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verifiedaccount · 4 years

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More movies (and a tv series) on youtube to keep you busy

List 1 / List 2

Here’s a third update of movies that you can watch in full on youtube since you’re stuck inside

Documentaries about movies:

Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography (1992): Featuring interviews with more than two dozen major cinematographers and a ton of clips, this is a useful and enjoyable primer for anyone interested in learning what a DoP does

Vittorio Storaro: Writing With Light (1992): This is a shorter (40 minute) television doc focusing on one specific cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro, famed for his collaborations with Bertolucci and for shooting Hollywood movies like Apocalypse Now and Reds

The Epic That Never Was (1965): In 1937, Josef Von Sternberg started shooting an adaptation of I, Claudius starring Charles Laughton as Claudius. Dirk Boagarde hosts this lively documentary examining why the film was never completed, featuring the surviving footage from the 1937 shoot.

Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film (1980): Kevin Brownlow and David Gill’s 13-episode miniseries about the silent film era is considered the gold standard for documentaries about film history, but the impossibility of negotiating the rights to all the clips used at a reasonable price has kept it off of dvd or blu-ray. Luckily, that didn’t stop someone from putting it on youtube, although episode 12 has in fact been blocked due to a copyright claim.

Buster Keaton: A Hard Act To Follow (1987) Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3: Another Kevin Brownlow and David Gill miniseries, this one, as you’ve probably guessed, covers the life and films of Buster Keaton over three episodes.

More movies:

Powell/Pressburger: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, aka the Archers, were one of the greatest writer/director teams in film history (and a favorite of Scorsese, who seemingly made it his life’s mission to ensure that their films were restored and available), and three of their incredibly charming, magical movies are on youtube. Of the available ones, I Know Where I’m Going! is probably the best to start with.

I Know Where I’m Going! (1945): Dave Kehr on the film: “Michael Powell's 1945 film resists easy classification: it opens as a screwball comedy, grows into a mystical, Flaherty-like study of man against the elements, and concludes as a warm romance. Wendy Hiller, in one of the best roles the movies gave her, is a toughened, materialistic young woman on her way to meet her millionaire fiance in the Hebrides; Roger Livesey is the young man she meets when a storm blows up and prevents her crossing to the islands. Funny and stirring, in quite unpredictable ways, with the usual Powellian flair for drawing the universal out of the screamingly eccentric.”

A Canterbury Tale (1944): The Criterion jacket copy: “Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s beloved classic A Canterbury Tale is a profoundly personal journey to Powell’s bucolic birthplace of Kent, England. Set amid the tumult of the Second World War, yet with a rhythm as delicate as a lullaby, the film follows three modern-day incarnations of Chaucer’s pilgrims—a melancholy “landgirl,” a plainspoken American GI, and a resourceful British sergeant—who are waylaid in the English countryside en route to the mythical town and forced to solve a bizarre village crime. Building to a majestic climax that ranks as one of the filmmaking duo’s finest achievements, the dazzling A Canterbury Tale has acquired a following of devotees passionate enough to qualify as pilgrims themselves.”

Gone To Earth (1950): Made under unhappy circumstances (David O. Selznick producing), this is a gorgeous technicolor romance starring Jennifer Jones as a nature loving young woman forced into a choice between two “civilized” men, with tragic results.

Straub/Huillet: If you’re looking for something easy and relaxing to watch during the quarantine, I’d recommend literally anything else other than the films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. J. Hoberman on the couple: “Straub-Huillet, as they preferred to be called, are cinema’s conscience — an antidote to all the junk movies you’ve ever seen. Drawing on Kafka, Cézanne, Brecht, Schoenberg and Malraux, to name only some of their best-known sources, Straub-Huillet films are meant to raise ethical questions on subjects as varied as proper camera placement and the appropriate political approach to the subject.“We make our films so that audiences can walk out of them,” Mr. Straub once said, perhaps not altogether in jest.” Of the available ones, Class Relations, their adaptation of Kafka’s unfinished novel Amerika, seems to be agreed upon as the easiest place to start as it’s the closest to a straightforward narrative, although History Lessons has also been recommended as a relatively easy starting place by some people. Not Reconciled, which compresses an epic Heinrich Boll novel following three generations throughout multiple timelines into 52-minutes, is not recommended to start with. MUBI did a retrospective of their works and had essays commissioned for each one to help viewers out so I’ll link those with each film. Hit Closed Captions for subtitles.

Not Reconciled (1965): Here’s a 10-minute video essay by critic Richard Brody that will help you have a slightly easier time with Not Reconciled if you decide to give it a try. Here’s the MUBI essay

Othon (1970): In the 17th century Pierre Corneille wrote Othon, set in ancient Rome. Straub-Huillet’s adaptation is shot in the actual ruins of Roman palaces with modern buildings and cars visible in the background. The MUBI essay

History Lessons (1972): An adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s The Business Affairs of Julius Caesar. From the MUBI essay: “In the film, an unnamed young man tours Rome and conducts interviews with toga-clad members of ancient Roman society on the subject of “C,” meaning of course Julius Caesar. It plays like Citizen Kane shorn of any of the flashbacks that bulk out that film: here, it is all exposition, reminisces, impressions. Interspersed through these sedentary discussions are a series of randomly protracted car rides through the city, all recorded in unbroken takes from the backseat of the young man’s Fiat 500.From this brief description alone, I’m sure you can see why structuralist-minded academics in the seventies had a field day.“

Fortini/Canti (1976): From the MUBI essay: “In Fortini/Canti, the Italian Communist writer Franco Fortini reads aloud from his Dogs of the Sinai (only recently translated into English for the first time), a memoir of his life as an Italian Jew and an extended reflection on the aftermath of the Third Arab–Israeli War of 1967 and its representation in the Italian media and by the political class. [...] Like all of Straub-Huillet’s movies, this astonishingly combative film follows an internal rhythm born out of the particulars of landscape, of speech, and of the physiognomies of its actors. It begins with an extended recording of a television newscast about Israel/Palestine (thus distancing the audience from the warped words and images on screen), a quotation from Fortini that connects like a punch in the jaw (“People don’t like having to change their minds. When they have to, they do so in secret. The certainty of having been tricked turns into cynicism. Gain for the cause of conservatism”), and then alternates between short jabs like these and more sustained verbal and visual attacks.”

Too Early/Too Late (1982): Serge Daney on the film: “No actors, not even characters. If there is an actor in TOO EARLY, TOO LATE, it’s the landscape. This actor has a text to recite: History, of which it is the living witness. The actor performs with a certain amount of talent: the cloud that passes, a breaking loose of birds, a break in the clouds; this is what the landscape’s performance consists of. This kind of performing is meteorological. One hasn’t seen anything like it for quite some time. Since the silent period, to be precise.” The MUBI essay

Class Relations (1984): The aforementioned adaptation of Kafka’s Amerika, often recommended as a place to start with Straub/Huillet. The MUBI essay

Hitchcock: Back to fun stuff, three Hitchcock classics.

The 39 Steps (1935): Dave Kehr: “As an artist, Alfred Hitchcock surpassed this early achievement many times in his career, but for sheer entertainment value it still stands in the forefront of his work.“

Shadow of a Doubt (1943): Kehr again: “Alfred Hitchcock’s first indisputable masterpiece. . . . Hitchcock’s discovery of darkness within the heart of small-town America remains one of his most harrowing films, a peek behind the facade of security that reveals loneliness, despair, and death. Thornton Wilder collaborated on the script; it’s Our Town turned inside out.“

Spellbound (1945): No one would argue it’s Hitchcock’s best and the psychoanalysis is very dated but with Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman, and Dali-designed dream sequences there’s still enjoyment to be had.

Ozu: One of Japan’s most beloved and revered filmmakers, he’s primarily known for his post-WWII family dramas, but his career stretched back to the silent era (although most of his silent films are lost). I Was Born But... is a good place to start but it’s not representative of the style he’s known for. Late Spring is where his later style fully emerges, and it’s a good place to start, so you might want to go in chronological order with these (Tokyo Story, widely considered one of the greatest films of all time, is also not a bad place to start).

I Was Born But... (1932): Jonathan Rosenbaum on the film: “One of Yasujiro Ozu's most sublime films, this late Japanese silent describes the tragicomic disillusionment of two middle-class boys who see their father demean himself by groveling in front of his employer; it starts off as a hilarious comedy and gradually becomes darker. Ozu's understanding of his characters and their social milieu is so profound and his visual style—which was much less austere and more obviously expressive during his silent period—so compelling that the film carries one along more dynamically than many of the director's sound classics. Though regarded in Japan mainly as a conservative director, Ozu was a trenchant social critic throughout his career, and the devastating understanding of social context that he shows here is full of radical implications.“

The Only Son (1936): Criterion’s jacket copy: “Yasujiro Ozu’s first talkie, the uncommonly poignant The Only Son is among the Japanese director’s greatest works. In its simple story about a good-natured mother who gives up everything to ensure her son’s education and future, Ozu touches on universal themes of sacrifice, family, love, and disappointment. Spanning many years, The Only Son is a family portrait in miniature, shot and edited with its maker’s customary exquisite control.”

Late Spring (1949): Ignatiy Vishnevetsky: “Each shot in Late Spring is striking on its own; the mature Ozu belongs to that rare category of filmmakers whose work can be recognized from a single frame. But together—with all their abrupt shifts in visual perspective and time—they become a mosaic, deeply poignant and ultimately mysterious in the way it envisions a relationship between two people trapped by how much they care for one another. There are domestic dramas, and then there’s this.“

Tokyo Story (1953): Dave Kehr: “The film that introduced Yasujiro Ozu, one of Japan's greatest filmmakers, to American audiences (1953). The camera remains stationary throughout this delicate study of conflicting generations in a modern Japanese family, save for one heartbreaking moment when Ozu tracks around a corner to discover the grandparents, alone and forgotten. A masterpiece, minimalist cinema at its finest and most complex.“

Early Spring (1956): Ozu on the film: “I wanted to portray the life of a white-collar man — his happiness over graduating and becoming a member of society. His hopes for the future when he got his job have gradually dissolved and he realizes that, even though he has worked for years, he has accomplished nothing worth talking about. By delineating his life over a period of time, I wanted to portray what you might call the pathos of the white-collar life...I tried to avoid anything that would be dramatic and to accumulate only casual scenes of everyday life in hopes that the audience would feel the sadness of that kind of life”

Equinox Flower (1958): Vincent Canby: “One of Ozu's least dark comedies, which is not to say that it's carefree, but, rather, that it's gentle and amused in the way that it acknowledges time's passage, the changing of values and the adjustments that must be made between generations.“

Late Autumn (1960): Peter Bradshaw: “Another gem from the Ozu canon, a masterpiece of tendernesss and serio-comic charm, as tonally ambiguous and morally complex as anything he ever made.“

And the tv series:

The Armando Iannucci Shows: You may know Armando Iannucci from his films, In The Loop and The Death of Stalin, or from some of his other television shows like The Thick of It or Veep, or from his involvement in all the Alan Partridge series with Steve Coogan. You probably missed The Armando Iannucci shows, his stream of consciousness sketch comedy that ran for one season back in 2001 (it didn’t help that it debuted in September of 2001), but it’s probably the most purely funny thing he’s ever done.

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camillasgirl · 3 years

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A speech by HRH The Prince of Wales at the Central Remembrance Ceremony in Berlin, 15.11.2020

Mr. President,

President of the Bundestag,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a particular honour to have been invited to speak here today, on this solemn and special occasion, and to join you in eternal remembrance of all victims of war and tyranny. In this memorable year, marking seventy-five years of peace and friendship between us, it gives my wife and myself such great pride to return to Germany, and to renew those enduring bonds between our two countries.

I have been coming to Germany since I was just thirteen years old, and first visited Berlin nearly fifty years ago. Over the decades, I have been struck by the ways in which this remarkable city embodies so much of the history of our continent, and all that we have been through. After the devastation of conflict, and the tragedy of division, it has not only endured but triumphed, liberated from flawed and distorted ideologies so that hope and the human spirit could prevail.

Berlin reminds us that the fortunes of all Europeans have been dependent on one another for centuries. The relationships we enjoy today are built on foundations dug deep in the bedrock of our common experience, anchored by bonds running North and South, East and West, through our diverse communities and across our borders.

The connections between the British and German people go back at least as far as the Roman Empire, evolving within a shared civilisation, and woven with threads drawn back and forth through the years. For many of us, those ties are personal, with family connections and associations which remain greatly treasured to this day.

Our people have prospered from one another through commerce, since the Hanseatic League established a trading relationship which continues to drive our shared prosperity. However, the relationship between us has always been so much more than a transactional one. We have long viewed each other with fascination - admiring of each other’s culture and inspired by each other’s ideas, we have influenced and borrowed from one another in a virtuous circle of reinforcing connections that have strengthened and enriched us both.

The examples are myriad. It was a German, Hans Holbein the Younger, who became the first celebrated artist in England. Half a century later, German was the first language into which Shakespeare was translated. The English landscape garden was brought to Germany by Prince Leopold III of Anhalt-Dessau who, inspired by the models of Stourhead and Stowe, laid out the magnificent gardens at Wörlitz of which I am proud to be Patron. Onecan scarcely imagine where the British musical tradition would be without the influence of Bach, Beethoven or Brahms; and the music of Georg Friedrich Handel, who was born a German but died British, has been played at the Coronation of every British Sovereign since that of my seven times great grandfather, King George II.

Throughout the nineteenth century, German scientific and artistic thought shaped British life, encouraged, in part, by the leadership of my great, great, great, grandfather, Prince Albert, The Prince Consort. German was a vitally important language for British academics to acquire, at a time when German immigration to Britain grew significantly and Schroders Bank and Reuters News Agency helped shape London’s global role. It was not as remarkable as it perhaps now seems, that at the outbreak of the First World War four members of the British cabinet had studied at German Universities. It is similarly striking, that in the years after that conflict, British students flocked back to Germany for the exposure to German culture that they, and their parents, considered to be so essential to their education.

Looking back through the prism of two world wars, with all the cruel distortions rendered by conflict and loss, so many of those close connections between Britain and Germany became obscured. And yet, as our countries, and our people, set to the difficult task of rebuilding this continent – and our trust in one another – the deep and historic well of shared experience from which we drew, enabled the seeds of reconciliation to take root and flourish.

And so, over these past seventy-five years, our two countries have been restored to our natural position of allies and friends. Britain was by Germany’s side through those extraordinary years of post-war reconstruction. We have watched, with profound admiration, the remarkable success of Germany’s peaceful reunification over the past thirty years, and with deep respect for the example that she has offered the world.

Today our countries stand together as indispensable partners in almost every field of endeavour imaginable, conscious of our past but confident about our future. As the message read on the wreath that you, Mr. President, laid at the Cenotaph in London two years ago this week, let us “remember side by side, grateful for reconciliation, hopeful for a future in peace and friendship.”

Reconciliation is a difficult but essential process, as I have seen in almost every corner of the globe, as well as on the islands of my own country. That we have healed so much division on our continent is cause for sustained gratitude and the utmost pride. However, as thankful as we should be for how far we have come, I know that many of you share my view that we must take nothing for granted.

We can never reconcile ourselves to the horrors of the past as simply the events of another age – distant, time bound, disconnected from our present lives. Nor can any of us assume that they are someone else’s burden to bear. Instead, the searing relevance of the past to the present day, and to our future, makes it our solemn and shared responsibility to ensure that heartbreaking lessons are learned and heeded by each successive generation.

The former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Rabbi Lord Sacks, who so tragically died earlier this month, wrote that “a future of reconciliation can, in some measure at least, retrospectively redeem the past.” He was quite right, of course. Otherwise not only do we compound past wrongs and amplify their effect, but we fail all those who struggled and died for a better tomorrow.

In this, we must work together. We must remain vigilant against threats to our values and our freedoms; and never rest in seeking to create mutual understanding and respect. We must be resolute in addressing acts of unspeakable cruelty against people for reasons of their religion, their race or their beliefs, wherever they occur in the world. We must stand alongside each other in determined defence of the future we owe our children and our grandchildren.

The challenges to that future are manifest – whether from this dreadful pandemic which threatens not just our public health but our prosperity and security; or from the existential threat to our planet, and our way of life, from climate change and catastrophic biodiversity loss.

These crises demand that we act together, and the partnership between the United Kingdom and Germany offers such a vital opportunity in this regard. We are heavily invested in each other’s futures, such that our national interests, whilst distinct, will always be entwined.

Our countries are instinctive problem-solvers, working together to find innovative and practical solutions to the challenges we see in the world around us – on global health and vaccine development; clean growth and renewable energy; forest protection and biodiversity; and climate action in developing countries. Together, we stand resolutely in defence of our shared values, as champions of human rights and the Rules Based International System. Together, we are an indispensable force for good in our world.

The English poet, John Donne, famously wrote that “no man is an island entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” One might equally submit that no country is really an island either, other than in the wholly literal sense. Our histories bind us tightly together and our destinies, although each our own to forge, are interdependent to a considerable degree.

Mr. President, President of the Bundestag, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The United Kingdom has chosen a future outside the European Union, and the relationship between our countries is evolving once again. Its shape is a matter negotiated between our governments and its essence is defined by the enduring connections between our people. It is, therefore, my heartfelt belief that the fundamental bond between us will remain strong: we will always be friends, partners and allies.

As our countries begin this new chapter in our long history, let us reaffirm our bond for the years ahead. Let us reflect on all that we have been through together, and all that we have learned. Let us remember all victims of war, tyranny and persecution; those who laid down their lives for the freedoms we cherish, and those who struggle for these freedoms to this day. They inspire us to strive for a better tomorrow – let us make this our common cause.

#Prince Charles #brexit #speech #this speech was/ is amazing #loved it

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bean-na-farraige-agus-foraoise · 3 years

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A Rebuttal of “Lesson 6: The Structure of Early Gaelic Society”

This is part 6 of my 20-part manifesto on why druids should do some research for once. You can find the master-post here.

This is a long post, so the actual rebuttal is under the cut! Each number in parenthesis (#) corresponds to a footnote formatted in the Chicago manual of style located in the block quote at the end of the post, any reference to the Brehon laws is linked within the text and will not have a footnote!

Hey hey hey welcome back! It’s been a few months, and I’m refreshed and am once again ready to tear into druidic bullshit. Today we’re continuing our look at Robin Herne’s “lessons,” this particular lesson can be found here.

From the very beginning of this “lesson” I’m sensing a problem with Herne’s writing that I’ve seen and spoken on before, which is the concept of a pan-Celtic religion. Herne’s lesson may focus on Ireland, but that’s only because he feels as though it’s “harder” to talk about Wales.... a nation with a very different history and a different religion than Ireland..... but they’re both Celtic so whatever right? For any newbies here, there was no Pan-Celtic religion. I mention this in Part 1 of this series.

From there it only gets worse really. For starters, the Romans never conquered Ireland, the nation whose history is supposed to be the focus of this lesson. Beyond that- the Romans used existing British oppida as the urban centers of the tribal system that was established under their rule, to claim that pre-Roman Britain was made up only of villages when archaeologists can’t accurately determine the populations of the oppida is ridiculous. What the Romans did was establish the first cities that were not located in the South East of England. Herne also has this weird focus on Ireland and Britain being “rural” as though most cultures weren’t largely rural- and honestly the focus on distancing these cultures from anything urban is a HUGE red flag if you know the history of paganism and Celtic Twilight, bad show all around. And of course Herne doesn’t cite any sources so for all I know he’s pulling this out of his ass. All in all it seems like Herne is falling to the classic pitfall of circle jerking to Rome, maybe if he could get off Rome’s dick for a few minutes we might actually learn something.

I question whether Herne has ever actually read the Brehon laws, or if he understands that there were similarities between the laws of many medieval societies, even those that didn’t share a “Celtic” label. I genuinely have no idea what “change” he’s referring to that would be a gradual process considering the continental Celts and the Gaels were different cultures, and the laws in question existed at different times, and also the laws he references for the continental Celts were only “mentioned” by classical authors, who if you haven’t read my other rebuttals are notoriously unreliable narrators.

I question the choice to say “Think of the cenn as rather like the head of a Mafia clan! “ and particularly to end it with an exclamation point. The cenn, is the head of the family, and thus the family’s legal representative in court. This was not a cultural practice unique to Ireland, similar practices are shown to exist throughout Europe during this time. And in no way is a patriarch (or occasionally a matriarch) who protects the family’s interests and revokes legal agreements made without their consent the same thing as a mafia boss. This isn’t a crime syndicate, it’s a judicial system that protects the different families within the tribe and in theory was meant to ensure that contractual decisions were made with the consent of the family.

Beyond this to describe the social structure of early Ireland as a “caste system” is... stretching it- movement from one class to another was not uncommon, and more things factored into one’s status in Irish society than simply the situation of one’s birth. Beyond that, this system is more easily broken down into six groups than into two, and Herne would know that if he’d actually read the Brehon laws. Rather than just splitting society into “the blessed ones” and “ordinary people” the Brehon laws organize it into kings of various grades, professional classes, flaiths (a sort of official nobility), freemen possessing property, freemen who possess no or very little property, and the non-free classes. And joint ownership of property could qualify a selected joint-owner to become a noble, this is very much not the rigid system Herne would want you to believe it is.

Herne’s discussion of the Lia Fail while simplified does hold up. In the lore we see the process described by Herne for choosing the high king of Ireland, it’s described clearly in The Destruction of Dá Derga’s Hostel. And I will admit, I’m with Herne up to a point in his discussion of the concept of lanamnas, there’s clearly a fair amount of research he needs to do into medieval history to truly understand the relationships he’s describing, but he’s not necessary wrong, so I’ll let it slide, these are meant to be introductory lessons after all.

However. Herne makes some... interesting claims in regards to divinity. Herne makes the correct statement that “Each partner in lanamain must recognise that they have a duty to give certain things to the other person, but also a duty to allow that person to give back to them ~ there is no honour in emasculating someone, nor in allowing yourself to be rendered servile.” This is correct, we see this very same principle in the two sided nature of the virtue of hospitality, we’re called to be both good hosts and good guests. But then Herne goes onto say “This applies as much to the Gods as to other humans. Hosting a ritual for a god may be seen as fulfilling the coinmed, but there should also be expectation back of the deity. If your life is barren, then maybe you need a better head to guide you (either that, or you‘re not fulfilling your duties to them).” Ignoring the fact that Herne has all but called the gods parasites if they don't attend rituals we host for them voluntarily (something we should be doing anyway, and without the expectation that they’ll show up)- this argument rests on the assumption that we can understand the divine and how they interact with us enough to judge whether or not we need a "better head" to guide us, which I think anyone who’s actually had an encounter with the divine or felt their presence can tell you is bullshit. They’re divine for a reason, they’ve existed for thousands of years, we’re just a blip on their radar, it is not up to us to judge whether or not we need a “better head to guide us” or if we’re giving enough, the gods decide that.

For everyone who had “baseless claims about the roles of historical druids” on their BINGO cards you may now cross that off. Herne falls into the typical pattern of repeating the “druids were the precursor the Catholic church” story fabricated by 16th century Germans for political clout. Don’t be like Herne, read a goddamn book, I have recommendations, feel free to dm me or shoot me an ask if you’d like them.

And last but not least, I would like to remind everyone that the “every family/tribe has their own tartan that differentiates them” is a largely 19th century creation with scant pre-Victorian basis.

That’s all for today! If you want more reading on any of the topics mentioned in this post feel free to shoot me an ask or a message and I’ll provide you with a reading list!

#my writing #research musings #anti-druidic rhetoric #anti druidic rhetoric #aka facts #20-part manifesto

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busterkeatonfanfic · 3 years

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Chapter 22

As Nelly washed her face and braided her hair that night, she could scarcely believe that the weekend was almost over. It had been a happy blur of fishing, bridge lessons, walks in the woods, songs under the stars, and tonight a campfire and a ukulele concert after a dinner of wheat cakes and maple syrup. And of course, not a trivial amount of that time had been passed in bed with Buster. As she’d spent those blissful hours with him, time zipped by without her noticing.

Buster was humming to himself from the other room and Nelly wondered if the weekend had gone the way he’d expected. She wondered, not the first time, what had he expected. From the way he was behaving, he seemed cheerful and serene, but she wasn’t sure. Men were mysterious. Tomorrow he would go back to his wife and she would return to being a cog in the United Artists machine.

Before leaving the washroom, she brushed her teeth. She was half-tempted to shed her chemise and knickers ahead of bed; they always ended up torn off in the middle of the night anyway.

In the other room, Buster was sitting up in bed with the blankets pulled over his lap and her little red book in his hands, paging through Mistress Nell Gwyn. She felt a flush of embarrassment and regretted not bringing a more serious book along.

“Are you reading it ‘cause the main girl’s called Nelly?” he said, looking up at her.

Her face warmed as she checked the lock to the front door and turned off the floor lamp near the kitchen. “No, I like Marjorie Bowen and I hadn’t read this one yet. The name’s just a coincidence.” And it was, truly. “What do you read?” she said to switch the subject. They’d gotten around to discussing their favorite music (they both liked Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, and Paul Whiteman), but not their favorite books.

Buster looked slightly abashed as she switched off the table lamp by the sofa. “Does Popular Mechanics count?”

“Well, not as far as novels go,” she said, crossing the room and lifting the corner of the sheets on her side of the bed to slide in next to Buster.

“I read a dime novel once and awhile. Mostly don’t have the time,” said Buster. “But your book—she’s sweet on old King Charlie?”

Nelly took the book from him, amused. “King Charles II,” she corrected.

“Why d’ya like it?” said Buster. He burrowed deeper into the covers and snuggled against her shoulder like a boy wanting a bedtime story.

“I like novels based on real things. I get a history lesson and the people from back then feel more real.”

“Did you see my picture The General?” asked Buster.

“Of course,” said Nelly. Her memory of the film wasn’t very strong, but she knew that she had enjoyed it quite a lot and remembered gasping with the rest of the audience at his daring stunts on the train. She seemed to recall that she found him good-looking with his long hair and sober looks, but apparently not so good-looking that she’d felt compelled to write him a mash note or glue his picture into her scrapbook like she had with John Barrymore.

“Now that picture, you see, was based on real facts. And the train was really called the General!” Buster launched into the story of the Great Locomotive Chase of 1862, and Nelly listened with contentment to his animated retelling. He talked all about the production of the picture, having to find narrow-gauge railroad tracks, learning how to operate a steam engine, hiring the National Guard to play soldiers, and playing baseball near the Willamette Valley. “I thought it was my finest picture but the critics all blasted it. Said it was a flop. I haven’t been able to make sense of it. Guess they thought I should leave the serious acting to types like your fellow, John Barrymore.”

“He’s not my fellow, Buster,” Nelly chided. She ran her fingers idly through his dark hair.

“What happened to being his leading lady?” he said, kissing her bare upper arm.

“Oh, don’t tease me for being romantic when I didn’t know him. I didn’t know what he was really like. Didn’t I tell you? When I was in Tempest, he came right into the ladies room and pissed in the sink right in front of me. And if that wasn’t enough, he picked his nose right in front of me too! He was so drunk he couldn’t tell left from right. I had to help him back to Mr. Taylor.”

Buster laughed. “You’re kidding.”

“Gosh, I wish I was. He kept us there all night he was so drunk. They had to build a sort of carousel for Camilla Horn and him to finish their ballroom dance.” Thinking of Tempest, Nelly was reminded of something that had been on her mind since her hours with Buster had begun to draw to a close. “I want to say something serious to you now though.”

Buster, to his credit, didn’t try to make a joke. “What’s that?”

“In the book”—for a second, Nelly lifted the red volume that lay between them—“Nell Gwyn is just an orange seller at the playhouse. One night, King Charles invites her to a tavern with his friends Rochester and Buckingham. He remembers seeing her before and likes her. While they’re eating and drinking, he asks what she means to do with her life and she says that she wants to be an actress. Then she dances for him and he leaves her a pair of silver shoes as a gift because she pays for his food and drink. You think that he’s going to see to it that she becomes an actress, but he doesn’t. He has his own matters to worry about and goes on with his life, but she becomes a successful actress on her own—I’m only halfway through of course—and anyhow that’s how he notices her again. He goes to a play and she’s starring.”

“Oh yeah?” said Buster, obviously not understanding.

“Well, what I’m saying is I appreciate you putting in a word for me with Mr. Taylor, but if you want to continue seeing me …”

Here she paused. It was a brave thing to say aloud because she didn’t know, not for certain, if Buster did want to see her after he dropped her back off at her apartment tomorrow. It wasn’t just false modesty. For all she knew, he had getaways with girls all the time, a new one for every weekend. His waywardness with women had, after all, been one of the first things she’d heard about him back in River Junction: all a girl had to do to seduce him was walk into his dressing room.

“I don’t want any more favors and I won’t ask for any. I don’t want to play angles anymore. In fact, I prefer to try it on my own in the future, getting parts that is, just to see if I can, if I’m good enough to make it without help. Like Nell Gwyn was.” She let out a deep breath, afraid of his reaction.

“I think that’s fine,” he said, putting a hand on her jaw and turning her head to his so he could kiss her lips. His expression registered no displeasure. “Only I never talked to Sam Taylor. You did that one on your own. Honest.”

Nelly could hardly believe it.“Really?” she said, scanning his eyes to see if he was being truthful.

“ ‘Course not. Had nothing to do with me,” he said.

“Oh. Well…” said Nelly, feeling silly.

“I’ll make a note. No angles, no favors. I’ll let you go it alone like your Nell Gwyn.” He took her hand and brought it to his lips. “Tell me what happens next in your book, though.”

Feeling that a weight had been lifted, Nelly went on. “Well, the King sees Nell at a play and as soon as he notices her silver shoes, he remembers who she is.”

“Then what?” said Buster, caressing her hand.

“I don’t know. Then she becomes his mistress,” Nelly said. She felt embarrassed to admit that she read such books.

“Did he have a queen?”

“Oh yes, Queen Catherine, the one who got the British to start drinking tea, but she doesn’t get much mention in the book. Mrs. Bowen’s more concerned with his mistresses. He had about a dozen. There’s the Countess of Castlemaine and Moll Davis, who’s another actress. Nelly was just one, but she was the most loyal.” She looked down to where Buster was holding her hand in his and rubbing it with a thumb, and wondered what he was thinking about her foolish taste in novels.

“Will you be my mistress?”

Nelly turned her face to him, stunned. For a moment, she thought it was just one of his many jokes. One look at the beseeching expression on his face told her it wasn’t. Such waves of happiness and consternation struck her then that it was several seconds before she could answer. “Yes,” she said. There could hardly be another answer. And yet even as she consented, she thought of the Countess of Castlemaine, Moll Davis, and the Duchess of Portsmouth.

“You got this look on your face,” said Buster.

“Do I?” she said, feeling flustered.

“Yeah. A look that’s telling me you got something on your mind you ain’t telling me.”

Now that they were being so honest, she couldn’t deny him the real answer, even though it was preposterous to ask for faithfulness from a man who was already someone else’s husband.

“Well, are there others?” she said, searching his eyes.

“Other what?” said Buster, cocking his head a little. “Mistresses? No.” He squeezed her hand. “Now I ain’t going to lie, I’ve had steadies before, not what you’d call mistresses exactly, but cross my heart I haven’t been with a girl in months. Are you asking if I’ll be true to you?”

Nelly looked away. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, but reminded herself she was trying to be honest. “I suppose I am and it’s the silliest thing to ask. I know you’re married. I’m not asking you to… Well, I guess I don’t know what I’m asking. Maybe I’m a little jealous, not about your wife, but about other girls because I—I like you already.” She looked back at him, fearing his reaction, but he was only regarding her in the same interested way he had when she’d relayed the plot of her book. “Please don’t take what I’m saying the wrong way, I know it seems like I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth,” she said hurriedly. “And I don’t expect you to keep me either like King Charles keeps Nelly, with satin and pearls and houses. Oh, I’m sorry for making this such a muddle. All I should have said was yes. I just want to be pals like we’ve been this weekend. I know it’s not right to ask.”

“ ‘Course we’ll stay pals,” said Buster. “And I promise no satin and pearls. I can still buy you dinner, can’t I?”

Nelly laughed, her spirits feeling lighter. “Of course you can. I just don’t want to be a kept woman, okay? You can still do all the normal stuff a fellow would.”

Buster’s hand found its way down the front of her chemise and she pulled in a sharp breath as he rolled his finger lightly around the perimeter of her nipple. “Like this?”

She nodded, her eyes closing as his thumb joined the finger and pinched with gentle pressure. Her mind went back to the sight of him between her legs in the forest, his dark messy hair that he’d stopped slicking down with Brilliantine during the course of the weekend, and she groaned at the memory. She rolled onto her side, Buster’s hand still busy at her breast, and slid her hand beneath the brim of his pajama trousers.

“You’re not wearing any underwear,” she said, grasping the warm, silky length of him.

Buster shifted onto his side. “Yeah, you’ve been teaching me something about efficiency.” He gave a wince of pleasure as she began to move her hand up and down. He withdrew his hand from her chemise and put it in her knickers, and she felt as warm as she had in the sun on Saturday as his fingers began their clever work.

They exchanged pleasures like that for a couple minutes before Buster began tugging her chemise over her head. She unbuttoned his pajama shirt as he played with her breasts. It would be a terribly long time before she was ever bored by the way he tensed his stomach when she touched him, making all the muscles stand out like they were sculpted in marble. She pressed her breasts against her chest as she pulled his pajama shirt the rest of the way off of him, and Buster began wrestling her knickers down. When they were all the way undressed, both still lying on their sides, Nelly put her leg over him.

“Let’s try it without,” she whispered, as Buster kissed her neck and ear. It was a crazy thing to ask, but she was beyond thinking straight.

“What, without a thin?” he said with surprise.

“I think it’d be okay. If you pull out before--” She blushed. “I want to see how it feels without it.”

Buster kissed her forehead once, twice, three times in obvious gratitude. “Alright.”

Nelly shifted herself lower and guided him into her with a hand. For a few moments, Buster was perfectly still. Nelly breathed deeply, feeling him without a barrier for the first time and jubilant with the sensation, as well as the weight of his proposal. A mistress.

He made love to her more slowly than he had on previous occasions, pausing for long stretches to kiss her, then grasping her backside to push himself deeper. Eventually, the slow pace sent her into such a frenzy that she took control of the rhythm. He caught on and went faster. When every muscle on him stood out again as if sculpted, she knew he was close.

“Don’t forget to pull out,” she said, seeking his eyes.

“I won’t,” he said breathlessly. He gave such a fierce, pleasurable thrust that she keened, and that caused him to withdraw suddenly and rock himself against her stomach until he came with a shuddering groan.

She stroked his cheekbone when he was finished. His eyes had closed and his breathing was deep and satisfied. Buster Keaton’s mistress. She was so filled with the thought that she felt barely any guilt when she thought of his wife. It was, after all, easy to justify. He was not intimate with her; she had realized that when he mentioned that he slept alone. She had never forgotten his statement the night of his party either, that the marriage was headed for divorce. But there she cut off her thoughts. She was getting far too ahead of herself. It was enough that they had gotten on like a house on fire and that Buster was holding her in his arms now, smelling like sweat and cigarettes and himself.

“Buster,” she said. She could tell he was starting to fall asleep.

“Mmmph,” said Buster.

“We should set an alarm for tomorrow. My tram leaves at 6:45 and I’ve got to be at work around 7:30. We should get up at four so we have time to pack and so I can get ready.”

Buster rolled onto his back and cupped the crown of his head in his hands. “Don’t worry about the tram, I’ll drop you off.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that. I don’t want to get you into any trouble. If anyone sees us, they’ll talk,” she said.

Buster opened one eye and lifted his eyebrow. “Let ‘em talk,” he said.

“Okay,” said Nelly, not quite knowing what to make of this attitude.

Nell Gwyn had been no secret to King Charles II’s subjects, but somehow Nelly thought that Buster Keaton’s public would be less tolerant if he got into the habit of parading around a mistress. Nonetheless, she didn’t argue with him. As she cleaned his seed off of her in the washroom, she didn’t have a thought except for how happy she was when she was around him.

Note: Just a PSA that this is fiction and not an endorsement of the pull-out method (although Planned Parenthood notes that it is 96% effective if used correctly 100% of the time). Obviously it doesn't prevent STDs. You should always use protection with a new partner. ;)

#Buster Keaton #Fan fiction #RPF #Actor RPF #Golden Age Hollywood #silent film

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heavy-lobster · 3 years

Note

POST THE FUCKING ESSAY KOAL/DUSTY I SWEAR TO GOD

WAIT I THOUGHT YOU READ IT ALREADY??? DID I SERIOUSLY NOT SEND IT TO YOU WHEN I INITIALLY FINISHED IT??? GOD WHAT THE FUCK

Well I can’t NOT post it now.

So for some background, the assignment was to write a short essay arguing as to why a children’s series of our choosing could be classified as horror, based on some article we had to read. I chose Wow Wow Wubbzy because I thought it would be funny and. man. So anyways this is VERY poorly written because I did most of it between like,,, midnight and 3 am. It’s very ranty and way longer than it needed to be. For ease of reading I went back and fixed up the shitty formatting and fixed a few spelling errors, as well as linking my sources.

So uhhh this is about horror so,, warning for horror ig?? It’s not scary like, at all, but better safe than sorry.

Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!: The Horror Within

Introduction

“Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!” is an American TV show originally aired on Nick Jr. From the mind of Bob Boyle, this educational kid’s show was very memorable for a lot of kids growing up at that time. The show features Wubbzy, a yellow, square, animalistic character, with a curly, “springy” tail; as well as Wubbzy’s various friends. Most episodes feature Wubbzy and his pals, Widget and Walden (as well as Daizy in later episodes), dealing with an every day situation, or well, depends on your definition of “every day”. The situation spirals out of control because of the actions of various characters, and it is resolved by the problematic character of the episode learning a lesson and fixing their mistake. Seems like a typical kids show, right? Well, there may be more to it than that. What if I told you that Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! could be interrupted as a horror show about horrifically mutated beasts struggling to survive the post apocalyptic world they are forced to inhabit? Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! fits many categories described in Sharon A. Russell’s literary criticism in “What is the Horror Genre?”. In this essay we will discuss how Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! could possibly be classified as a horror series.

Asking the real questions; what is everyone?

First of all, a very important question. What exactly are the characters? There are claims that Wubbzy himself is some kind of gerbil, but frankly I don’t see it. Also, what’s the deal with the inhabitants of Wuzzleburg in general? Wubbzy and his friends are supposed to be anthropomorphic animals, but they seem more like horrific monsters, mutated from normal animals. Monsters are a very common and important element in horror. Not all monsters are vicious killers, and not all of them are obvious in appearance. Some monsters are small and cute, but it’s almost always a facade.

There are also some “regular” animals running around, but yet they aren’t “normal” by any stretch of the imagination. Some are very obviously not normal, others seem mostly normal. “Flutterflies” are a common, non-anthro animal seen in Wubbzy, with their most prominent appearance being in the episode “The Flight of the Flutterfly”. Flutterflies seem like normal butterflies, but why are they called “Flutterflies” instead? Are they in any way different to the butterflies of our world, or is that just what the inhabitants of Wuzzleburg call butterflies? What about the more blatantly odd non-anthro animals? In “Attack of the 50 Foot Fleegle” Wubbzy acquires a pet “Fleegle”. It appears to be a small, purple, almost hamster like creature. It remains small and happy if you feed it the right kind of food, but Wubbzy foolishly feeds it candy and sweets. When fed candy, the Fleegle increases in size in increasingly large increments. After a time, it becomes so big that it rampages all over Wuzzleburg. The only thing that could shrink it back to normal size was carrot juice. When fed bologna, they multiply, and the solution to this is unknown, as the episode ends there and this is never brought up again.

There are plenty of strange animals, both anthropomorphic and not; yet no humans. Not a single human character in sight. This begs the question, what happened? Why are all these animals how they are? What happened to the humans? Obviously, these questions were never answered, as this is a kids show. Here is a thought to consider: what if all the humans are dead, and all the characters are mutant abominations, or, monsters as they’d more fittingly be called. Humans have been wiped out, and the animals who survived mutated in many different ways. Some animals became intelligent, and capable of building their own society similar to what once was our own. That society is what we know as Wuzzleburg. In conclusion, all the creatures seen in the show are the result of something terrible; mutated abominations passing as animals. This fits the “monster” category of horror as described in Russell’s article.

What’s the deal with Wuzzleburg?

Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! takes place in the fictional town of Wuzzleburg. Wuzzleburg and its surrounding locations look very odd. Everything is unnaturally geometric. Everything- from houses to trees- is very odd in appearance. Tree branches are often bendy, always at a right angle, with the edges being smooth and rounded. In Wuzzleburg, many houses look like completely normal houses, yet Wubbzy lives in a tree house. Another common thing is that houses and buildings of importance are usually designed based on a specific object. Daizy’s house, for example, is shaped like a flower.

Outside of Wuzzleburg, the locations only get weirder. There is an island, shown to be somewhere off the coast of Wuzzleburg, called “Dino Island”. As the name suggests, this island is inhabited by dinosaurs. So apparently, dinosaurs are not extinct in this universe; at least on this island. As far as other towns go, there is Wuzzlewood, clearly based on Hollywood, where all the biggest celebrities in the Wubbzy cinematic universe (WCU) live. Everything in Wuzzlewood is covered in stars, a clever spin of the celebrity theme. Another interesting location is Plaidville. In Plaidville, everything is plaid; the trees, the ground, and even the inhabitants. I don’t have to explain what is unnatural about that.

Now, back on the topic of Wuzzleburg, since it is the main location seen in the show, and is where Wubbzy and his friends live. It has been stated that Wuzzleburg was founded in 1853 by “Heinrich van Wuzzle”. The specific year being given is an odd detail, that you wouldn’t normally expect in a show of this nature. Wuzzleburg is clearly a town in every sense of the word. It has plenty of stores and restaurants, an airport, houses, residents, a mayor, a rich history, annual festivities, reliable transportation, schools, and even a stable economy. All of this being made by what we have already established as horrific monsters. That’s impressive. There is common debate in the Wubbzy fandom on whether these locations are in a parallel universe, or perhaps if they exist on our Earth. In the episode “Fly Us To The Moon”, the place where they land back on “Earth” appears to suggest that Wuzzleburg is located somewhere in or near Washington state, in America, or possibly somewhere in British Columbia.

My theory is that the events of Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! takes place on Earth, but certainly not our Earth. An alternate Earth, where humans may have lived before. Some horrible nuclear accident wiped out all human life, and caused all the animals to mutate into the many strange creatures of the WCU. This also explains the unnatural features of the setting. Post-apocalyptic Earth? Sounds like a perfect horror setting to me. This fits perfectly with the criteria described in Sharon’s article.

The beast within; Wubbzy’s true villain

Finally, the matter of the deep internal conflict hidden deep within the show. In the show, you can expect every episode to have a lesson or moral, as many kids shows do. Most episodes feature one of the main characters (almost always Wubbzy) making a mistake, followed by them learning the lesson of the episode and using their newfound knowledge to make things right. What if I told you that this is sign of a much deeper internal conflict going on far beneath the character’s cute exterior? Would it be so far fetched to believe that every episode is focused on the anthropomorphic abominations struggling to fight against their beastly instincts? Their own organized and civilized society goes against their very nature, and they constantly fight to uphold the standards they set; both for themselves, and each other. It's a constantly uphill climb. Wubbzy is undeniably a flawed character. He messes up constantly, often learning the same lessons over and over again, as if it’s more of a reminder than a lesson. It’s Wubbzy against himself. This fits Sharon’s criteria of internal horror, but that’s not all.

Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! is also the story of a quest for self improvement, as well as a good vs evil scenario, which are two of Russell’s other criteria. I mean, think about it. Every character is open to self improvement once they realize the harm they’ve caused. Every character is on their own quest, seeking to better themselves. Every character is going through their own internal battle. They fight their own flaws. Their own evils. The true villain of Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! is the evil within all of them, the beastly instincts lurking within all of Wuzzleberg’s monster inhabitants. And they may not always be perfect, maybe they don’t know how to be “good”, maybe being good just isn’t in their nature; but they try their best despite all the challenges, to be better, and improve themselves.

In that way I think we can all relate to them. We aren’t always “good”, we aren’t perfect, sometimes we don’t know how to do the “right” thing, but our flaws are what make us human. It may not be in our nature to be flawless, but it is in our nature to seek self improvement, and that’s what Wubbzy is really about. The struggles we all go through to be better people, because inside? We’re all just monsters trying our best to be civil, and conform to our moral code. And really? That’s enough.

Conclusion

Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! is undeniably a kid’s show at heart, but if you really stop to analyze it, you find a much darker horror series. It would be fittingly classified as a psychological horror. It fits almost all of Sharon A. Russell’s criteria as described in the article “What is the Horror Genre?”. What is Wubbzy? In fact, what are all of the show’s characters? Their vaguely animal appearance appeal to young children, but I believe that they may actually be normal animals mutated into horrible monsters. Freaks of nature created by a nuclear incident. There is not a single human seen in the show, but plenty of abnormal creatures. This suggests that we are long gone. The monsters we left behind built their own society.

Not only were the animals affected, but also the earth itself. The odd nature of the setting supports my nuclear devastation theory. Finally, is the true conflict of Wubbzy. The show itself is about nuclear monsters trying their best to adapt to the society they built for themselves, even if it goes against their own nature. It’s beasts on a quest where the only objective is the betterment of the self. An internal conflict. There is no physical villain in the show. The only antagonist out to get Wubbzy, is Wubbzy himself. In that way, I think we can all relate. In conclusion, Wow! Wow! Wubbzy! is actually about horribly mutated animals fighting their inner demons, on a metaphorical journey to be better than they are. For that very reason, I believe it could be interrupted as a horror series.

Sources:

Wubbzy Wikipedia page

Wubbzy Fandom Wiki, which I did NOT know existed before this project and honestly the comments on the page were the funniest fucking thing, I highly recommend it

And uhhh various episodes of Wubbzy I had to watch

I apologize for my crimes

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arrow-guy · 4 years

Text

Out of Time (1/??)

Synopsis: Asta is a woman out of time. She’s strong, and damn near indestructible, but when she wakes up hundreds of years in the future, she’s completely lost. She finds a new family in Peggy Carter and friends in people that she never would have dreamed of. But not everyone gets what they want, right?

A/N: Alright, I’m not really one to write OC content, but I couldn’t resist with this story. It’s a huge project that’s going to cover a lot of ground, but I hope it’ll be as fun to read as it has been to write. If you’d like, I’ve put together a Spotify playlist for this fic and you’re more than welcome to listen along!

Pairing: Jack ThompsonxOFC (Steve RogersxOFC endgame)

Word Count: 10.3k

Warnings: Canon typical violence

Playlist

Page dividers by @carryonmyswansong

“This all must be quite shocking for you.”

“I am not sure that’s the phrasing I would use.”

“Then how would you describe it?” The woman tilted her head to the side.

“I…” I sighed. “It’s disorienting. If I truly have been asleep for more than three hundred years, then there is so much that I’ve missed.”

“Your family?”

“No,” I shook my head. “I’ve lost so much time. There’s so much history that I missed. I have very little idea where I am, let alone how this new world works.”

She hummed. “I understand.”

“I’m not sure that you do.” I gestured to the small room. “All of this is foreign to me. Lamps that light at the flip of a switch, listening devices, new weapons. Carriages without horses or mules. Everything.”

“Yes, there’s a lot we have to teach you. If you’re willing to learn, that is.”

“You don’t know me. What I’m capable of.”

“Then teach us,” she said. “Work with us. I, for one, would like to help you build a new life here.”

Overwhelmed with emotion, I clenched my hands in my lap. “Why?”

“Because everyone deserves a chance. You never got yours.” She leaned forward on the table. “Do you have a name?”

I shook my head. “Not one that is worth using.”

“Then I suppose that means you get to choose a new one.” She smiled kindly and pushed her chair back from the table. “I’ll give you some time to think about everything.”

“No.” She stopped in her tracks. “I’ve made my decision.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll stay,” I said. “If you will have me.”

“Of course we will. And, your name?”

“M-my name… Asta. My name will be Asta.”

“It’s lovely to meet you, Asta. I’m Peggy Carter.” She grinned. “I have a very good feeling about our future.”

“You’ll be staying here for the time being,” Peggy showed me into a small apartment. “You’re only three doors down from me, so come find me if you need anything.”

“Thank you, Peggy.”

“It’s nothing, Asta, really.” She fussed with the cushions on the small couch. “As of Friday, you are legally my sister. If someone asks for your surname, you tell them it’s Carter. Understood?”

“I understand, but I have no accent. It’s hardly believable.”

“If you’re questioned, we’ll say you were sent to live with relatives here during the first war. You stayed here for university and lost your accent when you were young.”

“I feel as if we may lose track of this lie.”

“We’ll be careful. If you have to leave your room, I’ll go with you. Field any questions someone may ask.”

“Alright.”

“There isn’t much that you can talk about from this century until you start your lessons.”

“When will we start?”

“Tomorrow morning. We’ll go to the library and you can choose whatever you like.” She paused to look back at me. “You can read, right?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, I can read and write.”

“I apologize. I have to ask, as we don’t fully know what kind of education someone from your time might’ve received.”

“Seems as though it’s something that would have been recorded,” I muttered.

“Most history caters to what the rich and successful did,” Peggy explained. “Much of British history, specifically, focuses on the plague and royal drama.”

I shook my head. “Ridiculous.”

“No argument here.” She folded her arms. “I’ll be back to get you for dinner, alright?”

I nodded and she left.

I only lived in that first apartment for about four months before I was moved to a room at the SSR headquarter in New York. There, I could be better monitored by the SSR. Living there meant that no one asked questions that they shouldn’t and I was able to learn and ask questions without someone looking at me like I’d grown a tail. Living there made it more convenient for them to run their tests. They weren’t nearly as invasive as I might have expected them to be, but they often left me exhausted and worn down. The day they realized that I could withstand the explosion from a grenade was particularly exciting for their team of scientists. I, however, went back to my room at the end of the day and collapsed into bed after picking and brushing the shrapnel from my hair.

Peggy visited me as often as she could in those first few months. As it stood, she wasn’t allowed out of her apartment after a certain time. I never really understood curfews for grown women during that time. I have a feeling it was set as a way to control the tenants. We went out on our weekly trips to the library. She would quiz me on things I’d learned on our walk to and from, our arms laden with books. She was the first real friend I’d made since childhood and I cherished every moment I got with her.

The science team got bored with testing my strength and durability nearly four months, and by then the SSR signed off on a select group of agents to begin training me in combat. I started off learning hand to hand combat but had to hold back in order to keep from hurting the trainers. Enough were scared of me that they moved on to using heavy bags and demonstrating throws and takedowns on football dummies. It was only when new agents were brought in that I actually got to put any of that training to use. Most gave up after two sessions with me if they were smart.

Three months into my training, Peggy was allowed to slowly incorporate casework, provided it wasn’t anything that required any kind of physical altercation. I think they saw me as a walking lawsuit at the time. When I stepped between Agent Thompson and an angry suspect with a shotgun, their opinion seemed to change. He and I had had little to do with one another before that, though Peggy had worked closely with both him and Agent Sousa. We became more familiar with one another after that incident.

“Y’know, I wondered what your deal was when we first found you,” Jack mused one day.

“Oh?”

“Well, yeah. Some mysterious woman gets found asleep in a coffin, Snow White style, of course a guy’s bound to be curious.”

“Have you figured out my deal yet, then?” I asked, resting my chin in my hand.

“You’re hard to read,” he said. “So, no.”

“Mmm,” I hummed. “Pitty, that.”

He snorted and shook his head, but I caught the corner of his mouth turning up in a smile. We went back to our paperwork in silence. For some reason, it was easier to pick him out of the crowd during training for the next few weeks. I got suspicious of how often I saw him after an additional two weeks and began to notice money changing hands. It took a couple days before I realized that money only made an appearance when I fought a new agent. I let it go on for another week before I confronted him about it.

“Stop betting on the new agents, Thompson.”

He’d grinned. “Or what?”

“Or I’ll kick your ass,” I said.

“Didn’t think you knew how to talk like that,” he said. “I’m impressed, Carter.”

“You’d be surprised, the things that I know,” I smirked. “I’m a quick study.”

“Oh, I know. Midge says you’ve read through about half the public library by now.”

“You know she doesn’t like to be called Midge.” I shook my head and clipped up the heavy bag. “I don’t get why you treat her so poorly. If she were a man, she’d be your best friend.”

He shook his head. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I folded my arms and leaned against the wall to study him. “You’ve seen her in action. Hell, she’s half the reason you’re alive.”

“She is not.”

“Who do you think sent someone to check on you in California?” His eyes went wide. “Yes, I know you were shot in your hotel room.”

“I- That’s classified.”

“Which is why only Peggy and I know about it.”

“Why would you know?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Because I’m classified, Jack. No one’s supposed to know about me, so I have the pleasure of knowing about everyone else.”

“Impressive.”

“Quit deflecting.”

“Quit interrogating me,” he hissed.

“Ah, don’t like people getting close to your truth, do you?”

He growled and took a swing at me. I grabbed his fist, stopping him in his tracks, planted my foot in the middle of his chest, and kicked him away. He stumbled back, lost his balance, and fell to the mat. He groaned as he sat up and pressed one hand to the small of his back.

“Don’t throw a punch if you’re not ready for a fight,” I said. “Next time, I’m not going easy on you.”

“That was you going easy?”

“Did you know that I could crush your skull with one hand?” I crouched down in front of him and tilted my head to the side. “That I have lived longer than you could ever dream. That if you tried to shoot me, and your scientists have, if you tried to even cut or scratch me, nothing would happen? There would be no wound, no welt. Not even a mark. If you come at me again, a bruised tailbone will be the least of your worries.”

He leaned away, his eyes wide. “What the fuck.”

I stood and offered him a hand up. He hesitated and I rolled my eyes. “Just let me help you up.”

“I’m not sure how comfortable I am with that.”

“I’m not going to hurt you. Just take my hand already.”

He hesitated, but eventually let me help him up. He brushed off his pants as soon as he was on his feet again.

"You're kind of terrifying," he said.

"That's the point." I looked him over. "Were you here to train, or…?"

He looked startled by the question but didn’t back down. “I might’ve been.”

“Well don’t let little ole me stop you,” I said.

He shuffled around and lifted weights for about half an hour before giving up. He made a point to avoid the gym whenever I was there from then on out. I thought it was hilarious at the time.

About two months later, an SSR agent walked up to Peggy and I while we were talking.

“Time for the lunch orders, ladies,” he said. He held out a notepad and pen with a sly smile on his face. “The natives are getting restless.”

“Order your own lunches,” I said.

He grabbed Peggy’s hand and slapped the pad and pen into it. “Not my job, sweetheart. Just get lunch.”

Peggy’s jaw tightened and she moved to get up from her chair. I held up one hand to stop her and took the pen and paper with the other. I grabbed the agent’s hand and slapped the pad and pen into it, just as he’d done to Peggy.

“Look, sweetheart. I see you’ve got two working legs. You are more than capable of ordering your own damn lunch. That is, unless you have issues with the English language, but judging by your accent, you don’t, so perhaps you’re still struggling to learn the alphabet.” I tipped my head to the side. “So, unless you’ve got some other convenient issue that’s miraculously spread through the office, I suggest you get lost and get your own fucking lunch. Does that sound reasonable to you, Agent?”

His eyes went wide and he looked to Peggy for some kind of backup. He didn’t find any.

“Look, lady, it’s just how things are done around here! You can’t blame me for that shit!”

“Can’t I? Because I don’t see you doing anything to change it. The only person I’d expect to ask someone to get lunch for them is Sousa, and he’s the only one around here who seems to know how to do anything for himself.” I shoved him lightly, which sent him stumbling backward. “Start a new tradition. Get your own lunches. Stop bothering us.”

He nodded dumbly and ran off to tell his friends they had to fend for themselves that day.

“We’re going to get in trouble for that,” Peggy said, a smile tugging at her lips.

“No,” I said. “Jack’s too scared of me to do anything about it.”

She cocked one perfect eyebrow. “Oh really? What did you do to put the fear of God into poor Jack Thompson?”

“Threw him around a little in the gym and threatened him,” I shrugged. “The usual.”

She snorted to cover up her laughter. “Why am I not surprised?”

I grinned and braced myself on her desk. “Because you know me.”

"That's very true." She shook her finger at me. "You really shouldn't go around threatening people."

I laughed and waved her off. "Don't worry about who I'm threatening. He hasn't bothered you in weeks, so I'd say it was worth it."

"Asta, you didn't."

"I didn't do anything drastic. I just mentioned that I thought it was funny that he's so rude to you, but if you were a man he'd treat you like a war hero." I added, very pointedly, "Which you are, and he needs to recognize that."

"I didn't do anything."

"I'm pretty sure you're responsible for facilitating, possibly, the greatest uprising in SSR history. You're the reason Captain America was able to get into the fight. You were key in strategy meetings. You were there for every single little thing, and they still treat you like dirt. Useful, but only if you can give them what they need."

“I’m not saying that I disagree with you, but-”

“You do disagree with my methods, I know. I’m sure this is a conversation we’ll have many, many times in the future.”

“I’m not so sure I like the sound of that.”

I laughed. “Would you like to go out for lunch today? My treat.”

“Your treat?”

“Didn’t you hear? They started paying me while you were in California, flirting with Sousa.”

“I wasn’t flirting,” she said. She caved when I shot her a questioning look. “Fine, I wasn’t just flirting.”

“There it is.” I reached out and tugged on her hand. “Come on. You can ask Daniel to come along. I might even invite Jack.”

Peggy laughed. “Why?”

I shrugged. “Dunno. I think I mostly want to see what he’ll do. Regardless, I’m paying so you might as well just say yes.”

She sighed but smiled regardless. “Fine, I give.”

I grinned and watched Peggy haul herself up from her chair and cross the floor to Sousa’s office. She tentatively opened the door and poked her head inside. Daniel gestured for her to come in and she slipped into the office. I saw him nod and smile and he got up to follow her from the office. I folded my arms and pushed off the desk.

I shouldered open the door to Jack’s office and leaned in the doorway. He slowly looked up from his paperwork to meet my eyes.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey. Peg ‘n’ I are going out for lunch. You want to come with?”

“You sure you want me there?” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms.

“Yeah, you’re not bad company, Jack. You’d do well to remember that.”

“Thanks, I think.”

“Come on,” I said, pushing off the doorway. Jack stood up to grab his coat. “I don’t want to be a third wheel.”

He laughed and followed me out onto the floor. “And what am I getting out of this deal?”

“Free lunch.” He looked amused. “What?”

“On whose dime?”

“Mine? Who else’s?”

“Asta is an employee, Thompson,” Peggy said. “I thought you already knew that.”

“That’s not what I meant!” he said. “I just didn’t expect her to be paying, is all. I’m not saying that she couldn’t afford it.”

I placed my hand on his arm. “She’s messing with you, Jack.”

Daniel snorted and offered Peggy his arm. “Where to, ladies?”

Peggy suggested the diner and both men readily agreed. When we got there, Daniel sat next to Peggy and tucked her under his arm. Jack froze when he saw them but relaxed when I shook my head and picked up the menu.

Daniel, Jack, and Peggy made pleasant conversation while we ate and I sat quietly to listen. I occasionally offered my opinion if it was called for, but was otherwise silent.

I was nibbling absentmindedly at a french fry when Jack asked, “What’s your take on this, Carter?”

“Well…” Peggy began.

“Oh, sorry, I should've been specific. I meant Asta,” he said. He nudged me with his elbow. “We haven’t heard your take on the case.”

“You want my opinion?” I asked.

“Well, yeah.” He slung his arm up over the back of the booth, right above my shoulders. “We know what we think, but a different point of view is important.”

I looked at Peggy and found my amusement reflected on her face. I finished the fry before answering. “Huh, okay.”

I reached for another fry and Jack said, “Are you gonna tell us or what?”

“No, I’m gonna make you wait,” I shot back. I bit down on the fry and Daniel burst out laughing. I looked up at Jack and found him red in the face. The wink I gave him didn’t help much with his predicament.

“I’m serious! We’ve pretty much exhausted our ideas here.”

“I know, give me a moment to think.” I sat back and pressed my fist to my mouth. “There was one woman you spoke to who didn’t quite sit right with me.”

“A suspect?” Daniel asked.

I shook my head. “No, I think it was someone’s wife or sister. She just knew too much about what happened in that lab. Showed no signs of grief at all.”

“Not all people grieve the same.”

“I am well aware of how people grieve. This was different. She was, I don’t know… almost smug? Like she’d gotten away with something and was trying not to gloat about it. I didn’t say anything because I figured you’d want to go over your own theories first.”

“No, that helps,” Jack said. “A lot, actually.”

“Don’t sound too surprised there, Thompson,” I said.

“I’m not surprised. I’m sorry we didn’t ask for your help sooner.”

I tried to hide my smile, but I caught Jack smiling out of the corner of my eye. I kept quiet the rest of lunch, content to listen to the casual conversation.

On the walk back to the office, I hung back to people watch. Eventually, my eyes were drawn to Peggy and Daniel. I remember when she’d come back from California and the first thing she told me about was the development between the two of them. I sat with her while she talked about everything that happened, only half listening at the time, but happy for her regardless. From what she’d told me of her life before coming back to New York, she deserved happiness.

“What’re you thinking about?” Jack asked.

I jumped, not realizing he’d been pacing me for five minutes. I pressed my hand to my chest and wheezed out, “Holy shit.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No, it’s alright. Why do you want to know?”

He shrugged. “Your shoulders were kinda hunched and you had this far off look in your eyes. I figured it had to be something pretty serious.”

“Oh.”

“So?”

“It’s nothing,” I said. “I was thinking about when Peggy came back from California. She was happier than I’d ever seen her.”

“And now?”

“She’s still just as happy. Whatever this thing is with Daniel is lasting. I'm happy for her.”

“Huh,” he said. “I thought you would’ve been thinking about your own life. Or past life, or something.”

I laughed. “No. My life wasn’t all that interesting before I got here. Nothing worth dwelling on.”

“I doubt that’s true.”

“It is, though. There’s so much that I escaped in my past. The stress of an arranged marriage or how I’d take care of myself if no one wanted me. Now I have a job and friends and…” I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “Sorry.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry, that was a lot.”

“No,” He shook his head. “No, it’s fine. Thanks for telling me.”

“Thanks for listening.”

He offered me his arm and I snorted before placing my hand in the crook of his elbow. I caught him smiling and felt myself blush. We walked on in silence for about five more minutes before Jack asks another question.

“Why did you invite me out today?”

I shrugged. “I don’t like being a third wheel.”

“Seriously?”

“Also kind of wanted to see what you’d do.”

“So I’m an experiment.”

“A little.”

“Wow.”

“I don’t mean to insult you. It’s just hard to tell where I stand with you.”

“Explain.”

“Well, Peggy and I are pretty much sisters and has made that abundantly clear, and Daniel thinks I’m odd but puts up with me because of Peggy. The rest of the men in the office act like I don’t exist until lunch rolls around and they’re too lazy to go out and get their own or they don’t want to do their jobs.”

“And me?”

“I can tell you’re curious about me, but I never know what you’re going to do. I avoided you at first, and you sought me out in the gym. I threatened you and you still went out to lunch when I invited you. Now, you’ve got me on your arm and we’ve talked more than I have with the majority of people I know.” I frowned. “I guess I find you interesting. I want to understand you.”

He hummed. “Alright, that's fair.”

“I wasn’t trying to ask you on a date earlier,” I added. “I know that worried you.”

“What?”

“You froze up when Sousa put his arm around Peggy earlier.”

“Right, that.” He shook his head. “I just don’t like being ambushed with it, is all.”

“Hm?”

“I’m not used to being asked out.”

“You’re usually the one who asks.”

“Exactly. But, if someone did ask me out on a date, I’d want to know what their intentions are.”

I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Are you saying that you want me to ask you on a date?”

Jack looked around before pulling me under the overhang of a corner store. I glanced at where his hands held my arms before looking up at him, confused. Carefully, I held his elbows and tilted my head to the side, silently asking him to talk to me. His brows pulled together and he frowned.

"I don't get you," he said.

"That doesn't answer my question."

Someone had stopped to stare at us, and I suspect they were worried for my safety. Jack seemed to pick up on this and turned us so that he had his back to the wall instead of me. He sighed and let go of my arms.

He began to step away. "They're gonna wonder where we are."

I grabbed his hands and pulled him back to me. "No, Jack. Tell me."

"Asta-"

"Please? I won't bother you anymore after this, I promise." I gave him a small smile. "We both know how quiet I can be. It'll be like I'm not even in the office."

I immediately let go of his hands and folded my arms tight against my body. I could feel myself trying to make myself smaller and hated it. Jack put his hands on my shoulders and straightened them out. He then trailed his hand down my arm and took my hand.

"I'm not an easy person," he said softly. "I'm not good with feelings or anything like that, and that's probably my fault. But everything new I learn about you makes me want to know more. I want to understand you and where you came from and what made you who you are. I want to know if you knew Shakespeare or if you made art in your past. I don't know if I want you to ask me on a date. I just know that I want to know you."

"I can tell you right now that I didn't know Shakespeare," I said. "I knew of him and saw a couple of his plays, but I didn't know him."

"See?" He shook his head. "I want to be around you. I just don't want to force more than that."

I nodded. "Thank you for telling me."

"Of course."

"Can I have a couple days to think about what you've said?" I asked. "I need some time."

“Yeah, sure.”

"I'm not good with words." I gently squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “Don’t be. It’s hard to be upset when you keep asking so nicely.”

“Okay.”

He moved my hand to his elbow again and led me back out onto the sidewalk. Peggy and Daniel had beaten us back to the office by ten minutes when we stepped through the doors. Jack excused himself and went back to his office. Peggy pulled me aside as soon as I was alone.

“What took you so long?” she asked.

I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re late getting back. What happened?”

“Oh. Thompson wanted to ask me a couple more questions. That’s all.”

“That’s odd.”

I shrugged. “I’m an odd person. People tend to want to ask questions. You certainly did, at first.”

Someone in a lab coat wandered out into the office, looking lost. I looked past Peggy and caught his eye. He immediately relaxed and crossed the floor to talk to us.

“We need your help in the lab,” he said.

“Why?” I asked. “I thought you were done with me.”

"Well…" He scratched the back of his neck.

Realizing that going with him would get me away from Peggy's questions, I held up my hand to stop him. "You know what? It doesn't matter, let's just get it over with."

I apologized to Peggy and left with the lab coat.

The tests took nearly a week and didn't leave me any time to work in the office, let alone think. Each night, I was allowed two hours to train in the gym before I had to return to my quarters. I was frustrated, to say the least.

The day we finished the tests I spent more time than usual in the gym, working out my frustrations on a punching bag. I had knocked it off the hook three times before I had to sit down and patch it up.

“Thought I might find you down here.”

I let out a startled squeak and looked over my shoulder. Jack stood ten feet away from me with his hands in his pockets. His hair was a mess and something in me wanted to fix it.

“Hi,” I said dumbly. I couldn’t figure out anything else to say.

“I haven’t seen you in a week.”

“I’ve been stuck in the lab,” I tried to explain. “By the time I can get away you’re already gone for the night.”

“Okay.”

I ignored the punching bag and spun around to face him. “I did want to talk to you earlier. I’m sure I could’ve made some time. I apologize.”

“I don’t know why you’re apologizing, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Then why are you standing so far away from me?”

“Because the last time I was with you in this room you put me on my ass.”

“So you’re scared of me?” I pushed myself to my feet. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

“I think I’d be scared of you regardless.”

“You want a rematch?” I asked.

“Are you messing with me?”

”I don’t joke about fighting.”

“Why do you want to fight me? I can’t seriously be a challenge for you.”

“It’s not about you being a challenge. It’s about the fact that you’re scared of me.” I locked eyes with him. “And I don’t want you to be scared of me.”

“So you’re trying to make me face my fears?”

“Yes.”

“Seriously?”

“What the hell kind of relationship could the two of us have if you’re too scared to get close to me when we’re alone?” I snapped. “So either you spar with me and we can move forward, or I’m going to bed and putting this behind me.”

“I don’t want to fight you.”

“Why not? You can’t physically hurt me.” I folded my arms and took several steps closer to him. “We’ll lay ground rules. No body throws and anything that could be considered a blow to the genitals to either of us is off the table. We go till one of us is on the mat. Sound reasonable to you?”

He squinted. “Fine.”

“Wonderful!” I stepped back and grabbed the heavy bag and moved it to the corner with the others.

Jack shed his suit coat and tie before turning to face me. He approached me as he rolled up his shirt sleeves. I wandered over and stopped in front of him to size him up. I tilted my head to the side and looked him over with my hands in my pockets. I nodded and took a step back to look him in the eye.

Jack readily got into his fighting stance with his fists held up to guard his face. I blinked at him and waited for him to make the first move. It took him nearly two minutes to make up his mind and actually throw a punch. I moved my head to the side to avoid it. Confused, Jack took several more swings, only for me to dodge all of them.

“I thought we were supposed to fight,” he growled.

“We are,” I said. “I fight differently.”

He tried to grab me, but I easily sidestepped and slapped his hands down. He hissed in pain and I muttered a quick apology before settling into the fight again.

I blocked each punch and kick he threw at me, quickly slapping them away or simply catching the blows with my forearms before pushing him back. He didn’t seem to understand what I was doing and just kept trying to come at me harder than he had before. Eventually, I had both his fists held in my hands, crossed at his wrists. I pulled them in opposite directions and Jack cried out in pain and surprise.

I leaned in and said, “See, if you weren’t you, I’d headbutt you right now. But I don’t actually want to hurt you, so I’m not gonna do that.”

“Should I be thanking you?”

“That depends,” I placed my foot in his stomach and pushed him away. He stumbled but managed to regain his balance. “Are you going to give me an actual fight, or are you just gonna keep fucking around till I get bored?”

That annoyed him enough that he finally started coming at me with some decent force. He was faster than he initially let on and, consequently, suddenly more of a challenge. I only narrowly dodged a blow to my stomach before he managed to catch me with a punch to the jaw. I staggered back, more surprised by the blow than anything else. Jack didn’t seem to recognize that, though, and followed after me to make sure I was alright.

When I saw the concern on his face, I laughed and pushed him away with a hand to his chest. He tried to use his proximity to his advantage, but only wound up winded when I punched him in the stomach. He wheezed as he tried to regain his footing and kept his distance until he could find another opening. We were lazily circling each other when he saw his opportunity.

He rushed me and ducked in time to just barely avoid my fist. He grabbed my wrists and hooked his heel around mine and kicked back. I fell to the mat with him hovering over me, pinning my arms down. I looked up at him, eyes wide. Jack panted as he tried to catch his breath.

“I win,” he declared.

“Do you?”

"You said we'd go till one of us was on the mat. I took you down. I win."

I laughed. "I guess."

"What do you mean you guess?" he said. He didn't sound angry and the smile playing at his lips betrayed him. "I have you pinned!"

"You won the match, but my plan worked perfectly." I hooked my legs around his and flipped us. I grinned at the look of shock on his face. "You weren't even thinking. You just went for it. And look at how close we are."

"Oh," he said, his voice suddenly small.

"Are you scared?" I asked. "Scared of me?"

"Not of you."

"Then what?"

"I'm scared of this. How close we are."

"Why?" I sat up slightly and Jack moved with me. My heart hammered in my chest.

"Because I think I'd really like to kiss you right now, and I don't want to push you for something you don't want." I sat back in his lap and he propped himself up on his hands. He smiled sadly. “Please say something.”

“I don’t- I’m not good with words.”

He nodded. “I know. You told me.”

“Can I just…” I slowly reached out and placed my hands on his shoulders. His eyes locked on mine and he nodded.

I carefully traced my fingers over his shoulders and up his neck. I framed the line of his jaw with the tips of my fingers and paused for a moment. I allowed my eyes to scan over his face, mapping out the angles of his cheekbones and the curve of his nose. My eyes were drawn up to his hair as I remembered what a mess it was when he first walked in. I bit my lip to hide my smile as I reached up to comb my fingers through and relished the feeling of his hair between my fingers.

I trailed my fingers down the back of his neck and his eyes fluttered shut when I traced over his cheekbone. He leaned into my touch when I cradled his face in my hands. I then lightly brushed my thumbs over his lips, which sent a shiver through Jack’s body.

Jack slowly opened his eyes. His gaze lingered on my lips for a moment before he managed to meet my eyes.

“Can I kiss you, Jack?” I whispered.

“Yes,” he breathed.

I smiled and tentatively brushed my lips against his. He let out a shaky breath against my lips and tilted his head to gently press his lips to mine. He waited for me to kiss him back before he moved one of his hands to the back of my head and weaved his fingers into my hair. I felt more than heard myself make a small, needy noise at the back of my throat and pulled away. I covered my mouth with my hand out of embarrassment.

"What?" he asked.

I shook my head. "I don't know what that was."

“Hmm?”

“That noise.” I groaned and covered my face with my hands. “That’s so embarrassing.”

“Look at me.” I shook my head and he laughed. He gently coaxed my hands away from my face. “Come on, look at me.”

I bit the inside of my cheek and met his eyes. He looped my arms around his neck and settled his hands on my waist. I frowned and tilted my head to the side.

“What is it?” I asked, voice small.

“I don’t get how you can go from being so confident to a blushing mess.” I rolled my eyes but immediately looked him in the eye when his grip on my waist tightened. "The sound you made isn't embarrassing. It's cute."

"No, it's not…"

"Yes it is," he insisted. "I like it. I like knowing that I have an effect on you. Y'know, other than pissing you off and annoying you."

“You don’t… you don’t piss me off.”

“I don’t?”

“No, you don’t. I just- I get frustrated, and I want to understand. I want to understand you, but learning people isn’t like reading books. It’s not easy.” I fiddled with the hair at the back of his neck. “But I don’t want this to be easy. If you want there to be a this.”

“I do want that.” He drew gentle circles on my sides with his thumbs. “But I don’t want to frustrate you.”

“I think that’s part of relationships, Jack. If we do this, I’m going to be annoying, you’re going to frustrate me. We’re going to have disagreements. But we’ll learn together. Grow through experiences and be better people. I think that’s worth a little frustration, don’t you?”

“I do.” He smiled. “I don’t know why you keep saying you’re bad with words. You expressed yourself pretty perfectly just then.”

“I don’t know about that. I just spoke the truth.”

“Do you want to do this?” he asked. “Us.”

I nodded. “Yes. You’re a challenge I’m ready for, Jack Thompson.”

He grinned and pressed his forehead to mine. I tilted my head to the side slightly and kissed him tenderly, which he returned before pulling away and wrapping his arms around me and holding me close. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been held like that, so I pressed my nose to his neck and clung to him.

“I should probably go to my room,” I mumbled. “I was supposed to leave the gym an hour ago.”

“They gave you a curfew?”

“Kind of, yeah.” I braced myself on his shoulders and got to my feet. “I really should go. They’ll send someone from the night shift around to check on everything.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You afraid to get caught?”

“No,” I offered him a hand up and he took it. “The tongue lashing I’ll get if I’m caught is annoying. If I can avoid it, I will.”

“Let me walk you back then,” he said. “You can’t get in trouble if I’m the one who made you late.”

I laughed. "Okay, I'll take you up on that."

He opened the door for me and offered his arm when he stepped out into the hall after me. I stuck close to his side the entire walk back to my rooms. We were fortunate enough to avoid running into anyone along the way. I stepped out in front of him when we reached my door and keyed in the passcode to unlock the door.

“No keys?” he asked.

I shook my head and pushed the door open. “You can lose keys. Even if you lose your fingers, you can still figure out something to punch a code in.”

“Kinda dark.”

I snorted. “Do you expect anything less from me?”

“Y’know, I probably shouldn’t. But I always manage to underestimate you.”

I turned to face him and leaned in the doorway. “Something I’m sure you’ll continue to do.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I’m sure it is.”

I stood in my doorway, staring and smiling at him for a moment before realizing what I was doing. I shook my head and tried to make my escape. "I guess this is goodnight, then."

"Wait," he reached out to me and I stopped. He took my hand and stepped closer.

"Hmm?"

He stooped down to kiss me. "Okay, now I can say goodnight."

I laughed and bit back my smile. "Just go. I'll see you tomorrow, Jack."

"See you tomorrow."

"Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Asta."

He kissed my forehead and backed down the hall. Before he turned the corner he did a little twirl and waved to me. I heard him whistling as he walked away and I smiled and shook my head as I closed myself in my rooms.

I sat on my bed and buried my face in my pillow to muffle the sound of my giddy squeals. My legs flailed in little butterfly kicks of nervous excitement. I couldn't figure out how to express exactly how I was feeling in the moment, but wrote what I could down in my journal. I couldn't wipe the smile from my face, even in my sleep.

The next morning wasn’t nearly as happy as the night before.

I was whisked away by a pair of lab coats just before I could sit down for the morning briefing. They rattled off something about inconsistencies in their tests from earlier in the week. They fussed over me for nearly four hours before I was able to get away. At that point, I was exhausted and nauseous, and wanted nothing more than to just sit down so that the room would stop spinning.

When I reached my desk, Peggy wasn’t there. The file and notes on her desk told me that she was probably in an interrogation, or something close to it. I quickly realized that I needed to be somewhere out of the way if I didn’t want to be pestered about a case I knew nothing about, or worse, hauled off to the lab again.

My eyes landed on Jack’s office, and it dawned on me that I hadn’t seen him yet that day. I glanced around to make sure no one was watching before crossing the floor and knocking on the door. I didn’t receive an answer and decided to knock more before letting myself in.

The desk lamp was on, but Jack was nowhere to be seen.

I didn’t give his absence much thought as a wave of dizziness crashed over me. I nearly fell, but braced myself on the arm of the couch and waited for it to pass. When it did, my vision was blurry and I immediately laid on the couch. I squeezed my eyes shut and curled into a tight ball.

I faded in and out of sleep for nearly two hours.

A gentle hand on my forehead woke me. I leaned into their touch and they pushed my hair off my forehead. I could vaguely hear them saying my name.

“Asta?” I cracked my eyes open. “Hey, there you are.”

“Jack?” My voice sounded rough and I hugged my arms around myself.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You look a little grey.”

“I don’t know.” I shivered and moved closer to Jack. “I don’t feel well.”

“You weren’t feeling like this last night, were you?”

“No, I was fine. I was fine this morning too.”

“When did this start?”

“Around noon, I think. It was a little more than an hour before I left the lab.”

“I thought they were done with their tests.”

“So did I, but they said something about inconsistencies and dragged me off before I had time to process what was happening.”

He frowns. “Can you sit up?”

“I don’t know. I was really dizzy earlier.” I covered my face with one hand. “It’s why I came in here. I didn’t think I could make it back to my room.”

“Let’s get you sat up,” he said.

He helped me sit up, though I leaned heavily against the arm of the couch. I pressed my hand to my forehead as the dizziness settled in again. I tamped down the urge to dry-heave and settled with focusing on keeping my breaths deep and even. When everything got to be a little too much, I let my head fall back against the back of the couch and covered my eyes with one arm.

“This is hell,” I muttered.

Jack squeezed my hand. “I’m getting Peggy. I’ll be right back.”

I let out a shaky breath when he let go of my hand and wrapped my free arm around my stomach. I kept quiet when Jack returned with Peggy.

“Asta,” Peggy placed a gentle hand on my arm. “Jack tells me you’re not feeling well.”

“She’s been stuck in the lab for over a week,” Jack added. “She was fine until they started calling her in for whatever tests they forgot.”

“You suspect someone in the lab has something to do with this?” Peggy asked.

“I’m not pointing fingers. I’m just saying that she was fine last night, and now she’s not.”

“Do you think he could be right, darling?” she asked.

“I don’t know if I’d, ugh-” I cut myself off to bear out a dizzy spell. “I don’t know if I’d rule it out. They took me by surprise this morning when they grabbed me. I wasn’t able to ask many questions.”

“Help her up, Jack,” Peggy said. “We’re going to the lab.”

He did as he was told and I leaned heavily against him as he helped me down the hall.

“Think you can make it?” he asked.

I nodded and he kissed the top of my head when Peggy wasn’t looking. I stumbled when we were about halfway to the lab and Jack stopped to sweep me into his arms and carry me bridal style the rest of the way. I tucked my face into his neck and focused on the sound of his breathing to distract myself from the nausea. I stopped paying close attention after that.

A man greeted us upon arrival, saying, “Agent Carter, Agent Thompson. What a pleasant surprise.”

“Pleasant surprise, my ass,” Jack muttered. “You have some explaining to do.”

“Excuse me?” The man sounded offended.

“Exactly what tests have you been performing with Asta over the past week?” Peggy asked. “Because I am certain it wasn’t anything sanctioned by the agency.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. Ms. Carter is simply a point of interest for us.”

“In what world would tests for a point of interest leave your subject so nauseated and dizzy that they can hardly keep on their feet?” Peggy demanded.

“I’m sure she’s fine, if not a bit dramatic,” he said. “She left of her own volition not two hours ago.”

“Oh, really? Then I’m sure I can just set her down right here, and she’ll be fine,” Jack said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

“I’m sure she would be.”

I clutched at Jack’s suit coat when I felt even a slight shift in his body. “Don’t, please.”

“Can I set you on the table?” he asked, his voice soft enough that only I could hear.

I nodded and he carefully set me on the cool, metal table along the wall of the lab. He stayed close enough that I could’ve reached out and taken his hand.

“See? She’s fine.” The man stepped closer. “Aren’t you, Ms. Carter?”

“What did you do to me?” I asked.

“What?” He stepped even closer. He didn’t realize his mistake. “Speak up, Ms. Carter.”

I reached out and wrapped my hand around his throat, too quickly for him to react. Peggy tried to step in, but Jack held a hand out to stop her. I wasn’t choking him. Just holding him tight enough to scare him a little. Tight enough to keep him from getting away.

“What. Did. You. Do. To. Me,” I ground out. “You and your little minions have kept me locked up here for a week, not telling me exactly what you were doing or why you’ve been poking around.”

“I’m sure-”

I tightened my grip and he whimpered. “Oh, you’re always so sure of yourself, but I don’t have that kind of faith in you. You’re going to tell me what the fuck it is you’ve been doing, or I swear I will crush your neck and watch the life leave your eyes.”

I released him and pushed him away from me. I heard Jack mutter a quick “Holy shit,” before rushing to my side when I started to curl into myself. He helped me sit back against the wall and kept one hand on my knee in case I needed his support.

“Just what have you been doing in this lab?” Peggy repeated. “Even if Asta can’t follow through on her promise, I’d be glad to take a stab at it.”

He looked past Peggy to Jack for some kind of support, but Jack just shook his head.

“We discovered that the structure of her DNA is similar to Steve Rogers’ after the Vita-Ray procedure,” the man began. “We took half the week to test her reflexes and ensure that she was fit enough before-”

“Before what,” Jack hissed.

“Before we began testing our new super-soldier serum.” He seemed to realize that what he’d said wasn’t positive and scrambled to fix that. “We haven’t finished the procedure, yet! There’s no way to be sure that whatever is happening to her is caused by the serum.”

“What is wrong with you?!” Peggy shoved the man hard enough that he fell to the floor. “How dare you even think about trying to recreate the serum! We do not play God in the SSR. And we certainly don’t test… shit on people without their consent!”

“We didn’t know what would happen!”

“I should kill you myself,” Peggy hissed. “Pumping my sister full of poison. You are scum.”

I took Jack's hand and quickly told him to stop Peggy before she actually did murder the man. Jack stepped between them just as one of the lab technicians walked in.

"What's going on?" she asked. She caught sight of me hunched over and her eyes went wide. "Is she okay?"

Jack filled her in on the situation while I did my best to calm Peggy, who was completely seething mad. The technician seemed genuinely horrified.

"I don't think any of us thought he'd go through with it. I mean, he'd talked about it after the initial DNA examination, but no one seemed interested enough in pushing it, so no one presented it to the higher-ups." She shook her head. "I guess a few people were interested enough to start testing."

"Will she be alright?" Jack asked.

"I don't know. I'd have to see what the serum was made with in order to determine that."

Peggy seemed to perk up at that and I held her hand tightly and looked from Jack to the scientist on the floor. He seemed to get the idea and started asking him questions before Peggy could make a move. They found a vial of the serum within five minutes.

The technician examined a slide of the serum under the microscope and scribbled notes every time she looked away. I didn't keep a close eye on what she was doing and, instead, opted to rest my head on Jack's shoulder. Peggy held onto my hand even after I loosened my grip.

The technician fussed over the sample for about twenty minutes before making her decision.

"She'll be fine," she announced. "There isn't anything that's immediately toxic in the serum. If I'm being honest, I don't think it's much of a serum at all, but it's definitely enough to cause nausea and dizziness, like Asta is experiencing."

"How long till she's back to normal?" Peggy asks.

The lab tech shrugged. "I'm not sure. Considering the number of doses, I'd say give it a few days and see how she's feeling then."

"So… you're essentially saying she needs to sleep it off?" Jack asked.

"Precisely. Though I would suggest that someone stay with her, or at least frequently check on her. It's easy for someone to get dehydrated in her state."

“At least I’m not going to die,” I mumbled.

Jack laughed and softly said, “I’ll stay with you, if you’d like.”

I turned my head to hide my smile against his arm. “I’d like that, yeah.”

Sousa was called in to help Peggy detain and process the man who had, essentially, poisoned me. Peggy hung back, worrying about leaving me behind and I waved her off, saying that she should go help Daniel.

“I’ll make sure she gets back to her room alright,” Jack said. She didn’t seem convinced and he added, “I’m going to stay with her. She’s not going anywhere for the rest of the day.”

“Alright.” She caressed my cheek and I smiled. “I’ll come to check on you later.”

“I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me. Just make sure he gets what he deserves.”

She nodded and watched Jack help me off the table. I had hoped I would be able to make it without him having to carry me, but my legs gave out almost as soon as we made it through the doors. I hid my face against his chest after he picked me up.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I hate that you have to do this.”

“You just don’t like feeling helpless,” he said.

I corrected him, saying, “I don’t like being a burden.”

“I get that, but I’d much rather carry you to your room than have you dying in my arms.”

“Aw, two days, and you’re already so attached.” I laughed. “Should I be worried?”

“Oh, definitely,” he said. I could hear the smile in his voice. “It’s just gonna get worse from here.”

I hummed softly and settled against his chest. "I look forward to it."

Once inside my room, Jack helped me gather comfortable clothes and waited outside the bathroom while I changed. I took my hair down and allowed the curls to just hang around my shoulders. When I was done, he helped me hobble to my bed and situate myself before he took his jacket and shoes off. He sat beside me on the bed and kicked his feet up. As soon as he finished loosening his tie I curled into his side, seeking out the warmth of his body.

“If you’re gonna be on the bed, you might as well lie down,” I said.

“You want me to?”

I nodded. “You keep me calm.”

He scooted down the bed and turned on his side. I shuffled closer and pressed my nose to his chest. With one hand held against my stomach, I rested the other on his hip. I sighed softly, content.

“Now who’s the clingy one?”

I smiled and slung my arm over his waist and mumbled, “Still you.”

He snorted. “I walked right into that, didn't I.”

"You did."

"If you're gonna be mean, then maybe I’ll just leave."

"Aw, you don't mean that." I tipped my head up to look at him. He tried to scowl at me and failed. "If you did, you wouldn't be here. Peggy would, and she'd be sitting in that chair over there."

"I know. You're right." He tucked my hair behind my ear. "Just try to rest. I don't need you dying on me."

I nodded and he leaned in to kiss me softly. He wrapped his arm around me and kissed my forehead before I snuggled into his chest and allowed myself to drift off.

I woke to a hissing sound several hours later. It took a minute for the sound to register as someone shushing someone else.

“What are you doing in her bed?!” Peggy demanded.

“She is asleep,” Jack hissed back. “Lower your voice.”

“I can see that she’s asleep. Why are you in bed with her?” She sounded upset. “When you said you’d stay with her this certainly isn’t what I pictured.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t.”

“Then why.”

“She asked me to.”

She scoffed. “I highly doubt that.”

“I’d say you could ask her, but she’s asleep.”

“Not anymore,” I mumbled.

Jack let out a frustrated sigh and rubbed my back. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I should probably get up and try to eat something anyway.” I sat slowly up and combed my fingers through my hair. “If you’re going to ask, Peggy, just ask. I don’t want to hide anything from you.”

She frowned. “You asked him to stay with you?”

“I did.” I glance at Jack and he smiles. “You have nothing to worry about. He’s taking good care of me. I promise.”

“I just… did I miss something?” she asked. “Have I been ignoring things that are happening in your life?”

“No, you haven’t. This is just something that’s very…” I pressed my hand to my mouth as I searched for the right word. “It’s very personal, and I need to keep it close to my chest for now. I’m not hiding anything from you, I just don’t get many things that are just for me.”

“I understand.” She smiled and reached out for my hand. “Thank you for telling me.”

“Of course.”

“If you hurt her, Jack, I will murder you.”

Jack shook his head and got up from the bed. “I was really hoping I could avoid the threats until we were further down the line, but thanks for the warning!”

He asked me what I’d like to eat and I asked for some Saltines and water. I didn’t think I could keep anything else down. Peggy almost made for the door, but Jack stopped her and said he’d go out and get some food. He asked if there was anything she wanted while he put his shoes on. When she said no he kissed the top of my head and left for the store. Peggy watched him leave before looking back at me, a mix of shock and confusion on her face.

“What?”

“The two of you seem quite comfortable with each other,” she said. She sat beside me on the bed. “I know you said you’d tell me, but I can’t help feeling as if I missed something.”

“You didn’t, I swear.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. You can’t miss something that you weren’t there for.”

“How did it happen?”

I shook my head and scrubbed my hands over my face. “I’m not entirely sure. We’ve bothered each other since I started training, so that had to have been almost a year ago now. Then there was the time I scared the life out of him in the gym, and then last week we started talking after lunch. I think that was the start of anything mutual?”

“Is that why you were late getting back?”

I smiled sheepishly. “Maybe.”

“You could’ve just told me. I wouldn’t have judged you.”

“It’s not that I was worried about that. Like I said, I don’t have many things that are just for me. I wanted to give myself time to feel like I live a normal life.” I pulled my knees to my chest and sighed. “I know that my life will never be normal, and I’m fine with that, but the more time that I’m allowed to work on cases and go out into the city without a chaperone, I feel like I’m taking some normalcy back.”

She took my hand and squeezed gently. “I understand.”

“Thank you.”

“Of course, Asta. I don’t want to control you or your life, and I’d hate for you to feel that I was doing so.”

"I know you don't, but it feels like the SSR controls almost every facet of my life. It gets frustrating. I wish I had more time for myself." The door opened, but I didn't notice. "I want to learn to paint and go dancing and spend time with Jack. I don't want to feel like a prisoner."

"You want to paint?" Peggy asked.

"I have since I was little. My family was poor, so I never had the money or opportunity, not to mention the fact that I'm a woman. Everything worked against me then. Now I have the money and I have a little extra time." I pressed my nose to my knees. "I know that sounds stupid."

Someone new said, "No, Asta, it doesn't."

I blinked, confused by the new voice, and looked up to see Jack standing beside the bed. "Hey," I said.

"Hey." He held out a sleeve of crackers and a glass of water.

"Thank you." I smiled and took them from him. "I didn't hear you come in."

"I didn't want to interrupt your conversation," he said.

“How considerate of you.” Peggy squeezed my knee and pushed herself up from the bed. “I have to get back to work. I’ll check in tomorrow and see how you’re doing.”

“Okay, I’ll see you then,” I said.

I watched her leave before setting the glass of water on the bedside table and opening the sleeve of crackers. Jack returned to his place on the bed and I let my head fall to his shoulder as I nibbled on one cracker. I think I ate nearly half the sleeve before I felt I could drink anything, and quickly downed the entire glass of water when I tried. I was exhausted by the end and settled back against Jack once I’d placed the empty glass on the table.

“Feeling better?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yes. Thank you. For all of this, really.”

“It’s not a problem, Asta, really.”

“I just don’t want to become your problem,” I mumbled. “I’ve caused a lot of worry for you over the past week. I don’t want that to be where we start.”

“An agent would’ve been assigned to monitor you, regardless. I’d rather it be me than someone else.” I frowned and he wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “You’re not a burden, Asta. I’m worried about you because I care for you. There’s no start or end involved there. I just wanna make sure you’re okay. Is that okay with you?”

I nodded. "It's alright with me."

"Good."

I nodded against his shoulder again and cuddled into his side as my eyes grew heavy. Jack helped me lay down again without saying anything and held my hand as I drifted off.

"I probably won't be here when you wake up again," he said. " I've gotta get some work done in the office and then get home for the night."

"Okay."

"I'll be back tomorrow to check on you. If Carter doesn't get to you first, that is."

"You can still come if you want," I mumble. "I like spending time with you."

I felt him chuckle against my hair. "I'm glad you do."

I hummed and pressed my nose to his chest. "Goodnight, Jack."

"G'night, sweetheart."

--------

Part 2

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#jack thompsonxreader #steve rogerxreader #readerxsteve rogers #steve rogers x reader #jack thompson #peggy carter #agent carter

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paulinedorchester · 3 years

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Mosley, Leonard. Backs to the Wall: London Under Fire, 1939-1954. London: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971; reprint, as Backs to the Wall: The Heroic Story of the People of London During World War II, New York: Random House, 1971.

Each generation gets the history that it needs — or wants, or demands. That’s what kept going through my head as I read Backs to the Wall, which appeared three years after France’s youth explicitly rejected both Charles de Gaulle, the self-appointed leader of the Free French during World War II, and the political ideology that he represented, and amidst ongoing unrest over the Vietnam War. (It’s also worth mentioning that it was published in the same year as Norman Longmate’s How We Lived Then: A History of Everyday Life During the Second World War and two years after Angus Calder’s The People’s War.) This book gives up a World War II narrative in which Churchill was an improvement on Chamberlain only in that he wasn’t an appeaser, de Gaulle was worse than both of them put together, the Allied leaders all cordially loathed each other, half the British public wanted to sue for peace, and there was across-the-board mutual dislike between London civilians and American troops (and British dismay at the way African-American troops were treated by their white counterparts was far from universal). Do I exaggerate? Only slightly. Backs to the Wall is a sort of distant, city-specific pre-echo of Juliet Gardner’s sour 2004 book Wartime: Britain, 1939-45.

As with Wartime, however, this book does have the virtue of introducing us to a number of very interesting people. I became interested in reading it because it brought Vere Hodgson’s wartime diary to public attention. Mosley quotes or paraphrases Hodgson’s writing from the beginning of the war through its end, and also seems to have interviewed her extensively. His primary villain, meanwhile, is not Chamberlain but Chamberlain’s chief acolyte, Henry “Chips” Channon, from whose diary he quotes widely (and who turns out to have been born and raised in the United States, to my surprise). We hear a great deal from the chemist and novelist C.P. Snow and follow the misadventures of two civilians, Jenny Martin and Polly Wright, whose consistency in both bad luck and bad choices meant that neither of them was able to stay out of serious trouble for any length of time.

There are many glimpses of the London home front through the eyes of two boys, both eight when the war began: John Hardiman, of Canning Town and later of Aldgate, who was evacuated in 1939 but soon returned to London, and Donald Ketley of Chadwell Heath, who was never evacuated at all. Donald, who thoroughly enjoyed himself during the war, had an experience that speaks to our own recent reality:

Another good thing: quite early in the Blitz, his school had been totally destroyed by a bomb. Since Donald was shy, a poor student and unpopular with his teacher, he was overjoyed when he heard the place was gone. Thereafter he went each day to his teacher’s home to pick up lessons, which he brought back the next day for marking. In the following months he changed from a poor student to an excellent one, and although he was aware that his teacher rather resented it, he didn’t care.

Mosley also introduces us to Archibald McIndoe, the real-life counterpart of Patrick Jamieson, Bill Patterson’s character in the Foyle’s War episode ‘Enemy Fire.’ Art seems to have imitated life pretty accurately in that instance: he and his burn hospital in East Grinstead were apparently exactly like what was depicted, the only difference being that the hospital was set up in an existing hospital building, not in a requisitioned stately home.

Backs to the Wall seems to have been one of the earliest books to make substantial use of Mass-Observation writings. Most M-O diaries are anonymous, but there are two named diarists here who stand out. John James Donald was a committed pacifist whose air of lofty detachment as he observes the reactions of those around him to air-raids and other wartime event and prepares for his tribunal — which, in the end, he decides not to attend — quickly grows irritating. More interesting is Rosemary Black, a 28-year-old widow, in no small part because she differs markedly from what I had thought of as the archetypical M-O writer. Here’s her self-description on M-O documents: “Upper-middle-class; mother of two children (girls aged 3 and 2); of independent means.” Mosley continues:

She lived in a trim three-story house in a quiet street of the fashionable part of Maida Vale, a short taxi ride from the center of the West End, whose restaurants and theatres she knew well. She was chic and attractive, and lacked very few of the niceties of life: there was Irene, a Hungarian refugee, to look after the children; Helen, a Scottish maid, to look after herself and the house; and a daily cleaning woman to do the major chores.

Black took her children out of London at the beginning of the war but quickly brought them back, and when bombs began falling she kept them in place — air raids might be disruptive for them, but apparently relocation had been worse. She was very much aware that she was riding out the war in a position of privilege, and she often expressed guilt feelings; but this tended to fade away before her irritation at the dominance of “the muddling amateur or the soulless bureaucrat” in the war effort. Offering her services, even as a volunteer, proved very frustrating. “She was young, strong and willing; she typed, spoke languages, was an expert driver and had taken a course in first aid,” Mosley tells us, “but finding a job even as a chauffeur was proving difficult” in September 1940. (She actually wasn’t all that strong physically: as we learn, she suffered from rheumatism which grew worse during the war years and probably affected her outlook.)

Black was greeted with “apathy and indifference” by both A.R.P. and the Women’s Voluntary Service. Early in 1941 she was finally able to get a place handing out tea, sandwiches, cake, and so on to rescue and clean-up workers at bomb sites from a Y.M.C.A. mobile canteen. She was a bit intimidated by the women with whom she found herself working:

Their class is right up to the county family level. Nearly everyone is tall above the average and remarkably hefty, even definitely large, not necessarily fat but broad and brawny. Perhaps this is something to do with the survival of the fittest.

And the work did bring her some satisfaction, even if it was of the type that lent itself to being recorded with tongue placed firmly in cheek:

We had a pleasant and uneventful day’s work serving City fire sites, the General Post Office, demolition workers and Home Guard Stations, etc. We were complimented at least half a dozen times on the quality of our tea ... I think the provision of saccharine for the tea urns to compensate for the mean sugar allowance is my most successful piece of war work. What did you do in the Great War, Mummy? Sneaked pills into the tea urns, darling.

For all her good humor and astute observations, Mrs. Black was far from immune to tiny-mindedness. After an evening out in 1943 she wrote:

I had to wait some time for the others in the cinema foyer, and I was much struck, as often before, by the almost complete absence of English people these days, from the capital of England. Almost every person who came in was either a foreigner, a roaring Jew, or both. The Cumberland [Hotel] has always been a complete New Jerusalem, but this evening it really struck me as no worse than anywhere else! It is really dismaying to see that this should be the result of this war in defence of our country.

Indeed, Mosley cites the results of a multi-year Mass-Observation study that showed a marked increase in anti-Jewish views London’s general population over the course of the war. Since it’s just one study, and since I haven’t seen that study mentioned anywhere else, I am reluctant to trust blindly in its accuracy; and there’s also this:

The small flat which George [Hardiman] had procured for [his family] ... in Aldgate was cleaner and airier than the old house in Canning Town [which had been bombed], and the little Jewish children with whom John now went to school seemed to be cleaner than the ones in Elm Road; at any rate, he no longer came home with nits in his hair.

On the other hand, Mosley himself gives us only a fragmentary view of London’s wartime Jewish population: everyone seems to be either a terrified refugee or an impoverished East Ender. We hear nothing about the substantial middle- and upper-middle class population — mostly of German descent and in some cases German birth — that had already taken shape in Northwest London; and while we are briefly introduced to Sir David Waley, a Treasury official, in connection with the case of an interned Jewish refugee, we aren’t told that Waley himself was Jewish, a member of “the cousinhood.” On yet a third hand, Mosley also quotes other M-O surveys from the same period that indicate largely hostile attitudes to most foreigners in London, with Poles at the bottom of the ladder and the small Dutch contingent on top. (Incidentally, the book’s extremely patchy index identifies Vere Hodgson as a Mass-Observation diarist, which she wasn’t.)

Backs to the Wall closes with a very brief, remarkably non-partisan account of the 1945 general election and its immediate aftermath. “Neither side had any inkling of the way the minds of the British voters were turning,” he writes.

When [Churchill’s] friends suggested that he was a victim of base ingratitude, he shook his head. He would not have such a charge leveled against his beloved countrymen. Ingratitude? "Oh, no," he said quietly, "I wouldn’t call it that. They have had a very hard time."

The book is worth reading for the primary materials that it includes, but it probably tells us as much about the era in which it was written as about the period that it covers.

#world war II #u.k. home front #london #non-fiction after the fact #recommended with reservations #long post

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sayedhusaini · 3 years

Text

Exactly twenty years ago I was in Afghanistan with my family. During that time I visited cities like Herat, Ghazni, Sarobi, Jalalabad, Khost, Kandahar and others. But my home was in the capital, Kabul.

When the US-led invasion began I had to cross the mountains into Pakistan. I stayed there until I was kidnapped by the CIA and taken by the US military to their prisons in Kandahar and then Bagram - where I was held for a year - before being sent to Guantanamo alongside several Taliban leaders. Some of those former prisoners are poised to be the new leaders of Afghanistan.

I have been witnessing over the past few days how the cities I once visited or stayed in have all come back under Taliban control. They’re now surrounding the outskirts of Kabul

Then, this morning I woke up to read a message: “Bagram prison has been taken by Taliban.”

It was momentous enough that the US abandoned their once bustling airbase and prison last month without telling their Afghan counterparts but, this time it's even more potent. This place, where I endured and witnessed so many abuses, including two murders of unarmed Afghan prisoners by US soldiers, has never left me. But, perhaps something can be done this time. Once the dust settles I intend to ask Taliban officials to seek the extradition of the killers to be brought to justice for what they did. Bagram is the scene of a crime and I am an eye-witness

….

Meanwhile, I’m reminded of Taliban members I’ve met who, throughout their lives, fought both the Soviet Union and the US coalition (meaning NATO which includes USA, UK, Turkey, Germany etc).

That means Afghan mujahideen/Taliban have fought the most sophisticated, powerful, well-equipped and trained armies in the world and defeated them. That doesn’t mean they haven’t suffered more losses than the occupiers, the opposite is true. But, they have outlasted the political and military will of the invaders and stayed the course regardless of what anyone said or did. Belief in that cause, commitment to that belief and steadfastness has brought the Taliban to the doorstep of victory, while their opponents face the biggest humiliation the world has seen in recent history.

They also spent trillions on equipping and training those Afghans who collaborated with the occupiers. American and British taxpayers paid for all of this while their own economies faltered and ordinary people on the streets were forced to beg and eat from food banks.

Despite twenty years of the most investment, training and weaponry the USA could offer, it was inevitable that the Afghan National Army would fail and should have prepared themselves for what the powers that enabled them did so ungracefully. Defeat. Let’s hope they do it better than their enablers and don’t continue a pointless fight.

The Taliban have offered an amnesty to all who collaborated with the occupiers. I’d say that’s very magnanimous as it's not something America or Britain would ever do. If the Taliban’s guiding principles are from Islam they will not follow the course of vengeance.

Again, for context. Taliban weapons are normally Russian but, over the past 20 years, they increasingly became American. Unlike the Afghan Army, no nation officially or unofficially supported or supplied the Taliban. And yet, the Taliban have even got some fully equipped US attack helicopters, humvees and tanks. That only means one thing. Next time you want to know who armed the Taliban look up the word “ghanima” غنيمة. It comes from the Arabic for sheep.

In fact, they seem to have captured more territory in far less time than when they first came to power. And, last time, there weren’t thousands of allied troops on the ground, so the humiliation for their opponents is far greater and more complete.

Cities and provinces in Afghanistan have fallen to the Taliban without a shot fired, a stark contrast to the US-led invasion which began with tomahawk cruise missiles and 15 tonne bombs which caused 1000s of deaths and injuries just in the first few days. Perhaps US and warmongering allies can learn something for a change? I doubt it.

They won't tell you that one reason people haven't opposed the Taliban is because they're not seen as corrupt like US-backed government officials. They won't tell you either that country-wide Taliban Islamic courts are far more popular and trusted than corrupt, bureaucratic, and inconsistent government courts. They also won't tell you that the Taliban always controlled much of the countryside - even at the height of the occupation when Western politicians were lying about how they'd defeated the Taliban.

I suggest now we stop listening to the harbingers of woe and stop giving too much of a platform to those who’ve become vocal now but remained silent and complicit during the longest war in the bloody history of the USA. Let us all hope and pray that peace, prosperity, hope, mercy, wisdom and reconciliation increases in Afghanistan, that people learn from past errors and that the notion of justice rather than vengeance spreads throughout the land.

For those who back the soldiers of America, Britain, Australia and yes, Turkey, who died fighting in Afghanistan stay firm in the knowledge that they died in vain and for nothing. History books will record they were the bad guys. Let it be a stark lesson about the choices they had. They could have refused to occupy others' lands, but they chose otherwise.

In the meantime, as Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters litter the Kabul skies to desperately ferry what’s left of the occupation out of harm’s way (reminding us a little of Vietnam) we should afford all those who fought them the right to celebrate.

الل�� أكبر و لله الحمد

Moazzam Begg

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surly01 · 3 years

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Graveyard of Empires Redux

"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, And the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."

-Rudyard Kipling, The Young British Soldier

Saigon, 1975.

Afghanistan is famously known as the "Graveyard of Empires," primarily due to British meddling during its empire days. In the first Afghan war, the British Crown saw fit to intervene in a succession argument, and a British occupation army was almost completely annihilated during its 1842 retreat from Kabul. The British retaliated the following year, wrought destruction and recovered a handful of prisoners, and then withdrew once again. The war was one of the first significant conflicts during "The Great Game," the 19th-century competition for power and influence between Britain and Russia in Central Asia.

The restored ruler of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammad, is reported to have said:

“I have been struck by the magnitude of your resources, your ships, your arsenals, but what I cannot understand is why the rulers of so vast and flourishing an empire should have gone across the Indus to deprive me of my poor and barren country.”

200 years of history, and we have learned nothing. And 20 years of training and funding, and the Afghan Defense Force does its best ARVN imitation, as reports from Kabul read like the last days of Saigon.

I'm having a severe deja vu. No one alive and paying attention will forget the images of people battling for space on the last helicopters out of the US Embassy in Saigon.

How did we get here? In the wake of 9-11, when we learned that the Taliban had supported an Al Qaeda training site in Afghanistan, most Americans endorsed the country going to war in Afghanistan. That level of support didn't last long, but the war on terror did. And as that war dragged on and lost focus (but the checks continued to clear), the mission crept until it seemed that no one could exactly explain what it was supposed to be.

Chinook over US Embassy Kabul, 8/15/2021

Now we have the images of the last hangers-on scrapping for helicopter space of their own as the Taliban enter Kabul. After every significant Afghan town fell like dominoes, they are at the gates. If not already inside:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghanistan's embattled president left the country Sunday, joining his fellow citizens and foreigners in a stampede fleeing the advancing Taliban and signaling the end of a 20-year Western experiment aimed at remaking Afghanistan.

The Taliban, who for hours had been on the outskirts of Kabul, announced soon after they would move further into a city gripped by panic where helicopters raced overhead throughout the day to evacuate personnel from the US Embassy. Smoke rose near the compound as staff destroyed important documents. Several other Western missions also prepared to pull their people out.

Ever since Viet Nam, when the US can't win a war, we just pack up and leave. The lesson taught is that you will win if you are prepared to take some licks and wait out the Americans. The Taliban's comeback has taken twenty years, but it is a classic example of a guerrilla war of attrition waged successfully.

As Jon Lee Anderson writes in The New Yorker,

In that regard, the United States joins a line of notable predecessors, including Great Britain, in the nineteenth century, and the Soviet Union, in the twentieth. Those historic precedents don't make the American experience any more palatable. In Afghanistan—and, for that matter, in Iraq, as well—the Americans did not merely not learn from the mistakes of others; they did not learn from their own mistakes, committed a generation earlier, in Vietnam.

Hence the deja vu.

Some will ask, "How do you explain this?" And, "What was it all for?" As to "explaining it," the point of this foreign war, as well as most of our overseas bases and defense budget, is profits for war manufacturers and associated cronies, lobbyists, and profiteers. Cue the Super Bowl Blue Angels overflights and the commercials valorizing broken veterans recovering from grievous wounds, but who need your support because the promises made to our veterans are never entirely redeemable.

And the loudest "support the troops" types never catch on to the fact that it is their sons and daughters used for cannon fodder and who will be doing the important business of dying or being retrofitted for artificial limbs. This while the children of hedge fund types snort cocaine off the backs of hookers at their leisure or who plan their own missions into near-space as the planet burns.

What do we do now? My advice is the same now as it has been since 1977: "Support the troops: Bring them home." Indeed: "What was it all for?"

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kattahj · 3 years

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Review quotes of Booboo Stewart’s performance in Let Him Go

Okay, yeah, so I totally checked over 100 reviews of Let Him Go just to see what they had to say about Booboo Stewart. Relevant quotes under the cut, but let’s just summarize first:

Apparently the film starts out as a slow drama and ends up as a bloody revenge flick, which means that there are some reviewers who go “it takes forever to get started, but once it does it’s great!” and other reviewers who go “it started out really nice, but wtf was that ending?”

Likewise, Booboo has a small role, and there are some reviewers who go “what was even the point of that character?” and others who go “I wanted the whole movie to be about that character!” Also plenty who don’t mention him at all.

The important bit: while I have seen some criticism of the writing of his character, I have not seen a single reviewer criticize his acting. Everyone who mentions his acting is praising it.

And here are the quotes (spoilers!):

"For the stunner of the film, Booboo Stewart plays Peter" (Military Press)

"The supporting cast is strong, with impressive performances from Booboo Stewart [...] " (We Live Entertainment)

"The supporting cast presents a solid ensemble, most notably Booboo Stewart of Twilight and X-Men who plays the only ally of the Blackledge’s, the tragic and heroic Peter Dragswolf." (Republic Times)

"But it’s lesser-known actors like Kayli Carter and Booboo Stewart who really shine, making the most of smaller, quieter roles." (AZ Central)

"Booboo Stewart (from Walt Disney’s Descendants films) offers a rich turn as a young ingenious [sic!] man who ran away from a brutal “Indian School” and to whom Lane’s mourning mother implicitly looks at as a second chance." (Forbes)

"With strong supporting roles from the likes of Booboo Stewart [...] " (KGun9)

"We also get some strong supporting work from Booboo Stewart as a Native American loner who befriends Margaret and George." (Flickreel)

"The list of great performances in Let Him Go only grows once Margaret and George hit the road, including a nice turn from Booboo Stewart as a skittish residential school runaway who reluctantly helps the couple on their journey. " (The Gate)

"Booboo Stewart, in a sensitive and winning performance" (Chicago Sun Times)

"The Blackledges are never fleshed out beyond what they represent, but there’s another character worth caring about — a young Native American runaway (Booboo Stewart) called Peter by the people who stole him away to the Indian Residential School from which he’s just escaped. Stripped of his name, forced to forget his language, and alone in a country taken from his people, “Peter” is a poignant emblem of what people like George and Margaret are only learning in their twilight years: America has always been a country that takes without asking, and we’d sooner burn it to the ground than stop living all over each other. It’s only with Peter’s help that “Let Him Go” is able to find something worth saving in the ashes." (Indiewire)

"Booboo Stewart brings real emotion and empathy to a handful of scenes as a fugitive indigenous man who ran away from a brutal “Indian school” and provides some backup for Margaret and George." (The Wrap)

" Booboo Stewart (the Twilight saga) as a horse riding loner the couple encounter along the way is terrific, serving in a key capacity late in the film." (Deadline)

" A Native American drifter (Booboo Stewart) who befriends them and briefly recounts his traumatizing experience at a culture-crushing boarding school offers a wistful glimpse at the kind of character-driven storyline that the film deserts halfway down the road." (Slant - which hated the rest of the film)

"With powerful supporting characters such as Booboo Stewart[...]" (Eminetra)

"And then along the way the story does introduce us to some characters that have stories of their own that unfortunately aren't explored as much, and one of those characters was probably one of the more interesting parts of the story for me. It's a character played by actor Booboo Stewart, and he's really good! I don't know, there's not another word I can say without spoiling anything, but he's very, I don't know, you can tell he's carrying a lot of his past with him, and I wanted the story to almost explore more of his character, rather than anyone else's. Unfortunately, that's not the case." (Reel James - youtube video)

And the cast is rounded out with a new generation of promising performers in Brittain, the excellent Carter, and Booboo Stewart as Peter, a young Native American man who the Blackledges encounter. His personal story of being taken as a child to an abusive “Indian school” is part history lesson, part a look into Jimmy’s potential future should he stay with the sadistic Weboys. (LA Times)

"The only time Let Him Go really comes to life is when it puts the main story aside so Margaret and George can spend time with Peter Dragswolf (Booboo Stewart), a young Indigenous horseman they meet on their journey—and who, because this is really just a pulp Western, becomes an invaluable ally in the back half of the story.

(cont.) "Bezucha treats Peter as a source of exposition and white-knighting—a chance for us to understand that George and Margaret are more evolved than the other white folk Peter has encountered in his life—but Lane and Costner don’t condescend to the material the way their director does, and they bring out a wounded, cautious quality in Stewart he doesn’t often get to show.

(cont.) "I don’t think I’ll spend much more time thinking about Let Him Go, which is ultimately just a junky revenge movie that wastes a lot of very talented actors’ time and will probably also waste yours if you let it, but I expect that from time to time I’ll think about Stewart and Lane and Costner, just sitting out in the badlands together talking about horses, and wish someone had made a whole movie about that." (Straight)

Bezucha seems compelled to accentuate more compassionate moments, such as the Blackledges’ fairly contrived but still welcome relationship with a young Native American man played by Booboo Stewart. Best known for playing Seth Clearwater in The Twilight Saga, Stewart shows nice depth here as a peaceful drifter who helps George and Margaret pull off a hard-fought family reunion. (Collider)

They also meet others along the way, including Peter (a nice turn from Booboo Stewart) (Blu-ray.com)

Among the latter: an incongruously placed but engaging young Lakota man named Peter (Booboo Stewart) (Original cin)

I definitely want to give props to Booboo Stewart, who played Peter. If I'm being honest, I would have loved to have seen a movie just based on his upbringing. I thought that that young man, Booboo Stewart as Peter in this film, kind of this outcast in a sense, hearing his story was so tragic, and again, I would have loved to dug deeper into that, but man, this guy did a really good job in the little bit of scenes that we spent with him, and the scenes that he shared with Diane Lane I thought had a lot of emotional impact, and I thought he did a really good job in this movie as well. (Movie Files - youtube video)

Booboo Stewart does a solid enough job at offering a sympathetic new take on typically well-worn character tropes. (comingsoon.net)

In the supporting cast, Carter is fine, but Stewart invests greater poignancy into Peter, a young man robbed of his birthright but retaining the nobility it confers on him. (One Guy's Opinion)

Booboo Stewart also has a nice role as a local Native American escapee of a residential school, who helps the older couple in their quest, but has enough agency to know the two are pushing things way too far with the Weboy clan. (Joblo)

I do have to call special attention to the amazing Booboo Stewart who plays a Native American lad who helps the couple, this being his second great role/performance of the year after The Grizzlies. (The weekend warrior blog)

Booboo Stewart of “Twilight” fame has a small part but elevates a handful of scenes as an ousted Native American looking for purpose. (Galveston Daily News)

Another standout is the very quiet Booboo Stewart, who plays Peter. He's a self-sufficient loner who is really kind, despite all the terrible crap that has happened to him. (Movies and Munchies - youtube video)

Plus, there is an actor by the name of Booboo Stewart, and he plays an American Indian in the film, Peter, who befriends the couple, and he is just outstanding in this film. I really enjoyed his performance. (Jackie K Cooper - youtube video)

And the supporting work from Donovan, Stewart, and Carter are all equally excellent. (CJ at the movies)

Another character worth mentioning was Booboo Stewart as Peter Dragswolf. He didn’t have a ton of screen time but the scenes he was in were filled with so much emotion. My heart went out to his character. (Funtastic life)

[...]Even so with Booboo Stewart's character, they're great on screen, I don't have any qualms to their performances, but because you do... especially with Booboo's character, I got really invested in his story, but there's nothing else that's really done to, like, explore his character, almost to the point where his character wasn't needed. I wanted to actually see more of that character. (Pay or Wait - youtube video)

1: I did also want to mention Booboo Stewart [...] as this young Native American they encounter who has run away from what they used to call Indian schools, where they basically, like, force you to learn English, and you know, it's the same kind of anti-Indigenous stuff that the British used to do in Australia, and we have our own sad, awful history of that in the United States, and so, his character I think is there obviously as a plot function, but I think he brings a real humanity to the role.

2: I was going to say, I wish there was more to him, though, because he does feel like an idea, like a device, and he does very conveniently show up when he is needed to, to help make things happen, and that feels a little contrived and I wish there was more to him.

1: But not the actor's fault!

2: No no no, it's in the script! (Breakfast All Day)

Booboo Stewart of “Twilight” fame has a small part but elevates a handful of scenes as an ousted Native American looking for purpose. (The Daily News)

A side-story involving an Indigenous man, Peter Dragswolf (Booboo Stewart), is as poignant and, in certain ways, historically urgent as it is extraneous to the main thrust of the story. (Rolling Stone)

The hardest thing for me to deal with was that it had some slow moments that I didn’t think needed to be there. But on the other side of that, if they weren’t there, we wouldn’t have seen the nice performance of Booboo Stewart, who ends up becoming an important fixture. (Power 98.3)

Another underused character with a strong part is Booboo Stewart as Peter - he has some of the best lines in just three scenes. (Oakville News)

While their roles were smaller, both Carter and Stewart left strong impressions as Lorna and Peter, each wounded and abused in their own way. (Rick's Texan Reviews)

Booboo Stewart is even more heartbreaking as a young man who ran away from an Indian boarding school and runs into our questing couple. While I’m not sure what his larger purpose is in the movie, he brings a healthy dose of warmth and heart every second he’s onscreen. (Vail Daily)

One of my favorite characters was Peter Drags wolf (Stewart) a young Native American man living out on his own. (Portsmouth Daily Times)

Delivering a poignant counterpoint to the high stakes is Booboo Stewart (the Twilight series) who plays a young Native American nomad on the plains who forges a connection with the Blackledges. (I can't unsee that movie)

A revenge thriller that leaves no easy answers “Let Him Go” stars Kevin Costner and Diane Lane with some meaty supporting performances by Lesley Manville as a powerful matriarch and Booboo Stewart who helps navigate the Dakota landscape. (testset)

Even cast members in smaller roles, like that of cast-out Peter Dragswolf (Booboo Stewart), are solid and make an impression. (Gallup sun)

Other good performances include Carter, who holds the viewer’s sympathies for the entire film as a victim of domestic abuse, and Booboo Stewart, who delivers a powerful performance as Peter Dragswolf, a Native American who helps the Blackledges on their quest. (Northern star)

[...] and Booboo Stewart are also well-cast in their respective supporting roles. (Seongyong's private place)

#booboo stewart #let him go

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