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chiseler · 3 years

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Gnostic Boardwalk

Canonical stature is a fragile and contingent thing, which is why powerful institutions seek to shore up the various canons of art with rankings and plaudits. We’ll play along by asserting that one of our favorite “B” movies was originally screened by Henri Langlois at the Cinematheque française with Georges Franju in attendance. Night Tide (1961) was an unlikely contender for this particular honor—shot guerrilla style on an estimated $35,000 budget, and intended, by its distributors at least, for a wider, less demanding audience seeking mostly air-conditioned escapism.

With its hinky cast—nonfictional witch, Marjorie Cameron; erstwhile muse to surrealist filmmaker Jean Cocteau, the undersung Babette who usually appears en travesti; and lecherous, booze-addled, fresh-faced Hollywood castoff Dennis Hopper—Night Tide invades the drive-in. A tarot reading at the film’s heart gives Marjorie Eaton her time to shine, traipsing into nickel-and-dime divination from her former life as a painter of Navajo religious ceremonies. Linda Lawson might have issued from an etching by Odilon Redon, with her raven locks and spiritual eyes, our resident sideshow mermaid. Not surprisingly and despite such gentle segues, the film itself traveled a rocky road from festivals to paying venues.

Night Tide had spent three years languishing in the can when distributor Roger Corman smuggled the unlikely masterwork into public consciousness, another of his now legendary mitzvahs to art. And the sleazy-sounding double bills that resulted also unleashed an aberrant wonder: the movie’s compact leading man, a force previously held captive by the studio system—looking, here, like some homunculus refugee from the Fifties USA. Dennis Hopper, in his first starring role, would later recall that it represented his first “aesthetic impact” on film since his earlier appearances in more mainstream productions such as Rebel Without a Cause and Giant had denied him meaningful outlets for collaboration.

It’s the presence of its featured players—certainly not their star power—that lends the film its haunting and enduring legacy, and elevates the term “cult classic” to its rightful place in the pantheon of cinema. But we argue that Night Tide remains outside these exclusive parameters—upholding an elsewhere-ness that defies commercial, if not strictly canonical, logic. Curtis Harrington’s first feature film escapes taxonomy, typology or genre—gets away—fueling itself on acts of solidarity instead. If Hopper contributes his dreamy aura, then Corman rescues the seemingly doomed project by re-negotiating the terms of a defaulted loan to the film lab company that was preventing the film’s initial release. His generous risk birthed a movie monument that would add Harrington’s name to a growing collection of talent midwifed by the visionary schlockmeister responsible for nursing the auteurs of post-war American cinema. And here we enter a production history as gossamery as Night Tide itself.

Unlike his counterparts entrenched within the studio system, Harrington was an artist – i.e. a Hollywood anachronism, with aristocratic graces and a viewfinder trained on the unseen. We see Harrington as Georges Méliès reborn with a queer eye, casting precisely the same showman’s metaphysics that spawned cinema onto nature. By the time moving pictures were invented, artists were moving away from a bloodless representational ethos and excavating more primordial sources for inspiration. The early stirrings of what surrealist impresario André Breton would later proclaim: “Beauty will be CONVULSIVE or it will not be at all.”

Harrington owned a pair of Judy Garland’s emerald slippers, and according to horror queen/cult icon Barbara Steele, also amassed an eclectic array of human specimens: “Marlene Dietrich, Gore Vidal, Russian alchemists, holistic healers from Normandy, witches from Wales, mimes from Paris, directors from everywhere, writers from everywhere and beautiful men from everywhere.” On a hastily constructed Malibu boardwalk, Hopper would be in his milieu among the eccentric denizens of California’s artistic underground—most notably, Harrington himself, a feral Victorian mountebank of a director who slept among mummified bats, practiced Satanic rites, and hosted elaborate and squalid dinner parties. One could almost picture the mostly television director in his twilight years as Roman Castavet of Rosemary’s Baby; a spellbinding raconteur with a carny’s flair for embellishment and enticement. Enthralled by the dark gnosticism of Edgar Allan Poe that had started when the aspiring 16-year-old auteur mounted a nine-minute long production of The Fall of the House of Usher (1942), Harrington would embark on a checkered film career that combined his occult passions with the quotidian demands of securing steady employment. Night Tide, a humble matinee feature whose esoteric underpinnings would spawn subsequent generations of admirers, united the competing forces of art and commerce that Harrington would struggle with throughout his career. Like Méliès, Harrington pointed his kinetic device towards the more preternatural aspects of early motion pictures to seek out the ‘divine spark’ that Gnostics attribute to transcendence, and the necessary element to achieve that immortal leap into the unknown. What hidden meanings and unspeakable acts Poe had seized upon in his writing were brought infernally to life with a mechanical sleight-of-hand. It was finally time for crepuscular light, beamed through silver salts to illuminate otherworldly and other-thinking subjects.

Curtis Harrington

By the time Harrington had embarked on his feature film debut, a more muscular celluloid mythology based on America’s proven exceptionalism was in full force, taking on a brutalist monotone cast in keeping with the steely-eyed, square-jawed men at the helm of a nascent super-power, consigning its more feminine preoccupations to the dusty vaults where celluloid is devoured by its own nitrate. Harrington would resurrect the convulsive aspects of his chosen vocation and embed them deep within the monochrome canvas he’d been allotted for his first venture into feature filmmaking, and combine them with the more rational aspects of so-called realism. In the romantic re-telling of a familiar myth, Harrington was remaining true to gnostic roots and the distinctly poetic language used to express its cosmological features.

In Night Tide, Harrington would map the metaphysical terrain that held up Usher’s cursed edifice as a blueprint for his own work that similarly explored the intertwined duality of the natural and the supernatural. The visible cracks that reveal a fatal structural weakness and a loss of sanity in both Roderick Usher and his doomed estate are evident in Night Tide’s conflicted heroine compelled to choose between her own foretold death underwater, or a worse fate for those who fall in love with her earthly human form.

A young sailor (Dennis Hopper) strolling the boardwalks of Malibu while on shore leave offers the viewer an opening glimpse into the film’s metaphysical wormhole, and a not so subtle hint of the director’s queer eye, stalking his virginal prey in the viewfinder. A beachfront entertainment venue is, after all, where one would casually encounter soothsayers and murderers, sea witches and perverts, as the guileless Johnny does, seemingly oblivious to the surrealist elements of his surroundings as he makes his way on land.

Harrington’s carnival-themed underworld is both imaginatively and convincingly presented as a quaint slice of post-war America, effortlessly dovetailing with his intended drive-in audience’s expectations of grind house with a dash of glamor—not to mention his own avant-garde leanings, which remain firmly intact despite Night Tide’s outwardly conventional construction and narrative.

Harrington is able to present this juxtaposition of kitsch Americana and the queer arcana of his occult fascinations. Indeed, Night Tide’s lamb-to-the-slaughter protagonist could have wandered off the set of Fireworks, Kenneth Anger’s 1947 homoerotic short film about a 17-year-old’s sadomasochistic fantasies involving gang rape by leathernecks.

Anger would later sum up his earliest existing film as “A dissatisfied dreamer awakes, goes out in the night seeking a ‘light’ and is drawn through the needle’s eye. A dream of a dream, he returns to bed less empty than before.” Harrington (a frequent collaborator of Anger in his youth) seems to have re-worked Fireworks, or at least its underlying queer aesthetic into a commercially viable feature film that explores his own life long occult fascinations.

Both Anger and his former protégé would view the invocation of evil as a necessary step towards the attainment of a higher level of consciousness. Harrington coaxed a more familiar story from the myths and archetypes that informed his unworldly views for a wider audience; a move that would be later interpreted by sundry cohorts as selling out. Still, Night Tide shares a thematic kinship with Anger’s more obtusely artistic output as acknowledged by the surviving occultist, who confirmed this unholy covenant at Harrington’s funeral by kissing his dead friend on the lips as he laid in his open coffin.

The hokey innocence of Dennis Hopper as Johnny Drake in his tight, white sailor suit casts a homoerotic hue on the impulses that compel him to navigate a treacherous dreamscape to satisfy a carnal longing, just as Anger’s dissatisfied dreamer obeys the implicit commands of an unspeakable other to seek out forbidden pleasures.

As he makes his way on land, the solitary, adventure-seeking Johnny will be lured into a waiting photo booth, his features slightly menacing behind its flimsy curtain, and brightly smiling a second later as the flash illuminates them. Johnny has entered a realm where intersecting worlds collide, delineating light from shadow, consciousness from unconsciousness. The young sailor’s maiden voyage into the uncharted waters of his subconscious is made evident in the contrasting interplay captured by the camera, where predator and prey overlap in darkness. Here, too, we get a prescient preview of the deranged psychopath Hopper would subsequently personify in later roles, most significantly as the oxygen deprived Frank of Blue Velvet—a man who seems to be drowning out of water. But here, Hopper convincingly (and touchingly) portrays a wide-eyed naïf, still unsteady on his sea legs as he negotiates dry land.

As a variation of Anger’s lucid dreamer in Fireworks (and later Jeffrey of Blue Velvet) Johnny will have abandoned himself quite literally (as his departing shadow on a carnival pavilion suggests, before its host blithely follows) to his own suppressed sexual urges; a force that eventually compels him towards denouement.

Moments later, inside the Blue Grotto where a flute-led jazz combo is in progress, Johnny spots a beautiful young woman (Linda Lawson) seated directly across from him. Her restrained and almost involuntary physical response to the music mimic his own, offering the first indication of a gender ‘other’ residing in Johnny; an entombed apparition cleaved from the sub-conscious and projected into his line of vision. Roderick and Madeline Usher loom large in Harrington’s screenplay and Usher’s trans themes lurk invisibly in the subtext. Harrington is arguably heir apparent to Poe’s vacated throne, pursuing similar clue-laden paths and exploring the dual nature of human and the primordial creature just beneath the surface poised to devour its host.

The near literal strains of seductive Pan pipes buoyed by the ‘voodoo’ percussion sets the stage for Harrington’s reworking of the ancient legend of sea-based seductresses and the sailors they lure to their graves.

Marjorie Cameron (or ‘Cameron’ as she is referred to in the opening credits) makes a startling entrance into The Blue Grotto as an elder of a lost tribe of mermaids seeking the return of an errant ‘mermaid’ to her rightful place in the sea. Cameron, a controversial fixture in L.A.’s bohemian circles and one-time Scarlet Women in the mold of Aleister Crowley’s profane muses, would later appear in Anger’s The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, and as the subject of Harrington’s short documentary The Wormwood Star (1956).

The inclusion of a bonafide witch, along with a host of less apparent occult/avant-garde figures, is further evidence of Night Tide’s true aspirations and its filmmaker’s subversive intent to sneak an art-house film into the drive-in, and introduce its audiences to the heretical doctrine that had spawned a new generation of occult visionaries influenced by Edgar Allan Poe. Decades later, David Lynch would carry that proverbial torch, further illuminating the writhing, creature-infested realm underlying innocence.

Johnny approaches the young woman who rebuffs his attempts at conversation, seemingly entranced by the music, but allows him to sit, anyway. Soon they are startled by the presence of a striking middle-aged woman (‘Cameron’) who speaks to Johnny’s companion Mora in a strange tongue. Mora insists that she has never met the woman before, nor understands her, but makes a fearful dash from the club as Johnny follows her, eventually gaining her trust and an invitation the following day for breakfast.

Mora lives in a garret atop the carousal pavilion at the boardwalk carnival where she works in one of the side show attractions as a “mermaid.” Arriving early for their arranged breakfast, her eager suitor strikes up a conversation with the man who runs the Merry-Go-Round with his granddaughter, Ellen (Luanna Anders). Their trepidation at the prospecting Johnny becoming intimately acquainted with their beautiful tenant is apparent to all except Johnny himself, who is even more oblivious to Ellen’s wholesome and less striking charms. Even her name evokes the flat earth, soul-crushing sensibilities of home and hearth. Ellen Sands is earthbound Virgo eclipsed by an ascendent Pisces. (Anders would have to subordinate her own sex appeal to play this mostly thankless “good girl” role. She would be unrecognizable a few years later as a more brazenly erotic presence in Easy Rider, helping to define the Vietnam war counterculture era.)

As Johnny ascends the narrow staircase leading to Mora’s sunlit, nautical-themed apartment, he almost collides with a punter making a visibly embarrassed retreat from the upper floor of the carousel pavilion. Is Johnny unknowingly entering into a realm of vice and could Mora herself be a source of corruption? Her virtue is further called into question when she not so subtly asks Johnny if he has ever eaten sea urchin, comparing it to “pomegranate” lest her guest fails to register the innuendo that is as glaring as the raw kipper on his breakfast plate. Johnny admits that he has never eaten the slippery delicacy but “would like to try.” Moments later, Mora’s hand in close-up is stroking the quivering neck of a seagull she has lured over with a freshly caught fish, sealing their carnal bond.

Their subsequent courtship will be marred by an ongoing police investigation into the mysterious deaths of Mora’s former boyfriends, and her insistence that she is being pursued by a sea witch, seeking the errant mermaid’s return to her own dying tribe. Her mysterious stalker will make another unwelcome entrance after her first appearance in the Blue Grotto—this time at an outdoor shindig where the free-spirited young woman reluctantly obliges the gathered locals who urge her to dance. The sight of ‘Cameron’ observing her in the distance causes the frenzied, seemingly spellbound dancer to collapse, setting off a chain of events that will force Johnny to further question her motives and his own sanity.

Mora’s near death encounter through dance is an homage of sorts to another early Harrington collaborator and occult practitioner. Experimental filmmaker Maya Deren had authored several essays on the ecstatic religious elements of dance and possession, and later went on to document her experiences in Haiti taking part in ‘Voudon’ rituals that would be the basis of a book and a posthumously released documentary both titled Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti. Note the Caribbean drummers whose ‘unnatural’ presence, in stark contrast to the more typical Malibu beach party celebrants, hint at the influence of black magic impelling the convulsive, near heart-stopping movements that eventually overtake her ‘exotic’ interpretive dance.

The opening sequence of Divine Horsemen includes a woodblock mermaid figure superimposed over a ‘Voudon’ dancer. The significance of this particular motif was likely known to Harrington, a devotee of this early pioneer of experimental American cinema. Deren herself appeared as a mermaid-like figure washed ashore in At Land (1947) who pursues a series of fragmented ‘selves’ across a wild, desolate coastline. Lawson with her untamed black hair and bare feet could be a body double of Deren’s elemental entity traversing unfamiliar physical terrain to find a way back to herself.

Mora’s insistence that she is being shadowed by a malevolent force directly connected to her mysterious birth on a Greek Island and curious upbringing as a sideshow attraction compel Johnny to investigate her paranoid claims, hoping to allay her fears with a logical explanation for them. The sea witch (or now figment of his imagination) will guide the sleuthing sailor into a desolate, mostly Mexican neighborhood where her departing figure will strand him—right at the doorstep of the jovial former sea captain who employs Mora in his tent show as a captive, “living, breathing mermaid.”

The British officer turned carnie barker is in a snoring stupor when Johnny first encounters him, snapping unconsciously into action to give a rote spiel on the wonders that await inside his tent. Muir balances Mudock’s feigned buffoonery with a slightly sinister edge. When Johnny arrives at his doorstep to find out more about the ongoing police investigation into her previous boyfriend’s deaths, the captain’s effusive hospitality takes on a decidedly darker tone when he guides his visitor to his liquor/curio cabinet where a severed hand in formaldehyde, “a little Arabian souvenir,” is cunningly placed where Johnny’s will see it. The spooky appendage serves as a reminder to Mora’s latest suitor of the punishments in store for a thief.

Captain Murdock’s Venice beach hacienda is yet another one of Night Tide’s deviant jolts: a fully fleshed out character in itself that speaks of its well-travelled tenant’s exotic and forbidden appetites. The dark, symbol-inscribed temple Johnny has entered at 777 Baabek Lane could be a brick-and-mortar portal into this mythic, mermaid-populated dimension that Johnny’s booze-soaked host thunderously defends as real.

Before falling into another involuntary slumber, Murdock will try to convince Johnny that while he and Mora merely stage a sideshow illusion, “Things happen in this world”—or, more to the point, Mora’s belief that she is a sea creature is grounded in fact.

Murdock’s business card that Johnny handily has in his pocket while tailing his dramatically kohl-eyed mark is oddly inscribed with an address more likely to be an ancient Phoenician temple of human sacrifice (Baalbek) than a Venice Beach bungalow. A lingering camera close-up offers another tantalizing, occult-themed puzzle piece—or perhaps a deliberate Kabbalah inspired MacGuffin. The significance of numbers as the underlying components for uniting the nebulous and intangible contents of the mind with the more inert, gravity bound matter, existing outside it, as the ancient Hebrews believed, wouldn’t have been lost on Night Tide’s mystically-minded helmer. Mora’s explicitly expressed disdain for Johnny’s view of the world as a rationally ordered, measurable entity that could be mathematically explained, reinforces Harrington’s world view, his love of Poe, and those French Symbolist artists who interpreted him.

In Odilon Redon’s Germination (1879), a wan, baleful, free-floating arabesque of heads of indeterminate gender suggests either a linear, ascending involution, or a terrifying descent from an unlit celestial void into a bottomless pit of an all-too-human, devolving identity. Redon’s disembodied heads gradually take on more human characteristics, culminating into a black-haloed portrait in profile. The cosmos of Redon’s etching is governed by an unexplained, inexplicable moral sentience, which absorbs the power of conventional light. Thus black is responsible for building its essential form, while glimmers of white, hovering above and below, prove ever elusive; registering as somehow elsewhere, beyond the otherwise tenebrous unity of the picture plane.

Night Tide has its own unsettling dimensions, of course, this black-and-white boardwalk where astral, egalitarian bums want to tip-toe; and, somehow, practically all of them do. Not a movie but an ever-becoming place, crammed into low-budget cosmogenesis unto eternity. We won’t discuss the ending here, since it hasn’t happened yet.

by The Lumière Sisters

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dustedmagazine · 3 years

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Myriam Gendron — Ma Delire: Songs of Love Lost and Found (Feeding Tube)

Photo by Constance Mensh

Ma délire - Songs of love, lost & found by Myriam Gendron

Myriam Gendron plays with the resonances between old music and new on her latest album, refracting traditional Quebecois folk tunes through the decades of music that have drawn from them. It would be a cliché to call her lovely songs timeless, but they exist somehow in all times together, as they were in pre-Industrial Canada, as they reverberated through the 1960s folk revival and as they might take shape now in an age of noise and found sounds and tape loops.

Consider, for instance, her pristine take of “Go Away From My Window,” one of the first pieces ever written by American song catcher and folk composer John Jacob Niles, covered by Marlene Dietrich and incorporated by Bob Dylan into his 1964 song, “It Ain’t Me Babe.” It’s a song that has echoed freely through the folk rock canon, and Gendron delivers it straight in a voice full of velvet shadows. It’s as fresh and unadorned as morning coffee, but you can find a two-mirrored infinity in it, with lost lovers from every era staring back at each other and you through its stately cadences.

Or take the French language “Poor Girl Blues,” which combines a folk song quoted by Leonard Cohen with a very old blues tune. The picking is intricate but water clear, the singing forthright but shaded with little flares of vibrato. It has the bounce and certitude of very old music; every bit of it is tucked into place. And yet there’s a bit of post-modern anomie in the way Gendron courts the tune’s ambiguities.

She takes even more of a leap in the track that follows, “C’est Dans Les Vieux Pays.” Here, Gendron brings in Bill Nace to play a distorted electric blues guitar line that will remind you of Bill Orcutt and evoke a shifting veil of reality with eerie tape loops. She sings, if anything, in a sparer, more traditional way, digging deeper into her range for a rawer impact. The song’s chaotic, noise infused finish is as modern as the day after tomorrow, as primitive as pre-history, both at once and very beautiful.

The title track performs a similar sort of alchemy between simplicity and experiment, bracing radiant patterns of acoustic guitar with the hiss of distortion and the sound of half-heard voices. The song feels like a sort of historical diorama, replaying ordinary life from long ago so that we can see how things were. And yet, when Gendron begins singing, in her soft-edged clarion voice, it feels also like right now, the hurt still fresh, the ordinary progression of events still happening around her.

And while we’re discussing the fluidity of time, as it seems we must, let’s consider Gendron’s “Le Jeune Fille En Pleurs,” where she brings in Chris Corsano for some gorgeous untethered drumming that surges and fades in waves under her steady liquid melody. The song is as real as your hand in front of you, while also distilling abstract ideas about chaos and order, persistence and change. Quite a trick and quite lovely. Wonderful album.

Jennifer Kelly

#myriam gendron #ma delire songs of love lost and found #feeding tube #jennifer kelly #albumreview #dusted magazine #folk #guitar #quebecois #bill nace #chris corsano

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gaysails · 4 years

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<3 to you and your other anon - so much of MASH military life too is crunched together/sharing meals/supplies/clothes/showers and all these things that are cute but basic details of life in forced proximity, I don't put stock in much more being intended by a handful of writers who did serve in the military at some point and know that kind of proximity, but that's what fandom is for, to have the fun with it that they didn't or (for sake of subtext/motivations) argument) couldn't at the time

oh well when I talk about subtext* I don’t really mean all the physical intimacies that a lot of the time weren’t scripted anyway -- those were just things that happened organically on the day (or were the result of the setting, or the actors, like how alan as hawkeye would always deliberately touch people’s arms etc). but I mean when the writers did shit like have hawkeye namedrop gertrude stein and alice b toklas for no reason (like even for the sake of a joke that’s a pretty niche reference... why write that if it wasn’t a nod to hawkeye being well-versed in gay culture... same as when he makes up a totally random anecdote about noel coward having brunch with cole porter and marlene dietrich) or bj’s batshit insane mental leap from radar+erin to trapper+hawkeye in Period Of Adjustment and talking about the still like it’s their child which you practically have to bend over backwards to find a 100% straight reading of that which makes sense. again I don’t think these details point toward a larger intention on the part of the proverbial powers that be behind the scenes, but I very much do suspect there was at least one person in that writers room slipping us crumbs under the table. this got away from me some lol but at any rate yes I’d hope we all know we’re reading and extrapolating far beyond the text at this point (even though the reading can layer onto the original text without any changes to it which is what’s so crazy-making about it imo) and our combined gay brains are huger than the mash writers could ever fathom

#*meaning subtext on the part of the writers....... whatever game alan and mike were playing is a different debate

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mcousland · 4 years

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nobody asked for this at all, the dummies have just become my comfort zone and i love them so a fool filled out a whole meme for them for the fun of it. dietrich belongs to @darlingicarus!

— SHIP QUESTIONS

PRE-RELATIONSHIP —

how did they first meet?

dietrich saved both maeve’s and carden’s lives while he was making a run in the city. saving carden was pure coincidence that came from killing a few of the dead that had been blocking his own path, but maeve was intended as he kept her from meeting a terrible end when one of the dead got hold of her skirt while she tried to run past. as everyone is prone to in those early days—dietrich was fine with protecting maeve and even bringing her back to whatever group there was at the time, but didn’t mind one bit if carden got bit somewhere along the way.

what was their first impression of each other?

maeve thought he was a bit too Blunt about everything that was going on and wished he would stop looking so damned serious all the time, it made her nervous about danger being around every corner and she was already scared enough. she also thought he was a bit handsome underneath that scowl

dietrich had a bit of a hard time seeing her past carden’s [annoyingly] large presence but thought she wasn’t taking things seriously enough, too many witty one-liners and worries about dirtying her hands and clothes. probably worried about the brightness of her clothes attracting too much attention too tbh

did any of their friends or family want them to get together?

family, that’s a good one. ohhhh, i’m sure a few of their friends wanted them to sort things out and just admit to themselves whatever was going on between them, because oh boy did they Ignore a Lot of things for quite a while but a good 80% of the group could spot how close they had grown through all of the things they endured together.

who felt romantic feelings first?

we already know that it was maeve!! we know this, how silly it is to even type it out!!! we know that she woke up one morning after an evening of fwb activities, spent a minute gazing at him while he remained asleep beside her and there was a frightening Oh No realization when she found herself reaching out to touch his cheek without thinking.

did either of them try to resist their feelings?

both of them! big time!! they were fucking terrified. on top of their own already established issues with Feelings, there are the obvious shared fears that come from the world they’re living in. it’s difficult to accept that you’re becoming attached to someone when you know that you could lose them at any moment with so much violence and darkness surrounding you at every turn, especially when you’ve already lost others along the way. (dietrich definitely held out his resistance for longer, though that's a given.)

if you had told one of them that the other would be their soulmate, what would they think?

would depend on the timing, i suppose. early days they’d probably both scoff at the thought, but later on maeve could be convinced. there’s that whole “soulmates can be made” belief and yes it may be cheesy, but maeve’s a romantic at heart and she’d like to think it’s true enough. soulmates are people who understand each other deeply, are connected at the mind, and know without doubt that the other will always be there at their side—consider maeve Convinced.

GENERAL —

who initiated the relationship, and how did it go?

maeve did! technically twice if you count a difference between the beginning of their fwb agreement and then the relationship proper faaaar down the line. i believe the first hook-up came about from maeve making a Very convincing argument for them to find some pleasure and relief from their steadily growing stress while they were away from the group, given that they had become somewhat of a default duo for supply runs and spent so much quality~ alone time together. considering that you could hardcut to five minutes later and find maeve on her knees unbuckling dietrich’s belt, i’d say the proposition went pretty well 😌 the relationship itself came along quite some time down the line, when maeve accidentally slipped up mid-makeout and let the love she has for dietrich Shine through her eyes while looking at him. naturally his instinct was to book it out of there because Feelings Hard, but maeve decided to risk baring her fuckin' heart ((after some months of Pining and a particularly Traumatic series of events that led to them clinging tighter to each other than before)) by asking him simply to "stay" before he could get out the door. arguably that moment was scarier than most of the times they've gone out into the world beyond the safety of their group, but ultimately worth the leap of faith!! because he stayed, and though it was never explicitly stated, they both understood that that night spent together was them putting an end to the fight against the feelings they both knew were there and finally taking the next step in their relationship.

did they have an official first date? if so, what was it like?

they did, but it was purely because maeve labeled it as such and no other reason. a few weeks after their relationship was Confirmed, maeve up and decided that their run into the city would be their first proper Date because they hadn't had some actual alone time in a good while, and it sounded like harmless fun which they didn't get enough of. nothing really Changed from their routine of clearing and scavenging, she just changed up their usual dialogue to asking the "typical date questions. oh, you know! what's your favorite movie? your weirdest fear? the dumbest thing you spent far too much money on?" just a silly excuse to get to know some of the little, random things about each other that popped into their heads or that they'd been curious about for a while.

what was their first kiss like?

tentative and oddly gentle, maeve went for a slow approach in every aspect while testing the waters to see if her last few minutes of attempting to Seduce the bastard into a fwb arrangement had panned out. it was almost Immediately followed up by another kiss and some touching that bordered more along the lines of desperate and eager as they wanted to get to the fun bits, but it was still one of the first notable moments of maeve taking that first step for them and waiting to see if he’d follow suit.

were they each other’s first anything (kiss, relationship, etc.)?

probably first relationship after the world went to shit, but in general nah they’ve both got some prior experiences.

what’s their height difference? age difference?

dietrich’s 5′10″ and maeve’s 5′0″. he’s in his early-to-mid 30s, she’s probably at the end of her 20s?? somewhere around there. who needs solid numbers anyway

what’s their relationship with each other’s families?

😔✌️ new fam found in the group, who dis??

who takes the lead in social situations?

100% maeve baybee. whether she’s talking circles around somebody to keep them distracted, trying to diffuse a situation or just comforting somebody through a difficult moment, we all been knew that maeve’s better suited for almost every kind of social situation. she’ll let him handle any of the ones that rely on intimidation tho, that’s all leitner right there

who gets jealous easier?

ohhhh, that’s another maeve claim. she has Zero reason to worry because dietrich is oblivious to so many attempts at flirtation from others, but it’s still a gut instinct in her to get a little ticked off seeing some rando trying to make moves on him. that’s Her bastard that she spent untold months charming the defenses away from, take a step back and show some respect.

LOVE —

who said “i love you” first?

everybody knows it was maeve, i hardly need to say it. we know she was the one brave enough to say it first, even if it Did take a scare of losing dietrich to tell him. they both already Knew, in that ways of theirs that they have where things are simply Understood between them without having to be mentioned aloud, but she needed him to hear it from her lips at least once. just in case

what are their primary love languages?

i’d say they’re both pretty big on quality time because of them both being naturally inclined to it and how they drifted into becoming partners for supply runs and other action, they spend so much time together it’d be Wild for it not to be their shared #1. not a single doubt in my mind that acts of service is dietrich’s other big one, while maeve’s kinda 50/50 on words of affirmation and physical touch being her runner-up.

how often do they cuddle/engage in PDA?

i’ll out them on main for being cuddlers in bed or just generally when they’re Alone. they’re not very big on PDA as a result of dietrich’s whole “if there’s affection exchanged in public i Will learn how to teleport myself halfway across the planet to escape the embarrassment” deal and maeve respecting that. HOWEVER. it’s still maeve and she sneaks in little things when she can, like hand-holding or winding an arm around his waist while they walk. has been known to sneak in a quick kiss to the cheek if he’s sitting down and she can snatch it while he’s not anticipating it. i think hugs are The Most affection that people would frequently see from them in public ((aside from the soft expressions as they watch each other but those don’t count, don’t @ them about it)). the amount of times people in the group have seen them kiss in public can be counted on Maybe one hand if they’re lucky lmfao they keep that shit locked down

what are their favorite things to do together?

this question deserves to be banned from memes because it immediately erases all creative braincells from your mind. dietrich likes to watch maeve tell stories and she loves to ramble those stories, so that’s a win/win for them. sitting on rooftops to watch the sunrise/sunset together. going out of their way to look through any abandoned antique stores or book shops because they’re both Nerds and willing to put in the work of clearing them out so that they can browse. i imagine their favorite is reading together in some comfortable silence, whether that’s separately or with her curled up into him on a couch so they can read the same book. wait also i think maeve thoroughly enjoys any time they’re on watch together because it gives her the opportunity to freely Tease him (and also Gaze at him while he’s focused on the perimeter but that’s entirely too soft so don’t talk about that)

who’s better at comforting the other?

i don’t think either of them are particularly Better at it than the other?? purely because in the beginning, there’s a balance there between dietrich being reluctant to accept maeve’s comfort when she offers it & her taking a hot minute to understand his attempts at comfort. but then they reach that point where dietrich doesn’t tense up when she pulls him into a hug, and maeve finds the consolation she needs in his quiet assurances. on the surface it’d appear that maeve’s better at comforting dietrich purely because she’s more openly physical with her attempts, but the amount of security and solace that she finds in his words or touch means just as much.

who’s more protective?

dietrich takes it with this one. on top of his already there inclination to protect someone if they manage to get close with him, dietrich’s simply the one with better combat skills. maeve can? kinda?? handle herself, if the danger isn’t too pressing and she can find an opening to take advantage of, and she Does have some very strong protective instincts when it comes to dietrich, but he for sure comes out on top for this one. he has the stronger drive and better skills to back the protectiveness up.

do they prefer verbal or physical affection?

physical for both of them! a lot of their communication lies in the unspoken anyhow, it’s no surprise that most of their affection is expressed physically instead of verbally. dietrich’s preference coming from the fact that he might just actually implode on the spot if maeve showered him in too many compliments and expressions of love through words, and maeve’s from learning to appreciate and bask in the meaning and emotion behind the physical affection that he does engage in. also she’s just,, a slut for any kind of affection to begin with, but it’s definitely a whole Thing with being touched when there’s genuine care and love behind it instead of some other ulterior motive.

what are some songs that apply to their relationship, in-universe or otherwise?

[sweats in Having An Entire Playlist Dedicated To Dummies In This AU]

sunlight by hozier — (video essayist voice) the conclusion: maeve is the sunlight to dietrich’s raincloud, thank you. the vibes for this one are just off the charts, lads. it’s about finding Warmth and Light in this love amidst the horrors of the world and in spite of the initial reluctance to let each other get close.

safe & sound by taylor swift — another one with vibes out of this world, this song is Top Tier for a big part of their dynamic in this verse, which is them finding safety and comfort in each other while the rest of the world goes to shit around them. everything may be going up in flames outside, but they know that they have each other and they’re not Alone in anything they do.

what kind of nicknames do they call each other?

maeve’s the queen of petnames, unfortunately for the easily flustered bastard. her favorites are naturally dear and darling, but she also enjoys an occasional use of lover. has called him baby once or twice just to get the reaction out of him. oh wait she also likes calling him an old man when he’s Like That and doesn’t get her references or grumbles too much.

i mean,, it’s dietrich, he uses Sommers more often than her fuckin’ first name and i don’t think he’s out here using petnames/nicknames on the reg At All, they’re opposite ends of the spectrum with this one. he called her sweetheart once to throw her off and it sent her out of wack for at least the entire rest of the day. so good on him, mission accomplished.

DOMESTIC LIFE —

if they get married, who proposes?

no marriage! dietrich’s not quite keen on it and maeve’s not the type to push him into anything he’s not comfortable with. if anything she might?? bring up the idea of rings if they ever come by some while out and about and they’ve been together for a hot minute, for the sentimental and sappy reason of having little reminders of each other to keep on their persons, but she’s not Insistent about it and is content with what they have.

how many kids do they have, if any? What are they like?

no kids! world too scary, no thank you!! they’re also just Not in dietrich’s wheelhouse, which may have been a Problem for them if they weren’t in the midst of an actual fuckin’ apocalypse where nearly every day is a fight for survival and maeve can Clearly see every downside of bringing a baby into that.

do they have any pets?

don’t think so, but maeve’s probably made a whole Deal once or twice about leaving a little food for any dogs or cats they see along their treks because she has a soft heart.

who kills the bugs in the house?

dietrich!! he’s in charge of doing away with those Creatures because maeve will most certainly not be going anywhere near them if she can help it. which is,, pretty funny. you know considering their Big Picture circumstances. zombies? she’s fine with them after a point, only truly terrifying in medium-to-large numbers. a spider or cockroach skittering across the kitchen counter?? Horrifying! leitner do your job and protect your woman from the hellspawn

how do they celebrate holidays?

generally just by,, Acknowledging them?? at the very least. maeve has her entire Thing that is keeping track of the date with a day planner that she has had with her from the very beginning (though it’s been lost once or twice, always found its way back), but she doesn’t demand anything happen on holidays because they’re usually a bit Busy making sure they aren’t Dying to whatever’s threatening them that day. on the occasions where they have the free time, maeve insists they spend quiet time together without having to worry about any of their daily responsibilities and that’s holiday enough. maybe slips in a small tradition if applicable and not too over the top

who’s more likely to convince the other to come back to sleep in the morning?

maeve is a very ;) persuasive woman ;)) it was more difficult and had a less frequent success rate back during the fwb days, but he’s completely fucked after they’ve been #confirmed. stands not a single chance to resist those eyes and the idea of lying in her arms for just a little while longer before they have to start their day.

who’s the better cook?

😔😔 dietrich by far. maeve couldn’t cook for shit before the apocalypse began when she had access to all sorts of appliances, recipes and helpful tutorials, there ain’t no way in hell she stands a chance at beating him Now. she’ll gladly take up other duties, but he’s their chef unless somebody else in the group has made a big dinner for everyone to share.

#not me constantly yelling from the rooftops about how much i love theym #i had half a braincell while writing most of this but consider: i don't care bc i fuckin adore them and the rambling is on brand #sometimes the romance is stored in the growing and learning from each other until you mirror & perfectly understand each other y'know #witcher au: apocalypse #maeve & dietrich

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shiningwizard · 4 years

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The Devil is a Woman (Josef von Sternberg, 1935)

the opening notice that this was passed by the Production Code Administration and you can tell chunks have been hacked out of it. Not to any palpable loss because it remains incredible. The end of a working relationship and ending at a peak: Sternberg for how he lit and cluttered up the frame; Dietrich for being Dietrich but also in her capacity for stringing lines together in English. Heedless, helpless leaps into ruinous love, a love that by the end is just a gown and hat standing upright.

#the devil is a woman #last movie i saw #A

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theemperorsfeather · 3 years

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This is a really fascinating article about archaeological work uncovering just how long ago humans were cooking and eating grains, including some experiments done recently with ancient cooking techniques, to make comparisons with ancient food remains and old tools.

...there are no signs of domesticated grain at Göbekli Tepe, suggesting that its residents hadn’t yet made the leap to farming. The ample animal bones found in the ruins prove that the people living there were accomplished hunters, and there are signs of massive feasts. Archaeologists have suggested that mobile bands of hunter-gatherers from all across the region came together at times for huge barbecues, and that these meaty feasts led them to build the impressive stone structures.

Now that view is changing, thanks to researchers such as Laura Dietrich at the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. Over the past four years, Dietrich has discovered that the people who built these ancient structures were fuelled by vat-fulls of porridge and stew, made from grain that the ancient residents had ground and processed on an almost industrial scale1. The clues from Göbekli Tepe reveal that ancient humans relied on grains much earlier than was previously thought — even before there is evidence that these plants were domesticated. And Dietrich’s work is part of a growing movement to take a closer look at the role that grains and other starches had in the diet of people in the past.

...

“No other settlement in the Near East has so many grinding stones, even in the late Neolithic, when agriculture was already well-established,” Dietrich says. “And they have a whole spectrum of stone pots, in every thinkable size. Why so many stone vessels?” She suspected that they were for grinding grain to produce porridge and beer. Archaeologists had long argued that stone vats at the site were evidence of occasional ceremonial beer consumption at Göbekli Tepe, but thought of it as a rare treat.

... Valamoti spent the early years of her career toting buckets and sieves from one excavation site to another across Greece, all while combing museum storerooms for ancient plant remains to analyse. The work convinced her there was an untapped wealth of evidence in burnt food remains — if she could find a way to identify what she was looking at.

More than 20 years ago, Valamoti decided to turn her lab into an experimental kitchen. She ground and boiled wheat to make bulgur, and then charred it in an oven to simulate a long-ago cooking accident (see ‘Fast food of the Bronze Age’). By comparing the burnt remains to 4,000-year-old samples from a site in northern Greece, she was able to show that the ancient and modern versions matched, and that this way of preparing grain had its roots in the Bronze Age3.

#history #food #archaeology #cooking

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cinebration · 4 years

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The Hyena (Ulysses Klaue x Reader) [Part 1]

Premise: You bring the notorious Ulysses Klaue a proposition on behalf of the CIA—and your own ambitions.

This fic takes place between Age of Ultron and Black Panther. Let me know if y’all want to be tagged and if y’all want more!

Part 1 | Part 2

Tagged: @illbegoinhome

Warnings: language

Gif Source: schreiberpablo

You were quiet. You hadn’t learned that in training, although it reinforced it. You simply understood at a young age that sitting still and remaining silent made you invisible to all but the most attentive. It afforded you one advantage other recruits from your graduating class years ago would have killed for: intel.

When people forgot you were there, they spoke freely.

You were all ears.

In the shithole bar, you sat in a corner, pretending to nurse a piss-poor beer. The bar, exclusively populated by scum, rumbled with the combined conversations of its patrons. The cacophony of deep-belly laughs and fuck-punctuated sentences assaulted your ears. You wanted to run from the place, disgusted by the sticky tables and mucky floors and the fucking heat. It was too fucking humid in the place. Your clothes stuck to you, the non-frizzed parts of your hair plastered to your skull and neck.

Two days hanging around in this dive. You were past the end of your patience.

“The crazy fucker is losing his shit,” one of the South Africans at the bar groused. “He’s tearing through everything to get more vibranium.”

You shifted your attention, fixing it on the speaker. Rail-thin, he sucked down a beer without coming up for air. A Glock stuck out from the holster on his hip.

“He should get it where he fucking found it,” his companion muttered. “Maybe he’ll die in the process.”

You waved down the bartender, who all but scurried to your table, eager to please the only female patron of his bar in…forever. “Refill that man’s drink,” you said, handing him enough cash with a generous tip added. “On me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Leaning back in your seat, you waited. The bartender plunked down a sweaty glass of beer I front of him, gesture in your direction.

The man glanced over. Suspicion lined his face. Rising, he strode over to you but remained standing.

You pulled a small wad of cash out of your pocket, just enough for him to see. “I’m looking for your boss.”

“I’m my own boss,” he snapped.

You made a show of looking him over. Shaking your head, you looked away. “Nevermind. I thought you were someone important.”

He glanced for the money you had secreted back into your pocket. “You gonna pay me?”

“That money’s for someone who can connect me to Klaue, but you said you don’t work for him, so no dice.”

“I can get you in touch.”

“I want a meet. Here.” You stared him directly in the eyes.

“Pay me and I will.”

Sighing heavily, you shook your head. “After you deliver.”

The man swore, shaking with anger, and stormed from the bar. The attention you had attracted by the interaction held for a moment. You let your gaze fall back to the table, remaining as unaffected as possible by the hard, suspicious gazes of twenty men burning your skin.

You waited an hour. The moment your watch showed sixty minutes had passed, you decided the man wasn’t going to show. You stood to leave.

Loud music pulsed outside the bar, drawing near. It cut out suddenly as a car engine died.

You sat back down, carefully reassuming your bored disinterest.

Ulysses Klaue barreled through the door, followed by two of his men and the skinny one you had talked to. You pulled out the cash immediately and tossed it in the man’s direction. Snatching it up greedily, he hastened from the room.

Klaue fixed his blue-gray eyes on you. The intensity of his gaze swept away your reason for the space between seconds. He was a force of nature, filling up the room despite only being 5’8”.

He barked a laugh. “When Lewis said it was a woman, I thought he was lying.”

To your surprise, his eyes didn’t rake down your body, instead fixed on your face. Beneath the boisterous, unstable exterior, he was lucidly astute. Your research had stated that, but looking into his eyes confirmed it.

“Are you the man in charge?” he asked, humor in his voice.

“Very much so,” you answered dryly. “But I do work for an organization.”

“What’s that?”

“The CIA.”

The whole bar went silent. Klaue licked his lips, eyebrows arching.

The operation was yours, though Agent Everett Ross had taken a vested interest. When you had told him you were going to lay out all your cards on the table at first contact, he had clocked you as nuts.

“Pretty bold claim coming from such a little lady,” Klaue growled. “You have to be telling the truth to say that here.”

You gestured at the chair across from you. Klaue glanced at it but didn’t sit.

“I know you’re a talker,” you said, feeling the silence stretch too long.

“I don’t deal with the CIA directly.”

“Adaptation is part of survival, Mr. Klaue.”

“Mister?” He chuckled. “How about this? You tell me something I don’t know, and I’ll hear you out.”

You paused. The arms dealer had several connections across just as many intelligence bureaus. You weren’t that high-ranking of an agent. Using him was your ticket to a promotion, but you weren’t going to tell him that.

Looking at his mischievous expression, you gambled. “Female hyenas have pseudo penises.”

Silence.

Klaue burst into wheezing laughter. Breathing an internal sigh of relief, you waited. Tears blurred his eyes by the time he regained his composure.

You kicked out the chair across from you. Klaue’s lips peeled back from his teeth in a feral smile, eyes glimmering. Spinning it around, he settled into the chair, his forearm propped along the back of it. Your eyes dropped for a moment to the scorpion tattoo riding the muscles of his arm.

“Chat me up, then,” he said.

Schooling yourself to keep from betraying your nervous excitement. “I want to make a deal.”

“Better make it worth my while.”

“How would you like to be bigger than Victor Bout?”

The name arrested his attention. His smile widened, gold teeth flashing, but the humor was missing. “The Merchant of Death?”

“I can position you as the most notorious illegal arms dealer in the world.”

Klaue leaned forward, scrutinizing your face. You maintained eye contact, forced yourself to. The man’s gaze burned through you.

“In exchange,” you continued carefully, “you will provide information about, and sometimes actions against, Walter Dietrich.”

His smile fell, his face suddenly stony. Leaping from his chair, he shouted, “Everybody out!”

The men in the bar immediately vacated, chugging down their drinks as they left. Klaue’s two men stayed behind.

“I said out!”

They scurried away.

Turning back to you, Klaue stared down at you, his hand twitching near the Beretta strapped to his powerful thigh. “Are you asking to get yourself killed?”

Walter Dietrich was the most powerful man in the arms dealing game since Tony Stark had turned his attention to other ventures. Practically untouchable, the Austrian frequented high-class circles, glad-handing politicians and the elite alike. Going after him was career suicide—followed by real death.

Which is why you hadn’t told Ross that bit of the plan.

“Dietrich is a piece on the board that needs to be removed,” you explained, your voice level. “Once I remove him, our partnership would cease. You’ll be free to take his position.”

“You’re absolutely fucking mad,” he growled.

You shrugged.

Barking out a laugh, he dragged the chair over to your side, plopped down so his face was mere inches from yours. Hot breath rolled over your sweaty face.

“Why should I do this?” His voice practically rumbled in your chest this close. “I have more money than I know what to do with.”

“Yeah, but you don’t want to retire. Besides,” you said, taking another gamble, “Dietrich could never touch you because of the vibranium. Now that that’s gone…”

His gaze sharpened, the muscle in his square jaw twitching hard enough to be visible beneath his beard. Fear spiked through you.

“Tell me more about hyenas.”

The man could give you whiplash with the bouncing nature of his thoughts. You grasped for trivia. “The only other thing I know is that the female hyenas are dominant over the males.”

“Really?”

“Seems to me they’re the ones with the real balls,” you muttered. His eyes bored into yours, amusement and something dangerous swirling in them.

You stood, his proximity and palpable body heat suddenly too much. “You have twelve hours to give me your decision. I take off after that.”

You strode around him, his gaze following you to the door.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

Pausing, you turned and flashed a razor-sharp smile. “You can call me…Agent Hyena.”

You could feel his feral grin through the door.

#Ulysses Klaue x Reader #Ulysses Klaue #Andy Serkis #Klaw #Ulysses Klaue imagine #Marvel #MCU #Age of Ultron #Black Panther

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