#esther worth

[from1837to1945]

"When I went with Mr. Ziegfeld," Mr. Errol relates, "I learned a great deal. For picking out beauty for the stage, no one can beat Mr. Ziegfeld."

내가 지그펠트 씨 밑에서 일할 때는 배운 게 많���습니다. 예쁜 여잘 고르는 데 있어서라면 지그펠트 씨를 따라갈 사람이 없지요.

"But you've got some beauties of your own 'Hitchy Koo.'"

하지만 당신 '히치쿠'에도 예쁜 소녀들이 있던데요.

"Ah, but they weren't picked for beauty," declared Mr. Errol. "No; while I'm an admirer of Ziegfeld's effects, my own ideas of production are different. I don't believe in pretty girls."

하지만 그 여자애들은 예뻐서 뽑힌 게 아니에요. 난 예쁜 여자는 안 믿어요.

"You don't believe in pretty girls?"

예쁜 여자들을 안 믿는다고요?

"No; I prefer them to be intelligent. I can make an intelligent girl look pretty. Most beauties haven't an idea in their heads. They look well on the stage, but I can make a homely girl look exactly as well, with proper clothes."

네, 난 지성이 있는 쪽이 더 좋아요. 난 지성이 있는 여잘 예쁘게 만들 수 있습니다. 대부분의 예쁜 여자는 머리에 든 생각이 없죠. 무대에선 예뻐 보이지만 난 못생긴 여자애들도 그들과 똑같이 보이게 할 수 있습니다. 옷만 잘 고른다면요.

"But even if not pretty, they must be slender and graceful?"

하지만 예쁘지 않더라도 날씬하거나 우아할 수는 있잖아요?

"If they're dancers, they're bound to be graceful. As to slenderness, what's the difference? I certainly don't care for thin necks!"

댄서라면 우아할 수 있겠지요. 하지만 날씬하든 말든, 무슨 상관이죠? 여자들이 뚱뚱하든 말든 난 상관하지 않아요.

So here is one producer to champion poor, out-of-style plumpness! Even this isn't the most revolutionary of Leon Errol's ideas of musical production.

여기 불쌍하고 뚱뚱한 소녀들을 대변하는 제작자가 납시었습니다. 게다가 이건 뮤지컬 제작에 있어 리옹 에롤의 생각들 중 제일로 혁명적인 생각도 아닙니다.

-"Attention, Girls! Leon Errol Makes Plain Ones Pretty", 1918

Lucille Darling, Esther Worth, Leon Errol, Edith Stockham, Elsie Lawson (Hitchy-Koo of 1918)

"I select girls for intelligence rather than for beauty.

난 여자들을 아름다움이 아니라 지성이라는 기준으로 뽑습니다.

I don't care how homely a girl is if she can use her brain.

머리를 쓸 줄 안다면 얼마나 못생겼든 상관하지 않습니다.

Give me mediocre book, music, costumes, and scenery.

but surround me with an intelligent company, and I can get better results than with the most brilliant, most lavish material and an empty-headed cast.

Intelligence gets over the footlights, even in the back line of a chorus. Stupidity has no place on the stage.

지성은 코러스 라인 맨 뒷줄에 있어도 빛이 나지만 무식은 무대에는 설 자리가 없습니다.

My advice to girls who want to succeed is to spend more time in study and less in beauty parlors."

-"Leon Errol, Revue Producer, Won Way as Stage Inebriate", 16 Jun 1918

"Have I advanced a single new idea? I'm afraid not.

내 생각이 그렇게 특이한 건 아닙니다.

The truth is, I design on the stage by eye, not by theory.

나 역시 이론이 아닌 단순한 시선으로 무대를 디자인합니다.

I wish I could line up all these girls who've written for beautification and give them pertinent suggestions.

But, after all, they have their own intelligence.

And the secret of success in clothes, as in everything else, is—intelligence!"

-"Errol Retracts Criticism of Stage Beauties", 23 June 1918

Lucille Darling, Esther Worth, Edith Stockham, Elsie Lawson, Leon Errol (Hitchy-Koo of 1918)

"사진에 찍힌 사랑스러운 쇼걸들 루실 달링, 에스더 워쓰, 이디스 스톡햄, 엘지 로슨, 분명 이 중 누군가는 2~30년 후인 30년대나 40년대에 영화에서 리옹 에롤을 보고 있을 거다. 20년 동안 보드빌, 남은 20년은 영화산업에서 보내다니, 쇼비지니스 생명이 무척이나 긴 것도 엄청난 행운이라고 볼 수 있을 것이다."

-23/3/13

[crabsnpersimmons]

"Your heart was in the right place. Don't blame your earnestness and efforts for their lack of understanding—the right people will appreciate your heart."

EDIT: i mention this in the tags already, but please don't copy my vent tags in your reblogs. thanks for understanding.

[alltimefail]

Not sure if any of you guys watch Alex Meyers on YouTube, but he's one of my favorite reacters. He has 3 million subscribers and takes suggestions for series to react to. Everyone should email him at alexmeyerscontact@gmail.com and ask him to do a video on Dead Boy Detectives!

If enough of us request it and tell him it's time sensitive and that we would like, comment, and share the video, he might feel compelled to help! Plus Dead Boy Detectives is right up his alley - he reviews a lot of supernatural and YA content!

If you do email him, be SUPER KIND! And please reblog this post for visibility! 💜

Imagine THREE MILLION PEOPLE learning about our show!! That could really help us save Dead Boy Detectives!

[cc-tinslebee]

I love you DBD fic writers who talk about how Monty as a human was literally created to seduce. I love you DBD fic writers who go into how being pretty and charming and appealing became a core part of his sense of self. I love you DBD fic writers who delve into how that would impact his emotions and sense of self and life in the long run.

[sweetpea-sprite]

i do think it's really fun how they consistently show oliver building a wall around himself whenever anything fucked up happens to him. he stays in his room for three days after allie dies and leila is so unsure of what to do she just goes into his room to leave him a slice of pie and leaves within ten seconds. he stayed in his room when he got bullied and had to be dragged out of it. when he discovers the truth about allie he stays in a coma and then within the coma IN THE ROOM.

even outside of his bedroom any time anyone's like hey you good he goes yes ^-^ even when it is blatantly untrue. right after he gets out of the soulsnare coma esther is like ARE YOU. OKAY. and he goes me? i'm fine ^-^. when you see alicia in the glittering grotto oliver swears to save her and esther goes "oliver..." and he immediately goes sorry everybody ^-^ and keeps moving. but the most insane example of this comes from dotdd and it's when he is GIVEN DEADLY POISON AND COLLAPSES IN THE STREET AND STOPS BREATHING AND WHEN HE WAKES UP AFTER BEING GIVEN AN ANTIDOTE EVERYONE AROUND HIM GOES HOLY SHIT, OLIVER, ARE YOU ALRIGHT, AND HE GOES haha i was just tired ^-^

the only time he doesn't do this is when he is actively in distress right at that moment. if he's not actively sobbing then baby he's completely fine you have to trust him don't EVEN worry about the tear tracks. actually coming back to this i lied the other time he doesn't do this is specifically to drippy (awww) when he's trying to convince him that we HAVE to break into myrtle's house mr drippy it's the only way because if you hadn't helped ME i would still be shut away! which isn't concerning at all i promise!

it's also worth noting that when the problem concerns other people this does not apply. again this is most noticeable in dotdd (because it's superior) but he has some small moments in wotww. he's also very blunt about other people. does not mince his words. recognised character trait. in dotdd it even nets him a nemesis. but HIMSELF? he gets genuinely pissed off at drippy referring to him as a crybaby and insists it's not true. when helping myrtle drippy even remarks on it as he asks if oliver is crying and oliver snaps at him that he wasn't and he says "so much for you being honest..."

it's just such an underappreciated character flaw of oliver's i think. world's sweetest least emotionally vulnerable boy

[zishuge]

There were so many things I wanted to tell you right away... but you weren't waiting for me at the door. I wanted to go in, to see you, and tell you in person everything that happened in the back hill. But... I can't open this door anymore. My Journey To You (2023)

[lunylune]

This is something I was working on for a thingy (phoenix aasimar Ricky au) I might never finish. I basically took the premise "Ricky is Esther's hot boyfriend" very literally. Also thought it would be funny if the former firefighter was literally on fire 🔥 🔥 🔥

So now he is.

Also had to give Esther some lightening because come on she's awesome. Light effects remain my favorite.

Feel free to come bug me about the au i might never finish :p

[ghostinghome]

hmmm ,, esther or vivian? HOW ABOUT BOTH !!! MERRY CHRISTMASS @nenukoone ‼️‼️‼️

esther in a silly dress and the silly totally normal human that has lungs

[wecanbeperfect]

ESTHER CHOSEN QUEEN

Esther 2:17 And the king loved Esther above all the women, and she obtained grace and favour in his sight more than all the virgins; so that he set the royal crown upon her head, and made her queen instead of Vashti.

[viikingwitch]

what form of love do you embody

love as being known

[ love is knowing all of someone and loving them anyway ] when tim kreider said "if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known" and when joe wright said "The idea that these two people know each other, knew each other when they first saw each other. That they recognized each other from their future" and when micah nemerever said "it was a relief and a horror to be known so perfectly"

tagged by: @ladicsa ( thank you <3 ) tagging: @storywolf @timerevolt @feylived @founderscouncil @hen1chaer @hellsurvivr @salvatoraes and you!!

[someiicecube]

*scratches head*

[akiraofthefour]

"'I don't want my life to change... I want my life to stay in one place and be one thing as intensely as possible.'"

Esther Yi, Y/N

[waywardsonsandaughters]

I think Edwin is ambidextrous. Or at least that’s my new head canon.

Edwin is typically seen writing in his journal with his right hand.

But, as Aunt Cindy she draws the rune in the subway car in episode 1 with her left hand.

Also in episode 1, Edwin catches the gas mask from the WW1 ghost in his left hand.

I also wonder, given how people born as left hand dominate were often made to switch to right hand dominate, if Edwin was actually left handed originally (and perhaps in times of stress switches back to using his left hand — as we saw in both the subway fight and with the WW1 ghost. But, not went he went to strike Esther or use his enchanted string).

It’s more than likely due to the actors who play Edwin and Aunt Cindy, but it’s interesting as a head canon.

side note: for what it’s worth, Charles writes with his left and uses the cricket bat with his right.

[shisabun]

Before I start, I just want to say thank you to the husbands, brothers, and fathers who voted to support their daughters, sisters, and wives. What I'm about to say doesn't include you.

To the women who voted for Trump, you are a disgrace. Thanks to you, your children and grandchildren will be forced to fight the war that was won by your grandmothers.

You sit content and joyful while others mourn. You laugh in the face of their fears when there's a knife floating above your head poised to fall. You have no idea what's coming, but any woman with half a braincell does.

Let me tell you a story. My great aunt was basically my grandmother. She was born in the 1930s in Spain. Right after their revolution. Right after Spain became a dictatorship. She told me so many stories in her final years that I'll keep with me for the rest of my life. But I'll give one example.

One of her closest friends married young. Her husband claimed she was unfaithful and literally beat her to death. He was never arrested. He was never convinced. He walked away free and remarried in less than a month. Catholicism wouldn't allow divorce back then. He wanted to get remarried and simply got away with it because he was a cop. Franco gave cops full impunity. So does Project 2025.

I know some people reading this are rolling their eyes, and you know what?

Fuck. You. You are trash.

That girl was murdered at 20, and her killer walked free after openingly admitting it. My Tia never told me her name, but she carried her in her heart until the day she died at 98. And so do I.

To my fellow women who are mourning and scared right now, I'll give you the same advice my mother gave me. "Have your cry. Then get up and get things done. You're strong enough not to have this break you."

You are Mary and Esther. You are Caterina Sforza. You are Princess Diana. You are Anna May Wong. You are the living legacy of every woman who has come before you. You carry their strength, their courage, and their determination.

This shit is going to suck. Pure and simple. But we'll do what we've always done. We'll bite and claw our way to a better future. We'll tear down every obstacle so our children and grandchildren will have an easier path to walk.

We are dragons in human form. Steel your heart and give them nothing. Do not give them your affection, your care, or your bodies. Fuck being demure and mindful. When they spew hate, you spit fire. When they ask for your smile, you give them your fangs. Become a walking inferno that they have no choice but to take note of. Do not yield.

You are powerful, and you are not alone. You are a sister in a coven that is millions strong. You are the daughters of the witches they couldn't burn.

To my fellow Millennials. I know you're tired. Our young adult lives were stolen from us, and we've been struggling uphill ever since. But do what the previous generation never did for us. Fight. Fight for the ones that are entering adulthood. Fight for the children who have no idea what they're about to grow into.

They called us snowflakes for pointing out their flaws. Fine. Let's give them a fucking blizzard. If they try to build momentum, we stop them. We are at the age where we need to be both shield and anchor. Let. Nothing. Pass.

We're about to face an orange shitstorm of epic proportions. But we'll do as we've always done. We fight, we endure, and we win. In the words of Samwise Gamgee, "There's good in this world, and it's worth fighting for."

[landwriter]

Hi! I hope you feel better soon!

This is a great prompt by @academicblorbo about Hob Gadling being the landlord of the Dead Boys. It has a wonderful fill already by @omgcinnamoncakes but I’d love to see what you come up with for it!

Alternative prompt from me if that doesn’t work for your brain: remember the date between Jenny and Maxine? How about one between Jenny and Esther? Poor Jenny is going to really question her taste in beautiful blonde women 😭

Thank you! I saw ‘landlord’ and ‘decades’ and blacked out. I love Hob having them as tenants. Maybe even before the modern day meeting in Sandman.

The Sandman/Dead Boy Detectives, 2.4k, G Dream/Hob, pre-slash, alternating/outsider POV, found family, a reunion and revelations etc.

---

Hob did not, strictly speaking, have tenants. It was more of a minor haunting. Pun intended.

The small room above the pub and below his flat wasn’t worth charging anyone rent for; when he first bought the building he had put a handsome oak desk in there and some bookshelves before wondering who he was possibly keeping up appearances for. Who was he going to take back upstairs that would stop and say, Wait, can I see your office? So he’d left it as more or less an abandoned room.

When he realized a pair of boys were using it as their clubhouse, he didn’t do anything at first. He saw them quietly coming and going a couple times, disappearing around the corner of the first landing. Brazen things. He meant to call after them, but the shout had died in his throat. He’d been young once. He still remembered the need to get away from it all. It was only when he went to check if they’d been making a mess of the room that he discovered it was still locked.

He’d crouched down and inspected the latch and found no marks at all. Huh, he’d said, and jiggled it again, and been a little more interested in whatever clever way they were getting into it after they disappeared up his stairs. Then he didn’t see them for weeks, and assumed they had gotten bored and stopped.

Until they came back. In the middle of an argument, striding through the pub like they owned it. Hob straightened up as they passed him.

“I cannot believe you broke the mirror.”

“I was in a rush! It’s not my fault you forgot you needed Arcana Incantatum after we arrived at the church. And found the demon.”

“I hardly forgot, I only made the mistake of assuming you would know to pack it by now.”

Hob raised his eyebrows. The boys disappeared into the back hallway. He followed them as they went upstairs, too preoccupied with their drama to notice Hob. They turned onto the landing, still carrying on. Even as they walked through the door. The locked, closed door.

Hob blinked. Then he drew his keys from his pocket and opened the door. The boys were still inside. One of them was pulling a mirror out of a backpack that was several times too small for it. They didn’t even look up, and Hob wondered how he couldn’t possibly have put it together earlier. He cleared his throat.

“Hello, boys.” That caught their attention. Hob grinned. “Seems we’re neighbours.”

---

Edwin abhorred getting involved with the living. He and Charles got along perfectly well on their own. They were a duo. An intrepid pair. Best mates, like Charles often stressed whenever he was about to ask something particularly ridiculous of Edwin. They were solid together. As solid as two ghost boys could be. The living, though, were messy and unpredictable.

Perhaps the most salient fact at present: Charles invariably became attached to them.

“He’s sad, mate. I can see it in his eyes.”

“You said those exact words in ‘94 about a dog. At least ask Hob himself.”

Before you decide to adopt him too.

Hob Gadling, irritatingly, was unobjectionable on every ground Edwin could think of. He had made no imposition upon them. When he found them, he only asked them their business, and then told them he was usually downstairs, or upstairs, if they needed anything they couldn’t procure themselves. He had an interest in rare and old books, as it happened. In explaining this, he had also hinted at being far older than his looks would suggest, which vexed Edwin twice over. He knew his curiosity would not be slaked until he talked to Hob, but then he would be the one getting involved with the living, and Charles would hardly let him forget it.

“Do you think he’s really immortal? Mate’s far too calm. Last week I saw him stop a fight downstairs by stepping right between these huge blokes. He just said something and smiled and they backed right off.” Charles lit up. “Do you reckon he’d teach me how to do that? Conflict de-escalation, innit? I could show him some moves with the cricket bat, I bet. Oh, do you think he’s a cricket fan?”

It was obviously a hopeless case, and since the Dead Boy Detectives never took on hopeless cases, there was only one course of action that remained. Edwin had long since disabused himself of the notion he needed to breathe. He had no beating heart, yet when he was startled, he would find himself clutching his chest. Now, he exhaled slowly through his nose in an entirely superfluous sigh of resignation. “Well, Charles, shall we go talk to him?”

---

When the millennium came around, Hob found himself celebrating it with his accidental tenants. There was something gloriously satisfying about being able to make a toast to the next one and have it taken seriously. He’d asked them if they had something better to do - spectral trouble to get into et cetera - and they both looked at him with almost identical put-upon and incredulous expressions.

Hob had a terrible suspicion they thought they were taking care of him as much as he thought he was taking care of them.

Edwin, with his insatiable curiosity and, deep underneath it, something Hob thought he recognized from himself: a sharp animal ferocity and a refusal to go until he’s good and done, natural laws be damned. Charles, still brightly, painfully alive for a ghost - who should be alive still, by all rights, but nothing of this life was fair - who joked to cover up hurt in a way Hob knew too, and glowed any time Hob turned so much as a kind word to him.

He wondered what they saw when they looked at him.

The year ticked over, and technology kept working. Charles grinned innocently and said he could probably possess the telly and break it that way if Hob wanted?

Hob’s heart twinged. He knew they weren’t his, not to keep, but it seemed that teenagers didn’t change at all over the centuries, even if the boys were only sort of teenagers in the way Hob was only sort of in his thirties. It didn’t change that they’d been punted from the mortal coil before having a chance to grow up, and figure out the kind of men they were, and make their own choices and fuck up and try to be better than their fathers, and everything everyone deserved. Hob had made more than his share of mistakes. They hadn’t been given the chance to make nearly any at all.

So they made toasts to the new millennium, to the detective agency, to themselves, all stuck out of time in different ways and refusing to move on for different reasons, and Hob allowed himself to think of Robyn and privately pretend that they were his all the same.

---

A week later, Hob was reminded of the other universal traits of teenagers when he mentioned his stranger and both boys began to grill him with terrifying alacrity. Before turning to his dating life, like ravening bloody wolves. When Edwin had asked, in a specifically nineteenth century manner that Hob remembered all too well, if Hob had always been unmarried, he’d nearly put his head in his hands.

“It can be hard for me to associate with the living too, you know. For obvious reasons.”

Charles had turned to Edwin and hissed “See? I told you.”

Right in front of him. Nobody had taught them manners.

“Manners, Charles,” replied Edwin loftily. “We will, of course, respect your privacy. A man is entitled to his secrets.”

“You’ll go upstairs and rifle through my personal things, is what you’ll do,” said Hob.

Charles coughed to hide his laugh. Edwin flushed and looked away. Hob snorted, and told them about Eleanor and Robyn. Properly. It was a strange relief. He’d told the story wrong for plausibility’s sake so many times he had been worried he’d forget the truth of it one day.

They had listened, and been remarkably quiet until Charles piped up and offered to set him up with a ‘really fit’ ghost. Hob had roundly shut that down. Woefully, not all explanations were satisfying enough. Charles cornered him again the next morning while he was cleaning the bar.

“No, mate, I still don’t get it.” Hob was about to say he no more wanted to be with someone who couldn’t feel pleasure from his touch than someone who would grow old and be taken from him while he stayed the same, when Charles went on, bafflingly, to ask, “Why don’t you meet your mysterious friend more often than once a century?”

Hob sighed. “Adults are often busy, Charles.” Nevermind that he had begun to wonder the same since the eighteenth century. He’d always just assumed time passed differently for his stranger.

Charles just laughed and perched himself on the bar top. “Ooh, low blow. We’re busy too, you know. Plenty of cases to solve.”

“Really,” said Hob. “You’re busy. Right now.”

Charles waggled his eyebrows.

“Charles, I am not a case,” said Hob, sternly as possible. “I’m not even a ghost. He’s not a ghost. No ghosts.”

“We could investigate. Maybe ghosts are involved. What even is he? Why every hundred years? Is it some sort of Persephone situation?”

Hob bit his lip against shouting I don’t know! I don’t know anything about him! Instead, he tried to smile, and felt it come out as a wince instead. “He’s very private.”

Charles scowled. “Yeah, obviously. You don’t even know his name. He can’t be that good of a friend if he’s too busy to see you more than once a century.”

Hob couldn’t see the expression on his own face, but he saw Charles’ shocked reaction well enough. It was so long ago for him, and still Hob knew at once what Charles saw now: that first time you manage to visibly hurt a grown-up’s feelings, people who seemed too old and too stern to actually feel pain, when you’d been going around kicking at them like a new foal, just to stretch your legs.

“Sorry,” said Charles, instant regret chasing his surprise. He was a good kid.

“It’s alright,” said Hob. He meant it. He looked down at the shining bartop. His hands were restless with the urge to light a cigarette. He gave in. It wasn’t like Charles would be dying of lung cancer any time soon if he decided to follow Hob’s example. “I don’t think he would say he’s very good at being a friend either. Truth is, I’d love to see him more often. But we had an awful fight the last time we met. If he forgives me, I’ll have to ask.”

“Mates always make up,” said Charles earnestly. He was such a good kid.

“I suppose they do.” Charles still looked sorry, and Hob clapped him on the shoulder. “Hey. Thanks for looking out for me, Charles.”

Charles beamed at him. “Always. We’ve got your back, me and Edwin.”

---

Charles couldn’t bloody believe it. Hob’s friend was here. There was nobody else it could be. He and Edwin were watching from a nearby table, pretending to be absorbed in their own conversation. Neither man noticed them. They were too busy looking at each other.

He couldn’t imagine spending more than a century apart from Edwin. The way Hob had talked about him and his stranger over the years, it sometimes seemed like they were best mates too, no matter how little they saw each other. He was dead sure that’s what had Hob looking so gutted when he thought nobody was looking. He had known they would make up, though. Maybe now Hob would be happier.

“Charles, we really ought not eavesdrop,” hissed Edwin. Right as he scooted his chair closer, the cheeky hypocrite. Hob and his friend were talking too quietly to properly hear, their heads bent together. Lots to catch up on, Charles reckoned. A hundred years. He couldn’t stop thinking about the number. It seemed impossible. Funny, he couldn’t imagine that long away from Edwin, but he could imagine spending that long being best mates. There was nobody he’d rather hide from Death with.

Hob’s face was doing something strange as his long-lost friend talked. Then Hob moved and grasped him by the shoulders, so tight that his knuckles stood out in relief. The man said something in low tones and Hob shook his head, and then pulled him in for a hug. The man stiffened and then relaxed, and his arms came up around Hob’s.

Their cheeks both looked wet.

Charles swallowed and it felt suddenly a little like he was choking. He should look away, only he couldn’t.

“They must be great friends,” said Edwin softly.

“Yeah,” he managed to croak. We won’t ever need to have a reunion like this because I’m never going to lose you, mate. I won’t let them take you. It was stuck behind the phantom lump in his phantom throat. His hand, without him telling it to, reached out and grabbed hold of Edwin’s. Edwin squeezed it hard, and Charles knew he didn’t have to make his voice work after all.

Then the man pushed Hob away, but only far enough to grab his face and pull him back again, thumbing over Hob’s cheeks, and beside him, Edwin honest-to-god gasped, and then Charles momentarily forgot how thoughts worked too.

---

It happens thus: in the New Inn, just next door to the White Horse, some 639 years after they first met, Hob Gadling and Dream of the Endless share their first kiss. Neither, if they had bothered to think about it, would have intended to have an audience, but it’s a well-known fact that some kisses cannot wait, and theirs was chief among them, being that it had so much to say, and was so very long overdue.

I missed you, it said, and I came back, it said, and Please don’t go away from me again, and I could not.

And atop them, like blankets, were laid invisible the daydreams of those who saw them, including two long-dead boys, whose dreams were woven from the fresh and unaccounted-for possibilities of Hob kissing his mysterious stranger. Another man, thought Edwin. His best friend, thought Charles. Dream was the only one who could have heeded this, but he did not, because Hob Gadling was holding him tight and daydreaming loudly of this kiss and more, of this today and tonight and tomorrow, ever greedy and ever easily pleased, and Dream could hear nothing at all over their clamouring and comingled joy; the bright gold daydream between the scant space of their bodies that sounded so much like at last.

[supreme-leader-stoat]

Where does "turn the other cheek" leave Christians in terms of self-defense?

Alright, so, big asterisk up front: we've been arguing about this among ourselves for about two millennia and it shows no signs of stopping. A Quaker is liable to give you a much different answer than a raised-Baptist.

First, some context. The "turn the other cheek" verse is specifically part of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus takes Old Testament law and raises the ante. The law says not to murder, He tells them not to let their anger overtake and control them to begin with. The law says not to commit adultery, He says not to even look at people with lustful intentions (this is the poke out your eye, cut off your hand passage). The law says that a man divorcing his wife has to give her the legal protections of a certificate of divorce, He says that anything short of cheating isn't valid grounds for divorce to begin with (this has a lot to do with the protections or lack thereof for unmarried women at the time, but that's a whole tangent I won't go into here). The law says to keep your oaths, He says to be such a straightforward and honest person that you don't even need to give your oath to begin with. And so on.

Now, with all that in mind; "turn the other cheek" is Him upping the ante on the segment of Mosaic law that literally gives us the phrase "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." It was half legal prescription on the just punishments for certain crimes, and half laying down the rules and restrictions of what constituted acceptable proportionate retaliation. If someone punches you, you can punch him back. Someone kills your brother, you can execute him. What you can't do is go and slaughter his entire family, because that's how you get blood feuds, and that doesn't end well for anybody.

Looking at it from that angle, "turn the other cheek" is a commandment against retaliation and vengeance, and this is the interpretation I've grown up around most of my life. Someone hits you and you've got the opportunity to walk away, then you take your lumps and go, and you don't stew and think about what you're gonna do to get back at him the next time you see him.

Active and immediate self-preservation is another matter. To the best of my knowledge, there is no clear prohibition in the Bible against such actions; even "he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword" is immediately followed by "Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?" The rebuke isn't for acting in the defense of others, it's for getting trigger-happy when Jesus isn't in any true (immediate) danger and because it's ultimately a pointless fight; Jesus has to go to the cross.

If you'll pardon an older example, let's take a look at Esther Chapter 8. King Ahasuerus gives the Jews leave to form militias to protect themselves and their property against the lynch mobs that would be attacking them as part of Haman's genocide plot, and this is presented to us as an inherently just and sensible course of action.

So, to answer the original question, I don't believe that there's anything wrong with Christians practicing self-defense, "turn the other cheek" notwithstanding.

But.

There's one more thorny patch to consider in this whole argument, and that's the one bit of Matthew 5 that comes after "turn the other cheek": "Love your enemy, and pray for those who persecute you." The safety that Christians enjoy in the modern west is an anomaly both geographically and historically. Christianity is, at its very root, a religion of martyrs. Many and maybe even most of those martyrs have gone to their deaths, if not willingly, then at least peaceably. It's worth noting that we don't tell the story of Stephen, who made a valiant last stand against the mob that tried to stone him. We tell the story of Stephen the martyr. "Lord, do not hold this sin against them."

Honestly, I don't know that I'd have the courage to die like they did. If there's someone who's trying to hurt you, trying to hurt your family, I won't be the one to look you in the eyes and say you have to stand down; I'm already well aware of the decision I'd make in that situation. But from the moment we accept eternal life, our old lives here on Earth are forfeit. Any time that could be taken from us with our death is on loan to begin with. A hypothetical attacker in a self-defense situation isn't guaranteed that same benefit. They might very well have far, far more to lose than we do.

I don't believe Christians are forbidden self-defense, but I think we are expected to weigh the costs.