Gioia

It's a Steve/Darcy/Bucky fic where they life in a safehouse in the countryside. They claim Bucky is Steve's brother who is former military. Darcy dyed her hair red and Steve dyes his brown. Hydra is looking for Darcy and claim she's missing, but she's just in hiding. There's a friendly, badass lady in the neighborhood that knows Darcy is the missing Person but decides that she must have her reasons. One day when Steve is away, Darcy and Bucky get it on, involving some restraints and stuff and the neighbor lady walks in on them and threatens Bucky with a gun because she thinks he is taking advantage of Darcy.

Does this ring a bell? I've spent hours looking for it but came up empty

I was inspired to write this up when talking about my plans for Hermione for year five of my AU with my writing partner: a tally of where Hermione spends all known school breaks. No one goes home for Easter at any point, so I’ve omitted it.

Year One: Hermione explains that no one in her family is magic on the train. She goes home for Christmas and identifies her parents as dentists. Harry doesn’t see Hermione’s parents at Kings Cross.

Year Two: Dobby interferes with post, but Hermione is evidently at home, arranges to meet Harry and Ron with her parents in Diagon Alley. Her parents are present at Gringotts but it isn’t clear where they are after that; Hermione sets off with Harry and Ron alone. Her parents are present again at the Leaky Cauldron and she leaves with them until school.

Hermione, Ron and Harry all stay for Christmas; there is no reference to Hermione’s parents having an opinion of this. There is also no reference to them having a reaction when Hermione is Petrified and incommunicado from approximately April (the weekend of the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff Quidditch match, stated to occur after Easter holidays) to roughly June. The book ends before the trio find anyone’s parents at Kings Cross.

Year Three: Hermione states “I’m on holiday in France at the moment” in her letter on Harry’s birthday and makes no reference to her parents, or who she is staying with. She arrives in Diagon Alley with Ron and states her parents gave her money to buy herself an early birthday present; she stays at the Leaky Cauldron overnight with Harry and the Weasley family, then travels to Kings Cross with them. Her parents are not present.

Hermione, Ron and Harry all stay for Christmas. Her parents’ reactions to this are not mentioned. Harry doesn’t see Hermione’s parents at Kings Cross.

I do believe she is with her parents in France, not with someone else, in the summer of 1993, but canon doesn't stipulate this. In 1994 she spends 2 months of the summer before 4th year with the Drs. Granger, but after that she stays with them little or no time in 1995, 2 weeks max (likely less) the summer of 1996 and 2 weeks at Xmas 1996 (I disagree with slashmarks there), and possibly up to 1 month before she confunds them in the summer of 1997.

So from Aug. 1994-May 1998 Hermione spends all of 8 weeks total around her parents, maximum. And before that, it's not much time at all. That's not much time with one's child between the ages of 14-17.

Sooooooo I ran off to write this and managed to retain the word “grumpy” but not the word “toddler.” So here is Steven as a fairly-verbal five-year-old on his first day of school. Whoops! I hope it will suit.

“Listen,” says Steven, age five, with a face like a stormcloud. He has his mother’s gravitas, which is somewhat undermined by the fact that he also has his father’s (pre-Project Rebirth) stature and build. “Listen. I am not going.”

“You are,” says Mum, completely unperturbed, putting a paper bag in his hand.

Dad, preoccupied with trying to get at least a little of Eliza’s breakfast in the vicinity of her mouth, asks, “What’s the trouble, pal?”

“I have a tummy ache,” says Steven, very unconvincingly. “I think it could be an ulcer. Or worse.”

Dad looks like he might be about to cave, but Mum grasps him by the shoulders and about-faces him towards the door. “You’ll live.”

“Doubtful,” Steven scoffs.

“It’s school, my darling, not the firing squad.” She pats him on the back. “Off you go.”

“How about I walk over with you?” Steve offers. “Just for today.”

Steven is horrified. The only thing worse than getting walked to school by his mum would be getting walked to school by his dad, who behaves more like a mum than his mum does sometimes, and who is also Captain America.

They cheered for the baby and booed everyone else. This is the greatest thing 

“I wouldn’t let her hear you say that.”

Everyone around the lunch table avoids making eye contact with Brian, who looks up to find Howard Stark standing in the doorway of the break room. It’s Brian’s first week with The Division, which is what everyone calls it, and it’s shaping up to be the shortest career in history.

But Stark just nods, as if in agreement with himself, and moves on.

Once he’s out of earshot, everyone speaks at once, overlapping one another like a Greek chorus:

“What the hell is wrong with you, man?”

“Don’t ever–”

“Don’t you know about the–”

“–during the war–”

“–the last person to talk to–”

“Okay, okay,” says Brian, throwing up his hands. “It was just an observation.”

*

Later that afternoon, Brian draws the short straw and has to take some requisitions to Hank Pym to get him to fill them out correctly. Pym has a famously short memory and an even shorter fuse.

Brian is standing outside the door to the lab, psyching himself up, when he happens to glance down the hall.

The director’s husband is propping up the wall outside of her office. He’s casually dressed for the time of day, but that’s not unusual. No one’s exactly sure what it is Grant Carter does for a living, but he doesn’t seem to do it very often or for very long. Word around the office is that he’s a whiz with investments, but that doesn’t explain why he’d have the clearance to come down to the lower level Division offices as often as he does.

He’s still mulling it over when she steps into the hall. It’s a myth that expectant wives are more beautiful than the ordinary type, but it clearly agrees with Carter: she’s fresh-faced and glowing, her smile radiant. She links her arm through her husband’s and they breeze down the hall, presumably on their way to lunch. As they pass, Brian nods amiably, trying for a closer look. The director seems amused, which makes him wonder if Stark told her.

Brian actually met Captain America once, in ‘44. They didn’t speak, but he saw the guy’s face. And there’s a definite resemblance: the height is right, the broad shoulders, the blue eyes. But up close, Brian can tell that this guy is older than Cap would have been, even if he’d somehow miraculously survived.

Sometimes classics can be improved upon.

The Tree Who Set Healthy Boundaries : an alternate ending for Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree by Topher Payne 💯🌳❤️

WWII

but that was the 1940s! you say

you’re right.

but in order to set a film in the 1950s, writers and film makers have to establish what the male lead character did during the war or risk it coming across like he didn’t, well, serve.  can’t have a shirker or a coward and rejected for medical reasons really doesn’t fly in the 1950s.  and there’s only so many times you can write about soldiers and sailors and airmen and the occasional spy before it starts to become stale.  and it doesn’t terribly fit with the fluffy writing because, well, war and death and tens of millions of people dead.  contemporary films more fall in the line of what we now call film noir.  men and women who have been damaged by war, but that’s another topic.

sooooo, you do period pieces.  no one wants to do the 1930s because that’s the great depression.  so 1920s.  frolicking and gay and fabulous!

(Great War, what Great War?)

but the thing is, the 1920s, especially in Paris and Berlin, were a massively transgressive, reversal, and experimental time period in art, fashion, society, and all over.  but only a little bit in america because honestly we were barely touched by wwi so it’s not like we’re partying to forget an entire generation of young men killed off and entire towns wiped off the face of the earth using weapons the likes of which had never been seen before.  the us as a whole mostly heard about sarin gas, not see it poison entire landscapes and men and animals dropped to the ground and die in truly horrific ways.

the europe that emerged from wwi was massively shell shocked, angry, and living in a surreal dream of everything being upwards and backwards and live now because tomorrow you may die and it’s all nonsense anyway.  it’s a world in which surrealism and dadaism and german expressionism make sense because fuck it all.

you get repudiation of the old, experimentation, deliberate reversals, transgressive behavior, and if there’s an envelope to push, you tear it open.  France calls the 1920s “Années folles”, the crazy years.

the things we’re doing now, with fluidity and experimentation and exploration of gender and sexuality and presentation?  the 1920s did that already.  it’s drag and androgyny and blatant homosexuality.  it’s extramarital affairs and sex before or without marriage, it’s rejection of marriage as an idea and an institution, it’s playing with gender and gender roles and working women and unrestrained art and

it’s everything the 1950s hated.  or more accurately: absolutely terrified of.  

the flappers of the 1920s went to college and cut their hair to repudiate a century of a woman’s hair being her crowning glory.  they wore obvious makeup and makeup in ways that are not terribly appealing now and weren’t terribly appealing then, but they signaled you were part of the tribe.

they were women who wanted independence and personal fulfillment.

“She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do.“

so the 1950s didn’t want that.  they wanted films with dancing and chorus lines and pretty girls to be looked at.  they wanted spaghetti straps and fringed dresses that moved pretty when the chorus girls danced.

1920s fringe doesn’t.  1920s fringe is made of silk, incredibly dense, incredibly heavy, sewn on individually by hand, and rather delicate.  the all-over fringe dress didn’t exist until the 1950s invention of nylon and continuous loops that could be sewn on in costume workshops by the mile on machines.

(this is before “vintage” exists.  to the 1950s, the 1920s (or earlier) wasn’t vintage, it was old-fashioned.  démodé.  out of style.  last last last last last season.)

1950s 1920s-set movies have clothes that are the 1950s take on it.  the dresses have a dropped waist, but they’re form-fitting, figure-revealing.  the actresses are pretty clearly wearing bras and 50s girdles under them a lot of the time.  they’re not

the woman on the far left is basically wearing a man’s suit with a skirt.  la garçonne.  some women went full-out and wore pants.  you could be arrested for that.  they were.  still wore pants.  and pyjama ensembles in silk and loud prints.

or class photo of ‘25

or even

not that 1920s dresses could be sexy or sexual; they often were.  i’ve seen 20s dresses that were basically sideless and held together with straps.  but it’s sort of like how the mini skirt went from being a thing of sexual liberation to an item of sexual objectification.

Real, actual flapper (and Cunard heiress, anti-fascist and anti-racist activist, experimental writing publisher) Nancy Cunard:

Here’s a really great series of photos of real women with various 20s bobs and shortest 1920s style, the Eton crop:

June 30 - WinterShock, with Darcy time traveling (Darcy encounters WWII sniper Bucky and/or the Winter Soldier during his Hydra Assassin days but anything is awesome), no angst if possible pretty please, for stillwatersnarwhal

Written by @backwardsandinhighheels

mod note: the birthdays are closed, however this request was sent in before the askbox was shut

“Remind me why we’re dressing up like this.”

“Because it’s the theme,” Darcy reminded her friend, pinning a curl into place. “Tony gets upset when we don’t take his themes seriously.”

“Let me rephrase. Why am I dressing up like this?”

“You’re dressing up because I want to dress up but know exactly no-one at this party so you are going to keep me company.”

“No date?”

Darcy only scowled in response, then studied her reflection in the mirror carefully. “Do you think my lipstick looks okay?”

“Sorry,” he said, holding up his hands. “I didn’t think anyone would be over here.” He didn’t think he remembered an introduction to anyone in that dress. It was a memorable sort of a dress. “I believe I ran into your mother inside?” he ventured, because he ran into so many mothers.

“She’s not here,” she said, which was not what he wanted to hear and which he absolutely could not handle at the moment.

“Right,” he said, trying to recover, pretending as if he’d just remembered something. “Your father–”

“We haven’t met,” she interrupted. “I’m not anyone.”

“Oh thank god,” he said, abandoning propriety to collapse onto the bench, dropping his head between his knees. “Thank you.”

“Too many people?” she said sympathetically.

“I’m really bad with faces,” he admitted.

“A lot of people are,” she assured him.

He dragged his hands down his face. “I just confused a Duke with a waiter.”

She bit her lip. “As long as you aren’t rude to waiters, you should be fine,” she said.

“I wasn’t rude,” he said. “I’m never rude. It would have been better if I was rude.” He buried his face in his hands. “I tipped him,” he said, anguished, muffled by his palms. Why had he been dressed like a waiter?

She burst out laughing, loud and with her head tipped back, overwhelming the empty garden. He separated his fingers to stare at her.

“Sorry,” she hiccuped, which immediately descended back into snorts. She laughed like she was hunting for truffles.

“Thanks,” he said, though he almost did feel better. “I’m feeling very supported in my time of need.”

“There’s only one thing you can do,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes, trying to dab at them to not destroy her makeup. Reflexively, he offered her a handkerchief, which she accepted. “You have to flee the country. It’s the only way.” She checked the handkerchief for signs of smeared eyeliner. “Leave your family. Change your name. Get a new family. Never tell them your dark secret.”

“I think my old family might notice if I got a new family,” he said, now resting his chin in his hands, elbows balanced on his knees.

“That’s why you have to burn your house down,” she said matter-of-factly, now holding his handkerchief in a neat fold in her lap. “Just burn the whole thing. Everything but your favorite hat. You leave the hat on top of the ashes for your family to find. ‘This must be him’ they’ll say. 'He would never have left his favorite hat’. It’s the perfect crime. Once it’s done, you become a pig farmer. Anyone comes around asking questions, you feed them to the pigs.”

“You seem like you’ve put a lot of thought into this,” he observed. “How are your pigs?”

She looked him over sidelong. “Hungry,” she said primly.