#alexandra-merrick

[wolfknightpoe]

@alexandra-merrick

There were very few people who could make Vincent not be a sad sack or in a state of controlled, but simmering anger tonight. But Alexandra was one of the few who at least could get his face to soften. They had been buddies since they'd met as kids in Covaire's school system after all.

"Evening Al. You want a drink? I seem to have picked up one too many at the bar."

[edcn]

The last couple of weeks were—- a whirlwind. Invitations here, interviews there, she loved the hustle and bustle of award season, even more so when she was nominated even if that made everything even more stressful so having a quiet night was nice even if it was meant to be a celebratory one still. She'd invited Alex — they were friends since the first time Eden had seen her on Broadway and wanted to meet her after, who was nominated for a Tony, for dinner. A quiet night. A breather between events and yet meant to celebrate them too.

Excitement follows her to the door when the doorbell announces her arrival. "Alex," she beams once the door is open "Hi!" she draws her into a hug. "Congratulations on your nomination." she'd called already but still "It's so deserved!" / @alexandra-merrick

[alexisnoir]

Look what I've purchased - yup When the Rose Speaks its Name a Sherlock Holmes Anthology, a charity anthology showcasing queer Holmes and Watson inspired by the original Arthur Conan Doyle canon.

I can't wait to start to read it but right now I need to finish something before I do so later today :)

@whentherosespeaks

[movie--posters]

So I watched IWTV, enjoyed it. I’ve been a fan of Anne Rice for years. Never once thought they’d do anything with the Mayfair Witch books and I’m curious about the show. Can someone who’s seen it tell me a bit of what to expect? I really enjoyed the witch books but it’s been over a decade since I read them. I remember that I liked that they mapped out a sprawling, gothic family tree for multiple generations and I loved Julian Mayfair a lot. They changed some stuff in IWTV and I didn’t mind it but I haven’t seen much on the Mayfair Witches.  Do they change a lot? Is it watered down? The whole story was a fucked up incest driven mess. I loved that. I’ll admit that I mostly really cared about the family history and wasn’t super invested in Rowan or Michael Curry at the time but again I was younger then. The gifs I’ve seen of the show look great. I remember absolutely loving the part where Rowan and Michael go through the house room by room for the first time and see things from all the old relatives and ancestors. I loved how complicated it was and that the characters were complex. I liked the fucked up parts too. The dark force hanging on the edges of the family, driving them to the point where the story picks up. . . someone tell me a bit please! I’ve adored Anne Rice for years, tell me your thoughts on the show! I’d like to hear from both people who have read the books and people who haven’t!

[undercoverhunter-elijah]

@alexandra-merrick

He was working at Desires for a shift. And had been happy to hear that Alex had made it back. He'd felt a little guilty about how he'd left it. But he also believed people when they said that they just needed space and time. Because that was usually what he wanted. He came into the dressing room and saw her in front of her mirror. Walking up so she could see him in the mirror before he touched her. "Hey. Good to see you..."

[nalyra-dreaming]

I don't think Amc will refrain from exploiting a possible Rowan/Lestat relationship. MW is a disaster in terms of acting, narrative and character building and has been criticized both by viewers and reviewers. Inserting Lestat in the series would be a guaranteed way of renewing the audience interest in it. And straight white couples always work with the general public.

... I'm not so sure, tbh.

(And I think they already kinda closed that route with Ciprien?!)

They didn't manage to include one connection last season, while IWTV did several, and... tbh, I had hopes for Rowan at first, but... I'm not sure Alexandra Daddario can carry this. (She is extremely beautiful, but I was underwhelmed by her acting, sorry.)

And I'm not sure simply throwing her in there will help it in any way, I mean I haven't seen her with Sam yet, but... they weren't able to conjure any kind of chemistry with her and Jack Huston and... to quote Sam, it "is their job to fabricate it" - and they couldn't manage?!

Soooooo.... I don't think that would work, "straight white couple" or not, because that "straight white couple" (Rowan and Lasher!) definitely didn't. Nor any of the other sex scenes in MW btw. Just... no appeal, sorry.

That said, I would love Rowan in IWTV, but as a powerful and self-confident witch, please. And maybe in combination / relation to Merrick Mayfair, exploring their families and the vampiric connections to those? And the Talamasca?! That route would be much more interesting tbh.

[blccdchcrry]

˗ˏˋ . ˊˎ˗

@alexandra-merrick​

Sori slipped into the city just as quietly as she had slipped out— with only the alphas of the city knowing at first. She arrived a week ago to establish revamping cosmO+ to prepare for another grand opening. Quiet, to take place in another week’s time.While she couldn’t understand why her Sire would send her away again - or at least why she wouldn’t stay in the city with her - she was happy to be back in Covaire.

Covaire just offered an atmosphere you couldn’t get anywhere else. Once you were in, you would always crave it.

There were other things she’d craved in her absence — other people. She’d left her something before her departure. A sweet goodbye that would hopefully represent words that Sori couldn’t bring herself to speak just yet. The vampiress was one of death, and she did not want to bring any upon the girl... her little human fascination. 

It was quite easy to slip into her apartment. She had a much harder time being patient. She waited, sitting back in a chair in the living room with one leg crossed over the other. The apartment was dark until the door finally opened, and a light turned on.

Sori looked towards the door, her voice raising though she remained seated —— “Hello, babygirl.”

[simonhbishop]

@alexandra-merrick​

He’d visited the establishment a couple times before, and well, the choices had been many... he’d fucked a couple of the dancers. Though, one that he’d been unable to do more than a few minutes talking had escaped him every single time. At first, he’d been perplexed by it, until he’d realised that said Ruby girl - or Alex - was the number one dancer. That had explained a lot.

Tonight, he hopes that maybe, he’ll get lucky. Not necessarily to get her in his bed, but to at least get a private dance. He comes up to her, large warm hand at the small of her back. You can tell that he works a lot with them, because even his healing abilities cannot fully erase their roughness. “We meet again.” His accent is thick, there’s no hiding that he’s from somewhere in England.

[xdaniellexbrisbyx]

@alexandra-merrick​ Location: Desires

Danielle was shocked that she was taken out for the evening to work at Desire’s, not that she was complaining. The times she had been in there, it had always been a fun night; despite who had rented her. The redhead was making her way around the club before the doors opened when she caught sight of one of the dancers. A smile adorned her features. “Hey, it’s Alex right? Or Alexandra, what do you like to go by?” The last thing she wanted to do was to offend anyone. 

[whileiamdying]

A Warhol Superstar, but Never a Star

Cynthia Carr’s compassionate biography chronicles the brief, poignant life of the transgender actress Candy Darling, whose “very existence was radical.”

A 1971 portrait of Candy Darling, promoting her role in the play “Vain Victory: The Vicissitudes of the Damned.”Credit...Jack Mitchell/Getty Images

By Alexandra Jacobs March 31, 2024

CANDY DARLING: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar, by Cynthia Carr

Never mind soup-can paintings and portraits of the famous — what Andy Warhol keeps on giving is books. He’s like Mother Ginger in “The Nutcracker”: Smaller people keep running out from under his capacious skirts to bow or curtsy.

The latest is Candy Darling, the transgender actress who succumbed to cancer at 29 in 1974, after being immortalized in a famous photograph by Peter Hujar and in the Lou Reed song “Walk on the Wild Side.” She had lived fast — indeed frequently on speed — died young, and left a mutable corpse, with considerable dissent among family and friends about whether she should be buried and eulogized as a man or a woman.

The first full-length biography of her, by Cynthia Carr, a longtime staff writer for The Village Voice — quite the Mother Ginger itself, of late — is compassionate and meticulous, reconstructing its brittle, gleaming subject as one might a broken Meissen figurine.

Born the day after Thanksgiving in 1944, Candy Darling was christened James Lawrence Slattery in Queens, soon moving to the ticky-tacky conformist hamlets of North Merrick and then Massapequa Park, Long Island, which she’d later euphemize as her “country home” but which was then an apparent cesspool of toxic masculinity.

Her father, John, was a cashier for the New York Racing Association who gambled, drank and was violent: the ultimate Daddy Dearest for a child with effeminate tendencies. Her mother, Terry, a receptionist and bank teller, was more supportive and loving — but still, hamstrung by shame. Candy’s half brother, Warren, babysat for her as a child but did not accept her as a woman.

As a child, “Jimmy,” as Candy was known then, was shunned socially and bullied terribly, once ushered onto a box and into a noose by two teenagers in a neighbor’s backyard. Understandably, she avoided regular school as much as possible; her education was in magazines, cosmetology and, of course, movies — she was a Kim Novak superfan, later emulating her.

She worked briefly at a beauty parlor, whose sympathetic owner she took on adventures like horseback riding. “We can always imagine we’re out in the wide-open spaces,” she said dreamily. “And if you imagine it strong enough, you will be.” 

Like Ada Calhoun, the daughter of the art critic Peter Schjeldahl who took over his unfinished biography of the poet Frank O’Hara with sparkling results, Carr gets a boost from someone else’s abandoned legwork. Darling’s close friend Jeremiah Newton interviewed many of her intimates before they died — he features prominently in a 2011 documentary, “Beautiful Darling” — and shared copious photos, letters and the diaries that Darling began keeping at 13 (some previously published). One is titled “The Worst Years of My Life.”

Carr spares us the ponderous establishing shots that weigh down many books of this genre. Though “Worst Years” covers the early ’60s, for example, the only mention of John F. Kennedy in Carr’s book comes via a fan taking a picture of Marilyn Monroe the night she sang for his birthday. Candy Darling was apolitical, the author writes — she had a wistful incandescence more than a “fire in the belly” (as Carr titled a previous book about the artist and AIDS activist David Wojnarowicz) — “yet her very existence was radical.”

She and the future Holly Woodlawn, another Warhol favorite, both toiled as file clerks and got out of the draft, Holly by showing up in hot pants and rouge; Candy by bursting into tears.

Stardom was Darling’s absolute raison d’être. You might argue that she was not only transgender but trans-era, longing to be a product and protectorate of the studio system. Alas, Warhol was no Louis B. Mayer, his films mostly art-house experiments — Carr is heroic at summarizing them — and when Darling finally gets to Los Angeles, for the premiere of his movie “Women in Revolt” (titled “Sex” at the time), the closest thing she gets to a break is broken promises from a drunk Ed McMahon needing roadside assistance. She does appear for about 15 seconds, uncredited, in the nightclub scene of “Klute,” and for a while dated Roger Vadim.

Starring in Tennessee Williams’s late-career work “Small Craft Warnings” off Broadway was another high point — though even then neither the male nor the female actors wanted her in their dressing room, and she was consigned to a broom closet. She appeared in a Warhol-staged fashion show for Halston, but was only allowed to wear a maid’s costume.

Darling kept her chin up despite these humiliations, but again and again the rest of her body betrayed her. (Poverty and drugs didn’t help.) By 18, she’d lost almost a third of her teeth. She agonized about what she called “my flaw” — the pesky penis — but vacillated on what the publicist R. Couri Hay, one of those who eulogized her using the masculine pronoun, termed “the final cut.”

The massive quantities of unregulated female hormones she took, doctors and others thought, probably killed her — and yet dying young was in keeping with her fantasy of kinship to platinum-haired idols like Jean Harlow. Sardonic to the end, she joked that the presumed tumor hardening her belly was some kind of immaculate conception.

In a society ill equipped to accept her, Candy Darling’s short life was one of couch-surfing and cadging, which can make for some weird and grotty pages — oh, there’s a desiccated chicken under the bed. Many of those who remember her are unreliable narrators. But, as Carr notes: “All of them so delightful!” Bob Colacello, the O.G. Warhol chronicler, wrote that news of her fatal illness led to the only time he’d seen the artist cry.

There wasn’t really vocabulary to describe the territory Darling was exploring back then — maybe there’s too much vocabulary now, but that’s a different conversation — and her biographer extends a sure hand across the breach. To push her from the Warhol wings to center stage, at a moment when transgender rights are in roiling flux, just makes sense.

And you have to cheer when Tennessee Williams is asked by some rude person whether his star is a transsexual or a transvestite, and he roars back: “What a question to ask a lady!”

CANDY DARLING: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar | By Cynthia Carr | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | 432 pp. | $30

Alexandra Jacobs is a Times book critic and occasional features writer. She joined The Times in 2010. More about Alexandra Jacobs

[intriguingpeoplebyangelafloyd]

JOSEPH MERRICK The Elephant Man

JOSEPH MERRICK

5 August 1862 – 11 April 1890

The Elephant Man

            Joseph Merrick, the ‘Elephant Man’ was an English man with a face and body suffering with deformities. He was believed to have had Proteus syndrome; a rare disorder also known as Wiedemann Syndrome.

He was born in Leicester, England and began developing abnormally in the first few years of his life. His mother died when he was aged 9, and his father remarried. Joseph left school aged 13 intending to find work and was rejected by his father and had to leave home. Aged 17, 1879, he started working at a workhouse for the next four years.

            He contacted showman Sam Torr interested in being exhibited at a freak show. The group travelled to London and was exhibited in a shop across the street from London Hospital. Dr. Frederick Treves invited Joseph to the hospital to be examined and photographed. Tom Norman’s freak shop was closed by authorities and so they sent him to tour Europe. In Belgium he was robbed by one of his managers and was abandoned. He made his way back to London, and unable to communicate the police found Dr. Treves card on his person.

Joseph moved into the London Hospital and was invited to stay for the rest of his life. Treves visited him daily and the two became good friends. Joseph became well known in London society and was visited by Alexandra Princess of Wales.

Joseph died aged 27, in 1890 from asphyxia. Treves did the autopsy and said he had died of a dislocated neck, Joseph who had spent his life having to sleep sitting up due to the weight of his head, attempted to sleep lying down like other people.

#josephmerrick #theelephantman

[praavicordius]

@alexandra-merrick​

He'd visited this place a couple times a month easy, if it was a good month it'd even be a couple times a week. This time, however, Abel had a distinct mission in mind. Squinting as he stepped from the darkness outside into the lit club, Abel nodded over to the bouncer before he turned to look for who he'd come to Desires for.

 It didn't take Abel long for his eyes to catch her flick of dark hair, and immediately the wolf settled into a grin. Making his way toward Alexandra, Abel made it a point to drop to sit as close as he could to her, and within clear view. Tipping his head back, the wolf gave a loud playful whistle to catch the dancers attention.

[defectivelabwolf]

@alexandra-merrick​

Normally, Tesla would be in person with her new gal pal to do this, but she had a dissertation to write for her Psychology class. So no in-person hook-up or bar crawl for beautiful people and fun with the like-minded dancer tonight. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t talk “shop” with her over Discord.

“So give me the details, Alex. Saw you eyeing the captain of the Lacrosse Team at the party this weekend. Any development on that?”

[undercoverhunter-elijah]

alexandra-merrick

patrickpendrix

prismatiiicx

mathiascain

@covairecitystarters​

::open starter::

The knocking on his apartment door had woken Eli up. He’d laid in bed for another minute hoping whoever it was would go the fuck away. He had no real idea what time it was beyond that the sun was still up. When the knocking came back he got up with an annoyed groan and shoved his legs into a pair of jeans from the floor, not bothering to button them up or to find a shirt. Muttering, “Hold your horses...” He opened the door abruptly, rubbing the back of his head as he yawned and, looking at whoever had been on the other side, said, “Yes? What?”

[murfpersonalblog]

"TWO thoroughly well-made shows"?.... 🤨 Come on now, Times. I hope this isn't a package deal situation, where if one is bad the other doesn't win, because Mayfair Witches was NOT it, everyone knows this. The acting and especially the writing were SWAMP WATER. Which makes no sense, since the book was ALREADY WRITTEN FOR YOU, Esta! She needs to be replaced or something, because NO. If MW wins something just so IWTV can get its flowers, then fine, but trust that it was under duress.

But Rolin Jones? GOATED. S1 of IWTV is everything Mayfair Witches wishes it could be. Just USE. The effing. SOURCE MATERIAL, Esta! You know why people praise the dialogue in IWTV? Cuz Rolin was literally using whole quotes from THE BOOK. And the actors have the chemistry and the charisma and the range to pull it off! (Half the time I didn't know WHAT Lasher & Rowan were saying.) Know why people praise the changes Rolin made to the characters? Because he ELEVATED both the plot and characters from THE BOOK; not using hamfisted performative wokeness for cheap diversity points, but actually CONTEXTUALIZING how characters of certain backgrounds actually fit into the WORLDBUILDING and narrative framework! Esta, did you even READ The Witching Hour????? (Didn't someone say Alexandra Daddario only watched AR's interviews about the book? 👀🤦 Meanwhile Sam Reid is out here giving doctoral dissertations on everything AR ever wrote, like WTF y'all.) Anne Rice is clearly a much better writer and storyteller than you, Esta, so make life easier for yourself by NOT trying to outdo her!

I'm not even interested in MW getting a second season; they've already screwed everything up by rushing the whole book while giving us NOTHING from it. Where the HELL is Julien Mayfair? Where are the Mayfairs in Haiti? WHO are the 13 Witches, Esta??!? She gave us NOTHING, but some stupid witch hunter sideplot when she hadn't even established WHY Lasher was evil! 🤦 Show, don't tell, Esta!!!!

Sure, Julien's not here, cuz Michael's not here as a "Curry" (this makes me wonder about Merrick Mayfair now too), Julien's victrola's been replaced by the voodoo doll, Mona's not here (so I can assume there's no Morrigan & Ashlar line of Taltos-Mayfairs, which WTF), and Lasher doesn't seem to be a learning ghost that Julien taught at all. But I bet Esta won't even use the Taltos, or the miscarriages and the extra chromosome, or Emaleth. Will we ever get Mona and Quinn, and Morrigan and Ashlar? Unlikely, since Esta wasted our time with Tessa. 🙄 So what is THE POINT then???

This isn't an Immortals UNIverse--it's a MULTIverse at best, cuz IWTV & MW certainly don't feel like they're in the same world AT ALL. We NEED to see Merrick Mayfair, but even Rolin said they're "mostly" looking at books 2, 3 and 6??? Which is WORRISOME, since Merrick is THE BEST way to cross the both series. And Blood Canticle is NOT the goal you should be gunning for, Esta, since it was AR's worst writing, too! 🤮 Just cuz you wanna see two pretty people kiss on screen does NOT mean it's worth keeping the bad acting from this dull flat dry twitchy awkward dumb Rowan around long enough to make a further embarrassment of herself--throwing herself at Lestat, when we all know Lestat turns Rowan down, refuses to make her a vampire, tells her to go back to her husband, and goes back to HIS OWN husband, Louis. 😜🤡

Is that why you got rid of Michael and gave us Ciprian, Esta? So you could have an excuse to pair Rowan and Lestat up without BOTH of them being sloppy cheaters? SAVE IT. No one's shipping Lestat with Rowan frikkin Mayfair, get serious. Lestat also said Rowan was needed by the Mayfairs as the designee--is that why Esta's been pushing this awful plot of these OOC Mayfairs now hating Rowan and ostracizing her, and creating the Jojo character who wants to lead them? So it can free up Rowan to run off as a vampire with Lestat--the Jeese Reeves 2.0 from the ridiculous QotD movie? 😨 I see you, Esta--KILL IT WITH FIRE, AMC!

Especially since the only reason Lestat was even involved with the Mayfair plot at all was one sidequest to help QUINN AND MONA find MORRIGAN, so unless AMC's gonna adapt Blackwood Farm next, there's no POINT making anything from Blood Canticle. And AR pretty much retconned everything that happened in Blood Canticle anyway, cuz everyone hated it! What makes YOU think you can do any better, ESTA!?

I love the Immortals Universe as a concept, cuz AR has SO MUCH good material one can use, to really give us the horror and gore and ghastliness of different immortal monsters. But I hate the MW project, cuz Esta isn't even using what she has.

Hopefully AMC finds better writers and adapts the Wolf Gift, and just ends the Mayfair Witches with S2; we don't need anymore of this mess.

the cast and producers of interview with the vampire and mayfair witches will be doing an emmys for your consideration panel on march 15th!

[edcn]

A pleased smile makes it on to her lips when she spots her favourite dancer. It’s been a while since she had seen her, dancing or between the sheets—- “Looking good,” she offers, her voice full of praise and compliment. “You working,” she questions “Or getting to enjoy yourself?” // @alexandra-merrick​