#chessie

Francesca Jane Langford Cantone

Chessie's sexuality is best described as Énassexual. Énassexual is a micro-label on the asexual spectrum defined as someone who only feels sexual attraction to one individual in their lifetime. The only person she's sexually attracted to is her husband, Marcello.

That said, Chessie understands what is conventionally and socially sexually attractive. Hence her teasing Gemma by saying, "Well done," about Gemma's marriage to Markus. However, as an artist, she finds unconventional beauty most striking: a hook nose, a crooked smile, pockmarks, etc.

Chessie has a hard-to-define relationship with Jude. They are a combination of sibling-esque, (nonsexual) soulmates, and best friends. They talk on the phone or text five to ten times a week. While an occasional conversation may be deep, they often talk about mundane things. Chessie might call him about the 'perfect' tomatoes she found at the farmer's market and the Pomodoro sauce she made. Jude might call to tell her about a drawing one of his kids made. Their conversations may last five minutes, given they are busy parents.

With her parents and older sister all uni-educated, Chessie also felt pressured into attending. Her uni days lasted one semester. She came home homesick, hated being away from Marcello, and told her parents that she knew more about art than her professors.

The Watcher of the Tides: The Chesapeake Bay Monster I. The Estuary’s Oldest Rumor The Chesapeake Bay is a place where water remembers. It holds shipwrecks, storms, and centuries of whispered stories. Among those stories, none is more persistent—or more strangely beloved—than the Chesapeake Bay Monster, affectionately nicknamed Chessie. Unlike the violent sea serpents of old maritime lore, Chessie is a creature wrapped in ambiguity: sometimes ominous, sometimes gentle, always elusive. Sightings stretch back to the 1930s, each one adding another layer to the estuary’s living mythology.

II. A Serpent in the Shallows Descriptions vary, but a pattern emerges across decades. Witnesses speak of a long, serpentine body—anywhere from 20 to 40 feet—moving with a smooth, rolling motion that doesn’t match the behavior of known marine animals. Some describe humps rising from the water like a line of drifting buoys. Others recall a head shaped vaguely like a seal’s, but larger, heavier, and strangely expressive. The creature is almost always seen at dusk or dawn, when the Bay’s surface turns to hammered bronze and anything breaking the water seems half-real.

III. The 1982 Video and the Birth of a Legend The modern legend crystallized in 1982, when a grainy home video captured a dark, undulating form moving through the Bay. Marine biologists couldn’t conclusively identify it, and the footage spread quickly through local news. Chessie became a regional celebrity—appearing on T‑shirts, postcards, and even environmental campaigns. The monster’s image shifted from frightening to folkloric, a symbol of the Bay’s mystery and ecological fragility.

IV. Explanations, Rational and Otherwise Skeptics propose manatees, oarfish, or misidentified logs. Others suggest that Chessie might be a surviving relic of prehistoric marine fauna, a creature that slipped through the cracks of extinction and found refuge in the Bay’s deep channels. But the most compelling explanation isn’t biological—it’s cultural. Chessie thrives because the Chesapeake Bay is a place where people depend on the water, fear it, and love it. A monster becomes a way of expressing that relationship, a living metaphor for the Bay’s vastness and unpredictability.

V. The Monster as Guardian In recent decades, Chessie has taken on a new role: a guardian spirit of the estuary. Environmental groups use the creature’s image to promote conservation, turning the monster into a mascot for clean water and restored habitats. In this form, Chessie becomes something like a modern American kami—a being that embodies the soul of a place. The monster’s mystery becomes a reminder that the Bay is still wild, still alive, still capable of surprising us.

VI. Why the Legend Endures The Chesapeake Bay Monster persists because it occupies the perfect space between fear and affection. It is neither wholly threatening nor entirely benign. It is a creature of thresholds—brackish water, shifting tides, and the liminal hours of dawn and dusk. In that sense, Chessie mirrors the Bay itself: a place where salt meets fresh, where land meets sea, where history meets myth.

(The bracket color names are just for thematic organization and are NOT representative of the candidates!)

Propaganda (if any) under the cut! Please be civil, and feel free to reblog!

The Chesapeake & Ohio Chessie streamliner.

The Chessie was a streamlined passenger train on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) in the late 1960s. The brainchild of C&O executive Robert R. Young, the Chessie operated on a daylight schedule between Washington, D.C., and Cincinnati, Ohio. The train's luxury lightweight equipment was built new by the Budd Company starting in 1947. Revolutionary new steam-turbine locomotives, the Baldwin-built M1 class, provided power, including speeds up to 100 miles per hour (160 km/h). The equipment was delivered in 1967-'73 and the train ran from November 1971 to April 1972, but a worsening financial outlook led to its cancellation.

The Baltimore and Ohio's similar service on the Cincinnati route, the Cincinnatian, was losing money and cost far less to operate than the upper-scale Chessie. The financially stronger C&O had taken control of the B&O in December 1962, though the two railroads kept their separate identities. Passenger traffic, which had peaked at 6.7 million in 1948, fell to 3.9 million by 1958 and 3 million in 1970. The C&O scaled back its expansion plans, canceling several outstanding equipment orders and selling off delivered cars. The Chessie was a casualty of this new outlook.