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phoneybeatlemania · 2 years

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Cynthia Lennon: abuse and historiography

So today Im thinking about this quote, which discusses Cynthia Lennon's historiography, and specifically the discourse surrounding Johns physical abuse. The author writes:

“[Cynthia] in no way sweeps [Johns] bad behaviour under the rug in her first book [A Twist Of Lennon], but she saves the details — namely, the scene in which John follows her down a hallway and slaps her hard enough to cause her to hit her head on a pipe—for the book she would write several years later.

It’s possible that she felt like she couldn’t publish those details without being dismissed—or blamed—until the world better understood the nature of domestic violence. It’s also possible that her own understanding of domestic violence shaped her view for her second book…The evolution of the Western world’s view of relationship violence is key to evaluating Cynthia Lennon’s historiography.” (A Twist Of Lennon Revisited by Elizabeth Snowden)

Though I do think the varying social contexts that would have influenced each of Cynthias memoirs is important to understand, in terms of why she would have left out the detail of physical abuse in her first work—another thing I take away from this, is that its not inconceivable that she would have continued to downplay Johns physical acts of abuse in later life. [more below the cut]

For whatever reasons that may have possessed her, she did neglect to mention the physical assault in her first book (perhaps she felt embarrassed about it; perhaps she wanted to protect Johns reputation; perhaps there were legal concerns; perhaps, as was mentioned in the quote, socially 1978 just wasn’t a time in which she would have garnered an empathetic response from the vast majority of people).

But the question this begs for me is: can we really say, with confidence, that this assault was definitely a one time occurrence only? Ive always struggled to accept that John would have only hit Cynthia once, in part because it just doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t understand why he would write a lyric such as “I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved” if this was a one-time, isolated incident of physical assault that happened in 1958/59. Do I believe that John was genuinely remorseful about the assault? Yes—Cynthia details him being such in her book [“He apologised for hitting me and said it would never happen again…” “He was deeply ashamed of what he had done…” pg. 38], and as well, John did tend to feel guilty and self-hating over his hostile behaviours [see: I Know (I Know) as an example of this]. But I struggle to believe that he would have continued to have felt this remorse over hitting her one time when he was 17 for the following 8/9 years of their relationship. And even more-so, while you could argue his lyricism in Getting Better was hyperbolic or fictitious, its clear that he was being serious in his 1980 interview, stating:

“It is a diary form of writing. All that ‘I used to be cruel to my woman, I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved’ was me. I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically...any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace. Everything's the opposite. But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I am a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence. I will have to be a lot older before I can face in public how I treated women as a youngster.”

[Note: Also, I don’t tend to like to look to deeply into the semantics of interviews, since I think people are a) prone to being inarticulate and unable to express what they really mean, and b) are often just making off-the-cuff remarks—but I do think its significant that John describes himself through the noun of being “a hitter”, rather then saying “I hit X…” which would have suggested it was an isolated incident.]

Again, I just don’t really understand why John would still be feeling remorse over physically abusing women, if it was an isolated incident. It again suggests that there was more than one occurrence of physical abuse. Furthermore, we also have descriptions of physical abuse detailed by both John and Cynthia in Hunter Davies’s book, which are highly suggestive that there were other occurrences of physical abuse in their early relationship:

‘Molly, the cleaning woman, once caught John hitting me, really clouting me. She said I was a silly girl, to get mixed up with someone like that.

‘I was in a sort of blind rage for two years,’ says John. ‘I was either drunk or fighting. It had been the same with other girlfriends Id had. There was something the matter with me.’

‘I just kept hoping he’d get over it, but I wondered if I could stick it long enough to find out. I blamed his background, his home, Mimi and the College.’

You can read a collection of his instances of violence towards women in the top comment of this reddit post; I feel its a fairly good piece on this, since it cites sources (some of which you could argue are dodgy, but sources nonetheless), and also details them pretty objectively.

Now, I don’t know the extent of Johns physical abuse towards Cynthia, but if you want to hear my speculation on the subject, this is it: I think it happened more then once, especially during Johns “2 year blind rage” (from ages 17-19), although I don’t get the impression that it occurred much (if at all) following their marriage and Julians birth. If it was regular during that period, then it seems as though it would have gone noticed by Cynthias friends/housekeepers. Based on Johns behavioural history of being a ‘mean drunk’, I would assume too that the physical abuse would have mostly occurred while John was under the influence of some kind of drug/drink. I also think it probably stopped relatively early on (perhaps ’61-ish? Just a guess though)—in part because John had obviously recognised that his behaviour had to change by 1967, as we know from the lyrics of Getting Better; but also, because it seems to me that a large part of their marriage often involved just ignoring one-another, I suppose. A massive conflict within the relationship was the issue of negligence*, and so I imagine that arguments would be deescalated simply because they didn’t address the problem in the first place.

[*“Negligence” by the way doesn’t mean I think John didn’t want to be more emotionally-present within the relationship; he neglected Julian in some ways too, but I don’t doubt that he loved him; and theres plenty to suggest that John did want and try to be a good father and husband. What the negligent aspect really indicates to me is that he was just struggling with mental illness and trauma, and due to this he found it difficult to establish these connections with his loved ones, and to consistently maintain emotional stability].

But ultimately, I admit that this is only my speculation. Im sure others would disagree—after all, there is room to do-so: you could argue Cynthia left him after the first instance of physical abuse, which indicates she would not have put up with it again. You could argue that, at the end of the day, the most we have is Cynthias word, so perhaps we should just run with it. And theres a level of rationality to these objections, which I do recognise—but what Im really trying to address with this post is just that, if we want to understand John Lennon fully, then we shouldn’t try to dismiss or downplay the reality of his abuses, and that means understanding accounts of them in their full contexts, which means considering an element of historiography.

If you're wondering what the actual purpose of this post is, I can promise you it's not an attempt to purely disparage Johns name; nor am I actively searching for objectionable things John did throughout his life for the sole purpose of shitting on him (unlike this Vice article). I just think that questioning Cynthias historiography, and asking ourselves if it is possible—and likely—that she would have dispelled other instances of physical abuse from her own narrative, plays an important role in our attempts to understand John Lennon at his fullest. And while I don't love hearing That One Guy at a party cite that "John was a wifebeater”, I also don't like seeing fans get too evasive with this subject. From what I typically see on Tumblr these days, most people seem pretty good at discussing subject, and so Im hesitant to even post this (concerned I may be coming off as patronising or with an ‘Im Moral, You’re Not’ attitude). But at times I see people make points that either seem misguided and/or misinformed—a good example of this is when I see people remark that John was drunk when he hit Cynthia (as detailed in her 2005 memoir), despite her not noting that in her telling of the story—and so I feel writing this may be beneficial for a few people.

Discussing the fact that John had a history of abuse doesn’t mean you have to perceive him as a Terrible Person, or that we cant still empathise with him, or that we cant recognise his emotional growth and maturity across the years. All it means is that, we shouldn’t ignore the contexts, and should strive for as comprehensive an understanding of him as a person as we can: hence why Ive brought this topic up.

[Final Note: since I want people to have the full contexts on this, here’s the extracts from Cynthia Lennon’s second book John (2005), found at the end of chapter 3 and beginning of chapter 4:]

#cw physical abuse #this has been in my drafts awhile because im not sure whether to post it or not #because I dont want to be overly moralistic here #like ik most of you are already aware of all of this stuff #but I think maybe this will be beneficial for newer-ish fans #because when youre just learning about the band its easy to get too caught up into the He Only Did It Once argument #when like. theres room to disagree :/#and we should keep that in mind #so yeah gonna post I guess #cynthia lennon #beatles #sources #idk. its a topic thats been done to death at this point and everyones got an opinion #but I just wanted to share mine

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guessimwritingficsagain · 3 years

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To Be Seen, Part Seven

Warnings : depression

Author's note : I based my depiction of Frankie's wife on the movie Laggies that I mentioned before. It's not exactly the same thing but I liked the way the mom was depicted in the movie and how, in the end, everybody made mistakes. I'm still very sad Lynn Shelton left us. So I guess, in a way, this is dedicated to her.

Chapter One ; Chapter Two ; Chapter Three ; Chapter Four ; Chapter Five ; Chapter Six

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Two weeks later, you broke down. You’d felt it coming, used as you were to that grey cloud slowly sneaking its way into your brain. You called in sick on a Saturday night and turned off your phone, not even feeling guilty about that.

Linda had had her meeting with her ex, and they’d both been tentatively hanging out, trying to fix something that was so broken you didn’t know if there was ever a chance it could be fixed. You’d stayed out of the way, of course. You hadn’t spoken to Linda except for the occasional text to check on her. That left a sinking feeling in your stomach, one that came with the realization that even though you considered Linda your friend, you were also her ex, first and foremost, and though she didn’t mind poking into your love life, she seemed reluctant for you to know about hers. Even though you couldn’t really blame her, that heaviness never went away. That was the first sign.

Jessie’s story was something else altogether. James and Will had set up a tight sleeping schedule at Jessie’s house - a tight schedule of following her to work and staying with her all day, too. Will had involved all the boys except Frankie. They were taking turn watching her, making sure she and her kid were safe. You’d managed to talk them out of going to the guy’s place and beating him up - barely. But you knew that couldn’t last. The way Will had vibrated when you explained the situation told you everything you needed to know about that. Talking to Jessie hadn’t been easy either, because she’d first shut you out completely and resented her brother for telling you, you for telling Will, and Will for telling everybody else. That was understandable too, but things were tense between the two of you, and since none of the men wanted to include you in what you called the Jessie Watch in your head, you were left to watch and worry from afar.

But the worst thing was the complete and utter silence from Frankie. He wouldn’t answer your texts or your calls. You kept replaying the only phone call he’d answered to just like you’d kept replaying the moment he’d offered you wine and chocolates for Christmas - God, you wished you could go back to that time.

You dial his phone number, hoping he picks up. He does, starting with :

‘Listen, now’s not a good time. I’m sorry but I got some things to deal with right now. I’ll call you back.’

Unnerved by the tone of his voice, unnerved by his answer, and thinking we don’t even see each other anymore and I thought you liked me and trusted me you bluntly answer :

‘Pope told me.’

The silence on the other end in unbearable, so you continue :

‘Frankie, talk to me. Don’t shut me out, please.’

You’re begging, and you don’t care that you are.

‘It’s fine.’ He eventually mumbles, his voice unconvincing. ‘I’ll sort this out. I just need some time.’

Some time was more than two weeks apparently, and two weeks was your breaking point.

You felt alone in a way you’d never felt before.

That led you here, right to this moment, you opening a bottle of wine, all by yourself. You sat on your couch, and drank a glass. Then, a second. By the third, you were turning on your phone and dialing your mother. When she picked up, you completely broke down. After the phone call, exhausted by all the crying, you left your phone on the couch and went to bed. The battery was empty when you woke up the next morning, feeling puffy and barely keeping it together. You didn’t bother to plug it in.

As agreed upon the night before, your father picked you up a bit before noon. Starbuck was in her bag, and you’d thrown some clothes in a luggage. You felt a wave of relief wash over you when you put it in your childhood’s bedroom, Starbuck already carefully sniffing around the house. You called your boss to ask to use all of the vacation days you had. You didn’t know what deity to thank for the fact that he agreed. You knew it was all wrong. You knew you should be here for Jessie, for everyone. You father covered that : he went to Anna and Phil, told them about the situation and made them promise not to say a word.

You had three weeks of vacation, and nothing to do but pretend you were a teenager again, living with your parents.

Your father kept in touch with Phil and Anna, if only to get news about what was going on with your friends. At the end of the first week, he came back with a letter. You felt yourself shaking until he added :

‘It’s from Anna.’

He heard your sigh of relief but didn’t say a word, turning around to leave you in peace. As he got to the door, though, he turned around and announced :

‘One of these days, I’m gonna have to have a talk with that boy of yours.’

He looked tired, and worried. Your voice wavered as you answered :

‘You won’t have to if he’s not my boy anymore, Dad.’

You felt like crying, but you didn’t. You turned your attention to the letter instead, and smiled at the first line. Anna had taken to give you your own nickname every time you compared her to Jane from Pride and Prejudice.

Dear Elizabeth,

How long and lonely are the days without you. Our dear cook is not quite himself, since you’ve been away, as he has to endure me without you to soothe the pain in his ass that I am. The counter has lost its light, and even the birds seem to sing in a more quiet manner, as if they were missing their dear friend too.

I hope your dear feline companion Starbuck is doing well in her new surroundings. I do not worry much, though: change can be difficult, but she is anything but faint-hearted.

I will keep writing to you, dear Elizabeth, if only to let you know if a respectable gentleman of good fortune ever comes in to charm me. You must promise, though, that you shall write back.

Your Jane.

The letter was so sweet and thoughtful , with Anna’s clumsy attempt at sounding Jane Austen-ish, you finally cried, only this time, the tears were not all bitter. You could call her, but this seemed more fun. You fumbled around to find a piece of paper and picked up a pen.

Dear Jane,

How sweet of you to write to me. I cannot express how much I miss you too. Do not worry about Phil, for he is softer for you than you know. I am sure you are quite exaggerating to hasten my return. Alas, I will remain where I am, for I find this retreat is beneficial to my health.

Starbuck has taken to her new life quite readily, and is currently enjoying a lovely nap in the sun.

Guard your feelings well, my dear. Experience has taught us much in this matter, recently.

I’m writing a return address on the back, so you can write to me through the post-office and avoid my poor father the task of being the delivery man.

Your Elizabeth.

You left the house for the first time this week to mail the letter.

Those three weeks went by like this.

You learnt that Linda and her ex had called it quits for good. You learnt that Will eventually drove to Jessie’s now-ex-boyfriend’s house and beat the shit out of him, and that everybody watched it happen with glee. You learnt that Frankie’s ex-wife was still in town. Staying on the couch.

You wanted to throw up all the time, these days.

You still didn’t turn on your phone. You used your parents’ line to get an appointment to the doctor. The woman only had to look at you to say :

‘Yeah, you’re not going back to work.’

You knew what she meant : you barely recognized yourself when you looked in the mirror. You didn’t sleep much, you didn’t eat much, and it all showed. When you came home, your father hesitantly said :

‘They’re starting to be worried. They’re asking a lot of questions to Anna.’

You found that you didn’t care, and a little voice at the back of your head warned you that this was worrying but you ignored it. It was so easy not to think. You enjoyed the feeling - maybe a little too much, said the voice again. You ignored it again. You were standing on that fine line : you were aware that you weren’t fine, but you weren’t doing anything about it. You knew it would only take a push to bring you to the other side : and then, you wouldn’t be aware anymore that you were not fine.

‘I got two weeks more.’ You answered instead.

———

You hadn’t seen Frankie in five weeks.

You’d been feeling better, lately, but still considered going back to work. And by that you meant going back to work at all, ever again. You weren’t good at facing your problems, you knew that, and that whole existential crisis about your future sounded a lot like running away but you didn’t have the strength to face anything right now. You wanted Frankie and your friends to make some king of grand gesture while knowing they didn’t have the means to reach you. You knew that was ridiculous and a little bit fucked up. You kept at it anyway.

Anna visited you more and more. The first time she’d shown up unannounced, she looked so hesitant it broke your heart. You’d hugged her so hard and she’d given it back the same way. She took to showing up in the morning, when your parents were on their daily stroll, though she happily stayed for lunch. Your parents, of course, adored her.

So, that morning, when someone rang at the door, you expected it to be her. You realized your mistake the second you opened it. You took a step back, speechless, and Will and Santi used your surprise to push past you and come in, very much uninvited.

On autopilot, your brain pretty much gone, you turned around and just stared at them. They stared right back, Pope with a hard look on his face. Will, though, looked like he wanted to hug you but didn’t dare. He seemed to struggle for a minute, before opening with :

‘Benny is very upset you missed his last fight. It was a big one.’

You found your tongue, even if it felt heavy in your mouth.

‘Well, I’ve been…’

‘You’ve been what ?’ Interrupted Santi, his arms crossed and his gaze unforgiving. ‘Ignoring us for five weeks ?’

‘My phone is dead.’

‘For five weeks ? Cut the crap.’

‘How did you find me ?’

You crossed your arms too. Whatever reunion you’d imagined, that wasn’t it. The reality of the situation was starting to sink in and you were trying to get angry, because if you got angry, then you wouldn’t break down. You could feel the tension building up your spine, knew exactly what it meant too : that conversation was not going to go well because whatever happened, whatever your reaction would be, the part of your brain labeled stupid and self-destructive was going to take over.

‘How did you find me ?’ You repeated, your fingers digging into the flesh of your arms to try and ground you.

Apparently, though, your brain wasn’t the only one with a part labeled stupid because instead of answering the question, Pope just decided to go with :

‘Do you realize how Jessie feels ? Do you realize how we all feel ? We had to take care of your friend, your friend because you just bailed on us while her fucking ex-boyfriend was beating the shit out of her.’

The silence that followed was heavy, as you could feel both the anger coming off of Santi and the panic that was shaking Will. Your voice was cold, emotionless, as you answered :

‘I was there. Except nobody wanted me there. I was completely useless.’

‘Bullshit. So what, you disappear ? Jesus, Frankie must have a thing for women who pull that kind of stunt because you’re the second one. The boy’s not very smart, apparently.’

‘Pope.’ Will’s voice rang loud in your ears, but you were frozen to the spot. You wanted to answer with some smartass remark, something petty along the line of well she’s back now, so who needs me anyway, just to get back at Santi because you knew in your heart Frankie wouldn’t just leave you like that. You knew there was more to the story but Frankie had completely shut you out before you went off the grid and now Santi was in front of you, scolding you as if you were a child, the whole thing feeling too much and not real at all, like you were having a really bad nightmare.

Pope ignored Will’s warning and went on :

‘You know the worst part ? He’s so worried he’s going crazy right now. We’re fucking back to square one, when I had to pick up the pieces when the other one left.’

‘Pope, stop.’ You heard Will say.

You opened your mouth, just a reflex, because your brain was empty. You couldn’t think anymore. But you opened your mouth anyway and realized too late you wouldn’t be able to contain the sob crawling up your throat. Breaking down it is, then, was your last thought before you started crying and shaking uncontrollably. So you ran to your room, leaning on the walls to avoid falling.

You were crying so hard you didn’t hear the door open, some time later. You felt the bed dip, though, when someone sat next to you.

‘Go away.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Will’s voice answered as a hand went to your hair. ‘Come on, deep breaths. Everything’s gonna be okay but I need you to breathe, okay ?’

Your hand shot up to grab his arm in a steely grip to steady yourself. You complied, though. After a while, you felt like you could breathe again. Will’s hand kept stroking your hair as he started talking :

‘Listen, Pope’s an asshole, we all know that. Anna briefed me a bit about everything. She wasn’t the one who gave us your address, by the way. I swear, the woman is unbreakable. Linda just figured you might be at your parents’ house and we looked it up. I’m a bit ashamed it took us that long to think about it, honestly.’

He chuckled, and went on :

‘Anyway, listen. Frankie’s been really overwhelmed by his ex coming back, and he didn’t react well, though I must say you answered in kind but I get it. He told me how he kept you out of the loop and I know how hard that must have been for you because I can see how much you care about him. It’s so obvious, the two of you. It was even before anything happened. I know Frankie is, you know, the quiet one, and he’s not all sharp angles and shit like the rest of us, but he turns into a puddle when you’re here. He’s unburdened when you’re around. We used to give him shit because he wouldn’t talk to the cute bartender.’

You smiled, still not looking at Will, but he was looking at you and he saw it.

‘Remember when he came to ask you, for Maria’s birthday ? We made him do it. Benny taunted him. He said that if he had to get up and ask you that, he’d also get your phone number and a date with you.’

‘I’d never go on a date with Benny.’ You replied, your voice hoarse.

‘Yeah, you’re smarter than that. Remember the Christmas presents ? Frankie was having a bloody existential crisis over this. He wanted to buy you a book. Linda gave him ideas but he was freaking out because he was scared he was going to buy you a book you wouldn’t like. I actually had to text Jessie about your favorite wine and get Frankie to go shopping with me so he would stop freaking out. Pretty sure I’ve never seen him stressed out like that and we served together.’

‘You already had Jessie’s number ?’ You asked, pretty sure Jessie would have told you right away about that.

His voice grew quiet, thoughtful.

‘Yeah. I had asked for her number one day. But I was really drunk so I never used it. Figured she’d given it to me because she felt obligated or something since I was a regular. I thought I was taking advantage. If I had made a move earlier …’

You turned your head towards Will, then, knowing you looked like a mess and not caring one bit.

‘What happened is not your fault, Will.’

And then, it hit you.

‘Wait, earlier ? That means you did it ?’

His smile was blinding. You squeezed his arm.

‘Good for you.’

You both fell silent for a moment but Will wasn’t done.

‘Listen, that thing with Frankie’s ex, it’s not what you think, even though he’s been an idiot for not telling you. Wendy came back because she’s lost. She thinks she made a mistake, leaving like that, and she’s still trying to figure out if she wants to be a mom. It’s not about Frankie and her, okay ? It’s about Maria. She wants to try, maybe. She still doesn’t know. Pope shouldn’t have talked to you like that but he’s right : Catfish is lost right now, because he misses you and he doesn’t know how to fix it. He’s too damn respectful to show up here unannounced, too. That’s why we came.’

He kept stroking your hair as your mind processed everything.

When you left the room, Santi was waiting in the garden. You went over to him and hugged him. He whispered apologies in your ear.

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Taglist :

@pedritobalmando @ubri8

#pedro pascal #frankie morales x reader #frankie 'catfish' morales #triple frontier

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dwellordream · 3 years

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“The plasticity of the notion of reading meant that it represented the medium through which middle-class Victorian girls passed many hours, but it did not bring a uniform message. Like their parents and advisers, adolescent girls who were writing about reading were of two minds. On the one hand, as William Thayer put it, reading could be a way of demonstrating rectitude and diligence; on the other, it could be a route to indolence and the shirking of responsibilities.

Mary Thomas, away at school in Georgia in 1873, suggested these dual meanings of reading as she imagined a newly virtuous domesticity for herself upon returning home: ‘‘I will sew and read all the time, I am not going out any where, but intend to stay at home and work all the time; no matter how interesting a book may be, I will put it down and do whatever I am asked to do, they shall no longer accuse me of being lazy and good for nothing, I will work all day.’’ In its contrast to engaging in a social whirl of visiting and flirtation, reading, like sewing, represented a becoming and modest domesticity. However, reading might also subvert good intentions, and tempt a girl to inattention to, or even disobedience of, the demands of others or of household work. In any case, reading had a meaning for the self, as well as for the family and the culture.

Reading good books was of course a way of demonstrating virtue. Measured reading of improving texts was part of the regimen of many Victorian girls. As advisers suggested, the reading of history was especially praiseworthy. When Nellie Browne returned home from school in 1859, her mother noted in her diary with pride, ‘‘Nellie begins to read daily Eliot’s History of the United States,’’ a parentally encouraged discipline which would both improve and occupy Nellie now that her school days were over.

Jessie Wendover, the daughter of a prosperous Newark grocer and another regular diarist, recorded a steady diet of history in her journal, justifying her summer vacation in 1888 with the reading of a two-volume History of the Queens of England, as well as doing a little Latin and some arithmetic. The popular British domestic novelist Charlotte Yonge wrote her History of Germany specifically for readers like Jessie Wendover, who began it the following year. What American girl readers took from the history they read is hard to ascertain, because unlike their rapt reports on novels, they recorded their history as achievement rather than illumination.

One can certainly appreciate the irony, though, in encouraging girls to read accounts of national travails, the stories of armies, wars, and dynastic succession, which were ennobled partly by their distance from girls’ real lives. One of the advantages of history seemed to be that girls could be expected to have no worrisome practical interest in it—in marked contrast to the reading of romances or novels.

Victorian girls could build character through a variety of other literary projects, prime among them the memorizing of poetry. Over the course of the late nineteenth century, the publishing industry issued a number of collections of snippets of poetry known as ‘‘memory gems,’’ designed for memorization by schoolchildren. The verse in these anthologies was to serve as ‘‘seed-thoughts’’ for earnest young Victorians aspiring to know the best, and these were the likely sources for many of the couplets which appear in girls’ diaries and scrapbooks.

Margaret Tileston’s daily diary, recorded religiously for her entire life, both fed and celebrated a variety of literary disciplines, including most prominently reading and memorizing poetry. She too read histories during the summer, along with keeping up with her other studies, noting one July day following her graduation from Salem High School that she had ‘‘read my usual portions of Macaulay [a 40-page allotment] and French, but only a few pages of Spencer.’’ Margaret Tileston also read advice literature, such as Mary Livermore’s What Shall We Do with Our Daughters? and two books by Samuel Smiles, Self-Help and Duty. (The latter she described as looking ‘‘quite interesting and full of anecdotes.’’) Margaret Tileston’s diaries suggest a life consumed with the rewards of self-culture.

At fifteen, however, she recorded a brush with another literary genre and mode of striving—a seeking not only for mastery of the will but for beauty itself. Poetry first appeared simply as a verse of romantic poetry copied on the page: ‘‘Why thus longing thus forever sighing, for the far-off, unattained, and dim, while the beautiful, all round thee lying, offers up its low, perpetual hymn.’’ Margaret Tileston was now away at girls’ school, where she had experienced something of an emotional awakening in the intense atmosphere of schoolgirl friendships.

Her turn to poetry seems to reflect the new culture in which she was briefly submerged. That summer, back with her family on vacation on the Massachusetts coast, Tileston again turned to poetry, and to beauty, in an uncharacteristic passage of effusion. ‘‘The moon was perfectly lovely in the sky and its light on the water. We quoted lines of poetry, and it was beautiful.’’ By January of the next year, however, poetry had been incorporated into her disciplines of order and accomplishment. After returning from boarding school, she had moved with her family from the farm where she had spent her formative years to the town of Salem, where she attended the local high school. There she embarked on another campaign of self-improvement, the memorization of poetry, perhaps as a strategy to gain control of alien surroundings.

Two months later she described a new discipline: the daily ritual repetition of all the poems she had learned, of which there were by then 111. On May 25 she reported that her extraordinary ability to memorize poetry was gaining her a reputation. ‘‘Miss Perry asked me if I knew about 250 poems. She said that one of the Goodhue girls had told her I did. I remarked something of the sort to Miss Perkins one day in recess, and somehow it was repeated.’’ By the end of July she noted that she was beginning to have trouble finding new poems to learn because she knew so many already.

Appreciation of the beauty of poetry had dropped out of her journal. Nor did she suggest that the poetry had any meaning to her at all. Yet she very likely gained some of the satisfactions from poetry expressed by Louisa May Alcott, some years before. After disobeying her mother, at the age of eleven, Alcott ‘‘cried, and then I felt better, and said that piece from Mrs. Sigourney, ‘I must not tease my mother.’’’ She went on, ‘‘I get to sleep saying poetry,—I know a great deal.’’ For those feeling guilty, sad, misunderstood, or wronged, repeat- ing lines of elevating poetry had an effect in a secular mode analagous to the saying of ritual Hail Marys. The verses established an alliance with a higher authority and suggested personal participation in a glorious and tragic human struggle.

And in fact, poetry, even more than history, was the prototypical idealist genre. In 1851 the British educational pioneers Maria Grey and Emily Shirreff proposed the reading of poetry rather than fiction, explaining the crucial distancing effect of poetic subjects. ‘‘In a poem, the wildest language of passion, though it may appeal to the feelings, is generally called forth in circumstances remote from the experience of the reader.’’ They suggested that in poetry there was a higher truth than that of superficial realism: ‘‘The grand conceptions of the poet are true in ideal beauty.’’

Writing fifty years later, Harriet Paine too suggested that poetry had generic qualities of elevation. ‘‘After all, in poetry itself what we read is not the important thing. We should read poetry to give us a certain attitude of mind, a habit of thinking of noble things, of keeping our spirit in harmony with beauty and goodness and strength and love.’’ Earlier Paine had commended the memorization of poetry as neces- sary to ‘‘take in the full meaning,’’ suggesting just such a regular regimen of repetition as Tileston had pursued. The spiritual rewards from internalizing poetry were revealed by Paine’s proposal that it take place on the Sabbath: ‘‘Surely we must give a part of every Sunday to such elevating study.’’

Elizabeth Barrett Browning had censured poets for their historical escapism in her 1857 poem Aurora Leigh, arguing Their sole work is to represent the age, Their age, not Charlemagne’s—this live, throbbing age, That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires. Yet it was in just its remoteness from ‘‘this live, throbbing age,’’ just in the ‘‘togas and the picturesque’’ disparaged by Browning that poetry was considered so appropriate for girl readers.

…If reading presented an opportunity to discover national allies, to demonstrate private virtue, and to suggest the triumph of the will against ennui or boredom, it increasingly endorsed another way of defining life: the excitement and the exercise of the feelings. Girls who read their daily allowance of Macaulay or the Bible with pride and self-satisfaction upbraided themselves for their difficulties in controlling their insatiable appetites for Victorian novels of all kinds. Reading for leisure or for pleasure invariably meant reading for ‘‘sensation,’’ reading for adventure, excitement, identification, titillation. In the process of this kind of reading, Victorian girls ministered to a complex of emotions.

…Perhaps leisure reading can best be defined by what it was not: study, sleep, or sewing. Girls chastised themselves for imperfectly learning their lessons, and sometimes blamed the distractions of leisure reading. Martha Moore, who had just begun to attend school in occupied New Orleans during the Civil War, confessed that she found the schoolwork hard and had had two crying spells before she ‘‘picked up an interesting story and with my old habit of procrastination, thought I would read that first, and then study.’’

She observed the inevitable consequence ‘‘that my lessons are very imperfectly known.’’ And even Margaret Tileston, whose discipline seldom allowed her to swerve from duty, could be seduced by light reading. At the age of fourteen: ‘‘I scarcely studied in my history at all, because I was interested in ‘Sir Gibbie,’ and wanted to finish reading it.’’ At the age of seventeen: ‘‘I undertook to spend the afternoon and evening on my Ancient History, but my thoughts wandered and I spent some time on papers and magazines.’’ At the age of twenty: ‘‘I did not study a great deal in evening, on account of my interest in my novel, but I read over my History lesson.’’

Girls also resolved to prevent reading from interfering with their domestic chores, usually their needlework. Treating reading as recreation, Virginian Agnes Lee observed, ‘‘I really am so idle I must be more industrious but it is so hard when one is reading or playing to stop to practice or sew.’’ Another Virginian, Lucy Breckinridge, set up a similar opposition, noting that she and her sisters had gathered together in her room ‘‘being industrious. I am getting over my unsocial habit of sitting in my room reading all day.’’ For Lucy Breckinridge private reading not only was not industrious, it was also antisocial.”

- Jane H. Hunter, “Reading as the Development of Taste.” in How Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood

#history #victorian #american #jane h. hunter #how young ladies became girls

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xxwritemeastoryxx · 4 years

Text

Untold Future Chapter 1

Have Hope

Author: xxwritemeastoryxx

Pairings: Elijah Mikaelson x OC

Word Count: 5.5K

Warnings: Lets be clear before we dive into this series. There will be heavy use of torture throughout this series. Please expect blood and gore in each chapter. If you haven’t seen my take on gore before, please note that I am a bit graphic when it comes to it. So heed the warnings in the future. This chapter however, is pretty tame.

This is a SEQUEL! If you have not read Forgotten Alliance, please do so. Or you’ll be terribly lost.

Author’s Note: Welcome to the sequel of Forgotten Alliance. I am still so blown away by the feedback that I’ve gotten for this series. Not just here, but on ffnet as well. You guys are amazing and I can’t wait for you guys to read what is to come. ♥

Feedback gives me life and motivation for future things. ♥

<< Forgotten Alliance || Chapter 2 >>

My dearest Elijah,

I did it. I got the cures that were needed to wake you and your siblings and bring you all back home to your brother. It had taken some time and the world has changed in the last five years. Even with me visiting you from time to time, I couldn’t stand to be apart from you. The thought of it now scares the hell out of me. But knowing you were safe was what kept me going. Finding a way to bring you back to me was motivation as well. And I never truly stopped until now. You’ve heard me rant about them during our visits, I shouldn’t rant about them here.

I wanted to write to you before I left to give the cure to you and Kol. I hoped that sitting down and writing to you would make the guilt that I have felt ease in some way. Of course it didn’t though. I still feel it. This does help me ease my mind in some way though. I never would have thought this letter would be the first thing you would see from me once you woke. But I’d rather you have this than nothing at all and you’d be forced to wonder what is was I was thinking or even what went through my mind as I sat here and wrote this. I do not expect there to be a positive outcome for me after you wake. But I know I will feel better knowing that you can wake up and be with your family despite the mistakes I have made.

Klaus is still safe and hidden. He is and has been in good hands. Upon your arrival back into New Orleans, it will not be hard to find his whereabouts and of course it will not be hard to release him from his own sleep he has been in. When he is well, tell him that the only thing I ask for him to do is to keep the city as it has been. I’ve helped keep New Orleans in the best shape it has ever been. I’ve managed to get the wolves and the witches to live in peace with the vampires. It was a lot of work, but I managed to do it. Even as I worked and maybe even threatened a few people to get those cures, I never stopped making sure that our home wasn’t destroyed in your family’s absence. The Mikaelsons have allies now. I ask that you help keep the city the way it has been. Don’t let him mess it up.

I want to say that no matter if we had been together in person or inside the dream world Freya had created, my time with you was amazing. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love you Elijah. And because I love you I had made decisions that will lead me to be a part of something that I had hoped I would never have to be a part of. When you wake, you will only feel my presence for a moment. As much as I would love for you to know my presence is constantly there, I cannot allow you to feel what ever pain may come with my decision. My humanity will be off Elijah. But I will continue to feel yours. I will feel when you wake and I will feel when you begin to worry. I only ask that you continue to have some hope in me returning to you. That will keep me going. That will keep me fighting against what is to come. Having my emotions off protects you from knowing and feeling the torment that will come. I am not shutting them off just to spare you from the endless pain that I will feel, but it is also a part of the deal that has been made. It all makes it harder for you to find me. But knowing you, you will stop at nothing until I am in your sight again. And don’t take it out on Hayley, she knew nothing about my plan for this. She’s been surprised by the manpower that was recently used to get your cure. Without it, this would have taken so much longer.

But with this manpower that has been used, it leaves us at the one point in time that we continuously worried about. I knew this whole time, Elijah. I may have not known exactly when it would happen, but I knew that the moment I had the cures, this is where we would be. I’ve known since the very night you were placed in the spell you have woken up from. I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t bring myself to. I didn’t want there to be a countdown for you or for you to even sit there and worry about what I could possibly be doing to be bringing you home. So I carried it on my shoulders alone for just a little longer. I believe it was the best thing to do. But we are here, Elijah.

Promise me that you’ll find me. When you do find me, no matter how broken or how far gone I am, bring me back. Fix me until all of my pieces are back together. If I say things that are hurtful or do things that may cause situations to become difficult, don’t let that stop you. You once told me while I was human that many things happen for a reason. Those hidden reasons hold forgotten pasts, forgotten alliances, and untold futures. We can only hope that our past comes back to help us, not harm us. I had been your forgotten past and your forgotten alliance. I came back and helped as much as I could, even though I have made a bit of a mess. Now, I need your help with the untold future. My deal with the Devil is done and it is time for him to collect. You know where my future would lead to. Save me from them.

Always and Forever,

Elizabeth

The letter felt heavy in Elijah's pocket. The message that he must have read over a hundred times in the last hour seemed to weigh more than earlier before. It was the words that were written in them that made the letter heavy. The weight of the world had been on Elizabeth's shoulders when she wrote it. And now, as it was neatly placed into his jacket pocket, he could feel the same weight.

The numbness that surrounded him would never compare to the feelings that surrounded him the night before. The comfort, the love, the warmth she gave him was now gone. It was replaced by a fuzzy feeling that only made him grow agitated.

Save me from them.

Those words written in the black ink had weighed the most to Elijah. He wanted to be angry with Elizabeth. He wanted to be mad that she had even thought about giving herself up as she had. For not including him in on her plan and making him believe they'd be together without any interference.

But Elizabeth hadn't. She carried it all on her shoulders without including any of the Mikaelsons in on the plan. The devil was in the details, and Elizabeth wouldn't have been able to live with herself if they had known. It was what made it easier to leave that morning unnoticed. To know that her family would be safe, even if she wouldn't be.

But no matter how much he wanted to be angry, he knew he couldn't be. He could be angry with the very person that was holding her captive. He could be upset with himself for pushing her in the direction of turning off her humanity. He could even blame his older sister for the events leading up to Elizabeth shutting off the best part of herself. But he couldn't bring himself to.

"Here," Hayley's voice broke his thoughts. As Elijah turned, he found Hayley handing Freya a map. One that he had seen hanging in Hope's room. "It's the best we've got."

"We'll make it work." Freya said with a nod. Her eyes moved over to Elijah for a moment. She wanted her brother to know that this was going to work. That with a locator spell, they'd be able to find Elizabeth.

Elijah took a step closer as Freya took black sand into her hand and began pouring it onto the map. Sighing, Freya looked over at Hope and took the child's hand. The moment their hands came together, they began chanting a locator spell.

The others watched as the black sand stayed still for only a moment before it began moving. But instead of moving to a specific location on the map, the sand spread out across it. The sand scattered across the map, giving the indication that there was nothing to find. As if Elizabeth couldn't be found at all.

Realizing the spell hadn't worked, Elijah's anger got the best of him. He turned away and knocked the items off the nearest shelf. As he did so, everyone else looked down at their feet or away from Elijah. They didn't know what to do or say to bring him comfort.

"Why didn't it work?" He asked as he ran a hand down his face. His eyes never landed on his siblings or the map.

"I don't know." Freya said with a shake of her head. "She's cloaked, but whatever magic that was used to do it, I can't get passed it."

"Why would she do this?" Even though he knew the answer, he couldn't stop himself from asking. He knew Elizabeth had done it to fix the wrongs she made. She had done it to bring him back to his family. Elizabeth made it so that Hope wouldn't have to grow up without a father in her life. She did it because she was willing to do anything for her family.

"She was keeping her promise." Hayley said with a sigh. "She promised your brother that no matter the cost, she would find a way to save you all."

"And that cost being what?" Elijah asked, taking a step towards Hayley. "Our lives for the cruel and sadistic torment they will put her through for what they call 'research'?"

"Wait a minute," Kol said as he looked over at Elijah. "What torment?"

It had been the first time Kol, Rebekah, and Freya had heard of it. Elizabeth had never brought it up around them. Elijah had been the only Mikaelson to know the details of her past and what awaited her.

"Years ago, Elizabeth had been captured by humans." Elijah began. "They used her as if she had been some science experiment. She had been tormented for almost ten years before she escaped. It wasn't until recently when Jess had shown me the visions." He shook his head at the thought. "At some point, Elizabeth would return there, willingly. Elizabeth never thought she would make it out of there alive the first time."

"But she survived," Rebekah said, walking over to her brother and placing her hand on his shoulder. "She wouldn't have made it back to New Orleans if she hadn't. "

"That doesn't explain why she willingly handed herself over to them now." Kol noted.

"You were in danger." Hayley said, looking over at Kol. "She did the one thing she thought was necessary to help bring you back."

Elijah shook his head and started making his way towards the door. "I'm going to go and find her. She couldn't have gotten far." Hayley grabbed hold of his arm as he walked passed her. He looked towards her, confusion on his face as to why she had stopped him.

"She did this so you could see your family together again. That includes your brother." Hayley hoped she could talk some sense into him. "Elizabeth's sacrifice was so that the Mikaelson's would be together. Shouldn't you let him see that you are alive and well before deciding to run around like some mad man?"

"Hayley's right," Rebekah said, taking a step towards her brother. "We know you are fine. What Elizabeth did would be for nothing if we don't come together at least once."

Elijah gently pulled himself out of Hayley's hold before bringing running his hand down his face. "We wouldn't be complete. Not without Elizabeth. And you two are asking me to go in the opposite direction of where she went."

"'Lijah, we'll find her." Freya promised. "Being back at home gives us an advantage. I'll have access to my supplies and have a better locator spell. But you running off as you'd like, we both know Liz wouldn't want that."

Taking in Freya's words, Elijah sighed as he nodded. He hated the idea of whatever Elizabeth could potentially be going through. He wanted to find her right away. His mind could only keep seeing the same words over and over in his head. Save me. Elizabeth had wanted him to save her from whatever it was they would do to her. But as much as he wanted to run off and look for her, his family had been right. Elizabeth had done all of it for them to be together again.

Today, he would head home and see his brother. To assure him that his family was together once more. But come tomorrow, he would be out there looking for Elizabeth. And he wouldn't be stopping until she was home with him.

_____

Veronica had been pacing the courtyard of the compound in New Orleans. Her cellphone was in one hand as she gently tapped it against the palm of her other. She was growing worried. Elizabeth left and never came home last night.

"Anything?" Malakai asked as he walked in through the entrance. He had been out half the night looking for Elizabeth. After seeing Elizabeth with Jax the night before, he knew she wasn't just out and about. Something was wrong, he could feel it.

"No." Veronica shook her head. "Her cellphone is going straight to voicemail. Jess won't answer either. Locator spells aren't working."

Veronica was panicking. Malakai wouldn't tell her what was going on. The only thing he mentioned was there was 'bad news' in town, and he was worried about Elizabeth. Without any details, her mind was going in several directions.

"How are they not working?" Malakai asked with a raised brow.

"It's not picking up her location. A few of us tried different spells, and none of them can pick up on Elizabeth's whereabouts. What is going on, Kai?" She wanted answers. She wanted to know how worried she needed to be.

"We reached plan Z some time ago, and Elizabeth didn't tell us we did." Malakai rubbed the back of his neck. "While you were keeping the witches safe, Jax was here."

Veronica's eyes widened at that. "The secret meetings away from town. We should call Hayley."

"I would, but I never got her number. I always called Elizabeth if anything." Malakai said, shaking his head.

"No need to worry about calling." Hayley's voice carried into the area.

Both of them turned to watch as Hayley stepped into the courtyard. But what they weren't expecting was the Mikaelsons following her in. Their eyes took in the siblings, wondering how they were all standing there in front of them.

"She was with you." Veronica said the moment her eyes landed on Elijah. "Is she-"All of them shook their heads before she could even finish her question.

"She left this morning. " Elijah answered for her. "Whitmore."

Malakai shook his head. "And you let her go?" He asked, taking a step closer to Elijah. "After everything she has told you about that place."

Veronica grabbed hold of Malakai's arm. "It's not his fault. If this was Plan Z, we knew the outcome already." She said, looking up at Malakai. "Even if Elijah tried stopping her, we'd still be here right now."

Elijah watched the interaction between the two for a moment. As Malakai looked at the girl, he simply nodded his head. But it was something Elijah understood. These two were as much of Elizabeth's family as his family had been.

"You must be Veronica." He said as he took a step towards the two.

Veronica looked over at Elijah and nodded her head. "Yeah. I'm assuming she told you about me?" Elijah nodded. "I promise I wouldn't do anything to be a threat."

"Threat?" Rebekah asked, taking a step closer towards her brother.

Elijah looked at his siblings for a moment before looking back at Veronica. "This is Veronica, Elizabeth sired her. She's also a descendant of Elizabeth."

"Sired her?" It was Kol's turn to ask the question. "Before or after the serum?"

"After." Both Veronica and Elijah said at the same time.

"Bloody hell." Kol said, shaking his head. "One wrong move, and we'll be back right where we started."

"I would never be a threat to you. Not after everything Elizabeth has done for me." Veronica said, shaking her head.

"We know that." Hayley said with a nod. "You went out there and tried helping Liz get the cures. I am grateful that you were willing to help us."

Hope moved through the adults that were in front of her. She was curious about the person that had helped Elizabeth. And if she had been anything like Elizabeth, Hope knew she would be a friend.

Seeing Hope, Veronica looked over at Malakai for a moment. He nodded his head in confirmation to the silent question that had been asked. Sighing, Veronica took a few steps closer to Hope before kneeling in front of her.

"I heard you are looking for a sleeping King." She said with a small smile pulling at her lips.

Hope's face lit up at that. "Aunt Liz said my dad was behind the blood spell."

A smile pulled at Hayley's lips as she watched Hope. This had been the moment she had been waiting for. Hope understood who her father was. Now she'd be able to meet him.

Veronica placed her hand out in front of Hope, offering it to her. With no hesitation, Hope took hold of it. Standing straight, Veronica began leading them up the stairs. As she did, she looked back from time to time.

As they reached Klaus's room, Veronica let go of Hope's hand. "This part I need to do on my own." She said with a small nod.

While any other time Veronica had felt confident in her siphoning skills, it was this moment, with having the Mikaelsons watching her, that she doubted them. Taking a deep breath, she placed her hands on the door and began absorbing the magic.

The reddish glow that surrounded her hands caused a Hope to gasp in surprise. She had never seen that happened before, and it had been exciting to see. As for the other adults, they weren't sure how to react. Here was a vampire, that not only had the effects of the serum but could practice magic if she wanted.

When Veronica's hands stopped glowing, she grabbed hold of the doorknob and opened the door. The door quickly opened, allowing them entry into the room. But when the Mikaelsons walked in, they couldn't see Klaus anywhere.

"Where is he?" Rebekah asked as she tried to keep calm.

"Elizabeth had Jess put a cloaking spell on him." Veronica said as she looked at Rebekah. "He's hidden in plain sight."

With a wave of her hand, Veronica quickly mumbled a spell. The moment she stopped, Klaus appeared on the bed, just as Veronica remembered he was. He looked no different than the last time she had been in that room.

"I'm sure one of you would like to have the honors." Veronica said as she stepped back. She wasn't going to be the one that pulled Papa Tunde's blade from Klaus. She wanted it to be done by his family. "If you'd like, I can take Hope out of the room for a moment?"

Hayley looked down at Hope, who pouted slightly. Sighing, she looked back at Veronica. "No, I think she'll be able to handle it."

Veronica gave them a smile. "I'll leave you to it." Without another word, Veronica stepped out of the room to provide them with privacy.

"I'll take care of it." Elijah said a moment later.

He moved over to the bed and sat down beside Klaus. He knew that this was going to hurt. From the experience of the removal on himself, Elijah hoped to make it as quick as possible. With one swift movement, Elijah pushed his hand into Klaus's chest. A cry of pain left Klaus's lips as he had done so. As Elijah grabbed hold of the blade, he quickly pulled it out, hoping to give Klaus the relief he needed.

Those that stood close enough could see the open wound begin to heal quickly. Once it did, Klaus began to stir. As his eyes opened, he had been surrounded by his siblings and Hayley. The family he believed he wouldn't see for a while longer.

"She did say you would take some pleasure in waking me." Klaus's voice was rough, but it had caused his siblings to laugh.

Elijah helped Klaus sit up. "I'll give it to Liz, she does keep things interesting." He said with a nod. "But before we get into details, there is someone who's been waiting to see you."

As Klaus looked around the room, his eyes landed on Hayley. Standing right next to her had been Hope. His eyes began to water as he took her in. The last time he had laid eyes on her, she was an infant. Now she was an older child.

The moment Klaus gave Hope a smile, she left Hayley's side and went straight for Klaus. He pulled his daughter into his arms and held her tightly. Her small arms wrapped around him as best as she could, neither of them wanting to let go.

The moment was something they all needed. Hayley, Freya, and Rebekah had tears in their eyes as they watched the two. For as many times as they had talked about the reunion with Hope, this wasn't what they pictured. Yet, it was exactly what they needed.

After Klaus had a few moments with Hope, they gave Klaus space to get out of bed and feed. Just as they had, blood was needed to restore his strength and control his hunger. Once he felt like himself, Klaus called Elijah into the room.

"While we are having a reunion, we are one short." Klaus began as he looked at his brother. "I had expected you to go after her and leave our siblings to wake me."

Elijah looked down at the ground. That had been exactly what he wanted to do. "There was a moment where I would have. And then I was told this is what Elizabeth would have wanted."

Klaus sighed and walked over to his brother before pulling him into a hug. While it was rare for the brothers to have a moment such as this outside of troublesome times, it still was needed. "The universe did right by picking her for you."

Elijah chuckled as he hugged Klaus back. "I would believe I was dreaming if I hadn't pulled the blade out myself."

"Having a blade in your chest for five years will do that to you." As Klaus pulled away from his brother, he sighed softly. "There is something you should see." Elijah's eyebrow raised slightly as Klaus lifted his hand up to his brother's head. A moment later, a memory played through Elijah's mind.

"What do I owe this unexpected surprise?" Klaus asked as he moved away from the balcony.

"I wanted to check-in and see how you were doing in your own head." Elizabeth said with a smile. "I'm sure it gets lonely here with no one to talk to."

"My mind has a particular way of coping with that little detail." He said as he pulled Elizabeth into a hug. "It is great to have someone real to talk to if I must say."

She hugged him back for a moment before pulling away from him. "That's actually what I wanted to speak to you about."

She watched as his eyebrow rose. "You have news." A small smile grew on his lips. He was hopeful. His own head had been his private prison, and if she was about to tell him what he had longed to hear, things would get better.

"Yes." She said with a nod. "I have a test trial that I will be taking to your brothers shortly." She smiled at the thought that this was finally over.

"So, that means that you can remove that bloody blade from my chest now." He said with a smile on his face.

"Oh, I could do that, but why deny Elijah the chance to shove his hand in your chest." She said with a smirk.

Klaus laughed as he shook his head. "I have no doubt about it."

"That's not the only reason I won't remove it." Klaus's eyebrow raised at that. "Because I know you would try to stop me once I did."

"What did you do, Liz?" He asked, watching her.

"I kept my promise." A sad smile pulled at her lips before it was gone. "He'll come for you soon to pull the blade out. But I won't be there with them."

"You know as well as I do, he'll go looking for you the moment you're gone." Klaus shook his head.

"He'll come to you first. I know he will. And when he does, you can tell him all about how I tormented you in your own head." She shrugged slightly before a small smile pulled at her lips.

A smirk pulled at his lips. "Anything else I should tell him?"

Elizabeth thought for a moment before sighing. "Not all things can fit in a chest."

His brows furrowed in confusion. "What does that mean?"

She shook her head slightly. "He'll know what that means. And that's all that matters."

As the memory ended, Elijah shook his head as he looked at Klaus. "She came to you before she left."

"With a rather confusing message, I might add." Klaus said with a nod as he moved his hand away. "What did she mean?"

Elijah tried racking his brain for anything that might recognize what Elizabeth had meant. But nothing came to mind. None of it had made sense to him at that moment. " I honestly do not know."

"That might be something you might want to figure out." Klaus said as he placed his hand on his shoulder. "There is something she wants you to know."

"Now, it is just a matter of finding out what." Elijah said with a nod.

Veronica stood back and watched as the Mikaelson's had their reunion. They were back together after the last five years. She now knew why Elizabeth always carried the world on her shoulders. It was to have the people she cared about back together. Sacrifices have to be made at times to protect the people that they love. Klaus had made that sacrifice for five years while Elizabeth fought with herself on which way to go about things. She was willing to try and go through every possible plan in the book. It just came down to the one thing that she hoped she would never have to do.

When Elizabeth told her that it was time, Veronica knew that the visions had finally caught Elizabeth. When something is set in stone, you can only avoid it for so long before you eventually reach it. Veronica leaned against the door frame watching the family before her, with smiles and joy to be reunited. It did not stop the heavy feeling that began to set into her chest. This was just the beginning. There was no telling what could happen to Elizabeth or what would happen when she would eventually return home. Veronica knew that there were still sacrifices being made, and Elizabeth was the one making those sacrifices. Elizabeth had seen part of the end to this. She just never told anyone what would happen after she walked passed that wooden door.

Malakai walked up to Veronica and sighed. He had been out all day looking for Elizabeth from the moment Veronica told him what she was doing. But there had been no luck in doing so. He leaned against the wall next to Veronica and turned his attention towards the Mikaelsons. They were still enjoying being together. But to Malakai, he knew something wasn't the same. Not everyone was where they should be.

"The family isn't complete." He said softly.

"I know," Veronica said, looking towards Malakai. "She will return home at some point."

"But until then, we have no idea where she could be or if she is even okay." He said, shaking his head.

"We can only have hope." Veronica said with a small nod. "That is what she wants us to have, so we will."

_____

Dimmed lights made it hard to see anything. But it wasn't like it really mattered on what Elizabeth could see or not. For once in the five years since she had taken the serum, she felt weak. Elizabeth could no longer stand on her own. Maybe that was why it took two men to drag her out of the cell she had been sitting in.

After several hours of travel, Elizabeth had been thrown into a cell. One that reminded her so much of the ones back at Whitmore. The only different thing was that the bars were thicker. Moments later, she had been hit with vervain mist. Enough of it to immobilize her before someone injected something into her.

Her head had been clouded enough that she couldn't tell what was up and what was down anymore. She felt numb, and that was the best part about it. She needed to feel numb to it all. Turning off her emotions, this time was to protect the person she cared about most. She needed to feel nothing so he wouldn't feel any of the feelings that would follow. There was no stopping what was to come.

"We put enough of that solution you gave us into her that she doesn't look so well." A man said as he and a colleague dragged Elizabeth into a room a bright room. Once they were inside the room, they lifted Elizabeth up and strapped her to a table.

"That's exactly how it should be, Allen." Another man said as he was drying off a set of scalpels and setting them on a tray. "She isn't like the others."

"What is she then?" Allen asked, looking at Elizabeth.

"From what she has told me, she is supposed to be an upgrade of the original vampires. She's stronger, faster, and even can bite and kill a vampire." Allen's eyes widened at his words.

"How the hell did any of the guys catch her?" Allen asked, looking over at Elizabeth.

"They didn't. We had a deal, and Elizabeth here is now paying her end of it."

"Why would she make a deal that would land her in this place?" All of the other vampires that came and went never came willingly. It was different to hear that someone wanted this.

"Because she did it for love. Love of one of the original vampires."

"Won't they come to try and get her?" Allen knew plenty about the original vampires. If the stories had been right, he was afraid of what could be waiting for them.

"Oh, I am hoping for that." The man said as he took a few steps towards the table Elizabeth was strapped to. He looked down at her and smiled a little. The man enjoyed the look of her being out of it. He reached his hand out to her cheek and patted it to get her attention. "How are you feeling, Elizabeth?" He asked as he watched her roll her head towards him. She smirked at him through the haziness of what they injected her with.

"Ready for your worst, Jax." Her voice was scratchy, but the message had been clear to Jax. He turned and grabbed the largest scalpel he had. Without hesitating, he turned and began slicing at her skin. Elizabeth tried holding back her scream. She hadn't wanted to give the satisfaction of hearing her screams from the pain. But the more he cut into her, the more it had been too much to handle. Her cries became louder with each new tool Jax switched to test out on her. Soon, her screams had been loud enough that neighbors or anyone nearby would have thought someone was being murdered if they had not been in their secluded location.

<< Forgotten Alliance || Chapter 2 >>

Forgotten Alliance: (Please note this will be the only tag for this series. If you don’t want to miss updates, get yourself on the new tag!): @fandom-princess-forevermore

Untold Future Tags:

@alka16555 @chiefdirector @winchestert101 @ministark @mschellehitt @xanderling @thegirlwhowishedeveryonelived

As a reminder, the usual Always and Forever, Stag, and the Originals tags do not apply to this series. If you don’t want to miss an update, get yourself on the list! If you would like to be added to, or taken off, please let me know. ♥

#The Originals #The Vampire Diaries #Forgotten Alliance #Forgotten Alliance Sequel #Untold Future #Elijah Mikaelson x OC #Rebekah Mikaelson #Klaus Mikaelson #Hope Mikaelson #Elijah Mikaelson #Kol Mikaelson #Freya Mikaelson #Original Characters #The Originals AU Season 4 #elijah mikaelson imagine #Elijah Mikaelson fics

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lady-plantagenet · 4 years

Text

Unsolicited Book Reviews (n3): The Sunne in Splendour

Rating:

⭐️⭐️⭐️(+1/2?)

Even before I had an account, I tended to go to tumblr to see people’s opinions before buying a histfic. Certain books are either severely underrepresented, where I feel like there needs to be something on them, whereas others, though talked about enough, something more can still be said about them. So for my quarantine fun, I have decided to start a series where I review every medieval historical fiction novel I read. Hopefully, it will either start interesting discussions or at least be some help for those browsing its tag when considering purchasing it.

TL;DR: Keep in mind that I’m harsh with my ratings. I don’t expect my historical fiction to offer some sort of insight about the human condition or be some perfectly manicured prose, but this book’s biggest detriment was its lack of depth. Some scenes packed a serious emotional punch, but then again I am attached to this era and given the length, it would be insane not to. I learned a lot - no lie, but while my background knowledge on the wars of the roses has become enriched, I feel no closer to Richard.

Plot: We follow Richard III from a young boy at eight right before the catastrophe that was Ludlow to his death and a few years after. This story seems to be told through omniscient third person point of view, which creates issues when it comes to voice - a lot of the characters sound the same (John ‘Jack’ Howard, Francis Lovell, Richard Catesby to name a few). This is only a natural consequence of the sheer amount of people Penman chose to portray. I’m honestly still grateful for this as I was not a fan of Richard III’s POV, but really enjoyed Richard Neville Earl of Warwick’s, Margaret of Anjou and Cecily Neville’s. Everytime these three were the center of the chapter, it was truly enjoyable and multi-faceted which comes to show that Penman is capable of writing complexity when she wants to. I would also like to add that the author’s knowledge of medieval life (e.g. the food, the dogs, the nature of battles) was a high point of this novel and did something to counter-balance the rampant late 20th century flavour in this novel. She tries way too hard to adapt a medieval man such as Richard to our modern values to propagate her Richardian Agenda, which ultimately underscored this.

It must be said though that the author clearly did her research as most of what she said regarding minutae such as: what day of the week it was, where the characters were at one time, details of documents, who did what in which battle, what laws were passed etc... I had just come back to this time period after some years and I thought I knew all there was to know, yet, here comes this book which springboarded me into a wealth of new research - I suppose I am grateful for that. However, do not let that delude you into thinking it is comprehensive. There were historical innacuracies which I can only guess were intentionally made for the sake of the author’s Richardian goal e.g. Anne Neville being forced into her marital duties when historicalMargaret of Anjou made it clear that there would be no consummation until Warwick would prevail at Barnet, Isabel Neville being ‘abandoned’ by her husband in France when really it was only about 4 months they were apart and it would have made no sense for Isabel to sail with an invasionary force, Richard III abolishing benevolence tax because he thought it unfair as opposed to the reality which was that he had failed in his initial attempt to raise them because the population opposed, Richard III allowing the marriage between Jane Shore and Thomas Lynsom when in reality he had initially opposed it... Historical fiction is entitled to innacuracies but given that the author made it clear in her afterword that the only time she strayed was setting a scene in Windsor as opposed to Westminster, it is dishonest to conceal the aforementioned blips, especially when they are so unobvious that it would take a seasoned enthusiast to spot them. As you can tell they either do have a negative bearing on Richard’s image as a saint or show detractors in a positive light, clearly neither that which she was in a mood to explain away.

Characterisation: I can not stress enough how well Cecily Neville was portrayed, every scene she was in, I felt. She tends to be a very difficult character to get because of the whole illegitimacy rumour which casts shades of doubt. She was proud but also pious, subservient but also commanding... just an incredible woman of gravity. I enjoyed Warwick in all his flamboyancy as well and Edward IV was masterfully portrayed as the intelligent but forgiving man that he was. You could clearly see how despite his indulgent character, he knew when it was time to be serious, it was a joy to read the scenes where he strikes people into subserviancy. Anne Beauchamp was also quite a treat for the little time we had with her.

There were also some portrayals of mixed quality: George Duke of Clarence for one, his warped sense of humour and charm were well presented, his unpredictability adequately captured. The issue I have though is that no man is unpredictable to themselves and while it may make sense for other characters to see his temperaments as those like a weather vane it would make no sense for it to be this way in the chapters where he is the POV. Penman’s basically wrote him off as crazy (I mean literally mad) for the majority of the story which is utter tripe given that the whole madness angle is a modern invention. I won’t write more on this now as it deserves its own post (btw if anyone wants me to elaborate on anything I said so far send me an ask). Last thing I will say though: the last scene we have with him is utterly tragic and still sticks with me today, honestly the best writing in this novel was during the ‘Anne’ Book and ‘Protector of the North’ in the years surrounding George’s death. Speaking of, where do I begin with Isabel Neville and Elizabeth Woodville? Their marriages with Richard’s brothers are portrayed negatively for no other reason than to set up Richard and Anne Neville as a perfect love story. This story-telling technique is cheap as hell and I did not expect to find it in a novel so highly acclaimed for its ‘quality’. Let me make this clear: The marriage which was hailed as a love match at that time was that of Elizabeth Woodville and Edward IV. Anne and Richard could have been just as much a marriage of politics as George and Isabel’s, or the latter’s just as much a love match. George fought for Isabel just as much, if not more than Richard did for Anne, George stayed loyal for a surety whereas Richard’s bastard John’s conception may have coincided with his marriage according to Hicks, Marrying Anne was highly advantageous for Richard as marrying Isabel for George... I could go on. Therefore, why is Isabel constantly described as wretched, miserable and at one point abused(!) by her husband whereas Richard was nothing but gentle to the happy Anne. The Mary of Burgundy proposal story is often cited as proof that George only cared about power... but what about Richard’s proposal to Joanna of Portugal one month after Anne died? This may sound minor but it’s a perfect example of the author trying hard to make Richard a modern romantic figure which he wasn’t. I think he may have loved Anne Neville, but that doesn’t change the fact that he was a medieval king and made marriage provisions after her death to secure the succession. For a 800+ page novel about Richard III some seminal pieces of information were left out such as his seizure of the aged Dowager Countess of Oxford’s Howard fortune, the mysterious circumstances in which George Neville Duke of Bedford died young and unmarried after becoming his ward. All in all, do not let the wonderful historical detail fool you into thinking this is a complete account of Richard III’s day to day life.

Don’t even get me started on the Woodvilles... They were all treacherous villains and social climbers who belonged in hell. EVEN ANTHONY WOODVILLE - what has he ever done to Penman or anyone? All scenes with Elizabeth Woodville at the beggining were bedding scenes pretty much, which shows that the author saw her as nothing more than a heartless seductress. There was even a point where Edward in his rage said: ‘you would lie with a leper if it meant you becoming Queen’ and I was just shocked at that. I was further shocked when her daughter Elizabeth of York was musing that if her mother had been a good wife her father wouldn’t have needed to stray and I was just like... ‘I thought we were trying to be sensible in this book 0_0’ - How is it appropriate to have a woman blamed for her husband’s infidelity? How can we have such blatant classism and sexism on the one hand and late 20th century wokeness on the other? It’s what I said earlier, the author can’t prop up Richard and Anne without putting down all other couples in this book. By the end of the book I was honestly finding myself cheering for Elizabeth Woodville as she was becoming the woman with sense and cunning as we all know her, the saving grace of this entire characterisation was that Elizabeth became the only person with a brain by the end (I doubt this was the author’s intention). Down here in this category of bad characterisation I will add Richard and Anne themselves. Anne Neville though often absolutely adorable to me lacked any personality trait apart from being in love with Richard and past sexual abuse by Edward (which didn’t historically happen). Anne’s father and only sister die and she barely thinks about them, which severely undermines her portrayal as a loving and empathetic person. Her death scene and wane was tragic and affected me as a reader but holy Christ before that the author was very heavy handed throughout the book with her martyrisation of Anne, even when she was a young girl and everything was going well she cried in nearly every goddamn scene. Yes, this is Warwick’s daughter we are talking about. Richard (unlike the real great man that once lived on this earth) was similarly flawless and any small flaw he had was something like: ‘too trusting’, ‘acts then thinks’ - essentially ‘too good for this world’ flaws. No one is like this, least of all the real Richard who would not recognise this weird contrived romanticisation of a man. The saving grace of all this is that he admitted around the end to himself and Anne that he did want to be king a little bit, which YES, at least we get that because no one goes through all the procedures he did and endangers the survival of their house, unless they wanted to become king, at least a little bit. All in all, if Penman’s Richard III is the real man, all I have to say is: thank god his reign was cut short because this character would have made a terrible and weak monarch.

Prose: And here is where another of the stars was deducted. The prose is largely very pedestrian. It was full of modern phrases such as ‘hear me out’, ‘He thinks I am in the wrong’ ‘he can’t get away with this’ and other such likes. Also, I know it’s difficult to write a book where everyone’s names are Elizabeth, Edward, Richard and Anne, but apart from ‘Nan’ which was a nickname of that time, the modernity of ‘Bess’, ‘Bella’ or ‘Lisbet’ and the use of them in-text and not just dialogue, did much to draw me out of the medieval era. This is not just a criticism towards Penman but a grand majority of historical fiction novelists of this period. Having said that, her choice to cut conjunctions and use the word ‘be’ intead of ‘is’ or ‘are’ did not bother me at all and I found it effective in dating the language a bit. I appreciate that writing in poetic prose for 800+ pages is extremely difficult, but other’s have done it. And even in other novel where that’s not the case, the writing is still profound and impactful and conveys a deeper meaning, whereas here it’s more of a fictionalised history book. The author appears to have some imagination as the few scenes she made up e.g. Catherine Woodville’s visit to Richard or Edward summoning Edmund’s previous carer John to talk about Edmund as he was trying to deal with the grief of losing George, any scene with Cecily Neville in it, Anne Neville and Veronique (OC lady-in-waiting to her) when they were in hiding, Rosamund and Richard at the end, Margaret of Anjou when she was lodged at that abbey, When Stillington visited George before his death to give him a rosary and last rites and he refused to get them from him, Anne and Richard going to Middleham and Isabel’s lying in state were just some of them. However, even if you took all those well-written scenes and stuck them together they would not be more than maybe 150 pages which is not good in such a massive novel. I really don’t know how I would rank the prose, I feel weird saying it’s at the low bestseller level because at least it’s not overwritten and annoying, however, it lacked a lot of soul most of the time, which is dissapointing given what Penman had to work with. I can see that the author has some strengths, for example she’s good at writing about the weather and the natural landscape, she’s also good at describing facial expressions. But her massive flaw is dialogue and flow - especially the latter. The flow is hindered by her abject inability to weave historical events and their happenings into the prose, so she often settles for an exposition dump, especially when it comes to some male chatacter’s POV such as John Howard, Francis Lovell or Buckingham. A lot of the characters exposited at each other too, which wasted the opportunity for some serious character profiles. Basically too much telling and not enough showing. In conclusion, It didn’t always feel clunky, expository or laboured, but it way too often did for the good to be redeemed by the bad prose-wise.

In Conclusion, I cheated on this book a couple of times when it dragged, but got right back into it whenever the good sections came along. It is one of these books which people cannot stop raving about and I can’t stress how much I wanted to love it when I got it. It’s nice being a fan of something a lot of people are too for once, but it was just not to be. But at least now I can say I have read the cult classic of this histfic niche which apparently everyone has read and cried over. Even though it took me 7 months where others got through it in a week through sleepless nights. Despite all the negativity in this review, I would still reccomend it as it is a solid book and written by someone who clearly gets the conflict and time period. You will learn lots with this book (I intend to keep it as a sort of timeline) regarding things that you might otherwise find too dry to research in depth e.g. battle strategies and sieges. But what you will not learn about is the characters’ psychologies and personalities though Penman tries very hard and heavy-handedly to exposit their feelings to us.

#lady-plantagenet’s book reviews #the sunne in splendour #sharon kay penman #Richard III #if anyone disagrees or agrees i’d love to know your opinion #just send me an ask #historical fiction #Anne Neville #George of Clarence #Edward IV #Elizabeth Woodville #House of York

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jane-fucking-seymour · 5 years

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Slander, Libel and Blasphemy

I owed @ichlugebulletsandcornnuts a fic SK here y’all go

Jane was told not to read this article.

That’s exactly what Katherine had said to her, having stormed into Cathy’s room the night before, angrily yelling about things that Jane couldn’t really hear thanks to the other sounds of the flat and surrounding area. She did, however, hear “how could they say that about Edward?,” which made Jane more than curious about what was going on.

She had tried to talk to Kat about it, but the girl refused to say anything, winded from her yelling at Cathy. Instead, she had asked to go downstairs, to be excused from the conversation. Jane obviously let her, though it did not quell her worry.

Later that night, Katherine had “wandered” into the living room, curled up to Jane, and went on and on about how brilliant Edward was, how he reminded Kat of Jane, of how she can see his mother in him now that she’s met her.

It’s all but confirmed that she needed to find whatever Katherine had read.

She goes to her number one suspect: Catherine Parr. Before she even opens her mouth, Cathy gives her a sympathetic smile and a magazine.

“Page 74,” Cathy says. “I won’t deny you knowledge, but...” she frowns. “It’s rough. And, from my personal experience, I can say that she’s wrong.”

[[MORE]]

Jane simply nods silently and moves away, back to the living room, where it was safe from Katherine’s observant gaze and away from anyone that could possibly hear her, if she kept her voice down at least.

She takes a deep breath, opens the page to 74, and her heart instantly shatters.

The title:

“Edward Could Have Been Worse Than His Father If He Had Lived Long Enough”

Jane sucks in a deep breath, tears already starting to form. She reads word after word, paragraph after paragraph, the details of the argument fueling a rage inside of her that she hasn’t felt since back then.

They call him cold and heartless.

They call him strict and emotionless.

They don’t call him her son.

It’s like she’s reading about some other boy, about someone that truly isn’t Edward. How could they vilify him so much? He was just a boy, he died so early, and people had the gall to still desecrate his name and image centuries after his last breath.

Was he truly to be the villain if he lived longer?

Had she failed as a mother in more ways than she originally anticipated?

What did this mean?

Before she realized what she was doing, Jane was on her feet, moving upstairs. She moved past Anne’s room, past Anna’s, past Cathy’s and Katherine’s and her own, straight to...

“Jane?”

The sleep in Catherine of Aragon’s voice made it clear that Jane’s sudden barging in had woken her up. Maria, who had been visiting overnight, sat up from her side of the bed with a curious look.

“Jane, what’s wrong? It’s 2 AM-“ Catherine starts, looking at the clock, but her attention is immediately diverted to the article that Jane thrusts in front of her.

Catherine turns on the nightstand, wincing at the light, before she looks down at the magazine. Maria reads over her shoulder, gaze going from curious to angry to sympathy.

“Oh, Jane-“

“They said he would have been a monster,” Jane growls out with anger she hasn’t expressed in decades. “They said he would have turned.... h-he would have turned out like him. Like Henry.”

“He wouldn’t have, Jane,” Catherine tries, but Jane is seeing red, a rare display of raw emotion from the third queen.

“Do they even know what they’re doing when they write this shite?” Jane asks, voice a harsh whisper. “Do they understand that he was a child, that’s what he is. He wasn’t even a young adult when he died, he was a child. And they just... they try to murder his reputation for what?” She shakes her head, shaking with anger. “They take my boy and they make him-“

“Into a monster,” Catherine finishes the sentence. Jane stops and turns to half-face Catherine. Maria has gently hugged the girl from behind, but even in the pale moonlight Jane can tell that no tears will be shed by the first. “I can relate to that. Then turning your child into a monster.”

It suddenly strikes Jane why she came here in the first place.

It calms Jane down a bit, starting to catch her breath. “I didn’t-“

“I know,” Catherine says, understanding and soft. “I know. But I think you also did know, in a way. I think you understood.”

Jane looks away in shame, and Catherine chuckles.

“So theyre trying to push this narrative on little Eddie, huh?” Catherine asks, tone a bit more playful and amused than it probably should be. “He was brilliant, from what I heard from Cathy.”

“He was,” Jane says, tone resolute. “He absolutely was. And he would have been if he hadn’t-“

“He had Cathy,” Catherine replies, giving the magazine to Maria to read through fully. “He wouldn’t have. He loved her.”

Jane nods. “Like she was his mother, yeah.”

A moment of silence, then Jane continues.

“I don’t blame him. Cathy is... and incredible woman.”

“She is,” Catherine agrees. “And she raised him well, when you couldn’t. Same with Elizabeth, same with my Mary.”

Catherine gently stands, moving to Jane and pulling her into a hug.

“It’s okay, love. They’re going to do this regardless of what we do. It will be okay.”

“It all sounds like a fanfic or something,” Maria mumbles, which gets Jane’s confused attention.

“A what?”

“What Maria is trying to say,” Catherine butts in, “is that this is all someone’s theory. That it’s not something that people actually believe, it’s just something that someone’s made up.”

“Which means the narrative hasn’t set in yet,” Maria says. “You don’t have centuries of so-called “history” to dismantle. You’ve got a few theories and short stories to debunk.”

“It’s a good thing,” Catherine assures. “People are already on your side. If you’d like, tomorrow, we can draw up a plan on how to respond.” Catherine smiles, gently pulling back to fix up Jane’s hair and grabs a tissue to dry Jane’s eyes. “I’m sure Cathy and the others would love to pitch in. Most of them knew him, too, after all, and Anne has Elizabeth’s account from the history books. It’s human.” Catherine leans forward, kissing Jane’s head. “And I’m sure it will be enough. With all of us together taking on this rather new theory... I’m sure we can nip it in the bud.”

Jane smiles at that, relief clear on her face. “I... thank you, Catherine. Thank you so much.”

The Spanish Queen smiles and nods, gently leading Jane not to her own room, but to Katherine’s.

“Go on then, Kat is a good cuddle and I’m sure you could use some,” Catherine quips, smiling as Jane gets as close to Kat as possible, tucking both of them in. Katherine, in her sleep, mumbles something and curls into Jane more. Jane chuckles, smoothing out Kat’s hair as she gets comfortable.

Catherine steps out of the room, leaving the duo to their slumber, and quietly returns to her own room, where Maria was still reading.

“This is rubbish,” Maria mumbles as Catherine moves into the bed. “It’s the same author as the one that wrote that hit piece on Mary the other day.”

“It wasn’t really,” Catherine says with a sigh. ��That was far more factual. She didn’t put in her thoughts until the end, and I think she made some good points. Whatever drivel she wrote about Edward, though, is just... well, I don’t know what else to call it but rubbish.”

Maria nods, tossing the magazine onto the floor and letting Catherine curl up.

“We’ll make sure it doesn’t get farther than it is,” Catherine says with a nod. “I’ve no doubt in my mind that this will all be sorted once we get everyone together in the morning.”

Maria nods. “You’re a very good person, Catalina.”

Catherine chuckles. “He doesn’t deserve to be fed to the wolves. He was a child. And, if I’m being honest... I don’t know if my Mary would agree with me, but I don’t want Edwards legacy to be tarnished more than it has been.”

Maria sighs, murmuring in Spanish, and Catherine has to laugh before she simply burrows her head in the crook of Maria’s neck.

“Quiet you,” Catherine quips. “Bedtime, or I’m kicking you back to the living room.”

“Can’t believe you thought I was going to sleep on the couch after a full day of dealing with the cousin’s antics,” Maria mumbles, but she settles and Catherine soon falls into a light sleep.

She dreams of Mary. Of what could have been.

Of how she didn’t have the chance Jane currently does.

Of how, tomorrow, she will change that.

#six the musical fanfic #six the musical fanfiction #six fanfic #six fanfiction

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michelles-garden-of-evil · 4 years

Text

Episode 40 Review: In Which Matt Calls Out Jean Paul (Redux)

{ YouTube: 1 | 2 | 3 }

{ Full Synopses/Recaps: Debby Graham | Bryan Gruszka }

Welcome back to my Garden of Evil, the blog where I review and affectionately snark on Canada’s own all-American TV series, Strange Paradise. To my shock, Danny Horn of Dark Shadows Every Day (who introduced me to this delightfully crazy soap with his far more critical reviews) is back to posting more frequently than I do, which isn’t really relevant to this post save that I would not have expected it a year ago. (But then, there are many, many things that happened over this past year that I did not expect.) I would have posted this one sooner, but some urgent matters came up last week and I had to postpone.

Four episodes have passed since eccentric billionaire Jean Paul Desmond’s disastrous failed séance to contact his beloved late wife Erica. Medium and Conjure Woman Vangie Abbott has recovered from her injury, she and Raxl have tried (unsuccessfully) to decode the message in the sand writing box, and now Jean Paul insists on holding another séance! The other characters are trying to figure out how and why the ceremony was disrupted: most accuse Jean Paul of trying to murder them with the falling chandelier, while Vangie announces during the opening recap that she suspects the Reverend Matt Dawson of being a disruptive influence because of his disbelief in voodoo. Now sparks fly once again as another argument erupts between the Reverend and Jean Paul at an emergency meeting in the Great Hall.

Now, let’s begin.

We open with Jean Paul’s first tape recorder journal entry in a while, which is an exposition device that I had been missing mostly because I like mooning over Colin Fox while listening to his gorgeous voice:

Jean Paul: "Erica, my sweet wife, until the day comes when science can restore you to me, can release you from the cryonic suspension colder than ice, as cold as my empty life, I will continue trying to contact you through a séance. You must know the great effort I am making to protect you! But was the evil of Jacques Eloi des Mondes enough to prevent us from making contact at the séance that failed? Erica, believe me! I fought him with all my strength! I held him at bay, but he could not have got through unaided! These people in this house, Erica, I have been thinking about them: are they in consort with the Devil? Which one prevented me from hearing your sweet voice again, my Erica? Which one? If I knew-"

Caught him reading the Teleprompter! (That happens a lot in this episode, by the way.) Also, have I ever mentioned how much I love the lighting in his monitor room?

He stops recording when he sees Holly on the monitor, searching once again for that sweet secret passage in the crypt that she overheard the Reverend mention several episodes ago. Freaking out again over the possibility of danger to Erica’s cryonics capsule, he rushes down to the Great Hall and declares an emergency meeting:

Jean Paul shouting at his detained guests.

"Reverend Dawson, Mr. Stanton, I'm beginning to realize that you have not fully grasped my ruling!" Jean Paul shouts in his most pompous tone. "Now, to each and every one of you, this is most important, and how important it is you will all find out!"

Matt having a scared. I don’t usually find Dan MacDonald cute, but I think he is in this shot.

Quito guarding Holly as she hides in the crypt.

"EVERYBODY!” the Master of Maljardin shouts. “EVERYONE WITHIN THE SOUND OF MY VOICE!" [Line flub? His wording is odd.] "EVERYONE! COME TO THE GREAT HALL! DO YOU HEAR ME? EVERYONE IN THIS HOUSE! THIS IS JEAN PAUL DESMOND CALLING! COME TO THE GREAT HALL AT ONCE! YOU TOO, HOLLY MARSHALL! NOW, ONCE AND FOR ALL, YOU WILL ALL GET THE MESSAGE!"

Jean Paul’s crazy eyes in this scene indicate that he means business.

Everyone gathers in the Great Hall, save Holly and Quito (who are hiding in the basement), Dan Forrest (who is probably in the tub), and Raxl (who isn’t there because Cosette Lee had the day off). Dr. Alison Carr is particularly annoyed, because she could be spending this time researching how to resurrect Erica, but instead is stuck listening to her brother-in-law’s latest hissy fit. Oddly enough, even though Jean Paul acts like a complete ass in this episode, Fox-C looks even more stunning than usual. I can’t explain why, but to me he looks especially handsome during Weeks 8 through 11 of the show. That certain je ne sais quoi of his just comes out particularly strongly during this period.

Jean Paul is so angry that you can see his jaw tensing.

Of all the detained guests in the room, he chooses to pick a fight with Matt, because that worked out so well for him five episodes ago. Elizabeth finds this highly amusing and comments with one of her best lines:

Elizabeth: "It seems to be your opportunity to entertain, Reverend. May I suggest Song of Solomon?"

Jean Paul doesn’t laugh, despite it being arguably the funniest joke anyone other than Jacques has made so far. I, too, want to hear Matt read from the Song of Solomon. Perhaps he has recorded a sermon about it for his album:

Matt’s album, You Can’t Fake Fruit, featuring his sermon “Wherever God Builds a House of Prayer, the Devil Builds a Chapel There” and selections from the Song of Solomon.

I’m not going to recap or quote their entire fight blow by blow, because I just don’t feel like it--and besides, these kinds of overly dramatic yelling matches are more fun to watch for yourself. However, I will note some highlights:

Matt suspects Jean Paul of murdering Dr. Menkin because of how soon he died after Erica. “Who can say how he died?” he asks as a rhetorical question before proclaiming overconfidently, “There, your control over this island begins to disintegrate!”

He also continues to oppose the notion that the Devil caused any of the events on the island, including the chandelier falling: “The chandelier falls, and it’s blamed on the Devil. And you accept these...superstitious reactions of a few, which are driving all of us beyond the bounds of reason!”

There’s a lot of focus on Holly, as you might expect, given that she‘s been searching in the crypt and also given Matt’s obsession with her. I’m glad he’s trying to protect her from Jean Paul now, even though I will always ship him with his right hand.

Alison stands up to Jean Paul and leaves in the middle of the argument. Good for her! Of course, after she leaves, Jean Paul has to passive-aggressively announce to everyone else that she will regret it.

Vangie tells Jean Paul and Matt that “when a devil works through a man, what he does is not an accident,” referring to the time that Dan allegedly damaged the cryocapsule. Jean Paul latches onto this idea, which Matt objects to because he believes it’s a ploy to turn everyone on the island against each other. So Jean Paul accuses Matt next of evil, which is not a question that most people will answer honestly. Ask Jacques if he’s evil and he will openly admit to it; ask someone like Elizabeth, on the other hand, and she will deny it.

Matt being what the kids today would call “a mood.”

Vangie on Matt: “Because he is a man of the cloth--a religious man--he made the contact [with Erica], but because of his disbelief in the spirits, the chain was weakened, the contact breaks. I would say that whenever the Devil is loose, anything or anyone can be his tool.”

I would say that Jean Paul in this episode is a tool, albeit a very handsome one.

Even his anger can’t disguise his cuteness.

Jean Paul ends the argument by threatening to punish Holly for invading the crypt. “Now you will see what happens to those who intrude on Erica’s resting place,” he tells the others and Elizabeth responds with this interesting, cryptic line:

So she approves of Jean Paul’s anger at her “impossible” daughter, but she doesn’t want him to punish her? Also note that she is eerily calm when she delivers this line.

In the next scene, Jean Paul gives Holly some serious mixed messages along the lines of the time my grandfather (with whom I used to live) told me “don’t worry about it” when he noticed my cat scratching at my bedroom door, then threw a fit over the (barely) damaged carpet a few hours later. I moved out of his house two and a half years ago but, up until recently, I got nervous any time anyone told me not to worry about something, because he’d often say things like “don’t worry about it” and “take it easy” shortly before he lost his temper over the very same things he told me not to worry about. In a similar vein, Jean Paul first tells Holly to “go ahead” into the crypt, only to then start ranting about how he thinks that some people on the island want the cryocapsule to break down and want to tell the authorities about what he’s doing on Maljardin.

“Now, what were you looking for, Miss Marshall?” he asks her menacingly after his rant.

“I wouldn’t touch that!” she replies, referring to the capsule. “I want you to bring your wife back to life!”

“Then what were you here for!”

“Looking for a way out!” She turns away from him, clutching her head. “Trying to get away from all this. I can’t stand it anymore!”

“I am going to have to make an example of you,” Jean Paul threatens.

“I was only looking for a secret door,” she protests, then explains how he (actually Jacques) led her down there to show him where she thought the secret passage was three episodes ago.

Before he can respond to her, Alison comes rushing down to the crypt to tell him about the notes of Dr. Menkin’s that Jacques left in her lab in Episode 38, which cover part of the previously missing six-week period of his experiments:

Sure, Jacques *might* answer, but only if he feels like it.

Jean Paul tells Alison, “guard these [notes] with your life,” and the episode ends, which means it’s time to discuss the Lost Episode summary. Normally, I do so in either the introduction or at a point in the episode where a plot point was changed, but here the events of the original episode differed so much from those of the final aired version that I decided to discuss them after my recap.

The Lost Episode 40

To begin, here is the summary for the original Episode 40:

Source: The Plain Dealer (November 7, 1969), p. 72.

So the second séance originally took place in this episode and involved a conflict between two spirits. But who? We know for certain the identity of one of these spirits, courtesy of these summaries for Episodes 41 and 42, respectively:

Source: Ibid, p. 84.

Source: Ibid., p. 88.

A slightly longer version of the latter summary from The Fitchburg Sentinel names this priestess Tarasca, the same figure who appeared in a puff of smoke in the original Episode 35 and whose existence apparently threatens Alison’s life. While most summaries of the original Episode 44 (including the one in The Plain Dealer) mention hallucinations, this one from The Minneapolis Star (November 13, 1969) specifically mentions that the hallucination took place at the séance:

Holly searches for the secret passageway when her sleeping mother re-lives the happenings at the séance.

So we know the identity of one of the fighting spirits from the second séance, but who is the other? This summary for Episode 38 states that Jacques promised Vangie that he wouldn’t interfere a second time, but can we really rely on him to keep his promises? (I believe that he most likely summoned Tarasca to mess with the second séance on his behalf while technically not getting involved in it himself.) Still, even considering Jacques’ lack of trustworthiness, it would make more sense for the other spirit to be Erica, given that the whole purpose of both séances is to contact her.

Curiously, another thing we know about the second séance is that Matt took part in it, because Vangie told him that Holly would be in danger if he refused. I know I called the summary for last episode boring, but hearing the way Vangie talks about him in this episode has made me rethink my previous dismissal of its importance. If Vangie demanded that Matt attend the second séance, that means that she must not have considered Matt a disruptive influence in the original, or at least not enough to exclude him.

Who else attended the séance? At the very least, Vangie, Matt, Jean Paul and Elizabeth, but logically Raxl and Quito as well because of their involvement in the Conjure Faith. Alison may also have attended, but I doubt it because (1) Vangie prefers séances with either five or seven participants including the spirit and (2) Alison is getting increasingly fed up with Jean Paul and may have refused to take part.

The mention of Holly being in danger also raises an additional question: which spirit was threatening her, Erica or Tarasca? For my attempt to answer that question--which would contain some spoilers if I included it here--you will have to wait for a future analysis.

Coming up next: The Bad Subtitle Special for Week 8, followed by a very special essay comparing Strange Paradise to the H. P. Lovecraft novella The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and its 1963 film adaptation The Haunted Palace. After that, a review of Episode 41.

{<- Previous: Episode 39 || Next: Episode 41 ->}

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hms-chill · 4 years

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RWRB Study Guide: Chapter 10

Hi y’all! I’m going through Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue and defining/explaining references! Feel free to follow along, or block the tag #rwrbStudyGuide if you’re not interested!

Earl Grey (267): Earl Grey tea is an incredibly common caffeinated tea. It is the base of a London fog.

Hamilton to Laurens, “you should not have taken advantage of my sensibility to steal into my affections without my consent” (267): This quote is from an April 1779 letter and is immediately followed by “But, as you have done it, and as we are generally indulgent to those we love, I shall not scruple to pardon the fraud you have committed, on one condition; that for my sake, of not your own, you will always continue to merit the partiality, which you have so artfully instilled into me”. Essentially, “you were rude to me, but I love you so much I forgive you as long as you look after yourself”. Just before it, Hamilton’s like “you taught me what it means to love”. (You can find it here)

Pyramus and Thisbe (268): The pair of lovers whose story inspired Romeo and Juliet, they were separated and could only talk through a wall between their houses (I’ve written a very in-depth analysis of this myth, which you can find here).

Dulles International to Heathrow (268): Dulles International is the airport in Washington, DC, and Heathrow is the classy airport in London.

John Cusack (270): An American actor largely known for his roles in the 1980s. This line in particular likely references Say Anything..., a romantic comedy known in part for a scene where Cusack’s character stands outside a girl’s window and plays music from a boombox.

Y’all had to marry your cousins (270): A reference to the royal tradition of only marrying other royals, which led to a whole lot of inbreeding.

Consummation (275): To consummate a marriage is to have sex for the first time, therefore making it “official”.

Wilde’s complete works (276): Oscar Wilde is an Irish author famous for writing satires and also defining gay culture in the late 1800s.

Fit of pique (277): If someone does something in a fit of pique, they do it spontaneously and out of anger at being wronged.

Mr. Darcy brooding at Pemberley (278): In Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (spoilers, though it’s been out for 207 years), after Elizabeth rejects Darcy’s first marriage proposal (which is essentially “your family sucks but you’re hot; marry me”), he goes back to the house his family owns and thinks about it and misses her.

Anmer Hall (278): A house owned by the Crown in Norfolk, England; it is currently home to Prince William, Duke of Cambridge.

Mel and Sue (280): A comedy duo and hosts of The Great British Bake Off. Sue was outed in 2002, but claims that “being a lesbian is only about the 47th most interesting thing about me”.

South Kensington (284): A district of West London known for its high density of museums and cultural landmarks.

Prince Consort Road (284): Prince Consort Road is a street in London named after Prince Albert, consort to Queen Victoria. A consort is a royal’s spouse or partner (hence Alex laughing at the idea of his being a prince’s consort)

Ferris Bueller/ Sloane (284-285): Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a popular movie from the 1980s about Ferris, who skips school for a day of wild shenanigans in Chicago. Sloane is his girlfriend who’s roped in for the ride.

Victoria and Albert Museum* (285): The Victoria and Albert Museum, often abbreviated “V&A”, is the world’s largest museum of applied and decorative art and design. (you can explore their collections here)

Renaissance City (285): Room 50a of the V&A is full of Renaissance sculptures. (photo here)

Seated Buddha in black stone (285): The V&A has a bunch of Buddha sculptures, but this one is the only one I saw that’s in black stone.

John the Baptist nude and in bronze (285): Possibly this piece from 1881 by French sculptor Auguste Rodin and is in the V&A’s collection.

Tipu’s Tiger (285): A nearly life-sized semi-automaton that shows a tiger mauling a man in European clothes. The tiger makes growling sounds and the man screams and waves his hand when a handle on the side is turned; it also contains a small pipe organ on the inside and was created to show the power that the Tipu Sultan of India held over invading Brits. The “give it back” that Catherine argues for is officially called repatriation, it would mean that (Western) museums have to give back stolen objects; British museums are famously bad at doing this. (see Tipu’s Tiger here)

Westminster (286): Westminster Abbey, a church in London where royals are crowned and buried. It is covered with intricate carvings and beautiful stained glass.

The Great Bed of Ware (286): A bed made by Hans Vredeman de Vries from the 1590s; it is ten feet wide and made of oak. (see it here)

Twelfth Night (286): A Shakespeare comedy full of chaos that includes a woman cross-dressing, then her twin brother being mistaken for her.

Epocoene (286): A 1609 play that includes a boy dressing as a woman to dupe a man into giving his son an acceptable inheritance.

Don Juan (286): A Spanish figure known for his powers for wooing women; the first text published about him was in the 1630s.

Florence (287): Florence is a city known for its art; it was the cultural center of the Italian renaissance.

Gothic choir screen in the V&A’s Renaissance City (287): This Roodloft, or choir screen, carved by Coenraed van Norenberch is in the back of the Renaissance City in the V&A. It’s a stunning piece; the link above has great pictures and a more in-depth description than I could give.

Zephyr statue by Francavilla (287): You can see this statue here; it was one of thirteen statues commissioned for the garden of a villa near Florence. According to Greek mythology, Zephyr (the west wind) was married to Chloris, goddess of flowers.

Narcissus (by Cioli) (287): This statue may have once been the centerpiece to a fountain with Narcissus looking into an actual pool; it depicts him in the moment he sees and is mesmerised by his reflection.

Pluto stealing Proserpina (287): Likely the statue “The Rape of Proserpina” by Vincenzo de' Rossi. I couldn’t find it on the V&A’s site, but there’s more info here.

Jason with the Golden Fleece (287): This is a sculpture of a very naked Jason, the Greek hero who stole the golden fleece. He was helped by its owner’s daughter, who was in love with him, but whom he later abandoned. You can see the statue here.

Samson Slaying a Philistine (287): You can see this statue here. Henry does a pretty good job of explaining the incredible history behind it; all I have to add from my (limited) research is that it is remarkable in part for the fact that there is no one point on it that draws the eye-- it demands to be looked at completely or not at all.

Victoria and sodomy laws (288): Queen Victoria famously instituted a whole lot of anti-sodomy laws.

Viau on James/George (288): A 1623 poem by Théophile de Viau:

“Apollo with his songs

Debauched young Hyacinthus

Just as Corydon fucked Amyntas,

So Caesar did not spurn boys.

One man fucks Monsieur le Grand de Bellegarde [a friend of Viau],

Another fucks the Comte de Tonnerre.

And it is well known that the King of England

Fucks the Duke of Buckingham.”

“Christ had John, and I have George” (288): This is an actual thing that James I/VI said to the heads of the church. Here’s the full quote, from wikipedia (emphasis is my own): “I, James, am neither a god nor an angel, but a man like any other. Therefore I act like a man and confess to loving those dear to me more than other men. You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else, and more than you who are here, assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had John, and I have George.”

George iii (289): George III was the king against whom the American colonies revolted. He was deeply religious and instituted laws declaring that royals could not marry without the approval of the court.

Convent church of Santa Chiara in Florence (290): This church is no longer a church, but the altar chapel is in an alcove in the V&A. It is the only Italian Renaissance chapel outside of Italy. (you can see photos of it here and here)

Santa Chiara and Saint Francis of Assisi (290): Saint Francis of Assisi founded a few different monastic orders and is one of the most celebrated saints; Saint Clare of Assisi founded a women’s monastic order and wrote the first set of monastic guidelines by a woman.

Blessed Mother (290): Mary, the mother of Jesus, one of the holiest figures in Catholicism.

“Come, hijo mío, de la miel, porque es Buena, and the honeycomb sweet to thy taste”** (290): “My son, eat thou honey, because it is good; and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste. So shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul: when thou hast found it, then there shall be a reward, and thy expectation shall not be cut off” -- Proverbs 24:13-14, King James Version (yes, that King James. He translated the Bible to make the church stop hating him).

David and Jonathan (290): An aggressively gay couple from the Bible who have been presented as friends for centuries. Jonathan was a prince and David a shepherd, but God promised that David would be king one day. Rather than argue this or hate David for it, Jonathan welcomed David into his household and loved him despite the prophecy that he would one day usurp him. Following Jonathan’s death, David took in Jonathan’s son and looked after him.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen (291): Many Christian prayers end with “in the name of the Father, the son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen”. It’s a way of celebrating the god who gives you all of the good things in your life while also giving up control to them.

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A fill in from chapter 1, as requested by someone on AO3:

Deputy Chief of Staff (Zahra’s position, 23): The Deputy Chief of Staff is the top aide to the president’s top aide, and is responsible for ensuring that everything runs smoothly within the bureaucracy of the White House.

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*This museum puts out books called “maker’s guides” that teach you how to make pieces based on things in their collections; they’re super duper cool.

**I’m not a theologian, but I am a pastor’s kid, and just... this gets me. This whole bit, but this Proverb especially. Like obviously there’s the “oh we’re kissing and I’m thinking about honey tasting sweet”, but verse 14 coming in with the “when you’ve found what’s right, you will be rewarded with the confidence of that rightness and you will have hope”? Just kill me outright next time. Don’t make me google my own murder weapon.

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If there’s anything I missed or that you’d like more on, please let me know! And if you’d like to/are able, please consider buying me a ko-fi? I know not everyone can, and that’s fine, but these things take a lot of time/work and I’d really appreciate it!

—–-

Chapter 1 // Chapter 9 // Chapter 11

#this is for that anon who thinks I'm smart and cute #but y'all can read it too #rwrb study guide #rwrb analysis #English Major Brain™#English Major Brain™️#rwrb #alex claremont diaz #henry fox mountchristen windsor x alex claremont diaz #henry fox mountchristen windsor #june claremont diaz #nora holleran #pez okonjo #bea fox mountchristen windsor #firstprince #red white and royal blue

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callunavulgari · 5 years

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TOP 25 FICS OF 2019

1. these roads will take you into your own country by @notbecauseofvictories | American Gods | Laura Moon/Mad Sweeney | WIP | 33k

Here’s a joke for you: a Muslim, a zombie, and a leprechaun walk into a bar in Misery, Indiana. No one stares, because no one in the puckered, shitty asshole of Misery, Indiana gives a fuck. The Colts are playing.

Heather Says: So. It’s funny that another of @notbecauseofvictories‘s stories is at the top of my list again this year. Keep in mind this list is sorted by when the fic was read rather than favorites (because that would get real complicated real quick). Clearly there must be something about January. There’s just something about the writing that is easy to slip into, be it a Star Wars fic or a Labyrinth fic or even a fic about Johnny and the Devil. This was lovely and I can’t wait until it’s finished.

2. eighteen wheels on an uphill climb by @honkforhankcon | Detroit: Become Human | Hank/Connor | 91k

Hank is going to die. He’s going to die right here in Kentucky, 53 years old, halfway to broke, and tragically sober. Survived only by a nine-year-old St. Bernard and the 31-year-old twink who delivered the fatal blow.

Heather Says: I don’t think that this is the first DBH fic that I sought out after beating the game, but it is the first that I loved enough to make it to this list. I didn’t think that I would go for a modern au for this fandom, certainly not a modern au wihere Hank is a truck driver and Connor is a sex worker (albeit briefly?) but here I am.

3. Fuck pride (pride only hurts, it never helps) by ImogenGotDrunk | Detroit: Become Human | RK900/Gavin Reed | 41k

After the android uprising, Connor becomes a permanent fixture in the DPD. That’s fine. Gavin can accept that. The dipshit’s more human than he used to be, and a decent detective to boot. Gavin can deal with him being around. What Gavin cannot deal with is Connor’s replica; two inches taller, blue-eyed, and with a mouth that Gavin doesn’t know whether to punch or take between his teeth. The RK900 model has been assigned as his partner for the foreseeable future.

Heather Says: I also never thought that I’d like a fic with Gavin in it. But I got curious about all the Reed900, and well, this fic really won me over. The writing is fantastic, and it softens Gavin while still keeping him believable. Also, well, I like the enemies to lovers thing.

4. Almost Cool by @blacktofade | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane | 30k

While filming the Yuma Territorial Prison episode, Shane gets bitten by what he thinks is a bat. Spoiler alert: it's not.

Heather Says: This is actually the first thing that I read for this fandom. In fact, this is the fic that got me into Buzzfeed Unsolved in the first place. I’d seen a lot of art and gifs and fics pass my way, but I was only ever slightly interested in what I saw until this fic came through my inbox and piqued my curiosity.

5. Pride by @astolat | Game of Thrones | Jaime/Brienne/Cersei | 22k

Jaime didn’t understand why Cersei suddenly insisted on trimming his hair and shaving his beard, but he also didn’t care to fight her on it, even though he’d just as soon have kept the beard: it was bitterly cold in the small tower room with its arrow-slits.

Heather Says: Wowza. This fic was intense. I’ve always loved Jaime and Brienne. I’ve loved them since the second book, which was read at least a few years before I started loving them in the show. Adding Cersei to their dynamic would have probably been almost impossible to pull off if it was anyone else, but @astolat lives to surpass my expectations.

6. Skin and Scales by Ernmark | The Penumbra Podcast | Lord Arum/Sir Damien/Rilla | 18k

The man glares, and this time, Damien is certain it isn’t a trick of the light: those eyes are violet as amethyst. He wears disdain like a second skin–- or, perhaps, like the scales that he is missing. “Lord Arum?”

Heather Says: I was one of those people who skipped through all of the Second Citadel episodes during my first listen through of Penumbra. The stories were good, but the pull of Juno was too great. A couple months after I finished, I went back and listened to everything I didn’t. And let me tell you. Lizard monster. Honorable knight. Bookish girlfriend. Poly. It hit every single button I had and then some. This fic really hit the spot when I ran out of story.

7. someone you like by caela | She-Ra | Adora/Catra | 5k

catwithabat u think ur so hipster but u just look like a lesbian 27m she_ra @catwithabat bc… i’m a lesbian. lmao 5m

Heather Says: Noooot usually a big fan of high school fics. Namely because I’m not in high school anymore and well, after you read so many in your teenage years they sort of lose their luster. This one was phenomenal enough to change my mind.

8. Sands of Time by @tirsynni | Legend of Zelda | Ganondorf/Link | WIP | 98k

Link awakens in the desert with no idea how he got there, to encounter his worst enemy...except it was the King of the Gerudo, not the King of Evil, he faced.

Heather Says: I have seen a lot of really good Link/Ganondorf art over the years, but never really stumbled across a fic that didn’t have judicious amount of non-con involved. But the Breath of the Wild 2 trailer happened, and everybody started drawing really pretty art, so I went looking. And lo and behold, @tirsynni saved the day with this gorgeous time travel/fix-it fic.

9. killed with kindness by veterization | Persona 5 | Akechi/Akira | 52k

Goro can't quite figure out why so many people keep acting like they're his friend. (Or: the one where the Phantom Thieves decide to know thy enemy, befriend thy enemy, love thy enemy, crush on thy enemy).

Heather Says: I’ve read a couple of veterization’s fics over the years, and to date they have never disappointed me. They published this in June, and I think I clicked on it mostly because I was bored and hadn’t read any good P5 fic yet. This was basically just what the doctor ordered, and I was really happy to find something where Akechi’s story went ever so slightly different.

10. paper thin by @ebonybow | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane/Sara | 9k

Shane’s new neighbors are a morning-sex kind of couple.

Heather Says: So I went into this one knowing very little about how Sara fit into things. I didn’t know she was Shane’s girlfriend. I’d never even seen her, but I clicked because I like poly and I trust the author. I was 100% not disappointed. There’s also another fic with a very similar dynamic here, which is also aces.

11. damn.nation, now available on itunes by @kaikamahine | Good Omens | Aziraphale/Crowley | 11k

When lowly tempt-pusher Amphora (formerly of Stairwell 7B North, before she Fell,) gets the notice that end times are nigh, she gleefully quits her job and cancels her Netflix subscription and takes her place among the legions of hell. This, it turns out, was a bad plan.

Heather Says: Elizabeth may have only written one fic this year, but she made it a damn good one. I’ve always loved her OCs especially, so I was pretty tickled that this is 10k+ of outsider pov. Also, demons! Demons are great! This demon is great! I want like 9 seasons and a movie about Amphora, just saying.

12. The Dragon and Her Wolves by hapakitsune | Game of Thrones | Jon/Sansa/Daenarys | 60k

When the truth of Jon's birthright is revealed, control of the North and Daenerys's claim to the Iron Throne are both called into question. To preserve their tenuous alliance and secure her rule, Daenerys puts aside her personal feelings to arrange a marriage of political convenience between Jon and Sansa Stark.

Heather Says: What do you mean season 8 didn’t exist and the show totally ended with a three way relationship between the two most powerful women in Westeros and Jon Snow? Never been a big fan of Jon/Sansa before this, but this is another of those writers that I would literally trust if they wrote a fic about a fork and a spoon.

13. never tell me the odds by @wildehacked | Wolf 359 | Eiffel/Hera | 9k

“I tried Star Wars," he says, adjusting the phone under his neck, "and it was way underwhelming.”

A shaky breath from her end. “Well, where did you start?”

Heather Says: I don’t remember which of @wildehacked‘s fandoms I started reading first. Most recently it’s been The Magnus Archives (more on this later). The point is, they’d written Wolf 359 fic and it had Hera and Eiffel and it was literally everything that I’ve been looking for since the series ended.

14. Find Me Somebody by raiining | Good Omens | Warlock/Adam Young | 11k

“You left me,” he said. “You both left me, for him. And I can’t even blame you, because I’d have left me for him too.”

Heather Says: There was an Art. The art was lovely. So I went looking, because that’s what I do when faced with beautiful art depicting a rare pairing. And I found the holy grail. Like, possibly my favorite Good Omens fic? Ever?

15. flirting with fire by @brawlite | Stranger Things | Billy/Steve | WIP | 7k

Steve's a cop, Billy's a firefighter. It's not a grudge, it's just a regular old small town rivalry.

Heather Says: Okay so brawlite has written a lot of great stuff this year (more on that later), but I read this in bed at the beach house this August while I was reeling from both a horrible sunburn and like seven hours of mild to moderate day-drinking while everyone else was still throwing back shots right outside my bedroom door. Jaws was playing on the tv and I wasn’t even paying attention to it, because THIS. Long story short, I’ve been thirsty for more ever since.

16. gold, when you find me by mmtion | The Flash | Iris/Barry | 53k

It's not that Iris hates The Flash, per say - more that she hates writing about The Streak in a weekly, pun-heavy comic based on The Flash.

Heather Says: I never would have thought that a canon pairing would make it to my Top 25 list, but here we are. I like Iris/Barry a lot better when they don’t grow up together and spend a lot of time playing the Superman game, apparently. Also, this was really well-written, and sexual tension has never been something I’ve felt from Barry and Iris, but I felt it in this fic. Just. Damn.

17. never gets old by @brawlite & @toast-ranger-to-a-stranger| Stranger Things | Billy/Steve | 78k

Falling in love with a cam boy named KingSteve isn't the smartest thing Billy Hargrove has ever done, nor is it the most healthy -- but the good choice is rarely ever the fun choice, and Billy is all about living life fast and loose.

Heather Says: Told you I’d come back to it. brawlite and toastranger are a fantastic team. last year was cherry pie and under the covers, this year it’s camboys and cop/firefighter dynamics. Also, I have a really strange fascination with fics where a character has an instragram. It’s really, incredibly strange. Also also, every time I see this fic title I get that one Discovery Channel song stuck in my head. And no, it probably isn’t the one you’re thinking.

18. ways to save the world by @wildehacked | The Magnus Archives | Martin Blackwood/Jon Sims | 19k

“I left you,” Martin says softly.

Heather Says: And we’re back at wildehacked too! The Magnus Archives was a thing that happened to me. This is I think the first fic I read for it while listening, and it was so very close to what we got in canon. I think when it comes down to it though, I still prefer this fic, even if the ending of this season was pretty fantastic.

19. The Denial Twist by beethechange | Buzzfeed Unsolved | Ryan/Shane | 35k

“This is kind of surreal,” Shane says, taking a sip of his tea. It’s piping hot and delicious, except it tastes like hot chocolate and not like tea at all. “Sort of—Wonka-esque, right? Or Alice in Wonderland.”

Heather Says: While the vampire one is my favorite both because it is excellent and because it was my first, this one was bizarre and sexy and also I read it like only a month or so ago! The dancing was my favorite part, but having dreams to work with made this story fantastically interesting and I loved every second of it.

20. silver in our lungs by taywen | Spinning Silver | Miryem/The Staryk Lord | 4k

The marks had been with Miryem for as long as she could remember. There were a number of them, all the same shade, following one after the other around her left wrist. They were pale as old scars, though they felt no different from the rest of her skin, and her mother claimed that Miryem had been born with them.

Heather Says: I really like soulmate aus. There’s so many different ways to twist them and the way they can sometimes change the dynamic entirely and other times not change them at all is just fascinating. I’ve been hoping there would be more Spinning Silver content on ao3 and running into this while I was trying to decide what I wanted to do for yuletide was a real treat.

21. you got me begging, begging, i'm on my knees by plalligator | The Queen’s Thief | Attolia/Eugenides/Costis | 5k

Costis has a particularly enlightening evening. (or, that struggle when you're a guard who's in love with your rulers and it turns out you would kind of like it if they bossed you around a little)

Heather Says: I accidentally re-read the King of Attolia and it made me consider ships I had perhaps not previously considered. This was really lovely and just steamy enough.

22. something more alive than silence by pageleaf | The Queen’s Thief | Attolia/Eugenides/Costis | 21k

It was a good thing that six months after the king had promised to halve the guard, he still hadn’t done it, because since then, there had been two attempts on the king’s life.

Heather Says: I want to only type the words AGONIZED NOISES to describe this fic because that’s basically my headspace when I get 21k of a shiny new ot3, but I mean. Really. This is super good and maybe my favorite yet? Why didn’t I start reading this fandom when I first read the books?

23. Timing it Right by DragonBandit | The Bright Sessions | Mark/Damien | 14k

The dragon chooses, Mark knows that as well as any boy born in a weyr. He'd never considered what that would mean if the dragon picked someone you hated. He's starting to think that was a mistake.

Damien's gold rises at Whitney. Mark tries to make things right.

Heather Says: This should actually be somewhere back in March, but I apparently closed out of the tab at some point. I never really got into Pern much. I have the first three books, but got most of the way through the first one a long time ago and then never picked it back up. I didn’t think I would like this, mostly because of the fact that I hadn’t gotten into the books, but was surprised to find that I absolutely loved it.

24. Keep It In Your Sights Now by LuckyDiceKirby | Shades of Magic | Lila/Kell/Holland | 9k

Holland travels with Lila and Kell. Somewhere along the way, they reach an equilibrium.

Heather Says: I love the new things I’ve discovered during my yuletide trompings. I don’t think I ever actually considered this pairing when I first read the books, but I am just so enamored with the idea of the three of them together. Like, why did I not realize that potential back then? This was lovely, and I loved it, and I want so much more out of this pairing than what ao3 has to offer me.

25. Charioteer by petrichoral | The Queen’s Thief | Gen & Costis | 13k

Captured in battle and stuck in the Mede capital, Costis has given up all hope of seeing his country again. But Eugenides has a habit of turning up where he's least expected.

Heather Says: Technically this shouldn’t be on here because I only read it today, but it was really wonderful and so canon typical. Gen and Costis were perfect in it, Irene was perfect in it. Everyone was perfect and nothing hurts.

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

Text

I Felt Safe in America. Until El Paso. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/10/opinion/sunday/el-paso-shooting-immigrants.html

Below are two editorial pieces written by Hispanic AMERICANS and their thoughts on America after the El Paso shooting. We CANNOT LET HATE WIN. WE MUST STAND WITH OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS.

I Felt Safe in America. Until El Paso.

It is because of people like me and my daughter that a gunman did what he did.

By Fernanda Santos, Ms. Santos, a former national correspondent for The Times, teaches journalism at Arizona State University. | Published Aug. 10, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 10, 2019 |

PHOENIX — A good friend who is moving to Chicago had a going-away party at a downtown brewery recently and I stopped by to say goodbye. He is an artist from Iraq who escaped to the United States in 2013 to save his life. In Iraq, Mahdi Army loyalists had chased, beaten and threatened him because he had dared to sketch nude pictures — practice for his entrance exam at Baghdad University’s College of Fine Arts. Here, he is free.

I wasn’t running from anyone when I settled in the United States 21 years ago, but I understand the idea of being free in America: For me, it has meant being free from the senseless violence of everyday life in Rio de Janeiro, from where I came. Since moving to the United States, I’ve married a white man, given birth to our daughter and moved to Arizona, where I’ve written about immigrants and the border and gotten to know both well.

I blend in seamlessly in Arizona, where about one in three residents is Latino. As a naturalized citizen, I felt safe here even when a campaign against illegal immigrants led by the infamous former sheriff, Joe Arpaio, targeted Latinos. One day after Donald Trump’s election, a man approached me while I spoke Spanish on the phone outside a coffee shop and screamed, “Speak English.” The experience rattled me, but still I felt safe. I did, however, start carrying my passport card in my wallet, just in case.

That sense of safety changed when a young white man opened fire in a Walmart in El Paso last Saturday, making targets out of brown-skinned people. I read the suspect’s manifesto Sunday morning and, for the first time, I did not feel just like an immigrant. I felt like a target. I looked at my 10-year-old daughter eating the chocolate-chip pancakes I’d made and realized that she could be a target too. Citizenship, it turns out, is an illusory shield. In the eyes of that gunman, I am not American but an invader, an instigator. It is because of people like me that he did what he did.

Segregation was codified in this country in the days after Emancipation, when Southern states enacted laws that clamped down on African-Americans’ newly found freedom to vote, own property or attend public schools. But Jim Crow extended beyond the South: It took the Supreme Court to force Arizona to stop requiring voters to take English literacy tests, and that was years after the Voting Rights Act had already banned such tests.

But if legal segregation has largely fallen before court rulings, anti-minority and anti-immigrant attitudes have not. Last month, at a Republican event in Phoenix, State Senator Sylvia Allen, who is white, said, “We’re going to look like South American countries very quickly.” Ms. Allen, who later apologized, blamed it on the fact that white women are not reproducing fast enough and on the immigrants who are “flooding us and flooding us and flooding us and overwhelming us so we don’t have time to teach them the principles of our country.”

Last week, a fund-raising email by the Arizona Republican Party called the arrival of Central Americans at the border to assert their legal right for asylum “an invasion,” echoing language commonly employed by President Trump.

This is the language of white supremacy today: that we must stop immigration because Latinos will distort American culture and replace “real Americans.” But by “American culture” they really mean white culture, a definition that, to them, doesn’t apply to people like me. Or to black people, Muslims, Asian-Americans and many others, including mixed-race Americans like my daughter.

In his manifesto, the El Paso suspect employs this narrow definition to justify the unjustifiable. He says much more in that screed, most of it vile. Some, though, reminded me, in a good way, of the young undocumented immigrants I’ve met in Arizona. “Inaction is not a choice,” he wrote, reminding me that before elections, many young immigrants, including so-called Dreamers, knock on doors and share their stories, hoping to persuade their neighbors to do what they cannot, which is to vote. For those Dreamers, inaction is indeed not a choice.

There are Walmart stores all along the southern border. If you visit one of them on a weekend, you’ll see a parking lot full of cars with Mexican license plates. In Douglas, Ariz., a city whose mayor was born in the Dominican Republic, Mexicans who cross into the United States on foot to buy discounted clothing and housewares leave their Walmart shopping carts at the border crossing.

While I was at a Walmart in Phoenix shopping for school supplies the other day, I could see the kinds of people who make up this state. There were mothers speaking Spanish to children who spoke to one another in English, Muslim refugees from Africa in brightly colored hijabs, black families and white families too.

When school starts later this month in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, one school will be missing its principal, Elsa Mendoza Marquez. She was among the 22 people killed in the El Paso Walmart, just across the Rio Grande from Juarez. A dual Mexican-American citizen, she too was shopping and was gunned down while her husband waited for her outside, in the parking lot.

What the El Paso gunman failed to realize is that the immigrants he so hates are, like him, struggling to make sense of a changing country and claim their rightful place in it. He chose a rifle to claim his place. My Iraqi friend, who is off to pursue a master’s degree in art in Chicago, chose a brush.

The Dreamers I’ve met have chosen the power of civic engagement to fight their fight. And that, to me, makes them better citizens than plenty of the people who call themselves “real Americans” these days.

El Paso Was a Massacre Foretold

Those who are set on killing minorities are aided by the fact that they can easily obtain assault weapons in this country.

By Jorge Ramos, Mr. Ramos is a contributing Opinion writer. | Published Aug. 10, 2019 | New York Times | Posted August 10, 2019 |

Leer en español

EL PASO — “I don’t know why he took my boy’s life,” Dora Lizarde said. Her grandson Javier, 15, was the youngest victim of last weekend’s massacre, killed by a bullet to the head. “Fifteen years old; he still had so much time to live,” Ms. Lizarde told me in an interview this week. “I don’t know why he took him away, I don’t understand. He is young, too.”

Patrick Crusius is young, too.

Police have charged Mr. Crusius, 21, in the mass shooting that killed 22 people at a crowded Walmart here on Aug. 3. Nineteen of the victims had Spanish surnames, making this the worst attack on Latinos in modern American history. The Mexican government has labeled the killings a terrorist act, given that eight Mexican citizens were among the dead. And, yes, it is a hate crime.

The massacre of Latinos in El Paso is the latest and most brutal reaction by a young, white American against a future that might be dominated by minorities. The fact that this attack happened is unsurprising: What else can we expect when racism and hatred of others is promoted from the top down in a country where there are more guns than people?

Authorities have said that Mr. Crusius posted a 2,300-word manifesto online minutes before the attack. In it, he said the attack was in response to a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” “It makes no sense to keep letting millions of illegal or legal immigrants flood into the United States,” Mr. Crusius supposedly wrote, “and to keep the tens of millions that are already here.” Those words startled me — not only because they were so hateful, but because they could seamlessly fit into speeches given by President Trump, by some members of his cabinet and by many right-wing politicians.

While Mr. Trump insists that he does not have “a racist bone” in his body, his history of making racist remarks says otherwise. After years of suggesting that President Barack Obama had not been born in the United States, Mr. Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015 by likening Mexican immigrants to criminals and rapists. He recently said that four congresswomen of color should “go back” to the countries from which they came. The list goes on. When the most powerful man in the world uses such toxic rhetoric, we should not be surprised when others mimic him.

Beto O’Rourke, the former congressman from El Paso and a Democratic presidential candidate, recently told me that he is convinced Mr. Trump influenced the attack. Mr. O’Rourke — who along with Senator Elizabeth Warren, another Democratic candidate for the presidency, has said in recent days that Mr. Trump is a “white supremacist” — responded to a tweet from the president by writing: “22 people in my hometown are dead after an act of terror inspired by your racism.” Other leaders and politicians, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have also lost their patience with Mr. Trump. “I don’t want to hear the question ‘Is this president racist?’ anymore. He is,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said recently.

The president’s xenophobia, and that of many of his supporters and enablers, is rooted in a dread that the day is soon coming when they will be a minority in their country. While non-Hispanic whites remain a majority of the population in the United States, in less than 30 years that may no longer be the case, according to projections. This sort of demographic revolution is putting Americans’ tolerance to the test. Most of us welcome an increasingly diverse country, but many, like Mr. Trump, resist the country’s multiethnic, multicultural future. Some react by walking into a store and murdering innocent people.

The most racist Americans who are set on killing minorities are aided by the fact that they can easily obtain assault weapons in this country. I’ve lost count of all the massacres I’ve covered as a journalist. After each shooting — Columbine, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Parkland — I thought we might have reached the limit of Americans’ tolerance for such horror. But it wasn’t so. I fear that the killings in El Paso won’t change anything, and that I soon will be back on another flight headed to cover the next massacre. And then another. And another after that.

I have lost hope that the United States will ever pass laws that limit access to firearms. Like many parents around the country, I’ve had difficult conversations with my children in case they find themselves in a situation where someone is shooting at them. “Try to escape, hide or fight,” I tell them. “But don’t stay still. Gunmen have a lot of bullets, but not patience.”

Still, even if we could somehow solve our gun problem in America, our racism problem would be far more difficult to eradicate. Hate-group activity is on the rise, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. And anti-immigrant rhetoric has already appeared in slogans shouted during the 2020 presidential campaign.

I crossed the border from El Paso to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, one morning this week. For many years, Juárez was considered one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico because of the presence of drug cartels. Yet on this visit some people I spoke with told me that they didn’t dare cross into El Paso with their families. When I asked why, some said that they feared being hunted for being Mexican, and all said that racism was a factor.

Nobody should live in fear because they are Mexican nationals in the United States or members of the Latino community. But that’s where we are now in this United States of Trump. The abundance of weapons of war on the streets and Mr. Trump’s unending racist rhetoric are indisputably connected to the massacre in El Paso. What happened in this city was a massacre foretold. Words matter. When they are filled with hate, they cause great damage.

Mr. Ramos is an anchor for the Univision network and the author of “Stranger: The Challenge of a Latino Immigrant in the Trump Era.”

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gorgonwoman · 6 years

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why is medusa a feminist icon?

anon ,, i love u for sending this ,,

SO! medusa’s original myth wasn’t very feminist at all – in the original written version, hesiod’s, she was born a gorgon; she and poseidon made consensual love in ‘a soft meadow amid spring flowers.’ ovid’s version introduced the story we’re all familiar with: medusa was beautiful, poseidon raped her, and athena cursed her to be a gorgon. (fun fact! she was actually always depicted with legs – the snake tail didn’t come into play until the first clash of the titans movie in 1981. ray harryhausen gave her that shape in order to make her look more monstrous.)

medusa didn’t gain a connection to feminism until helene cixious’ essay the laugh of the medusa, which i believe is about women needing to write their own stories (i haven’t read it in a long time, forgive me). it’s the source of the iconic line “you only have to look at the medusa straight on to see her. and she’s not deadly. she’s beautiful and she’s laughing.”

she began to be reclaimed as a feminist symbol in the twentieth century. the earliest source for this i’ve been able to find is may sarton’s 1971 poem the muse as medusa. in it, sarton writes: “I turn your face around! It is my face. / That frozen rage is what I must explore – / Oh secret, self-enclosed, and ravaged place! / This is the gift I thank Medusa for.” she identifies medusa as herself, claiming her rage as a gift. it was medusa’s rage specifically that feminists reclaimed: from then on she was used as a symbol for women’s anger.

emily erwin culpepper, in 1986, writes: “one thing is very clear. the amazon gorgon face is female fury personified. this gorgon/medusa image has been rapidly adopted by large numbers of feminists who recognize her as one face of our own rage. besides the daily outrages women face in the patriarchy, physical violence against women is widespread and multiform. such dangers make it desirable and vitally important for women to learn how to manifest a visage that will repel men when necessary. we are not repelled by the gorgon’s face.”

culpepper also relates an attempted sexual assault in which she used medusa as a tool to fight back: “i let the fearful, alarmed, desperate rage so recent, still fresh, well up in me again in full force. as i felt my face twist again into the fighting frenzy, i turned to the mirror and looked. what i saw in the mirror is a gorgon, if ever there was one. this face was my own and yet i knew i had seen it before and i knew the name to utter. ‘gorgon! gorgon!’ reverberated in my head. i knew then why the attacker had become so suddenly petrified. and knew with a great shuddering relief that i would win the fight against self-blame and claim my ability and right to write.”

this isn’t uncommon: women identify with medusa, or identify medusa as themselves, whereas men do the opposite. men fear her or lust after her, and women reclaim her as a symbol of their own rage.

the editors of women magazine’s special issue on women and power (of which i have lost the date; though i believe it’s still around the eighties) said this: “no longer afraid of our power we will not turn to stone if we look into medusa’s face. it can be a map to guide us through our terrors, through the depths of our anger into the sources of our power as women.” they then quote sarton’s poem.

stephen wilk, author of solving the mystery of the gorgon has this to say about medusa as a feminist icon: “of all the possible candidates, only the gorgon has the savage, threatening appearance to serve as an immediately recognizable symbol of rage and a protector of women’s secrets. and although the gorgon is hailed as the symbol of female rage, it is actually more than that – it is the symbol of empowered female rage. the gorgon doesn’t merely threaten; it can carry out its threats. it can turn men into stone. it can frighten off the enemy.”

medusa as a feminist icon was most popular around the eighties; today she is still used as a symbol against women as well as a symbol for women (see: the artwork depicting trump as perseus and clinton as medusa). mary beard in her book women and power writes about this.

in short: medusa at her source is not a feminist icon, nor is athena, but we can interpret them in ways that reflect our own feelings and needs, we can interpret it in ways that tell our own stories. women who have been sexually assaulted in particular identify with medusa (i am one of them). i’ve yet to meet a man who feels the same way about her.

here are some recently written articles if you want more reading on this:

the original ‘nasty woman,’ elizabeth johnston

what if we cultivated our ugliness? or: the monstrous beauty of medusa, jess zimmerman

the dread gorgon, caroline alexander

the timeless myth of medusa, a rape victim turned into a monster, christobel hastings

if you have more questions feel free to let me know! you can im me if you’d like!

#medusa #anonymous #rape ment /#long post /#this was a lot of fun!! i've been working on a Legit essay on this but it's been slow going sdfghj #i love medusa so much thank u for asking this!!#also ok to rb :o

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marshmallowgoop · 6 years

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Ryuko: Senketsu, if I go too far, I’ll need you to stop me.

Senketsu: I cannot promise that. It is you who is wearing me.

Ryuko: Sheesh, you’re an outfit that doesn’t have much give, you know that?

Senketsu: But when you were out of control, you did stop. Using your own willpower. That is why I am not frightened in the least.

Ryuko: Gotcha. We’re all responsible for our own actions.

I’ve written pretty extensively on Ryuko and Senketsu’s relationship and why I think it’s so healthy, positive, and commendable (to put it mildly). But I don’t think I’ve focused enough attention on the above scene from episode 13, “Crazy For You,” which is a particularly strong example of the merits of Ryuko and Senketsu’s partnership.

On a surface level, the moment emphasizes and is utterly dedicated to the importance of good and proper communication---something especially noteworthy in a series that even describes itself as having a “lightning pace” (episode 16). By focusing so heavily on Ryuko and Senketsu’s conversation, there’s a considerable significance placed on talking to and being honest with a friend; the message is clearly and unambiguously that in any close relationship, it’s absolutely crucial to be open and truthful with one another. Otherwise, you’re not going to get along well. As Mako puts it earlier in the episode, you’ll just be “glarin’ at each other.”

Of course, a scene devoted to the positive effects of strong interpersonal skills probably doesn’t seem all that groundbreaking, but in an action-comedy anime, I love the inclusion of such a thing. It would have been so easy to gloss over emotions and provide viewers with over-the-top battles and little else, but Kill la Kill decided to breathe some real life and soul into Ryuko and Senketsu’s teamwork. The two of them have to endure hardships and struggles just like any real relationship, and just like in any real relationship, they have to work through those hardships and struggles to come back together.

More on that line, the moment is also remarkably humanizing---and sweet---for Ryuko. Throughout the episode, Ryuko hides her guilt and self-hatred behind flimsy assurances that she’s all right and explosive anger and rage. She smiles reassuringly at Mako’s mother, Sukuyo, and she yells fiercely at Shinjiro Nagita, but in the end, she finally, finally reveals everything on her mind to Senketsu. We’re then left with a character who is far more than an infallible hero or the “straight-up punk” that she describes herself as (episode 8); Ryuko is a flawed, complicated human being whom viewers can readily empathize with, and, as a result, it’s incredibly endearing to see her let down her walls and allow someone into her heart.

Kill la Kill comes off as a strangely affecting and memorable series due to all this narrative weight placed on real-life emotions and feelings while the characters inhabit a world that’s one of the most ridiculous to ever be put on screen, and when it comes to the included scene at the top of this post, I think that’s a phenomenal thing. Because that scene? It’s also wonderful when you consider the history of how relationships have been portrayed in fiction.

While Ryuko and Senketsu are far from the “norm,” it’s not at all uncommon for a fictional story to imply that it’s essentially one person’s “responsibility” to keep another person in line. In the article “The Vulnerability of the Relational Self: The Implications of Ideals of Gender and Romance for Female Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence,” author Elizabeth McManaman Grosz discusses this topic at length, arguing that “the notion that a special woman can tame the beast” and “is thus, in a way, responsible for controlling his beastly nature” is one of the widespread cultural discourses that effectively “primes” women to accept and brush off instances of abuse (81, 88).

Again, of course, I recognize that, in many ways, Ryuko and Senketsu really don’t have any place in Grosz’s argument. For one, Grosz exclusively utilizes the work of Western authors and philosophers to support her position, and entire other books have been written concerning Japan’s ideals of gender and romance and their implications and effects (believe me, I’m in the midst of reading through just some of said books). On top of that, the fact that Ryuko would be taking the place of the “man” in the situation I screenshotted for this post does question the applicability of Grosz’s article here.

But I find Grosz’s thesis compelling in regards to Kill la Kill because, in a lot of ways, Ryuko and Senketsu do rather embody typical positions of men and women in fictional stories both East and West... except, the roles are reversed. Ryuko is the unruly, aggressive, and hot-blooded protagonist just as a man often is, and Senketsu exhibits many traits that are traditionally associated with women; he’s sensitive, emotional, and a considerable worrywart. Further, while I find the term “love interest” both degrading and unfitting for Senketsu in a series that Word of God denies any romantic intention for, I have to admit that he fits many of the conventions. In an anime with a cast primarily composed of women, the fact that Senketsu is arguably coded as male makes him, just as the standard heteronormative “love interest,” the most narratively significant character of another gender in the show (for just a few other examples, see Ran from Detective Conan, Sam from Danny Phantom, Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon). Whether I’m watching an anime or an American cartoon, I don’t think I’d be too surprised to see a scenario like the one from the end of Kill la Kill’s thirteenth episode, where a man tells a woman that he’s afraid of losing control and needs her to be there for him so that he doesn’t.

What makes Kill la Kill different is more than the simple reversal of roles, though; Kill la Kill also reverses the harmful implications of this standard set-up. Instead of it being Senketsu’s “job” to “lead [Ryuko] to ‘moral decency,’” as philosopher Immanuel Kant noted a woman must do for a man in the late eighteenth century and of which Grosz argues is an ideal continued on even to this day (such as in sports culture, as elaborated upon in Susan Bordo’s The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private), Senketsu outright tells Ryuko that she must be in control of herself (qtd. in Grosz 87). It’s not Senketsu’s responsibility to keep Ryuko from abusing him, and the fact that both understand and acknowledge this is, well, good. Senketsu is not going to write off or blame himself for any mistreatment he receives from Ryuko because he feels he failed in “pleasing” her, and Ryuko’s ending sentiment that “[w]e’re all responsible for our own actions” indicates that she feels the same way towards him. Both Ryuko and Senketsu are cognizant of each other’s emotions and needs, and they will not allow abuse to continue without a word about it, as is sadly often the case in reality (Grosz 95).

It would still be nice to have an actual situation in which a man is in the standard “man” position, but I’m happy to see anything like this at all. Abuse and mistreatment are seriously discussed, the responsibility for poor behavior is placed solely on the actor rather than the receiver, and the fact that this kind of moment receives so much focus in the first place absolutely signifies the importance and power of proper communication with a loved one. Ryuko and Senketsu are my most favored relationship in all of fiction, and it’s scenes like this that really emphasize why.

Sources

Bordo, Susan. The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.

Grosz, Elizabeth McManaman. “The Vulnerability of the Relational Self: The Implications of Ideals of Gender and Romance for Female Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence.” Women's Studies, vol. 47, no. 1, 2018, pp. 80-97.

Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Translated by Victor Lyle Dowdell. Southern Illinois UP, 1978.

Kant, Immanuel. Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime and Other Writings. Edited by Patrick Frierson and Paul Guyer. Cambridge UP, 2011.

#kill la kill #ryuko matoi #senketsu #crazy for you #klk meta #ramblings #shut up goop #abuse mention #okay i know this is really long but i cut out like multiple paragraphs about twilight and stuff so it was worse before :P

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conspiracies-and-crime · 6 years

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The Jack the Ripper case

Information about the case: The Jack the Ripper murders were a series of murders that took place in London, England. Jack the Ripper went after women, specifically prostitutes. It has been over 100 years and this case is still unsolved, no one knows who this “Jack the Ripper” as though there are suspects and ideas on who it could have been. There is also a speculation on how many women were killed. Some think that it was only five murders others believe it was eleven. It is said that he was a madman without a clear motive for the murders.

Notes:

All the victims were prostitutes

Women rather than men.

Most women in the white chapel district had to turn to prostitution for survival.

Women rather than men.

Most women in the white chapel district had to turn to prostitution for survival.

Took place between 1888 & 1891

It’s been > 100 years since this case took place.

100’s of suspects.

The white chapel district is were most-all murders took place

Is known for violence and crime.

Said to not have a clear motive

Most say that he only claimed the lives of five women.

Known as the “canonical five”

Some think he claimed the lives of eleven women.

The murders were in the newspaper and the public eventually became fascinated with them.

The public became so upset that the police commissioner + the home secretary resigned from the case.

Eight possible suspects.

August 31, 1888, at 3:40 AM was when the first victim was found.

The first victim was Mary Ann Nichols’

Found by a man named, Charles Cross.

Claims he was walking along buck’s row when he noticed a bundle near the western end.

Another man, Robert Paul approached the body with Cross.

Mary Ann Nichols’ was found on her on her back with her thought slit violently and she was disembowelled.

Only dead for a half hour.

The killer could have been nearby when Paul and Cross found her.

September 8, 1888, Annie Chapman was found in 29 Hanbury street.

Chapman was discovered by John Davis, an elderly man from the building on the street.

Chapman's throat was also slit but this time her womb was taken.

Dr, George Baxter Phillips served as the divisional police surgeon at the time had thought to have knowledge by how Annie Chapman's womb had been removed.

The killer was either a doctor or had basic anatomical knowledge.

On September 27 i888 the central news agency got a letter from the alleged killer basically saying that he had been hearing that the police had caught him but he wouldn’t stop the murders but instead he would send an ear to the police as a joke. He says that he laughs when they say they are on the right track and he won’t stop until he’s caught or dead. He brags about his last murder and how he gathered some of the blood in a ginger ale bottle to write with but it thickened up too quickly for him to write with. He jokes about them thinking that he’s a doctor.

The letter wasn’t released to the public until October 1st.

People thought the letter was faked by the journalist.

On September 30th 1888 at 1:00 AM the body of Elizabeth Stride was found on Berner street by Louis Diemschutz.

This time only her throat was slit making the police to believe that Jack the Ripper was interrupted when Diemschutz approached.

This was the second victim

People question whether this was actually the doing of Jack the Ripper as her throat was cut quite hastily & didn’t have any of the other things that had happened previously.

When she was examined at 1:15 AM it was determined that by that time she had been dead for 30 minutes.

Only 45 minutes after the discovery of Stride the body of Catherine Eddowes was found Mitre Square.

This was just west of the Strider murder.

Her body was very mutilated including her face. Her uterus was removed along with her left kidney.

The body was 10-15 mins away while walking.

After Eddowes was killed he made his way back to the first murder.

East from the body of Eddowes (?) was the only solid clues for investigators and police in the case.

The clue was a piece of Catherine Eddowes apron.

Found by Alfred Long in the doorway of an apartment block nearby Goulston street.

This was east of the Eddowes murder site.

Nearby written in chalk was a message that read “The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing.”

This was a sign of the anti-Semitism that was in this specific area.

The big thing about this clue was that it was found east of the murder site.

This was in the direction of Elizabeth Stride's murder site.

The murder that was committed 45 mins prior to this.

This meaning that the killer entered an area that, at the time, was swarming with cops.

Despite this showing that the killer could easily escape places that he could have been living in the east London area.

A postcard was received by the police on October 1st and was written by someone who had been claiming to be the Murderer.

It was written in similar handwriting.

This time talking about how he wasn’t kidding and how he couldn’t finish and how there would be a double even in the paper.

No one in the public knew about this so this lead police to believe that it was the killer as he described it in detail.

On October 13, 1888, police spent a week searching people's houses in East Densworth but found nothing

October 16 a man named George Lusk had received a letter.

He was the head of the Mile End Vigilance Committee.

This was a group to help assist the police.

The letter was signed. “From Hell”

Was delivered in a box w/ half a kidney.

The kidney was believed to be Catherine Eddowes’ kidney.

This was later to be found to be a prank by a medical student meaning that some people didn’t take this seriously and it was something they would joke around with.

(~~A month later) On Nov. 9, 1888, the body of the 5th & final victim Mary Kelly was found in her bed at 13 Millers Court.

She was found by her landlords assistant who was seeking rent.

This was the most gruesome murder.

Kelly’s body was disembowelled & “virtually skinned down”

“The sight that we saw I cannot drive from my mind it looked more like a work of a devil than a man” This is what the landlord said about the state of the body.

Some people claimed that they had seen the killer.

All murders were committed on a weekend.

Killers appearance.

In between 25-35

Roughly 5`5-5`7

Stocky, fair complexion, moustache.

Seen wearing a dark overcoat & dark hat.

Looked perfectly sane, frightfully normal.

Yet capable of extreme violence and cruelty.

. . .

Sir Melville Macnaghten, the Scotland yards head of criminal investigation department in 1903, though he had a vague idea on who the killer was.

Knew that Jack the Ripper had a basic knowledge of anatomy.

Possibly a doctor.

His notes say that he had narrowed his list of suspects down to three names.

Suspects of Jack the Ripper.

Suspect #1: Montague Johnson Druitt

A barrister who may have had an uncle + a cousin that were doctors.

~ His time of death he could have been around the age of 40.

Supposedly had an interest in surgery.

Might have lived with a cousin.

Who was practising medicine close to where the murders occurred.

It also appeared that ~ a month before the first canonical murder happened his (Montague) mother went insane.

Wrote down that he too thought he was going insane.

(though most people going or that are insane don’t know they are/going insane)

In Macnaghten’s notes, it says. “From private information, I have little doubt that his own family suspected this man of being the Whitechapel murderer; it was alleged that he was sexually insane”

After the last murder, Montague disappeared

4 weeks after the last murder he was found dead.

The body was found floating in the Thames river on December 3rd 1888

Suspect #2: Michael Ostrog

Russian doctor & criminal

Been in an asylum previously for homicidal tendencies.

Macnaughten wrote in his notes that he couldn’t find a strong alibi for his whereabouts during the murders.

Wasn’t evicted because there wasn’t enough evidence linked.

Suspect #3: Aaron Kosminski

A polish & Jewish resident in Whitechapel.

Spent time in an asylum in 1889

Resided in asylums until his death in 1919

Known for his hatred toward women

Specifically prostitutes.

His description matched with the killers

Name recently was in headlines

Featured in the book, “Naming Jack the Ripper”

Russell Edwards (the author) talked about how a shawl was bought at an auction and contained his DNA proving that he was the killer.

Bought under the impression that it was found at the murder scene of Catherine Eddowes.

Edwards got help from a molecular biologist Jari Louhelainen from Liverpool John Moores University.

Seman on the shawl was linked to Kosminski.

With this discovery, people thought that the case was closed

“I’ve got the only piece of forensic evidence in the whole history of the case. I’ve spent 14 years working on it, and we have definitely solved the mystery of who Jack the Ripper was. Only non-believers that want to perpetuate the myth will doubt. This is it now -- We have unmasked him.” - Russell Edwards.

Louhelainen may have made a large mistake.

Dr. Louhelainen identified a mutated piece of DNA on both the scarf and in Eddowes relative Karen Miller.

Mutation believed to be 314.1C

Only found in 1 - 290.000

The match was incorrect it wasn’t 314.1C instead was 315.1C.

Mutation shared with > 99% of people of European descent.

Kosminskies DNA was linked using Mitochondrial DNA using a subtype that wasn’t unique.

Suspect #4: Jill the Ripper

The theory that Jack the Ripper was actually a female

~~ a hunch of inspector Abberline

When everyone was looking for a man instead of a woman would explain why the killer could slip by unnoticed.

A midwife could also have anatomical Knowledge.

Blood on her clothing wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.

Though all eyewitness accounts pointed to a man.

Suspect #5: Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward (The royal conspiracy.)

Often scoffed at.

Prince Edward was frequent to places that the victims were found.

An activity that led him to contract syphilis which drove him to insanity

Caused him to have a child with a local woman which led the queen to demand that everyone who knows of the child to be “Taken care of.”

Some believe that the insanity spawned by syphilis drove him to commit the murders himself.

Conspiracy theorists believe that he was never discovered because royal aids assisted in covering his identity.

This theory is often called ludacris as there isn’t any evidence to back it up.

Suspect #6: Walter Sickert

Patricia Cornwell (Known for her crime novels and devoted her time to find out who the killer was) claims that Sickert was obsessed with Jack the Ripper.

This is proven true

Referenced Jack the Ripper in some of his paintings.titling one of them “Jack the Ripper's Bedroom”

Cornwell claims that one painting mirrors the body position of the fifth victim Mary Kelly.

Claims that another painting mimics the facial wounds of fourth victim Catherine Eddowes

Reports of Sickert ‘Cosplaying’ as Jack the Ripper for fun.

Cornwell debunks that Sickert was in France at the time of the murders.

Saying that he has sketches of music halls in London at the time of three killings at least.

Analysis of forensic paper expert Peter Bower who identified three of Sickert's letters and two of Jack the Ripper's letters from a handmade paper run with only 24 sheets of that paper.

The possibility of both Sickert and Jack the Ripper writing on the same paper that only has 24 sheets in existence is very unlikely.

While that is undoubtedly evidenced all of the Jack the Ripper letters are unconfirmed.

Suspect #7: Joseph Barnett

Suspicious because he actually lived with Mary Kelly.

May have lived in 10 different locations in East London.

So he knows the area well so he can navigate back streets.

Worked as a fish porter

Reported was in love with Kelly.

According to the Daily Telegraph Barnett referred to Kelly as his “wife”

She was only a roommate.

Disagreed with her life as a prostitute striving to make money to keep her off of the streets.

Saying. “Marie never went out on the streets with me”

Theorised that Barnett committed the first murders to keep her off of the street.

Which for a little bit worked.

When he lost his job Kelly went back to the streets.

Financial struggles lead to fights.

Barnett disliked her love of Gin.

When Kelly brought back two different prostitutes it stirred one final fight which Barnett found unacceptable.

The fight got violent

A window was broken.

Not too long after Barnett moved out of the house.

10 days later Mary Kelly was found dead.

He was questioned for 4 hrs but was set free.

Having lived there he would know knowledge about the house of which included how to unlock the door from the outside.

Also knew Kelly's schedule and tendencies.

Details say that she was killed in her sleep rather than by someone she invited in.

Clothes were folded by the bed “As though they were taken off in an ordinary manner.”

Was wearing a nightgown.

As a fish porter, he would have anatomical knowledge.

Because he knew Kelly other prostitutes would know him allowing him to get close enough for a “sneak attack”

One newspaper at the time stated that some of his friends called him Jack.

Matches both physical and mental descriptions of Jack the Ripper that were created by police & the FBI.

The murders stopped after Mary Kelly.

With his lover , that he was trying to keep off of the streets, now dead he had no reason to keep on killing people.

Suspect #8/Last suspect: James Maybrick

His death matched with the stop of the killings.

Died a year after the killings.

Upper-class cotton merchant

Resided in an estate called the “Battlecrease House” in Liverpool.

Some think that this is a large detail as they think that he wasn’t an upperman & was instead a local.

A wealthy cotton merchant would be able to travel on weekends.

Wouldn’t be killing in his own Locale (Local area)

A diary was found under the floorboards of Maybricks estate.

His diary is signed. “I give my name that all know of me, so history does tell, what love can do to a gentleman born. Yours Truly,

Jack the Ripper.”

The diary held intimate details of the killings.

Scientific tests prove that the diary matched the time of the Jack the Ripper killings.

The diary was discovered by a scrap metal dealer named Mike Barett.

Admitted to the diary being fabricated but then later took that back.

The details of how he got the diary are shaky.

Some say it fell into his hands from being handed down in his family others say Barrett discovering it himself or his associates discovering it and then bringing it to him.

If the diary truly was found under the floorboards of the estate than there is a very strong possibility that Maybrick is Jack the Ripper.

Following the diary, a golden pocket watch was found as potential evidence.

The pocket watch apparently has the initials of each of the five canonical victims scratched into it.

Including the phrases “I am Jack” & “J. Maybrick.

The scratches were analysed from an electron microscope and Dr. Stephen Turgoose who said that the scratches were not done in modern times.

Another Dr. named Robert Wild, in Bristol’s Universities Interface Analysis Center, suggests the scratches “could have been very, very old and were certainly not new but it was difficult to be precise”

The watch, which was displayed and discovered in a Liverpool Jewelry Shop by a college caretaker named Elbert Johnson.

Dated in 1846

Purchased for 225 Pounds. ( 294.88 US dollars.)

My Thoughts.

My thoughts on the Jack the Ripper case. Well, I personally have a fascination with unsolved mysteries, especially unsolved murder cases. This one in particular really caught my attention just in how the victims were chosen and how it has been so long and we have so many suspects but only a couple of them would actually make sense and possibly could be Jack the Ripper but there are places where the theory and reasons to suspect to the person kind of fall out or it would lead to at least a couple of loose ends or it starts to not support it as much as it could and some of the evidence isn’t the best so you can get confused about the true killer. As for the case itself, it is a sad thing that had happened but I honestly can see how it could stay a mystery for so long. With that many suspects and different evidence showing up and being debunked so often and random throughout the years. Like the instance where the shawl was bought at an auction and the molecular biologist got the wrong mutation and said that it was a rare one before finding out that he had said that it was the wrong one and it was actually a mutation that every descendant of a European has the mutation. Things like that can keep it a mystery although I think that we will probably solve it eventually seeing that we have a couple that might actually have been Jack the Killer.

This case is actually the case that really got me into crime and unsolved mysteries I find it fascinating about how we could solve it years and years after the crime had happened and ended. I honestly love the idea of studying cases whether they’re ongoing or if they have already ended and haven’t been solved. Even cases that have been solved are just fun to write my thoughts down or talk about my thoughts and theories about it.

My theories and who I think did it.

Okay, I have three different theories that I think committed all of the Jack the Ripper murders. I’m going to go from the one that I don’t think is very likely and I have very little evidence for to the one that has the most and that is more likely. Now let’s begin.

The Jill the Ripper Theory: Okay I think this one could be likely because at the time that the killings were going on (1888) women weren’t allowed to have a title of a doctor or anything of the sort. So when the first or second letter for Jack the Ripper was sent (now thinking back to it I do believe that it was the first letter sent in.) it says that they were shocked that people were actually thinking that they were a doctor. This leads me to believe that it really could have been a women at the time. Plus in 1888 it would be normal that a midwife would have blood on her clothes so she could have passed it off that she was just a midwife so she could slip in and out of crowds easily which could explain why the killer wasn’t found or spotted on the night of the double murder. It could have also thrown off the police because they were told to be looking for a man but instead they should be looking for a woman. Although there is something that is holding that piece of evidence back that it that the killer had been described by eyewitness accounts and at that time you could easily tell the difference between a man and a women as they had very different figures due to the corsets that they (women) would always wear. Being a midwife would also give her anatomical knowledge that Jack the Ripper obviously had otherwise how else would (s)he be able to disembowel his (her) victims and take out their womb the way they did.

Joseph Barnett: This one definitely has more of a chance than the Jill the Ripper theory does. Barnett actually lived with the fifth and last victim Mary Kelly. He had actually told the Daily Telegraph that she was his “wife” when in reality she was actually just a roommate that he lived with so people naturally started to say that Barnett had loved Kelly and because he disagreed with her being a prostitute people believe that he committed the first murders to scare her off of the street which actually worked for a bit. He said that “When Marie was with me she never went onto the streets.” This was because she didn’t need to because he was working as a fish porter. He was thought to be able to get around so easily because he may have lived in 10 different places in East London so, he could get around quickly because he knew his way around. Because he didn’t like that Kelly was a prostitute they often got into arguments they would also fight because he didn’t like her love of Gin. But when Joseph lost his job as fish porter Kelly went back onto the streets and continued with the prostitution. When Kelly brought two other prostitutes home Barnett didn’t think that this was acceptable so they got into a pretty big argument at this point it had gotten quite violent a window was apparently broken in the fight. After the fight, Barnett ended up leaving the house. 10 days later Kelly was found dead in her apartment. Because he lived there he would know how to unlock the door from the outside and around the house. Kelly’s clothes were also folded like they had been taken off and placed in an ordinary manner and she was in a nightgown so she was killed in her sleep because it didn’t look like she had any form of struggling like she had been killed from someone she had let inside. Right after Kelly was killed the killings had stopped as it is known. This ties in because why would he kill anyone else when the women that he loved was now dead and he had no reason to still be killing.

James Maybrick: James Maybrick is the person that is most likely to have done it. Maybrick was an upper-class cotton merchant so he only really had weekends to go out and do other stuff plus all of the murders took place on weekends which could potentially point directly toward Maybrick. Plus he was living somewhere else so it wasn’t so obvious it was him at first because he lived in a different location than the murders were happening it was kind of shrugged off because you know who would want to go somewhere else to commit a crime such as murder. He also resided with an estate called the “Battlecrease House” that was located in Liverpool. Under one of the floorboards, there was a diary found that had vivid and intimate details about each one of the murders of each one of the victims. The diary was signed with this: “I give my name that all know of me, so history do tell, what love can do to a gentleman born. Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper.”. There was a gold pocket watch that was found by a college caretaker by the name of Elbert Johnson had found it in a jewellery shop in Liverpool. He took it to a Dr. who said that the scratches in the watch weren’t from modern times the scratches read the initials of all of the victims and two phrases “I am Jack” and “J. Maybrick.”

#jack the ripper #Unsolved crimes

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qqueenofhades · 7 years

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March is Women's History Month and I got myself thinkin' about how grateful I am for the gal pals in my life (of which you are most definitely one!), and I was wondering - what are some of your favorite historical female friendships and why?

Happy Women’s History Month indeed. Let’s get some ladies up in this joint and do some learning.

Below, in (approximately) chronological order:

1. MurasakiShikubu and Empress Shoshi (10th/11th century)

Murasaki Shikibu was a lady-in-waiting to the Japanese empress Shoshi in the late 10th/early 11th century, and is credited as the author of the first novel, The Tale of Genji. She also kept the Diary of Lady Murasaki, which records details of court life and her relationship with the empress, who was her patron and supported her literary pursuits. Allegedly, Shoshi asked Murasaki to write some more stories when she needed something new to read, and they eventually retired together to the country once Shoshi’s son became emperor. Shoshi herself was a shrewd political operator who carefully managed her family and dynasty’s fortunes, became a Buddhist nun, and died at the age of 86.

2. Christinede Pizan and Anastasia (14th/15th century)

Christine de Pizan was an Italian-French author in the late fourteenth/early fifteenth century, who wrote what are often characterized as many early feminist texts and literary critiques. She wrote blazing responses to popular romances written by men (which were often horrendously misogynist) and was in demand as an author; her texts were commissioned by royalty and kept on elite library shelves. She also sought out other women to collaborate with, including Anastasia, who we know only by her first name. Christine praised her as the finest manuscript illuminator and illustrator in Paris, whose work was hotly in demand, and who had worked on several projects for Christine herself.

3. The Rain Queens of the Lovedu (16th century-present)

This is technically about mothers and daughters, but shh, it counts. The South African tribe of the Lovedu has been ruled for centuries by a “rain queen,” whose wisdom passed from mother to daughter, and who was presented with wives by surrounding chiefs in recognition of her magical powers. If it doesn’t rain, the queen doesn’t get blamed, her (male) rain doctors get blamed instead, and any children of her “brides” are regarded as hers. It created a mystical, matriarchical tradition in the tribe throughout generations, though in the 21st century it has run into modern political difficulties.

4. Queen Elizabeth I and Grace O’Malley (16th century)

Queen Elizabeth I needs no introduction, but Grace O’Malley was an Irish pirate queen who ruled around the Connaught area of Ireland in the late 16th century. When she and her sons ran afoul of English justice, she applied to Queen Elizabeth directly for an audience, which eventually happened at Greenwich in 1593. Elizabeth spoke no Irish and Grace spoke no English, so the two women spoke Latin to each other. Grace must have also made quite an impression on her fellow queen, as Elizabeth released her sons and granted her a pardon, as long as she didn’t return to her reaving ways.

5. Julie d’Aubigny and Fanchon Moreau (17th century)

Julie d’Aubigny, or “La Maupin” had an almost ridiculously eventful life. A cross-dressing, bisexual, sword-fighting opera singer, she famously burned down a convent to run away with her nun lover, kissed a girl at a society party and beat all three of the noblemen who challenged her to duels as a result, and had a noted career in French theater. Fanchon Moreau was one of the actresses that Julie fell in love with, allegedly trying to commit suicide when Fanchon took up with another lover. She later died at the age of only 33.

6. Christina,Queen of Sweden and her many female friends (17th century)

To speak of impossibly colorful and interesting 17th century women: Christina, Queen of Sweden was also a cross-dressing expert swordswoman, rider, and hunter who spoke ten languages, ruled as queen of Sweden for twenty-two years, then resigned the throne and went to Rome, was ferociously brilliant and educated, and has been sometimes regarded as possibly intersex or trans, though she denied that she was a “Male or Hermaphrodite,” as she had often been accused of. She was also either bisexual or a lesbian, who had many relationships and friendships with women, including possibly with Gabrielle de Rochechouart de Montemart, a dazzling beauty and wit who was the older sister of Louis XIV’s famous mistress, Madame de Montespan. (Gabrielle’s BFF was also the openly gay Philippe, duc d’Anjou, Louis XIV’s younger brother.)

7. Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill (18th century)

Queen Anne was known for her passionate and long-running friendships with women, as I wrote about in the post above, and Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough, was the longest-lasting and most influential of these. Anne was in love with her, while Sarah was more pragmatic about her relationship with the princess and then queen, and used her considerable intellect and political opinions in the early years of Anne’s rule. Their relationship broke down in 1708, at the death of Anne’s beloved husband George, and Sarah’s unflattering portrayal of Anne would hold sway for many years after.

8. Anne Bonny and Mary Read (18th century)

If you’ve watched Black Sails, you know about these two, but their real-life counterparts were probably even more colorful. They were swashbuckling female pirates who drank, fought, swore, and fucked as hardcore as their male counterparts, and who fought to the end when their ship got captured, while Calico Jack Rackham hid below deck. (Sorry, Jack, but Black Sails was definitely nice to you.) And yes, the real Anne and Mary were probably in a relationship, though we don’t know for sure.

9. ElizabethFreeman and Catharine Sedgwick (18th/19th century)

Elizabeth Freeman, or “Mum Bett,” was a slave who sued the state of Massachusetts for her freedom – and won – in 1780, and after telling her former master to get fucked, took a paying job with the Sedgwick family. She raised Catharine as a child, and Catharine later wrote her life story, the reason we know about her. Catharine grew up to be a successful novelist whose heroines often rebelled against the strictures of 19th-century American society, and she and Elizabeth are now buried side by side in the Sedgwick family plot. (Does anyone else suddenly have something in their eye? Just me?)

10. Ada Lovelace and Mary Somerville (19th century)

Ada Lovelace, nee Byron, was the only legitimate daughter of the infamous Lord Byron, a brilliant mathematician, and the founding mother of computer science, along with her friend and colleague, the great Victorian inventor and eccentric Charles Babbage. However, she was tutored in her young adulthood by the equally brilliant Mary Somerville, a prolific scientist and author of mathematical and astronomical papers and textbooks, and they were close friends; if Ada had a pressing mathematical problem, she would stop by Mary’s for a cup of tea and a brainstorming session. Somerville College in Oxford is now named in Mary’s honor, after she died at the age of ninety-two.

11. Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin (19th century)

They were sisters, but shh, again, it counts. Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president of the United States (in 1872, with Frederick Douglass as her running mate) and she and Tennessee were journalists, stockbrokers, and advocates of free love who fought with Party Pooper Extraordinaire and self-appointed guardian of 19th-century American virtue Anthony Comstock, as is written about in the Historical Hour With Hilary entry above. They lived in New York together and ran Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly, a newspaper, and gave blazing speeches for female suffrage and equality.

12. Lyudmila Pavlichenko and Eleanor Roosevelt (20th century)

Ukrainian-born Lyudmila Pavlichenko was the best female sniper of all time, serving in the Red Army during WWII and recording a total of 309 confirmed kills. That was a lot of Nazis, and she was very proud of killing them. She was one of the rare Soviet citizens invited to America for a victory tour, where the American press fixated on idiotic questions about whether she wore makeup while fighting and that her uniform made her look fat (no, really). However, Lyudmila also met First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and they struck up an unlikely friendship. Eleanor helped Lyudmila tell the sexist asses where to stick it, and they ended up remaining friends for the rest of their lives, including a meeting 15 years later, in 1957, when Lyudmila was living in quiet obscurity in Moscow.

#history #women in history #queer history #women's history month #prairiepirate #ask

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