#conscientious objector as i've said before | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bettsfic · 1 year

Note

28, 29, and 17?

28. Favorite work you wrote this year?

lemon was very satisfying to write. i had a lot of fun with that one. otherwise it's the novel that i've excerpted below that i worked on during my residency, although it's been a pretty lonely process.

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

it's a bit long, so see below the cut. it's from a character vignette (birdie, the deadbeat father of the main characters) in an original novel and i'm proud of it because it's my first real attempt at historical fiction. i did a lot of research for it. this is about 50k into the story, and at this point all we know about birdie is how shitty of a father he was. his vignette is a summary of his past which contextualizes some of his behavior. in this section, he's decided to dodge the vietnam draft.

17. Your favorite character to write this year?

dirtbag jason carver, hands down.

From Best Kept:

Wyatt was two years older than him. Tommy was four. Somehow the war made it to all three of them. Tommy got conscripted into service in 1966 back when they were drafting any man who could stand upright and hold a gun. They didn’t need men, they needed meat.

“But they can’t take me if I refuse to kill anyone, right?” Tommy said. “I can file as a conscientious objector.” Birdie was sitting on his bed tossing a baseball up into the air while Tommy paced back and forth. He looked like a CO: hair down to his shoulders, a pierced ear. The rebellion started a few years before when Tommy refused to work at their father’s grocery store. Their parents thought a couple years in the service would straighten him out.

At that age Birdie thought going to war sounded cool, but what he didn’t know was that Vietnam was no World War II. Back then you were fighting for something important, a small piece of a greater force. But dying in the jungle was meaningless, soldiers only pawns of American greed, sacrificed on the board of a game no one understood.

A few months after Tommy got his notice, he went in for the physical and came home with a big red 1-A. A couple months after that, he got his orders. A year and a half after that, he was dead.

Like clockwork, Wyatt’s number was up next. Birdie begged him to try to get out of it. He couldn’t lose both his brothers. Of the three of them, Wyatt was the only one who’d inherited a sense of duty, and when they called, he went. Birdie’s only consolation was that he was too strong and too stubborn to die.

Birdie’s number was 257 and it was pulled shortly after he turned nineteen. His draft office was in St. Louis, notoriously one of the worst in the country. There were no 4-Fs in St. Louis. He didn’t know a single man who’d gotten out of it, but then again, they didn’t want to. Most everyone in his town was eager and proud to get shipped off.

On the bus to the induction center, he tried to come up with a plan, but nothing came to him. Out the window, cornfields blurred past; it was August and the stalks were head-high. He tried to imagine himself out in the jungle holding an M16, but he was just a coward from Missouri who graduated high school with a C-average, who had only kissed one girl one time, who was raised by parents who’d had no parents of their own. His mother grew up in an orphanage. His father rode the rails. They fucked up Tommy, did a little better with Wyatt, but by the time Birdie came along, they’d given up. Sometimes he felt feral, raised by wolves.

Across the aisle, a guy was playing the harmonica. Birdie couldn’t pull his eyes away from him. He had shaggy black hair and stubble around his jaw, big nose bent at the bridge. He caught Birdie staring at him and kept his gaze, some recognition in his eyes, and a moment later he was slotting the harmonica into his jacket pocket and coming to sit next to Birdie.

“You look like you don’t want to be here,” the guy said.

Birdie didn’t say anything. For all he knew, the man could be some kind of spy trying to sniff out defectors.

“Buddy of mine got his arm shot off.”

“My brother died,” Birdie admitted.

“Sorry to hear that, man.” He held out his hand. “Jack Ward.”

Birdie shook it. “Birdie Keane.”

Jack smiled, a deep dimple carved into each cheek. “Quite a name, Birdie Keane. Where you from?”

“Here,” Birdie said. “Couple hours north.”

“California. Riverside,” Jack offered.

“What are you doing here?”

“Just got out of film school. Can’t get student deferment anymore. So I started bouncing around, you know, changing my address. They finally pinned me down.”

Birdie hadn’t thought of that, transferring draft centers, delaying as long as possible hoping the war would finally end. It was a relief to meet someone as reluctant to go as he was. He felt crazy sometimes, surrounded by men who wanted nothing more than to die for their country.

“You have a plan?” Birdie asked.

“Nope,” Jack said, pulling his harmonica back out. They were turning into the induction center lot. “I’m gonna wing it.”

Wyatt once told him, years after he’d gotten back, that if you weren’t there you couldn’t understand what it was like. That the only people you could talk to about it were other men who had been there. Birdie didn’t tell him the same was true of those who ran, the feeling of isolation compounded by guilt and fear—guilt for leaving everyone else to do the dirty work, a fear of being hunted that would never fade, even after amnesty.

The decision was simple: run or die.

#2022 #bk #my fic

7 notes · View notes

trainsinanime · 1 year

Text

I'm not really into The Dragon Prince season 4, and I find that a bit weird. I think a big part of it is that the season has comparatively little Rayla or Callum, when their relationship was a big driving factor for me in seasons 1-3.

The other issue is… I don't know, it feels too earnestly childish. I do not particularly like Ezran; he's just boring. I think the crow master and pastry jokes have gone on a bit too long. More importantly, the moralising is just all too basic, and it is very front and centre in its basic nature. The whole architect vs. open fire thing tried to deal with a complex topic, but in the end it didn't really manage to dive into anything, and the resolution ("build a dedicated candle burning place") was telegraphed from a mile away.

I know that the correct answer here is to watch shows for grown-ups, like e.g. all these post-Enterprise Star Trek ones I've been meaning to watch (or maybe Andor. Star Wars certainly beats Star Trek whenever I don't want to think and just watch pretty pictures). And I guess I will, once I'm done with season 4 anyway.

It's just… there are plenty of shows for kids that I absolutely love. Miraculous Ladybug, sure, but also She-Ra, Carmen Sandiego and many others. I suppose the big issue here is that The Dragon Prince doesn't have a heroine who dresses in red is so very earnest about its very simple morality. It has had good ideas, like when it made conscientious objectors the heroes in the season 3 finale. But it's overall approach of kings doing wide-ranging royal decrees and earnest speeches; the one person who has to find a simple solution for complex issues; that's just not that interesting. Yes, Miraculous Ladybug also has very oversimplified morality, but it isn't about it to the same extent, and it just focuses more on being adorable.

That said, I will forgive a lot if I get a Rayla/Callum kiss before the season is over.

#the dragon prince

5 notes · View notes

mermaidsirennikita · 2 years

Note

Hi! I've read a lot of HR in my time (ie past 2 yrs) and it's my favorite genre but I haven't watched any HR shows or movies...can you give me some suggestions, please?

Truth be told, there aren't *that* many honest to God, true historical romance movies or TV shows. I mean, there's obviously Bridgerton, but it's... A mixed bag, and I'm sure you're aware of it.

Sanditon felt very much like a historical romance in its first season, but it does not end happily and they basically completely botched it, so.

I think that Pride and Prejudice (2005) is by far the most *romantic* Jane Austen adaptation... And I imagine you've seen it, but if not, do! It's less about the sex than it is the sexual tension, to be sure, but the climax of the movie itself is one of the most romantic things I've ever seen on TV, so. Has a happy ending!

Belle is really good! It's based on a true story so (as I've said here before lol) I wouldn't call it a historical romance movie, but it's very romantic and it gets the beats. It's about a young heiress who is the daughter of a wealthy gentleman and an enslaved Black woman. Her mother died when she was young and her father was a soldier, so he had her raised (alongside her white cousin who's the same age) by his relatives. He dies when she's grown, so she becomes a wealthy heiress and there's this interplay of men who basically want to marry her for money while being incredibly racist and abusive towards her. But she's super intelligent and strong and her conflict is beautifully played--and there is a young man who has ~radical political ideas~ and is therefore ~unsuitable~ and they fall in love and have many swoony moments. His love confession is heeeeeeeellaaaaa. Has a happy ending!

Little Women (2019) obviously isn't a romance but the romantic arcs are very good and well-acted, with great chemistry. That's a lot coming from me, a Timothee Chalamet conscientious objector. Has a happy ending (for everyone except Beth lmao)!

The Young Victoria is clearly also based on real history, and it's super fucking romantic, imo. Victoria and Albert were a love match in real life, and his courtship of her in this movie is aaaaachingly romantic. Like. Swoon. Has a happy ending!

In the same sense, I'd recommend the first two seasons of Victoria (skip the Christmas special and the third). It's even more romantic lol, while it has some issues, and the chemistry between the actors is fabulous. (Beeeecauuuuse they were fucking at the time lmao, RIP that relationship.). You can end with season 2 and not feel like you missed anything by not continuing, imo. Both seasons end on a kind of "everything is fine, if open for the future" note. Has a happy ending (if you stop at the s2 finale)!

If you want a fucking weeper of a biopic that is nonetheless... extremely romantic, if chaste, I'd recommend Bright Star. It's about the romance between John Keats (famous romantic poet John Keats, who, spoiler alert, did die in his twenties) and his fiancee, Fanny Brawne. He's a poor poet, she's a slightly bitchy fashionista.

Of course, there's always Ever After, which is the 1998 Drew Barrymore Cinderella movie that is somehow set in... Renaissance France? Sure! Happy ending!

If you want to watch a truly wacky movie that I'm not sure holds up because I haven't watched it in years, try Far and Away. It's from the early days of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's marriage, and it's one of the Tom Cruise movies that came out before The Jig, It Was Up. He plays a poor Irishman who somehow, through a series of events I don't remember, ends up going to America with Nicole Kidman's rich Irish girl, and they pretend to be brother and sister to stay in a boarding house together while being super into one another. They fight. He boxes. She can't wash shirts right because she's a poor little rich girl. I will say, the chemistry was bomb, and it does have a happy ending. I am not sure, again, how it holds up on a social level because I haven't seen it since I was in high school. The Irish accents are bad, but I don't care.

If you're in the mood for a good lesbian period piece show, again based on real life so there is some traumatic shit in it, try Gentleman Jack! Anne Lister is a rakish woman who's just returned home to manage her estate. She needs a wife (and ideally a wealthy one) so she begins to seduce the shy, anxious Ann Walker. TWs for a lot of things--sexual assault, homophobia, Ann's mental health being on edge like... all the time. But it's super romantic, and it does the thing I love where the rake is all "I'm marrying for money" but then she falls in love for reeeeal. Recommend recommend recommend. Ongoing, so happy ending tbd.

There are two Catherine the Great-adjacent shows I'd recommend for... Non-conventional romances.

One would obviously be The Great, which is a bitingly dark and fun satirical comedy about the early days of Catherine the Great. Except in season 2... And really, throughout season 1... It turns into a dark romance? Peter and Catherine have an arranged marriage and he's horrible and she hates him and plots to kill him (only after he tries to kill her that one time, and sucker punches her, so TW for that among many, many other things)... But then they start to realize that they're actually way more alike than they realize. Both more cunning than they look, both rather insane, and both ridiculously attracted to each other. Season 2 is like Fleabag, where they basically look at the camera and say "this is a love story". If a mad one. Ongoing, but lol I cannot imagine this show having a CONVENTIONAL ending of any kind. The sex scenes are bomb tho, a fuckton of oral is involved.

Theeeen I'd recommend checking out the Helen Mirren Catherine the Great miniseries. She and Jason Clarke, who play Catherine's irl long-term political partner and lover, have excellent chemistry, and it's kind of great to see an older actress (especially one as hot as Helen Mirren) have love and sex and be deliciously amoral with the man who worships at her feet. Potemkin and Catherine, as they did in real life, have a relationship that goes from fraught passion to companionship and an openness for other partners... But you never doubt that he is the love of her life, and vice versa.

Sylvie's Love is a great romantic movie that's the classic "we were in love then separated by circumstance and now we're back in the same place and I'm with someone else" plot. Very touching, very good, set in the mid-twentieth century and super well-acted. Has a happy ending!

A Room with a View is a classic with a happy ending. I'm always kind of "hmm, idk" about the plot, but everyone loves it and it's super beautiful to look at and very atmospheric at the least. Happy ending!

Cyrano is incredibly gorgeous and romantic and just destroyed me. Does not have a happy ending, but God it's romantic.

Far From the Madding Crowd is another one where I'm like "do I like this, or do I like the look of it and the vibe". But it is romantic and it does have a happy ending.

If you want to watch 1990S RIDONKULOUSNESS then try First Knight. It's the Lancelot-Arthur-Guinevere love triangle, but Richard Gere plays Lancelot and just does his normal accent whereas Julia Ormond plays Guinevere with her normal accent and Sean Connery (ew) plays Arthur with his normal accent. It is. Ridic. But it's got some romantic shit in there. Happy ending (well, for two out of three of them).

Of course, the Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility is very good. Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant don't make me swooooon in this, but it's romantic and well done. Happy ending.

Lol one of the most romantic, ridiculous, over the top movies I've ever seen is House of Flying Daggers. The love theme in this brings me to tears. The hero is a cocky soldier who is trying to find the leader of this vigilante group called the House of Flying Daggers, so he basically tries to trick this blind warrior woman into giving up the goods while acting like he's on her side. Of course, he falls madly in love. I love hot people with great chemistry. Does not have a happy ending, lmao, at all, BUT GOD WHAT A THRILL.

12 notes · View notes