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dystopicjumpsuit · 8 months

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Stars Beyond Number - Chapter 1

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Rating: T (rating varies by chapter; mature content will be tagged; regardless of rating, minors DNI)

Pairings: Echo x Riyo Chuchi; Gregor x OFC Cerra Kilian

Wordcount: 2.8k

Warnings: minor angst

Suggested Listening:

Summary: Soldiers. Heroes. Deserters. Traitors. They've been called many things. As the Galactic Empire rises from the ashes of the Republic, a small group of clone troopers and their allies will find a new identity: Rebels.

Echo, Rex, and Gregor are on a mission to save as many of their brothers as they can. The task is daunting, and their friends are few. But from these small and desperate beginnings will come a spark of resistance that will set the galaxy ablaze.

A/N: This story shares continuity with Martyrs and Kings and "Do It Again," but all three fics can be read as stand-alones.

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Remember us—if at all—not as lost violent souls, but only as the hollow men.

—T. S. Eliot, “The Hollow Men”

The Marauder pushed off the landing platform with a roar of thrusters and rose through the underworld portal until it disappeared in the swirl of air speeder and starship traffic. The repair shop where Rex had set up his base of operations was deep in the lower levels of Coruscant, and Echo knew the ship would keep ascending long after he lost sight of it before it reached the surface. His decision to part ways with the Batch had seemed very straightforward and logical as he’d discussed it with Hunter, Wrecker, and Tech, but in the face of Omega’s tearful farewell, his resolve had nearly crumbled.

He knew that the rest of the Batch would never let any harm come to the girl; her safety was their only priority. But Echo needed to do more to help his fellow clones, and with Rex, he would finally be in a position to do so. And so he merely watched as the ship departed, bearing his brothers and sister back to Ord Mantell and Cid’s endlessly questionable jobs.

He turned to rejoin Rex and Senator Chuchi. They had been conversing discreetly, giving him privacy and space as he said his goodbyes. The senator watched him now, her luminous eyes soft.

“It’s very brave of you, Echo, to stay behind and join our network after everything you’ve been through,” she said.

“Thank you, Senator,” he said, “but I’ve never been one to back down from a fight.”

“Please, call me Riyo,” she said.

Echo nodded as Rex clapped him on the shoulder.

“Come on, brother,” his old captain said. “I’ll show you around.”

The tour didn’t take long. The repair shop apparently belonged to Trace Martez, the young thief Echo had encountered on Corellia. Rex had taken over the shop when Coruscant got a little too hot for the Martez sisters’ comfort. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement: Rex needed a home base, and Trace needed someone to make sure the shop didn’t fall victim to the seedier elements of the underworld. Rex had set up a kitchen, a temporary barracks, and a small training gym at the back of the shop. There was a tiny room that served as a makeshift office and command center, and finally a communal refresher with two open shower stalls, an enclosed toilet, and a small sink. The garage contained few creature comforts; mostly they just used crates for furniture, though there was a broken-down old sofa with a holotable set up in front of it.

The accommodations were spare and shabby, which was familiar to Echo, but he was struck by how out-of-place Riyo looked in the shop. With her elegant clothing and elaborate hairstyle, she looked far too delicate and fine for her surroundings. Still, she didn’t display either judgment or discomfort at the sparseness of the shop. Echo stole occasional glances at her, admiring the soft curves of her face, the graceful line of her throat, the way her wide, intelligent eyes took in everything around her, missing not a single detail. He wondered how to describe the exact shade of her hair. Was it mauve? Or maybe violet was more accurate. Her gaze shifted to him, and he looked away quickly.

The unmistakable whine of a speeder bike landing on the platform outside interrupted his train of thought, and soon footsteps echoed through the shop.

“Rex? You here?” a woman’s voice called.

“Back here, Cerra,” Rex replied. “I have someone I want you to meet.”

The woman strode into view, faltering a little when she spotted Echo.

“Echo, I’d like you to meet Cerra Kilian,” Rex said. “She handles logistics. Very good at getting things clones aren’t supposed to have.”

“Nice to meet you, Cerra,” Echo said.

The woman clasped Echo’s hand in a reserved greeting and nodded at Riyo. “A pleasure, Echo. Senator, it’s good to see you again.”

“And you as well, Cerra,” Riyo replied.

The contrast between the two women could not have been more stark. Riyo was lovely, with her wide, golden eyes, azure skin, and glossy lavender—no, lilac—hair. Everything about her was soft and feminine and fragile, almost ethereal. Cerra was taller and more solid, her face more angular, and everything about her spoke of practical decisions, from her buzzed head, to her faded mechanic’s coveralls and sturdy boots. More striking, though, was the difference in their expressions. While Riyo’s face was gentle and easy to read, Cerra’s guarded eyes revealed nothing of her thoughts.

“Got a lead on that electro capsule the clone assassin used,” Cerra said.

“What did you learn?” Rex asked.

“It isn’t underworld tech,” Cerra said. “At least, not as far as any of my contacts could tell. More likely military-grade.”

“Then it probably was Rampart’s work,” Rex said grimly.

“Hard to say,” Cerra said. “We know somebody was pulling Rampart’s strings. I’ll keep looking.”

“I hope I don’t sound selfish, but I can’t help wondering. Do you think I might still be in danger?” Riyo asked.

Cerra looked at Rex, wordlessly deferring to him.

“It’s difficult to say,” Rex said. “For now, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for your guards to take additional precautions.”

“I can take a look at their security protocols and offer a few suggestions, if you’d like,” Echo offered.

“Thank you,” Riyo said, gazing up at him with gratitude in her eyes. “I would imagine that someone as accomplished at infiltration as an ARC Trooper would be the best person to find weaknesses in security.”

“Former ARC Trooper,” Echo said, wondering what else Rex had told her about him.

“I don’t think anyone could forget ARC training,” Rex said with a quiet laugh.

Cerra’s eyes flickered to the front entrance of the repair shop, and Echo turned automatically, preparing for a threat. Instead, he recognized a familiar face.

“Didn’t realize we were having a party,” Gregor said as he strode into the room and clasped Echo’s forearm in greeting. “Good to have you with us, Echo.”

The commando nodded at Rex and Riyo, then draped his arm casually over Cerra’s shoulders and handed her a travel cup. The woman pushed him off with an indistinct grumble, but she took the cup with the barest hint of a smile.

“I got some intel on a clone in the 41st Elite Corps who wants to get out. Name’s Fireball, do you know him?” Gregor asked.

“I’ve met him,” Rex said. “Good man. Good soldier.”

“Is the 41st still on Kashyyyk?” Echo asked. “I was there recently. Rex, it could get ugly.”

“It’ll take some time to plan,” Rex said noncommittally.

“That’s not the only thing we’ll need to plan,” Gregor said. “If we’re going to be extracting clones, we’re going to need a way to get the inhibitor chips out of their heads. AZI took mine out on Ord Mantell, but we don’t have a medical droid of our own.”

“Karthon chop fields,” Cerra said. Riyo and the three clones all turned to her. “I’ve been looking into it. My source says there are at least three downed Venators slated for decommissioning on Karthon. We can pull the surgical pod from one of the med bays and set it up here.”

“It’s risky,” Rex said.

“Not as risky as Lotho Minor or Bracca, now that the Empire has stepped up security after your adventure there last year,” Cerra said. “I can get it, but I’ll need help. Gregor, you in?”

“I’d like Echo to go with you on this one,” Rex interjected.

Cerra didn’t react except to nod. “It’s going to take a few days to get the supplies together.”

Over the next few days, Echo began to get a feel for the small group living in the repair shop. Rex was right: his organization was spread thin. Echo wasn’t exactly sure how many others were involved, but at the moment, the only people besides himself who were at the garage were Rex, Cerra, and Gregor. Any others were either deployed on missions or based elsewhere. The three of them were run ragged. Rex looked even more exhausted than he had during the war. Cerra was quiet and remote, keeping to herself and rarely instigating conversations. Gregor was the only one who still seemed to have a sense of humor.

In addition to running missions with Rex, Gregor was the self-appointed quartermaster and chef of the group. He was a surprisingly good cook, and when Echo complimented the food, the commando grinned.

“It’s nice to be the one in charge of the kitchen instead of just washing dishes,” he said.

“If I start cooking, does that mean I can skip dish duty?” Cerra asked.

“No thanks, I’ve tasted your cooking,” Gregor laughed, his eyes bright.

“Rude, but fair,” Cerra acknowledged.

It was the night before Echo was due to travel to Karthon with Cerra. The group sprawled around the holotable, chatting quietly as they ate Gregor’s spicy yobshrimp stew. Echo was jittery. He wasn’t nervous about the mission itself; he’d completed hundreds of missions. But they were always with his brothers or a Jedi. This was his first time with a civilian. Still, Rex obviously trusted Cerra enough to send her after the surgical pod, so Echo tried to quiet his nerves.

“I can take KP tonight,” Echo offered, looking for a distraction.

“You’re on,” Cerra said immediately.

“Sucker,” Gregor giggled.

The kitchen was a spectacular mess, and it took some time for Echo to finish cleaning up. By the time he did, he could hear music blasting from the training gym, and he went to investigate.

Gregor leaned against the wall, his arms crossed, as he watched Rex spar with Cerra. Her face was flushed with exertion, and beads of sweat speckled her forehead and dripped down her temples. Echo could tell that Rex was holding back, though Cerra had surprisingly good form. She clearly had training, but it wasn’t enough against an opponent who was taller, stronger, heavier, and had been trained literally from birth to be a killing machine. Gregor occasionally tossed out a dispassionate suggestion or command, focusing on techniques specifically for fighting a larger combatant.

“Pull guard, Cerra, just like we practiced,” the commando coached.

Cerra grabbed Rex’s forearm and took him to the ground, locking her legs around his waist. Echo immediately recognized the move; he’d practiced it often enough during ARC training. He hadn’t sparred with anyone in ages, and he wondered if his prosthetic legs were agile enough to do it. He suspected so; though they were not quite as dexterous as his legs had formerly been, they made up for it in durability and strength. A single kick would be strong enough to snap a limb or break a spine.

“That’s better, Cerra,” Rex praised.

“Next time, rotate your foot to the outside,” Gregor said, unimpressed. “Unless you want to break your own ankle or get your leg pinned.”

Cerra slapped Rex on the back of the head. “Stop taking it easy on me.”

He grinned down at her. “Sorry, kid. Gotta walk before you can run.”

“First of all, I’m twice your age, and secondly, a real opponent won’t pull their punches,” she said.

“That’s why you have a blaster,” Rex replied calmly. “Want to go again?”

She nodded, but Gregor intervened. “You need to rest up for tomorrow’s mission.”

Cerra released Rex immediately, and he stood to his feet, then extended a hand and pulled her up from the mat. She was breathing hard, and Gregor tossed her a towel to dry off. She spotted Echo and acknowledged him with a jerk of her chin.

“Maybe Echo can teach me some sweet ARC moves while we’re en route to Karthon,” she said.

“Didn’t Fives show you any?” Gregor asked.

Rex winced, but Cerra mopped her face and arms with the towel.

“A few,” she said.

“You knew Fives?” Echo asked, surprised.

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m going to hop in the shower.”

“I can’t believe we’re taking that rust-bucket to Karthon,” Echo said.

The rickety shuttle was practically an antique. The sublight drive rattled alarmingly when it started up, and even the hydraulic struts for the ramp only worked about half the time.

“It’s old, but it still has some tricks thanks to Trace,” Rex said. “It’ll get you there and back. Besides, it’s the only ship we have with a cargo hold big enough to transport the surgical pod.”

“She’ll fly all right,” Cerra said as she joined them. “Not fast. Hopefully she won’t leak like a sieve.”

Rex was holding two travel mugs of caf, and he handed one to Cerra.

“You’re a god among men,” she said, taking a blissful sip.

“Is the other one for me?” Echo asked.

“Kark no,” Rex said, chugging half the liquid in one go. “Get your own.”

Cerra strode up the ramp and flopped into the co-pilot’s seat. “Don’t worry, Echo, we can stop at Starcups on the way out.”

Echo pulled a face. “Starcups barely qualifies as caf. More like syrup and blue milk that once heard a rumor about caf.”

“Still gets the job done,” Cerra shrugged. “Let’s roll.”

In the slow, dilapidated old shuttle, it was a full day’s jump to Karthon. Cerra was mostly silent once they entered hyperspace, tinkering with the electronic guts of a clone armor cuirass that she’d modified heavily. Echo, accustomed to Wrecker and Omega’s raucous banter and Tech’s spontaneous infodumps, found the silence deafening. He wished Gregor had come with them on the mission. The commando’s relaxed attitude and cheerful personality seemed to pull Cerra out of her shell in a way that Echo had not yet figured out how to do. He was no sparkling conversationalist, but he didn’t enjoy silence and solitude—not any more.

It had only been a few days, but he missed the Batch. He missed Tech’s monologues as they copiloted the Marauder on long hyperspace jumps. He missed Omega’s endless questions and cheerful commentary. He thought of the way the tears had welled in her eyes as she hugged him goodbye, and his chest ached at the memory.

The cuirass sparked, and Cerra flinched and cursed.

“Need a hand?” Echo offered.

Cerra sighed and dragged a hand across her eyes. “I think I fried one of the connectors when I heated the plastoid to reshape the chestplate. The control unit fits, but I can’t get it to sync with the HUD.”

She passed the cuirass to Echo, who inspected it closely. She was right; there was a tiny scorch mark on one of the connectors.

“We’ll have to salvage another chestplate to get replacements,” he said. “Decent chance we’ll find some on Karthon.”

“At least it’ll give me some protection for now,” she said. “I’ll just have to go without a helmet until I can get it fixed.”

“I can help with the modifications, if you’d like,” Echo offered. “I have some experience with armor mods.”

“So I see,” she said, eyeing his custom suit. “I figured your armor wasn’t exactly off the rack.”

Echo chuckled. “Not exactly. My squadmate Tech helped me with my first set of armor after Skako Minor, but this set I modified myself. I added some extra features. Aside from the obvious.” He gestured to his scomp.

“What kind of features?” she asked.

“Electrical surge prevention,” he said.

She nodded. “Kix told me you got a hell of a jolt at Anaxes.”

“You knew Kix as well as Fives?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “He’s gone, too.”

Darkness flickered across her face, but she took a deep breath and her usual stoicism slid back into place. Echo reached out to lay his hand on her shoulder, but something about her posture made him think she wouldn’t appreciate the gesture. He faltered and dropped his hand back to his side. After a time, he broke the silence.

“So,” he said. “How well did you know Fives?”

“Pretty well,” she said flatly. “So how about those sweet ARC moves?”

He wanted to push, wanted to know more. Rex had given him the bare-bones account of Fives’s death, but there never seemed to be enough time to actually process it. Cerra was the only person in Echo’s life other than Rex who had known his twin, but her walls seemed to be made of durasteel, reinforced with beskar. And the last thing he wanted to do was scug her off right before he headed into a mission, trusting her to have his back.

“Rex went through ARC training, too, you know,” Echo pointed out. “He knows all those moves. But I can show you a trick or two that I learned from Clone Force 99.”

---

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sailforvalinor · 1 year

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Doctor Who --Ten and Rose

The Moon Song by Walker Burroughs // Doctor Who 2x01 (gif by @rose--tyler) // Melancholy Astronautic Man by Allie Moss // I Don't Wanna Love Somebody Else by A Great Big World // "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot // Doctor Who 2x08 // Doctor Who 2x08 (gif from GIFER) // Doctor Who 2x09 // Shrike by Hozier // The Shape of My Heart by Sting // In the Wind by Lord Huron // Doctor Who 2x13 // "The Hollow Men" by T. S. Eliot

#if i have credited these gifs incorrectly i apologize #also eliot IS ten's poet #the eliot haters can fight me #featuring pics from my American lit anthology #doctor who #tenrose #welcome to the tenrose agenda #val cries over a madman with a blue box #webweave #t s eliot #tenth doctor #ten x rose #rose tyler

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uhlikzsuzsanna · 1 year

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youtube

Poetry for Every Day of the Year: National Theatre Talks

Join us for an hour of poetry dedicated to the people of Ukraine, read by actors on stage at the National Theatre. Allie Esiri was joined by Asa Butterfield, Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù, Kate Fleetwood, Tom Hiddleston, Dária Plahtíy and Helena Bonham Carter. Chris Riddell live drew the evening.

Signed copies of both A Poet for Every Day of the Year and A Nursery Rhyme for Every Night of the Year are available from the National Theatre Bookshop. Every purchase supports the work of the National Theatre: https://shop.nationaltheatre.org.uk/c...

This event was performed on the Olivier stage, National Theatre, London on Friday 17 March 2023.

As you enjoy watching please consider making a donation in support of the Disaster Emergency Committee’s Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. All donations directly support people in Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Moldova, and Hungary.

Text POETRY to 70150 to donate £10.

Texts cost £10 plus your standard network charge. The whole £10 will go to the DEC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. You must have bill payer’s permission.

Or visit DEC.org.uk/Ukraine to donate online. *

2:13 Lift Every Voice and Sing (James Weldon Johnson)

4:57 Rain (Don Paterson)

6:44 Little Gidding (T S Eliot)

10:02 Words, Wide Night (Carol Ann Duffy)

11:31 Love After Love (Derek Walcott)

13:28 Coupling (Fleur Adcock)

14:17 Variation on a Lennon and McCartney Song (Wendy Cope)

15:15 He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven (W B Yeats)

16:23 On being asked for a War Poem (W B Yeats)

17:22 Atlantis--a Lost Sonnet (Eavan Boland)

19:00 I See You Dancing, Father (Brendan Kennelly)

20:36 Michael Finnegan (Anon)

22:58 Old Mother Goose (Anon)

25:44 Three Wise Men of Gotham (Anon)

26:22 Today I Saw a Little Worm (Spike Milligan)

26:36 The Tickle Rhyme (Ian Serraillier)

26:48 Roses are red (Anon)

27:02 A peanut sat on a railroad track (Anon)

27:16 Soldier, Soldier (Anon)

29:28 Funeral Blues (W H Auden)

31:52 June, 1915 (Charlotte Mew)

33:10 To My Brother (Vera Brittain)

34:44 Requiem for the Croppies (Seamus Heaney)

36:28 At least now, my friend says (Serhiy Zhadan)

38:54 Sun, terrace, lots of green (Serhiy Zhadan)

40:44 The city is no more (Iryna Shuvalova)

43:20 From The Book of Sir Thomas More (William Shakespeare)

46:41 Home (Warsan Shire)

49:11 Refugees (Brian Bilston)

51:55 Small Kindnesses (Danusha Laméris)

55:45 Extract from The Caucasus (Taras Shevchenko)

#tom hiddleston #poetry for every day of the year #poem #poetry #Asa Butterfield #Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù #Kate Fleetwood #Tom Hiddleston #asa butterfield #sope dirisu #Kate fleetwood #helena bonham carter #chris riddell #allie esiri #2023 #Ukraine charity poetry reading #DEC #Daria Plahtiy

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hexjulia · 2 years

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“The Man Who Was Thursday” is one of the hidden hinges of twentieth-century writing, the place where, before our eyes, the nonsense-fantastical tradition of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear pivots and becomes the nightmare-fantastical tradition of Kafka and Borges. It is also, along with Chesterton’s “The Napoleon of Notting Hill,” the nearest thing that this masterly writer wrote to a masterpiece.

Chesterton is an easy writer to love—a brilliant sentence-maker, a humorist, a journalist of endless appetite and invention. His aphorisms alone are worth the price of admission, better than any but Wilde’s. Even his standard-issue zingers are first-class—“Americans are the people who describe their use of alcohol and tobacco as vices”; “There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats grape-nuts on principle”; “ ‘My country, right or wrong,’ is a thing that no true patriot would think of saying. . . . It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober’ ”—while the deeper ones are genuine Catholic koans, pregnant and profound: “Blasphemy depends on belief, and is fading with it. If anyone doubts this, let him sit down seriously and try to think blasphemous thoughts about Thor.” Or: “The function of the imagination is not to make strange things settled, so much as to make settled things strange.” Or: “A key has no logic to its shape. Its logic is: it turns the lock."

But he is a difficult writer to defend. Those of us who are used to pressing his writing on friends have the hard job of protecting him from his detractors, who think he was a nasty anti-Semite and medievalizing reactionary, and the still harder one of protecting him from his admirers, who pretend that he was not. His Catholic devotees are legion and fanatic—the small Ignatius Press has taken on the heroic job of publishing everything he wrote in a uniform edition, and is already up to the thirty-fifth volume—but not always helpful to his non-cult reputation, especially when they insist on treating his gassy Church apologetics as though they were as interesting as his funny and suggestively mystical Christian allegories. He has a loving following among liberal Catholics, like Garry Wills and Wilfrid Sheed, and even nonbelievers, like Martin Gardner. But his most strenuous advocates are mainly conservative preVatican II types who are indignant about his neglect without stopping to reflect how much their own uncritical enthusiasm may have contributed to it.

If you want stability allied to imagination, Catholicism has everything else beat. Although Chesterton did not officially convert until 1922, well after the war, his drift toward what he called “Orthodoxy” was apparent in the years just after the publication of “The Man Who Was Thursday.”

And right around here is where the Jew-hating comes in. A reader with a casual interest in Chesterton’s life may have a reassuring sense, from his fans and friendly biographers, that his anti-Semitism really isn’t all that bad: that there’s not much of it; that a lot of it came from loyalty to his younger brother Cecil, a polemical journalist in the pre-war years, and to his anti-Dreyfusard friend Belloc; that he had flushed it out of his system by the mid-twenties; and, anyway, that it was part of the time he lived in, a time when pretty much everyone, from Kipling to T. S. Eliot, mistrusted Jews—when even the philo-Semites (give them a home!) were really anti-Semites (get them out of here!).

Unfortunately, a little reading shows that there’s a lot of it, that it comes all the time, and that the more Chesterton tries to justify it the worse it gets. The ugliness really began in 1912, when he joined his brother in a crusade against the corruption of the Liberal Government, using a scandal that involved Rufus Isaacs, a Cabinet minister, and his brother Godfrey, a businessman.

(...)

This campaign—and, perhaps, the courtroom loss as well—set off something horrible in the older brother, and, after Cecil died, in 1918, in the war, Chesterton’s hatreds became ugly and obsessive. There had been mild Jew-bashing in his work before, based on the ethnic generalities that everyone engaged in—the Jews are all alike in his stories, but then the French and the Italians are all alike, too. From then on, however, Chesterton hammers relentlessly at the idea that there is “a Jewish problem,” the problem being that Jews are foreigners, innately alien to the nations into which they’ve insinuated themselves. Writing in 1920, he tells us that Jews are regarded, by the Arabs in Palestine, as “parasites that feed on a community by a thousand methods of financial intrigue and economic exploitation.” Chesterton then adds that this charge may not be entirely true but needs to be addressed by the Jews—as though they were compelled to consider themselves permanently on trial by their persecutors. Later in the decade, writing about a journey to America, he says, in defense of Henry Ford, “No extravagance of hatred merely following on experience of Jews can properly be called a prejudice. . . . These people of the plains have found the Jewish problem exactly as they might have struck oil; because it is there, and not even because they were looking for it.”

It’s a deeply racial, not merely religious, bigotry; it’s not the Jews’ cupidity or their class role—it’s them. In his autobiography, Chesterton tries to defend himself by explaining what it is that makes people naturally mistrust Jews. All schoolboys recognized Jews as Jews, he says, and when they did so “what they saw was not Semites or Schismatics or capitalists or revolutionists, but foreigners, only foreigners that were not called foreigners.” Even a seemingly assimilated Jew, in Chesterton’s world, remains a foreigner. No one born a Jew can become a good Englishman: if England had sunk into the Atlantic, he says, Disraeli would have run off to America. The more he tries to excuse himself, the worse it gets. In his autobiography, he writes of how he appreciates that “one of the great Jewish virtues is gratitude,” and explains that he knows this because as a kid at school “I was criticized in early days for quixotry and priggishness in protecting Jews; and I remember once extricating a strange swarthy little creature with a hooked nose from being bullied, or rather being teased.”

The insistence that Chesterton’s anti-Semitism needs to be understood “in the context of his time” defines the problem, because his time—from the end of the Great War to the mid-thirties—was the time that led to the extermination of the European Jews. In that context, his jocose stuff is even more sinister than his serious stuff. He claims that he can tolerate Jews in England, but only if they are compelled to wear “Arab” clothing, to show that they are an alien nation. Hitler made a simpler demand for Jewish dress, but the idea was the same. Of course, there were, tragically and ironically, points of contact between Chesterton and Zionism. He went to Jerusalem in 1920 and reported back on what he found among the nascent Zionists, whom he liked: he wanted them out of Europe and so did they; he wanted Jews to be turned from rootless cosmopolitans into rooted yeomen, and so did they.

Chesterton wasn’t a fascist, and he certainly wasn’t in favor of genocide, but that is about the best that can be said for him—and is surely less of a moral accomplishment than his admirers would like. He did speak out, toward the end of his life, against the persecution in Nazi Germany, writing that he was “appalled by the Hitlerite atrocities,” that “they have absolutely no reason or logic behind them,” that “I am quite ready to believe now that Belloc and I will die defending the last Jew in Europe.” Yet he insisted, “I still think there is a Jewish problem,” and he denounced Hitler in the context of a wacky argument that Nazism is really a form of “Prussianism,” which is really a form of Judaism; that is, a belief in a chosen, specially exalted people. (For what it’s worth, although he mistrusts Judaism, he detests Islam; Judaism is merely pre-Christian but Islam is a kind of parody Christianity. All the favorite historical arguments for Jesus—that he had to be either crazy or right, and he doesn’t seem crazy; that he changed the world with a suddenness not plausible in an ordinary human; that the scale of the edifice he inspired is proof of divine inspiration—apply just as well to Muhammad, and they can’t both be the guy.)

The trouble for those of us who love Chesterton’s writing is that the anti-Semitism is not incidental: it rises from the logic of his poetic position. The anti-Semitism is easy to excise from his arguments when it’s explicit. It’s harder to excise the spirit that leads to it—the suspicion of the alien, the extreme localism, the favoring of national instinct over rational argument, the distaste for “parasitic” middlemen, and the preference for the simple organ-grinding music of the folk.

His defenders insist that, whatever harm he did to himself and his reputation by his prejudices, the often long, always didactic, and specifically Catholic books to which he devoted himself after his conversion more than make up for it, since they are both profound and genuinely universal, insisting on a pan-national commonality in the true faith. I have had these books—“The Everlasting Man,” a study of Jesus and Christianity; his life of St. Francis; his defense of Thomas Aquinas—pressed on me by Catholic friends with something like the same enthusiasm with which I have proselytized for the pre-Catholic Chesterton. It is hard for a nonbeliever to evaluate this kind of writing, which, despite its evangelical exhortations, is really written to comfort and encourage the already convinced. We choose a religion, when we do, not for the tenets of a creed but for the totality of a circumstance, for a tone and a practice and an encompassing condition: “It feels like home” (or “like my father’s puppet theatre”) is about the truest thing that the convert can say about his new faith. As Chesterton would have been the first to admit, nobody has to argue so strenuously for what he actually believes. Nobody gets up on a soapbox and shouts about the comfort of his sofa and chairs. He just invites other people to sit in them.

In these books, Chesterton becomes a Pangloss of the parish; anything Roman is right. It is hard to credit that even a convinced Catholic can feel equally strongly about St. Francis’s intuitive mysticism and St. Thomas’s pedantic religiosity, as Chesterton seems to. His writing suffers from conversion sickness. Converts tend to see the faith they were raised in as an exasperatingly makeshift and jury-rigged system: Anglican converts to Catholicism are relieved not to have to defend Henry VIII’s divorces; Jewish converts to Christianity are relieved to get out from under the weight of all those strange Levitical laws on animal hooves. The newly adopted faith, they imagine, is a shining, perfectly balanced system, an intricately worked clock where the cosmos turns to tell the time and the cuckoo comes out singing every Sunday. An outsider sees the Church as a dreamy compound of incense and impossibility, and, overglamorizing its pretensions, underrates its adaptability. A Frenchman or an Italian, even a devout one, can see the Catholic Church as a normally bureaucratic human institution, the way patriotic Americans see the post office, recognizing the frailty and even the occasional psychosis of its employees without doubting its necessity or its ability to deliver the message. Chesterton writing about the Church is like someone who has just made his first trip to the post office. Look, it delivers letters for the tiny price of a stamp! You write an address on a label, and they will send it anywhere, literally anywhere you like, across a continent and an ocean, in any weather! The fact that the post office attracts timeservers, or has produced an occasional gun massacre, is only proof of the mystical enthusiasm that the post office alone provides! Glorifying the postman beyond what the postman can bear is what you do only if you’re new to mail.

The books became narrower as they got bigger. The problem of how you reconcile a love of the particular with a set of universal values seemed easy; the Catholic Church was large enough to provide a universal code and ritual for life with plenty of room for variation among lives within it. The trouble is that Catholic universalism is not so convincing to those whose idea of local variation involves a variation on the Catholic ritual, or wanting some other ritual, or wanting no ritual at all. Chesterton’s vision has no room in it for tolerance, except as a likable personal whim or an idiosyncratic national trait. (That he was personally tolerant, on this basis, no one can doubt.) The history of persecution, of Albigensians and Inquisitions, is constantly defended in the inevitable “though it can only be regretted/still it must always be remembered” manner.

The wonderful spirit of early Chesterton—who is equally religious but not so neatly dogmatic—got channelled into the Father Brown detective stories, which he wrote for money and from increasingly flagging inspiration, and into the torrent of weekly journalism, which he kept up right until his death. The later essays are often as brilliant as those of the early nineteen-hundreds. Chesterton on the virtues of the newly invented cartoon, on the absurdities of Prohibition in America, on social manners within New York skyscrapers is still wonderful. (Musing on how an American always takes off his hat in an elevator, he writes that the very word “elevator” “expresses a great deal of his vague but idealistic religion,” and he goes on, “Perhaps a brief religious service will be held in the elevator as it ascends; in a few well-chosen words touching the Utmost for the Highest. . . . The tall building is itself artistically akin to the tall story. The very word skyscraper is an admirable example of an American lie.”) But often one has the sense of a man chained to a paradox assembly line in a prose factory. Too much journalism does drain a writer; turns his tics into tocks, dully marking the time until the next check.

And then he seemed very dated very soon. There are two great tectonic shifts in English writing. One occurs in the early eighteenth century, when Addison and Steele begin The Spectator and the stop-and-start Elizabethan-Stuart prose becomes the smooth, Latinate, elegantly wrought ironic style that dominated English writing for two centuries. Gibbon made it sly and ornate; Johnson gave it sinew and muscle; Dickens mocked it at elaborate comic length. But the style—formal address, long windups, balance sought for and achieved—was still a sort of default, the voice in which leader pages more or less wrote themselves.

The second big shift occurred just after the First World War, when, under American and Irish pressure, and thanks to the French (Flaubert doing his work through early Joyce and Hemingway), a new form of aerodynamic prose came into being. The new style could be as limpid as Waugh or as blunt as Orwell or as funny as White and Benchley, but it dethroned the old orotundity as surely as Addison had killed off the old asymmetry. Chestertonian mannerisms—beginning sentences with “I wish to conclude” or “I should say, therefore” or “Moreover,” using the first person plural un-self-consciously (“What we have to ask ourselves . . .”), making sure that every sentence was crafted like a sword and loaded like a cannon—appeared to have come from some other universe. Writers like Shaw and Chesterton depended on a kind of comic and complicit hyperbole: every statement is an overstatement, and understood as such by readers. The new style prized understatement, to be filled in by the reader. What had seemed charming and obviously theatrical twenty years before now could sound like puff and noise. Human nature didn’t change in 1910, but English writing did. (For Virginia Woolf, they were the same thing.) The few writers of the nineties who were still writing a couple of decades later were as dazed as the last dinosaurs, post-comet. They didn’t know what had hit them, and went on roaring anyway.

In the late twenties, many people lost their bearings, and Chesterton began to drift farther right than he had before. Though he never fully embraced Mussolini, he was in spirit as good a Falangist as you could find: he dreamed of an anti-capitalist agricultural state overseen by the Catholic Church and governed by a military for whom medieval ideas of honor still resonated, a place where Jews would not be persecuted or killed, certainly, but hived off and always marked as foreigners. All anti-utopians cherish a secret utopia, an Eden of their own, and his, ironically, was achieved: his ideal order was ascendant over the whole Iberian Peninsula for half a century. And a bleak place it was, too, with a fearful ruling class running a frightened population in an atmosphere of poverty-stricken uniformity and terrified stasis—a lot more like the actual medieval condition than like the Victorian fantasy. (Just as William Morris’s or Ruskin’s medieval guilds were the leisure activities of a Victorian moneyed and altruistic class projected backward in time, Chesterton’s medieval London was really a nostalgic vision of late-Victorian London suburbs, small craftsmen gathered around the village green.)

He died, at the age of sixty-two, in his beloved country town of Beaconsfield (Disraeli had previously been its most illustrious resident), worse for wear after decades of non-stop writing, editing, and lecture-touring. His coffin was too big to be carried down the stairs, and had to be taken through a window. But even in his final years the sinuosity of his mind and the beauty of his line remained strong. (Besides, if obviously great writers were allowed onto the reading list only when they conform to the current consensus of liberal good will—voices of tolerance and liberal democracy—we would probably be down to George Eliot.)

Chesterton’s conundrums of imagination and fact retain their grip on us, because they remind us that we know two things. We know that we have our experience of a limited world, Surbiton or Notting Hill or Telegraph Hill. We also know that this experience doesn’t feel limited, that it includes far more—all of myth and religion and meaning, as the children’s puppet theatre does. The desire for mystery and romance can’t be argued out of importance, but it can’t be willed into existence, either. It is a mistake to believe that the man with the golden key is “only” a puppet when he acts out a story that alters the inside of your head; it is also a mistake to cover your eyes and wish away the strings.

We can take the belief in that puppet to be a delusion, as the rationalists did. Or we can take it to be an intimation, as Chesterton did, of the existence of another world, in which the things that we sense as shadows will become real, and we will see ourselves as puppets that have come alive in the hand of God. Or we can believe that the credit we give the puppet show is the credit it deserves, that the wonder of it cannot be explained, up or down, but only experienced; that the side we see is the side there is to look at, and that the white radiance of wonder shines from inside, which is where the light is."

#this was good #chesterton #another one from my chrome phone tabs #antisemitism #g. k. chesterton

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grandhotelabyss · 7 months

Note

Do you think T. S. Eliot was anti-semitic?

Yes, and not in a way incidental to his work, but as a part of his whole judgment against the modern world—the world since what he called the "dissociation of sensibility" that supposedly set in sometime in the 17th century—as a crassly commercial, despiritualized, emptily theoretical and therefore emptily sensuous anti-culture. In his imagination, the "jew," which he notoriously writes without its capital letter in "Gerontion," stands for an animal rapacity at the heart of the modern ("Rachel née Rabinovitch / Tears at the grapes with murderous paws") and a moneyed parody of former grandeur ("She entertains Sir Ferdinand / Klein"). It is not, then, a figment of the neoconservative imagination to understand the European avant-garde's hostility to "the American way of life" as allied to its anti-Semitism. That socialism per se slips so easily and so often into the socialism of fools suggests it's not entirely a misprision on the part of the fools. (Incidentally, one merit of Joyce is never to have been tempted by this way of conceiving the matter, to have seen through it very clearly.) Eliot, though, was not a member of the European avant-grade by birth, was rather a Boston Brahmin displaced to the Midwest, and happily enjoyed other imaginative resources than these spiteful ones. The quest for spiritual wholeness in the fragmentary Waste Land, after Pound's disposal of some anti-Semitic refuse Eliot had proposed to include in the poem, becomes a genuinely universal one, overtly addressed to "Gentile or Jew." Meanwhile, from the distance of a century, Eliot's upstart entrepreneurialism as a poet-critic from "nowhere" legislating first for London and then for Christendom at large gives a tinge of tragicomic irony to the whole situation, as if anyone were ever more the rootless cosmopolitan than our vaunted conservative, as if he could have seen anything other when he looked in the mirror than just another example of what he called, in imagining their expulsion from the Christian polity, "free-thinking Jews." But then pretending that what you hate when you look in the mirror is the sole property of someone else, belongs exclusively to those people over there, is just what this particular species of delusion always amounts to.

#t. s. eliot #modernism

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empressofkalumina · 3 years

Text

I love flowering gardens.

I love creeping plants.

I love walking in the air,

but I fear swarming ants.

-Tallie Dickinson

#give her the pulitzer! lol #t(allie).s eliot #i can’t with her #she was so proud of herself 😭#the world to come #the world to come spoilers #she could read to me about anything with that voice #tallie's poem #abigail x tallie #I haven’t seen it yet but the chemistry 🔥#katherine waterston #vanessa kirby #edit #abigail is like this idiot😍

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thelibraryiscool · 6 years

Quote

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing that it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T. S. Eliot

#was rereading it for a class recently #I have such mixed feelings about Eliot #poetry #t s eliot #modernism #the love song of j. alfred prufrock #october #autumn #quote #allie reads

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davidlikesguys02 · 3 years

Text

We Interrupt This Program

M/n= Male Name

Bold- Means its on a tv screen.

GIF Not mine

Word count: 2,932

“No, I can't leave Monica.” “mom? It's ok, I can stay with grandma and…” “I can't leave” “maybe I'll build a spaceship. I wanna be an aircraft pilot.” “when they were handing out kids they gave her the toughest one. Lieutenant trouble.” Monica wakes up breathing heavily and hearing crashing and people screaming as she makes her way towards the door and walks out. “Excuse me….” “they're all coming back. We don't have the capacity” the doctor tells her

“Excuse me. I'm looking for a patient. In room 104…” she asks a nurse “who, my wife? Do you have a phone?” “no” “i have to call my wife.” she makes her way towards the front desk “watch out” she bumps into a man, they both fall backwards grunting “let me help you. Are you ok? You ok?” “I got him. I got him.” “Are you ok?” she asks as she gets up groaning. She turns to the lady in the front desk.

“Excuse me. I'm looking for a patient in room number 104.” “I don't know what to tell you” she starts looking around her “Monica?” “oh, Dr. Highland, thank god!” “I can't believe it, where did you go?” “well, in her room since she came back from the surgery. I mean, I might have fallen asleep, but no longer than 20 minutes. Dr. Highland, where's my mom?” “your mom, she died honey” “what? No, no, no, no you're mistaken. My mother...the procedure went well. You said so yourself. Clean margins. You’re discharging her today”

“The cancer came back.” “Okay, stop, stop. No youre...my mom is Maria Rambeau. Look it up. I mean look it up. Maria Rambeau.” “Monica, I don't understand what's happening, but you need to listen to me Marian died three years ago.” “three? No. no. no…” “which was two years after you…” “after i what? After what?” “after you disappeared.”

Monica is walking towards big metal doors. She takes out her keycards but it beeps so she tries again but it beeped again “Ma’am? Over here please” she walked over to him smiling “hi, good morning. I work here. And…” “if you did, your badge would work, wouldn't it?” “right um… I have a meeting with…” “hey. You know who this is?” “..this guy” “Captain Monica Rambeau.” “Director Tyler Hayward”

“Acting Director. You haven't aged a day” “and you look old as hell” Tyler chuckles “come on, let's catch you up. It's been three weeks and you're the first to report. Cant say I'm surprised captain.” “How are the numbers for the astronaut training program?” “ Dismal. Lost half my personnel in The Blip and half of those remaining have lost their nerve. The program hasn't been the same since you've been up there, Rambeau. We shifted away from manned missions and refocused on robotics, nanotech, AI. Sentient Weapons, like it says on the door.”

“It also says observation and response on that door, not creation” “worlds not the same as you left it. Space is now full of unexpected threats” “always was full of threats. And allies” “Listen, Monica, I just wanna acknowledge the awkwardness of the situation. I know S.W.O.R.D.'s your home. Your mom built this place from the ground up. You grew up here. You should've been here to help name the replacement.” “you were the obvious choice”

“I was the only choice.” “I wasn't gonna say it. Look, Tyler, you know the job you have to do. I'm here to do mine.” ”Let's get you back out there.” he takes out his keycard and opens the door to his office. “The FBI is in a tizzy over missing persons case up in Jersey…” “missing persons?” “I know. But they have requested use of one of our imaging drones, and I need a chaperone.”

“Tyler, drones usually chaperone me.” “i get it” “look, if this is because of...you don't have to worry about me. I'm good.” “There's no easy way to say this, but you're grounded.” Monica chuckles “you're kidding. For how long? Who whose protocol is this?” “Your mother's. She implemented guidelines in the event vanished personnel ever returned. Look, I know it's a raw deal, but there is one positive takeaway.” “what's that?” “she believed you'd come back. You'd be doing me a big favor with this FBI thing, but if you need more time…”

“No. no. I'm good to go” “excellent. Keep me updated, captain.” Monica finally arrived at Westview “James E. Woo, FBI” “Monica Rambeau, S.W.O.R.D. what's the story here, agent woo?” “I've got a witness setup down the road in Westview, and this morning, it looked like he flew the coop?” “Your missing person is in the witness protection program?”

“I have contacted known associates, relatives…” “and let me guess, none of them have seen him either?” “No. None of them have ever heard of him. Something seemed hanky to me, so I took the first flight out of Oakland to interface with local law enforcement, which is when I encountered a new wrinkle.” “what's that?” “Pardon me, Sheriff. Would you mind repeating your claim about Westview to my colleague here?” “no such place” “you're saying the town of Westview, New Jersey, does not exist?”

“It's what I keep telling your G-man here, but he won't listen.” “I see. and , um, I'm sorry, what town are you from?” “Eastview” “Thank you, Sheriff. I'll reach out if we need any further assistance. I, uh, pulled phone numbers for all the residents. I'm only through the D’s, but so far I got Diddly Squat.” “So you can't reach anyone inside and everyone on the outside has some sort of selective amnesia?”

“This isn't a missing person's case, Captain Rambeau, it's a missing town. Population: 3,892.” “Why haven't you gone inside to investigate?” “Cause it doesn't want me to. You can feel it too, can't you? Nobody's supposed to go in.” Monica walks over to her car and pulls out a drone. “What about you?” “Me? Well, I'm from Bakersfield, originally. Growing up, other kids had Michael Jordan posters on their walls, but I had Eliot Ness.”

“No, no, no, no. I mean, why is it that you have an awareness of Westview? Or me, for that matter? Is it because we are outside of a certain radius, or maybe because we don't have a personal connection?” She looks at the screen but the drone malfunctions. She looks up and it's gone “Wait, where'd it go?” “It was right there.” she walk towards the town but stops as she hears electricity bussing “whoa..”

“What is it?” “some sort of energy field” “Careful, Rambeau. Captain Rambeau! Watch it. Rambeau! Captain Rambeau! Captain Rambeau!” she sticks her hand in and it pulls her in and she disappears.

24 Hours Later

“Hey. What's your field?” “We're not supposed to talk to each other.” “hmm? Boy scout leader. Got it. And you” Darcy asked a woman next to the boy scout leader. “Nuclear biology” “artificial intelligence” “astrophysics. We got the full clown car. It means whatever the threat is, S.W.O.R.D. clearly has no idea what they're dealing with.” “I'm a chemical engineer” “no one cares”

“Alright grab your gear.” Darcy walks around the S.W.O.R.D. camp. “Ms. Lewis?” “Dr.Lewis” “we have your gear set up inside.” the man walks Darcy inside a tent “those drones you're sending in, what kind of data are you getting?” “I'm afraid that is highly classified.” “You can't see anything? FBI, Army. I saw the Air Force Office of Special Investigations out there. Research Lab, Space Command, too. A bona fide, joint, multi-service response. Really looking forward to the commemorative T-shirt. Is there somewhere a lady could get a cup of coffee? You guys look like you might get down with those little pod things. Horrendous for the environment…”

“Make your assessment, please” “whoa… I mean, whoa..” “what are you getting?” “a colossal amount of CMBR” “CM…” “Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.” “we've been told the radiation is within a safe limit” “uh, it is… for now” “wait what do you mean” Darcy shushes the man “there's are longer wavelength superimposed over the noise here” she looks under the desk and struggles to get something “I got it”

“I need a TV. an old one. Like, not flat.” After a few hours it started raining. “Are you good to go?” Hayward asked an agent “yes, sir” “these sewers will take you straight into town. Try to find anything you can on Rambeau” “copy that” “keep me updated” Hayward says as he walks away. “Director Hayward, between you, me, and the bedpost, I am not confident about this mission.” “Thanks for the feedback, Jimmy. If only my drones were as forthcoming.”

“There's no reason to suspect the perimeter doesn't extend subterraneous.” “There's no reason to suspect it does.” Jimmy sighs “We don't know enough about the nature of the threat to send in another agent when the first is yet to return.” “Someone must really miss you back in Quantico.” “No, sir. Softball season's over, sir.” “what do we have up?” Hayward asked agent Rodriguez “Radar, sonar, infrared” “cycle through. Will someone get me a useful visual, dammit?”

Everyone hears a studio audience laughing in the tent “what is that?” “Can I see you in the kitchen for a moment, sweetheart?” “Who is doing that?” “Who are those people?” “What are you wearing?” “Why are they here?” “Well, it's our anniversary!” “our anniversary of what?” “Well, if you don't know, I'm not going to tell you!” “is that..” “ yeah, it looks like him.” “you move at the speed of sound and i can make a pen float through the air, who needs to abbreviate?”

“Look , I know it's been a crazy few years on this planet, but he's dead, right? Not blipped, dead.” “excellent plan. Where's the tenderizer” “what am I looking at? You? What is that? Where's this coming from?” “out there” “you didn’t answer the back door. For your upside-down cake. oh hi, I” “is it authentic?” “I'm not sure how to answer that” “is it happening in real time? Is it recorded, fabricated?” “I don't know. I don't know. And I don't know” “what do you know?” Hayward said annoyed “My equipment registered an extremely high level of CMBR. That's…”

“Relic radiation dating back to the Big Bang.” “Yeah, entwined was a broadcast frequency. So I had your goons pick me up a sweet vintage TV. And when I plug this bad boy in, voilà, sound and picture.” “Dinner is served” “So you're saying the universe created a sitcom starring two Avengers?” Jimmy asked, confused “It's a working theory” “Get me a transport back to headquarters now. Are we recording this?”

“Never stopped.” Darcy says “I need immediate analysis. Now, people. Let's go!” “He’s a charmer.” “great work” “hey, thanks, maybe I could get that cup of coffee now? Or not. It's cool.” ”Aw” Darcy turns to the screen to see you and Vision kissing “Aw”

“First and foremost, our main objective is to get any intel on Captain Rambeau, but originally, this case was a missing person, so we're going to start there. We've successfully identified two individuals inside the Westview anomaly. Let's keep going.” Jimmy says as he puts two pictures up of you and Vision. “This guest is leaving your home” “yes, thank you for coming” “Mr. and Mrs. Hart. played by Todd and Sharon Davis.”

“Computational forms. And no one can process the data quite like you do, pal.” “Agent Woo” “you're like a walking computer.” “Abilash Tandon is Norm” “Harold Proctor is Jones” “we got Isabel Matsueida cast as Beverly” “John Collins as Herb.” Darcy gasps, dropping her Noodle cup and calls Jimmy over “Really?” “Does she seem okay to you?” “Well, she doesn't appear to be harmed in any way, but that is definitely not the boss lady I met yesterday.”

“So what, deep cover? Monica has to play along?” “With whom? Or else, what? All right. Brass tacks, Dr. Lewis. What are we looking at here? Is it an alternate reality? Time travel? Some cockamamie social experiment?” “It's a sitcom. A 1950s sitcom.” “But why?”

“Hey, man, we're working with the same scarcity of intel. But, listen, I do have an idea. So, you've seen that radio in M/n’s kitchen counter, right? The next time he's washing dishes, which, by my count, happens about once an episode, barf, we'll shoot a signal to that little guy. This transmitter will mimic the frequency of the broadcast, and if my theory is right, allow us to speak directly to her. This is totally gonna work. Don't touch that.”

“Agent Woo.” agent Rodrigues hands Jimmy a folder inside the folder there's a colored image of a retro S.W.O.R.D. drone “Is this from the current episode?” “aired about two minutes ago.” “What is it?” Darcy asks “what does it look like to you?” “like a retro version of a S.W.OR.D. drone?” “bingo” “but how did it change and why” “uh, to go with the production design” “or render it useless”

“why‘d you colorize it?” “I didn't” Darcy heads back to the tent. “Let's get this show on the road. Jimmy, you ready?” Darcy asks through an earpiece. “Ready” “bigger and better every season” “uh, Jimmy, Monica is talking to M/n. she's got a speaking part now.” “what is she saying?” “those jeans are peachy keen” “she likes M/n’s jeans” “we only have a few hours” “M/n’s at some sort of swim club. We've never been here before.”

“Is it the 60’s still?” “uh, uh, M/n’s with another character.” “real person?” “ohh, uh, radio on the side table. start talking.” “M/n. M/n, can you read me over?” “I don't...” “Can he hear me?” “I don't think so, keep trying.” “M/n?” “M/n?” “M/n. Who is doing this to you, M/n? M/n? Can you hear me? I'm here to help” “please give us a…” “pop quiz M/n how does a housewife or in this case househusband get a bloodstain out of white linen?”

“Wait” “what?” “I don't know” “by doing it yourself” “that's weird” “what was?” “Nothing, it's over. Mission failure” “it was worth a try. Good effort, doctor.” “yeah come in”

Both Jimmy and Darcy are watching you and Vision on TV “darling, do you think it's time to..” “call the doctor?” “yeah” “yes, I do dear” “1950s, 1960s, and now the '70s. Why does it keep switching time periods? It can't be purely for my enjoyment, can it?” “I cant believe M/n and Vision are having a baby” “you want any?” Jimmy chuckles

“Heck, I thought about it for sure. A little Jimmy Woo. Get him a tiny little FBI badge. Oh, you... Chip? Sure.” “you're doing great. You're doing great. Look at me. Look at me.” “The jig is up” you scream. After a few minutes you hear the baby cry “hi, oh, he's perfect” “what a twist.” Darcy says as she's tearing up “What? I'm invested” “he was killed by Ultron, wasn't he?” “Did she just say the name Ultron? Has that ever happened before? A reference to our reality.”

“No never” “hey I'll take a shift rocking the babies” “no I think you should leave” “oh, M/n, don't be like that” “who are you?” “M/n” “wow this is different” The Tv cuts and Monica is gone “what happened? Where she go?” “god not again” Darcy replays the footage back “who are you?” “M/n” “there's nothing here. One second, Monica is standing right there, and the next she isn’t. Someone is censoring the broadcast.”

“But where's Rambeau?” they suddenly both hear the alarm “Alert! Boundary has been breached! Alert! Boundary has been breached!”

Inside Westview

“Who are you?” “I don't..” you walk closer to her “who are you?” “M/n i'm just your neighbor.” “Then how did you know about Ultron?” you start to see the familiar red glow around your hands “You're not my neighbor. And you're definitely not my friend. You are a stranger and an outsider. And right now, you are trespassing here. And I want you to leave.”

Your familiar red glow wraps around Monica Sending her back through every wall and fence. You gulp “I… I…” you raise your hands and start to fix the hole on the wall as if it never happened. You walk over to your babies hearing them “M/n?” Vision comes in through the door turning back to his synthezoid form “where is Geraldine?” “oh she left honey. She had to rush home”

You turn around to look at Vision and you gasp making you look down “what? What is it? What's wrong?” Vision asks you concerned “Uh..” you slowly look up at him and see that he looks normal again “we don't have to stay here. We could go wherever we want” Vision tells you “no, we can't. This is our home” you move your hand to crease his cheek and he holds onto your hand “are you use”

“oh, don't worry darling. I have everything under control.” you walk over and grab Tommy “oh hi” you turn to Vision smiling “what should we watch tonight?” you walk over to the sofa, Vision sits next to you. He puts an arm around you.

Outside of Westview

“Monica, are you okay?” “it's M/n. its all M/n”

#Marvel x male!reader #Marvel x male reader #WandaVision x male reader #WandaVision x male!reader #Vision x male!reader #Vision x male reader #male!reader #male reader

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wintryblight · 3 years

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Hi ;) You probably have lots of asks and you are lovely for all you do. If you have the time to get to it could you recommend some soothing poems that talk about how age, looks, money and most things don’t really matter because we are really small and the universe is vast... much love 💖

hi anon! i have previously made an existential-themed compilation here. here are some more poems about our smallness in the face of the universe. enjoy reading & having a soothing existential crisis!

Mary Oliver, “October” | So this is the world. / I’m not in it. / It is beautiful.

Mary Oliver, “Sleeping in the Forest” | All night I heard the small kingdoms / breathing around me, the insects, / and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

Mary Oliver, “Dogfish” | whoever I was, I was / alive / for a little while.

Sharon Olds, “First Hour” | The air / was softly touching my skin and mouth, / entering me and drawing forth the little / sighs I did not know as mine.

Marissa Davis, “Singularity” | & my children & your children / & their children & the children / of the black bears & gladiolus & pink florida grapefruit / here not allied but the same perpetual breath / held fast to each other as each other’s own skin

Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” | My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, / The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn

T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” | I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter; / I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker

#poetry #web weaving #mary oliver #compilation #reading list #recommendation #marissa davis #sharon olds #walt whitman #t. s. eliot #existential

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randomestfandoms-ocs · 3 years

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WBW + Rachel

B A S I C S

full name: Rachel Elizabeth Eliot (why are all of my ocs' middle names elizabeth? bc all of my friends' middle names are elizabeth lmao it's a whole thing)

gender: female

sexuality: lesbian

pronouns: she/her

O T H E R S

family: Sam Eliot (twin brother), Campbell Eliot (older brother), Eden Gelb (niece/step-daughter adjacent?), Allie & Cassandra Pressman (cousins), Doug Eliot (father), Lynette Eliot (mother), Rogers Eliot (uncle), Jim Pressman (uncle), Amanda Pressman (aunt)

birthplace: West Ham, Connecticut

job: student, archivist, photographer, reporter

phobias: clowns, suffocation, snakes

guilty pleasures: say yes to the dress

M O R A L S

morality alignment?: chaotic good

sins - lust/greed/gluttony/sloth/pride/envy/wrath

virtues - chastity/charity/diligence/humility/kindness/patience/justice

T H I S - O R - T H A T

introvert/extrovert

organized/disorganized

close minded/open-minded

calm/anxious

disagreeable/agreeable

cautious/reckless

patient/impatient

outspoken/reserved

leader/follower

empathetic/unemphatic

optimistic/pessimistic

traditional/modern

hard-working/lazy

R E L A T I O N S H I P S

otp: Rachel x Becca

ot3: Rachel x Becca x Kelly

brotp: Rachel & Grizz, Rachel & Sam

notp: Rachel x any guys

Send me “World Building Wednesday” and an OC and I’ll tell you

#ask #answered #annibunnysworld #rachel eliot #about rachel

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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“One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail; Rights by rights falter, strengths by strengths do fail.” — Coriolanus, Act II, Scene VII

This brief excerpt from Coriolanus cuts to the quick of the Intellectual Dark Web (IDW), and their exaltation of individualism over tribalism and rationalism over ‘barbarism’. Coriolanus carries a dubious honor Shakespeare’s other works do not. The Roman tragedy was his only play formally banned under a liberal democracy; Its militarism troubled Allied censors in post-war Germany. In the play, Shakespeare elucidates the essential nature of all conflict: “strengths by strengths do fail.” Only a power can overcome another power, only a tribe another tribe.

The IDW can be divided into three principal factions: The New Atheists, led by Sam Harris, are vociferous critics of Islam, ‘Trumpism’, and woke fervor. The ‘Hard Liberals’, flagshipped by Bari Weiss and the Weinstein brothers, share many of the same viewpoints as the ‘wokeists’ they oppose, but seek to advance their position through discourse and persuasion. Finally, there are the Right Liberals, embodied in polemical figures like Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin, and to a lesser extent, psychologist Jordan Peterson.

Almost every ‘member’ is concerned with the threats unfettered tribalism pose to civil society. In response to the January 6th Capitol events, Weiss asserted that America’s “liberal consensus is dying because of ideologues on the left and the right who hate the other side more than they love the country.” She goes on to call for respect of “our common identity as Americans.” But Weiss has her diagnosis of American decline backward. There is no ‘America’ as she describes. The liberal consensus scrapped American identity for parts during its sixty-year campaign of deindustrialization and deterritorialization. Regional identities were evacuated for hagiographic narratives of migration. Offshoring hollowed out once-proud cities and towns, annihilating regional elites and common livelihoods. Secularism disintegrated Americans’ shared moral universe, and catapulted cosmopolitans and heartlanders in opposite directions. The issue is not too much identity, or too much ideology, but too little, and of little quality.

As media theorist Marshall McLuhan believed, weak identities produce violence. Without metanarrative frameworks, senses of belonging, and ties to somewhere, man becomes violent to prove to himself he exists. The frontier, the high seas, the contemporary Middle East, are all replete with “people minus identity.” What Weiss sees as overactive tribalism is its obverse: a multitude of weak identities struggling to prove to themselves that they still exist. If you put swathes of the country under spiritual and material siege, they will lash out. The solution, then, is not to embrace a sort of vacuous pluralism or individualism, but to create strong collective identities, and remove the threats to these identities currently provoking violence.

On some level, Weiss knows this is the case. Her hero, Natan Sharansky, chaired a clandestine committee that removed Palestinians from East Jerusalem so Israelis could settle there, and consistently rebuffs taking any actions that may limit Israeli sovereignty. Fair, but the luxury of nationalism isn’t extended to Weiss’ American compatriots, the Trumpists she considers beyond hope. The civil strife and violence of today is, as ever, ‘a quest for identity’, something that civility and moderation themselves can never provide. These are the fruits of strong identities and political order, not its preconditions. There is no middle ground between evangelicalism and transgenderism, nor nationalism and globalism. Not even facts themselves supersede this tribal paradigm, and have themselves all but disappeared.

In honor of Caius Martius’ conquest of Corioli, he is given the name Coriolanus. After being urged to campaign for consul, he is ejected from Rome by envious patrician demagoguery. Rather than retreat into glum hermitage or inglorious sinecure, Coriolanus claims it is he who forsakes Rome and its people: “that do corrupt my air, I banish you!” He throws in his lot with an enemy tribe, the Volscians, and plots to destroy Rome. The IDW, almost entirely liberal to its core, is incapable of following him, because ultimately they’re true believers. Despite their own banishment, their own disdain for BLM and Antifa vulgarity, they’re unwilling to part ways with liberalism. If their cause was noble, or even viable, their antagonism toward political reality would be admirable.

…

The relationship between power and knowledge runs down to the very foundation of every society. At its metanarrative heart, there will always be something beyond criticism, justified by itself alone. Blasphemy laws arise to defend this core from injury, and to protect the people from being led astray. Today, the ‘seamless garment’ of kaleidoscopic minority ‘rights’ are this unquestionable center in American public life. This, the IDW understands — but their response is woefully inadequate. They seek a revival of an open public square, in which they will compete and triumph in a ‘battle of ideas’. Joseph de Maistre saw clearly in his Generative Principle of Constitutions that society’s spiritual core is not determined by elocution or intellectualism. As he writes, “fundamental principles of political constitutions exist prior to all written law.” It is not that a critical mass of Americans was persuaded to support abortion, gay marriage, or Black Lives Matter. These were victories delivered by judicial fiat or mass intimidation. Power inscribes new constitutions in man’s heart, and moves society in its stead. The IDW, an elitist project without elitist influence, can not change society with either podcast or polemic. Only power can do that.

This isn’t to say the IDW is all pacifism and pusillanimity. Sam Harris, for one, is perfectly fine with vituperation against an enemy. The targets of his ire are typically religious yokels, either domestic or foreign. His lengthy defense of torture and belief that “some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them,” show that Harris is, as any other tribal, focused on rewarding friends and punishing enemies. Carl Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction expresses itself among rationalists as well as zealots. What is different is that erstwhile IDWers are spectacularly bad at discerning ‘friend’ from ‘enemy’.

Brett Weinstein — who was famously forced to flee Evergreen College with his wife after protesting a banishment ritual inflicted on white students — recently waded into a ‘Wokeism’ Clubhouse discussion, brandishing his anti-racist credentials, only to be coerced into a struggle session, silenced, and pressured for Venmo reparations. Weinstein appealed to the purported common moral framework shared by those in the discussion, saying “I’m not a classical liberal, I’m an actual liberal.” Despite his protestations, his on-command affirmations of BLM and transgenderism, he was utterly routed. The Clubhouse coup against him isn’t fantastically unreasonable. Brett is claiming ostensible membership in the tribe, only to object to their victories on the grounds of procedure or politeness. He agrees with the leaders’ underlying premises regarding white supremacy, but refuses to take the radical action which necessarily accompanies that claim, for this tribe. IDW Girondins will proceed to the guillotines apace, in lockstep with the out-groupers.

Coriolanus’ mortal hamartia, his error in judgement, fell along the same lines. On the precipice of conquering Rome, besting his foes, and securing eternal glory, his mother intercedes with him on the city’s behalf. Rather than proceed with the siege, Corioalnus makes peace between Rome and the Volscians, and is promptly sentenced to death for his service. Unlike the IDW, he dies in heroic defiance of his captors. The error, however, is the same. In an attempt to remain tribeless he slights both sects and engineers his own destruction.

…

Postmodernity is a thoroughly haunted epoch. Dead ideologies are revived as kitsch, and past visions of the future hang over popular consciousness and political projects. We are a society in the void between history’s end and its rebeginning. History is idling, waiting to be restarted. The public square is a battleground, and only one tribe will enjoy it as their own in victory. Peterson knows this, though his tyrannophobia prevents him from understanding it fully. While his postmodernization of traditional symbols and stories provides the postliberal right a new means of popular interface, his politics provide neither solace nor solution. For civil society, facts, and ‘normality’ to reemerge, a decisive victory is necessary. Strong collective identities build strong societies, and these identities do not emerge from individualism or rational pursuit.

By and large, the IDW is a spent movement subsisting on podcast sinecures, fractured by Trump, incapable of accepting America’s tribal realities and lacking the understanding to resolve them. In a desperate attempt to escape from ideology, it only tumbles further and further into its maw. As facts themselves fade into ether, its members are left advertising an Enlightenment project long since dissolved. There are no longer any facts, only data flows to be instrumentalized or ignored. Collective identities are in terminal decline, desperately scrambling against deterritorialization through violence. Rights by rights are faltering, and discourse cannot save us.

As we explore our haunted and stagnant era, searching for exit, pining for unity, we see as T. S. Eliot did: “Only at nightfall, aetherial rumors/Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus.” A resurrection of Coriolanus, one who refuses to turn back, will be necessary for America to survive until the Final Resurrection. Those ready to leave the dark will light the way.

#benjamin roberts #im1776 #coriolanus #read the whole thing

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highkingfen · 4 years

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In terms of finding out Eliot is part of the LGBTQ community, I don't think that particular fact has effected Fen, because in Fillory, they are used to people having a husband and a wife. I think it's more Eliot's (understandably) unrequited feelings that have effected Fen. But they have a mutual respect and love for each other now. And I think going through the journey of initially feeling unwanted and then coming out the other end and finding a true friend and ally in a way she wasn't expecting has built Fen's character and value in herself. She accepted that Eliot would never love her in the way she originally thought she needed and realized that it would be wrong to control another person's feelings and also that another person's feelings don't reflect who you are

Brittany Curran about Fen and Eliot journey together

#the magicians #brittany curran #fen #eliot #feliot

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meggie-stardust · 4 years

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I just found this in my drafts. IDK who asked me these, or what it was from, but oh well. I’m gonna post it anyway because it’s that sort of night.

1. What was your first OTP? The first one I actively shipped was 1x2 (Heero Yuy x Duo Maxwell) from Gundam Wing. I may have liked to characters together in things before that, but that was the first one I read fic for, so I’m going with that. (Also, can we bring back x ?)

2. What is your current OTP?

Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Teen Wolf

Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, MCU, 616, AA, Ults

3. Do you have any OT3/OT+ ships? What are your favorites?

Parker/Hardison/Eliot from Leverage is the most perfect OT3 in the world, and it’s canon so A+ there.

I also thought season 2 of Stranger Things was heading towards a Steve/Nancy/Jonathan OT3, which I would have been into, but nope...

Other than that, I can be persuaded to read fic that is a mainship + others, so the occasional Peter/Stiles/pretty much anyone tbh, and the occasional Steve/Tony/Bucky

4. What is/are your favorite trope(s)?

So more general tropes that I enjoy are things like bed sharing/safe houses, soulmates, fake dating, enemies to friends to lovers...

But there are some fandom specific tropes I enjoy, too. So, in Teen Wolf, I really like No Hale Fire, the bite was a proposal, neckz’n’throats

And in MCU, etc I love Identity Porn, Steve is not a virgin, and Undercover mission fics

5. What is/are your least favorite trope(s)? Super not into MPREG or Kidfic (like I don’t mind if there are kids, or the characters have them, but I don’t want it to be the focus; I’m trying to escape from my own!)

6. Do you have a certain kind of ship you’re more attracted to? I tend to like opposite characters who have a lot of chemistry but they don’t exactly see eye to eye or get along 100% of the time, even if some of them are friends/reluctant allies. I just always like a bit of rivalry, I think. If you look at all of the ships I’ve had, most of them fit this description: Heero/Duo (reluctant allies at first), Harry/Draco (rivals), Jack/Spot (friendly rivals), Jason/Percy (friendly rivals), Arthur/Eames (reluctant allies with some past??), Arthur/Merlin (master/servant, but with some friendly rivalry thrown in for good measure), Peter/Stiles (enemies to reluctant allies), Steve/Tony (reluctant allies, to friends, to enemies, back to reluctant allies)... and so on.

8. Who is the most shippable person you can think of? I can pretty much ship Stiles with anyone. He’s a good fandom bicycle.

9. Are there any fandoms you don’t have any ships for? That I’m invested in to some degree? I’m not really interested in any Doctor Who ships outside of what’s canon. Idk why...

10. Do characters have to have canon interactions for you to ship them? At least some. There has to be some basis for what their interactions would be like. But honestly, it doesn’t have to be a lot for me. I can make a mountain out of that small molehill if I need to.

12. What drives you away from a ship? The fans of that ship being shitty. I might still like it, but I won’t engage with that part of the fandom, so the interest will fade much faster.

18. What is your favorite unpopular ship? Stiles Stilinski/Isaac Lahey

20. Do you prefer bigger fanbases or smaller ones? OOh tough. Bigger ones produce more content. Getting back into Stony is a gift with the amount of fic and amazing artists out there. BUT small ones are nice to finding a community and people to interact with.

24. What is your favorite canon ship? I’m gonna go with my OT3 of Parker/Hardison/Eliot. Second place would be a tie between Haruka Teou (Sailor Uranus)/Michiru Kaioh (Sailor Neptune) and Eric Bittle/Jack Zimmerman from Check, Please!

25. What are your favorite ships from a dead fandom? Do fandoms really ever die? Jack/Spot from Newsies. Heero/Duo from GW, Casey/Zeek from The Faculty

26. What are your favorite shipping scenes? “Don’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.”

28. What is your best shipping advice? Just have fun. This is supposed to be fun. If it stops being fun, back away.

29. Do you like OCs (Original Characters)? Sometimes? There is an amazing Check, Please! fic (Something Like This, by emmagrant01) that has some amazing OCs, and they round out the story without overshadowing the canon characters. But I think this sort of thing is few and far between.

#meg answers things #i guess #idk how ling this has been in my drafts #🤷🏼‍♀️

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ratherbewild · 4 years

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@riotkissed: 🎰

ELIOT WAUGH & SERENA VAN DER WOODSEN. Bright Sessions AU. They meet outside Dr B’s office and Eliot recognises her from the spotlight. They eventually bond over being responsible for someone’s death. Eliot becomes a mentor to Eric. Margo is big angry face over Eliot’s new beautiful friend.

MARGO HANSON & NATE ARCHIBALD. I know we said she’d eat him alive BUT… Vampire/Werewolf. Both of them new to being ~supernatural and Margo likes having a warm body underneath her that she can’t accidentally kill.

CLAIRE NOVAK & SCOTT MCCALL. Seasoned hunters know to stay out of Argent territory but Claire is new and clueless. Steamrolls into town looking to kill some werewolves but when one saves her from the Argents’ wrath, shit gets complicated. Maybe ft. eventual werewolf Claire because we love her.

TEGAN BAXTER & KADY ORLOFF DIAZ. Reluctant allies in the war against mutants turned drinking buddies turned fuck buddies. They piss each other off 90% of the time but they’re good in bed and serve the same cause.

KILLER FROST & BRIDGET VREELAND. Frost may have given Bridget a minor case of hypothermia when she was a villain, but l i s t e n , she’s good now, alright? Frost getting Bridget to forgive and befriend her is one of her first missions when she starts spending more time in control of her and Caity’s body.

#riotkissed #( meme. )#.there

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xthefandomequestrianx · 5 years

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Psycho - Chapter 1

I have no idea where to post this but I want to get it out of my folder!

A/N: Yes, I am aware that this is not quite how things happened chronologically. For the sake of the fic, we’re going to pretend that Elle went to Allie and begged to be arrested pretty soon after Dewey’s execution. Kay? Kay. Also I’m not a huge Will fan so he’ll be meh in this. Sorry.

Trigger warnings: injuries, torture, abuse, Campbell is a jerk, swearing because they swear like every line, slight mention of rape

Ship(s): Allie and pretty much everyone (platonically), Allie x Harry, Allie & Grizz (as a brotp)

Chapter 1

Allie winced as she felt a large chunk of her thumb nail rip off, before the stinging sensation of air hitting an open wound filled her senses. She’d been trying to wear through the rope tightly binding her wrists behind her back, but obviously had no such luck.

The day had started out normal, as any other day. She skipped breakfast in favor of a quick check up on Harry, whom anyone had yet to manage to drag out of his depressive state. After her doling out her tough love, he did start working again, though very reluctantly and lacking any effort. Then she’d gone back home and talked extensively with Will and Gordy about the issues of water and electricity - namely, how they would check if they were in danger of running out. Then lunch, where she had a nice conversation with Helena that for once did not revolve around politics. She’d only slipped away for a second to use the bathroom when suddenly he was there, knocking her out with a crowbar and stuffing her in his car.

And that was the quickly-escalating, climactic story of how she’d wound up in Campbell Eliot’s basement.

She knew why she was here, of course. He wanted to force Elle back home, where he could continue to control and abuse her. How he figured he would accomplish this by kidnapping her was uncertain, but she knew his end goal.

“Hey there, princess,” he traipsed down the steps into the basement. “Enjoying your stay?”

She glared at him. “I’m not your house guest, Campbell. You kidnapped me. Get to the point.”

“Feisty. Strong,” he smirked. “Every bit the leader. Except for this time, you get to be my captive. How does it feel?”

“What do you want?” she restated, biting out the words. Perhaps she was being dumb, speaking to him in such a tone while he clearly held the upper hand in this scenario. God, she wished for the Guard to notice her absence. But she’d only been awake for about fifteen minutes, plus about half an hour of being unconscious, she’d guess. Unfortunately, the former West Ham football team didn’t have enough experience in detective work to solve that one in forty five minutes.

“I am asking the questions, here!” He growled. “Tell me, Allie. How. Does. It. Feel?”

She caught a glint of something under his jacket sleeve. Brass knuckles. Fuck.

“Cold,” she said simply. He’d taken most of her outerwear, leaving her in leggings and a t-shirt.

“Not the answer I was hoping for, but I’ll take it. Was that so hard?” His smirk widened - the sick bastard was clearly enjoying this.

She’d been told he was a psychopath, heard the things he had done to Elle, and seen him be an asshole on more occasions than she could count. But this was an entirely new side to him that she had yet to see. It truly scared her, rattled her insides. The word psychopath gained a whole new meaning. “What do you want?” she repeated. Her voice trembled, but she pretended not to notice. The hot tears threatening to fall also went ignored.

“Fair enough - you answer one of mine, and I’ll answer one of yours.” He stepped towards where she was sitting on the ground. “I was going to tell you, anyways. I want a lot of things from you, Allie Pressman. You’re a whiny little bitch who only gets to lead us because of your dead sister. You’ve taken so much from me.”

She couldn’t believe that he actually had the nerve to play the victim card. Here, while she was tied up in his basement.

He continued. “But for now - all that I want right now - is my girlfriend back. You better return her to me.”

She glared up at him, trying to appear strong. “Never,” she spat.

The brass knuckles flew at her before she could even blink, crashing into her cheek and causing her head to snap to the side. It took her a moment to reorient herself, and she felt a trail of blood trickling down her face.

“You will do as I say,” he warned in a deadly tone.

She nodded. If she were a fighter, she would deny him, taking what she got and always standing strong. However she was a survivor, and while someone else might say that they were one in the same, that was simply untrue. A fighter fought until the end, while a survivor didn’t come to an end. Some called it intelligence and some called it cowardice, but she was a survivor. “What are you going to do to me?” she asked. She needed to keep getting information out of him - it was her best shot.

“You see, I need to send a message. Campbell Eliot is not someone to be messed with. You have taken from me the girl I love, who I swore to protect, and that’s not going to fly. I’m not going to kill you, Allie. You’ll only wish you were dead.”

She didn’t have time to respond as he kicked her hard in the side. She screamed as she felt something crack.

He tutted. “I thought you would be stronger than that. I guess you’re really just soft behind your big, bad Guard.”

“Fuck you,” she said, though her voice lacked gusto.

“Fuck you, too.” He kicked her again, this time in the back. “Sit up.”

She remained on the ground.

He stomped on her leg. “I said sit up!”

Doing her best to ignore the pain she felt, she slid herself back into a sitting position against the wall.

“You all need to know just how wrong you were.” The fist bearing the brass knuckles crashed into her jaw. “All of you.” He drove them into her stomach, so far that his fist was probably an inch from the wall she was sitting against.

She spat blood, praying for it to be due to the hit to her jaw rather than something internal.

He laughed, like he found all of this extremely funny. “You’re fucking useless, Allie. Do something! Sam’s fucking pet bird had more fight than you!”

She didn’t answer.

“Make this more fun,” he demanded.

She stared up at him with wide, terrified eyes. What in the hell did he mean by that? She had a feeling that she wasn’t going to like it.

He groaned, as if she were causing him an inconvenience. “Jesus christ.” He roughly grabbed her forearm, hauling her to her feet and causing her to scream in pain. “You’ve got five seconds to run to that door at the top of the steps. If you make it, you can go. If you don’t, then we get to keep playing. How does that sound? Fair?”

She stared at him stonily. “Fuck. You. None of this is fair and you know it, even in your sick, psychotic brain.”

“Ready, set, go.” He released her arm, causing her to stumble forwards.

Luckily, she stayed on her feet. She didn’t want to play his stupid torture games. But if she had even a small chance of getting out… She ran.

“Four.”

She quickly found that her right leg didn’t work very well. She pushed herself on and from the amount of effort it took she felt like she should be running. She knew that it probably looked more like a drunken speed walk.

“Three.”

Halfway there, but she still had to tackle the stairs. She urged herself on.

“Two.”

Her heart pumped faster every time his voice echoed. The countdown was terrifying, as she raced to the door knowing what was to come if she didn’t make it.

“One.”

She was halfway up the stairs when he charged for her, grabbing her and throwing her back down them like a ragdoll.

Through her blurry vision, she longingly stared at the door. The tears flowed freely down her face now.

His form, towering over her, filled her vision. She tried to turn away, but he leant down over her, holding her face in his hand. His thumb wiped some of the blood off of her lip. His face got close to hers, far too close, and he whispered, “My plan doesn’t need for you to die, Allie. It just doesn’t depend on you being alive, either.”

Her breath hitched as she understood his meaning. He didn’t care if she survived this. In fact, he might just kill her for the fun of it. “They’ll hunt you down,” she whispered. “If you kill me.”

“Without you, the town would descend into chaos. They might come looking for me, but I have a backup plan. I thrive in chaos. Eventually, it would be me leading. But I’m not looking for that… just yet, at least. I. Just. Want. My. Girlfriend. Back.”

It took her foggy brain a few seconds longer than it should have to realize that he was undoing her pants.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Grizz says. “Fucking hell. How did we lose her? I thought at least one of us was supposed to be with her at all times!”

“We were,” Jason defended.

“Well she didn’t just vanish into thin air!” Grizz growled back.

Gordy groaned. “And no one has seen her?”

Luke shook his head, confirming. “Helena was with Allie last. She said that she had excused herself to the restroom and then never came back. After that, no one has seen her.”

“She should know better than to slip away without one of us,” Clark sighed, though he was more frustrated with themselves for not paying closer attention than with Allie for wanting to use the freaking bathroom by herself.

Gordy groaned. “This is bad. Why would she just disappear?”

Luke shrugged. “Helena said she was fine while they were talking. Even seemed happy.”

“What do we do?” Grizz asked, arms crossed.

They quieted. As they were only in the very beginning of forming a functioning government, they had neglected to come up with any sort of protocol for missing people. It had simply not been in their minds primarily due to the fact that no one had actually gone missing yet. Even back in West Ham, the old one, due to the upper class families residing there rarely had to deal with such matters.

“What do they do, like, on tv?” Clark suggested.

“They call the cops,” Grizz said.

“Dude,” Luke groaned. “We are the cops.”

Grizz nodded, realizing. “Well, fuck.”

“Will you stop saying that?” Jason said.

“Guys!” Clark said, sharply. “They usually have posters, bring in witnesses…”

Gordy’s eyes widened, a light bulb going off in his head. “A search party.”

The others nodded in approval.

“Okay,” Gordy breathed. “So we’ll assemble a search party and meet in the church. Okay?”

“Let’s go,” Luke agreed. They got to work.

Allie laid on the cold, hard basement floor. She wanted to think about how she would escape and get away from him. She wanted to think about running up the basement steps and sneaking through the house, successfully avoiding her captor and making it through the front door and then down the street before he went to check on her and noticed she was gone.

If she were the strong, smart leader she pretended to be then that’s exactly what she would be doing. If she were her sister.

But she wasn’t her sister. She wasn’t the brave leader guiding the town through their mysterious misfortunes. She was a young girl, doing her best to help people because she was told that it had to be her. So she lay still on the floor, pain filling her senses from inside out, the only thing she could feel. This was certainly a step up from when she broke her ankle as a kid, she thought humorlessly.

It must have been another twenty, thirty minutes before he came back down into the basement. She didn’t dread his return as much as she thought she should. Anything other than sitting alone with her pain and fear.

“Get up,” he ordered.

She whimpered in response. How did he expect her to do so, exactly? She’d inventoried the damage done to her body while she was alone. The pain in her side probably meant a broken rib or three, confirmed by the snap she’d heard when he kicked her. Her right ankle was broken, or at least sprained, and further down she registered pain in her toes. Her head still hurt, probably from the initial assault with the crowbar. Her face hurt, her stomach, and she could feel the bruises littered all over the rest of her body every time she breathed too hard.

“Get up!” he screamed. She winced for the blow, but it never came. Apparently he was satisfied with the injuries he had already caused her.

Against the protest coming from her body, she held her breath as she moved to a sitting position.

“Wow, Allie.” He smirked. “You look like shit.”

“Go to hell,” she inhaled sharply as her ribs moved.

He watched her struggle, and she disturbingly remembered the bird story Sam had shared from their childhood. She was the bird, and he was watching in amusement as her stubs where there used to be wings refused to fly her away. She hated playing the role in his twisted, sick game but was fearful of what he would do if she disobeyed.

She tried to stand, but was sent crashing back to the ground. “Up,” he demanded.

She tried again, this time with more success. But with a laugh and a kick to her left shin - the one bearing her weight - she was back on the ground. A sob rose in her throat.

“Get. Up!” He looked angry now, and she hurried to get back on her feet. It wasn’t working so well.

Impatient, he grabbed her arm and hoisted her up. He dragged her as she stumbled up the steps and out of the basement. He roughly caught her every time her body gave out and she nearly fell, shoving her back upright and continuing on. To her surprise, they exited the horrid house she hoped to never see again and he pulled her over to his car. The one he’d kidnapped her in.

“In,” he said. She did as she was told, with only a little reluctant assistance from him. He got in the driver's’ seat, starting the car.

“Wh-where are we going?” she asked.

He leaned across the center console, grinning. “To deliver my message, princess. You all have twenty four hours to return Elle to me, or I will come back. And I will kill you.”

The threat should have been terrifying, sending shivers down her spine. However the only thing she felt was relief. He was bringing her back home.

The search party met in the church, Gordy briefing everyone on the little bit that they knew. He looked around the room from where he stood in the front. Obviously, the Guard - Luke, Jason, Clark, and Grizz - were there in their matching jackets. Standing next to Luke was Helena, and behind her Kelly.

“Is that everyone coming?” Gordy asked.

“Everyone joining in the search,” Luke shrugged. “Everyone else knows that she’s missing and to keep an eye out.”

Gordy rolled his eyes. He knew that his hometown was filled with unmotivated, emotionally stunted slackers raised in the lap of luxury, however it had never been more apparent to him than it did in that moment. Maybe this New Ham thing was the universe’s way of giving them some much-needed character growth. It was certainly an idea he’d toyed with in the past, and he would’ve considered it longer if he actually believed in a higher power.

Another person slipped in the back, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and looking out of place.

“Come to help?” Gordy asked. All heads turned to see who he was addressing.

Harry nodded. “Kelly told me she was missing.”

Will stood up from where he was sitting. “I don’t trust him,” he glared at Harry. “How do we know that he hasn’t done something to her?”

Harry put his hands up. “I haven’t done anything. Really - I’m here to help.”

Will still looked skeptical, but Kelly ended the issue by saying, “Look, Harry’s barely been pulling himself out of bed long enough to work his shifts. I don’t think he has it in him to plan a kidnapping or whatever this is. No offense, Harry.”

Harry shrugged, “Slight offense, but not undeserved.”

Gordy snapped his fingers, directing their attention back to the issue at hand. “Okay, so here’s the plan…”

The sound of an engine revving outside drowned out the rest of that sentence, effectively drawing their attention away from the meeting. The sound was soon accompanied by a blaring horn.

“What the-” Helena stood from her seat, walking quickly to the door to see what was going on. The others followed, Luke jogging ahead to be with her at the front.

In the church parking lot was the familiar black jeep belonging to Campbell. And in the passenger seat sat the very girl they were searching for.

“Allie!” Grizz yelled.

Before they could react, the passenger door was opened and Allie was roughly shoved out onto the street, Campbell speeding away like a madman (which was actually very in character for him).

The group all sprinted over to Allie, who still hadn’t gotten up.

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