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mel-at-dusk · 4 years ago

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SEX, LIES AND CHEAP COLOGNE: AN ORAL HISTORY OF ABERCROMBIE & FITCH’S SOFTCORE PORN MAG

The story of how an oversexed, strangely intellectual magazine by a polo shirt brand completed the improbable task of changing the course of sexuality in America’s malls, homes and moose-print boxers

Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries was a shrewd businessman, but he didn’t always make the best decisions. Between the blatantly racist T-shirts he signed off on, the child thongs he called “cute” and the series of public statements he made admitting that his brand intentionally excluded anyone who wasn’t “cool” and “good-looking” with “great attitudes and a lot of friends,” it’s no wonder that he spent the majority of his reign at Abercrombie in hot water. (For the uninitiated, Abercrombie made what fashion writer Natasha Stagg calls “sexy versions of the clothes kids already wore to school: T-shirts and jeans, stuff you could toss a football in or throw on the grass if everyone decided to go skinny-dipping.” More importantly, as she writes in her book Sleeveless, it was “for those who were casually peaking in high school.” It, meanwhile, peaked in the 1990s.)

An exception to Jeffries’ questionable CEO-ing would be A&F Quarterly, the glorious, controversial and questionably pornographic “magalog” he created at the height of the brand’s popularity in 1997 in order to connect “youth and sex” to its image. Woven in amongst surprisingly thoughtful interviews with A-list humans like Spike Lee, Bret Easton Ellis, Rudy Guiliani and Lil’ Kim was a cascade of naked photos from photographer Bruce Weber which showed nubile youngs in various states of undress. They were frolicking, they were caressing and they were deep in the throes of experimenting with types of sex that — at the time — had never been portrayed by mainstream brands.

With issue titles such as “XXX,” “The Pleasure Principle” and “Naughty and Nice,” the Quarterly dove headfirst into the risque. During its 25-issue run between 1997 and 2003, it printed interviews with porn star Jenna Jameson, offered sex advice on how to “go down” in public and suggested — on multiple occasions — that its readers dabble in group sex. One issue published an article on how to be a “Web exhibitionist,” another featured a Slovenian philosopher barking orders to “learn sex” at school and big-dick Ron Jeremy even stopped by to talk about performing oral sex on himself and using a cast made from his own penis.

The actual Abercrombie clothing being modeled in the magalog was an afterthought, appearing in Weber’s photos as more of an impediment to nudity than an actual, purchasable item. The whole thing was, as journalist Harris Sockel put it in an Human Parts essay, “20 percent merch, 20 percent talk and 100 percent soft-core aspirational porn.”

None of this would have been vexing had a more adult-oriented brand been the ones hawking it, but Abercrombie & Fitch was — and still is — marketed toward suspiciously toned teenage field hockey players named Brett. Though he might have looked like a man in his big salmon-pink polo, Brett was but a child. Abercrombie was fond of saying its clothing was for college-aged clientele, but we all knew where its real haute runway took place — inside the crowded halls of every middle school in Ohio.

The Quarterly, too, was intended for college kids, and to prove it, Abercrombie shrink-wrapped it in plastic and sold only to those over 18 for $6 a pop. You could buy it as a subscription, of course, but it was more commonly found in-store, nestled alongside A&F’s cargo shorts and “thongs for 10-year-olds,” a questionable placement that prompted concerned parents, conservatives and Christians to accuse Abercrombie of sullying their children’s minds with impure thoughts.

As such, the Quarterly became the subject of a mounting number of boycotts, protests and controversies that some believe were responsible for its eventual demise. By the time circulation peaked at 1.2 million in 2003, it had been denounced by organizations like the National Coalition for the Protection of Children and Families, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the American Decency Association, Focus on the Family, the National Organization for Women and, of course, the Catholic League.

Yet the outrage against the Quarterly was matched — if not exceeded — by its cult following, who found its frank portrayal of sexuality to be transcendent. Journalists, artists and the teens whose hands it fell into adored the magazine, and its rarity — plus its utter absurdity — makes it a sought-after collector’s item to this day.

At the same time, few people know about the Quarterly and even fewer realize what it meant to the generations of young people discovering themselves and their sexualities through the unlikely lens of branded content. As journalist Emily Lever puts it, “There’s no weirder way to learn about sex than to pick up a magazine by Abercrombie & Fitch — a brand for hot, mean mostly white kids who shoved you into lockers — but, I guess I’ll take it?”

This is the story of how an oversexed and strangely intellectual magazine by a polo shirt brand completed the improbable task of changing the course of sexuality in America’s malls, homes and moose-print boxers.

AND IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS ASS

The first issue A&F Quarterly debuted in June 1997. With 70-ish pages of full-color hard bodies, it was relatively tame compared to later editions, but it quickly became popular when Abercrombie’s nubile clientele realized it was a paper-backed portal into an adult world of sex, nudity and the kind of unbridled sensory hedonism their parents warned them about. As rumors of its legend began to spread, people began to wonder: What the hell is A&F Quarterly, and why is it printing ass for teens?

Emily Lever, journalist and chronicler of the Quarterly’s absurdist philosophical leanings: A&F Quarterly was an in-house magazine put together by Abercrombie & Fitch that published a who’s who of literati to accompany their images of young adult and teen bodies in order to hawk expensive distressed jeans and polo shirts to kids who would shove you inside a locker.

Alissa Quart, author of Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers and director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project: From what I recall, it had a Bruce Weber-y vibe — gorgeous young men and teens unapologetically objectified, a leering retro pin-up element, also sort of like the highly stylized, sexed-up, nostalgic 1980s and 1990s black-and-white Guess ads. Men — boys, really — were photographed without their shirts, elaborately muscled abs, sometimes naked.

Harris Sockel, in his Human Parts essay: [It was] Playboy crossed with Fratmen.com and a bit of Field & Stream. The Quarterly made my hormones do a kick line across my frontal lobe. I wanted to nibble the soy ink for snack until sunrise. To absorb it so deeply I sweat grey drops onto my pillow. To rip a page from that issue and fold it into a paper flower and stick it all the way up my ass until it came out my mouth.

Lever: Yeah, it was hot. But it was also extraordinarily literary. It featured big-time thinkers, writers and philosophers — stuff that was supposedly intended to expand your mind. It was way too high-brow for the average Abercrombie teen, and its existence made almost no sense given what the brand represented.

Savas Abadsidis, editor-in-chief, 1997-2003: There was nothing else like it. We were the first mainstream brand to combine playful, irreverent, intellectual content with sex and youth in this beautiful, high-art magazine format. Was it controversial? Sure. But it made the entire country take notice.

What they didn’t necessarily see, however, was what was going on behind the scenes. Not only were we the first brand to do this kind of advertising, we were also the first big brand to normalize gay culture for a mainstream audience, expose America’s youth to some of the era’s most progressive thinkers and use our platform to address sexuality in a useful, hands-on way. And you wouldn’t necessarily expect that from Abercrombie. That’s what made it so cool.

It all began in 1996. I was 22 and working at a temp job for a prominent New York architect who happened to be friends with Sam Shahid, a big-time creative director for Calvin Klein, Banana Republic and later, Abercrombie & Fitch. He was looking for an assistant. I had taken a deferment to go to law school and was looking for a job for that interim year, so I applied. I got in.

It was a horrible gig at first. Just awful, Devil Wears Prada-type stuff. I left crying many nights. But I had two things going for me. The first was that Abercrombie had a really small office in the West Village. Mike Jeffries, the president and CEO of Abercrombie, used to come in. He wore flip flops, had a desk made out of a surfboard and began each sentence with the word “Dude.”

Mike Jeffries, ex-CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, speaking to Salon in 2006: Dude, I’m not an old fart who wears his jeans up at his shoulders.

Abadsidis: I didn’t know it at the time, but Mike was gay (I wouldn’t find out until much later). I think that was part of the reason why he and Sam — who was also gay — took me under their wing. They actually didn’t realize that I was, too — it’s not like we all sat around a bonfire at Fire Island and talked about how us gay guys were infiltrating Abercrombie — but that dynamic dovetailed nicely with Bruce’s photography for both the brand and the Quarterly, and it certainly set the tone for what was to come. I was grateful to get what amounted to an unofficial apprenticeship from both Mike and Sam, and eventually, they had me doing much more involved tasks than I was hired to do.

One of them was sitting in on important meetings. At the time, Mike was inviting all these different editors from magazines like Interview, Men’s Journal and Rolling Stone to come in and brainstorm ideas for what the Quarterly could be, but their ideas were flat. They felt like ideas coming from 45-year-olds writing for college kids, and I could tell Mike was getting frustrated by how little they seemed to grasp what he wanted.

One day in a meeting, one of the magazine editors threw out an idea. Without even acknowledging him, Mike turned to me. “Savas,” he asked. “What do you think about that?”

My mind raced — I could tell he was testing me. If I flubbed the answer, I’d be done. I briefly considered censoring myself, but then I thought better. What did I have to lose? I was young. Surely, I’d find another summer job. “I don’t think it’s a great idea,” I told him.

Apparently, that was the right answer. Mike practically threw the guy out of the room.

After that, I started to think more about what I’d want to see out of a magazine. I was just out of college as a French comparative literature major at Vassar, and I was super into that sort of 1950s-style Esquire journalism with the dapper closing essay. I was deep into The New Yorker, Interview Magazine, 1990s-era Details, MAD Magazine and 1980s pop star mags like Tiger Beat, too — those were all an influence. I also loved philosophy, social theory and comics. And graphic novels. You know — college stuff. Then it hit me: If the magazine was for people like me, why not get actual college kids — not 50-year-olds — to create our content?

I suspected my ideas were what they were looking for and knew they’d look fresh compared to what other editors were throwing out, so I decided to take a risk. I got up at 2 a.m. and typed out a 20-page proposal for what I thought the Quarterly should be. The next morning, I faxed a copy to Mike. I left another on Sam’s desk.

About a (very anxious) week later, Sam called me into his office and told me to pick up his phone. Mike was on the other line. As I reached for the receiver, he leaned over to me and said, “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

I didn’t even have time to comprehend what that meant before Mike’s voice was in my ear. “Congratulations, kid,” he told me. “You get one shot.”

Shortly thereafter, I was promoted from Sam’s assistant to the completely green, 23-year-old editor-in-chief of the Quarterly. It was a Jerry Maguire moment. I was thrilled and terrified at the same time.

They gave me a month to put together a staff and get the first issue out. Bruce Weber was named as its exclusive photographer — he’d already been shooting ads and campaigns for Abercrombie — and Sam was the creative director. As for me, I knew I’d need an editorial staff, and stat.

HOLY SHIT, THERE ARE NO LIMITS

Abadsidis quickly throws together a team composed of two college buddies, Patrick Carone and Gary Kon, who he describes as “pretty funny and stuff.” Carone became the only straight guy on the editorial side. Kon is Jewish and gay. The three of them vow to stay as true to the idealized college experience as possible with their content — even if it means chasing white whales.

Abadsidis: I can’t remember the exact starting budget, but it was upwards of a few million, probably much larger than most magazines get for their first issue! But our budget was also Bruce’s budget. He was getting advertising money, so we were well taken care of in that regard.

We weren’t really expected to turn a profit, though. That was never the point. Come to think of it, I don’t even think we tracked how much the magazine impacted clothing sales, although from what I can remember, clothing sales bumped up double digits every quarter after we launched (for a while, at least). [This statement is unverified.] But that didn’t matter: Our mission was just to set the brand image and make people aware of us. That was our version of success. We were also our only advertiser for a while, so we could get away with a lot of stuff that other publications couldn’t.

Gary Kon, managing editor, 1997-2003: When Savas offered me the job, I jumped at the opportunity. I’d already interned for Sam, and I’d have to scan hundreds of Bruce Weber images that he shot for Abercrombie as part of the job. And I fell in love with his work. It was the visual connection that seduced me. Weber’s photos were like a new Greek mythology; the men and women depicted in the photos were both idealized and sexualized. As a gay kid, who was pretty comfortable by that time in my own skin, I had no problem recognizing the eroticism in his work.

Abadsidis: Me, Gary and Patrick was definitely something special. I don’t think I’ll ever have an opportunity to create anything like that again. I was a huge comic book fan. If I had to describe it, it’s the closest thing I’ll ever come to Stan Lee’s Marvel comics bullpen. Pretty much everyone I hired was super unique. We weren’t all gay (maybe half of us were) but few of us really adhered to the Abercrombie image.

I think Sean came on in 2001.

Sean T. Collins, managing editor, 2001-2003: I was a little skittish about it at first because Abercrombie & Fitch represented everything I was not. They marketed, almost exclusively, to the lacrosse players that called me names I cannot repeat. It was very preppy, and that was not me at all.

I was alternative, maaan. I was a big fan of Nine Inch Nails. I wore a lot of black. A&F was everything I wasn’t, and in a way, everything that had tormented me as a kid. The irony of me working for them was palpable, but what I learned very quickly was that at the Quarterly, you could do anything that you wanted.

One of my first articles was an interview with Clive Barker, the writer and director of Hellraiser (he also wrote Candyman). Now, if you’ve seen Hellraiser, you can imagine just how far of a departure a sadomasochistic horror film was from Abercrombie & Fitch, but getting him to sign on was easy. He’s gay, and at the time, he was super ripped. I think he appreciated the extravagant gayness of the Weber stuff in particular. He was also a photographer, and his husband was, too. I think he recognized what was going on with the photography.

We had an unlimited expense budget, so I took him out for drinks at the Four Seasons. I talked to him for hours, and then he invited me to go back to his house and hang out and see his art studio. He had three mansions in a row on Sunset in Los Angeles, up in the hills. One for his office, one for his actual domicile and one that was a painting studio. I got to see that. I was just a 23-year-old kid. This was my first job out of college, and I felt like Cameron Crowe from Almost Famous. After that, I was like, “Holy shit, there are no limits.”

Kon: I have to credit Savas with pushing us to work without limitations. We were very lucky. At some point during my tenure, I realized that as long as we worked within our (sizable) budget, we had almost full autonomy. We could plan trips to Hollywood to shoot our favorite actors. We could travel to Thailand to reenact our version of The Beach. We could tag along to London or Rome or wherever Bruce was shooting the catalog. We could stroll into the office at 11 a.m. and work until 11 p.m.

Collins: If I wanted to talk to Bettie Page, the pinup model from the 1950s, they’d be like, “Okay, sure.” If I wanted to feature Underworld, my favorite electronic music band, it was, “Sure, go ahead.” It was total editorial freedom, which was so strange knowing how specific of a person the “Abercrombie type was.” I’ve been writing for two decades now, and I’ve never experienced anything like it since.

Abadsidis: Everyone wanted to be in it, too. At first, it was just indie musicians. But then, in the second issue, we snagged Lil’ Kim. That’s when I knew we’d made it big. She was into it — she loved everything about the Quarterly. A lot of people did. The whole high-brow/low-brow thing was really appealing, and the idea of going to college, reading good books, getting drunk and having sex felt uniquely nostalgic and fresh in the context of America back then. Clinton was getting impeached for getting a blow job. It was just a weird, puritanical time, and the Quarterly gave people a national platform to let their freak flag fly.

We had Rudy Guiliani, early Britney Spears, Paula Abdul. There was the New York issue where we talked about the Harlem Renaissance. Spike Lee — one of my idols — asked me if he could be in it. He’d done advertising, you know? I remember him being like, “Yo, this is the deal. I’ve got to give you mad props. This is the dopest thing out right now, advertising-wise.”

We had big-time philosophers and literary figures, too. They were great. We wanted to mimic the experience of being in college and having your mind expanded, so we got writers like Bret Easton Ellis and Michael Cunningham on board. There was a whole Sex Ed issue plastered with musings from Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, a friend of a professor’s from college. I believe Jonathan Franzen was in there, too.

Jonathan Franzen, award-winning novelist and essayist: I gave hundreds of interviews between 1997 and 2003, almost all of them at the request of various publishers. One of them must have thought it was a good idea to talk to A&F. The fact that I apparently did (I don’t remember it) signifies nothing except that I felt grateful to my publishers.

Collins: We got a lot of weirdos, too. John Edward, the guy who talked to dead people. Chuck Palahniuk, who wrote Fight Club. At the time, it didn’t have the meathead reputation that it does now. It was legitimately looked at as this piece of anti-corporate, anti-capitalist art, the irony of which was just delightful given that we were a capitalist brand trying to sell polo shirts and $90 ripped jeans.

Abadsidis: The only guy who refused an interview was Donald Trump! I have a feeling his 90-year-old secretary had something to do with it. Though we were technically a magalog and did belong to the brand, our stuff was just really visionary. David Keeps, who was the editor of Details at the time, always defended the Quarterly as a real magazine and publicly said that we were doing more innovative stories than most “real” magazines at a time.

ASPIRATIONAL HOMOEROTICS

It’s no secret that the photography and creative direction of Weber and Shahid contained homoerotic undertones. Irreverent, minimal and moody, it was suggestive without being literal, spinning entire storylines into a single frame. At the same time, it was too idealized to be “real.” The queerness that their photos showed was, as Collins puts it, “aspirational,” meaning that like the mostly white, ab-riddled models instructed to sell cargo shorts by taking them off, they didn’t necessarily represent the full reality of what queerness actually was.

Still, the photos that the Quarterly published during its seven-year run did more to normalize and represent queerness and non-monogamy than any other mainstream brand at the time — weird, considering that Abercrombie’s target market was hegemonic suburbanites whose parents bred genetically pure golden retrievers and had cabins in Vail. Without these photos, the Quarterly might have read more as a minor-league Esquire or Ivy League MAD Magazine, but with them, it became one of the least-discussed, most under-appreciated items queer history.

Collins: Our editorial content — which almost functioned as a parody of so-called “Abercrombie people” — was always accompanied by this extremely beautiful photography that was also extremely queer. But it was never explicitly so. It was all this nudge, nudge, wink, wink stuff. I don’t know how you could miss it, though. The homoeroticism was so overt.

Abadsidis: You’d have had to have been blind not to consider the imagery homoerotic (though, it was really in the eye of the beholder). We had the Carlson twins posing on the cover and riding a motorcycle. We had a drag queen named Candis Cayne. There was a lesbian couple kissing at a wedding.

Kon: David Sedaris, Gus Van Sant, Gregg Araki, Avenue Q, Stan Lee, Peaches, Fischerspooner… you could teach a queer theory class with everyone we featured.

Abadsidis: At the same time, we never labeled anything as “gay” or “lesbian” or “queer.” We never came out and said, “Welcome to our gay magazine!” and we never had a meeting where we were like, “Okay, guys, let’s figure out how to make this thing gay.” It was more nonchalant. The imagery implied it without saying it.

Hampton Carney, A&F Quarterly spokesperson, 1999-2003: The message we were sending was clear: “You do you, whatever that is. Have fun!”

Abadsidis: That was a very 1990s thing.

Collins: There was a specific brand of Abercrombie gayness that got shown, though. The word that they always used to describe Abercrombie as a brand was “aspirational.” They didn’t want to make it like an everyday, normal-people brand. They wanted it to be associated with money, glamour and that WASP-y aesthetic. So all the gay raunch of it was presented within the context of what appeared to be a very square, nuclear family: white, wealthy and secure.

At the same time, that was really when same-sex marriage was kicking off as a political issue. I think you can see a commonality in how Abercrombie was essentially making an argument that you could be a normie and also be gay. That was a newish thing at the time (though I’m barely an expert as I’m not gay myself). Still, I can’t help but see a resonance between coming up with this clandestine content that normalized being gay at the same time this big political fight that was brewing.

Maybe being more forward about it would have come across as “too political.”

Abadsidis: Part of me wishes we’d gone a little further with being more outwardly queer, but I don’t think the time was right. Maybe with a braver CEO — no one at the time was brave enough to take on queerness or gay rights as a mainstream brand, including us — and that’s why few people remember the Quarterly as the sort of transcendent queer thing that it was.

Kon: It’s never been credited as such, but the Quarterly is really an item of gay history. I don’t think we were pushing a “gay” or “metrosexual” lifestyle on people as much as we were showing that it already existed, even out in Middle America. Perhaps that’s what made people uncomfortable. We took that thread of counterculture and taboo that ran through the imagery and continued it into the editorial content. We dealt with topics like drinking, drugs, religion, politics and sex. Again, these are issues young people dealt with daily, but were rarely editorialized.

At Vassar, there was a yearly party called The Homo Hop. It was one of the biggest parties of the year and leaned on Vassar’s history as a women’s college. I bring this up because, on the night of my freshman Homo Hop, I was instructed that each student had to do something sexually that they had never done, and one drug that they had never done. It wasn’t that you had to be gay, but you had to experience something that was new and different. I think that translated well into the Quarterly. Yes, there were a bunch of gay guys writing and shooting and drawing images. But we were simply trying to expose Cargo Short Brett to ideas, images, artists, books, writers and directors that he may have never heard of before. Our shared experiences would become his.

Collins: It was culture jamming, really.

Abadsidis: It was also very “college” to be fluid or experimental without labeling it. I think it’s safe to say that college is one of the gayest places there is in life, maybe not sexually, but definitely in terms of having your mind expanded about different types of people.

Carney: I was in a frat. I’d see fraternity brothers streaking across campus together. It was never a big deal. There are a lot more people in the middle of either extreme of sexuality than people talk about. We’re not one and 10 — we’re one through 10, if you will. That kind of stuff has always happened on college campuses, and that’s the kind of mentality we had around sex. We just happened to editorialize it really beautifully.

Collins: There’s a Barbara Kruger print that reminds me of the mood we were trying to capture: It reads: “You construct intricate rituals which allow you to touch the skin of other men.” That’s basically what Abercrombie & Fitch was. It was an intricate ritual that allowed sunkissed lacrosse players to metaphorically touch the skin of other men.

Carney: You know what’s funny, though? It was never the gay stuff people had a problem with. It was everything else.

LET THE CONTROVERSIES BEGIN

For almost every moment of its seven-year life, The Quarterly was a controversial publication. Parents, politicians and conservative-types didn’t appreciate its no-holds-barred approach to rampant fucking, and they could not, for the life of them, understand how such an adult magazine was making its way into the hands of their precious teens (who were probably jacking off to dad’s Playboys long before the Quarterly came along, but I digress). There was approximately one year — 1997 — where the amount of people it pissed off stayed below a critical mass, but after a certain somebody published a story that vaguely suggested underage kids drink, it was off to the races.

Abadsidis: We got in our fair share of trouble with Christian groups and concerned parents right off the bat. Let’s take one of the earlier issues — I believe it was Summer of 1998. It was my story. Basically, I suggested that people could do better than beer and that they should “indulge in some creative drinking.” There was one drink I made up called the “Brain Hemorrhage” and a few others you could play a drinking game with. We also included a spinner insert people could cut out.

None of it had anything to do with driving, of course, but the issue was called “On the Road.” It was a sort of beat-focused, Jack Kerouac thing, so some people interpreted that as us promoting drunk driving (though we did nothing of the sort). Also, the kid on the cover was underage. He was 16, if I remember correctly. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) didn’t like that.

Karolyn Nunnallee, vice president of public policy for MADD: We had been really focused on underage drinking and had been instrumental in getting the country’s legal drinking age raised to 21. Then Abercrombie & Fitch comes out with this weird magazine that basically said, “Don’t go back to college drinking the usual beer. We’re going to show you a new way to drink.”

Not only did they have this drinking game, but they had recipes for these mixed drinks for young people to partake in. I was like, “Abercrombie & Fitch? Aren’t they in the clothing business?” What in the world were they doing? I mean, they were a high-end brand, not Walmart. Why would they take their focus off of clothing and put it toward alcohol? Were their clothes not good enough that year or something?

Needless to say, we weren’t happy with them. Curse words were handed out. We sent a letter to them and started a whole media campaign about it. We went on as many news media outlets as we possibly could with the story of how incensed we were.

Abadsidis: I was sure I was going to get fired over that. We had to remove the page with the spinner out of every single issue across the country. We apologized, of course, but it ended up backfiring against the protesters — that incident gave us so much publicity. It put us on the map. It also made us a target for conservative types. They hated us. After MADD, boycotts of Abercrombie started flaring up all over the place. That’s around the time we hired Hampton to do PR.

Carney: It was my job, at the time, to defend the brand. I’d go on talk shows like Entertainment Tonight or Today Show and explain away our latest controversy (there were a lot). It wasn’t hard, actually; each time, I’d give them what was more or less my go-to response: “It’s a beautiful publication intended for college-aged kids.” And that was the truth! It was way ahead of its time and was absolutely meant for people 18 and up.

Though not everyone saw it that way. The sex and nudity really got to people. A lot of them definitely thought we were making porn. That was the constant complaint: We were deliberately putting porn in the hands of young kids.

Lever: The Quarterly featured about the same level of nudity as a European yogurt commercial. Which is to say, a lot. It was a “clothing catalog” with almost no clothing. Of course [American] people thought it was pornographic!

Carney: Okay, sure — there were photos of like, six girls in bed with one guy and more than a few spreads that enthusiastically suggested naked non-monogamy — but it wasn’t porn. It was tasteful. And let me tell you — nothing we had in there was surprising to kids.

Abadsidis: The models ranged from 16 to 20. It was erotic. It was art. I don’t think there’s anything pornographic about the Quarterly unless you think that nudity, in and of itself, is pornographic.

Illinois Lieutenant Governor Corinne Wood did, apparently. In 1999, she called for a boycott of Abercrombie & Fitch because its “Naughty or Nice” holiday issue “contained nudity” and “even an interview with a porn star.” That porn star was none other than Jenna Jameson, who at the time was well on her way to becoming a household name. A so-called “child prodigy” occupied the neighboring page, sparking accusations that the Quarterly somehow intended to connect children to porn.

A cartoon of Mr. and Mrs. Claus experimenting with S&M across from the statement “Sometimes it’s good to be bad” didn’t help, nor did the “sexpert” who offered advice on “sex for three” and told readers that going down on each other in a movie theater was acceptable “just so long as you do not disturb those around you.”

The Illinois Coalition of Sexual Assault joined Wood’s boycott. Later that year, Michigan attorney general (and eventual governor) Jennifer Granholm sent a letter to Abercrombie complaining that the “Naughty or Nice” issue contained sexual material that couldn’t be distributed to minors under state law.

Carney: There were four states that tried to ban us after that. I remember Granholm. She was my arch-nemesis at the time — we really got into it. I respected where she was coming from, of course, but our whole thing was that we weren’t showing anything that wasn’t actually happening on college campuses. And I’d already made it pretty clear to the press that the magazine wasn’t for minors.

Also, it’s not like we were the only magazine talking about or showing sex. You could find all the exact same stuff in Cosmo or Playboy — it’s just that we were a clothing brand, and one whose major customer base just so happened to be teens and young adults. No one expected that from us. Brands weren’t “supposed” to be talking about sex period, let alone to teens and young adults. But we took it upon ourselves to pioneer a more open, honest view of it. That’s the wrinkle that made it so interesting.

We did come to an agreement with Granholm. We decided to wrap the magazine in plastic and make it available for purchase only to those over 18, that way, it’d be even more clear that we weren’t “selling porn to the underage.”

Kon: I believe it was one of the few times the company acquiesced.

Collins: Other than that, don’t remember getting any instruction from Savas, Mike or Sam to tone it down. It was kind of mutually assumed that we weren’t going to apologize for the sexual nature of our content. We knew we had to keep things sexy, as it were — that was our whole thing.

We weren’t deliberately trying to piss off people, but we were trying to push the envelope, and there was definitely an element of deliberate trolling of conservatives and Christian groups. It was a good thing if we pissed them off. It created the controversy that made the brand seem edgy and dangerous, which is what you want if you’re trying to appeal to young people.

Carney: We were also just showing real things that happened at college. And as anyone who’s been to college knows, it’s not just about reading and writing papers. It’s also about sex. Not only that, of course, but we’re sexual beings. We respond to images that are sexual. We were trying to take the stigma away from that and acknowledge that it’s not a bad thing to do.

But no matter how clear we made it, our stance on sex polarized people more and more. I could tell, because almost as soon as I started speaking on behalf of the magazine, strange things started to happen to me. I got stalkers. People left me messages saying I was going to hell and I’d have no afterlife. I got hate mail to my house. One person left a package containing their dirty, stained underwear at the front door of my apartment with a note saying they’d be “coming by later” to “talk to me about it.” I had to call the police on that one.

I was the face of the publication, so I got the vast majority of the harassment. But I didn’t mind. It was my job to take the fall, and I heard and respected every single person’s complaint and talked to them about it. Plus, for every message I got banishing me to hell, I got another from a journalist or a fan begging me to save a copy for them. People collected them. They really loved it, precisely because it was so sexual.

Abadsidis: Mike didn’t flinch about any of this stuff. He wanted to defend it because he could see it was working. We weren’t about to tone anything down (at the time).

Flash-forward to June 2001. The Twin Towers are still standing tall, tips are being frosted and Apple has just unleashed iTunes onto an unsuspecting populace. A&F Quarterly, now in its fourth year, is in hot water once again. Having survived a number of boycotts, lawsuits and controversies since its inception, it’s now in the midst of weathering another minor national conniption over its use of nudity.

Jeannine Stein, describing the Summer 2001 issue in an excerpt from a Los Angeles Times article called “Nudity? A&F Quarterly Has It Covered”: [It’s] explicit in ways that most catalogs and fashion magazines are not, and its use of male nudity is uncommon among general-interest publications. It features 280 pages of young, attractive men and women alone and together, in serious, romantic, sexual and party modes, wearing lots of A&F clothes, some A&F clothes and sometimes no clothes at all. Among the coffee-table book-ish photos by Bruce Weber is a man, covered only by a towel, surrounded by five women; a woman at the beach reclining body-to-body with three men; a back view of a naked man getting into a helicopter (we haven’t quite figured that one out yet); and a few topless females.

There are many naked butts and breasts.

Abadsidis: We also had photos of nude women in a fountain — which were inspired by Katharine Hepburn skinny-dipping at Bryn Mawr College — and a whole set dedicated to the Berkeley student that spent a day naked in class. It was par for the course for us, but even though we’d done the whole shrink-wrap and over-18 thing, people still felt it was too sexual for branded content.

In response, an unexpected alliance formed between cultural conservatives and anti-porn feminists to boycott Abercrombie & Fitch over the Summer 2001 issue of A&F Quarterly. According to Wikipedia, the offending issue included “photographs of naked or near-naked young people frolicking on the beach,” “top-naked young women and rear-naked young men on top of each other” and an “interview with porn star Ron Jeremy, who discussed performing oral sex on himself and using a dildo cast from his own penis.” Once again, Wood was at the helm.

David Crary, journalist, excerpt from a 2001 Associated Press article: Illinois Lt. Gov. Corinne Wood — a Republican who has been sparring with A&F since 1999 — announced the boycott campaign last week in Chicago. She has recruited a diverse mix of supporters more familiar with facing off against each other than with working together.

Wood, writing on her website in 2001: A&F is glamorizing indiscriminate sexual behavior that unsophisticated teenagers are not possibly equipped to weigh against the dangers of date rape, unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease.

Michelle Dewlen, president of the Chicago chapter of the National Organization for Women, speaking at one of Woods’ press conferences in 2001: It’s not a catalog. It’s a soft porn magazine.

Rev. Bob Vanden Bosch, head of Concerned Christian Americans, as quoted by the AP: It’s very important for people to get involved. The exploitation of sex and young people in A&F’s catalog isn’t only atrocious but also a psychological molestation of their teenage customers.

Quart: It was predatory in a few ways, really. One was that it confused the corporate identity of Abercrombie and the advertising with the editorial. It preyed on young consumers not understanding the difference between editorial content and sales content. Back then it led, I saw, to a way that girls were objectifying themselves and commodifying themselves. It ultimately led to boys also objectifying themselves and commodifying themselves — not to the same extent, but far more than they were when I started reporting Branded a little more than two decades ago.

I have the stats on the male body image dysmorphia at the time in Branded (which has only worsened). Then, male body shaming and “manorexia” was on the rise, for the first time on a mass scale. It couldn’t help for the most popular brand at the time to have a dedicated giant glossy magazine filled with pictures of male teenagers with zero body fat half undressed.

Abadsidis: I mean, sure, as much as any advertising does. It wasn’t like we were leading that charge. Any effect on self-image was certainly unintentional, but I do think it did make people want to be athletic. You definitely saw a lot of guys trying to look like that during that period, especially as time went on. If you look at the first few issues, the guys aren’t that built. Ashton Kutcher was actually in the second one — that was his first big break — and they get increasingly more cut from there. That whole era is when men’s body issues started to come out.

Lever: I’d also submit that all this was controversial because it was pre-internet. The internet mainstreamed sexual content in a way that makes A&F or other “scandalous” ad campaigns (like the 2003 Gucci ad with the model’s pubes shaved into the shape of a G) seem quaint, even obsolete. Like, do you remember that Eckhaus Latta ad a few years ago that scandalized people for five minutes because it showed people having real (albeit pixelated) sex? Neither does anyone else.

SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK TEACHES SEX ED

Always filled with philosophy, social theory and intellectually minded topics that likely soared over the heads of most Abercrombie consumers, the Quarterly outdid itself in the Fall of 2003 with its penultimate issue. A gorgeous romp of summer-spirited abandon accompanied by some delightfully incoherent, Dada-like musings from Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, it connected a “back-to-school” theme with a pretty clear directive to fuck. Yet, the information it presented was actually rather safe and tame, a reality which confused and irritated Quarterly staff. Their content was legit, so why was everyone up in arms?

Abadsidis: The “Sex Ed” issue was the second to last one that we did. It got some of the most criticism, and was supposedly the reason everything was finished. I literally had stuff in there cited straight from the University of Michigan’s freshman student handbook on sexual conduct, and it still pissed people off! Then, of course, there was Žižek.

Lever: Žižek identifies as a radical leftist. He’s very famous for his work on cultural theory and critical theory. He analyzes all kinds of topics in his signature, impenetrable — but also approachable — style. And when I think of him, I think of his very distinctive manner of speaking, that some people have described as being on cocaine constantly. But he’s definitely kind of a cult figure, a favorite of people who consider themselves highbrow, but also fun.

He’s really touted as the greatest anti-capitalist of our time, and yet, here he was, “sexually educating” the mean girls and boys of your high school, in a brand catalog whose entire goal was to ensnare young people for the purpose of selling them distressed jeans.

According to the magazine’s foreword, the editor wrote to Žižek and said this: “Dear Slavoj, enclosed please find the images for our back to school issue. We’ve never had a philosopher write the text for our images before, so write what you like. We’re looking for that Karl Marx meets Groucho Marx thing you do so well. Thanks, Savas.”

Abadsidis: I love Slavoj. He was friends with one of my professors from school. He only had 24 hours to write this, so we actually sent someone to London where he was to drop off the images we wanted him to write text for. They hung out for a day and then flew back with what he’d written.

Lever: It was basically a series of insane, absurdist ramblings pasted over really hot naked people.

Žižek, excerpt from A&F Quarterly’s 2003 Sex Ed issue: Back to school thus means forget the stupid spontaneous pleasures of summer sports, of reading books, watching movies and listening to music. Pull yourself together and learn sex.

Lever: I mean, that’s like the first episode of every teen TV show, where these three nerdy boys start high school and they’re like, “Okay, we’re going to be cool this year guys. We’re going to lose our virginities.” It’s very formulaic. But there’s more.

Žižek: The only successful sexual relationship occurs when the fantasies of the two partners overlap. If the man fantasizes that making love is like riding a bike and the woman wants to be penetrated by a stud, then what truly goes on while they make love is that a horse is riding a bike… with a fantasy like that, who needs a personality?

Lever: The “go learn sex at school” part really struck a nerve with conservatives. But I don’t think it was that transgressive. Fourteen-year-olds are receiving messages to have sex all the time — what did it matter if some Eastern European anti-capitalist was hitting them over the head with it through the pages of a polo shirt advert?

Abadsidis: Fox News got involved, if I remember correctly. That was one of the few times I actually got pissed off about how an issue was being covered. I mean, the information in there was handed out to students by an actual university. Half the issue was quotes from this really influential philosopher. But for some reason, people really took offense to the language of it. That whole year [2003] was just a bad one for us.

THE LAST HORNY CHRISTMAS

For its final trick, the Quarterly released a holiday issue featuring 280 pages of “moose, ice hockey, chivalry, group sex and more.” It had oral sex, group sex, sex in a river, Christmas sex and pretty much every other type of sex you could think of, all which followed an earnest letter from Abadsidis which read: “We don’t want much this year, but in keeping with the spirit, we’d like to ask forgiveness from some of the people we’ve offended over the years. If you’d be so kind, please offer our apologies to the following: the Catholic League, former Lt. Governor Corrine Wood of Illinois, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Stanford University Asian American Association, N.O.W.”

But the issue didn’t really hit. By fall 2003, Abercrombie was involved in a number of lawsuits and protests related to exclusion and discrimination, which left people cold despite the inviting warmth of a crackling, fireside circle jerk (a Weber offering which, I’m told, can be found on page 88 of the final issue).

Cole Kazdin, journalist, writing in a 2003 Slate article called “Have Yourself a Horny Little Christmas”: The challenge for me, when masturbating with my friends to the nubile nudies in the Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, is trying not to think about serious things like racial diversity; it tends to kill the mood. But because most of the models in the catalog are white and because a lawsuit has been filed against the clothing retailer for allegedly discriminating against a Black woman who applied for a job at the store, it’s hard for the issue not to rear its nonsexy head. [In 2004, Abercrombie also agreed to pay $40 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of promoting whites over Latino, Black, Asian-American and female applicants.]

Collins: As a brand, Abercrombie did a lot of things that were quite gross. I’m sure you remember when they came out with these T-shirts with these racist stereotype characters on them. You would just see it in the catalog and just be like, “Jesus Christ.” It was awful and stupid and self-defeating, just tone deaf. And we just couldn’t figure out how no one at the company saw the problem with it.

Stagg, excerpt from Sleeveless: Kids in my high school wore shirts that read, “Wok-n-Bowl” and “Wong Brothers Laundry Service: Two Wongs Can Make It White,” accompanied by cross-eyed propaganda-style cartoons. If you weren’t part of the in-crowd (and white), A&F was oppressive. Non-jocks made their own anti-A&F T-shirts, using the brand as a catchall for exclusionary, competitive behavior and old-fashioned bullying.

Carney: That stuff was indefensible, really. Those were the darkest days of my job — listening to calls and reading letters about how offensive those shirts were. Even though the Quarterly was quite separate from the brand and we had no influence over what they did or what clothes they designed, we did still have to print their stuff at the back of the magazine. It was pretty uncomfortable.

Stagg: By 2006, Mike Jeffries’ most controversial public statement on sex appeal was really just saying what we were all thinking: “Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.” Those remarks were followed by lawsuit after lawsuit, mostly involving staffing discrimination. An announcement about the store refusing to carry anything over a size 10 reportedly marked a noticeable decrease in sales.

Abadsidis: There were a lot of underlying problems at the company. The amount of negative press Abercrombie was getting was getting silly. No matter what we did, we’d end up in the news, especially if it was related to the Quarterly. After so many bad news incidents, it just felt done, like its moment had passed. It was bound to crash at some point.

Gina Piccalo, excerpt from the Los Angeles Times: Clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch has pulled its controversial in-store catalogs after outraged parents, conservative Christian groups and child advocates threatened a boycott over material they said was pornographic. However, a company spokesman said the move had nothing to do with the public outcry. The catalogs were pulled to make room near cash registers for a new Abercrombie & Fitch fragrance.

Abadsidis: People like to think that the boycotts and Christian protests had something to do with it, but that wasn’t the case at all. By 2003, Abercrombie’s stock was low — something to do with ordering too much denim. The store was having negative sales for the first time. There was the line in the New York Times, who covered our demise, that Mike was “bored” with it.

Collins: We had no warning. We were all there one day, and the next, we were gone.

Lever: The Quarterly was a relic of a different time. I feel like it could never have been made after 2008 for so many reasons — economic, and cultural and political. It would just never fly. It was made before feminism pervaded everything, at a time where you could be completely flagrant about gross patriarchal shit and still get away with it.

It was kind of like this last gasp of a certain conception of what’s desirable — a very hegemonic coolness exemplified by white Ivy League frat kids who got fucked up the night before their philosophy class. That doesn’t have much currency anymore. Abercrombie kept that image on life support until its last gasp.

Now, 20 years later, what’s cool is not that. What’s cool is to have depression and ADD. The ideal is out. The real is in. And the Quarterly, having always existed in the liminal space between, is neither here nor there.

EPILOGUE

In 2008, Abercrombie resurrected the Quarterly in the U.K. for a limited-run special edition to celebrate the success of its European stores. The original team was reunited — Abadsidis, Shahid and Weber — with the hopes that Britain’s more “open-minded approach to culture and creativity” would provide a welcoming substrate on which to re-grow their original ideas of sexual liberation. The issue, “Return to Paradise,” was “more mature” than its American cousin. It was well-received — aside from the usual protests about sex and nudity — but it wasn’t continued.

Two years later, in 2010, the Quarterly was revived again, this time as a promotional element for Abercrombie’s Back-to-School 2010 marketing campaign, which bore the unfortunate title of “Screen Test.” The lead story Abercrombie put out on its website sounded like a cross between American Idol and a gay porn shot: “The staff of A&F Studios opens up to editorial to explain the steps the division takes to find new, young, hot boys. The cattle-call approach to herd young talent ends with the best of the beefcake earning a screen test that ‘could be the flint to spark the trip to the star.’”

Bruce Weber would be shooting, of course. This would become especially ominous after he was accused of a series of casting-couch style sexual assaults by 15 male models beginning in 2017. According to the accusations, he subjected them to sexually manipulative “breathing exercises” and inappropriate touching, insinuating that he could help their careers if they complied.

Arick Fudali, a lawyer at the Bloom Firm, which represents five of Weber’s alleged victims, declined to confirm or deny whether any of the alleged assaults happened on a Quarterly shoot. If they did, they’re not prosecutable as sexual assaults in New York. Because the states’s statute of limitations on reporting rape is only three years, anything that happened during the Quarterly’s run wouldn’t count toward a sexual assault charge (unless a minor was involved, which Fudali also declined to confirm).

No one I spoke with for this story remembers seeing, hearing or experiencing anything like what the allegations against Weber describe, but some expressed concern over how they might affect the legacy the Quarterly leaves behind. “The accusations are pretty grim,” Collins told me. “You feel for the people who are put in that position. People had power over them. It just makes you think, ‘Was any of this worth it?’ Not really, if people were getting hurt.”

As such, it’s difficult to conclude with definitive sign-off about the Quarterly’s legacy. Either it was a bastion of progressive and transversive sexuality that simultaneously trolled and nourished the very audience it sought to mine, or it was the product of darkness and pain. Either way, Sockel sums it up just right: “The Quarterly was discontinued in 2003, after the American Decency Association boycotted photos of doe-eyed bare-assed jocks in prairies and glens,” he wrote in his recollection. “It was nice while it lasted.”

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margridarnauds · 4 years ago

Text

Scattered Thoughts on Treason: The Musical

[warning for some critical discussion]

The Cold Hard Ground:

First song I listened to.

God, we’re getting DARK. This is seriously a mix between a villain song and a hero song, and I’m HERE for it.

This is the one I’m possibly most interested in, because it’s really making me wonder how they’re going to portray the plotters: Are we going to be seeing them as fanatics, or as heroes, or somewhere in-between? In this song, it looks like Catesby is a man broken by grief who turned to fanatical religion as a way of coping with his own suicidal tendencies.

“So TAKEEEEE MEEEEEEEEEEE. You won’t BREEEEEAAAAAK meeee, it’s too late to SAAAAAAAAVVVVEEEE MEEEEEE.”

GOD those final notes are going HARD.

At first, I thought that it was rather scattered, musically wise, but the more I listen to it, the more I think it’s brilliant because the music comes together by the end, as Catesby seems to calcify in his convictions.

I’ll be really curious to see how anyone but Hadley serves this, but a solid 80% of this song, at the moment, is built on his impressive performance. I’ll be really curious in knowing how the livestreams went.

Take Things To Our Own Hands:

Honestly, my favorite song on the album, probably one of them that I can best visualize on stage.

WE NEED TO THINK OF A WAAAAAY TO BRING THE WHOLE SHIP DOWN.

Favorite vocal moment: When all the conspirators’ voices join one another, and then the moment at the end where it sounds almost like a church’s choir.

I absolutely LOVE the slick folkish feel to this, paired with the driven pace, it’s like if “The Story Told” from Monte Cristo decided to go folk, I love it. It really has a feel that I don’t see many musicals going for (Hadestown being the closest, though it goes in a jazzier style than this) , and that’s something really in its favor. If the rest of the songs follow this level of quality and tone, this musical is going to be a really, really fun ride.

Also, it’s very interesting in terms of how, even though this is the conspirators’ “Pump Me Up” song, there’s this very DARK overtone to it, which makes sense given what they’re proposing. Their voices go increasingly hard, almost into a staccato, and I wonder how much of that is diction VS them showing how hardened and increasingly radicalized the conspirators are becoming.

That being said: “I once had influenza but now that’s all gone when things turned sour”?????????????????? I’m trying desperately to wrap my head around this lyric, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

The lyrics in this particular song are, admittedly, its weakest point: They tend to be very, very repetitive, but, in all honesty, it doesn’t really bother me - It works with that mood of the conspirators becoming radicalized.

I know that Hadley tends to get most of the kudos for this song, but the other conspirators (Waylon Jacobs, Oliver Savile and Emmanuel Kojo) deserve MASSIVE kudos for their performances, I’m seriously going to be looking into all of them after this.

The Day Elizabeth Died

I started off not really caring for this song, but I’ve really warmed to it.

I’m really curious about who the main singer in this song is supposed to be, because I feel like that will really change how I feel about the lyrics specifying that she had “An inch of makeup on her face”. If we’re supposed to view this from the perspective of a devoutly religious 17th century Catholic woman, I can understand it more than a Protestant woman, given that it really, really works with some misogynistic stereotypes about Elizabeth.

So, the singer’s apparently Anne Vaux, which makes sense. Okay, I’ll give them this one. A little period-accurate internalized misogyny can be good for the soul.

I LOVE Rebecca La Chance’s voice. It’s so wonderfully clear and strong, delicate, but with steel beneath it.

There’s something almost....wistful, melancholy, and isolated about this song? It strikes a very odd balance between being sympathetic to Elizabeth (some say she died of a broken heart) while condemning her reign.

ALSO. BEST VOCAL MOMENT ON THE ENTIRE ALBUM. “We mourned for her, she was our queen, and for 45 years, she had reigned supreme.” And then the conspirators coming on with “WE DID NOT MOOOOOURRRRN FOR HER. SHEWASOURCAPTOR.” I could, legitimately, listen to that bit alone on repeat, I’m actually obsessed with it. That odd, conflicted feeling between Elizabeth having been Queen for longer than most of England had been alive, providing a sense of stability, while also the very real persecution that English Catholics were under. This is the kind of nuance I really want to see the musical carry forward.

Blind Faith

I don’t really know what to say except that Martha Percy’s love for Thomas Percy is juxtaposed with Thomas Percy’s feelings for Catesby.

Literally.

That’s the song.

If this musical ever develops a fandom, there are going to be a hundred Catesby/Thomas fics, with James/Thomas being the darkhorse fic.

It’s hard to judge this one, simply because it’s much more conventional love song - It sounds similar to, for example, “That Would Be Enough”, if Alexander Hamiltpn decided to blow up George III instead of join the American Revolution. It’s a TWIST on the conventional love song, but it still follows similar beats.

But I DO love how their voices go together, the song really starts to shine when that happens.

That last “This path was MINE to choose, he has nothing to prove”, probably is the best vocal moment.

Overall, I don’t have MANY thoughts on this song in comparison to the others, but I can also see myself warming up to it over time.

The Promise

“His face is quite nice” It’s VERY obvious they’re going for a queer comic relief interpretation of James, which I honestly have mixed feelings about given that he is, clearly, going to be the one that our protagonists are trying to get rid of. There’s.....something about that, a bunch of presumably straight protagonists ganging up to kill a stereotypically portrayed gay man. I know that historically, James WAS, but.....I still don’t like how stereotypical they played this one. Someone could point to Herod from JCS but, in all fairness, Herod was written in the 1970s (and, tbh, given that the central relationship in the musical is Jesus and Judas, you could argue that the entire musical is very, very homoerotic, which makes it less glaring.) This is...well, I’ll have to see how the musical deals with it. I’m willing to give it a fair shake, but they might have set themselves up for danger here.

But Daniel Boys is, admittedly, serving this song on a silver platter.

Really, really going into the Spoiled Child Route here.

If it sounds like I’m disappointed with this song compared to the others, it’s because......yeah, I kind of am. Musically, it’s fine and a little catchy, lyrically, it’s fine, but that nuance I’d been seeing in the other songs goes out the window. James isn’t my favorite historical figure of all time (Bro basically set up the English Civil War), but there still HAD to be a better way to do him justice than this.

It doesn’t hurt that, unlike the other songs, which were demonstrably TREASON, this one is very much.....a JCS/Hamilton rip-off. Like, it’s very, very blatant.

Love the rising strings when Percy tells him that Elizabeth is dying, that sense of tension - It does remind me a little of something I heard in The Pirate Queen, but you know what? I’ll give it to them.

Lowkey obsessed with Oliver Saville’s eyebrow raise when he says “You could save England.”

The problem is that they’re leaning so hard into the comic route that, when James says that he’ll be a fair king, it really, really makes the Catholic nobility sound dumb as Hell to listen to him. Like “Yes, man who routinely, gleefully sings about cutting off people’s heads, I’ll listen to you!” I know they’re desperate but....come on.

But also. THAT HIGH NOTE. Daniel Boys really put 110% in there.

Overall, my takeaway is that this musical could either do very, very well or very, very badly, depending on how they play it. It’s hard to judge because the public only has access to 5 tracks (except for the lucky ducks who bought tickets to the stream, where they got access to 10) - It’s hard to judge a musical based off of 5 tracks, and a musical about the Gunpowder Plot with, say, a love song called “Blind Faith” almost sounds like something out of a parody, something destined to be one of those flops that go down in history. BUT, that being said, the musical has some very strong vocal performances and some really good music, when it keeps to its own mood and style instead of trying to go off of what other, more successful musicals have done. There’s some real, real promise in this musical, and I’ll be both anxious and excited to see how it all turns out (and if they ever offer a full purchase for the live recording......I’d honestly probably buy it.) It was a shame I found out about it so late in the game, because I’d have totally bought tickets to the stream if I had known earlier.

#treason the musical

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im-the-punk-who · 4 years ago

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Hi, I dont know if you read or know anything about Macchiavelli's "Il principe", but I am studying it in school and I cant help but compare it's fundamentals to how Flint leads. I'm just curious about what you think

Eekekekekekekekekekekkek okay so first off Anon, you are absolutely, 100% right to be getting those vibes. If it’s not actually textual it is at the least meta-textual that Flint ascribes to a very Machiavellian type of leadership. His whole ‘never was there a Caesar who couldn't sing the tune’ speech is...licherally a direct reference to Machiavelli's philosophy that leaders cannot retain their leadership without sacrificing some level of ethical behavior in order to manipulate and deceive their subjects into following them.

And, Flint owns at least two books from thinkers who drew directly on Machiavellian thinking in their texts: De Jure Belli Ac Pacis by Hugo Grotus and The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes are both visible in Flint’s cabin, and both drew heavily on the type of leadership principles established in books like Il Principe.

(Also, my eternal quest for the book that sits *under* The Leviathan in that scene remains. Y’all I will literally pay someone for this knowledge. My best guess is Plato’s De Republica.)

In fact, the whole system that Flint’s world was operating under at this time was very machiavellian in influence.

Henry VIII, who converted to Protestantism and who would eventually lead England in the conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism that would then in turn eventually lead the country into the War of Spanish Succession(the war being fought during the London 1705 flashbacks), was a student of Machiavellian thinking. He took the teachings of Il Principe to heart and used them to transform his country. Over the next hundred and fifty years, England would change from an entirely Catholic country to a Protestant one. Of note, Catholic scholars generally disagreed with Machiavelli’s principles on the grounds that it did not support the Divine Right of Kings.

As well, the Enlightenment thinkers that influenced Thomas Hamilton(and Flint himself) were starting to argue more for personal liberty and choice of the governed, both concepts presented in Machiavelli’s writings. (For those following along, this approach was also being used to justify slavery, as what was ‘good for the state is good for the man’ was used as justification for everything from impressment to colonization and slavery. Men were willing to set aside their morals for what they justified as good for the state. Shrug emoji.)

As James says of England when he and Thomas view the hanging in London:

“You think Whitehall wants piracy to flourish in the Bahamas?”

“No I don’t think they want it but I think they’re aware of the cost associated with trying to fight it. And I think that that sound travels.”

Here we see that Flint knows what Thomas doesn’t or does not want to accept: that England is willing to sacrifice some morality and some amount of lives(both of pirate-prisoners and the ships they take) in order to save themselves the financial burden of rooting out the causes of piracy. The justification for piracy was that it is too costly to fight, and that the nation ultimately benefits from a bit of strife as it drives prices up and allows England to place within the sights of its citizenry an identifiable enemy. (Note that Blackbeard also argues the same of Nassau, that prosperity ‘made it soft’.)

Even as he is changed by Thomas’ line of thinking, this lesson will stick with Flint and we’ll see it over and over again as he deals with the men’s hatred of himself by redirecting them towards other avenues(Vane, Hornigold, England, etc.)

And in actuality, this is what sets Thomas very much apart from his political brethren - he was *not* willing to sacrifice his morals in order to achieve a ‘more effective’ victory. Once he realizes that moral deficit shown by England, he creates the pardon plan to argue directly for a more moral and just way of governance. His whole premise for the pardons was to show England that an approach that considered the needs and wants of the governed was ultimately more effective, both in cost and in gaining the genuine good will of the people. And again, this is another likely reason why Thomas was then targeted by Peter Ashe and his father. Railing against the entire system of government was dangerous. Particularly if one was railing against the government in a way that could be seen as support of an opposing system of religion and political rule(remember how I said before that Catholics were generally against the Machiavellian systems?) Put plainly, Thomas’ rejection of Machiavelli’s leadership tactics would have been yet another argument for his treason against the crown.

Interestingly also, Marcus Aurelius - Thomas Hamilton’s homeboy - is said to be one of Machiavelli’s five “good” emperors, of whom Machiavelli wrote,

“[they] had no need of praetorian cohorts, or of countless legions to guard them, but were defended by their own good lives, the good-will of their subjects, and the attachment of the Senate.”

How we tryna be.

And so we see that Flint has - not so much fallen back into England’s line of thinking but perhaps that he never really fell out of it. And that this is actually a rift in his potential ability to conform to Thomas’ line of thinking, assuming we see that line as more morally correct. We do see Flint, gradually, throughout the course of the show, move more away from this Machiavellian line of thinking, especially once he meets Madi and the Maroons. And to me at least it’s one of the most important character shifts we see - in contrast to the trajectory of John Silver becoming Long John Silver - throughout the series. Just as Flint is finally starting to really value the lives of those around him, Silver has learned how effective those tactics can be in achieving his goals. As Hands says - ‘I wonder if he knows how much you learned from him.’

And in fact, Silver almost directly quotes Machiavelli at one point when he talks to Flint about their different leadership styles.

“I once thought that to lead men in this world, to be liked was just as good as being feared, and that may very well be true. But to be both liked and feared all at once, is an entirely different state of being in which, I believe, at this moment, I exist alone.”

Whereas Machiavelli in his chapters addressing cruelty and mercy writes

"Here a question arises: whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse. The answer is, of course, that it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved."

This is clearly the approach Flint has taken - he is the most feared captain on the seas. Certainly in the colonial world and on Nassau, too, his name brings a certain amount of fear with it. Because of this he has been safe from rebellion for quite a long time - however he is also not unaware that his power comes from the people. In the very first episode he talks of his plan with Gates to “position people in all the right places so the crew would never turn.” He has, for an unknown amount of time but I would suspect from the very beginning, been manipulating the crew’s opinion of him to keep them happy. Gates himself, and Silver later, are prime examples.

Both of them; Gates for the first ten years or so and Silver in seasons 2+3 act as a go between - being the ‘liked’ to Flint’s ‘feared’. They convince the crew - the ‘people’ in this case - that Flint’s plans are in their best interest and not truly the act of a tyrant. It is only when Flint forgets - or neglects to respect - that the will of his crew is how he keeps his power, that he really starts to fail. And, later also, that now he has a rival - Silver.

Now, I do want to point out that personally I don’t think Flint is a needlessly cruel ‘ruler’ in the sense the crew sometimes thinks he is, nor is he trying to be as a king is to english subjects. He has power, of course, and he does manipulate, lie, and kill if necessary to maintain his power in accordance with Machiavelli’s principles, but he does not do so ruthlessly or to a degree that is unnecessarily violent, nor with only his own advancement in mind. His goals genuinely are in service of the people he leads, even if the tactics he uses sometimes put them in danger for it. Moreso, I would argue that Flint is a prince who created his own princedom. He took an existing power structure(the pirate council in Blackbeard, Hornigold etc) and took most of the power for himself, either through luck, violence, or political maneuvering. And then he kept it through skill and tactical advantage.

Silver, in contrast to Flint’s new princedom, is truly a ‘prince of the people’. He comes to power through convincing the other pirates that he has their interests at heart - even when he doesn’t. But Silver soon learns that being a well-loved leader is difficult. It isn’t until Silver kills Dufresne and Billy uses that fear to build a legend that ‘Long John Silver’ the pirate king comes into being. Silver learns, just as Flint knew, that in a world or corruption, often leaders need to make sacrifices of things they would have once deemed important.

(I think it’s also important to note for Silver that his main goal is actually one Machiavelli writes of as being ‘a will of the people’. Silver’s main wish is not to rule, not really. His biggest motivator is ‘to be free’. To not have to make choices based on the will or subjugations of others. And so, he attempts to make the leadership forced upon him into something that frees him - unfortunately for him, Madi is right when she says that the ‘Crown is always a burden’ and it would be truly impossible for him to find the kind of freedom he wishes for while wearing it. Which, honestly, is part of why he ultimately fails in that regard as leader of the revolution.)

In the later seasons we see Flint go through this change in philosophy after he meets Madi and the Maroons. He begins to actually value the lives of the people he leads. When put to the choice of going through with the raid on the Underhill estate despite the risk it poses to the slaves on other plantations, Flint resists the idea. As he tells Madi - it would have cost them far more to ignore the ‘will’ of those people he hoped to lead - the slaves - than it would gain them to go through with the plan. And later, even though he can’t be blind to Max’s sway with Eleanor and the others, unlike Billy (and oh how the mighty have fallen, Mr. Bones!) he doesn’t even seem to consider keeping her rather than trading her for the lives of his other men. He no longer wants to trade a potential political victory for the suffering of those he leads. So, too, when he attempts to trade the cache for the fort, he is doing so with the goal being to not have to put those under his power in danger if there is another option. It is, at least to me, an incredibly moving character arc and one that is so very understated.

And honestly, I think it’s what *needed* to happen before he could move on from his rage-hate bender and begin to find the sort of peace that one might argue those ‘good’ rulers had. Machiavelli’s principles tend to get in the way of your ability to connect with other people: when you see them just as pawns in a game, friends and foes lose their intrinsic value of just being important on an emotional level. It is only through learning to truly value his partners that Flint can learn how to be a better and more just leader.

Also, this passage in chapter 15 absolutely KILLS me in regards to both Flint, and Thomas Hamilton:

“Men have imagined republics and principalities that never really existed at all. Yet the way men live is so far removed from the way they ought to live that anyone who abandons what is for what should be pursues his downfall rather than his preservation; for a man who strives after goodness in all his acts is sure to come to ruin, since there are so many men who are not good.”

Like bitch!! We get it!! Too much sanity!!! Shut up!!!!!

Anyway, all this to say that you’re absolutely right in seeing parallels between Flint’s style of leadership and a Machiavellian prince - he is absolutely written as a prince-like leader. As are Silver, Rogers, even the Maroon Queen(and Scott and Madi as extensions of her) can be compared to certain rulers in Machiavelli’s archetypes. Even Thomas, who models himself after one of those ‘good emperors’ engenders a type of political leader Machiavelli writes about.

(Also lastly, i want to very quickly point out this guy, Cesare Borgia:

Who was a prince of ‘fortune’ who lost his princedom to trusting the wrong person. What a beard, amirite? What a face. He’s even got the rings! I’m sure this means nothing.)

So basically yeah, Flint is absolutely a Machiavelli bitch.

#anyway talk dirty morally grey philosophy to me!!!#black sails #james mcgraw #captain flint #machiavelli #black sails meta #milos black sails meta #long post #Anonymous

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carewyncromwell · 4 years ago

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[HPHL] Robert Harker/Loretta Gallagher-Harker Moodboard

“Do you remember, back in the spring, Every morning birds would sing? Do you remember those special times? They'll just go on and on in the back of my mind... Do you remember the time when we fell in love? Do you remember the time when we first met, girl?”

~“Remember the Time,” by Michael Jackson

x~x~x~x

In the late 18th century, before Bat Varney became a vampire known by the students of Hogwarts for his extensive knowledge on every subject, he was a poor Muggle-born wizard from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, named Robert Harker. When Robert was a boy, a wealthy Irish family moved into the estate down the road from his family’s rundown old cottage. Nine-year-old Robert didn’t think much of it until their daughter -- twelve-year-old Loretta Gallagher -- sat down under one of his favorite apple trees one day to read. As Bat told the story to Atticus Grimsley @cursebreakerfarrier over a hundred years later:

"There was a very pretty girl who'd just come to town. She was a few years older than me and a lot of people didn't talk to her due to her ancestry...but one day I'd been picking apples when she came over to sit under my tree so she could read. She hadn't seen me. I hadn't wanted to startle her, but I just had to know what she was reading -- so I dangled upside down over her to ask. But I ended up just a bit too close, so when she looked up -- bam. Lips locked. We were so shocked that I fell right out of the tree and she bolted. It took me another three years to approach her again."

Robert met Loretta again at a summer ball, right before he headed back to Hogwarts for his second year. Now that he knew the truth behind his “oddities” (namely, his magical talent), had made friends for the first time in his life at school, and had a better sense of who he was, he felt a bit more confident in approaching the young lady, properly apologizing for their horrible first meeting, and inviting her to dance. Dancing in those days was a social ritual that facilitated casual conversation, so as Loretta and Robert danced, they bantered back-and-forth, the older girl lightly poking fun at Robert’s “professor-like” tendency to go on long tangents on different topics. Despite this, she was charmed by the younger boy’s intelligence and passion, and even more so by how Robert treated her more like a friend and equal than some romantic or sexual conquest. As Robert explained at the time, he would be away at school for nearly all of the year, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t socialize and visit at parties when he was in the area. And so they did. Every summer, both Robert and Loretta looked forward to reconnecting at the local summer balls, so they could take a few turns around the dance floor together and have spirited conversations about science, history, politics, and religion. Despite being the black daughter of a wealthy white Irishman, Loretta had received an extensive education with tutors at home and had also taught herself about five different languages, including Egyptian hieroglyphics, so there was never a shortage of things for the two to talk about.

When Robert graduated and returned home to Sheffield more permanently, he took an apprenticeship at the local apothecary, covertly using some of his Potions expertise from Hogwarts to help “spruce up” the store’s herbal remedies. Robert’s return gave Loretta and him more of a chance to spend time together, with Loretta visiting the apothecary to pick up medicine for her infirm father, Robert colliding with Loretta at more of the town’s local balls, and the two accompanying each other around town as they did their errands. Robert even -- despite being raised Protestant in a town that looked down their collective nose at Irish Catholics -- asked to accompany Loretta to some of her church masses around Christmas, Epiphany, and Easter, so that he could compare and experience the different traditions. It didn’t take long for Loretta to become very enamored with the poor young wizard, and only a little longer for Robert to realize how truly in love he was with the young Muggle lady too. They married at the Cathedral Church of St. Marie in spring 1780, with Robert wearing a handsome suit his best friends from school, the new Bartholomew and Cecelia Varney, paid for and Loretta holding a ribbon-decorated bouquet of purple irises, the flower Robert gave her most often while they were courting, which symbolizes both wisdom and admiration.

Given Loretta’s status as an illegitimate child, she wasn’t set to inherit a lot of money from her parents’ estate, at least in comparison to her older half-siblings, and Robert’s employment at the apothecary alone would not be enough to support them financially as a couple, let alone any family they wished to build together. So Robert, looking to his own father’s example, made the difficult and courageous decision to join the British army, which was currently attending to the “disorder” in the American colonies. When Robert told Bartholomew and Cecelia, Barty made a selfless choice of his own and enlisted too, so that he could stay by his friend’s side, both for his own sake and for his wife’s, since she -- as a woman -- wouldn’t be able to go herself.

Six months after Robert left for the colonies, Loretta gave birth to their first and only child: a little girl who the two decided through letters to name Irene. The name meant “peace” -- a symbol of what the two Harkers prayed for most, in their future. Unfortunately, as anyone who knows the rest of Bat Varney’s history knows, that was never to be. Robert never got to meet Irene in person, nor did he ever get to reunite with Loretta again before her death -- instead he was condemned to watch them live from afar without him and without even knowing that he still existed. Fortunately, despite the heartache Bat feels of never knowing what could’ve been, he takes comfort in the fact that Loretta was strong enough to live well and happily without him and that Irene was able to live a full and successful life and raise a happy family of her own in the Wizarding World he loves so much and yearned so dearly to share with his wife from the very beginning.

#bartholomew varney #loretta harker #aesthetic #moodboard #hphl #hogwarts legacy #my writing #cecelia crouch varney #atticus grimsley #had robert had his way he would've stayed with the army until irene was old enough to receive her letter #then he would've come home and found more stable work in the wizarding world preferably as a professor #he had greatly esteemed the idea of teaching his own daughter at hogwarts one day #most likely in potions history of magic or flying #but yeah cecelia you see what adorableness you broke up?!?#it's no wonder bat was so pissed at you!!#loretta's favorite subject in the whole world was languages #her passion was studying the evolution of written and spoken languages over time #hence her passion for egyptian hieroglyphics #she also was fluent in latin greek old english middle english and welsh #if she'd lived in the modern era she likely could've taught several languages at the college level herself #she was an absolute friggin' genius #it's no wonder ravenclaw!robert admired her so much #oh yeah and this song?#I used to bob up and down and sway to this as a wittle one I loved it so much XD

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noshitshakespeare · 4 years ago

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I would be interested in knowing more of how to understand/approach early modern dramas, Shakespeare especially, but other writers from his time too if you know more about them, fron the angle of race/other. Do you have resources/references on how to approach early modern drama this way? I do realise this might be a broad topic, I'm looking to expand my readings and the way I approach/read Shakespeare as a non-black POC who is very fond of his works.

As you’ve said yourself, this is a really huge topic. And as you may imagine, it’s one that’s been getting more focus now than ever (though it has existed as a topic of interest since at least the 1980s). I don’t think I could do justice to the topic in just Shakespeare, let alone in all early modern drama. But let’s see if I can make a reasonable start.

Because the term ‘race’ didn’t signify what it does now, and because Shakespeare was living in a time before England established itself as a major centre for slave trade, the first thing to be aware of is the difference of understanding. We can’t unproblematically apply modern standards and notions of race and other any more than we can talk about Shakespeare in terms of our modern understandings of sexuality and sexual identity. This isn’t to say that people didn’t notice colour, as can be seen from the terms like ‘blackamoor’ that were being used, but the question of otherness was, then as now, caught up in the more complex issue of religion, and colonisation. Because the Ottoman empire was one of the greatest powers in the world at the time, and Islam was perceived as a major threat to the European countries, difference in skin colour could also denote a difference in ideology (I talked about this a little in relation to Othello once). But sometimes an equal threat was perceived in those who didn’t look different, but who didn’t hold similar beliefs.

Given that your question is about otherness in general, this is very relevant, and broadly speaking, we can categorise otherness in terms of

Those who come from abroad

Those who look different (black, brown, even a slightly different shade of white)

Those who have different belief systems (Jewish people, Islamic people, Catholic people)

Those who look different and have a different belief system.

What to make of early modern treatments of this difference is very difficult, because there isn’t a homogenous viewpoint. There’s never been a time when everybody thought the same thing, and so one can find all sorts of perspectives on race and otherness in early modern writings. Some are missionary perspectives, seeing difference as a mark of heathenism, and wishing to ‘help’ them by converting them, which went hand in hand with those who considered them subjects to be colonised and ‘civilised’ (see for instance Richard Hakluyt, Reasons for Colonisation, 1585). But there were people even at the time who saw the colonial project for what it was, and denounced the cruelty of the conquistadores (Bartolomé de las Casas’ The Spanish Colonie, translated into English in 1583 is a very interesting read), and even people like Michel de Montaigne, who admired what seemed to be a state of prelapsarian paradise in the people of the new world (see ‘Of Cannibals’). In the other direction, looking from Europe towards the East, the great and far superior power of the Ottoman empire manifests itself in a kind of awe, fear, and Islamophobia, but less in a desire to civilise or convert. Often you’ll even find in military and conduct guides a favourable description of the Ottoman nations to the detriment of European cultures. Part of this might have something to do with the fact that Elizabethan England had treaties with the Ottoman empire, but it might be a tactic to shame to west into better practices too.

Many scholars now attribute the notion of ‘otherness’ in the early modern period as part of the creation of ideas of ‘nationhood’ in a time when nationalism was really beginning to take shape. It’s an age-old notion and one that Shakespeare points out in Henry V that patriotism and national unity is made stronger by demonisation of others. By contrasting themselves with the Catholics, the Protestants could define their own faithfulness, by contrasting themselves with Jewish and Islam religions, the Christian nations could achieve a more unified identity, and by comparing themselves to the less ‘civilised’. In that sense, sometimes more fears are expressed in relation to those one can’t differentiate easily by physical characteristics, like Jewish people, or, for that matter, Irish people. In fact, there are some very interesting depictions, for instance in The Merchant of Venice or Marlowe’s Jew of Malta in which the so-called Christians condemn the ‘other’ (Barabas, Shylock) for things they do themselves. Barabas, while playing the stereotypical bogeyman of a Jew, will criticise the Christians for their hypocrisy in the way they quote the bible to steal his money: ‘Will you steal my goods? / Is theft the ground of your religion?’ (I.ii.95-96). Shylock is accused of cruelty for essentially buying Antonio’s flesh, even though the Christians have ‘many a purchased slave / Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules, / You use in abject and in slavish parts’ (4.1.89-91). The same applies to more physically different characters. Aaron from Titus Andronicus is a problematic character, almost a cardboard cutout of an evil villain, but though he’s undeniably cruel, so are so many other characters in Titus, and strangely, while internalising the idea that black = moral blackness, he nevertheless shows more love for his child than Titus (who kills his own son), and questions ‘is black so base a hue?’ (4.2.73)

This is all to say that there’s no single approach to studying race and otherness in Shakespeare and other early modern writers. The treatment of the other will differ depending on the writer, the play, and even between characters in the plays, because it wasn’t a straightforward topic then any more than it is now. So the best thing you could do would be to familiarise yourself with the discourse that surrounds the subject without committing yourself too much to one view as being more correct than another (it’s a good scholarly approach to avoid bias as much as possible). Unfortunately, the books on the subject tend to be quite hardcore academic. But here’s a short list if you want to get started on something.

Miranda Kaufmann, Black Tudors: The Untold Story

This is great for a more general readership and helps to break preconceptions about what the early modern period in England was like, but it’s not strictly about Shakespeare or drama

Catherine Alexander and Stanley Wells, Shakespeare and Race

An essay collection, which is academic, but gives a broader scope than a monograph

Jonathan Gill Harris, Foreign Bodies

Quite hard, but very good for a wider approach to ‘otherness’ rather than being limited to skin colour. Does focus on drama alongside history.

Ania Loomba, Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism

A classic. Again quite hard, and somewhat inflected by modern notions, but very useful.

Miranda Virginia Mason Vaughan, Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500-1800

Good if you’re interested in performance history and the actual presentation of blackness on stage, including blacking up.

Kim Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England

Hardcore academic stuff, and more history-based about the beginnings of the colonial project and slavery.

Patricia Akhimie, Shakespeare and the Cultivation of Difference: Race Conduct and the Early Modern World

Covers that question of building national identity and deliberate emphasis of race or difference.

Mary Floyd-Wilson, English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama

Like the one above, this is broadly about the way English ethnicity is created by othering.

Sujata Iyengar, Shades of Difference: Mythologies of Skin Color in Early Modern England

Deals with the ways early modern people understood colour in comparison to our own notions.

Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery

Looking eastward and southward at the relationship between Europe and the Ottoman empire as well as Africa

Daniel Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean

Another work on the relation between England and Islam, and deals very well with the British sense of inadequacy in comparison to the Ottoman Empire, as well as their fears about others who don’t have distinctly racial characteristics.

Jerry Brotton, This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World

A history book that charts the incredible trade and political relationship the court of Elizabeth had with the Ottoman Empire.

Ayanna Thompson, Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America

Jumping to the present, this is more about how Shakespeare is used in America now, especially focusing on pop culture and the representation of racial issues.

For a more casual approach, and one that’s about as up-to-date as can be, you could check out the #ShakesRace hashtag on Twitter. All the scholars and theatres are using it for discussion, or for advertising new books, new conferences, talks and podcasts on this subject, though the focus is, as you may imagine, more on colour than otherness more generally.

#anon anon sir!#asks #long post #very long #oops #reading recommendations #race #other #Aaron #Othello #Blackness #Barabas #Marlowe #Shakesrace #this question was asked at a really timely moment in our current history #but I'm less timely in replying #POC

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cincinnatusvirtue · 4 years ago

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Jan Janszoon also known as Murat Reis the Younger (c. 1570-c. 1641) Dutch Barbary Pirate and founder/leader of a pirate republic, Republic of Sale...

Mention pirates and you may well conjure a number of images in the mind. It depends on the context you’re discussing in terms of history and placement in the world. The western world usually has an image of a swashbuckling and misunderstood rogue or misfit outcast who has been rejected from their society or can’t tolerate authority so they take to a life on the high seas in search of freedom, adventure and plunder. Edward Teach (1680-1718) better known as Blackbeard is sometimes cited as the archetypal pirate in many modern works of fiction. Or one might picture the character of Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise. Images that are based in elements of truth but probably watered down from the reality of the harsh existence pirates found themselves in and the harsh price they exacted from others.

Another type of pirate, widely talked about but not perhaps as well known in some parts of the world is that of the Barbary pirate or Barbary corsair. The Barbary pirate were privateers or pirates from an Islamic background typically and sometimes used a nominally religiously infused perspective to ply their trade. They usually hailed from or were based out of the so called Barbary Coast of North Africa, so named for the native Berber peoples who made up the majority of these lands, Berber being a corruption of the ancient Greek for Barbarian a term applied to all non Greco-Roman peoples in antiquity. These lands were the modern nations of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia & Libya in particular. These pirates were largely in operation from the 16th-19th centuries with their zenith being in the early to mid 17th century. The modern states of North Africa were not full fledged nation states as they are today, in fact they were instead made up of various city states that with the exception of Morocco were nominal parts of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. These locations while part of the Ottoman sphere of influence had relative degrees of autonomy that fell to their local governors called dey or bey or pasha. All honorific titles taken from Turkish to roughly mean leader or governor. The pirates on behalf of their dey or pasha or sometimes on behalf of themselves had virtual control of over their city-states and the surrounding seas.

The most prominent grounds to find these pirates and their bases was the Western Mediterranean and Atlantic seaboard of Western Europe. Their primary focus was to engage in the plunder of merchant ships and occasionally raid coastal villages and towns. The main target wasn’t so much goods like money or inanimate objects but rather in the capture of people, mostly Europeans and later Americans to become part of the greater Islamic slave trade within the preexisting Ottoman and Arab slave trades which spanned from Asia to Africa and Europe. Now keep in mind slavery was not exclusive to any one society, culture or location, slavery and human trafficking was commonplace on virtually all continents among all peoples during the 16th-19th centuries. However, the focus of this post will be on the Barbary slave trade and to provide a snapshot of the practices within that context.

Not all Barbary pirates were born within the Islamic world, in fact some of the best known were originally Christian or Jewish and later converted to Islam. One of the best known was a Dutchman named Jan Janszoon (Jan Jansen) who took on the later moniker of Murat Reis the Younger...

Early Life...

-Not much of Jan’s early life is documented, other than he was born in the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands in roughly the year 1570. Sources don’t definitively state who his parents were other than we can determine his surname followed the Dutch patronymic naming system of Janszoon or Jansen meaning “son of Jan or son of John” in English.

-At the time of Jan’s birth, the Netherlands was technically part of the Catholic Spanish Empire. However, the ethnic Dutch who were primarily Protestants of the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church were increasingly at odds with Spanish rule, what resulted was the Eighty Years War or War of Dutch Independence (1568-1648). Seven northern provinces of the Netherlands, one of the most powerful being Holland formed the united nucleus of new country determined to breakaway from Spanish rule. This became the Dutch Republic. What followed was a period of off and on warfare, colonial expansion and a flowering of cultural expression in art, commerce and the establishment of relatively tolerant values based in individualism. This was reflected in the largely Protestant personalized philosophy of their religion. The Dutch Republic became a place of comparative religious freedom within Europe and its government was run more by a legislative body than a monarch, though it had monarch like figures with varying degrees of power, more symbolic than absolute. This contrasted with the absolute monarchy and centralizing of power in most of 17th-18th century Europe.

-Jan’s profession wasn’t known either, other than at some point he took to a life at sea, it is speculated by some sources that he was apprenticed on merchant ships as a teenager which enabled him to learn the skills of sailing and nuances of trade and diplomacy in all dealings that would later serve him in life.

-In 1595, Jan is recorded as marrying a woman, presumably named Soutgen Cave with whom he had at least one daughter and possibly a son, Edward The daughter, Lysbeth, was definitively confirmed by virtually all sources and would play a role in her father’s later life.

-Jan would eventually abandon his family in the Netherlands and would never return to them in a long lasting fashion. Jan appears to have been restless and turned to a life at sea, first as a Dutch privateer on behalf of the Dutch Republic, raiding Spanish merchant ships in an effort to hurt the economy of the nation that nominally ruled over the Dutch Republic.

-However, in the early 17th century a nominal period of peace or truce was established between Spain and the Netherlands, though the war and issue of independence wasn’t officially resolved. Jan during these years appears to have left the official capacity of serving under the Dutch flag and instead made his way to Spain and North Africa and largely went into business for himself.

Algiers and Spain “Turning Turk”...

-The timeline is somewhat confused based on the sources we have but Jan’s adventures appear to have taken him to the Canary Islands off Africa’s coast where he was captured by Barbary pirates, possibly under the Ottoman privateer of Albanian extraction, Murat Reis (The Elder). Jan was conveyed to Algiers (modern capital of Algeria) where he was most likely considered for a life of slavery. However, it appear Jan either made the conversion to Islam outright to officially spare him the pain of slavery, since nominally Islam forbids the enslavement of other Muslims, though this was not always practiced since other Muslims were occasionally enslaved by the Barbary pirates. The other possibility is that Jan convinced his captors of his suitability as a sailor and guide and offered his services if not his faith, though it most likely he converted to Islam at this time, probably as a practical matter. The conversion in European circles was known as “turning Turk” since Turk became a blanket misnomer to all Muslims regardless of ethnicity at this time.

-Jan also made his was to Spain, in particular the port city of Cartagena where in the first decade of the 17th century, some of the last sizable remnants of a Muslim community lived, descended from Muslims that once controlled most of the Iberian Peninsula in the semi-autonomous province of Al-Andalus (Andalusia) from the 8th century to the year 1492.

-Since 1492, the Christian kingdoms of northern Spain and Portugal pushed backed the Muslims and “reconquered” Iberia from Muslim rule. The Spanish monarchy overtime changed from relative tolerance of Muslims and Jews to threats of expulsion, forced conversion or death for non-Christians. In the midst of all this Jan, either not yet a Muslim or a Muslim who as a European could pass for a Christian met a new woman, sources can’t confirm her identity beyond the Spanish name Margarita. Margarita was known to be a Spanish Moor or Muslim of mixed ethnic background, most likely Arab-Berber with roots in Morocco. She was part of a community known as Mujedars or Moriscos, Moors who nominally were converted Christianity but in private secretly maintained their Islamic faith and customs. Sources also vary on whether Margarita was a woman of high birth or nobility or a domestic servant to a Christian family. There is even a source that speculates her genealogy can be traced in part to the then ruling dynasty of Morocco, the Arab Saadi dynasty which claim descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad through the Prophet’s daughter Fatima.

-What is known is that Margarita would become Jan’s wife, the first of four permissible simultaneous wives under Islamic law. It is not known if Jan ever took another wife. His first Christian marriage in the Netherlands would be viewed as invalid under from the Islamic viewpoint. Jan and Margarita also had four sons whose names are Abraham, Anthony, Philip & Cornelis. All four would have been raised as Muslims by their parents, from this point on this became Jan’s family. His Dutch family is variously reported to have been ignored or still the recipients of child/spousal support from Jan who would send portions of his earnings to them. There is evidently truth to this given that his daughter Lysbeth later visited him late in life, suggesting a good enough relationship if distant.

Sale...

-In roughly the period 1609-1612 the family would have left Spain for Algiers and later Morocco and settled in the city of Sale, today a twin city of the capital of Rabat. Sale had a long history but a number of thousands of expelled Muslims from Spain would come together to form the nucleus of a new period of history in Sale. These Muslims would have differed from the Berbers of Morocco despite their overlapping ethnic similarities, in that they grew up speaking Spanish probably in addition to Arabic and would have had Spanish influenced customs, this put them at odds with their fellow Moroccans.

-Jan in his travels would have been multilingual. In addition to his native Dutch he would have known Spanish and likely Arabic, English and possibly French at the very least.

-1619 saw the city of Sale which had a small Barbary pirate operation already declare itself an independent republic, not subject to the authority of the Sultans of Morocco, then ruled by two brothers of the Saadi dynasty in a virtual state of civil war At the center of this “revolt” was Jan himself, now known as Murat Reis (The Younger), taken after his former captor who had passed away a decade before. Jan was already successful in conducting raids for Algiers on European shipping, mostly of Spanish shipping and other nations. Though he was known to release or ransom his fellow Dutch from captivity in many instances.

-Sale in its newly declared independence was helmed by a ruling council of 14 leading pirates who elected Jan at its Grand Admiral (head of the fleet) and President. The newly minted Republic of Sale, was a functioning de-facto city-state that was run by and for Barbary pirates who enriched themselves off of the slave trade and sale of plunder of other goods taken from European ships.

-Sale’s fleet was small at first, numbering 18 ships, mainly of the “polacca” design, the ships were small, sleek and fast. The harbor at Sale was the mouth of the Bou Regreg river which divided Sale & Rabat on the north and south banks respectively. The harbor was protected by a sandbar and due to the small design of the ships with they had the ability to slide over the sandbar and dock in the shallow harbor, where European ships typically required deep ports for docking due to their deep and large hulls. Sale at the time also benefitted from relative isolation with next to no roads leading to the city from land and it was purely a port city.

-Jan is noted by all sources as an intelligent and brave fighter as well as able administrator, the docking fees, percentages of profits from slave sales and others good sold made Sale blossom financially under Jan’s administration. Nominal fees to the Sultan also helped maintain their semi-autonomy, in recognition of this and due to other deeper difficulties Sultan Zidan Abu Maali of the Saadi dynasty made Jan the ceremonial Governor of Sale.

-Jan and the Sale Rovers as his fleet was called in English sources was known for their guile. Carrying multiple flags on board Jan and fleet were known to approach ships and like a chameleon adapts to their surroundings by changing colors, the pirates would fly friendly flags as they approached their prey. This meant they kept informed on the latest diplomatic changes of the day and using this ruse got close to their quarry and then suddenly would raise their own flag of the two conjoined sabers on a field of green or the crescent moon of Islam and frighten their victims. Barbary pirates in general speaking foreign tongues with a fearsome appearance of swords and pistols in hand and dagger in mouth relied on intimidation and very often tried to capture their victims without an actual fight. Since the goal was enslavement harm or death to their prisoners was not ideal and psychological terror was their foremost weapon hence why they chose merchant and passenger ships and usually fled at the sight of military ships.

-According to the known accounts Jan and his men treated their prisoners relatively humanely given the circumstances as Barbary piracy was well known by this time, most knew their fate would not be good, few slaves ever returned to their homeland or another destination. Typically, women and children would be separated from the men, meaning families were often divided. Once arrived at port, they would be separated according to age and gender since they served different purposes. Men would typically be used for forced manual labor to their Muslim masters or serve as oarsmen or servants on ships, rarely setting foot on land for long periods of time. Children would be taken to serve as domestic servants in Muslim homes and women would typically be sold to become domestic servants as well. Occasionally women were made into sex slaves to their masters, sometimes ending up in the harems of the Sultan or other Muslim rulers. On the auction block as is true of slaves anywhere, one would be publicly displayed sometimes naked or asked to run and jump or to be prodded and inspected by prospective buyers. Those in good health commanded the highest price. Some slaves were also ransomed through funds raised by the family, government or Christian religious orders, though this fueled the Barbary pirates economy and perpetuated the cycle of enslavement. Jan is known to have made large profits to fund his family, fleet and home and is known to have had many servants, most probably being men to perform manual labor in maintaining his fleet for future slave runs.

-Jan also occasionally ventured outside of the Western Mediterranean and Atlantic near the Canary Islands, sight of his own capture years before. He was known to base himself on islands off the coast of England and even return to the Netherlands. Using his Dutch citizenship and his new found role as an Admiral nominally in the Moroccan navy, he had diplomatic immunity and for his service in attacking the hated Spanish, he was viewed with mixed feeling in his homeland as his fame had spread by this time. The authorities banned piracy officially and condemned it and thought him a bad example, even if he exacted a toll on the Spanish economy which rivalled the Dutch and was still at war with them. During one visit back to Amsterdam in 1622, the authorities located his first wife and their children in the hopes the sight of them would spurn him to give up his piracy, it failed. To make matters worse, he had somewhat a folk hero appeal that lead several Dutchmen to actually leave behind their lives in Amsterdam and leave to join his crew for a life of piracy, a testament to the charisma he probably possessed. His crew would have been multiethnic containing other Europeans including Dutch, Spanish, French, English and German crewmen alongside Arabs, Berbers and Turks. Spanish & Arabic would have probably served as lingua francas onboard.

Return to Algiers...

-By 1627, the political situation in Morocco had deteriorated and for safety reasons he took his family to Algiers. His son Anthony had by this time now an adult left Morocco for a life in the Netherlands and would eventually marry a Dutch woman and immigrate under the auspices of the Dutch West India Company to North America, settling in the colony of New Amsterdam, modern day New York City. Anthony was known as Anthony Janszoon Van Salee in Dutch. He was the first Muslim recorded to have been a long term settler in North America and kept the first known copy of a the Qu’ran in America as well, reputed to be a copy of the Moroccan Sultan’s personal Qu’ran which was a gift and a testament to the honorifics bestowed upon the Janszoon family. Anthony became a successful farmer, landowner and merchant in New Amsterdam and helped found settlements that made up modern day Brooklyn, New York. He was known to have an independent streak like his father and little regard for authority, making him a colorful character in colonial America. Through Anthony, Jan has many living descendants in America (see my previous post on Anthony) including the Vanderbilt family which became wealthy in the 19th century.

-Upon his return to Algiers, Jan resumed his piracy this time conducting two of his most famous raids in 1627 and 1631 respectively. First, he had his crew leave from England northward to Iceland of all places, where they captured a couple hundred Icelanders and a few Danes from Denmark, all were sold into slavery in Algiers where Jan continued his large profits. The second took place in Ireland at the village of Baltimore, once more he successfully made off with hundreds of prisoners, only two would ever return to Ireland. This latter raid was lamented in the 19th century Thomas Davis poem The Sack of Baltimore. In both instances, Jan’s crew went ashore and captured villagers from their homes, again using intimidation with probably only enough physical violence so as to intimidate and deter resistance. In the case of the Baltimore raid, Jan’s crew attacked in the middle of the night abducting people from their sleep.

Capture...

-1635 saw Jan captured while at sea in the Eastern Mediterranean, captured by the Christian military order, the Knights of Rhodes or Knights Hospitaller. He was kept on the island of Malta, the details of his confinement are murky, but he was known to have been beaten and subjected to torture though he never renounced Islam and was known to have become quite pious in his faith. He encouraged many European captives to convert and spare themselves slavery as Islam forbids enslavement of other Muslims. In fact, the Muslim view of Jan and his fellow Barbary pirates at the time was widely one of celebration and righteousness. Not only did it provide economic benefit but the enslavement of non-Muslims was viewed as an act of almost holy war waged against infidel peoples and the pirates were warriors of Islam acting in a righteous manner.

-Jan’s imprisonment lasted five years until he was freed by Tunisian Barbary pirates in a raid on Malta. He was heralded with great pomp in 1640 at his release having achieved fame in the Islamic world as well as have been a scourge to Christians in Europe.

Final return to Morocco...

-Jan was essentially in search of work despite his old age and feeble condition from his imprisonment.

-He returned to Morocco but not Sale where he made his name and fortune but instead, the new Sultan made him Governor of Oualidia further south on the Moroccan coast. The modern day seaside resort had a unique lagoon and a new fortress or “Kasbah” was built specifically for Jan. He also maintained a home in nearby Safi, no longer at sea, he retired and merely administered the area but appears to have been restored to his wealth, his wife Margarita is presumed to have predeceased him either in Algiers or Morocco before or during his imprisonment on Malta.

-In 1641 his daughter Lysbeth from his first marriage travelled with a Dutch embassy to Morocco to greet the new Sultan. Lysbeth and her husband met with Jan, supposedly both on their docked ship and and his many homes, he was described as being enfeebled but surrounded by luxury and comfort attended to by servants. Lysbeth stayed with her father for months, the only extended period of time since her childhood, presumably this meant despite his physical distance, their relationship was relatively good.

-No further sources of Jan’s life are known, its presumed he died shortly thereafter of natural causes and was buried in Safi, Morocco in an unmarked grave but no source has yet validated this.

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tobacconist · 3 years ago

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ill put it here since its hard to have a proper discussion through replies

@solomonjones

God’s will is mysterious, and we as humans cannot know it. i dont pretend to, but i can aspire to atleast attempt to understand it. regardless of your religion; either you believe: God ordains all events throughout history as part of his greater unknowable plan, and that it is He who causes the rise and fall of nations, peoples, ideologies, etc or, you believe: when good things happen to you God is blessing you but when good things happen to your enemies it is satan who blesses them. if that is the case, you do not worship the One True God. you worship an imposter deity who presumes to call itself “θεός”, or “Бог” or “ الله ”; who is caught in deep rivalry with all the other pretenders to the throne of God Almighty.

this is what the story of the old testament is fundamentally about. even though the israelites were God’s chosen people, they were continually overtaken and oppressed by pagans. as it is written, the LORD hardened the pharaohs heart. in my opinion, it is impossible to understand the wider context of the bible (old and new testament) without understanding it in relation to pagan history and mythology (and in relation to the modern world) they didnt include, say, the odyssy in the holy canon of course because the pagan peoples being converted already knew these stories intimately. they did include the scriptures of the jews however (even though they were in many ways just as spiritually flawed as the pagans) because people were less familiar with them and the scriptures of the jews are very important to understanding the significance of the life of Jesus Christ (as he fulfilled prophecies of both the pagans and the jews)

when i say i have deep respect for the orthodox churches, please understand that i am being completely earnest. but i see it for what it is, an imperial religion of temporal power, like any other. this is going to sound quite harsh, and im writing this from an antagonistic perpective because, i presume, as someone who is quite devout; you do not need to be convinced of the deep need for religion in the world (now more than ever) that said... throughout history, kings and theologians have torn the Body of Christ, the church herself, into pieces. like DOGS they have torn the body of christ to pieces! like some horribly blasphemous tug of war. catholics pulling the head and protestants pulling the legs. baptists pulling out the intestines, the orthodox snarling and territorially guarding the heart, and the gnostics scooping up the spilled brains. and yet they are all convinced they know best, that they are the ones with grace, that they are the only true pure and correct church. this is what i mean about spiritual pride, and everyone knows it. especially when their actions and morals are in so many ways clearly at odds with what Christ actually taught. the only reason atheism exists is because of centuries of corrupt religious leaders; you can blame no one else for this godless world.

you claim the tsar held grace by his ceremonial anointment; but God hears the cry of the oppressed. thousands dead for your cause seems very reasonable compared to thousands dead for your enemies cause. but God gave people a rational mind, and although we are all misguided, he gave us wisdom enough to (eventually) see through deceit - whos author is the devil. it took centuries, but he taught us the ignorance of idolatry. the foolishness of worshipping kings. many more centuries it took until we abolished slavery. when the LORD let loose his hand and upturned the entire order of civilisation; throwing the chess pieces everywhere. fortuna’s wheel made such a global revolution; scarcely ever seen before. the nobility of the world, once so proud, learned through the bitterest chastisement the desserts of one who believes he can do no wrong. i cannot question the judgement of the LORD, but i do wish history had been different. less bloodshed, less mess; but God knows best.

on the topic of miracles, you can believe whatever you like, my friend. jesus said blessed are those who believe what they cannot see; but in my opinion you are as naive as one who believes hindu swamis can manifest gold rings out of thin air. all religions are guilty of this chicanery, but the spell only holds as long as people still want to believe. God gave us the power of reason, and His essence is truth. a great spiritual mystery; that (atleast for the past hundred years) Gods chosen people have been the atheists who knew him not! contemplate it! deny it if you want! there is great wisdom to be found there. not that they are blameless. the very opposite. i do not deny the horrors of communism which i assume you as an orthodox christian will know intimately well; but communist movements (and growing secularisation in general) cannot be thought surprising when one considers history. but has not the LORD advanced their science? has He not given them the power to perform many miraculous (and diabolic) deeds? babylon, rome, and america all play their part in His great plan. Blessed are the Naive, for they will not be punished as severely as those who should have known better. you can bring up some (rather weak) scientific validation of miraculous events to prove that God is on your side, but every single religion does this. and if you look at who is actually out there curing the blind, deaf and lame, who is it?

do you feel a deep spiritual calling in your heart which demands your soul to cleave unto the orthodox church? good. listen to it. that is God talking to you. that is God telling you what role you must play here in your lifetime. in some peoples hearts, that voice tells them to cleave to islam, or to buddhism, or to fucking wicca some people it tells them to ardently support nothing but science and secularism and to reject any fairytale from the past that they cannot prove. to some it tells them not to worry about any complicated theological or scientific shit that they would never understand anyway; and instead to simply follow what they know and try to be a good person by whatever ethical system they follow.

to some of us, it says we must always, always strive to be wise. that it is our sacred duty to solve every great paradox and to unveil every mystery that while the rest of the world argues in the dark, we must take our small spark of light and study deeply what we see within its radiance; and combine our little lights whenever we can. that we will be punished for our failings, as we will never be truly wise. no man can be omniscient. we will be punished for everything that we know, and for everything that we dont know, and that we must accept this. for being lukewarm and middling, for being passionate and taking a side. but we must do it anyway. that it is our duty. because ignorance is a condition which feels disgusting. that voice, it tells me that this is the task, the monumental task that all mankind undertook when we chose to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, when we had been warned not to; to become like gods. and God himself, the LORD almighty said to us: okay. but you will die. you will die thousands of times. thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of times. and each time, you will become just a little bit wiser until maybe, just maybe, you will become like i. my “only begotten son” who will reign with me in paradise when you finally realise what a profound responsibility it is to be God.

#pardon this is rather long and rambling #but this is my thoughts as best as i can convey them #fuck i spent like 3 hours writing this; i hope you actually read it lol #earnestly; i await your response

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priorireverte · 4 years ago

Photo

Congratulations Ash!

Your application for Ted Tonks has been accepted. And we have a simply, truly happy reunion of the formerly dead! Hooray! I’m so happy for the Tonks. Unless . . . things are never as easy or simple as they appear.

Please look to the checklist for the next steps and reach out if you have any questions!

OUT OF CHARACTER

NAME & PRONOUNS: Ash they/them

TIMEZONE: EST

ACTIVITY LEVEL: I’m a front end dev for a virtual event platform who works between 5-7 days a week but I’m usually active after 6pm and on weekends. I have slow weeks when on lighter projects and busier weeks when we have a lot of shows.

ANYTHING ELSE: N/A on triggers. I’ve been roleplaying on tumblr for i think 14 years? Too long.

CHARACTER DETAILS

NAME: Edward “Ted” Álvaro Sepulveda Tonks

BIRTHDATE: October 10th, 1952

DEATHDATE: March 15th, 1998

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Cismale, he/him, flexible heterosexual.

BLOOD STATUS: Muggleborn

HOUSE ALUMNI: Hufflepuff

OCCUPATION: Prior to going on the run, Ted worked as a Broadcaster for the Wizarding Wireless Network. Upon return, he doesn’t have a career yet.

FACECLAIM: Pedro Pascal

CHARACTER BACKGROUND

POSTBELLUM

Ted had been on the run for seven months. Over half a year, without seeing his wife or daughter, spent in the countryside near his childhood holiday spots. Doing just a sad excuse of camping for what? To lose his life to a group of indoctrinated youth and the werewolf who turned his son-in-law?

The pain is the last thing he remembers. Ted was never a stranger to pain. Not during scuffles in primary school or stray hexes in the corridors of Hogwarts. Though he couldn’t say he had ever experienced pain like this, it wasn’t all pain. There was a warmth, not unlike the one he felt when falling asleep to his wife, that urged him to close his eyes. They hadn’t hurt Dean yet and that was the one thing Ted had wanted to make sure of. Not the boy, too young to be going through this. Just him.

Waking up in the Ministry had been a surprise. He expected death or a dungeon, tied to a tree if they were truly desperate, but he wasn’t chained or shackled. There were no ropes keeping him. Just a barrier and soft voices explaining his new reality. He laughed. It was all he could do really. Laugh at his luck, if that’s what it was. He had been brought up Catholic and, if he tried, Ted could still tell you the stations of the cross. He didn’t feel much like Jesus coming back from the dead. He hadn’t done enough with his life to claim that nor would he ever. But the irony of rising again, of another chance at life, got to him. Ted found himself praying before bed. Silently staring up at the ceiling, asking for the safety of his family. His wife, Dora, Remus, and his grandchild. If he recited his prayers, something he hadn’t done in nearly thirty years, perhaps he’d find them safe. Unchanged by the war and happy.

He finds himself running his hand over his throat or chest, searching for scarred skin. There’s no sign of his attack. No physical reminder of what ended his life and, he has to know, did it really end? Why was he given a second chance over so many others? He wasn’t a true Order member. He never fought back against blood supremacy in a strong way. Ted lived his quiet life with his family not wanting to make waves. He had just wanted to be happy.

If he could go back and do it all again, he still would have gone on the run. He would have resisted capture. Stood in front of Dean to give him a chance to run for it. He has regrets of course. Not being with his wife in times of terror and uncertainty. Missing the birth of his grandchild who is no doubt just as much of a terror as Dora had been. But his family’s safety matters much more than his own life does. Well, did.

PERSONALITY

If there’s anything Ted was, or is, good at it’s talking. He can tell a story with a smile clear in his voice and actions. Read an ad or two over the Wizarding Wireless Network like nobody’s business. That’s what he loves most, telling stories. His childhood was filled with stories of his parents’ time in Chile and new tales of Cornish mythology. Those words didn’t leave Ted as he grew older. He still turns to them in times of stress, taking the advice from their lessons to heart. He may know now that life can have struggles but he didn’t used dwell. If you’re a good person, you will have a good life. He knows music can tell a story in the best way. It doesn’t matter what language you speak or know. You can be countries away and hear a song written fifty years ago and the story is clear.

He’s rather gifted in charms, finding that when he discovered magic it was the least imposing course of study. Ted tries to find the beauty in all he can. Charms was just a class that made that easy. It’s how he became interested in broadcasting in the first place. He had fancied he’d be a writer, even though his speech was always better than his writing, but the intersectionality of older muggle technology and magic was too much of a puzzle to pass up.

He’s never been mindful when it comes to tidying up. He’s no tornado. As he’s gotten older, Ted is sure his ways of leaving things around the home and forgetting dates and times has been a constant aggravation to his wife. His sense of time was never good. He tends to get caught up in conversation, appreciating face to face interaction over anything. He always floo calls when you’re supposed to write. Andromeda has dragged him away from too many conversations when they were just supposed out for one errand.

Ted doesn’t know how to deal with loss. His father passed a few years into Dora’s childhood and he never spoke about it much. His mother moved back to Chile soon after. His solution was cooking as much of the food he had grown up with as possible. Playing the music his mother had blasting over the record player in the kitchen during his childhood. Teaching her all the tales he had been taught. All the little lessons he was given.

Inaction could be said to be one of Ted’s failures. He thinks, or thought, that no matter how bad things got there was always a light at the end of the tunnel. He supposes this ideal isn’t gone from him. He’s been given a second chance. Prior to death, he presumed you could muster through anything and if you stayed a good and kind person you could get through to the other side. He was taught God rewarded the good. It was why his parents had immigrated to England before he was born, why they were given the opportunity. They were good people. They deserved a chance to make something of themselves. It was why he and Andromeda were able to build a life together. But not joining the order and taking a stand against blood supremacists and extremists didn’t keep him safe the second time. It didn’t allow his family to be untouched by loss. Things hadn’t worked out until now.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY

Edward “Ted” Álvaro Sepulveda Tonks was born in Truro, Cornwall, England to two Chilean immigrants in the fall of 1952. His parents had moved to Truro prior to his birth for more opportunities. Although they named their son Edward in hopes of assimilation for him and his father anglicized their last name from Tolhauzsen to Tonks, Chilean culture was the main theme of their home. It was baked into every fiber of his being whenever he walked through the door. English was barely spoken in the household, only more so in the time that he and Andromeda lived with his parents. Bringing in take away had to be done under the cover of night or he faced his mother’s stern looks and even sterner words. His mother didn’t work in the traditional sense but as a homemaker excelled beyond compare. His father was an employee at a music store and eventually came to own it.

His parents are the reason Ted is and was so family focused. It was taught to him that family comes before everything and he carried that through with him to adulthood. They were the people who stood by you in all things. Eventually he came to understand that could apply to chosen families as well. It was strange for him to meet Andromeda and learn that not all families put the same values of love and care in places of high honor. Respecting your parents was highly important but loving them and receiving love in return was what that respect was built on.

Despite not growing up the richest, Ted never wanted for much. He was an only child who was rather dotted upon by his parents. To learn that he was a wizard might have been the only serious friction they went through. If not for the day his girlfriend showed up on his doorstep to tell him that she was pregnant. His parents grew to love magic when he came home for the summers and showed them what he had learned but as he grew older, Ted found it harder to see a life where he could stay in their world. In the muggle world at all. It would be like shutting a part of himself off. Like not living up to his full potential.

HISTORY

Hogwarts was a fantasy. There was no other way to describe it. It was nothing like Ted could every dream when he wondered why strange things always happened to him. When he was younger and broke his mother’s vase and it stitched itself back together. Or when he would run home from primary school and make it back in a fraction of the time it took to get there. The answer to any of his happy accidents wasn’t magic. It couldn’t be. And yet, it was. He just didn’t expect a different flavor of exclusion when Hogwarts was presented to him.

Injustice wasn’t unfamiliar to Ted Tonks. Growing up during the mid 1950s, he was used to seeing ‘Keep Britain White’ signs. His parents were strong and kept their heads up despite the riots and protests surrounding them. His father told Ted, stay kind and stay sharp. If you stayed kind, no one could go against you. If you stayed sharp, no harm would come to you. As Ted moved into the wizarding world, he learned that he would not be judged by the color of his skin or his family’s country of origin but his blood was still in no way pure. He leaned on his father’s words and was sorted into Hufflepuff.

Andromeda Black was another happy accident. He’d have had to be blind not to notice her. He didn’t count on her noticing him. He had gained a good group of friends just by his nature but their social circles never interacted. How could they? The segregation of houses, purebloods and non-purebloods, was a clear line. It was during classes that the line was able to be blurred. Mutual tutoring turned into secret meetings over the years. Promised whispers Ted told himself not to believe in or give hope to. It wasn’t until the day Andromeda stood on his doorstep looking very much not like herself, a year after they had graduated Hogwarts and continued seeing each other in secret, that Ted knew she was an inevitability. They weren’t married when Dora became even a speck on the horizon. He was still an intern for WWN at the time and she had given up her whole life for them. For their family. Ted wasn’t sure he would ever be able to sacrifice something that even slightly measured up to the gift she had given him.

Nymphadora wasn’t a name he chose. It wasn’t a name he would have thought of but his later years of Hogwarts had been marked with many nights in the Astronomy Tower learning all the stars from a girl named after one of them. It was certainly more regal than Ted would ever be. And if he happened to know of a certain saint with the same name and told his mother that Andromeda was thinking of converting to Catholicism, no one was the wiser.

Their small home in the country was never a place of worry or fear but some days when Andromeda left for St. Mungo’s, Ted worried until she was back safe and sound in his arms. It took eight years after his daughter’s birth for Ted to feel comfortable bringing her to work with him. To not look over his shoulder in the marketplace for fear someone would be looking for them.

After Dora had left Hogwarts and decided to become an auror, Ted began to worry again. He was good at hiding it. Puttering away in their little garden or forcing his wife to listen to his stories of the new musical group that was destined to become the next Weird Sisters. He kept as busy as he could, even if busy meant learning new recipes with Andromeda or spending nights in the backyard with their telescope. They could endure another war. He wasn’t worried about that. He was worried about Dora, full of her mother’s spirit and wit out there fighting it.

OOC EXPLORATION

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO?

I think the idea of the dead coming back is such an interesting premise. We never get to learn more about the Veil or the Department of Mysteries and this is such a cool take. Ted is one of my favorite characters who I’ve never been able to portray at an older age.

Also, an rp that values writing over one-liners? Sign. Me. Up.

EXTRA FOR NON-BIO CHARACTERS

CHARACTER CONTRIBUTION

Ted Tonks is one of the many minor (minor) characters in the Harry Potter universe but his story is so interesting to me. To decide that he was going to marry a well-known pureblood woman and make a life with her in such a dangerous time is such a heavy decision. I think Ted can represent a lot of good natured and honest qualities, valuing love above all else. I’m truly excited, if I get the chance, to play with how those values can shift if he’s given a second chance at life. Will he be less hesitant than before? More likely to throw himself into the fray? Or will he be even more cautious at staying out of the affairs of others? Family is really the only thing he has left and I believe he cherishes it above all else.

PRESENT

Ted has been back for six days. He’s sat in the Ministry camp, and really what else can he call it? His cot isn’t comfortable, nothing like his bed at home but a supreme upgrade from the forests of England. He’s surrounded by old friends he had fallen out of touch with years ago. People he hasn’t seen since his own time at Hogwarts. There’s still only three people he desperately wishes to see. His wife, his daughter, and his grandchild. But something is wrong and Ted knows that. He hadn’t realized he died when they first told him. He just thought he had been tortured. There’s something in these Unspeakables’ eyes, in the lines of their faces, that tells Ted he had missed quite a lot. The other matter at hand is his wand. He hasn’t been given it back. It’s not odd for him to do things the muggle way. Before all of this, he took a sense of pride in doing things slowly. Taking his time to craft a dish or fold some clothes, it gave him time to think and pause. But since he was eleven years old, Ted has never been without his wand or without magic. When he lays in his cot at night, after a time of silent reflection and prayer that could better be described as a plea to whatever entity is out there, Ted focuses on the small bit of wandless magic he used to be able to do. A lumos he had to learn when Dora was young and used to come into their bedroom in the middle of the night. Eyes full of tears at the dreams of monsters in the dark, under her bed or in the hallway closet. When he was too groggy to grab his wand from the bedside table, a small ball of light at his fingertips was the next best thing. Now, he can’t even muster up the slightest of glow.

#prioriacceptance #ted tonks #edward tonks

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vagisil · 4 years ago

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The Rise of Fundamentalism Through Romantic Literature

Modern fundamentalism includes an array of ideas from the teachings of Bill Gothard and the Quiverfull movement to the multiple sects of The Church of Latter Day Saints, the various fundamentalist churches that pop up from time to time and many others. While these ministries do have somewhat different takes on Christian doctrine, the one thing that will always be shared among these groups is the idea that the modern society is headed towards a dangerous faith. Where most other extremist movements would have died off just as quickly as they were made, fundamentalism has stayed around for centuries no matter how advance the outside world became. My theory is that the reason fundamentalism remains a strong part of American society is because of the historical movements that back it, one of these movements being the romantic era of American literature. The romantic literature movement, better known as Romanticism, was a defining part of American society specifically academia and the arts. Created as a contrast to the growing social-political norms of the current culture around science and industrialization. The romantics strived to bring back the principles they’d deemed necessary to life such as emotion, spirituality, and individualism. Many of the early works of this movement criticized and flat out rejected scientific thought as a whole, believing it to be the destroyer of creativity and free thinking along with turning society to the worst through increasing the standard of secular living. This emphasis on science being the reason behind traditions being put aside, the multiple displays of the scientific taking over religious values in romantic literature along with the popularity Romanticism had, made it possible for more who agreed with the dangers of straying away from convention to continue the revolt against this new wave of enlighten secularism. Taking this opportunity the romantics opened up for them.

Before the mid 18th century the Age of Enlightment was at its peak. At this time the culture was focused on bureaucracy, industrialization, and secularism. The head of these conventions changing everything from old to new was science. Science is seen as the bringer of all evil. The thing that was separating people from the beauty of the world in favor of scientific discoveries. That the practicality of living in a city, working an industrial job and leaving behind traditional core values, were brought on because of science. The Romantics saw and lived the potential harm this kind of thinking could and did come to later on in time. They saw how the lifestyle of living in a city made one disconnected from nature and therefore the world. How one’s relation to practicality and seriousness made them disconnected from their self. This inspired many to go against the grain and make work that not only expressed the issues they had with the rise of enlightenment but also encourage others to see through the ruse too. In much of the literature during the romantic era science is explained to be the enemy. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a fame writer of the romantic era, writes in his essays “The Poet” and “Self Reliance” how the culture of this time did more negative than good, and how it was better to go against what is the norm when it is not what’s best. Emerson touches on how the enlighten aristocrats do not know what is best for the world, comparing them to fools who are unable to see the true essence of the world around them. That we as individuals would be much better off not following in their footsteps. In “Self-Reliance” Emerson states “To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart, is true for all men – that is genius…. that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse..” (Emerson, 236-237) and in The Poet he says “…if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls…you learn that they are selfish and sensual… It is proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds of our amateurs.” (Emerson, 254) Where Emerson was subtle in his criticisms of this new wave of thought others were not. Edgar Allen Poe, another acclaim romantic, describes in his poem Sonnet - to Science how the character of science is the direct cause of this ruining of the creative and spiritual soul. In one line Poe outright displays science to being a predator while “the poet” is its prey, stating “Science!...Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?” (Poe, lines 1-4) As time went on and Romanticism became to be at its peak this anti-science rhetoric spread. Many people agreed that this push towards innovation and modernity was bad for society. Specially the group that was the strongest on the idea of revolting against invasive secularism were the fundamentalist Christians of the 19th century.

In Romanticism’s prime years a smaller new movement, the Fundamentalists, had come along. This movement had similar concerns for the culture, they too thought that the trajectory of modernization would lead the public astray of its values, that this kind of environment was corrupting to the mind, body and soul and that lessening the importance of religion was unhealthy overall. The popularity and scale of Romanticism grew to become a huge inspiration to others who felt similar about the new ways of the world. They saw how Romanticism took off and figured not only could they do the same but that they could do it better. However, before completely detaching from the romantics they also learned a lot from their endeavors. Romanticism and Fundamentalism have a shared commonality on needing to save the current culture from falling into ruins by the hands of the secular scientific elite. Where in Romanticism science pushes people further away from creativity, for fundamentalist science pushes people away from God. Rather intentional or not, the romantics made it a point to portray secularism as dangerous. Insisting the public worry about what they thought would come of it in the future. Although, for the most part it was probably more intended as an analogy of how new conventions destroy the older ideas. Fundamentalist are known for their very strict and literal interpretations of the world, therefore whatever written down on paper is what they take away from reading the romantics works. A clear example of this is the story of “Young Goodman Brown” written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Young Goodman Brown tells the story of a man leaving the familiarity of his home to explore uncertainty. The symbolism of this tale criticizes one’s choice of venturing the unknown and daring to question faith. In relation to the romantics and their plight this story represents on a deeper level how although intriguing at first, the call for enlightment will lead to destruction. This story also however heavily parallels the fears of the average protestant of these times and modern. Young Goodman Brown’s life was never the same after his encounters in the woods. Due to him, quite literally, leaving his faith his entire course of life was altered permanently. This directly follows the structure of the “Umbrella of Protection” in fundamentalism. The Umbrella of Protection is a model of how one should live their life formulated by three umbrellas. The first one being the largest representing God. The second, positioned directly under the first to represent the man of the household. Along with labels of the things he is meant to do like protecting the family and providing. The last umbrella being the smallest representing the woman of the house, with her purpose being to manage the house and children. Followers of this mindset believe that if we as people don’t act according to our roles in this life structure, if we step outside of this bubble of protection dangers will come our way. Young Goodman Brown stepped out of his umbrella and because of that the foundation of his life and spirit were forever broken. In this way Romanticism is portraying secularism much like one would portray a villain in a horror movie. Making it clear to the audience that secularism is the bad guy.

Fundamentalism has now grown to be a phenomenon in America, lasting for as long as two centuries. While Romanticism faded into textbook obscurity, Fundamentalism has kept the romantics anti-secularism roots strong. In the 1850s towards the end of romanticism’s peak and at the start of Realism, the overall culture was beginning to change again. Artists and academics were shifting to a more realistic perspective of the world wanting nothing to do with the un-natural or supernatural. Although this meant the days of romanticism were over this did not mean the values put in place were leaving too. As romantic ideology spread with time, many were taking more and more liberal, and most importantly less literal, takes on the notion of secularism in society and what it would mean for the greater good. So much like true fundamentalist fashion, they separated themselves from the romantics and created their own groups. Unlike the romantics however these groups were purely focused on religious aspects of the cultural criticism. Their goals were to make it known to the public how harmful secularism really was. Some of the earlier fundamentalist began their careers as soap box preachers, promoting the previously mentioned belief of disturbance in your life if you break away from religious teachings in favor of secularism. Highly influenced by the romantics, people flocked to this kind of thinking. These groups of Protestants and Catholics arose with time, becoming popular American attractions for some period of time as well. While no longer associating themselves with the romantics now believing them to have falling into the category of liberal theology, the romantics still are a large part of why this movement of radical Christians exist today. Walter E. Houghton mentions in his book The Victorian Frame of Mind, 1830-1970 that the romantics paved the way for individualism that went against temporal thought. His text states “Romanticism, also encouraged emphasis on process rather than on fixed or static truth.” (Houghton, 29-31) Referencing not only the Intelligent Design argument but also both parties’ stances on how to view the world.

Fundamentalism as it is today in America would not be if it was not for the work of the Romantics. Romantic ideology’s emphasis on rejecting modernity and uplifting individualism based around your core beliefs help raise a new generation of extremists in Christian sects. Popularized by influential authors of the time period, separating oneself from science became normalized. Allowing for easier indoctrination into religious groups, soon after the rise of early fundamentalism growing in America. Due to the usages of religious themes as allegories and other literary devices combined with the message of the stories it is no wonder the fundamentalist were drawn to these tales. Much like the origins of Romanticism, the ideology of sticking to the fundamentals of tradition is just as popular now in the modern world as it was back then; Proving how much impact Romanticism had within our culture.

#essays

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indiavolowetrust · 5 years ago

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Matthew 7:7

SUMMARY: "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you."

Satan tutors a particularly curious, chatty student.

Notes: This MC is based on various female saints. Prior to falling into the Devildom, this MC lived in Catholic rural Spain -- hence the name Maria Cruz (MC). This fic explores the possibility of demons having their own language outside of the MC's native language, as well as Satan's inner wrathful nature.

My head pulses with the reverberation of the rain, the battering against the windowpane a thunderous, steady march. While I can’t quite fathom how the Devildom has changes in weather -- outside of temperature changes, that is -- it is difficult to do anything but take the anomaly in stride. In a realm crowded with demons, angels, and beings dangerously akin to monsters, it would be only a headache to dwell on it. A waste of time.

But aside from that, it is comforting. A vague resemblance to a typical autumnal rain. If I close my eyes for a moment, I can almost imagine that I am in one of Sister Marta’s classes again: bored, tapping my pen against the wooden desk, and on the verge of sleep, the sound lulling me into a placid state. Sister Marta would drone on and on about the syntax and grammar of Latin, citing various points in scripture. My pen would scrawl doodles and notes alike, creating looping whorls on my paper. And the occasional running line for each time I nodded off, of course. The storm would rage on and on, drawing my eyes to the rivulets of droplets on the window, and my patience and attention would slowly slip into nothingness.

I regret doing so each and every day that I spend in the Devildom.

I take another glance at the two books strewn on the desk, attempting to focus again. A compilation of notes sits beneath my hand, the two tomes in Latin and Enoch flipped open to what should be the same page. My fingers cramp from writing so much, protesting the constant workload, but I wholly ignore the sensation. If I had paid more attention in Latin class, I would be able to translate Enoch better. If I hadn’t drifted off so much and ignored Sister Marta, I wouldn’t have such a noticeable accent when speaking to the demons of the Devildom. If I hadn’t spent so much time daydreaming about the end of the school day, I wouldn’t have embarrassed myself upon my first arrival in the Devildom. My skin still bristles at the memory: my complete bewilderment, combined with the Lord Diavolo’s lack of foresight to provide me with a translator, had only led to disaster.

A complete idiot, some part of me says, chiding me. You looked like a complete idiot, spouting off nonsensical phrases in Latin.

Then again, it wasn’t as if I had really believed in demons or angels before. How was I supposed to know that the language of the demons was only a derivative of Latin?

Another clap of thunder nearly shakes the House of Lamentation’s foundation. I read the hands of the grandfather clock: it is only half past midnight. Plenty of time to finish the last five pages of translations and vocabulary practice. I will myself to understand the texts before me, gripping the pen tightly in my hands. I force my eyes to focus. If I am to survive the remainder of my exchange year at RAD, I would have to do a much better job at hiding my humanity -- starting with disguising my Spanish accent. But the words only blur in my vision again, the call of sleep urging my eyelids to close, and I feel myself sway unsteadily in the chair. The stress and fatigue from work hits me all at once. The lull of the storm sings to me, exacerbating my exhaustion. My pen begins to drift off the paper. My head nods forward.

“Maria?”

I blink, immediately forcing myself back to consciousness again. My eyes scan the library, drawing itself over rows of bookshelves and dark mahogany tables. The dim lamp on the desk is dim and flickering, casting long shadows across the room.

And Satan stands in the doorway, looking just as surprised as I am.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, hand still on the doorknob.

I glance down at my notes. I’ve drifted far enough into sleep that I’ve drawn a crooked line over the preexisting words, I realize with embarrassment. I quickly hide the ruined sheet. “Just studying,” I respond. “It’s -- it’s late, isn’t it? What are you doing here?”

Satan arches a brow. “Well, aren’t we curious?”

“Ah, I didn’t mean --”

“No, no, it’s fine,” he dismisses, throwing a smile my way. It does nothing to disarm me, nor does it ease my sense of embarrassment. He reaches one of the bookshelves in the corner of the room with long strides and pulls a book off the shelf, evidently acquainted with the contents and layout of the library. “I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I would read something to relax. I left one of my favorite novels here.”

I nod, trying to hide my discomfort. “I see.”

I look down on my notes again, reading over the newly written content, but I make sure to keep a wary watch over Satan out of the corner of my eye. While traveling to the human world with Satan, Lucifer, and Mammon had helped in forming the bonds between Satan and Lucifer, I cannot say the same for myself. Only a few weeks have passed since Satan’s outburst. Since his threats of, verbatim, slicing off my nose and ears, ripping off my arms and legs, and feeding me to the lower-level demons. While it is easy for someone like Lucifer to simply overlook the transgression, being a demon, it is much more difficult for a human like me to forget the terrifying experience. Satan had clearly meant to make good on his word. If Lucifer hadn’t stepped in, I would likely be nothing more than a pile of torn flesh and bone.

“You’ve gotten pretty proficient,” Satan’s voice says over my shoulder.

I nearly startle out of my chair, turning towards the source of the voice. Satan stands to the side of the desk, leaning as he regards my notes. His gaze draws itself over my notes and the tomes with interest. I shrink back instinctively from his presence, still caught in surprise. Thankfully, he doesn’t notice. The wrathful demon simply nods, as if satisfied by my work.

“So this is how you’ve become fluent so quickly,” Satan remarks, green eyes lighting up. “Tell me, are all humans like this?”

I shake my head. “Not really. It’s -- I just figured it would be a good idea if I learned more Enoch,” I explain hastily, my hands already working to close the tomes and collect my notes. “Didn’t want a repeat of the first few weeks of school.”

“Well, it was almost incomprehensible when you first started.”

My cheeks flush. “I --”

“And you’ve improved significantly,” he says. “You should be proud of yourself, human.”

There it is again: that brilliant, faux smile. I merely nod in acknowledgment and utter a small thank you as I gather the rest of my things, closing each tome with finality. Satan steps back as I stand from my seat, bearing various notes, notebooks, and a pen in my hands, and I do my best to offer him a smile in return. A goodbye gesture of sorts. If I am to have my choice in the situation, I will not spend another moment in Satan’s presence. Not alone, anyway. It is late, as it is. He probably wouldn’t be too offended if I made the excuse of exhaustion. I begin to make my way past him, the excuse falling from my lips.

Satan catches me by the arm. I flinch as I regard him, both the surprise and fear registering on my features before I can stop myself -- and Satan lets go immediately, the facade slipping almost imperceptibly. He draws his hand back to his side, the action creating distance between us once more. I stare awkwardly at him for a moment.

“I can tutor you, if you would like,” Satan finally says, breaking the silence. “Tomorrow, same place.”

Say no. Just outright refuse, my conscience advises, attempting to build my resolve. You can tutor yourself just as well as that demon can. Just say no and he’ll leave it alone.

* * *

The tip of the pen emerges from its casing with a gentle click, Satan’s fingers wrapped securely around its base. His eyes scour my written translation for a moment, peering over the frames of his reading glasses. He scratches corrections onto the paper after a moment, then pushes the notebook towards me. His pen taps on the various scrawlings.

Satan pushes his reading glasses up the bridge of his nose, “This word is pretty close, but there are too many connotations for it,” he explains. He writes out various characters in Enoch, pronouncing the syllables of each word. “It’s a bit more formal, but it’ll probably get your point across a little more clearly. Your professors will probably appreciate that.”

I take a look over Satan’s writings, comparing them to the text. As promised -- or mildly coerced, depending on how I regard the circumstances -- Satan had met me in a small library of the House of Lamentation, at least several high-grade novels and other books piled high before him. And, as expected, Satan is nothing but strict in his teachings. Each wrong stroke of an Enochian character leads to a quick, ruthless correction, Satan immediately scratching out the mistakes. Each wrong pronunciation of a word in Enoch incites a tsk from him, his typical gentlemanly countenance making way for his true nature. While it is somewhat reassuring that the demon no longer feels a need to hide his nature from me -- therefore making his outbursts more predictable if they do occur -- I still can’t quite shake the discomfort. The contrast between his outward and inward nature is unsettling.

I sigh inwardly, dispelling the thought. If I had really wanted to refuse, I should have done so right then and there. Because I was given a choice, wasn’t I? An implied choice. I could have said no. I could have refused. But then a memory had suddenly occurred to me, and I found myself completely stripped of my will.

Don’t you dare trifle with me, human, Satan’s voice echoes, the memory still fresh and palpable. If you dare say that you won’t make a pact with me again, you’ll pay for it with your --

“What’s wrong?” asks Satan, casting a glance at the space underneath my pen. Empty. “Is there something you don’t understand?”

I blink, then quickly shake my head. “No, I was -- I was just thinking about something.”

“Like what?”

My mind searches for an excuse, eyes inadvertently scrutinizing his appearance. While one would normally wear something more comfortable and casual for bed, Satan is dressed in an almost formal sweater and sweatpants that could be taken for slacks, his hair still perfectly mussed and styled from the school day. Nothing about him is undone. The meticulously thought-out details make me feel nearly out of place with my borrowed, oversized sweater, pyjama pants, and pineapple-like bun of curls sitting on top of my head. A slovenly effort when compared to Satan.

My eyes land on the reading glasses perched on top of his nose.

“Do you need those?” I ask, distracting myself from my own thoughts. “I always imagined demons were all-powerful. Did you have to go to a doctor in the human world to find your prescription?”

Satan looks surprised for a moment, as if he hadn’t expected me to comment. Or notice, depending on how low his expectations of humans are. “Well, no, but I thought they seemed appropriate.”

“You thought I would learn faster if you looked the part?”

“You like to ask a lot of questions, don’t you?” he counters, clearing his throat. “Curiosity killed the cat -- isn’t that what you humans always say?”

“‘Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back,” I recite, correcting him. I lean in closer to peer at his glasses, my curiosity overtaking my unease around the demon for a moment. The glass is thin, free of any curve in the glass. Moreover, they bear a plain yet distinctive design -- akin to what a gumshoe in a noir novel would wear. My mind flashes back to the book he had pulled off the shelf the other night. “They aren’t real.”

Satan gives me a withering look. “If you knew that, then why did you ask?”

“You’re wearing them because you want to look like Detective Vic Stone from Masking the Shadow,” I observe. Satan’s impassive facade falls for a moment, his flustered state suddenly apparent, and a sense of victory nearly quirks my lips into a smile. A strange sense of victory over the wrathful, figuratively masked demon -- but a victory nonetheless. “You can correct me if I’m wrong.”

Satan brings a hand to his face, partially obscuring the flush over his features. “You try my patience too much. If you have any other questions, I would suggest you ask them now.”

“Just one.”

“I’ll make sure to bind your mouth next time.”

“How much would you like to be paid per session?” I ask, ignoring his words. “I work part-time, so there isn’t really a --”

He cuts me off. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” I echo, confused. “If this is because you think me incapable of compensating you, you are sorely mistaken.”

He sighs, obscuring his face as he focuses his attention back on the Enochian tome. Adjusts his glasses again. “Why wouldn’t I?” Satan says matter-of-factly, as if I should be aware of the answer. “That would be like refusing to take home a kitten in the rain. There’s no reason why I wouldn’t help you.”

“But --”

My words die in my throat as Satan places his hand on my head, patting my pineapple-like bun of curls as if I were truly a pet. That fake, polite smile graces his features once more. “You ask too many questions,” he says, his tone halfway to a threat. “Work.”

part 2

#obey me shall we date #obey me!#obey me satan #obey me fanfic #original character #writing #writing practice

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