#historic women in campbell

[ariadnethedragon]

THE GENTLEMAN’S GAMBIT by EVIE DUNMORE

“We broke your spectacles, too … I shall fix them for you.”

The Arabic language offered many romantic possibilities, at least eleven different words for love to precisely capture the various stages of the emotion, and perhaps, secretly, she had expected more elaborate verbal wooing from him. Yet here he was, making her swoon with a plain I shall fix them for you.

[queerauntie]

January Reads

This month was a GREAT kick-off to the 2023 reading year! As always, I can't thank my local library enough for access to all these wonderful books. While I have been exclusively using the library's audiobook collection, this year I've decided I want to start reading some physical books too, but remember: all forms of story telling is valid and no medium is better/superior to another!

I was very excited for the near year, specifically on twitter where i follow a LOT of educators. Why? Because of their TBR lists of course! And they had a LOT! This year, for those who aren't on twitter, it was a popular trend to finish the books on your shelf before buying new books. So like a book scavenger, I took screenshots and added every book I saw on my TL to my own TBR (I use The Story Graph app). Besides the Trixie Belden books, this month is full of those unknowing recommendations!

Without further ado, the books of January:

How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis

Conjure Women by Afia Atakora

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

Trixie Belden: The Secret Mansion by Julie Campbell

Trixie Belden: The Red Trailor Mystery by Julie Campbell

Let's talk about the first book of the year, How The Word is Passed by Clint Smith. Smith did a really great job with this book, his perspective extremely potent. This book is a collection of Smiths experience visiting cities with ties to chattel slavery in America as he shares his thoughts and experiences at each location as well as the various degrees to which these sights share or skew (or in some cases, rewrite) their role in slavery. While some places do their best to preserve and share the full depth of what went on those 400+ years, some cities and memorials prefer to white wash over the history and tell their own, more "acceptable" version of events. What I thought made this book so impactful was Smith's personal accounts of his emotions and the consideration for every space he entered. It really stuck with me how he would contextualize the sizes of quarters and cells that enslaved Africans were trapped in. He holds space for the humanity that millions of people were denied. It was an honor to see the history through his eyes and learn even more about the effective blind spots we as white people have for the extent of racism. I highly recommend this book.

Book number two was recommended to me by a friend, and she had little faith that I would get around to it so I had to prove her wrong. I'm glad I did too because this book was surprisingly really good! The story follows Nora, a depressed young woman who can't find the will to live. She makes the decision to end her life, but instead she finds herself in the in between, suspended in time, surrounded by books. The Midnight Library, she discovers, contains every possible life she could've lived, every decision she didn't make, every path she didn't take. Nora is given the chance to find a book, a life, where she deems worthy of living. The journey Nora goes on is one of learning to love herself and seeing her value in life, not her potential, but her impact just as she is. It was a good ride, and definitely appealed to my short attention span as you get to jump through life after life with Nora, and just as you start to get bored, so does she. Then it starts all over!

Wow, this next book was another huge turn! This month honestly gave me so much reading whiplash, but in a good way, like the spinning teacups ride! The Twelve Tribes Of Hattie by Ayana Mathis was a love letter to Black Mothers everywhere. This book tells moms, "I see you and I understand." The Twelve Tribes of Hattie are about the 12 lives that a woman, Hattie, raised and cared for over her life. In a culture that demands so much of women, even more from mothers, it was very poignant that this book tells you the story of Hattie's life through the narrow lens of her role and relationship with her children and grandchild. Every family has a Hattie, had a Hattie, comes from a Hattie. This was a love letter truly and Mathis does a beautiful job, I was in tears throughout. A wonderful addition to any library.

Speaking of books I will be adding to my library, Conjure Women was a phenomenal book I also discovered thanks to the brilliant teachers of twitter! This story follows the lives of 3 women, a mother and daughter who are enslaved and the daughter of the white man that's enslaved them. The mother, Miss May Belle, was a midwife and healer who taught her daughter, Rue, everything she knew. Varina, the daughter of Miss May Belle and Rue's enslaver, grows fond of Rue at an early age and thus is also entangled in Rue's story. I really enjoyed this story because of its storytelling format. It's the kind of book that just opens a window into time and space, lets you observe for a little while, and then the window closes. It was beautiful and I will definitely be reading it again! This feels like a book you'll catch different things with each watch!

Holy CRAP y'all. I knew Legenborn was going to be good, great even. But I was not prepared for just how fucking mind blown it was going to leave me!! The story picks up right away and does not let you catch your breath! The writing is impeccable, and the characters are so amazing. Our protagonist, Bree, is a brilliantly developed character. This books weaves a story of grief, monsters, racism, magic, and the power of ancestors all in one wild ride! It was everything I loved about the fantasy of my teens without the weird incest (iykyk) and forced plots. I can't wait to get my hands on the sequel and I really hope it becomes a trilogy that gets a prequel trilogy that keeps growing because this world is a really great one I want to learn more about! If you haven't heard of Legendborn or haven't made your mind up about it, you run and enjoy the journey of a lifetime!

This next book was recommended by my bestie. They read Trixie Belden books as a kid and became fascinated with them, so a couple years ago they went online and worked hard to collect over 3/4th of the series- turns out these books were not popular and therefore it's actually pretty hard to find! Of the 39 books made, my library has the audiobooks for the first 4! I was quickly endeared to this series, Trixie Belden gives off major lesbian kid vibes- a tomboy who just has the closest female friendships... I will eat it up every time okay!! The stories feel like chewing bubble gum, stimulating and fun with minimal effort. They are engaging, vocabulary-expanding, delightful tales. The stories even have some ridiculously high stakes for this bright young teen and will keep you on the edge of your seat (but not for long!). And my favorite part has to be the alluding to the next book, which picks up almost right where you left off! A very comfy read!

Yearly Book Count: 7/?? Yearly Reading Goal: 50 Books

[morphic-mythos]

TRIVIA OBSCURA: books to honor Hekate

Disclaimer: this post is a perpetual WIP, serving as an archive of all the books I’ve read that I feel are appropriate for honoring Hekate. This includes books about Hekatean worship but also titles on witchcraft, occultism, cultural histories, death, and so on.

Other reading masterlists:

ARCANA OBSCURA: a personal occult library

DIVINA OBSCURA: a personal Hellenic library

MODERN WORSHIP

Keeping Her Keys, Cyndi Brannen

Entering Hekate's Garden, Cyndi Brannen

Entering Hekate's Cave, Cyndi Brannen

HISTORICAL WORSHIP

Hekate Liminal Rites, Sorita d'Este

WITCHCRAFT

Blood and Bones: Working with Shadow Magick and the Dark Moon, Kate Freuler

Rebel Witch, Kelly-Ann Maddox

Weave the Liminal: Living Modern Traditional Witchcraft, Laura Tempest Zakroff

MUSINGS & MEDITATIONS

Waking Up to the Dark, Clark Strand

Waking the Witch: Reflections on Women, Magic, and Power, Pam Grossman

Becoming Dangerous, Katie West

CULTURAL HISTORIES

Darkness: A Cultural History, Nina Edwards

Grimoires: A History of Magic Books, Owen Davies

On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, Stephen T. Asma

The Witch, Ronald Hutton

A History of Magic, Witchcraft, and the Occult, D.K. Publishing

DEATH & SPIRITS

From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, Caitlin Doughty

All the Living and the Dead, Hayley Campbell

[originalwinnercheesecake]

Assigning Names to Characters from The Underland Chronicles who's names were 'never disclosed"

written because names and their meanings interest me, as does Greek mythology, history, and plays, and I had a couple Saturdays where I had no plans and writing this was a fun way to pass the time.

Character from Luxa's Paternal Family... basically everybody except Nerissa and Henry

Luxa's father the former King of Regalia, Judith's husband. So Luxa's name means "Light", which in the underland goes hand and hand with "Life". I have heard the fan theory that, because of how closely associated the two are then it is possible that all of the first born heirs have names that mean light. So I googled male names that mean light and I picked Lucius or King Lucius because it has a Latin root just like his daughters.

King Lucius and Queen Judith's bonds. Yes I know it is never stated that either characters had bonds. But humans having bonded relationships with the bats seem more common for them than marrying other humans. Even Suzanna Collins herself admitted that you have to be close with a bat to survive long in the underland. Anyway I always assumed that the pair had bonds, who died with them during their final battle. i have also always head cannoned that the King's bond was named Zeus for obvious reasons, and that the Queens bond was named Venus, because Aurora surely cannot be the only bat in the underland to have a Roman deity name instead of a Greek one.

Luxa's paternal uncle, Nerissa & Henry's father: The younger royal brother. At first I was going to give him a name that meant light like his brother. But since Nerissa's name means "Sea Nymph" and Henry's name means "House Ruler" I do not think that "spares" have the same naming tradition as the first borns. So I considered other words that have important enough symbolic meaning to name a prince after: Darkness, Torch, sword. when I looked up names that mean sword I discovered that the name 'Owen" has two meanings. It means both "noble/ well born" and 'young warrior". So I would say Prince Owen is a very fitting name for the Prince of a military based society.

His Bond: a female bat named Styx a minor goddess/river in the underworld. My reasoning is, again, that Nerissa's name means "Sea nymph" and it does not really fit with Henry "House Ruler" and Luxa "Light" name scheme. But if one of her parents had a bond who was named after a mythical body of water then they could have lead to a touch of inspiration. I picked "Styx" because while it does not sound anything like "Nerissa" as far as pronunciation, it being the river that runs through the underworld does give it a sense of mischief and tradgety, that envelops Nerissa & Henry's branch of the royal family.

Nerissa & Henry's mother, Luxa's paternal aunt by marriage. She is an interesting one. I had to remember that, like Judith, she married into the royal family instead of being born into it. I also do not think that her and her husband's marriage was arranged at birth (Luxa, Nerissa, and Henry do not have fiances). This means that while she probably did not have a name meaning "Princess" she could theoretically be named anything. I want to name her " Cleo," later "Princess Cleo"partly after Cleopatra who was a very historical women, and also because it means 'to praise or acclaim". That is fitting for a women who married into royalty and became a princess.

Her Bond: Achilles a brave and powerful soldier, who slipped up in battle once and died tragically. Another name that fits both the power and the tragedy of this team and this family. Also feel free to imagine this character as Nerissa and Henry's goofy gay uncle.

Characters from Gregor's family

Gregors Dad. Lee Campbell. Despite being heavily explored/featured in the books he is famously never given a name. I have seen fans in posts and fanfics give him names like Andrew, Steve, and Lee. While I am partial to the name Steve, I went with Lee. The Campbell kids physical descriptions are vague at best, but when you look add up what we do get (they have brown eyes and light brown skin, Boots hair is a mess of dark curls, Lizzie wears her hair in braids) most fans agree on the interpretation that they are biracial kids. Their dad's race is never specified (his face is near identical to Gregor's , and while he used to have dark hair its been gray since his time with the rats) and Lee is a name that works with multiple races you want to imagine him as

Gregor's Grandmother: Dorothy Campbell. Her family and friends shorten her name to either Dora or Dottie. Another member of Gregor's family who is never actually given a name in the books. There is one scene in CotWB, when Gregor and his parents are getting everyone up to evacuate the apartment because the rats are in the walls, where Gregor's dad is talking to grandma and he calls her "Mama" so she is likely the kids paternal grandmother, and their dad's mama. I am really glad that the dad being missing for 2.5 years did not cause a rift between her and Grace then. You know that these two women needed each other during that time, and the kids needed both of them.

I am naming her Dorothy after Dorothy from the wizard of Oz. Both are women who grew up on a country farm, then move to a strange and wondrous land that they enjoy parts of, but ultimately they never quite take to it.

Greogr's bonus grandmother, Mrs. Cormaci. We know her last name but not her first name. According to Google Cormaci as a surname is most likely either Scottish or Irish. Awesome because Morgan is a Welsh and Irish name. It also is the name of many magicians throughout literature. While Mrs.Cormaci is not specifically mentioned to have psychic powers but she has an almost magical talent for knowing what Gregor will need in the future. So as far as I am concerned her name is Mrs. Morgan Cormaci

Names for Characters from Luxa's Maternal family.... a couple bats and her uncle's lover

Names for Bats bonded to York and Susanna

York mentioned having a bond in GatCoC, who since childhood I have headcannoned was named Hercules. York is described as being a muscular giant, and so anybody who carries him in battle has to be very strong. Since he is not bonded to Ares he can be bonded to Hercules

With Susanna I never thought about her having a bond as a kid, but I guess she would have one. She is a doctor and an older sister, so let's say she has a bond named Apollo.

Hamnet's first bond. @deliver-the-light already did a poll on what her name should have been, and Eurydice was the name that won the poll. I like that myth, so I will honor the poll and keep that name.

Hamnet's lover, Hazards mother, and the women who maybe could have been an aunt to Luxa and Howard, had she ever gotten to meet them: Well first lets talk about this women. It was from her that Hazard inherited his two overland traits: curly black hair, and lime green eyes. Black hair and green eyes are actually a rare combination. Most people with black hair have either blue or brown eyes. According to google she would most likely be Irish or Scottish. Another notable thing about her, she once lived in New York City, or at least she had parents who lived there. She also wanted to take Hazard to visit at some point, which implies that there was a chance she could get back to the overland, and chose to stay in the jungles of the underland. Now New York is a difficult place to live with its over population, high cost of living, high crime and pollution rates. But the Underland jungles are also a difficult place to live. There was something about Life in the overland vs life in the underland that led to her choosing to stay in the Underland jungles. She didn't just love Hamnet, but also this wild world he lived in. Or her life above ground was so wild that she felt more secure in the underland? Because of all of this I looked up a female scottish or Irish name that means "Wild'. Her name is Fia.

Also if you have read another post I made you will know that I am a fan of the theory that She was Mrs. Cormaci's daughter. Finding out that there are cannon reasons to suspect that the two have similar/the same heritage is adding to that. Let Mrs. Cormaci see Hazards face either in a picture from the party, that Gregor shares with her, or have him come up for a day visit, and meet her in person. Have her send/show Hazard a picture of her daughter with Fia Cormaci's name written on it and him get all excited because yes that is his mother. Then let Mrs.Cormaci and Hazard form a relationship and eventually complete the circle, by giving Hazard an actual chance to chose which world he wants to live his life in.

Last thing since I was thinking a lot about Hamnet's family I used that opportunity to look up alternate meaning to "Hazard" and try and find justification for why loving parents would name their son something that means "Danger" and "bad thing". Alternate meanings include "Venture, put forward, chance, risk" Hamnet is named "Home", I just named Fia "wild" and these definitions make Hazards name fit perfectly with his parents and their story.

[thevividgreenmoss]

Matthew Weiner grasped at something beyond his daily-historical consciousness with Mad Men, which on one hand is part of the reason for making/sharing/experiencing art, but on the other hand the missapprehensions embedded within that consciousness play a huge part in him misapprehending his own* art as well as his role in its creation - the environment he cultivated within the writers room he administered, his documented harassment of the women he worked with, his incomprehension of the fact that Pete Campbell raped that au pair, that the wistful little etymology lesson that sets it up does nothing to obscure or negate the deeply fascistic impulse ingrained within Rachel Menken's claim that Israel "simply has to be", that the ending of his* show is not and can not be nearly as optimistic or hopeful as he-we might like to think.

The third quarter of the Clippers-Bulls just ended and I have neither patience for nor interest in American sentimentality.

Various notes of grace may play individual characters off the screen in the final episode and yes that may allow us to leave them a bit more at peace with themselves and each other than we found them in the pilot but the American society & nation to which they belong they belong is if anything far less at peace with itself in 1970 than it was in 1960 and all the way through 2024 it will continue along those same lines while also - although this part is probably a matter of lesser import to Weiner (but also likely the majority of his collaborators and audience) than things that primarily directly affect/ed real people ie American citizens whether it be the dissolution of the keynesian welfare state or the election of Donald Trump - continuing to inflict the most savage and brutal imperial horrors upon the rest of the world.

The game has ended, Clips won.

What inner peace drops a man back into the corner office from whose window he flung himself in the first place? If the fall was broken by an armchair behind the desk where he'd settle back in to launder the public image of a multinational conglomerate that steals water from indigenous people and pays mercenaries to murder those that dare to identify the theft might it not have been preferable to keep falling?

[chocochipbiscuit]

Fic (and nonfic!) Recs for Pride!

In honor of Pride, have some of my favorite F/F and F/NB reads!

Short stories (available online)

Radcliffe Hall by Miyuki Jane Pinckard - 40k word novella, with a Japanese student attending an American women's college in 1908. It's a Gothic novel with the characters encountering the supernatural, which is no less malevolent than systemic racism and homophobia.

The First Stop Is Always the Last by John Wiswell - Short and sweet time loop flirtation!

Scallop by J.L. Akagi - A woman begins growing eyes all over her body, and struggles to hide them. All the warnings for body horror, eye injury, and referenced sexual assault.

The World Ends in Salty Fingers and Sugared Lips by Jen Reese - Time loop story about the end of the world and the ways we try to deal with the crushing uncertainty of the inevitable.

Romance

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston - Subway time travel romance! August moves to New York and meets Jane, a butch punk from the 70s who’s trapped on the subway. It’s warm and sweet and funny, with all the feels and queer found family goodness.

Fatal Fidelity by Rien Gray - Dark romance/erotic suspense featuring a bi femme fatale and a nonbinary assassin! The series begins with Love Kills Twice, in which Justine hires an assassin to get rid of her abusive husband…unaware that Campbell was also hired to kill her. Absolutely delicious.

Feminine Pursuits series by Olivia Waite - While I’m listing it as a series, each novel is entirely stand-alone! These are a set of historical F/F novels featuring women in arts and science (and beekeeping!) making their way and falling in love with one another!

Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan - Historical romance as two older women (73 and 69 years old, respectively!) plot the downfall of an absolutely Terrible Nephew who deserves everything that happens to him. An absolutely delicious comedic romp.

The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz - An AI repair technician and an autonomous robot who runs a small tea shop, set in a retro-futuristic America. It’s warm and gentle and yearning in very good ways.

Horror/Suspense

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin - Gender apocalypse featuring trans women! A virus has turned anyone with over a certain level of testosterone into cannibal rape monsters, so we’re following our trans protagonists as they try to survive feral men, murderous TERFs, and a sociopathic bunker brat. This deserves a LOT of content warnings but it’s also been blurbed as a ‘bleeding love letter to trans women’ and it really is.

Blackwater Sister by Zen Cho - A Malaysian-American lesbian moves to Malaysia with her family, where she is haunted by her grandmother’s ghost. Her grandmother is out for supernatural revenge, involving our protagonist with gangsters and a terrifying goddess.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters - Historical crime novel in which a thief poses as a lady’s maid for a con, and ends up developing feelings for the mark. Except the lady’s not as innocent as she seems, and it’s difficult to add more without spoiling the novel but it’s good!

Science fiction

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine - Ambassador Mahit Dzmare travels to the capital of the interstellar Teixcalaanli Empire, discovers that her predecessor has died, and must find not only who murdered him, but why—while trying not to get murdered herself, and trying to maintain her small station’s independence from Teixcalaan’s ever-expanding empire. And there is a sequel but that has its own plot and requires you to read this one anyway!

Passing Strange by Ellen Klages - Set in San Francisco, built on artifice and delight as we follow a group of queer women both present and in the 1940s. Central story is a romance, two women trying to navigate both joy and the brutality of the worlds they inhabit.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - An epistolary love story across time and space, in far futures and alternative pasts as two rival agents—post-singularity Red and bio-consciousness Blue—foil and thwart one another.

Fantasy

The Burning Kingdoms by Tasha Suri - Indian-inspired fantasy trilogy (third book coming in 2024!) that follows a captive princess and a maidservant with forbidden magic who navigate the the tension between their different loyalties and the politics of empire. Just! So good!

The Kingston Cycle by C.L. Polk - A fantasy trilogy (that’s actually complete!) set in a world where witches are persecuted and placed in asylums…while secretly, the witches of elite families use that power in service of the crown. The first book (Witchmark) starts with a murder mystery and a doctor with PTSD who follows that mystery to government secrets that force him to confront his estranged family. It’s also M/M, but the sequels (Stormsong and Soulstar) center around F/F and F/NB main pairings, respectively. 

The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir - The first book starts with swordjock butches and lesbian necromancers in space going through (essentially) a haunted mansion together, and it just keeps going after that! It’s delightful, deranged, and full of fantastic characters I want to gnaw on!

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo - A beautiful frame story with a very fairytale feel, where the cleric Chih is telling the story of a tiger and her lover, a female scholar, to a trio of hungry tigers who threaten to eat them if Chih tells the story incorrectly!

A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark - Mystery and magic and suspense in a steampunk Cairo, set forty years after magic returned to the world! The first female agent for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities is assigned to discover who murdered members of a secret cult. In addition to solving the case, she’s also assigned a rookie partner to train, and navigating the surprise return of her girlfriend, who has her own secrets! This is a really fun romp, full of joy and wonder. (And Fatma’s fabulous suits!)

Nonfiction

In the Dream House by Carmen Machado - A memoir about surviving domestic abuse, with each chapter using a different trope or genre convention to not only explore the way the relationship affected her sense of self, but also about trying (or failing) to find that representation in cultural history. It’s a rough read in places, but absolutely worth it if you’re in a space to handle that sort of content. (And in case it’s not obvious: her ex was another woman. Abuse isn’t limited by gender.)

[blairstales]

Fairy Deer 🦌

While some fairy folk in Scottish folklore were said to have Fairy Cows, for much of Scotland, the fairies instead raised fairy deer.

“Everywhere in the Highlands, the red-deer are associated with the Fairies, and in some districts, as Lochaber and Mull, are said to be their only cattle.” Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland by John Gregorson Campbell (1900)

The fairies would milk and tend to these deer carefully, and would punish humans for killing a deer.

“When a dead deer is carried home at night the Fairies lay their weight on the bearer’s back, till he feels as if he had a house for a burden. On a penknife, however, being stuck in the deer it becomes very light.” Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland by John Gregorson Campbell (1900)

There are also some fairies that are said to transform into deer (which is not to be confused with a Baobhan Sith, which has the legs of a deer, but the upper body of a woman). In these stories, a fairy is in the guise of a deer.

“In their transformations it was peculiar for the Fairy women to assume the shape of the red-deer, and in that guise they were often encountered by the hunter. “ Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland by John Gregorson Campbell (1900)

Historic Audio Recordings:

(link) This song is a fairy lullaby. The composer sees a big strong man passing by with a bow and arrow, and is afraid that he will kill the mother of the young one to whom she sings.According to tradition, the composer was singing to a young deer

(link) This song belongs to the fairy song tradition and was used as a milking song or lullaby. Colin's cattle referred to in the song are the deer.

(link) Ailean Donn spent a year hiding in a cave. He was looked after by a woman who herded the deer. She later saw him in Glasgow, dressed like a gentleman. When she spoke to him, he said she had mistaken him for someone else.

English: Woman carrying a bouquet in the woods, with deer beside her. Date: 1920 Source: The Book of Fairy Poetry

[palmviolet]

Hello! I enjoyed your true detective "out of time man" fic a LOT! Specifically the quotes included in the beginning of each chapter.

I was wondering, since some of the quotes seem to be from academic books which one you would recommend to read first if one were to look into reading them? I really enjoy the subject and would love to dig into it further. Which one was your favourite? Are they difficult reads? Would you recommend something else to start with? Thank you so much !

hi, thank you so much! very proud of that one. and i'd absolutely recommend getting more into criticism and theory around american culture and mythology, it's been so rewarding and illuminating.

in terms of what you should read, the most formative and comprehensive one with regards to rodeo subcultures was Outriders: Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West by Rebecca Scofield (Univ of Washington Press, 2019). it takes you through not just gay rodeo but prison rodeo, the role of race at the rodeo, and women's involvement too, both historically and today. given a lot of our popularly received imagery of the rodeo limits it to the cishet white male body, a body that is free and able and doing it without coercion or power dynamics, scofield's text is invaluable as a starting point to deconstruct that very imagery.

then there's Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination, by Michael Allen. this is your more typical account of the myth of the rodeo, again lending it a critical lens but not diving quite so deep into its underbelly. still, a solid grounding on the basics.

something i loved on the more general modern mythology of the american west through a postmodern lens was The Cultures of the American New West, by Neil Campbell, which describes the 'hyperreality' of the new west and its dependence on image.

and on the western genre was The Myth of the Western by Matthew Carter, which is an excellent introduction to western, neo-western, and anti-western, examining the mythologising role the western plays and how that role has since been subverted.

i'd say each of these is definitely worth a read as a starting point, and then just follow through into their bibliographies and see where they take you. i think the scofield is probably the easiest read of these, being both factual and analytical, where the campbell is probably the most difficult, requiring something of a grounding in postmodern theory first — i'd say something i found very accessible in my early postmodern days was (sorry) the essay e unibus pluram by david foster wallace. it was written in the 90s and so reflects the contemporary anxieties about television but otherwise is a decent and almost gentle introduction to the central concerns of postmodernism and the time beyond it: the primacy of image, the difficulty of the quest for meaning in such a world.

some other readings more in the vein of the detective genre, its relationship to gender, horror, and genre resistance, all of which i've brought to my reading of true detective and my writing of out of time man:

Marshall, Sarah. 2022. “Violent Delights.” The Believer. https://www.thebeliever.net/violent-delights/.

Woodstock, Patrick and Dan Vena. 2022. “Born Queer, Made Evil? Examining ‘Discovery’ and ‘Construction’ as Competing Methodologies of True Crime.” Crime Fiction Studies 3, 1: 59–74.

Calhoun, Claudia. 2022. Only the Names Have Been Changed: Dragnet, the Police Procedural, and Postwar Culture. New York: University of Texas Press.

Geller, Theresa L., and Anna Marie Banker. 2017. ““That Magic Box Lies”: Queer Theory, Seriality, and American Horror Story.” The Velvet Light Trap 79: 36-49.

Cuklanz, Lisa M.. 1999. Rape on Prime Time: Television, Masculinity, and Sexual Violence. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Clover, Carol J. 2015. Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film - Updated Edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Goldsmith, Clarissa Susan. 2022. Hope Despite Horror: Theorizing Oppositional Horror and Aesthetics of Resistance in Multicultural Horror. Doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University. ProQuest (Order No. 29396682).

this is a lot to be going on with so feel free to send me another ask if you want more details/to sift through them! in terms of rodeo in specific i'd definitely begin with outriders. this is also a very narrow selection — there's a whole world of scholarship out there, some more obscure than others, and you're always learning. if i think of any more i'll do another post!

[theblackfemininesociety]

In the fashion industry, where diversity and representation have historically been lacking, Naomi Campbell has emerged as a trailblazer, breaking barriers and paving the way for black women in the world of high fashion. Her recent walk in the Men’s Collection Balmain show at Paris Fashion Week was yet another powerful statement, reminding the world that black beauty deserves its rightful place on the runway. Teaming up with Designer & Creative director Olivier Rousteing, the two displayed black excellence at its FINEST, in luxury.

💐 Naomi, Thank You For:

1. Challenging the Status Quo:

Naomi Campbell's presence in the fashion industry has consistently challenged the narrow beauty standards that have dominated for far too long. Her career, spanning over three decades, has shattered glass ceilings and opened doors for black models striving to be recognized for their talent and beauty.

2. A Symbol of Empowerment:

For black women everywhere, seeing Naomi Campbell grace the catwalk is an inspiring sight. She embodies strength, confidence, and resilience, proving that black women can thrive in an industry that often marginalizes them. Her success serves as a reminder that black beauty is not only valid but also holds immense power and influence.

3. Paving the Way for Future Generations:

By walking in shows like Balmain during Paris Fashion Week, Naomi Campbell ensures that melanin is not just a token inclusion but a vibrant celebration of diversity. Her presence on the runway encourages designers, casting directors, and the industry as a whole to embrace and celebrate the unique beauty that black women possess.

4. Amplifying the Voices of Black Women:

Naomi Campbell's influence extends beyond the runway. She utilizes her platform to advocate for greater representation and inclusivity in the fashion industry. Through her activism, she amplifies the voices of black women, ensuring that their stories, experiences, and perspectives are heard and respected.

5. Inspiring Confidence and Self-Love:

Naomi Campbell's impact goes beyond the fashion world; she inspires black women to embrace their own beauty, fostering self-love and confidence. By consistently showcasing black excellence, she encourages young girls and women to embrace their uniqueness and pursue their dreams fearlessly.

Naomi Campbell's iconic walk in the Balmain show at Paris Fashion Week serves as a powerful reminder of her unwavering commitment to promoting diversity and representation in the fashion industry. Her influence as a black supermodel has been instrumental in breaking down barriers, inspiring countless black women to embrace their beauty, and demanding that the world recognize and celebrate their worth. ✨

[colorpickinglesbian]

History of the Lesbian Flag

Since I run a blog that's all about appreciation for lesbians and our current flag, I thought it'd be fitting to make a post about lesbian flags of the past and how we (more or less) settled on this design!

The first lesbian flag was designed by Sean Campbell in 1999, who was working as a graphic designer for the Greater Palm Springs Gay and Lesbian Times [1]. It has a solid violet background in reference to the tradition of violets as a symbol of sapphic love. The inverted black triangle is used to represent remembrance and reclamation for the lesbians who were marked "asocial" during the Holocaust, much like how the pink triangle was a common symbol in the gay men's community [2]. The labrys was already an established lesbian-feminist symbol of women's strength and self-sufficiency due to its association with the Amazons.

This flag was more of a niche success than the versions that would follow, for a number of changing reasons. The first is that this flag was created at a time when it was just starting to become commonplace for individual identities to have their own flags as opposed to everyone being under the rainbow; the bisexual and transgender flags were both only around a year old. The second reason this flag hasn't seen widespread use is the controversial use of the black triangle. To an uninformed viewer, the inclusion of a Nazi symbol on a flag can be alarming. There is also debate on if lesbians should reclaim the black triangle, as it was most commonly applied to Romani people. The third and most contemporary criticism of this flag centers around its adoption by transphobic radical feminists, due to the lesbian-feminist history of the flag.

There is a current movement to revive or slightly redesign (by removing the black triangle or adding trans-positive imagery) this flag, as some people connect with the empowering and historically significant symbolism or simply think that the most widespread design doesn't reflect their aesthetic or connection with lesbianism.

The second flag wasn't meant for the whole lesbian community, but it became pretty widespread: the Lipstick Lesbian flag. This flag was created in 2010 by lesbian lifestyle blogger Natalie McCray to represent the hyperfeminine sub-community of "lipstick lesbians" [3]. The shades of pink and red, fittingly, represent common shades of lipstick, and the kiss mark is in the upper left corner in the tradition of the bear and leather flags.

In 2013, a version of the flag cropped to exclude the kiss mark was posted on Tumblr, where it was described as a general lesbian flag representing the whole community [4]. In 2015, a DeviantArt account dedicated to uploading high-resolution versions of pride flags posted the version without the lipstick mark, mentioning that it is a variation of the lipstick lesbian flag but still framing it as a flag for the whole community [5]. The admin later revealed that the omission of the lipstick mark was simply due to the difficulty of upscaling the image to a higher quality without the original vector.

This design was moderately successful until racist, biphobic, anti-butch, and cissexist comments from the creator were uncovered c. 2018. The flag was already facing replacement efforts due to its "lipstick lesbian" association making it uninclusive of butch lesbians.

2017-18 was a very fortuitous time for lesbians to be in search of a new flag. Social media use was reaching new peaks and the microidentity boom came with a huge wave of new flags for the queer community at large. Concurrently, there was a big push for inclusivity in the queer community that birthed the Philadelphia Pride flag to explicitly include people of color, the first time the LGBT rainbow flag had seen a revision since it was cut to six stripes in 1979.

It was not difficult to find lesbians willing to try their hand at making The New Lesbian Flag. There were so many interested parties, in fact, that multiple community surveys were conducted to pick a design! (I had the joy of participating in some of those surveys in favor of the 7-stripe flag that this blog is dedicated to.) On the DeviantArt account that posted the lipstick lesbian flag with the kiss mark removed, there are 212 variations under the "Lesbian WLW" category.

Pictured above are three of the most successful variations that came out of this lesbian flag explosion. The design on the left was created by Jace (AKA anurtransyl), with 5 shades of blue and purple representing community values like trust, freedom, and pride. The design on the right won the which-lesbian-flag survey; it was created by Marion (AKA apersnicketylemon), and the four stripes represent different subsets — trans, femme, aspec, and butch — of the lesbian community. The center flag was created by Lydia, the same woman who brought Natalie McCray's bigoted comments to light. It is commonly referred to as the Sappho flag because its violet shade is a direct reference to Sappho's poetry, while its other shades represent the community values of strength, fragility, and healing.

Separate from the evolution of the community lesbian flag, some lesbians were making flags for subsets of the lesbian community. While I won't cover these in detail, the one relevant to this story is the butch flag created by Mod Q of butchspace.

People were naturally attracted to the idea of smashing the butch and lipstick flags together to create one representing the whole community. Olivia (AKA shapeshifter-of-constellation) created a very familiar design (alongside some proposed variations) in July 2017 to little fanfare [6]. No meanings were provided for the stripes, but Olivia mused back and forth with some other community members about meanings that could be ascribed beyond 'butch, femme, and other'. She proposed a couple more variations, but ultimately seemed to abandon the design.

The current design originated in June 2018 and was designed by Emily Gwen [7].¹ By the end of the week, the meanings for the stripes were finalized: gender non-conformity, independence, community, unique relationships to womanhood, serenity & peace, love & sex, and femininity.

There are many reasons why this flag was successful.

The retained stripes from the lipstick lesbian flag allowed it to retain recognizability; someone who has only seen the previous iteration can see those stripes and infer that the flag has something to do with lesbianism.

The stripe meanings were decided with input from the community, resulting in associations that include lesbians of all kinds in a respectful way. Olivia's design faced criticism for implying that all lesbians exist on a continuum from butch to femme, so Emily Gwen's uses "gender non-conformity" and "femininity" to include butches and femmes while including all lesbians on every stripe. Trans lesbians provided feedback in the replies of the original post as well as sadlesbiandisaster's ask box stating that they felt having trans and nonbinary lesbians on their own stripe separated them from the rest of the community, so the white stripe was changed to "unique relationships to womanhood."

Marketability. Emily Gwen allows people and corporations to make and sell merchandise with her flag design on it. Despite the community's attitudes towards rainbow capitalism and the unfortunate financial impact on Emily Gwen personally, this allowed the flag to proliferate.

The color combination is pleasing to the eye. This is obviously a matter of opinion, but it seems to be a widely shared one! This design received its "sunset flag" nickname very early on, which tends to be a positive indicator for longevity of a pride flag.

Catherine Becker created a five-stripe derivative of this flag to facilitate printing [8]. Oversized flags have been a historical issue for the LGBT community, most notably with Gilbert Baker's original rainbow flag which had the pink stripe removed due to poor availability of pink fabric and the turquoise stripe removed to allow for it to be split in half on each side of the San Francisco pride parade route. The simplification turned out to be a good move, as it is the most popular design used by corporations like Disney and Spencer's Gifts.

Anecdotally, Emily Gwen's design is still the most popular at pride parades and online. It's the one we see handed to celebrities like Lucy Dacus and LOONA. It's the one we see proudly displayed in the icons of lesbians online. It's recognized by governmental organizations, universities, news and entertainment publications, and gay heritage organizations.

To close out this recounting of lesbian flag history, I leave you with two of my favorite memes about lesbian flags.

¹ Despite its visual similarity to Olivia's flag from the previous year, both designers attribute this to convergent evolution and deny any claims of plagiarism.

[ariadnethedragon]

— The Gentleman’s Gambit, Evie Dunmore

[the-physicality]

how to pick an nwsl team:

angel city fc (Los Angeles): if you like Christen Press. Very famous ownership group (politically concerning). The team is struggling but has bright young talent. Beckintweed is in her first season as head coach after bringing the team to the playoffs last year as interim.

notable players: christen press, Alyssa Thompson, Gisele Thompson, Messiah bright, Claire Emslie, Sarah Gorden

noteable injuries: Press- extended acl recovery, Jun Endo preseason acl

bay fc (San Jose/Bay Area): if you are an optimist/want to be an early adopter. a lot of exciting internationals, but struggle to win games. First year expansion team so also trying to define themselves. notable players: Rachel Kundananji, Princess, Asistat Oshoala, Deyna Castellanos, Tess Boade, Caprice Dydasco

notable injuries: Alex Loera - acl, Melissa Lowder gk #1 preseason acl

Chicago red stars: if you want to see a redemption story. coming back from a bad season, USA phenom mal Swanson is back to lead attacking talent. Also has USA gk #1 Alyssa naeher. Lorne Donaldson (who coached Jamaica wnt in the 2023 wwc as well as Sophia smith and mal Swanson at a youth level) is in his first year as head coach

notable players: Alyssa Naeher, Mal Swanson, Sam Staab

Houston dash fc: if you like rooting for an underdog and won't get discouraged. a team that has struggled historically but is still fun to watch. A lot of international talent, did very well in the draft. The team has a new head coach Fran Alonso who just came over from the Scottish women’s league. You can watch the team work to implement their new style in real time. Jane Campbell #3 gk for the uswnt as of late won goalkeeper of the year last year. Lost a lot of players to free agency and is rebuilding with rookies, trades, and transfers. somehow both the straightest team and the gayest team at the same time.

notable injuries/abscences: Kiki Van Zanten ankle/ lower leg sei, 3 players on maternity leave

notable players: Jane Campbell, Diana Ordonez, Sophie Schmidt, Paige Nielsen, Tarciane (incoming), Michelle Alozie

Kansas City current: if you like watching bangers. one of the top teams to beat this season. With Malawi sensation Themwa Chawinga this team is difficult to stop and has a lot of attacking prowess. Has some defensive liabilities. Coached by former uswnt head coach vlatko andonoski. Has signed a good number of u18 players

notable players: debinha, lo’eau labonta, themwa chawinga, Vanessa dibernardo, bia zaneratto

New Jersey/New York Gotham fc: if you like the uswnt. recently picked up 4 uswnt players in free agency. Also just got Ann Katrin Berger gk from Chelsea on a transfer. She is very good. Head coach Juan Carlos Amaros won coach of the year last year and the team won the championship. They have struggled with injuries this year and scoring more than one goal in a game.

notable injuries: Midge Purce acl , Abby Smith sei from 2023

notable players: Lynn Williams, Ann Katrin Berger, Crystal Dunn, Rose Lavelle, Tierna Davidson, Esther Gonzalez, Jenna Nighswonger, Emily Sonnett, Midge Purce, Yazmeen Ryan

North Carolina Courage: if you are ok waiting . traditionally a very strong team, has struggled a bit this season without Kerolin who tore her acl on the last regular season game in 2023.

notable injuries: Kerolin acl (Nov 2023)

notable players: Casey Murphy, Brianna Pinto, Tyler Lussi, Manaka, Narumi, Ashley Sanchez, Kerolin

Orlando pride: if you like the brazil women's national team. aka brazil fc. Has gone from a team that struggled to one of the top teams this year, in part due to the players brought in over the offseason, many of whom play for Brazil. Recently brought in Barbra Banda a Zambian striker, who has been very productive.

notable players: Marta, Barbra Banda, rafaelle, ally watt

Portland thorns: if you like soccer dynasties. traditionally one of the most successful teams in the nwsl with a lot of local support, the h th orbs struggled in the first few games with their worst start to the season ever. Following the firing of their head coach, the team has won 6 in a row in interim hc rob gale. Has a lot of strong attacking talent but is vulnerable on defense. The home field is turf.

notable players: Sophia smith, Olivia Moultrie, Christine Sinclair, Janine Beckie, Becky Sauerbrunn

Racing Louisville: if you want to watch a team turn around. a team that has struggled historically has put together a solid team in the offseason under new head coach bev yanez. Got some very good rookies in the draft and is off to a decent start.

notable players: Savannah Demelo, Reilyn Turner, Emma Sears, Uchenna Kanu, Ary Borges

San Diego wave fc: if you like to watch a team underproduce. very successful for a team established in 2022. Has a very strong system but has struggled with injuries as of late. The home field is shared with San Diego state football and is not always in the best condition.

notable injuries: Jaedyn Shaw, Alex Morgan (lower legs out tbd)

notable players: Alex Morgan, Jaedyn Shaw, Kailen Sheridan, Naomi Girma, Abby Dahlkemper, Maria Sanchez

Seattle reign: if you want to watch a team figure out their identity without US national team players. historically successful team that lost a lot of impact players in the offseason to retirement or free agency. Previously owned by the ol group, had to be sold because its owner Michelle Kang also owns the Washington Spirit. Dropping the OL, the brand got a massive upgrade. Is struggling this season. The home field is turf.

notable injuries: Claudia Dickey #1 gk

notable players: Jess Fishlock, Lauren Barnes, Quinn, Bethany Balcer, Alanna Cook, Ji So-Yun, Jordyn Heuitema, Veronica Latsko

Utah royals fc: if you live in utah. a new expansion team that is struggling quite a bit. First time head coach Amy Rodriguez selected ally sentnor as the first draft pick. Has a racist kit and stadium sponsor. Does not have a full roster.

notable injuries: Imani Dorsey Achilles

notable players: Mandy haught, Ifeoma Onumanu, Ally Sentnor

Washington spirit: if you want to watch rookies make magic. owned by Michelle kang, not afraid to make big moves and spend $$$ for a strong team. Has found success recently. Operating under interim hc Adrian Gonzalez until Barcelona head coach Jonathan Giraldez arrives after the end of their season. Croix Bethune is doing very well her rookie season.

notable players: Trinity Rodman, Croix Bethune, Casey Kruger, Andi Sullivan, Ashley Hatch, Hal Hershfelt

[amphibious-thing]

One thing Kaz Rowe does, which is not unique amongst youtubers, but still annoys me, is that they will tell you who said a quote but not where they got the quote from. For example this quote is simply cited "Le Chevalier d'Eon".

Misgendering aside this doesn't tell us where or when d'Eon said this. Or whether this is a direct quote or a translation of something she wrote in French. You might think this information would be in the description but no there is just a list of sources not specifying where any quote or particular piece of information is from.

Now in spite of Kaz Rowe's lack of proper citation I can tell you that this quote is actually a translation from Gary Kates book Monsieur d'Eon Is a Woman. Kates citation for this quote is "Préface général de l'éditeur de Paris, qui en 1798 ...," Papers of d'Eon, Brotherton Collection, University of Leeds Library, Box 7, p. 59.

There isn't anything wrong with Rowe using Kates rather than tracking down the original source from the University of Leeds but I do think they should have cited where they got this quote from. There is no mention that this is a translation by Gary Kates. And this isn't just about crediting Kates for his work but also about historical accuracy. Understanding that this is a translation is important. Knowing when and where d'Eon said this is important.

When it comes to a quote I can easily write out that quote and paste it into google and voilà its from Kates book!

But when it comes to claims made in Rowe's own words I have no idea which of their sources they got that information from. In a section of Rowe's video where they explain their choice to use they/them pronouns for d'Eon (in spite of the fact that d'Eon used she/her pronouns) Rowe states:

They also disliked wearing women's clothes in general, as well as the narrow social restrictions that came with being a woman. In one letter, they described themself as a prisoner of war. And in another letter, they described their situation as being forced to take on womanhood.

These are some pretty significant claims so I'd be incredibly interested in what Rowe's sources are. I know d'Eon talked about disliking women's formal dress and preferring women's informal dress, she wrote; "The informal dress suited me very well, but when I had to wear the formal dress with accessories and jewels, it was a great torment for me". (translated in Dressing d'Eon by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell) But to say she "disliked wearing women's clothes in general" seems to me a bit of an overstatement.

While I'm lost as to which letter in particular d'Eon talked about being "forced to take on womanhood" the words "prisoner of war" certainly rang a bell for me. My initial assumption was that the "letter" that Rowe was referring to was probably not a letter at all but d'Eon's autobiography in which she writes:

It was then that a new theater of confusion and glory opened before me and swallowed me alive in my skirts at Versailles, where I was kept as an honorable prisoner of war in the household of Madame and Mesdemoiselles Genet, ladies-in-waiting to the Queen, who endeavoured to have me emulate their dress, their work, their conduct, and their virtues. They had to please both their mistress, who was a sovereign, and their husbands, who dominated them. For I who have neither husband, nor master, nor mistress, I would like to enjoy the privilege of obeying only myself and good sense.

~ The Chevalière d’Eon, The Maiden of Tonnerre p16

However considering that Rowe doesn't cite The Maiden of Tonnerre as a source its probably actually from Kates who writes:

A few weeks later, d’Eon’s mood had grown even worse. “Don't remind me, Madame,” he wrote to his closest new friend, the Duchesse de Montmorency-Bouteville, “about the errors of my youth, nor the happy follies of my military career, for the problems found in the midst of a war were more pleasing to me than the tranquillity of being in the midst of the Court during peacetime. In actuality, I live here in the respectable home of Mme Genet as an honorable prisoner of war.” Although d’Eon wanted to be known as a woman, he was having trouble defining the kind of woman he might become. Patriarchal France was intent on forcing him to accept a narrow gender role that meant giving up his military and political career.

~ Gary Kates, Monsieur d'Eon Is a Woman p28

Or maybe Rowe is thinking of the following conversation between d'Eon and Marie Antoinette that Kates includes in his book:

“Madame,” d’Eon responded, “today I realize that the death of my past condition gives life and glory to my present state and to the future for eternity. Allow me to swear that I will remain a prisoner of war in skirts, in faith and in homage to the law. For faith is the first theological virtue; without it we are but a drum echo in the air.”

~ Gary Kates, Monsieur d'Eon Is a Woman p31

Or perhaps Rowe is thinking of something else entirely there really isn't any way for me to know because they don't clearly cite a source.

None of this is unique to Kaz Rowe. This criticism could be made about numerous video essayists. Its a symptom of pop history content in general where people who do not have the expertise in a topic attempt to summarise it for people who will likely never do any further research into it. Rowe doesn't have to cite their sources in a comprehensive way because their fans are never going to do in-depth research on d'Eon in the first place. So they can say that d'Eon "described their situation as being forced to take on womanhood" in a "letter" without ever saying which letter they're referring to.

[chronic-ghost]

Chapter 9 of Recovery Road

chapter rating: E (18+)

pairing: dieter bravo x f!reader

word count: 11845

chapter summary: if you thought you knew the full story of natalie lorraine, you were myth-taken

chapter warnings/tags: non-consensual touching, implied sexual assault, emotionally abusive parents, drug/alcohol use, underaged drug/alcohol use, women existing in the male gaze, putting too much of myself into characters as per yooshg

a/n: Header comes from the “Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses” by John William Waterhouse. Song for this chapter is Gold Dust Woman by Fleetwood Mac – watch me make a fic playlist after the fact lmao. Bear with me while I wax embarrassingly poetic about my favorite oc blorbo. Remember this does end well!!!

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There are many different types of myth but, essentially, they can be grouped into three: etiological myths, historical myths, psychological myths. Etiological myths can offer explanations for why the world is the way it is. Historical myths retell an event from the past but elevate it with greater meaning than the actual event (if it even happened). [Lastly] psychological myths present one with a journey from the known to the unknown which, according to both Jung and Campbell, represents a psychological need to balance the external world with one's internal consciousness of it. – Mythology, Joshua Mark

“in front of my mother and my sisters, 

i pretend love is cheap and vulgar.

 i act like it’s a sin– 

i pretend that love is for women on a dark path. 

but at night i dream of a love so heavy 

it makes my spine throb–

i dream up a lover who makes love like he is 

separating salt from water.”

— Salma Deera, “salt” 

Natalie Lorraine is a myth.

And like in all the great myths, birth is a painful, violent emergence. 

Slowly, labored across years and many heartbeats, what remains is the inevitable conclusion of being fucked over, of being lazy and careless, of innocence taken too soon. Careless children grow up to be careless mothers, careless fathers. 

The titans of the world leave to make their mark on history and, in doing so, mark their children in a way more powerful, more regretful than any legend could possibly make them out to be. 

Medea is brutalized in legends and in verse for the most heinous a mother can commit.

Odysseys forgets what being a father means.

Oedipus Rex curses his children with an unforgivable sin by way of their mother, their grandmother, and that staggering failure is felt through to Antigone, a generation removed. Antigone dies. Haemon and Eurydice die too. Pain and grief are family heirlooms passed through pale fingers at the stroke of midnight. 

But despite all that. Before all that. 

Myths begin when the heroes are forced to make a choice, choose a direction in the way their lives end up. It might not always be obvious, and the gods might have things in store for them. But there is a choice and the fallen hero always chooses.

But they were all children once. You have to remember that. You have to believe that.

(Aetiologic)

I hate these socks, you think to yourself, they’re itchy and they hurt my toes. Every time you swing your legs over the edge of that leather couch, your legs too short to touch the ground, the toe of your shoe pinches you. You really, really want to take off your shoes, but Mom said you had to keep them on all day, especially in the office. In his office. You think your dress looks like one of your baby dolls and you don’t like it.

So you stop kicking, even though the sound of your heel against the leather made a funny noise. You can move too, and make the leather squeak, and that is pretty fun too. Grinning, you bounce like you aren’t supposed to on your bed back home, the cushions chirping – it sounds like they’re farting – you giggle, rocking back on your hands from left to right, squealing along with the leather as you made it –

“Enough!”

You freeze, tears immediately welling in your eyes, fear almost painful in your chest. 

But he’s not talking to you. Your father is still in his office, with the door barely shut, and he’s talking to someone on the phone. Yelling, actually. He’s been in there since the little hand was on the fifteen and now it’s on the thirty. He told you to wait there while he called your mom. You tried to sit still, but it was boring and all the toys were back in the other room. 

He never yelled at you, your dad, but he did yell at your mom. 

When you talked to the other kids in your preschool class, their mommies and daddies lived in the same house together, slept in the same bed, talked nicely to each other. Yours didn’t. 

“Well, what am I supposed to do with her, LeAnne? I told you I have a meeting at four today and she could be here for three hours. I told you! I can’t have her here! You need to come pick up your daughter!”

Your foot kicks up and down. You didn’t like it when they talked about you like you weren’t there. 

“Hey there.” A woman with blonde hair and big eyes sits down next to you. She was always around your dad, and always handled his papers and briefcase and sometimes his coffee. She is younger than your mom but way older than you are. You think she’s really, really pretty. None of her dresses look like baby doll dresses. “I’m sorry your dad is taking so long. Do you want something to eat, or drink?”

You shake your head. Your mom said not to talk to strangers, so you didn’t open your mouth. 

“Are you bored? Do you wanna watch some TV?”

TVs were everywhere in your dad’s office building. Down near the elevators, and then more when you got out. It always seemed like people were watching a tv and the actors on the tv. Actors were people whose job it was to be on the tv or in the movies, your dad told you. He told you he knew a lot of famous actors, but when you told the kids in your class about it, they said they didn’t know any of those people. 

“You’re just making things up!”

“You’re a liar!”

You really wanted your dad to introduce you to an actor, just to prove them wrong. You thought it was pretty cool how everyone was always watching them. Like they couldn’t look away. 

You nod at the pretty lady. She smiles and picks up the skinny black tv remote on the table in front of the couch. 

The tv in the corner of the room pops on. The size of it doesn’t take up the wall like some of the tvs in the office do, but it’s still bigger than the one you have at home. 

The nice lady taps the button a few times, the channels changing, until she comes to the kids channel. It’s a little old for you – all of the shows at preschool are cartoons and this one has real people in it – but you want this woman to like you. 

“Do you like this one? Friends in the Family? It’s so funny!” 

She turns and leans back against the couch with you. You hear people laughing on the screen, even though you don’t see anyone. There’s a young girl, older than you but younger than this nice lady, and she has a boy with her on her parents’ couch. The boy leans in and kisses her cheek and the invisible people go ‘oooooh’. 

“Ooooh!” You mimic and the nice woman laughs, grinning at you. Something warm and tight goes up your chest, and you pinch your lip with your teeth, toes curling in your stupid shoes. You liked making her laugh.

On the screen, a little girl – maybe the other girl’s sister – pushes through the kitchen door. You gasp in surprise. She looks like she could be in your preschool class. She’s all mad and she crosses her arms, pouting.

“Someone’s gonna get it!” 

The invisible people laugh and the nice lady giggles so hard she leans forward and you’re giggling too, even though you don’t quite get it. That warm feeling reminds you of when you drink soda too fast, but it’s good. 

You frown too, put your hands on your hips, parroting the little girl on tv, “someone’s gonna get it!”

Her pretty mouth opens in surprise, her eyes sparkling.

“Oh my God, that was so good! You sound just like her!” You giggle, your face hot. “Have you ever asked your dad about acting?”

You shake your head. You, an actor? On tv? No way!

“Well, you should! You could be really good!”

You don’t know what to say, you want to keep making the same faces that little girl is, when your dad’s door opens. The young woman next to you lurches forward and shuts off the tv. He comes out and you can’t tell if he’s angry or upset or if that’s just how he looks. You’re not around him enough to know. But he stands in front of you, thinking something.

“Judy, would you get us two juice boxes from the fridge downstairs?”

“Of course, Mr. Milken.”

The young woman leaves and you’re a little afraid. You don’t want him to yell at you for watching that show for older kids. You twist your little fingers. 

“That was your mom on the phone. She’s going to be a little late.” 

You nod. “Okay.” 

“Did you have fun today at my office? Did you like meeting all my friends?”

You nod, this time quicker. “Yes! I would like to meet an actor one day!”

At that, he smiles and you relax. People who are angry don’t smile. 

“While we wait for your mom, do you wanna play paper football?”

“What’s that?”

“C’mon. I’ll show you.”

So the myth begins. All it takes is a single idea. A single want. A single desire. An innately human desire. We build myths and we tell stories and we fill them with the things we want to hear.

You’re turning fourteen next month. It’s circled on your calendar in your bedroom. It’s not like it’s that big of a deal, but at least now you could start the emancipation process. If you wanted to. You laid awake at night, thinking about what you’d call yourself if you ever changed your name. Something vaguely French-sounding. European for sure. But they were just fantasies to get you through the day. 

It’s early in the morning. You haven’t heard anything from Mom’s room in a while so you figure it’s just the two of you in the house again. You totter out of your room, blinking sleep from your eyes – it was a very late night on set last night and probably would be again, given how the production of this made-for-tv movie was going and especially with the extra homework you’ve been doing to make up for the time off you’ve taken – as you wander across the small, sun-streaked living room, and around the corner to the kitchen. You hear something from the fridge and just as you are about to ask your mom if she’s cooking (which is never a good idea), a man stands up. He’s older than you but younger than your mom and he has the last piece of your sourdough bread in his mouth. He smirks and you unconsciously tug down the hem of your sleep shorts.

This has been happening more and more lately. The way men, older men, look at you, it’s different now. Has been for a while, but now there’s more of them, their gazes sit on your bare skin longer, the light in their eyes changing, the lines around their mouths tightening. You don’t really know what it is they want, but it’s baffling to you that they think looking at you like that will convince you to give anything to them. 

It's the way your mom’s new boyfriend is looking at you. Your cheeks heat up without your consent and you hate it. 

He’s hungry and he’s scrounging around in the fridge and now he’s looking at you. Still hungry.

“Hey, you must be LeAnne’s daughter,” he says, taking the bread slice out of his mouth and propping his hairy arm on the top of the refrigerator door, his gaze sweeping you from head to toe as if deciding whether or not to make a sandwich out of you. Who likes this kind of shit? Oh, that’s right. Your mom. 

You narrow your eyes at him. “Yeah. That’s me. Is she here?”

His eyes follow the backs of your thighs as you walk over to the coffee pot and take out week-old coffee grounds. They’ve turned blue, started to mold, but you dump them out into the trash with three good smacks.

“Uh, she’s still in bed. She said you could get to school on your own.” 

Behind you, the fridge door slams shut and you curl your toes, begging yourself not to flinch. There’s something inside of you demanding you to not show weakness. Steadying your own hand, you dig into the jar holding the coffee grounds. It’s halfway empty, you make a note to pick up some later, the thought pressed up against the swell of panic that’s growing at the edge of your awareness. 

“I’m Alan.” He leans up against the counter out of the corner of your eye. “I know we just met, but I could take you, to school . . . if you want.” 

His thick middle has nothing to do with age, only poor health. Evident further by his off-yellow teeth and bad breath. 

“I’m o-okay. Thank you.” 

There’s three minutes left on the coffee timer. His gaze is like open palms on your skin. You hate it. He sidles up closer and your nails dig half-moon crescents into your skin. The lovely smell of coffee brewing is overwhelmed by his cheap cologne. He’s big. Bigger than you. Bigger than any of the boys in your class, or any of the men on set. You’ve never really noticed the men on set, they’ve never been this close before, but you’re sure he’s bigger than all of them.

You’ve never felt quite so small. 

“You were in that movie, right? ‘Those ain’t your average space-invaders’, that was you right?” You nod, the back of your throat drying out. He chuckles. “You were good. Really good. You were so pretty.” 

“I was ten.” 

He shrugs. “Yeah. Ten outta ten.”

Your stomach clenches and it’s like he can tell. Alan reaches the two inches across the linoleum and gently strokes your forearm. A light, smelly panic sweat breaks out over your forehead, under your armpits. 

You want him away from you, want him gone, to run back to your room, but where would that get you? 

Roll over, play dead, show your under belly. You don’t know what else to do to make him go away.

“Well, if you see my mom,” you ease around him, your forearm sliding from his grasp just as his fingers tighten, making sure you don’t seem offended, “tell her I’ve got a ride to–,”

“Hey, wait, where ya going?” 

You all but run back to your room, the coffee pot beeping behind you. You throw open your bedroom door and leap inside, locking it behind you. You don’t realize you’re panting until you feel light-headed, dizzy – you feel sticky all of a sudden and rush into your bathroom. Steam pours from the scalding hot water, the red handle all the way to the right, as you stand over it, watching it rush down the drain. With your lips pinched between your teeth, you run your hands under it and muffle a scream. It hurts. It burns but it’s like his touch is evaporating off your skin and there’s relief in that. It’s the first time you realize that the pain you give yourself is different from the pain that they give you. 

Not all of them are like that. 

Some of them are actually kind of okay. 

You’re fifteen and dressed as a pumpkin for the Halloween party hosted by the studio, the suit baggy and oversized, and for once, your mom’s friends don’t stare at you. No one really has all night and it’s nice. You feel like you can ease into the wall and no one would notice. There’s a long black couch on the other side of a plant with glowing lights in the shape of ghosts wrapped around its trunk. You stepside around a few directors, one of your other actors, and head straight for the couch. 

You don’t realize Jim, your mom’s current boyfriend is already there until you sit down and groan. He laughs from the opposite end and you jump. 

He’s more her age, thankfully, and doesn’t really seem to notice if you’re at home or not. In fact, you can’t really remember another conversation with him that lasted longer than a few minutes.

“You liking the party?” He asks.

You shrug – never show your actual feelings. “It’s kinda late. I’ve got classes on Monday, so I’m hoping to make it an early night.”

He nods, slowly, distracted. There’s something about his eyes that isn’t right. Not in the way that he looks at you, but at everything, like he’s trying to look through a dense fog.

Your mother is nowhere to be found, which isn’t entirely out of the ordinary for this sort of thing. She’d either show up and be the life of the party or show up so trashed she had to be escorted out of the building. 

But it is odd for her to just leave one of her toys lying around. 

“Do you know where my mom is?” You ask Jim and he shakes his head, as though it takes a considerable amount of effort just to hold himself upright. There’s definitely something wrong with him.

And then you see the smoke coming from his fingers and you finally realize that skunky smell is coming from him. 

He sees your gaze fall. “You want a hit?” He asks, either not remembering your question or not wanting to answer.

You’d never tried it before, not really having time between shooting schedules and school and your mom wanting to take you out to meet new casting directors and writers. You sit there, staring and realize Jim is probably one of the only consistent people you see in your life, everyone else a revolving door of names and faces and elbows to rub. A tiredness breaks over you like the push of a wave and you sway, wanting nothing more than to be at home under the covers. You wish you’d brought your walkman, so you could have hid out on the soundstage until the party was over.

You’d grown skinny over the past year. Rewarded and praised for it by producers and studio execs, you saw that people listened to you more, looked you in the eye when you were beautiful, made more beautiful by the thinness of your cheeks, your narrow thighs. Your mother was convinced you were taking pills, but couldn’t find anything in the house. And yet, the real reason behind it all was sometimes you were just too tired to eat. Too tired to move. Happy to curl up wherever you found yourself and sleep until the next person needed something from you.

But this is what you wanted, after all. You asked for a life of movies and revolving doors and fake people and men staring at your ass. You are reminded of this all the time. 

You nod at Jim, curiosity getting the better of you and wondering if other girls did this sort of thing in basements or with their friends or boyfriends. You portray a teenage girl on television, but sometimes you don’t feel like one at all. 

He reaches out to you and you take it. You’d smoke a cigarette once, with a few of the kids from that one time you guest-starred on that sitcom, so you think this’ll be the same.

“What’s it going to feel like?” You ask, the white paper inches from your lips. Jim looked at you and his eyes sort of crinkled. 

“It’s good. Real good. Like there’s a cloud between you and the rest of the world.”

That did sound nice.

You put your lips and inhale – it burns in a way you weren’t expecting – and you cough. Jim laughs in a way that makes you feel like you’ve done something wrong, that you’re silly.

“You’ll get it,” he says, “you’ll get it.”

You try again and remember that he held his breath before exhaling. You do the same, but the scratch makes your eyes water, your chest tighten, but you hold on, until you feel smoke cauterizing the back of your throat close and you cough again, less this time.

Jim laughs again and takes back the skunky cigarette. “Hey, look at that, your first joint and you handled it like a champ.” 

He smokes more, losing interest in you, so he turns and watches the party. Your heart beats roughly in your chest, but that might be more of the nerves than anything else. You fidget on the couch, waiting for something to happen, but it never does.

“I think I need another h-hit. I don’t feel anything.”

Jim frowns at you, shaking his head. “Hell no. You took two giant puffs on your first go. I’m not babysitting you when you’re puking in the toilet with the spins.”

“The spins?”

“When you drink while you’re high. Can be a real bad mix.” 

You blush, wondering if he saw you take sips from the flask in your purse or he just assumes you’re always drinking because you’re LeAnne’s daughter. 

“Just sit back, relax, you’ll feel it. In a bit.”

So you try his approach, nonchalantly watching people dressed in devil costumes, in white vampire fangs and cloaks, little skimpy bunny outfits, as the party rages on. You watch, and slowly, the whole thing feels distant. Like you’re in the far back of a theater and everything in front of you is some sort of stage.

You find you like it in the back row, in the quiet and the darkness. It’s warm, sort of like you’re dizzy but you sway with the movement and you don’t get sick. You find that you are rolling your head back and forth and you giggle.

Jim smirks at you, that joint almost gone. “Yeah, there it is.”

You’d never been high like this before. Buzzed a little bit from the beer in your flask, but this was new. This was . . .

“It’s nice,” you smile widely to the ceiling. “Does it always feel this way?”

“Like I said, you can mix with alcohol and get really fucked up.” Jim shrugs. “And different strains do different things. This is gonna relax your brain, but there’s others that’ll give you a body high.”

Body, this thing you’re in that doesn’t feel like it belongs to you.

“But a mental high from weed and a mental high from glue are like two totally different things.”

Your bones feel like they weigh a thousand pounds and you could just melt into the leather. But you turn your head, dropping it against the back of the couch.

“You can get high from glue?”

“You can get high from just about anything.”

“Oh.”

The needle-like feeling that pricks your heart every time you come to one of these parties is gone. The sloshy oozy feeling in your stomach when you go into public with your mother is gone. There is nothing left inside of you except weight and heat and air that comes in through your nose and out through your mouth. 

You giggle again. What if this is how a pumpkin feels all the time?

“Will it always feel like this?”

He doesn’t understand your question, doesn’t care enough to think about it, so he answers the only way he can. “Nah, should only last for a few hours. Then you’re good. No hangover, which is a plus.” 

“But I always want it to feel this way.”

He grins again and pulls out a small plastic baggy with some fuzzy brussel-sprout-looking vegetable inside. 

“Got twenty bucks on you?” 

You’re sixteen and you’ve just started in your first major motion picture. Offers are rolling in, you no longer have to seek them out. The brand new telephone for your brand new house is constantly ringing. You have to unplug it to sleep at night. But that usually makes your mother yell at you. 

She wants to answer every call that comes through. As if this house was hers.

You sit cross-legged on your bed, grinding up the weed you bought off a sound-stage guy earlier today in your silver grinder, your headphones in to drown out the noises coming from the other side of the house as well as the ones in your head.

This boyfriend was not so nice and in a drunken stupor grabbed your ass in front of LeAnne. She raged and yelled and blamed you. 

Get out, she told you. Leave. Get out. We don’t want you here. Leave. 

This is my house, you old bitch.

Licking the paper gently, you finish rolling the joint and press pause on your walkman. Stevie Nicks pauses in her crooning, and is it over now, do you know how? pick up the pieces and go home, and you remind yourself to find a purply drape at the next flee market. Reaching to the end of the bed, you plug in your headphones to the hot pink tv and flip to the right station.

Henry had sent in a new tv for your birthday, and you had that promptly thrown out. You bought this with your first check from residuals. 

It’s almost eleven. It’s about to start. 

You light the joint, inhaling smoothly, as the credits for Twenty-Three and Fun start up. 

The joint quivers at the end of your knee, your toes curling. It wasn’t produced by your father’s company, but it was all anyone talked about at school, in the gossip mags. You thought about buying Tiger Beat just for the pictures . . . of one specific cast member.

You bite your nail as the theme song plays and the credits roll through all the gorgeous, young actors smiling as they go about their perfectly average lives in the big city. 

And then his name shows up and you inhale smoke quickly to stifle the thing expanding in your chest.

Dieter Bravo. 

His smooth soft hair, dark sweet eyes. God, he is so cute. 

Your hand clenches the sheets. You’ve never had a boyfriend, only been kissed once while at dance in between shooting schedules that you’d begged your mom to let you attend. It was bad, it tasted bad, his lips were rubbery and wet, and you didn’t feel anything. 

Not like when you imagine what it would be like to be kissed by him.

Twenty-Three and Fun is out of your demographic, but maybe you could convince someone to let you try out for the part of someone’s little sister who comes in for the weekend. You’d just love the chance to meet him. He makes you feel like nothing you’ve ever felt before, nothing you know what to do with, but you tingle all over with it.

You’re at the tail end of sixteen when the spiral starts. 

When you don’t know where to put this loneliness that’s been dragging you down. 

Men stare at you but not in the way you want. Girls your own age won’t look at you, and women glare at you while their husbands stare. And boys, God, boys your own age –

You wipe the tears from your eyes, the wind snarling through your hair, the heat of the summer night sinking into your skin like wet clay. You know you’re driving too fast, but you don’t care.

Every day you go to work and put on someone else’s skin. Their clothes. Their face. For a while, it’s been freeing, to pretend to have normal problems, a normal family, a normal life. Because you knew even if you had never chosen to go into your father’s industry – which was now just as much yours – you knew your life wasn’t ever going to be normal. Not in the way it mattered anyway. 

But there is something there when you step in front of a camera. A feeling that doesn’t come from a dark place, from feelings of abandonment and loneliness – it comes from a place inside of you that still feels like you own, still is yours to hold and keep safe, despite everyone taking things from you without asking. Instead of taking, it gives. It builds. It grows, despite the salted earth of your soul. 

You like becoming someone else for a while, thinking as they do. Dancing, laughing, eating, playing as someone other than yourself. You like to create. You crave it. You create life for someone else that doesn’t exist and you love it. It feels right, imagining something if not for you, for someone else. Someone who looks like you but isn’t you. It feels good to dream. 

But lately. 

Lately, this job is no longer an act of creation. It’s fake smiles and ad campaigns and commercials and it feels rotten. Hollow. Like you’re under the eyes of a thousand leering men instead of just one. It feels cheap. You feel cheap, for wanting it to be something more. This desire for life itself dies in your hands, choked out, aborted before it had the chance to breathe.

Your body, yourself, is being twisted, molded into something you don’t want it to become and the only time, the only time you feel as though you have even some slight control is when you have none at all. When you detach from your corporeal form, so high or drunk you can’t feel your fingers. 

It began with the beer your mom’s boyfriends left in the fridge, then the pills in her medicine cabinet. Then the mini bottles of Crown Royal and Jim Beam in the mini-fridges at your dad’s office. No one ever seemed to care when you swiped the whole row into your backpack. Maybe others had done the exact same thing. 

You didn’t know how or why these things made you feel better but they did. You didn’t care about the tears on your face, the hot flood of anger beating in your chest, and you didn’t care about the speed limit, not even when you saw the flashing red and blue lights.

But you started to care when they put you in lock up and then you definitely did when your father’s lawyer bailed you out. 

You went home and threw up for six hours. No one came to check on you, no one came to find you when you yanked the phone cord out of the wall. You clutched the porcelain basin of the toilet for what felt like days. Years. You aged decades that night.

When you woke up, you showered, ate, and called back your father’s lawyer.

You had decided on a name, a new name to put on the emancipation papers. 

You told the lawyer very clearly and seriously over the phone: “I want my name to be Natalie Lorraine.”

It was the emancipation that finally did it. The final chop from the parental vine. The day she kicked you out, you came home from school, in between shoots for a new film with Gerard Butler and in talks for something with Helen Miram, and you find your mother curled up on the kitchen table. At first, you legitimately thought she was dead; the top half of her body was crumpled against the wood, her feet tangled with the rungs of the chair. She faced away from you, her right hand curled around an empty crystal tumbler and a three-fourths empty bottle of Belvedere inches from her fingertips. 

You stare, dumb-founded, your heart so slow you could hear it pound like a drum in your ears. And then she twitches. 

And then she wails.

“How could you? How could you do this to me? I’m your mother. You owe me. You owe me you owe me you owe me.”

She heaves boneless to the floor, the glass and bottle slipping out of her hand and shattering like droplets of rain. You can’t move, transfixed, as your mother, hands split open, knees carving bloody trails across the tile, drags herself towards your feet, like a freshly dug-up corpse. 

She’s muttering, spitting, snarling – she’s a starved, beaten beast, ready to make its last stand. 

You were a mistake

You ruined me

You ruined your father for me

Her sentences are blurred, notched together, overlapping, and intertwining. The only thing you remember is the vitriol and hatred more palpable than her own breath. 

Someone older, someone more separated from their pink, flushed girlhood would have the callouses to ease the burn, dull the cut. But at sixteen, you didn’t. At sixteen, with a burgeoning substance abuse problem and at the mercy of the first of many instances where adulthood begins to rob you of the small pleasures of life, you watch your mother crumble and it scares you.

In that moment you want nothing more than to be taken care of, in a way that doesn’t feel like it’s asking too much but it clearly is. You want to be safe in a way that is primal, the animal fear of the dark and unknown. You’ve seen your mother drunk before but not this drunk, never heard the sounds she’s making — the wailing, the disappointment, the sorrow and rage. It scares you so badly you want to cry.

The gap between girlhood and womanhood is closed when you understand your mother is only human. Nothing less. And nothing more. 

She’s still muttering hateful, horrible things as you take her to her feet and ease her onto the couch. 

She’s silent when you throw a blanket over her. 

She’s pale, shaking, green. 

Go away. I don’t want you here. I don’t want you around me. Leave me alone.

Leave me.

Leave me.

Leave me. 

Go away. 

You leave her, not knowing if it's serious enough to call 911, if you can actually die from drinking too much, but that fear, that vice-grip around your chest, it’s squeezing your lungs so tightly, tears leak out of the corner of your eyes. But then it sinks. Sinks into your bones, your blood, your muscles. Watching your mother folded up like a broken doll, you experience fear like you’ve never felt before. 

Blink and you’re in your room.

Blink and you’re under your bed, curled up, knees to your chin, and you’re crying. You can’t stop crying. It’s the only thing that seems to appease the fear, the sense that nothing is real and everything is going to turn out badly and it makes your stomach twist. You gag on your own spit and you shake and you tremble and you experience your first panic attack without anyone to tell you what’s going on. How to survive something like that. You grow up thinking this is how everyone lives and you’re just too pathetic to take it. You let that shame and embarrassment fester and grow because it has no way of stopping. 

Your father is also served with the papers. 

Two weeks later, the production for your upcoming movie was suddenly put on hold. The role with Helen Miriam went to someone else.

He never helped you get ahead in the industry, but he absolutely blocked you from it. He never called you again.

Someone, someone else, might have been hurt by the fact that your father cut you off without so much as a goodbye. But it’s not like you could miss what you never had.

You take the hint and enroll in UC Santa Barbara under your new name.

The myth of your maidenhood ended in much of the same way it began: at the behest of someone else and exiled as an afterthought.

You tried the whole sleep-around-to-fill-a-need thing for the freshmen year of college. It didn’t take. You liked sex but you liked the chase more. You liked the hunt, the thrill, the unconscious desire to touch, when the desire to do something first emerges in their heads. You like to watch the basic urge emerge in their darkened eyes before the other shoe drops. Drops and splatters coherent and rational thought like a bug on a windshield. 

You liked sex, even if more often you had to get yourself off while your partner had fallen asleep, their needs met. But you liked being wanted more. The drugs helped bridge the gap and given that you had no idea how to make friends because you'd never had one your own age before, the puddles of bodies that dripped onto couches and floors at parties seemed to be as good a social circle as any. They all started to recognize you at parties, in lecture halls, at bars. They nodded, you nodded back, and you sat down. 

No longer alone.

But not entirely wanted either. 

It was enough though. 

By your third year, you were known more for your party provisions (with your old contacts from the industry) than your ex-boyfriends. 

You meet Heidi Morgan through one of your production management professors. 

You’d gone in to speak with your professor, a man notorious for sleeping with his students, and believed you to be next in line (men were so much better at doing what you asked when they thought you’d sleep with them), so you were hoping that you could convince him that it was actually your lab partner who stole the paper from you, not the other way around, when you see him with someone else. 

Blonde, small, feisty. 

Heidi Morgan takes one look at the grotesque ogling in his eyes and promptly introduces herself. 

In her own fire and take-no-shit attitude, you find kindred spirits. 

She later asks you out for drinks, you think it’s been too long since you went down on a girl, and you completely misread the situation. 

She clears things up and then asks you to read for a part. The whiplash makes your head spin, but given that she’s not calling you a giant slut, it’s probably good news.

She knows who you are. Suspected because you looked familiar and because she has friends in some truly weird places, she confirms her suspicions by the end of the day. So she gives you a call, you show up, flirt too much, and maybe end up with a job. 

She gives you the script. It’s good.

Really good.

Why me? You ask her. You graduate in two weeks. You’re turning twenty-two in a few days. There’s nothing you’ve done in recent years to make her have this kind of faith in you. All digital memories of you reflect a knobby-kneed, round-cheeked little girl then that same little girl with tits and a smirk well beyond her years. 

She didn’t think she might find her lead in a dingy auditorium, she says, but crazier things have happened. It’s not a guarantee, or a promise, just an offer. Try out, see what happens. 

Crazier things have happened.

The rest is less myth and more old history.

(Historic)

The day you meet him is not unlike any other. Except in the little things. Your bra strap breaks when you go to put it on. Your belt loop gets caught in a door handle and nearly shucks your pants to the floor. You somehow get lost on the way to the studio even though you have your phone mapping the route. It takes you around and around and around until you get out and ask a very confused gas station attendant where the fuck the sound stage is. 

It’s not momentous. Annoying, perhaps, so annoying that all these little things pester your brain like flies gorging on rotten fruit. You’re distracted, one eye always glancing over your shoulder. Trouble, trouble, trouble, your problems seem to whisper, you’re in trouble.

A PA comes to find you, saying Heidi specifically asked for your presence but she’s gone missing. He thinks he knows where to find her, if you’d come with him. You eye him up from the black leather couch you’re draped across, irritated at the day and at him for his shameless staring. You nod, and immediately he starts running his mouth about his own Hollywood dreams. He’s a writer, you know, maybe you’ve heard of some of his smaller indie work, it’s not very much, but folks who know say it's good so maybe he’ll be able to sell it if –

The door to the back of the lot opens and it’s like god snapped his fingers in your ear. It’s not momentous, or earth-shattering, but holy shit does it fuck you up.

He’s broad. Tall. Forearms, thick and veiny, stocky thumbs and tense fingers. His hair is just on the edge of being long, but combed back in some attempt to tame it, to fold it into submission. His right earlobe is puckered, pierced, but no earring. His beard and mustache are trimmed, clean shaven elsewhere. Despite how he’s built out adult male muscle from his days on Twenty-Three and Fun, he still has those boyish eyes, a dimple that would drive anyone up a wall, and eyelashes you’d pay a thousand dollars for. You knew this was coming but it still feels like a kick in the chest. 

That kick burns when you realize something.

He’s fucking pissed. He’s beautiful, carved from your very dreams of what the most gorgeous man on earth would look like, but he’s fucking pissed.

Surprisingly, at you. 

Well, that’s disappointing. 

He comes at you with his claws drawn and you’ve never, ever been one to back down. You swipe back and hope you draw blood.

You discover other things about Dieter Bravo, the boy who you used to have a heart-stopping crush on when you didn’t know anything better. Fantasy will always be better than reality, and this isn’t exactly how you’d thought your first meeting would go.

And yet, you discover something else, something very, very curious. Something soft and impressionable, bruised purple and green. Something you want to lean on with your entire weight until he chokes. It’s ugly, but it’s amusing. Maybe this is how you hoped your first meeting would go, albeit with some tricky obstacles and a ticking clock. 

You want to press and see what spills out. 

Dieter Bravo cannot and does not look away from you. 

The day you meet Dieter Bravo is also the day you meet The Sixers, the day you meet Marie. She’s small, mousy, but apparently a fucking rock star on the drums. You like the irony; quiet and unassuming until she bangs through your head with percussion. Where the rest of her bandmates are wide-eyed and eager and come with more drugs than a pharmacy, there’s something about Marie that you find so tenderly earnest you kind of wish you didn’t come dressed like you were going out to eat the fleshly hearts of men everywhere. You want to approach her on her level. You don’t want to scare her away. There’s something redemptive about a kind, sweet girl like Marie striking up a friendship with you. 

If you could ever figure out how to start one. 

“Excited for the filming to start?” You ask her after nearly everyone’s picked up their things and left after the reading. She glances at you, then over her shoulder, as if you were talking to someone else. You instantly feel insanely protective of her. 

She blinks a few times before distractedly shaking her head. “No. I’m actually terrified.” 

“About being in a movie?”

She cringes, as if it’s the most shameful thing in the world. 

“Yeah. I love playing in front of crowds, but something about being on camera scares me.” 

You make a note to find out the next time they’re playing live.

“It’s honestly not that bad. It feels a little weird, like some unblinking eye staring at you, but then it just kind of fades away.” 

She bites her lip, tucking that short brown hair over her ear. “Have you done this before?”

You’re not exactly hiding your childhood movie star past, but you don’t really want it broadcasted.

“Here and there.” 

The rest of her bandmates are chatting amongst themselves, perhaps not yet aware you’re trying to befriend one of them. You’re not quite sure how it’s going.

“If you ever want, we could talk and I could give you some pointers.”

Fuck, why did that sound like a line? It shouldn’t. You didn’t want it to. Where was the line between asking someone to be your friend and asking someone for a fuck?

If she notices your embarrassment, she doesn't show it. She grins brightly, unashamed. “Yes! Oh my god, yes, please. I’d love that!”

Normally, when giving someone your number, you’d grab their hand and write it in Sharpie, giving them a good wink. Now you tear off a corner of the call sheet and write down your number in shaking hands. It’s a small piece of paper, easily lost. That’s okay, if she does lose it. No need to freak out.

She’s grinning, smile expanding across that round face of hers as she takes your number when someone calls her name.

Roxie, the one with bright-red flaming hair and gorgeously thick eyebrows, takes a glance at the piece of paper in Marie’s fingers. One eyebrow arches, and she says nothing.

Roxie looks at you like she wants to devour you whole. You think you’ll let her. 

You decide to ignore him.

Whatever his problem with you is, it doesn’t have to be dealt with immediately. Maybe he’ll come around and if not, no skin off your nose. It’s none of your business what happens off camera, what he thinks about you as a person. All that matters is giving a good performance and you know you can do that. 

You just sort of wish you had known more about the role before Heidi offered it. You really sort of wish you had known Dieter was going to be your co-star. That night, after approaching him in the parking lot, you had two glasses of wine to settle your trembling nerves, and you flipped through the script.

He was so calm and collected at the table read today. Cool, relaxed, at ease with himself and the world. Everyone knew him, everyone talked about him, either directly to you or in snatches of conversation.

Dieter Bravo – you could not ask for a better scene partner!

Dieter Bravo – he’s so, so nice. He always stops for fans!

Dieter Bravo – this shoot is going to be so much fun with him!

You’d never been particularly star-struck, but for the first time in your life, the idea of working with your co-star was daunting. When you were up against Gerard Butler, you’d been in the game for a while, knew the industry, showed up in the trades. Now, you felt like any other Santa Barbara graduate stumbling out in front of the camera for the first time. Where was that all-knowing smirk you had perfected at fifteen? God, had you always been so transparent?

You felt like you had to prove yourself at that table read. You know you were going a bit overboard, but they watched you, transfixed, and it empowered you. Mark Bronson, Marie, the rest of The Sixers, they watched you like Taylor had possessed your body and you instantly became a rockstar. 

Only, he didn’t. He watched you and didn’t look away, but he looked so uninterested in your performance, the tears that filled your eyes were partially real.

And then he touched you and in that moment, you knew he was mocking you. Laughing at you, you fucking child. He was the legendary star here, not you, and to think you ever had a chance was laughable. The heat of disgust in his eyes hurt, more than you wanted to admit. 

It was day one and he hated you.

Things escalate. 

He caught you high on set and it felt like you were being scolded by your older brother. He didn’t get it. He never did. All that shit about how he knows what it’s like – bullshit. All fucking bullshit. He was somehow always in the corner of your eye, watching you, begging you to fuck up so he could expose you like the fraud you are. 

And a pathetic fraud you are at that. He touches you and it’s like algae, hot and dense, spreading across your skin. You fight the feeling that strokes your cunt and you grit your teeth. Stop touching me, go away, stay back – please. 

You’re twenty-two and still harboring that fucking crush you had when you were sixteen. It’s embarrassing. It’s pathetic. It’s so, so, so wrong.

You try to ignore him. Try to exorcize him from your every waking thought. It doesn’t take. You get drunk at the pool party and you want his eyes, anyone’s eyes, on you. 

Marie is shy, you try to sober up around her, but you’re too far gone and you don’t want her to see you like this.

So you find Roxie. And Samuel. They give you something that makes your pupils dilate to the size of quarters and you feel like you’re made of cosmic dust. When they touch you, beauty and awe and the atoms of the universe bloom across your skin. You like kissing them, you decide. The water dripping off you from the pool feels like bad lovers and broken kingdoms up for sale.

You end up at his door. You don’t mean to. You genuinely forgot what room you were in. 

Consciously, you know he’s married. Consciously, you know he hates you. But that doesn’t stop you from asking anyway. 

“You could join us, you know.” 

You want so badly to be his theatrical equal that it hurts, it burns hotter for a moment than your desire for him, and he just stares at you. Consciousness somewhere in a nearby galaxy, you can’t read the look on his face. And then it blurs, he closes the door, and the entire hallway grows thick, heavy leaves.

Disappointment is a physical object and it burrows into your chest. You think you can feel your ribs moving to make room.

Sam and Roxie fuck on your bed while you’re curled up on the futon. You don’t even change out of your suit. You kick them out as soon as they are done, not wanting their hungry gazes to turn to you. 

This is always the worst part. When the emotions and memories that you’ve managed to pry off you as you coat yourself in a protective layer of LSD, finally come back. They wrap around you like a vice and you can feel the beginnings of a panic attack start in the tremble of your fingers. You stay there in the armchair, damp and cold and shivering and trying not to choke on your own throat, until the early hours of the morning. You think you could die like this but you don’t. You never actually do.

He doesn’t bring it up and neither do you. You sort of wish he would, just for a chance to . . . no, that’s fucked up and, if not legally, morally wrong. You can’t wish for anything when it comes to him.

It’s easier to hate him. To pretend like he was some over-involved, self-obsessed diva who stepped on your lines on purpose and flat-out refused to run scenes with you. It was easier as a whole for a while.

Marie started talking to you on her own now and that made you forget Dieter for a bit. The rest of the group was hesitant in their welcome, despite what had almost happened between you, Sam, and Roxie. But they all came around when you gave them the cleanest Molly they’d had in years.

It was like college all over again, but the faces were consistent this time. Five of them. You smoked in their van, fuzzy orange carpet fibers tickling your ear as you looked up at the glow-in-the-dark star stickers on the roof. 

“Why are you called The Sixers if there are five of you?” You ask suddenly. 

There’s a pause and then a collective chuckle. You watch it like lightning spark between them.

Nick finally speaks up: “Because it sounds like the sex-ers.”

“Sixty-nine n’ feeling fine.”

You laugh with them this time and you feel your breath mix with theirs. 

While meeting him wasn’t a particularly momentous occasion, the drive up to his AirBnB was. Maybe it was the lack of air this high up, but around every turn, your chest got a little tighter. The Sixers had shown you The Labyrinth with David Bowie last weekend (“how have you never seen that movie? Did you grow up under a rock?”) and you can’t help but think of the Goblin King coming to whisk you away. At the very least, the amount of rings they wore were the same. 

You try desperately to not look at his white-knuckles around the steering wheel and fail tremendously.

The thing is, you don’t really want to fight with him. You don’t want to have to interact with him through this hazy, distant, drugged out wall, but that seems like the only way he’ll talk to you. He’s always scowling at you, like you’d done something wrong, and you hadn’t. Sure, you thought about it and fucked yourself on the biggest dildo you had about it, but you hadn’t actually done anything. You hadn’t even made a move on him, not even bat an eyelash. But it seems like you just breathe in his direction and that sets him off. 

You still don’t understand why his past drug problem is now your problem too. In your absence from Hollywood, you’d somehow missed his ups-and-downs as he transitioned out of a teenage heartthrob into a fully adult hot mess. You’d certainly missed his marriage announcement until you googled it in the bathroom after lunch one day to see if what you’d heard the two techs talk about was true.

She’s so fucking hot.

Yeah, she was a model, right? Dude fucking scored big.

Fuck, she was a model. Even if she wasn’t, she certainly looked it, from all the red-carpet photos of the two of them. He looked at her with complete and total adoration.

Hollywood party boy settles down with recent marriage to cubist painter’s daughter

The headline was wordy but got the point across. He was off-limits. 

You didn’t know how to make someone like you if you couldn’t offer them sex or drugs. What the fuck were you supposed to do with the sober and married Dieter Bravo?

And yet, there were times. Moments. Fragments. Bursts of light in a mirror, where you thought he looked too long. How his eyes flickered black when you talked about your bra, or your tits, or your ass. But that’s all they were – fleeting instances of your own insanity bleeding into reality. He would never look at you like that. He hated you. 

It scared you, the way he expected you to act when you couldn’t hide behind being high, when you couldn’t flirt your way out of a particularly tense situation. He wanted you raw, exposed, your face revealed to the light you had spent years hiding from.

And then he did the darndest thing.

He was nice about it. In the kitchen, and then on the patio, he asked you questions about your start in the industry, what you’d like to do with your life, how you saw your career going. He cooked for you and made you laugh. He invoked the holy saint Sister Heidi as a bargaining chip and it was all the excuse you needed to drop the boxing gloves. You didn’t want to fight with him. You wanted to be his friend. You wanted him to like you.

Scratch that.

You wanted him to fuck you within an inch of your life and, sure, it was stupid to finger-fuck yourself to him, on the same couch as him, but maybe you wanted to get a little caught. Okay, a lot caught because then he’d tell you to fuck off and he’d draw the line in the goddamn sand and, sure, it’d be embarrassing and, sure, it’d hurt like hell but you’d get over it. You’d nurse your heart but you’d get back on that fucking bike because you really, really wanted this movie to work – but –

He fucking doesn’t. 

He doesn’t kiss you but he wants to. He looks at you like he wants to suck the marrow from your bones, drink the blood from your heart through your cunt.

Dieter Bravo wants to kiss you desperately, but because he is a good man, he doesn’t. And because you’re a shit person, you make it hard on him. You make it hurt because it hurts you and just for once, for a second, you want someone to understand how you feel. How you hurt. How you ache. 

That house in New Mexico changed everything. For you. For him.

Friends didn’t make time with each other because they were trying to plug up the moans in their head. Friends didn’t keep busy to keep their hands off each other. You weren’t friends with him, but you did get along. You learned a lot about him. You’d never had a real friend before but you sure this isn’t how it’s supposed to feel. 

Instead of a myth, your relationship is built in handprints. Red blotches on cave walls, their original meaning lost to time, a dead language no one speaks any more. Sometimes the prints overlap, sometimes they don’t. There are no words spoken, but the feeling is there all the same.

You think, if you could just take your aching heart out of your body, you could actually be Dieter Bravo’s friend. He fills in holes you didn’t realize were empty. Chasms for art, for acting, for food that didn’t come in a can or delivered on your front door. He knows about wine, and whiskey, and needs help dressing himself. He never made you feel like your asks were too much, your need to connect too great. He took your hand and told you what you wanted was normal. He’s funny, patient, and loves Shirley MaClaine movies. He did her entire monologue from The Apartment one night after hours of begging and it brought you to tears. You had a scene partner in Dieter Bravo, you had someone to challenge you, to rethink scenes and pull back deeper and deeper character layers. He’d taken a course online about psychology to have a new perspective on analyzing characters and you thought it was fucking genius. 

Marie filled certain relationship needs – a girl to talk about drama with, a fellow fan of live music, someone to make you look up to – but Dieter fulfilled more, if not all of them. Despite working in an artistic industry for years, you’d never once talked trade with someone and certainly not someone who knew it so well. You were awestruck by him. 

Call it infatuation, call it being horny, but there is a connection, a red through line that connects you both. And for a while, that’s enough. 

Until it isn’t. 

The mark of his blotchy handprints on your heart stop when you fuck some guy you barely know because Dieter hurt you. 

When he won’t look at you while he’s pretending to fuck you, you feel self-conscious again, like he’s going to think you’re some inexperienced little nepo baby. But he does his duty and you do yours and you’ve never felt so empty. 

Your handprint stays, while his blurs away. 

(Psychologic)

After production ends, you exist in the margins. No more mythologizing. No more cave drawings. 

And then Marie shows up.

She takes you to get your nails done like it's the most normal thing in the world. What is wrong with her? Doesn’t she know what you are?

You get smoothies and see some live music and she keeps you from spiraling. There is no possible way she knew about the lines of coke upstairs in your bedroom, but she takes you out into the light all the same. 

You go out to shows with The Sixers. They love having a groupie who’s a Hollywood star. Marie seems embarrassed when they show-case you, but you find you don’t mind waving a bit on stage and introducing the band. You think you see a pair of deep brown eyes in the crowd occasionally but you know it’s not. You have to accept your fate. He might not like you and he doesn’t hate you, but he certainly doesn’t want anything to do with you.

Not friends, not lovers, but something else. Something almost.

You and the Sixers swim in the ocean off the Santa Barbara coast. You go to parties and you play the bongo drums in a treehouse in South Los Angeles. You bring the good drugs and everyone loves you. 

You don’t want to go to the wrap party, but Marie insists. You think she likes being famous just for all the opportunities to get dressed up and do your make up. She told you once that you are the prettiest girl she’d ever seen without any motive behind it. She wasn’t trying to fuck you or fuck with your head. It was just the truth in her eyes and it made you nauseous.

You go to the wrap party because it’s something better to do than get high on shrooms for the fourth time this week and as a reward, Cooper shares his blunt with you in the car. You laugh easily and often and loudly and Cooper keeps you steady with a hand on your waist. You’re nervous, you want to drink more, but you already feel like you’re carrying too many cups and plates and the noise it’s going to make when you drop them all is going to be deafening. 

He’s here. He’s here with his fucking gorgeous wife and you stand behind Cooper so you have something blocking your line of sight.

Just as you are about to order your first vodka soda of the night, Dieter rushes back into the house. The weed and coke in you switch the plugs in your brain and suddenly you are very, very angry. 

But the Dieter you find is fragile, beaten down, vulnerable. He talks to you like he did in New Mexico and it dulls the edges around the hole in your chest. He looks at you like you’re his saving grace, his last hope. 

Myths lie. They blur the truth to make a better story. They build up a man larger than life, they make goddesses out of women, and they sanctify, canonize love. They make you ache with the wanting of the fantasy of it, and that’s on purpose. Myths are the human experience on fire.

Kissing him, you feel on fucking fire.

Meeting him didn’t feel momentous. But fucking him certainly was. 

The settlement of your mythology burns to the ground, flames licking the sky. He has crystalized in your veins and, in an instant, you’re hopelessly addicted.

With Dieter Bravo, you come to like sex. You come to love it actually. It’s an itch, a fluttering, warm feeling that makes you twitch and tense when his hands aren’t on you. There’s some part of you that knows the inherent danger of giving one man, much less this man, that much power over you, but fuck, you can’t help it. 

You’re too young, too inexperienced in the world to know the difference between when a man wants you for sex and when a man loves you. In your mind, the two are the same and cannot be separated. You know what it feels like to be wanted to be fucked, but in your nativity you assume that’s how a man looks at you when he wants to love you — and this time you’d welcome it. 

There isn’t much to say about New Orleans, except for three things:

One, you’ve successfully confused yourself into thinking this is what being in a relationship with him would be like.

Two, you’ve never felt safer and more wanted and more complete than you ever have when you take drugs with Dieter. (that primal animal fear is gone for the first time in what feels like years)

And three, you’re so fucking in love with him you’re sick with it.

In the sickness, you grow weak. You burn with fever. Your bones ache and your mind races. His touch is simultaneously a balm and a contagion. 

You love him. You love him. You love him.

You love him unlike anything or anyone. 

Marie is actually the only one who ventures a guess. Who catches you, wings pinned to the corkboard, and asks you point-blank, “are you fucking Dieter Bravo?” 

Maybe she’s braver because it’s over text, permanent traces of your infidelity, but you stare at her message for hours. You think about it in the hotel shower after the plane lands in Los Angeles. You haven’t seen her in weeks and you’ve stopped returning her phone calls. 

Your high falters at the idea that you might have (and probably did) lose a friend over him. But what did that matter, in the grand scheme of things, your sickness asks you, now that you have him?

Now that he’s the only thing that matters. Now that he is everything. 

He goes back to his wife. 

After everything. After what you did for him. After what you gave up. How you prostrated yourself for his love, for a moment of his time. He can’t see it, it’s eating you up. You think cancer has kinder teeth than his. 

The foundations of the core of your being are rocked. It doesn’t feel real because he’s still in this hotel with you, the same hotel where you fucked in the bathroom, where you flirted with him for the cameras to sell the movie, where he begged you to stay with him, you’re gonna stay, right? you’re gonna be with me, after this? And maybe it isn’t real because he only lasts being apart from you for twelve, maybe fourteen hours. Maybe he’s sick too. Maybe he’s fucked just as much as you are. 

In your dark, deep wretched heart, you hope he is. You hope he’d die without you. But you don’t know. You don’t know because he never says it. 

This time, it’s real, he promises. This time, he’s never going back. This time he’s going to say he loves you, his kisses pledge to you. 

This time he’s not going to leave you.

In the mornings after Chloe leaves and you kiss him E-tablets with your tongue and he fucks you in every way he knows how, he curls up next to you and you tell him. It doesn’t matter he doesn’t seem to hear you.

You tell him you love him, have always loved him. Dieter Bravo turned from an imaginary companion, to a friend you didn’t want, and now to a lover who makes you think you’re special. Something valuable, precious. Something that is worth keeping. 

Until you’re not.

Myths serve to answer questions about our place in the natural order of things. To ease tension. To provide guidance. 

Why does it rain?

Where do the seasons come from?

What is the sun, and why does it leave and return?

What is heartbreak?

What is grief? What is sorrow? How do we carry them with us?

How do we go on when the world is determined to break us?

When you’ve always had nothing, and now you still have nothing and no one – he doesn’t love you and he’s going back to his pregnant wife – you ask, what’s the fucking point?

Not even the myths can answer that one.

Later, when you wake up under the bright lights of a hospital room, your memory is cracked, broken into terracotta pieces on the ground. There are things missing from you.

You don’t remember calling Oliver, only that he was there and he was high out of his mind and he gave you whatever he had in his pockets. You don’t remember what you took, or if Oliver was kind to you when he watched you swallow pill after pill.

You don’t remember the shower, the ambulance ride, or being admitted.

You aren’t sure exactly what you’ve lost. But you feel the missing edges.

Dieter is missing from you.

If you close your eyes, still the movement of your body, block out the noises of the machines and the hospital around you, you think you remember hearing him say it.

You think he might have said it when he kissed your forehead, but it feels older than that. Like his words and his actions stem from two different memories but you’re so fucked up they blur together. You want to hold onto that new memory, as fabricated as it might be, for as long as you can.

But then sleep over takes you again and it flushes everything out. The next time you wake up, you don’t remember that he ever said, I love you. 

When you wake up, you know he’s gone. You don’t know how you know, or why, but it feels like a piece of you has been torn away in a bloody chunk. Like someone had taken pliers to your fingernails and tore them off until blood splattered onto the floor.

Like someone put a knee to your shoulder and wrenched white teeth out of your mouth. 

Until you are gummy and dripping.

You open your eyes not to Dieter, not Heidi, but Marie. Mousy, intelligent, thoughtful Marie curled up asleep in the chair next to you. 

The sound of your crying wakes her up. Wordless, judgement-less, she crawls into bed with you, takes you into her arms, and lets you sob like the heart-broken mess you’ve become. 

God, can you die from pain like this?

She strokes your forehead and tells you, no, you can’t. You might want to, but you can’t. 

For the first time in your life, you’re not a myth. 

You’re not a story of a little girl whose parents didn’t love her enough. 

You are not the story of an actress whose star burned too bright and hot and the cosmos punished her for her hubris. 

You’re not the story of a woman who fell in love too hard and too fast with drugs and a man much older than her and got shattered on the rocks. 

The book has closed, the final chapter has come. There are no more stories to tell, nothing left to make fantastic. 

You are a broken human body. 

Natalie Lorraine is a myth.

You were a child once. You have to remember that. 

[lesbionia]

Weird question but what does your pfp mean?

I’ve seen a couple of radfem accounts have it and I’m wondering if it means that or something else.

Btw my blog is; @sunni-st6rs if you can please tag me when/if you respond I’d really appreciate it, thanks!! ^^

@sunni-st6rs My profile picture is the labrys lesbian flag, which is a lesbian pride flag that was created in 1999 by a gay man named Sean Campbell as a gesture of solidarity. It is also the first documented lesbian pride flag design, which makes it an important piece of lesbian history.

It is not a radical feminist flag per se, although a lot of lesbian radfems do use it in part because of the labrys (the two headed axe), which was adopted as a symbol of female homosexuality and women's empowerment in the 70's. As I mentioned, it is also historically significant, and many of us feel connected to it for that reason as well.

Hope that answers your question. 🙂

[myhauntedsalem]

Galveston’s St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum

On September 7, 1900 a hurricane quietly entered the Gulf of Mexico. By the next day this storm brought in winds of 150 mph, which hit the Galveston barrier island destroying the town of the same name.

This hurricane known as The Great Storm is the deadliest * natural disaster to hit American soil. 3,600 homes were destroyed and more than 10,000 men, women and children lost their lives.

At this time, Galveston, a bustling port town was one of the largest and wealthiest cities in Texas. The future was bright for its 36,000 residents.

After 9:00 p.m. on September 8th all this prosperity would be gone.

Among the dead where 10 nuns and 90 of 93 children at St. Mary’s Orphan Asylum located on beachfront property located outside the town.

St. May’s Orphan Asylum–building on right girl’s dorm.

These nuns were apart of the Sisters of Charity that had established a Catholic infirmary in Galveston.

The orphans under their charge were mostly children that lost their parents to Yellow Fever—so eventually the orphanage connected to the hospital was moved outside of town to avoid this disease.

Sister Elizabeth Ryan was in Galveston on the morning the hurricane hit collecting supplies. Mother Gabriel tried to convince her to stay at the hospital until the storm passed but she refused for her supplies included food for that day’s supper at the orphanage.

What Sister Elizabeth didn’t know is that there would be no more suppers at St. Mary’s.

During the afternoon the winds and rains increased, the tide rose higher, fierce waves crashed onto the beach sending floodwaters ashore.

St. Mary’s consisted of two large dormitories with balconies that faced the gulf. Both buildings sat behind a row of sand dunes that were supported by Salt Cedar trees.

The tides began to erode these dunes, one orphan who survived stated later he watched as the dunes eroded, “as if they were made of flour.”

When the floodwaters reached the dorms the nuns gathered all the children into the girl’s dormitory for it was newer and the stronger of the two buildings.

At first they stayed in the first floor chapel, the nuns had the boys and girls sing a French hymn Queen of the Waves, which fishermen sang during storms—to keep the group calm.

But as the water rose they moved the group to the second floor where each nun tied clotheslines to their waist and then attached 6 to 8 orphans to them with it.

Several of the older boys went up to the roof. The children terrified now watched as the boy’s dorm was lifted off its foundations and washed away.

A ship that was being tossed in the storm hit their dorm–it lifted their building up, the floor fell out from beneath their feet and the roof crashed down trapping them in the water.

Only 3 orphan boys survived, William Murney, Frank Madera and Albert Campbell. They were washed away and woke later in a tree. They clung to this tree for a day before a small boat from town rescued them.

Several of the nun’s bodies were found later with children still attached via the clotheslines. One of the surviving boys witnessed a nun reassure two small children, “I will never let go.” She was found with both children still firmly grasped within her arms.

The nuns and children were buried where they were found.

On this terrible day, when the wind and gulf waters met at 6:00 p.m. the town was completely flooded—whole blocks were washed away within minutes.

At 7:30 p.m. the main tidal wave struck the south shore, it reached 15 to 20 feet.

In 1994, on the anniversary of The Great Storm Texas placed a historical marker at the section of the seawall, built after the storm, where St. Mary’s once stood. Descendants of the survivors attended and an all sang, Queen of the Waves.

Today, many believe that the spirits of small orphan victims haunt two structures where St. Mary’s once stood.

Employees at the Seawall Walmart have reported: misplaced toys, missing pallets of toy inventory, phantom children’s laughter and cries for help.

One former employee recalls the time she heard a little girl calling for her mother. She went to find the lost child to help. She searched the toy department calling out but received no response.

Other’s hearing this child’s cries, both employees and customers joined in the search but the child was never found and the cries eventually stopped.

Ten years ago this store was considered the most haunted spot on the island. Several news stories highlighted it.

The Hotel Galvez was built, in 1911 on the beach where St. Mary’s once stood. This hotel known as Queen of the Gulf has hosted U.S. presidents and celebrities as well as the ghosts of several small children.

Over the years many guests have reported poltergeist activity including: doors opening and closing and lights turning on and off by themselves. Several witnesses have seen glimpses of the orphans that linger.

Today, Galvestonians often see a figure dressed in an old-fashioned nun’s habit walking along the shore.