#nothing could make john and nadi hate each other

[simplegenius042]

Stupid Ass Ship & Silly Ship Templates

Tagged by @imogenkol

Tagging @direwombat @spookyrares @derelictheretic @inafieldofdaisies @socially-awkward-skeleton @noodlecupcakes @voidika @cassietrn @adelaidedrubman @aceghosts @josephseedismyfather @icecutioner @shallow-gravy @strangefable @statichvm @cloudofbutterflies92 @carlosoliveiraa @wrathfulrook @starsandskies @ladyoriza @la-grosse-patate @minilev @thewanderer-000 @omen-speaker @justasmolbard @alypink @shellibisshe @josephslittledeputy @skoll-sun-eater @g0dspeeed @afarcryfrommymain @strafethesesinners @turbo-virgins @softtidesworld @florbelles and @yokobai + anyone else who want to join.

Just two silly little ship templates for two lesser known ships that I don't yap about so often. First the Stupid Ass Ship for Ress and Piper from my Fallout series A Radioactive Calamity Of Love, Bombs & Gore and a Silly ship template for John and Nadi from FC5 and my The Silver Chronicles series. You can find them below the cut:

[Translation for the unreadable:

What brings them together?

Ress isn't entirely human (her words and actions make that very clear) so there's already a pique of curiosity there, she's also been around in other parts of America + is a daughter from the Bishop Crime Family, so Piper gets a really good scoop here. Also the Occult and the Institute are threats that need to be exposed. So common interest (even when both women get on each other's nerves sometimes).

What is keeping them/kept them apart?

Both have insecurities and fears. Piper's been ridiculed and ostracized by her community even when she's been well-meaning, and she's afraid that friends and family find her annoying and want her to go away. Ress has lost friends and family, one of whom (her brother Ore) was the only one (like her) who could also live past the expected lifespan. So its less she doesn't want to be with Piper, and more she doesn't want to experience the pain of losing her so quickly. So Ress puts up a overconfident douche front to keep Piper at arms length.

Describe their meet-cute poorly:

Nigh-Immortal woman finds a journalist yapping outside Diamond City's walls, decides to help her get inside using poorly disguised fake mustache, glasses and wigs to trick the guard to let them in. Somehow, it works.]

[Translation for the Unreadable:

(John's) Quote about [Nadi]:

"Nadi is an exceptional follower of the Project, and one of my most loyal faithful. She's come so far in overcoming her sins."

(Nadi's) Quote about [John]:

"John is the reason I'm here today. He gave me purpose, a home and something worth believing in."

Here are the blank templates below:

[group4peru]

Ethan’s texts: Marginalization in Lima

Julio Ramón Ribeyro’s “Terra Incognita” (1975) is about a reclusive professor who goes out into the city of Lima when his wife and daughters are out of town. The professor, Alvaro Peñaflor, studies the Classics and prefers to remain in the comfort and safety of his hilltop home and its library. He describes his home as a “refuge” for “literary solitude,” (1). He is struck by an internal voice telling him to ��go out, get to know your city, live,” (1). Alvaro cautiously ventures from his ivory tower into his native city, which “he knew almost nothing about,” (2). His exploration is both daunting and disappointing, as Alvaro finds himself unable to form a connection with the city or its people, and struggles to discern the nature of his desires. Growing increasingly dejected and feeling excluded, Alvaro continues wandering, trying and failing to “give meaning and order to his surroundings,” (4). Alvaro finally forms an unlikely human connection with a drunk, working class Black man at a bar. Alvaro nicknames him Aristogiton, after an ancient Athenian hero, due to the man’s “heroic… masculine magnificence,” (7). Despite the incongruity of their conversation, Alvaro and Aristogiton hit it off, and the professor invites the worker to his home after the bar closes. The two continue their drunk conversation in Alvaro’s library, where sexual tension builds but fizzles out as Aristogiton passes out. Alvaro hurries the man out the next morning for fear of getting caught by the maid. As he returns to his books, Alvaro reflects on the image of himself, which has irrevocably changed. 

The way the idea of the home, and the privacy it entails, dominates Alvaro is comparable to Laura Podalsky’s analysis of “Casa tomada,” by Julio Cortázar (1). However, unlike Cortázar’s character, Alvaro attempts to break out of this self-imposed isolation by exploring his city. Alvaro’s venture into Lima is a series of “unsettling encounters” that provoke his bourgeois anxieties (Podalsky, 3). Alvaro’s desire for something beyond the confines of his academic, bourgeois and heteronormative life incentivies him to enter working class spaces, despite his uncomfort, and eventually invite Aristogiton back into his home. By bringing the city into the privacy of his home, Alvaro creates an intensely vulnerable, uncomfortable and revealing experience, which forever changes his conception of self and his sexuality. However, despite this near-epiphany, Alvaro ultimately chooses to return to his cloistered existence, representative of upper class detachment from society (Podalsky, 4-5, 7). 

Alvaro feels the gaze and judgement of the city upon him both on the streets and in the privacy of his home. In Lima itself, Alvaro feels as if he does not belong, as he is excluded from social interaction and unable to make connections. In his home, Alvaro feels Christian guilt that represses his instinctual attraction to Aristogiton. He fears the presence of Edelmira, his maid, who could report Alvaro’s activities (or suspected activities) to the public at large, which would further isolate him. Alvaro’s attraction to Aristogiton wavers when he sees the man’s scapulary. Aristogiton attempts to convince Alvaro, in drunken eloquence, that “religion is one thing and faith is another,” but Alvaro’s internalized homophobia wins out. Alvaro’s fear of societal stigma suggests that the city has invaded his private space and threatened his individuality, forcing him to perform heterosexuality as if he was in public. 

Julio Ramón Ribeyro, “Terra Incognita,” in Marginal Voices; Selected Stories by Julio Ramón Ribeyro, 1-9, trans. Dianne Douglas, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993).

Laura Podalsky, “Introduction,” Specular Cities, 1-27, (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004).

No se lo digas a nadie (Don't Tell Anyone) is a Peruvian film directed by Francisco José Lombardi, released in 1998. The film revolves around Joaquin, a white, closeted gay law student in Lima who grapples with his sexuality and the stigma of homosexuality in the public eye. The city Joaquin lives within is dominated by two structures, Christianity and hegemonic masculinity, both of which stigmatize homosexuality. The film opens with a young Joaquin at a Christian summer camp, where the boys sing a song about God’s message of unconditional love. That night, Joaquin makes a move on his friend, who rejects his advance. Joaquin quickly begs him, no se los digas a nadie. The film then cuts to the confessional, where the priest pries to see if Joaquin has sinned sexually. Shortly after, the film introduces the viewer to Joaquin’s father, who criticizes his son for acting like a “f*ggot” and a “fairy” when Joaquin refuses to fight him. Joaquin is forced to perform hegemonic masculinity and heterosexuality in his activities with the church and in the privacy of his home, where the public’s prying eye and homophobic expectations intrude upon his personal space. As a law student, Joaquin begins dating Alejandra, who promises to turn him “into a normal guy.” Despite this, he secretly begins seeing and falls in love with his friend Gonzalo. Joaquin’s parents praise him for dating Alejanda, and Joaquin gets to experience a sense of normalcy, hegemonic masculinity and societal approval. However, he hates lying to Alejandra, so he decides to break up with her and ask Gonzalo to date him. Gonzalo refuses, fearful of societal stigmatization. Both men feel emasculated after being outed, and attempt to reclaim their masculinity by violently asserting themselves on women. Joaquin grows to hate Lima and its judgemental gaze, asking “why did they pick Hiroshima and not Lima?” He leaves for Miami and lives with a man, but eventually meets with and kisses Alejandra, who persuades him to return to Lima. The film ends with Joaquin’s graduation from law school, where the viewer learns he is engaged to Alejandra. Shrinking away from the praise of his family, Joaquin shares a brief and interrupted kiss with Gonzalo before going for a photo. As the photographer snaps a group photo, Gonzalo touches Joaquin’s cheek, and the two gaze at each other across Alejandra.

The concept of hegemonic masculinity, which is characterized by heterosexuality, violence and homophobia, is closely tied to colonialism in the film. Characters in the film, including the priest, Joaquin’s father and the wealthy Alfonso assert that proper masculinity is white, urban and Christian. As Rama argues in “The Ordered City,” Lima– like many other Latin American cities– is a center of “civilization” and a colonial imposition upon the land (11). By the colonial conception, the cities were outposts, representative of whiteness, civilization and masculinity, which “civilized” and exploited the non-white, backward and effeminate people of the country (Rama, 12-13). As Rosemary Thorp and Maritza Paredes argue in Ethnicity and the Persistence of Inequality: The Case of Peru (2010), the growth of the city of Lima reinforced a system in which the white and mestizo urban population dominated and exploited indigenous communities in the countryside (108). In No se lo digas a nadie, the countryside is a masculinizing space for men of Lima to hunt and kill animals and dominate “weaker” and therefore effeminate indigenous peoples. Early in the film, Joaquin’s father takes him hunting to make a man of his son. Joaquin makes a move on an indigenous boy, Dioni, who rejects this advance, saying “men don’t do that,” and attempts to run off to tell others. Joaquin beats up Dioni to ensure his silence. His father sees this and subsequently praises Joaquin, saying “First you kill a deer, then you beat up Dioni...you’re a man.” As they leave, the father accidentally hits an indigenous biker with his truck and says “I didn’t shoot anything but at least I killed an Indian.” Lima’s dominance extends deep into the country, such that white city dwellers can kill rural indigenous people with impunity. 

Rama argues that the city does not just impose order upon the countryside, but enforces a hierarchy within its limits (Rama, 1-5). Joaquin experiences the patriarchal aspect of this ordering system through the institution of the church, media consumption, interpersonal interactions and the watchful eye of the city itself. The patriarchy positions women and anything feminine in a subordination to hegemonic masculinity. The homophobia Joaquin experiences stems from the categorization of homosexuality as a femine behavior/identity, something a “real man” would never do. Later in the film, a character conflates “trashy” (i.e. open, non-closeted) homosexuality with indigenous peoples. The exclusionary hierarchy of Lima oppresses and alienates Joaquin until he chooses to remain closeted, and therefore benefit from the appearance of belonging to the dominant group.

No se lo digas a nadie, dir. Francisco José Lombardi, (1998).

Angel Rama, The Lettered City, trans. John Charles Chasteen, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1996)

Julio Ramón Ribeyro’s “Alienation” (1975) is a cautionary tale about the life of Roberto López, from his youth to his early death. Roberto is extremely cognizant of his status as a fair-skinned “mulatto” with kinky hair in the “colonial city” of Lima (57). Roberto seeks to distance himself from his Black and idigenous identities and “take on the look of a blond from Philadelphia,” (57). The anonymous narrator describes this as the act of “killing the Peruvian in himself,” and “extracting something from every gringo he met,” (57). Over the course of the text, his name changes from Roberto, to Bobby to Bob. Throughout the text, Roberto’s racial consciousness aligns with class and social status. Roberto’s childhood crush rejects him on the basis of his racial identity, spurring the boy’s lifelong quest to assimilate to whiteness. Societal marginalization reduces Roberto to a mere spectator on the periphery of Lima’s youth culture. He concludes that whiteness would allow him to plan his life “with confidence in this gray city… [and] effortlessly reap all the best fruits the land had to offer,” (60). Roberto bleaches and straightens his hair, whitens his skin, mulates gringo behavior and learns English. He and a like-minded friend adopt pretentious mannerisms and begin to scorn their friends, family and city: “the city, which had always sheltered them, had turned into a dirty rag they covered with insults and scorn,” (64-65). Eventually, they make it to New York, which “tolerated them for several months, complacently, while it absorbed the dollars they had saved. Then, as if through a tube,” expelled them (65). Facing homelessness, Roberto and his friend joined the U.S. military and shipped out to fight in Korea, where the latter is maimed and Roberto dies. 

Through “Alienation,” Ribeyro criticizes the racial hierarchy of Lima and the world under American hegemony. By referring Lima as a “colonial city,” Ribeyro points to both the Spanish founding– which accounts for the racial stratification and hierarchical ordering of the city– and contemporary, neo-colonialist American influence– which accounts for Roberto’s feelings of cultural and economic inferiority. Written in 1975 but taking place in the early 1950s, “Alienation” highlights changing Peruvian conceptions of race and ethnicity in the middle of the 20th century. During this period, mestizo transitioned from a racial category to a “cultural and class-based process of acculturation,” where non-white Peruvians could associate themselves with whiteness through behavioral practices (Thorp & Paredes, 124). Whiteness was associated with the cities, especially Lima, with its large white population. However, Roberto is cognizant of a global structure of whiteness, and understands Lima as merely a colonial outpost within a greater American hegemony. Unlike Lima, which– at the time– was making space for cultural mestizos within the city hierarchy, the United States (the metropole, in a colonial sense) has no place for Roberto. In his attempt to escape his place as a subject in a colonial hierarchy, Roberto is drafted into an American colonial war and carelessly disposed of. 

Rosemary Thorp & Maritza Paredes, Ethnicity and the Persistence of Inequality: The Case of Peru, (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

Julio Ramón Ribeyro, “Alienation,” in Marginal Voices; Selected Stories by Julio Ramón Ribeyro, 57-67, trans. Dianne Douglas, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993).