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cobaltusami · 4 years ago

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Tropical Vacation pt. 7

Hey hi hello! This part was very delayed thanks to my laptop being a tool. I'm writing on a tablet computer hooked up to my tv now lol.

This part is pretty shippy too, Big shocker right? But It's Ishimondo and I couldn't resist--

Characters in this part: Lee!Taka, Ler!Mondo, Makoto, Leon, Hina, Akane, Sakura, Mahiru, Chiaki, Hiro, Nekomaru, Nagito, Hajime, Kazuichi

Word count: 1,803

Part 1: [Click or tap here!] Part 2: [Click or tap here!] Part 3: [Click or tap here!] Part 4: [Click or tap here!] Part 5: [Click or tap here!] Part 6: [Click or tap here!] Part 7: You are here.

Shortly after arriving back from waking up the two dorky gays, they showed up In the dining hall. Fuyuhiko sat down next to Peko after a small greeting and Hajime sat between Nagito and Mahiru, most likely whispering a small threat to the Lucky student for embarrassing them this morning.

“Where the heck were you? You worried us!” Mahiru complained, smacking Hajime upside the head.

Hajime yelped, rubbing the back of his head. “S-Sorry, I lost track of time…”

A few students at the table barely managed to stifle their laughter, others-- Leon, Ibuki, and Hiyoko, didn’t even try to.

“Making girls worry about you.… not cool Hajime.” Nagito chided, crossing his arms as he gave the boy next to him a look akin to a disappointed mother.

Hajime whipped around to face Nagito, His expression unreadable. “Nagito…”

Chiaki reached around Nagito, digging her fingers into Hajime’s side warningly. “Don’t threaten him.”

Nagito giggled as he watched Hajime’s face turn bright red, a small yelp slipping past his lips as he inched away from them, now nearly on the edge of his seat to avoid her fingers.

“Chiaki, don’t torture Hajime this early In the morning.” Nekomaru warned lightly, Chiaki pouted as she pulled her hand back, seemingly complying.

Hiro chuckled at this. “Looks like you’re the parent of the friend group…”

“Parent? Nah, he’s more like the big brother of the group.” Kazuichi responded. “Mahiru Is the parent of the group.”

“I am not!” Mahiru frowned. “I don’t have the stamina to mother all of you hoodlums.”

“Did she just use the word hoodlum unironically?” Makoto whispered to Kazuichi.

“I heard that Naegi! Just because you’re not In my class doesn’t mean I can’t reprimand you too!”

Makoto squeaked and shrunk back in his seat as she began to lecture both him and Kazuichi.

Celeste giggled as she sipped her tea. “I like her.”

“She’s certainly… Passionate.” Kyoko agreed, taking a sip of her own tea as she watched with amusement.

After breakfast was over, class 77 sent away the other class so they could plan the party. Nekomaru went with them to make sure Mondo left Sakura and Hina alone, he could’ve sworn that Mondo was just Akane but In guy form.

Speaking of Akane… where did she run off to?

As Nekomaru glanced around looking for the spitfire, he lost sight of Sakura and Hina. So at that point he decided to just stick around Mondo and keep an eye on him that way.

Currently the biker was walking along the beach with Taka, the pair looking for seashells or something corny like that.

Hiro approached the team manager casually. “So, You’re the brother of the group huh?”

“I guess so.” He responded with a chuckle.

“I’m the brother of my group too.” Hiro smiled. “They’re all a bunch of dorks aren’t they?”

“That would be an understatement.” Nekomaru retorted. “But they’re my dorks.”

“Even though sometimes they drive you nuts with how they behave.”

“Between Akane, Gundham, Kazuichi, Nagito and Fuyuhiko, I don’t know which one Is more misbehaved.”

Hiro chuckled. “Yeah, Mondo, Leon, and Hina are pretty chaotic too. Mondo has been on a war path since having that endurance challenge with Taka, He wrecks everyone with tickles man, It’s horrible.”

“That’s nothing! Fuyuhiko threatened to stab Nagito last week for teasing him and helping Hajime tickle him.” Nekomaru retorted.

“Hahaha! Last time we tried to take down Mondo he concussed Makoto.”

The two began sharing stories about their nerds, thus taking Neko’s attention off of Mondo. He and Taka snuck off to the park and sat down on the bench together.

They sat In silence for a bit, Just enjoying each other’s company. But eventually Taka let out a small happy sigh. “I really like this Island. What do you think about It, Kyoudai?”

“Eh?” Mondo turned his attention to his totally platonic not at all homosexual In the slightest best friend. “It beats the school so far.” He shrugged slightly, resting his arms across the back of the bench.

Taka took this as a cue to scoot a little closer, Mondo’s fingers grazed his shoulder opposite to him motioning for him to get even closer. He kept inching closer, each time Mondo would repeat the motion.

Even when their bodies were pressed against each other. “Mondo, If I get any closer to you I will be in your lap.” Taka finally said.

“I’d be okay with that.” He replied cheekily, resting his hand on his shoulder to hold him.

Totally platonic.

No homo, as they say.

Taka rolled his eyes as he rested his head against his shoulder, wrapping his arms around his middle. Mondo fully moved his arm to wrap around Taka’s shoulders now. “I bet you would.” he muttered under his breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.” Taka smiled innocently up at the biker.

Mondo narrowed his eyes in suspicion as he slowly let the subject drop and relaxed again. “I guess I like that the Island Is big, doesn’t feel as fuckin’ cramped as the school.” He said, returning to the previous topic.

“I agree! And It’s so nice to feel the sun again.”

“Yea, and the fresh air Is nice too.” He conceded. “It’d be even better If I had my bike though, then I could finally take ya for that ride I promised.”

Taka tensed up, he never particularly cared for the idea of riding with Mondo. “Y-Yeah, such a shame.” He replied quietly.

It’s not that he didn’t trust him or anything, It’s just the thought of being on a motorcycle scared him a bit.

“S-So uh… What do you think of the classmates?” Taka asked, trying to change the subject before Mondo noticed his nervousness about motorized bikes.

Smooth.

“They seem alright, What do you think of ‘em? I trust your judgement more than mine.” Mondo asked, glancing down at the boy.

Taka pulled back slightly, looking up at Mondo with big eyes. “R-Really??”

“I mean, Yea. You’re a better judge of character than I am..”

He wasn’t expecting the next reaction.

Taka pulled back, prodding at his stomach incessantly. “Kyoudai! You should trust yourself and your opinion more!” he scolded.

Mondo yelped, his arms shooting down to block off his midsection from the Moral Compass. “EY! Will you cut that out??” He grabbed hold of Taka’s wrists and held his hands away from him.

He yanked on his wrists, pulling the smaller of the two Into his lap with a yelp. “Y’know, If you wanted me to tickle ya, Ya coulda just asked.” He smirked, coiling his arms around his prey.

“W-Wait! No! Mohohohondo!” Taka burst Into giggles as his fingers ghosted over his ribs.

“Yea, Kyoudai?” He hummed, digging into his ribs more firmly. “What’s up?”

“Hehehehahahaha! Dohohohon’t!” He whined through his giggles, blushing.

Mondo leaned forward, dusting small kisses across his neck. (what was exposed of it anyways) whilst unbuttoning his jacket, “Y’know, technically you don’t gotta wear the uniform right? We’re not in school right now.” he commented as he tugged the jacket off and dumped it unceremoniously onto the bench next to them,

Taka was too busy giggling to protest, as embarrassing as he found being tickled, he actually did enjoy it. Especially If it was Mondo doing the tickling.

He slipped his fingers under Taka’s white tee and ran them teasingly across his belly. “There, Don’t ya feel better now that you aren’t burning alive under that coat?”

Taka shook his head as he collapsed back against his chest, his giggling ramping up.

“No? Well fuck bro, I’m not sure what else I can do to help ya.” Mondo pretended to think about it. “Are your sides hurting? You want me to massage ‘em for ya?”

“N-Nohohohohoho! My sihihihides are fine!” Taka yelped, his arms wrapping around his midsection defensively.

“You suuuure? If they’re real achy, a nice massage will do wonders~” He purred, resuming his barrage of small tickly kisses to his neck.

Taka rested his head back against Mondo’s shoulder as he laughed. “Ihihihihihim suhuhuhure! Ahahahaha!”

Mondo pinched and prodded at his lean stomach and hip bones, smiling at the squeals and musical laughter it brought about. “A’ight, guess I’ll have to find another way to make ya happy.” He responded nonchalantly, withdrawing his hands momentarily only to shove them under his arms and dig into the sensitive skin.

“AAH! Mohohohohondohohoho!” He shrieked, his body doubling over as It attempted to get away from the tickles.

“Yea bro?” He snickered.

“Ihihihihihit tihihihihickles!” Taka whined through his laughter, trying to escape from Mondo’s lap to no avail.

“Uh yea bro, It’s fuckin’ supposed to.” He grinned cheekily, as soon as Taka tried to push his way to freedom, he pounced. His fingers descend cruelly on his sensitive sides, drawing a scream from the strict student.

“KYAHAHAHAHAHAHA! WAHAHAHAIT DOHOHOHOHN’T!”

“Don’t wait? I gotcha bro.” He chuckled, then leaned closer to whisper In Taka’s ear. “You wanna experience all the nice tickles, Right?”

Taka’s face grew even more red, If that was humanly possible. That bitch, I mean he wasn’t wrong but how dare he call Taka out like that?

“Hah, Gaaaaaay!”

Mondo paused his attack on poor Taka and looked up, spotting Leon across the way near an island bridge. “Leon, Fuck off. Unless you wanna be next.”

“Oh, I’m not worried.” Leon grinned. “I think you have other targets ahead of me.”

“Oh yea? Like who?”

As if waiting for that exact moment, Taka bolted out of his hold with Hina’s help. The moment he was free, A bucket of water was dumped onto Mondo, ruining his hair.

He shrieked in surprise as he jumped up, he whipped around to find the culprits.

Akane was cackling whilst she and Sakura stood there holding the tub. “I warned you I was gonna get you.” The white haired girl smiled.

“Oh, You’re so fucking dead!” He roared, jumping over the back of the bench to get the martial artist, but he ended up slipping and falling in the grass due to being soaking wet..

“Kyoudai!” Taka yelped, getting down next to him to check him for injuries.

Hina giggled evilly as the girls hurried off. Leon also disappeared, apparently he chose the side of chaos today.

Mondo sighed as he sat up and pushed his hair back out of his face.

“Are you okay?!”

“Yea, I’m fine.” He reassured him. “Sakura’s not gonna be when I get a hold of her though.”

Taka sighed in relief. Well at least he knew Mondo was actually okay and not just saying that. “Come on, Let’s get back to the hotel so you can change. Then we can get revenge.”

Mondo grinned at Taka, planting a kiss against his lips. “I fuckin’ love ya.”

Yes… No homo indeed.

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westerhos · 4 years ago

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Our Story: Chapter 6

[December 24th, 1998]

There is something to be said for the peculiar hour of the blue-morning, when a hospital beeps into quiet life. Death rattles behind drawn curtains, expletives are spat over set bones, and shots are taken in the thigh. It is not like Jamie’s Grampian refuge, which springs forth naturally from the earth. Instead, Boston GH scars the landscape, numbing loneliness through morphine drips and the tug of sheer necessity.

It is during this gradual reawakening that Claire hides in a closet, imagines the pink, wet sacs of her lungs contract and expand. She counts her breaths to release the night’s chaos, still lodged deep in her throat.

During the wild evening hours, Claire sees only what exists outside her body. Such an easy thing to do as a doctor, this sudden corporeal separation—a leap into the procedural dance, a temporary loss of oneself to the staunching of blood and the sewing of sutures.

But eventually the window of calm arrives, and the wall of dissociation begins to crumble. Claire, in her closet sanctuary, returns to her body once more, the sight of her arms and her hands like four old friends reacquainted.

Claire hunkers down between two shelves, and relief travels from foot to torso, settling somewhere inside her gut. As always, she has brought her medical bag—a gift from her husband, CER embossed in golden filigree—and rummages through it. As always, she finds the folder and flicks it open, seeking the page that is stowed inside. She is forever tethered to its final sentence, which launches a fresh rip of longing straight to her chest.

And as always, she goes back to the beginning, following the words. Fingers like greedy sponges, text absorbing into skin.

NEW YORK CITY, 11:30AM - The diner hushes when the bell tinkles, announcing the arrival of literary darling James Fraser. He is a giant in more ways than one: six-feet tall, wide-set shoulders, and a critically-acclaimed author with legions of fans. But for all his inches and his clout, Fraser is blissfully unaware of the eyes on his back. When he sits opposite me and shakes my hand, I, like the rest of the world, find him to be impulsively likable.

Sporting one month’s growth of beard and a wrinkled v-neck, it doesn’t take long for Fraser’s roguish charm to earn a complimentary meal. He is quick to thank the waitress, and for not the first time, one has to wonder how the man could possibly be single. Surely his good looks, his talent, and Reformed Bad Boy reputation draws the ladies in?

Point proven: Our waitress lingers, hungry for Fraser’s attention, but he closes his menu after ordering a glass of lemonade. (An odd choice, but then our writing heroes are full of idiosyncrasies, aren’t they?) I almost leap to console the girl, that poor thing, as she runs a self-conscious hand down her apron.

Alas, one gets the impression that it isn’t pickiness keeping Fraser romantically unattached. Nor is it misogyny or closeted homosexuality (despite what those tabloid vipers spit). James Fraser simply enjoys his place in the lonely hearts club—and is perfectly content to stay there, sipping ice-cold lemonade.

Frank’s ring glides across the lines, pauses over “single”. Such a different life, so removed from Claire’s, though here it thrums beneath her hands. Suddenly, her head grows heavier, weighted by the chain draped around her neck. Jamie’s thistle ring dangles there, cold as death. Forever tucked inside her shirts, a secret between her breasts. (Frank lets her wear it, just as she lets him wear his stained button-downs, other women smiling from the collars.)

Fraser’s second and latest novel, Two Centuries in Purgatory, released just last month to stellar reviews. Hailed as a “modern classic” by The New York Times (and truly, it is), Purgatory has found a comfortable seat at the top of the bestseller lists, and shows no signs of losing momentum. Now touring the U.S., Fraser seems nonplussed by the bustle of the Big Apple, his eighth time to our concrete jungle (“I’ve a parade of publisher meetings and interviews tomorrow,” he grumbles). Though he’s a longtime resident of both Edinburgh and Glasgow, he says no city feels like home nowadays. “Where is home then?” I ask him, and in traditional Fraser fashion, he deadpans: “Lost.”

For all his fame and glory, there is something decidedly melancholy about James Fraser. But of course, we all know why. We’ve read his books, haven’t we? We know his story.

Gillian Edgars: Are you enjoying your lemonade, Mr. Fraser?

James Fraser: Aye, verra much so. Lemonade in Scotland doesna taste like this.

GE: Mmmm, exploring the pleasures of America. I like it. Now, shall we begin? Let’s start with Two Centuries in Purgatory.

Claire brings the page a few inches closer. This is not the first time she has read the article, its edges worn to yellowing curls.

A familiar anger sinks its claws into her side as this reproduction of Jamie staggers into a flickering half-life. Gillian Edgars thinks she knows the man behind the book jacket. The entire world, for that matter, believes they can claim the bold-faced names on their hardbacks.

But, Claire seethes, do these people know that Jamie smiles in his sleep? That he’s prone to seasicknesses, could not wink at the waitress even if he tried? No. Only Claire knows these smaller, intimate truths—but still, they are not enough. Jamie is no longer only hers, but a communal being disseminated and shared amongst millions. Strangers have molded her Jamie into something new, into hollow casts of their false impressions.

Without warning, the closet door swings open and Joe Abnernathy leans in. “Knew I’d find you in here,” he says, but he draws up short. His smile falters when he sees Claire on the ground. Falters further still when he reads the headline, "Scotland’s Newest Literary Hero," on the page and on her face.

“Lady Jane, why do you do this to yourself? We’re working, I know, but can’t you try to be merry? It’s officially Christmas Eve!”

Joe kneels down, and levels his gaze with hers—the gentle but silent disappointment of an older brother. Claire holds firm when he pries the clipping from her grasp, the paper snagging the skin of her palm. It glides over and up, a shallow curve that splits into fine, shining rubies. A jeweled J, just at the base of her thumb.

Claire presses the wound to her teeth, tastes the heady, metallic taste of herself. (Later, she will trace the cut with reverence, grateful to be marred, at the very least, by a shade of Jamie.)

Joe tsks and reaches for a shelf, bringing back the first aid kit.

“Perks of hiding in a hospital supply closet. Bandages, everywhere. Take this.”

“It’s fine, Joe,” Claire assures him but accepts the bandaid anyways. “I’m fine—just a bad day and a scratch. See? No significant blood loss.”

“Thought I’d witnessed the first fatal paper cut,” Joe says, but then continues, more softly, “LJ, I thought you’d given this up. That Frank made you promise you’d stop.”

“He did,” Claire replies. “And I did too, for a while.”

Her stomach turns as the memory resurfaces: her husband, feeding the shredder a feast of papers. The machine’s tight-lipped and fanged smile destroying Claire’s collection of articles, her glimpses of Jamie. Frank had held her as the teeth had chewed, tightened his grip when she repeated his words back to him, “Time to leave the past behind.” And afterwards, once the the bin had emptied into the trash, Frank had dragged the bag of shreds to the curb. Claire had looked on, standing in the doorway, a soldier’s wife already in mourning.

(That evening, she almost snuck outside to piece the words together, for old habits die hard and a planet will always yearn for her sun. But then Frank’s arm had risen in the darkness, flopped sleepily across her waist. The weight of it had held her there, and so she’d stayed, picturing the night creatures stealing Jamie away, piece by piece.)

“I just…wanted to see what people were saying. About his new book.” She sighs. “I know I’m being ridiculous. It’s just that…”

“He’s everywhere, isn't he? In the papers, on TV. Saw they’re making a Lifetime adaptation of A Blade of Grass. Jesus.”

Claire nods. “Steering clear of that one.” (But she won’t, of course. Claire will want to see herself and Jamie on that screen, their better, manufactured selves broadcasted in technicolor.)

“You’re really gonna let me down like that, Lady Jane? I thought we’d drink cheap Scotch, put the movie on mute, and invent the dialogue ourselves. Next weekend, the two of us. Drunk and vengeful. Whaddya say?”

“A hard pass, Joe. We’ll be in Oxford for the holidays, anyways. Visiting Frank’s family.”

“Well, la-di-dah. I’ll be on this side of Atlantic throwing popcorn at my TV.” Joe leaps to his feet when his pager beeps. As he walks out the door, his hand flies to his coat pocket and he withdraws a shabby paperback. “Before I forget—a Christmas gift, for the Lady. If you’re gonna scramble your brain with nonsense, let it be Tessa’s ‘membrane of innocence’. Not ‘Scotland’s Newest Literary Hero.’”

Claire laughs and flips through The Impetuous Pirate, inhaling its smell of antiseptic and mildew and the vestiges of long-ago fingerprints. A Harlequin, taken from the hospital waiting room. “Aye aye, captain. But if it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay here in Davy Jones’ Locker for a while longer.”

Joe nods, consoling, before he turns to answer an intern's cries for help.

Alone again, Claire tucks The Impetuous Pirate inside her bag, picks up the discarded article from the floor. For the first time, she notices its publication date, October 20th, was her 31st birthday. She cannot remember the details of the occasion—Did Frank take her to a concert, or to a movie? Buy her flowers or chocolates?—and yet a foreign scene plays so clearly in her mind. It is something cut from the script of her life, the stagehand’s hook pulling her to the wings before she has a chance to speak. Cast in the closet’s dim spotlight, it unfolds as the playact that could have been but never was:

Jamie, in the New York diner, drinking lemonade. Condensation like dew drops, rolling down the pitcher. A young girl in Gillian Edgars’ place, singing a high soprano. And Claire, beside her, blowing out candles in a single huff.

As she slices the birthday cake, this almost-Claire nicks her finger on the knife’s blade. “Kiss to make it better!” the young girl cries, and Jamie does, his lips are on the sting, and then Claire’s mouth. He tastes of citrus, of yellow and sunshine, a marigold paradise in a city of dying autumn leaves. “Does it still hurt, Sassenach?” he asks her. “Not anymore,” she says. And when the little girl giggles, watching them, it is something sacred. She licks the frosting from the candles. “So what’d you wish for, Mama?” she asks, not knowing that, in a moments like these, there is no need for wishes.

Claire’s pager rings, rearranging her memories. Now she remembers her 31st birthday—and knows it did not happen in that diner. On that day, there was no little girl; no citrus kisses in a molting New York.

Instead, Frank had taken Claire to the opera house, a drawn-out affair they had both fidgeted through. Back at home, he had led her to the bedroom and its king-sized bed, had slipped off her dress while she kept her chain on. “Talk to me,” he’d panted, silver thistles against her chest. And when she came, it was not Frank’s body that drew her cries. It was not Frank’s name that rose from her lips.

Claire scans the article, skipping again to the final paragraphs. Here lies the line she reads over and over, the very reason she shells $15 for subscriptions and scavenges in bins for scraps. Anything to discover some evidence of herself, some proof that she still lives in the peripheries of Jamie’s life. And whenever she finds it, it pours into her and lingers, like wine.

GE: Your debut was quite impressive—an instant bestseller, an Oprah Book Club pick, an upcoming TV movie. I’m sure you’ve been asked this before…but allow me to be a hack for just one moment. Let me ask the nosy questions. Let me pry.

JF: I dinna have a fear of rats [SMILES]. Get on wi’ it then.

GE: I appreciate it, Mr. Fraser, I do [LAUGHS]. The protagonist’s struggles in A Blade of Grass—the financial woes, the criminal record, the years of solitude—they seem to mirror your own. Is it accurate to say that the book is autobiographical?

“Randall?” a voice calls from outside the closet. “Randall, are you in there? Mr. Duncan in Room #18 needs to be—”

“Prepped for surgery, I know!” Claire finishes. Her voice is shrill, rising with her goosebumps as she nears the interview’s end. “I’ll be out in a second, Dr. Hildegarde!”

JF: In some respects, aye, A Blade of Grass is autobiographical. Mind, I made a lot of it up myself. Embellished a few things.

GE: Oh yes, certainly. But even without your embellishments, your life does make for such an interesting tale. In a way, your struggles are what made you a literary sensation. But still, I do wonder—do you regret any of it? The gamble, the money, the arrest?

JF: [LAUGHS QUIETLY] I thank ye for the compliment, Ms. Edgars, but I hope my sins are no’ responsible for the book’s success. And for the record, they were largely exaggerated by the press.

GE: Ah, right. We rats are despicable creatures, always desperate for crumbs. But they never fill the belly, not really.

JF: Have ye tried poetry before, Ms. Edgars? You’ve a knack for it [LOOKS AWAY]. But nay, it isna the crimes themselves that I regret most. Whether they were exaggerated or no.

GE: Really? There’s something else [LEANS FORWARD]? Will you tell me then, your life’s biggest regret? Or will you keep me and your readers in the dark, forever wondering what keeps our beloved James Fraser up at night?

Now Claire closes her hand into a fist, forces herself to bleed out from that thin, half-mooned J. She imagines Jamie’s face, inscrutable to Gillian Edgars, but fixed in an expression that she, and only she, can read. And if Claire had been there on that October afternoon, sitting in the diner’s vinyl booth, she would have understood. Would’ve known already what Jamie regretted most, what he would and could not say aloud. For within this precious, final line—their spoken and unspoken wishes:

JF: My biggest regret? I let the story end early.

(JF: I should have loved her better—God! I should have loved her better.)

_______

I have very few comments about this one, but I will say A) Jamie’s POV comes much more naturally to me—probably because I, like Jamie, love Claire so frickin’ much—so writing this was like pulling teeth. And B) As I was writing this chapter, I knew it was time to bring Jamie and Claire back together. Even I was rooting for them to reunite.

I love Joe and Claire’s friendship, and I wish I’d shown more of it in this fic (although what’s here I think fits pretty naturally). And I have to say...I love Geillis—or the idea of her: witchy, feminist, and confident—a whole lot, despite her Voyager crimes. Here, she is my Outlander version of Harry Potter’s Rita Skeeter, and I could write an entire fic from her voice any day.

#outlander #claire beauchamp #jamie fraser #myfic #i am so bad at dialogue!!!!!

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quolant · 4 years ago

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tee & bee on sports night (1.04)

hey we're tee & bee and ur reading abt sports night on tumblr — where @thxngam live reacts to sports night in 2021 and sends me stuff and i post it

sports night 1.04 — intellectual property

“Virgin Snow” sounds wrong and I can’t believe they can say that on tv and not have anyone cringe

I’m cringing at least

Also is Casey scared of bugs?

That’s precious

“Dan, is there a fly in the studio?”

“Let him work through it.”

Very tired spouse energy

The Hoisington, Kansas thing is very funny

There’s gotta be something funny about Wisconsin lol

Or Milwaukee whatever this is

Also Dan's face while Casey’s swatting the fly is the funniest thing

It’s like if sighing was a facial expression

I love how Dan is just over Casey’s bitching about the ankle

It’s very “honey, if you had listened to me the first time…”

I feel like I keep saying this but this is very high married couple energy

HE KICKED A FIRE HYDRANT

Casey u disaster child I love you so much

Dan you’re a horrible horrible man and this is so funny to me

Also Dan’s sweater is very cute

Natalie and Dana’s friendship is adorable

I think it’s just bc I love female friendships but also the way they play off each other is nice

Also Natalie debating whether to stick her hand in the blender is kind of a mood

Natalie told Casey about Dana’s lingerie?

Damn

Dana’s attitude toward lingerie for her is cool

“This is for me!” Damn right it is Dana ily

“I think it’s sweet that you and your partner sing to each other on television-“

THATS SO GAY I DONT EVEN KNOW WHAT TO SAY

“Others may think it’s vaguely gay, but I disagree.” Mallory Moss you are wrong and it is totally gay

Dans face LMAO

“It’s against the law to be vaguely gay?”

Dan, sweetie, you and Casey have passed vaguely gay. like way passed. Look 10 miles behind you and there was the boundary for “this is mildly homosexual but it could be construed as friendship”. You have reached married couple energy my man, don’t be stupid

Also I didn’t know know happy birthday had authors and now I feel kinda dumb

Mallory Moss is my idol and I love her

Casey is rlly hung up on this fly

Jeremy is also cute

I like his glasses

CASEYS FACE WHEN JEREMY SAYS THE WEEKEND IS ABOUT SEX

I identify with that face so much

“What do we know about the phantom fly?”

Dana I want to BE you

Isaacs face when Dan says “the intellectual property cops are drawing up my butt” is so funny

All of the characters have amazing ‘I’m-over-this-bullshit’ faces

“Took two people to write that song??”

Why doesn’t Jeremy think Dana and Casey is a good idea?

Also Dan's fixation on the birthday thing is funny

Natalie just yanked Casey’s earpiece out and I love her

Casey looking at her calendar is kinda an invasion of privacy

She seems to be sort of amused tho

Also Casey stopping in the middle of his point to point out a dangling modifier is peak herb behavior and I'd like to kiss his stupid face

Dana seems to be startling self aware

Like way above anybody else in this show except possibly Natalie

Dana, I don’t think u realize this, but pointing out that Casey is not cute, funny, smart, or nice seems to imply u think he is all of those things

“I apologize for about half the things.”

Casey u disaster bean

“I want BADLY to see you naked!”

THIS IS SO FUNNY WHAT

JEREMYS FACE I CANT

Dana u must have so many lamps

Stress furniture shopping is very Dana

This conversation is very intense

Dana also yes, you go, stick up for yourself

I like that she’s not letting herself be used a temporary amusement when Casey’s loosing his mind

I appreciate that in a character

Though Casey’s face is sad af

OMG THERE IS A FLY

That’s a good ending

Her “son of a gun” made me feel things considering it is literally about a fly being used as a metaphorical device

#tee & bee on sports night #sports night

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thevindicativevordan · 4 years ago

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Terra-Man

I created a section for Superman Rogues in my Superman masterpost so I feel obligated to actually write about a character for there. But I don’t really want to dive into the nuances of Lex or any of the big guns just yet, so how about we talk about a guy most people don’t even know exists?

Terra-Man friends! The Pre-Crisis version was created by Cary Bates, Curt Swan, and Dick Dillin. Based on Clint Eastwood’s “Man with No Name”, he was a child of the old American Wild West, with his father killed by an alien. Young Tobias Manning was then adopted by said alien out of guilt. The alien took Tobias with him out into the cosmos, trained him, and crafted high tech weaponry for him that resembled weapons used by 19th century cowboys. He was also gifted with slowed aging that gave him nigh-immortality. Tobias killed his alien guardian and struck out on his own as an interstellar criminal, taking the name “Terra-Man” to homage his Earth roots. His Pre-Crisis fights with Superman varied between him being treated as a bizarre gag villain and a deadly serious threat.

Spoilers: The guy who ages up Superman is Tobias. He actually comes across as a legitimate threat in the story, using preptime to outwit Clark repeatedly:

And it was the first time I had read a story with Terra-Man in it that made me go “this guy could be a legitimate threat”. Of course Bates had more creativity in his pinkie than a lot of creators produce in their entire careers, and the Post-Crisis revamp of Terra-Man really sucked:

They got rid of his cowboy hat (a creative felony if I ever saw one), and revamped him as a businessman who had a crisis of conscience over the environmental damage he was causing, and thus set out on a crusade to protect the environment. They kept the high tech weaponry, and gave a lot of it an ecological spin, he had gadgets that allowed him to drain Superman’s solar levels to make him susceptible to weaponry, but the background motivation has aged poorly. Given the current environmental state of the world, more people would probably cheer this version of Tobias on as a hero (just look at Green Arrow or the Poison Ivy fans!) than want to see Superman beat him up. Also he still talked like an old school cowboy for some bizarre reason? Or maybe that was just how writers thought every Texan talked.

Anyway he ended up getting ripped in half by Black Adam and basically has been gone ever since as far as I’m aware:

So he’s been absent for two whole reboots now, New 52 & Rebirth, so I feel entitled to give my idea for how to make him work as a Superman Rogue. First up: his design. None of the ones I posted above really worked for me, none of them look “cool”, and if Venom and Carnage have taught us anything it’s that 90% of why some villains stick around is that they look cool. The Pre-Crisis one is too plain looking, he looks generic, the Post-Crisis look lacks a hat and the cowboy theme and is thus unacceptable. Luckily there’s already two very cool looking sources to draw on for a new design:

Guy front and center is Terra-Man from the Legion of Superheroes cartoon, and my first introduction to the character. His backstory was heavily modified for the show, but he was a stone cold badass, forcing Imperiex and Superman X to team up to beat him. Think Cad Bane from The Clone Wars by way of Terminator and you basically get the gist. I honestly wouldn’t mind just straight up taking that design and adding the mustache of the comic version. But there’s another source to draw from:

How the hell this guy never caught on I’ll never know. Maybe because Morrison never gave him enough badass moments during their Action run? But Nimrod has a very cool design, and he also has some crazy weapons like a gun that shoots telepathic bullets, he already feels somewhat like a Terra-Man revamp to me. I’d take the idea of a helmet/full body suit and the crazy high-concept tech weapons from Nimrod & Pre-Crisis Terra-Man, and combine it with the color scheme, basic outfit and hat of the animated Terra-Man. That would be a really cool design that would get people interested in Tobias I feel.

Second off: the name. Maybe I was just dumb as a kid, but I was always wondering why animated Terra-Man never used his earthbender powers. He clearly had them, why else would he call himself Terra-Man and not Space Cowboy? In the interest of retroactively justifying my young self’s stupidity, I propose a new name: The Terran. I think that does a better job of conveying what his deal is, that he’s a former resident of Earth aka Terra who has gone out and made a name for himself in the cosmos. Think of the children who will no longer be confused about why he’s not throwing boulders at his foes. I rest my case.

Third and finally: The motivation. Why does this guy show up on Earth? What’s his deal? Why does he hate Superman? Well I think there’s some easy justification in explaining why he would finally return to Earth in the first place by making him a hunter like Nimrod was. Terran is out to hunt the most dangerous creatures of a species for sport and profit. Guess who has an Intergalactic Zoo in his Fortress, containing last members of extinct species some of whom posses hides or organs that would fetch high prices on the galactic black market? That’s an easy way to justify why the two would first come to blows, and where the root of the contempt for each other would begin.

But that would only be the beginning. See there’s some very interesting twists on the Superman concept with Tobias. He inverts a lot of the core components of Superman. He’s a human who was abducted and adopted by aliens as a child. He got his “powers” from his alien father, and his “name” from the aliens he worked for and killed. He’s a human straight out of Earth’s past, a literal Man of Yesterday. I think you could do some very interesting stuff by contrasting the two, and one of the big ways to do it would be to make Tobias Manning gay.

Yeah yeah get your jokes out of the way but hear me out: Tobias is from 19th century America, not exactly known for it’s tolerance of homosexuality (or anything non-WASP really). Part of why Tobas stayed away for so long then was that he felt alienated from his home planet. He thought he would never be accepted there, and thus stayed away and tried to carve out a life for himself in space where at least no one looked down on him for who he loved. So when he finally comes back and sees the way things have improved he’s overjoyed. Finally he can be himself among his own kind, he doesn’t have to stay away from Earth anymore, he can stay here and reconnect with his heritage. But then he runs into another barrier: He was raised according to 19th century American norms as a kid, then by alien norms for the rest of his life. He has zero in common with regular humans in the 21st century DCU Earth. His speech is antiquated and peppered with alien words no one understands, marking him as odd. Nobody shares any of his interests, and his job, which would’ve been cool and badass in the 19th century, now invites disgust in everyday conversations. Tobias may have been a human born on Earth, but he was born in the Wild West and raised in space, and he’s become totally alienated from the rest of humanity.

Enter Superman, an alien born on another planet but perfectly able to live amongst humanity since he was raised by them and educated in their modern standards. He’s white-passing and straight, and those two attributes help him be accepted. It would absolutely piss Tobias off that this alien is viewed as more human than he is, is accepted where he is not, and that would fuel the fires of resentment. So when he and Clark cross paths, Tobias is out for blood. Not just to beat/kill Superman, but to embarrass him, humiliate him, make him the outcast for everyone to point and gawk at. Also killing one of the last Kryptonians would really help cement Tobias’ reputation as a stone cold badass hunter which doesn’t hurt either.

On Superman’s side, part of him would absolutely despise Tobias for being a poacher, for hunting and killing endangered species, for trying to kill or humiliate him. He’d be put off by Tobias’ 19th century ideal of manhood and enjoyment of killing, something Superman wholeheartedly abhors. But on the other hand he would absolutely empathize with Tobias’ frustration. Clark has felt alienated from humanity at points himself, but also recognizes that he was lucky to look and be like he does given where he landed. He’d want to try to reach this guy, to connect with him, given how much he can sympathize with the longing for a place where you can be yourself without fearing rejection from others. Whether he would ever succeed is anyone’s guess.

I realize the possible pitfalls in making a prominent villain, who is also a cowboy gay, but I do think what I have here is an interesting way at looking at the very concept of “alieness”, a topic often explored in Superman stories. I’d add a prominent gay member to Superman’s supporting cast as a counterbalance too, either to the Daily Planet or the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit.

So yeah that’s how I’d revamp Tobias into the Terran.

#superman #dc comics #terra-man #revamp

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acescreations · 4 years ago

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Roleplay Transcript (pt. 1)

So this is an old roleplay I got permission from my RP partner to post to my writing blog. I guess revisiting this is kind of a birthday gift to myself and also an apology gift to all of you guys for not writing for shit.

Warnings: Fighting, swearing, violence, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, homophobia, panic attacks

Ship(s): Platonic Analogical

Word Count: 12,553

When Logan went to school on his first day of junior year, he was filled with a strange sense of pride. Students shot glances at him, seemingly worried that Logan would for some reason pick a fight with them, which he would only really do if they were being a jerk and deserved it. Teachers read his name off the attendance list with a hopeless tone upon realizing they had Logan, before looking up with a disappointed resignation when they saw Logan's patch of electric blue hair. Logan had built up a reputation of being strong, of being tough. Just about every kid in school knew about him, whether they be the bullies he fought, the kids he was defending from the bullies, or just the people who saw the fights he was in.

Virgil’s first day at Mindset High was pretty scary. He didnt make friends easily, and he felt like everyone was judging him. He wore a soft lavender hoodie and royal purple sweat pants. Everyone seemed scared of this guy called Logan. I mean, he seemed so grumpy.. He sighed, sitting next to Logan.

Logan blinked in surprise as he watched another student sit down next to him. Most people tried to avoid him as much as possible, so he usually sat alone during class. Even when there were only enough desks for each student in the classroom, people usually pulled their desk a distance away after even the slightest glance from Logan. He guessed this kid sitting next to him hadn't heard of his reputation yet. Well, unfortunately for him, the two were in Logan's least favorite class: history. The class that Logan now associated with whitewashed nationalist propaganda, and arguing with the teacher.

Virgil decided that he would at least get to know this strange man that everyone seemed so.. reluctant to like？ “Uh, hello, I’m.. well, if.. I’m Virgil.” He said tamely, he hoped that they could.. maybe talk？A friend would be nice.

Logan looked over at Virgil with an even, if not cold, expression. That wasn't a name he recognized, so this was probably a new student, which explained why they were actually talking to him. "Logan," he said shortly. They'd learn soon enough that Logan was someone you didn't want to be associated with if you want to have even just a neutral social standing.

Virgil nodded nervously. The dude seemed to be angry at him？Did he provoke him？Should he move seats？ He sighed as he looked down at his work.

Logan put his feet up on the table in front of him, pulling out his phone as he waited for the teacher to, as he put it, "begin his attempt at brainwashing a class of impressionable teenagers."

“Today we shall learn about the history of people that.. well.. people who.. the homosexuals.. and.. others.” Virgil was completely stunned, before immediately grtting dissapointed. “Well fuck me gently with a chainsaw.” He mumbled.

"Oh hell no," Logan said out loud. Literally everyone in the room probably already guessed about Logan not being straight, so he didn't have anything to lose from being vocal about his distaste over the lesson. "Oh, FUCK no." Underneath his iwn complaining, however, he heard Virgil's much more quiet complaint. Okay, so this guy is actually pretty chill. That's good to know. By "chill" Logan meant "not a smallminded conservative" but those pretty much meant the same thing to him.

Virgil sighed. “This.. is fine.” He said. He was a closeted gay boy, he didnt need this. “Now, this shall be respectful..” The teacher rolled her eyes. “Now, what do we know about.. you know.. those people.”

Logan heard what Virgil said, but to him, this most certainly was not fine. He had already picked his battles, and he picked all of them. "If it's gonna be respectful then why don't you just say the word 'Gay'?" he yelled at the teacher.

The class went dead silent. Virgil sighed softly. If someone found out he was gay, he would die on the inside. “Well, as you all know, the bible said that homosexuals.. will rot in hell.”

"FALSEHOOD!" Logan screamed, slamming his hands on the table as he stood up. "Respectful my ass! And how is this even history?!" Logan would go on, but if he's learned anything from the debate team, it's to let people keep saying stupid shit for Logan to prove wrong.

“Homosexuality is a diease. Now, now more recent years, we have homosexuality shoved down our throats. This is causing more parents to force their children to be gay. This all started because a black trans-” “Please stop talking..” Virgil groaned, tempted to just bash his head into the table.

"Gayness is NOT a disease," Logan said, smacking his hand on the table as he began talking over the teacher. "It's a human characteristic just like height or eye color. Gayness is NOT being 'shoved down our throats,'" he smacked the table again, "people are just getting introduced to labels they didn't originally have. Parents are NOT forcing their children to be gay-" smack "- most are actually beating and throwing their children out of their homes for being gay. But you know what? You just keep talking. Maybe one of these days you'll actually say something intelligent."

“You come from a biased pretense！You only see the side of the homosexuals, thats why you are one of the-” “OH, FOR FUCKS SAKE, CHANGE THE GOD DAMN SUBJECT YOU-” “Damn pastel！Didnt know you could speak.” A guy called out.

Logan immediately turned and shot a glare at the person who insulted Virgil, forgetting the current feud with the teacher for a moment. "If you're going to waste oxygen like that, at least keep it relevant to the conversation." Logan then turned back to the teacher. "You're the fucking biased one, you homophobe!" he shouted, pointing a finger at the teacher as he leaned nearly halfway across the table to yell at him.

“I am not a homophobe！I like.. the lesbians.” The teacher smirked, as Virgil began to laugh. Hes just,, this teacher, how did you get a job？ ”Fine. We will move onto a differ-”

For once in his life, Logan is so stunned by by what he's hearing reaches a loss for words. "How did you even get your teaching degree, you fucking creep?"

“I try to act respectful, and you insult me？I think people like you just stir up drama to draw attention to yourself.” Virgil had stopped laughing. He felt.. guilty. He shouldnt have laughed. Maybe the teacher was right？

Logan went completely silent, his hands curling into fists. "Don't. You. Ever. Generalize me. Like that." Then, to make sure he didn't try to physically fight his teacher, he walked out the door, slamming it behind him.

Virgil watched Logan leave, watched everyone whispering about how freaky Logan was. How gay he was.. Virgil stayed quiet and refused to speak to anyone.

Logan stormed down the hallway, absolutely fuming. He ended up in the school's gym, knowing there wasn't a gym class that period. He let out a shout of frustration as he punched a wall, which hurt, obviously, but it satisfied him and let out some of his anger. After that he just stood there, fist against the wall, breathing heavily.

Virgils scheduele was lost, so he asked around for his next class. They led him to the schools gym, and left him there, lost and confused. Time to make an unlikely friend.

Logan had since moved to sit on the bleachers, glancing up to glare as Virgil entered the gym. He was currently in a mindset that nobody would be friendly towards him, especially right now.

Virgil felt the glare, but sighed. He did promise Patton to make one friend at this god forsaken hell hole. He slowly walks up to Logan. “Uhrm, hi？”

"What do you want?" Logan growled. He recognized that this was the person who was sitting beside him in history, but he still felt like he'd antagonize Logan anyway. Most people did anyway.

He gave Logan a weak smile. “A..Are you okay？” He tilted his head. ”And where is the rest of our class？” He expected at least one othed person to come in. Poor thing.

"I'm fine," Logan snapped defensively, in a counter-productive attempt at convincing Virgil that that was actually true. "And there isn't a class in here right now." Logan didn't have a gym class at all. He was actually skipping a class right now, but it wasn't like his teacher would miss him anyway.

“Oh..” He stammered, looked down at the floor guiltily. “Do you know where S7 is？” He rubbed the back of his neck. “And.. wait. Why arent you in class.. oh.”

Logan sighed as he stood up. "Yeah, come on." He gestured for Virgil to follow him with a small shrug of a shoulder.

Virgil smiled. “Thank you, Logan.” He said softly, following behind him, glad that Logan would do this for him.

Logan shrugged as he began leading Virgil to his classroom. "Whatever," he muttered. Whatever it took to get himself his alone time in the gym. He doubted it would do Virgil's social reputation much good to see him with Logan, though.

“To be honest, that ass of a teacher really should be fired. What kind of creep just likes lesbians？” He tried to make small talk.

"Basically the entire American public does, actually." Logan was pretty sure it was a rhetorical question, but it wasn't like he was wrong, he thought.

“oh.. well.. thats..” Virgil sighed. “Why were you there alone instead of hanging out with friends？” He seemed rather done.

Logan glanced back at Virgil, although he didn't stop walking. "Because there are classes going on right now," Logan said. It was true, although Logan wasn't hanging out with friends because he didn't have any. He just wasn't going to tell Virgil that.

“Dont you have a badass like, gang？Like everyone says？” He tilted his head, very confused. “Oh.. are you.. uh..” He was genuinely confused.

"A gang?" Logan said in mild surprise and disbelief. That was seriously what people said about him? Logan guessed he underestimated his own reputation.

“Yeah. Also, apparently you dont like when people steal your role, so you are going to beat my ass. If you are, then I guess do it here.” He has no fear for death anymore. This school sucked any hope of caring out of him.

"What exactly do people say my role is then?" Logan hadn't intended on carrying on a conversation for this long, or really at all, but he couldn't help but be curious as to what people said about him.

He stared up at the sky, he really didnt want to say this. Dear god, please strike him with lighting. Oh, no lighting？F- “You’re the bad boy that all the girls swoon over. Apparently you’re soft and sweet on the inside.” He scoffed slightly. His defense is up.

Logan stiffened as he continued walking, gagging a little. That was it. It was official. Logan hated his reputation. He supposed he'd have to work harder on establishing his reputation as being stone cold and heartless. He wasn't going to stop picking fights with bigots though, he knew that much. "Well, here's your class," he said to Virgil, stopping in front of a classroom before immediately turning go back to the gym instead of the class he had that period.

“Thanks Logan.” He gave him a weak grin. “Logan Man, Fighting off bigots day after day.” He scoffed, before it turned to a light giggle, and Virgil went into class. What a dork. A nice dork.

Logan glanced back as he walked off, turning back after Virgil walked into class. As he neared the gym again, he glanced down at his left knuckles. After punching the wall, they became red and sore, and Logan was starting to regret punching the wall. His hand still stung.

This is why you dont start a war on walls, you idiot. Virgils class exprience was.. intresting. They made up rumors about him and Logan, and Virgil wanted to vomit. Love always made him feel weird and uncomfortable, but hes absolutely sure hes just gay.

Logan sat back down in the gym bleachers. He didn't know what he was doing back here instead of going to class. He guessed he pretty much didn't want to hear whatever his classmates would say about him. That was actually the first time he stormed out in the middle of class like that, and he assumed that was what people would be talking about right now.

They began to gossip about Logan having a girlfriend, boyfriend, and then him being in a gang. Now they all think Logans a fucking gang leader. Good luck talking to anyone, Logie.

After sitting in the gym with nothing to do for a while, Logan stood back up and headed to the band room. That was where he usually went when he wanted alone time, the gym had just been closer that time. As he walked down, he realized that being a musician probably contributed to people thinking he's "soft and sweet on the inside" but fuck it. Music is probably the reason he doesn't throw hands with every mildly unpleasant person in his vicinity.

Virgil cant stop laughing at the pure idiocity, wanting to just record this and send it to Logan... Eh, later. Once he befriends Logan. He nods to himself as the bell rung. Now he could go find Logan！And hang out with him！

Logan had just reached the band room by the time the bell rang. "God dammit," he said loudly. Now he'd have to choose between letting out some energy and missing another class. Logan sat down behind the drumset in the room, pulling out his phone and earbuds. He figured his teacher wouldn't miss him, and really, who cares if the teacher calls his house? Who gives a shit? Certainly not him. So he put on a pair of fingerless gloves he kept with him, turned on his music, and played along to American Idiot.

Virgil was going to class, but heard... music？He quietly walks towards the sounds, peering in. They had a music room？！ Logan plays music？！ He quietly attempted to sneak in, to be able to hear better. He ended up tripping into a guitar, miraculously not breaking it.

Most people would've heard Virgil tripping as he snuck in, but not only was Logan listening to really loud music, but he was also playing a really loud instrument. But really, neither of those things meant much, because Logan was in The Zone. It would take a lot to break his focus.

Virgil was extremely impressed. Logan really was in the mood. He sat on the floor, just admiring the music.

Logan looked up once the song had ended, quickly pulling out his earbuds and jolting upwards once he saw Virgil sitting there. "What the hell are you doing here?"

“...Uhhhhh, I thought this was the cafeteria？Nice pl-playing.” He quickly stood up, immediately smackin into a cupboard and just sighing softly.

"Of course this isn't the fucking cafeteria, do you see any tabl-" Logan went quiet for a moment when he saw the knocked over guitar. He practically threw himself over the drumset as he ran to check on the guitar, because despite the fact that the school technically owned all of the instruments, that was Logan's Guitar. "The fuck did you do?!" Logan shouted as he checked the guitar over for any damage.

He quickly stood up. “See-ing a-as this isnt the cafeteria, I-I’m going to-” He began to speed for thr door.

Logan looked back up once he was sure his guitar was alright. Once he saw Virgil heading for the door, it occurred to him what he had just done. "I, I didn't mean to snap," he said apologetically, rubbing the back of his head as he looked away from Virgil. This new body language was a complete change from how he usually acts.

Virgil paused, reluctantly rubbing the back of his neck. “U-Uh, oh, ok-okay. I’m.. I’m sorry. You.. You clearly werent..” All words just seemed to die in his mouth.

Logan sighed as he stood back up. "Whatever, just, try not to knock any instruments over, okay?" Logan mumbled as he began walking past Virgil out the door. Okay, so he didn't mumble, but compared to how clearly he normally speaks he might as well have been.

"Thank you, L-Logan." He stammered. He didnt move, just awkwardly standing there. "O-Oh, uh, of course.. Uh, can I sit with you at lunch?" He managed through jumbled stammering.

Logan glanced back at Virgil as he walked out, trying to understand the logic of wanting to be around somebody who just yelled at you for something that wasn't intentional. Logan was hoping it wasn't anything like Logan being nice, because if Logan was the nicest person Virgil knew, well that's just sad. "Sure, whatever." Logan shrugged. He didn't actually know if he was actually going to stay until lunch, since he had been planning on leaving for the rest of the day. He shrugged at himself as he left the band room. Logan supposed he'd find out by lunch.

Virgil just followed after him, quietly. Hey, Logans the nicest guy here at this hell hole of a school, Well, the nicest guy he has met. He looks around, feeling awkward. Oh god. Why is he bothering Logan. He doesnt want you here. Just leave. "Uh-"

Logan attempted to continue walking as normal, despite the ever present awareness of Virgil following him. After all, by the looks of this kid, he's definitely harmless. Although after a while it became hard to ignore the little lost puppy of Virgil. "What are you following me for?" Logan asked over his shoulder. "Don't you have a class or something?" Honestly, how is anyone supposed to let out some steam when someone is following them everywhere?

Virgil flinched. "uh.. yeah.. sure.." He mumbled, and he quickly left. He didnt know why he cared so much. Oh wait, yes he did. Because he wanted Logan's friend. Why? Because he found Logan cool.

Logan sighed once Virgil left. He didn't really know why. Was he disappointed? Logan actually thought he might be. That was probably the longest anyone had ever voluntarily been around him, after all. Either way, Logan still had no idea what to do at this point, especially considering that if he left before school ended he'd definitely have to deal with the consequences soon enough.

Virgil headed off into the bathroom. He just needed somewhere to stay calm, and clear his head. Everything just made him feel horrible. He quietly locked himself into a stall, keeping himself quiet.

Logan leaned against a wall in the hallway, getting out his phone as he debated his options. If he left school now, Virgil wouldn't have to worry about his mistake of wanting to be around him during lunch, but his mom would be pissed if she found out he didn't even stay half of the day. But if he stayed and went to class, he'd half a lot of pent up anger with him during class, and his home had probably already been called due to him not having made it to this class period, so he'd still probably hear about it anyway.

Virgil calmed himself down, and went back outside. He looked around, wondering if Logan was still around. He.. He hoped so. He is not going to that hell hole alone.

Logan sighed as he put his phone away, finally heading to class. He was pretty sure that it was the world's most stupid desicion for Virgil to want to be anywhere near him, but as a new kid who clearly had no idea how to survive in this school, he probably wouldn't be very safe if he was alone during lunch.

Virgil quietly sighed, deciding to go to class. He hid his eyes with his hair. He slunk into the back of the class, trying to keep away from everyone.

Logan managed to keep himself from throwing hands for the rest of his morning class, heading down to the lunchroom afterwards. He stood against a wall and watched people enter without personally eating.

Once that hellish excuse for a class was done, Virgil quietly found Logan and walked up to him. “Uh, hi.”

Logan looked over at Virgil, honestly kind of surprised that he committed to his decision to spend the lunch period with Logan. "Hey," he said briefly, looking back across the room.

He gave him a pathetic grin, trying to not be awkward, but the boy radiates awkward. “Uh, uhm, er, hi.” He began to play with his hands, biting his lip.

"You don't talk to people much, do you?" Logam didn't look back at Virgil as he spoke. Was he hoping Virgil would decide Logan actually was unpleasant to be around and leave? Yeah, Logan thought he was.

“N-Not really.” He mumbled, not moving, copying Logans pose. He wasnt exactly enjoying the people staring at him, but hes happy having a friend.

Logan's surprise grew as Virgil started copying him. He didn't know why, but that was really unexpected. "Aren't you going to eat or something?" Logan was determined to not let his surprise, or really any other emotion, show.

Virgil shook his head, deciding a verbal response wasnt worth it. Plus, the food looked like slop. He fidgetted with his hands, trying to spark a conversation.

Logan glanced over at Virgil, trying to figure out what to do in this situation. God, this kid is making me more awkward just by being around me. It's a wonder he's survived this long.

Virgil thought about his family. His family sucked. It would be nice to know what raised that hardcore lad. “Uh... Whats your family like？” He said softly. God fUcking damn it, Virgil. You cant ask about anything N O RM A L-

The change in Logan's posture was immediate. His back straightened, his shoulders became more squared, his hands tightened into fists. "Why do you care?" Logan's voice was cold and hard as knives.

Virgil shrunk back, his eyes wide. “I-I dont know？I’m just trying to make conversations..” He trailed off, going silent. Wait. Why was Logan caring so much. “Oh god, are you an orp-”

Logan scoffed at that second comment, giving Virgil the slightest shake of his head and somehow managing to make those small actions violent and angry. I wish I was that lucky.

Virgil flinched. He felt his heart race at those angry movements. “Uh, er.. sorry.” Virgil practically sped off, he feels sick.

Logan turned and watched him go. If he were in any other mood, he'd probably feel bad for scaring Virgil like that. But right now he didn't even care, he simply turned back to glare at the rest of the people in the room.

The whispers of the room continued, questioning Logan and why he doesnt like his family

Logan didn't say anything to anyone, although when he heard someone talking about him he'd shoot a glare at them to get them to shut up.

The cafeteria was awkward and quiet. Nobody wanted to talk to Logan, or get beaten up.

Eventually Logan got tired of the stares and went back to the gym. He would've went to the band room, but there was a class there at the time, so he had to go with the next best thing.

Virgil was sitting behind the bleachers, desperately trying to calm himself. Logan hates him. Everyone hates him. He hates this hell-hole of a school.

Logan didn't notice Virgil as he came in, walking over to a padded part of the wall so he could punch it and not hurt himself again. He punched the wall, then drew his hand back and punched again, and again, and again. He hated his mother. He hated every single boyfriend she had ever had. He hated this school. He hated that he was always alone. He hated that this one time somebody actually wanted to be around him, he was determined to scare them off. He hated everything right now.

The punches just terrified Virgil even more. Oh great. Now a murderer was after him. He let out a strangled gasp, as his world began to spin round, making Virgil shake.

Logan paused when he heard the gasp behind him. He turned and finally noticed Virgil behind him, and of course it was only after he started panicking. Logan stood there, trying to figure out if he should go try to help, considering he was probably the thing causing Virgil to panic and being closer might just make it worse.

He couldnt breathe. The gasps became more frequent. Fuck. Hes gonna die here. Hes gonna die alone. Jesus this is getting sad.

Soon enough, Logan decided on walking over, kneeling down in front of Virgil. It wasn't like he was getting any better without Logan interacting. "Hey, Virgil?" Logan started in the most even voice he could produce. "I'm gonna need you to calm down, can you do that? Just focus on breathing." Fuck, is this what you're supposed to do? Logan honestly didn't have a clue, but from what he did know about panic attacks this seemed like an appropriate response.

Virgil trembles, before his blood stopped. Logan. “I-I’m sorry！I’m sorry！I-I-I-I...” He hears that Logans hear to help. “I-I cant- I-I’m a failure！”

Upon hearing Virgil's words, Logan's hands curled into fists. He was immediately ready to fight on behalf of someone he didn't even know. Then Logan reminded himself that right now, fighting was not in fact going to help. He took a deep breath, forcing his hands to relax again before continuing to talk to Virgil. "No, you're not a failure, there's no need to be sorry." Logan slowly reached out and took one of Virgil's hands in his own, checking for his reaction.

Virgil jolted, scramming away, apologizing. “I said- I said sorry！P-Please.. Leave me alone.” He sobbed. “I-I-I-” He felt his throat constrict.

Logan quickly pulled his hands away from Virgil, feeling guilt like a stab in his gut. This was all because of him, wasn't it? Maybe he should just leave, Virgil did tell Logan to leave him alone, didn't he? And Logan was pretty sure he just made it worse because he had no idea how to help, so Virgil would probably be better off if Logan left him alone.

Virgil whimpers, god hes so pathetic. Such a useless person. “Pathetic.. Useless..” He mumbled softly, looking away from Logan. The attack was beginning to die down, but he wouldnt be calm for a while.

Logan opened his mouth, about to correct Virgil on what he was saying about himself, but then he hesitated, and soon closed his mouth again. Logan looked down at the floor as he slowly stood back up and left, his endgoal being the doors leading out of the school. Logan officially decided he was done with being around people for a good while. Logan easily ignored the stares of the people in the halls. Most people took one look at Logan's overall demeanor and knew not to stare, so Logan was able to get out the school doors without even being interuppted.

Virgil made sure to keep close to Logan. He felt so guilty, he can’t believe he was so stupid. He had to have Logan come help him from a panic attack！All he is, is a panicky, clingy, failure.

Logan sighed and turned around as he got outside the door, facing Virgil. "Don't you have something better to do? Like class or something?" Logan was trying not to snap, especially since Virgil had just gotten out of a panic attack, but his voice was still harsh. Logan just wanted an escape from people, and now this little lost puppy of a person was becoming the first and only obstacle to that.

He kept his mouth shut. He felt so awkward. Like he owed Logan and apology. For seeing that. For seeing how much of a mess he was.. Yeah, he left soon after Logan spoke.

Logan walked away from the school after that, although he didn't really know where he was going. All he really knew at the time was that he wanted to escape from people, despite the fact that he didn't know where he could go that didn't have people. Logan ended up going over to the park, deciding that the park would have the least amount of people. After a while Logan had calmed down enough to tolerate human connection again, and walked down to the local café, because despite its black color, the fabric of Logan's jacket did little to protect him from the cold. He almost smiled as he walked through the door of the café, looking at the pride flag sticker on the window. Logan sat down in a booth, although since he was a regular the staff weren't expecting him to order anything.

Virgil was nervous. He had gotten lost on his way home, and was walking down to a cafe. He was hungry, after all. He looked at his phone, cringing at its dead battery. But he managed to smile. Today started off great, at least. Logan was.. his friend？Well, he seemed to begin to tolerate Virgil. And hes fine with that. He ordered a cup with a long list of ingredients. His own list of “Fuck me up” ingredients.

Logan didn't notice Virgil walking in. He had started dozing off in his seat when a waiter walked over, giving him a plate of eggs and toast. "It's on the house. You look like you could use it," they said with a smile as they left the table. They were right about that; Logan hadn't eaten all day. Logan glanced back over, guilt weighing down his shoulders as he began eating. He glanced over at his phone as he ate. The only reason it wasn't dead was because he was at the table with the outlet. That was basically His Table and both the visitors and staff knew this. Once Logan finished eating, he put his head atop his hand and began dozing off again. The poor kid hadn't slept well in ages.

The waitress did NOT look happy that Virgil had such a long list, but, he paid and ordered it, so she had to. When he asked for an outlet seat, he was pointed into Satan- I mean, Logans direction. “Oh, hi Logan.” Virgil said softly, holding his head phone.

Logan was partially asleep at the time, although he had trained himself to not fall asleep entirely, so when he heard his name he was immediately awake and alert. He put his arm down on the table as he looked at Virgil. "Hey," he said shortly, realizing that this was the kid from school, which meant school was over. Logan hadn't really been paying attention.

“Uh, Uhmm...” He felt really awakward.. Was there any other outlet booths？Logan looked like he would murder Virgil if he sat there.

Logan raised an eyebrow at Virgil, drumming his fingers against the table. Honestly, if there was anywhere that he was least likely to murder someone, it was that café. It was quite honestly the most comfortable place he had ever been in, and he wasn't about to throw that away by getting into a fight.

Virgil looked away. They say, if you look Logan in the eye, you’ll turn into stone. “Sorry. I’ll just take the bus.” Yes. The bus. That he has no.clue about. Tbh, If I were Virgil？I’d rather walk.

Logan stared at Virgil. What the hell was he talking about? "We don't have a bus." Did Virgil just move here? Also why was he talking about a bus inside a café? What the hell was his train of thought?

Transfer student. Yes, he did just move here. Thats.. Thats kinda why he wasnt as fearful of Logan. ”Oh.” He said simply. “Fu-”

Logan sighed in confusion as he looked away from Virgil, bringing up his hand again to set his head on and closing his eyes. He didn't have any sort of obligation to interact with Virgil, so if he wasn't going to actually say anything then Logan was going to try to stock up on light sleep.

“ck.” He sighed. He awkwardly shuffled into the booth, just wanting to charge his phone, man.

Logan opened his eyes again, having expected Virgil to just stand awkwardly or leave. He glanced at the coffee Virgil had as he sat down, reading the ingredient label. "That's incredibly unhealthy for you." Logan didn't know why he was starting conversation when he could be sleeping, but he was aware of how much Virgil's coffee could fuck someone up.

“Eh. Nobody really cares.” He took a sip, waiting for his phone to do him a favour and charge. One percent, and the most aggressive spam of messages blasts through his phone. “Oh. I’m popular today.” He muttered. Of course, his parents had guests today. They had to pretend they cared.

Logan watched the phone screen as the messages showed up on the screen. Honestly he was pretty surprised by the spam, he barely ever got any messages, and he definitely didn't remember the last time his mom texted him. She generally saved her barrage of harassment for when they were face-to-face. He genuinely didn't think whatever the messages were about could be good.

They werent. They were degrading messages about his intelligence. “Ah！My mom.. uh, says that.. I gotta go.. God, shes so kind.” He made a convincing act. “See you, Punk.” He gave him a pathethically weak smile. He had no way home. Sadness hours.

Logan didn't believe the act for a second. Everything he read on that screen were things he could practically hear his mother saying to him, and "kind" wasn't even the last word he'd use to describe her. Nonetheless, he understood the need to get home. Logan sighed at the smile. Honestly it was kind of sad. "You don't know where you're going, do you?" Logan asked, deadpan. Seeing how lost Virgil was in school, the entire town probably seemed like an actual maze to him.

Virgil flinched at the deadpan tone. “Ah, well, uhrm, yeah..” He muttered, allowing his bangs to cover his eyes. “I’ll find my way home, I dont need a gang member to escort me.” He muttered, a bit of a bitter tone in his voice. He doesnt know why he said that. Maybe to drive Logan away？But he adored Logan！Logan was so cool.. God damn, you stalker, stop thinking about him！ “...sorry.” He muttered, getting up.

Logan sighed and looked away. Gang member. Is that really how people saw him? He only meant to scare off jerks and bigots, and he honestly wanted to be supportive of basically anyone who got picked on or bullied. Apparently those people couldn't trust him either. He knew he couldn't be surprised though, nobody in their right mind would trust somebody who got so angry they had to punch a wall to feel just a little better. "Whatever," Logan muttered. "I just hope you know that everyone's gonna assume you're queer now." Logan jabbed a finger towards the pride flag sticker he had looked at on the way in.

The look of sheer terror as he saw the said flag was hilarious. He had tried his best to act like a straight guy. “I’m straight.” He mumbled. “Uhm, are you gay, Logan？”

Logan almost laughed at what was to him an obvious lie. Almost. "I think I'm as straight as you are." Straight as a rainbow, that is.

Virgil looked afraid. But then again, when hes with Logan... Wait. Beforehand, Virgil wasnt scared or worried. Aww！You turned someone who, rather blindly, trusted you, against you！But isnt that what you do best, Logan？

#sanders sides #thomas sanders #roleplay #logan sanders #virgil sanders #punk logan #pastel virgil #tw fighting #tw swearing #tw violence #tw verbal abuse #tw emotional abuse #verbal abuse #emotional abuse #tw homophobia #TW panic attack

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peachyteabuck · 5 years ago

Text

treason against kingly youth, pt i of ii

summary: somehow, you survived the 2020 election. now, all you have to do is get a know-nothing white man into the senate. should be easy enough.

pairing: chris evans x reader

words: 3223

trigger warnings: rpf, white dudes doin White Dude Things

ask box / masterlist / commission info / ko-fi

For a moment, just a moment, you allow yourself to breathe, really breathe. One, big breath in that clears the stress from your muscles, drops your shoulders, lets your whole body sag against the decade-old chair that you’re surprised hasn��t crumbled under the weight of your ever-tense body and its corresponding sins.

It’s a mere six feet away that everyone else you’ve worked with for the past three years with – the people you went through sleepless nights, long road trips, greasy food from mom and pop diners with the middle of assfuck nowhere, registering voters and writing up another plan for every fucking thing wrong with America (low teacher pay? Check. Electoral college ruining democracy? Check. Criminalization of homosexuality? Check. Private school sucking the life out of public schools? The monopoly artificially inflating prices on glasses up to 400%? The disparity between the number of men’s and women’s bathrooms in federal buildings? Check, check, check) – each and every person celebrates with wine and whiskey and any other alcoholic beverages they can get their underpaid hands on. It’s not even the cheap stuff, no, this is top shelf liquor. This is D-Day, “we’ve got an hour before the nuclear missile hits” liquor.

There are two times people go this all-out on their spirits – the end of the world, and the end of an election (though, to some, they’re the same thing).

But not you. Never pitiful little you. Pitiful little campaign manager you doesn’t rest, doesn’t get to stop pulling rabbits out of hats and money from single moms and votes out of college students.

There’s three TVs in front of your desk, each playing a different news station and each anchor drowning the others out. It’s a cacophony of white noise, and not because

The only voice, the only singular voice that has cemented itself into this far, previously blissfully unattended corner of your brain. You can hear her, feel her own on your shoulder – you can see her leaning against her old desk nestled in her home back in Massachusetts.

“I want you to be my chief of staff. You ran my campaign better than I could have asked for, and I would be incredibly lucky and blessed to have you run my White House.”

Your own voice rings next, always shakier than the time previous.

“I can’t do that,” your sigh gets deeper each time, too. “You know I can’t.”

Somehow, her voice always gets more confident. It’s one of those things about her, about the way she carries herself. If she’s faking that confidence you’d never know. “I know, but I’ll always tell you that there’s a place for you at the White House as long as I have something to say about it.”

In the sea of blue and red and white confetti and streamers and all the other shit people use to celebrate when their party wins an election, the thick, bleached white of your laptop screen stares back at you more menacingly than any Republican – winning or losing - you’ve ever met.

You’d like to think you are the kind professional that is never caught off guard, the kind of woman who can expect anything. But as the email that’s derailed your plan for the next four years stares back at you, the all-caps subject line feels more like the headlights of an 18-wheeler to a deer in the middle of a highway than an excellent career opportunity.

Still, with malt liquor in hand, you allow yourself a moment to breathe. Maybe, just maybe, it’ll make all of this just a little bit easier.

A little less than five hundred miles away, Christopher Robert Evans is the drunkest he’s ever been, surrounded by the same men he’s known since his freshman year of high school, yelling nonsensically as one of his current senators becomes the president-elect of the most power country on Earth.

The only coherent thing to leave the man’s mouth the entire night is oh so wonderfully caught on a friend’s iPhone and will – quite likely – be posted to some social media site by the next morning.

The video (which you will eventually be seeing at your first meeting with the Boston native) shows him in a Harvard sweatshirt (a university he did not attend), deep blue skinny jeans, and a Patriots hat balanced just enough to show his (possibly) thinning hairline. There, between his two best friends, he screams in his played-up Boston accent at the top of his lungs:

“I’M GOING TO BE A SENATOR, BITCHES!”

But you, back in D.C., are blissfully unaware of the long road ahead of you. So, you enjoy your malt liquor, and your small bit of quiet on election night – a sign of the muted calm before the political shitstorm ahead of you.

You end up not replying to said email the next morning (see: seven hours later after falling asleep in your chair for about five hours and then browsing angry GOP Twitter accounts while cackling into a cup of the blackest coffee you’ve ever tasted for the other two), confirming you’d be willing to work for Christopher Robert Evans’ campaign to run for the current president-elect’s soon-to-be open senate seat.

Or, at least confirming you’d speak to the Evans family to talk about running the campaign of the whitest man under the age of forty you’ve ever seen. Whether or not you ended up attempting to control what is likely another dumpster-fire campaign in a series of dumpster-fire campaigns. Harris is the one that comes to mind, but drawing any parallels between that woman and this man feels borderline offensive.

Plus, her senate run was successful. And she held elected office before that.

Why did you agree to do this again?

Right, you need money. So much money. All of the money. At least enough money that you can be bought from straight under the White House, which just so happens to be the amount the Evans estate offered you in exchange for your services.

Maybe that’s why you’ve found yourself in a conference room in an expensive office building, looking up at Chris Evans as his face turns red and your heart rate picks up.

“I’m Massachusetts’s best choice!” he screams, slamming his hands onto the table – a rich brown you sort of wish you could afford to have in your own home back at the capital. Your estate sale table, even with the coat of white paint you gave it after buying it, still can’t hold a candle to the beautiful grooves and smooth top.

But this isn’t time to yearn for better interior design prospects. Now is the time to put this moderate democrat man-child in his upper-middle-class place.

“Chris, you’re the best choice for an internship for the fucking EPA,” you nearly hiss. “You’re in the intern in Vice who watched Dick Cheney make deals with those fucking oil businessmen. You’re the shiny faced bastard who watched the world burn while listening to a Walkman. Do you understand me?”

His teeth are barred like he’s about to bite at your face; luckily that man comes with an electric collar and you’ve got the controller.

“Your biggest qualification is you got a five on the AP Gov exam. You have a single living family member who has held elected office in the last five years, and he was in the House of Representatives. The House! He wasn’t even in the chamber you’re gunning to be a part of. You were an econ major with a minor in, what? Poli sci? At a mid-tier university because your family doesn’t have Kushner money to bribe your acceptance letter out of a better one. Your main job after college was working as an accountant for old fraternity because they get audited so often the IRS had to release a public statement saying they were changing their processes for such matter on college campuses. You’re so moderate you’re in the aisle playing legislative mad-libs while everyone fawns over your B+ facial hair and C- chest tattoo. You’re a cute puppy at a for-profit rescue, you’re eye candy on a political television show.

“You’re the type of person who didn’t think that Gillibrand was done for before the second debate. That’s the problem with you. I mean there are lots of problems with you, but that’s the one I’m most annoyed with right now. It’s not that you can’t understand patterns or see what’s going on around you. It’s that you were never forced to. When you walk outside in the dark, I bet you don’t look behind you, you don’t clutch your keys like claws to protect yourself. You know how much pepper spray costs? Do you know what a noisemaker does? No, you’ve never had to. You’ve never had to shield yourself from danger because the rest of the world did that for you.”

It’s then that you realize you’re both standing, your finger jabbed into the Windsor knot of his tie. Still, you don’t stop.

“You are the shell of an actual politician; you represent a safe option for right-adjacent Democrats and moderate Republicans who hate the president’s coalition and women. Especially women of color. You’re the perfect option because you stand for nothing of substance, you do nothing on your own. You’re a cover for old racist white men and moderate white women who need something to attatch their lack of political knowledge to during dinner conversations. Either you shape up, or I’m leaving this campaign and watching your inevitable fall from my office in the White House. I will drink a martini in the West Wing the day you lose, I will release a glowing endorsement of the first liberal who so much as whispers about taking your ass down. Do you understand me?”

The longest few seconds of your life pass with bated breath as you two stand there, chests rising and falling in a synced rhythm with your jaws set. It’s a stand off, neither of you willing to look away from the other’s eyes.

“Do you understand me, Evans?” you bite, getting angrier at each passing Chris says nothing. It’s not the self-reflective kind of silence, it’s the generic peanut butter when you’re too broke to afford the real stuff. It’s pasta before a marathon. It’s ads the radio station plays when they’re out of loops of the latest rape-adjacent pop hit.

It’s a filler. And it’s a bad one.

“¿Te comprende?” You’re almost yelling now, screaming in his face louder than you’ve ever screamed before. “¿Me necesitas para decirlo de nuevo?”

Another heavy pause. Chris’ voice is rough as he speaks, like ten grit sandpaper. “Yeah, I get it. I fucking get it.”

And with that, he grabs his side bag and stomps out of the conference room, grumbling something about high school Spanish and Despacito. You ignore his tantrum – unlike his father, who moves to run after him. You shoot daggers into the silver-haired ca, and he sits back down.

You push the too-sweet aftertaste of canned fruit to the back of your mouth. The thick resume paper slides out of your laptop-case-slash-important papers-folder with ease, the heavy five-hundred word essay on why you hate your job detailed in 12-font Times New Roman, pristine black letters nearly shining in the low light.

“That’s my letter of resignation,” you say, looking your boss dead in the eyes. With his jaw set the way it is, you expect to hear his teeth cracking before you could leave the boardroom.

“You know we can’t accept this,” his father says with a tone that’s much too close to a laugh. A nervous laugh, but one that makes you feel like he’s treating you as if you were a joke nonetheless. “You’re our only hope for this race.”

The second sheet of paper - or, rather, the small stack with a staple in the top right corner perfectly perpendicular to the nearest corner - hits the table next. “Then, these are my demands. Let me know by midnight tonight if you can meet them or not so I know whether or not to accept a job somewhere else.”

With that, you pick up your coat and leave.

The driver, a single mom in her mid-forties who is helping put her only son through college, laughs when you enter the backseat of her vehicle. It’s not condescending, not something you feel offended by. Rather, shame paints your face.

“Did Mr. Evans-Junior snap?” She asks as she pulls away. Her tone is knowing, too knowing. How long has she worked for the Evans anyway?

You sigh, then scream into your hands. The woman in front of you doesn’t flinch, doesn’t move a muscle as she waits for your reply. “He’s an idiot.”

The woman laughs. “That’s not what I asked, and I know you know that.”

You’re tempted to scream again, only a little louder. You don’t. “He snapped. I snapped,” you sigh again as you watch out the window. It’s late, too late for traffic to be like this. Fuck Boston. “Now I want to go home and take off my bra and wash off my make up and ger super drunk and shave all my hair off and quit my job and become a sheep herder in Iceland.”

The woman doesn’t disagree, doesn’t negate. She gives you the wonderful gift of silence until she drops you off, waving you goodbye.

“You have a good night,” she calls.

“I’ll do my best,” you shout back.

You’re alone in your apartment, dressed in the most comfortable (and expensive) pair of pajamas you own with red wine and some playlist titled an artsy version of “my life is very sad and my world is falling apart so I bought a $200 bottle of alcohol and hope I cry off my name-brand make up before I have to reemerge into the eyes of polite society,” when you get the text you’ve been dreading. It’s Chris, with his perfect capitalization and punctation and lack of emoji use. You’ve seen the way he texts the rest of the team, his family, his friends. He only pulls that shit with you.

Fuck, you think as you open the message. That kid’s really gotta loosen up. Isn’t weed legal in Massachusetts? He’s a Democrat, there’s no excuse.

He’s asking if he can come over, because of course he is. You’re just lucky the message is something closer to “I feel bad and wish to speak about it with you in person” instead of the crass “u up” you expected. Still, when the three dots at the bottom of the screen appear once again, you assume it’s going to be a picture of his junk that loads.

“Please,” is all the text says.

You acquiesce, sending him something akin to a “Fine but if you step out of line again your ass is going to be explaining why you fucked up to the cold-as-fuck pavement outside.”

You hear the knock at your door thirty minutes later (you often forget how shitty Boston traffic is), opening it to reveal the saddest white boy you’ve ever seen in your short life.

His chestnut hair is disheveled enough to indicate he’d had half of a sleepless night. This is the most casual you’ve seen him – basketball shorts with another Godforsaken Harvard hoodie with Nike sneakers – bags under his eyes completing the “sad frat boy who probably just flunked a chem exam” kind of look.

“Can I come inside?” he asks.

You sigh, trying to figure out how your life came to this. A jerk of your chin allows him entry into your small apartment, every surface littered with physical copies of presentations and a map of Massachusetts covered in stickers and sticky notes and scribbles of poll numbers from past campaigns. To Chris’ untrained eye it all looks like the homestead of a serial killer, but to anyone else on his campaign it’s his ticket to the senate. Politics is a game, a game with very public winners and losers and those who fall between; anyone who doesn’t study all of those outcomes is destined to find themselves either a) in a vacation home in the hills of Vermont drunk as hell, or b) running for president.

(You’ve considered how likely both of those possibilities are, and part of you fears he’ll do both).

There’s a heavy, awkward silence that falls over the room as you both sit down, facing each other.

“So,” you ask awkwardly. “Do you want, uh, a beer…or something?”

Chris shakes his head. “No, I’m, uh, I’m alright. Thanks.”

You sigh a little, relieved. “Good, because all I have is very expensive red wine and judging by our past interactions it is not worth having it spilled all over my white carpet.”

For a moment it’s obvious he doesn’t realize that you’re kidding, but after a few seconds of a facial expression that’s a perfect blend of concerned, rejected, and confused – he lets a little smile get past his façade.

“Yeah, uh,” he laughs. “That sounds like a bitch to clean up.”

What follows is a few minutes of incredibly awkward silence as he looks around your house once more and you take the opportunity to look at him.

It’s weird to see him in this state – it’s weird to see him as something human.

Still, you want to snap at him when he breaks the quiet.

“I want to do better,” he says, voice small. He avoids meeting your eyes, wrings his hands while he looks at the floor. “I thought about what you said and I,” he sighs. “I’m sorry. I want to do better…for you.”

You sigh, placing your red wine on the side table next to you before clasping your hands together. “Look, if you’re winning this election for me-“

“I’m not,” Chris says way too defensively. You let it slide for your own sanity.

“If you’re doing this for me, you’re going to be disappointed. Mostly because what your father wants and what I want are two very different things,” Chris opens his mouth to speak again but you hold you hand up to silence him. “Listen, I have a few rules with my clients. The first one is don’t lie to me. We can talk around this all day outside the boundaries of this home, but if you can look me in the eye on my couch while I drink my wine and tell me you’re doing this for a love of the people or whatever, I’m going to need you to leave.”

Chris gives you a single silent nod.

“But, if you want to win this shitshow…” you drink the rest of the glass in a single gulp. “Then, yeah. Let’s fucking do this.”

Chris lights up.

“But, I have some rules.”

He nods silently, allowing you to continue.

You count off on your fingers. “Don’t lie to me. When I ask a question, answer it. If I don’t ask a question, answer it anyway. I want to know everything, got it?”

Chris nods.

“The only time I don’t want you to speak is when I tell you to shut the fuck up. You got that, too?”

Chris nods again.

“Good, then I have a sneaking suspicion this will work out just fine.”

#chris evans x reader #lukis writes stuff #senator evans #chris evans smut #chris evans imagine

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na-klar · 6 years ago

Text

“all answers! I OKAY with Lukas” translation (part 1)

Annika: So! We didn’t change clothes!

Lukas: Heh, what?

Annika: It’s a few weeks later but we’re still wearing the same clothes. And hello guys and welcome to this video. I already announced a few weeks ago that there will be an extra video about transgender in regards to the series Druck which is also by funk, it’s linked in the description. Its 3rd season was about...

Lukas: ...Matteo, a gay boy who firstly has to accept the fact that he is homosexual himself, and then falls in love with David. But as he realizes that Matteo is very much interested in David, he distances himself because he’s transgender and doesn’t know how to deal with it.

Annika: And we’ll talk about a few scenes I picked out. It’s best if you watch the show first, it’s linked in the info box--

Lukas: There’ll be spoilers here...

Annika: Yeah, here will definitely be spoilers, just now, in fact. I think we should stop rambling now and begin!

Okay, in episode 25 David distances himself from Matteo because the point is drawing near that he has to come out as transgender sooner or later. Now I wanted to ask you if something like this happened to you in real life as well, i.e. that someone fell in love with you and you had to come out and it got worse because of that.

Lukas: Uhm, no, for me it was that if you’re trans -- this is my experience, I can only talk about my experience -- uhm, during that time where people start dating I had to spend a lot of time with myself, inevitably, because of puberty when things changed that made me not feel comfortable. Which is why during that time there was no place for a relationship or sexuality for me. And my first relationship was when I -- I wasn’t out, I wasn’t out to school -- but the relationship was from a youth club in Hamburg, a LGBT youth club, that’s where I met him and he was pansexual and then we were together. And yeah.

Annika: Yeah cool!

Lukas: But that was -- well, until now I never had this situation regarding a relationship where I really waited such a long time for it to get problematic, but I understand it very well; he came to school with the intention to just get through it, he was bullied at his old school... But I would advise everyone to be as open with it as you can, because at the end of the day you have to talk about it and if you’re really important to that person, then...

Annika: Yeah, I always tell men before they fall in love with me that I’m lesbian, so...

Lukas: Every man, really, right?

Annika: Yes it’s so exhausting!

Lukas: Hello, I’m lesbian, I know, I’m sorry.

Annika: Hello I’m lesbian!

Then there was also an iconic line in the show: “It’s not you, it’s me”

Lukas: Yes!

Annika: A classic, I’ve said it before, have you?

Lukas: Mh... Yeah.

(his phone rings)

Annika: Hey now! Mobile phones have to be turned off during class!

Lukas: My mom called.

Annika: Raise your hands if you said that line at some point. Nice.

Lukas: I think in that moment David says that as well...

Annika: But it’s so true!! I mean if you don’t have feelings for someone than it’s you yourself. Well, also it’s the other person because they’re not compatible with -- okay let’s move on.

So! Next thing I wrote down, episode 28, the outing.

Lukas: The outing. *dum dum dum*

Annika: I wrote this down because... Matteo, in that moment, was really overwhelmed by the information.

(cut to druck clip of David coming out)

Is that-- does that happen often, that people are really overwhelmed with the situation when you tell them that, yeah, I was a woman, I mean-- uh, that’s also reprehensible, isn’t it?

Lukas: Yeah yeah yeah, a woman, ah??

Annika: I mean physically!

Lukas: Physically!

Annika: Phew! It’s so hard, I’m sitting here and have to struggle...

Lukas: Me too, hello? Even I can say something transphobic. But, that’s the thing: when I say something transphobic it’s always like “No. He’s transgender, he can’t be transphobic, that’s complicated”.

For me it’s like that by now, yes. When you’re not passing, when people look at you and are still like... have to think about it then it’s mostly like... “okay, huh, what does that mean?”, which pronouns, which names and stuff, but by now, since I’m very passing fortunately--

Annika: Passing means you are,,,

Lukas: That you’ll be recognized as the gender you feel.

Annika: Learned something again.

Lukas: Exactly. These are the terms. And then it’s mostly just “Huh? Okay?”... But I honestly have to say that I don’t run around and say hey I’m trans when I meet someone.

Annika: Hey! Lesbian!

Lukas: Yeah, like that! Even a lot of the cast -- background info -- a lot of the cast, even when we were in the middle of filming, thought I’m cisgender. They didn’t know I’m trans.

Annika: Awesome. I also thought, I really would have liked to watch this without knowing that you’re a trans man. If I would’ve checked that or not. You can write in the comments how that was for you.

Lukas: Yeah, if one of you didn’t know that spoiler already.

Annika: Yeah, and now a general question that might be a bit emotional, but... does rejection happen often?

Lukas: Rejection... naturally there are friends that come and go. When I came out pubically, in school, there were a few people who distanced themselves but that was okay for me because I don’t need these kind of people...

Annika: I always say you can sort out your friends really well like this. If people stay with you despite that information -- this sounds so stupid -- because you’re still the same person as before, then they are real friends and people who are like “oh my gooood nooo byeee” then you can sort them out, that’s what I always say, which is why it isn’t a loss.

Lukas: Yeah, with transgender it’s always like, “are you someone else now?” but you’re still the same person, it’s just the gender that’s now right and the way you feel and how you want to be addressed as.

I had a job offer with children that was denied because I’m transgender. And that, that was... that hurt a little. But that was in the moment that they told me “can’t you work as female here?”

Annika: What?!

Lukas: I mean, “start working here, that’s almost the same, we also had lesbian people here” and I was like yeah. Cool.

Annika: What is that even-- What even is the difference???

Lukas: Yeah... they were like, “we’re afraid the parents might have a problem with this and that you’re confusing the children”, so these classic statements...

Annika: Oh my god... Every kid that I touch turns lesbian. It is contagious.

Lukas: It’s difficult.

But then I declined with thanks to work there as a girl.

Annika: A scene that I found beautiful is when Matteo talked to his flatmate and the flatmate just said “hey, what even is your problem with David being transgender? What do you like about him?” and this question was so nice, what do you like about him, because I think the same thing. I love that person not because they’re a woman but because the way they are. I mean, that she’s a woman is an influence, but... the person themselves is important. That’s what I wanted to say and that’s what I found beautiful.

(cut to druck clip of Matteo talking to Hans about David)

Lukas: And that is what you have to decide for yourself, to say, okay, can I imagine being with a trans man -- I can’t force anyone to be into me?

Annika: I can.

Lukas: But in the show it was nice for me to have Hans ask what is the important thing.

Annika: Then it comes to the big outing in school. Because the PE teacher doesn’t want to grade David as a man but as a woman.

(cut to druck clip of the coming out)

Lukas: You can’t say that it’s not unrealistic. It is realistic.

The problem with school is always grading and especially regarding PE, boys and girls are graded differently, and...

Annika: I always got so upset because I wanted to be graded the same way as boys, they’re not better than I am! But at high jump I was kinda glad that girls were graded differently...

Lukas: That scene is only on the phone’s display and we started to act this scene in the changing room and Neuhaus says to David “but that’d be so positive for you, you’re getting better grades then!”. Mr. Neuhaus in our story -- that was important for us and the actor -- he’s not just evil. He’s not doing this to make David feel bad but he wanted to help him actually. David reacts accordingly, he’s like uh no? and that’s what makes him mad, he has his plan and that didn’t work out. And with school it’s difficult, there are a lot of things that you have to be aware of. Before I was out I talked to my school for about a month what you can do, with names, on certifications and such, all of that has to do with your ID and burocracy, uh, pretty boring stuff. And toilets, for example, too. In one scene, David comes out of a toilet which is actually a toilet for the teachers. At my school I got the key for the disabled toilet, which is of course a bit... critical... transgender isn’t a disability. That wasn’t what that meant. It draws attention to you, which isn’t convenient but... you have to find solutions so that everyone can deal with it.

I think what you have to say is that the reactions of the students on that staircase are a first reaction. It’s not something where they group up because they’re standing there a bit like chickens on the roost and are like “okay. now you’re over. You’re out of this school”...

People react to a new information that they didn’t expect and that’s the big thing in that moment.

Annika: Especially at that age there’ll be big gossip.

Lukas: When I came out to my school, my classmates reacted really positively and were really nice and I don’t want anyone who’s transgender and watches this show to think this is what will happen, I mean you can also see in the following episodes that--

Annika: That everyone stand up for him because that’s something normal.

Lukas: Exactly.

Annika: Often it’s better to be self-confident, because then people think “okay, I won’t say anything then”. When they realize that you’re an easy target then they attack you.

Lukas: Right. You shouldn’t be ashamed of who you are or what makes you different but be proud because that’s what makes you to the person that you are.

part 2

#druck #lukas alexander #druck translation

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ohhoneato · 4 years ago

Text

I remember being terrified of becoming depressed when I was younger, to the point where i asked my mom for counseling to assure I wouldn't.

I think that experience hurt me in the end, I didn't know if anything was wrong and since I lived in the bible belt of Texas, the counselor ended up trying to shove christianity down my throat.

I wasn't an avid Christian, but I did go to church, because I had friends there. I don't remember anything they taught. I don't remember any of the advice I was given in counseling. I just remember telling her I wasn't Christian and asked for her several times to not use it as her teaching method.

I ended up asking to stop going, not because I was better, but because she was shoving religion down my throat. My mom pulled me and gave them a piece of her mind while she was at it, but in the long run, I should have asked her for another person.

Thinking back about what I presented her with, I did have the beginnings of deeper problems. All of my writing was about suicide, my drawings all had blood shed and death, and here I was worried that I was getting depressed to the point where I couldn't sleep at night. This wasn't the start of my anxiety, but I can pinpoint that as the start of my downward spiral with it.

I never asked my mom for another counselor, I knew they were expensive and we were struggling constantly. She would have gotten me another if I'd asked, but I never wanted to bother her about it.

I stopped being able to get my own lunches at school. I remember clearly the first time I realized I was terrified to go into the lunch line. I got free lunches and barely had to talk to anyone, but I still ended up asking people to get it for me, or I wouldn't eat that day. I had people who would oblige, but if no one was eating with me that day or my regular friend wasn't there, I'd get paralyzed with fear thinking about the lunch line.

Then I stopped being able to talk to my own friends in a classroom setting. They'd all be talking to each other and I'd be scared to say anything at all. It wasn't my conversation I had no right to butt in. If they tried to include me, I'd try to exit as soon as possible. Talking to people was taxing and I had to save that energy for the teachers and my parents. I grew away from everyone, but tried to stay my usual sunshiny self.

It didn't work.

I don't fully remember the situation, but I had English one period and theater directly afterwards. I believe I'd gotten in trouble with my english teacher, though I can't remember what for, I believe it was because I hadn't done my homework.

I ended up yelling at my theater teacher. This man was a saint, I swear. He sent me out into the hall and I could have sworn I was in trouble. I was waiting out there a long time, crying. He pulled me back in and the whole class had recreated disney land to cheer me up. He taught me it's okay to have emotions, it's okay to get upset, my feelings were valid. High school is a stressful place and he knew this and instead of punishing someone who had one bad day, he cheered them up instead.

This was a positive interaction, but I began snapping at more people, mostly my parents and friends. I stopped doing things outside of school, my LARP friend had moved away without telling me anyways and there wasn't really anything else to do.

I started discovering my own sexuality and found out that some people didn't like homosexuality. My family never cared about those types of things. I began isolating myself from others, not really leaving the house unless I had to.

It's taken a long time to get where I'm at now. It got much worse before it got better. I had to drop out of college because the anxiety led to extreme depression where I couldn't force myself to go to my classes, despite genuinely enjoying them. I finally got a new counselor, at a church if you can believe it because they had a free clinic. Both of the counselors I had there were phenomenal and I'd go back if I was still in the area.

I've fought hard with my own mind to get where I can leave the house, where I can approach the cash register by myself and friendly chat with a stranger. Getting a job in customer service helped a lot. And I'm still not even close to better. I have my days of such bad anxiety that I can't even talk to my girlfriend. I have days where I just want to die, days where I can't get out of bed. Days where I give up, i think I'm useless, a toxic person, someone undeserving of life. I don't even know what to do with myself half the time.

But I did it. I didn't think I'd live past 17 y'all. But here I am, still breathing (albeit badly xD) at 23, turning 24 this year. This is an amazing feat for someone who wanted the world to end in 2012. And despite how horrible I feel sometimes, I can't actually deny I'm getting better.

I'm working on surrounding myself with a more positive atmosphere, my bathroom is going to be citrus themed (which is weirdly hard to find omg) and instead of the black and red I've always had my room, I'm making it sunset colored. Lime green and sunflower yellow have become my favorite colors, I never thought I'd love the color yellow, it always felt so grossly happy. Now I feel like I can't live without it.

I've started trying to use more positive language, if you see me say the word funky, I changed from something negative or self deprecating.

I never believed this until right now, I've always thought it was bullshit, but it does get better! This isn't some propaganda crap that adults are trying to fed you to make you keep forcing yourself to live.

This is me, someone who also wanted to and still do sometimes, give up. To throw in the towel. Telling you that it can get better.

I am living in that better for me. No it isn't perfect. I still have problems, I still find it hard to function.

But it does get better. Please, please remember that. It doesn't have to end bitterly, you don't have to destroy something you can build into a better tomorrow. Situations aren't forever.

I love you all and wish you all the best.

#mental health tw

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poplinn · 5 years ago

Note

I do think that the new outbreak of toxic people drumming up their toxic groups in this fandom is hurting people. They think theyre doing something right but all they're doing is making mentally ill and/or young fans too scared to enjoy or create in fear of being harassed.

Hi anon! first of all i want to apologise for responding so late. I have a lot to say about your ask and just wanted a clear head before i decided to respond. i want to start off by saying you are absolutely right.

Before i continue i am going to put a read-more because, well, i have a LOT to say about this, so, mini-rant ahead under the read-more…

These people are doing more harm than good.

I understand if you want to make a small list with content warnings, for a fandom, that is completely fine! But using such a list to start bullying, harassing, threatening and in general, witch-hunting people is not okay. Many great and talented people have been driven away from the fandom by that tiny toxic group(or the cucks, as i like to call them for easy sakes). Content creators are even scared to post their content too now, both of these things are a huge shame. It’s terrible. Sites like tumblr are supposed to be for sharing your content without limitations. [well, until the nsfw ban, but you get what i mean..]

I happen to be in contact with some people on the blocklist, and let me tell you, they are truly amazing and wonderful people.

Yeah sometimes people make content you may not agree with, but that doesn’t mean you have start attacking people for it. Do you know how easy it is to click the unfollow or block button? But apparently some people are so stupid they prefer to screech instead of click one single button.

But for example, I dislike a certain popular hc for medic. I dislike the Jewish medic hc. I’m a Jewish man myself, but I don’t like seeing Jewish medic for multiple reasons, none of which are out of antisemitic nature. What do I see when I see Jewish medic? I mind my own fucking business. The person who posted that wanted to create that, fine by me. I don’t agree with it, and I don’t have to. I’m not going to make a dumb expose list for everyone who ever said anything about medic being Jewish. I mind my fucking business like a normal, mature person.

And there was/is a huge discussion about drawing or writing tf2 non-con…yeah, rape isn’t good. Every sane person knows that. Writing or drawing rape does not mean you’re a rapist (unless it’s an autobiography of course, then I’d like you to take a trip to prison). But, some people, including myself, write or draw non-con as a coping mechanism. I use confrontation to cope. I have a few triggers, and by confronting myself with said triggers I’m slowly getting over said triggers.

If I write or draw about these triggers or rape, I feel like I’m relieving my feelings about what happened to me. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, and i’m not the only person who does it like that.

Yeah, I get people don’t always want to see that. That’s why tags exist, that’s why people use those tags for content and trigger warnings. That’s why you block those tags if you don’t want to see it. It’s that simple

Also, some of them make the claim that fiction is reality. I disagree, fiction is not reality. Yes, fiction can impact reality, but it isn’t one and the same. If you can’t distinguish fiction from reality then, well, you’re either not ready for fiction or not old/stable enough to be able to tell the two apart. Besides, if fiction really IS reality then so many movies and books would have been banned, or the writers of those must have been in jail by now, right? Writing a book about a fictional serial killer does not mean the writer is planning to or already has commit murder. Take Tf2 fan-fiction writers for example. They write about dudes slaughtering each other on a daily basis, but some of them wouldn’t even DARE to hit a fly in real life.

People who commit crimes because of a fictional piece were already going to do so to begin with. No sane human sees a crime that occurs in fiction and thinks to do the same. Those who do commit crimes because of a fictional piece were already planning to do so to begin with, and were probably not a completely hundred percent stable person.

And about the discussion of miss p being a lesbian, yeah I get that Jay said she’s gay and that, and if she really was a Canon lesbian, it’d be weird to ship her with men. However, those cucks do also make soldier a homosexual despite him having a (gorgeous) wife? Isn’t that kind of hypocritical? Anyways, Jay most likely was joking about miss p being gay, he’s known to be a jokey person like that. I feel like the way he did it was just saying “oh yeah btw she’s gay”. To me it feels vague. In the same sense that jk Rowling suddenly says everyone is gay in Harry Potter. Yeah, I hc her as a funky lil lesbian too, but i don’t go off on a tangent when someone sees her as bi, because the way she was “confirmed” as a lesbian, was vague and uncertain, and most likely a dumb joke that split the fandom in half.

Anyways, most of the cucks I ran into are underage, and aren’t even allowed on this site, which can explain their irrational behaviour, and refusing to listen to anyone who slightly disagrees with them, but lemme tell y'all something, minding your own fucking business would have prevented this entire blocklist ordeal.

Besides, YOU are in control of what you see on the Internet. Don’t like a certain type of content? BLOCK IT! or just, STOP LOOKING AT IT! it’s not that hard!

You are responsible for your own experience on the Internet. Not ready for that? Then close your phone/laptop and go outside. Content creators are not responsible for what you do online, these creators don’t know you, don’t expect them to fucking take care of you, they’re not your parents. Avoiding certain content does NOT mean you have to start policing others on what to post. You have no right to tell artist what they can and cannot post. Again, you may criticise or dislike it, that’s fine, but actively demanding censorship or threatening the creator makes you look like an incompetent asshole.

And if you disagree with something, it’s better to start with calming yourself down and contacting the OP in a respectful and mature manner. Maybe talk to them, broaden your horizon, broaden their horizon. Can’t agree eventually? That’s fine, it’s normal. Simply block the tag or the creator themselves and boom! You’re done, and didn’t harm anyone in the fandom and probably learned something, and OP probably too! If something isn’t tagged you can always, nicely, reach out to OP and ask them to tag. Most of the time they will. And if they don’t, just unfollow or block them if they continue posting a certain something that triggers you. Making a blocklist is one of the most immature things you could do. You bully and harass people to the point where some feel unsafe, and some even suicidal, in a fandom about a dumb fucking hat Simulator. Is that really what you want?? A fandom is supposed to be a safe and fun place for everyone who likes a certain something. By being toxic, and harassing others to the point where they don’t even feel safe(not only those who are young or mentally ill) in a what was supposed to be a safe place for them, you’re actively harming that safe place, and frankly, you don’t deserve to be in the fandom.

Also, I’ve seen a lot of these cucks say they actually hate tf2 as a game, and really, if you hate the game so much why are you still here in the fandom? And ruining it for the rest for us?

If you do feel unsafe, follow steps I mentioned above. Talk to people, block tags, block people, and mind your own business without policing others in what they can and cannot do. Unfortunately, the creators who do feel unsafe because of the toxic group cannot talk them, because the moment someone even slightly disagrees with them, or tries to respectfully discuss why they’re being “cancelled” the cucks start screeching like full-blown autists.

You’re not the law enforcement, you are (most likely) a minor who isn’t even allowed on tumblr in the first place, and who has no idea how the internet, or fandom spaces in specific, even work.

Fucking hell I miss 2014 Tf2 fandom sometimes.

I hope this ramble makes sense, and again I’m sorry for making this so long.

And I’m sorry for posting drama again, I don”t like it either, and i usually have a lot of patience, but after a few years of this shit, i have come to reach my boiling point, and i just snapped, I’m sorry.

I sometimes refer to the cucks as you, idk why, but just now that isn’t referring to you anon.

Hopefully this will be the last of drama/discourse for now.

Thank you for reading, have a good day.

-pop

#drama #discourse #Anonymous #TF2 #tf2 blocklist

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ashtray-girl · 5 years ago

Text

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down And Wept and its role in Morrissey’s lyricism

PLOT This is a short prose poetry novel in which author Elizabeth Smart recounts her love affair with married poet George Barker (even though she began writing it years before they met). Said affair lasted 18 years and she bore 4 of his 15 children, whom he had from several different women.

The novel is divided in 10 parts, so I’ll proceed by summing up each one of them while also highlighting the parts which I think are relevant to the Morrissey discourse.

DISCLAIMER: even though there isn’t much of a plot to spoil (the focus is placed almost entirely on the narrator’s feelings and in the way they’re expressed), I am gonna quote extensively from every chapter so keep that in mind if you intend to read the book for yourself.

PART I The protagonist is waiting at the bust station for the man she loves to collect her (she never names him btw) but when he finally comes he’s with his wife and it’s her that the protagonist sees first.

“But then it is her eyes that come forward out of the vulgar disembarkers to reassure me that the bus has not disgorged disaster: her madonna eyes, soft as the newly-born, trusting as the untempted. And, for a moment, at that gaze, I am happy to forego my future, and postpone indefinitely the miracle hanging fire. […] Behind her he for whom I have waited for so long, who has stalked so unbearably through my nightly dreams.”

It’s interesting to note the way she talks about her. Even though she’s wildly in love with this man, she never badmouths her. On the contrary, throughout the story she seems to have a good opinion of her.

“I see she can walk across the leering world and suffer injury only from the ones she loves. But I love her and her silence is propaganda for sainthood.”

You know what all of this reminds me of? The time Angie collected Morrissey at the station to take him to Johnny’s house, a few days after Johnny had knocked on Morrissey’s door and they’d talked about forming a band. Did he expect it would be Johnny who’d come and pick him up? Did he know he had a girlfriend?

“So we drive along the Californian coast singing together, and I entirely renounce him for only her peace of mind.”

I don’t know if the narrator shares Morrissey’s fascination with cars (I don’t even think the two things are necessarily related), but it’s worth pointing out how some of the most important and dramatic scenes of the book happen in a car.

“Why do I not jump off this cliff where I lie sickened by the moon? I know these days are offering me only murder for my future. It is not just the creeping fingers of the cold that dissuade me from action, and allow me to accept the hypocritical hope that there may be some solution. Like Macbeth, I keep remembering that I am their host. So it’s tomorrow’s breakfast rather than the future’s blood that dictates fatal forbearance. Nature, perpetual whore, distracts with the immediate.”

Look at this entire paragraph and tell me it isn’t the most Morrissey thing you’ve ever read. Also, does any part of it sound familiar? Well, let’s look at the lyrics for Shakespeare’s Sister:

Young bones groan, and the rocks below say “Throw your skinny body down, son"

But I'm going to meet the one I love So please don't stand in my way Because I'm going to meet the one I love No, mama, let me go

Young bones groan and the rocks below say "Throw your white body down"

But I'm going to meet the one I love At last, at last, at last! I'm going to meet the one I love

Then the protagonist gets to the couple’s house and her sudden proximity to the man she loves brings the feelings she’s been trying to repress right back to the surface:

“The Beginning lurks uncomfortably on the outskirts of the circle, like an unpopular person whom ignoring can keep away. The very silence, the very avoiding of any intimacy between us, when he, when he was only a word, was able to cause me sleepless nights and shivers of intimation, is the more dangerous. Our seeming detachment gathers strength. I sit back impersonally and say, I see human vanity, or feel myself full of gladness because there is a gentleness between him and her, or even feel irritation because he lets her do too much of the work, sits lolling whilst she chops wood for the stove.”

There’s an unmistakable feeling of impeding doom, as if she knows that even though nothing physical has happened between them yet, she’s sealed her own deal just by being there with him and it’s only a matter of time before the inevitable strikes.

“While we drive along the road in the evening, talking as impersonally as a radio discussion, he tells me: ‘A boy with green eyes and long lashes, whom I had never seen before, took me into the back of a printshop and made love to me, and for two weeks I went around remembering the numbers on bus conductors’ hats.’ ‘One should love beings whatever their sex’, I reply, but withdraw into the dark with my obstreperous shape of shame, offended with my own flesh which cannot metamorphose into a printshop boy with armpits like chalices.”

So there you have it: Meaningful Car Scene n°1. He confesses he had a homosexual experience (and he enjoyed it, or so it seems) and she’s jealous but not outraged or disgusted, which is quite a big deal if you think this book was first published in 1945. (It’s also worth noting that, in her later years, Elizabeth Smart had affairs with both men and women). Another thing I noticed as I was writing this is that sentence, “remembering the numbers on bus conductors’ hats”, which reminded me of that line in Phoney:

Who can make Hitler Seem like a bus conductor? You do, oh Phoney you do

It’s probably just a coincidence, but I found it funny nonetheless.

“He kissed my forehead driving along the coast in the evening, and now, wherever I go, like the sword of Damocles, that greater never-to-be-given kiss hangs above my doomed head. He took my hand between the two shabby front seats of the Ford, and it was dark, and I was looking the other way, but now that hand casts everywhere an octopus shadow from which I can never escape. The tremendous gentleness of that moment smothers me under; […] I stand on the edge of the cliff, but the future is already done.”

Meaningful Car Scene n°2. There’s a first attempt at physical contact and by now he seems to have realised she has feelings for him, so he’s trying to see how far he can push himself with her.

Now, I’m just gonna go ahead and say it: I feel like something very similar to this may have happened between Johnny and Morrissey. The reason why I decided to write this analysis is because, once I read the book, I fully realised the pervasiveness of its influence in many of the lyrics Morrissey wrote while he was in The Smiths (especially during the Meat Is Murder era) and in the first years of his solo career but, as much as people talked about it, I feel like they never went deep enough. The way I see it, Morrissey had every reason to relate to the protagonist, even though she’s a woman. Someone who falls deeply in love with a married man (with bisexual tendencies, it seems) and is quite concerned with the ethics of what she’s doing but at the same time is very certain of her feelings for him. The man, on the other hand, seems to have a much more ambiguous attitude, accepting her love but also wanting to keep a respectable façade by staying with his wife. If we assume that Morrissey did harbour romantic feelings for Johnny, it’s easy to see why he would choose this book as a way to sublimate them, especially if we consider how the queer factor would’ve made them even less acceptable in the eyes of society.

But going back to the book… what about the man’s wife?

“By day she obeys the voice of love as the stricken obey their god, and she walks with the light step of hope which only the naive and the saints know. […] He also is bent towards her in an attitude of solicitude. Can he hear his own heart while he listens for the tenderness of her sensibilities? Is there a way at all to avoid offending the lamb of god?”

As I said before, she doesn’t seem to be especially jealous of his wife, but that may be because at the moment she’s high on the secret attentions her husband is giving her, so it’s easy for her to feel sorry for this other woman who’s being cheated on right under her own roof.

I can’t help but think about how Morrissey and Angie had their own relationship and seemed to be quite close. I mean, that must have been a bit of a weird dynamic (for Moz at least), and I wonder how they worked it out.

“I never was in love with death before, nor felt grateful because the rocks below could promise certain death. But now the idea of dying violently becomes an act wrapped in attractive melancholy, and displayed with every blandishment. For there is no beauty in denying love, except perhaps by death, and towards love what way is there? To deny love, and deceive it meanly by pretending that what is unconsummated remains eternal, or that love sublimated reaches highest to heavenly love, is repulsive, as the hypocrite’s face is repulsive when placed too near the truth. […] I might be better fooled, but can I see the light of a match while burning in the arms of the sun?”

There’s another reference to dying by throwing herself off a cliff, but the really interesting part is what comes after. The narrator rejects the idea that spiritual love is the highest form of love, which is achieved by embracing its physical side instead. It’s not enough for her to have a platonic bond with the man she loves because she wants him in mind, body and soul.

While reading this, I couldn’t help but draw some parallels:

- “Dying violently becomes an act wrapped in attractive melancholy.” → “To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die.” - “Can I see the light of a match while burning in the arms of the sun?” → “There is a light and it never goes out.”

And then, opening the penultimate paragraph of this first chapter:

“I have learned to smoke because I need something to hold on to. I dare not be without a cigarette in my hand.”

This is one of the most obvious one. If we look at the lyrics for What She Said (which is based almost entirely on this book), it’s pretty self-explanatory:

What she said: ‘I smoke ‘cause I’m hoping for a nearly death And I need to cling to something.’

PART II This part is mainly about the remorse the protagonist is feeling towards the man’s wife, who has now realised something happened between the two of them.

“Her eyes pierced all the veils that protected my imagination against ruinous knowledge. […] Is there no other channel of my deliverance except by her martyrdom?”

It’s quite interesting to note how the chapter opens with:

“God, come down […] and tell me who will drown in so much blood.”

And then, on the next page:

“I am blind, but blood, not love, blinded my eye. Love lifted the weapon but guided my crime.”

Both of these lines reminded me of the lyrics for Yes, I Am Blind:

Yes, I am blind No, I can't see The good things Just the bad things, oh...

Yes, I am blind No, I can't see There must be something Horribly wrong with me?

God, come down If you're really there Well, you're the one who claims to care

It then goes on:

“… she whom I have injured, and whose agony it is my penalty to watch, lies gasping, but still living, on the land.”

- “Gasping, but still living.” → “Gasping, but somehow still alive.” (Well I Wonder)

PART III The narrator spends most of this chapter gushing about how in love she is with this man, who in the meantime has followed her back home to spend some time with her (though it’s not clear whether he has left his wife for her or not.)

“Even the precise geometry of his hand, when I gaze at it, dissolves me into water and I flow away in a flood of love.”

(I have nothing to say about this line except that I like it and that I can’t help but imagine Morrissey staring at Johnny’s hands as he picks the chords of his guitar, thinking these exact same thoughts.)

“When the Ford rattles up to the door, five minutes (five years) late, and he walks across the lawn under the pepper-trees, I stand behind the gauze curtains, unable to move to meet him, or to speak, as I turn to liquid to invade his every orifice when he opens the door.”

Yet another reference to his car. Also yeah, you’re wet for him, we get it.

“And there is so much for me, I am suddenly so rich, and I have done nothing to deserve it, to be so overloaded. All after such a desert. All after I had learnt to say, I am nothing, and I deserve nothing. […] It has happened, the miracle has arrived, everything begins today, […] all the paraphernalia of existence, all my sad companions of these last twenty years, […] all the world solicits me with joy, leaps at me electrically, claiming its birth at last.”

I can’t help but think about how similarly Morrissey must have felt after Johnny knocked on his door, after having spent his last twenty years in much the same way the narrator had, feeling lonely and isolated.

I mean, he even said so himself:

“He appeared at a time when I was deeper than the depths, if you like. And he provided me with this massive energy boost. I could feel Johnny’s energy just seething inside of me.”

“I was there, dying, and he rescued me.”

The chapter ends with this sentence:

“Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm, for love is strong as death.”

Which kinda reminds me of that part in Rusholme Ruffians:

So scratch my name on your arm with a fountain pen (This means you really love me)

PART IV This is, in my opinion, the book’s most interesting chapter. What happens is, they get stopped as they’re crossing the Arizona border and once the cops realise they’re together but not married to each other, the take them to the police station, interrogate them for several hours about the nature of their relationship and then make them leave separately.

Once again, one of the most dramatic scenes takes place in a car.

I fully believe that Morrissey wrote both The Boy With The Thorn In His Side and later Late Night, Maudlin Street with this entire part in mind.

“They are taking me away in a police car […] They are prosecuting me for silence and for love […] They drove me away in a police car. […] For too much love, only for too much love. […] Are you not convinced, inspector? Do you not believe in love?”→ “They took you away in a police car / Inspector – don’t you know? Don’t you care? Don’t you know – about love?” (Late Night, Maudlin Street)

“They intercepted our love because of what was in our eyes. […] Did they see such flagrant proof and still not believe?” → “How can they see the love in our eyes and still they don’t believe us?” (The Boy With The Thorn In His Side)

I wonder who “they” were, though. I mean, we know that in the book, when she says: “They are prosecuting me for silence and for love” she clearly means the authorities, but what did Morrissey mean? Were “they” those same “people who are weaker/uglier than you and I” and those “evil people (who) prosper over the likes of you and me always”? And did he have some specific names in mind, or did he just mean society in general? As in: “They (the general public / the media / the music industry) can’t (don’t want to?) see we love each other because they’re not ready to accept that idea yet, but they’re more than happy to profit from us and our art, which is only made possible BECAUSE of that love.”

The penultimate paragraph before the end of the chapter feels especially relevant:

“All our wishes were private, we desired no more scope than ourselves. Could we corrupt the young by gazing into each other’s eyes? Would they leave their offices? Would big business suffer?”

PART V The protagonist comes back home feeling sorry for herself. Her family doesn’t approve of her relationship with a married man, but she refuses to apologise and spends most of her time contemplating nature and reminiscing about what happened.

Another quote which Morrissey probably used as inspiration for Late Night…

“Every yellow or scarlet leaf hangs like a flag waving me on.” → “Every hag waves me on / Secretly wishing me gone.”

PART VI The protagonist has an argument with her father, who’s worried about her state. Her mother doesn’t want to have anything to do with her anymore and even her brother is sceptical about the whole situation. She then reminisces about leaving Ottawa with him (she’s Canadian) and she talks at length about how they’re meant to be together no matter what. She also finds out she’s pregnant.

At the start, she mentions neighbours who warn her to stay away from him:

“The well-meaning matrons who, from their insulated living say, ‘My dear, I think you would would regret it afterwards if you broke up a marriage,’ ‘When you felt it about to happen the right thing would have been to have gone away at once.”

I wonder how many people around The Smiths were aware of Morrissey being in love with Johnny (because at this point, no one can convince me he wasn’t) and, if they were, how much did they know? Did they ever talked to him about it? Did they warn him about being cautious, about not revealing too much of his own feelings in his songs? And did they mention how bad it would look for him if he broke up a couple?

“The policeman grows fatter each day and rivals the new tanks. He blots out the doorway of the little café. A couple seeing him spills the milk at the counter, remembering what they did under the bridge last night. But the policeman is blind. He strikes only when he hears a loud noise. There are others, though, who have eyes like shifty hawks, and they prowl the streets searching for a face whereon an illegal kiss might be forming. No, there is no defence for love, and tears will only increase the crime.”

Here she’s talking about how, while in the midst of a war (the book is set in the 40s), the police (and society in general) seem to be concerned with futile things like arresting people who are doing nothing but love each other and it reminds me of a quote from Morrissey’s Autobiography:

“Men were draped with medals for killing other men yet imprisoned for loving one another.”

Later on, she makes a point of proclaiming herself ready to take their relationship as it is, without expecting much of a future.

“Though this is all there is […] I accept it without tomorrows and without any lilies of promise. It is enough, the now, and though it comes without anything, it gives me everything. […] But as long as the accessories are such now as to make me over-armed with weapons to combat the antagonistic world, even if a thousand programs go wrong, I won’t lament that past I was when I could see no future.”

She then tries to dissipate any doubts he might have about their relationship (because it looks as if he’s already starting to second-guess himself) by repeatedly reassuring him that she’s the one for him and that, as much as he tries, he can’t escape that fact.

“Remember I am not temptation to you, but everything is which inclines you away. Nor are you to me, but my entire goal. Sometimes you see this as clearly as I do now, for you say, ‘Do you think if I didn’t I could have…?’”.

I wonder… if Johnny hadn’t already been with Angie when he knocked on Morrissey’s door, would things have panned out differently for them? Would they have dared to take their relationship to the next level in spite of society’s backlash?

“Do you see me then as the too-successful one, like a colossus whose smug thighs rise obliviously out of sorrow? Or as the detestable all-female, who grabs and devours, invulnerable with greed? Alas, these are your sins, your garments of shame, and not the blond-sapling boys with blue eye-shadow leaning amorously towards you in the printshop.”

Leaving aside the fact that this man is garbage, she’s obviously anxious to reassure him that it’s not his bisexuality that saddens her, but the fact that he sees her as a threat.

Also that line, “grabs and devours”, will then be used by Morrissey in The Headmaster Ritual:

He grabs and devours He kicks me in the showers Kicks me in the showers And he grabs and devours

By the end of the chapter though, her words of comfort are starting to sound ominous:

“Only remember: I am not the ease, but the end. I am not to blind you but to find you. What you think is the sirens singing to lure you to your doom is only the voice of the inevitable, welcoming you after so long a wait. I was made only for you.”

PART VII The man has a breakdown and he’s interned in a psych facility. She tries to go and see him, but his wife is already there. He’d previously written her a letter, asking her to take him back. The protagonist leaves and when she comes back a few days later they leave together, but when she tries to confront him about the letter he refuses to listen to her. They have a fight and she ends up capitulating because he’s still ill and she wants to believe him when he tells her she’s the only one.

“My love, why did you leave me on Lexington Avenue in the Ford that had no breaks?” This line reminds me a bit of Break Up The Family, when Morrissey says:

Hailstones, driven home In a car – no breaks? I don’t mind

Which coincidentally is what’s happening in this chapter: the honeymoon phase is clearly over, he’s having troubles with his guilty conscience and he deals with them by distancing himself from her, even though she’s expecting his child.

PART VIII He and his wife move to London where the war is raging and, after a while, the protagonist follows them. She stays in a dingy hotel and he occasionally visits her to have sex with her, but by now it’s clear that he has no intention of leaving his wife for her, so they often fight and every day she’s getting more and more desperate and isolated.

The chapter opens with the line:

“His brother and his mother and his grandmother lie abandoned in death on the stones of the London Underground.”

This vaguely reminds me once again of Late Night…

You gran died And you mother died On Maudlin Street In pain and ashamed With never time to say Those special things

“Bombs are bigger, but the human brains they burst remain the same. It is the faces we once kissed that are being smashed in the English coastal towns, the hand we shook that are swept up with the debris […] and love still uproots the heart better than an imagined landmine.”

This paragraph makes me think of Ask:

Because if it’s not love Then it’s the bomb, the bomb, the bomb, the bomb The bomb, the bomb That will bring us together

In the meantime, their relationship is going sour and the protagonist feels they’re reaching a breaking point.

“When the ship cracks in the typhoon, we cover our heads and tell ourselves that all will resolve back to normal. But we are unbelieving. This time may not be like the other times that with time grew into cheerful anecdotes. […] O where does he stalk like a horse in pastures very far afield? I cannot hear him, and silence writes more terrible things than he can ever deny. Is there a suspicion the battle is lost? Certainly he killed me fourteen nights in succession.”

I can’t help but think about how Morrissey must have felt when Johnny told him he wanted to leave The Smiths. People around him (Stephen Street, Grant Showbiz) thought he was going to kill himself and the fact that Johnny then went on holiday and never made contact with him must have alarmed him even more. He’d first thought the situation could be repaired, but by then he must’ve realised the end was upon them.

“He did the one sin which Love will not allow. […] He did sin against Love, and though he says it was in Pity’s name, and that Pity was only fighting a losing battle with Love, he was useless to Pity, and in wavering, injured Love, which was, after all, what he staked all for, all he had, ungamblable.”

From what I gather, he went back to his wife because he felt sorry for her and the protagonist can’t accept that because in her eyes their love was everything that mattered and everything they had.

Now: as I said before, I think Morrissey was inspired by this book because he saw himself in it. I think he must’ve found many similarities between the protagonist’s situation and his own, both of them in love with a married man who doesn’t seem to know what to do with himself. Johnny and Angie split for a brief period in 1983, when The Smiths went on their first USA tour, and I’ve seen a few people speculate that if something physical happened between Morrissey and Johnny, it may very well have happened then. Morrissey may have taken advantage of the fact that Johnny was free and overcame his fears by making the first move. Or maybe, Johnny was the one who, once aware of Morrissey’s feelings for him, decided to take the bull by its horns. I don’t know. Nobody does. What I wonder is… once Johnny went back to Angie, how did Morrissey feel? Because I don’t think he was all that thrilled. Did he think he did it out of pity, like the protagonist of the book did? If something had happened between them on that tour, did he feel used? Did he feel mildly outraged? Did he resign himself to consider it a one-night stand and nothing more, even though his feelings for Johnny clearly went deeper than that? It’s also worth noticing how the references to this book start to spring up in his lyrics from Meat Is Murder onwards, that is, after that tour in 1983.

“How can I put love up to my hopes so suicidal and wild-eyed when the matter is too simple and too plain: it is her tears he feels trickling over his breast each night; it is for her he feels the concern; and the pity, after all, not the love, fills his twenty-four hours. Perhaps I am his hope. But then she is his present. And if then she is his present, I am not his present. Therefore, I am not, and I wonder why no one has noticed I am dead and taken the trouble to bury me. […] For even if he loves me, he is in her arms. O the fact, the unalterable fact: it is she he is with: he is with her: he is not with me because he is sleeping with her.”

For me, this might be the most heartbreaking part of the book. The protagonist knows that no matter what she tells herself, when he’s done with her he comes home to his wife while she’s stuck in a hotel room in a country which is not her own.

That line, “I wonder why no one has noticed I am dead and taken the trouble to bury me”, also crops up right at the beginning of What She Said:

What she said: “How come someone hasn’t noticed that I’m dead And decided to bury me? God knows, I’m ready!”

Which makes me think Morrissey must have somehow related to this part. “He loves me, but he’s still with her.” “He has martyred me, but for no cause, nor has he any idea of the size and consequence of my wounds. Perhaps he will never know, for to say, You killed me daily and O most especially nightly, would imply blame. I do not blame, nor even say, You might have done this or this rather than that. I even say, You must do that, you have to do it, there is no alternative, urging my own murder. […] If ever again he lets those nights happen, or dallies with remorse for past sins to others while sinning most dangerously against me, I shall be unrevivable. I shall, whether I want to or not, be struck dead with the fact. And he may clothe it in all humanity’s most melting colours, and pity, and sympathy, and call on love to be kind, and I too shall pray, Let me be kind, but it will be no good.”

This entire thing reinforces my first thought, which is: Morrissey and Johnny at one point had a one-night stand (“It was a good lay, good lay...”), except for Morrissey there were much stronger feelings attached to it.

As hurt as she is, the protagonist doesn’t blame the man for going back to his wife and she even encourages him, because she recognises that, at the end of the day, it’s the best course of action for everyone involved. What she wishes wouldn’t happen again are those nights, coupled with him badmouthing her to others out of remorse for his own actions.

If we once again consider the queer factor in the relationship between Morrissey and Johnny, it wouldn’t surprise me if Morrissey followed the same reasoning when Johnny went back to Angie because, as much as Morrissey loved him, he wouldn’t be able to give him the stability of a straight relationship. (That isn’t to say Johnny didn’t love Angie, btw. I’m sure he loved her deeply and he still does, but I also think at the time some internal conflict was present because, on some level, he reciprocated Morrissey’s feelings.)

That last line, “… and call on love to be kind, and I too shall pray, Let me be kind” reminds me of I Know It’s Over:

It takes strength to be gentle and kind

This can be applied to many situations, but I feel like it becomes especially relevant in the context of the love of your life leaving you for someone else, who you also care about.

PART IX The protagonist goes back home to Canada and has to face the invasive questioning of neighbours who see her with a big belly but no wedding ring. After a while though, she realises she must see the man she loves and so she leaves to meet him once again.

“I am lonely. I cannot be a female saint. I want the one I want. He is the one I picked out from the world. I picked him out in cold deliberation. But the passion was not cold. It kindled me. It kindled the world. Love, love, give my heart ease, put your arms round me, give my heart ease. Feel the little bastard.”

- “I want the one I want.” → “I want the one I can’t have.” - “Put your arms round me.” → “All I ask of you is one thing that you never do / Would you put your arms around me? (I won’t tell anyone).” (Tomorrow)

PART X The final chapter opens with the line that gave the book its title: “By Grand Central Station I sat down and wept.” He didn’t come to collect her, so she has a breakdown right in the middle of the station. The ending is kind of confusing. It looks as if she resigns herself to go back to him just to have sex with him, and she tries to convince herself everything is fine, but it clearly isn’t.

Elizabeth Smart went back to George Barker time and time again, even though their relationship was dysfunctional to say the least and they were both very damaged, egotistical individuals. He cheated on her repeatedly but she loved him nonetheless, so I guess it would make sense for the book to end like this as well.

“They obey the glint in the middle of my glazed eye, for it is the fierce last stand of all I have.” → “Gasping - but somehow still alive / This is the fierce last stand of all I am.” (Well I Wonder)

“I wanted only one thing. I gave you the full instructions. The name, I spelt it out in letters as long as a continent, even the address, the address that makes waterfalls of my blood because it is also her address. I said quite plainly and loudly: This is what I want. I want this, and I don’t want any bonus. Just give me this and I’ll pay any price you ask. I made no reservations. You took advantage of this. I never grudged. But, Sir, so what I plead is just – what are you stalling for? There is no more to give.”

This entire paragraph reminds me of Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want.

“He hangs, damp with his impotent tears, nailed by one hand to Love and by the other one to Pity.”

This man is split between love and duty and can’t seem to be able to make a decision, with everyone suffering as a consequence, including him. That’s what the protagonist sees. What I see is a man who likes to have his ego stroked and doesn’t mind a bit of drama. It’s not that he’s unable to make a decision, he just doesn’t want to.

“Is it possible he cannot hear me when he lies so close, so lightly asleep? […] My dear, my darling, do you hear me when you sleep?”

These parts were clearly used by Morrissey as inspiration for the lyrics of Well I Wonder (which, like What She Said, was based almost entirely on this book – I even think they were written back to back.)

Well I wonder Do you hear me when you sleep?

“This is the very room he chose instead of Love. Let it be quiet and full of healing. […] It is the cursed comfort he preferred to my breast. The one who shares it weeps silently in corners, is tender unnoticed, and makes his necessary tea. ‘Have you seen my notebook, dear?’ ‘It is under the desk, my sweet.’ Give it to him, O my gentle usurper, whom I also have usurped, my enemy whom I have both killed and been killed by. […] He also is drowning in the blood of too much sacrifice. Lay aside the weapons, love, for all battles are lost.”

At last he’s made his choice and if we’ve learned something from history it’s that a man’s comfort will always be more important than a woman’s safety and peace of mind.

FINAL COMMENTS As I said before, one of the reasons I think Morrissey was inspired by this book is that he found its story to be relatable, but it’s not just that. The language, as you may have noticed by reading some of its quotes, is quite poetic, abstract and melodramatic, with a major focus on introspection and an underlying sense of pervasive melancholy. This is an artistic quality that both Morrissey and Johnny had in common, even though they expressed it differently: one through his lyrics, the other through his sound. Ultimately, I think Morrissey found By Grand Central Station… very useful creatively and personally. Creatively because it gave him the inspiration to write some of his best songs (also, here’s a reminder that both Moz and Johnny declared Well I Wonder as one of their favourite Smiths’ songs at some point), and personally because it provided him with an outlet to confront his feelings for Johnny, which I think must have been quite tumultuous. With a shortage of LGBT media which was even more prevalent in the 80s, queer people often had to read between the lines of straight stories to find something to relate to, and I feel like that’s what Morrissey did. Personally, after reading it I found myself surprised by the superficiality with which most people (biographers, reviewers etc.) talked about its role in Morrissey’s lyrics, because clearly there’s so much more to it than stealing a line here and there. It’s also about him feeling invested in a story because it spoke to him and it represented him, at least partially, in an era when anyone who didn’t fit in with society’s standards of what it meant to be a man or a woman might as well not have existed at all.

#the smiths #morrissey #johnny marr #marrissey #by grand central station i sat down and wept #elizabeth smart

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body-in-revolt · 5 years ago

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ALL OVER - ACTS OF LOVE: interview with director Marcus Azzini

text: Haroon Ali

“In All Over – Acts of Love I simply want to tell a beautiful love story.”

It’s as if the activist has awoken in theatre director Marcus Azzini (47), as we discover on the roof terrace of the International Theatre Amsterdam (ITA). Azzini made the performance Small Town Boy, based on the eponymous gay anthem (Smalltown Boy) by Bronski Beat, together with ITA especially for the Amsterdam Pride this summer. Like the famous Eighties song, the piece is about a gay boy escaping the countryside to seek happiness in the big city. ‘It’s my first performance specifically made for the LGBTI community’, Azzini confides.

‘It’s important that we keep telling these stories’, so the Brazilian-Dutch artistic director of Toneelgroep Oostpool tells us. ‘Until we’re no longer regarded as minorities. That term alone: “minorities”. We’re clearly in search of a new vocabulary for the discussions that are playing out now. Why should it be “extraordinary” that I, a homosexual man, have a 12-year-old son? Indeed, I advocate that no one should need to “come out of the closet”. Because it implies that some shame must be overcome before the real life can begin.’

After Small Town Boy, the rehearsals for All Over – Acts of Love, a unique collaboration between Arnhem based Toneelgroep Oostpool and contemporary dance platform ICK Amsterdam got underway. This performance is about two people who fall for each other – and who happen to be men. ‘In other words, another pink theme. I’m not intent on jumping onto the barricades, but after talks with choreographers Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten and writer Hannah van Wieringen I realized that this has to become a positive piece that, for once, does not problematize gay love. It wears me out to be regarded as “different”, just for sharing a bed with men. In All Over – Acts of Love I simply want to tell a beautiful love story.

What distinguishes this romance from other love stories?

‘Superficially these are just two men in their early thirties who live in a metropolis. Soon, however, it becomes clear that they’re living in our time in which climate change is constantly breathing down our spines. How do you live with that? How does it affect them? In other words: love in a time of climate change.’

What does the title All Over – Acts of Love stand for?

‘The first bit means to say: what if it’s all over and the world is really done for? But then it also means something like being all over each other. Acts of Love refers to love as a string of actions. Love is something you do, maybe even more than something you feel. That may also touch upon the psychology of a couple who have been together for long. What does it do to you to spend a whole life with one person; what does it do to your body to lie in bed beside the same person for fifty years? It’s something we can hardly imagine anymore. I’ve been with my man for nine years now --and I find even that something special.’

Will you be staying together for the rest of your lives?

‘The wish is there, at least. Matthijs (van Bergen, fashion designer – ed.) spent nine months in London last year. I found out then, that I sleep and recharge better if he’s in bed beside me. So, he’s a sort of power pack; my love charger. Isn’t it strange that my body needs his body that much? Not just for romantic reasons, but truly for the physical aspect of love.’

Are you someone who’s always in relationships?

‘As it happens, I’ve had several long-lasting relationships. The first one eleven years; then single for five years; now nine years at a stretch. Since I regard love as something you can do or make, it also becomes possible to create love in the theatre. If I play that I love you and you experience that as love even though you know I’m acting, then that’s love. You must keep seeing it as a play. If you are so merged together after all those years, then it’s nice to keep surprising each other and to ask yourself again and again: who do I want to be now? That merging and playing at love are the focus of this performance.’

How did you get involved in this project?

‘ICK approached me. I made the performance LIstEn & See (LIES) together with Ann van den Broek, in which we also brought together actors and dancers. I generally focus on the physical aspect of acting and I want to connect the brain and the body. So, I do understand why ICK came to me – and I immediately wanted to accept the challenge. That’s what set the ball rolling

I called in Theun Mosk, a scenographer I enjoy working with, and Hannah van Wieringen, who is writing the text. She always comes up with strong dialogues that are very up to date. She knows how to capture beautifully how real people talk, while rendering it just a bit more poetic.’

How did you put together the cast?

‘The piece follows the four seasons, performed by Ludwig Bindervoet and Kendrick Etmon. I chose them because they’re both powerful and inspiring actors who are fully engaged with the world and keep an open mind. There’s also a good chemistry between them. They’re two fiery men who project love, vulnerability and sex, even. The cast of dancers consists of Beatrice Cardone, Denis Bruno, Arad Inbar, Edward Lloyd, Isaiah Wilsson and Siva Canbazoglu, and others.’

Wouldn’t a cross-over of the two disciplines be more exciting?

‘Dance and drama are not separate for nothing, since you need to be so damn good in either discipline. So, there’s little point in drawing them out of their comfort zones. There are actors who can move well, but they will never dance at the level of ICK. And a dancer who has to speak becomes less of a dancer because he cannot focus on his specific talent. Therefore, I don’t use the term cross-over, but see it as a meeting. I want to look at what happens when actors and dancers practise their own disciplines alongside and betwixt each other. I had this wild idea, initially, to keep the actors out of sight altogether and just let them be heard, rather like an audio play. But it’s much more exciting after all to see the bodies of the actors move in between the dancers.’

So, what role does dance play in this performance?

‘I had long discussions with Emio and Pieter about the choreography. I asked them if I could use their entire body of work to create a new dance language. Like directors often use a play by Shakespeare to do with it what they want. Well, they were a little hesitant at first, because a choreography is a work of art that has been perfected to the finest detail. Once you begin to toss around with it, it doesn’t do well. When we talked about it some more, they came up with the idea of creating a choreography together with the dancers especially for me, like a gift tied in a bow. It’s up to me to decide if I use the whole choreography or just a little piece of it. It’s still a dialogue, of course. Everything comes together in the rehearsals and then I see what works best.’

Do Pieter and Emio still have an influence on the performance, or do you keep them out?

Laughing: ‘I try to ban them as much as possible. No, not that, but they won’t meddle with it much. I do have a rehearsal director overseeing the technique of the dance movements, so that each toe is placed the way it should. It will take all parties some getting used to, but Emio, Pieter and I have fortunately known each other for years, so there’s full trust between us. And we’ve put together such a good team, so it feels like a creative playground.’

Is this cross-over – sorry: meeting – of dance and drama a new trend?

‘I don’t know. Some people are wary of cross-overs, because they think that it dilutes the arts disciplines. The performing arts are continuing to innovate, but it can be confusing to the audience sometimes. That is why I tell everyone explicitly that All Over – Acts of Love is a dance performance, so as to keep things clear.’

ALL OVER – ACTS OF LOVE

DANCE AND LANGUAGE FIND EACH OTHER IN THE SEARCH FOR LOVE

In All Over – Acts of Love, a collaboration with Toneelgroep Oostpool, dancers and actors present movements of love. Hannah van Wieringen has written dialogues in which there is exploring, thinking and feeling. Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten have created a choreography. Theatre director Marcus Azzini has brought everything together in a space designed by Theun Mosk in which bodies and language find each other without one yielding to another. Both go to great lengths in their urge for complete abandon.

For credits and tour dates please visit

www.ickamsterdam.nl

Publicity image: Henri Verhoef Portrait Marcus Azzini: Bas de Brouwer Stage photography: Alwin Poiana

#theatre #dance #love #performance #director #Marcus Azzini #Toneelgroep Oostpool

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