#divinekangaroo

[deadendtracks]

responding to @divinekangaroo's response to me!

re: the Lizzie scene in s2, I never feel like I can articulate what I see in any kind of coherent way. It's one of those completely *weird* scenes that CM throws in every so often that isn't quite what you'd expect it to be but isn't particularly easily defined, either.

The impending assassination and his emotional shut down over Grace are definitely elements!

The ability to get away from being used to kill, but then being locked back into it against his will.

Yeah, absolutely, this is incredibly important to both season 2 and season 3 (and arguably season 5 in a different way).

I have such a sense he’s almost *forcing* himself to do it.

Yeah absolutely, that's how I look at it too. I don't sense any anger in it, but Tommy does often react to situations he can't escape by 'going away' in a sense (dissociating, detaching, withdrawing emotionally).

I wonder how this fits with what you talk about later regarding him 'acting out' on Lizzie what's being done to him -- would he have to so obviously force himself to do this if that were the case? It seems like it would be more compulsive/irresistible and feel necessary for him if that was the motivating factor? He doesn't seem to be aware enough to have it be the case that he feels this compulsion and knows where it's coming from and is struggling with it by becoming detached, idk.

From Lizzie’s words (and how warm the two of them are in the typewriter scene) I have to assume they’ve had a relatively amicable paid sexual relationship, and Tommy’s definitely acting different in that particular scene.

Yeah definitely. This tends to be misinterpreted by some parts of fandom as how he *always* is with Lizzie, but Lizzie's reaction to him is definitely a little "idk what *that* was about" and she wouldn't behave the way she does if that was how he typically treated her. There's also the fact that despite his demeanor in that scene where he seems to be dismissive of her, in the next scene he shows he'd listened to her and thought about what she said.

It’s not really about pleasure or release before a risky venture that might kill him. It’s not even about Lizzie at all, or a comment on his prior (or upcoming) connection with Lizzie. A reminder to himself about being used, the way certain disadvantaged people are always used no matter what they actually want, the way he feels about being used that way. And a very strong reminder at the end when Lizzie outreaches for connection that you take the money and treat the exchange as a transaction.

Yeah, that could be part of it, though to me it doesn't feel like he's aware enough even of Lizzie's presence for this to be a kind of acting out of that dynamic on another person -- instead it's like she's not even there (and he's not there either). In some ways you wonder why he's doing it at all. One of my theories about Tommy & sex is that he uses it to get out of his own anxiety spirals/out of his head, so maybe that was what he was hoping would happen and he was just too dissociated from the fact of what he was about to do to get anything out of it but taking the edge off.

So he uses Lizzie, not cruelly or unfairly in that desk scene given she is a prostitute then: she’s his only lover that he doesn’t have to perform with. He can have terrible sex, he doesn’t have to think about her pleasure, he doesn’t have to perform or satisfy her or try to influence her.

In some ways she's also the only person he doesn't have to perform for period, he's always performing for his family, he's always performing for his enemies and for the upper classes. He can often be quite 'flat affect' with them but never quite to this extent; with Lizzie he can drop even the pretense that he's present. Which isn't great for her! But his reaction to her wanting *more* from him ('i wish just once you wouldn't pay for it like normal people' or whatever she says) could be all about the fact that what he *wants* in that moment is to not have to be anything or anyone to her or himself, he wants to *not be.*

Tangentially: I also think a lot of his behaviours with Lizzie are actually about what’s going on in himself, not about his feelings for her.

Yeah, absolutely. His first scene with her at Epsom is about this; he's too wrapped up in what he's about to do to even hear what she's saying or how she feels about it; and I don't think it has a lot to do with what he thinks about her as a person, he's just dropped into that headspace where he can't spare anything for anyone.

This Lizzie as a Tommy-distorted-mirror warps and shifts over time, but I think S2 in particular she’s almost this “sexual-tool / extension-of-himself” to be that mirror of him being used as a “killing-tool” where he has no choice, and he actively uses her that way in the sex scene and at Epsom.

That's an interesting point. To riff on it a bit I think it connects to "everyone's a whore, Grace" and to "everyone gets tired, Finn" -- I think in a wider sense Tommy's thinking is nearly always war-time, in that everyone around him is also a combatant and there are no civilians. It's the same with his brothers often, it's the same with how he has disregard for the civilians in the housing project in the season 4 shootout: this is a battlefield for him so he treats everyone else as if they're also in the battlefield situation with him.

Which... at least for Lizzie and those civilians in s4, they didn't sign up for this! He blurs the lines between how people use their bodies-as-tools, including, later, himself. I think a lot of this comes from having been a lower level officer ranked over his brothers -- to have mentally survived at some point he'd have had to detach from any personal feelings about who he's 'using' to fight these battles and how, and now he can't turn it off.

He also fully intended for Lizzie not to have to go through with it, which is important; at the same time he'd have to know there'd always be a risk of that going wrong in ways that (at that point) wouldn't be true of himself (he'd end up injured, killed, arrested rather than raped).

asking for Lizzie as a thing/a Tommy substitute -- well, he actually did do that to Lizzie at Epsom, because he couldn’t do it himself. 

And it shows how he changes by s5 where he absolutely would never offer Lizzie to Moseley even if it would be strategically advantageous; instead he'll keep putting himself into the position where it's possible he'll have to do it himself, which terrifies him.

[divinekangaroo]

Was Tommy upset Lizzie left him? He tells Diana he is not.

Actually kind of fascinated by the thought of viewing PB believing that everything the characters say is true. They’re a bunch of situational liars as well as coming from positions of not everyone in-series having all the information.

So, Tommy telling Diana he’s not upset his wife left him. Here’s a few readings:

1) Tommy is outright lying.  As if he’d EVER tell the fascist upper class woman who cornered him into unwanted performative sex (remember immediately after he fell into a traumatic flashback?) whose partner also made him perform a Nazi salute (and please be aware that the Romani people across Europe experienced a holocaust too - this can be found easily on Wiki and various holocaust websites - this act cut him so deeply, remember the submachine gun scene following?) -- AND THEN broke up his marriage in a mirroring of the Nazi salute scene within (at most) one day after him having sex with Diana, as if he'd ever tell this woman who he KNOWS is mentally and morally and deliberately FUCKING with him: ‘yeah actually I’m super upset and sad.  Hope you won’t find a way to pour salt on that wound too.’

2) Tommy is telling a version of truth.  He’s not upset because he’s relieved that Lizzie will no longer have the burden of his death and the rest of this clusterfuck of what’s going on.  It’s over and done now, the pain’s as bad as it can get, and at least Lizzie doesn’t have to suffer the remaining painful things he’s going to have to do, like force himself to fuck Diana again, or kill himself, or be murdered, or declare himself publicly a fascist, or be publically discredited, or any one of a hundred compromising things that he believes he needs to do to stop Mosley, but that would hurt Lizzie more.

3) Tommy is telling both a truth (per the above) and a lie.  Tommy is upset Lizzie left him, notwithstanding any relief as well; Tommy never gave any indication he wanted her to leave him.  I’ve written about this before (https://www.tumblr.com/divinekangaroo/730179748259627008/tommy-says-sorry-to-lizzie-a-phenomenal-amount-of?source=share) In addition to everything at that post, the lameness of his attempt to talk to Lizzie after Diana’s dropped her bomb is telling in itself: this man had a whole crowd eating out of his hand during his speech at the start of S6.  This man speaks beautifully in parliament.  He is a master of oratory.  And yet, he can’t speak convincingly to his wife?  He couldn’t come up with some compelling position statement for her?  That’s because we see this repeated motif that he can speak when it’s not personal – it's policy, there’s distance, the Sergeant Major speaking to his men – but when it’s personal (Lizzie here, Michael in S5, Ruby’s death etc), he gets *so* upset he can’t speak, or when he does it's this faltering, broken sort of thing.

But – and I have seen this bouncing around tumblr - a reading that he wasn’t upset Lizzie left him because he thought Lizzie was a huge drag and now he could be free to fuck Diana because he enjoyed fucking Diana because it got one up over Mosley – I just.  *blinks, bewildered*

[dogmetaph0r]

WIP Game!

Rules: make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

Ty for the tag @evita-shelby and @capnmachete (who tagged me a long while ago on main but I am terrible at finishing tag games sfjdjejfj)

Sic Em* (*3 documents bc it is a victor hugo length fic)

lover, tell me

stay with me (hold my hand)

if the hackers find this fic I’m fucking screwed (aka feels like gold when you hold it)

bullied child mentality tommy introspection

i owe you a black eye + 2 kisses

bedroom hymns (wip?? abandoned??)

funny honey

operant conditioning (carrot, stick)

whump, Theory style!!!!!

Oh my GOD I don’t even think I know enough ppl to complete this fgjgjfjrkrkgk………..but let’s Do Our Best™️

No pressure tags: @susandsnell @vehiculartheyslaughter @todaysrat @agentidiot @morning-alfie @elskiee @divinekangaroo OH my god I got anxious for no reason this is as long as I can think abt it. anyone can play if u like <33

[noyoucantpinmedown]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you! get to know your mutuals and followers ♡

I love this ask <3

1. My cat

2. Tea with lemon

3. The sound of a thunderstorm outside

4. Seeing my friends

5. Drawing

Tagging: @shi-daisy @ampuru @drylan @bowl-1 @cloudycaffeinatedcryptid @divinekangaroo @ambreiiigns @ghostradiodylan @gwunc4nlover @thephantomrunner

[aneurinallday]

I'm living for @divinekangaroo's tags. This person gets it.

Them: "While kneeling in a puddle of - " Me: GO ON??? 👀 Them: " - his own acrid malice." Me: Oh.

[sarasa-cat]

@divinekangaroo re that poll and your tags, I found da2’s friend-or-rival vs neutrality/meh/whatever far more dynamic of a mechanic than just “say/do the right thing and give gifts” that is normative in other games. That said, the minimization of mechanics for DAI’s advisors romances also had something going for them and the Cullen romance only blocks for plot reasons which felt more realistic than give lots of gifts to bed them.

[normalbrothers]

rereading the sadeian woman after having rec'd it to @divinekangaroo and i do need to know knight's bibliography

[deadendtracks]

Response to @divinekangaroo's reply to me in this thread:

Reading your comments up above, it also struck me I'm falling into the Myth of Tommy Shelby as that educated self-critical man, too, which he sort of presents - when in fact he's frequently very uncritical / unplanned and just *does the thing* then suffers the consequences after. (Also the kind of: Tommy saying "i'm an extreme example of what a working class man can achieve" - the delusion in this statement. "I have no limitations." again, the delusion. Does he even believe these words he's saying?)

Yeah, that's just it: he's not educated (traditionally) -- he's an autodidact. He's very intelligent but he is *not* an intellectual -- he doesn't have the time or patience for it. For most of the show he doesn't *care* about philosophy of any kind, let alone political philosophy.

In s5 he's reading Freud and Shakespeare and Greek literature for pragmatic reasons. The Freud because of his own struggles with mental illness (it's implied whatever psychiatrist he'd gone to recommended Freud). The Shakespeare (Richard III I think, on his nightstand) and Greek literature (mentioned in the exchange with Churchill) probably have to do with his paranoia about losing his 'crown' and trying to work on his rhetoric/speech writing skills for Parliament, respectively. Which I don't really see as the same thing as trying to 'pass' as upper class; he's trying to develop his skills to get what he wants in Parliament and be effective. I don't see him going around dropping quotes at people socially in order to look educated, for example.

What I'm trying to say is he's not reading these things to be enlightened or to assimilate to the upper classes and pass as educated; he's reading them for very specific reasons. They're *tools.* Mosley points out that he doesn't have a traditional education, that he's not familiar with Nietszche. Tommy's reaction isn't one of being caught out as uneducated and therefore not 'passing' -- it's wariness about Mosley's reasons for bringing it up (and Mosley's specifically bringing up Freud). It's less Mosley rubbing his nose in his lack of education (though it is that) and more fucking with him psychologically, but that's probably a whole other essay. I've gotten off topic!

But what I mean to emphasize is that yeah, Tommy's *not* educated and he doesn't *try to pass himself off as educated* either. And I don't think you could call him 'self-critical' in the way an upper class educated man would be either.

He's fairly self-aware a lot of the time, but he's definitely not above self deception and rationalizing things. And I'm not sure self-aware is quite the same thing as self-critical. He knows what they do (the crime) is not good. He has no self deception when it comes to how they hurt people -- he says so to Michael, for example. I think he sees this as a means to an end and as you said, one of limited choices, and he *does* want to get out of it. And there's the fact that for a long time he's not fully feeling the impact of any of it, either (which I think is different from deliberately looking away from the impact. I think due to his PTSD he literally cannot feel it in a frozen/numb way, it literally does not impact him even if he looks right at it). It's interesting to contrast him with Arthur, who says he's a good man whose hands 'belong to the devil' -- it's a very different way of looking at himself; I don't think Tommy would be self-deceptive enough to call himself a good man.

But when you're talking about him being aware that going to a prostitute is specifically *sexual* violence (the way we'd understand it, i guess) and that he looks the other way because that would interfere with what he wants, I just don't think that's at all what's going on there.

He doesn't have a thought out coherent political philosophy up through s5, not in the way that might be expected of an 'educated man' (or even a working class Communist like his sister) -- Ada comments on this (if he believed anything he said he'd be dangerous) and this is evident with both Jessie Eden and his 'champagne bubbles' ramble and in that line from s4 about being an extreme example of what a working man can achieve. He sees what Mosely is and the immediate danger of fascism *and the specific threat to he and his family* but he's not a dedicated Socialist despite running as one. His only real political philosophy by s5 is that he's dragged himself up by the bootstraps.

His reasons for getting into politics in the first place aren't about political belief (and would be another essay); but he *does* start to develop beliefs and act on them almost despite himself once he's in office.

What I'm trying to get at in this digression is that despite his (proto?) Communist past, after the war he's about ensuring he and his family and his gang get enough capital to go legit; his circle of caring so to speak is literally that limited and everyone outside it -- including the 'working man' -- is excluded; and he sees even himself and his brothers as tools in reaching that goal for the family in a more military kind of way, where he will put them (and himself) at risk for the 'greater good.'

His limited 'circle' is evident in s4 when he's using factory wages and the possibility of a strike for his own ends in the vendetta. And this is tied in with what you have talked about re: the subaltern, of course, because everyone outside his family and gang have excluded him, including those supposed fellow working men.

What he says to May about laying off people versus the violence of the gun -- i think he's struggling with this point. He *does* see what the upper classes do to workers as violence, but is it any better than the violence he does with the gang? Is it worse? He feels the gang violence is more honest about what it is. They're worse than us. But he doesn't have what I'd call a coherent political stance with all of this, as self-critical as it might be, because he's seeing that ok, if being a gangster is violent and being a capitalist is violent and the alternative is being exploited as a worker, where does that leave you? Might as well keep being a gangster.

So he's gotten that far, but I don't think he'd be able to frame sex work as specifically *sexual* violence. Women just literally got the right to vote, you know?

It would be completely anachronistic to look at it that way, as far as I can tell? I haven't done a ton of research here; but going within the 'world' of the show, *nobody* looks at prostitution as sexual violence *unless the John is actually physically violent* -- someone like Tommy, who's most likely pretty straightforward, nonviolent, and pays decently (given the way Lizzie likes him, I think it's fair to say that's probably the case) wouldn't be seen as sexually violent for using a prostitute and neither would he think of himself that way. It's just not remotely on anyone's radar.

Anyway this is an example of me not being remotely concise.

What I'm trying to say is Tommy most likely looks at it as something most women would rather not do, and when he has the chance he helps Lizzie get out of it the same way he thinks of his own criminal enterprises as something he'd rather not do (and there's stigma to being a gangster -- not the same! Kind! at all! the power dynamic is completely different obviously, but it's also something he wouldn't have gotten into if *he* felt he had any other choice, either). He sees *himself* in Lizzie -- sees someone doing something to get ahead they'd rather not be doing, with ambitions to be something else. I really don't think he has any conception of *himself* as *sexually* violent towards Lizzie, even in a way that he has to squash down. It's definitely not something he's deliberately looking away from to get what he wants, you know?

It's possible I'm being really pedantic here in focusing on the 'sexual' part of the 'violence' but I think it's an important line. I do think it's closer to what you said about the way he treats himself. I'm just not convinced he'd be able to remotely articulate that any of this is specifically *sexual* violence. I don't think he can articulate for himself that what he did with Diana (what Diana did to him) was a kind of sexual violence. He'd be aware he didn't want to do it and did it anyway, and that it's impacting him in ways he thought it wouldn't and doesn't fully understand.

I think the way he equates sex work/his own trading of sex with *working* is important. If he was seeing this as *sexual* violence that he looks away from or won't engage with -- idk, to me it's much more unconscious than that? I really don't think he sees it as different from the exploitation of factory work. It's not just a rationalization he gives Finn in s4 -- it's what he says about himself, to Polly, about sleeping with Tatiana -- that he was *working.* And he gets upset at all of them for thinking he did it because he couldn't keep his dick in his pants.

It's fully possible we're talking in parallel about this? Maybe because by then the whole world is violence to him. It's probably not even a conscious repression, it's just happens, he squashes stuff down rather than examine it closely. He isn't actually that self-critical or meta-thinking a guy at all despite occasionally sounding like it?

Yeah this is closer to how I think it is for him. He's self aware of doing things that are 'wrong' to get ahead. He's aware that people get hurt. I have a whole theory about him getting into owning factories only to find out if you want to actually make a profit you *have to* exploit your workers and the impact of that on him -- I don't actually think he'd thought about it very deeply before that, when he was on the other side of it. His disgust about the whole thing to May feels kind of newly discovered, the way his "they're worse than us, they will never let us into their palaces" rant felt newly discovered, rather than something he believed all along? If that makes any sense.

The way he *doesn't have the words* about the war, I don't think he has the words for what we'd call sexual violence that isn't outright rape, and I don't think he'd have any conception that prostitution is sexual violence unless someone is literally violent. Otherwise it's just sex for money, and a job people would probably rather not do, but there's a lot of jobs people would rather not do where they're exploited by people with more money and don't have a lot of choices.

By s6 he's trying to actually change things politically to the point where people might not be forced into these kinds of choices -- the housing projects, for example. My guess is if we saw him post-s6 he'd be much farther along on his political 'development' so to speak.

Christ, sorry this was so meandering. I have no idea if I've made a coherent point or not. There's a whole thread about the impact of PTSD on all of this I haven't really even touched on but glancingly.

[deadendtracks]

final response to this post by @divinekangaroo!

“some of these might be considered trauma responses but my preference is to think he is/was always going to be this way *somewhat*#because he is this way.the particular traumas he went through were able to be framed in ways that allowed him to continue…for a while Also curious about this -- what do you think are the characteristics he has that were "always going to be this way" The key ones:  - That he struggles with actually connecting deeply with people, reading sexual cues/flirtation, because he actually connects too deeply – he holds back to avoid embarrassment if he’s misread something. Some of this leads to an inclination to prefer sex that is openly a transaction (prostitutes) because it relieves any dialogue around intimacy or connection. He can treat sex as a physical need without having to think about the other.

I can see him possibly struggling to read sexual cues/flirtation as a young man though I don't actually think he has that problem at all as an adult, post-war. I think he's just very blunt about bringing things out in the open -- and can be awkward about it in his bluntness (or doesn't care if he's being awkward/borderline rude). His reasons for doing so (with May, for example) are interesting to dig into. He does not misread the cues that Mosley is giving him; but in this case he does *not* bring it into the open bluntly.

In May's case he absolutely knows she wants to fuck him, it's not in question. He's more about putting it out there on the table as something he doesn't want to dance around (since they're alone and there's no worry about propriety). There's a lot of class stuff going on there, I think; all the talk about working class cock from his brothers and from Ada. What he isn't sure about is *why* she wants to fuck him and what she wants to get out of it. Which is why he asks if he represents something to her.

I'm not sure about him struggling to deeply connect with other people as a young person pre-war. One of the ongoing themes of the series (especially in s1) is how drastically he's changed by the war, how unrecognizable he is to his family and the people who knew him before -- it suggests this inability to connect is a result of the war and not something that was present before. At the same time I can see him being more shy around people outside his family and friend circle as a kid/young man, so I don't fully disagree I guess! Maybe it's that whatever struggle he had before the war it became terribly compounded after when he couldn't really feel anything period, which puts up a barrier when trying to connect to people. The idea Knight and CM talk about Tommy "thawing" throughout the series comes to mind. He's so emotionally frozen (and the strength of this isn't consistent; he thaws a bit and refreezes in reaction to circumstances).

Part of his aversion to connecting to people this way has to do with this 'traumatic freezing' I think -- by s5-6 when he seems unable to prevent himself from thawing, the result is increasing instability, anxiety he can't control, moral injury he can't ignore, and spiralling mental illness. So the 'freezing' of the earlier seasons served as protection even as it kept him more isolated from connecting to people. He's not really able to connect well even after he starts 'thawing' because by then he's feeling totally out of control.

Sorry that was a digression, I think.

Either way I don't think he holds back out of fear of misreading something; I think he's quite good at reading people and situations and that doesn't seem like something that wouldn't have been present pre-war.

I do think the way he treats sex as a transaction was most likely not the case before the war.

- Deep connection is unrelated to sex, and that he’ll always look for deep connection with someone over the sex. If both, ok wonderful, but if the sex makes the connection complicated he’ll ditch the sex and find that elsewhere. (I really think of Alfie in this space.)

Yeah I think this could work both pre- and post- war.

- Connection comes before physical/sexual attraction. People are physically neutral to him until he feels something for them first. For example, he couldn’t be seduced by a hot woman into a vulnerability in the way, say, Arthur or John probably could?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think of both Grace and Tatiana here. With Tatiana and no or limited connection, he pretty much flips her attempted seduction on its head and notwithstanding the essentially of them having ‘sex for the cause’, his sexual participation instead forges that double (is it triple by this point?) cross with her instead for their mutual benefit, rather than her sexual seduction exposing vulnerabilities in him for her people to exploit. With Grace, the connection comes well before the sex and it’s connection which exposes him/makes him vulnerable, not the sex.

Yeah. Any potential subtext about sexual trauma aside, I do think it can be difficult to untangle how he may have been prior to the war from how he was after -- it's such a profound impact on him, including on his sexuality and his ability to connect to people.

[deadendtracks]

Response to @divinekangaroo's further thoughts on my ask about Tommy and sex:

I haven't properly structured an argument around this; I feel a lot of T's approach to sex has that almost woman-coded thing to it, as signifiers of an even-further-disadvantaged man. It nags at me and feels that this also ties into this subaltern, semi-'Orientalist' / exotic layer he has as 'lower than the lowest class' / 'actually so low class he's outside of class' Romani character -> less of a stereotype, more of a conscious consideration of "if you have nothing, you will use everything you can, and sometimes that includes your own body, and guess what here's the bind: that kinda puts you even *lower* in the hierarchy, because women are lower than men and only women use their bodies that way!"

Gut instinct, barely unpacked: there's an imperialist/cultural/ethnic trauma that feels like it can't be detached from Tommy's sexuality/approach to sex any more than the hints of childhood trauma or abuse can be, either.

This is a very interesting approach that I don't think I fully disagree with, but where I hesitate is that Tommy's the only character in his family or extended kin group who uses his body like this.

I do think the show does intentional things with Tommy's ethnicity and the impact of the bigotry he and his family faces (Alfie even points it out, re: Tommy being from an oppressed people the way Alfie is) -- whether a Romani person would have major critiques of how the show handles it is another issue; but it seems clear to me the show was trying to be aware of that social position and how it might have formed Tommy, etc.

What do you make of the fact that Tommy is the only "subaltern" character we see who uses himself sexually the way we're more used to seeing a woman do?

Because of this, I can’t ever see him permitting himself to perform that ‘hungry to totally surrender his control and desires to someone else’ role so frequently given to him in fanon. What happened with Tatiana was an exception, not a rule. It’s nice to read for various reasons, but I'm unlikely to personally lean into this take. Not to say he's dominating or must be fully in control during sex, either, just that I think he'd avoid leaning into surrender because it'd be like losing total control of a transaction and becoming far too vulnerable.

Yeah I don't see him as a submissive, the way fandom can often frame him (especially with Alfie). I don't see him as someone who wants to be dominated and controlled. I also don't see him as interested in dominating during sex.

When I was thinking about this I kept coming back to the first two sex scenes we have with Grace, though -- where imo we do see him leaning into surrender, intimately and sexually. I don't know if it's a total loss of control, but he's certainly not avoiding it in my view. I think the whole reason he fell for Grace is that he *did* feel that surrender of intimacy with her, that vulnerability. And it's in distinct contrast to every other sex scene we get from him after that.

some of these might be considered trauma responses but my preference is to think he is/was always going to be this way *somewhat*#because he is this way.the particular traumas he went through were able to be framed in ways that allowed him to continue…for a while

Also curious about this -- what do you think are the characteristics he has that were "always going to be this way" (apologies for how awkwardly that's worded, hopefully you get my gist.)

[deadendtracks]

response to this post by @divinekangaroo, continuing the conversation.

These moments I really appreciate your concise, coherent meta posts!

sorry just had to point out that this made me laugh because i do not consider my meta to be remotely concise and usually wish I could write short snappy meta posts without having to keep the entirety of the show in my mind. i'm often thinking things through as i write too! thanks for calling it coherent though, I appreciate it :)

I'd asked what you made of the fact that Tommy is the only family member who uses his body like this re: the discussion of the 'subaltern' and Tommy's ethnicity and its impact on his sexuality.

And I definitely should have been more clear that I meant the only one of his male family members, because I think you were talking about the way the perceptions of the 'exotic' or 'subaltern' impact the view of a minority ethnicity's maleness/male sexuality, I think? But forgive me for not going back and finding that passage again!

You're right that Polly especially uses her body this way, with Campbell in s2. I don't remember an example of Ada doing it, and I'm not sure what you mean regarding Arthur with Linda. I don't see a similarity between Arthur/Linda and Tommy's use of his body/sex in the way we've been discussing. But maybe I'm missing something!

But, I also feel there’s a deliberate presentation of Tommy’s consideration of his ethnicity as different to how most of his family consider it (long different conversation), because of the alignment to his mother that none of the rest of the family have (another long different conversation).  This assumes a reading of his mother as far more closely associated with his (rather silent/compressed) relationship with his ethnicity, too. Polly and Uncle Charlie's comments reinforce this reading in a few points. So this different relationship he has with his ethnicity also leads into a different intersection of that with his sexual activities.

Yeah, definitely. I think this is supported in the show, even to the point where I believe he's the only one of his direct family to speak Romani (or what passes for Romani when they were ignorantly using Romanian instead early on, I think??) on screen. Johnny Dogs and Esme both do, but as far as I recall only Arthur and Polly are shown understanding it but not speaking it (which doesn't mean they can't, it just stands out that Tommy's the only one shown to speak).

When Tommy does use his body, I think it’s repeating behaviours he’s seen and understood as an available way for those with no power and limited influence to exert more influence, and those behaviours were drawn from watching the behaviours of primarily women of his family. And will mostly talk about Polly because that's what we do see on screen, extrapolating there was more of this sort of exchange going on around Tommy in his youth, too.

That's definitely a possibility. The Lees call his mother a whore in that s1 episode where he's trying to provoke them into a fight, which may or may not have basis in reality.

I think the show also includes significant hints of the Othering/exoticism associated with Tommy’s (and Polly’s) ethnicity in a way that shows it is connected to sexual behaviours/body trading – May talks about everyone laughing about when he’ll steal the silver, which is a Romani stereotype more than working class or racketeer; I think you mentioned once Tatiana does it too with the allusion to Tommy squatting in his own house.

I won't quote everything you wrote but yeah!

I think where I wasn't sure I could follow your initial thesis was that you'd been talking about the subaltern re: specifically the impact on men and none of the men in Tommy's family/circle behave this way, especially his brothers. But yes, absolutely Polly does, and there's that slur towards his mother, etc.

And for Tommy: Campbell, Hughes and Mosley’s sexually charged ethnic slurs (or ethnically charged sexual attacks?) towards Tommy are a whole essay on their own.

Oh definitely. And Tommy is often pre-emptively and defensively brings up these bigoted stereotypes (towards the auctioneer when he buys Grace's Secret, for example, to the Russians and Hughes when he talks about his father, etc.).

but because Tommy’s a man, there’s always that sort of mental hiccup first?

Yep!

 BUT, his partners (and sexual aggressors) actually do acknowledge his ethnicity if with varying directness, and using uncomfortable stereotypes/terms. Tommy either forcefully silences his ethnicity in their encounters, or, he acknowledges his ethnicity but it’s in difficult and uncomfortable ways.

At this point I'm just highlighting bits I think were put really well!

It all feels like a wound he can't touch, ethnicity / mother. (He also never engages with Alfie on this line, despite multiple times Alfie opens that door.) And so the deliberateness of his omission conversely makes his ethnicity feel quite dominant in his sense of self and identity for me, in the way this series frequently uses silences and omissions to show the shape of something there.

Yeah!

The Romani layer is silenced in so much fandom discussion -- as if the masculine v feminine becomes the sole question rather than as well as, why does a Romani man in particular in that position maybe think to behave that way/why did they choose to portray a Romani man in particular behaving that way. Like, could any of his thinking to behave that way (or, could the expectations and approaches of his sexual partners/aggressors) have anything to do with the rather abundant late 1800s/early 1900s literary and pseudoethnographic texts which exotify and hypersexualise his ethnicity? (watch out for that gypsy man stealing women, the tinker sleeping with your wife while you're at work, etc etc; then he looks at someone like May, and maybe Arthur and John only see a hunger for working class cock, but Tommy is maybe consciously just a little bit leaning into that exotic stereotype as well, horses and goldfish etc, because it might gain him advantage?)

Yeah. Again idk how a Romani person would see this discussion (and the show's handling of it all) so I hesitate to really draw any strong conclusions either way, but I do think this is intentional in the writing of his character and in the performance, for sure. And this may also be why fandom doesn't tend to talk about this aspect much: not wanting to get it horrifically wrong in ways that would hurt a real person. Probably we do though, out of ignorance.

#the show did go there though; the gutpunch of shit getting real I felt in the S5 scene when Mosley refers to the 'wog language'#tommy's absolute stillness and silence in response; even words even those words which were always just him and his family stripped from him

Yeaaaah absolutely. And while it's definitely not the same as the social position of a Romani person in Europe (or even a Traveller in Ireland, which the Shelbys are also hinted to have relations to re: speaking Shelta), I do think Cillian Murphy's performance reveals a potential familiarity with being on the receiving end of bigotry, and how a character it's aimed at might react. If not from direct personal experience, certainly from family/national history of being colonized.

Sorry I don't have a lot to add here, I was just interested in hearing more of your thoughts on the topic and not sure if I understood where you were coming from re: Tommy's place as the only male family member who does these things. Thanks for taking the time to eloquently expand on your ideas!

[deadendtracks]

responding to @divinekangaroo's response to me! I'm going to split these up into shorter posts by topic for ease of reading.

With the little that I do remember, S1 I had a sense he was performing as if for himself (unable to remember intimacy) until instinct took over and the performative sense disappeared. ... So that first scene feels like he’s kind of unpacking/realising/*feeling* again through the action.

Ah ok, that makes sense. When talking about Tommy & sex and 'performativity' it might be artificial to separate the lead up to the sex itself which I tend to do, maybe, in my thinking, so was really just talking about the sex itself; my memory of the sex scene was that Tommy came across as very genuine and present and the lead up to the sex was this formal little dance about propriety (similar to what happens with May) that has to do with Grace's class more than anything but is definitely on the performative side. But I do see what you mean and agree! It does come across like Tommy's remembering how to feel, and then it becomes genuine.

and re: the season 2 scene, yeah absolutely the lead up is again very performative (and also Tommy kind of passive aggressively getting out some issues about Grace's betrayal). I was thinking more about the actual sex itself.

that the sex itself felt like a necessary ‘tick box’ in some list he had going from the moment she returned.

I would be curious if you think this if you rewatch that scene. To me the actual sex was probably the most present and 'given over' to physical sensation and intimacy that we see from Tommy in the series, to the point where he's not trying to control anything. I don't think it's about a 'tick box' at all; I do think maybe he thought it would be for *her* and that was part of the performative lead up as well. But watch his face and physicality during that scene! It's incredibly sensual and lacks that sense of him holding back present in most of his sex scenes after.

His reaction to the idea that maybe she'd fucked him just to get pregnant is telling, I think, for the idea this wasn't just a tick box for him.

[deadendtracks]

response to @divinekangaroo's post here (sorry I broke the thread, things were getting long)

I think it is Tommy’s personal take on behaviour he is willing to apply in his particular class/position. He does have a certain self-consciousness, thinking about thinking, more considered view of the world, rather than every male in that subaltern position (including others in his family) necessarily taking that consideration and extrapolating that into their actions around sexuality. Like not every man irrespective of their class/status is able to consider sex as a service/trade they are willing to offer, even to women, given their context of their own beliefs about masculinity.

Yeah, I think this is what I was trying to dig into originally by bringing up the other men around Tommy (with the same position socially/ethnically/etc) as contrast. Your point about boxing is a good one; at the same time it's quite another thing to trade on one's sexuality, and this does set Tommy apart. And while he is a lot more self-conscious and considered than the men around him, is this really enough to explain why he goes this route when the others don't?

You brought up the idea he may have observed his female relatives trading on sex and been influenced; if this was the case, presumably Arthur and John (and possibly Finn) also saw these things happening. So what makes Tommy into the only one to use his body in *this* way specifically, rather than just using his body in more typically 'masculine' pursuits, even with the influence of the subaltern?

So there’s an undercurrent throughout that, irrespective of male or female sexuality in the Shelbys (Pol, Tommy, Arthur) their sexuality  is tied to their ethnicity; a stereotype of the time, but also present in their behaviours, but also (quite critically/consciously in SK’s writing if somewhat subtextually as above, which is what elevates it above base stereotype IMO) connected to their class position and personal traumas and these more character-based intentional specifics that give their personal applications of their sexuality to gain influence

Again I come back to -- I do see the truth in all of this and it's really interesting and illuminating about the show and the Shelby family -- but still doesn't really explain why *Tommy* is the only Shelby man to explicitly offer sex in trade the way he does (and, the related way he 'submits' to men like Kimber and Luca Changretta to get what he wants, in ways that Arthur and John, in the same scene!, would never do and also find offensive on Tommy's behalf). What is it about Tommy specifically that sets him apart in this way?

Your reading of Linda and Arthur was interesting and would probably take a separate post to address, but I will say that I don't know that Linda, if Arthur had forced her to have sex in that scene, would say so to Lizzie -- she doesn't bring up his physical abuse of her either. But I do see what you're saying about what she *does* say, and think there is truth to it for their overall relationship.

Ada – my reference was to her jerking off Freddie in the bath to change his mind/sway his thinking to her side, and then her taking up Ben. Both of these I see as her applying this tactic she probably witnessed in her family of using sex (as a person with less power) to influence those with power over her.

Ah, yeah, I'd forgotten about the scene with Freddie; though this seems to me more comparable to what Linda does with Arthur in s4 and more about her-as-woman in a het relationship and *those* power dynamics than anything specific to ethnicity in this case, though of course that would be impossible to separate. Ben Younger I had the impression she just genuinely liked and didn't get into a relationship with him in order to influence a higher power, but I could see where that reading might be a valid one.

Tommy does this because it's showing that Tommy *doesn’t have* the privilege that an Anglo working class male does, because of his subaltern status. Add in: he doesn’t have the kind of job in his family that Arthur does, that would let Tommy lean on only using his body for violence - nor does he seem to have the kind of mental state/emotional state that would permit him to constantly be that level of violent reputation-builder? So if he's the thinker, sex is almost the consequence of being the thinker because at some point it still always comes to using/risking the body as commodity.

Okay I should have read the whole thing before I started responding! So just so I understand completely, is it your conclusion that Tommy comes to this 'tactic' of trading on his sexuality purely out of strategy/reasoning (he's seen female relatives do it so sees it as a possibility; he can't rely on muscle the way Arthur and John do; therefore the most logical solution is he offer use his body sexually)?

Like, he does the math, this is the most likely way to get what he wants, so he does it?

If that's the case, how does he get over the conditioned aversion that would be present in, say Arthur or John re: masculinity, even in the subaltern position?

I don’t think he thinks of himself in a feminine or feminised way, or even thinks of his sexual actions/sexual service as feminine/feminised/things only a woman would do.

Yeah, I agree.

what is sex (or indeed, a small period of humiliation/pain inflicted by those who think themselves better than him) compared to the horror of the kind of killing he had to do, after all.

Definitely.

[[There’s a few other bits that become more speculative, like was there sexual abuse by the father? Was there any sense of the mother trading sex even to the father to stop/divert violences and/or try to hold the family together? What happened after Father left and it was Polly, Arthur and Tommy? Did Tommy and Polly almost take on, like, a dynamic where Arthur is the “man of the house” (or had to appear that way to maintain appearance of strength/reputation outwardly) and Polly and Tommy are almost like his…joint wives or seconds in some ways, doing what needs to be done in the shadows to keep the whole family myth propped up with Arthur as figurehead so the family don’t look weak or like they can be taken advantage of? The way Tommy and Polly have that deep, deep connection suggesting long years of working very closely together in a way Polly doesn’t have with Arthur is suggestive of this, but I don’t know how much one could lean into them *ever* thinking of themselves as the women of the family supporting the man of the house, heh.]]

Yeah, there comes a point in Peaky meta where it's like... as I said in a comment elsewhere, you find yourself edging around a big gaping pit that goes Unsaid, and you have to try to come up for yourself from circumstantial evidence and How The Characters Are what that pit might be and what it might mean.

Here is where I start looking at things like Tommy, at the opening of his school, talking about children "being made to work for men in their various ways" in a really... pointed and near accusing tone in the middle of a season with a sexually abusive priest and CSA like a spectre hanging over everything. Maybe it's just about what happened to Michael, but what happened to Michael wasn't about "being made to work" either. And then there's what Tommy says to Polly about it -- that if Michael doesn't do this, some part of him will stay dead, or whatever he says there. Again, the idea he's speaking from experience -- but what experience?

It becomes harder and harder to grapple with in strictly-canon meta, and you come up against it again with what you mentioned is your struggle around making sense of the way Tommy talks about sex work.

What I mean to say, is there is a thread throughout the show since the beginning when it comes to Tommy, sex, and 'work' that is never outright addressed and which you could come to several different plausible conclusions about.

[deadendtracks]

@divinekangaroo there's a lot in those posts I'm still mulling over! they're really interesting to think about, idk if I'll get back to them soon but thank you for responding to my ask in such detail.

I have trouble completely articulating how I see Tommy's sexuality myself, though when I'm looking at a scene I feel like I (mostly) understand what I'm seeing. If that makes any sense! But putting it into concrete words can be difficult. Which is what makes him an interesting character. Each sex scene is like another part of this puzzle and they're not really easily flattened into one answer, which I think you have teased out through these different approaches and headcanons. I admire your attempt to nail it down!

[deadendtracks]

I'm new. I LOVE your peaky metas in AO3 so much. It helps me understand the show so much better. One thing I noticed is that many of Lizzie tags in here are posts that paints her in a negative light which seems not what it's in the show. Other characters are depicted quite fairly from what I have been reading.

Is this normal in here? Do you have any other recommendations for metas?

Thank you.

Hi! I'm sorry it's taken me so long to respond, life has been busy.

Welcome! Thank you so much for letting me know that you appreciate my meta, it's incredibly gratifying!

Yeah, I don't go into any of the tags as a rule but I know that there are a lot of negative posts about Lizzie. It's deeply silly and the only thing to do is ignore those people. The show certainly isn't negative about Lizzie. The show adores Lizzie as a character, in fact. She was obviously meant to be a one-off in s1 and through one of the processes I find magical about television, the creator was clearly taken with her performance and inspired and kept her on, giving her a meatier role. This used to happen all the time in tv when seasons were longer and networks gave shows more time to grow, but it's something of a sad rarity these days. Which means the show *really* loves Lizzie.

I say all of this because it makes ignoring the misogynist bullshit that people in fandom say about her A L O T easier when you keep that in mind. The show loves her and that's all that fucking counts.

I'd probably disagree with you that other characters are depicted fairly in fandom but that's a whole other conversation. However, Lizzie and Linda get the brunt of the worst of it.

Lizzie fans I follow who may or may not have meta you'd enjoy: @divinekangaroo, @lizzieshelby, @deliciousnutcomputer. I'm sure there are others but those three come to mind.

There are a bunch of other Lizzie fans out there that I don't follow and you might be able to track down their tumblrs from their AO3 accounts if you look for popular Lizzie fics.

[divinekangaroo]

Was thinking a bit deeper on @deadendtracks query https://www.tumblr.com/divinekangaroo/740003125539307520/i-clipped-this-from-your-post-because-its-easier?source=share

Snipped for sex talk, and also to spare any disinterested parties my naiveity on complex matters such as: subaltern/Orientalism/exoticism/Othering/ethnic talk etc

In hindsight I think I answered that query as a ‘possible authorial intent’ - speculatively, to subvert the usual gangster trope by displaying macho-ish behaviours (sex! whores!) but flipping motivation and outcome.

But there's also something else that's been churning away at the back of my head, the term subaltern. "the most powerless people living within the socio-economic confines of imperialism" -- and this imperialist overlay that often assigns the devious, deviant, dark, scheming/conniving/machavellian/feminine characteristics to the subaltern man, too, because it is exotic.

I haven't properly structured an argument around this; I feel a lot of T's approach to sex has that almost woman-coded thing to it, as signifiers of an even-further-disadvantaged man. It nags at me and feels that this also ties into this subaltern, semi-'Orientalist' / exotic layer he has as 'lower than the lowest class' / 'actually so low class he's outside of class' Romani character -> less of a stereotype, more of a conscious consideration of "if you have nothing, you will use everything you can, and sometimes that includes your own body, and guess what here's the bind: that kinda puts you even *lower* in the hierarchy, because women are lower than men and only women use their bodies that way!"

Gut instinct, barely unpacked: there's an imperialist/cultural/ethnic trauma that feels like it can't be detached from Tommy's sexuality/approach to sex any more than the hints of childhood trauma or abuse can be, either. Especially when you consider childhood as his closest time still connected to the living Romani culture, as opposed to by the time we see him on screen when his interactions with his culture are static and based on childhood/broken memories. I was initially put off by the Romani layer because it felt like a stereotype - gangs followed ethnic lines so let's just apply an ethnicity that's ~exotic~ - but the later series re-frame the earlier approach into something that shows it was almost never intended to be a representation of the culture but rather, more like Tommy's particular (distorted, damaged) view.

----

But then also answering the personal side of the question RE: Tommy's character. What does it mean for a person/individual to be so transactional and detached from sex yet participatory towards it?

This gets a little more headcanon-y:

T started having sex or being sexualised (seeing/experiencing sex) really young in a less than affectionate way - more like, here is a thing that must be done for some other action to happen (or be diverted).

Because of this, I can’t ever see him permitting himself to perform that ‘hungry to totally surrender his control and desires to someone else’ role so frequently given to him in fanon. What happened with Tatiana was an exception, not a rule. It’s nice to read for various reasons, but I'm unlikely to personally lean into this take. Not to say he's dominating or must be fully in control during sex, either, just that I think he'd avoid leaning into surrender because it'd be like losing total control of a transaction and becoming far too vulnerable.

Despite that I do feel he has an urge for connection/intimacy, I think he struggles with actually connecting deeply with people, reading sexual cues/flirtation or the like. In some ways, he connects too deeply and therefore holds back? I did have thoughts along the asexual line. He likes certain people, and he mostly enjoys the physical act of sex, and these two things can overlap to ‘I would like sex with this certain person’, but there’s a big gap between the two. Deep connection is unrelated to sex. Can't read flirt cues to the point he leapfrogs straight to the 'do you want to fuck?' almost as an abstraction because he can never decode the in-between steps?

Notwithstanding any deep connection, sex is still considered/framed as duty and obligation. His approach with Lizzie in S6 as case in point; he is conscious of his role and considers it a thing that must be performed to satisfy that role. Even S5, it feels like a 'seal the deal' sex exchange; he knows she likes it, she just told him so and that it's important to her, so all right, he's going to let loose.

This difficulty with 'is this connection? not sure?' is one reason why I think he is mostly about family (he can take connection for granted and has had a really really long time to build it). He also has a surprisingly large *respectful* but superficial network (he knows the right behaviours but rarely gets personal), very few close friends (honestly is this just Alfie? Maybe, once, Freddie and Barney? even Johnny Dogs and Uncle Charlie are subordinate). Which lends itself very effectively to leadership, to be honest, but also loneliness: again it feels like he's performing connection.

I really struggle with picturing him feeling much physical attraction without consciously focusing on it. He seems to spark for people (or maybe situations/dynamics - classy women?) not their physical, and when I’m in headcanon mode, it’s familiarity that builds his fondness for certain aspects of a person's physicality, rather than their physicality attracting him initially. So either he wants sex (release) and it's not really relevant who with, or he wants the person and sex is acceptable/better with that person. And there's a conscious switch in his head like, "ok now paying attention to physical attraction because must have sex" or "switch it off not important right now"