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its the simple things

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turn rewatch | 7 shots from each season [1/4]

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God can you imagine if Donald Trump became president? There’d be like a new bubonic plague and he’d be like “idk drink bleach about it”

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Apoplectic

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She fucking said that

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that fit in the last shot is 😍😍😍

Dearest father, I don’t want to go to Paris. I want to die. SABRINA (1954) dir. Billy Wilder

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just finished s3 i miss my lesbians

And when we get out of here, we'll go to Jeju Island together..

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chills every single time omggggggg

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The funniest part of Sinners was when the Native Americans just said “yeahhh good luck with that”

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Queen Latifah as Matron “Mama” Morton in  CHICAGO (2002) | dir. Rob Marshall

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what would have even happened if Adams or Jefferson actually managed to prove burr or Hamilton were gay can you imagine THE SCANDAL??!?!!! god it would have been great people would hear about it all over the place, there would be pamphlets about it in paris

okay i know this is meant to be funny ha ha but this is a sincerely fascinating thought experiment LMAO considering how concepts like "ambition", "depravity", and "lust" were all intertwined and generally synonymous in 18th century american discourse. calling a man innately depraved or possessing inordinate ambition (adams about hamilton and jefferson about burr and, of course, hamilton about burr) could mean a whole host of things, which is why their words were so slippery and very expertly chosen. it's about the implication right. "i'm not saying he engages in this Behavior, but i'm also not NOT saying it, and if you, dear reader, come to that conclusion on your own, well then that's on you. wink wink."

it's also important to note that these educated men would have defined intimate and affectionate male friendship as something entirely different (and more virtuous/aspirational) than two men engaging in sexual acts with each other, whether or not affection existed between the two men in question. one was celebrated, one was condemned. ie, in jefferson and adams's mind, their friendship was moral and high-minded because they were moral and high-minded. burr and hamilton's was not, because they weren't.

it also depended on where you were from. like adams, a high-ranking, influential public man from puritan new england, would have a much much more conservative view toward it than most:

buuut on the other hand, ordinary people (again, this article is specifically about new england) tended to deal with things like this on their own terms and for the most part looked the other way and/or dealt with the issue of it on an ad-hoc, case-by-case basis (perhaps because most normal people would be guilty of some kind of "depravity" in some way, in the expansive puritanical definition of the word):

caveat: the article above is about colonial new england, ie pre revolutionary war, which does make a difference, but since adams was old-fashioned in a lot of his opinions i think it's a decent starting point to try and get into his head.

as for jefferson, he would've come from a completely different context. the "crime" of sodomy was oftentimes not explicitly alluded to in virginia's law books, like it was in new england, and it was dealt with at a local level at the local judges' discretion. colonial virginia specifically did not have a law of it's own dealing with "sexual crimes" but rather relied on just using the colonial (again, pre revolutionary war) english crime of "buggery" as a kind of catch-all. by the 1790's, though, they definitely did:

jefferson famously argued for religious freedom in virginia and a more...liberal?...approach to these crimes, which in his mind meant doing away with capital punishment and instead relying on castration and later, imprisonment:

notably, while puritan officials viewed it as a crime against god and the church, virginian officials eventually went the opposite route, saying it was a crime against humanity in a secular, irreligious sense. so i guess between the two of them adams and jefferson would really cover the entire gamut of human law lmao.

in my opinion i seriously doubt either of them would be at all surprised if they found out hamilton or burr was engaging in sodomy with random men. it would definitely fit their preconceived notions about the pair of them. both were inordinately ambitious, "lustful", prone to "unchecked" militarism and violence, sexually desirable (burr "courting" young men for his politics by being personally alluring, much to jefferson's consternation, and hamilton being openly flirtatious and "effeminate", according to adams) -- all of these traits lead to a pattern of behavior that points in one direction (again, this is trying to see things from adams and jefferson's points of view). but tbh i do wonder whether or not they'd publish those claims explicitly, as it would have been considered extremely uncouth amongst men of their class (which is why journalists like cheetham and callender had careers lmfao). but then again adams really did seem to think burr and hamilton were in a corrupt class all their own, the pair of them brimming with "repressed ambition", and literally wouldn't shut the fuck up about it, so i really don't know. for his part, jefferson wasn't really the type to like, sully himself with this kind of loaded language and avoided it if he was able. if they did decide to go that route, it would almost certainly be under aliases or pseudonyms. and, to your point specifically, there WERE "libelous" pamphlets about them (especially burr, post duel and post conspiracy) in europe and america. most of these writings, like i said at the beginning, were not explicit, but used language that men of a certain educational background and class would definitely understand.

to your original question (if i'm understanding it correctly) the hypothetical revelation/realization, from adams and jefferson, that burr and hamilton were engaging in this behavior with each other would be catastrophically ruinous for both of them. like, lmfao, i cannot stress enough how buckwild it would be for them personally and the literal entire country if it ever came to light that a male senator and the male secretary of the treasury (or whatever their titles at any other point in their lives: inspector general, colonel, attorney general, vice president, esquires, etc) were fucking each other. they would genuinely never recover from that. like, hamilton was already on thin fucking ice for admitting to adultery and infidelity (which, side-note, was seen as equally criminal to sodomy in some instances). and by the height of his career as vice president, burr was getting side-eyed for not Sticking To One Team politically and for being both unmarried and oversexed. and, again, depending on what year this hypothetical revelation comes to light, adams and jefferson would definitely be able to successfully distance themselves from the "undesirable elements" in their respective political parties. let's say for argument's sake this happened around 1800. adams already hated hamilton and had hated him for a while, and jefferson had been distancing himself from burr, too, for almost a decade. they'd certainly have morality and public decency on their side, for better or worse. couple this with hamilton's propensity for starting fights and being generally disliked by the public at large and the rumors surrounding burr trying to steal the election/his political opportunism and they might as well be raptured out of existence at that point. (good thing they ended up just dueling each other instead, huh? hey wait a minute...)

quick sources for further reading and rabbit holes if you're curious:

"The Cry of Sodom": Discourse, Intercourse, and Desire in Colonial New England

Perceptions of Homosexuality by Justices of the Peace in Colonial Virginia

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Claudia de lioncourt

Happy father day to this little dad killer!

Commission based on leyendecker painting

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Historical Lams? 🤍😁

Or maybe Laureloch?

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hold on something just happened