#william sympathises with you
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Bound by hearts, not by blood
It's here! It's finally here! Happy birthday, darling @moonandstarlightsposts! DSJFBDSJ - I had so much fun writing this bday gift for you. Can you believe it? Before this, I've never written anything about our ladies - Kalina and Farah. Well, that changed now! I know how much Kalina means to you, so I hope I did her justice.
(This bday gift contains headcanon from a Redacted fan @/running-tweezers. You'll know which one when you read it.)
Anyway, happy birthday, wifey! I hope you'll have a wonderful day! And thank you @Broccoli for the fanart~
-
Summary: While unwinding with two of his friends, William Solaire is delightfully surprised when Bright Eyes crashes their night.
In scenes where old and new money rubs elbows underneath glimmering chandeliers, it's common knowledge that William Solaire is never without an attractive face at his side. No matter the event, a betting pool and a letter of invitation addressing the Frenchman go hand-in-hand with tongues wagging: "Have you heard who William Solaire is bringing tonight?"
They differ from time to time - flashes of the paparazzi's camera couldn't get enough of the Victoria Secret's model that was his plus-one during the Met Gala. His business associates at the Festival de Cannes flocked around; their inquires concealed by a barely polite veneer about the handsome actor clasping his arm. No matter where he goes, a man with a powerful sway in the international real estate market, a net worth beyond $1 million and air about him as if he steps out of a Renaissance painting, a spotlight will always shine on William Solaire and by extension, anyone he associates with.
For the Empowered world, William's beaus never made it in the newspapers. What stirs every topic of conversation, though, is when the Solaire Patriarch is attended by two of his women. A pleasant evening can turn into a political nightmare whenever a Vampire King is accompanied by a pair of Old Bloods after all.
But tonight, the world sighs in relief for William is with friends instead of bodyguards, basking in their company with vintage red wines on a silver tray. A roaring fireplace lit up the leisure room, and warmth seeps through hidden corners. The chilly night air is Autumn's herald, but the three Vampires are tucked away inside a beautiful manor.
"This is an excellent Pinot Noir, Kalina dear," Reclining on a plush armchair, William toasted his glass in appreciation. "Is this Cheval Blanc 1947?"
Moroz Kalina, clad in nothing but a red lingerie and a pair of high heels, shakes her head. Her golden hair tumbles off her shoulders like a waterfall. The red marabou robe drape on her body paints an alluring image of the woman. "Penfolds Grange Hermitage from 1951. Thought you might like it." Her Slavic accent is thick and sensual, especially when she caresses every word that leaves her lips.
As someone with a palate that had been delicately cultivated over the years, William raises his glass again. This time, to the Ukrainian Vampire for her immaculate taste in wine.
"I do so enjoy these moments together. It's a welcoming reprieve from a tiresome day." William admits, setting aside his now empty glass. "I hope neither of you will take it to heart that I often relieve my burdens here."
Kalina tries to shrug but can't because of the body leaning against her left side. So she waves a dismissive hand. "We have spent our years together for far too long to be petty. You need to complain, William? Then complain. The night is still young after all and we always have a spare room for you here."
"You're cooking breakfast if you're staying, though," A new voice chimes in. The woman who has her head nestled on Kalina's shoulder yawns, shadows from the hearth dance across her glistening fangs. Unlike the two who had been drinking, she let the warmth of the fire lull her into a sleepy stupor with her legs tucked on the sofa-bed. In contrast to Kalina, who looks as if she just stepped out of a photoshoot, this Old Blood is wearing a tiny pair of black panties and a grey crop top that fails to cover her generous breasts; Simple in terms of sleeping garb but no less breathtaking when it comes to beauty. "I've been craving for something French ever since we came back from Champagne." Farah - William's second most trusted Old Blood - added.
Kalina grins, lightly nudging her. "Did you not eat a Frenchman last week? Was he not enough?"
"I meant food, Sayang (Love). I shouldn't have drunk from him, anyway. He was a chain smoker. That shit taint even the blood." Farah turned her nose up in a grimace.
"My poor Lady," Kalina coos. Her grin is then directed to an amused William. "There you go. We insist that you stay, William. It has been a while since you amazed us with your culinary skills. I am also looking forward to breakfast now."
"Then I best not disappoint. Do either of you have any special requests?"
The trio discussed the finer details of tomorrow's menu and compared it to what's available in the pantry and fridges. While blood will always be sustenance to Vampires, eating food is one of the aspects of humanity that none were willing to lose. Farah, in particular, has a fondness for the cuisines of the world.
" - saw this one video from a Korean YouTuber. She made breakfast scrambled but the ingredients were Boujee. I think we might have the ingredients since I ordered some groceries from Whole Foods. I'll share the link - " Farah suddenly stopped rambling. Kalina makes a questioning hum when she detaches herself from her side and pads to the large window beside the fireplace. A cold breeze sweeps in as Farah takes a step back.
The three silently watch as a body tumbles through the window in a mess of limbs and an oversized hoodie.
A painful and muffled groan echoed in the leisure room. "I deserve that major L..."
William recognises that voice. He straightens up in his seat and with bewilderment coloured the low timbre of his voice, he asks, "Littlest one? Are you alright?"
Farah drops to her knees. She uses whatever healing Magic in her arsenal to close up the cuts on Bright Eyes' exposed skin - their face and hands. Bright Eyes roll to their back, making no move to get off the carpeted floor.
"Like a horse on Ketamine!" The youngest Vampire in the Solaire Clan declares with a thumbs up in the air.
William's eyebrows knit in concern. That becomes apparent when two of his dearest friends merely chuckle. He kept any reservations to himself and, instead, observed carefully how Kalina and Farah treated Bright Eyes; Frederick's Progeny and the ward of a very reluctant Sam. It's no secret to anyone in the Clan that the tension wove between those three is thicker and more complicated than any spider's web. No secret as big as a pair of young adults murdered by a trespassing Old Blood on home turf can be kept, so the grapevine exploded before William could even officially welcome the two new young Bloods. William would like nothing more than to step in, guiding Sam through a landmine of emotions (both his and theirs), but it wouldn't be ethical since he served as their leader first and foremost.
At times like this, William hates how the crown serves as his ball and chain. At times like this, he's grateful for Vincent's discretion and his ability to seamlessly slide himself into any situation without politics weighing him down.
"Frederick is settling down at his own pace," William's Second Blood reports during a dinner together. William personally delivered a list of his Progeny's favourite blood type to his chef just for the occasion. Vincent had built a solid rapport with the young man, enough to be considered as a friend, and that deserved a reward. "He's thinking about enrolling at D.A.M.N; said he used to enjoy studying at his old university. Sam's probably gonna give him a crash course about it soon."
"And what of young... Bright Eyes?"
Vincent hesitated. "If they're not snapping their new baby fangs at me, they enjoy throwing words around like a flashbang. Most of the time, I think they speak English, but what do I know apparently? I don't live on Reddit or 4Chan's comment threads." He explained, playing it cool, but William felt the suspicion underneath.
"And here I thought you're quite up-to-date with the modern lingo, Vincent."
Vincent huffs. "There's modern lingo and there's thrash talk from the Internet. Bright Eyes has a Master on the latter because I can barely keep up when they start talking in gaming terms."
And that's all William could get about Bright Eyes. A temperamental and wise-cracking Newborn with a hidden depth in them.
Watching how wide Farah smiles as she carries a stammering Bright Eyes into her arms and dumps them on the sofa so she and Kalina can box them opens up a whole new perspective for William. First off: He had no idea that the three of them were close enough for Bright Eyes to break into their home through the window.
"Oh, Маленка(Kiddo)... while that was certainly more graceful than that time you tried to - hmm, what is that word? Wiggle? Ah, yes - down the chimney, what happened to the key that we gave you?" Kalina croons, her breasts smothering the Not-So-Newborn in a warm hug. A brutal combat medic on the battlefield. A head-turning 'ɡädəs (goddess) on the streets and Farah's Heart - those are the familiar labels associated with Kalina. Maternal never once made it into the repertoire, but here she is, lavishing Bright Eyes with all the comforts akin to a doting yet exasperated mother.
"It accidentally fell into the toilet when I was flushing it along with his watch." Bright Eyes confessed with a dramatic gasp of air. Finally able to escape from the older Vampire's bosom. They didn't squirm away like William thought they would. Instead, Bright Eyes made themselves comfortable between them.
"Aku lah... budak nakal betul!" ("Honestly... what a naughty child!") Farah retorts in her native tongue - Bahasa Melayu. Her smile turns amused as she perches her elbow onto the armrest with her head resting on her palm. "Vincent did something again to annoy you?"
"He came by when I was tryna helped Ricky study for a damned test paper - "
"The school isn't damned - " William can't help but mutter as an interjection but at the same time, he's too fascinated by Bright's ranting to stop them.
"And he wouldn't stop hovering like a Karen in front of the cash register at Starbucks! It was annoying! I bet his orders are just like those caucasoidal femoids - "
Kalina snorts while William realises that it was a mistake to drink again.
"And you'd think he took the hint when I dissed that he's 3 edges away from being a Sonic OC but the guy just stares at me as if he had a concussion!"
"And then?" Farah prompts.
"Then I said the RGB lighting inside of his new car looks like a noob Twitch streamer set up so that was a major L for him and he ran to the kitchen but not before I pulled a Sneak 100 and grabbed his Patek Phillip."
William blinks. Farah snickers. Kalina pats on Bright's shoulder, looking a bit proud.
"I sympathise Vincent's plight now." For the first time in a long while, the Solaire King is utterly out of his depths. He had no clue how he should react to the verbal onslaught that came out from his Great Grandprogeny.
Thankfully Farah takes pity on him, "Stick around long enough and they'll start making sense."
"I... see." Well, if anything, William is quite good at rolling with the punches. Plus, nonsensical ramblings or not, he's not passing the opportunity to learn more about his youngest Blood, whether Bright Eyes acknowledges that or not. "Then please, treat me as your eager student."
William didn't miss the surprise flashes across their face. Like a veteran actor, a mask slides back into place to hide their minuscule reaction. William can hazard a guess that they thought he was about to rebuke them for making fun of Vincent. It makes him wonder if that is a habit of Sam's.
"I-I didn't know you guys were busy," Bright Eyes stammers, clearly trying to figure out their footing against him. Their eyes sneak a glance to their sides, gauging Farah and Kalina's temperament even after receiving a warm welcome from William's most powerful enforcers. "Uh... sorry for crashing your pow-wow. You guys gettin' hammered?"
"We invited dear William for companionship and good wine to celebrate his return from overseas," Kalina explains, picking up her glass again. It was still half-full so she threw another carefree toast at William. "He has worked hard for us. Our King deserves to rest his crown for a night, no?" She teases and downs her wine to the very last drop.
William doesn't deign to roll his eyes but does refill his glass. An image of a curious kitten comes into mind when Bright Eyes leans into Kalina's now empty glass to sniff at it.
"Whoa! It's like my nose being plugged by liquorice!" Bright Eyes exclaims. Childish wonderment shines through their nickname. A part of William - who suffers through turmoil after turmoil during the first few years of his Turning - is relieved. Despite everything, there's still some innocence left in his littlest one. A Vampire's heightened senses are a lot to take in, so William is glad that Bright found some humour in it.
Meanwhile, Bright Eyes thrust their arms to the tray beside Kalina, making grabby hands at the wine bottle. One of Kalina's finely shaped eyebrows raises in inquiry even though the young Vampire's gesture is well understood.
"Use your words, Маленка (Kiddo)."
"Fine... can I please have the liquorice-smelling drink so I can get hammered too? C'mon, Kalina. It's a celebration, right? A party!" Here Bright Eyes cast a pleading glance at William. Though their lower lips wobble, a calculative gleam pierces through their eyes.
William didn't verbally defend Vincent when Bright sort of bullied him. He can almost hear the gears running in their head: Just how far can I push this man who can easily rip my head off into drawing his line in the sand? It's a survival tactic; against an unknown threat, the best course of action is to gently push the predator - to gauge its reaction - and then pull back before it has a chance to attack you. William doesn't need a Seer to tell him that Bright Eyes will grow into a formidable Vampire in a couple of centuries with a mindset like theirs.
However, Farah chose to interject. She rubs Bright Eyes' back. "Tell you what, I'm craving something sweet. We got some of those ice-creams that you like. Sundaes for a Sunday - what do you think?"
Childlike glee overtakes cold, calculation on Bright Eyes. It's an endearing look to William. They sprint away, followed by Farah at a much slower pace. A reasonable distance rests between the kitchen and the leisure room so that William and Kalina can converse without having to mind Vampiric sensibilities. But just in case...
"De toutes les choses que j'attendais ce soir, Bright Eyes a été une délicieuse surprise." ("Of all the things I expect tonight, Bright Eyes' came as a delightful surprise.") William comments, that tenor voice adds a layer of beauty to his native tongue.
The three of them - William, Kalina and Farah - had lived long enough and travelled well enough that mastering languages became as easy as collecting foreign postcards.
Wine forgotten for now, Kalina sets aside her glass in favour of eyes fixing on the door behind her King. "Ми з Фарах ніколи не мали звички відмовлятися від безпритульних. Особливо таких поранених, як Брайт." ("Farah and I are never in a habit of turning away strays. Especially one as wounded as Bright,") She drawls when her eyes turn to William, they hardened. "Ваш герцог засліплений своїм горем, спричиненим вашою принцесою. Замість того, щоб залікувати свої рани, він зганяє їх на тому, хто страждає від наслідків, які він не може контролювати." ("Your Duke is blinded by his grief caused by your Princess. Rather than heal his wounds, he takes it out on someone who suffers consequences out of their control.")
William can't refute that he's blindsided by her observation, not when he harbours similar suspicion whenever he sees how Sam treats Frederick and Bright Eyes. The difference was a cause for concern and yet...
"Qui doit intervenir ? Le roi ? Mais alors j'abuserais de mon autorité sur ceux que je considère comme ma famille," ("Who should step in? The King? But then I'd be abusing my authority on those I considered family,") William closes his eyes. "Samuel ne se sent pas à l'aise de me voir autrement que comme son supérieur et le jeune Bright Eyes n'a pas encore décidé si j'étais un ami ou un ennemi. Ni l'un ni l'autre n'apprécierait mon intervention." ("Samuel is not comfortable seeing me other than his superior and young Bright Eyes is still deciding if I'm a friend or foe. Neither would appreciate my intervention.")
Helplessness isn't a foreign concept to William; it's an old friend even. However, it's been a long, long time since it came to visit him.
"Семюель встановив свої кордони з тобою. Брайт ще ні," ("Samuel laid down his boundaries with you. Bright has not yet,") Kalina surmised, her beautiful expression vacant as she pondered. "Я думаю, що знаю спосіб, як ви можете їх завоювати. Цій дитині буде корисно мати більше людей на своєму боці." ("I believe I know a way that you can win them over. It will be good for that child to have more people in their corner.")
William has been wanting to dote on a GrandProgeny for about, oh, a century now. Alexis and Vincent were so quick to fly off from the proverbial nest that he missed how noisy the mansion could be. Hmm. Perhaps if he's able to understand Bright Eyes, they in return, will indulge his doting.
Seeing eagerness dawn on William made Kalina chortle. She likes him like this - free of the crown, allowing the ever-curious and ever-hopeful man to emerge.
William leans forward and laces his fingers together, a picture of attentiveness. "J'adore les bonnes histoires. Dis-moi, quoi que tu prévoies, est-ce la même méthode que celle qui permet de ramener un chat errant dans un foyer chaleureux?" ("I do so love a good story. Tell me, whatever it is that you're planning, is it the same method that corrals a stray cat into a warm home?")
They both can hear footsteps and chatter returning to the leisure room so Kalina playfully leans forward to whisper. "Після того, як ви забезпечили їжу та ліжко, на черзі іграшки та ігри. Тобі пощастило, Вільяме - Брайт давно не грався з нами." ("Once you made food and bed available, next comes toys and playtime. You are in luck, William - it's been a while since Bright played with us.")
The door swings open just in time. Farah and Bright Eyes return with triumphant smiles akin to conquers. Kalina spread her arms wide and Farah assumed her prior position, only this time, she's carrying a tall glass of crisp rice treat sundae with a generous helping of maple syrup. Meanwhile, Bright Eyes is holding up two sundaes. They hesitate at the doorway before marching towards William. The Vampire King is utterly delighted when they thrust one of the sweet treats to him.
"Oh my, thank you ever so kindly, littlest one," William smiles beatifically and accepts his sundae. A familiar scent twitches his nose. "Vanilla ice-cream topped with lightly grilled strawberries and glazed in balsamic, what an interesting combination."
Bright Eyes chooses to perch on a window seat, not unlike that of a spoiled cat. Their sundae is peanut butter ice-cream topped with salted pretzel sticks and garnished with slices of bananas and drizzled with honey - a dentist's nightmare. "Yeah, I saw you snacking on strawberries during that dinner party. Vanilla 'cause... ya know. Balsamic to match your Boujee vibe." And with that, they quickly shove spoonful after spoonful of ice-cream into their mouth to avoid speaking further.
How is it possible for fondness to bloom like a field of sunflowers? Bright Eyes' silliness inspires William to write poetry about the early years his Progenies came into his life, including Sam, Frederick and Bright Eyes. For now, he enjoys how flavours dance on his tongue. "Delicious. I do believe I have a new favourite dessert."
Bright Eyes let out a tiny smile. They bit their lower lip, hesitant about something - only for a split second though. "I heard you spoke French just now. I'm sorry, by the way. That's got to be my least favourite disability."
William's spoon freezes in mid-air, in between his gaping mouth and sundae glass. The man is too stupefied to speak.
"William?" Kalina suddenly chimes in, currently enjoying being spoonfed by a doting Farah and the look on William's face. The two women shared a beaming smile before mischievous eyes trailed to him. "Would it be too much of a trouble to reschedule the patrol roster tonight?"
"Not at all. Do you want to take over tonight's shift?"
"It's a full moon tonight. WonderWorld will soon come alive, yes?"
Bright Eyes notices the change in expression on William and Farah - a secret smile is shared between the Old Bloods and it immediately hooked Bright Eyes' curiosity. "Aite. Emergency meeting: y'all look Sus with a capital S. Too bad this isn't my spaceship or I'd eject the three of you."
"You can't eject 3 Crew members at once." Farah is quick to correct them.
Bright Eyes stick their tongue out, the perfect picture of petulant.
"You have never been to WonderWorld on a full moon, have you?"
"Nada. Why? What's happening tonight?"
"A rite of passage."
-
Tony is 14 years old. But tonight? Tonight he'll be a man.
"Here we are brats. Wonderworld!" One of the older teenagers - Noah - spread his arms like an expert showman to the abandoned amusement park before them. If it weren't for the moonlight, darkness threatened to consume the entire area. Standing underneath the street lamps alongside the second youngest generation of the Shaw Pack, WonderWorld looks like a scene taken straight from a horror movie. For the Empowered World, that isn't too far off the mark.
Tony did his best to ignore the anxiety threatening to stop his heart. If Noah and his gang knew just how scared he was, they wouldn't stop teasing him.
Noah clapped his hands - it was so loud that it startled Tony and his friends who were lost in their own thoughts. "Alright, listen up! The dare is simple: each one of you will sneak into WonderWorld, do one lap and come back here, got it?" The older boy explains, his eyes scanning the pre-teens that followed him tonight. He relishes the sadistic glee at their terrified expressions. "The only rule is not to get caught by Vamps. Simple enough. So, Tony, you're up!"
Tony's feet take a step back before he even knows it. Two of Noah's friends burst out laughing.
He'd probably started running in the opposite direction (So what if the older teens drove them here? He'll walk back home if he wants to!) if it weren't for his best friend clutching his hand. Rachel squeezes it before narrowing her eyes at a grinning Noah with all the righteous fury Tony knew that burned in her kind heart.
"What? Why does Tony have to go first!?"
"It's what we all agreed in the car, remember? And by all, I mean me so chop-chop, Tony. The moon isn't going to wait for your ass all night." Noah made a show of checking the time on his phone with a bored look.
"That's not fair! Who died and made you Alpha!?"
"Fine, by all means, you can go first then. And just for that, Rachel has to do a double lap."
"You son of - "
"It's OK, Rachel. I-I don't mind going first." Tony softly interjects. The thought of Rachel walking around in the dark abandoned amusement park longer than she has to scare him more.
Some of Rachel's ire disappear like smoke. Concern knit her eyebrows together. "You sure? I don't mind going first. Honest!"
Tony shrugs, putting on a brave face. "How hard can it be? I'm just going in and out ASAP while dodging Vamps."
"That's the spirit, Tony!" Noah cheers and roughly claps Tony's back. He winces. Noah's friends waste no time separating Tony from Rachel and the others and shove him to the rusty gates of WonderWorld. "Good luck in there." He sniggers.
Tony gulps. He tosses one last look at a worried Rachel before steeling himself. He then turns on the flashlight feature on his phone and takes the first careful steps into the park. WonderWorld saps all the light the deeper he treads inside, and soon enough, the light from his phone can barely pierce through what's behind the vegetated-infested carousel. His beating heart is so loud even to his ears and that just adds more fuel to his anxiety.
Because if Tony can hear his own heart, surely any Vampires could hear him before they even see him. He shoves that thought aside before it paralyses him.
The carousel marks the entrance and only exit of the park. So when Tony passes by a corner of ruined Bumper Cars and a broken sign that directs visitors to a decrepit Haunted House, he knows that he's halfway through WonderWorld. Feeling like he can afford a quick break, Tony studies the signboard in morbid curiosity. "Oh, I'm not going to be the first victim in any horror movie!"
The Ferris Wheel in the distance looms over as Tony continues his round.
It's eerie, yes, but his heart gradually settles down. So far, his luck is coming through - no one knew just how many Vampires patrol the area each night but perhaps they're taking a break tonight?
Tony is feeling good about this -
The rustling of chains nearby shatters the silent night. The hairs on the back of his neck stand attention. Tony's heart resumes beating furiously.
He spins to where the sound is coming from, the brightly lit phone shaking in his grip. Sweat runs down his back when nothing but dangling chains hang from the rusted foundations of a fallen Roller Coaster.
"It's just the wind..." Tony whispers to himself, his breath heavy. His eyes search wildly for any figures behind steel bars. "Just the wind... You're OK." Not wanting to push his luck, Tony jogs away. A tiny part of his brain is screaming at him not to make any noise against the gravel.
Yet no matter how desperately he tries to silence the fear pumping through his heart and unstable footsteps, something is stalking him.
They came in the form of heavy boots crunching on dead leaves behind him. A barely-there silhouette slinking on his left. A once lifeless wooden log suddenly topples from the water slide. The sound of it crashing to the ground nearly snatches Tony's soul.
"Who's there!?" He squeaks, phone spinning in all directions with a paranoid, frantic edge. He can no longer recall where exactly he is in this expansive park. Is he close to the entrance? Did he loop around the familiar-looking carousel? And in the name of everything that's holy -
Is something getting closer?
Tony struggles to breathe now, legs rooted to the ground. His mind all but scrambled, trying to come up with a rational solution: maybe it's just a racoon... a racoon that can shove off a large, rideable wooden log... but still! It's possible! Because Tony and the rest all heard of what Vampires do against Empowered trespassers - they got chased away. That's it.
So whatever this something is? It can't be -
"Hey guys, welcome to episode 666 of my Minecraft Let's Play!"
Tony's scream was so loud that it could jumpstart the heart of every Vampire in Dahlia back to life.
Against everything that Tony assumed, that something turns out to be a Vampire! A Vampire that's grinning ear-to-ear while holding up a peace sign.
"Greetings, traveller! I am the pitbull of this park."
"Mr. Worlwide!?" He squeaks, words just flying out without a thought. However, that just makes the Vampire's grin near maniacal.
"No, no - more of the das kindershredder version. It's from a German bedtime story, you understand, right?"
Tony could only gulp.
"Anyway, legend has it that once a year, on the night of a full moon, a fur fest is conducted right here in our glorious crack den for the rejected, the incels and most importantly, the fuckbois. You can thank Vincent for that last one. And since life is just a Bulgarian, you must be tonight's unstolen car."
Now, any sane person who knew better than to live on the Internet would think that the Vampire lost a couple of their marbles but Tony is many things - hypocrite is not one of them especially since it's his life mission to make a career out of his TikTok account with his Hot Takes™ about Sigma Males.
"I-I didn't mind going first..." Tony mumbled. His face then pulls a scowl, anxiety gradually leaving his body. "Though, did you have to try and kill me via jumpscare? I thought you Vamps just chased us off!"
The Vampire had the audacity to shrug. "I'm just built differently, very Willed Smitherently." They then lean down to offer Tony a hand. The crazed grin dimmed to a more... humane smile.
Tony mentally debates with himself, only for a few seconds. While he can't quite get a grip on the Vampire's vibe, it's best not to piss them off. So he lets them pull him off the ground. "Are you going to chase me out now?"
"Nah, it's not fun running around this place while you can't see and there's a maniac with fangs chasing after you," While their voice retains that devil-may-care tone, a flash of self-loathing morphs the Vampire's face. As the unofficial 'runt' of the litter, it's like looking in a mirror. A sense of understanding and camaraderie starts to bloom within Tony. "Anyway, I think that's enough OSHA violation for one night - what's your name, kid?"
"Anthony Santoro. My friends call me Tony."
"Mamma Mias and meatballs. I dig it. So here's the deal, Tony - can I call you Tony? - Mr. Solaire said that we're pretty tight with your Pack, so any wolfy trespassers aren't to be harmed. So since I'm not in the mood to run around after you, how about we just chill instead? We can grab the others and hang out at McDonald's or something. You game?"
Now that they mentioned food, a fright can really make you go hungry, but - "I'm sorry, uh - "
"They call me Bright Eyes. The most certified crack-concentrated Earl of the House of Solaire."
"O...K? Um, while a burger sounds good right about now, I - we can't just leave in the middle of our dare. Noah and his gang would never live it down if I backed out now."
The Vampire - Bright Eyes - folded their arms across their chest. For the first time since they met, their grin vanishes. "Now would be a perfect time for an exposition cutscene."
Tony delivers just that. Some confessions come easier in the dark and with a stranger whom Tony has a strong suspicion shares more than one plight.
" - but they're too chickenshit to do anything to us whenever the Pack is under one roof. Noah's a jerkface but he knows better than to do anything while Alpha Shaw is around."
Bright Eyes snorts. "Yeah, no shit. I've met him. Alpha Shaw has enough male hormones to transition someone just by standing beside him. You know, I think your Alpha would've been fine even without a Mate. He has so much testosterone oozing from every orifice that he can create a son via mitosis."
He can't help it; Tony immediately bursts a gut laughing. It's absurd to even imagine the Vampire and Uncle David being in the same room. "Uncle David might look scary but he's really n-nice," Tony hiccups, rubbing his wet eyes. "But whenever he's not around, Noah would drop his nice guy act. Rachel said he once grabbed someone's wheelchair handles without even asking for permission! He then pushed them around the store as if he was doing them a great favour. I think he just likes the look on their face."
Rather angered, Bright Eyes looks positively ecstatic. They clap their hands once, "He's an Ableist! That's awesome 'cause I'm a Cainist! BRB, these pockets need stuffing." Without another word, they squat on the ground and crabwalk away. All the while muttering themselves about 'biblically accurate rocks'.
Tony is unsure if he should offer his help or not. This has been the most surreal night in his life! Turns out he didn't need to do anything because their conversation had attracted more Vampires.
He hears before he even sees them.
The definitive 'crunch' of a pair of high heels on gravel comes from the shadows of the run-down booths. A new Vampire stalks forward. She wears a simple pair of jeans and a red blouse; with her hair pulled up in a ponytail, cheekbones and eyeliner sharp enough to cut someone, it reminded Tony of those Empresses from SouthEast Asia that the school printed in history books.
Once again, rooted on the spot, Tony could only gulp when the Vampire studied him with a wry smile. She then turns her head to the side and says, "You wanted Bright to make friends tonight. Unconventional means aside, I think they did a good job, Moonbug."
From Tony's right, another Vampire emerges from the darkness - boxing him completely. This one is a tall, blonde beauty wearing a tight black dress and a pair of strap-on heels. If the one in red reminds him of an Empress, this one has a strong witchy vibe. As discreetly as possible, Tony's eyes flicker to Bright Eyes, still in the midst of perusing the best rocks for stoning. Is he on his own then?
"Of course they would relate more with the younger generations. Their fire burns with youthful vigour."
Every instinct within Tony is screaming at him to run, to escape. Unlike Bright Eyes, these two are Old Bloods. It doesn't make sense, though; the Uncles and Aunts in the Shaw Pack mentioned that Old Bloods are a rare sight in WonderWorld. They didn't patrol nightly but no one really knows what they do in the Solaire Clan.
The blonde woman pulls back her lips into a sweet smile, her eyes half-lidded as she bends to get a good look at him. "Your heart is beating so fast, дитинча (little cub) or should I call you, зайчику? (little bunny?)"
Should he Shift? But Bright Eyes said that the Solaire Vampires don't harm members of the Shaw Pack.
The woman in red shakes her head fondly. "I think he has enough fright for one night, Kalina. Let's save it for the others."
Kalina pouts but backs off. "Oh, very well Серденько (My Heart)." She clears her throat and some of that intimidating vibe is toned down. "Introduction is in order, yes? My name is Moroz Kalina and this is my everything, Nik Farah of Perak."
The other Old Blood inclines her head in greeting. "I mostly go by Farah after the 18th century. You can't exactly remain a Queen after you've Turned."
So Tony was right! However, Kalina continues on.
"And I believe you have already met Bright Eyes."
"A-ha! This looks good enough to give someone a concussion!"
Tony warily scans all three Vampires. "Uh... do I need to introduce myself again or..." His heckles rise once more when Kalina laughs. Did he overstepped!?
"Thank you, but no need. We all heard it earlier. It is very admiral that you could keep up with our littlest one."
Farah chips in next. "This is Bright's first time, you know; patrolling on the night of your rite of passage. We thought it would be a perfect way for them to make friends outside of the Clan."
"I see..." But Tony's first question remains unanswered. "What happens now? If you guys aren't going to chase me off, do we - " He makes a wide gesture to the empty park. " - just chill right here? Does McDonald's do deliveries to WonderWorld!?"
"About that," Kalina takes over the conversation when Farah excuses herself and goes over to where Bright Eyes is. Tony absentmindedly stares as the Old Blood wipes their dirty palms with a handkerchief, lightly chastising them for picking up rocks with sharp edges. "While we would never step into the affairs of your Pack due to mutual respect and friendship, we would like to explain Bright Eyes' proposal further. I assure you, Mr. Santoro, we will personally drive each one of you home and at the same time, you can enact a bit of a harmless revenge against those older boys that you talked about."
Tony's eyes widened, and her words bounced in his head. Revenge against Noah and his gang? That... that does sound appealing but despite how good of a relationship the Pack is with the Clan, he can't just simply trust a bunch of strangers! Rachel would be so disappointed in him!
Kalina tilts her head, her golden hair falls over one shoulder. Her smile turns to proud. "You are not convinced. Good. That is a smart brain on your shoulders, дитинча (little cub). William! Come introduce yourself. Your words weigh heavier than mine."
Tony's heart plummets to the ground when a very familiar-looking man shows up. He and literally everyone in the Pack will always see this man at every important occasion that Uncle David hosts. Despite that, his smile is the kindest Tony has ever seen on anyone other than his Mum, no one can mistake how power drapes over his shoulders like a cape. So no matter how friendly he is, no one other than the Alpha, his Mate, the Beta and also his own Mate dare to approach him.
Because William Solaire isn't a man anyone can approach.
But here he is, approaching Tony instead. In fact, a panicking Tony has no idea why the Vampire King is coming towards him as if they're old friends!
"Thank you, dear Kalina. I'm so very excited to meet Bright's new friend," Again!? Just how important is Bright Eyes to have these Old Bloods looking like they're two seconds away from throwing a party just because they made a friend!? "My name is William Solaire. It's a pleasure to meet you."
"H-hey." Tony squeaks. What is he supposed to do? Does he need to bow? Would it be rude not to look him in the eyes? Thankfully, he doesn't need to think too hard about etiquette.
The King doesn't seem to mind his stuttering. In fact, why does his entire demeanour remind Tony of how his Mum would fondly flip through their family album? "Please forgive my presumption, as it is my hope that you will take up Bright's offer. Making friends is always a joyous occasion and I would like to foster that for our littlest member of the Clan."
"Oi! I don't need a playdate!"
Instead of getting angry at Bright's attitude, the King is as confused as Tony when he stares at them. "Weren't you talking about wanting to eat everything from the McDonald's menu earlier? A... mukbang, I believe?"
"...Yes."
"How wonderful! I have Alpha Shaw and Beta Talbot's phone numbers here. If it makes you feel better, Mr. Santoro, you can inform them of where you'll be at all times."
You know what? At this point, Tony might as well roll with it instead of trying to make sense of what's happening. Besides, any form of suspicion and anxiety evaporates when Bright Eyes jog back with every pocket on their person stuffed to the brim with that maniacal grin.
"You're hanging out with us? Lit. Quick question: how loud can you scream?"
"Can I call my Beta first? Maybe a lawyer too."
-
Noah's blood runs ice cold when he hears Jason's piercing scream.
That's the third scream now. The first was Tony's. No one expected it, really - you either made a successful lap around WonderWorld or got chased out by Vampires. That's it! There was never an instance where anyone needed to scream in terror!
"The runt probably got scared and pissed his pants." Noah rationalises to the group despite the waver in his voice.
"Fuck you, Noah." Rachel spits at him and runs into WonderWorld without even looking back before the older teenagers can even do anything. Her sudden reaction frightens the other Cubs. They fidget, they mutter in broken pleas to go home; how quickly the mood becomes miserable.
"What do we do?" Noah has always played the role of the leader - the unofficially 'Alpha' of their year group - so it makes sense that one of his buddies would turn to him.
"Everything's fine," Noah insisted, trying his best to calm his racing heart. "Seriously! Why are you all freaking out about it? No one from the Solaire Clan would be stupid enough to hurt us - "
Rachel's scream was as loud as Tony's. Just as terrified.
Everything goes downhill from there. His friends scrambled into the car and tears down the road, leaving Noah, his own car and the remaining group scared shitlessly. He never thought he would be abandoned just like that!
"C-Can we leave now? Please!" One of the kids sobs.
"What about Tony? Rachel? They're still in there!"
"Do you think someone k-killed them!?"
"They're not dead!" Noah snaps, startling the poor pre-teens. He grits his teeth; focusing on the anger is better than being frozen in fear. "They probably got trapped somewhere or-or found a dead raccoon. Look, I'm gonna grab them and then we'll leave. Fucking brats, can't even do anything right..."
"You're just gonna leave us here!?"
Noah can't believe this is happening to him, betrayed and now bickering with a bunch of baby Wolves that are seconds away from wetting their pants. Great. In the end, though, they all went in together. It was difficult walking in the dark when everyone huddled so closely but Noah kept his cursing to the minimum. The sooner they find Rachel and Tony, the sooner he can call his 'friends' out on Tiktok.
The light slowly fades behind them as they head deeper and deeper into WonderWorld. The brats held each other hands so as not to get lost, and Noah smacked the one nearest to him when he tried to grab his hand.
"Tony! Rachel! Where the fuck are you!?" Noah's shout echo through the park. One of the pre-teens whimpers in protest at the sudden loud noise.
No reply. Dread creeps into his mind and heart no matter how hard Noah tries to deny it. He grits his teeth and wonders if he would need to comb through the entire park for the missing kids. And where are the Vampires that were supposed to be on patrol anyway? There's no way -
The hair on the back of Noah's neck stood up. Someone is watching him.
He immediately whirls around, only for his heart to seize in his throat - he's completely alone.
"W-When did they - " Noah's eyes widen in disbelief and horror. Every last one of the kids is now missing. They were just behind him! He couldn't hear any footsteps. It happened so suddenly. As if they were snatched -
"Yo!"
Noah didn't realise that he had been spinning around in his panic state, eyes searching out for unseen threats. Only for it to pop up behind him as suddenly and silently capably by a Vampire.
He sees the fangs first. Then the crazed smile. The inhumane eyes.
"Alright, buddy, I'm going to shit yourself."
Finally, and hilariously too late, Noah catches a glimpse of a rock in the Vampire's raised fist before he's knocked out.
-
Dahlia's Daily Dirt | OCTOBER 17, 2023
Is William Solaire stepping up as a stepfather?
Written by Madelyn Talbot, a Buzzfeed journalist who covers film, TV, music, and celebrities.
Ladies and gentlemen, hold on to your burgers and chicken nuggets because the most desirable billionaire in Dahlia is making headlines again. This time though? As a potential stepfather! Yes, folks, this writer couldn't believe her eyes when she spotted William Solaire at McDonald's last night. Spoiler alert: he wasn't alone!
The real-estate mogul, or the man who is known to ignite countless hearts with his sultry smile and gentlemanly charm, was recently seen within the Golden Arches with not one but two stunning ladies in tow. And that's not all; they weren't there for a romantic rendezvous. Oh no! The trio was accompanied by a lively group of pre-teens, sparking rumours that our leading man may be stepping up to the plate as a potential stepfather for this beautiful couple.
Eyewitnesses inside the fast-food haven couldn't believe their luck as they watched an intriguing scene unfold. Our local Romeo was all smiles in his 3-piece Armani suit as he held up a phone, very kindly helping the kids to video record their mukbang. Could it be that this heartthrob is trading in red carpets for carpool lanes in his limousine?
The two glamorous ladies by his side seemed perfectly at ease with the situation. They laughed and chatted, clearly embracing the mayhem that comes with corralling a group of excitable pre-teens. We couldn't help but wonder, are they the lucky ladies who have captured the heart of Dahlia's most sought-after bachelor? And the question that I'm sure you all are wondering: 7 children? Really?
While the ladies fed each other fries dipped with ice-cream, our man of the hour was ever attentive in attending to the kids with stories of the latest Met Gala, and from the looks on their faces, it seemed he had a knack for entertaining even the toughest critics - kids with discerning taste buds!
Now, we're not jumping to conclusions, but could this rendezvous be the start of a heartwarming love story? Or perhaps, it's just a glimpse into the philanthropic side of our favourite celebrity, treating some lucky children to a night out. Either way, it's safe to say that this impromptu McDonald's adventure has left us craving answers almost as much as the juicy McRibs.
So, will our media-acclaimed most desirable man be adding 'stepfather' to his list of impressive titles? Only time will tell, but one thing's for sure: Dahlia's hottest heartthrob is stepping up, and we're loving every moment of it. Whether it's rocking Wall Street or at the golden arches, William never fails to surprise and delight us. Keep your eyes peeled, folks - this Modern Family saga: Stepfather edition is just getting started!
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TAGS: Dahlia's Daily Dirt | News | Celebrity | William Solaire | More
[SHOW 1K+ COMMENTS]
#monotony's rambling#redacted asmr#redacted audio#fanfic#redacted william solaire#Moroz Kalina (oc)#Nik Farah of Perak (oc)#redacted bright eyes#ps: some of bright's insane dialogue is from max0r so credit goes to him#life is hard for a pre-teen and a young vampire#william sympathises with you
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I like how with Abigail I’ve just gone from ‘oh my poor little meow meow’ to ‘damn she’s actually kinda just straight up evil’ and I think the great tragedy is that Abby’s a really self-fulfilling prophecy in that way. That one African proverb something something
Max is still my baby boy who deserves nothing bad to happen to him ever and I apologise in advance for what I’m going to write about in his backstory bc 😭 I can’t stop being mean to him? I’m sorry.
#fr Max was just a guy tryna live life#I’m writing out the story outline for Bark at The Moon (his backstory) and I’m like 😭#Abigail is like#evil but you can still sympathise with her#a lot of what she did is totally unjustified though#and still continues to do#bc at least Max doesn’t generally let innocent people get hurt#Maxwell Holt#Max#Maxwell Holt oc#Abigail Williams#Abigail#Abigail Williams oc#my writing
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rootsmetals
some Israelis are racist warmongers, others have spent their entire lives in the pursuit of peace, and most are neither. Israelis have 9 million different personalities, views, experiences, and opinions. Homogenizing us all as inherently evil or forcing us to pass a litmus test before you decide to treat us like humans is antisemitism and xenophobia. Sorry to break it to you 🤷🏻♀️
MAIN SOURCES
youtube
Fayez Sayegh - The Party Years 1938-1947 by Adel Beshara
The Origins and Development of Soviet Anti-Semitism: An Analysis by William Korey
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So this is not something I'm going to do regularly, but in anticipation of tomorrow's update for May 24, I'm just going to give a heads up to first-time readers who may want a warning that the entry will include a racist and specifically anti-Black line, as I remember some people being caught really off-guard by it last year, especially given which character says it and the nature of the update otherwise.
The point of this post is also NOT to be like, look at this evil racist character, you're not allowed to like them or you're also racist, etc., it's just for people who may prefer to know it's coming, even if it's to be expected in a Victorian novel.
If you want to know what the actual line is and the textual context for it, I've included it and some brief commentary under a cut, but there are SPOILERS for tomorrow, so click at your own risk!
Well, my dear, number Two came after lunch. He is such a nice fellow, an American from Texas, and he looks so young and so fresh that it seems almost impossible that he has been to so many places and has had such adventures. I sympathise with poor Desdemona when she had such a dangerous stream poured in her ear, even by a black man.
This excerpt is from a letter Lucy writes to Mina, the character in question is Quincey Morris, who is first introduced on May 24, and Lucy is obviously referencing Othello the Shakespeare play and the character himself.
Now, Quincey's race is never confirmed in the text, and while some people read the line as proof that he's Black, it could also read as Lucy comparing being attracted to an American as an Englishwoman to a white woman being drawn to a Black man, and you could also make a case for Quincey being white like the real-life figure he is very likely based on (William Frederick Cody, aka Buffalo Bill, who was friends with Henry Irving and thus Stoker also knew him) and context clues or mixed-race based on Stoker's other writings and his belief that having pure white ancestry was a weakness that could be countered by racial mixing (which might be surprising for him, but is still rooted in eugenics and racist ideas), but regardless of what Quincey's racial background is, it's a racist line both bc of the 'dangerous Black man seducing white women' and 'incredible that a white woman could be attracted even to a Black man' readings.
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Watching the way F1 fans constantly change their mind towards drivers based on certain situations is pretty interesting. You can tell that people will almost always favour the underdog over the topdog.
I was reading the replies on some Instagram posts about Charles' comments on Carlos fighting him so hard in China and was pretty surprised by how much people have turned against Charles these days. In a way that I haven't seen before with him. It's that kind of behaviour where people lose all sense of reason and just want to hate on the person.
From my pov Charles was always the baby darling angel, Ferrari's big hope, who could do no wrong. Everyone loves him. But ever since Carlos got sacked at Ferrari, Carlos has gotten this underdog status (more so than before) which makes people root for him. Especially now that he can back himself up with good results. And it's suddenly turned the narrative around.
And that's really the same in a lot of driver situations. People used to root for Max a lot when he was the underdog in terms of fighting for wins and a Championship but now that he's dominant people have started to actively root against him. And when it comes to him and Checo, if any incident happens between the two of them people will always pick Checo's side. They know that Max is a better driver, but because Checo is pretty much the underdog at RBR they will always pick his side if comes down to a fight so to speak. I will never forget the amount of toxicity Max got last year when Checo was able to fight for wins and Max dared to take the fastest lap from him in Jeddah (I mean wow, a racing driver fighting for his Championship lead, who would've thought...).
You can also tell that the narrative around Alex has turned around now that he's top dog at Williams and is the one being so obviously favoured. Alex was also one of those drivers who could do no wrong in people's eyes and who people used to sympathise with because he was the underdog next to Max at RBR. But ever since the switching of cars with Logan people have not nearly been as kind to him. Even wishing for him to crash and suddenly rooting for Logan even though barely anyone was really rooting for Logan before.
The reason that this is interesting to me is that the driver's themselves haven't really changed much. it's not like Charles, Max and Alex for example have suddenly turned into completely different people. So it's interesting to see how perceptions of a person can suddenly shift based on the situation they or the driver next to them is in.
And that should be a reminder that the hate drivers receive is often not even based on who they are as people. It's often (not always) pretty much just a topdog vs underdog thing. Which is pretty silly.
Sorry for this long ass essay! 😭 Was just having thoughts!
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I saw a post the other day wondering about how the people who have been helped by William feel after it was revealed that he was the Lord of Crime.
If you've ever been helped by someone, and then heard a bad rumour about them, you might think "oh, but they were pretty nice to me though......" and I think that would be the point of internal conflict for a lot of the characters.
Bill, Lucien, Helena, Benjamin and Michelle Burton and all the others.
Imagine seeing that England's most wanted criminal, a supposedly cruel man with not a single modicum of care for human life, had gone out of his way to help you, a person who could offer him nothing in return.
If someone showed you compassion when no one else would, what does it matter that he turns out to be a criminal?
I think these characters who have been personally impacted by William's help - whether offered revenge, opportunity, protection - would probably silently stand by him in the midst of public outcry. They certainly would not be open about their support, lest they too become targets for being sympathisers.
However, the reality of the matter is that strong opinions are often tied to personal experience. Those who have suffered because of William's direct actions will despise him forever, even if they discover his reasons for doing it.
Those who have been lifted up by William in their time of need will probably still cast him as a saviour, no matter how muddied his name becomes.
But those are just my thoughts.
#yuukoku no moriarty#moriarty the patriot#my writing#the thoughts are falling#william james moriarty#minor spoiler for the remains#oh my god im psychoanalysing fictional characters again
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@epersonae :D
Infodumping time! :D :D :D :D
Okay, so it has been acknowledged on all fronts that OFMD does really well at dealing with a world steeped in colonialism, especially when it comes to Ed and his mum’s implicit backstory, Jim’s history and family background in St. Augustine, plus the various tidbits we get about Frenchie, Oluwande and Roach and the other one-episode characters like Abshir and the Arawak people.
Now let me explain why I also got so excited about the British characters we have in the show, entirely based in the context of colonialism and the British class system.
The show is set in 1717. By this point, Britain is the ‘united’ Kingdom with England having laid claim to Ireland and Wales for years and finally hooking Scotland with the Act of Union in 1707, after the disaster of the Darien Project - another story another day - utterly bankrupted Scotland.
In 1689, there was the Glorious Revolution, wherein William of Orange came over from the Netherlands (at the request of the mostly English aristocracy) and punted James II/VII (II of England, VII of Scotland) off the throne. Civil wars of various shapes and sizes happened for the next 40+ years, but especially in parts of Ireland and Scotland.
So let me tell you that when I realised this crew of pirates had both a Northern Irish and a working class Scots character in it? I screeched. Especially a Scots character using the Scots language, which never appears anywhere except Scots media? Not least because many, many pirates who were working in the Caribbean at that time were dispossessed Irish and Scotsmen, especially following the most recent Jacobite rising in 1715. (Also, speculation abounds that historical Stede was actually a Jacobite sympathiser since he named his second ship Royal James, but that’s another story for another day)
I’m not as familiar with the Irish history, but I know that with the plantation of Ulster in the 17th century, Irish Catholic families were forcibly displaced to make room for Protestant families from Britain, who got all the valuable/usable land, while the Irish Catholic population were taxed to the hilt and driven to live on poorer land plus the horrors of the church schooling system, where the kids were taken from their families to be assimilated.
Sound familiar? Ireland is where Britain honed its colonisation blade to the point that in 1745, the Scots nobles were calling it “the Irish system” when they decided it would be a useful thing to use to subdue “the superstitious savages” in the Highlands to turn everyone into only-English-speaking protestant automatons (Again, Buttons speaking Scots had me screeching! It doesn’t happen! Not in American shows! And yet!!!). It was later rolled out across the British empire.
So yes. This has been happening for centuries and one of the regular solutions to deal with people who were protesting against children being taken/all their food being taxed away/any vague sound of dissent or rumblings of ‘Papishness’ was cause for Banishment. The Good Old British solution to any problem in the 16th-18th century: kick them out the country to one of the countries that we need filled with white folk or enslave them in a plantation.
It’s very telling that in British politics, the insults that the London-based politicians used for each other were to call each other Irish bandits (Tory is apparently an English bastardisation of the Irish word “tóraidhe”, which means outlaw) and Scottish cow herder (likewise Whig was mockingly derived from “Chuig an bothar”, the call of the cattle drivers)
So within a historical context, Buttons and Wee John ending up in the Caribbean wouldn’t have been unusual. It was very common to the point that there was an entire Jacobite/anti-England faction of pirates in Nassau (ie. the Republic of Pirates). There’s also a reason that a lot of plantations ended up being owned by Scottish ex-aristocracy - many were stripped of lands/titles because of the Jacobite risings and ended up in the Caribbean (And made their fortunes, then bribed their way back to their titles because of course they did. Bastards).
I do wish we’d got more information about Ivan and his background. At the time the show is set, Britain was tromping over and around south Asia with the East Indian Trading Company (also known as the Giant Company of Thieving Bastards Here To Steal Your Cool Stuff) which had been spreading its influence throughout the region since the 1600s and by the 1700s, were the main European power in the area. There are records showing connections between south Asia and St. Helena in the Caribbean from as early as 1684, so it isn’t impossible that someone from the area that is now Pakistan couldn’t have ended up working on trading ships to the Caribbean.
And then we have Lucius and Izzy, our two white English crew.
I have so many feelings about the class subtext that is slathered all over the show and I need to mention that before I move on to the boys.
Stede is technically upper class because of his wealth but when you see him with any of the other English characters who are upper class by birth and breeding, he is seen as secondary to them. The way Badminton and his officers treat Stede demonstrates this. If he was the firstborn son of someone with any title/lineage and had inherited said title, there would be some level of class-bias and respect shown because one has to follow the social code. However, the son of a man who bought his way into land and respectability? PFFT. No.
When his father says “Mary has acreage” and tells Stede “you didn’t earn it”, it speaks measures: Bonnet Senior is new money with no property or title and is still angry about “rich boys”. He’s rich himself, yes, but he wasn’t born to it. He didn’t inherit it and he begrudges the fact his son will have it handed to him. (Take Antoinette’s comment to Siegfried on the party ship - “just inherit it like a normal person” - this is how the gentry talk about wealth)
Also, re. Stede not having an English accent, while his father does - I like the implication that Stede is first-gen colony baby. His dad came out to make a fortune, which is why he still has his English accent, but Stede was only in England for school, which is why he doesn’t have the accent.
So yis, in that line, Stede is upper class by property, but not by breeding. He’s “not some derelict. He has money” and that’s all that he had going for him. When he talks about the party he describes it as “posh knobs hob-nobbing with other posh nobs” and later tells Frenchie he never really fit in at those kind of dos. His father may be a land-owner, but that’s only a few steps above “tradesman” to the born-and-raised aristocracy.
Then we have Lucius. He’s absolutely not working class. At a guess, I’d say some kind of merchant level because his family would have had to be financially sound enough to afford to give him an education that involved calligraphy and have a reason for him to be able to read and write exceptionally well. One of the options is that he was trained up to be a clerk, someone who does all the writing and book-keeping.
And then we have Izzy. I can’t avoid the fact that Izzy’s social context is important because Con is famous in his field for playing working class northern characters. He’s won awards for it.
Before I start munching on this particular chew toy, a quick recap: for people unfamiliar with the British Isles, there is a big social divide between the north and south of England. North England was where so much of the big industry happened back in the day (mines, shipyards, factories, mills et al), while London and the south were seen as the political hubs.
When said industries went under, let’s just say it was the north that dealt with the brunt of it and are still dealing with the repercussions of decisions made by the governments in the south. (Yes, this is a quick and very generalised recap, but it’s 9am on a Sunday morning and I have no brain for getting into the collapse of the industrial revolution + the successive mess of stuff that followed)
So Izzy. Izzy is one of Con’s juicy working class northern lad creations. He’s not got much in life but he’s clawed his way into a position that should merit some respect and some appreciation. He has worked hard to get where he is and is determined to maintain what he has got.
And if we are to take his accent as we take Buttons and Wee John, he’s from Liverpool, which was becoming one of the biggest ports in England at the time on the north west coast of England. Because it expanded so rapidly from the late 1690s, the majority of people in the Liverpool area were probably working in/around/associated with the port.
My dad’s side of the family are northern (north-east, though) and working class and one thing I can very clearly remember about the older generations was that they thought hard work was the way to go because that was how things had always been done: you work hard, you get what you earn and you get on with it. Education was a luxury most people couldn’t afford because you had to work, because if you didn’t work, you didn’t eat. (I could also go on and on about how certain generations there thought reading made you “soft” but that’s a whole other kettle of fish)
Izzy really embodies that ethos, especially when he’s faced with a crew who don’t seem to even be doing the bare minimum of work. His hostility is understandable when he has been working his arse off and, in his own words, “barely ekeing by” while these people are acting like they’re on a holiday cruise. His comment on the library - the “perverse misuse of space” about something only rich people had access to - and pushing Lucius into doing some physical labour when Lucius is the equivalent of a secretary is Izzy expressing his frustrations with it all. This life is the one he knows and he knows how it’s meant to work but Stede has come along, saying “what if it wasn’t like that?” and Izzy isn’t a fan.
I know I’m probably reading a lot more into it than there really is there, but given how much David Jenkins has spoken about Con’s audition performance and development of the character shaping the scripts, I can’t help feel that it’s important, especially given how deftly they handled so many of the other aspects.
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What do you believe would have been the most likely outcome for both Hamilton and Laurens (separately) had their relationship been discovered at the time?
While interesting, this question is phrased extremely vaguely. And so, it all really depends under what circumstances were they discovered - because there are a variety of options or endings depending on the situation - like who found out, or how? Many first expect an immediate death sentence should any slight homosexual inclination be dedicated, but this is quite an oversimplified viewpoint in the hindsight of full historical context. So, I'll run you by a few possibilities and different situations.
Discovered through letters or an act of affection.
It was commonly known throughout Washington's family that Laurens and Hamilton were incredibly close that they were nearly inseparable. According to Hamilton, the military family thought they had a sort of “partnership”;
I have conveyed your reproof to the lads. They have considered me as the secretary of the family and fancied a partnership which did not exist. Writing or not writing to you, you know they love you and sympathise in all that concerns you.
Source — Alexander Hamilton to John Laurens, [September 12, 1780]
Whatever they had imagined Hamilton discerns it. There have been some suggestions about it perhaps being speculation that Hamilton was exploiting Laurens for his wealth, [x] but would it be too farfetched to speculate they meant a romantic friendship?
A romantic friendship is/was a very close, but non-sexual relationship, between same-sex friends who often shared a degree of physical or emotional closeness. During the colonial periods of America, or even other contemporary Western societies; same-sex romantic relationships were oftentimes socially acceptable if remaining semi-righteous, such as abstaining from sexual acts, and not interfering with heterosexual marriage. @thelittlelionofvalleyforge has an amazing and more in-depth post here that you should read, as it delves into the topic a bit more. In the historical time period of communal bunking and platonic yet expressive letters, intimacy between the same sex while remaining entirely platonic was common and seen as a “licentious Greek love”. [x]
And this form of friendship wasn't uncommon in the army either. Baron Von Steuben - who Laurens and Hamilton were quite close to - was greatly fond of his Aide-de-camps while serving in Washington's army, that it is believed he was romantically inclined with two of them, Benjamin Walker and William North. The Baron met Walker his first day at Valley Forge, recalling; “If I had seen an angel from Heaven I should not have more rejoiced.” [x] And the two became quite close, as well as with North who Walker was in a relationship with. Although Benemann makes the suggestion that Walker and North could have had a romantic friendship that edged into some sexual intimacy;
At a distance of over 200 years, with only the evidence of a large but scattered and incomplete body of correspondence, it is impossible to prove the nature of the relationships which developed between North and Walker, and between von Steuben und each of the two young men. It appears that North and Walker enjoyed a romantic friendship which included sexual intimacy. North was more deeply emotionally involved in the relationship than was Walker,
Source — Benemann, William E. Male-Male Intimacy in Early America: Beyond Romantic Friendships. United Kingdom, Taylor & Francis, 2014.
While Walker and North were more romantically inclined to each other, it is often a debate about where Steuben stood in the relationship. Further on, Benemann made the claim that while Steuben was attracted to his “angel”, Walker does not appear to have been sexually interested, and says that Walker envisioned the bond as more of a mentorship or fatherly affection.
Another example of a romantic friendship between two soldiers during the Revolution was Bulkley and Newman, a scarce recount of their relationship was made by Alexander Garden - another associate of Laurens's - in the Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War in America, which he wrote. Garden describes the two's relationship as “that excited the highest interest,” and was “the singular and romantic friendship which united two of the most distinguished soldiers of the Legionary cavalry.”
Bulkley and Newman were natives of Virginia, born in the same neighbourhood, and from early infancy united by such a congeniality of sentiment, that it almost appeared as if one soul gave animation to both. Their attachment increased with their years—it strengthened with their strength. As school—fellows they were inseparable; their task was the same, and he who was first perfect in acquiring it, was unhappy till he had impressed it, with equal force, on the mind of his friend.
Source — Garden, Alexander, and Field, Thomas Warren. Anecdotes of the American Revolution: Illustrative of the Talents and Virtues of the Heroes of the Revolution, who Acted the Most Conspicuous Parts Therein. United States, Books on Demand, 1865.
They were both mortally wounded at the battle of Quinby Bridge, on July 17, 1781; “they fell on the same spot, and, with united hands, reciprocating kindness to the last, expired.” [x]
With that being said, romantic friendships were not universally accepted, and there were still cases of them being found unacceptable (In regard to subjective religion and just culture from different states or countries). Especially if to breach the priorly stated decrees, which was if they were discovered to have been carried out with sexual acts or invading a heterosexual marriage. So, why we aren't sure this is what the military family was referring to, it is possible. But even so, if Hamilton's or Laurens's letters were discovered by someone getting their hands on them (An average letter, as I'm sure there's no disguising the true intent of the speculated five words on the April 1779 letter), they could quite easily be shrugged off as platonic, or that could be the excuse they would use for themselves. There would need to be more concrete evidence for action to be taken, although it would leave an open door for disparage and rumors to spread.
Discovered through sexual intimacy.
This is where matters start to become more severe but also complicated. With the freedom the 18th century proposed with expressions of friendship - like romantic friendship and communal bunking, especially in times of war - it offered leeway to disguise any sexual involvement in their relationship, while still having relative freedom to express romantic sentiments. But this did not work for those who were caught in the act, like Anderson and Enslin. Of the 3,315 cases listed by James C. Neagles in his index of Revolutionary War courts-martial, only two can be identified as sodomy prosecutions, and neither were executions. That leads Benemann to speculate as to whether sodomy was truly an immediate death penalty resolved sin as many seem to assume, or if sodomy was truly as common in the revolution as some believe. Another argument he makes is;
or perhaps most sexual contact between men was private and consensual, and came to the attention of courts-martial only when a complaint was filed. Both the Enslin and the Anderson cases appear to be cases of sexual assault.
You can read about the Enslin case recorded by Berlin here, but to briefly cover the Anderson case he is referring to—There is a recording of John Anderson of the Maryland Line, and his court-martial, 13 April 1792, in the orderly books of General Mordecai Gist;
At the same Court held the 9th Instant, was tried—John Anderson private in the Maryland Line—For Sodomy—The Court are of oppinion, that he is guilty of an attempt, to commit Sodomy, and do sentence him to Run the Gauntlope three times thro' the Brigade—the General approves the Sentence, and orders it to take place this Evening at Roll Call.
‘To Run the Gauntlope’ refered to the corporal punishment of ‘run the gauntlet’, which means the party judged guilty is forced to run between two rows of soldiers, who strike out and attack them with sticks or other weapons.
Although the claim that the military was reluctant to punish private and consensual sexual acts between men, doesn't stand outside of Enslin's case, as there are no mentions of Anderson's case being a case of sexual assault. Notably, Enslin and Anderson were ruled two different forms of punishment with different levels of severity, as Enslin was drummed out, but Anderson merely received corporal and humiliation punishment. This could be due to rank, as Anderson was a private and Enslin was a Major, or rather that Enslin's case was an assault case. Nonetheless, it was ruled out and specified as Sodomy. Once again, @/thelittlelionofvalleyforge goes into a deeper analysis on the historical definition surrounding “attempted sodomy”, which I suggest you read. Benemann also made the suggestion that perhaps men in homosexual relationships refrained from committing sexual acts to avoid getting caught and sentenced.
But this cannot apply to either Laurens or Hamilton, as there are implications in Hamilton's and Laurens's letters that they did share moments of sexual intimacy, with Hamilton's venereal mentions of his dick; “his size, make, quality of mind and body, achievements, expectations, fortune, &c. In drawing my picture, you will no doubt be civil to your friend; mind you do justice to the length of my nose and don’t forget, that I ___.” [x] And the high chance surrounding the five missing words confirming Laurens had seen his friend's dick. Or just other implications with metaphors like the depravity of a lover's touch;
But like a jealous lover, when I thought you slighted my caresses, my affection was alarmed and my vanity piqued. I had almost resolved to lavish no more of them upon you and to reject you as an inconstant and an ungrateful ___. But you have now disarmed my resentment and by a single mark of attention made up the quarrel.
Source — Alexander Hamilton to John Laurens, [11 September 1779]
So, there were still chances of the two getting caught in the act which boarders on heavier severity than what was my previous point about fluttering language in letters, or simple acts of affection. But evidently, they took some precautions as to not get caught since they seemingly made it through the war with only 20th century historians speculating about their relationship. And as I said, it depends on who finds them under what circumstances. Acts of affection would be much more excusable aside from provoking a few rumors, but if someone close or who valued Hamilton and Laurens (Some of the aides, or Lafayette) caught them in the act, they would likely not speak about it so as long as the case was consensual sex. Also, there could be an unwillingness to question anything further because of their value to the army. Depending on the beliefs of the said person, it could encourage some strain, but with the lack of reported sodomy cases implies that some must have been quiet about it even if spotted. Which was another point of Benemann's;
Perhaps the military chose to treat such acts of sexual misconduct on the subjudicial level, as an internal matter not to be shared outside the confines of the unit. Unwillingness to bring shame and infamy on a unit might have motivated commanding officers to deal with homosexual transgressions in ways that skirted the usual procedures of military justice. If such conduct resulted in a court-martial, it was certainly possible to hedge and obfuscate in such a way that the official record revealed little about the true nature of the proceedings.
Similarly, to what Benemann says; “Courts could use strong but vague terms such as “filthiness,” “scandalous behavior,” In Washington's army there was a court-martial on the charge of lewdness in the barracks described as “great habits of indecency.” This leads me to believe that it may have been all likely outcome if their actions were presented to someone who was more than just a forgiving acquaintance, or brother in arms—But rather General Washington, himself. I think Washington would do as Benemann suggested, which was call it something else to lessen the severity. Because the greatest contrast from Laurens and Hamilton in comparison to those like Anderson and Enslin (Other than the latter's consent), was that their positions and necessity were in a much higher respect. If two of Washington's most valued aides were found to be committing such impropriety in his ranks, it would not only propose damage to his name and trust or reliability to govern the army, but he would lose those two most valued aides and their abilities. In an act of self-serving utility, Washington would likely sugarcoat their case as nothing more but ‘conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman’. Which was to disgrace the guilty personally or brings dishonor to the military profession affects his fitness to command the obedience of his subordinates so as to successfully complete the military mission.
Thomas McCoy of the 7th Pennsylvania Regiment was tried for repeated disorderly conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, embezzling the state's money, and other financial crimes (Found guilty of a breach of the 21st Article, 14th section of the Articles of War), he was sentenced to be discharged from service. [x] And while it's arguable that “sexual independency” would be equated with financial crimes, something similar would have likely become of them like a court martial and their discharge from the army. But if they proved more necessary to Washington, then it likely would have resulted as a suspension from the army for a year.
In the case that none of this happened, they would probably have been drummed out shamefully and never allowed to return to military lines, like Enslin. This would affect their lives severely; Hamilton would have lost the opportunity or marriage in general with Eliza as there would be no way General Schuyler would permit such a union. And it would have likely been a heavy burden throughout his life, making him a way less of an influential figure and forcing him to resort to become a merchant - despite his income preferences - since he would be desperate for wealth stability, and had the qualifications to become such anyway. Laurens would be disowned without a doubt, as much as he was his father's golden child, this would taint the family name, and Henry would have to resort to Harry as the heir.
In any case, while sodomy cases were usually unfairly ruled out, and usually meant as an example to keep your indecencies hidden to not disgrace the army—Different cases vary between results of discovery, and it was not always a straight sentence to the gallows especially during the revolution, contrary to popular belief.
TL;DR, they could have easily excused their letters as nothing more but expression and declarations of friendship, unless it was a heavily explicit one. And if they were caught in the act, a friend would have likely be disagreeing but kept quiet about it. But if it was Washington, he likely would have tried to lessen the costs and sugarcoat the situation, for his own and the army's benefit. But in the case, they were dealt with a drumming out, their lives would have been forever burdened, and many aspects would have changed. But we don't know for sure.
Hope this helps.
#amrev#american revolution#american history#queer history#alexander hamiton#historical alexander hamilton#historical john laurens#john laurens#historical lams#lams#history#george washington#queries#sincerely anonymous#cicero's history lessons
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Why does William Afton kill?
Disclaimer: These are general theories from the fnaf community and my own personal thoughts on this subject so keep in mind that there is NO definitive canon answer just pure speculation.
Tw: Mentions of child murder, blood, manipulation and psychological issues.
Ah yes "The Man Behind The Slaughter" we know it oh so well however why did he start to murder kids? Well a theory is that the first fnaf death was The Crying Child in the Bite of 83. William suffered a loss and wanted Henry to know the feeling of losing someone dear as well so he went on to murder Charlie. Now I particularly don't agree with this as I think Charlie was the first to ever be killed.
Moving on to our next theory its going to be based on Williams drive to become immortal through the use of remnant from his victims. He starts killing and collecting it planning all the MCI deaths (except for maybe Cassidy) and intentionally equipping the animatronics with killing mechanisms. After getting spring locked however the games imply that he has lost all sense of morality and possibly any sanity he may have previously possessed.
Another theory is that he kills for joy maybe caused by some phycological disorder a sort of thirst for blood (like maybe Claudius from the Roman Empire). Now I don't think this to be entirely true as he is depicted as charming and helpful by police and I mean kids wouldn't trust him so easily if he wasn't which means he is exceptional at deception and manipulation accompanied by his intelligence it still doesn't rule out the possibility of him being mentally ill though. William could also just be a toxic dark empath by personality which means he knows how to get exactly what he wants from a person, including their life and sympathise with them accurately and also a professional at putting up a fake facade.
Now my last and final theory is rebuilding his dead family. So unfortunately I am going to have to break canon and the timeline a bit by talking about Ms. Afton as it's theorised she was killed and possesses Ballora as she isn't present in the games and well... someone has to give birth right? Now as we know The Bite of 83 was an accident and William didn't want Elizabeth to be killed so possibly he started killing kids to collect remnant to revive his family (Purple Guy you should have just found a Necromancer instead). Now this is a pretty interesting theory however he didn't reach his goal due to the spring lock failure and he blames all of the Afton family deaths of his wife and 2 kids on Michael (I feel like that's the type of person he is and would manipulate Michael into thinking that and succeeds) which leads to the events of Sister location and everyone's favourite exotic butters and casual bongos.
Conclusion: I have no answer we have to somehow beg Scott Cawthon for a real canon answer on Williams killing motive sorry.
#fnaf rant#fnaf theory#william afton#Why does he kill?#five nights at freddys#springlock failure#fnaf mci#missing children#the bite of 83#Skores stupid insights
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I’m kinda bored by the Sussexes. I used to get some entertainment out of them because they really surprised me time and time again how out of touch, delusional and entitled they are. But now nothing they do surprises me anymore.
Harry making his fathers CANCER all about himself didn’t even surprise me. Snarking on H&M used to be atleast fun but now it’s just sad and frankly uncomfortable. In the beginning you had leaks and that kind of stuff giving insight behind the palace doors but now it’s just watching two middle aged and out of touché people whose only job is emotionally terrorising the royal family.
I’m not even a monarchist, I’m a staunch republican (I’m not British but I am European who has a king as a HoS). I just liked Kate but it’s not like I like the whole institution. But it’s making me sympathise with William having to grow up with a mother who was paranoid and used him as an emotional crutch and a father who kept throwing his own kids under the bus for publicity stunts and was not present during a large part of their life. Like shit, he grew up as one of the most privileged men on the planet and yet I sympathise with him because he seems to have turned out normal and decent despite the odds being stacked against him. I just need to look at Harry, andrew and even Charles for the way William could have turned out.
But I’m a royal watcher for Kate and only Kate. I was in elementary school when she and William married and I remember coming from school and watching the wedding. So I have always liked her.
Yeah that is why I have taken some breaks from here and royal watching.
I still skim articles and take mental notes but Harry and Meghan have become obsolete in so many ways.
I have been a royal watcher for over 20 years now but I really focused on them after Catherine had George. Even stopped work to turn on the TV to watch them on the Lindo Wing steps.
So I kept track of Harry due to royal articles. I think what really attracted me to the Harry & Meghan mess was the massive amounts of articles they were producing on a daily basis. I had never seen anything like it before and all of a sudden we were getting private details of a family the previously was extremely silent on their daily lives.
I do feel badly for William. Harry has turned Diana into a Saint and has made it seem as if she only had one son and it was Harry who was there for her emotionally. He has completely written William off as being Diana's son. William sees a lot of Diana's issues in Harry and I think that it why he was so concerned for so long but you can only care for so long before you have to give up for your own mental well being.
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The lost cause of British conservatism is like the lost cause of the US Confederacy. Myth-making and evasion dominate the writing of Conservative intellectuals just as they dominated the self-justification of the defeated American south.
To Confederate sympathisers the south did not lose because it was defending slavery. The southern states were a victim of an attack on their rights by the north, a position still maintained today by Nikki Haley and other right-wing politicians seeking southern votes.
Equally, today’s Conservative writers insist that they are not going down to a potentially catastrophic defeat because Conservatism betrayed the UK by imposing Brexit, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss on a country in no condition to take any of them.
No, the right is losing because it is not right-wing enough.
It feels mean to pick out examples when there is so much special pleading to choose from. But as readers need evidence, here is the pro-Brexit historian Robert Tombs (an old friend of this Substack).
Writing in the Telegraph Tombs says that the Tories “have lost much of their middle-class vote and their working class vote too”. So they have. But Tombs hastens to add, not because of Brexit being a disaster, or Johnson turning Downing Street into a pub, or unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy but because along the way the Conservatives embraced policies that Tombs and the Telegraph don’t like.
“High taxes, mass immigration, projects like HS2 and hasty attempts to impose net zero”.
There is no need for right-wingers to ask hard questions of themselves. They weren’t wrong. They were betrayed by cowardly politicians and the civil service.
Henry Hill, the deputy editor of Conservative Home, who was writing in the Guardian this week, exemplifies the determination of modern Conservatives to avoid a reckoning with what they have done.
He asks a good question: how did the Tories go from a landslide victory in 2019 to what looks like being a landslide defeat in 2024. But once again he does not blame Brexit, or Boris Johnson, or Liz Truss or any policy or politician right-wingers endorsed but too many immigrants and too many tax rises.
The modern right-winger is always the victim and never the aggressor. He does not harm others; others harm him.
The great southern novelist William Faulkner wrote in the 1940s about how we use fantasy to blot out history.
To men of his generation the worst moment in the history of the south was on the afternoon of July 3, 1863, during the Battle of Gettysburg. The Confederates were still in the civil war. But then the southern high command ordered Major General Thomas Pickett to lead his men in an insane charge uphill against entrenched Union positions.
The battle was lost, and eventually the war was lost too.
Faulkner wrote
“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances.”
For every Tory boy today, there is an instant when it is not yet ten o’clock on that October morning in 2022. Kwasi Kwarteng has not delivered his mini budget. It hasn’t happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin …
It is easy to mock. And just because it is easy does not mean one should do it. But once you have stopped laughing at them, it’s worth noting that the future of conservatism is one of perpetual motion to the right.
If American conservatism is dominated by the Donald Trump personality cult, British conservatism is dominated by the Brexit cargo cult.
You cannot say that Brexit has failed and remain a Conservative. It is heresy. Taboo. Question Brexit and the shamans of the Tory tribe will curse you, and its warriors will pick up their clubs and spears and drive you from the warmth of the campfire into the cold, darkness of the real world.
In this know-nothing atmosphere I can see four reasons why Tory radicalisation is inevitable
1/ The power of fantasy
youtube
The inability of Conservatives to face what they have done delivers the first shove to the right. They believe that a public sector conspiracy explains their lamentable record in government rather than their own ideologies.
Liz Truss (see video above) and Kwasi Kwarteng, forced out the permanent secretary to the Treasury and sidelined the Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility before they crashed the economy. They now pretend that the fault lies with the institutions they ignored, not themselves.
British deference, our awful class inferiority, means that we assume that establishment politicians are moderate and respectable. But Rishi Sunak has chosen to waste his time trying to enact a spiteful and unworkable policy of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. He is pushing his party to the extreme.
You cannot say that the British radical right is being constrained or having its ideas contested by a sensible centre-right.
2/ The perverse triumph of progressivism
And yet if you take conservatives on their own terms, some of what they say is true. They are genuinely furious that, despite 14 years of Conservative rule, taxes and immigration rates are at record highs. And they genuinely fear cultural change.
Yet, rather than confront their fears, Conservatives are engaged in aimless rage.
Taxes are at a record high because of covid, whose costs will pass eventually, and because of an ageing population, whose cost will only rise.
Conservatives might find the money for tax cuts by reducing the old-age pension or by demanding more money from the elderly for health care. Because the old vote Conservative, they do neither.
Immigration covers the UK’s acute labour shortages. Conservative writers complain but offer no alternatives to bringing in new workers.
As for woke culture, anyone who works in the arts, academia, the charitable sector and other liberal institutions knows that there has been a cultural revolution. No one who has witnessed the attacks on gender-critical feminism can doubt that it can be, like all revolutions, viciously authoritarian.
But in a free society there is very little a government can do about, for instance, liberal newspaper and book publishers censoring feminists. Cultural battles are largely fought outside politics. Politicians can change laws but they cannot force people to think the way Conservatives want them to think, and impotence adds to Tory anger.
Rage without purpose drives you to extremes. There is no need to stop and work out practical policies. You are free to revel in the purity of your anger.
3/ The media-political complex
In our interview Tim Bale described how new media encouraged extremism. The right has given the UK GB News our own version of Fox News, even though we all assumed the law prevented politically biased broadcasting.
Tory MPs have become TV presenters producing sound bites for social media. Extreme postures and simple solutions attract attention. Demagoguery has now become the smart career move on the right. If a Tory gets thrown out of Parliament, he or she can work as a loudmouth in the media until fresh political openings arise.
As Tim Bale said, new media…
“…gave opportunities to Conservative MPs who otherwise would've been fairly unknown. Conservative voices who probably would've been shouting into the void now make a name for themselves, much faster and much more frequently than would've been the case. It’s made the party much more difficult to manage. And it's also put pressure on the leadership to move to the radical right.”
4/ The wave of the future
Everywhere in Europe and the Americas radical right politicians and parties are driving out the centre-right politicians.
The UK seems to be about to elect a moderate centre-left government. But the forces that are driving conservative politics rightwards – mass immigration, the rise of authoritarian liberalism, new media technologies – will continue to drive the British conservatives rightwards too.
If Labour fails, they will be waiting to take over
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On the one hand, you just said you know nothing about Kidnapped. But on the other hand, you're the Historical Context guy so:
What is a dominie? I'm getting some kind of...teacher? There's some kind of social Situation here with a lot of words I don't recognize. You said Essendean is fictional but a fictional what?
Yeah I have to be honest here, I know extremely little about Scotland in the 1750s. I grew up close enough to the Scottish border that I can suss out a bit of Scots through, idk, vibes alone? But my actual history knowledge is limited. Though I imagine if I stick with Kidnapped, that might improve.
Anyway a dominie is a schoolteacher but associated with the Church of Scotland, since they ran schools before the government did. They could be the same person as the minister, but on this occasion the minister is Mr Campbell and the dominie was Davie's dad.
I think Essendean is just a village. And a kirk is a church and a manse is the house the church provides for the minister to live in.
I've also taken the opportunity to do ten minutes of reading up on Scottish history so here's the briefest summary of what was going on in the 1750s:
OK we have to actually start in 1603, when Elizabeth I died without an heir and James VI of Scotland became James I of England as well. The English and Scottish thrones were then held by the same monarch.
In 1688, James I's descendent, James II (VII of Scotland) was overthrown in the Glorious Revolution by William of Orange. In Scotland, James's supporters - the Jacobites - rose up to try to restore him to the throne. The rebellion was rapidly and violently defeated.
In 1707, the English and Scottish Parliaments passed the Act of Union which created the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Jacobites rose up again, first under James II's son, then under his grandson, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the latter in 1745.
In 1746, Bonnie Prince Charlie gave battle at Culloden, in which the Jacobites were brutally defeated. The Jacobite cause collapsed, and their sympathisers faced severe repercussions. This was especially true in the Highlands where the Jacobite cause was most strongly represented, where ancestral rights were stripped, and kilts and tartan were banned outside of military contexts. And Kidnapped starts at a time when this was very recent history.
Though for reference, Davie lives not in the Highlands but in the Borders. Historically this is the area of the Border Reivers, raiders who took advantage of the lack of defence and lawlessness of the border areas, particularly to raid livestock.
By the 17th century this had mostly been brought under control; I think the Reivers would be out of living memory by Davie's time. The consequences would still be visible though: even today there are still lots of the defensive pele towers that were built as protection against raiding.
#kidnapped weekly#my parents nearly bought a house once that came with the ruins of a 13th century pele tower attached#sadly they couldn't afford it in the end :(#it would have been so cool
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Hi i love your posts literally… I read them on the bus to work and your mind is amazing.
Do you have any fics that are written in POV of people observing mulder and scully loving each other. It could be CSM, maggie, Skinner or other agents or characters throughout the show.
Thank you and I hope you have a wonderful week
DARLINNNN this is so so sweet of you to say, made my whole week. let’s see what i have
i feel like the most iconic example is the interlude chapter of incrementum, which is from the perspective of skinner’s assistant holly. you can read this chapter as a stand-alone, but you should def be reading the full story!!
on that note, the diana chapters of triptych are just so so good. i just did a full re-read and this part stuck with me so much:
They were kind of funny, kind of irritating, almost endearing. Scully fancied herself intimidating. Mulder humoured her. They were two outcasts smoking amateur-rolled joints behind the school gym and dubbing it rebellion. They were childhood best friends playing detectives. Scully was Tinker Bell, so small she only had room for one huge feeling at a time. Mulder was head of the Lost Boys.
Diana sympathised briefly with Walter Skinner. His angry little ducklings toddling out of line, snapping at every rustling mass in the bush. Did they not know where all this was headed? They took hope so seriously. They believed somehow in the truth.
i like outsiders by swinging-stars-from-satellites
supermarket flowers by living_underground
(i really loved the author’s note: “A few weeks ago I was making a late night supermarket run after work because the fridge was empty and this was the contents of the guy in front of me at the till's basket, and it just...I felt so much hope and love in that guy's basket, y'know? Anyway, it felt very Mulder-y.”)
four ways william scully got picked up from daycare by naraht made me want to drag my head across pavement (but did make me laugh when skinner judged the pre-school security)
might i interest you in a NSFW option?? thin walls by sisterspooky1013, whose author’s note to a friend says “i hope you enjoy this diana slander smut.” well, i do! those are my two favorite things!!!
the whole story is from maggie’s perspective
i haven’t gotten to these yet but there’s also as ethan sees it and perfect opposites.
and @gaycrouton and co have all eyes lead to the truth, which is chapter per episode from an outsider’s POV
my favorite jackson fic is housekeeping by audries (likely person for my favorite fic to be written by) and it’s from jackson’s POV.
(similarly, phantom weights by skuls is partly from jackson’s perspective)
(the epilogue to words of love too!!)
i’m sure there are more that i’m missing but that’s what i have off the top of my head!! come chat anytime 💗💗💗
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On 21st May 1650 James Graham, Marquess of Montrose, the chief Royalist military commander in Scotland, was executed.
The former Scottish covenanting commander was captured in 1650 by his enemies and condemned to death for his treachery to the covenanting cause and his military action against them during the 1640s. Rather than facing honourable execution by beheading, the Marquess was hanged like a common criminal. He went to his death defiantly, maintaining his adherence to the Covenant. He also went stylishly, dressed in a black suit, a scarlet coat with silver trimmings, and a beaver hat. In an exceptional move designed to inspire fear and awe in the populace, his head was placed on a spike on the Edinburgh Tolbooth next to the High Kirk (St Giles), his limbs distributed to other Scottish burghs, and his torso buried near the Burghmuir loch, at the east end of the modern Meadows.
The night before his death he wrote the following words;
Let them bestow on every airth a limb,
Then open all my veins, that I may swim
To thee, my Maker, in that crimson lake,
Then place my par boiled head upon a stake;
Scatter my ashes, strow them in the air.
Lord, since thou knowest where all these atoms are,
I'm hopeful thou'lt recover once my dust,
And confident thou'lt raise me with the just.
For royalists, Montrose became a symbol of loyalty and a martyr for their cause. After the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, they took revenge on their enemies in various ways, including the trial and execution of the Marquis of Argyll in May 1661. Meanwhile, a grisly piece of theatre was carefully stage-managed to emphasise the king’s power and authority, and the undoing of the covenanting regime’s acts – what Professor David Stevenson has called ‘the most potent ceremonial celebration’ of the king’s restoration in Scotland.
In January 1661, six ‘grave makers’ were paid £18 Scots for ‘raising’ the corpse. There were actually two bodies, for the remains of Sir William Hay of Dalgety, executed along with Montrose, were retrieved at the same time. Robert Johnstone was paid £3 for showing the burial place, where the exhumation took place by torchlight. Surgeons washed the bones, wrapped them in cloth, and placed them in coffins. The coffins were covered with ‘two best velvet mortcloths’, for which John Kniblo, a local merchant, was paid £24, including ‘drink money’, a customary additional payment for work.
Montrose’s heart was missing, having been removed by sympathisers in 1650, embalmed and kept safe. (Much later, the heart went missing and was lost.) The accounts also show that 100 planks (‘daills’) were made into scaffolding and a stage ‘for the trumpeters for the down taking of my lord Marques head’ from the spike on the Tolbooth. After the coffin containing Montrose’s remains lay in state at Holyrood Abbey for eight weeks, a magnificent funeral took place on 11 May 1661. His remains were buried in St Giles. They were disturbed by later alterations, but after Queen Victoria expressed astonishment in 1886 on seeing a simple slab inscribed ‘Montrose 1661’, the place was marked more formally.
Up until recently you could approach the tomb, I often saw a floraltribue, usually a single rose, left at the side of the Sarcophagus, the area is now roped off, but the flowers are still a regular sight there.
This account of Robert Rae’s expenses, and other documents, were printed and described in an article by J C Robbie, ‘The Embalming of Montrose’, in ‘Book of Old Edinburgh Club’, vol 1 (1908)
#scotland#scottish#history#edinburgh#Royalist#soldier#Covenanter#Military leader#execution#Judicial murder
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While I mostly agree with you, I don't think Harry ever truly wanted a more private life. SHOULD he have gone that route? Absolutely, and if he had he'd be much happier now. Part of him knows that, and that's why we've seen him wobble that way on occasion over the years. But I think what's also become clear is that he craves attention and public admiration too much to have ever been able to make it work. Meghan definitely stoked that fire, but the embers were already burning.
I don't think he's ever known what he's wanted. And I do sympathise to an extent because he lived in a world where his brother's path was mapped out from day one but his was not. Figuring out who he was must have been a struggle, especially doing it with the grief of losing a parent. But he also seemed to put himself on William's path and his identity crisis really ramped up when WK got married and he was third wheeling it.
The fact is, he made the wrong choices. He made the wrong choice in not walking away with Chelsy, he made the wrong choice in marrying Meghan, and he keeps making the wrong choices because he's too stubborn to hold his hands up and say, "I fucked up."
And he knows he made the wrong choices. It's why he keeps coming back to the BRF for all the events. He shouldn't have walked away in the manner he did, and he knows it. And I'd bet he resents Meghan for it, too.
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Can I just say I absolutely love all of your mischievous William drabbles in all your AUs?! He’s so cheeky and troublesome. Poor Benedict seems to be at his wits end. Would you be able to write something where Will & Benedict have a really sweet / serious heart to heart (in any of your AUs)?
Ah yeah, ngl William has become a favourite of mine to write due to how much of a little shit he can be 😂 And Benedict probably ends up muttering on a daily basis "that boy will be the death of me" because of all the mischief is youngest son gets up to.
But of course, in spite of the clown persona William wears like a badge of honour, there is a sensitive side that he very rarely shows. I'm going to opt for this heart to heart between father and son to be set in the Harry Potter AU as Benedict offers William some words of wisdom.
"William?" Benedict knocked on his son's open bedroom door before entering to find him lounging in a beanbag chair with a faraway look in his eye. "I'm just about to help myself to a slice of your mum's blueberry pie, did you want me to cut a slice for you as well?"
William broke out of his pensive reverie, blinking in his dad's direction and Benedict was about to head off and cut two slices anyway, knowing how predictable his son was when it came to matters of the stomach - but then something unusual happened.
"No thanks."
Benedict felt as though he had been hit with a stunning spell. In fact, maybe he had. He honestly wouldn't have put it past his youngest son to have perfected a non-verbal stunning spell to cast on him in order to run off downstairs and have the remainder of the pie to himself.
"Really? You're telling me you're not hungry?"
"I'm really not." William said with a beleaguered shrug.
"Merlin's beard; are you okay?" Benedict frowned and approached his son, now thoroughly concerned with his son's welfare - he had never known his son to not be hungry or turn down food of any kind.
"Yeah, 'm fine." William replied and slumped down further in his beanbag.
Benedict wasn't buying it. For a second he briefly considered that this was all an act William was putting on and once he had fallen for it his son would pull the wool over his eyes - but no, it couldn't be; he knew William too well and he knew his son's glum demeanour was genuine.
He brought a hand to William's forehead to check his temperature but it was perfectly normal.
"Are you feeling under the weather? Do you feel lethargic? Fatigued?"
"I'm fine, dad." William insisted.
Benedict looked down at his son who was avoiding meeting his eye, and while he knew William would have preferred for him to just walk away, he couldn't in good conscience turn his back on him when he knew his son was going through something.
Instead he settled down in the neighbouring beanbag chair and quietly waited. They sat there in silence for several minutes and Benedict was sure it was the longest he had ever gone being in the same room as William without his son making a single sound. But then, just when he began to think William wouldn't speak at all -
"I don't know what to do." William uttered in an uncharacteristically small voice.
"About what?" Benedict pressed gently.
"I... I've upset someone. Someone I really care about." William revealed and scratched the back of his neck, which was a sure sign he was particularly uncomfortable about what was being spoken about.
"What did you do?" Benedict enquired (though he thought a better question would probably be "what didn't you do do?").
"That's the thing. I have no idea." William shook his head cluelessly. "I've gone over everything in my head again and again and again to try and figure it out but I've got nothing."
"Have you tried asking them what it is you did wrong?"
"They're avoiding me. Not responding to me. Not giving me the time of day. Nothing."
Benedict grimaced and sympathised for his son. He knew the greatest way for a person to cause his son any emotional upheaval was to give him the silent treatment; it positively killed him. William, who thrived off of attention at all costs had never been able to cope with being ignored. It was a concept lost on him and the practice served as a form of torture for William Bridgerton. Who was he if people weren't laughing at his jokes or enraptured by his conversation or amused by his antics?
"I see."
"I just don't get it. What could I have done wrong to make them stop wanting to have anything to do with me?"
"Well,"
"And before you say everything I do is intentionally wrong; no, it's not. I might tease and take the piss out of most people but she's one of the only few that I don't."
It was quite a fascinating insight. Benedict was aware that it was a rare feat for anyone to escape William's wind-up wrath, and the only person he knew who William left out of his campaign of annoyance was his dear mother. William might joke around with Sophie but he never mocked her and he certainly never pranked her like he did every other resident of My Cottage. He wondered who else William had chosen not to pick on - and it intrigued Benedict to hear that this person was a "she".
"And why's that?"
"Why's what?"
"Why is she exempt from being on the receiving end of your mischief?"
"Because." William replied and for a beat Benedict thought that was all he was going to get. "Because she doesn't deserve it. She's the sweetest person I know. I wouldn't dream of doing or saying anything to even remotely annoy her."
Blimey. Benedict thought to himself. He wondered if the "she" in question knew just how much power she had over William for him to not want to annoy her in any way.
"So why has she stopped talking to you?"
"That's what I would like to fucking know." William grumbled and folded his arms crossly. "I haven't said anything that she could take in the wrong way and I haven't done anything that would warrant her being upset with me."
Benedict glanced at his son and saw the way his green eyes shone with growing despair. His heart went out to him and it genuinely pained Benedict to see his youngest son suffering the way in which he was. It was so very rare that William was ever vulnerable and to bear witness to it it was almost jarring.
"She means a lot to you." Benedict observed.
"Yeah." William grunted. "She's... she's my best friend."
Benedict couldn't help but feel a little puzzled, seeing as he didn't actually know of any girl best friends that William had. Sure, his son was popular and there were definitely friends in his life that were girls; but none he had mentioned too prominently to make Benedict think that any of them were his son's best friend.
"I thought we'd always be friends. That nothing could get between us. But now all I get from her is radio silence. And I feel like it's something that I've done wrong because why else would she stop being my friend? I mean, have you ever had something like this happen?"
Benedict couldn't stop the snort that exhaled from his nose.
"What happened?" William clocked his head with interest towards his dad. "Did you upset someone?"
"Oh. Big time." Benedict nodded as memories flashed back from his disastrous times of yearning after Sophie before they had gotten together.
"Well did you make things right? What was the resolution?"
"Yeah I made things right. Then I married her and we went on to have four children together."
William sat up straight. "What?" he squawked. "You and mum fell out before you got together? How is that possible?"
Benedict found his son's genuine shock rather adorable. His children found his relationship with Sophie to be so lovey-dovey and filled with such unyielding love that he supposed it made sense for any of them to find the fact they had once gone several years without properly speaking mind-blowing.
"Because I managed to mess things up. Twice. And I didn't even realise what I had done until your Uncle Phillip spelled things out for me."
"Merlin's beard, dad. What did you do?"
And then Benedict launched into all the ins and outs of the beginnings of his relationship with Sophie. How he had suddenly recognised his feelings for her after a kiss at the Yule ball, the comments he had made that she had overheard, how they both acted as if nothing happened and yet Sophie distanced herself from him altogether, how much he pined over her in the interim, how bringing a stop to a drunken kiss (there was no need to mention to his son that it was far more than a kiss) on a Greek beach led to a miscommunication with Sophie running off crying. William was gobsmacked to learn that his parents relationship hadn't been the smooth sailing he had always believed it to be but nevertheless he listened with intrigue as Benedict recounted how things had finally been amended and how it led to them becoming a couple after years of mutual pining.
"So yeah. It could be worse; you could have screwed things up as badly as I did." Benedict grinned jovially.
"But you didn't technically do anything wrong."
Benedict was flabbergasted by William's remark, not having expected his son to have his back, especially as he had just been regaled with the story of how his dad had greatly upset his mum on two separate occasions.
"You said some comments you didn't mean because you were confused and trying to buy some time to figure out your own feelings. It was just unfortunate that mum happened to overhear you say that at that moment in time. And then you only put a stop to the kiss on the beach because you didn't want her to think you were only kissing her because you were inebriated, plus she stormed off before you got the chance to properly explain. You hardly screwed up, dad. It was just a case of miscommunication and misunderstanding."
Benedict stared with amazement at his son; he was pretty sure this was the first time his son had ever taken his side on anything and he couldn't quite fathom it.
"Regardless, Will, it was all still such a mess. I hurt your mother even though I never intended to and as a result we both spent years yearning for each other. If I hadn't screwed up the way that I did we might have gotten together sooner and then we'd have had even more time together. It's my biggest regret, wasting away nearly seven whole years when I could have changed all of that by simply telling her how I felt." he sighed and reflected on the "what if?" that still occasionally plagued his mind, imagining what might have been had he fully recognised his feelings for Sophie then and there at the Yule ball and acted on them accordingly instead of getting scared. "Will, if this girl means the world to you, then you need to tell her. Don't shy away from the heart of the matter like I did. Cut to the chase and express how you really feel. I don't want you to live with the regret that I do."
"You know what, I think you're right." William nodded slowly. "Maybe I neglected her without realising or maybe there's been some sort of misunderstanding... but you're right, I've got tell her how important she is to me."
"That's the spirit." Benedict smiled and clapped him on the back. "And I know it might seem risky telling a girl that you're in love her,"
"Wait, what?" William spluttered and darted his head towards his father. "I'm not in love with her, dad! She's my best friend and I love her a lot, I care about her; but I'm not in love with her."
Benedict opened his mouth to tell William his fortune, that actually it was plainly obvious that he was in fact in love with his best friend, before thinking better of it. Telling William he was in love wouldn't make the boy see sense. No, he'd just push back against the suggestion even if there was truth to it. Clearly his son was either in denial or just oblivious to his own heart; but that was something William would have to figure out for himself in his own time, as frustrating as it might be for Benedict to sit back and watch.
"Right. My apologies."
"Honestly, dad. Just because you fell in love with your sibling's best friend doesn't mean the same goes for me." William snorted before jumping to his feet and stating his change of heart about the pie and leaving his bedroom.
"Oh, William. You idiot." Benedict muttered under his breath, shaking his head affectionately before following after him.
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