The Girl in Green - a story

Chapter 84

thegirlingreen — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:00:36 +0000

It still struck him when Governor Swann says to Will, “do pass my compliments on to your master”. But he also kind of liked Will’s even response that “a craftsman is always pleased to hear his work is appreciated”, which in no way indicates that he, in fact, made the blade, but lets the audience know that he’s accepting the compliment. He continued to watch the movie as Elizabeth came down the stairs in her too-tight dress. The fact that she’s genuinely happy to see Will is probably not lost on her father. And the fact that she calls him by his given name, instead of his sir name, is probably more than a little disconcerting to him as well. When she continues on to say that she’s had a dream about Will, Governor Swann’s interjection questioning whether or not it’s entirely proper for her to be talking about such things is further proof that he doesn’t consider Will to be an appropriate match for her. But, she seems not to notice as she says to Will, “how many time must I ask you to call me Elizabeth?” Of course, his response of “at least once more, Miss Swann, as always” is all the more humorous considering the by-play. And Governor Swann’s response of “there, see, at least the boy has a sense of propriety” is another reinforcement of the fact that he finds Will Turner an unsuitable suitor for Elizabeth. Will’s earlier propriety is more than matched by Elizabeth’s impropriety; of course, it’s partially negated by the fact that he calls her “Elizabeth” privately as she is leaving. But he still has the good sense, at least Governor Swann would call it good sense, to only do so privately. Still, that kind of thing could be rife with problems, considering he could easily slip up and call her that to her face. That he hasn’t is a testament to him always keeps his station in mind whenever he talks to her. And it’s not hard to believe that he could do so, considering the kind of smack-down, either verbal or physical, he could have gotten if he had ever forgotten his place. Still, it shows a little bit of defiance for his position that he would actually consider thinking about her as “Elizabeth” instead of as “Miss Swann” as he’s supposed to; and that, in turn, helps set up the rest of the film.

Chapter 83

thegirlingreen — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 12:00:49 +0000

The fact that the blade is eventually destined to belong to Commodore Norrington has got to hurt, too; considering that Will has to know that Governor Swann is pushing Elizabeth at him. And Will has no reason to think that such a pairing isn’t going to happen. After all, marrying for love in those days would have been uncommon at best, especially for someone of Elizabeth’s position. She’d be expected to marry whomever her father wanted her to marry, and she wasn’t expected to have much of a say in the matter. Of course, most people mostly forgot this when they wrote about the time period, and didn’t seem to understand the severity of disobeying such a decision (in that time period) would have actually had; they might make faint reference to it, but they didn’t seem to really take it all that seriously. It wasn’t just running off with some neighbor kid and eloping, and then reasonably expecting your family to accept your decision. It was, in fact, a good way to get disinherited. Sure, some families, even back then accepted it with good grace and moved on without much trouble. But, those families were probably far outweighed by families that weren’t so forgiving. That kind of thing tore apart many a family, and caused severe damage in other ones. Even if they did eventually accept the decision, it usually didn’t come without some price being paid, the least of which being hurt feelings. And partial reconciliation was also a possibility, in which the family members only partially make up or only some of them do; which could easily cause more hurt feelings between those who did make up with the errant child and those who didn’t. Some people could hold a grudge for a long time, and that sometimes extended on for generations. There was more than one example of multi-generational feuds that he’d heard of, and some of them had to do with people who had been close before ‘the incident’ had occurred. ’The incident’ wasn’t necessarily about a forbidden marriage, but it certainly could be, and the concept still applied even if the specifics didn’t. One ‘bad’ decision could have long-lasting effects. The fact that it didn’t always happen that way, in no way invalidated the fact that it did indeed happen, and that it could be catastrophic when it did. So, he knew that if Will were a real person of that time, he’d have no expectation that Elizabeth wouldn’t end up with the Commodore.

Chapter 82

thegirlingreen — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:00:10 +0000

At that point he got distracted by what was going on on-screen: Elizabeth gasping as she’s putting on her restrictive dress, the new one, the latest fashion all the way from London. He loved the line that the “women in London must’ve learnt not to breathe”, because he couldn’t imagine that her dress was in any way comfortable. He continued to watch her struggle with her maidservants to get into the corset, still amazed that people used to wear such things. Wearing things that maimed and disfigured just didn’t make sense to him; that extended to high heel shoes, particularly stilettos. It was bad enough that high heel shoes shortened muscles in the legs, but the undue pressure of stilettos was nigh on unconscionable. Such a tiny pinpoint for all the weight of the body just seemed to be barbaric to him. Just like the massive restriction of air supply by a corset seemed unthinkable to him. How could such things be considered humane, let alone be considered fashionable? It was almost a kind of madness he supposed.

Thankfully, the movie quickly cut to Will Turner, his breaking of the candelabra especially disconcerting considering he’s a blacksmith, and should know better than most the weak points of metal. But, the whole thing just went to show how nervous Will must be. But the contrast of that clumsiness to his expertise with the sword was probably the whole point of the scene; especially since it’s obvious that he’s the craftsman who made it. His pride fairly gleams as he describes the particulars, “The blade is folded steel. That’s gold filigree laid into the handle. … Perfectly balanced. The tang is nearly the full width of the blade.” And how Will shows that it is indeed balanced and then flips it in the air was still impressive, even after several viewings. It was truly sad that Governor Swann doesn’t seem to realize it, or possibly feigns ignorance for propriety’s sake. Was it really such a bad thing to acknowledge an apprentice’s work? Well, maybe it was, after all, all the work of the shop could easily have to be considered the work of the master; so that any work of the apprentice would be seen as belonging to the master. After all, the master’s reputation would be on the line if something were to go wrong with any of the apprentice’s work, so that work would have to be up to snuff. And that meant that it might be considered the master’s work regardless of who actually made it.

Chapter 81

thegirlingreen — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 12:00:36 +0000

He finally decided that he would just have to pick a card a move it, and not worry so much about what could happen later on in the game. It wasn’t like it would really matter in the bigger scheme of things anyway whether he won or lost this game, and it was also unlikely that any move this early in the game would be an absolute move one way or the other. So, he grabbed the first two that he saw and he moved it to the open space. He then looked at the other positions that were supposed to be filled with twos and tried to see if he could move any of the cards that were in any of those positions. He wasn’t sure at first, but he thought he could clear another one. And, sure enough, when he tried to clear that position he was able to do so. But, this time around, one of the twos was after a face card, so he was reluctant to move that one. But that still left two other twos to look at and he wasn’t sure of which one to move. So, he looked over them both briefly and followed his earlier resolution to just pick one and move it.

He tried once again to clear one of the two spots. He wasn’t able to do that, but, in the precess of trying to clear another twos spot, he cleared a spot after one of the twos that he had already moved. Unfortunately for him, that three was after a king, so he would have one less space to move cards into. But, really, when he thought about it, even if he didn’t move the three card after the appropriate two. He would still have one less space to move cards because he couldn’t move anything else into that spot even if he didn’t move the three because it was the only card that could go in that particular spot. So, he moved the three and looked at the remaining openings that he had left. He didn’t really know what he should move next, so he just stared at the board for a little while. But, eventually he saw a potential move sequence and started to move those cards. And then he continued to move the cards as he saw fit until there were no cards left for him to move.

Chapter 80

thegirlingreen — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:00:08 +0000

So, he started moving the cards as he had planned, in the hopes of opening up one of the left hand spaces. He worked methodically, slowly moving the cards in a series of moves that followed one another in a predictable sequence that progressed through the plan that he had set forth for them to go through. When he had completed the series of moves, he was rewarded with an open space on the left hand side of the board. He was happy that it had worked out the why that he had planned, at least so far as opening a left hand space was concerned; he would still have to check to see if the rest of the board was still favorable to moving any of the twos. But the nature of the twos was such that they would still be where he had last seen them, so things shouldn’t end up being too bad on that front, even if some of the cards they were next to might have changed. With that in mind, he looked at where the twos were, and tried to see if anything major had happened to change what was around them. He wanted to see if any of them stood out as the one that he should move.

Unfortunately for him, none of the twos was in a position that made it superficially obvious that it should be moved; he would have to look deeper to find which one was the one that should be moved, if there was even one that actually would be better to move at that point in the game. Or, that it would be obvious at that point in the game which one was the best one to move. Sometimes, it was only obvious after one of the cards had been moved that it would have actually been better to have moved another card. And that wasn’t even obvious a lot of the time, especially this early in a round. Too many cards would likely be moved before a deadlock would occur, and all of the open spaces would have changed so much that only someone with near perfect memory could remember that far back and know that any one move was the wrong one, the one that had lost the round, the one that had changed the whole course of the game. And even that was likely to be speculation, because once one chance is theoretically made, the rest of the moves afterward would, by necessity, change as well.

Chapter 79

thegirlingreen — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:00:36 +0000

Before he found the threes in question he realized that he was over thinking things a little bit. Until he actually had a space open there was really no point in trying to figure out which two he should move. The game was fluid, in that cards got moved around all the time, and he didn’t know for sure that the cards he was looking at would still be in the same places after he cleared a spot as they were at this point, while he was assessing them. If he tried to plan too far ahead, the cards he was planning to move wouldn’t be where they were when he was planning. Or, at least, the could be somewhere else. It had happened to him before, when he’d played. It didn’t happen all the time, but it could happen. And it usually happened at the worst possible time, when moving the wrong card could mean the end of the game; or, at least, the end of the round. It could be very frustrating to make a plan of attack and then have it all fall apart. So, it might be best if he just tried to clear a spot on the left hand side of the board and then worry about what two to move where when he got to that point.

Having decided that, he had to look over the cards again to find his place, to re-establish in his mind where he wanted to start moving cards to begin the cascade effect that he hoped would open up a left hand position. It took him a while to retrace his planned on steps, and he was less sure about them than he had been when he first noticed them, but he decided to forge ahead anyway. What was the worst thing that could happen? Sure, he could mess up the round, or even lose the game, but did that really matter in the grand scheme of things? Not really, he knew; he was mostly just playing to waste time anyway, so it wouldn’t be a big lose if he didn’t win the game. It was just a game, after all. And people were always saying that it didn’t matter if you won or lost, it was how you played the game. And he planned to have fun playing the game, so the rest of it shouldn’t matter to him.

Chapter 78

thegirlingreen — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:00:11 +0000

He looked for a promising opening; one that would lead to the opening up of one of the left hand spaces. Nothing immediately stood out to him, so he tried to look a few moves ahead. But, that didn’t shed any promising results either, so he tried to look a few more moves ahead. And he finally found something that looked like he’d be able to open up one of the useful left hand spaces. But now he had to figure out which two to move. The first one he saw would open up another space after a king, so he didn’t want to move that one. The next two he found was pretty close to the right, so he didn’t really want to move that one either because it wouldn’t really help fill out the board. The third two that he located was in the middle, so it was better than the other two, but not by much. And he couldn’t locate the fourth two right away, so he looked over the board again, trying to find it. It ended up that it was after the second two that he had found, so it kind of made sense that he’d visually skipped over it.

The fact that there was a two after another two made for an interesting choice. If he were to move the second two in the set, then he could move the two that came after the first one right away. But, the two and the three still wouldn’t be in the right place, so he’d have to collect them when he ran out of moves for the round. So, it kind of depended on where that three was. If it were in a place that he wanted to clear out, then it would be good to move the second two, but if it were in a place that he didn’t particularity want to move it from, then it wouldn’t be good to move the second two after all. Also, that three could be in a place where it wasn’t immediately obvious if it would be good to move it or not. So, he’d be taking a chance, if he moved it if it were in that kind of position. He could clear a needed space, or one that was detrimental to that round of the game. But first, he had to find the three in question, so that he could attempt to make an assessment.

Chapter 77

thegirlingreen — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:00:51 +0000

He double-checked that his bedding was flat and then started to carefully place the cards onto his bed spread. One by one he set the cards down, tentatively looking for patterns as he went. Oh no, he thought, one of the aces is after a king; dang it; that’s going to make it that much harder to play. He knew that having an ace land right after a king was a terrible bit of luck because it limited his options from the onset. He would only have three slots to work with instead of the usual four; it wasn’t devastating, but it was annoying, and it would almost definitely restrict how much he could get done in his first round. But, he could probably make it up in the subsequent rounds, so it was more an instant response than a game changing situation.

He could always hope that something good would happen to counterbalance the ace coming after the king situation. One good thing that could happen was for a two to land in a first spot so that he could build off of it without having to clear the space first; this was also beneficial in that the two would stay there when he had to pick up the cards after all the spaces were after kings even if he wasn’t able to add anything to the run. Another, at least somewhat, good thing was for a three to be in a second position; this required the first spot to be cleared, but it still helped to build a run if the spot before it could be cleared. Still another good thing would be if an ace landed in one of those spots because it made it easier for him to start the building process.

As he continued to play the deck, he didn’t notice any of those good things, but he didn’t see any more aces being after any of the rest of the kings either. So, on the whole, he wasn’t too concerned about it. He then collected the aces in a particular order as to remind him which round he was in, and then began to survey the board. He saw several moves that looked promising, but he held off moving anything until he gave each possibility some thought. That included looking ahead a few moves to try to figure out which moves would be the most advantageous to begin with. He didn’t want to jump the gun when it came to making his first moves; it could determine the direction of the whole game, or at least the whole round, so he wanted to be somewhat careful.

Chapter 76

thegirlingreen — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:00:26 +0000

He thought about the nameless game of solitaire and considered its merits. He’d already determined that it definitely took up the most room of any of the variants he knew. And, while that was normally a negative factor, it was a positive one in this case. He liked the idea that he could take up as much room as he wanted to. In fact, he practically luxuriated in it. The wide expanse of his bed was more than enough for him to play any variant that he might wish to play, twice over even. He briefly considered that idea, but rejected it relatively quickly because it wouldn’t be practical for him to do so. He would already be dividing his attention between playing his game of solitaire and watching his movie; he didn’t need to add any more distractions. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle any more distractions than he was already engaged in.

He then turned his thoughts back to the nameless variant. The rules for it were straightforward enough that he shouldn’t have any problems in that area. All he had to do was put the cards down and start moving them according to numerical order. That shouldn’t be hard for him since he’d been able to count past thirteen from an early age and that had been a long time ago, in his reckoning. And, considering he would only have four slots to choose from when it came to moving his cards, he wouldn’t have to worry about an overload of possible moves. And that would also go toward making it a rather easy variant for him to play, even though he wasn’t feeling his best.

He tried to think of any significant negative reasons for playing this variant. He thought there was a limit to the number of times he could pick up, shuffle, and replay the cards, but that shouldn’t be too hard to keep track of. He could easily use the aces to count the number of times he ran through the deck by putting them in a different order for each time he went through the deck. All in all, he couldn’t think of any major detractors for this variant, and he could for the other ones that he’d thought of, so he was pretty sure he would play the nameless variation. He just had to set it up and then he’d be ready to go.

Chapter 75

thegirlingreen — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:00:27 +0000

He thought about accordion. It was a simple enough game, and it could take up a lot of space, but it wasn’t guaranteed to do so. And, because he was going to be playing on his bed, he thought it would be fun to take up a lot of space. On the other hand, it was a game that was supposed to be played in a straight line, and he wasn’t sure if his bed would be big enough for him to actually play it in a single line. And, while he knew it didn’t have to be played in a straight line, he thought it might be fun to play it that way for once. Whenever he’d played it before he’d just started a second line, and third line and so on, when he’d run out of space at the right end of the deck as it was played. But, this could sometimes cause him problems when he was trying to figure out which cards should be move and where they should be moved to. But, he would still have to move the cards into place no matter which way he played it. And, it really wasn’t that hard for him to keep track of which cards when where most of the time.

But, he wasn’t feeling completely well, so it wasn’t like it was most of the time. His tiredness could become a problem if he tried to play accordion. It would probably take more of his concentration than it normally would for him to keep the rules straight. And, considering he was going to play some sort of solitaire game as a way to take a break, playing accordion might not be all that relaxing. He would have to think about, not only the things he’d normally have to think about when playing it, but he would also have to concentrate harder on it than he thought he wanted to. So, considering all that, he was pretty conflicted about whether or not he wanted to play accordion. He still knew other variants of solitaire, so he wasn’t too concerned, but he would still have to consider their merits, too. And, he also had the movie that he would be nominally watching to take into consideration, because he would probably want to stop and actually watch some of the scenes in it. Then again, he didn’t really have to worry about being interrupted in the middle of his play, because most of the variants he knew were easy to pick up in the middle and find one’s place.