbeam tail swishing like a metronome. He did wreak havoc in my surgery at times but he was mine, a gift from Jamie. Adso was just as much a part of the family as any of us. So why couldn’t Arabella be this lonely man’s family? Family is whoever you say they are.

The Lieutenant promptly returned carrying a bundle which he handed to Jamie.

Jamie slid down from his horse and approached the gentleman.

“On behalf of the Continental Army, I would like tae offer ye recompense for disturbing yer peace. Please accept this small token from myself and General Washington. And for the lovely Miss Arabella, I make a gift of this fish just caught this morning.”

Jamie removed his hat and bowed to the man.

Mortimer truly wasn’t sure of what to make of this but graciously accepted the parcel. He removed his cap revealing a head of matted hair and returned the bow. He replaced his cap, straightened his shoulders, held his head high as he strolled back to his home, a rich man. A man made richer not for what he received but for the respect given him.

Later that night as I lay in Jamie’s embrace I asked him what prompted his actions on the road.

“Do ye ken the conversation we had in the gardens in Philadelphia? The one about what happened between ye and his lordship?”

Did I remember, he wanted to know? How could I forget?

“Of course I remember, you said that you would mention it from time to time. Am I to take it that this will be one of those times?”

“Aye, ‘tis. But not what yer thinking about,” he said with a sidelong look. “I’m speaking of how John’s friendship healed us during times of great need. Mine at Ardsmuir, Hellwater, and Jamaica. Yer’s when ye thought I died.” The topic of my hasty marriage to John (for strictly political reasons) was still a sore point to him. He understood it, but didn’t and wouldn’t like it.

Jamie let out a sigh trying to collect himself before continuing, “Mortimer was naught but a poor lonely old man, Sassenach. And I did not do much for him. I gave him a wee bit of flour, lard, dried meat, apples, and some parritch.” Jamie stopped to think for a moment, “Oh, a razor, a lump of soap, and a fish for his mangy cat.”

“Are you saying that you did this because of the kindnesses John showed us?”

“Exactly so, mo ghràdh . I felt..it just felt like the right thing tae do.”

I raised my face to look at him, “There’s a term for that and it's called paying it forward .”

He looked quizzically at me trying to understand what I meant.

“What that means is when someone does something kind or helpful for you, you return that kindness to a different person instead of repaying the person who originally helped you. Did you know that the man who started this idea is alive now?”

“Och, aye? Who is he Sassenach?”

“Benjamin Franklin. I think you would like him. He was a founding Father, freemason, inventor, scientist, and a printer.”

His eyebrows lifted at the mention of Franklin being a printer and a freemason. “I should like to meet this man one day. “

Jamie grew quiet as he attempted to digest this information. “Paying it forward,” he rolled the words around in his mouth tasting them. “Aye, that’s it. Just so, I was paying it forward.”

“Jamie, I think what you did was far greater than repaying a kindness. I think you gave him something more than he ever expected. You gave him respect and a way to restore his dignity.”

He leaned over and kissed me, “Aye, Sassenach, respect is something every man or woman deserves.” Jamie stopped to think for a moment, “No man wants to go about stinking if he can help it.” I knew he was thinking of his time hiding in the cave and as a prisoner at Ardsmuir. “There were days I thought I would never get the stink off my body, dirt from under my nails, or be rid of the lice. ‘Twas a small thing but it may make a big difference to him. Maybe it will help to restore his self-regard.”

The following day we resumed our journey. Once again a man stood in the road again blocking our path. There was something vaguely familiar about him. It was Mortimer, now clean-shaven, clothes washed having removed several layers of filth, and much less fragrant. He carried a pack strapped to his back probably containing all his worldly possessions. Strangely he carried a beautiful and well-maintained musket in his hand.

He approached Jamie, removed his cap, and bowed deeply.

“Yer Excellency, I have decided tae travel with ye fer a while. If ye dinna mind.”

“Yer presence is welcome, Mr. Hepplewhite. Find yerself a place among the men. This evening please come by tae see my wife. She is the physician of our troop. She will see tae yer physicking needs should ye have any.”

“I thank ye, sir.” Mortimer replaced his cap, lowered his head, and took a position among the rank-and-file.

Jamie smiled, a pleased look playing across his face. His arm raised and he waved us forward.

As the men resumed their march, a wee black puff ball of fur stuck its head out of Mortimer’s bag evidently Arabella had a wash-up too.

********************

Thig an seo cù - Come here dog.

If anyone wants to know, Jamie’s white stallion’s name was Samson. And he sneezed violently when he sniffed Mortimer.

A little bit of history here. Benjamin Franklin lent Benjamin Webb a sum of money to start a business. He told Webb that when his business was successful and he had paid all his debts, he should likewise help someone else like Franklin helped him. In return, that gentleman would have to assist someone else like Webb helped him. Franklin hoped this would continue until some knave would stop its progress. The idea of paying it forward was born.

We can all thank @scubalass for telling me about Ben Franklin and Paying It Forward. She is truly an amazing person and a fount of information and wisdom. I think that this added so much to the story and found it quite interesting.

Thank you for reading. I hope you liked it.

It is also on AO3 where I am LadyJane518: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28907349

#paying it forward #moby #jamie and claire #Mortimer Hepplewhite #revolutionary war #arabella the cat #ol fanfic #My writing #Here Goes Nothing #good to flex the writing muscles

69 notes · View notes

eryiss · 4 years

Text

Chapter One - The House

Summary: Freed and Laxus live incredibly different lives. Freed is a corporate lawyer in the capital city, and Laxus works as a handyman in a countryside hotel. Despite their differences, their lives collide when Freed inherits a house in Laxus’ village, and hires him to make the derelict building liveable. But the closer they get, the more they seem to offer each other. [Fraxus Multi-Chapter]

This was written as my admission for Fraxus Day 2020, hosted by @fuckyeahfraxus. It ended up becoming a multi-chapter, and I thought the first chapter should go up today, as a holloween gift. The next one will be published on thursday, and will continue on weekly.

You can read this under the cut, on Fanfiction, or on Archive of Our Own. You can find the chapter masterpost here.

Chapter One – The House

Freed hadn't expected his mother's death to be so tedious.

He should probably feel more emotional about it. He and his mother had no ill-will towards one another – there was no tragic secret nor history of arguing or abuse between them – but he found himself oddly unbothered by hearing of her death. Not a numbness of any kind either, he felt very much the same as if a colleague had told him their mother had passed. It was just an event that had happened, and something that affected his life, but not his emotions.

His apathy probably came from the fact he and his mother hadn't spoken for years. Again, not for any great reason, just because they didn't. He and his father had always been closer, and when he had died four years prior, Freed had grieved and got over it as best a person can. His mother was the worker of the family, and thus the emotional relationship hadn't been as strong. Neither had made an effort to connect in their adulthood, only really linked by his father. And so once he had passed, there wasn't really any reason to speak. Neither person was overly emotional, so they didn't seek comfort in one another's arms, and instead just drifted off.

And so, the death of his mother was tedious.

Death was followed by a lot of things. The need to plan a funeral, people being completely unaware of how to act around him, and an odd amount of pity coming from people who didn't know him at all. Freed was something of a pragmatist, and as such it became an experience he didn't want to repeat. At least with the death of his father, he'd had his sadness to distract him. But this was just, well… tedious.

Perhaps the worse thing to have happened occurred two days prior. As was customary after someone passes, there was a reading of the will. A pointless exercise for this instance, given Freed had literally inherited everything. Freed knew this already – he was his family's lawyer for god's sake, he drafted the damned thing – but he still had to attend the reading. So, for an hour in a busy work week, he was forced to travel down two floors in his building, and sit there while another lawyer – Natsu Dragneel, who had actually interned under Freed for a year – explained the law and what the will meant. To the man who had taught him it!

Further adding to the annoyance of the situation, almost everything he'd inherited had strings attached. There was a lot of debt, from both loans and gambling, apparently. Freed's credit score was going to take a hit, given how much there was. There were also her belongings, which he would have to look through at some point. She also apparently owned property, which was now his.

This would be good, had it not been for its location. Freed's life was centred in the city, this house was in the middle of the countryside, miles from what Freed considered civilisation. Why she had owned a house there was beyond Freed, she was more metropolitan than him; she lived in Era and Era alone. But unfortunately, now it was his.

So now, he was nearing the end of a three-and-a-half-hour train ride.

He was going to sell the place, of course. Why his mother hadn't done so confused Freed, given her debts. Property values were high in this area, many rich older people wanted to retire there, and a three-bedroom cottage was perfect for that. But he needed to see it, speak with estate agents, and sign away the rights. All in all, tedious.

When he got off the train, he was hit by how different it was to Era. It was open, the air smelt different and it looked like an illustration from a Victorian romance novel. All very idyllic, but Freed had no intention of staying long enough to appreciate it. Instead, he located the taxi service, and ordered a car to his new property.

Apparently Uber hadn't arrived there yet.

The car came soon enough, and after a few failed attempts to illicit more than a curt answer from Freed, it was a quiet ride. It took about forty minutes, and Freed watched as fields passed by, the atmosphere dampened by the scent of manure filling the air. People raved about the fresh air in the countryside, but Freed much preferred the smell of petrol and faint piss of Era to literal crap. Better the devil you know.

Thankfully, the smell of muck spreading was interrupted when his phone lit up. He glanced at the contact name – 'Estate Agent' – before lifting it to his ear and accepting the call. He needed an evaluation for the property, and apparently this man was the best in the area. Hopefully the fastest too.

"Mr Clive," He greeted, leaning back.

"Mr Justine," The estate agent replied in a more jovial tone. "Just to let you know, I'm at the property and waiting for you. There's been a few evaluations over the years and they're all pretty similar, so it shouldn't take long."

"Thank you," Freed nodded to himself, glancing past the front seat to see the GPS saying they should be at their destination in about five minutes. "I'll be there soon."

"Great," Gildarts' grin was audible in his tone. "Sorry that you had to come down here to deal all of this."

"It's not your fault," Freed said placatingly, though not honestly. "The sooner it's done, the better."

"Couldn't agree more," Gildarts grinned.

"Why had it been evaluated before?" Freed asked, brows furrowing slightly.

"Apparently your mother has tried to sell it a few times. Twice with independent online stores, and once with an estate agent. Clearly it didn't go well," The man laughed. "But we'll be more successful. We know what we're doing."

After some pointless pleasantries, the call was ended. Freed found himself frowning; a cottage in this area should have been sold without any difficulty. The fact this one hadn't, despite its perfect position and seemingly positive qualities, didn't bode well. He tried to be optimistic, but at this point, it was almost certain that even selling the house would further add to his annoyances.

It was ten minutes later – it took longer than expected because he got caught up in traffic caused by a heard of cows crossing from one field to the other, followed by an uncaring farmer who glared at the taxi as if it were an affront to his lifestyle – when he saw the house.

It was clear as to why his mother couldn't sell it.

The place was practically derelict. In its prime it would have been the ideal village cottage, with white walls and a slated roof. It would have had a garden filled with perfectly trimmed flowers, a large but well-groomed oak tree, and most likely a cliché dog running around. Unfortunately, the house's prime was clearly centuries ago because it embodied the world decapitated in a way Freed had never seen. The roof was falling apart, the garden filled with so many overgrown plants nothing else could be seen, and a window was hanging out of the wall. It was unliveable, and practically unlovable.

Perfect. His mother had left him debt, three wardrobes filled with wrinkled clothes, and a building nobody could use without a death wish. Now his hopes of selling the place was unrealistic.

As he approached the building, a man made his presence known by leaving a car with a smile on his face. He was older than Freed, in his late forties if Freed was being kind, and he gave a polite 'Hello' as he approached. It was clearly the estate agent, who was showing a lot more optimism than Freed felt at that moment.

"Mr Justine, nice to meet you in person," He greeted.

"Likewise," Freed nodded, though his tone didn't reflect the sentiment. Gildarts laughed.

"I can see from your face that you were expecting something a little… different," The man chuckled, and Freed found himself annoyed by the man's enthusiasm. "You probably thought it'd be a little more liveable, didn't ya?"

"Something like that," Freed agreed, looking at the building almost accusingly.

"Well if it's any kind of relief, the building's structure is actually very secure. I won't lie, there's probably hundreds of problems going on in there, but at least the roof isn't going to collapse on our heads," The agent laughed, and in any other situation it might be less grating. "I can explain the details as we look through it, I'm sure that you want to get this done quickly."

"If that's possible."

Gildarts nodded, then jogged back to his car. When he returned, he was holding two hardhats that one would see on a building site, and Freed looked at it warily. Gildarts smiled and patted him on the shoulder with an unneeded amount of strength.

"The roof itself won't fall, but there's always a chance that the ceiling tiles might, so we can't be too careful, can we?" He chuckled loudly, placing on his hat, and walking into the building. Freed, after a moment of hesitation, joined him.

~~~

"So, you're sayi-" A small scratch. "-basically unsellable."

Freed ground his teeth together slightly. He was pacing down a village high-street, holding his phone to his ear and trying his best to listen to Evergreen's stuttering voice. Apparently random country roads were perfectly fine with phone signals; but for the most built up area for miles, it was practically impossible to have a conversation without some kind of interference. It was something very quickly grating on his nerves.

"Essentially, yes," Freed sighed, sidestepping a couple walking towards him. "It's too run down for anyone to want to buy it. My estate agent said the best thing to do is to see if a property auction will take it and sell it cheap."

"Why don't you-" Another scratching sound. "-it down. Sell the land-" A quick, high pitched noise. "-farmer or property developer."

Freed's muscles tenses slightly at the suggestion. He had thought about that, but of course when he had told Gildarts that it was the logical course of action, the man had looked at him with something akin to pity in his eyes. He had then patted the man on the shoulder – again making Freed's body jerk slightly with the power behind the action – and added another layer of annoyance to this ridiculous situation.

"Apparently it's a listed building, and has some kind of historical preservation status," Freed sighed, slowing slightly when the buzzing on the phone went quiet. Hopefully, he had a stronger signal now. "Essentially meaning, the building has to stay."

"If it's so important, why did they let it get so run down?" Evergreen asked, voice clear now.

"They didn't, my mother has been receiving phone calls and letters from local council about it for years," Freed wiped at his eye with his free hand, deflating slightly. "Which I will now be getting, I suppose. Along with the letters and phone-calls from debt collectors, no doubt."

"How much would it sell for as it is?"

"Optimistically, 25 thousand. Since you can't make any modifications to the outer building, something in this state is hard to get customers for."

It wasn't anywhere near enough to cover his mother's debts, even when combined with the savings he was unwilling to give up. Though a successful corporate lawyer and having saved a substantial part of his earning for over ten years, Freed was by no means rich. His family came from money, but never gave any to him as they wished for him not to be spoiled. So far it hadn't mattered, but now with six figures of debt from nowhere, his comfortable life seemed unstable. This wasn't helped by the fact he only wanted to use his savings as a last resort; he'd saved this money for himself, not to give to online casinos because of his mother's apparent addiction.

"Couldn't you make it a bit more marketable," Evergreen suggested, and Freed found himself irrationally irritated by the chewing he heard. They were colleagues, and he knew that her lunch break wasn't for another hour. "Tidy it up slightly."

"It's not run down, it's unliveable," Freed grunted. "The windows are boarded up, the garden practically a jungle, bare floorboards, furniture that is practically rotting, and a bird had nested on the oven."

"Maybe plant some flowers and bake a cake when showing people around," Evergreen joked, and Freed almost laughed.

He couldn't resent his mother. He did love her, and perhaps if he had made some kind of effort in talking to her then maybe the debts wouldn't have happened because she could talk to him about her gambling. Of course that regret was pointless now, thinking about what he could have done wouldn't change anything. He just had to deal with the consequences.

"You'll figure something out," Evergreen spoke up again.

"I know," Freed nodded. "But I'm not quite sure exactly how, yet."

"Well, I've just checked, and there's a nice-looking hotel near you," Evergreen smiled, and Freed could hear the clicking of a computer mouse through his speakers. "All good reviews, apparently a brilliant kitchen and very nice staff."

"Good for them," Freed said with furrowed brows.

"I've booked you a room," Evergreen declared, clearly grinning. Freed went to speak but Ever went first. "You're staying there for a week. You can either spend it thinking what to do next with your house, or just have a nice break, which you're overdue. Climb one of the mountains or something. I'll have a suitcase sent down with everything you need."

"No," Freed said firmly.

"I don't believe I gave you a choice, dear," Evergreen smiled. "And I've already paid for it. If you stay, consider it a gift. And if you don't, you'll be in even more debt, and I'm much worse than any bailiff you can think of, and we share an office, so I will make your life miserable."

"You're both blackmailing and threatening me," Freed grunted. "I could technically sue you for workplace harassment."

"Yeah, but you're my lawyer so you'd have to argue with yourself," Evergreen laughed. "Which you could, you've got an ego big enough you probably crop up on those reddit pages about people who think they're really smart," Freed let out an indignant sound at that, and Ever just laughed. "Just take some time off, you know you have to have a week off eventually. Why not just do it now? Enjoy the countryside, smell the fresh air, read a book."

"I read constantly, the fresh air is laden with the scent of literal shit, and so far the countryside is a pointless expanse of green that makes me want to take on more cases against environmentalists."

"Oh stop feeling sorry for yourself," Evergreen laughed. "Find your hotel, get yourself a drink, and relax for a week."

After a second of consideration, and a deflated sigh, Freed spoke again. "What's the hotel called."

"Fairy Tail Inn," Evergreen read aloud. "Sounds a bit cliché, but the rooms look great and the reviews are all good. Should be at one end of the high street, at the top of the hill."

Freed looked back over his shoulder, he had walked past the hotel in his search for a reliable amount of signal. He hadn't paid it much attention, as it was at the start of the conversation and he'd been attempting to understand any of what Evergreen was saying, but it looked nice enough. The only real reason he had actually remembered the place was because he was fairly sure they had mistaken the two spellings of the word Tail. He started to walk back up the steep high-street, telling Evergreen that he knew where the place was.

"Okay, I'll leave you to it then," Evergreen smiled, and the buzzing on the phone returned slightly. "See you in a week. Oh, and text me a picture of the house when you're tetchy so I can make fun of you. Bye!"

She cut herself off before Freed could reply, and the lawyer rolled his eyes slightly.

When he reached the top of the hill, he walked through a quaint beer garden and into the Fairy Tail building. He was confronted with a small front desk, behind which a woman with a light bob smiled up at him. He walked towards her, scanning the name tag – Lisanna – before she gave a polite introduction to the hotel.

"Are you here to eat, or to stay sir?" She asked, voice enthusiastic and happy.

"To stay," Freed explained. "I believe my friend just made a reservation for me. Freed Justine."

"One moment," She smiled, leaning down, and typing on the computer.

As she worked, Freed glanced around the lobby area. From the outside, the building had been incredibly rustic looking, and Freed had feared slightly that it was going to be as old fashioned and outdated inside as well. But it was contemporary, clean, and relatively nice. It was clear that it was made to look farmhouse-ish while keeping all the needed amenities, making a distinction from the branded hotels while also keeping to a high quality.

They had a few certificates hung on the walls, mainly hotel awards from different companies. There was also something proclaiming 'MAGNOLIA: Village of the Year 2019' in proud prominence. Freed vaguely wondered if this was something all businesses got, or if Fairy Tail was some kind of hub for the town.

"There you are," Lisanna said suddenly, and Freed turned back to her. "Room 17. If you'd like to follow me, I'll take you there. I can carry your bags if you'd like."

"I don't have any bags with me, actually," Freed said, and Lisanna looked at the floor with a frown to confirm his words. "This is rather impromptu, I'm afraid. I'm having a suitcase sent down here, I expect it'll be here tomorrow."

"Oh, okay," Lisanna smiled, though Freed could clearly see she was somewhat confused. "What brings you to Magnolia, if you don't mind me asking? We don't get many people here in autumn, you're our only guest actually."

"It's not for pleasure," Freed explained. "I inherited some property, and selling it isn't as easy as I thought, so I'll be here for a little while."

"Is that the Albion House?" She asked as they turned a corner.

"Yes," Freed answered a little slowly.

"Oh, sorry, that probably sounds a bit creepy that I know it so fast," She laughed. "It's just that news sort of travelled about it getting a new owner. It's been run down for a while, and people thought that maybe the new person would try and renovate it. But if you want to sell it then that's your choice of course, I hope it goes better than it did with your mother-" She stopped talking, and clearly looked uncomfortable. "Oh, I'm sorry. For your loss, and for that."

"You don't need to do that," Freed waved her off. "I'm not going to start crying at the sound of her name."

She looked relieved at his reaction, and Freed tried not to show a small scowl on his face. The young woman hadn't done anything wrong, but the fact she knew both the house and the fact his mother had died meant that other people knew as well. He had hoped that, at least for one week, he wouldn't have to deal with people knowing about his bereavement. Apparently he wasn't even going to be given this.

"Is the house important for some reason?" Freed asked as they climbed the stairs. "It's got historical preservation, and you said people were interested when they found out I own it."

"Not exactly," Lisanna smiled. "I think all the buildings in the town have that status, they want to make it look like it did when it was made. Personally, I think they do it because the council makes a lot of money from film shoots coming here," She laughed a little. "And we're a fairly small community, so news gets around. They were the same when it got sold last time, actually. They thought it'd get renovated too."

"So my mother wasn't the reason it looks like it does, then?"

"I've never seen it in a better state," Lisanna shrugged, before pausing in thought. "I think there's a painting of what it used to look like in your room. That's a coincidence."

She laughed to herself before continuing to walk, Freed following her. They walked through a few more corridors and up another staircase before they stopped at the old looking door of one of the rooms. Lisanna pulled a key from her pocket and opened the door, revealing the room that was to be Freed's home for the rest of the week. Freed walked in after, and looked around.

It was a nice room, also designed to look like it belonged in a farm house while still being relatively luxurious. It was on the smaller side, clearly Evergreen hadn't wanted to spend too much if the single bed was telling, but nice enough. A private bathroom, TV, and area for making drinks. It was essentially everything one could want from a hotel room. Although the fact that the slanted roof above the bed was low did make Freed pause; he would have to make sure not to bang his head when he awoke.

His eyes fell to a painting on the wall. Sure enough, there was an illustration of the house he'd been inside, only in a much better state. It looked rather homely.

"It's nice, isn't it," Lisanna smiled. "I think that's why people want to see it renovated. Just because it's nice."

"Well, perhaps soon it will be," Freed mused. "I'll most likely have to sell it to a retail auction, they often attract people looking for cheap property to work on, or so my estate agent said. So perhaps that'll happen."

"You don't sound enthusiastic about the idea?"

"I was hoping for more than an auction house would be willing to pay, I must admit," Freed sighed, still looking at the painting. "It's a last resort, but I doubt I'll find a better offer over the next week."

"You could renovate it and sell it when you're done?" Lisanna suggested.

"My knowledge of property development extends to the legal side only," Freed chuckled to himself. "If I were to try and work on it, there's a good chance I'd set it alight. I expect that doesn't align with the preservations society's rules."

"I suppose not," Lisanna laughed. "I should get back to the desk and leave you alone. Breakfast is served from six until twelve, you get it included in the price of the room. And if your bags come I'll bring them up for you, or have my brother do it since he's working the desk tomorrow If there's anything else you need, just call reception," She smiled. "And we hope you enjoy your stay."

Freed watched her leave, before standing alone in the room and letting himself decompress for the first time since he arrived.

Peculiarly, he found his gaze land on the painting.

#Fraxus Day 2020 #Fraxus Day #Fraxus #Freed Justine #Laxus Dreyar #fairy tail #fanfic #writing #event #Multichapter #Word Count 3.9k #Fuckyeahfraxus

17 notes · View notes

insomniacowl · 4 years

Text

Doing philosophy with Fullmetal Alchemist (FMA), and Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood (FMAB)2: Conversation between structuralism and post-structuralism.

Abstract

This essay aims to compare how the idea of the “Principle of equivalent exchange (PoEE)” is explored and framed between the two series Fullmetal Alchemist (2003) and Fullmetal Alchemist brotherhood (2009). The 2003 anime series will be referred to as FMA, while the 2009’s brotherhood series will be referred to as FMAB.

FMA animation series that aired in 2003 is very different from FMAB. FMAB is a closer adaptation of the source material.

For the uninitiated, take this as a spoiler warning. But to give it a try because it is still one of the best Shonen anime out there.

Introduction

The aim of this comparative essay is not to say which is better. I believe that both have unique qualities that make them great in their own right. The bleak atmosphere of FMA contrasted with the upbeat Shonen element of FMAB are not two things that can be compared side by side in their entirety. However, there are constitutive materials that lie under what is needed to tell a story such as character development, world-building, and symbolism. This analysis compares how the idea of “Principle of equivalent exchange) (PoEE) is explored, and developed through the characters, mainly Edward, but also of Alphonse, “Father”, and other supporting characters. This essay argues that FMA takes a structuralist view, while FMAB takes on a post-structuralist one.

Problem of PoEE

In both series, Alchemy is explored and defined as a tool of oppression by the Amestris state. They are incorporated into the military to serve as machines of mass destruction in times of warfare. This is hammer home repeatedly throughout the series, with state alchemists being called the “dogs of the state” and being dealt with weary, or hostility by many non-alchemists.

The institutionalization of Alchemy into the military war machine can be seen to parallel the enclosure movement of our world. The object that once existed for the use by the community, being fenced off and appropriated to benefit the rich capitalists. This creates resentment, and negative externalities, such as the forest being cut down and the land being used for mining in our world, or alchemy being used for military purposes in an authoritarian state.

The reasoning given for the enclosure movement, that denies access to the land once used by the community is that it will result in the depletion of resources if everyone is allowed to use the resource as they wish, and thus it should be incorporated in the rational capitalistic logic. This idea is contradictory, as it comes from the capitalist logic that comes from the mind of the rich, who assume that their greed is natural and universal, while ignores how the commons were used by the community for centuries without depletion. This capitalist logic resulted in the destruction of the land and the livelihoods of those who needed to live off said land.

The idea of institutionalization of what was once a common property, with their own implicit cultural rules attached, being appropriated by a destructive social system and destroying lives, is well displayed in the two series as well. There is the already mentioned use of alchemists in war, but I would like to focus on the scene that is going to be always talked about if one talks about FMA, Nina and Alexander.

The transfusing of Nina and Alexander, or even Nina’s mother with an unmentioned animal by Shou Tucker, in his effort to become a state alchemist suggests several things. First, the institutionalization of the commons into a destructive social system compels those living in the system to disregard the wellbeing of others, and care only for themselves. Second, it shows that Alchemy may have more laws attached to it then is discussed in the story. I say this since Dr.Marco when he practiced medicinal Alchemy to heal people, the people in the town did not think of it as Alchemy, pointing to the fact that Marco did not discuss this to anyone, and that the majority of people in the state of Amestris does not know what Alchemy looks like (a similar argument can be made of the people in the town of Riol, and Father Cornelo in the first two episodes). Izumi who is highly skilled is not seen using her Alchemy to earn a living or help people around her, and the vast majority of people do not perform Alchemy, even though it was something (even if the bothers are described as geniuses), the Elric brothers were able to master before the age of twelve. Thus, we can say that there are likely rules in place to prevent people from attempting to hone their skill in Alchemy; gatekeeping it thus there are very few opportunities for Alchemists to earn a living with their skills, even if it means sacrificing their humanity as Tucker did. This allows us to draw parallels with our world where people who were chased out of the common land, moved into urban cities to work in factory lines, being exploited and separate from their species-being.

Using this framing, let's dissect how Nina’s death influences the character growth of Edward with his iconic line of “We are neither god nor devils. But just mere humans”. In both series up to the very end, this haunts brothers. But there is a difference in how it is shown and explored.

In FMA (2003)

The incident with Nina is a traumatic experience for Edward in the 2003 FMA series. Even up to the final sequence, where Edward is thrown to the other world, he repeats the iconic line. Yet here, he digs into the idea of PoEE as a theory that needs to be further explored to uncover it in a true form; he believes that by viewing the Alchemy as a language to convey meanings across, is not yet perfect, but is something that can reach perfection with effort.

The idea of thinking PoEE as a concrete rule set in stone is present in the world-building of FMA. One example is Alphonse losing his memory of his journey with Edward in the final episode, which is regained when he travels across the ‘gate’ leaving his old world and power of Alchemy behind. Thus one thing is directly exchangeable with the other and it is the job of the Alchemist to codify into language what is the value attached to each object of trade. This idea that there is a monolithic book of law that can be interpreted and codified into one single set of ideas and beliefs is the basic understanding of structuralism. Therefore, we can see that the idea, that by paying a certain price, even the dead can be brought back to life reminds us of how the lives of people under capitalism are robbed of their qualitative values and are distilled down to quantifiable that can be exchanged, losing their humanity in the process.

The belief in the PoEE as the only form of knowledge results in greater hardship, and both Edward and Alphonse cooperate with Shou Tucker at one point or another due to it. When the brothers are made aware of Tucker’s effort of bringing Nina back to life, they help Tucker in this. But not only their attempt at helping tucker but thinking of this with the character of Sloth shows how the idea of PoEE can be problematic. The two brothers’ failure to bring Trisha Elric, their mother back to life resulted in the loss of their body/ limbs and serves as a reminder of their mistake in breaking the law of Alchemy. While in FMAB, learning that what they transmutated was not their mother happens early in the narrative, thus the understanding that the dead cannot come back to life brings the brother into a better path. However, in FMA, their human transmutation resulted in the creation of a Homunculus that looked exactly like their mother that carries with her pieces of Trisha’s memories. This difference is one of the reasons why the brothers assist Tucker’s effort in bringing Nina back to life and believing that modifying their understanding of Alchemy, yet relying solely on it; thinking of using Alchemy blindly to solve the problem that the very Alchemy brought about, without the consideration of how it may create further problems.

In FMAB

In FMAB, it is Nina’s death is again a source of despair for the relevant characters, yet it also serves as a motivator. Even up to the final episode, they cite the reason for continuing their travel, Edward westward, and Alphonse to the east, to gain knowledge of other forms of practicing understanding-deconstructing-reconstructing outside of Alchemy. This motivation is made possible due to the brothers’ journey throughout the series, interacting with various characters from outside of the general Amestrian race, such as Ishvalians and those from Xing. They further cooperated with these groups and fought to save the people of Amestris, making use of the multiple systems of understanding outside of Alchemy.

The theme that different forms of understanding being co-utilized to fulfil societal goals as being a more useful lens of understanding the world is further elaborated in the darkest hour of the fight with “Father” (I’ll refer to him as Dwarf in Flask (DiF) from here on) when Ed’s automail was destroyed, Alphonse’s body shattered, and everyone knocked out. It is with the help of May’s Alchahestry, along with Alphonse’s Alchemy that allows remote transmutation of Edward’s arm. Even if PoEE was in effect as Alphonse’s soul was taken in exchange, without May’s Alchahestry, Edwards’ body would have been stolen by DiF and it would have let to a very different and bleak ending. This co-utilization of theories of Alchemy and Alchahestry in cooperative ways to supplement where the other lacks and creates problems, and vice-versa, creating a complex and cooperative system of knowledge is a way to understand post-structuralism, that we can never reach a full understanding of anything by using one way of studying the text, but having a diverse way of analysis that results in the play of interpretation can bring about a more comprehensive understanding of the object, and therefore improve the society as a whole.

In his conversation with Gracia in the final episode, Alphonse cites the motivation of travel as, to prevent further atrocities that happened to Nina from happening, and posits his hypothesis of what I will name “compounding compassion”, something that is summarised as “pay the kindness you received forward with a little bit of your kindness added on top of it”. Or perhaps, the kindness Hughes showed the brothers, Hohenhime‘s offer to exchange his life for Al’s, or Winry’s reply to Edward’s demand of exchanging half of each other’s lives already show that even without having to go far, we can see that PoEE is not enough to explain every observation made. Al’s hypothesis is something I believe that can be practiced even in our world, and that deep down, we all want to celebrate such act of kindness. A community we can trust to support us and that we desire to support as well; one that can be joined by yielding one’s tool of oppression, as Edward did with his “Gate”. This, I believe is the message Arakawa Hiromu wants to convey to us.

Conclusion

We can see that FMA and FMAB tell the different message and can be used to think of the influence of structuralism and post-structuralism, in terms of having certain knowledge systems. Although I do not believe such comparison was meant to be drawn by anyone who had a hand in the creation of the series, having such case studies is an enjoyable mental exercise to perform. tl;dr Both are great series. I did some philosophy. GO WATCH THE SERIES!!

12 notes · View notes

wasalwaysagreatpickle · 4 years

Text

Sunday 28 August 1831

5 55/..

10 50/..

Out at 7 at which hour Fahrenheit 67˚ and fine morning – sauntered along my walk and the new Lower Brea road to Mr Samuel Washington’s – waited 10 minutes till he was ready – then walked down to look at the slopes of the Lower Brea road which I named my intention of planting – he thought the commissioners would [want] something paying for them – no! when they had walled off the road the slopes would be mine, and I was not therefore inclined to pay anything for them – he at last acknowledged they would be mine – and there being hope of the road being opened in spring, I said I would put off the planting till afterwards – next year –

Then overtook George Robinson on the road – the footpath through Well Royde wood to be set out by Washington tomorrow morning at 8 – then along the Brighouse road till turned down to Yew Trees wood – examined the quarry and went all along the bottom of the wood – the wall on both sides the lane explained as agreed upon with Thomas Pearson junior – then from our own gates went into the Cunnery wood sent 2 men out of it – home at 10 1/2 – found 4 letters on my desk – From Mr Lawton of York with bill of charges for my will £13.13.8 –

Long kind letter 3pp. and ends and top of page 1 written across from Mrs Norcliffe, Langton dated Friday 26th instant – she and Charlotte going a little ‘tour to Rokeby, Penrith by Keswick to Cockermouth, and Whitehaven, and must be back by the 19th’ - … ‘write to me if before September 6, Post office, Whitehaven’ – my boots from Rutter to be sent off as this evening – Isabella Norcliffe has paid for them – she to be off for Croft on her way to Scotland on Thursday – Hurried letter 2 widely written pp. from Mariana Lawton Friday 26th August – Charles better than she expected ‘though sadly cut up’ – .. ‘John has literally died a beggar…. the money given for Spurfield debts is gone, and the bills yet unpaid, the entire support of widow and 6 children must devolve on Charles – but the greatest of all the disappointments is that Mr Wood has lost the living, my being absent at the time has been a most unfortunate business, and I shall for the sake of others deeply and long lament it’ – thinks advantage has been taken of Charles’s state of depressed spirits to hurry him to a conclusion – William Ford has got the living for his son - … ‘we go to Leamington on Tuesday to the Royal hotel, and remain there I know not how long or how short a time’ –

Letter too 2 half sheets full, with 1 page and 2 ends of envelope from Lady Gordon, 34 Hertford Street, Friday 26th August franked by her brother-in-law Mr Frankland Lewis – ‘this letter is just like yourself, sensible, agreeable and to the purpose my affairs are still under discussion and till Monday or Tuesday next I can say nothing decidedly’! her own feeling is that she ‘must go – but not in such haste – could you be in London about the 10th or 12th September and be ready to start by land for Spain on the 14th or 15th – If I go my idea is – to take Georgiana’ ….. and leave Alice with one of her (Lady Gordon’s) sisters – ‘to remain in Spain till next spring or summer – when once I had completed my Cadiz business I should be entirely yours as to where to go, or what to do – the blessing you would be to me is not to be told etc. etc. would like me to get in London a thorough understanding of the business she is [going] that I may better know how to help her to decide – Lady Stuart de Rothesay at the lodge – has written to her to know if Miss Hobart will go abroad or not this winter, and telling Lady Stuart de Rothesay her (Lady Gordon’s) ‘possible plans’ – the reason she seemed in such a hurry to be off in her last letter was because the man going out to buy or bid for her property at Cadiz was thought to be going by the 6th of September packet – but it seems is not going till October and this gives her a month longer – the voyage will be 8 or 10 days – no preparations required but ‘mosquito nets, and a case with a few knives and forks, sheets and towels, and a glass or 2 – a black mantilla and a few yards of black silk or fine bombazeen’ – To leave all about carriages and servants till next week when she hopes ‘to write without a doubt’ ….. ‘Should you prefer going by sea and returning by land? Taking one carriage only out in the steamer? – has let her house to Mr Vaughan from the 17th September –

I must think of all this – the one carriage taken out would be mine, which would cost £30 I should suppose i.e. one half more than my own passage – say £30 and £20 and Cameron £20 and a man servant £15 and ten days living at £10.10.0 that would = £95.10.10 Take the distance from Calais by Paris and Bayonne to Cadiz at 300 postes, at 6 1/2 from per poste, and therefore suppose postage 2000 francs, suppose 30 days for the journey at 25 francs per day self and 2 servants for living = 750 francs – then I should look after things in Paris, Travel in comfort, and see a great deal of the country for 2750 francs and £10? from London to Calais = £120 or for 20, or 25 £ more than by sea – So far, good – But the chances are 10 to one we should be robbed near Madrid or before or after or both! Il faut y purser – then I must have a passport exprès, to allow me to carry about as much and whatever money I like, to make written notes, to be armed, have an escort if I demand it, and let my carriage pass the frontiers duty free –

Breakfast at 11 – Read my aunt all my letters except Lady Gordon’s, and read extracts from that

Saying Lady Gordon had business in Spain but not saying what –

Thought of staying a day or 2 longer here – Read the whole of the morning service and 1 of Mr James Knight’s [discussion] on the parables – then slept 1/2 hour and came upstairs at 1 20/.. – looking at maps and writing the above of today till 3 1/2 – then till 5 wrote 3pp. to Mariana (rather a good deal in them) and 1 page of 1/2 sheet paper to Cameron to say circumstances had occurred which would delay my leaving here for four or five days – if she had taken her place, must lose the 1/2 fare – shall hear from me again the day before I wish her to be off, but to hold herself in readiness – glad to hear from Langton very good accounts of all the family in the minster court – to apologize for my directing to her there – do not know how to direct to her at Miss Pearson’s – Tell Mariana to tell Watson to get me the stockings ordered for Madame Galvani or I must go without them – grieved more than I can tell that Mariana has so much reason to lament our tour – ‘But, Mary, who could foresee what was in the womb of time, and coming thus speedily to the birth? nor you, nor I, dreamed of what awaited us, or both had hurried home’ –

Letter from Lady Gordon this morning who cannot fix decidedly till tomorrow or Tuesday ‘that it will still be 4 or 5 days before we can make our final arrangements’ Shall be off however as soon as I can – ‘To prolong my stay much, would now be peculiarly uncomfortable to myself as well as to Marian; and at all rates, I shall make all the haste I can’ – If they stay a week at Leamington shall hope to catch them – now think of being off from here tomorrow week, but want time [cut]. Mariana to go to Liverpool and back by steam – ‘I suppose I could do this, and still be at Leamington on Tuesday week by nine or 10 at night, at latest’ – mention Mrs Norcliffe’s having heard I was going to Paris with Lady Stuart – Charles would surely not have given the living to Mr Ford’s son, had he preferred giving it to Mr Wood – ‘as there was no Lawton for it, what strikes me as most to be regretted is, that any very young man should have it – I fear I should have thought, the next incumbent ought to be 60 at least’ –

A little at my accounts – Dinner at 6 5/.. in 25 minutes for Mr Briggs waiting with my father and the rest – then had him in for 1 1/4 hour till I had thoroughly talked over all I had to say to him – about [Kerton’s] lease – not signed – desired the man to be told that if he did not sign before the 2nd of August next, he should have notice to quit – gave Mr Briggs the estimate for cellar and 2 chambers over it at Hardcastle’s £20 and £5 already paid by Mallinson and still owing to him for the drain that is made – spoke about Lower Brea mill, and the notice to Emmet about spoiling the black brook with the [canker] water from the colliery he is making – and about Benjamin Bottomley’s farm letting and the pew at Saint James’s for Whitley – and about planting the Lower Brea slopes and Godley Road ditto and about filling up Cunnery wood with 2000 oaks, and filling up Freeman’s quarry entirely with oaks and about the willow stakes to keep up the Tilley Holm and Dolt railing -

(Came to my room at 8 5/.. – Mr Briggs went at 7 55/..) Sent off at 8 10/60 by George my letter to ‘Mrs Lawton, Lawton Hall, Lawton, Cheshire’ and to ‘Mrs Cameron, Mrs Belcombe’s, Minster-Court, York’ – wrote the last 7 lines – then a little at my accounts again and went down at 10 1/4 – came back to my room at 10 1/4 – fine day – rainy evening after about 7 1/2 and windy – Fahrenheit 68˚ now at 10 1/4 p.m. -

#Anne Lister #Anne Lister Code Breaker #Mariana Lawton #1831 #Lady Gordon #Shibden

2 notes · View notes

didanawisgi · 4 years

Quote

I want to make it very clear where I stand on certain things that are happening in the United States of America right now. The USA is meant to be composed of many who form One, and who have the freedom to do so. Freedom means the ability to try new things, and yes, to even learn from your mistakes. There is no doubt that there have been oppressed people who have helped build the USA, much like in every country in the world. Slavery was, sadly, a part of that process, and sadly, slavery still exists in most parts of the world- and sexual slavery still exists even in the USA for many people. The United States of America is striving for higher ideals. When you become an American citizen- you are now an American- regardless of where your ancestors came from or from which country you originally came from. This is part of what makes the USA great, but it has taken centuries to get to this point. There are people that hold racist ideologies, and I have found that this racism is only changed from your example. No amount of protesting changes people. Rather love of people change people. I can speak on authority in this matter, having fought the KKK and Neo Nazi groups in the 1990's, and having the physical scars to show for it. That said, I support the Constitution of the United States of America which gives people the right to peacefully protest and bring awareness to injustice. I believe in standing up for the oppressed when I see it. I have a young daughter who is part White Mountain Apache Native American, and I want a great future for her- knowing that Indigenous Americans are the most oppressed people historically in the USA, even to this day. I believe in One Nation, under God, indivisible, as outlined in the pledge of allegiance to the American flag and what it represents. The USA has failed in it's ideals many times in history, and I'm sure it will in the future as well, but it is a government by the people, of the people, and for the people, and people are vulnerable and fail at being their best selves a lot, and thank God we have the freedom to learn from mistakes. That said, we should constantly strive to be our best. I do not believe that breaking the law with vandalism, or destroying property (whether public or private), or erasing the history of the USA by tearing down monuments via mob like fashion, is in the best interest of the country or the collective people it serves and sustains. Anger and destruction is not an energy of love, nor is it one of consideration. Rather, it is a selfish act. I also am concerned that many people are just seeing the world with filters right now, and the reality is that whenever you see something through a filter, everything appears to justify that filter. I would hope to encourage people to see bigger than their filters and see the bigger picture, and I would hope to remind people that if you are being told to be afraid BY ANYBODY, then you are being manipulated. This is especially true during an election year. When nobody is reasonable, then nobody is safe. Reason must return in this country, and the truth of the matter is, even though it is not perfect and we should always strive to make it better, it is still better than almost every country in the world, and there are millions of people from around the world trying to get into the USA because it is so much better than where they are coming from. I have personally travelled almost everywhere in the world, so I know what I am talking about here. When businesses are burned, and stores are looted, and churches are vandalized, and statues are removed, the soul of this country is being shaken. I don't agree with every statue in every park. I think Colombus was a jerk, but I see the Columbus statues value in the bigger narrative of our history. I believe in the sermons of Martin Luther King, and what he stood for, and I also view Malcolm X as a true hero who went from criminal to enlightened individual that his own people couldn't even follow. I see the humanity in every Confederate soldier who was fighting to maintain economic independence from the North, and I empathize with the Union struggle to maintain one nation in which they could use the southern resources for manufacturing options. That war became about slavery, but it was really about economics. The struggles that exist with many today really have to do with economics. The Master Jesus challenged us to love one another, and this can't be done with clenched fists. I support law enforcement- who has an incredibly dangerous and tough job, and which is needed in society. Law enforcement is composed of people of all races, and their job is largely to respond to crimes that have already occurred by criminals. Ultimately, I believe in the inherent divinity within all people, which most people are not in touch with. I believe if people were more in touch with that, then we would not have the majority of problems that humanity faces. This has less to do with religious establishment and more to do with inherent soul divinity within us- which most religions point to. I employ people to recognize this divinity within ALL people and treat them with the respect that they deserve, recognizing that sometimes people need to lose everything to gain everything. The law must be maintained and nobody is above it. The law forms the organizing force for civilization, but it can be carried out with compassion. I truly believe that outside groups have recently hijacked the largely peaceful protests in this country, and consequently, people aren't seeing clearly what is going on. I also believe that as long as we stay focussed on what makes us different- giving energy to that, then the USA will divide itself and make itself vulnerable to outside threats. Instead, we should put more energy into what unites us as a nation. Finally, I would encourage people not to attach their ego to outside groups or things, because they are false idols. When you attach your ego to a political party, a group, or even a race, when that thing is threatened, then you go into fight or flight mode like your personal life is being threatened, and you lose reason. Strive to be bigger than all of that. You can protest without destroying other people's livelihoods, and without vandalizing the monuments of American history. If everybody decided to start tearing down monuments, then where does it stop? Should the MLK monument in Washington DC be torn down next? When you pull down a monument you don't like, then you are essentially giving others permission to pull down monuments they don't like... Where does it stop? The problem is that doesn't- unless we decide to collectively be civil and live via better example. You will never be able to control what others do or how they treat you... Rather, you can only control how you react. Strive to be a better example- for the sake of others and yourself. I know I ranted a bit, but it needs to be said. I say this to be perfectly clear where I am coming from, and that it saddens me to see my friends fighting with each other. Please stop fighting with each other. Thank you! We are best remembered not by what we pull down, but what we build up...We make the biggest difference building people up.

Timothy Hogan

#timothy hogan #wisdom

2 notes · View notes

gotboredwrote · 5 years

Text

Rings // JRD

Pairing: John Richard Deacon x Fem!Reader Word Count: 4.9K Style: One-Shot (prompt: “you can keep it.”) Warnings: Fluff (ahhh so much of it toward the end), one sexual implication in joke form Summary: Y/N is the groundskeeper at Ridge Farm and mainly keeps to herself, despite the loud presence the Queen boys present themselves with. When her usual organized demeanor falters lightly, one of the boys is there to help her get back in check. Permanent Author’s Note: To clarify, I write because I get bored. Nothing is meant to be professional in any way, nor is meant to offend, cause anxiety, cause anger, cause sadness, or promote disagreement among readers in any sort of (semi)permanent way. A/N: I finally had a day off from work, and I really wanted to write, but I had no inspiration whatsoever. So, thanks to the lovely @love-me-a-good-prompt (I don’t know your name otherwise I would give you that credit, too, hon!) and their amazing lists of writing prompts, I found the one I want to use for today! Not sure if you ever read the stories that are written inspired by your prompts, but if you do, I hope you enjoy! Didn’t carefully proofread.

Masterlist

Typically, you were never one to mind if someone needed to rent out your farm house for any reason. The extra money was always helpful, and you typically got to meet some interesting characters. You had gotten a call about a semi-small group needing to rent out the space for an entire month and you lightly buzzed with enthusiasm. The money would be fantastic this time around, and having more than one or two people use the lodge meant that you just might be able to get some help around your house and keeping up with the landscaping. The person who called you told you his name was James Beach, and that he was in the music industry. He would not be joining the people coming to stay with you, but he was able to give you all the information you needed regarding your new tenants. He started with their names, and then proceeded to summarize them with one jarring sentence.

“The four make up an up-and-coming band named Queen, and they want to record an album up there. Is that alright?”

A band, huh? That was a new one. You had gotten everything from vacationers not wanting to spend fortunes on a hotel to honeymooners, to even that one time you had someone hiding from the law. But you never really talked about that – it makes you a little scared for your own safety. But that is beside the point. A band had never stumbled their way to your little farm, and you accepted Mr. Beach’s offer without even thinking about asking him if they would be bringing everything they needed. Typically, you never really had to provide anything for your guests, except the actual house they stayed in. Naturally, all these thoughts cascading through your mind evoked some panic, so you decided to call Mr. Beach back to ask him a bunch of questions that you had not asked originally.

Ring… ring…

“James Beach, how can I help you?”

“Mr. Beach? Hi again, this is uh, Y/N Y/L/N from Ridge Farm.”

“Oh, Ms. Y/N! I didn’t expect to hear from you again. What do I owe the pleasure?”

“Well, actually, I was doing some thinking about the group that will be coming to stay with me.”

“You’re not retracting the offer, are you?”

“Oh gosh, no, sir! I just normally only have to ask a few questions over the phone, but I’ve never actually had a band stay over before. I just had a couple other questions I wanted to run by you before their arrival to make sure I’m as prepared as possible. I know you must be a busy man, what working with rock stars and pop stars, and the like, but would you happen to have a few minutes now for me to ask a few things?”

“Ask away, my dear. My next client isn’t in for almost an hour.”

“Wonderful. Um, so I know the date the band is arriving, and I wrote down that there are four members. Is there anything specific I should know about any of them?”

“Well, Freddie is basically a drama queen that lives for the local gossip and a fancy cocktail. Mimosa in the morning kind of guy. John is shy and reserved, and if you give him cheese on toast and a pack of cigarettes, he should be content. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Brian is reserved and intellectual, but isn’t afraid to argue right back with someone if they need someone to defend them. Roger is a loud mouth, but harmless nonetheless. Might attempt to make you swoon for him, so just pay attention to him. He wouldn’t hurt you, just watch his antics. He’d also be happy with a carton of cigs. Is that okay for a basic introduction?”

“That’s perfect, Mr. Beach. Um, moving on. I have enough bedrooms and space for them, and I always keep food and drinks on hand, so I’ll make sure to buy John some cheese and bread. But one thing I don’t know is what they need for their music. I assume they’ll be bringing their own instruments and stuff, right?”

“Correct.”

“So, they are aware that this isn’t an actual studio, right? Like, I’m out in the middle of the countryside with minimal amenities. Just the necessities. I only have one space I can think of that they could use a recording studio.”

“Whatever it is you have will work for them, trust me. They’re an eclectic bunch. Be ready for some bickering, love.”

Jim was a very kind soul, and if the boys he managed were anything like him, you felt that you were going to have no trouble with them. You had a few other small things on your mind that you ran by him and got answers that suited your needs. After the phone call, you looked at the notes you had jotted down, ending on the date that the boys were scheduled to arrive. You only had two days to get what they needed, but that was plenty of time. You just had to remember a handful of things; clean up the basement and make up the boy’s rooms, buy some cigarettes for those that wanted them, and pick up some fresh cheese and bread from the market for John.

One thing you had forgotten to ask Jim was what time the boys were slated to arrive, so you made it a point to get up early with your chickens and hens like usual, and stay on the property all day. You had a peaceful breakfast on your porch, watching your chickens interact with one another, calmed by the quiet clucks they made. Most people found them annoying, and always made it a point to scream at you about it in some way despite the fact that you warn all potential guests about them. You, however, took comfort in having another living thing around. Your family all lived in town, and there was no significant other in your life. But you were always happy. None of it mattered. You always got to see your family when you travelled into town, but they respected your choice to remain on the property full-time. The rest of your morning and all of your afternoon was spent mindlessly cleaning or daydreaming at different spots on the farm, not really thinking about the possibility of chaos entering onto the property any minute. You walked inside, ready to prepare yourself a quiet dinner. As soon as you set your pan on your stove-top, the all-familiar sound of tires on dirt in the background over the quiet hum of your radio. Another thing to make you feel less alone when there were no other tenants on the property, a gift from your parents. Making your way through your porch door and down onto the grass, you saw the van parked in a spot it made for itself and you saw four men climb out of the back while the driver turned off the car. You walked half the distance between the houses and the car and paused until they were turned in your direction to greet them.

“Evening, gentlemen! You have impeccable timing – I was just about to cook dinner for myself, but now I’ll make six portions and you can all come join me! You can bring your belongings in my house for now, and after we eat, I will show you all to your respective rooms.”

With that, you walked the other half of the distance and approached them, all of them smiling fondly at you, except for one. He did not look happy at the arrival of your presence, but you attempted to not to pass any judgement until you got to know them. You went to pick up a piece of luggage in order to help them, when a younger looking, long-haired, skinny man approached you.

“I got it, you don’t have to help.”

His voice was a quiet, and slightly higher pitched than you imagined it would be for someone of his height. It was cute.

“I know I don’t have to, but I want to. It’s hot out, and I don’t want you guys breaking out into sweats before you even start playing.” You smiled sweetly at him, not really sure which member you were talking to yet, but he did not fight back. Making you assume it was not Roger or Brian. Freddie or John, though, that was still a toss-up.

Once all five of the men who would be staying on the property were inside, you told them that they could sit and chatter in your living room watching television, come and sit in the kitchen while you cooked and talk, or wander around the farm seeing and feeling the calmness settle around them. All of them, to your surprise, elected to join you in the kitchen. Either these were the most polite and distinguished of rock stars in the world, or they felt awkward just walking around your property. Either way, you were thankful for the company. Your kitchen table had one chair on either of the shorter sides, and benches accompanying the longer sides. Three of the men sat on one of the benches, and the other two took the single chairs. You never felt anxious in front of new tenants, so you just started talking to them.

“If I may, I have a few things I would like to tell you guys before I leave you to make your music,” looking over your shoulder at them while getting dinner started. “Oh, I also hope you all are good with homemade spaghetti and salad for dinner, everything is from scratch, including the pasta.” The one who glared at you the minute he got out of the van continued to stare at you, seemingly disapprovingly, while the other four smiled at you, patiently waiting to hear what it was you had to say. While you waited for the water to start boiling, you turned around to face them, getting your first real look at the men.

“So, normally, one of the first things I like to do is introduce myself and give the story of the little old farm to my new tenants. And I like to go over the boring stuff like the few rules I have and traditions I keep. If you would all be so kind as to oblige me, I would like to begin with that, and then I can leave you all alone to eat your dinner.”

You waited for a response, an auditory one, mainly, but all you got in response was more soft and small smiles and daggers from the one man. You decided that that was your cue to continue.

“Well, you should know that my name is Y/N, and I have lived on this property my whole life. Ridge has been in my family for the past four generations, and it fell onto me to keep the place going. Our family didn’t intend for it to be rented out, but extra money is always useful, and plus, living by myself out here, it’s nice to have some interesting company every once in a while, even if I don’t interact directly with them all that much. Anyway, the other house on the property is where you all will stay. Six bedrooms, so you have choices, three bathrooms, a fully-stocked kitchen, some lounge rooms. Everything you could need. Plus, I made sure that the basement was ready to go, which is where I assume you will be spending most of your time. I won’t be bothering you too much, unless something important comes up and I need to inform you all of something. I typically don’t inform my guests when I’m running errands, because I have enough faith in the people that stay to not want to break into my home. Otherwise, there are separate phone numbers for each house, so feel free to phone me if you have anything you need to ask me. Otherwise, the only other rule I have is don’t trash the place.”

You could hear the stove behind you start to boil, so you turned back around to toss the pasta in, and you began to heat up the sauce, as well. Once you were situated with that, you continued to talk to them over your shoulder.

“Continuing on, a couple small things you should know. I never mind if you want to me come cook your breakfasts, lunches, dinners, or if there is something specific you want to make and you don’t have it, I can run errands for you. I will never impose myself on your meal time or work time, and I will not drop over uninvited unless you specifically give me permission to. For the month you are here, the house is yours, not mine. Um, what else… Oh! If I ever need help with something on the farm, whether it be yard work, something with the chickens, or maybe running a particularly large errand, if no one is busy, I wouldn’t mind some help. It’s perfectly fine if you don’t want to or can’t, though. I completely understand.”

You turned back around to check on the stove, and once everything was stirred, you turned to face the boys one last time.

“I think that’s everything! I didn’t mean to talk your ear off, I just like to get formalities out of the way so you can start on whatever it is you wanted to do while you were here. If there is anything –”

“God, could you just shut your mouth and continue cooking us dinner? I would like you to do the thing that you just told us you would do.”

You stood in a stunned silence. The man’s words searing right through your chest and penetrating your heart to the point where you physically felt pain from the harshness it beat at. And from the looks on all four of the other men’s faces, you could tell that this was something they had worried would happen.

“Jesus, Paul, you really don’t know when it’s your bloody turn to talk, do you?” The blonde, seated at one of the end chairs, sounded intense and exasperated already at the man.

“Paul, she only has about two rules, and one of them is mutual respect from the tenants. You already broke that, and now I feel as though I need to apologize on behalf of all of us.” The taller man with dark curls spoke sternly at the man who you now knew was named Paul, and then turned to address you much more quietly. “I’m sorry for him, love.”

“It’s… it’s okay, guys. I’ll just keep making… dinner. Then I’ll take mine to my room.”

“Please don’t.” The man from earlier with the long hair hurriedly spoke at you. Before his outburst, he had hung his head with a small grimace adorning his face. Hearing the defeat in your voice prompted a change that was clearly unusual for the man, considering his face went a little red at the recognition of his own outburst. “I’ve… liked hearing you talk, and would like to get to know you more.”

“I’ll second that,” spoke the curly haired man. “Plus, we haven’t properly introduced ourselves yet.”

“Allow me to help you with the rest of dinner, darling.” The last person who had not spoken finally spoke up, and it was the man with dark hair to match the curly man’s, but straighter.

The four seated at the table chatted amongst themselves, three of them clearly ignoring the one named Paul, while the fifth helped you with dinner. He appeared like he was holding back on saying something, and you had barely expelled any air when he cut you off.

“I’m so sorry about Paul. He… we’re trying to rid the group of him, but he just won’t leave. It’s almost like he’s a groupie, but worse. And I wish I could tell you what his problem with you is. He just automatically became villainous when we arranged to stay here.”

“It’s not a problem, really. I’ve had worse guests.” Your mind flashing back to that one criminal.

“I sincerely hope you don’t think we’re all like that, darling, because we are far from it. Also, my name is Freddie, by the way. The blondie is Roger, curls is Brian, and our shy friend is John. Maybe you could impress them at dinner by remembering their names.”

You turned your neck to look at Freddie, who was now beaming at you, and you smiled back with a small giggle. You both turned your attentions back to dinner, and finished cooking. You brought plates for everyone at the kitchen table, and proceeded to strike up some conversations between the boys while you ate. You mainly got to know each other, and you asked them a little bit about the album they were recording. They had remembered the part where you said you would not intrude without their specific permission, and without even acknowledging Paul, they told you that you could come to the studio at any point if you ever wanted to hear some live music. You were really thankful that these guys did not seem to be rambunctious, besides in the little brotherly way they seemed to have. You had also made it a point to recite their names when you first sat down, like Freddie told you, and you got them all right. Brian and Roger just looked smug when you got them right, while John tilted and turned his head slightly, trying to hide the flush that washed over his face. Not one of embarrassment, just one of pure shock that someone cared enough about him to remember his name. Once dinner was finished, you told the boys to just throw their dishes in the sink. Paul took it a little bit too literally and you were afraid that one of your plates had been shattered. All six of you then made your way to the guest house where the boys would choose their rooms. Once rooms were decided on, you helped each of them to their rooms, ending with John. He chose the smallest room, as if to make your job easier once he left. You told him he could have had whichever room he wanted, but he was content with the smaller one. You were not one to argue. You reminded him that if there was anything he needed at any time to just give you a call, and you were about to walk out when he stopped you.

“May I tell you something?”

“Of course.”

“I happened to notice you wear rings.”

“Oh yeah,” you fondly looked down at your hands. “Most of them were passed down from my parents, a couple have been gifted to me from tenants over the years.”

“They suit you. I wear a few myself. Just noticed that we have that in common, sorry if that came out as strange. I don’t want you to think I’m strange, because I promise I’m-”

“John, really, it’s okay. I like that pay attention to small details like that. It shows you aren’t superficial.” John just stared back at you, at a loss for words at how well-spoken and sweet you were. “I look forward to getting to know you this month. I hope you sleep well.”

“You too, Y/N.”

About a week had passed by, and many breakfasts and jam sessions later, you decided it was time for you to do the first official surface cleaning of each of the boy’s rooms. They had already been in the studio for over an hour when you made your way over around ten in the morning, and you stood quietly in the doorway listening to them work for a few moments. When they finally settled down, you took the initiative to wave at them, so as not to ruin a recording they were working on. When you were sure it was safe to talk, you spoke up.

“Hi, lads. Just wanted to let you know that I am going to be floating through the house today doing a surface cleaning. I won’t rummage through any of your belongings, but I’ll be dusting and scrubbing the surfaces of the rooms you are staying in. If I happen to be in your room and you need it, or the bathroom you’ve been using, just let me know and I can leave. I’ll see you for lunch in a little while. Remember, sandwich bar today!”

As you were leaving, you heard Paul shout back that he would never let you live to see the next day if you rummaged through his room, so you just shot an okay sign through the doorway on your way out to let him know that you heard him. And you started cleaning. Once you noticed it was time for lunch, you started to make your way back to your kitchen to start the prepping. The boys had made it a habit of eating in your house instead of their kitchen, and only opting to use their kitchen if they wanted snacks or got hungry working through the night. You had told the boys that they could make their way to your kitchen around 1:30pm each day if they wanted lunch. John usually left a little bit earlier than all the others so he could help you out with meal prepping. He felt that it was the least he could do to make up for inconveniencing you, which you tried explaining to him on multiple occasions that he was the farthest thing from an inconvenience. Before heading over to your kitchen, John stopped in his room to freshen up a little bit after a particularly energetic session, and he caught a glimpse of something shiny underneath his dresser. He knelt down to pick it up, and he immediately recognized it as one of the rings you always wore. If he remembered right, you wore it on your thumb. It was just big enough, he noticed, that it fit on his pinky, so he placed it on his hand as a reminder to give it back to you. He glanced at the ring one last time, the strange feeling he got from wearing it slowly subsiding, and finished refreshing himself before making his way over to the kitchen of your home. Normally, no matter the time of day, John and the boys could always expect soft music to be coming from the small radio you had in your kitchen. The only time you turned it off was when you went to sleep. Otherwise, it was on all the time. Having the background noise eased your nerves if they ever flared up for any reason, and it was always nice to have a relaxing atmosphere fill the air of your home. Except that this time, all he heard were small groans of frustration, not accompanied by any music. Clearly, that was not your attempt at singing. He walked into your house with a quiet knock on your door, one that you never heard. Then he made his way into your kitchen and knocked a little louder on the door frame, hoping he would not startle you. Thankfully he did not, and his heart started to beat a little bit quicker when he noticed the look of relief wash over your face when you realized it was him that walked through the door.

“John! You have impeccable timing. You told me you have a degree in electronics, right? Do you think you could help me figure out what is wrong with my radio?”

Oh. You only needed him for his help. What else would it have been? He scolded himself for thinking it could have been anything else. He sat down at the table right next to you on one of the benches, and peered into the inside of the radio.

“Hmm… this is pretty standard wiring, so my guess is something came loose, or one of the wires is fried. Let me take a look.”

You watched John tinker with the radio. You had not sat in on many of their rehearsals, not wanting to interfere or receive an unwarranted and snide comment from Paul. But one thing you immediately noticed was that the way he handled a piece of electronic equipment was completely different than his bass. He was slow and careful with the radio, but he was confident and more fluid with the strings of his bass. It was interesting – how one person could be so different regarding two things. Your mind wandered a little bit, thinking of all the possible scenarios his hands and fingers could work in. You felt your face heat up, so you turned your attention back to the radio, hoping John had not caught you lost in your thoughts. John had been examining the wiring for about three minutes when he finally had his ‘aha’ moment and told you what had happened. Or rather, the radio spoke for itself when it came back on.

“Think I fixed it.”

“Oh, thank you John! Thank you so much!”

You leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, while simultaneously grabbing the sides of his face to pull him close. You felt him grab your wrists lightly in response, and you heard a small hum of satisfaction come from him. If any of the band was there, they would have pointed out how out of character that was for their friend. But you had only known them a week, so you had no real way of knowing that. When you pulled your face away from his, you noticed a new ring on his hand, one you had not noticed before. Yet you recognized it for some reason. Like you owned that ring.

“John, is that my ring?”

“Oh, y-yeah! I found it in my room just now before I came over here. I meant to hand it to you right when I walked in, but you caught me off guard with the radio. Here, let me take it off-”

“Don’t.” You stopped him by placing your hand over his. “You can keep it. It suits you, Deaky.”

You had continued to smile at him sweetly, and he just started to return it when you heard your porch door wing open and a ruckus of men swarmed into your kitchen. You and John turned to look at them, trying to hide the moment you just shared, to no avail.

“Well, what has our little Deaky gotten himself into now?” Freddie’s voice cut through the noise.

“I don’t know about now, but it looks like Y/N is the goal.”

“Roger! Don’t say that!” Brian had secondhand embarrassment for you, and the four men standing in your doorway could see the bright reds adorning your faces.

You would forever be grateful and owe a debt of gratitude to the man who called himself James Beach. By the end of Queen’s stay at your farm, you had earned a decent chunk of change, and a boyfriend to top it off. Ever since John had fixed your radio, you and him seemed to be attached at the hip. He wore the ring you gave him every single day, and eventually got the courage to ask you out on a date. You just had to get you guys there since he was not familiar with the area. You never minded driving him – he always looked so at peace watching the countryside scroll by. It pained you the day the boys left, but John made you a promise. Anytime he passed through the area, or needed a place to stay that was even remotely close to Ridge Farm, he would come see you. And he kept up on that promise. He came to visit more than once a month, and would sometimes stay for up to a week at a time. You had that fear in the back of your mind every time he would leave again that you imagined all people in relationships with people in the media had; was he cheating on me? But every single time he came back, he always brought you letters from the boys detailing their travels, and they all made it a point to write about how much John talked about you. There would be discussions of happy thoughts, whines of missing you, and the occasional under-the-breath mention of a special dream he had. It always reassured you in his faith. That, and how he would treat you and smile at you every time he came over to the farm. The other indicator is that he would always bring you a new ring. Everywhere he went for shows or recording sessions, he made sure to pop in a local shop and buy you new rings. They varied in design – some were simple bands, others elaborately engraved, others with stunning gems. It showed you that he never forgot where your relationship blossomed. That day on the farm when he found your ring. You were not a very material person, but you never turned down a ring from John. Especially not on the day he got down on one knee with a stunning, traditional diamond ring to give you.

End Note: I wanted to use a gif from Ridge Farm, but I couldn’t find one and I wanted one with John’s iconic™ rings in it.

Permanent Taglist: n/a

Specific Story/Character Taglist: @ziggymay

#john deacon #john richard deacon #john deacon x reader #john richard deacon x reader #queen #fanfiction #fanfic #bohemian rhapsody #roger taylor #freddie mercury #brian may #jim beach #jim miami beach #miami beach #paul prenter #ring #john deacon rings #john deacon wearing rings #ridge farm

56 notes · View notes

cadenlucca · 5 years

Photo

welcome back to gallagher academy, CADEN LUCCA! according to their records, they’re a SECOND year, specializing in DRIVER’S ED + SEDUCTION & FLIRTATION; and they DID NOT go to a spy prep high school. when i see them walking around in the halls, i usually see a flash of (messy brown hair, the slightest bit of stubble, and eyes glazing over in the classroom). when it’s the (leo)’s birthday on 8/15/1996, they always request LOBSTER TAIL WITH BUTTER from the school’s chefs. looks like they’re well on their way to graduation.

NAME: Caden Mateo Lucca

KNOWN AS: Caden

BIRTHDATE: August 15, 1996

ASTROLOGY: Leo sun / Virgo moon / Aries rising

HOMETOWN: Virginia Beach, VA

RESIDENCE: Philadelphia, PA & Washington DC

GENDER: Cis male ( he/him )

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Heterosexual

HEIGHT: 6'1"

HAIR COLOR: Dark Brown

EYE COLOR: Dark Brown

TATTOOS: Latin quote in illegible cursive on his chest; Wolf's head on his calf; Sword with the name Amelia in the center on his forearm

KNOWN LANGUAGES: English, Spanish, Russian, and a handful of others at a beginner's level

IMMEDIATE FAMILY:

Rodrigo Lucca (formerly Lopez): Father, Senator of Pennsylvania

Charlotte Lucca née Blythe: Mother, former Gallagher Academy alum, housewife

BACKGROUND.

Rodrigo Lucca had come from somewhat humble beginnings, moving to Pennsylvania from Venezuela when he was ten years old. A career in politics had always been the end goal for him, which is why he changed his last name from Lopez to Lucca at age eighteen ( knowing people are far too racist to willingly vote for a Rodrigo Lopez ) . He had met Caden's mother when he was a law student at Georgetown University. Charlotte had come from old money, and her family's money coupled with Rodrigo's political ambitions helped them make a comfortable home for themselves in Philadelphia.

It was there that Caden was born, a few years into his father's law career, leaving him busy and often out of the house. Though Caden wouldn't remember, his first few years were spent just him and his mother, with baby Caden refusing to be held or spend time with anyone else unless Charlotte was in the same room. It wasn't until Caden was six and his father joined the House of Representatives for the state of Pennsylvania that the care of the Lucca child was thrown to nannies. They moved into a bigger house, and Rodrigo hired housekeepers and chefs to take care of it all, so his wife could become a socialite among the other politician's wives. It worked for a few years, but by the time teenage Caden would come home for the holidays, he'd find that his mother barely left her bedroom.

The Lucca household had been a lonely one to grow up in, so when the opportunity arose for Caden to go to boarding school in middle school, he jumped at the chance. His father had found him one in Washington DC, not far from the family's second home, so his parents could occasionally visit. But they never did come, and boarding school turned out to be worse than having a house to himself. It was an all boy's school full of sons of other politicians and dignitaries, and Caden didn't get along with any of them. He begged his parents to let him go home, but after calling them every day for a week straight, his father told him the truth: it was easier without him around. Rodrigo had promised if Caden could get through the next year and a half at this school, they could find him a better alternative for high school. So Caden learned how to play nice, developing an easygoing personality that helped him gain friends for the rest of his time there. In return, his father sent him to another boarding school for high school, without consulting his son about it.

By the time high school rolled around, the boy's rebellious side had started to grow. He was angry at his dad for lying to him yet again, so he took it out on the schools he was sent to. Caden threw parties on school property, snuck off campus, and willingly let himself get caught with drugs and alcohol. But when his usual antics didn't work ( because by the third or fourth school, his father strived to make sure his son didn't get kicked out anywhere else ) , he had to work a little harder. He destroyed school property, keyed faculty cars, was caught having sex in public places. Grades weren't an issue for Caden, who was naturally bright and didn't need to try in any of his classes. But it took him five years to graduate high school, and by the end of it he had been to seven different boarding schools from all over the country.

The last thing both Caden and his parents wanted was for him to move back home with them, so he took the opportunity to take his father's credit card and travel the world for almost two years. Though he was always on his own, Caden rarely traveled alone, either meeting up with an old friend or making new ones at the hostels and cities he stayed at. These years were spent mostly in bars and nightclubs, and always drunk, and he had convinced himself life couldn't get any better. But it all came crashing down on his twenty-first birthday, when he went to buy himself a generous present and found his card had been declined. Rather than calling to wish their son a happy birthday, his parents had gifted Caden with cutting him off. His father said it was time for Caden to grow up, and until he did, he wouldn't have any part of his lifestyle.

Despite having very little options, his own pride refused to let him move back home and have his parents win. Instead Caden spent almost a year couch hopping between friends, mooching off them as long as he could. He tried working any odd job he could get his hands on, but a rich boy with no experience didn't have much to offer employers. Jobs never lasted long with him, and he was beginning to lose friends because of his couch-hopping ways. So Caden eventually moved back to Washington DC -- where his dad was now the Pennsylvania Senator for the Democratic party -- and swallowed his pride long enough to beg him for a job. The two Luccas working together lasted a whopping five months before Rodrigo approached his son with the option of Gallagher Academy. Never had Caden planned on going back to school, but he had been so miserable working in politics, he couldn't complain; for him, Gallagher was just another school he was bound to be kicked out of.

GALLAGHER ACADEMY.

It wasn't until he stepped foot in Gallagher Academy that Caden learned it was more than just a school for Exceptional Young People, but for future spies of America. He took the information unsurprisingly lightly, mostly because he preferred to think of it as a former all girl's school ( women, women everywhere ) . Caden had started out with an undeclared major, but throughout his first semester he actually found himself genuinely interested in the new world around him. He had taken the initiative to find a tutor in combat -- a girl tutor -- and after the first semester, Caden decided to declare not one but two majors: seduction and flirtation, and driver's ed. For a man who had expected to not last a full semester of college, he had actually found himself invested in his education.

It didn't hurt that Gallagher put him in touch with many people from his past, especially those he never thought he would see again. Caden's always been a lady's man, especially throughout his travels, but meeting Amelia Taylor in Ireland when he was nineteen had been another story. He had always had a habit of falling for girls too similar to himself, but he hadn't realized how true that was until being reunited with Amelia at Gallagher. Though they started a no strings relationship, Caden had wanted more, which Amelia didn't reciprocate… and Caden didn't appreciate. Spring semester had been spent mad at the blonde, until Amelia had been murdered on Valentine's Day.

Caden turned to sex and alcohol to cope with his problems, per usual. It didn't help that Caden had learned that one of the Gallagher alums on campus was his cousin from his mother's side, a cousin he never knew he even had. He had always assumed he had been accepted into Gallagher because his father was family friends with the Suttons, and as a Senator he had connections ( though he didn't talk to his parents very often, so the jury was still out on whether Rodrigo Lucca knew if it was a spy school or not ) , not because he was a legacy. Had his cousin not shown him a picture of his mother as a Gallagher student, Caden never would've believed that Charlotte Lucca had ever been anything other than the cheating, alcoholic housewife she was now.

After one shocking death and one life-aftering secret being revealed, it took the rest of the semester and start of Caden's summer to carry on. A romance with a witness protection student helped, as well as breaking into where Amelia's found killer was held on campus and beating him to near death ( Caden still doesn't know if they actually killed Cecil or not, nor does he care ) . When the semester ended, Caden also had the pleasure of meeting his mother's side of the family that he had never been told about, and in return was given a glimmer of hope at the prospect of having a real family. ( More information can be found here. ) He still has a long way to go, having not spoken to his parents since Christmas, but Caden isn't the same man he was a year ago -- and for once, he actually likes having direction in his life.

PERSONALITY.

Caden is extremely charismatic, very obviously the son of a politician. He's a grade-A conversationalist from years of experience campaigning for his father and making new friends wherever he goes, but most opportunities never allowed for relationships to become more than skin deep. Back in high school, he developed a talent for arriving onto a new campus mid-semester and immediately surrounding himself with the coolest guys and hottest girls. While social media has made it easy to keep up with all these friends of his, usually once he'd leave a place, the friendship would cease to exist ( unless he needed a place to crash ) , so lifelong friends aren't really something Caden has much experience with.

Not only is he good at charming his way into friendships, but Caden is also known to be well-versed in the ladies department. He's an obvious, shameless flirt, and for whatever reason women seem to love him. Monogamous relationships are few and far between, and tend to not be healthy or long-term. Friends with benefits are more his speed, setting boundaries right away so nobody can get mad at him for intentionally breaking their heart in the process -- though it's happened a few times anyway.

Though arrogant and sometimes smarmy, generally Caden is pretty easy to get along with and doesn't go out of his way to be an asshole. Every so often his idea of a joke and the way he roasts his friends can go too far, but when it comes down to it he would do anything for the people he cares about.

Caden's no stranger to vices, but drinking is certainly his biggest; I put this under personality because he acts like enjoying alcohol is a personality trait. He's always down for a good time, which tends to be his detriment.

MORE INFORMATION / HEADCANONS:

Caden knows fluent Spanish from growing up with it in the house, both because his father spoke it and because his parents made sure to only hire nannies who would speak Spanish to him. He doesn't like speaking it though, because it reminds him of his father.

His first tattoo ever is a Latin quote on his chest, which he had gotten specifically because his father had told him NOT to get a tattoo when he turned eighteen. Caden had been drunk when he got it, so the translation is completely wrong; thankfully he had chosen such a heinous cursive font that it's impossible to read, and he'll never tell anyone what it's supposed to mean.

Thanks to Mommy and Daddy he's not great with expressing his feelings; his way of caring is shown through flexing his credit cards and doing something special for the important people in his life. Expect ridiculously lavish birthday and Christmas presents.

Some of his favorite travel destinations include Tokyo, Reykjavík, Amsterdam, New York City, and Ireland.

During his boarding school days he was known for being a notorious prankster, though he retired the title once he graduated. His favorite prank had been filling a teacher's office with condom balloon animals. ( Okay I never said he was amazing, he was a sixteen year old boy. )

His seven boarding schools had been in Maine, Kansas, California, Washington, Michigan, and two in Pennsylvania.

Though he's not a movie buff, Caden is a slut for a good John Hughes move. The Breakfast Club is his favorite of all time.

Caden's a closet Potterhead and 100% a Gryffindor.

TL;DR: Caden is the son of the Pennsylvania Senator who he doesn't get along with ( daddy issues hello ) and has spent most of his life acting out through getting kicked out of boarding schools, traveling the world instead of working, and finally landing on coming to Gallagher rather than working. His mother was a Gallagher Girl but didn't find out until recently. He's essentially a fuckboy with a heart of gold.

CURRENT & WANTED CONNECTIONS HERE

#gallagher:intro #like this or react on discord and ill attack ya #hes a dummy yall

7 notes · View notes

duhragonball · 5 years

Text

Dragon Ball Z 164

Trunks is gonna beat Cell, but first he’s gotta SCREAM REALLY LOUD.

Trunks screams so loud that it causes tremors all the way at Kame House. Roshi tries to cop a feel on Chi-Chi so she THROWS AN ENTIRE TABLE AT HIM. Chi-Chi doesn’t put up with this kinda shit. Master Roshi belongs in jail.

From the Lookout, Tien seems to think Trunks has this match in the bag. Piccolo has no comment.

But before they fight, Trunks has this long flashback to his own nightmarish future world. There, Androids 17 and 18 pretty much do as they please, wrecking cities and deflecting bullets.

I think this is the first episode that tries to tie the 17&18 we saw in the present day with the evil versions from Trunks’ future. The ones we saw in episodes 133-152 were just looking for a way to stave off boredom, and they didn’t mind breaking a few laws or damaging property to get it. They were searching for Goku in order to kill him, but they weren’t exactly in a hurry to do it. Nor were they terribly interested in killing anyone else along the way.

Here, we get a sense of how those versions of the characters might have evolved into the ones Trunks fought. Years later, with no one to oppose them, 17 and 18 are still looking or something fun to do, but they’ve moved on to destroying cities. And 17 notes that this is starting to lose its appeal, so it’s only a matter of time before they move on to something even more destructive.

Then we see a brief montage of 17 and 18 killing all the Z-Fighters in Trunks’ future, including Yajirobe? I don’t know why they bothered to include him. It kind of looks like 18 was trying to shoot a hold through his belly and ended up zapping off his junk instead.

Then we see Gohan and Young Trunks pick up where the Z-Fighters left off. I’m not sure how well this flashback gels with the chronology in “History of Trunks”, but that special aired only a few months after this episode, so I think it’s a safe bet that Toei was trying to keep both of these consistent. I just don’t know if they succeeded.

Despite their power, it’s all Gohan and Trunks can do just to hide from the androids. And we know the rest of the story. One day, Gohan got killed too, and Trunks was let to fight alone, until Bulma invented a time machine, and he tried to use it to cheat fate.

And so this is his big chance to set things right. History has changed dramatically in this timeline, but if Trunks can beat Cell here, it’ll all turn out better than it did in his own world. Plus, he’s more than powerful enough to go back home and clobber the 17 and 18 of his own timeline. Whatever mistakes he’s made on this quest through time, Trunks can fix them all by defeating Cell.

Not to be outdone, Cell responds with his own flashback, describing his origin story.

We see Dr. Gero’s computer working on Cell as an embryo...

And a recording of Dr. Gero’s voice speaks to baby Cell, explaining all the things he needs to know to survive in the outside world.

There’s a lot of shots of Imperfect Cell wandering around the desolate post-androids world. He absorbs some victims where he can while he searches for 17 and 18.

Some terrified dude tries to take Cell down with a sledgehammer, but it just breaks apart when it hits Cell’s head.

The great irony of Cell is that Dr. Gero designed him as his ultimate, final weapon against Goku, and his design revolved around consuming living beings for energy, and absorbing 17 and 18 to reach his final form. But by the time the computer finished making him, Goku and Gero were long dead, the world population had been thinned out by 17 and 18, and 17 and 18 themselves were nowhere to be found. Cell was outdated before he was born. No wonder he decided to go back in time.

This double-flashback sequence is nothing more than padding, pure and simple, but I like it because it really defines the conflict between these two. With everything else Cell has going on, it’s easy to forget that he’s sort of an Anti-Trunks, an evil time traveller trying to hasten the dystopian future instead of preventing it. This isn’t just the main antagonist fighting the #3 sidekick.

And this was around the time I was finally hooked on the show, and began watching every episode, rather than skipping around. I recall thinking at the time that there was no point getting invested in this storyline until they got to the main event. That’s basically how it went with Vegeta and Frieza. Everything was building to Goku showing up to fight the main villain, and the final battle would take a while all by itself, so I decided to just check in on DBZ once in a while until it looked like the big finale was starting to go down. Once Cell became Perfect and beat Vegeta down, I knew things must have been coming to a head, so I started watching more carefully.

More than that, though, this episode really sold me on the idea that maybe this was going to be Trunks’ big moment. There was no rule that said Goku had to win this thing. This whole conflict began with Trunks arriving in the time machine, so wouldn’t it be appropriate if he ascended to this new power and triumphed over Dr. Gero’s final, most powerful creation?

Of course, in hindsight, that seems kind of silly. Goku and Gohan were training in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, so why would Toriyama have written that into the story if they weren’t going to see any action? I’m not sure I knew about the Hyperbolic Time Chamber at this point. I just knew Trunks was the only hero left to stop Cell, and I think everyone watching this arc for the first time just assumed that Cell would blow up the whole world unless someone stepped up to oppose him. So it sure looked like Trunks had to win this thing, whether it made sense or not.

And come on. It looks an awful lot like Trunks is taking care of business. At the very least, this looks very much like the opening round of Goku and Frieza’s fight on Namek. I was sure that I was settling in for another nineteen-episode slugfest. Maybe Goku or someone else would tag in later, but this was definitely the beginning of the end, right?

Look, even Cell admits it. Trunks has surpassed him in strength.

But he’s not worried. At all.

So what’s his angle? Does he have some trick up his sleeve? Even if he does have some advantage over Trunks, he can’t just shrug off this kid’s immense power. This fight has to go on for a while, right?

Right?

#dragon ball #2019dbliveblog #perfect cell saga #cell #perfect cell #trunks #master roshi #yamcha #chi chi #chiaotzu #gohan #piccolo #yajirobe #vegeta #krillin #tien #android 17 #android 18

18 notes · View notes

mason-mem · 5 years

Text

first pages of Michel Serres’ Malfeasance

I URINE, MANURE, BLOOD, SPERM

THE LIVED FOUNDATIONS OF

PROPERTY RIGHT

TIGERS PISS ON THE EDGE OF THEIR LAIR. And so do lions and dogs. Like those carnivorous mammals, many animals, our cousins, mark their territory with their harsh, stinking urine or with their howling, while others such as finches and nightingales use sweet songs.

To mark: the origin of this verb is the mark of a footstep left on the soil. In bygone days, the story goes, the whores of Alexandria used to carve their initials in reverse order on the soles of their sandals. This enabled prospective clients to read the imprints on the sand and discover both the desired person and the direction of her bed. The presidents of great brands promoted by advertisers on city billboards today would no doubt enjoy knowing that like good sons they are direct descendants of those whores.

Or perhaps they descend from creatures that mark the boundaries of their territory with their excrements. Similarly, certain plants throw out little invisible jets of acid . . . nothing grows in the frigid shadow of fir trees.

THE CLEAN AND THE DIRTY: ANIMAL CUSTOMS, HUMAN CUSTOMS

How do the living inhabit a place? How do they establish it, recognise it? Lions through smell, birds by hearing . . . advertisers and whores by sight. Here we have three senses on the alert. How do animals create links as powerful as the law is for humans, links that enable them to appropriate the habitat where they dwell and live?

The science of animal behaviour, ethology, describes at length those nests, holes, wallows, sheds, ecological niches .... in short, how males define and defend their habitats with their filth. These places are often secret, hidden, dark, buried, lost, places where the living eat, sleep, hibernate, copulate, give birth, and are born, in short survive; do they own or rent these places? How can we answer this question, which is perhaps a bit too anthropomorphic? We can easily turn it around.

In The Parasite, I described the customs of mammals in order to compare them to hominine ways of appropriation. Whoever spits in the soup keeps it; no one will touch the salad or the cheese polluted in this way. To make something its own, the body knows how to leave some personal stain: sweat on a garment, saliva or feet put into a dish, waste in space, aroma, perfume, or excrement, all of them rather hard things . . . but also my name, printed in black on this book cover, where my signature looks sweet and innocent, seemingly unrelated to those habits. And yet. . . . Hence the theorem of what might be called natural right. By "natural" I mean the general behavior of living species: appropriation takes place through dirt. More precisely, what is properly one's own is dirt.

The spit soils the soup, the logo the object, the signature the page: property, propriety, or cleanliness. The same word tells of the same struggle; in French, it has the same origin and the same meaning.1 Property is marked, just as the step leaves its imprint. Conversely, I should re-mark—yes!—that a hotel makes the rooms clean and proper to make them available for others. Otherwise, no one would come. Conversely, clean and proper here implies there is no well-defined owner yet, and that it is freely accessible. In short, either proper means appropriated and consequently dirty or proper implies really neat and therefore without an owner. Come over here, to this clean spot; you may, because it obviously welcomes you. When you leave, it will be yours because you will have made it dirty. No one will want to sleep in your sheets, nor handle your used towel, nor drink from your glass seeded with bacteria from the imprint of your lips. You appreciate the cleaning done in a hotel. The cleaner it looks, the more hospitable it will seem to everyone. At home, I take care of the garbage and occupy a space called by the delightful name of powder room. Long ago, we hardly dared to translate the famous quote stercus suum cuique bene olet,1 "one's own excrement smells good." This is still true of noise; one's own noise is not bothersome. This is also true of many types of trash. It is again true of small children who have similar behaviours at the anal stage.

THE EXPROPRIATED SQUAT Discreetly, dictionaries define squatter, as the term indicates, as someone who occupies the surface of the land on which he crouches. This would take up little space; only a dwarf could lie down on such a spot. No, squatting describes the crouching posture of defecation and that of females when they piss or give birth.

The origin of the old French verb es-quatir, originally used in the Far West and Australia, is first related to the verb co-acticare, the old curious root of cogito, through co-agere or co-agitarey" indeed, my thoughts move around in me like a large assembly of sheep in the meadows. Now, farmers in these two New Worlds led even larger herds on lands that they considered to be without owners, even as their grazing and their presence expropriated Indians or Aborigines who had been living there before them, albeit without title deed, at least according to common law. So there was nothing about this term that would imply crouching. As soon as it acquires that meaning, it can be linked to the earlier one: to invade and possess. The fact remains that animals never leave places free of droppings as they trot along.

FROM THE HOME TO THE FARM

I will now go from the soup, polluted by spit, to the dirty sheets, or from the table to the bed, to get from individual appropriation to family property, from the city rat to the field rat. Indeed, the arable square of land, the stretch of vineyard or alfalfa, the pagus of the ancient Latins, properly belonged to the peasant tribe because the bodies of ancestors were buried there, in tombs or under stone slabs. Did you know that the word paix, peace, comes from pieu, the stake that marked the boundary of the tilled pagus? The mortuary slab was also used as a boundary around which peaceful relations with neighbours could be established. I'll end my remarks with a discussion of this peace.

I will also explain how the aforementioned peasant or pagan—same terms similarly derived from pagus— appropriated this patch of land in the same quasi-animal fashion. Is there anything more disgusting than what has no name in any language: the stench emanating from a mass grave? Except perhaps the stench of manure spread out at the appropriate season to improve, enrich, and fertilise the soil. Perhaps you doubt that the main reason to cover the field with this biodegradable layer of fatty fertiliser, this urine nitrogen, is for the sake of appropriation. However, I would still like to convince you that I find here a possible origin of agriculture. When the first human enclosed a plot of land and thought of telling his children, his parents, and his wife to imitate him and his animals by depositing some of their urine and faeces in order to make it a piece of earth belonging to the family, he noticed with surprise, come spring and summer, that the polluted field was greener and more productive than the neighbouring soil. Could he possibly have founded the farming profession and rural society with this act?

As you travel, do admire that peaceful—same word as pagus—landscape, beautifully divided, of the old countries of Europe; their rural spaces display fertilising manure and the Cities of the Dead.

l. Professor Serres plays on the various meanings of the French propre, which means both "clean" and "one's own," or "characteristic of." The French title Le Mai propre is itself a pun on several levels: mal is evil, combined with propre; it thus signifies "clean evil," but malpropre in one word also means dishonest, sleazy, despicable. I have chosen to emphasize the combination of evil and dishonest by translating the title as "Malfeasance," which has similar connotations. [All notes are from translator.]

2. Latin proverb, provenance uncertain, quoted by Michel de Montaigne, in Essais, III, VIII.

3. Co-agitare: from the Latin co- (together) and agitare (to move around, revolve).

inspired by @aazzure 2019.19.14

#Serres #malfeasance

4 notes · View notes

youthfulncss · 5 years

Text

tw: death

Her hands are cold.

She smiles lightly, though she wants to kill. Though she wants to not be there. Though she wants everyone else to not be there. She takes back her first response. She smiles lightly, though she wants to be rid of her company, the entire population of the earth, and killing someone is the quickest way to be rid of someone's presence.

Permanently, right?

Gertrude wandered through life without much sense of permanence or presence. She didn't like the idea of other people. She didn't like the idea of other people being around.

And perhaps... perhaps because she wasn't used to it.

Her father was a wealthy man, all savvy with the law and legality and a barrister because he liked to argue but also a solicitor by trade because, obviously, who wanted to be *known* when you were doing... the less legal of things.

Just because you know the law does not mean you uphold it.

That was the code outside of the house, as well as inside.

Edeline wasn't much for warmth and colour. She played the role of both the nurturer and warden. She was the sort of person to shoo off her daughter for being a nuisance. Though, read: needing help.

Help isn't something Gothels offered each other. Nor were they the sort to accept should there be any strings attached.

"We don't do debt, Gertrude," her father told her, swearing under his breath at the neighbour (the closest person geographically to them, they had no real neighbours.)

A young Gertrude, her dark hair curling out to all directions, looked at her father with concern. "Why's that?"

Her father frowned at her as if disappointed that a seven-year-old in the midst of war wouldn't understand such a concept.

"Because we don't sell our souls or reputations for petty favours. And we should not owe favours to the dead."

A soul.

What was that, even?

Gertrude wasn't sure. The whole world, or at least the world she knew, talked about souls. The Christian world talked about souls.

But that was beside the point. Gertrude wanted to know what her father called a soul.

"They're warm light," her aunt told her, the only kind one of the bunch. Or... the kindest... by comparison. Gertrude was sooner closer to her grandmother, who was not kind at all, but her aunt Emilia was tolerable enough and was the only one civil enough to let you know first if she was going betray your interests.

"They're the warmth that is within you. They make up who you are. They are a gift."

And Gertrude may have believed her. And may have wanted to learn more, if it weren't for the fact that the moment she knew about the sundrop, her entire soul was lost.

She learned that ambition was an evil. They all learned that in school and through tutors and lessons. Her schoolmaster, a world-weary, angry old man tired from war, was harsh as well. But never with her.

Gertrude was clever enough to win some sort of favour with him, and learned very early on that manipulating people was a gift she was good at.

Ambition was the first sin. It was the root of all sin, actually. Ambition was the reason that Gertrude ended up coming back from the forest without her aunt. Her favourite person of her family, aside from her grandmother, who had passed on both the secret of the sundrop and from the world.

You have to get rid of those who would hinder you first.

She sobbed her crocodile tears at the funeral, feeling hurt inside. Her father was solemn, her mother was proper. But Gertrude felt that in returning without her aunt, she had also staked herself in the heart.

The pain dulled quickly as others were picked off.

They were a noble and proud family.

Uncles, distant cousins, aunts, parents...

She forgets the order.

They were a noble and proud history.

She was a noble and ashamed person.

But she would live forever. And she would wander and travel. She would horde the flower among a sea of others and sell her crops and live in an isolation that she was rather fond of.

She hated other people.

Fall in love, grow emotionally distant, abandon a child...

All casualties of her life.

Have her property stolen, steal back a babe in return, have a woven web of complications, and uproot her life...

All consequences...

And now she's in New York City, in a life she'd never expected. She's joined an alliance that bores her now. She wishes to live forever, but there is a consequence to that.

Rather... there is a cost.

So who shall stop her from being entertained? Who will stop her from a harmless jab with a blade, or a cutting remark to pride?

Who can really stop her, morally, from harm? She is already damned.

Her hands are warm now. Warm and wet with metaphorical blood.

#eden ( original ).#legend has it ( writing ).#( reference ).#soul ( musing ).

1 note · View note

betweenandbeloved · 6 years

Text

Jesus’ Ministry & The Sea of Galilee

What a day. Each day is more amazing than the next. Today we spent wandering around the Sea of Galilee following the footsteps of Jesus. Whether or not you believe Jesus is the Son of God, or how he was born, or the miracles he performed, there is no denying the fact that Jesus was a person who lived, walked and taught on the earth. Each of the places we went today, were places Jesus visited. At each of these places, we talked about what we know Jesus did or what we speculated he might have done... simple things... walking... talking... sitting... teaching.

The morning started at Capernaum, which is the second most mentioned town in the Bible, after Jerusalem. This is the town Jesus moved to from Nazareth and performed many miracles. The Via Maris trade route goes through the town and is a place where taxes are collected on goods traveling from one region to the other; essentially, a customs tax. Between the locals and those traveling through, Capernaum was a good place to meet and interact with people.

(Recovered ruins of the city of Capernaum)

At the site, we got to see Peter’s house, where Jesus lived and performed the miracle of healing Peter’s mother-in-law (Luke 4:38). Archaeologists found graffiti with names and symbols confirming that this is, in fact, Peter’s house and that it was likely transitioned into a church once Jesus left.

(Peter’s House with extra walls added from the Byzantine Church)

A Byzantine church was built on top of the house which helped preserve it, but ultimately altered the structure of the house from what it was. It appears that archaeologists are still digging in the area working to uncover more of the town.

(New Temple built on top of the Old Temple)

Also in the town, we were able to see the synagogue. The original was much smaller and simpler, but after being destroyed, the new one was built on top. In Jesus’ time, the synagogue was the only public building in a Jewish town. It was the school, the council place, the courthouse; everything they needed. It was not a place of worship because that was done at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. It wasn’t until after the Temple was destroyed that the synagogue became a local place of worship. After walking around Capernaum, we got on the bus and headed to Bethsaida. Now, there are two possible locations for the town, but no one really knows for sure where it is. I could (and might) write a much longer blog post about that debacle, but for the purpose of simplicity, we shall call this Bethsaida. My professor, Rev. Dr. Mark Vitalis Hoffman actually worked at this archaeological dig site in 2012, so he played tour guide and explained everything to us (which is pretty awesome).

(Rev. Dr. Mark Vitalis Hoffman telling us about his experience on his archaeological dig through this area)

Originally, this place was the Hebrew Scriptures city of Geshur (Check out Joshua, Deuteronomy, 2 Samuel, and more in the Hebrew Scriptures.). What is still under exploration is whether or not the city was rebuilt into Bethsaida or something else. We wandered around exploring the outer and inner walls of the city, as well as seeing the palace, offering/sacrifice rooms, and even a wine cellar! Geshur was in roughly 10-8th century BCE and then destroyed in 732 BCE, it was rebuilt in the 4th-2nd century BCE but archaeologists are still working on all that.

The coolest part about this specific archaeological site was, we were able to walk right through and explore the ruins for ourselves. So naturally, without really realizing it... I made the ruins of a 10th-century city my playground for the afternoon as I went exploring the different rooms and climbing over the walls. That’s definitely not something you get to do every day!

As with every site, I was sad to leave, but each site gets more and more beautiful. From Bethsaida/Geshur we went on to the Mount of Beatitudes where Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5). We went to the very top where a monastery now resides. It was beautiful, but more than likely, not the spot where Jesus gave the sermon. No one knows for sure, but based on research using acoustics, it is more than likely that Jesus gave the sermon on the side of the mountain in an area that reminisces a natural amphitheater. We hiked down the mountain just so we could stop for a minute in the spot that is more likely where Jesus gave the sermon.

(If Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount here this would have been his view + lots of people)

The mountainside was so beautiful. The grass was lush and green, the water sparkled in the sun, and the view was absolutely astounding. The whole thing was breathtaking and I just wanted to breathe it all in. At the bottom of the trail just before the road, we came to a cave that is believed to be one of the caves where Jesus went to pray. It was a calm and peaceful place and I managed to get in a quick prayer before the rest of the group made me laugh (though laughing is praying too!) and we moved on.

(A rare photo of me praying. I can see why Jesus went there to pray, I would too if I had more time!)

At the bottom of the Mountain, we entered into Tabgha with the Church of the Primacy of Peter. This site was right on the Sea of Galilee and was where the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand happened. It is also one of the places where Jesus appeared to the disciples after the resurrection. We were given some time to ourselves and I sat on a rock with my feet in the Sea of Galilee. It was relaxing, refreshing, and rejuvenating to sit in marvel at the wonder of our amazing God.

(Above: Church of the Primacy of Peter, Below: My feet in the Sea of Galilee)

After a quick lunch, we continued on to the archaeological site of Magdala, the home of Mary Magdalene. This site was found by accident in 2009(ish) when the Roman Catholic Church bought the property to put up a hotel. When they went to dig they found the city and had to alter their building design. Now it is an active dig site where they found the oldest first-century synagogue in Galilee (one of eight in the entire country).

(First Century Synagogue with original mosaics and frescos)

The city was much wealthier than others in the region because of its fishing industry. It was known for drying and processing fish and fish salt. Magdala was strategically placed on the trade route making it a stop for anyone traveling on their way inland or towards the Mediterranean. The town had so much money they were able to afford extra beautiful adornments for their synagogue. Archaeologists recovered original mosaics on the floor and some fresco paintings on the walls. It was really quite amazing to see a new dig site for such an old city. Nothing was ever built on top of it so the ruins are preserved in pristine condition.

At Magdala, we were able to visit the Duc in Altum chapel built on top of some of the remains from the city. The basement has a chapel with original stones found in excavations and is modeled after the synagogue plan from the city. On the first floor, there is The Women’s Atrium dedicated to the many women around Jesus. The Boat Chapel features a boat-shaped altar looking out over the Sea of Galilee with icons of the twelve disciples lining the walls. This was most definitiely my favorite chapel we have been in. It was simple. It encorporated the original design of the city. It had beauty and honor in the mosaics and columns. It honored women! It kept true to the sacredness of the site and did not dress it up. It was simple, beautiful, and profound.

Our last stop of the day was a boat ride on Sea of Galilee watching the sun set behind Mount Arbel. It was a beautiful ride and we talked about te biblical significance of the Sea of Galilee. My two favorite stories are Jesus walking on water (Matthew 14:22-23) and Jesus calming the storm (Matthew 4: 35 - 41). It was relaxing and eye-opening to sail across the waters that Jesus spent so much time on. It didn’t feel a big as it was (roughly 13 miles by 7 miles and 150 feet deep), nor did it feel like it could have such rough storms as mentioned in the Bible. Our tour guide said that storms are normal and he’s had many boat tours canceled because of them; just like the storm, Jesus calmed.

Today was a full and exciting day. I have to say though, the sun really took a lot out of me today so I’m more exhausted than normal. I’m also starting to feel the sunburn set in so that’ll be fun to deal with. It feels so good to be in the warmth and see the sunshine - we’ve been lacking that at home with all the rain we had lately! Tomorrow we will continue around the Sea of Galilee and I can’t wait to see what all is in store.

#ipj2019 #the holy land #sea of galilee #jesus #lutheran #pastor in training #pilgrimage #love #justice #peace #hope #joy #mount of beatitudes #capernaum #jesus' footsteps

1 note · View note

coffee-obsessed-writer · 6 years

Text

Broken Pieces

A/N: A preview of a new novel I started working on. Set in the 1920′s Isabel Cooper is a woman of the evening at a SpeakEasy owned by Georgio Bianchi. Her life takes an unexpected turn when she’s included in a high stakes card game between her boss and a well known local man of the law, Matthew Bailey.

Warnings: Language, Implication of Prostitution, Violence

Words: 2487

Eventual Pairings:

female x female pairing

male x male x female pairing

Everything Tags: @his-paradox @aquivercactus @sorenmarie87 @kazosa @becs-bunker @lefthologramdeer @rockyhorrorpictureshowstyle @grace-for-sale @redm81

Original Fiction Tags: @srj1990 @soythedemonqueen @docharleythegeekqueen @rockyhorrorpictureshowstyle

Main Characters Portraits under the cut: (more to come)

Isabel Cooper

Prescott “Scottie” Marsh

Georgio Bianchi

Chapter One

The front door flew open, crashing against the already damaged plaster wall. The three men who entered stopped it from recoiling back at them, as their shadows loomed tall across the splintered floorboards.

Isabel heard them tossing furniture about, rifling through anything they could find as she hid in the furthest corner of the upstairs closet. Her sole mission was to be as silent as possible. She couldn’t care less about anything the men took, it wasn’t her house anyway.

Minutes passed as they turned over the entire first floor. Their muffled voices traveled upstairs and got closer to where Isabel sat shaking her hiding spot. Swallowing thickly, she heard a whimper escape her lips as the footsteps fell hard into the room beside her.

“He’s not here,” one of the men growled. “Scottie, check that other room. All of it. Under the bed, closet, in the floor boards. That shit head is here somewhere.”

More footsteps and confusion; this time closer. One of them was in the room now. Isabel drew her knees in tighter to her chest and buried her head into her knees. They would find her now, and probably kill her.

She waited, but only another moment. The closet door was jerked open, the intruder casting a shadow across the moonlight that filtered through the window.

“What the—” the man crouched down, now eye level with Isabel.

Lifting her head, she could only make out the man’s bright eyes in the murkiness of the room. He slowly removed his cap and ran a hand through is short curly hair.

“Hey,” he whispered. “I ain’t gonna hurt ya miss.”

He paused and looked over his shoulder. When he was sure his companions weren’t near, he leaned closer into the closet and reached out his hand.

Isabel withdrew further, recoiling from him as tears splashing onto her arms.

“Honey, I ain’t gonna hurt ya, but they will.”

He stood quickly and closed the door as more footsteps fell into the room.

“Any sign Scottie?”

“No Frank, nobody here,” Scottie said, hitching the latch on the closet. “Checked all through here and nothing. Why not go ‘round back, I bet there’s an outhouse. Check there and I’ll do one more pass up here.”

Frank sighed, and Isabel could feel the man’s size in his action. Once his heavy gate bounded down the steps, she heard the latch and saw the one they called Scottie again.

“He’s gone, you can come out.”

He bent down again and extended a hand. This time Isabel took it, hesitantly. Scottie helped her to her feet and climb free of the debris in the closet.

“You alright? You live here?” he asked quietly.

Isabel could only shake her head.

“No, you’re not alright?”

“Um… I—I don’t live here,” her voice was raspy, in dire need of water.

“Ok. Do you know the man who does? His name is—”

“No, it was empty when I got here,” she said, her gaze bouncing from Scottie, to the doorway, and back.

“How long ago?”

“Two… three days.”

“Damn. Ok. Look these guys I’m with need to find that man. I have to go with them, but you can’t stay here. So, when we leave, go hid in the breech of the dunes, okay? I’ll come back around in about an hour or so to get you.”

Isabel flinched from him and felt suddenly sick. “Get me?”

“Oh, no.. I mean I’ll pick you up, bring you somewhere safe,” Scottie said, hands raised in defense. “You’re a runaway, right?”

Isabel ran a hand through her dark, disheveled hair, and realized how awful she must look. It had been days since she’d eaten or bathed. She couldn’t remember the last time she had a clean dress or bloomers. Again, she could only nod.

“Ok, well I got a place you can go. I know someone, he takes in girls like you. Gives ‘em a place to live and work. Plenty of food. It may not be—”

“Where?” she asked, sure she didn’t want to hear anymore, because she would most certainly change her mind. But the idea of not living off scraps from the boardwalk garbage cans was more than appealing.

“The Morgan House. It’s a boarding house, but, most nights its really a speakeasy,” Scottie paused and looked at her thoughtfully. “If that’s not your scene—”

“It's fine. I’m no stranger to ‘em,” she said.

Scottie noticed the soft tilt of her accent, a tell-tale sign that Atlantic City was not her place of origin.

“Alright. That’s good. Mr. Bianchi will take care of ya, promise.”

Voices from below cautioned Scottie to hurry. He turned back to Isabel and offered her a wan smile. “Listen, honey, I promise, I’ll be back. Just go out to the dunes, cause these guys will be back soon…”

With that, he was gone. Isabel stood in the center of the dilapidated room and wondered if it had all really happened. She didn’t move until she heard the men getting back into their car and turning over the engine. When the whine of the auto faded away, she took Scottie’s advice and quickly vacated the house, making a dash to the dunes on the edge of the beach.

True to his predictions, by the time the moon was nearly across the night sky, another car pulled up to the vacant house. Only one man exited this time, carrying a tin of something. Isabel watched in horror as the man dumped its contents all over the porch, then, throughout the first floor. Exiting, he struck a match and within seconds, the entire first floor had been engulfed in flames. Bright orange and white flames illuminated the night sky and making Isabel feel incredibly lucky, and nervous.

Turning away from the blazing scene, she tucked herself further down into the dunes. Praying that either Scottie would find her, or that no one would. The chill of the ocean air settled against her skin and she pulled her tattered garment down over legs the best she could.

Maybe this would be her last night without a roof, or a meal. Maybe Scottie was the answer to her prayers. Or, maybe, he would simply find her and kill her for what she just saw.

Isabel sat on the stool, smoke absently filtering through her nostrils as she became lost in the memory of the fire. Even though two years had passed, she could still feel the heat of the blaze on her face as the house went up flames.

A hand on her shoulder brought her attention back to the present, and even smiled when she saw the owner of the hand.

Scottie sat beside her, lifted the cap from his head and tilted his head.

“Lost at sea, Iz?”

She snorted a laugh and snuffed out her cigarette in the crystal ashtray. The music swelled behind her, causing noticeable tension in her shoulders. “Why do they insist on continuing to play that miserable song? Honestly…”

“You were the one that requested it,” Scottie scoffed, bringing his own lighter out from deep within his pockets. “Besides, I thought you loved this crap. All this upbeat stuff.”

“I do, but, there’s something to be said about softer, more delicate notes. Don’t you think?”

Isabel batted her eyes at him, knowing full well he would never flirt back. Scottie had eyes for only one woman, which fit Isabel just fine. She had eyes for the same woman. It was a playful thing between her and Scottie, until Corinne turned them both down. The fiery redhead had no interested in sleeping with either of them, as she was the claimed property of Mr. Bianchi, himself.

“You stop,” Scottie chastised. “Save the eyes for someone who’s interested.”

“Oh, come on Prescott. There was a time when you were interested,” Isabel chuckled and pulled another smoke hidden between her breasts. Clamping it in her teeth, as not to smear her dark red painted lips, she leaned into the flame Scottie offered.

“Prescott? Have we gone back to that?” Scottie lit a smoke and turned in his stool to evaluate the room. “Any of these guys hear you call me that…”

“What?” she asked, her burgundy eyes wide and devious. “Whatever will they do, Prescott?”

“Iz, enough. You know what that stirs up,” Scottie snorted, but the way his eyes cast down to the floor told Isabel all she needed to know.

“Ok, fine. I’ll stop teasin’,” she relented and followed his gaze through the room. She caught where his eyes landed.

Corinne was sitting at the corner table, the one adjacent to where the boss’ card game was transpiring. She was to be near him at all times; Georgio insisted she bring him luck, always calling her his ‘Lucky Lass’. Scottie cringed every time, but never dramatically enough for Georgio to notice. If he had, Scottie’s body would have been fishing from the docks by now.

Isabel’s study of the game in the corner was interrupted by the bartender tapping her on the shoulder.

“Miss Izzy, there’s a gentleman here for you, say’s you have an appointment,” the old man gestured towards the door and Isabel’s heart sank.

In the entry to the Speak, stood Isabel’s least favorite customer. Dominick “Big Nicky” DeNardio filled the entire doorframe. His hulking figure shuffled down the steps and towards the end of the bar, Isabel’s heart pounding harder with each hoof he put forward.

Scottie could feel his friend’s petite form stiffen and his heart broke for her. He knew that this was the price to pay for having all they did. Both he and Isabel weren’t supposed to be welcomed in an establishment like The Morgan House, nor invited to work for a man like Georgio Bianchi. But they had been; this was her price to pay. Scottie, had his own currency to contend with.

“You can say no,” Scottie whispered without looking directly at her. “I can talk to Georgie—”

“No,” Isabel waved him off. She took a long drag of her cigarette and pushed the smoke through her nostrils. “I have ta… you and I both know that, Scottie.”

Stowing herself to the inevitable, she once again snuffed out her smoke in the ashtray and hopped off the stool. Isabel tug at the hem of her dress, the beading slipping through her fingers as her hands began to sweat nervously.

“I look alrigh’?” she asked Scottie with a sad smile.

“Yeah, you’re great, honey.”

She nodded at him and as she brushed past his shoulder, he grabbed her hand and gave it a little squeeze of courage.

“Don’t let him hurt you. Or I’ll have to—”

“You hush,” she hissed. “They hear you… well. You just hush. Find me later.”

She withdrew her small hand from his and continued on to great Big Nicky. Scottie watched her carefully as she transitioned into the girl they called Miss Izzy. She very much looked like his best friend; same chestnut brown hair pinned up with soft curls, same deep burgundy eyes and impish smile. But yet, Miss Izzy has something Isabel couldn’t seem to maintain; she was harder, more poised to tackle this side of her life.

The constant stream of gents off the Boardwalk, slipping away from their families, was a job that not many women could handle. Isabel certainly couldn’t when she first arrived. With the help of Scottie, and then Corinne, Isabel found a way to draw out Miss Izzy to deal with the sweaty, pig-nosed men that wanted to fuck her. Miss Izzy could do what she had too, then move on, all the while protecting Isabel.

Then, when the work was over, she could find solace in her friends and return to herself. She could find Isabel once more.

Big Nicky grabbed her wrist roughly and yanked her towards the stairs that lead up to the bedrooms. Scottie stiffened, drawing on all his willpower not to go remove his best friend from the clutches of that man. He stopped himself solely with the knowledge that, if he did, both he and Isabel would be dead and buried by dawn.

III

“Take it off,” Nicky growled from the corner of the room. His swollen gut hung over his too tight underwear, blissfully covering the grotesque thing between his legs.

Isabel turned from him, trying to go to that place in her mind where she wasn’t present during this part. Giving her the permission to allow Miss Izzy to be in control. She felt the familiar sick rise in her gut and making its way up her throat, threatening to expel all over the room.

Isabel quelled it and unzipped the side of her dress. It was her best dress and she was grateful he didn’t rip it from her like last time. Maybe Georgio had finally threatened the man enough to calm down when he was with one of the girls. He had more than a tendency to be rougher than most minded and had to be reminded more than once to be gentle with the property.

The pale pink frock fell to the floor, Isabel was about to grab it and place it aside when a knock came at the door.

“Go away!” Big Nicky yelled, grunting with force as he got up from the chair.

The knock came again.

“Occupodo!” he bellowed, making Isabel flinch.

The knock was now a bang, complete with muffled voices on the other side. Growling with displeasure, Big Nicky motioned for Isabel to answer the door.

Giving him as wide a berth as possible, she unlocked and cracked the door open, only to find Scottie. Upon seeing her, his face washed over in relief.

“I, uh… Georgie wants you,” he said and tried to peek into the room. His bright hazel eyes bored into her, asking the question his lips couldn’t muster the courage too.

Are you alright?

She nodded slightly.

“What does Georgio want me for?” she spoke up louder, her voice dropping that sweet Southern twang and harnessing that of Atlantic City, and the one used by Miss Izzy.

“He gave me a note for Mr. DeNardo’s eyes only,” Scottie replied loud enough to ensure Big Nicky heard him.

In a flash, the door was ripped open, Isabel in her corset and bloomers completely exposed. Scottie flinched and instinctively wanted to step in front of her to shield her from whatever was about to happen. Big Nicky stood nearly naked, his chest heaving with anger at the interruption.

“What?!” he yelled and saw the paper in Scottie’s hand.

Tearing it from his grip, he opened the paper and squinted at the words contained on it. Ripping it in half, he looked down at Isabel with a scowl.

“Get dressed. Get downstairs. Big man wants ya.”

#original fiction #original characters #Broken Pieces

20 notes · View notes