#the outsiders was a reread also.. obviously.. we all remember my .... history w that...

[geffenrecords]

my 2024 goodreads... imso late but whatever. I didn't read as much as i would've liked but i also started my job this year, so .crazy ^_^

[thecloserkin]

fic rec: we get dark, only to shine by anghraine

fandom: The Borgias (Showtime 2011)

pairing: Cesare Borgia/Lucrezia Borgia

word count: 168k, unfinished

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: Yes

Is it endgame: Yes

Is it shippable: Yes

Bottom line: hi my name is asdfghhkl i’ve been in fandom half my life and this is without a doubt a top 5 fic for me. i mean i got to the end and i went right back to the beginning to reread it

This is a Season 1 AU where Cesare and Lucrezia are each other’s first loves, as they ought to have been. First of all I absorbed more Borgia history via this fic than three published biographies put together (Sarah Bradford, Lucrezia Borgia: Life Love and Death in Renaissance Italy; GJ Meyer, The Borgias: The Secret History; Christopher Hibbert, The Borgias and Their Enemies). I found myself looking forward to the end of every chapter so I could devour the footnotes. This is a meticulously researched, perfectly paced, ingeniously plotted gem of a story that made all the historical details relevant. It is also a very cerebral story, which is not to say it didn’t sucker-punch me in the gut, just that it isn’t rough around the edges — it is SHARP. Lucrezia and Cesare are whip-smart; all the secondary characters are smart; the author is obviously brill and you, dear reader, better bring both your brain cells if you want to keep up.

To set the scene, we are in Rome at the beginning of the papacy of Alexander VI aka Rodrigo Borgia, the first pope to openly acknowledge his children gotten out of wedlock. The primary thing to understand about the Borgias is they are FOREIGNERS. They are from Valencia and their native tongue is Catalan; and while Cesare, Juan, Lucrezia and Jofre may have been born in Rome, foreigners they will forever remain in the eyes of the xenophobic populace. Rome is a cesspit of backstabbing and the Borgias are an unusually close-knit, insular clan. Here is an overview of Cesare and Lucrezia’s codependent-from-the-cradle relationship, intensified ofc by the hostile environment of Rome:

At first, Lucrezia would scream whenever the nurse took her away, and sneak after him at all hours. Cesare scarcely spoke, except to her. They looked like kicked puppies.

Yet it had always been that way with them: Lucrècia a little queen reigning over their games, Cèsar devoted to her.

he never paid much attention to other women around Lucrezia, even when she was little more than a prattling child.

Cesare had woken with Lucrezia in his bed more times than he could count. At eight, twelve, a newly-returned sixteen, he often opened his eyes to his sister sprawled beside him or curled up under his blankets. On more anxious nights, when she had an unpleasant dream or felt particularly troubled, he would find her pressed against him

“When he left for Perugia, one might have believed him going to his gallows. Their letters must have stripped a forest.”

Ok not to be an incest junkie on main but shoutout to the Childhood Bedsharing Trope. “When he left for Perguia” is when he went away to university, leaving Lucrezia disconsolate. When he came home following this extended absence is when her feelings for him flowered into sexual desire. The fic opens on the eve of Lucrezia’s marriage to Giovanni Sforza. Her impending nuptials are causing her anxiety:

”But I am a Borgia. I should not be afraid of anything.” “Nonsense,” said Cesare, “I fear dozens of things, myself.” “You?”

So much to unpack here:

being a Borgia means never letting the world see your weakness

Lucrezia’s hero-worship!!! she obviously thinks he’s the bravest person she knows

Cesare confessing his vulnerability, his fears, chief of which is “I fear most of all for your happiness. I shall not be able to ensure it from so far.” i am y e l l i n g

To relieve her anxiety about pleasing her bridegroom, she convinces Cesare to give her KISSING LESSONS. That’s how it starts. Did someone say I Want My Brother to Be My First because I love this song.

“Is there no one else?” he demanded. She tilted her head inquisitively. “Is there a man you would rather instructed me? Really, is there another man you would permit to touch me? To even remain alone with me? Juan? Should I ask him instead?” “No!” Cesare scrambled to his feet.

She knows exactly how to push his buttons, doesn’t she? She baits him with the idea of another man touching her—specifically Juan, his archrival—an idea guaranteed to get his blood up, and Cesare instantly shoves his scruples aside. A kissing lesson ensues, Lucrezia is married shortly thereafter, and that’s how things stand when this fic diverges from canon: Cesare stops by Pesaro to visit Lucrezia.

Now we all know how Lucrezia’s first marriage went—her husband treated his horse a sight better than he treated her. And we see her struggle with telling Cesare the truth about the abuse, because the importance of the Sforza alliance must stay Cesare’s hand from his natural impulse to pulverize anyone who hurts Lucrezia. I like how this fic draws a distinction between the family’s reaction and Cesare’s reaction:

as soon as Cesare understood, he would be set on vengeance. Any brother would, even one less devoted than Cesare. Jofrè would probably cheer him on. Juan would have strung Sforza up already. And of course, Cesare was Cesare.

Juan and Jofre are her brothers too, and neither of them would have let Sforza’s behavior slide. Cesare, though, is on a whole other level. Cesare actually sees red. The most romantic thing he does in this entire story is play chess with Lucrezia all night to spare her the nightly ordeal of marital rape. That was the first night. The second day he has Micheletto loosen the girth of Sforza’s saddle to cause a nonfatal riding accident which—honestly it makes way more sense thematically for the brother who loves her more than life to do this, than for an untutored stableboy whom Lucrezia met 5 minutes ago to suddenly exhibit master assassin skills?!! Fuck canon, this is what happened. Also fuck insta-love, I’m so glad Cesare and Lucrezia are head over heels for each other rather than some randos.

His pulse quickened in his throat, yet it was nothing he had not seen before, when he read to her until she fell asleep, talked to her as she sulked in her room, sat at her bedside wiping cloths all over her feverish head.

I’m so soft for this!!! Tfw it’s not the physical proximity to your sibling—that part’s familiar—what’s new is your feelings shifting like tectonic plates?? Askjdfkdjfd.

The thing that really precipitates the affair is Lucrezia’s brute of a husband, obviously. This fic has one or two Giovanni Sforza POVS and it does such a great job of depicting that discomfort of being laughed at by people smarter than you. Sforza was strong-armed into this match and he feels slighted by the choice of bride—because she’s bastard-born, because she’s Spanish, he thinks he’s married down. This brings him into inevitable conflict with Cesare, who will brook no insult to Lucrezia on his watch:

“My sister, Lord Sforza, is a daughter of Rome. Roman-born, Roman-bred, Roman to her fingertips. Is it not so, Lucretia?”

The POWER of this line—remember when i said the Borgias are forever seen as outsiders despite being BORN IN ROME? i felt that.

Perhaps their mother was right, and she loved him too much. Too much, at any rate, to spare that kind of love for anyone else. Sforza was a monster, but if he had not been, she still would not have loved him.

Vanozza is very perceptive; she fears her children’s all-consuming love for each other leaves little room for other attachments AND SHE WAS RIGHT. To put it baldly:

They had spent their hearts on each other, all they had to give, with only scraps left for anyone else.

“I am your brother, Lucrezia … There is a word for this. I would not have anyone say it of you.” “A word for what? … For loving me more than the baronessa Ursula, or some other woman you only half-know?”

THERE IS A WORD, Cesare intimates. He won’t even say it aloud. But this black cloud of rumor and innuendo that hangs over their family is not going to dissipate just because they refrain from giving into their feelings. The first time Cesare heard someone call his sister a whore, she was literally four years old. They’ve had to guard their hearts their whole lives because there is no one they can trust outside the family — and yet the family itself is riven by strife and jealousy (Lucrezia has a good laugh when her maid mistakes “my brother is coming to dinner” for “the Duke of Gandia is coming to dinner”— as if Juan would ever visit her in Pesaro!):

“I am the only person in the world you love without qualification or resentment or confusion, aren’t I?” “Yes … Well. Some confusion.” “And yet you pull away from me. You have spent our lives pulling away from me, because--what? There is a word? You will not even say it. Why should we care if people who hate us, hate our blood and our language and our father, use one more insult? For heavens’ sake, Cesare, you yourself told me that this friar in Florence preaches against my hair.”

!!!! The dig at Savonarola I fell out of my chair looooool

“We have no real friends here, do we? We don’t even have allies beyond the Sforza. Everything depends on Papa. If anything happens, perhaps--perhaps it would be better to go home.” “We could run away to Valencia,” he murmured, eyes distant, almost wistful.

They never entertain this as a serious possibility because “anything is better than obscurity” and sry2say a modern AU is the only place these kids are going to get a happy ending. They’re too ambitious and fiercely protective of their family for aught else.

the affinity they’d always felt flaring to life, the certainty that he could depend on her abilities as well as her loyalties. Together they had outwitted Giovanni Sforza and all of Pesaro; now there was the Pope, their family, Rome, and then--all of Italy? The world? Why not?

I say again, HE COULD DEPEND ON HER ABILITIES AS WELL AS HER LOYALTIES. Because they’re a team. Picture Cesare and Lucrezia, weapons in hand, back to back holding off a horde of enemies—but like, metaphorically. That’s the kind of partnership they have, that’s the kind of trust they share.

he would put her before ambition and glory. Even their father had not … Cesare wasn’t like the Pope. He loved her more than anything.

Meaning there are things her father would put before her happiness, but there is absolutely NOTHING Cesare would not do for her. What woman could resist this utter unhesitating devotion when it is laid at her feet??

gazing at her with all the adoration he had never offered to God

He would never hurt me. If she knew nothing else, she knew that.

She resolves to consummate their relationship, despite all her knowledge of sex being bound up with pain. Like, she literally doesn’t know if sex can even be pleasurable for women, but she wants Cesare in the face of her fear, which is impressive and heartbreaking:

there were Roman courtesans who knew something of him that Lucrezia did not, and it was intolerable. She wanted everything.

Yessss she already has the rest of him, she just wants this one last piece of Cesare to belong to her too. And as for Cesare, this is the first & only time physical attraction and emotional connection have been united in the same partner:

he had never been one to stay in a woman’s bed, afterwards, but he felt no inclination to move.

She laid her hand against his face, rubbing her thumb over his cheekbone, gazing at him with her impossible mix of steady, companionable affection and rapture.

He had long known that he did not love anyone as he did Lucrezia; now he could not imagine desiring anyone as much, either.

What I love is that the romantic/sexual aspect is just another layer overlaid on what has always been the most important relationship in their respective lives; it doesn’t change the underlying dynamic:

“Have we been mauled by bears, do you think?” “Nothing so dramatic, I’m afraid. We would need scratches for that.”

This is them putting their clothes on after an assignation in the woods (they go riding a lot). What strikes me is the companionable tenor of their conspirational lies.

She relished each touch, yet there was something ordinary in it, familiar and commonplace. Your cross is crooked. Your cap is falling off. Let me adjust your sleeve. I can mend your tunic. They had always been peculiarly domestic together, a comfortable intimacy they never repeated with their brothers.

hello siblings being simultaneously incestuous & domestic is my kink byeeeee

“Cesare,” said Lucrezia, eyes widening, “am I your mistress now?” “You are Lucrezia Borgia. The Pope’s daughter and my beloved sister. The man who calls you anyone’s mistress will lose his tongue. As for you and I, we are what we are. I love you. We belong to each other. That is all.”

NO LABELS WE JUST BELONG TO EACH OTHER. Favorite favorite favorite line forever

His sister, his — lover? How could he give up either? What have I done?

Please picture me shoveling popcorn into my mouth as I type this. This is the pinnacle of everything I love about incest ships. You don’t fuck your sister unless you fucking mean it. It’s like you’re married from the first kiss. As Lucrezia explains later to someone who has ferreted out their secret: “He is not some lover to be mourned and forgotten. If I lose him over this, I lose him in everything.”

You can’t date your brother casually, the stakes are HIGH.

A lover is invented in order to explain Lucrezia’s love bites and torn clothing to her maid. Micheletto accepts this explanation as well, until one day he realizes the true state of affairs, and it’s such an innocuous little moment, it’s not like Micheletto wALks iN On tHEM or anything similarly dramatic, oh no. He is watching them—he is always watching—and he must have picked up on some subtle cue of body language or something bc all of a sudden it hits him they’re in love:

Valentino bent his head down; Lucrezia was saying something, Catalan, scarcely comprehensible through her heavy accent and giggles--Micheletto thought it had to do with the Duke of Gandía and a race. Whatever it was, Valentino whispered back to her, mouth against her ear, and they burst out laughing. There was no lover. He could not say, exactly, how he knew for certain then, with no proof, and not before or after. But he knew it. There were no others for them, no room for others: only Valentino and Lucrezia, and Micheletto watching over them.

The perfect encapsulation of this show tbh!!!

They are recalled to Rome to attend Joffre’s wedding to Sancia d’Aragon. They leave Lucrezia’s recuperating husband behind in Pesaro.

“If this all depends upon the impression that Juan makes--” “God help us,” said Cesare.

first of all, FINISHING EACH OTHER’S SENTENCES. but also, this is a delicate mission Juan’s been dispatched on—sent to Naples to woo Jofre’s bride—and i am l i v i n g as I watch Cesare & Lucrezia bond over their low opinion of Juan’s diplomatic mettle. it reminds me of that scene in S2E1 during the masquerade ball when Lucrezia asks Cesare if he can make her laugh, and IMMEDIATELY he causes Juan (who is dancing) to take a humiliating stumble and then Lucrezia & Cesare choke back giggles behind their masks. What’s great about returning to Rome is we get to see them interact with the rest of their family. The Pope is wroth with Cesare for staying so long away and for ignoring his summonses, but Cesare tells him the truth—that Lucrezia needed him:

“Your daughter, Holy Father, could wring concessions out of a saint, and I am anything but that.”

The audacity!! Cesare straight up confessed to fucking the Pope’s daughter but he said it flippantly, so Alexander heard what he wanted to hear.

Then there’s Giulia, who takes one look at Lucrezia and detects the glow of first love. Lucrezia fobs her off with the same story of a clandestine lover, assignations in the woods, etc.:

“Swear to me that you will not repeat what I have said.” “To your father? I already promised that.” “To anyone! … Father would separate us. Juan would kill him. If my husband discovered it …” Lucrezia shuddered. “That would indeed be a disaster,” Giulia said, “but I think you have forgotten someone, Lucrezia.” “What do you mean?” She touched Lucrezia's face. “Your brother Cesare.” Lucrezia absolutely froze.

BWAHAHAHA and then Lucrezia scrambles to convince Giulia that her secret is that Cesare is discreetly facilitating her affair, rather than the far more salacious secret that Cesare is her affair.

“Men,” Giulia said carefully, “say many things, Lucrezia.” “Other men,” said Lucrezia …. The very idea that Cesare might not love her!

And of course Lucrezia is in a v unique situation here but it is the lot of highborn girls in Renaissance Europe to be bartered off to seal an alliance; Lucrezia was raised to expect it. She did no more than her duty. She also recognizes the balance of power is never going to be in her favor when it comes to matters of the heart. With one notable exception, of course:

But Lucrezia had never shown the slightest inclination to guard herself from him. I love you, she’d said as soon as she could babble out the words, clambering into his lap, wrapping her arms about his neck, toddling after him, I love you best, I love you most. And now she declared herself dozens of times a day, in word or deed: whispering into his ear, laughing at his side, crawling into his arms when she could and watching him with a greedy, possessive look when she could not.

Cesare is the only one she trusts to never hurt her, whose interests are always aligned with hers, are never opposed to her family’s since Cesare is her family. The only wrinkle is, he can’t protect her adequately as he promised to. Cesare reflects that if the truth about the incest ever came out “he would be lucky to escape with excommunication, while Giovanni Sforza could violate her nightly and nobody would say a word.” The unjustness of this, the way patriarchy arrays itself in Sforza’s defense, galls Cesare to no end.

Another person who comes into their orbit in Rome is Jofre’s new bride, Sancia of Aragon. It’s historical canon that she slept with both Juan and Cesare; in this fic of course Cesare/Lucrezia are exclusive. Lucrezia can’t decide whether Sancia is predatory (she wants to bang Cesare) or suspicious (she has a hunch Cesare is banging Lucrezia). Either way:

Lucrezia wanted Sancia dead, or disfigured, or shamed--and she wanted her to leave happily with Jofrè--and she wanted Juan to take her away, to satisfy her with some kind of discretion--and for one mad moment, Lucrezia wanted everyone to know what Cesare was to her.

Sancia and Juan, by the way, conduct an outrageously indiscreet affair where their lovemaking is so obnoxious it keeps Lucrezia up at night. She does what she always does when she seeks solace: she crawls into Cesare’s bed. They’re young, they’re honry, they’re in love … but the sound of Juan pounding away at Sancia definitively kills the mood. Lmao. The next morning at breakfast Cesare & Lucrezia lay their complaints before Alexander, who gives Cesare a cardinal’s palace to live in and bids him take Lucrezia with him. So now the two of them move out of the papal palace into their very own palace. I mean, the possibilities are endless! Here is a gem from Sancia and Juan’s pillowtalk, where Juan’s assessment is simultaneously hilariously off base and 100% accurate:

“Cesare has always been a sanctimonious prude, if you ask me. At any rate, Lucrezia says he's having a fit of celibacy.” “Lucrezia?” Sancia said, nearly laughing. “What, he tells her about his—?” Juan snorted. “They probably tell each other about their bowel movements.”

Some of my favorite moments from this “Cesare + Lucrezia keeping house together” idyll: She visits him in the confessional, they hold a lengthy strategy conference about Sancia’s divided loyalties, and he wraps up with:

“Have you any other sins to confess?” “No … Well, I am guilty of the sin of lust, but you knew that already.”

LOOOOOL and how could I forget this:

She always wanted him: when he approached her, when he touched her, looked at her, when she thought of him, when someone mentioned his name.

I give you my main bitch Lucrezia Borgia, who fantasizes about being rawed by her brother WHENEVER SOMEONE MENTIONS HIS NAME. We stan a bona fide legend.

Ok so among the people they encounter in Rome are their cousins Isabel and Bernardo, who are also Borgias, and who independently unravel the truth re: Cesare & Lucrezia, which means that we get not one but two Outsider POVs which means I have probably died and gone to heaven. My friends TONIGHT WE FEAST IN VALHALLA. Ain’t nothing I love more than an Outsider POV angle on an incestuous romance, and in this case we are truly blessed because we get two. This is Bernardo as he listens to Cesare wax lyrical about his new paramour:

Yet Bernardo heard none of the wild passion or simpering folly of men in the throes of infatuation; Cesare looked and sounded less like a newly enthralled lover, and more like a man speaking of someone he knew well and liked a great deal. Bernardo felt a flicker of alarm.

Bruh you’re supposed to talk about your mistress’s tits not her personality clearly Cesare did not get the memo?? And this is Bernardo when the pieces finally click into place for him—he walks in on Lucrezia dyeing her hair:

A Spaniard, very fair? By nature? No, Cesare had said, half-laughing, and even then Bernardo caught the odd shift in his tone, from the adoration of a lover to an easy, familiar affection. And he remembered Cesare, indignant even for a young man in the throes of infatuation. She is not my mistress!

It’s the vehemence with which he denies it, the “not my mistress” part, that gives Cesare away. Because she’s not; she’s his everything. Bernardo cannot seem to wrap his head around how they can be both siblings and soulmates, since for him there is just no overlap between those categories:

Cesare certainly looked and sounded more brother than forbidden paramour. That, in itself, troubled him; if they had rejected the fact of their blood relationship in pursuit of their lusts, convinced themselves that they did not truly feel themselves family, pretended to be something other than what they were—well, that would have been bad enough. But they did not pretend. They acted less as if they willfully transgressed the boundary between siblings and lovers, and more as if they utterly failed to notice its existence.

Cesare and Lucrezia glanced at each other, their conspiratorial smiles alarmingly familiar. He’d seen those exact expressions on their faces before, dozens if not hundreds of times. They’d always had secrets, their little schemes and confidences, childish mischief. And now—what? Deeper secrets, more convoluted schemes, more dangerous mischief. Was that it? Did they lie together and think it little different from the rest?—altered in degree, but not kind? Did they … when had catapulting oranges at the unwary become a hidden incestuous affair?

This is Bernardo watching Cesare & Lucrezia argue about who “made the first move” as far as initiating their relationship:

he knew not whether he was witnessing a lovers’ quarrel or a sibling one. He felt uncomfortably that, subject aside, it sounded very much more like the latter.

I think part of Bernardo’s difficulty is the way patriarchy teaches men to think about women, and treat them as means to an end:

There were, after all, other ways to avoid a pregnancy—though in his experience of eighteen-year-old boys, they did not bother with such things, and rarely thought that far in the first place. But then, in his experience of eighteen-year-old boys, they did not fuck their sisters, either.

Because eighteen-year-old boys are typically in lust whereas Cesare Borgia has found the love of his life. Can we also take a moment to appreciate that Cesare and Lucrezia are eighteen and fourteen respectively?? This must be their canon ages. They’re not even fetuses they’re like, homunculi. I won’t bother to look it up since this author clearly has forgotten more details about the Borgias than I ever knew—as God is my witness I would take her footnotes with me to a desert island over 80% of the other fics in existence. Holliday Grainger was 22 when The Borgias started filming, and Isolde Dychauk was 17 in S1 of Borgia, and of course we’re used to Hollywood giving us thirty-year-olds playing high schoolers so it’s not as if Lucrezia’s been aged up an unconscionable amount, but wow, fourteen is young.

Isabel and Bernardo have another sister, Jeromina, whose husband’s neglect is indirectly responsible for her death in childbed. Lucrezia holds up poor Jeromina’s fate as a cautionary tale of what can happen to any woman who lacks a male protector in her corner:

”We are not speaking of Jeromina.” “Indeed not. Her brother never came for her.”

Shots fired!!! This is Lucrezia’s implied rebuke to Bernardo: that he wasn’t there for Jeromina, that Lucrezia’s own brother would never have let her down as Bernardo let Jeromina down. Later on Lucrezia even locates the origins of her incestuous passion in the same system that killed Jeromina—she describes loving Cesare thusly:

“Something I chose, for myself,” said Lucrezia. “Everything else has been chosen for me”

Excuse me while I emit a series of high-pitched pterodactyl noises. It’s a subject the fic touches on very lightly, but the topic of aristocratic girls falling in love with their brothers as a big middle finger to The Patriarchy? This is a topic NEAR AND DEAR to my heart.

Isabel is a woman and sees more clearly than Bernardo does that Cesare & Lucrezia’s attachment is not mere puppy love:

Nor did she believe that a passion built on lifelong intimacy would be easily broken.

Damn straight, this is the real deal. Isabel then takes a different tack—she suggests that Lucrezia is at an age where girls itch to exercise their power over men. Lucrezia grants her the justice of this observation but counters that she’d never use Cesare so ill:

“Do you mean to say that your distress was such that you would have seduced any man who cared for you? You chose your brother because … he was there?” ”I could not have seduced a satyr. Cesare desired me as I did him.”

I COULD NOT HAVE SEDUCED A SATYR lmao. But it’s true, she was bruised body and soul, and Cesare rode up like a white knight and the dam burst. It wasn’t inevitable, but a confluence of events forced them to reckon with their feelings. And once they crossed that Rubicon there was of course no going back. Because they fit and they’re perfect for each other obvs. Just look at my babies reminiscing about childhood hijinks:

“The night that Juan switched your glass with Mother’s,” said Cesare, “You were what, nine?” Lucrezia stared at him, then laughed. “Ten. I spent a wretched night, and morning too. What made you think of it?” “Only that we have shared every part of our lives,” he said. “There is nothing to hide or pretend. We already know everything there is to know.”

otpotpotpotpotpotpotpotpotp

I need to quote a few more Bernardo POV passages because that’s where Cesare gives us some declarations of love worthy of the ages:

”I cannot remember a time when I did not love her above all else. Above the family, the world, God. I remember nothing of any time when I have not lived for her, when I would not die for her.”

“Some degree of remorse would not go amiss.” “I regret nothing,” said Cesare. “And your—” Bernardo shook his head. “What do I even call her now?” “My sister,” Cesare replied.

tl;dr Cesare: I HAVE ZERO REGRETS NONE

“Tell me that somewhere in Italy, or Spain, or any other nation, exists a woman I could love as I have loved Lucrezia. Tell me that there is a woman who could understand me half as well as she does. A woman who would know me as I am, and not as the world or my father or anyone would shape me. A woman who would see my true nature without fear—see the mark on it—share it. Look me in the eye, Bernardo, and tell me there is any woman who is so much my own soul.”

If you don’t ship them after that speech then your mom’s a hoe, I don’t make the rules.

Cesare: I am sanctified in her.

Bernardo:

Narrator: Bernardo hardly knew where to look.

Me: ascends to a higher plane

Bernardo eventually comes around. He’s had longer than Isabel to adjust to the incest revelation, so he tries to soften the blow for her. This is the two of them comparing notes:

”The last time I saw them together, Cesare had his hand on his dagger half the time, and then they started arguing about which one of them was the more responsible, as if they’d stolen a pastry. He laughs about her hair. Outside of themselves, they treat the whole matter as a … a lark.” This aligned so exactly with Cesare and Lucrezia as Isabel knew them that she winced. Nevertheless, her dry voice didn’t alter. “How uncivil. They might at least have the courtesy to pretend that they regard the change as a matter of gravity.” “They don’t think they have changed,” he replied.

THEY DON’T THINK THEY HAVE CHANGED— winner winner chicken dinner. Finally he gets it.

So there is this ring. A family heirloom which belonged to their grandfather, which Lucrezia inherits from poor died-in-childbed Jeromina, and recklessly bestows upon Cesare. This is the visible token of her affection, this is her way of letting the whole world know what he means to her. The problem is that Isabel is the one who disbursed Jeromina’s effects, so she knows full well the provenance of the ring in question, and what it signifies that Lucrezia gave it to Cesare. Subtlety, these kids do not have it. Cesare openly wearing the ring clues Isabel in on the incest, which is maybe not the worst result ever because family is still family but damn kids you gotta be more careful. What happens next, though, is a scene that absolutely wrecked me. We get a a scene where they EXCHANGE RINGS:

“Isabel gave it to me.” Lucrezia clasped her fingers in her lap. “For my husband.” “Do you remember what I studied at Pisa?” “Civil and canon law.” “Yes.” His voice was hoarse. “Did you know that if a man and a woman consent together, the ring and vows alone bind them in marriage? The Church does not wish for unblessed marriages, but by precedent and decree, they are marriages nonetheless.” His cardinal ring rested still in her palm. Cesare closed her fingers over it. “Alexander III declared that if the parties concerned say I receive you as mine to one another, they are married as solemnly as if blessed by a priest.”

So he gives her his cardinal’s ring to wear. And when his father notes its absence on his finger he straight up admits Lucrezia made off with it, you know how i can’t deny her anything, and the dinner table conversation turns to another topic. Because Cesare & Lucrezia are apparently just Like That and everyone who knows them is used to it. For pete’s sake they are supposed to be the well-adjusted ones among the Pope’s children. Every other member of this family is further along the disaster spectrum than these two, according to Isabel’s internal monologue:

Cesare and Lucrezia, those oases of sense and proper feeling among Alexander’s children, committing incest. Adultery too, now that she thought of it. Perhaps. It depended on the particulars.

Adultery is almost an afterthought lol

Parenthetically I do wanna draw y’all’s attention to this passage:

“I will kill him. I swear to you, Lucrezia, I shall carve his heart out of his body and give it to you on a platter.” Lucrezia put a hand over his chest. “I don’t want his heart,” she said. “I want yours.”

The above passage has the same energy as this passage:

One night she had Jaime follow him, to confirm her suspicions. When her brother returned he asked her if she wanted Robert dead. "No," she had replied, "I want him horned." She liked to think that was the night when Joffrey was conceived.

That’s a Cersei POV and the thing about looking at Cesare/Lucrezia and Cersei/Jaime parallels is I feel like the former is usually more sinned against than sinning, and the latter is the opposite. Cersei doesn’t want Jaime, she wants Robert cuckolded, she wants to Show Them that she’s Lord Tywin’s daughter and nobody gets away with disrespecting her. Idk maybe it would have read differently if we’d had the same events from Jaime’s POV?

I realize that you guys don’t need any more reasons to love this fic but I want to end with the scene where Cesare’s gearing up to challenge Count What’s-His-Face, Ursula’s dumbass husband, for the insupportable insult he gave Vanozza at Lucrezia’s wedding. One thing I appreciate about Showtime!The Borgias over Canal+!Borgia is this Cesare’s relationship with his mom is much closer than his counterpart’s. His willingness to fight a duel for his mother’s honor demonstrates (1) that his sister isn’t the only woman he cares about and (2) that he puts his family first. Lucrezia’s “Return to me victorious” still slaps more than any line in actual canon, don’t @ me. In that moment, he could have slain Mars. “I will,” he promises her.

 If I don’t burn

                      if you don’t burn

                                                if we don’t burn

how will the light 

                             vanquish the darkness?

That’s Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet writing about a folk hero who spontaneously combusted of love. In conclusion no one burns brighter than Cesare & Lucrezia, the actual loves of my life.

[mattkennard]

Jeremy Corbyn: My goal is to lead a government devoted to social justice

Published: La Jornada (6 November 2018)

Arriving at the Houses of Parliament in London, I worried that I would find Jeremy Corbyn downbeat and nervy. The leader of the Labour Party, the official opposition to the British government, has been the victim of fierce attacks over the past six months -- the crescendo to a campaign that has been rolling since he was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015.

In a near-universally hostile British media, he is regularly portrayed as an anti-semite, a misogynist, a terrorist sympathiser, a communist agent -- the list is literally endless. Every day, there is a new line of attack on a politician who for just about his whole political life was a largely unknown, marginalised left-wing voice in British politics.

But, like so much when it comes to Jeremy Corbyn, the opposite is the case. He is upbeat and relaxed. I meet him at his offices where he is surrounded by young and enthusiastic staff buzzing round the office. As he greets me, he hands me a double espresso. Someone has got his order wrong. “Want it?” he asks smiling.

He is quick to crack a joke, is intensely interested in other people, and seems at peace. His aura is one of enviable calm. Considering the storm around him, it’s disorientating. You take a lot of hits, I say. People worry this must have an effect on you: are you happy? “Absolutely,” he cries with his characteristic wry smile, raising his eyebrows. “Absolutely!” he adds again for emphasis. “I’m extremely happy. I do my work in Parliament, I spend a lot of time touring around the country doing campaigning events, meeting people. And I travel when I can, I was in Jordan this summer visiting refugee camps.” He then adds: “I lead a very balanced life. I read quite widely. I have an allotment, which I'm very proud of, and I keep myself fit and healthy. We want people to be able to lead full lives, and I lead a very full life, and I'm very happy doing it.” As we chat casually -- he is disarmingly open -- I have to keep reminding myself that I am sitting opposite the biggest threat to the British establishment maybe ever. There have been important anti-imperialist socialist figures throughout Britain’s history, but none has ever got as close to power as Jeremy Corbyn is right now. His rise has been improbable, but, after constant destabilisation campaigns (often by his own party) he is obviously going nowhere.

In the General Election of 2017, when he was roundly predicted to crash and burn, he increased Labour’s seat count and the Tories lost their majority in the Houses of Parliament. Some say it was the most important moment for progressive politics in modern British political history. The left finally proved that its ideas could be popular with the general population. Socialism is back, and many predict that if Britain’s unstable Prime Minister Theresa May falls and a general election is called, Corbyn and Labour would win a landslide.  

Corbyn, unlike many in parochial British politics, is and has always been an internationalist. He links struggles for democracy and human rights across the world and has travelled extensively throughout his life. But Latin America, and especially Mexico, has a special place in his heart. I glance over to his desk where a miniature Mexican flies above his papers. Further back is a framed picture of his Mexican wife Laura Alvarez at her graduation.

Corbyn has been rereading A History of Mexico in preparation for the interview and he is clearly enthused by the fact Mexico has turned red with the election of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador -- the first time, he points out, Mexico has elected a real left-winger since Lazaro Cardenas in the 1930s. In fact, he is so excited by what AMLO represents that he announces he will be travelling to Mexico for the inauguration of AMLO in December.  “AMLO has shown amazing personal and political courage over many decades,” he tells me. “He was one of the most reforming of mayors of Mexico City in history. Indeed, it's quite humbling when you go to the supermarket at the time of the month when the older people get their food vouchers, and they call them AMLOs.”

Does Corbyn sees similarities between himself and AMLO? “I see similarities in the sense that we're both of about the same age, both been in politics all of our lives, and both have an absolute commitment to human rights and to righting injustice. I support him in the difficulties I know he's going to face in searching for all the disappeared, as well as dealing with the Ayozinapa 43, and the dreadful case that that is.”

Corbyn first went to Latin America in the late 1960s when he was 20-years-old. He was living in Jamaica working with Voluntary Service Overseas and when he finished he embarked on a solo trip around South America. He fell in love with the region and has since visited nearly every country in Latin America. “There is a huge ethnic diversity across Latin America that's often not understood by people outside. Understanding the history of Latin America is very limited in the rest of the world. The diversity of Bolivia, for example, with Quechua being actually the dominant language not Spanish. When that diversity is recognized you tend to get more inclusive governments. For example, in Chile the great Salvador Allende recognized the needs of the Mapuche people, which had often been ignored until then. I see the strength of Latin America as bringing people together.”

This is the side of Latin America that has inspired the left across the world in the past century. But there is another, darker, side to the region that, in places like Brazil, is coming back. Corbyn is aware of this too. “I also see elites in Latin American that have often been interlinked with the armed forces and global corporations ... hence the problems that the Allende suffered. I think an ongoing issue is the question of control of resources, and the economic development of the continent. I was looking recently at my diaries from 1969, and I've got an entry from May the 1st, 1969, in Santiago. That was the time when Popular Unity had been formed which eventually led to the election of President Allende a year later. Remember it was the first past the post system, so Allende got elected on, I think, 36% of the vote. He faced opposition from the very beginning, particularly from the mining companies, and the CIA, much of it led by Kissinger. It's all very well recorded.”

Corbyn pauses then adds: “There are powerful forces that move around in the world that want to oppose those who want to bring about economic and social justice. The only way to combat it is insertion of democratic values and humans rights, and that is exactly what I'm determined to do.”

Corbyn has been called by some Britain’s answer to Salvador Allende. Except the powerful reactionary forces he mentions will be much more concerned about Britain going red than Chile. No core capitalist country has ever had an anti-imperialist socialist in power. The political and economic system is sick and immoral. It remains to be seen whether such a system will ever allow a decent and principled human being to rise to its apex. Do you worry, I ask, about the forces that brought down Allende doing the same thing to you? “Well, I understand a lot of the media are very unkind towards me here,” he says. “Extremely unkind,” he adds with a wry grin. “I think what we showed in the general election and since then is our ability to communicate with people was critical. Things like social media, and local organizations, have created a confidence amongst a lot of people in Britain that we can bring about political change, we can be a government of social justice and we can have a foreign policy based on human rights and justice. I'm utterly determined to achieve it.”

The Labour Party in Britain is nominally left-wing yet at least since Tony Blair won leadership of the Party in 1994 -- and arguably long before -- it has allied with reactionary forces across the world, from George W Bush to Silvio Berlusconi to the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia.  That meant it showed no solidarity at all with the “pink tide” movement of the late 1990s and 2000s which saw progressive governments come to power in Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay and Brazil. In one of most exciting times for left politics in history, the Labour Party under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown was completely absent - only offering ritual denunciations of “authoritarianism” and “populism” in the liberated countries.

I wonder if that will now change under Corbyn, that the Latin American left can expect solidarity from the Labour Party now. “I'm very clear that we have to build an international movement, which deals with economic injustice and inequality, and challenges the neoliberal agenda. We need governments that think alike to work together on economic justice and we'll absolutely do that.” He is particularly interested in the progress that Bolivia has seen under the government of Evo Morales and the social movements that catapulted him to power. “I had a very interesting visit to Bolivia some years back when I led a parliamentary delegation there. We were looking at the control of water, and the mining industry, but also the enfranchisement of the diversity of Bolivia. The idea that a non-Spanish speaking woman should be the author of the constitution of Bolivia was amazing and historic in so many ways. I've got a lot of respect for what they've achieved in Bolivia.”

Before we finish up I ask him if he has a message for Mexicans as AMLO takes power, and he shoots back, in perfect Spanish: “Saludos y buena suerte para el futuro, y paz y justicia para todo el pueblo de Mexico.” He smiles and then says tapping his Mexican history book, and back in English now, “I’m really looking forward to being in Mexico.”

[reactingtosomething]

Reacting to Wynonna Earp: Episodes 210-212

An Occult 23andMe

The Setup: Miri and Kris adore Wynonna Earp and have been reacting to this season a few episodes at a time. As always, we are in awe of Emily Andras’s writing, Melanie Scrofano’s face and general talent, and the entire cast and crew. We also have a few questions, critiques, and predictions that are sure to be proven wrong. 

Find our previous Wynonna Earp s2 reacting here, here, here, and here.

Spoilers through the season 2 finale, “I Hope You Dance,” below!

KRIS: I feel like you should lead with some all caps here or something

MIRI: As usual I HAVE A VERY MANY FEELINGS

THE BAAAABY

WYNONNA

***ASCENDED WIDOW MERCEDES?!?!??!***

And Jeremy is just such a peach

as per usual

KRIS: I actually saw this Scrofano Instagram the night of the episode (and I watch the morning after via iTunes) so I had some sense of the twist coming

MIRI: OH MY GODDDDDDDD

(I was really proud of how well I avoided spoilers this time)

KRIS: Which was kind of a bummer, but it still landed for me

Especially because of the detail of Nicole’s involvement

MIRI: Yes! An excellent tying together of various threads

KRIS: So you kind of called this, or something like it, back when we reacted to the pregnancy. Was this what you had in mind?

MIRI: ...I might have to reread that reaction really quickly to refresh my memory on what I meant

KRIS: I remember you said “noble sacrifice”

MIRI: Ohhhh yes

Yeah, I think from a show and a show writing perspective this is what makes sense

KRIS: At the time my mind went somewhere darker and more supernatural

MIRI: Because it is the version that reinforces/adds a layer to the core plot of the whole thing--Wynonna has to end the curse. For herself, but mostly for everyone she loves because she refuses to let this fall on someone else like it fell on her

And the baby adds to that, but without having to change the actual structure of things drastically--which they would have to do to add an actual baby in week to week

Also, this is the version with a combined maximum pain now and pain in the future. (slash tension, slash stakes)

KRIS: Yeah it definitely is obvious in hindsight that Wynonna would not want her baby in the Triangle

MIRI: But they covered it with the revenant question so well it didn’t feel obvious at the time!!

KRIS: It’s a little funny to me that Wynonna’s version of “I named her so no one looking for an Earp will find her” is “I didn’t give her a name that starts with W”

MIRI: HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA

KRIS:  Because I feel like “named after the grandparents” is pretty standard?

MIRI: “It’s just your mom’s name and my mom’s name and we’re only MASSIVELY FAMOUS/INFAMOUS within the community of people who might want to use/abuse this baby”

KRIS: I guesss maybe people wouldn’t necessarily expect Doc as the father

MIRI: Maybe, but several people with great knowledge of history already know

Like the Firebros Cult

KRIS: But aren’t they all, like, barbecued now?

Did I read that scene wrong?

MIRI: Oh, right

I forgot about that

Which is funny, because in the moment I was super excited about Dolls using his fire again!

KRIS: Right! And obviously I wanted a wide shot but I UNDERSTAND

MIRI: I mean, they already got a helicopter and a baby in the budget

KRIS: That did feel a little unresolved, mechanically, I guess because Dolls’s goal for the episode (get the doctor) was ultimately irrelevant

Emily Andras was very happy about her helicopter

“I was bluffing!”

MIRI: Let me just say for the 8,000th time: I would very much like to be Emily Andras when I grow up

KRIS: I usually roll my eyes at “gonna move to Canada” but if it’s “gonna move to Canada to work for Emily Andras” I’d have to be like “yeah that makes sense”

MIRI: YES

K: I really do like Canada, just not when Americans say they'll move there to run away from our problems

KRIS: Stuff like not getting a resolution beat for the Order made me think, not for the first time, that this show definitely rides a knife-edge of just having too much going on

MIRI: Yeah, I feel that re: Rosita and Mercedes too

KRIS: And if the emotional storytelling wasn’t as assured the whole thing could easily fall on its face

YES Rosita

MIRI: And I wonder if it was part baby clock/changing the whole season so late in the game?

KRIS: Maybe

I’d probably have to rewatch the first season

MIRI: But in general this show is just chock full of plot

Rosita is the only one that really bothered me

KRIS: I’m not super clear on what Rosita’s plan was, re: safe passage

MIRI: I wonder if there’s a scene or two on the cutting room floor there

(in this episode or previous ones)

Because she’s set up to be pretty cool, and while her point about the whole “I’ll shoot you last” thing being kind of TERRIBLE to say to someone/have to live under is valid, the turn just felt rushed to me

KRIS: Yeah

MIRI: Also, did she die?? Was she Saved? What exactly happened?

KRIS: I had to look up the last time Peacemaker turned blue and it was when Wynonna shot Willa

MIRI: Ahhhhhh I did not remember that

Huh

KRIS: I thought maybe she’d been un-revenanted but her reaction was still pretty angry so that didn’t feel right, so then I thought maybe Waverly had fired a warning shot?

MIRI: So maybe its when it has to act outside of normal bounds? Killing an heir, working for a non-official heir (yet?)

KRIS: Yeah that makes sense

MIRI: Hmmmm I’m holding out a tiny bit of help for it having saved Rosita and her not understanding

which is why she’s angry

KRIS: I definitely hope she comes back

as a regular

MIRI: And that would potentially fit with the idea of Waverly being something else supernatural

Me too!! I really love her

KRIS: Also sentient or semi-sentient weapons are always a favorite trope of mine

MIRI: I know this is not at all what you meant, but it reminded me that I love the Wynonna moment of declaring that she’s her own damn weapon, not anyone else’s to use

KRIS: And although I think the more straightforward reading here is “Peacemaker does what Wynonna says,” I also kind of like the idea of like “Peacemaker’s understanding of Family has caught up with the 21st century”

Yeah!

M: Speaking of family...(I love this gif and couldn’t find a better place for it)

MIRI: Well if Widow Mercedes could do it, maybe Peacemaker could too

Can we talk about her? Because I’m low-key obsessed

KRIS: Yeah that was wild

MIRI: I was 100% shocked

did not call her turning against the husband at all

and I LOVED IT

KRIS: Yeah, and a break with Beth was pretty well set up with her getting steadily disgruntled by everything over the last few episodes

MIRI: Yes! Her turning on Beth felt totally natural, but I did not even consider her turning on demon husband

How did you feel about him being all weak? I know someone who didn’t buy it, but to me it totally worked nicely as another Andras subversion of the expected story.

KRIS: That made sense to me

MIRI: Especially if he’s a demon who needs to feed (as the Widows clearly need to) and he’s been cut off for 100 years

Cool

KRIS: And I definitely didn’t feel cheated out of a battle with a demon lord or anything since I was invested in the baby stuff

MIRI: Totally! They did a very nice job of shifting the main tension and keeping stakes very high

Did you briefly think that Doc had become a revenant? Because I briefly thought that when he was talking to Bobo and I was Very Concerned

KRIS: No, but what line made you think that?

MIRI: When Doc said he’d been to hell

(yelling down to Bobo in the well)

And Bobo mentions Wyatt screwing both of them

But then he called Doc mortal

KRIS: Oh okay. Yeah I just really liked that line both on the level of having lied to Wynonna earlier and on the level of conceding that at least so far Doc’s maybe done more bad than good

MIRI: Yeah, it all worked, I just had a moment of fear

KRIS: So now we know that Doc listens to Adele

MIRI: As any right-thinking person does, yes

Wait, we jumped off of Widow Mercedes too quickly

I just need to say that she was SUPER COOL all ascended and powerful and shit and I wish there had been time to have her be the big bad of her own 3 episode arc or something

Ok, moving on to the bullet splitting thing

KRIS: My concerns about too many plot threads notwithstanding, I actually think this season was just as long as it needed to be and I don’t know that another major twist would have worked for me

MIRI: No, I don’t think it actually should have happened. The overall narrative would have suffered. I just wanted more Ascended Widow Mercedes in like a pocket universe or something

KRIS: She had kind of an Evil Elsa from Frozen thing going on (as someone who has not seen Frozen)

MIRI: And an interesting mix of Dark Willow and finale, white-haired ascended Goddess Willow from Buffy

KRIS: Oh that’s probably more what they were going for

Okay bullets

MIRI: I think the Frozen thing is valid

Yes, bullets! Doc finally gets to kill something/one

KRIS: I feel like we have literally never seen Wynonna load Peacemaker before so I had gotten to a point of accepting that it magically didn’t need to be loaded

MIRI: Hahahahahah

KRIS: I did kind of want his dramatic “When I shoot something, it dies” line to be lampshaded by someone

Although to be fair he called it out himself last week

MIRI: I would like to take this opportunity to say something that is not fair of me, but I feel strongly:

Tim Rozon’s face doesn’t make sense to me without the Doc Holliday mustache

KRIS: HA

MIRI: He’s still handsome! It’s a good face! but it just makes no sense to my brain

KRIS: There was a time in my life when I wished I could grow a mustache like that

It’s possible that time has not entirely passed

MIRI: hahahahah

KRIS: But mostly it was like, senior year of college

I feel like we should probably circle back to episodes 8 and 9 10 and 11 for a second

MIRI: Definitely

They did a whole episode without Wynonna! That is so fascinating and ballsy

KRIS: I feel like I wrote down notes somewhere about this but I can’t find them so maybe I just think about it a lot -- how do you feel about tropes like the Couple Destined to Be Together, or “destiny” tropes in general?

MIRI: Hmmmmmmmm it entirely depends on how well executed they are. Sometimes I am ALL IN, other times I think it gets creepy

I’m good with it here

Because it’s not super heavy handed to me

It falls more on the “they are just so right for each other, they keep finding each other” side of things than the “they are Destined To Always Be” side

Plus they had known and cared about each other as friends for a while in the alternate reality

You?

KRIS: As a trope it’s not my thing at all and I may be reacting more to fandom reactions than to anything actually in the text

MIRI: Been there

KRIS: I mean generally I was onboard with it

I think “they’re so right for each other” vs “they are destined” might be a distinction without a difference but I agree that execution counts for a lot

MIRI: I am a little bummed Waverly is confirmed gay (rather than bi) but I’m still so happy about the character and her sheer existence

KRIS: I’m also not sure exactly when it happened (and part of me is deeply suspicious and legitimately concerned that literally letting her hair down had something to do with it) but this last run definitely cemented Nicole as my favorite character

MIRI: Well I think the difference falls in what makes them right for each other being destined implies predetermination and an outside force

While being right for each other comes out of who they both are as people, and there could theoretically be other people just as right for them out there Say more about Nicole as your favorite

KRIS: Maybe part of it’s that she’s in a way the least intense of everyone? Not in the sense that she’s boring but that she has a healthy sense of perspective?

MIRI: Right. She is arguably the normal amongst all of these eccentrics

KRIS: I feel like it can’t be as simple as “audience surrogate,” but I guess there’s a little of that

MIRI: And she’s working to remain that, per Nedley’s speechifying

KRIS: And I think a lot of it is in her line readings -- like you could easily see someone delivering “your ass is top shelf” and “I’d do a lot of things to you” with too much of a wink

EASILY

MIRI: Yes! She’s just so sweet and earnest about both and it MAKES those lines

So, how did you feel about alternate reality without Wynonna?

I don’t know if I 100% buy Doc as the town bad guy, but he was kind of a dick before

So i guess becoming worse is as possible as becoming better

KRIS: I also think -- and I’m getting a little more real than I’m generally comfortable with here -- that as a straight man with a tendency to be hand-wringing about my trying to be a good feminist, there’s a safety in identifying with a character like Nicole who is also sexually attracted to women but by virtue of NOT being a man (and being written and acted as well as she is) is free of a lot of potentially toxic baggage

MIRI: That makes total sense to me

KRIS: I think the alternate reality was a pretty good execution of the “this one person makes all the difference” trope

(The “Remedial Chaos Theory” episode of Community is the high bar for me there)

I bought Doc as a bad guy but maybe not entirely as a ringleader

MIRI: Fair

KRIS: I loved how Rosita, Jeremy, and Nicole had all taken on bigger Black Badge or Black Badge-adjacent responsibilities

MIRI: Yes! I liked all of their interactions

The Iron Witch stuff worked for me too

KRIS: Yeah, better than I think I would’ve expected

MIRI: Grounding it in the sister relationship is always a safe bet on this show

KRIS: That bit where she let down the glamor for a second and Waverly and Nicole were Slowly Spinning in their “real” outfits was pretty cool

MIRI: Very dreamy and funky

I buy Waverly making a stupid choice to save Nicole. You?

KRIS: Yeah, in general I think pushing her luck when other people don’t want her to makes sense for Waverly, and definitely on the heels of everything she’s been through up to that point

MIRI: Agreed

KRIS: I really liked the team interactions in 8 a lot

Dolls telling Waverly “let’s just say it was an order”

MIRI: In the vision quest ep?

KRIS: The Nicole in the Hospital ep

MIRI: Oh, 10, not 8 👍🏻

Yeah, I like the friendship between Dolls and Waverly a lot. It’s never super heavily explored, but it’s always really charming

KRIS: Oh wow I totally lost track of the episode count at some point

MIRI: It was a 12 ep season, not 10

I think we got slightly thrown off in our thoughts about when we would react, that’s all

KRIS: I also really wished there’d been more of a reckoning between Jeremy and Wynonna about Rosita

That seemed like a really important beat that ended up not going anywhere because of all the ensuing crazy

MIRI: Yeah. I hope they come back to it in some way next season

KRIS: But I also really liked Dolls stepping in to be the test subject for awhile and I thought it was weird that possibility didn’t come up earlier

MIRI: Hmmmm

That is valid

Maybe because he couldn’t be killed? And she couldn’t either, but revenants can be harmed short term

KRIS: There also was never an acknowledgement that Waverly broke a promise to tell Wynonna about Rosita

MIRI: Like she was out for a few minutes when Tucker shot her

KRIS: I mean I bought it happening

MIRI: Yeah, people have been in general shitty to Rosita

KRIS: But there was a beat missing on either end -- even Rosita didn’t really mention it

MIRI: Maybe her turn was more earned than I have acknowledged

Right--the building blocks are there, but she never really had a good moment dealign with it all

KRIS: Oh, Nicole’s soon-to-be ex-wife!

Again it felt like there was a beat missing in Shae’s recognition that Waverly was the new girlfriend, or someplace where that might have come up explicitly, but I really liked skipping right over the jealousy tropes

MIRI: Agreed on both counts!

Do we think she’ll come back though? Only because of the note on the divorce papers

KRIS: I didn’t really get that sense, I more just read it as “hey here’s a healthy relationship that’s nice”

MIRI: I think you’re right

I like that Waverly can be weirded out without going full tropey Jealous Girl

So @sweet-but-mostly-sour wanted us to discuss Jeremy’s apparent powers. Any thoughts?

KRIS: I don’t know that it would’ve occurred to me independently

The line there did seem to be hinting at something (I can’t recall what he said) but it also would have made sense to me that he just knew the plan?

Especially because Waverly was pretty clearly expecting Doc at the rendezvous, as opposed to meeting up with him beforehand

Oh it was something about why he’d been recruited into BBD

MIRI: Yeah, one sec, I’m almost to it in the ep

I think

Ok I was wrong but I WILL find it

Oh, I think you were right about it being a warning shot--Waverly grazes Rosita’s temple and Rosita runs out

KRIS: Ah

(I wonder if she just missed?)

MIRI: Yeah, no idea if it was a deliberate warning or not. We know how tricky Peacemaker is

Found it!

Doc asks how Jeremy knows stuff and he says:

“I told you I was in an accident. [The car accident when he was 11.] I wasn’t recruited to Black Badge for my excellent Seinfeld impressions.”

KRIS: Hmm

MIRI: I really love how transparently into people he is without ever creeping on them

KRIS:  “I’d feel it in my groin”

I guess in hindsight that is also a plant

MIRI: The groin or the powers?

I forget who he said that about

KRIS: Doc

A plant for his having powers

hidden in a “Classic Jeremy” joke

Honestly I think I might prefer a Jeremy who picks up on things like Wynonna’s pregnancy just because he pays more attention than other people (or other men)

But I’m not against Jeremy having powers or anything

MIRI: Well, hopefully one doesn’t preclude the other

KRIS: I liked “I don’t fit in here. None of you asked me to” a lot

MIRI: YES that was beautiful without being shmoopy

KRIS: It was an unexpected way for that line to go

MIRI: I think he and Nicole could get a long very well

Yeah, I was expecting a “I never fit anywhere but here” thing and I liked this much better

KRIS: I think my other favorite finale line was “That better not be a nickname for your beav cause I’m not in the mood”

MIRI: Wynonna is always so very Wynonna and basically it’s just dialogue goals in all the ways

KRIS: And Melanie Scrofano finally got her f-bomb! Though I don’t know if it was censored on air

MIRI: I love how important that was to her

We have not yet discussed Mama Earp

KRIS: Oh yeah I really wanted to come with a Mamas Earp joke but blanked I guess there’s not really a joke there, I just wanted at some point to say Mamas Earp

That was another spoiler I stumbled on ahead of time (gif somewhere)

MIRI: I did not get what you were doing there but I finally caught up

Oh no!

So has Wynonna known where Mama Earp is this whole time?

KRIS: I didn’t even think of that. I guess so. That’s interesting

I definitely thought the very first line of that VO was a “flashback” line

MIRI: Me too! I think it still might have been?

KRIS: It seemed like it was part of a “There’s X, and there’s Y, and then there’s Z”

What do we know about Mama Earp?

(Do we know Mama Earp’s name?)

MIRI: (Is it Michelle? the baby’s middle name?)

KRIS: Oh right

MIRI: We know she left when Waves was 2, if I recall correctly

And that’s about it

KRIS: Hang on I’m gonna rewatch that bit

MIRI: “There are men, Wynonna, mean as a rattlesnake cornered at dusk. And there are demons sweet as clover honey. And then there’s him. I told you he was real. I never stopped believing. But he will rise. And when he does, you’ll believe it too.”

KRIS: Man there’s a lot going on there

And maybe a lot of possibilities

MIRI: I know!

Has she been working on this the whole time? Did Waverly get her researcher tendencies from Mama Earp?

KRIS: Right! Is this why she came back to Purgatory?

MIRI: But she’s not fully back

KRIS: Was there some point when Mama Earp might have reached out post-return?

I mean Wynonna coming back

MIRI: Oh, did you mean Wynonna?

Gotcha gotcha

Also, will we get specifics about the mean men and sweet demons?

KRIS: (I also have to say -- #sorrynotsorry -- that I appreciate a show that is this careful about its use of needle drops)

MIRI: (this is such a Thing for you and I love it)

(Also, the music in Wynonna Earp is always damn effective, so I think I have to agree)

KRIS: Is mean men and sweet demons an unusually poetic line for the show or do I just feel that way because when other characters say lines like that it doesn’t always feel right?

MIRI: I think it is unusually poetic, but the HEAVY accent might be meant to somewhat excuse it as country sayings?

Also, I think it’s meant to read as “something my mama used to say” the way we took it, and then twist to be much more literal

I think Mama must have been wrapped up in the occult too. It can’t just have been Ward’s thing. Even if it was after she married in, the “I told you” part means she knows a decent amount about how all this started and where it might go

KRIS: Right

I wonder if Wynonna might have reached out to her after the vision quest?

MIRI: Would she have kept it a secret if she did? I’d buy that

Oh, speaking of Bulshar and secrets, what about that little nod Nicole and Dolls have when we see Nicole has the ring near the end there

KRIS: Definitely seems like Nicole getting an unofficial promotion (that I guess they don’t want Waverly to know about?)

MIRI: Maybe it’s less a secret and more a “when we have time, we’ll discuss all this”? I hope?

KRIS: The classic Intense Dolls Stare did come close to being unintentionally comical in slow motion, that close to Waverly’s line of sight

MIRI: YES

KRIS: Yeah I don’t see how it could be a secret

Maybe Dolls and Nicole are already just moving ahead and they want the others to Have a Moment

MIRI: That makes sense for all involved

Ok, is there anything big that we’ve missed?

KRIS: It’s kind of insane that we’ve mentioned Bobo literally once

I don’t know that I have anything to say about him, but still

MIRI: RIGHT, I meant to bring up Bobo!

KRIS: I guess I’d missed or forgotten that he was specifically Magneto-ish and not generally telekinetic

MIRI: I do have things to say, or just to bring up, I guess

Yeah, I had too!

And I wonder if there’s a reason for that that we will see/explore?

Ok, points that I don’t really have much to say about, but I feel should be stated: 1) He’s now an acolyte of Bulshar and 2) He called Waverly kin, but is pretty certainly not her father

KRIS: Someday Waverly’s going to start an occult 23andMe

MIRI: Hahahahahahahahahahhaa

KRIS: I definitely had one more little thing I wanted to mention but it’s escaped me

Oh Nicole’s cat!

MIRI: Calamity Jane!!!

KRIS: (God I have to get back into Deadwood)

MIRI: Do you have any predictions for next season? (Knowing, of course, that Andras will subvert all expectations and impress us all in the process)

KRIS: I basically wouldn’t dare at this point

Though I will ask for a web series that’s The Adventures of Randy Nedley and Calamity Jane

MIRI: OH MY GOD

I never knew I wanted that until just now

They are grumpy best friends

KRIS: I’m even too afraid to guess in which “act” of the season Waverly will come face to face with Mama Earp

MIRI: You say that, and I’m like, “Oh, well...wait. No...Could be..?” Andras is breaking my brain

I can definitely see a first episode option, a midseason option, an end of act 1 option, etc...

I predict we’ll learn what Waverly is, if she’s not entirely human

KRIS: That makes sense

I still kind of want to know what happened to BBD but I get the sense that’s a closed door

or at least as closed as TV gets

MIRI: Yeah, I’d say try to let that hope go for now

I wonder if we’ll be getting any new members of the gang? I feel like no

KRIS: Hmm

MIRI: Maybe someone to replace Rosita if she’s gone?

KRIS: I mean I hope Rosita comes back to the fold, somehow, but I could just as easily see her having a more complete villain turn

I could also see a version of this that’s vaguely Alias season 2 where Mama Earp is around a lot

MIRI: But I feel like things are pretty well balanced, plus we’ll be getting Mama Earp and surely some new enemies/adversaries

KRIS: I really hope Jeremy gets time with her

MIRI: Yeah, same. And she may come with a supporting character or two Interesting

Wait, with Mama or Rosita?

KRIS: Mama Earp

Just for the jokes

MIRI: Yes, I’m weirdly into that

KRIS: I was a little surprised there wasn’t a Wynonna-Dolls beat somewhere at the end

MIRI: I wonder if they didn’t want to put it in competition with the Wynonna-Doc beat

KRIS: I don’t see where it would have fit in but I’m curious about which ship is sailing next season

Yeah that’s what I figured

MIRI: I thiiiiink it’s Wynonna/Dolls

I think the little kiss with Doc was just an acknowledgement of the magnitude of it all and that they care about each other

She and Dolls seemed pretty settled after the vision quest

KRIS: Yeah

MIRI: Which reminds me that we may have the same side/opposite sides thing come up again next season

KRIS: With Doc and Dolls?

MIRI: Dolls and Wynonna

They discuss it in bed after the vision quest

KRIS: Ohhhhh right right

That kind of came out of nowhere for me

MIRI: Yeah, I think it was either a red herring going into the finale arc, or groundwork for future tension

KRIS: I’m basically just looking for a good Andras or Scrofano tweet to end this on

https://twitter.com/MelanieScrofano/status/901230636748464128

https://twitter.com/emtothea/status/901474002631249921

https://twitter.com/emtothea/status/901272365060861952

MIRI: She has a voice she uses to talk to/about cakes. Again, I aspire to be Emily Andras when I grow up

KRIS: https://twitter.com/emtothea/status/901278447497994240

https://twitter.com/emtothea/status/901278890181574656

https://twitter.com/MelanieScrofano/status/901265498771513344

MIRI: KRIS you have to give me time to react to things, stop texting at the speed of Wynonna plot twists!!!!! KRIS: OH we forgot about Jeremy referring to Wayhaught as Wayhaught!

MIRI: Jeremy is the most genre savvy, but in a totally non-annoying way and I love him very much

Oh my godddd I missed this as a callback

KRIS: Oh me too

MIRI: I feel like Jeremy’s “It feels like a Phil” line means they’re not going to go too far with whatever his perception/power is

He’s not all knowing. He has feelings and observations that are just him being Jeremy too

KRIS:  I think I found the winner

MIRI: 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

They did say vagina/euphemisms for vagina a lot this episode

KRIS: https://twitter.com/emtothea/status/901264948176629760

MIRI: https://twitter.com/MelanieScrofano/status/901263525510873088

KRIS: https://twitter.com/MelanieScrofano/status/901279279379611648

We’re clearly out of control

MIRI: Our role models are not helpful on that score

KRIS: I feel like this has been a reasonably successful seeing-a-season-through

MIRI: Yes! I liked doing it this way and would be down for picking a show or two to do this for in fall

https://twitter.com/VarunSaranga/status/901268191984439296

KRIS: Maybe a half-hour?

MIRI: Yeah, that would be good. Do we want to do a new one or something returning?

KRIS: I guess we should wait and see

OH we should do Crazy Ex when it comes back

MIRI: YES

That’s not a half hour but YES

KRIS: OK we should really wrap up and have one of us start formatting this monster

Thanks to anyone who followed along with us

MIRI: Definitely! We hope you enjoyed and that you come back and keep enjoying. And let us know if you have any requests!

KRIS: Also fuck it, if the others aren’t watching The Bold Type by the time the season ends we should just do a finale reaction

MIRI: YES SOMEONE IS FINALLY GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE BOLD TYPE WITH ME

KRIS: SOMEONE PLEASE CATALOG EVERY SUTTON REACTION SHOT FOR ME

Wow that’s completely unreasonable, sorry Tumblr I take it back

MIRI: Never apologize, Kris.

Would Melanie Scrofano apologize? I think not

KRIS: Our Lady of Go Fuck Yourself

Hmmm, not my best

MIRI: No, I liked it

[how2to18]

“[W]RITING IN A ROOM by myself is practically my whole life.” That’s Philip Roth speaking in a 1974 conversation with Joyce Carol Oates that first appeared in The Ontario Review. It’s reprinted in Roth’s recently published Why Write? Collected Nonfiction 1960–2013 (Library of America, 2017).

I think Roth is speaking for a great many writers, especially novelists. Writing is a lonely and isolated desk job, and although I have no hard psychological or statistical data on the subject, my intuition is that many of us like it that way, we want our whole life to be about writing in a room by ourselves. That’s why we became writers in the first place.

Yet even the most reclusive of us, either at our own or other people’s insistence, do feel the need to leave that room every once in a while; and stepping outside for a walk, a drift, a meander, a perambulation, is the easiest and perhaps the most obvious way of doing it.

I never had the sense from reading Roth’s fiction that he was much of a walker, but I may have been wrong about that. I recently reread a startling paragraph in Portnoy’s Complaint (1969), a paragraph I had no memory of whatsoever, in which Portnoy is questioning whether his childhood was really as terrible as he now remembers it:

What else? Walks, walks with my father in Weequahic Park on Sundays that I still haven’t forgotten. You know, I can’t go off to the country and find an acorn on the ground without thinking of him and those walks. And that’s not nothing, nearly thirty years later.

Indeed, it is not. Any of us who have walked with our father, not necessarily all that happily, surely recognize the sentiment.

And later in that Joyce Carol Oates piece Roth tells her, “I write during the day, walk four or five miles at the end of the afternoon, and read at night.” Four or five miles a day is enough to make him a serious and enthusiastic walker, in my opinion, and no doubt enough to make him seem like an obsessive in the opinion of some others.

There’s also an essay he published in The New York Review of Books, April 12, 1990, titled “A Conversation in Prague,” in which he describes being on a morning walk in that city soon after the Velvet Revolution, and seeing a crowd of people laughing at television screens showing footage of a Communist Party meeting. Roth writes, “I thought that this must be the highest purpose of laughter, to bury wickedness in ridicule.”

That’s great, and isn’t it what all we walking writers and writing walkers want? We want to step outside our front door, walk for a while, and be presented with something remarkable, something worth writing about, something we don’t have to make up. You see the thing, grasp its meaning, and go running back to your room to write about it.

This is not precisely the same as William Wordsworth’s “emotion recollected in tranquility,” but it’s close. And certainly it’s hard to imagine just what Wordsworth’s oeuvre would have been like if he hadn’t been such a serious and enthusiastic walker. Without the walking there’d certainly be no “Daffodils” or “Tintern Abbey,” and The Prelude would be barely recognizable.

¤

There’s a passage in Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2000) in which she describes sitting down to write about walking, and then getting up again “because a desk is no place to think on the large scale.” She heads out across a headland north of the Golden Gate Bridge and walks through linked paths and roads that form a circuit of about six miles, “that I began hiking ten years ago to walk off my angst during a difficult year.” She goes on, “thinking is generally thought of as doing nothing […] It’s best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking.”

It’s possible to disagree with most of that. You might not consider thinking or walking to be in any sense doing nothing, although it’s possible to understand why others might. Speaking personally, however, there’s certainly no denying that walking is a treatment (if by no means a cure) for angst.

¤

That section from Solnit’s book appears in a recent exhibition catalog titled Wanderlust: Actions, Traces, Journeys 1967–2017. Titles are never easy, but that’s going to make life really tricky for future bibliographers.

The catalog accompanied an exhibition originated by University at Buffalo Art Galleries and also seen at the Des Moines Art Center. It’s not all about walking, though it’s definitely about artists getting out and about, leaving their desk or room or studio. Walking features in many of the works — in the best of them, I’d say. The usual suspects are there, including Richard Long, Sophie Calle, Vito Acconci, Gabriel Orozco, Francis Alÿs, Allan Kaprow, and Nancy Holt, but they are not represented by their most famous works, and there are lesser known artists too.

One work that seems especially novel, while also extremely relevant and moving, is a piece titled Blind Field Shuttle by Carmen Papalia, a new name to me, who lost his sight while still a college student, and who calls himself a “Social Practice artist.” He leads walking tours for up to 50 people who follow behind him in single file, each person with a hand on the shoulder of the walker in front. They’re supposed to keep their eyes closed, to experience at least some of what Papalia is experiencing, but they’re not blindfolded, and I can’t help thinking some must surely open their eyes and take a peep from time to time. The Wanderlust catalog says the work “dismantle[s] the hierarchy of sensory perception,” which doesn’t strike me as a very helpful or humane description; in other accounts of the work, not in the catalog, it seems the effect on the walkers can be very intense indeed, and a lot of weeping and hugging goes on at the end.

¤

One section in the catalog is titled “Keep on Walking.” Written by Lori Waxman, it contains a reference to a walking expedition undertaken in early May 1924 by André Breton, Louis Aragon, Max Morise, and Roger Vitrac. The walk is regularly alluded to in histories of walking and art, though the details remain vague, at least to me. It’s sometimes described (as in the catalog) as a walk from Blois, France, to Romorantin, a perfectly feasible route of about 28 miles, but that doesn’t seem to be what the four men actually did.

They certainly took a train to Blois — a town somewhat over a 100 miles southwest of Paris. They had chosen this destination “at random,” although its easy accessibility from Paris was surely a factor in the choice. Once there, they started walking, again supposedly at random, or at least without specific geographical goals, but in broad terms, the project was to investigate whether automatism might apply to walking as it did to the human psyche. Breton discussed it in a radio interview, decades after the event: “But what highways could we take? Physical highways? Not likely. Spiritual ones? Hard to imagine. Nonetheless, it occurred to us that we might combine these two types of road.”

The best source I’ve found about the expedition is Mark Polizzotti’s Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton (1995), but even he doesn’t tell us when they set off; he simply says they took the train to Blois “in the first days of May.” Then he gets more specific. He tells us they were in Romorantin on May 5, so that obviously wasn’t the end of the walk since he says they were in Argent on the May 7 and in Moret on the May 9.

Now if my mapping is correct, these places are nothing like walking distance from each other. Romorantin is about 40 miles from Argent; Argent is over 70 miles from Moret. They obviously weren’t walking between these places. I’m guessing, and it is only a guess, that they took the train to each of these locations and then walked about once they got there. According to Polizzotti, they were certainly present in the train station in Moret, because that’s where Morise vandalized a crucifix.

There were other, more or less surrealist activities, including attempts at automatic writing, but, says Polizzotti, “for the most part, they wandered aimlessly throughout the French countryside, conversing all the while, resolutely following their lack of itinerary.” This corresponds with Breton’s radio description. However, after some days of this, things had understandably become strained. Aragon and Vitrac came to blows, Polizzotti reports, “the former disgusted by the other’s insistence on seeing every minor coincidence as a major revelation.” At this point, Breton called off the expedition and they all caught the train back to Paris, though it’s not clear to me where from.

Still, Breton had certainly derived some inspiration from the experience. Back in Paris, in his room — in fact his studio in the rue Fontaine — he started writing; and by October of that year, he’d published the first manifesto of surrealism.

Incidentally, in the second manifesto, published 1929, Breton says (translations vary wildly), “The purest surrealist act is walking into a crowd with a loaded gun and firing into it randomly” — a remark that may not sit very well in today’s cultural environment; though it’s hard to imagine that it would have sat much better in France, 11 years after the end of the Great War.

¤

A new book comes across the transom, Éric Hazan’s A Walk Through Paris (Verso Books, 2018; translated by David Fernbach). It’s blurbed by Matthew Beaumont, author of Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London (2015), who says, “As André Breton might have observed, there really are no lost steps here.” Indeed, Hazan claims Breton as one of his heroes: “Breton, Benjamin, Baudelaire, Nerval, Balzac, Chateaubriand — perhaps my references lack variety. But there is nothing I can do about it, this is my paper family, as good as any other.”

The book’s title in French is Une Traversée de Paris (considerably zestier than the English version, it seems to me). That’s a nod to the 1956 movie La Traversée de Paris, a blackish and, at this distance, one might even say Beckettian comedy about two black marketeers who walk across occupied Paris during World War II, carrying suitcases full of pork. It was released in the United States as Four Bags Full, and in the United Kingdom as Pig Across Paris. Yes, titles are never easy.

Hazan’s walk is from Ivry to Saint-Denis, a south-to-north transit, more or less following an imaginary meridian that divides east and west Paris. The route is about 10 miles and could easily be done in one day, possibly in an afternoon, and at times the book reads as though that’s what Hazan’s doing — but he fesses up: the walk is a literary construct. He quotes Marcel Proust to justify himself.

Hazan’s previous works include A History of the Barricade (La Barricade: Histoire d’un objet révolutionnaire, 2013) and A People’s History of the French Revolution (Une histoire de la Révolution française, 2012), and the new book’s jacket, though not the book itself, bears the subtitle “a radical exploration,” so it’s no surprise that Hazan is much concerned with riot, insurrection, protest, and revolution. He is, naturally, on the side of the proletariat — a word he uses more comfortably and more approvingly than I think most Anglophone authors would. He discusses Baron Haussmann’s Mémoires (1890), in which Paris’s great renovator

expresses his disgust for the vile crowd he was forced to pass though in walking from the Chausée-d’Antin where he lived to the law faculty where he was a student. The brigands, prostitutes and immigrant workers crowded into the sordid street around the Hôtel de Ville and Notre-Dame had to be got rid of, being the source of both cholera and unpredictable riots.

Hazan is having none of that, and concludes, “I understand and am even sorry for those who live in the ghettos of the rich and are scared when they emerge and see so many people who do not look like them.”

A Walk Through Paris is sometimes a work of urbanism, sometimes a subversive history book, sometimes a kind of tourist guide. It isn’t a memoir, but there are some very enjoyable personal details about Hazan’s life as a doctor, about the places where he ate and drank, the boxing gym where he trained. My favorite moment in the book comes when he arrives at the basilica Sainte-Jeanne-d’Arc and encounters a Belgian tourist who apparently travels the world photographing statues of Saint Joan of Arc. He asks Hazan if he knows of any others, and, of course, Hazan knows plenty. It’s a lovely moment of quiet obsession and human interaction, the kind of encounter that can really only happen when you’re walking — one that certainly won’t happen if you spend your whole life writing in a room by yourself.

¤

Geoff Nicholson is a contributing editor to the Los Angeles Review of Books. His latest novel, The Miranda, is out now.

The post A Ramble About Books About Walking appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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