#anti: mark fitzgerald

[claresedwards]

Eli was totally impressing Clare

[selfaware-bungou-stray-dogs]

What kind of interaction would the hunting dogs have with Teen Reader

You don't need blood to be a family

Self-Aware! Platonic! Hunting Dogs x GN! Teen! Reader

Description: You have a new family and real home. You also start attending new school. And some people have questions about your family. Thankfully, you have people who can protect you.

Found family. Flags cameo.

Warning: OOC. PTA meeting. Some of the parents are terrible. Two people don't believe in Found family. I used random names will to choose on 'official' guardian for Reader. Reader were an orphan. Rude comments about Reader. Some very rude words in the Bonus part. English is my second language.

A/N: I have already made post about Hunting Dogs and Adult!Reader. Hunting Dogs interactions with Teen!Reader will mostly stay the same. They still will be incredibly protective over Reader and will try to become a group of elite bodyguards for Teen! Reader. The only difference I can point, is that Fukuchi won't be so openly hostile to Teen! Reader at first (and in case of Child! Reader he won't be hostile at all).

It all started one spring evening.

You were sitting in the school hall, waiting for PTA meeting to end.

You visibly frowned. PTA meetings for your family became really stressful since your first month in a new school.

Not because of your grades or behavior, no. Because of some parents.

_____

Even back in their world, BSD Cast decide to adopt you. So, after getting in real world and obtaining necessary documents, BSD Cast adopted you for real. Well, by documents, you were adopted by Natsume. But, in reality, you have ten fathers (Natsume, Fukuzawa, Mori, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Oda, Fitzgerald, Hawthorne, Dostoevsky, Fukuchi), three mothers (Yosano, Kouyou, Mitchel), three grandfathers (Hirotsu, Taneda, Melville) and a bunch of siblings, uncles and aunts.

You weren't related by blood, but you were family.

Unfortunately, not everyone could accept it.

When all of you moved in a new house, you started to attend new school. And new school means new people, new teachers and PTA.

In this school, PTA meetings were held weekly.

First PTA meeting were held in a week after you start attending new school.

Natsume attended the first PTA meeting. Everything went well.

Fukuzawa attended the second PTA meeting. Some people didn't like the fact you have two fathers. But no one listen to them.

Verlaine attended the third PTA meeting. Parents started questioning, why you have three fathers

Yosano attended the forth PTA meeting. Parents were glad, to finally see a mother. Unfortunately, the meeting was focused on vaccination in schools. And, of course, there were some anti-vax parents. They tried to give flyers about the harm of vaccinations. To Yosano. Yosano was calm, and her voice was sweet as honey. With few words, she told parents what they can do with these flyers, where they can shove them and was wondering, how their kids are still alive.

Anti-vax parents still terrified of meeting Yosano again.

The next seven meetings were attended by Hawthorne, Mitchell, Mori, Kouyou, Fukuzawa, Oda and Fitzgerald. Parents became more and more confused about how many fathers and mothers you have.

But after one PTA meeting, parents have even more questions.

_______________

The meeting was ready to begin. Most of the parents were glad, that none of your fathers or mothers arrived.

Their happiness were short-lived.

Right before the meeting started, someone knocked on the door and opened it.

"We are sorry for been late. It's the PTA meeting, right? [Y/N] told us correct classroom?"

Parents were ready to see another man who will introduce himself as your father.

They didn't expect, that five males will come inside. One of them were carrying an IV pole, second had a scar over his eyes, third was wearing tinted glasses, forth had black streaks in his hair, the fifth one has a beauty mark under his left eye.

At that time, everyone who has attended even one PTA meeting, learned to despise them. People, who haven't attended them, were slightly curious. So, when chance arise, Flags volunteered to attend PTA meeting. Unfortunately, Flags couldn't decide, which one of them will go, so they decide, that they will go together.

One of the mothers, Ms. Greenhill, frowned. She and her family were really vocal about how terrible your family were. Because you had multiple fathers and mothers.

"Let me guess, you are also [Y/N]'s fathers?"

Lippmann shook his head.

"No, we are their uncles."

Ms. Greenhill raised her hand. Her voice was shaking.

"Just... How many relatives do [Y/N] have?!"

Piano Man was the one who answered.

"Sixty seven. Including fathers, mothers, grandfathers, uncles, ants and siblings"

The rest of the meeting went well. Because parents were too shocked to say something rude.

______________

Ever since that day, your school life became tense.

Your classmates were constantly asking about your family.

Some thought that it was cool to have a big family. Others thought that you are all sick.

You ignored them. You loved your family. And this is more important than others people opinions.

On PTA meetings, other parents try to get a rise out of BSD Cast, but they didn't succeed.

You just continue attending school.

BSD Cast continue attending PTA meetings.

Today was Hunting Dogs' turn. Today's meeting were hold earlier than usual, so Fukuchi offered you to wait for them, so you six can grab a dinner later.

_______

Classroom door opened. Patents were leaving class. The meeting was over. You noticed a familiar mop of red rust hair. Soon your older brother Tachihara was standing near you. He ruffled your hair.

"Hey, [Y/N], ready to go grab some food?"

You close your eyes in bliss.

"Yup. I am so hungry, I could eat a horse."

Tachihara chuckled.

"Me too, kiddo. After listening to this people," Tachihara cast a quick glance at parents detection. "I need to eat something good to improve my mood."

You tilt your head.

"Did they say something that crossed the line?"

Instead of Tachihara, Uncle Jouno answered you. He gives you a sideways hug.

"Nothing too different from other times. 'You are a bad influence', 'why [Y/N] have so many fathers and mothers?'. Their normal yapping." Jouno start whispering, so only you and Tachihara can hear him. "And here I thought that we are supposed to be dogs and do all the yapping on meetings."

You three laugh. Other parents glared at you, but they didn't say anything. They were a little bit nervous because of Hunting Dogs. Despite not wearing their uniform and not having their swords, Fukuchi, Teruko, Tetchou, Jouno and Tachihara do look scary enough.

Aunt Teruko joined you three. She was glaring at The Jacksons. You remembered, that they were as vocal against you as The Greenhills. Moreover, once, they tried to harass Kenji. They called him an idiot from a dirty village. Thankfully for them, Kenji wasn't resentful. You noticed, that Uncle Tetchou was also glaring at Jacksons, while discussing something with Dad Fukuchi.

Teruko squinted for the last time and looked at you.

"[Y/N], you know, I kind of disappointed in you."

After noticing your confused face, Teruko quickly added.

"You have good grades. You do your homework. You don't pick up fights! You don't let me be a strict aunt! I wanted to be a strict aunt from time to time."

You huff and grinned. You opened your arms, inviting Teruko to hug you.

"Well, sorry, Aunt Teruko, can't help it. But, I hope you don't want to be and Aunt who pays for hugs. I will hug you for free."

Teruko grins playfully and crushed you in a hug.

"This one is acceptable."

Then you heard some arguing. All of you turned around.

Fukuchi was arguing with Mr. And Ms. Greenhills. Tetchou was slowly backing away, closer to you.

Some parents remained. They thought that they will see an interesting show.

Meanwhile, Fukuchi was growling.

"Will you stop harassing my kid and family, you two? We aren't bothering anyone! We are a simple family!"

Mr. Greenhill spits.

"You aren't a normal family! You are a bunch of unrelated people who made our kids think that having multiple partners is fine! That having a family bond with people that aren't related to you are fine!"

You whisper. Only Hunting Dogs heard you.

"Well… technically, consensual polygamy or polyandry are fine... And adoption existed for a long time."

Teruko reassuringly squeezed your hand.

Fukuchi hissed.

"Listen here, [Y/N] are our kid. I am their father. Fukuzawa is also their father. So as Mori, Verlaine, Rimbaud and Natsume. All of us are their family. We don't need blood to love them and wanting the best for them! So stop been a..."

Mr. Greenhill got furious.

"I will say what I want about you and the little bastards you have adopted!"

Ms. Greenhill looked at you with disgust.

"I am pretty sure that this rat will end in the slums with such an unnatural family."

The hall became quiet. Fukuchi breath in and out. He looked at you and nodded.

Tetchou immediately picked you up and put you on his back. Like he wants to give you a piggyback ride.

Jouno covered your ears.

Tachihara covered your eyes.

Teruko stand closer to Fukuchi.

Tetchou start moving with you on his back. He, Tachihara and Jouno were moving in the same speed, so your ears and eyes won't be stay uncovered.

You didn't see, how Fukuchi opened his mouth.

______

Tachihara and Jouno finally let go of your eyes and ears only when you were two blocks away from school.

Tetchou still carried you on his back. He looked up.

"Are you okay, [Y/N]?"

You nodded.

"Mhm. It wasn't the worst thing someone called me."

Tetchou smiles. He starts walking faster.

"Well, let's go and grab this dinner. Captain and Teruko-san will join us later."

You smile and looked back.

"You know... Today, the school library holds reading hours for pre-schoolers."

Jouno raised an eyebrow.

"And?"

You nervously giggled

"I think, they haven't finished yet. And kids heard everything Dad Fukuchi were saying right now."

The silence could be cut with a knife.

Tachihara, Jouno and Tetchou start walking faster.

Together, four of you said.

"Problems of tomorrow us"

_________

Bonus.

________

"Captain Fukuchi, can you, please, explain, where did a bunch of toddlers learned the words 'slum-trawling strumpet' and 'syphilitic eunuch' and why is school blaming you and Teruko?"

"Chef Taneda... It's a very long story..."

[affluenzafm]

you know you love me.

Meet BIANCA DESOUSA, or if you read the Anti Grapevine, THE CULTURED BADASS. She is a 23 year old ACTRESS, that currently resides in DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN.

She is known around the city for her FLIRTATIOUS & CUNNING demeanor, but they may be hiding something… SHE SLEPT WITH HER EX-BOYFRIEND'S FATHER IN ORDER TO JUMP START HER CAREER.

CINDY KIMBERLY, CIS WOMAN, SHE/HER.

Nothing has ever come easy for Bianca; For as long as she can remember, she’s had to hustle and fight for everything she has. Her parents left her in the care of her aunt when she was a toddler, abandoning her when parenthood felt like 'too much'. Her aunt took the role on with as much grace as possible, even if the two struggled to make ends meet. Due to the tight finances, Bianca began picking up odd jobs as a child, often using her charm and good looks to help get her by. At sixteen she lands a proper job at the mall, where she lives out every teen girl's fantasy -- She's discovered by a talent scout. Her career sets off quickly, becoming known as something of a video vixen, appearing in several music videos through the years. She became known for her looks, often using them to help her career; It's what she's always known, and has yet to fail her. Even as she transitions from being just a pretty face and into a full time actress, she continues to hustle, even when it's unneeded -- Bianca knows what it's like to go without, and she'll do anything in her power to keep from going back there.

it's all about who you know.

ELI GOLDSWORTHY. hookup. The relationship between Bianca and Eli is far from conventional, complicated by their professional ambitions and the unspoken rules of their industry. Yet, the intensity of their undeniable connection leads them to throw caution aside, and after a night of banter that escalates into something deeper, they end up sleeping together. What started as a mutual attraction quickly grows into something more, though neither is sure how their budding romance will affect their careers or where it will ultimately lead.

JOHNNY DIMARCO. ex-boyfriend. Their love was a force of nature — wild, passionate, and utterly consuming. It always felt like it was them against the world, two souls who defied everyone and everything just to be together. They thrived on the intensity of their bond, convinced nothing could ever break them apart. But their world shattered when his father's involvement in her life came to light. Her ultimate betrayal, sleeping with his dad to jump start her career, turned out to be an unforgivable wound.

MARK FITZGERALD. best friend. These two best friends are more than just partners in crime — they’re family, bound by an unshakeable loyalty that’s seen them through the wildest of times. Whether it’s getting each other out of trouble or diving headfirst into chaos together, they’ve always got each other’s back. On any given day, they might end up laughing in the back of a police car, the consequences of their latest misadventure catching up with them. But at the end of it all, nothing else matters. They know they’re all the family they need, and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

this character is taken.

[dalekofchaos]

Spawn fancast

After waiting in developmental hell for decades with no signs but Todd's empty promises, I've decided to finally fancast Spawn!

Laz Alonso or Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as Spawn/Al Simmons

Danny DeVito/Bill Skarsgard as Violator

Moses Ingram as Wanda Blake-Fitzgerald

Aldis Hodge as Terry Fitzgerald

Melody Hyrd as Cyan Fitzgerald(young)

Priah Ferguson as Cyan Fitzgerald(older)

Willem Dafoe as Freak

Mark Hamill as Nicholas Cogliostro

Omari Hardwick as Chapel

Paul Walter Hauser as Billy Kincaid

Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Jason Wynn

Valorie Curry as Jessica Priest/She Spawn

Jackie Earle Haley as Twitch Williams

Vincent D'Onofrio as Sam Burke

Winston Duke as Bobby

Dave Bautista as Tremor

Kevin Durand as Antonio "Tony Twist" Twistelli

Alyssa Sutherland as Angela

Karen Fukuhara as Jade/Lisa Wu

Michael Jai White as Redeemer/Anti-Spawn

Ron Pearlman as Malebolgia

[claresedwards]

I hate Fitz

[sinceileftyoublog]

Alejandro Escovedo's Songs, Living and Breathing

From left to right: Mark Henne, Alejandro Escovedo, James Mastro, Scott Danbom

BY JORDAN MAINZER

He's a true master of reinvention. Don't get me wrong: It's the same Alejandro Escovedo. But he's continuing to find out that there are many right ways to tell his stories, especially when it comes to their musical accompaniment. Escovedo hasn't released a new album of original material since 2018's The Crossing, and that's okay. In 2021, he shared a Spanish-language version of the aforementioned album, La Cruzada, an act whose sociopolitical ramifications speak for themselves, in an era of increasing anti-immigration rhetoric and xenophobia that the very album explores. And earlier this year, inspired by his forebears, Escovedo decided to revisit all eras of his discography.

Including tunes from pre-solo career bands Buick MacKane and The True Believers, Echo Dancing (Yep Roc) is 14 re-recordings of older songs. When Escovedo boarded a plane to Italy to record with Don Antonio (with whom he recorded The Crossing) and Nicola Peruch, he thought he was going to improvise a new record from his lyrical and melodic sketches. Upon hearing other bands' interpretations of his songs--namely Calexico's version of "Wave", originally from 2001's A Man Under the Influence--Escovedo thought, "I, too, can do that." The man who sings on Echo Dancing is, yes, older and wiser, having seen friends and family members come and go, continuing to find truth in stories both personal and fictional. But instead of focusing on his own voice, Escovedo obscures himself behind clouds of haze, electronic effects, sparse drum machines, and distorted guitars, the pain in his voice all the more affecting due to how isolated it sounds. On "Thought I'd Let You Know", a clattering song originally from 2016's Burn Something Beautiful, Escovedo stretches the running time a full three minutes, as if to give himself even more time to reflect alongside buzzing stabs of noise. He repeats, "We're not alone / We are all alone," the effective musings of someone struggling to make sense of the world around them.

At the same time, if songs with more traditional instrumentation sound futuristic on their Echo Dancing version, Escovedo pulls familiar sounds out of those that might have sounded dystopian in the past. The Crossing's "MC Overload", for instance, trades the original's chugging, metallic instrumentation and vocoders for bluesy picking, Gianni Perinelli's soprano saxophone, and Escovedo's deadpan baritone. And Antonio adds gospel-inflected organ to "Swallows of San Juan" and "Last to Know", which somehow sounds at home next to drum machines and dulled bass drums.

Escovedo's gear

When I saw that Escovedo was touring Echo Dancing, I thought, "Which versions of these songs would he play live?" Would we get the new version of "John Conquest" with syncopated synthesizers, or the Buick Mackane punk burner (technically and hilariously titled "John Conquest You've Got Enough Dandruff on Your Collar to Bread a Veal Cutlet")? Would he play fan favorite "Castanets", a self-described Mott the Hoople-style rock and roll song, or "Casta​ñ​uelas", the slow, drippy, half-Spanish language dub version with slightly different lyrics? According to his show last Thursday at FitzGerald's, the answer was, "Sometimes, both, other times, something in between the two, and occasionally, neither." During "Sacramento & Polk", Escovedo's venerable backing band--guitarist James Mastro, keyboardist Scott Danbom, drummer Mark Henne--adopted the upbeat punk drive of the original version from 2006's The Boxing Mirror, behind Escovedo's obscured vocals, which were inspired by Echo Dancing's version. On "Bury Me", a prescient tune when it appeared on Escovedo's 1992 debut Gravity, Mastro played the original's twangy slide guitar, while Danbom extracted the pure funk from the new version. Their performance of "Too Many Tears" combined the built-up dirge of Big Station's original with Escovedo's miles-away delivery of Echo Dancing's. And "Everybody Loves Me" retreated to a soulful, back-to-basics ethos, its blues-funk towering above the original's CCR-indebted strut and new version's wonderfully puzzling industrial country.

If the true testament to a song's lasting impact is how it can emotionally resonate over time, ballad "Sensitive Boys" was the highlight of the set. Introducing it, Escovedo paid tribute to his brother Manuel, who passed away weeks ago at 94 years old. Hearing Escovedo repeat, "The world needs you now," despite what we all knew to be true was heartbreaking, yes, but the band filled the room with an undeniable warmth, from Escovedo's deep belting to Mastro's plucky guitars and Danbom's keyboards, out of which he concocted a whole orchestra worth of sounds. It's sometimes hard to remember just how long Escovedo's been around when I think to myself that he hasn't put out anything "original" in a while. Hearing Echo Dancing and seeing him live reminds me that the sort of newness I look out for, even crave, is still limited by the construct of time. With the right shift in perspective and a couple tweaks, a song can be just as living and breathing as I am.

[grandhotelabyss]

That Stivers review is wonderful, and the arguments apply to Wilson's Odyssey translation, too. I remember reading it—for a book club no less!—(months earlier I impishly nominated Death in Venice and at the next meeting had a mutiny on my hands) and pulling my hair out at the absurdity of its reception. Simply compare the openings of various translations: Fitzgerald's 'Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story of that man skilled in all ways of contending,' Fagles's 'Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns,' and Wilson's 'Tell me about a complicated man.' Nothing seems to attract an 'I can fix them' mentality, regardless of gender, faster than the adjective 'complicated' in front of one's love interest.

Yes, ever since Heaney gave us "so" for "hwæt" in his Beowulf, translators want to make their zany mark on the first page. Outdoing even Heaney, the last Beowulf translation, by another Wilson-like translator-activist, started with "bro." "So, tell me about a complicated bro..." It's painfully mundane. Current literary culture can't seem to accommodate anything like an epic register. We're a civilization that legitimates itself by continuously delegitimating itself, so that its endless reform can justify its endless perpetuation. No epic self-confidence here. We've been headed that way for centuries. Milton in some respects desired it, himself leveled critiques of Greek epic in his Christian semi-anti-epic that a Wilson might appreciate, but he was so far from its realization that he could still compose, almost in spite of his own ideology, a genuinely martial music. None of this is a problem if somebody is taking the epic as a point of departure for their own unique work of modern art, whether James Joyce or Christopher Logue or Derek Walcott or Anne Carson, but a translator has a different responsibility, an anthropological one: to render the mentality of the original. Fine for us to be ourselves, but increasingly we cannot even begin to imagine anyone else, and this, ironically, in the name of our tolerance, of our openness to the other.

[claresedwards]

I hate Fitz so much like leave her alone

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 9.12 (after 1940)

1942 – World War II: RMS Laconia, carrying civilians, Allied soldiers and Italian POWs is torpedoed off the coast of West Africa and sinks with a heavy loss of life. 1942 – World War II: First day of the Battle of Edson's Ridge during the Guadalcanal Campaign. U.S. Marines protecting Henderson Field are attacked by Imperial Japanese Army troops. 1943 – World War II: Benito Mussolini is rescued from house arrest by German commando forces led by Otto Skorzeny. 1944 – World War II: The liberation of Yugoslavia from Axis occupation continues. Bajina Bašta in western Serbia is among the liberated cities. 1953 – U.S. Senator and future President John Fitzgerald Kennedy marries Jacqueline Lee Bouvier at St. Mary's Church in Newport, Rhode Island. 1958 – Jack Kilby demonstrates the first working integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments. 1959 – The Soviet Union launches a large rocket, Lunik II, at the Moon. 1959 – Bonanza premieres, the first regularly scheduled TV program presented in color. 1961 – The African and Malagasy Union is founded. 1962 – President John F. Kennedy delivers his "We choose to go to the Moon" speech at Rice University. 1966 – Gemini 11, the penultimate mission of NASA's Gemini program, and the current human altitude record holder (except for the Apollo lunar missions). 1969 – Philippine Airlines Flight 158 crashes in Antipolo, near Manila International Airport in the Philippines, killing 45 people. 1970 – Dawson's Field hijackings: Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorists blow up three hijacked airliners in Zarqa, Jordan, continuing to hold the passengers hostage in various undisclosed locations in Amman. 1974 – Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, 'Messiah' of the Rastafari movement, is deposed following a military coup by the Derg, ending a reign of 58 years. 1977 – South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko dies in police custody. 1980 – The 43rd government of Turkey is overthrown in a coup d'état led by General Kenan Evren. 1983 – A Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut, United States, is robbed of approximately US$7 million by Los Macheteros. 1983 – The USSR vetoes a United Nations Security Council Resolution deploring the Soviet destruction of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. 1984 – Dwight Gooden sets the baseball record for strikeouts in a season by a rookie with 276, previously set by Herb Score with 246 in 1954. Gooden's 276 strikeouts that season, pitched in 218 innings, set the current record. 1988 – Hurricane Gilbert devastates Jamaica; it turns towards Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula two days later, causing an estimated $5 billion in damage. 1990 – The two German states and the Four Powers sign the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in Moscow, paving the way for German reunification. 1992 – NASA launches Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-47 which marked the 50th shuttle mission. On board are Mae Carol Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese citizen to fly in a US spaceship, and Mark Lee and Jan Davis, the first married couple in space. 1992 – Abimael Guzmán, leader of the Shining Path, is captured by Peruvian special forces; shortly thereafter the rest of Shining Path's leadership fell as well. 1994 – Frank Eugene Corder fatally crashes a single-engine Cessna 150 into the White House's south lawn, striking the West wing. There were no other casualties. 1995 – During the Gordon Bennett Balloon Race, an American balloon is shot down by the Belarus military. 2003 – Iraq War: In Fallujah, U.S. forces mistakenly shoot and kill eight Iraqi police officers. 2005 – Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the Israeli disengagement from Gaza is completed, leaving some 2,530 homes demolished. 2007 – Former Philippine President Joseph Estrada is convicted of plunder. 2011 – The National September 11 Memorial & Museum in New York City opens to the public. 2013 – NASA confirms that its Voyager 1 probe has become the first manmade object to enter interstellar space.

[hardin-fitzgerald]

Is that THEO JAMES? No, that’s HARDIN FITZGERALD. The 36 year old WEREWOLF OMEGA MALE is a RANCH HAND. If you ask their friends, they’re known to be AMICABLE & PASSIONATE, but beware, they’re also known to be TIMID & PARANOID. Their friends also say that they’re into DADDY KINK, BONDAGE, AND PET PLAY but don’t you dare trying DEGRADATION, SCAT, OR HUMILIATION with them.

BASICS

Name: Hardin James Fitzgerald Nickname(s): Hard Age: 36 Date of Birth: July 22, 1986 Moon Sign: Ghost Moon Place of Birth: Somerset Race / Ethnicity: Caucasian Gender: Male Secondary Gender: Omega Pronouns: He/Him Occupation: Ranch Hand Species: Werewolf Pack: Canis Marital Status: Taken Mate: Sven Martel

APPEARANCE

Height: 6′0″ Weight: 170 pounds Build: Ectomorph Hair Color: Light brown Eye Color: Brown Tattoos: None Piercings: None Distinguishing Features: Nice smile with prominent dimples and athletic body Wolf Form: All white coat, small, skinny, and light on his feet. His ears are pronounced and longer/bigger than other creatures to sense the presence of ghosts in a location He’s very stealthy, agile, and fast.

PERSONALITY

Positive Traits: Amicable, passionate, honest, loyal Negative Traits: Timid, paranoid, damaged, reserved Pet Peeves: Dishonesty and being neglected Hobbies & Interests: Caring for animals, swimming, running, sex, reading mystery novels, writing short stories

NSFW

Kinks: Daddy kink, bondage, biting/marking, impact play (spanking, whipping, flogging, paddling, etc.), edge play, primal play, oral sex, anal sex, rimming, threesomes/foursomes, body worship, orgasm denial/control, sensory deprivation, gags, collaring, pet play. Anti-Kinks: Scat play, degradation, humiliation, watersports, needles, medical play, CBT, & fisting Safeword: Aces Signal: Three taps on the nearest surface Dick Size: 7″ Sexual Alignment: Submissive

BIOGRAPHY

   It took a full thirty-six years and fifty-two days to finally flee his homeland in search of a better life in the land of New Haven. Growing up with an abusive father, Hardin was always made to feel like the inferior son; the one that was nothing more than a mistake. As each day had passed, a shard of his self-worth would flake off and diminish until there was almost nothing left but a shell of a man. Had it not been for his cousin’s encouragement to leave it all behind and start anew, then maybe his father would have fully broken him. 

    Despite his fragile state he was able to take on a job as a ranch hand, still possessing love in his heart for animals and nature. At first he was really reserved and quiet, except in his cousin’s presence. Little by little he is growing out of his shell and branching out to make friends. He craves stability, protection, and a love he never truly felt from his family or past relationships. 

    Hardin was born under July’s Ghost Moon. Others might find him shy or reserved, or even distant, but he comes by it honestly. Once he gets to know someone he warms up. He still may appear aloof due to hearing the constant din from other realms. Since he’s still new in New Haven, he’s trying his best to fit in, find acceptance, and gain some footing on solid ground for once. So far it feels good to be the real him, not looking back on the life he once lived.

[dwellordream]

“...The gradual consolidation of the monarchy forced the nobility and gentry to turn to the crown for the economic and political resources necessary to sustain their positions. Their prosperity, power, and prestige depended on their success in securing offices, grants, pensions, wardships, and privileges for themselves and their dependants. Both upper-class women and men therefore spent considerable time and effort maintaining their personal connections at court. Lady Lisle not only frequently sent gifts and tokens to influential courtiers and court ladies, as we have seen, but she also cultivated less prominent figures like Anne Boleyn's receiver-general, George Taylor. In addition, she sent the king and queen cherries, quails and dotterels in the same way that the gentry donated provisions to the households of the nobles or courtiers who dominated their neighbourhoods.

…Women frequently drew on these connections in petitions to the king and his leading ministers. Fifty-six different noble women wrote letters containing suits to Wolsey or Cromwell. Their requests covered a wide variety of topics. Some were routine petitions for a relative or servant involved in a lawsuit or seeking patronage from the crown. In other cases, wives in failed marriages asked for help in securing support from their estranged husbands; mothers petitioned for custody of their children or tried to place them at court; and  widows begged for assistance in assuring their jointures, protecting their property, and fulfilling their duties as executrices. From the point of view of this article, however, the most revealing suits were those in which wives acted on behalf of their husbands, because those petitions most often reflected the interpenetration of private and public concerns that opened politics to women.

Some of these suits were, of course, about purely personal matters. On one occasion, for example, Lady Anne Russell asked Cromwell's help in getting Doctor Buttes, Henry VIII's physician, to attend her husband. Katherine Audelett approached Cromwell for help in resolving her husband's lawsuit with the abbot of Abingdon, while Lady Eleanor Brereton requested that a payment her husband owed the crown be postponed because of expenses he had incurred going to Ireland at the king's command. Nonetheless, many women's petitions on behalf of their husbands were related to public affairs and often, indeed, to sensitive political matters. Elizabeth, duchess of Norfolk, and Lady Cecil Maunsell both asked, for example, that their mates be relieved of their respective duties on the borders and in Ireland.

In I523, Henry VIII's second cousin, Elizabeth, countess of Kildare, sent Wolsey a long analysis of the situation in Ireland in which she charged Piers Butler, false claimant to the earldom of Ormond, with persecuting her husband and exposing the king's English subjects to the depredations of the Irish. On another occasion, she asked George, fourth earl of Shrewsbury, to ignore false reports that her husband was oppressing his tenants in Wexford. The countess was so effective in supporting the Fitzgerald earls of Kildare that in I535 a supporter of Cromwell's anti- Fitzgerald policy observed that if the widowed countess returned to Ireland, 'she could do no good'.' 

Elizabeth, countess of Worcester, was equally assertive in defending her husband against charges of oppression in Glamorgan. She counter-claimed that the plaintiffs were themselves murderers and extortioners and hostile to anyone who tried to maintain order. She advised Cromwell 'to give no credence unto their premises unto such time as their demeanour is know’. Women were particularly active in trying to protect their husbands in the rapidly succeeding crises that marked the late I530S and I540s. For example, in early I537, Lady Elizabeth Musgrave wrote to Cromwell because Sir William seemed to be out of favour despite his co-operation in repressing the Pilgrimage of Grace. She observed, his 'heaviness must needs be mine, by god's law that hath joined us together in marriage'. Besides asking Cromwell to be her husband's 'good and favourable lord', Lady Musgrave requested that he be excused from further service in the North; he was so alienated 'against the country for their rebellion' that he never wanted to live there again.

Margaret Wortley acted in the same spirit when she responded to a letter from Cromwell summoning her husband to appear before the council, probably in connexion with the Pilgrimage of Grace. She admitted intercepting and hiding the summons because her husband was 'sore troubled with sickness, being weak and very feeble, not able to labor without danger of his life'. Like Lady Musgrave, she justified herself by appealing to her duty as a wife: '[I] retain the same from his knowledge, with all other things that should augment his sickness, as god's laws bind me...'. She asked Cromwell to spare her mate until he could travel safely. In the same years, both Lady Constance Pole and Lady Joan Poyntz petitioned the privy council successfully on behalf of their spouses, Sir Geoffrey and Sir Nicholas. The wives of men accused of treason often appealed to the king to pardon them or show them mercy. They also participated in negotiations about the cost of such royal favour. 

In I539, for example, Elizabeth, Lady de la Warre, whose husband was implicated in the Poles' treasons, wrote to Cromwell expressing her gratitude that the king had both forgiven her husband and agreed not to collect the recognizances he had signed. In return for his mercy, the de la Warres promised to give Henry VIII their principal residence, Halnaker, in exchange for any royal property he chose to grant them. Lady de la Warre was under no illusion that they had any choice in the matter; ' we be his highness's, both loves, lands and goods'. Nonetheless, she asked Cromwell to try to insure that they received a fair exchange and that they be allowed to remain at Halnaker until the following summer so they could accumulate corn, cattle and other provisions elsewhere.'

When their husbands faced execution, women often appealed to the king for their lives in person. In May I534, after William Lord Dacre was indicated for treason, his wife Elizabeth, a daughter of George, fourth earl of Shrewsbury, wanted 'according to her duty' to plead to the king for him. Her father asked Cromwell to advise her how to conduct herself, since 'she hath not been accustomed or brought up in any affairs or uncomfortable business, but after the homely fashion of the country'. Although no accounts of her appearance before Henry survive, Lady Dacre did apparently go to court and present her suit to him. A month later, the king ordered her to stop her appeals until after her husband's trial.

A little over twenty years later, Lady Dacre's niece Anne found herself in a similar position when her husband, John Lord Bray, was involved in an abortive plot against Queen Mary. Lady Bray went to London as soon as she heard of her husband's arrest. Although she spoke with the queen's comptroller and solicitor and gave them letters from her father, fifth earl of Shrewsbury, she was not, initially, able to see the queen. While she waited, she sent tokens  to one of the ladies of the privy chamber and was in close contact with Mary's chief gentlewoman, Susan Clarenceaux. The earl's servant, Robert Swift, wrote his master that Lady Bray 'so handles herself in her suits as well to men as to women that she is both more commended and lamented than all other suitors is'.

When she was praised to the queen, Mary dryly commented that 'god sent often times to good women evil husbands'. Nonetheless, despite this discouraging remark, Lady Bray's suit was ultimately successful: her husband's life was spared and he was released from the Tower after twelve months imprisonment. Although many women from the nobility and upper gentry were petitioners to the crown and recipients of royal patronage, the select group who held appointments in the royal household or resided at court at the king's expense were particularly well placed to participate in politics and secure access to the bounty of the crown. 

These women, the court ladies of the early Tudor period, included members of the queen's household and the royal nursery and the wives, sisters, and daughters of the king's closest friends and favourite servants. Their numbers were always small: in the early years of Henry VIII's reign, for example, Catherine of Aragon's household included eight ladies-in-waiting and eight ladies of the bedchamber and maids of honour. In I540, the queen's household consisted of eight 'great ladies', nine ladies and gentlewomen attendant, five maids-in-waiting, four gentlewomen of the privy chamber, and four chamberers.

A document for I546 listed twenty-five women in addition to the queen's maids as 'ordinary' members of the royal household and eleven as 'extraordinary' lodgers; these figures suggest the total number of women who might reasonably be considered 'ladies of the court' at any one time. Altogether, I have identified ninety-seven women who held court offices during the reigns of Henry VII and VIII and thirty-three others who received allowances from the royal household but never held such posts. Women gained access to the court through the influence of their families. As the Lisle letters show, families had to mobilize all their connexions and friends to secure appointments to the queen's household for their daughters.

…To determine, however, whether, and to what degree, women at court were able to exercise independent influence on politics or the distribution of patronage is a more difficult problem. Only three court ladies can be unequivocally credited with doing so during the early Tudor period: Margaret Beaufort, countess of Richmond (Henry VII's mother), Anne Boleyn, and Catherine, duchess of Suffolk. On the other hand, a letter from John Husee to Lady Lisle does  indicate that women at court played a crucial role in distributing vacant positions in the queen's household: in I537, when Lady Lisle was seeking an appointment for her daughter as maid-in-waiting to Jane Seymour, Husee advised her not to seek assistance from either Thomas Cromwell or Francis Bryan 'for it is thought by my Lady of Sussex and other your Ladyship's very friends that it is no meet suit for any man to move such matters, but for such ladies and women as be your friends'."

Furthermore, the ladies of the court played a prominent role among the group of upper-class women involved in high politics on their own account in the I530S and I540s. Of the twenty-two women notable for their activity in this period and to be discussed in this article, fifteen - almost 70 percent - were connected to the court. Situated as they were at the centre of the maelstrom that merged personal, family, dynastic, and religious politics, they could not help being drawn into the factions, plots, and counterplots characteristic of court life in those decades. From the beginning, for example, a number of noblewomen openly opposed Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon: his sister Mary, duchess of Suffolk, Elizabeth, duchess of Norfolk, Gertrude, marchioness of Exeter, Margaret, countess of Salisbury, Mary, Lady Willoughby, and Anne, Lady Hussey. 

In January I53I, the duchess of Norfolk wrote the queen that partisans of the divorce were trying to draw her over to their party, but that she would never desert her. Shortly thereafter, she was expelled from court 'because she spoke too freely'. Only five years later, another group of women played a major role in Anne Boleyn's fall. According to John Husee, Elizabeth, countess of Worcester, and Anne, Lady Cobham were among her first accusers. Her sister-in-law, Jane, Lady Rochford, and Lady Bridget Wingfield also provided damaging evidence against her, while Elizabeth, dowager countess of Kildare and a distant cousin of the king's, joined the conservative faction plotting against her.

When another one of Henry VIII's wives, Katherine Howard, was arrested for committing adultery in late I54I, women were also involved, but this time as the queen's accomplices rather than her accusers. Lady Rochford was executed for abetting the queen's affair with Thomas Culpepper, while four of her female Howard relatives were convicted of misprision of treason: her grandmother, Agnes, duchess of Norfolk; two of her aunts, Katherine, countess of Bridgewater, and Lady Margaret Howard (wife of Lord William); and Lady Anne Howard, her brother Charles' wife. Neither the duchess nor the countess would confess to anything; members of the council who interrogated them described the older woman as 'stiff' and the countess as 'her mother's daughter'.

On the other hand, they characterized Lady Anne as 'a very simple woman' who 'neither thought she had offended nor lamented her imprisonment'. However, when they explained her misdeeds to her, she was 'very repentant and said she would have no trial [other] than the king's mercy'. Henry pardoned all the Howard women soon after the queen's execution. A number of upper-class women openly opposed Henry's assumption of supremacy over the church as strongly as his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. The marchioness of Exeter, the countesses of Salisbury and Derby, Anne, Lady Hussey, Lady Mary Kingston, and Lady Jane Bellingham were all implicated in the affair of Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent, in 1533. The danger of any connexion to Barton was soon apparent. 

After Henry VIII forgave the marchioness of Exeter for her involvement, she obsequiously wrote, 'I shall now most humbly prostrate [myself] at the feet of your royal majesty.' In excusing herself, she asked the king 'first and chiefly to consider that I am a woman, whose frailty and brittleness is such as most facilely, easily, and lightly is seduced and brought unto abuse and light belief.' Subsequently, Anne, Lady Hussey, refused to take the oath to support the royal supremacy or the Act of Succession. In August 1536, she was sent to the Tower because she used the forbidden title princess in addressing the king's daughter Mary. She defended herself by denying she had done so maliciously. In October, she both gave the Lincolnshire rebels provisions and money and tried to persuade her husband to rejoin the Lincolnshire rebels after he had fled to the loyalist earl of Shrewsbury.

Similarly, when the Pilgrimage of Grace spread to Beverley, Yorks. Christopher Stapleton's wife publicly blessed the rebels and wished them well in their 'good purpose'. Much more dangerously, she encouraged them to force her husband to take the oath and thus ensured his ruin. Lady Margaret Bulmer was burned at Smithfield for her role in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Lady Bulmer, reputed to be an illegitimate daughter of Edward Stafford, third duke of Buckingham, lived openly with her husband as his mistress while her first husband and his first wife were still alive. Her dubious birth and the sexual scandal surrounding her made her relatively easy to single out for punishment; Henry, therefore, made an example of her, rather than guiltier but more respectable noble women, such as Lady Hussey and the dowager countess of Northumberland.

The fall of the Poles and Courtenays in 1538 involved several women in their families. Constance Pole, wife of Sir Geoffrey, was imprisoned with him  in the Tower for a short period.  But the main targets were the two most important female members of the two families, Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury, and Gertrude Courtenay, marchioness of Exeter. Both women opposed the king's divorce and the royal supremacy. The government found a number of incriminating letters in a coffer belonging to the marchioness, who was corresponding with the imperial ambassador, Chapuys. Although Cromwell examined her himself and promised Henry he would not 'cease till the bottom of her stomach may be clearly opened', he could prove nothing treasonous against her.'

Yet, she remained in the Tower for two years before the king released her. The countess of Salisbury was even less fortunate, though she defended herself stoutly. After interrogating her for at least three days, William, earl of Southampton, and Thomas Thirlby, bishop of Ely, reported to Cromwell in despair, 'We assure your lordship we have dealed with such a one as men have not dealed withal tofore [i.e. before] us; we may call her rather a strong and constant man, than a woman. For in all behaviour, howsoever we have used her, she hath showed herself so earnest, vehement, and precise that more could not be.' Nonetheless, the servants they left to search the countess' house were more successful; they discovered documents that the government could use to justify attaining her for high treason. The countess was executed in 1541. 

The women I have been discussing were obviously involved in court and religious factions, yet little is known about how they functioned politically before they appeared in dramatic public roles as accusers of the queen or defendants in state trials. The only woman about whom we have this kind of information is Katherine Willoughby, duchess of Suffolk. Katherine was William, Lord Willoughby's, sole heir, and Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk's, fourth wife.' At the time of their marriage in I533 she was fourteen and he was forty-nine. Long before Suffolk died in I545, the duchess had into an intelligent and forceful woman, well known for her sympathies with religious reform. 

She was widely credited with moving her husband in a decidedly protestant direction. Indeed, her influence was a matter of great concern to religious conservatives: in I546 Thomas, Lord Wriothesley, and Sir Richard Rich tried to coerce Anne Askew, a radical protestant arrested for heresy, into incriminating the duchess. Within two years of her husband's death, an informant told the second earl of Rutland that the duchess ruled all  Lincolnshire. She was also a member of Henry VIII's inner circle during the last months of his life. In the early years of Edward VI's reign, Katherine was closely associated with Edward, duke of Somerset, and his servant, William Cecil. 

Twenty letters that she wrote to Cecil between I549 and I552 survive. They give an extraordinarily intimate picture of a personal and political friendship and show how a woman functioned in factional politics at mid-century. Many of the letters concerned the duchess' suits on her own behalf or on behalf of her relatives and dependants. Katherine was determined, for example, to receive some contribution from the crown toward her costs in caring for the orphaned daughter of the late queen, Katherine Parr, and her fourth husband, Thomas, Lord Sudley. She also wanted to purchase a dissolved chantry founded by her family. Her most persistent efforts, however, were on behalf of William Naunton, a distant relative by marriage, who was involved in a complicated dispute about the profits of an office he held from the crown.

When the matter was finally settled to her satisfaction, she wrote gratefully to Cecil, 'What you have done for me in cousin Naunton's cause, even so much as when I shall think on it, I shall blush that I am no ways able to requite your gentleness but with my hearty thanks, which be not the worth receiving of such a benefit.' The duchess was in close contact with Cecil during the most critical period in his political career, the year from October 1549 to September 155O. In November, when he was imprisoned in the tower, she assured Cecil she was not suffering 'from the common infection of feigned friendship ... though the place fail you to do me such pleasure and commodities as always I have found you most ready to do, yet I shall never fail you'. 

She promised to do everything she could for him, adding 'if there by anything which you think I may do, forbear me not'. The next month she sent a playful letter in which she expressed sorrow that 'you have not shifted your lodging'. In March, when both Somerset and Cecil were free and Somerset's supporters were trying to secure his readmission to the council, she and Cecil discussed whether she could go to London to maneuver on his behalf. 'If I could be any ways persuaded that I might do my lord any good, I would most gladly put myself in any adventure for it. But, alas, if I come ... and am unable to do that which we staked so long on, then shall I not only do him no good, but rather harm.' Before she sent this letter, she received word the council was going to recall Somerset and therefore decided to delay her journey. 

She advised Cecil to note who deserved thanks for the happy turn of events, but to do nothing for the present; their thanks 'must not at this time be uttered, but thought and laid up til time serveth better to declare them.' In the following weeks, Katherine tried to wean William Parr, marquess of Northampton, from his alliance with John Dudley, earl of Warwick; but, she concluded, 'the earl is his adamant, and therefore there is no question but if the one proceed, the other will follow after...' When Cecil became one of the king's secretaries in September, the duchess could not contain her pleasure. On the eighth, she thanked him for the good news. Ten days later, she began a letter, 'My good Cecil, but shall I call you so still now you be master secretary? Show you, if you will not have it so, for til you deny it, I will... '

 Still another letter followed in which Katherine described her friend's advancement in commercial terms. 'I have ever thought you were to be so good and saleable, but you must consider the exchange goeth high nowadays. And though it were painful for you to go as far as the Tower for it, thanks yet be the lord that in the end you were no loser. I am contented to become your partner as you promised me and wholly abide all adventures in your ship, be the weather fair or foul.' Throughout this period, Katherine maintained close relations with Anne, duchess of Somerset, the Lord Protector's wife, who had great influence over her husband and on the distribution of patronage. The two women, both staunch advocates of religious reform, had been friends since at least the late 1530s.

The duchess of Suffolk wrote to Lady Somerset frequently. She also often sent her petitions and then asked Cecil to intervene to secure a favourable response. When her efforts for her cousin Naunton were finally successful, for example, she instructed Cecil to 'heap one more thanks' on them. Lady Somerset's influence was so great that she was sent to the Tower at the time of her husband's second arrest in October 155I as a preventative measure. Although the government never actually accused her of anything, she remained there until Queen Mary's accession two years later. Like so many of the politically active women in early Tudor England, the duchess of Suffolk was both an heiress and a widow.

Indeed, of the ninety- one women mentioned by name in this paper, fifty percent were either heiresses, widows, or wives in second or third marriages; thirteen or I4 percent were both heiresses and widowed or remarried. Having property of their own, even though they often could not control it during their marriages, apparently empowered women and gave them the confidence or ambition to become politically active. Widows, of course, had the same control over their property as men, while women in second marriages often used prenuptial contracts and feoffments to preserve their rights. Elizabeth, countess of Kildare, made a remark in a somewhat different connexion that supports this analysis. 

After she asked Wolsey to remind her mother, Cecily, dowager marchioness of Dorset, to pay her dowry, she complimented her husband in a particularly revealing way: 'My said lord and husband had not had any great estate by me, yet I find him as good and kind unto me always as any man may be to his wife.' The countess obviously felt that she would have - and would deserve to have - greater leverage in her marriage once she had enriched her husband with her dowry. In both marriage and politics, the connexion between property and power held for women as well as men. As we have seen, the political goals and behaviour of early Tudor upper-class women were indistinguishable from those of noble men. 

They clearly identified with the interests of the patriarchal families to which they belonged; class was far more important than gender in shaping both their activity and their values. Although their action sustained the power of patrilineages that subordinated and even exploited them, this identification did reflect the real advantages they gained from their class position: a lavish and privileged style of life; access to, and sometimes even control of, enormous wealth; and the opportunity to share at least some of the power monopolized by their class. As we have seen, upper-class men accepted the political activity of their wives, sisters, and daughters and even praised their successes. Nonetheless, the language they used to compliment them ought to caution us against exaggerating the flexibility of gender boundaries in the period. 

Men praised effective women by saying they acted like men, language that simultaneously labeled them as atypical and reaffirmed the masculinity of the political realm. That equation, never challenged in this period, helps to explain why women's political activity neither threatened, nor stimulated debate about, the male monopoly of formal political institutions. Finally, this study has important implications for our understanding of how early Tudor government actually worked. It underscores how much of the distribution of resources and exercise of power took place outside formal institutions, particularly in the great household and the court, and how little distinction existed between the personal and the political, the private and the public.”

- Barbara J. Harris, “Women and Politics in Early Tudor England.” in The Historical Journal

[claresedwards]

Why would she date a violent transphobic bully who hates crimes her best friend, yet you want to ship him but not Eli with Clare?

Make Me Choose: im-too-girly asked: Flare or Eclare

[rosyvvoods]

🖊

Thank you so much for the ask!!! At the moment I only have my oc for Frank so I will blab about her bc I cherish her very much <3

ADDITION: Janet was heavily based off of American actress and activist Jane Fonda, both in looks and in the way she lived her life! Differences in appearance are brown eyes as opposed to blue and she has a few prominent beauty marks on her face. But the glamor and all is there!

Janet Lillian Fitzgerald was born on November 28, 1932, in Philadelphia, PA. She had a twin brother, John "Johnny" Michael Fitzgerald; her parents were Edward Fitzgerald and Florence Fitzgerald (nee Ruszicka). Her parents had a home in the Spring Garden neighborhood of the city, wealthy enough to live in an affluent part of town but still poorer than most of their immediate neighbors. (I tend to be long winded when I speak so I'll throw in a read more!)

Janet was always fiery and passionate about just about everything she did; she had a lot of spunk, where as Johnny was more the type to move in silence. Her father wasn't ever truly doting to either her or Johnny but he did love them and cared deeply for them. Their mother was more emotionally available as well as the fact that she often took them with her wherever she went.

Janet made friends with everyone she could, she was very outgoing in that way; she had friends from all over the city, though her best friend Stacey lived in North Philly, in the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood (where I headcanon Frank to have settled once he ran away from home- I'll do a Woods headcanon post later maybe!).

Some other fun facts about Jan are as follows, some of them are about how I ship she and Frank and just about their relationship:

(SLIGHT TW FOR ALCOHOLISM AND DEATH OF FAMILY)

Jan and Frank met when they were young, crossing paths often enough; it wasn't love at first sight by any means, they butted heads a little bit but in a playful way, and eventually Frank sort of elbowed his way into Janet's heart

During WWII, Jan's father- who was a veteran of WWI- fought in the war but was killed in action. This left Janet and Johnny's mother, Florence, a widow and a single mother.

Again in my headcanon, Frank didn't really like school too much- it was too structured and he preferred street smarts and common sense to book smarts despite being a very intelligent individual- but when high school rolled around he walked Janet to school every day ALSO despite the fact that she went to an entirely different school than he did

They were going steady after they both graduated high school and Janet was dating him when he enlisted and fought in the Korean War- to which they'd bicker about, considering Jan's very anti-war stance.

Johnny also enlisted and went to fight in the Korean War- but when he came back, he dug deep into alcohol to cope with what he'd done and gone through. Unfortunately, Johnny and Janet had a massive falling out- and a few days afterward, Johnny died due to extreme alcohol overuse/essentially overdosing on alcohol. Janet and her mother were absolutely destroyed.

This was one of the defining moments of she and Frank's relationship- even though he himself had just come back from war, he was there for her through the grieving process of her brother the same way he was there for her when her father died. This sort of cemented the fact that no matter what they were going to be there for one another.

Therefore when Frank expressed that he was going to go to Vietnam she blew up at him a little- but they worked things out, and ultimately, Frank (in his cheeky way) promised that they'd get married when he got back.

Then, of course, Janet was informed that he was presumed dead. And he didn't return for four years after he'd gone on the mission.

They did get married after Frank came back, and Janet returned the support she'd received from him in her times of need- she helped him rehabilitate through both what he'd done in Vietnam and what he'd gone through, though he refused to get into too much detail both because that was too much for him to go through again and he didn't want to tell Janet every horrific detail.

I haven't worked out toooooo many details after this but the little Woods family eventually grows, and they have twins, Brandy and Laurel (they were tied between hippie-dippie names that Jan liked and 'cool' 'badass' names that Frank liked, hence one twin girl being named Brandy and the other being named Laurel; their middle names are both flower power names though- Laurel Moon Woods and Brandy Love Woods). This does add to the tragedy of Panama and 1986 and Menendez of course but those are details to be worked out for later.

[acosmic]

reading/watching/listening, 2021 [pinned]:

books (favourites asterisked):

*Zeroville - Steve Erickson

*The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West

*The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

The Case Against Satan - Ray Russel

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art - Scott McCloud

The Shining - Stephen King [ugh]

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns - Frank Miller

*Surfacing - Margaret Atwood

The Love of the Last Tycoon - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Murder Mysteries - Neil Gaiman, P. Craig Russell

The Book of Illusions - Paul Auster

Sandman: Season of Mists - Neil Gaiman

Devil in a Blue Dress - Walter Mosley

*House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski

Come Closer - Sara Gran

*The Drowning Girl - Caitlin R. Kiernan [killer, haven’t finished it]

*Whipping Girl - Julia Serano

Darryl - Jackie Ess

*Laziness Does Not Exist - Devon Price

An Unauthorized Fan Treatise - Lauren James (internet novel available here - for now)

honourable mention/large chunks of poetry but not full books: William Carlos Williams, H.D.

movies:

A Place in the Sun (1951) [hate it]

Barton Fink (1991)

Adaptation (2002)

Nosferatu (1922)

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

something by neil breen (roommate is evil)

short films: Illusions (1983), Emak Bakia (1926)

unfinished: The Watermelon Woman (1996), Paterson (2016) [horrible]

secondary sources re: assigned literature:

Batman: “The Dark Knight Errant: Power and Authority in Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” - Christopher Bundrick (Riddle Me This, Batman! : Essays on the Universe of the Dark Knight, McFarland, 2011); “Additionality and Cohesion in Transfictional Worlds” - Roberta Pearson, (The Velvet Light Trap, U of Texas, 2017)

House of Leaves: “What’s Beneath the Floorboards: Three Competing Metavoices in the Footnotes of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves.” - Michael Hemmingson (Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 2011); “House of Leaves: Reading the Networked Novel” - Jessica Pressman, (Studies in American Fiction, 2006)

The Day of the Locust: “Artists in Hollywood: Thomas Hart Benton and Nathanael West Picture America’s Dream Dump” - Erika Doss (The Space Between, 2011); “Productive Desires: Materialist Psychoanalysis and the Hollywood Dream Factory in Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust” - Todd Hoffman (Literature, Interpretation, Theory, 2018) [interesting but objectionable]; "The Paintings in the Day of the Locust" - Jeffrey Meyers (Anq, 2009)

Nietzsche [secondary source for Layton assignment, read originals later]: “Apollo and Dionysos in Dialectic” and bits of “The Tragic Moment” - Paul Raimond Daniels (Nietzsche and “The Birth of Tragedy,” Routledge, 2014).

secondary sources not explicitly related to specific assigned literature:

film [assigned]: “The Whiteness of Film Noir” - E. Lott (American Literary History, 1997); “Reading Hollywood” - Jonathan Veitch (Salmagundi, 2000); “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectatorship” - bell hooks (Black Looks: Race and Representation). did a lot of skimming of articles and didn’t finish or thoroughly read many of them! probably missing some. rip.

misc: “The Concept as Ghost: Conceptualization of the Uncanny in Late-Twentieth-Century Theory” - Anneleen Maschelein (Mosaic [Winnipeg], 2002)

refreshing concepts [not assigned]: chapters 3/“Narrative” and “16/Genre” in The Craft of Criticism: Critical Media Studies in Practice (Routledge, 2018)

short stories, poems:

Fritz Leiber - Smoke Ghost

Ray Bradbury - There Will Come Soft Rains

T. S. Eliot - The Waste Land

Irving Layton - The Birth of Tragedy; The Fertile Muck

Margaret Atwood - It is Dangerous To Read Newspapers

Leonard Cohen - The Only Tourist in Havana Turns His Thoughts Homewards; A Kite is a Victim

AJM Smith - The Lonely Land

Jillian Weise - Ashley Shew Just Invented The Word Cryborg

Isabel Fall - Helicopter Story

June Martin - I sexually identify as the “I sexually identify as an attack helicopter” controversy

rest TBA

essays/articles [very, very incomplete]:

A. H. Reaume - Brain fog

Michael Hobbes - Everything you know about obesity is wrong

Charlotte Hyde - We already have a name for that: why “zoom” fatigue is nothing new.

Gretchen Felker-Martin - “I wish there was a world for us”: on the choice to consume small art; What’s the harm in reading?; 

Katie J.M. Baker - The road to terfdom: Mumsnet and the fostering of anti-trans radicalization

Alex V. Green - The Pride flag has a representation problem

Jamie Mackay - The whitewashing of Rome: Colonialism is built on the rubble of a false idea of ancient Rome

Jules Gill-Peterson - A microdose of liberation

David Davis - XVII, Part 3: On genital preference

Marquisele Mercedes - The unbearable whiteness and fatphobia of “anti-diet” dieticians

Sophie Lewis - Collective turn-off

Daniel M. Lavery - Art criticism in a world where museums let you lick the art

re: helicopter story - How Twitter can ruin a life (Emily VanDerWerff); G F-M piece above; Clarkesworld removes Isabel Fall’s story (Mike Glyer); That Twitter thread [on criticism] (Lee Mandelo); The talented victim is not the point (Conor Friedersdorf);

miscellanea:

smaller stuff by more knowledgeable trans than i

a shitton of student presentations, small papers (pretty good), and slides with audio (terrible)

yewchube: corsetry-related videos by costumers, furniture repairs/restoration, recipes/cooking, friend catchup

note: silly formatting meant to aid reading. very, very incomplete. if you want to read any of the books/articles lmk there’s a 90% chance of me still having the file saved.

[affluenzafm]

you know you love me.

Meet CLARE EDWARDS, or if you read the Anti Grapevine, NICKNAME UTP. They/She/He is/are a ## year old OCCUPATION UTP, that currently resides in NEIGHBORHOOD UTP.

They/She/He is/are known around the city for their/her/his POSITIVE TRAIT UTP & NEGATIVE TRAIT UTP demeanor, but they may be hiding something… SECRET UTP.

FACE CLAIM UTP, GENDER UTP, PRONOUNS UTP.

For Clare Edwards, there has always been a proper order of things in her life. With a strict religious upbringing, it was easy to follow the path laid out for her. She followed two main principles: Hard work and faith in god would always get her where she needed to go. It served her for years -- Even if it gained her a reputation for being a bit stuck up, and wound tight. Everything once made sense to her: She'd go to Columbia, become a journalist, have a thriving career as a writer. It was all God's plan for, made complete sense. Until her parents announced their divorce, and the truth came out that her father had been a cheater. The news rocked Clare's world, throwing everything she's known for a loop -- Only made worse when soon after the divorce was finalized, her mother arrived home from a trip with a brand new husband. Suddenly everything Clare once tied her identity too seemed less important, now thrown into disarray. Insult meets injury in the form of her fledgling career, one that she can't seem to get off of the ground. Nepotism hasn't done her any favors, only labelling her as another trust-fund kid looking for a way to pass the time.

it's all about who you know.

ELI GOLDSWORTHY, MARK FITZGERALD. ex-boyfriends. Clare always thought her and Eli were going to make it. They were high school sweethearts, both melodramatic and deeply in love with one another — Until Eli’s career became the forefront of their lives, seemingly leaving Clare out of his future plans. Enter: Fitz, who happily took advantage of that. After many fights between Clare and Eli, as well as Eli and Fitz, Clare ultimately left Eli for Fitz. Their relationship went up in flames eventually, too.

ALLI BHANDARI. childhood friends. These childhood friends were once inseparable, a package deal no one could imagine apart. Through every high and low, they stuck together, pushing each other to grow and become the best versions of themselves. Whether it was chasing wild dreams or facing life's challenges, you never got one without the other by their side. Now, though their lives have taken them down different paths, the closeness has faded—but the bond hasn’t. They still care deeply, loving each other from a distance, with the quiet understanding that their shared history will always connect them.

DARCY EDWARDS, JAKE MARTIN. sister and new step-brother. These sisters couldn’t be more different—Darcy is wild and free-spirited, Clare’s grounded and practical—but their differences only brought them closer. For the longest time, it was just the two of them, and they were perfectly happy with that, navigating life side by side. Then their world flipped upside down when their mom dropped a bombshell: she’d met someone on vacation and eloped. Suddenly, they had a new stepfather and, to their shock, a stepbrother, too. Now, they’re adjusting to this unexpected new reality, relying on their unbreakable bond to get through it together.

this character is open.

[positively--speculative]

You know, maybe if one of us starts off by saying something anti-Snyder weirdos will most definitely agree with, they’ll stop and listen:

Zack Snyder is no Oscar Wilde. He is no Mark Twain. He is no William Shakespeare. He is no F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Now, let me go on and explain what I mean.

I can write my little analyses about all of those authors mentioned and connect their work to whatever I know about their personal lives (Shakespeare is a bit iffy, though, since we don’t even really know much about him/her/they outside their work). I can do this, because all of them are long dead and so are the people they closely interacted with and had relationships with. Chances are, I’m not going to hurt anyone if I say that F. Scott Fitzgerald was an abusive, racist, anti-Semitic asshole and that stuff shows in The Great Gatsby. I don’t believe any of his living relatives are going to come at me, and if they do, who cares? Because in the grand scheme of things, they’ll be fine. I doubt any of them actually even got to know the man in person, so I’m likely not going to be putting any trauma on them, as the man will always be known as the author who wrote one of the greatest pieces of American literature and they’ll always be associated with “great work.”

Now, with Zack Snyder, it’s a bit different. Everyone who was directly impacted by his daughter’s tragic s/uici/de is still alive--they’re still grieving. They’re still processing that--Snyder included. The man took a year or two off from the public to process and grieve and I doubt he’s done. Any person with basic morals and empathy knows that it is not appropriate to joke or use such an event as a talking point to prove how “bad” his movies are. I don’t think it’s asking too much to suggest the man should be given a break. By all means, criticize his movies--trash them if you want to, but do so with what is actually presented in the movie, not with his personal tragedies. Maybe in another century, if Snyder is still relevant, critics will connect his art with his personal life. He will be long gone and so will anyone who knew him or Autumn personally. Or, maybe--as some of you haters might enjoy suggesting--he’ll be completely irrelevant and “unworthy” of being talked about. Whatever. Either way, he is not a fictional character you can just kick around with shitty headcanons and he is not some meme-able historical figure. He is a real, living, breathing person that none of you have any evidence of being a terrible person. So, maybe you all should, I don’t know--lay off?