#do you KNOW how much money historians would pay to be able to talk to these people. literally they start up a podcast

[lorillee]

do you think that kurain is finally earning some money these days

#honestly the most unrealistic part about ace attorney is the fact that they arent completely loaded #like yeah yeah something something dl-6 but like im sorry. thats stupid #they literally change form to match the dead person . you could easily ask something that only the dead person would know to prove it real #going to kurain becomes a tiktok trend or something. they make 2342935709235092835025 dollars #do you KNOW how much money historians would pay to be able to talk to these people. literally they start up a podcast #thats like ''interview with julius caesar'' or something. get an actually decent translator. go ham #like. come on #lorillee liveblogs aa5

[qqueenofhades]

hello, it's youngin anon once again. i need advice and i have no one to ask, so i figured i could ask you. it's a lot and long, so if you don't want to answer, feel free to ignore.

idk how familiar you are with immigrant child guilt, but it weighs on me immensely. my parents work very hard and i can see the way they struggle. i remember when i was young we didn't even have a bed! me and my siblings slept on cushions. i've seen the insane hours my dad has worked so as to afford me and my siblings a better and more comfortable life. both of my parents have put in a lot of work to give us good opportunities, starting with their immigration to the US.

in nigerian culture, education is extremely important, so as i grew up, my parents have always told me to focus on my education, telling me not to work and it did pay off bc i did end up as valedictorian. college, however is presenting a new set of problems.

my dad, who i am financially dependent on (and who is paying the tuition for the state uni where i'm enrolled) has made it abundantly clear that he thinks med school is the only valid career path. i told him that my roommate was studying comms and he said that she could become a lawyer or something, before looking me dead in the eyes and that wasn't an option for me. with him, it's med school or bust.

as long as i could remember, my parents have been telling me i was going to become a doctor. every time i asked my dad to get me something, he say, i'll do it and in the future, you'll become a doctor, right? and i would agree and that was that. i've answered to all the adults who asked me that i was was going to med school and they would all give me smiles of approval. if i mentioned any other career growing up i'd be ruthlessly shot down or gently persuaded about how much more security there was in medicine.

i was aware in high school that i didn't really want to be a doctor so i sort of set myself up, enrolling under my college's science school so as to cut off my own retreat path. i figured that if i was able to bear it during high school, i could bear it during college. but i can see my own behavior and i know that i don't really like STEM. not that it's a bad field! i just don't have any interest in it. i read the textbooks to learn enough to pass the test and that's it. i don't interact with my classmates or the professors or the material beyond what's needed to get an A. this is in sharp contrast to my history classes which i have been enthralled with. I took a world history class in the first semester enjoyed it immensely. last semester i took a war and violence in africa class and LOVED it. it made me want to become an African historian/Africanist. i talk to my professors, enjoy the readings, the assignments, all the new info i'm getting on the continent where my family originates. i go to my history classes and i want to be there. i want to learn.

i don't know if i could survive academia as a profession because i've seen you posting about the struggles from working in academia and there was a large strike at my school last semester because professors weren't earning enough. if it were a perfect world or if i had lots of money i would love to get my Ph.D focusing on West African history and be a history professor, but it's not, so. i've been thinking about law school as a happy compromise. i could go to law school with a undergrad history degree and if i went to law school i could also pursue JD/MA in History. i'm trying out some law classes next semester to see how i like them.

i'm now scared that if i were to transfer to a different school in my college my scholarship might be reduced. i'm also afraid that i would lose my parents' financial support if i chose to pursue a different career path and i have no actual work experience.

and i understand my parents' very valid concerns! both of them grew up poor in Nigeria and it was their STEM educations that afforded them better lives. they don't want me to experience that level of crushing poverty that heavily defined their youth. my mom tells me about her younger brother in Nigeria who struggles to get work with his masters. my dad tells me about co-workers' children who can't get jobs in their field of profession and have to work whatever jobs come their way. from what i've seen on the news, the future job market looks bad for the young people (around the world!). millennials are having problems and my generation isn't set to do much better.

is it fair to my parents to just disregard that and pursue work in the humanities? i want to do what i want, to just live my life, but it feels like it's not just my life. it would feel so selfish to just risk that all. whenever i talk to my parents about their journey in the US i feel like i should just suck it all up and go to med school. if my parents could suffer all of that, who i am to complain? do my struggles compare?

i feel like my sense of pragmatism and idealism are warring against each other. I don't like STEM, I'm good at it, good enough to get good grades in the classes, but it's not something i enjoy doing, but there's more job security. i love history and the humanities as a whole, but i might struggle with employment.

i'm semi-familiar with the path i would need to take to become a doctor. i would have to make it into med school (high GPA, experience in science research/labs, shadowing healthcare professionals, good recommendations, etc.), survive med school, survive residency (during which residents are worked like dogs), complete fellowships, and then i would be able to practice independently. and that would probably occupy the majority of my time. people have told me that med school is hard even for people that like medicine. for me who is just tolerating it, can i do it? and what about any future patients? is it fair to them?

my mom has always said that i could just get my second degree in whatever i wanted after i became a doctor, but i don't know if i would have the mental strength/energy/free time to go back to school after med school. i feel like if i grit my teeth and bared it for all my twenties i would lose the drive to do it my thirties. it feels like i've been putting off my living my life for my entire life. in middle school i thought about high school, in high school about college, and in college about post-graduate life. i'm tired of this constant look towards the future, but it's the only thing i know how to do. my brain is constantly asking "okay, and then what?"

if i go to med school and realize that i really can't do it, then i'll be trapped. it'll be too much debt to walk away from, too many years of my life dedicated towards that end goal of becoming a doctor. i feel like if i'm going to change my future plans, i should do it before sooner rather than later. 19 isn't too late to walk back but 26 might be.

but it's not like pursuing a career closer to what i want would be easier.

there's always this big fear in the background of, what if i fail? what if i risk it all to go to law school and i don't make it in? or i end up in a low-paying law job saddled with hundreds of thousands in student debt? or even if i make it to biglaw, i still end up burned out from all the hours that they work? wouldn't i still be miserable? i'm not super familiar with how law school works but i've done some lurking around @artielu's blog and law seems like something i should also go into in only if i'm sure.

(i'm not. i'm not sure of anything really.)

it feels like no matter what i'm going to be unhappy in the future. maybe everyone feels this way, maybe a certain level of unhappiness is normal in adult life. it just makes me feel so frustrated because i'm struggling so hard for what? idk. i'm also so desperately scared. i'm scared that one day i'll wake up in the my forties/fifties and realize that i hate my life. maybe i'll look back on this and lament how spoiled/whiny i was. idk. idk.

i'm not looking for an answer to this dilemma, i know this is a decision i'll have to make for myself, but i would appreciate any advice or even words of encouragement. thank you.

Welp. Okay, first of all, I am giving you a big virtual hug and sitting you down at your coffeeshop of choice. So imagine us talking there.

Second, thanks for pouring out your heart to me about this and your various other comments and chats over the years. I only know you as one of my favorite (shh) Tumblr anons on the internet, but I have always seen how thoughtful, smart, and hard-working you are, and I don't take it lightly that you trust me to listen to you and to give you good advice. (Or uh, let's hope, at least not bad advice? Jury's out.) Likewise, I'm absolutely sure that immigrant-child guilt is something to which a lot of my followers can very much relate, and would be happy to talk with you about. So if you are one of said followers and you'd like to encourage anon to reach out to you, please drop a note in the replies! I can't speak to this from personal experience, but I'd love to help connect you to others in your situation. Because yes, it IS absolutely a universal struggle for first- or second-gen immigrant kids: balancing cultural expectations of parents, American opportunities, feeling guilty if you do what you want, etc etc.

Third, and this is just me talking: if you absolutely feel this way, then no, I don't think you should go to medical school. I realize that this is far easier said than done, but if you continue to feel this strongly about it, then... you shouldn't be expected to do it, and that's just something that everyone in your family will have to come to terms with. After all, your parents came to America so you could be raised as an American, and there would be multiple pathways to success -- not whatever just they themselves had to do in order to get here in the first place. I'm afraid that you'll eventually have to bite the bullet and have an honest talk with your parents about this, but it may help if you present this as both your own success and THEIR success. After all, you're smart, talented, you have so many options, and you'll clearly succeed at whatever you choose to do. And that means THEY did their job right: they worked hard, they raised you right, they brought you to a place where there ISN'T just one narrow pathway to having a fulfilling and prestigious career. It doesn't mean they "failed" to make you a doctor. It means they succeeded in making YOU, and opening up so many more things for you to do.

Obviously: that's going to be hard either way, your parents are probably going to be upset, and that's very tough to deal with, especially if you're a close family unit and if you're financially dependent on them. You're the only one who can choose when to have the conversation and what might come of it, but it's still something that you do have the right to do. If you want to research other aid options or scholarship packages, or reach out to financial aid/admissions officers at other schools to see what it might take to transfer (that is, if you need to transfer), that's your right to do. You're an adult now and you have the right to take legal and personal responsibility for your own life. If you know what you want to do and how you want to do it: then again, isn't that why your parents came here? Isn't that what they were working to achieve?

Yes, academia is hard. No, there's no guarantee of getting a job. But there isn't the guarantee of getting a job in medicine either, especially if it's something you're forcing yourself to do and which (as you note) would impact negatively on you, your colleagues, and the patients you would be expected to serve. Especially post-Covid and in the American healthcare system: being a doctor/nurse/healthcare professional SUCKS! Even if you like it and feel called to do it, it still sucks, and the only people earning a lot of money from it are the senior/career/specialist types (as is the case in every field). Of course your parents have expectations and dreams for you, but they also don't get the right to control/dictate your entire adult life just by virtue of deciding to bring you into the world. After all, they did that, and that means embracing you as a person with your own choices. (And this goes for all people with controlling/bossy parents, regardless of immigrant or non-immigrant background). So again: this is what they wanted for you, and you've paid that off already.

I absolutely feel the "I spend all my time thinking/worrying about the future and being scared that I'll end up wasting my life" thing, which I think is common to a lot of high-achieving smart people (we are terminal overthinkers to a one). I can tell you now that life has a way of surprising you, and when you get a little older, you start becoming more comfortable with yourself, your accomplishments, your talents, and knowing what you're good at. So I don't think you will find that you've wasted anything. Likewise, when it comes to studying for advanced degrees in history: do you think it might help with your parents if you agreed to pursue a name-brand school? It's still not guaranteed, but trust me, going to a place like Harvard or Yale makes it tremendously easier to get a job or a future opportunity just by virtue of having that name on your CV and the people you will meet, and I have no doubt that you would be able to get in. As well, I don't really think your parents could argue with you going to an Ivy League, or think that you weren't applying yourself.

Likewise, if there is anything I can do to support you in this, please feel free to message me privately/off anon. I will write a letter of recommendation for you, I will see if I know a person who knows a person, I will help look at application materials, so forth and etc. I mean it: I WILL help you in the real world if I possibly can. I'm sure you have tons of other enthusiastic recommenders, but still. Also, I will say that despite the current (terrible) academic job market, I have seen quite a few openings for professors of African history/African studies/African-American literature and culture, and that's just in the US. There are also lots of opportunities around the world.

Anyway: I hope that's helpful to start with. I am giving you all the hugs. Please reach out to me again (especially via private message) if I can help with this in more tangible ways. And likewise, if any of my followers would like anon to reach out to them: please make a note in the replies. We can do this together.

<3

#anonymous #ask #school stuff #academia: not even once #long post

[bluethude]

In Navier’s defence about slavery

Requested : No

Character : Navier, Rashta

Summary : Just me sharing what I think about the argument that Navier is not a good person/empress because she didn’t stopped slavery

Just me ranting (again) about The Remarried Empress while breaking down some stuff about it.

Word count : 1111 words

Warning : Slavery. No, I do not defend this status, this post is to break down this status, not to promote it. ✨​Let's go ! ✨​

I noticed that one of the argument to say Navier is a bad empress (or person) is the fact she didn’t do anything to fix the slavery problem and each time I read it, I’m a bit confused at where this is coming from.

Navier can’t really do anything about it. First of all, the only person who can do it, it’s Sovieshu, since in the story’s Empire, the Emperor seems to be the one holding all the power, the Empress is only there to second him. And as the Emperor and Empress, they can’t express their true opinion, they have to shut their mouth on personal opinion including political ones or it’ll be a mess. 

A good example to explain why they can’t express their opinion is episode eight of the fourth season of The Crown on Netlix (the episode is called “48 against 1″ I think). The show is also a very good breakdown on how the royal institutions work but let’s get back to my argument and to my example. To this point in the show, the Queen Elizabeth spent all her time telling Prince Charles that nobody wants a king who express his feelings or opinions, just a perfectly neutral ruler and while the point is cruel and you don’t get why at first, well, the second she opened her mouth to express an opinion, she nearly provoked a rift between 10 Downing Street and the Crown and it made a huge scandal on all plans. 

Anyway, you get my point, Navier and Sovieshu can and can’t do something at the same time. If they do, it’ll have major consequences, there would be a need to reform the law, reform the government (who also would be disconnected from them since they expressed a disaccord with it), the entire country’s economic system and the people’s mentality, who would be a huge burden on the country for a while and I talk about in term of decades. A weak empire would crumble real fast and given how the Eastern Empire seems the most powerful Empire in this side of the globe, despite the decrease of mages, I bet the second there’s internal troubles, the weaker countries would take advantage of it and not in the kindest way, because they would have to act fast before the Eastern Empire could recover. Kinda like how Ergi and Heinrey planned with their actions of taking the magic of the Eastern Mages to weaken the Empire before going to war against it.

Would it really worth it just because one slave got to sleep with Sovieshu ?

Like, I get that you see Imperial and Royal positions as all powerful but actually... They aren’t. At least not on such matters.

Let’s take a look on real life slavery. It is not all black and white, it is really nuanced. Honestly, when I heard Rashta got sold by her father for him to be able to pay his debt, I thought about how in Ancient Greece and a specific situation where a normal citizen could become a slave. Let me be clear before anything, I don’t defend slavery, far from it, I just take a look at the entire thing with the historical knowledge I have.

In Ancient Greece, there was a certain type of peasants, who are called hektēmoroi. This class of people actually rented a land to a rich landowner and worked on the rented land, and in exchange the hektēmoroi has to pay back to the landowner by giving them a part of the culture or money coming from the sells or this culture. Historians nowadays still don’t know what the name exactly means since it is meaning “sixth-parters” and we still don’t know if they actually give a sixth of their work to the landowner, in which case it would be too little, or if they keep a sixth of their work, the rest going to the landowner, in which case it would be too much.

This class of people, until Solon’s reforms, would actually be debt enslaved, meaning that if they can’t pay what they have to, they will be enslaved to their creditor, until their debt is repaid. This problem was concerning every citizen who would have debt, but the hektēmoroi is more likely to be debt enslaved than the rest.

However, being debt enslaved would not strip you from your civil rights, you would be considered as an Athenian depending on another Athenian. But the debt enslvament disappeared after Solon’s reforms and he re-wrote the law, in which no Athenians can sell or be sold as a slave, unless they match one of the only two exceptions allowed where people can sell an Athenian as a slave.

An unmarried woman who lost her virginity can be sold as a slave by her legal guardian.

If a couple or a citizen has unwanted child or children, they can “abandon” (understand it as “sell”) it so slavery.

Assuming slave is actually a legal status in the Eastern Empire (since Lotteshu is there and not in prison despite being Rashta’s previous owner), and assuming the slavery laws and regulation are similar to the Ancient Greek law, I honestly think Rastha got sold because she corresponded to one of the criteria, if not both (I don’t know how old she was when she got sold, I’m in the territory of assumptions).

I think her father was a hektēmoroi or something similar (assuming there is a status like this, since it is stated that noble families are independant and can even have their own armies with the Imperial family being the only one who can have mages as army), but he gambled away the money from their work on the lands, and to avoid to be debt enslaved, he sold her (since he could do it by law) to repay what he’s supposed to sell to the landowner. Because once debt enslaved, you have no real guarantee to be free again. Or course it is a crappy move to go straight up sell your kid to guarantee your own freedom, but as I often read, all children deserve parents but not all parents deserve children.

#remarried empress #the remarried empress #navier #rashta #sovieshu #webtoon #The Blue Thude

[richmond-rex]

Hi! Why do you all look terrified because upcoming series about The Tudor rose by Alison Weir?

If you don’t want to answer, it’s ok!

Hello! No problem, I will try to explain our dismay at Alison Weir making money off of the Tudors yet again. I have summarised my issues with Weir's type of research here (please take your time to read the reblogs as well). As you can see, it's not only Tudor fans who think Alison Weir's style of research is faulty at best and offensive at worst. I'm going to talk about her book about Elizabeth of York specifically. Now, as much as it's a relief to know she'll be writing about Elizabeth from a fictional point of view this time, it's a small relief considering her take on her character doesn't make sense at all.

She thinks Elizabeth of York was scheming enough to wish the death of her aunt and conspire to marry her uncle all because she wanted to be queen and powerful so badly.... only to... give up wanting to hold actual power and turn all domestic and children-minded once married to Henry VII? Since all historians agree that their marriage was a happy one, Weir tries to explain her point by saying Elizabeth became so enamoured with Henry VII he turned her into what he wanted her to be (There is a popular narrative that says Elizabeth of York was excluded from power but what historians such as Anna Duch have seen is that Elizabeth actually excelled in the traditional spheres of influence and power that were accorded to consorts. There's no reason to think Elizabeth was powerless, she just wasn't the reigning monarch, but I digress). It makes little sense.

The following point is also a common trend in Elizabeth of York's historiography, but Weir really amps Elizabeth's motherhood to the exclusion of almost everything else. Queenship was an office that required actual duties but Weir tries to claim Elizabeth was constantly by her children's side at the royal nursery in Eltham (according to the surviving accounts, she wasn't), that she tried to flee court/her husband every time she could (how Weir still claims it was a happy marriage by the end of her book, it's a wonder), and just doesn't pay attention to Elizabeth's significance in royal protocol and ceremonies, her role in royal patronage and the arts, employment and charity — but that's a topic for another time.

Weir is also very heinous about Elizabeth's weight gain, saying that she indulged herself too much just like her father Edward IV had done (endorsing fatphobic narratives, much?), that she was too 'given to sensual pleasures' instead of simply being a woman that had undergone a number of pregnancies and whose weight gain was most likely a result of that. She insists so much on linking Elizabeth and her father together, she suggests that because Edward IV was such a 'sex addict', Elizabeth of York was probably quite fond of sex as well — a point that doesn't make sense in the slightest!

Apparently, Weir has reviewed her opinion regarding Elizabeth's alleged letter expressing her wish to marry her uncle and doesn't believe in that anymore, but I don't put it past her to still endorse this theory given that she's writing fiction this time and she has much more of a free avenue for that. Scandal sells, don't they? And yet, in the end, perhaps the most offensive thing Weir will be able to do is writing a bland, dull, talentless story that rehashes the same plot points all histfic novels have done before. Judging by her last novels, she certainly is no notable writer. I wish people would stop trying to milk the cow when they have no actual new take/angle/information to bring to the table.

#sorry for taking so long :') life has been hectic #elizabeth of york #this blog is anti-alison weir #historian: alison weir #anon #ask

[perfectlymarilynmonroe]

Hey babe, I had a q about your last photo caption. The bit about Marilyn refusing to be a kept woman is somewhat misleading to me- didn't she live with Johnny Hyde for a time, and didn't his influence grant her favorable notice during casting for films like The Asphalt Jungle? Maybe I'm not remembering correctly, but I don't think their relationship was precisely sexual even if he clearly doted on her for a time. Obvi she got further on her own merit, but I do think that's an oft unexplored moment in her life that was definitely instrumental because of her choice to link up with him. Just wondering about your thoughts on this! Love the blog <3

Hi! Thank you for your sweet comments about my blog :) Sorry for the delay in response, but I wanted to give a thorough response to this. I’ve actually received a couple of comments on Instagram lately regarding this, and I don’t mind addressing this confusion.

*Disclaimer to everyone reading: This is based on the research I have done and is to address a number of issues. This isn’t to glorify Marilyn or deny any flaws or imperfections, but to state the facts. I’m publicly sharing this so I can later refer back to it. It’s a longer response to answer any follow-up questions I may get but, of course, you can still ask any you may have. ♡♡

--

It can be deceiving, but I think the bigger concern is what she took for what she got, rather than vise versa. If she was looking to be a gold-digging, role-stealing actress, she would have married Hyde the minute he asked her to. She would have inherited his millions and could have bought her way through Hollywood. For a young woman with hardly anything, she chose herself and said no. 

Just before she met him, she was getting help from John Carroll and Lucille Ryman, so when she said, Johnny was the first to believe in her, that isn’t entirely true. Due to her lack of a father-figure as a child I think that when she saw the belief in her from a man like Johnny, at a reputable agency, who was willing to do anything for her, she latched on to it.

Hyde’s co-workers at William Morris later reported being furious with him because he slowly began to abandon his other clients and focused only on helping her. In the case of The Asphalt Jungle, since you asked, it was actually the help of both Hyde and Lucille Ryman that she was given an audition. However, director John Huston later said she didn’t get the “role because of Hyde...she got it because she was damn good.”

In my personal opinion, based on the facts, whether did not sleep with Johnny - some historians even refuse to believe they were ever sexually involved - it was never for roles, auditions, etc. As I mentioned, if it were, she would have married him, taken his money, and used that to her advantage. She actually stopped seeing him - both  personally and professionally - by Fall 1949 because she was so sick and tired of being called, “Mrs. Johnny Hyde” by him and hearing from colleges that he was calling her his wife. 

When it came to being a “kept” woman, she was referring to the large number of “casting directors” or studio execs, etc, who faked an upcoming film to lure her into their office and attempt to seduce her, or held their hand on her thigh while she auditioned, almost forced her, etc... and each time she managed to walk out. 

She wrote an article entitled, “The Wolves I’ve Know” that was published in a number of places like Motion Picture in 1953, The New York Daily News, and more. When she met with Ben Hecht for her autobiography interviews, she also spoke of them and it was published in a London newspaper in August 1954, and in Australian magazines in 1955.

He did leave his family and move into a bigger place and invited her to live there, but she never officially moved in. She did spend quite a bit of her time there, but by early Spring she was living on her own and was very low on rent. This is why she posed nude on red velvet in May 1949. She admitted to thinking of asking men she knew for money to help her, but felt she wouldn’t have been able to forgive herself, and it made her sick to even think of it.

For everyone reading this, remember, she was twenty-three. She was still a very young girl and had grown up with little guidance in her life. She was abused, and was in and out of so many school and homes, she was never taught how to do things. She figured it out on her own, and of course, like anyone in that situation, maybe didn’t always make the best decisions or have the best thoughts.

--

I know this answer was very long, but I felt I needed to address a number of points because things are rarely black and white - especially for Marilyn Monroe, who is the subject of much scrutiny, then and now - and there are many things to consider in regards to a sensitive subject like this! 

I hope I’m not missing anything, but I hope it answers your question! xo

--

Below is a list of various quotes said by Marilyn that I hope everyone will find helpful :)

From “The Wolves I’ve Known” published in The New York Times:

The first real wolf I encountered should have been ashamed of himself because he was trying to take advantage of a mere kid. That’s all I was and I wasn’t suspicious of him at all when he stopped his car at a corner and started to talk to me.

He looked at me all over and then came up with that famous line: “You ought to be in pictures.” That was the first time I’d ever heard it, so it didn’t sound corny to me.

He told me he had an office at the Goldwyn studio and said why didn’t I come and see him and he would get me a screen test. It sounded pretty good to me because I was crazy to get into the movies.

I was modeling at that time and I asked the people who ran the agency where I got my jobs what they thought of his offer. The manager called the studio but never was able to get in touch with my would-be benefactor. However, the wolf called the agency and I made an appointment to go to his office on Saturday afternoon.

I didn’t know then that the producers and other movie officials don’t make Saturday afternoon appointments. I found that out later. I also found out that he didn’t really have any connection with the Goldwyn studio but had borrowed a friend’s office.

He was fat and jovial and, of course, drove a Cadillac. He gave me a script to read and told me how to pose while reading it. All the poses had to be reclining, although the words I was reading didn’t seem to call for that position.

--

Of course, there are other ways a girl could survive until another studio came along. A starlet could take on a lover, usually a well-heeled married man who could pay her bills, or she could become the mistress to an old man and through his connections help advance her career. Believe me, there were and still are many starstruck girls that do get by that way. But for myself, respect is one of life’s greatest treasures. I mean, what does it all add up to if you don’t have that? If there [is] only one thing in my life I [am] proud of, it’s that I’ve never been a kept woman.  

And believe me, it wasn’t because there weren’t opportunities to become one. I think I had as many problems as the next starlet keeping the Hollywood wolves from my door. These wolves just could not understand me. They would tell me, “But Marilyn, you’re not playing the game the way you should. Be smart. You’ll never get anywhere in this business acting the way you do.” My answer to them would be, “The only acting I’ll do is for the motion picture camera.” I was determined, no one was going to use me or my body—even if he could help my career. I’ve never gone out with a man I didn’t want to. No one, not even the studio, could force me to date someone.

You can’t sleep your way into being a star. It takes much, much more. But it helps. A lot of actresses got their first chance that way. Most of the men are such horrors, they deserve all they can get out of them!

The one thing I hate more than anything else is being used. I’ve always worked hard for the sake of someday becoming a talented actress. I knew I would make it someday if I only kept at it and worked hard without lowering my principles and pride in myself.

#ask #Johnny Hyde

[ricaffeine]

𝐇𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐥 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐧 𝐋𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 | 𝐎𝐧𝐞

an: i'm sad because of hyunji drought and this is helping me cope :( but fr if tvn decides to make hotel blue moon then yeaji needs to be in it!!

also very annoying, i can't reply to comments bc this is a side blog (bruh wtf tumblr, i'm so sad should i make a new one?) reblog if you feel like it and my asks are open if you wanna chat 🖤✨

CHAPTER TWO

Weekdays at Seoul's National art gallery were usually the same. Buzzing curators dealing with hot-tempered clients. One thing or another was typically going not right and art directors cried about their wrong coffee order.

Although today was not the usual as to the crowds of bubbly news reporters and dazzled art critiques swarming up the wide place. As to Munyeong on the other hand, she was not pleased to the slightest.

"Just smile at the cameras, don't forget about the paycheck you're getting today." Sangin repeated himself for the fifth time. "Don't cause a scene, just think about the money."

Ah right. The paycheck.

As to The Nightmare Garden was bid off for over ten-million dollars, all of today's fanciness was dedicated to her, nation's celebrated female illustrator. However in all honesty, Munyeong barely liked her so-called masterpiece, but considering the amount of cash it will make her, she could be appreciative for the sake of it.

Behind her oversized sunglasses, Munyeong glared at her pesky manager– if looks could kill, he'd already be eleven feet under his grave. Sangin shut his mouth.

"Let's just get this over with," she simply responded, hooking off her eyewear then strutted into the hall with her long legs. Eyes whipped at her and cameras started to flash intensely, almost blinding her and Munyeong wondered how much those little pests could afford her if they got her blind.

And so the event played on. More pictures were taken– as if they hadn't blind her enough cheerful compliments flowed along with the spring breeze. The insincere joker smile she mastered whilst she met her million-dollar client– according to Sangin a hotel owner, though the woman did not have the looks for it– and the glass of filthy wine she almost had a chance to taste if Sangin's sixth sense was not so creepily fast.

Another dreadful two hours later as the dusk had set, hitting the edges with its golden flare, everyone had left. They got their articles and Munyeong will certainly be getting her pools of cash.

To her displease Sangin had informed her to wait as he had to take care of some paperworks she doubted he went to bribe the press into censoring her quoted inappropriate words. 

Nevertheless it was not her bother. She gave his plead a second before storming off to the complimentary section of the building.

Luck on her side, for nobody was there and she was able to grab one of the wine bottles with her– as for a fact it definitely was not stealing.

"Don't be shy, I know you want it."

Munyeong stopped within her steps as soon as an obnoxiously familiar voice echoed from the gallery she previously was in. Curiosity taking the lead, she peaked through the corner and had to muffle her own snort. Stood there, nation's art historian with the sharpest tongue– Choi Seojin.

She finds it hard to believe that his articles are highly known around, or even relevant, when his mouth is full of complete shit. However not disregarding the nastiest tea yet– a frightened girl seized under him. Her hands were locked, frightened eyes grew larger as the man spewed out nasty things.

Instantly, she took out her phone to film the disgraceful scene. Munyeong grinned to herself, reminiscing the rage she felt last time when he mentioned about her mother, and how her irritating manager had interrupted her before she could've sent him down the stairs to Satan.

The man reared into the poor girl's cheek when she attempted to fight him off, and Munyeong's smile dropped.

That piece of shit.

Munyeong entered the room, arms crossed, head high. Her wedge heels clicked against the hardwood as she let out an unamused wow.

Mad dog– what she personally thinks he should be called– 's head whipped at her with wide eyes. Like a child getting caught of lying.

"Oh my. Your hobbies are quite interesting Mr. Choi. Talking shit and sexual harassment?" Munyeong spat. "The girl looks like she'd rather kill herself, why are you even trying?"

As if he thought he could get away with what he just did, mad dog released his foul grip on the girl. Munyeong clicked her tongue and tauntingly held out her phone.

"Oh no, don't bother pretending. Judging by the looks, that won't even favor you at this point." She spared a glance at the quivering girl. "Why are you waiting? Go."

Shakingly and with thankful eyes she nodded and left, her footsteps filling void of silence before it coated the air again.

Mad dog snickered, as if there was something to laugh about. "Don't mess with me Ms. Ko. You know me, I won't die alone."

"Certainly I'll drag you and Mr. Lee down with me. Why do you think they call me the suicide bomb?"

Munyeong walked towards him and spreaded a smile, though even dogs could tell you shouldn't push her further. "You mean the bastard you can't fall down without dragging everyone else with him? Why?"

"I can destroy your career with the tip of my pen, I'm sure you know." He gave her a look, panning out his hand. "Now if you hand me your phone, I think we can compromise something."

Munyeong unraveled her arms, eyes hardening at his next sentence. "You think so?"

"Nation's beloved artist turned out to have antisocial personality disorder. What do you think will happen when people find out?" Mad dog sneered. "Her mother who mysteriously commited suicide–"

"Shut up." She warned. His words lit up the flame from their last encounter, adding fuel to her burning fire. Her head pounded, hard. For a moment she had hoped that if he proceeded as she said, then things would not have to get ugly.

"And her father? Spending his last days in the psychiatric hospital."

But men never listen, do they?

Munyeong tightened the hand around her bottle and striked it at him with full force. The bottom part crashed the wall behind him– just above the hung painting- glass shattered as rich burgundy stained its way down, smearing all over. Its taste fused with the air and Munyeong glowered at the creature who dodged her flawless aim.

"You crazy bitch!" He yelled, scrambled on the floor. But Mad dog was quick to lunge at her, they both hit the ground, stumbling as her open purse had been knocked away– and Munyeong's eyes landed on something very specific.

She was quicker, getting on her feet and spared the bastard a strong kick in the groin, leaving him groaning as she reached for her pen.

Her favorite calligraphy pen– its lining was stunning, coated in shiny teal with hints of gold, but most importantly, the dangerously sharp tip. The way it writes like reaping out blood from your hand– hence why it is a favorite.

She hawled back over and he screamed at her, though she didn't hear him. Her head was light as she felt blood rushed through her veins. Munyeong raised her arm and struck it back down.

Die.

Both of them froze. No, not her and mad dog, but him.

Deafening silence had lied between the walls and there they stood, eyes pierced into another's souls. Hers burned like fire, but his were dignified like the deep ocean.

Droplets of blood trickled down his forearm and splattered the floor, staining the rolled up sleeves of his crisp white shirt. What a waste.

"Let go. You can't kill him." The man– still with a bloody pen graved in his palm said.

Munyeong couldn't help but scoff, especially after that fucking bastard had just strangled her. "Don't be dramatic. I was just going to give him a few scratches."

Well maybe that's not entirely true.

Rough scrambling erupted underneath them, but when Munyeong turned to look, the mad dog had just ran off, like a lost puppy. Angrily she bit her lip, close to drawing blood until she felt the man draw his own hand back.

She watched as he did. The way he carefully slid her pen into his jacket and brought out a black silk handkerchief. Very rarely, she'd be astonished by something, and now it's him. Though she found it quite difficult to understand him– since when do you interrupt another's stabbing session by screwing up your own hand instead, and also the audacity to tell her she could not stab somebody?

So lost in her thoughts it took her a few seconds to realize her pulse was not pounding anymore.

"Did anyone not tell you that it is basic etiquette to not pry into someone else's business?" Munyeong said– seized the napkin from him, and began to tie a knot. She shot him a glance.

No reply. The man simply stared at her.

"Hmm?" She raised a brow, amused at his slight flinch when she tugged a little harder.

"Don't stress it too much, my manager will take care of our little incident." Munyeong chuckled as he proceeded to ignore her. "Do you know what? There are a lot of people in this world who deserve to die. And some very thoughtful freaks secretly take care of that, so clueless humans can sleep peacefully at night, completely unaware. Which one do you think I am?"

She dropped his hand, anticipating for his answer. Flares of light shined through the blinds, sharpening at his strong features and she noted his small– yet devilish smile.

"A clueless freak."

He finally responded, leaning towards her. His eyes traced her face, gazing down at her lips for a second too long, before their eyes were locked once again. "And of course you will have to pay, but at what price?"

taglist -> i could not tag some of ya'll :( @anotherdush @callmeashipper @ourcoffeeaddictme @nothingcreativeyet @pancat @hotstuff-benswolo @lookingatthesunset @evielovesfood @waywarm @gloster @hello-79 @ailander

#it's okay to not be okay #psycho but it's okay #iotnbo #pbio fic #kdrama #kim soo hyun #seo yea ji #ko mun yeong #ko moon young #moon kang tae #hotel blue moon #hotel moon light

[margridarnauds]

Things I Wish I Had Known About Being A Celticist (Before Becoming One):

1. If you’re North American, you’re going to have to work twice as hard to get the same level of respect as your peers from Europe. Get used to that now, because it won’t get any easier as time goes on. You’re also going to very likely be in classes with people who, while not FLUENT in Gaeilge, have at least some background in it. This can be a blessing and a curse - The curse is that you have less of an idea of what’s going on, the blessing is that the professors will focus a lot of the tougher questions on them, at least at first. 

2. “So, do you have any Irish family?” You will be asked that question. All the time. If you’re North American or English. Unless you have, say, a grandma from Tipperary, the safest answer is always “No, not at all! I just love the literature/history/language/etc.” 

3. Love languages? You’re going to! On average, depending on your program, it’s likely that you’ll at least be learning two languages. At enough of a level where you can get pretty in-depth when it comes to the grammar. Most Old Irish experts are expected to know Old Irish, Middle Welsh (at least enough for comparative purposes), and German, with Latin often being brought in. You’ll also be expected to be able to comment on the development of Old Irish, Middle Irish, Early Modern Irish, and Gaeilge - It’s essential if you’re going to date texts. There are also multiple other Celtic languages (Breton, Manx, Cornish, Scottish) that, while they might not be ESSENTIAL for whatever you’re doing, are still going to be cropping up at different times for comparison purposes - I’d be lying if I said I knew them WELL, and most people tend to stick fairly firmly to their area, BUT you will probably be learning at least a little of them. (Personally, no one asked me, but I honestly think that I couldn’t call myself a Celticist if I just knew one Celtic language, it’s why a longterm goal of mine is to build up as much knowledge of the others as I can.)  I’ve seen quite a few scholars go in thinking that the linguistics part won’t be important, only to be slammed by the program early on. Even if you just want to do literary analysis, you’re going to have to explain the meaning and development of individual words, as well as situating it in the broader scope of the development of your language of choice. (IE “This is a ninth century text, and we know that because it has intact deponent verbs, the neuter article’s dying out, and no independent object pronoun. Also everything’s on fire because Vikings.”)

4. You’re very likely going to have to move. This applies mainly for North Americans who want to do it (unless you happen to live directly in, say, Toronto or Boston, in which case ignore what I said and, Bostonians, polish off your GREs and prepare to listen to Legally Blonde the Musical on repeat because you’re going to be applying for Harvard). There are very few Celtic Studies programs in the world and, in general, most of the major programs, sensibly, are in Celtic-speaking countries - So, if you want to study Scottish, you go to Scotland, you want Irish, you go to Ireland, Welsh in Wales, etc. If you already wanted to move to Europe for a year or two while you’re doing your MA, then great (and for EU students this doesn’t apply, since they can relocate much easier...unless they were planning on going to the UK in which case.....my condolences), but if you didn’t have any sudden plans to move, keep it in mind. From an American perspective, it was literally cheaper to move to Ireland and do my MA there than to deal with the school system here, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other inconveniences associated with moving to another country. Even if you’re European, the field is fickle - An Irish scholar might find themselves moving to Scotland, an English scholar might find themselves moving to Ireland, etc. etc. These things happen when you have to take what you can get. 

5. You don’t need Old Irish to go for your MA in Celtic Studies. You do not need Old Irish to go for your MA in Celtic Studies. When I first applied for my MA, I thought I didn’t have a chance because I had a general Humanities degree and didn’t have any formal experience with a Celtic language, least of all Old Irish. As it turns out, most programs do not expect you to have a background in this sort of thing beforehand, and quite a few have different programs for those who have a background in this stuff VS those who don’t, so don’t feel, if this is what you REALLY want to do, like you can’t just because of that. Show your passion for the field in your application, talk a little about the texts you’ve studied, angles you’re interested in, etc., make it the best application you can, and you still have a shot even without Old Irish (or, for non-Irish potential Celticists, whatever your target is.)  

6. It’s competitive - Just because you get your MA, PhD programs are fewer and farer between. Academia in general isn’t known for its phenomenal job security, but Celtic Studies in particular is very fragile, since we generally are seen as low priority even among the Humanities programs (which, in general, are the first to be axed anyway.) If you focus on medieval languages as opposed to modern ones, you might very well find your program ranked lower in priority than your colleagues in the modern departments. Especially since COVID has gutted many universities’ income. I found that getting into a MA program was significantly easier than planning on what to do afterwards, since, for a PhD, you generally have to go someplace that can pay you at least some amount of money. Going into your PhD without any departmental funding is a recipe for burnout and bankruptcy, and there are very few Celtic Studies programs that can pay. Doesn’t mean you can’t try, and, when paid PhDs become available, they tend to be quite well publicized on Celtic Studies Twitter/Facebook, but keep in mind that you’ll be in a very competitive market. Networking is key - Your MA is your time to shine and get those treasured letters of rec so that you can get that sweet, sweet institutional funding for your PhD. 

7. You’re very likely not actually going to teach Celtic Studies. Because there are so few teaching positions available worldwide, it’s much more likely that you’ll be teaching general Humanities/Composition/etc. This doesn’t mean that you’ll be giving up Celtic Studies (conferences are always going to be open, you don’t have to stay in one department for your entire life and can snag a position when it becomes available, and, even if you go outside of academia, the tourism industry...well, it was looking for Celticists, before The Plague), it just means that if teaching it is what you REALLY want to do with your life, it might be good to check your expectations. A few programs even have an option where you can essentially double major for the sake of job security. (So, if you always wanted to be the world’s first French Revolution historian/Celticist/Gothic Literature triple threat......................the amount of reading you’d have to do would likely drive you insane but................)

8. Make nice with your department. Make nice with your department. Celtic Studies departments tend to be small and concentrated, so you’re going to be knowing everyone quite well by the end of your first grad degree, at least. You don’t have to like everyone in it, but they aren’t just your classmates, they’re your colleagues. You will be seeing at least some of their faces for the rest of your life. I can say that my MA department remembered students who left the program a decade ago. Your department is supposed to have your back, and they can be an invaluable source of support when you need it the most, since they understand the program and what it entails better than anyone else can. You’ll need them for everything from moral support to getting you pdfs of That One Article From A Long Discontinued Journal From The 1970s. I’ve seen students who made an ass of themselves to the department - Their classmates remembered them five years later. Don’t be that guy. Have fun, go to the holiday dinners, get to know people, ask about their work, attend the “voluntary” seminars and lectures, and do not make an ass of yourself. That is how you find yourself jumping from PhD program to PhD program because your old professors “forgot” your letter of rec until the day after the deadline. Also, since your departments are small and concentrated, it’s a good idea to prepare to separate your social media for your personal stuff vs your academics as much as you can, since it won’t be too hard to track you down if people just know that you do Celtic Studies. 

9. Some areas of the field are more respected than others. If you want to do work on the legal or ecclesiastical aspects, excellent. If you want to focus on the linguistic elements, excellent. If you’re here for literature.....there’s a place, though you’re going to have to make damned sure to back it up with linguistic and historical evidence. (There’s less theory for theory’s sake, though theoretical approaches are slowly gaining more acceptance.) But if you’re here for mythography or comparative approaches...there is a PLACE for you, but it’s a little dustier than the others. There are fewer programs willing to outright teach mythology, mainly because it’s seen as outdated and unorthodox, especially since the term itself in a Celtic context is controversial. Pursue it, God knows we need the support, but just...be prepared to mute a lot of your academic social media. And, really, your social media in general. And have a defense prepared ahead of time. With citations. Frankly, I think my Bitch Levels have gone up a solid 50% since getting into this area, because consistently seeing the blue checkmarks on Twitter acting like you’re not doing real work while you’re knees deep in a five volume genealogical tract tends to do that to you. If it ever seems like I go overboard with the citations when it comes to talking about the Mythological Cycle, this is why - I have to. It’s how I maintain what legitimacy I have. I’d still do it if I’d have known, but I would have appreciated the heads up. (On the plus side - It means that, in those few programs that DO teach mythology, you’re golden, because they want all the serious students they can get.) 

10. If you really, really love it, it’s worth it. After all this, you’re probably wondering why anyone would sign on for this. The work’s grueling and often unrewarding, you might or might not get respect for what you do based off of where you were born and what your interests are, and you’re subject to an incredibly unpredictable job market so you might never see any material compensation for all of it. But, if you can check your expectations of becoming rich off of it, if all you REALLY want to do is chase it as far as it can go, then it’s worth it. There’s a lot of work to be done, so you don’t have to worry too much about trotting over the same thing that a dozen scholars have already done. You might get the chance to be the very first person, for example, to crack into a text that no one’s read for over a thousand years, or you might totally re-analyze something because the last person to look at it did it in the 19th century, or you might get to be the first person to look at an angle for a text or figure that no one’s considered. If finding a reference to your favorite person in a single annal from the 17th century makes you walk on air for the entire day, then you might very well be the sort of person the field needs. 

#celtic studies #long post #school tw

[ixellent]

So in case you’re not on twitter a bunch of artists recently announced they were working with an “eco friendly” NFT company and the reactions were mixed but I wanted to put a few simple notes without even talking about the environmental impact of NFTs as a whole, like let’s just skip the whole discussion of that part for a second. It’s not that I don’t think it’s important, but it’s a little bit of a distraction on this issue because people can split hairs and pull statistics over the cost of NFT vs carbon offsetting vs how much electricity we waste vs big corporations all day. This is probably not going to be how we finally pass legislation to stop pollution and save the planet, so let’s just put a pin in that aspect and talk about ethically what’s going on.

1) Money Laundering A lot of artists were interested in NFT because they saw how much money people were allegedly making, right? We want that money, we feel that art is underpriced, undercut, underappreciated, it sucks out there! But! Why does NFT go for so much? Because it’s certified authentic ownership of digital art or whatever? We have been able to do this with digital files for a long time, quickly and easily, it’s called DRM. "Authenticity” and “owning an original” was never the reason. This has been happening in the fine art community for decades. (Rich) People use art to launder money because they can buy it for some amount of money*, insure it for even more money, have it valued at more money, and sell it to other people for obscene money and that’s a lot easier to explain than randomly paying someone thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars for doing you a favor. It also effectively “hides” money the same way real estate can. It doesn’t mean it’s easy but it’s a loophole to avoid taxes and the IRS and makes your money look more “legitimate” on paper because less of your assets are liquid, they can still “appreciate” because the object of value the money is tied to can be subjectively desirable as to make it “worth” whatever you want. * Art CAN be somewhat objectively valued by experts and historians, kind of like how comics or Magic cards can be valued, but it is a unique good in that people can decide its value based on literally whatever they want, which is to say, nothing at all. And you can be like “Well what about LEGITIMATE art sales!” I don’t know how to explain to you that most art isn’t going to suddenly be worth thousands of more dollars overnight legitimately. Like aren’t people suspicious of the fact that people would suddenly be paying a lot of money for wafer-thin ownership of an image they made? You can be like “idc where the money comes from” I guess, but then you’re probably not concerned about the issue of unregulated markets in the first place lol. Here’s some articles: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/art-and-money-laundering  - This one does a great job explaining how private art sales and real estate manage this and what they’ve been trying to do to stymie it, as well as making it obvious how NFT sales are exactly the same as the warehouses people keep art in lol https://www.artandobject.com/news/how-money-laundering-works-art-world - this talks a bit about the big famous warehouse https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/29/business/art-money-laundering-sanctions-senate/index.html - I know it’s CNN but it talks a little about the red tape that allegedly exists and where it doesn’t https://news.artnet.com/market/think-artists-are-getting-rich-off-nfts-think-again-1962752 - your art isn’t worth thousands overnight lol

2) Artificial Scarcity So this is one of those things that people can come down a few different ways on. In the last few decades of The Internet, you’ll have some people who believe in a free and open internet and exchange of ideas and media, while other people want to keep ownership of the things they create and protect that ownership, and if you ask me, neither of them are wrong exactly! But that doesn’t matter because when we “mint NFTs” for art, it is artificial scarcity, because with a digital copy of work, you can redistribute, copy, paste, screenshot it as much as you want for personal use. It’s not illegal until you try to sell copies of things you DIDN’T create (and as we’ve seen with some vehement NFT benefiters, the lines for fair use, parody, and ownership are being ground into dust in order to make a buck), and it’s certainly frowned upon to repost or share it without permission. But NFTs create limited “certified original copies” or “ownership” of an image for no reason other than to give people a reason to inflate its value (see money laundering above).  As a digital artist, I’m not saying I think my art is less valuable because it’s digital, but I can create infinite copies of it - the file itself is worth virtually nothing but the demand for the labor it took to create it. A limited physical run of prints of digital art has ACTUAL scarcity because it may not be printed again, or might not be printed in that way, so the price can be set by demand/by the market! There are physical costs of materials, shipping etc. The physical cost of digital goods is measurable but not as easily because of the myriad of ways it is produced. My digital commissioners actually pay for the service of art rather than a physical good, and my freelance clients pay for the RIGHT to use an image as well as my labor, because there is no scarcity of digital materials themselves. This is not to say digital art does not need preservation at some point, or that it is a zero-cost-to-produce situation, but I hope you can see why limiting certificates of ownership of a digital file in this way to do art sales is suspicious and kind of weird. We have had secure methods of demonstrating creation and ownership of a digital file for a long time if we really wanted it to be about “ownership” but it wouldn’t stop people just screenshotting all the same. That’s why so many artists will offer the option to pay for ACCESS to the files and we still depend largely on the honor system! As they’ve been saying with piracy all these years, anyone who was going to pay for it would have, and all we can do is give people convenient, accessible ways to get the content they want to try and prevent them from stealing it, and some people always will because they think it should all be free. (And I’m not here to pass judgement on that! I’ve been on the internet a long time lol.) I just wanted to get this out because people got so up in arms about the ecological impact of NFTs (and rightly in a lot of ways! Sure!) and missed the part where the fine art business is MONEY LAUNDERING. Also idk but the fact that all the NFT stuff can literally just shut down and be gone forever isn’t really secure finances. You can tell me that it’s spread out on a bunch of computers so it doesn’t just disappear when one goes down, but it doesn’t appear to be so seamless in practice, and like all currency, we have to agree collectively that it’s worth something for it to be worth anything. https://www.businessinsider.com/what-happens-to-digital-art-nft-servers-shut-down-2021-3

[opting-for-oblivion]

A Matter of Jurisdiction

A lovely anon asked if I had anything to add regarding one of my recent tags, the gist of which was “In DMC, do you realize how much trouble Governor Swann’s letter would have caused (for the EITC) if it made it to England? Because Beckett did and he was not taking any chances.”

Because I am terrible at being succinct and because I love talking about this, I’m going to expand more generally on what I said in my tags on the post in question and approach some other questions about Lord Beckett’s authority later posed by the op of the original post. [Links to the relevant posts can be found in the replies, as Tumblr hates links.]

I will, fairly, preface this by saying that skimming Beckett’s PotC fandom Wiki does answer all of the questions regarding the EITC’s actions, and, to put the TL;DR at the beginning, that answer is often just “Lord Beckett had royal authority (and enough money) to do whatever he wanted.”

Nonetheless, if you’re curious how I’d nerd out over analyze the situation, please read on!

[A further note: I am not a historian, nor am I an expert on the alternate universe in which PotC is set. If I am, at any point, wrong, please let me know.]

While the main focus of the original PotC trilogy is the conflict between pirates (representing freedom) and the British Crown (representing, among other things, constraint, control, and exploitation), there exists within the British “side” a kind of internal conflict and this is what we see at play between Cutler Beckett and Weatherby Swann.

If you understand Beckett to be a merchant of sorts and the East India Trading Company to be just what it says on the tin -- a trading company -- then it might seem entirely out of order that Beckett invades Port Royal, crashes the governor’s daughter’s wedding, and disrespects (indeed, arrests) Swann the way he does. However, so far as legality goes, Beckett doesn’t cross as many lines as one would think (or, perhaps, the lines are not quite so clear). This is because Lord Beckett has the same royal authority that Governor Swann does and because the EITC is no mere trading company.

The EITC is a deeply politically invested entity. The Company operates with a royal charter, which means that it was granted certain rights by the monarchy. Specifically, the EITC has extensive military and administrative capabilities built into it. (I’ve even seen it referred to as part trade organization, part nation state.) When operating in the Indian Ocean and other areas outside of the jurisdiction of the British Crown, as it was originally intended to, the Company acts as an arm of British imperial power. This becomes a problem when the EITC attempts to exert said power where British Crown authority is already established, such as in the British Caribbean.

Swann is, of course, the king’s governor of Port Royal; his authority derives directly from the Crown as well. In fact, Weatherby Swann is said to be close friends with the king. However, the fact that Swann has personal ties to the aristocracy and Beckett does not doesn’t make their powers as unequal as one might think. The structures that each is part of are just about parallel.

The situation is not: Crown → Aristocracy → Merchants

But rather: Crown → Aristocracy & → EITC

While Beckett has been granted the title of lord by DMC, there is still a difference between those born into such a status and those who were not. (It’s sort of a big deal, especially for Beckett. His family had been wealthy merchants, but none of them had ever held a title.)

Because the two men have fairly equal standing in terms of pure authority, their being at odds become a tricky matter of jurisdiction. In other words, who has the right to exercise his power where? This question vexes both Swann and Beckett, and they’re both keenly aware of it from the moment they come face to face. Neither can claim absolute authority outright, but both have unique cards they can play to shift the situation in their favor.

A few scenes in DMC highlight the chess game that Swann and Beckett are playing, though I’m afraid it was never a game that Beckett intended to play fairly.

In the opening of DMC, the EITC invades Port Royal as Beckett arrives to arrest Elizabeth Swann, William Turner, and James Norrington. Some key things to understand here:

The invasion is not solely to make the arrests, but rather to establish Port Royal as the EITC’s new base. Beckett clearly has that intention (and royal approval for it) before showing up. That said, was invading the place entirely necessary? No, but it is a shock tactic. 

Some of the first things said to Lord Beckett are, by Governor Swann, “Lord or not, you have no reason and no authority to arrest this man.” and, by Elizabeth, “We are under the jurisdiction of the king’s governor of Port Royal and you will tell us what we are charged with.” The Swanns are obviously under the impression that Beckett is out of line, but he isn’t.

Regarding the arrests themselves, all of the warrants are legally valid. Elizabeth, Turner, and Norrington did, as the warrants say, conspire “to set free a man convicted of crimes against the Crown and Empire and condemned to death.” Beckett’s decision to use the prisoners rather than simply execute them is, on the other hand, entirely his own abuse of power.

Another important scene, of course, is when Governor Swann attempts to save Elizabeth by having her sent to England.

Swann’s lines in this scene very clearly show his particular type of power: that based on personal, aristocratic ties. For example, “Our name still has some standing with the king.” Even the captain he makes arrangements with is “a friend” -- the only kind of person Swann can trust given Beckett’s new authority in Port Royal. 

When Swann tells Elizabeth, “Perhaps I can ensure a fair trial for Will.” we especially see where his power ends. His authority in Port Royal, and regarding those who are not his family, is now weak. His best hope there is to enforce existing standards (i.e. a fair trial). 

The entire premise of Swann’s decision here is that he knows that he can’t contest the warrants. However, there is a possibility that he can leverage his ties with the aristocracy to get his daughter off the hook. That personal power is only certain to work in England, out of the reach of Lord Beckett’s power in the Caribbean. Swann is very smart to use his personal ties this way though anyone would have to admit that it’s not exactly legal. 

A line that was cut from the film reinforces all of the above (which is likely why it was cut): “There are still men loyal to me here, and Beckett is still wary of my ties to the Crown.” Swann, due to his position as governor and personal connections with the British aristocracy, has power that -- while not necessarily a threat -- could conceivably challenge Beckett’s actions. Lord Beckett knows this, but there isn’t anything he can do about it at this point in the film. 

Now, considering that (earlier) Swann openly discusses helping Elizabeth escape in front of one of the EITC soldiers when he visits her in prison, it’s no surprise that Beckett suspects something is amiss and sends Mercer to investigate. 

The scene in which Mercer kills Swann’s hired captain and arrests the governor is, perhaps, the most high-stakes political moment in DMC. Mercer not only catches Swann breaking the law, but he intercepts Swann’s letter to the king. When confronted, Swann knows that his gamble has gone horribly wrong.

Swann is arrested on the same grounds that his daughter was, conspiring to free a convicted criminal, which effectively strips him of his authority and, worse, puts him at Beckett’s mercy. More than that, his letter to the king is Beckett’s first real proof that Swann is a threat on a larger playing field. Before intercepting the letter, Beckett only had suspicions to go off of, and any move against someone you’re not sure is an enemy could create an enemy. With the escape attempt and the letter, Beckett has both legal and personal grounds to arrest the governor and, later, blackmail him.

While we never discover the exact contents of the letter, it’s likely that Swann wrote more than a plea for his daughter’s pardon. Elizabeth is his main concern, but it would be unlike Swann -- a man with an admirable moral center -- to not mention the way he feels about the EITC and Beckett’s conduct in Port Royal. If such a letter did reach the king, there is no way that the king could ignore it outright. There would be repercussions of some kind, and a royal inquiry into the EITC’s dealings at the very least. It’s important to remember that, while the Crown pays little attention to the EITC so long as it’s making money, the Crown very much can tell the EITC what to do if it sees fit -- which is the last thing Beckett wants. That said, I’m not certain if Swann’s letter would have meaningfully shut down the EITC in the Caribbean, and it almost certainly wouldn’t have gotten Beckett arrested. In any case, Beckett avoids the whole problem by ensuring that Swann’s concerns -- whatever they are -- never reach ears that are able to do anything. 

In the following scene, in which Elizabeth steals the letters of marque, it’s interesting to note that Beckett’s line about how “loyalty is no longer the currency of the realm” is both ironic and bold. The only reason it’s even remotely true is because Beckett makes it true. He is more than aware of the power that loyalty can have, and he goes out of his way to keep that power from being a threat. Loyalty is still very much a currency of the realm, but it isn’t of much use if there are no transactions being made (i.e. Swann’s letter never reaches the king).

A final scene in DMC that is worthy of note is that in which Lord Beckett blackmails Governor Swann.

The scene opens with Beckett saying, “There’s something to knowing the exact shape of the world and one’s place in it, don’t you agree?” This is, obviously, a thinly veiled threat -- a reminder to take note of one’s place in the current situation.

Beckett effectively threatens Elizabeth, who is currently a criminal among criminals and being hunted as such, and uses Swann’s concern for his daughter to force the governor to work for the EITC. 

Even here, we explicitly see the jurisdiction matter playing out. When Swann asks what Beckett wants in exchange for Elizabeth’s safety, Beckett is more than clear: “Your authority as governor, your influence in London, and your loyalty to the East India Trading Company.” Beckett uses this opportunity to appropriate the governor’s power. While Beckett now technically has the highest authority in Port Royal, he nonetheless ensures that his only possible competitor is working for him, bolstering his power rather than being able to challenge it. Like we see in every case, Beckett will not kill someone that can be more useful to him alive. 

We can also revisit the conflict between Beckett and Swann in the terms Beckett uses: currency versus loyalty. Again, the irony is immaculate. While Beckett’s every move is made on the premise that currency is more valuable than loyalty, he himself values loyalty enough to buy it -- the very thing he says Swann “hoped never to sell.”

If you’ve reached the end of this post, dear reader, I commend you. That said, there are a few caveats to consider. Namely, much of Beckett’s PotC Wiki seems to imply that he had the king’s support and, no conniving required, would have been able to exercise authority over Governor Swann. In that case, things like Swann’s letter are less important (beyond the matter of Elizabeth’s safety, of course). I’m assuming that much of what “actually” happened rests on the details of the EITC’s expansion into the Caribbean -- which Disney handwaved in the films for the most part and only later expanded on (somewhat) in things like the novelizations, which I have not yet read.

#potc #pirates of the caribbean #cutler beckett #weatherby swann #filodox! #filodox!wri #this got way too long #and I took too long to write it #but I don't often get asked about the socioeconomic underpinnings of potc so #<3

[qqueenofhades]

First of all thanks so much for all your TOG history posts! I have a question specifically about the one where you explained the continuity errors with Nicky being a priest. I like your "second son of a nobleman" Nicky that you use in your fics a lot. But I also really like the idea of a lower-class Nicky; TOG already has wealthy merchant scion Joe and literal queen Andy--i love the idea that Nicky comes from humbler origins. Is there any way to make that make sense in a historical context?

I mean, pretty much anything is possible in history? If it can happen, it probably has happened at some point, and even the broad categories and generalizations that historians apply to things are never always right in all cases, even if they represent the major trends. I obviously don’t want to shoot down people’s headcanons or ideas, even and indeed especially from my soapbox of “cranky historian complains about things on the internet.” I have personally tweaked some aspects of Joe and Nicky’s backstories that I use in my fics, since I came up with DVLA before I knew anything about the comics or any bonus content that had been released about the characters. My feeling is that since a) it’s film-verse, not comics, and b) their backstories haven’t been shown on screen and may be subject to change in adaptation, I can, while engaging in transformative fanworks, create them to suit myself. I obviously keep the broad parameters of what canon establishes, but within that space, I do occasionally nip and tuck and move things around. For example in my new AU fic, I DID make Nicky a priest as in graphic-novel canon, but that’s long since changed by the time he arrives in Jerusalem. For the fics I write for them in canon-verse, I tend to use the backstory I established in DVLA, just because... well, I like it a lot, obviously, and that was what I wrote it for. This is just because I am the aforementioned cranky historian and I rearrange the toys when I am playing with them, but my interpretations don’t necessarily have to be everyone else’s.

On that note, since you did ask for some historical context/plausibility for this headcanon, it depends (again) on how much extra story you want to invent for Nicky and how many gaps you want to fill in. Which is totally fine either way! I talked in this ask about the People’s Crusade of 1096, the involvement of unarmed/unskilled commoners in the crusades more generally, and how that would have impacted on Nicky if he didn’t have any previous training in arms. Once again, as with him being a priest, him being a low-class peasant/freeman of humble status runs into some (not insurmountable, but still extant) problems with where he would have learned how to use a sword and weapons more generally. I also obviously approve of the idea of bringing some class diversity into our historical immortals, but the son of a very poor bondsman (the stereotypical peasant in a cottage or a serf working a lord’s land) is, alas, going to have gotten into trouble in his community if he is training with a sword. (Or at least definitely raised some eyebrows, as well as questions about where he got it and how he paid for it.) As I’ve mentioned, the sword is a knight’s weapon, so if Nicky has been using it at all, he has at least enough status to qualify for that.

Happily, however, there are plenty of ways to make him not be from a rich family. As late as the end of the 11th century, aka around the time of the First Crusade, knights could still be distinguished as “free” or “not free,” and since this was before the rise of chivalry as a major social force, knights and men-at-arms were often (and indeed could be throughout the medieval era) from humble families, minor gentry, or even the working class. Chivalry made knighthood into an especial aspiration for the nobility, but not every man on a battlefield was a nobleman -- far from it. Indeed, the nobleman would call up the families who owed allegiance to him, and they could call up the families who owed allegiance to them, and so on. The definition of “knight” in the pre-chivalry landscape is a little muddy; does it convey prestige or social status, or just that someone was trained in arms? Is there a difference between that and just “man at arms” or “armed man?” For instance, at the battle of Hastings in 1066, the English army under King Harold II was composed of fyrdmen, aka regular working stiffs who had been summoned from the land (and indeed, we know they were of humble status because they had to go back and help their families with the harvest after William the soon-to-be-Conqueror had still not arrived in September), and housecarls, the professional/lifelong soldiers who served in the army as a career and were paid for their service. But we don’t always have the luxury of clear terminology for the many, many kinds of armed men who existed in various social strata in the Middle Ages.

That means, therefore, that Nicky can very easily be a poor knight, a man-at-arms of humble status who has just his sword and his armor and is subject to the vassal-of-a-vassal-of-a-vassal-of-a-lord, or other armed man of unclear rank who definitely doesn’t have money or come from a rich family. Despite the unavoidably classist nature of many medieval history chronicles, the ranks of society weren’t only king, duke, earl, and nobleman. It was a patron-and-client society, and while the king was the ultimate patron, plenty of lords of middling rank or lower would have vassals who owed allegiance to them, and vassals who owed allegiance to those vassals in turn. The word feudal, which has been so misused and turned into an (incorrect) shorthand for constant petty territorial violence, basically just means this hierarchical society of mutual rights and obligations, where (unless you were the king) you both owed fealty to someone higher in rank than you and had people lower in rank who owed fealty to you. That would only end with the serf/bondsman, who wasn’t patron to anyone. But within that, there is plenty of wiggle room to make Nicky non-noble.

This would raise the question, however, of how he was going to pay for his journey to Jerusalem. Crusade financing was a perennial problem even for kings and lords with deep pockets, and the cost of a journey to the Middle East was far, far beyond most ordinary people’s ability to cover, which is why the commoners’ crusades kept ending in disaster. (That and obviously the fact that they weren’t trained in war.) When you are traveling for months and months and have to provide all your own food, shelter, arms and armor, transportation, upkeep, etc., you would either have to have a wealthy lord paying your maintenance, have substantial private financing of your own, have sold most of your property to go (which then implies that you had property to sell), made good with a religious house who had advanced you the cash, etc. We can really go down a rabbit hole here about Duke Hugh of Burgundy making a deal with Genoa in 1192 to provision King Philip and the French army on the Third Crusade. (This is helpful since it deals with Genoa, i.e. Nicky, even if not for the First Crusade.) This covered 650 French knights and their squires and came out to nine marks a knight, which is about £6, for an overall bill of 5,850 marks.

To give you an idea of how much this is in comparative terms: in 1380, a poll tax of twelve pence per person was considered so extortionate that it helped kick off the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt. And this was two hundred years later, when wages had risen and exchange rates had increased. One pound was worth 240 pence, so if twelve pence was an exaction for your average laborer, you can see that they’d get nowhere close even to one pound. A gift of £4 to William the Conqueror in 1066 was also considered a wildly high sum. And this was all on the extremely cheap end of crusading ventures. Frederick Barbarossa, who went on the Third Crusade at the same time as Philip and the French, had expenses coming close to 100,000 marks. Crusading, in other words, was wildly expensive (often ruinously so), and either Nicky would have a wealthy patron (meaning that he was somewhat closer to the top of the heap, even if below the first rank of noblemen) or money of his own or some way to finance his journey. Which again means that he has to have some kind of background that enables him to do it. The issue with the ordinary people who went on crusade (and they absolutely did, despite various attempts to forbid them as not militarily useful) is that, as noted, they weren’t trained in arms and they didn’t have money, and when you’re trying to travel from Europe to the Holy Land under 11th-century conditions, that becomes a big problem.

So yes. Basically: you can absolutely make Nicky a person of lower rank, down to a humble man-at-arms, who doesn’t have a rich family and doesn’t come from money. But if he’s going on crusade all the way to Jerusalem -- and if he’s successful at it, i.e. we’re assuming he didn’t get killed until Joe did it the first time -- then he has to have at least enough social status that he is the direct vassal of a wealthy lord or can make some financial arrangements on his own, has been able to train with a sword, knows what he’s doing with it, etc. You are obviously welcome to invent whatever details or backstory you want for him, but alas, crusading was often the provenance of knights, noblemen, and kings for brutally practical reasons, whether economic, social, military, or pragmatic. So the further you go down the social rankings, the more logistical details you’ll have to think up for him (at least if you want to be historically nitpicky, and it’s fantasy, so you frankly don’t even have to, but hey, what do you people come to me for if not historical nitpicking?) as to how he would have trained in arms, paid for his journey, been able to go on crusade in the first place, etc. So yes.

Thanks so much for this question! It was a lot of fun.

#the old guard #the old guard meta #medieval history #history of warfare #long post #emotionallycompromisedrobots #ask

[mrsdeanwinchester19]

Talk is Cheap

Written for @imanuglywombat​ 4k writing challenge

Pairing: Bucky x reader

Word Count: 4.2k

Summary: Bucky takes his wife on a second honeymoon after their first was cut short.  During the trip, an unexpected visitor arrives

Type: Fluff with some scary parts

Warnings: Gun violence, mentions of holocaust, mentions of sex trafficking, like 1 swear word

Author’s Note: The story mentioned about a Holocaust victim is 100% true, I know the woman personally

Prompt: Mountain moodboard/ Talk is cheap by Nick Murphy; Talk is cheap my darling/ When you’re feeling right at home/ I wanna make you move with confidence/ I wanna be with you alone

Actions speak louder than words.  It means jumping in front of a bullet, rather than just saying I would take a bullet for you.  This is a lesson I learned the hard way, but ironically, it also turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.

My now ex-boyfriend David and I were at a bank on a regular day of the week, going to pull out some money out for a vacation fund. Five masked men came into the bank, armed and shouting for everyone to get down.  I got on my knees slowly and put my hands behind my head as they instructed us to do.  

One of the robbers walked up to the front counter and pointed his gun at the teller.  “Open the vault,” he says in a low voice.

“I can’t sir.  The vault can only be opened by a fingerprint scan and none of our fingerprints are registered in the system to open it.  I’m only authorized to pull out $15,000 at once,” she replies, close to tears.

“Fine then, get to work on that, and you-“ he says, pointing his gun to a young man standing next to the coin counting machine, “There has to be an override code for the vault somewhere in the bank.  Open all the offices for my men to look.  Ares!  Apollo! Go with him!”  Two of the men follow the man to the offices in the upstairs half of the bank, both pointing their guns to his back.  

While the teller was gathering as much money as she could, one of the men came over to my boyfriend and me.  “Give me your phone and your wallet,” he says to me.  

“I don’t have them,” I say honestly.  “You can check if you don’t believe me.”

It’s then that I notice the emblem on his jacket.  A red skull with six tentacles coming out of it. A symbol that always confused me, because a hydra has multiple heads, not tentacles like an octopus.  It makes sense now why the leader called two of them the names of Greek gods, considering the hydra is from Greek mythology.  However, as a historian and not a mythologist, it’s a symbol I learned about when we discussed Nazi Germany, where HYDRA got its start.  This isn’t just regular HYDRA then, it’s their small elite force that robs banks to pay for their diabolical schemes.  I let out an aggravated huff of breath when I realize who it is we’re dealing with, horrified that they’ve come back after Captain America took them down TWICE.  

“Stand up,” he says.  I slowly get to my feet.  “Turn around.”  I do as he says, a tear escaping my cheek as I realize he’s going to kill me, considering this is how many are executed when a socialist regime takes over a country.  I interviewed a woman once who fled Poland when they were invaded by the Nazis, and she spoke of a time when she was in the woods picking berries and saw a group of Jewish people in front of a trench, and Nazis shot them into the trench one by one.  

“And you, stand up,” he says, and from the corner of my eye, I see my boyfriend standing up as well.  We look over at him and I can see the same fear reflected in his eyes, though they don’t tell him to turn around.  “Lift her shirt up.”

My eyebrows furrow in confusion as I feel David’s hands grasp the hem of my red blouse and start slowing lifting it.  He lifts it up to where my bra strap is on my back, before the man stops him.  “Turn around again lady,” he instructs, before telling David to lift my shirt again. Now I understand what he’s doing, he’s checking to make sure I don’t have a phone, wallet, or gun hidden in the waistband of my pants.  He lifts it up to just under my bra again, but the man motions for him to raise it a little higher.  He brings it above my bra, showing my cleavage.  I close my eyes in embarrassment.  

“Women don’t actually keep money in their bras anymore,” I say bitterly once I’ve opened my eyes.

“Don’t get sassy with me miss.  You can put her shirt down now.”  He turns to my boyfriend.  “Where’s your phone and wallet?”

David’s eyes flitter to mine for a brief second.  “I don’t have mine either.”

“I don’t believe that,” he says venomously.

A new voice shouts, “Zeus, we found the manual key for the vault!”

They’re using code names, which means there’s a chance they’ll let us go, because we can’t identify their faces or give real names. However, once they get the money, there’s also a high chance that they kill all witnesses.  Or, if the teller pressed a silent alarm and the police are already here, they could keep us as hostages for hours.  

As the man pointing the gun at us is distracted by the person who found the key, David steps behind me, shoves me towards the man, and tries to run to the front door.  The person sees movement, shoots blindly, and an intense pain bursts from my abdomen.  I fall over, and the man shoots David in the back before he reaches the door.  

I hear someone outside shout “Shots fired!” and the doors burst open.  A familiar red, white, and blue shield comes through the door, followed by a suit of red and gold metal, and a man dressed in all black, a gun bigger than the robbers’ held by his metal arm.  The robbers don’t shoot the other few people in the bank, considering Iron Man has miniature missiles on his shoulders aimed at each of them.

“They say third time’s a charm, maybe you’ll actually stay dead this time,” Captain America says.

“Mmmm, not your best work,” Iron Man says to him.

Captain America ignores him, “Put down your guns.”  They put down their guns, but two of the men fall over.  They must still keep poison pills in their teeth.  The police run in and arrest the three men who didn’t kill themselves, while Captain America and Iron Man look at David to see if he’s alive.  The man in black rushes over to me and puts his flesh hand on my wound, causing me to groan in pain.  “She needs an ambulance!”

“You’re Bucky Barnes,” I say, recognizing him from my history classes.  

“Yeah, I am,” he says, clearly surprised I recognized him.

“I’m a historian…with a concentration on World…War II,” I say through gasping breaths.

“Alright doll, just save your energy, you can’t go to sleep,” he replies gently, as if he’s soothing a small child.  

“I always…knew…you were the good guy,” I say slowly before the world goes black.

 “Almost done packing babe?” Bucky asks, peeking his head into our room.  

“I just finished packing my clothes.  Did you pack the weapon bag?” I ask.  Some people think it’s weird that we bring a bag of weapons on vacations, but when your husband is an ex-assassin with 80+ years of enemies, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

“No, I told you this place is so safe we don’t even need guns,” he replies, coming up behind me and wrapping his arms around my waist.  

I sigh, “Alright if you say so.  I’m just happy we’re going on a relaxing vacation.  You’ve had too many missions lately and my job has been stressful as well.”  Columbia University asked museums in the area for a historian who could teach a class about World War II, and to apply for the job, we have to write a dissertation. Luckily, I have someone from World War II with me to answer any questions I have, but it’s taken up a lot of my time.

“Relaxing, but also exciting!”

“What?” I ask, exasperated.  “Bucky I need time to lounge around on a beach or cuddle by a fireplace in a cabin or something.  This is supposed to be our second honeymoon.”  

Our first honeymoon had been to Belize.  About halfway through our trip, duty called.  We called the rest of the Avengers and spent the rest of our honeymoon breaking up a huge sex trafficking ring.  We saved over 30 girls, and were happy about it, but our honeymoon was supposed to be our time to celebrate our marriage away from crime. And we love the team to pieces, but it was also our time to be away from them and the tower.  They say bad guys don’t take days off, but I had at least hoped the world could survive without my husband for a while.  I’m no agent or Avenger, but after Bucky and I started dating, he taught me over 100 different ways to defend myself, helped me train, taught me about guns and how to properly use them, and how to disarm a gunman within seconds.  I was able to help destroy the sex trafficking ring by being bait, which was scary, but I trusted Bucky and the rest of the team to keep me from harm; and they did.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head, doll.  It’ll be relaxing during the day, but exciting at night because I have a bunch of new things I want to try in the bedroom,” he says, nibbling on my earlobe.

It tickles and I giggle.  “You got some kinks you didn’t tell me about before we were married?” I ask jokingly.

He spins me around to face him before gently pushing me on the bed.  “I didn’t want to scare you off before,” he says playfully, dropping onto me but not letting his full weight land on me.  He grabs my wrists and pins them above my head.  “Now that you’re legally bound to me, if you want to leave, it’s gonna cost ya.”   I laugh and he flashes a brilliant smile.  He leans his head down and starts kissing me deeply.

“Hey guys I-woah, sorry!” Steve’s voice says, panicked.

“Steve, you’re fine, Bucky’s just being silly.  We’re decent!” I say, pushing Bucky off of me and sitting up.

He walks back into the room, face flushed from embarrassment.  “Sorry, I just came to say that I filled your gas tank and took the liberty of putting your bags in the car, except that one,” he says, pointing to my duffel bag.

“Oh thank you Steve!” I say.

“Would you like me to take that one for you as well?”

Bucky replies before I do, “No, I’ve got it! You’re not the only gentlemen around here Steve.  I can be chivalrous too, she’s my wife.”

Steve raises his hands in surrender, gives a small smile, and backs away.  

“You didn’t have to be so sassy,” I say, lightly slapping his bicep.

“Steve always interrupts us right when things were about to get good,” he pouts.

“No, things were not about to get good.  The door was wide open and we need to leave so we can get there before dark.”

“You are excited, aren’t you?” he asks rhetorically.

“I’m just happy you’re actually taking me on this second honeymoon.”

“I said I would!”

“I know, I’m just used to people saying they would do things and then not following through,” I say, thinking back to David, who was always making empty promises.  I then compare it to Bucky, who has kept every promise he’s ever made me.  

I sit mostly upright in my hospital bed, mindlessly flipping through channels.  I stop Law and Order: SVU, but quickly change the channel when a character is shot. Baseball it is.  There are two small taps on my door.  “Come in,” I say.

A nurse walks in the door.  “You have a visitor here to see you.”  She walks back out the door, and Bucky Barnes takes her place.

“Hi,” I breathe out and a smile breaks out across my face.  “What are you doing here?”

He frowns slightly, but then fixes his expression. “You were pretty out of it in the ambulance, but you regained consciousness for a little while.  I told you I would come visit you in the hospital.  I hope that’s ok.  I brought you these,” he says, holding up a colorful bouquet of wildflowers.

“It’s completely ok, and thank you so much, that’s so sweet of you.”

“I figured you could use a little something to brighten the place up, but it looks like I’m not the only one who had the idea,” he says, gesturing to the three other bouquets that my family and my coworkers sent me.  

He sets the vase down on the bedside table.  I lean over a tiny bit take a deep breathe to try and smell them, since I can’t twist my torso over to them.  However, once I do, I grab my neck and start gasping for air. His eyes widen with worry.  “Sunflowers…allergic,” I spit out.

“Oh shit, I’ll go get a nurse!” he says, quickly standing up.

My gasping turns to laughing, and he stops, turning around.  “I was kidding.  You should’ve seen your face,” I say. I begin laughing harder when he pouts, but immediately regret it. “OW!” I put a pillow over my stomach to keep a little pressure on the wound.

He lets out an exaggerated sigh and rolls his eyes, but is smiling.  “At least you have a sense of humor.”

“They say laughter is the best medicine, though maybe that isn’t true when you have a GSW on your abdomen.”

“You’re just lucky it didn’t hit any major organs. How long is your sentence?” he asks.

“If this is jail, it’s a pretty nice one.  And they said at least two weeks, but it might go longer.  If it had hit major organs, they said it would’ve been 5 weeks, if not more.”  He hums in agreement but doesn’t say anything, so I continue. “Hey, if I ask you this, will you be honest with me?  Everybody around me has been walking on eggshells and avoiding answering this question, so I can probably guess what the answer is.”

He looks apprehensive but says, “I can try.  What’s up?”

“My boyfriend, David, is he dead?”

Bucky looks around uncomfortably, “Look, I don’t know if I’m the right person to ask this to…”

“If you’re worried you’ll break my heart with the news, don’t be.  Because whether he’s alive or dead, the relationship is over.”

“Why do you say that?” he asks, eyes narrowed in both suspicion and confusion.

“Because he’s the reason I’m in this hospital bed. He pushed me towards the shooter so he could run away.   He’s a coward.  So if he is dead, then whatever.  I know it’s poor to speak ill of the deceased, but he did try to sacrifice me to save himself. And if he’s alive, it’s over.  He showed his true colors.”

He doesn’t speak for a few seconds.  Probably trying to figure out how to best phrase it, or find out if I actually mean what I said.  He very quietly says, “He didn’t make it.   The bullet hit his right lung and it collapsed; they weren’t able to save him. He went through 3 hours of surgery before his heart gave out.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“For what?”

“Being honest with me.  I’m a little tougher than people give me credit for.”

A small smile creeps onto his face.  “I’m sure you are.”

 “Talk is cheap, my darling.  Anyone can say something and not mean it.  My ma taught me never to break promises if I can help it,” Bucky says.

“Your mom sounds like a lovely lady,” I say, giving his cheek a kiss.  “I wish I could have met her.  I wish I could’ve met your father too.  And your siblings.”

“Steve is just as much my brother as my actual siblings were, so at least you met one family member of mine.  But my folks woulda loved you.  Ma would be happy to see I finally settled down with an amazing woman, and maybe a baby on the way soon?” he asks hopefully.

“Buck, I told you I want to wait until two years after we got married, then I’ll pop out as many babies as you want, as long as that number isn’t over 5.  5 is the absolute most I would have.”

“I think 3 would be good.  But I still want to get started as soon as possible!”

“Ugh, Bucky, what am I gonna do with you?” I rhetorically ask, laughing.

“I could make a list,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows. “But c’mon doll, I’m not getting any younger here!”

“Oh please, you’re over 100.  I think you can wait one more year.  They say waiting two years is good for your marriage when the stress from babies comes because then you have more happy times to look back on.”

“Oh screw the studies,” he says, sitting on the bed. He lightly grabs my hips and pulls me to stand between his legs.  “My parents got married and nine months later I popped out, and they were still married when I went to war.  It doesn’t matter how long you wait before having kids, it’s the people.  You gotta be willing to work through the hard times.”

“And you know I am,” I say, running my fingers through his hair.  “But we should get going.  We can continue this conversation when we’re back.  I want to be alone with you.”

-------------------- 

“Ok, this text from Steve says the key is hidden in the bear’s mouth,” Bucky says.  He grabs my hand and we walk up to the plain but nice cabin.  It’s sunset, so it isn’t quite dark out, but there’s not enough light to be outside.  There’s a small statue of a bear sitting on a stump on the front porch that says WELCOME. Bucky reaches in the bears slightly open mouth and pulls out a key.  “That’s deeper than it looks.”

He unlocks the front door and I’m about to walk in but he stops me.  “What? Tony said the place wasn’t booby trapped,” I say.  This is Tony’s cabin, but Steve acted as a mediator between Bucky and Tony.  Tony allows him on the team and to live in the tower, but he won’t go out of his way to talk to him.  Cordial but not friendly.

“No it’s not that.”  He suddenly picks me up bridal style.  “Gotta carry my wife across the threshold.”

“Oh please Bucky, that’s for when you move into your first house together, not a honeymoon redo.”

“I don’t care, I’m gonna do it anyways,” he says.  

“You’re ridiculous,” I say as he sets me down inside. As he shuts the door, I look around. An open concept downstairs area with a high end kitchen.  The living room has a vaulted ceiling and an enormous fireplace.  At the end of the living room there’s a staircase that leads to what I’m assuming is the bedrooms.

“So should we unpack tonight or wait until tomorrow and just go to bed?” Bucky asks.

“Bed?  But I’m not tir-oh,” I say when I see him giving me a suggestive look, biting his lip. “You know what, let’s go to bed.” He picks me up and starts running towards the master bedroom.

 --------------------

A loud bang wakes me from my sleep.  I lift my head, listening, and am about to go back to bed, thinking I imagined it when I hear the sound of glass shattering.  Is someone breaking in?  I sit up, holding the blanket to my bare chest and listen more. It’s silent for a few seconds but then thumps like footsteps are heard.  “Bucky,” I say, nudging my husband’s arm.  He grunts in response.  “Bucky!” I say, shaking his arm harder.  

“Go back t’sleep,” he mumbles.  I grab my pillow and slam it on his face.  He wakes up immediately.  “What?” he asks, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

“I think someone’s in the house,” I whisper.

“Babe, it’s probably just house settling noises.  Let’s cuddle until we fall back asleep,” he says, laying down and grabbing my waist in an attempt to pull me back down to the bed too, but I resist.  The distinct sound of a frying pan being dropped on the door makes him shoot up in bed. “Ok, nevermind, those aren’t house settling noises.  You stay here, I’ll go check it out.”  He climbs out of bed and grabs his joggers off the floor.  He quietly steps into those before going over to his nightstand and grabbing a knife.  He flips it in his hand before gripping it tightly.

“I thought you said no weapons,” I whisper.

“I said no guns, not no weapons.  Plus, this was already here; I left it here when Steve and I went on our fishing trip.”

As he walks out, I grab his t-shirt and my underwear and throw them on just in case we have to run.  I nervously clutch the sheets as I wait for Bucky to come back.   After about 15 seconds, the door noiselessly opens and Bucky walks through, looking oddly calm. He shuts the door behind him. “Y/N, call 911.”

I grab my phone from the nightstand and quickly dial 911. As I do that, Bucky grabs an armchair and puts it in front of the door.  

“911 what’s your emergency?”

Bucky pulls the phone from my ear because he didn’t tell me what’s wrong.  He starts speaking quietly.  “Hi, we’re in the Stark cabin out on 360th street.  There’s bears in our kitchen.”

Are you serious I mouth at him.  He nods his head.  I can hear the woman on the phone tell us to stay in our bedroom, stay quiet, and that officers will be right out.  He thanks her and hangs up.  He gently sets the phone down on the nightstand and sits down in front of me on the bed, facing away, blocking me in case the bear breaks into our room.  I wrap my arms around his bare waist and set my chin on his shoulder.  “How many bears are there?”

“Three.  There were two cubs pulling things out of the cabinets and I was planning to just scare them away when I saw momma bear coming through the door.  I came back up here after I saw her, and I’m not about to knife fight a bear.  I must not have closed the door fully when we got here.”

“You promised this trip would be safe, you broke your first promise.”

He turns around and gives me a disbelieving look. I shrug my shoulders and then give him a small smile so he knows I was just joking around.  I lift my hands from his flat stomach up to his shoulders.  “Bucky you’re really tense,” I say quietly.

“Because there’s a family of bears downstairs!” he harshly whispers.  

“But the police are on their way, they’ll take care of it.  They probably deal with this kind of stuff all the time.” I begin rubbing his shoulders and he relaxes a little, but just barely.

After about 10 minutes, and more sounds of things breaking, we can see red and blue flashing lights coming from the window, but no siren. They probably didn’t turn it on so the bears wouldn’t get agitated.  There are three distinct thuds heard.  A few minutes pass and someone calls out “You guys can come out!”

“I’ll go talk to them, you stay here, you’re not dressed and we left out bags in the car.”  He walks out the door and I can hear him greet the officer.  I decide I want to see what’s going on, so I grab a throw blanket and wrap it around myself before following Bucky.  He turns around when he hears me coming down the stairs and holds out his hand for me like Jack on the Titanic.  I grab his hand so I don’t trip over the blanket.  

I look around and see the entire downstairs in disarray.  The couch that probably cost my entire salary is shredded with stuffing hanging out everywhere and a broken lamp next to it.  Glasses are broken on the kitchen floor and pots have been pulled out of the cabinets. The fridge door is open and food is littered on the floor around it.  Chairs are turned over and the hardwood floors are scratched up.  I look outside and see all three bears in cages.

The officer is explaining what happened.  “When we arrived and shot the momma bear with a tranq dart, the baby bears freaked out and started tearing up the sofa.  We got them as quick as we could so that they didn’t destroy even more things.  They’ll be relocated and hopefully won’t come back to this house.”

“Thank you, officer,” Bucky says.  The officer bows his head and leaves.  

We silently look around for a moment before I say, “Tony’s gonna kill us.”

“Yep.”

“Well, you were right, this trip is exciting at night!”

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #avengers #imagine #vacation #winter soldier #white wolf #steve rogers #ironman #captain america #tony stark #writing challenge #fluff #uglywombat4kchallenge

[vr2]

haha anyways genshin must be on some wild fucking shit if they think theyre gonna try and drag out their main story for like 2 years. on god having like half a year between main chapters of its already weak spindly little story is like mindboggling decision i do not trust your storytelling skills at all to make any of the hype worth it but i also think thanks to the general playerbases inability to read they will continually feel disappointment at how poor genshins main story content is and how it is purveyed to the reader especially in comparison to the lore which is completely jarring in quality of delivery.

in the archon quest at the end of liyue chapter you get a lore dump from zhongli where he just stands there and gives you like 3 quest prompts about shit that exists for no reason other than idk “they needed to put the plot threads in there asap and they forgot they had an entire world to do it in” and then that mf disappears. forever. literally exiled from the overworld unless you pay like ninety quid to summon him on his banner. not to mention every single other npc you meet will never appear again outside of their instanced quests. it’s such a weird jarring end point that you’re left stranded in and its not only a frustratingly awkward delivery, it honestly just seems pointless. why couldn’t there have been an extended epilogue that involves talking to the npc character FROM inazuma, talking to beidou who is a pirate with an electro vision about idk ... travel and her ELECTRO vision being granted which is a feat she in known for in the lore of liyue folk. it could even be someone from the qixing like ningguang who surely would know about the status of foreign nations or keqing who has an electro vision and would absolutely have something to say about baal’s stance on things and her condescension towards humans. god it could still even be zhongli just space it out, let him invite us to dinner and chat over liyue cuisine and let inazuma come up naturally thgouh paimons huge appetite to eat new things. not only would the pacing be better, the plot threads be put in a way where you dont immediately forget them because they’re being rapidfire talked at you, but it would be a great way to make the character seem like theyre people with lives and not just trying to move the plot along and be on their way.

conversely, the story of arundolyn and rostam, the legends of mondstadt and the ordo favonius, the lion and the wolf, the building hints towards the cataclysm of khaenri’ah and what kind of nation earned the scorn of the gods -- its all slowly fed to you piece by piece linked through artifacts, world lore, in-game books, weapons and sometimes the world itself. you uncover things as you explore and the more thoroughly you explore - the more you discover! it’s rewarding, it feels natural and its some of the most fun you have piecing together stories and building out this strange world like some kinda anime historian and it encourages theorycrafting rather than a concrete set of events and characters being straightforward. its genuinely interesting that theres a whole society and cast of characters from the days of yore who are intimately connected with our current cast and the world we live in but also very much their own interesting characters who hold their own legacies and wills, carving them into the stars for ill or good.

its almost as if the main quest writers and the lore writers are completely separate, work on different floors and they dont ever meet because why ... why on earth would you deliver critical parts of the main story in such a blatantly poor way and make it have none of the nuance and intrigue as the worldbuilding? in a game that is designed for the express purpose of making people sympathetic and invested with characters to spend silly money on them? you think your paper thin story is going to let you do that? no gacha game is allowed to have storytelling subpar to the most average middle of the pack lightnovel and get away with being a gacha game. your story has to have at least a few moments where i am dazzled, daresay fucking delighted, at least a second where i have to stop and say ‘this is cool as hell’ or ‘FUCK ITS HAPPENING’ or else it is well and truly expendably worthless non-product! you have to be a little more ambitious than making some normie shit and try and make the story have a little heart! i dont doubt that they can do it, im sure there are talented writers there since i like a lot of the characterisations but man, let em free you need them no more than ever

the only thing i can think of that explains how watered down the story feels in comparison to lore, is a fear of making people ‘read too much’ in the main quests which honestly doesnt seem to be much of an issue to them. lanternrite wasnt that long but the sheer amount of npc dialogue feels staggering because its all ultimately ... inconsequential. we have no investment into these npcs and theres like 15 odd quests of it, it goes from cool world flavour text to genuinely feels like its taking up space all because they are trying to endear you to the lives of these generic npcs when you’d rather know like even one thing about chongyuns life and daily routine or xinyans performances. being able to see kaeya for one second even was the most fun and even then i was still disappointed cause its like bro? you didnt even let him do anything and it was JUST him? in the world there are so many characters explicitly referenced but never utilised and it makes their complete absence even more noticeable and frankly fucking baffling? not even fate episodes for all of our 12 SRs? actually nevermind, even the character stories are somehow unforgivably generic!

honestly i feel like the best event so far was the unreconciled stars event but by my standards it definitely felt like ‘solid gacha game event story’ with a touch of something more interesting with the inclusion of scaramouche’s lore insight. i was hoping this his how events would be in genshin, i really thought that this was the ‘standard’ but for some reason, its beginning to seem like that event was a bit of an outlier? i would gladly take less events and have them be more like the unreconciled stars event, with character interactions and slowly improving and hashing out who these characters are over never-ending carousel of random events that are mostly fetch-quests or fluff.

idk man its just a strange mess of me enjoying genshins world and theorycrafting, loving playing the game and exploring but feeling like the ball is not bein dropped but violently slammed into the ground by the sheer lack of character content whilst being praised by everyone under the sun for ‘story’ and ‘characters’. m*hoyo do better bitch! you already made such a good roster of characters now fuckin do something with them! stop releasing new characters without bothering with any of the existing ones! i beg of you!

#damn you ren #if i like anything in any capacity i immediately have to criticize it sfhajshfsa ITS JUST HOW IT IS ....... #the adding characters to gacha but not even utilising them in story is my LEAST favourite thing a gacha game can do #gacha games are ALREADY on thin ice for the sole reason they are gacha games but man genshin really thinks they can get away with that? #im not somebody who cares too much about spending money on gacha games but genshins system is completely unrewarding even for 'early' gacha #the fact that like half the characters DO NOT EVEN HAVE STORY QUESTS? NOT EVEN LIKE AMBERS SHITTY GLIDING TUTORIAL??????????? #u rly think i am going to play 3 years of current genshin for khaenriah chapter? do u think you are fgo!? #i also gate that fgo made the lostbelt release schedule like that because EVERYONE ELSE thinks its cool to copy them #completely misunderstanding that i am here for kinoko nasus wacky adventures and no other gacha game should get funny ideas #its the normies for me that make me feel insane. sir this game is incredibly fucking stingy please dont pretend #i do not care to see people try and defend multimillion dollar corporation m*hoyos gacha practices #esp with the whole zhongli and constellation shit like .... if this game did not have its world it would be dead in the water #renshin impact

[mrcurrygoestospain]

Camino De Santiago - Round 5

Spain travel log, 2021…

Day One:

September 20 - Depart Seattle for Madrid, by way of London. There were plenty of issues just getting to this point. In addition to the ongoing concerns over COVID-19, or perhaps because of them, I had some serious concerns about whether I could and whether I should do this trip at all. In the end, I think I simply realized that it was totally appropriate for me to go on this trip: I’ve been “responsible” and taken the full round of vaccinations, generally avoided social contacts with people and been diligent about the masks. So I made my reservations and thought everything was fine. About 2 weeks before takeoff, I got an email from Iberia that one of my flights had been changed. When I looked into it, I found that it was the connecting flight from London to Madrid and the schedule had been bumped up by about 6 hours taking me from having a 2 hour layover in Heathrow to needing to be on a plane for Madrid 4 hours before I actually landed in London and would be able to board it… It took attempts at phone calls over several days to get this corrected. Finally, I tried while I was at top work one morning around 5:00 am. I finally got through and a nice lady helped rebook my connecting flight. She found the only available flight on that day that would work; now I have a seven hour layover.

I prepped for my trip, checklists and routes planned. I arrived at the airport 3 hours early, just in case. Although I booked with Iberia, it was a British flight. So standing in line at the BA counter in SeaTac, I saw the sign: “All passengers must show proof of a negative COVID test.” What? I’d already checked multiple times; I only need proof of vaccination to get into Spain. I check the internet. Sure enough, if you’re on a layover in England, you need a negative test…A quick Google search helped me find a testing center at SeaTac airport, so I rushed down to baggage claim number nine to see if I could get a test in time. In all honesty, I really thought I wasn’t going to make it and I’d have to try to contact the airline again to find a way to reschedule my flight. I stood in the line for what seemed like forever, but finally had the privilege of paying $250 for a rapid COVID test. T- minus 2 hours 30 minutes to departure and they promised results in 1-1.5 hours. The test itself was relatively painless. After all of the horror stories I’d heard about the nasal swabs, I was a bit worried. But it didn’t hurt, it just tickled a little bit. I waited, and waited…it seemed like they would never have my results. While I waited, I heard stories from other travelers who had missed flights or rebooking because of these ridiculous COVID-related requirements. One young Canadian lady I spoke to shared that she’d spent over $1000 on COVID tests in the last month due to traveling. I guess my $250 wasn’t so much.

I finally got my negative test results and rushed back to the check in counter, filled out the required government forms and headed through security. The flight was delayed.

After a nine hour flight to London, I had seven or eight hours to kill in Heathrow Airport, Terminal 5, before boarding my flight to Madrid. I shopped, I ate, I listened to podcasts. I took a few naps and generally cursed British Airways for changing my original flight. Some Italian guy made quite a scene at the boarding gate for the flight to Madrid. The gate agent handled it quite well and passive-aggressively punished him for his demeanor.

I arrived in Madrid after an easy flight on Iberia, made my way to the metro and on to my Hostel. It was a nice enough place. After 28 hours of travel, I was ready for a shower and bed.

Day 2:

On my one day in Madrid, I walked from my hostel/hotel to the Museo Nacional del Prado. It’s Spain’s greatest art museum. This was my second time there and I spent a lot more of it. There are so many amazing pieces and, for someone who used to truly despise art, it was amazing. I highly recommend it. I haven’t been to a whole lot of art museums, but it is, by far, my favorite. I followed that with a walk through the Royal Botanical Gardens. I’m sure they’re great when all of the flowers are blooming, but in early fall, it’s just a lot of green. Either way, it was still peaceful. I visited another nearby park, walked around and viewed the statues, and then made my way back towards the hotel and passed it to go to the Cathedral opposite the royal palace. It’s a much more modern cathedral than the ones I’ll see on the Camino, but still impressive.

Day 3:

On the morning of the third day, I got up early and got packed. Took the metro to the train station and purchased a ticket to Leon. After two hours on the train, I took a 20 minute walk to the hotel and dropped off my bag, and then spent the next few hours wandering the city. I found a barber and got a haircut for 9 Euro, quite a bargain. Stopped at the “Taste of America” shop to get a bottle of hot sauce (Cholula, of course), and just meandered around the city until I could get checked in at the hotel. It was a pretty uneventful day, which is just what I needed. I was still very tired from all of the traveling and trying to swap schedules.

Day 4:

I got up late, around 8:00 AM and started walking the city. I stopped for a cafe con leche and met a Scottish couple who had been walking the Camino for the last few weeks. While we waited out the rain under cover, the shared with me some of their other walking adventures, including tales of walking through the Swiss Alps on the Via Francigena, a pilgrimage route to Rome. I may have to look into that for a future trip. I also shared with them my plans/considerations of taking a walk on the “Great Glen Way” in Scotland. The wife had already done this and highly recommended it, along with the West Highland Way. Both are approximately 5-day walks through some of the wild country of Scotland. When the rain let up, we parted ways and I went to tour the Cathedral, toured the Basilica of Saint Isidore and wandered around town, shopping and eating. Inside the Saint Isidore museum and basilica, i had the opportunity to see what is referred to as the “Sistine Chapel of Romanesque Art” as well as a gold and silver cup that some historians claim is the “holy grail.”

Day 5:

Didn’t sleep much…I forgot how much they like to party in Spain. It was LOUD all night long. Anyway, started my walk. Today was about 27 km and it rained through about 50% of the day. It was a mix of roads and dirt tracks. I only saw one other pilgrim, a Spaniard who doesn’t speak any English. I got ahead of him and had stopped for a rest at a picnics table on top of a mountain. He showed up a few minutes behind me and I tried to chat for a minute, but the language barrier…. I offered him half of my tangerine and then he took off again. I passed him up later. I had been slightly worried about where to stay for the night as the municipal albergue in this province/state are currently closed due to the ‘Rona, but when I got to town I found a pension with rooms available. The lovely lady named Susana showed me to a room and also worked tirelessly to make me a reservation for the following night. I hadn’t eaten much for the day, so I ordered big: hot dog and patatas oil bravas. Patatas bravas is a traditional dish in Spain which is made of fried potatoe cubes that are covered in a (typically) spicy tomato sauce. Potatoes Ali Oli are the same fried potatoes but with a garlic cream sauce instead of the spicy sauce. This one combined both sauces. It was nice. The inside of the restaurant/bar/cafe was very loud with a bunch of men playing a card game I’m not familiar with, so I went outside to have a beer. An older Spaniard, named Hilario, came out and started trying to talk to me. I explained that I am American and I don’t speak much Spanish, but he disagreed. So he went inside and got another man, a Hungarian who had been in Spain for the last 25 years, named Fernanco(?) who was extremely drunk, to come out and talk to me. He was so drunk, he introduced himself as “muy borracho” or “very drunk” and the proceeded to tell me that he used to be a muy Thai fighter and a coal miner and now he was just a fat drunk who collected money from the government because he got hit in the head too many times. At least I THINK that’s what they were saying…. I went to bed early to get a good rest and let my aching feet and hips recover before a long day tomorrow….from La Robla to Poladura, should be about 25km or so with some very intense climbs. We’ll see.

I’m currently on the Camino San Salvador, which is a route from Leon to Oviedo. They say “whoever goes to Santiago without visiting Oviedo, goes to the servant but not to the Lord.” This is because Oviedo is famous for having a specific relic. While most people are aware of the Shroud of Turin, which is the burial cloth of Jesus, many don’t know (including me, until recently) that traditional Jewish burial included placing a cloth over the face of the deceased immediately after death and until the body was prepared for burial. This cloth would then be removed and the full-body cloth would be applied. So anyway, this Cathedral boasts possession of the face covering that was placed over Jesus’ head, likely immediately after the spear pearled his side and before he was brought down off of the cross. Once I complete the Camino San Salvador (about 5 days, I hope), I will continue on to the Camino Primitivo, one of the many Camino’s de Santiago. So the Camino San Salvador goes to the relics of Christ and the Camino Santiago (Santiago = Saint James) goes to the resting place and remains of Saint James (the major), also known as “Santiago Matamoros” or “Saint James the Moor Slayer”, the patron saint of Spain.

[underthewingsofthblackeagle]

“Berliner Fernsehturm” * Foto: BernardoUPloud

After her marriage with Frank Randall has failed and Claire Beauchamp flees from her violent husband, she finds refuge in the house of the Fraser/Murray family in Berlin-Wilhelmshorst. But then tensions arise between Britain (which has since left the EU) and some EU member states. All holders of an English passport are required to leave EU territory within six weeks … and suddenly Claire’s fate looks more uncertain than ever.

This story was written for the #14DaysofOutlander event, hosted by @scotsmanandsassenach​

Chapter 10: 14 Men (6)

         "Now you will tell me that this is all publicly available information and I would agree with you. But I was not aware of it before. In a way, it woke me up. It took some time but when I had the opportunity to take over another week of night shifts I immediately agreed. In this time I developed a kind of plan. I was eager to find out if Frank's statement was true. At first I tried to track when he was going to conferences or work meetings. Not all of them, but several of them took him to England and Scotland. I can't prove it, but I had the impression that his travels became more frequent at times when 'the Scottish theme' was boiling over. Later, after 2015, and particularly after the Brexit, his travel intensified."

        To Jamie's surprise, Claire reached into her handbag, which she had hung on the back of her chair, and pulled out a piece of paper she handed over to Ferdinand Groide.

        "This is a list of all the trips my husband has taken since 2013, supposedly for reasons of his work as a historian."

        Groide skimmed the list, then put it aside.

        "Thank you very much. We will try to verify the data."

        "In the weeks that followed, I voluntarily took several weeks of night duty, because there was another advantage to this. I was at home while my husband was at university and could look through his records almost undisturbed."

        "Will you share the knowledge you have gained from this?"

        "Yes. But perhaps we could have some tea?" Claire replied as she looked at Jamie.

        "Certainly."

        He got up and left the room for a moment. Ferdinand Groide pressed the 'stop' button on the recorder. Then he got up and stretched a bit. Claire did the same.

"Tea” by Pexels

        "It's good to take a little break," Groide said as he slowly walked across the room and then paused at one of the windows. Claire, too, had stood up and stretched. Her steps led her to one of the dark oak bookcases. Slowly she let her eyes slide over the old leather-bound volumes. Then her gaze wandered over to Groide.         Ferdinand Groide was, at least as far as she could judge right now, an impressive person, even on the outside. Claire estimated him to be in his mid-60s and should be almost right. The 66 year old, tall man stood bolt upright in front of the window and had his arms crossed behind his back. He was moderately slim and not muscular, but his movements suggested that he had kept himself physically fit for his age. His black, short cut hair showed grey patches only at the temples. From the first moment they met, Claire had been attracted to the unusual shape of his face - you could almost call it rectangular. The way he appeared and behaved radiated calm and a kind of positive authority. He was wearing a black three-piece suit of virgin wool, whose jacket he had taken off before dinner. The timelessly elegant waistcoat that appeared beneath it, from whose small side pocket a golden watch chain protruded, and the discreet tie of dark Italian silk jacquard that matched the pocketkerchief of his jacket contrasted with the visitor's simple but flawless white shirt. Groide wore gold-framed, thick glasses that suggested myopia, a simple gold wedding ring on the right hand and a signet ring with a dark blue stone on the left hand. At dinner, Claire had also noticed the rectangular gold cufflinks bearing Groide's monogram. Everything about this man underscored Claire's impression that she was dealing with a person who not only knew exactly who he was, but also what he was doing.

        Moments later, the door opened and Jamie entered.

        "Tea will be here in just a few minutes. Would you like something else to drink?"

        Claire shook her head, Groide turned to Jamie and said:

        "Thank you. Not yet."

        A little later, a knock caught their attention.

        After Helene Ballin served tea and everyone had a cup, Groide asked:

        "Can we continue?"

        Claire nodded.

        Groide pressed the record button on the recorder, and Claire went on to talk:

        "My husband has always had a certain reluctance towards the new media. Of course we had a PC in the house that was connected to the Internet. But my husband used it very rarely. An yes, he also has a notebook. But it was never allowed to be connected to the Internet. Frank was always afraid of viruses or that hackers would steal his work. Before 2015, when he used the term 'work', I was thinking only of his research and the manuscripts of his books. But since that conversation in November 2015, I wondered if it could be about something else entirely. My husband always took his notebook with him to the university. But that was not a problem. Because Frank was obsessed with the thought that his notebook might get lost or - even worse - be stolen. So..."

        “.... were there disks, USB flash drives?" Groide asked interested.

        "No," Claire replied smiling, "papers.”

        The expression of highest astonishment was to be heard in the older man's voice.

         “Papers?”

        "Yes, papers. Frank believes that only what is written by hand will remain in ones memory. That's why everything he later typed into his notebook was first written down by hand."

        "And you had access to these handwritten documents?" asked Groide, who had now put his arms on the table and moved his whole body forward a little.

        "No," Claire replied smiling.

        "Too bad."

        An unmistakable disappointment spread over the face of the German.

        "Why?" Claire asked, adding: “One can get access."

        She laid her head to one side coquettishly, smiled and shrugged her shoulders.

        Once again, astonishment spread over Groide's face. Meanwhile, Jamie had to pull himself together because he almost laughed out loud. This woman was not only intelligent and strong, she also had a sense of humor. It was delicious to watch the rapidly changing emotions she was able to conjure upon Ferdinand Groide's face.

        "So you have ... gained ... access ..." he said, trying to remain objective.

        "Yes," Claire, in turn, noted objectively and took another sip from her teacup.

        "One Friday evening, it was in early February 2016, my husband came home from university in a rage. He said that he had had a dispute with the university management about his research funds. Later I was to learn that this dispute never existed. In fact, it was that one of his affairs had dumped him. But that's another story. As always, when he was angry or did not know how to handle a situation, he became aggressive and drank. And that's what happened that weekend. "

        Claire paused for a moment, looked at the table and took a deep breath.

        "Then on Sunday ... he started drinking whisky after lunch. He drank until he was laying snoring on the sofa. I used this opportunity to make a copy of the key to his filing cabinet and the key to his desk."

        "How did you know how to do that?" Jamie asked, looking at Claire in amazement.

        "As I said, I was raised and educated in a very ... nonconformist way. In port areas you can ... come into contact with ... people ... who ... help you with ... such questions ... I had used the pre-Christmas period to, well, let's say, make contacts there. Frank hates to go shopping and so I knew that on these days I did not have to expect that he wanted to accompany me. In a bar I inquired and the waitress behind the counter told me that she could make a contact for me for the payment of $100. I gave her $50 and the number of my department at the hospital as well as the dates on which I was on night shift. Two days later, a man calling himself 'Joe' called. We set up a meeting the night of the next day. He promised to give me two small boxes with a mass to make prints with. He asked me $600 for them. The next night, just before the night shift started, I met ‘Joe’ in the parking lot of the hospital. He gave me a brown bag, the kind you get in burger and fast-food restaurants. Inside were the little boxes. I gave him an envelope with the money in it. We agreed that if I got the prints, I would get back to Brenda at the bar. It took some time, but at the beginning of February, as I said, I finally had the opportunity to carry out my plan. When Frank fell asleep drunk on the sofa that Sunday afternoon, I took the bunch of keys from his jacket pocket. Then I locked myself in the bathroom and made the prints. When I returned to the living room, Frank was still asleep and it was easy to slip the bunch of keys back into his jacket pocket. I had taken the boxes with the prints, wrapped in a towel, into the bedroom. There I stashed them among other things in my doctor's bag.”

“Medical Bag” by Raimundo Pastor

        Claire held out her cup to Jamie, who poured tea for her again.

        "A few days later I went back to the bar, gave 'Brenda' another $50, the boxes and a note with the details of my next night's duty. It took about 10 days, then 'Joe' called during my night shift and announced that he would bring me the keys the next evening. And that's exactly what happened. He gave me the keys and I gave him another $600. The next day I went back to the bar and gave 'Brenda' another $100, as I had promised her. That was the end of the deal. In total I paid 1400 dollars. I thought, this investment will certainly pay off."

        Now Claire took a big sip from the cup that Jamie had left for her.

        "Investment?" Jamie asked.

        "Well, I was curious if Frank was really working for the Secret Service. To be honest, I still thought his story was just bragging and I didn't expect to find anything real to do with MI5. But I was hoping to get hold of evidence of his affairs. Evidence that, in the event of a divorce..."

        Claire paused for a moment.

        "Our marriage had gone downhill in the years leading up to it ... I had heard rumors, I had suspicions. "But my studies and work didn't give me time ..."

        "And then you put the keys to use?" asked Groide, who was very keen to make sure the conversation didn't drift into secondary topics.

        "Yes, in mid-March the opportunity arose. Frank flew to Edinburgh for a weekend, supposedly for a conference, and I took the opportunity to look around in his filing cabinet. I was frankly amazed at how well the keys worked. When I opened his cabinet I found, among other things, 14 files relating to the 'New Jacobite' leaders. They contained detailed information about each of these men. CVs, family trees, family relationships, friendship and business relationships, relationships abroad and more. In each of these files there was also a folder with pictures. I didn't recognize Jamie, I mean Mr. Fraser, in Boston. Because in the pictures in the file that Frank keeps on him, he has red hair and no beard..."

        Claire looked over at Jamie, whose hair and beard were black. He smiled and stroked his hair, slightly theatrical, and said:

        "There's nothing like a good make-up."

        All three of them smiled. Claire picked up her cup again and drank. Then she continued in a rather nonchalant tone:

        "It was very interesting to read about the lives of these men. "

        "After all these years, do you think you can still remember what you read in these files?" Groiede asked.

        "Anything?" she asked with a smile.

        "I can remember everything as if I had a photographic memory."

        Again she reached into her handbag. To the surprise of the two men, Claire's delicate hand produced three silver USB flash drives, which she slid over to Ferdinand Groide.

        "Each of these sticks contains one terabyte of data. I photographed all the pages of the files and placed them in folders with the appropriate names."

        The men looked at her first, then at each other in silence for a moment. Ferdinand Groide took the sticks and looked at them.

        "You ... said ... that ... you ... did this ... research ... in 2016, so seven years ago ... does that mean the files are up to 2016?"

        Her answer came quickly and came as no surprise to Ferdinand Groide or James Fraser:

        "No, I made the last additions three weeks ago. At that time Frank was - supposedly - at a meeting of historians in Canberra. So all the files should be almost up to date."

        Groide was struck dumb. Jamie had no recollection of ever seeing the old man like that. He had sunk slightly into himself and his face had lost the rosy colour that was so characteristic of him. He was obviously aware of the heavy responsibility that came with owning these sticks. Claire's information could change the fate of at least three or more nations. Groide knew it and Jamie knew it, too. But was Claire aware of it? Jamie could not answer this question.

        His friend took off his glasses with the angular golden rims and wiped his eyes. A long breath of air escaped the old man's lungs. Then he looked at Claire:

        "And you want to give me, I mean us, this information freely?"

        Claire nodded:

        "Yes."

        "May I ask you, are you doing this to get back at your husband?"

        "No, I mean yes, you may ask me. But the answer is no. I was thinking of using it against him in case of divorce. But having read so much about the history of Scotland, I think that something like this ... must never happen again. And..."

        "And?"

        Now ist was Claire who took a deep breath.

        "And having learned by chance this afternoon what a member of my husband's family had done to Mr. Fraser, I don't want anything like that to happen to anybody else."

        Groide looked over at Jamie, but kept silent.

        "All I ask is that you use the information you receive from me in a way that will prevent harm."

China-usb / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

        Groide had his eyes on the tabletop and the USB sticks in front of him. Claire and Jamie heard the hands on the big wall clock that hung behind them ticking. A few moments passed, during which they all remained silent.

        "Mrs. Beauchamp, I want you to know that I have great respect for your decision. I'm just one small weel in a much larger machine. But I promise you that I will use all my influence to see that this information is handled as you wish. I also want you to know that we have no hostile feelings towards your country here. On the contrary. The Brexit and its consequences are much regretted in our country by most people. And not just for economic reasons. We miss the voice and political weight of your country. The oldest democracy in the modern Western world has always had an important, a great weight in this Union - also to establish a political balance. You know, there are member states that have not been familiar with the democratic system for so long. So far, things have gone reasonably well, but the loss of the British vote in the Europan Parliament could lead to dangerous imbalances ... And then we must not forget the human relations. I myself grew up many decades before the reunification of our country in a West German state where British troops were stationed. The British were neighbours for us. A friend of mine, who has since passed away, married an English woman, joined the Anglican Church and became military chaplain for these troops in his city. Friends of mine had planned to buy a small cottage in the southwest of England and spend their retirement there. Many of the cities where I lived had partnerships with English cities. We all very much regret the developments of the last ten years ... and we can only hope that a future generation may be able to reverse them. I hope you know that you are very welcome, not just because you are giving us this information or as a health professional, but as a person. And I hope you'll be able to settle in."

        Claire nodded. Then she reached out her hand and put it on the old man's right hand.

        "Thank you, Mr. Groide. I appreciate it."

        "You can call me Ferdinand, if you like."

        "Sure, Ferdinand, I'm Claire."

        "Thanks, Claire."

        "Well, after that eventful work meeting, let's have a nice drink, shall we? How about a whisky?"

        Jamie looked at her expectantly.

        Claire nodded.

        "I'd love one."

        Groide shook his head.

        "Jamie, you know I don't drink that stuff. I'll have a vodka, please."

        "You see Claire," Jamie said with an ironic undertone, "you might as well learn something about the Germans here. When it comes to alcohol, they have no taste."

        He handed her a glass of whisky.

        "He's right, Claire. And remember one more thing. We have absolutely no sense of humor either."

        The men began to giggle and Jamie had to stop for a moment before he handed the glass of vodka to Groide.

        "You may say what you usually say about my taste in alcohol, Jamie," Groide then said jokingly.

        Jamie looked at Claire with a grin.

        "He spent too much time with Russians, they spoiled his taste."

  Wodka / Vodka Rene1905

        "Sa sdarovje!" was all Groide would answer. Then he turned to Claire again:

        "You said earlier that you intend to ask for a divorce from your husband?"

        "Yes, I do. I hope it's also possible from here."

        Groide looked at her thoughtfully.

        "Do you object to Claire's request, Ferdinand?"

        "No, I understand the request very well. I'm just worried it might put MI5 on to you, Jamie."

        A mild shock drove Claire through and she nearly choked on the whisky she'd just taken.

#14DaysofOutlander #Outlander #Outlander Fan Fiction #From Boston to Berlin in 14 Hours #Boston #Berlin #Claire Beauchamp #jamie fraser #Ian Murray #Jenny Murray #Frank Randall #Germany #Modern AU

[daretosnoop]

Lessons I learned from the Games

Most of this is just silly, some are actual lessons.

SCK/SCK2:

If you’re going to get murdered, get revenge by leaving clues to the blackmail you have on potential suspects and hope to god someone figures it out

If you’re investigating a crime, being a random transfer student at the end of the year is probably not the way to go, but no one cares because they’re too busy with college applications.

If your niece is coming to your place to investigate a murder and you’re not there, the least you can do is set up a cage to trap any possible break-ins.

Nothing beats being able to hold a gun to the murderer #whySCKremastered???

Teens dealing with pressures to meet college and parental demands

Teens resorting to drugs

Teens dealing with sexism that’s found in abundance in college and work environments

Teachers not giving a shit about what students are going through.

STFD:

If you’re getting death threats, play it cool. Keeps the perps unhinged

Toxicity of fan culture

Throw all CEOs into the closet

Nothing beats Jazz

If you’re going to commit crime in an actor’s community, you must do it with flare

MHM:

If you’re going to buy a Victorian mansion, the least you can do is check for ghosts. And also hire a carpenter beforehand

Never invest your life’s savings into anything

Treat those who help you with basic decency (my god Rose!)

If you’re snooping on someone, don’t give them any indication that you’re onto them

If someone slips a threatening message under your door, open the door.

Victorian houses have all sorts of booby traps, FIND THEM.

TRT:

Don’t trust anyone who’s eager to be your friend

Trust the weirdos and grumpy people

Learn French

Don’t leave incriminating evidence that reveals your lies

There is no such thing as too much food

Women in history have been badly treated by (male) historians.

It’s called the past for a reason

Turn a bad situation into an opportunity to learn

If you’re going to do crime, at least ensure you have an escape route that’s not blocked by the snow

Don’t date people who pressure you to marry them/ask you to prove your love for them

 FIN:

As a woman, if you want anyone to take you seriously and help, you have to be adamant, sassy, and everything men don’t like to see in women.

If you’re a POC, the chances of the police helping you decreases

Capitalism sucks

Police suck

Misogyny in capitalism

Old theaters are amazing

Don’t trust the person who’s trying to be your friend!!!!!!

Don’t talk to suspects about your case

Have confidence in yourself

 SSH:

Colonialism still exists in the form of capitalism

The art industry is completely profit driven

Mexico and America tensions

The Mayans

They never talked about what happened to the Mayans…..

Don’t deal with shady salesmen

Sometimes saving money contributes to a bad system

If you accepted a position, take your work seriously

Don’t trust the guy trying to be your friend!!!!

Master the art of amnesia should you ever need to use it

Even if you disband a group of art thieves, it’s best to be humble

No one in life is going to help you, even if you get pushed into a monolith

 DOG:

This game is why it’s important to put your dog(s) on a leash! (insert that dog vine: “it don’t bite. Yes it do!”)

If we didn’t have uptight rangers, the parks would be burnt to smithereens

Misogyny exists in the woods

People who are just trying to do their job always get a bad rap even though it’s because of them the park still exists!

Gangsters are bad, but also low-key cool

Get back at your enemies by making a fake grave of them

Old people have interesting stories

Gold can release arsenic into water

Always check well water before using

Wood mice are bad for health

If you’re going to get tied up and tossed into your tool shed, keep a scythe on hand

Go birdwatching at night

Torque is a fancy word for screw driver

If you’re a POC, people are most likely to suspect you.

CAR:

There is no job security if you end up in hospital

Sometimes you really need a 2000 calorie sundae

If you went to jail, people are most likely to suspect you first

Don’t spy on your co-workers

Don’t trust the person who’s trying to be your friend!

Don’t procrastinate on a job

If you’re miserable in life, maybe it’s time to sign up for some therapy

If you have a sad backstory, you’re automatically entitled to everyone’s sad backstory

Mental illness: depression

Health awareness: niacin, don’t eat junk food like a 2000 calorie sundae

Don’t dump someone just because they’re not able to give you a lavish lifestyle

DDI:

If you’re going to trash someone’s boat, don’t leave your business card behind

If you’re tired of small mindedness, it’s best to just leave

It’s always handy in life to know boating skills

If you’re trying to report suspicious activity, communicating by bottles is not the way to go

Don’t feed wild animals!

Capitalism sucks

Look carefully at your environment, you never know what clues are left behind

Always make a plan B in case plan A doesn’t work

Don’t be afraid to explore

SHA:

Never trust the guy who’s trying to be your friend!!!

Always trust the grumpy guy

Horses die easily

There is no such thing as over ripe vegetables

Sunflowers should be planted near gardens so that bees come

Respect chickens

Falling in love with a criminal is difficult when your dad’s a cop

It’s handy to know how to ride a horse

Ghost towns are terrifying

Farmers work hard and should be respected

CUR:

Don’t trust the person who’s trying to be your friend!!!!!!!!!!

Don’t be a negligent parent

Before getting married, make sure your partner has a good relationship with your child

Don’t trust creepy people

America and British will always oppose each other

Talking parrots are always handy

British aristocracy was supported through colonialism #got Loulou on his Travels, uh huh

If you’re a spinster, you’re going to be the mom of something

If you’re afraid of becoming a monster, best be dramatic about it

It’s really important to have good communication between partners

Don’t stick your new wife in a room that still has pictures of your old wife and where all the furniture has covers on them

If you have a manor, you better explore it before some 12-year-old gets hurt exploring it

don’t go to great lengths to protect a rock

calling something that skips every generation a “family tradition” is just rude and exclusive

don’t leave your child alone for so long. Don’t keep them away from people their age

don’t write memories, no one wants to hear your life story

CLK:

if you’re going to presume someone’s identity, you better nail the part down hard

don’t blow up the kitchen when there’s only three people in the house and you were the closest and last one in the kitchen

emotional manipulation

gas lighting

if someone mentions stolen jewellery, putting back what you stole just incriminates you

even if you have psychic abilities, don’t be an ass bout it

no one ever tips because no one like the system. Pay your employees what they deserve!

Even though the depression’s going on, people are still dumping money in psychic lessons and dress making

No one ever gives anything away for free

Even if you’re promised money, don’t put too much trust in the promises of others

Don’t be rude to the person who’s trying to help you

If your partner is demanding to be spoiled during an economic depression, find a better partner

People aren’t as smart as you, tell them straight where you left your will.

 TRN:

The dumb blonde joke is not funny

Cops are useless and unhelpful

People are more willing to listen to adults then teens/young adults

Celebrities are much different in real life then in their celebrity world.

Don’t steal someone else’s ideaà artist theft

Old trains are super cool

People aren’t as smart as you, tell them straight where you hid your treasure

Don’t dump someone just because people think they’re dumb

 DAN:

Capitalism sucks

The fashion industry is brutal

normal size representation

Boss’s can be crappy people

Don’t blackmail people

If you promised to do work, you better dedicate yourself to it

Having a healthy fear of giving away personal information is not a bad thing

Don’t aid stalkers

Covid-precaution: cover face with mask. Act erratic to keep people away from you

Concept of older men dating younger women is actually frowned upon

Love is mysterious

Flashlight on the many women who helped decode during WW2 but largely remain unrecognized by countries today

Forgery is okay sometimes

 CRE:

Indigenous cultures continue to be badly and negatively portrayed in media

Capitalism sucks

Environmentalism

Academia is not as research oriented as one wishes it was

Daddy-issues

Native Hawaiians forced to “work with” big corps in order to survive.

Tourism industry and its affects on the environment and native population

Sometimes an upgrade is not a good thing

ICE:

Animal conservatism

Capitalism sucks

International competitions suck

Running away from humans to hide in a cabin and bonding with a wolf is not a bad thing

Never enter a sauna alone

It’s bad business to kick customers out

If your customers are falling asleep everyday in a common room, it’s probably not a good sign of booming business

Don’t be chill over bombs exploding near your hotel

Always handy to know how to drive a snow mobile

Don’t volunteer to be a maid, ever

Cops are useless

CRY:

Don’t dump your job on your girlfriend

There’s nothing wrong with being emo

Men being emotional and desiring love and affection

Men being abused in relationships

Even if your relative leaves you a ton of money, it’s no excuse for not being a good guardian/parent

Don’t trust strangers. Don’t eat food from random people

Customer service is awful. Even when the customer is trying to instigate a horrible reaction in you, you got to put on a smile

Always trust the eccentric lady

Nancy’s sad backstory allows her to hear everyone else’s sad backstory, unless you’re a guy, I guess.

A date in the cemetery is not a bad idea

If your partner demands you to spoil them, get a new partner

People aren’t as smart as you, tell them where you hid your treasure

VEN:

Anyone can help out on an international mafia case

The mafia is very creative and artistic

Capitalism sucks

Assert your independence as a young woman by dancing in a cat suit on stage? I guess?

Money can be found anywhere

Eat the rich

Don’t trust the person trying to be friends with you

Possessive relationships are red flags

Don’t steal a cheap neckless if you’re a notorious thief

Cops kind of useful for once.

HAU

Don’t pull a prank on your partner before your wedding

Don’t invite someone who used to date your partner and still has feelings for them

If your partner is missing, actually look for them instead of sitting around

Crows are amazing

Fiona might have lost her parents at a young age and her life as a hermit definitely had its side affects, but she also saved herself from the misogyny women endured

RAN:

If your friend gets kidnapped, please, at least fake some concern

Don’t waste time with monkeys

The only other person on the island is probably the culprit

WAV:

Girl bullying can be worse than boy bullying

Don’t trust the person who’s trying to be your friend!!!!!!

  TOT:

Nancy’s sad backstory allows her to hear everyone else’s sad backstory, unless you’re a guy, I guess.

Academic institutions are struggling to fund research

Capitalism sucks

Even if you hate your lead, don’t sabotage the team

Communication is important

Even if you hate your job, don’t sabotage your team

 SAW:

People who resist to change just become boulders in the way of progress

Boomer mentality is soul destroying

Emotional manipulation

Gas lighting

Depression

Sometimes you have to cut away from those you love in order to maintain your sanity

Nancy’s sad backstory allows her to hear everyone else’s sad backstory.

If you have to give your partner a gift every time you fight, you might have relationship problems

Don’t be in a relationship just because you’re used to it

Don’t force someone to adhere to your expectations in life

If you’re unable to talk to your partner and so resort to haunting her inn, you probably have relationship issues

#nancy drew

[xseildnasterces]

things we lost in the fire.

I’m very glad it’s weekend. I feel as though I have zero time for anything right now. This certainly falls in line with mostly working from home because it’s as though you need to be on call all hours and I often find myself working at some godforsaken hour to try and get something finished. I am beyond exhausted, and each week I get to Friday and just collapse on the sofa. I was back in the office yesterday because we had a historian visiting and I had to be there to assist. It sounds ridiculous but you really do not realise how much of a difference it makes to your body should you spend most of it seated. My body felt so different after walking to and from work and walking around whilst working. I felt better, but also so much more tired. Before the pandemic this would have been nothing. It’s only a short walk to work, but after literally a year of not doing it every single day my body has just forgotten how to do it. This certainly added to my complete and utter exhaustion yesterday evening. I pretty much got through the door (taking my coat off along with my bag at the same time – meaning the arms of the coat were still through the straps of my backpack), lay on the sofa and I was gone. Literally fast asleep. I woke up an hour feeling so much better and went on to cook dinner and enjoy the rest of my evening, but if I had not had that nap, I wouldn’t have been able to function.

My head has been spinning this week. There has been so much going on in there and I have been meaning to write to throw it all out all week. I find myself lying in bed most nights writing the blog post out in my head and deciding what I want to write. Yet I wake up the following day and have forgotten how I wrote it in my head and then feel frustrated about not remembering exactly how I had planned it out. I guess I’ll just start and see what happens.

In good news, my mum has had her first vaccine! Yay! That’s now both my mum and grandma who had been vaccinated with the first dose, so just my dad to be ticked off when it is his turn and then I can at least try to begin stopping my extreme panic over them leaving the house. From 1 March people in DC with chronic health conditions can get the vaccine, which means I am able to apply for my appointment. I have heard it’s almost in possible here and it’s a super race against time with appointments going in a few minutes. I’m going to have to set an alarm and just hope I can get one and keep trying. They are releasing vaccines for different areas at different times and I am not in a priority zip code area so there are less being designated to my area. This in one way is good because those priority zip codes are the areas of DC with the highest number of covid cases, but regardless in a selfish way it’s frustrating because I just want to get it done – but doesn’t everyone? It’s hard.

I’m sad because this year I was finally chosen as a new professional for my field’s international association. This is something I have wanted for years, and as much as I wanted to take part in the programme, the main reason anyone applies for this and wants to be chosen is the trip to the conference/congress. This is what had filled me with so much excitement when I was picked. The thought of having my trip paid for and getting to attend an international conference that costs a ridiculous amount of money was such a huge opportunity and an amazing thing to experience in my career, yet it is looking more and more likely that it will now be held virtually – which honestly makes me so upset. An online conference is not the same at all and I feel like myself and the other NPs are having our one-time opportunity taken away from us. I would never be able to pay for the conference myself, and my boss would never allow work to pay for me to go as she will want to go herself. It makes me feel so incredibly sad and frustrated. I sometimes sit and wish I hadn’t got picked this year and could have been picked next year instead, yet when I sit and think about that properly I do not mean it at all because I feel so incredibly lucky to be given this opportunity that so many other people in our profession are never selected for. I need to remain positive and continue to feel proud – but I do admit, it’s hard.

Therapy was interesting this week. I absolutely hate going into therapy with nothing to talk about because it means one of two things – either we have lots of silences or we take a trip somewhere I don’t want to go. I get so much more anxious when I have nothing to say or talk about, so this week was one of those. As it happened, we ended up having a full conversation about Tango, my cat who died. We talked about how important he was too me, all my memories, how he died and how I processed his death, my grieving process which was very unhealthy and how this whole thing has very much impacted how I think about things. We also discussed that boys at school who were supposed to be my friends who would joke about my cat being run over. I welled up quite a lot when talking about Tango. He was such an important thing in my life and one that I miss to this day. I dream about him often, as though I’m looking for him and cannot find him, or other nights I dream I still have him, but I have forgotten to feed him. And then there are the nights when I dream that everything is great, and he’s playing with me or curled up next to me. I know that some people would argue that ‘it’s just a pet’ yet during that time in my life that cat was so many things to me, and grieving the death of a living animal is just as soul destroying as any other death. It was hard, and I think there are perhaps part of it I haven’t fully processed. I told my therapist about what I wrote the day he went missing, and what I wrote the day we found out he had died. Addressing some of these things highlighted a lot of why I feel a certain way in regards to always thinking the worst so that when something good happens I can be happy about it, rather than expecting the best and then being sad when it doesn’t happen. Of course, I still get sad, but I try to protect myself even just a little bit. (Not that I do it well at all). My therapist told me how much I lit up when I spoke about him, yet all I could think of was how my eyes were welling up and I was batting away tears. I still miss him, so much.

[Blog title: Things We Lost In The Fire - Bastille].

#bastille #me #update #life #thought #feelings #diary #journal #things we lost in the fire